Feeling the heat The state of the EU’s climate policy ahead of Warsaw talks A special supplement
24 – 30 October 2013 Volume 19 Number 37
NEWS
Telecoms timeline Time is running out for agreement on cross-border communication rules. PAGE 4
NEWS
EU leaders urged to get tough in US spying row
Double duty What did MEPs get up to in their second October Strasbourg session? PAGES 6 AND 7
NEWS
Bye bye Juncker? Luxembourg election threatens survival of prime minister. PAGE 8
PROFILE
Artis Pabriks Latvia’s defence minister fights for what he believes in. PAGE 12
REUTERS CLOSE TIES? John Kerry, US secretary of state, and Enrico Letta, Italy’s prime minister, before talks in Rome yesterday (23 October). An Italian government spokesman said that Kerry promised that US authorities would look into claims that their intelligence services may have illegally intercepted telecoms data. Toby Vogel and Andrew Gardner t.vogel@europeanvoice.com
COMMENT
Freedom cheese Russia’s neighbours protest with wine and cheese. PAGES 13 AND 19
The drawbacks of forward guidance Central banks’ extensive promises, assurances, and pre-commitments have lured market players into a false sense of security, writes Marcel Fratzscher. Price: Eurozone €4.70
UK £4.20 37>
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The European Parliament is ratcheting up pressure on European Union leaders to take a tough line with the United States in the wake of revelations about the scale and scope of US surveillance in Europe. In two separate votes this week, on the protection of EU citizens’ data available to the US authorities, and on data-protection rules within the EU, MEPs took a line antithetical to American interests. The votes came in the immediate aftermath of revelations published on Monday in the French newspaper Le Monde, that as recently as January the US was routinely recording millions of calls and messages each month made through French telecom networks. The alleged targets of surveillance included internet company Wanadoo and Alcatel-Lucent, a giant French-American company that provides equipment for communication networks, raising the possibility of industrial espionage. François Hollande, France’s president, called Barack Obama, the US president, to express his disquiet at the revelations. Laurent Fabius, France’s for-
eign minister, said on Monday (21 October) that at an EU summit that is being held today and tomorrow in Brussels (24-25 October) France would call for rapid completion of a reform of the EU’s data-protection rules. The surveillance scandal broke as the EU and US are supposed to be negotiating a free-trade deal. In any such deal, rules governing the telecoms sector and the digital economy more broadly are expected to figure prominently. The European Parliament yesterday (23 October) urged EU member states to suspend an agreement that gives US counter-terrorism officials the possibility to look at data about bank transfers made by Europeans and carried through the SWIFT messaging network. The vote is not binding on the EU, because suspension of the agreement would require the backing of a weighted majority of member states, but it was an expression of discontent. Another vote – on data protection within the EU – has greater political significance, because it will help to shape EU law. The Parliament’s civil-liberties committee approved the Parliament’s negotiating position on a draft data-protection regulation and accelerated ne-
Parliament seeks greater protection for
EU citizens Page 2
MEPs call for suspension of SWIFT
agreement with US Page 2
Transatlantic trade talk delays Page 2 Bad blood with US will be costly Page 10
gotiations, by deciding not to refer the proposal to the full Parliament for debate. In both instances, leading members of Parliament buttressed their arguments by pointing to the need to respond to mass surveillance of EU citizens by the US. Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German Green MEP who is Parliament’s lead negotiator on the data-protection regulation, called on leaders of the EU’s member states to “send a strong signal” on data protection when they meet for their summit, which is scheduled to give particular attention to the digital economy. Details released previously by a US whistleblower, Edward Snowden, suggested that the US’s National Security Agency had extensive programmes in Europe and targeted EU buildings in Brussels and in the US. Snowden’s revelations also raised the possibility of commercial espionage, because the targets included the headquarters of the EU’s Council of Ministers.
His disclosures prompted the EU to initiate consultations about data-protection aspects of the surveillance programmes with the US authorities. They also marred the start of the transatlantic trade talks in July, because the EU insisted that from the start there should be consultations in parallel about the implications of the US’s surveillance operations on data protection. Fabius described the consultations as “insufficient”, an argument that he said Hollande would make at the summit. The European Commission has also voiced dissatisfaction with the consultations. Cecilia Malmström, the European commissioner for home affairs, said earlier this autumn that she was unhappy with the response she had received from US counterparts on the allegations. She said that any systematic circumvention of the safeguards would constitute a serious breach of the SWIFT bankdata agreement.
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NEWS
A new Georgia Saakashvili to hand over reins of power. NEWS 9
THIS WEEK
EU-US TENSIONS
Count-down Commission publishes limited agenda for Barroso’s remaining months. NEWS 5
Pre-emptive strike EU over-rides staff unions' opposition and signs tougher working rules into force. NEWS 7
Power talk Is fluent English now a key requirement for political influence? COMMENT 11
DATA PROTECTION
Parliament seeks greater protection for EU citizens Report will not yet be debated in full plenary EU authority will be needed to disclose data Toby Vogel t.vogel@europeanvoice.com
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Multiple choice questions John Wyles sees more problems than solutions in choosing Barroso's successor. COMMENT 13
THE WEEK AHEAD 24 OCTOBER European Parliament committees meet, Strasbourg. On the agenda: data protection; marine oil pollution; maritime planning; wildlife crime; environmental economic accounts; Copernicus Programme; EU governance. 24 OCTOBER Council of Ministers, European Commission and the social partners meet for the Tripartite Social Summit, Brussels. On the agenda: social aspects of EU policies.
and jobs; digital economy, innovation and services; implementation of Investment for Europe plan; simplification of regulations; Youth Employment Initiative; economic and monetary union (EMU), including policy co-ordination, banking union, and social aspects; Eastern Partnership summit; deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean.
28-29 OCTOBER National ministers and EU and national officials meet for the annual forum of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region, 24 OCTOBER Bucharest. On the agenda: European commissioners and negotiations on future proEU officials meet Chinese grammes; review of implemencounterparts at the EU-China tation; Danube Innovation High Level Economic and Trade Partnership. Dialogue. On the agenda: investment agreement; trade; 28 OCTOBER economic policy. 1 NOVEMBER EU and Japanese negotiations 24-25 OCTOBER for the third round of talks on a EU heads of government and free-trade agreement continstate meet for a European ue, Tokyo. On the agenda: reCouncil, Brussels. On the agen- duction of tariffs and regulatoda: competitiveness, growth ry barriers to trade.
This week’s special report on climate change is printed separately from the newspaper and distributed only to subscribers. It is also available from our website. To subscribe, visit: EuropeanVoice.com/subscribe
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FEELING THE HEAT CLIMATE CHANGE 24 OCTO BER 2013
LETTERS FEATURE CAREERS ENTRE NOUS
MEPs call for suspension of SWIFT agreement with US Toby Vogel and Dave Keating t.vogel@europeanvoice.com d.keating@europeanvoice.com
INDEX NEWS EDITORIAL COMMENT PROFILE
he European Parliament has signalled to member states that in a revision of data-protection rules it will insist on greater protection for European Union citizens than the European Commission has proposed. In a vote on Monday (21 October), the Parliament’s civil-liberties committee decided that a report drawn up by Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German Green, was sufficient to make debate unnecessary in a full plenary meeting of the Parliament. The text had been agreed by the Parliament’s political groups last week, but even so Albrecht said that he had been surprised by the sweeping support given in the vote. The report will now serve as a basis for negotiations with the EU’s member states about a revamp of EU dataprotection rules. MEPs reinstated a provision limiting the transfer of personal data beyond the EU. Firms that have been asked by a foreign government to disclose data about EU individuals would be required to obtain prior authorisation from an EU data-protection authority. The European Commission had
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removed the provision before finalising its proposal in January 2012, reportedly under pressure from the US. This provision, if passed into EU law, could create a legal dilemma for the likes of Google or Facebook, with American law compelling them to hand over personal data of Europeans and European law preventing them from doing so without prior authorisation. MEPs also voted to raise the maximum penalties for non-compliance from 2% of a company’s annual global turnover, as the Commission had initially proposed, to 5%, or up to €100 million. Various MEPs invoked allegations that the US has been spying extensively in Europe as justification for tightening up the rules. Sylvie Guillaume, a centreleft French MEP, said that the protection of personal data was a “fundamental right for European citizens” and that the reports published on 21 October about US spying on French telecommunications “remind us more than anything that we need clear rules”. Albrecht and other MEPs fear that national governments – notably Germany and the UK – will seek to slow down the negotiations so that the new rules will not be adopted before the current Parliament holds its last plenary, in April. The committee’s decision not to refer the proposal to the plenary at this stage is an
The European Parliament demanded yesterday (23 October) that the EU suspend its agreement with the United States on sharing bank-transaction data, in response to reports that US intelligence services had breached privacy safeguards. The vote was close, with just 280 in favour and 254 against, with 30 abstentions. It was supported by Socialist, Liberal and Green, MEPs but opposed by centre-right MEPs. The agreement covers the
Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme, set up to give US authorities a degree of access to data on banking transfers made through the global SWIFT messaging system, which is headquartered in Europe. It allows US counter-terrorism officials to check certain data in search of suspicious transfers of cash that could be related to terrorism. Documents provided by Edward Snowden, a US whistle-blower, have led to suggestions that the US National Security Agency has enjoyed unimpeded access to all Swift transactions. MEPs say this would be a
attempt to maintain momentum. A diplomat from a small state with relatively strong data-protection rules said that his country was concerned that “this truly horizontal file affecting every single data subject in the EU” could be pushed through too fast because of anxieties about US activities.
John Higgins, director of DigitalEurope, which represents digital businesses, said: “There is a real risk that the drafting process will be rushed and important details will not get addressed properly. Rushing through a half-baked law risks throwing away a vital and much needed opportunity to stimulate economic growth.”
TRANSATLANTIC TRADE TALK DELAYS Allegations about US spying are not to blame for a lack of public information about when a second round of transatlantic trade talks will start, according to European Union officials. Talks had been scheduled for 7-11 October, but were delayed after an impasse in the US Congress over the US budget that forced the US government to close down much of the public administration. However, after US government offices re-opened on 17 October, it had been expected that the trade talks would be rapidly rescheduled. Officials blamed the further delays on difficulties in scheduling meetings, as many of the EU’s roughly 100-strong negotiating team are currently engaged in negotiations with other countries. MEPs from the far-left, Greens, as well as some Socialists, have been calling for the suspension of the trade talks, which began in July, but without gaining much support from other political groups. An official said that the allegations of spying would not affect the atmosphere between the two sides. violation of safeguards that form part of the agreement, which explicitly forbid such data mining.
Threat The Parliament vote is nonbinding. But the text that MEPs adopted carries a threat to future international deals: Parliament will “take account of the Commission’s response” to this demand when considering whether to give its consent to future international agreements. It also calls on the EU policing agency Europol to investigate the allegations, with a “full on-site technical investigation”. The dispute comes in the context of an overall deterioration of US-EU relations, as new allegations of US snooping continue to surface
(see page 1). Cecilia Malmström, the European commissioner for home affairs, indicated continuing concerns earlier this month, and said she was awaiting “clarifications” from US authorities to outstanding questions. Sophie in ’t Veld, a Dutch Liberal and one of the drafters of the resolution, said that suspending the Swift agreement was “the least we can do”, and attacked member states for failing to investigate the allegations. But the centre-right ECR group of British Conservatives and their allies called the MEPs’ vote “presumptuous”. A suspension would “provide further advantage to terrorists,” said ECR MEP Timothy Kirkhope. See pages 6, 7 and 10
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BUSINESS IN BRIEF Rising debt Eurostat announced yesterday (23 October) that government debt in the eurozone had risen by 1.1% in the second quarter of 2013 to 93.4% of the eurozone’s gross domestic product (GDP). The government debt to GDP ratio for the European Union as a whole stood at 86.8%, an increase of 0.9% on the first quarter.
VAT proposal The Commission yesterday (23 October) proposed to harmonise the forms for claiming back value-added tax, in an attempt to reduce unnecessary administrative burdens. Companies could save as much as €15bn annually, the Commission said.
NEWS
COMMISSION Telecommunications
Pressure is on to reach agreement on telecoms Commission proposal described as too complex Negative reaction from telecoms industry Nicholas Hirst n.hirst@europeanvoice.com
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The Commission announced on Tuesday (22 October) an in-depth inquiry into the bid by Holcim, a Swiss building materials firm, to acquire the German subsidiary of Mexicobased rival Cemex Group. The Commission has until 10 March to approve or block the deal.
uropean Union member states are resisting European Commission pressure for agreement at this week’s EU summit on a strict deadline for adopting the new telecoms package. France, Italy, Sweden, Hungary and the Czech Republic are among the countries arguing that the Commission proposal is too recent and too complex for EU leaders to be able to take any firm decisions at present on either a timetable or on the package’s content. The Commission made its proposal on 11 September, focused on increasing consumer protection and integrating Europe’s fragmented telecoms sector. It wants the European Council to direct national ministers and the European Parliament to adopt the package before the Parliament dissolves for elections next spring. Some member states, including Ireland, are sympathetic to the Commission’s proposed timeline. But the reluctant member states say that negative reactions within the telecoms industry and from national regulators dictate that the proposal should follow the usual legislative procedure, with full prior discussion by national experts and telecoms ministers. EU diplomats stress that quality should not be sacrificed to speed on such important proposals. Some also point
Italy to recover €295m from Alcoa
TECHNOLOGY Internet
ECB to assess bank assets The European Central Bank yesterday (23 October) announced the criteria it would use in November when assessing the financial situation of the European Union’s largest banks. The review is a prerequisite to bringing into force the first elements of EU banking union.
Digital tax On Tuesday (22 October) the Commission announced that it was setting up a high level expert group to examine the challenges presented by the digital economy to European tax systems. It will report back on possible EU solutions in the first half of 2014.
Cement merger
The European Court of Justice on Friday (18 October) ordered Italy to recover €295 million of illegal state aid from Alcoa. Italy had not implemented a 2009 decision by the Commission that found that two Alcoa aluminium smelters had benefited from subsidised electricity tariffs.
Samsung antitrust deal The Commission on Thursday (17 October) put out for consultation a draft antitrust deal with Samsung. The settlement offer would limit Samsung’s ability to use its smartphone patents to extract high fees from rivals, including Apple.
REUTERS
to inadequacies in the Commission’s consultation on the proposal, and to risks of creating unacceptable uncertainty for market operators so soon after earlier reforms.
Criticism The concerns hardened after the EU’s 28 national telecoms regulators published detailed criticisms of the proposals. The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (Berec) on Thursday (17 October) accused the Commission of exaggerating the problems fac-
ing the telecoms sector so as to ensure “legislative priority” for the package. Berec argues that the proposals take insufficient account of national regulators’ understanding of the peculiarities of national markets. If the Commission were to win the power it is seeking to veto decisions taken by national regulators, the checks and balances under the current system would be upset, says Berec. The Commission’s proposals would also reduce Berec’s independence and proximity to consumers by replacing the Berec
chairperson, who rotates amongst the national regulators, with a permanent official proposed by the Commission. Resistance is also expected in the European Parliament, according to a source who said that there was “no chance” of the package being adopted by the parliament in this term. The most optimistic prediction is that the Parliament might adopt an initial position on the package, leaving the following parliament to negotiate a final text with member states.
Pilar del Castillo Vera, a Spanish MEP from the centre-right European People’s Party who sits on the Parliament’s committee on industry, research and energy, has been appointed to steer most of the telecoms package through Parliament. Malcolm Harbour, a British MEP from the European Conservatives and Reformists Group, who chairs the Parliament’s committee on the internal market and consumer protection, is taking the lead on the consumer aspects of the proposal.
Estonia leads the way on safer internet transactions Nicholas Hirst n.hirst@europeanvoice.com
Andrus Ansip, Estonia’s prime minister, is urging European Union leaders to adopt proposals that would make it easier and safer for EU citizens to conduct transactions over the internet. As an Estonian, he is well placed to understand the role technology can play in making citizens’ lives easier. The Baltic republic is one of the world’s most advanced e-societies, with citizens
able to use electronic identity cards (eIDs) to access a wide range of public and private services online – whether voting in national elections, filing tax forms or making a bank transfer. What is more, Estonians actually use these services: more than 90% of Estonians have eIDs, 24% voted using the internet in the last parliamentary elections in 2011, and 94% of tax returns were filed online in 2012. The time that this saves for Estonians is worth an
estimated 2% of gross domestic product, says Ansip, writing in today’s European Voice. All the more reason, he says, why EU leaders must hurry, before the European Parliament dissolves in April 2014, to adopt a Commission proposal on eIDs and electronc trust services that would allow EU citizens, businessmen and governments to use their national eIDs to sign for online transactions in any other member state. See page 14
Broadband for all The European Commission announced on Thursday (17 October) that every European Union household now has access to a basic broadband connection, fulfilling the Commission’s 2013 target of ‘broadband for all’. Satellite internet connections, whose deploy-
ment the Commission has helped to fund, now make it possible to connect to the internet from anywhere in the EU. This will benefit the 0.6% of EU households, representing about 3 million EU citizens, who live in remote regions that are not covered by fixed or mobile internet networks.
NEWS IN BRIEF Turkey talks The European Union’s member states on Tuesday (22 October) agreed to resume membership negotiations with Turkey, ending a three-year freeze in talks. The talks will resume at an inter-governmental conference to be held in Brussels on 5 November, focused on regional development.
AGENDA
Commission sets out its priorities NEW INITIATIVES
Council secrecy The European Court of Justice ruled on Thursday (17 October) that the Council of Ministers is breaking European Union transparency rules by blacking out the names of member states in legislative documents before they are released to the public. The case arose from the Council’s refusal to a request from Access Info Europe to see what changes individual member states had proposed to legislation.
Biofuel reform delayed The European Parliament’s environment committee voted on Thursday against giving a negotiating mandate to Corinne Lepage, a French Liberal MEP, to begin negotiations with member states on draft measures to restrict the use of biofuel. The refusal means that the legislation is likely to require a second reading, which will delay it for at least a year because of the approaching end of this parliamentary term in April 2014.
Transport funding maps The European Commission has published maps of the nine infrastructure corridors eligible for priority funding under the Connecting Europe Facility, with €26 billion available from 2014-20. The maps were published at a ‘Ten-T Days’ event in Estonia on Thursday, at which the Commission also launched a platform of European infrastructure managers, involving six European transport organisations.
Fish subsidies MEPs voted yesterday (23 October) to reject an attempted re-introduction of subsidies for the building of new fishing boats in the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund, the funding vehicle for the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy. The Parliament’s fisheries committee had voted in July to renew this funding. The Parliament has also voted to double investment in data collection, control and enforcement of regulations. Negotiations with member states are expected to begin next month.
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Agriculture and rural development Review of EU political and legal framework for organic production Review of regime for agriculture in the outermost regions Climate, energy and environment 2030 framework for climate and energy policies Framework for safe and secure unconventional hydrocarbon extraction Competition State aid modernisation in key sectors State aid modernisation: General block exemption regulation Review of competition rules for technology transfer agreements Development and environment Follow-up towards the post-2015 development framework Employment, social affairs and inclusion Labour mobility package Communication on job creation in the green economy Energy State of implementation of the internal energy market and action plan to implement the internal energy market at retail level Enterprise and industry Industrial policy package Action plan for the defence industry Environment Resource efficiency and waste Equality Tackling the gender pay gap European Convention on Human Rights EU accession to the ECHR – internal rules External action and maritime EU maritime security strategy Home affairs Countering violent extremism Humanitarian aid Preparing an EU position on the post-Hyogo framework Justice and home affairs Future projects in the areas of justice and home affairs Justice and enterprise European accessibility act A new approach to business failure and insolvency Internal market and services Follow-up to the Green Paper on long-term financing of the EU economy Review of the copyright acquis Framework for crisis management and resolution for financial institutions other than banks Protection of the EU’s financial interest OLAF reform Research and innovation and economic and monetary affairs Research and innovation as sources of growth Rule of law The rule of law in the European Union Taxation and customs union Towards a definitive VAT system Source: European Commission
Toby Vogel t.vogel@europeanvoice.com
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he European Commission on Tuesday (22 October) adopted its work programme for 2014, setting out a plan containing 29 initiatives between now and the end of its mandate in October 2014. Of the 29, just four – see below – are legislative; the remaining 25 are primarily
reviews of existing legislation and communications on issues such as state aid modernisation or industrial policy. The Commission says that all new legislative proposals arise from legal obligations, the need for technical updates, or specific urgent issues. The work programme also lists more than 20 legislative proposals that the Commission has already made,
with a plea for their adoption by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers during the current legislative term, which ends with a plenary session in April. José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, said that 2014 will be about “delivery and implementation”, and that growth and jobs will be the Commission’s top priority.
FOUR LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS TO BE MADE BY THE COMMISSION BEFORE OCTOBER 2014 Resource efficiency and waste Before the summer, the Commission will put forward a review of EU waste policy, subjecting elements of its waste and resources legislation to fitness checks. It is expected to include new recycling targets and to contain guidance for resource efficiency. It may also suggest a headline target for raw material consumption or indicators to measure resource efficiency. EU accession to the European Convention on Human Rights This proposal is to set out the internal rules required to make the EU’s future accession to the Convention operational. Framework for crisis management and resolution for financial institutions other than banks This proposal is intended to increase financial stability through rules on resolving non-bank institutions in trouble. The rules are modelled on those that are to apply to banks, to prevent failures from having an impact on the entire financial system. OLAF reform The Commission wants to update the rules on OLAF, the EU’s anti-fraud office, under a critical spotlight following its investigation of John Dalli, then a European commissioner. The Commission intends to propose procedural safeguards modelled on those of the future European Public Prosecutor’s Office, for example the creation of an independent controller.
EXISTING PROPOSALS THAT THE COMMISSION IDENTIFIES AS PRIORITY ITEMS Single resolution mechanism Framework for bank recovery and resolution Deposit guarantee schemes MIFID Retail banking Long-term investment funds Anti-money laundering Public employment services Posting of workers Free movement of workers Network and information security Telecoms package Payments package
E-identification and signatures Fourth railway package ETS aviation Actions for damages Public procurement E-invoicing in public procurement Reform of insolvency rules Data protection package European Public Prosecutor’s Office Administrative co-operation directive Financial transaction tax Tobacco products directive Regulation on political parties
HEALTH Regulation
Member states fall behind on cross-border healthcare rules Dave Keating d.keating@europeanvoice.com
The vast majority of member states will miss a deadline tomorrow (25 October) to transpose the crossborder healthcare directive, which is meant to make it easier to obtain pre-planned medical treatment in another European Union member state. Only a few member states have set up the required transparency websites and control centres that the law requires to be in force by tomorrow. Some countries that have all along been fiercely opposed to the legislation, such
as Spain, are so far behind on transposing the legislation that it could take several years to implement, according to EU sources. The European Commission has warned that it will pursue ‘failure to transpose’ infringement action against member states unless they quickly implement the rules. The Commission has also pointed out that as from tomorrow, a country that has not transposed the legislation will nevertheless be liable to reimburse other member states when its citizens have used their healthcare systems. This legislation relates
only to pre-planned medical interventions (emergency medical treatment through the use of the European Health Insurance Card is a separate issue). During difficult negotiations in 2008-11, member states that were concerned about a potential influx of patients added a stipulation that patients will have to seek prior authorisation from their home country for any intervention that requires an overnight stay or “cost-intensive care”. Member states can also deny requests if they believe the destination country presents a “safety risk” or the treatment can be provided at
home without “undue delay”. But such decisions are subject to Commission scrutiny. Tonio Borg, the European commissioner for health, said on Tuesday (22 October) that the Commission will in the coming months come out with guidance on when a denial is acceptable and when it is not. He said he hopes that some member states will notify their compliance in the coming weeks, but added that the Commission will pursue ‘failure to transpose’ infringement action against those that do not comply. He said worries about the
implications for member state resources are unfounded: “[The Commission expects] only 1% of EU citizens will use this, because people prefer to get healthcare in their own country, surrounded by friends and family.” The Commission wants EU citizens to be aware of their new rights, but it also warns that patients must satisfy certain conditions before they get care abroad. “We have to manage expectations,” Borg said. “If we tell people that anyone can go anywhere and get healthcare, we would be doing a disservice to the directive.”
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EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT PARLIAMENT IN BRIEF Organised crime MEPs yesterday (23 October) endorsed a report by the special committee on organised crime, corruption and moneylaundering. The report calls on the next European Commission to propose legislation setting standards for member states in dealing with organised crime and corruption, for example by banning people who have been convicted of such crimes from bids for public contracts.
Visa-free travel
GUEST OF HONOUR Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's main opposition leader, addresses MEPs in Strasbourg after picking up the Sakharov Prize she won in 1990.
See page 9
BUDGET
The civil-liberties committee on Monday (21 October) endorsed a proposal from the Commission to allow citizens of five Caribbean countries, ten Emergency vote to add Pacific island states and Timor€2.7bn to 2013 budget Leste to travel to the EU’s Schengen area without visas. Commission ‘close to The MEPs also added Colomrunning out of money’ bia, Peru and the United Arab Toby Vogel and Dave Keating Emirates to the list. The vote t.vogel@europeanvoice.com gives Mariya Gabriel, a centrehe European Parliaright Bulgarian MEP, a manment has agreed to date for negotiations with the take an emergency Council of Ministers. vote today (24 October) on
MEPs to vote on extra budget funds
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Ship recycling The plenary on Tuesday (22 October) voted in favour of legislation that allows the dismantling of EU-registered ships only in facilities approved by the EU. The move, already agreed with the member states, is designed to put an end to the dangerous and polluting practice of ‘beaching’ ships in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Medical devices On Tuesday, MEPs approved tougher scrutiny procedures for the approval of medical devices that are implanted into the body. The rules would create an EU-level supervisory group to oversee the 80 ‘notified bodies’ that currently approve such devices. MEPs voted to start negotiations with member states on this issue and a related file on diagnostic kits straight away.
Small investors The economic and monetary affairs committee on Tuesday backed draft rules obliging investment brokers to provide small investors with a ‘Key Information Document’ with clear, comparable and complete information on any investment product before they sign a contract. MEPs will vote on the proposal in plenary before centre-left French MEP Pervenche Berès can start negotiations with the member states.
whether to add €2.7 billion to the European Union’s budget for 2013 in order to avert disruption to EU business in the coming weeks. The budget increase, which will be paid for by increased contributions by the member states, was approved by the Council of Ministers in an emergency procedure on Monday (21 October). It was made necessary by MEPs’ refusal last week to approve another set of top-up funds – €3.9bn – requested by the European Commission, which said it will run out of cash by midNovember. Their refusal was a response to what leading MEPs described as a “provocation” by the member states, which decided under German pressure that €400 million in flood relief for Germany, Austria and the
Czech Republic should be taken from the €3.9bn, instead of a separate request for extra national contributions. The prospect of disruption to business was raised to dramatic effect by José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, in an early-morning phone call to Martin Schulz, the president of the Parliament, on Monday. Schulz conveyed the call, together with Barroso’s plea for MEPs to adopt the extra funds in urgent procedure, during the plenary’s opening session on Monday afternoon. Alain Lamassoure, a centre-right French MEP who chairs the budgets committee, agreed – with much grumbling – to call an emergency session, which approved the €2.7bn in additional funding for the current budget. The top-up now requires only the approval of the plenary to take effect, with a vote scheduled today. “We have found the second-best solution to the EU budget,” Janusz Lewandowski, the European commissioner for financial programming and the budget, told European Voice after the committee’s vote. His first
preference would have been to have all outstanding requests for additional funding – including both the €2.7bn and the €3.9bn – approved this month, so that November could be devoted to negotiations on the EU’s annual budget for 2014.
Plenary debate Barroso’s call, and the language reportedly used, caused dismay among MEPs, many of whom felt bullied into approving the extra money. This prompted an unscheduled debate in plenary on Wednesday morning. Lamassoure said that the Commission had not raised the prospect of a shutdown during last week’s budget talks. “Apparently the Commission only realised it was on the verge of insolvency over the weekend,” he said. In an ill-tempered exchange in Strasbourg on Wednesday morning, Barroso rejected that interpretation. “Since the beginning of the year, we’re saying loud and clear that without amending budgets there will be a rupture of payments,” he said. Three-way talks on the 2014 budget are set to start today, after the plenary yes-
terday adopts its version. By law, the talks have to end on 13 November. The positions of Commission, Council and Parliament are not far removed from each other, but the unresolved requests for additional 2013 money are complicating negotiations. “There are [now] too many dimensions, which is never good for negotiations,” Lewandowski said. “Everything is now linked, which makes it more difficult.” The member states’ linking the payments for flood relief to one of the Commission’s requests to top up the 2013 budget also prompted the Parliament to postpone a vote on the €960bn spending plan for 2014-20 from this week’s plenary to 19 November. This means that the 2014 annual budget, the first under the new financial framework, will have to be adopted before the overall 2014-20 framework is in place. Commission officials said that they expected no immediate difficulties because of this, but added that the growing tendency to roll over unpaid bills from one year to the next was unsustainable. Lewandowski said that just 8% of the budget for
2014 would be available for new initiatives, with the balance required to pay for old bills or continuing commitments. “This is not a sound budget,” he said. “This is management of shortage.” Commission officials damped down the possibility of a ‘shutdown’. Should no deal be reached, it would be commitments, rather than payments, that would be affected. According to the Commission, no permanent staff would be affected, nor contract staff. Some of the Commission’s main expenditure, such as Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) direct payments, would not be affected because the 2013 payments have already taken place. “This is not an EU shutdown,” said a spokesperson for the Commission on Tuesday (22 October). “This is not comparable to the US system in any way. The EU will continue to function properly in the coming weeks.” “At the same time, the EU treaties do not allow us to create a deficit in our budget,” he added. “We need a quick agreement between the European Parliament and members states on an amending budget.”
NOTEBOOK Migration from Strasbourg Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, has appealed repeatedly to Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, not to schedule summits of national leaders during plenary weeks. Van Rompuy, however, appears to enjoy doing precisely that: half of the ten European Councils that have taken place since the beginning of last year were held in plenary weeks, and the summit that starts in Brussels today (24 October) continues the tradition. Schulz’s problem, of course, is that he does not want to miss the chance to lecture the national leaders during the summit’s opening session, which he is invited to attend. On the other hand, this forces him to miss the plenary debates that take place on Thursdays (today – 24 October – there is a debate on a strategy for the Carpathian region. What a dilemma!) This week, Schulz, who is campaigning to become Germany’s European commissioner and, he hopes,
president of the European Commission, appears to have decided that if he cannot change the schedule of the European Council, he should try to shape its agenda. A plenary debate yesterday morning (23 October) focused on refugee policy and migrant deaths in the Mediterranean – even though the summit agenda suggested that the national leaders were not planning to have a serious debate about asylum and migration. To drive home the point, Schulz left Strasbourg yesterday evening so that he could meet Rosario Crocetta, a former MEP who is now president of Sicily, and Maria Giuseppina Nicolini, the mayor of Lampedusa, in Brussels this morning to discuss the deaths off Italy’s coast.
A thin agenda The agenda of this week’s plenary – the second in October, to compensate for the summer break – was rather thin, especially once the vote on the EU’s longterm budget and some 20 associated acts had been
cancelled. The main event, a vote on data-protection rules, took place not in plenary but in the civil liberties committee. But there was still rather a lot of legislative activity going on, at least at the symbolic level: yesterday, Martin Schulz, the president of the Parliament, signed nine acts into law (the very last step before they take effect), including such controversial items as the Schengen package, the single supervisory mechanism (a cornerstone of plans for a banking union), and the revised staff regulations (see opposite page).
Party funding With just seven months to go until the European Parliament elections, a proposal for a new statute for EU-level political parties is still languishing in the Council of Ministers. The European Commission proposed new rules on EU-wide parties in September last year, and MEPs adopted their position in April. Since then, the draft legislation has barely budged in
NEWS ENVIRONMENT
STAFF Reforms
Tough talks on HFCs MEPs and member states are at odds over the timetable for phasing out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), powerful global warming gases mainly used in refrigerators and air-conditioners. Negotiations between the Parliament, Commission and the Council of Ministers began earlier this month and will continue in November. HFCs are sometimes called ‘super greenhouse
gases’ because of the dangers of their soaring use and their potential to cause global warming. But some companies that use HFCs argue there are no suitable alternatives available. The European Commission is proposing a freeze from 2015 on the maximum amount of fluorinated gases (the most damaging HFCs, known as F-gases) allowed on the market, followed by a
gradual reduction in their use. Under the plan, companies would be given a quantity of free quotas, and have to purchase allowances for use beyond that amount. Member states want a more lenient approach than that proposed by the Commission, with a slower timetable, and exemptions for certain HFCs. But MEPs want a stricter timeline and fewer exemptions. They also want a ban on F-gases in ‘pre-charged’ equipment – which is sold complete with gas rather than the gas being
added later – something opposed by member states. MEPs also want to see the quotas sold rather than given away for free. A conference on the issue in Brussels last week revealed deep divisions on how ambitious the phaseout of HFCs should be. A French government representative backed the MEPs in their opposition to giving out allowances for free, suggesting the Council of Ministers is far from united on this issue. Dave Keating
HEALTH
Split over e-cigarettes MEPs and member states began talks on new EU tobacco rules yesterday (23 October) with a view to concluding the negotiations by the end of the year, but they remain deeply divided on the issue of e-cigarettes. The devices contain nicotine but no tobacco. They have remained largely unregulated to date. “The gap is not about whether to regulate e-cigarettes, but how to regulate them,” said British centreleft MEP Linda McAvan, who is leading negotiations in the Parliament. Earlier this month the Parliament rejected the European Commission’s proposal to treat these devices as medicines for the purposes of authorisation. The nascent e-cigarette industry lobbied against such authorisation requirements, saying the red
tape involved would kill the development of these devices. MEPs voted to regulate e-cigarettes in the same way as tobacco. Member states supported the Commission over regulation as medicines in the general approach adopted over the summer. McAvan said that, despite the widespread attention that the e-cigarette issue received during the Parliament plenary vote earlier
this month, so far no member state had indicated it was changing its stance. The UK recently confirmed that it will continue to oppose regulating e-cigarettes as tobacco. Another issue that must be resolved is the use of flavourings in tobacco products. MEPs want companies to be forced to ask for permission to use a new ingredient. Member states want to leave regulators with the discretion to approach companies if there is a suspected problem with an ingredi-
ent that could be a flavouring. There is also a difference over the phasing-in of a ban on menthol cigarettes. The Parliament wants an eight-year timeframe for a ban, while the Council wants just three years. Yesterday’s talks avoided the areas of contention, focusing only on technical aspects of the areas on which there is agreement. The Council has still formally to adopt a negotiating mandate, which is expected in the coming weeks. Dave Keating
ENVIRONMENT
MEPs resist vehicle noise limits Three-way talks on new vehicle noise limits seem to be heading down a cul-de-sac after member states and the European Parliament tried to water down the European Commission’s proposal. Talks will continue on 5 November after an initial meeting earlier this month made little progress. The
7 24 October 2013
Commission proposed lowering limits from the current 74 decibels to 70 after two years, followed by a drop to 68 decibels after five years. The Council set the same limits but with an extended timeframe – no earlier than 2024. The Parliament’s scenario would reduce the limits and extend the time-
Council. But Lithuania, current holder of the rotating presidency of the Council, hopes to lift the draft out of its workingparty misery to the level of national ambassadors in the coming weeks, after which three-way talks between MEPs, the Council and the Commission could start. Lithuania’s hopes were raised when the three institutions agreed in principle to launch an independent authority to monitor whether European parties break their more technical obligations under the new rules, while a separate inter-institutional panel would monitor whether they fail in their commitment to ‘European values’. The main sticking point in the Council now appears to be differences between the draft rules and existing national legislation on the caps for individual contributions to political parties.
frame. Analysis conducted last month by TNO, a research organisation, found that the Commission’s proposal would reduce overall noise levels by 3.4dB, the Council’s would reduce levels by 2.6dB, and the Parliament’s by 1.9dB. Miroslav Ouzký, a centreright Czech MEP guiding
Something to shout about Own-initiative reports are not legally binding and rarely get MEPs excited. Not so on Tuesday (22 October), when a small but loud group of far-right MEPs heckled Edite Estrela, a centre-left Portuguese MEP, over her own-initiative report on sexual and reproductive health, which promotes the legalisation of abortion across the Union. With the help of a group of social conservatives from the centre-right, they managed to disrupt voting and – after the vote had started – send the report back to the committee on women’s rights and gender equality, from where it had emerged last month with 17 votes in favour, seven against and seven abstentions. Mikael Gustafsson, a far-left Swede who chairs the committee,
the legislation through the Parliament, found himself at the centre of a scandal last year when it was discovered that in the compromise amendment document he submitted to weaken the limits, a representative of German car manufacturer Porsche was listed as the author. Germany has been lobbying for less stringent noise limits, particularly for sports cars.
helpfully pointed out that the committee would simply vote again on the report and that the plenary would eventually have to vote on it too.
The joy of freedom MEPs took a break from the usual squabbling and sparring to listen to Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's main opposition leader, who was in Strasbourg to pick up the Sakharov Prize she won in 1990 (see pages 6 and 9). Only one false note was struck during the ceremony, when the ‘Ode to Joy’ was played and MEPs from the UK Independence Party and a fair number of UK Conservatives, never ones to miss an opportunity to underscore their national allegiance, refused to stand up for the EU’s unofficial anthem.
Controversial staff reforms cleared to begin in 2014 Rules will apply from 1 January 2014 Jobs to be cut and retirement age raised Toby Vogel t.vogel@europeanvoice.com
R
evised rules on the pay, pensions and perks of European Union staff will take effect on 1 January 2014 after being signed into law by Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, on Wednesday (23 October). With his signature, Schulz turned a page on an illtempered, lengthy quarrel between staff unions, MEPs, the member states and the European Commission. Three-way negotiations between the Council, the Parliament and the European Commission on the new staff regulations had eventually yielded a political agreement in June, which staff unions greeted with a strike. The agreement was endorsed without debate by member states on 10 October, paving the way for the Parliament’s final approval. The Commission had proposed toughening the terms in the existing staff regulation in 2011, but in the course of the protracted negotiations it had to defend the main provisions of its proposal against attacks from member states who were seeking deeper cuts. The new staff regulation will introduce a freeze to pay and pensions in 2013 and 2014. There will be a reintroduction of a levy on base salaries of 6%, rising to 7% for the most senior staff. The regular retirement age will be raised from 63 to 65 (66 for new staff ). Pension arrangements for those taking early retirement will be less generous. New clerical staff will see their pay cut by 13% for entry-level jobs and by 40% in the highest paygrade. The Commission estimates savings of €2.7 billion from now to 2020, with further savings after that.
There will be a 5% reduction in staff across the EU institutions – some 2,500 posts are to be cut – in 201317; and an increase without compensation in the working week from 37.5 hours to 40 hours. This latter measure the Commission estimates will save €1.5bn up to 2020. During negotiations on the 2014-20 multi-annual budget, a group of member states, with the UK and the Netherlands prominent among them, had sought deeper cuts to the Union’s administrative budget.
Revised method The reforms include changes to how annual changes to the salaries and pensions of EU staff will be calculated from 2015 onwards. The current method takes account of the changes in pay for civil servants in eight national administrations, and changes to the cost of living in the host country. That formula produced a 1.7% increase in salaries in 2011, but the Council of Ministers refused to authorise the increase. The Commission challenged this refusal at the European Court of Justice, and a ruling is expected in the coming weeks on both the 2011 and 2012 increases. Last month, the Court published an opinion drafted by Yves Bot, one of the Court’s advocates general, which backed the Commission’s reasoning. In a similar case relating to 2009 pay, the Court sided with the Commission against the member states. If the Court does indeed rule that the Council’s refusal to pay was illegal, EU staff will be entitled to backpay to make up for the lost increase. The total amount payable is estimated at €246.5 million, covering pay and pension increases between 1 July 2011 and the end of December 2013 for staff in all EU institutions and former staff. Of that total, an estimated €8.4m would be owed in interest for late payments.
8 24 October 2013
NEWS
ELECTIONS Czech Republic
ENLARGEMENT
Clear win expected, but who will form Czech government?
San Marino rejects EU accession
Social Democrats ahead in opinion polls
BOHUSLAV SOBOTKA Leader of the Social Democrats (SSD). REUTERS
Question over how to translate lead into seats Andrew Gardner a.gardner@europeanvoice.com
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zechs will go to the polls tomorrow and Saturday (25-26 October) all but certain about the party that will win, but deeply uncertain about the possible government that might emerge from their early elections. The Social Democrats (SSD) were significantly ahead in the final opinion polls, at 22%-26% of the vote. However, the party’s leader, 41-year-old Bohuslav Sobotka, is likely to struggle to forge a workable government. The seemingly unassailable lead of the SSD and the level of uncertainty about the future government are both effects of the implosion of the three centre-right parties that ruled until May 2013, when a series of scandals brought down the government of Petr Necˇas 13 months ahead of scheduled elections. The largest party, the Civic Democrats (ODS), gained 20.2% of the vote in the last elections, in 2010, but is now down to around 7.5% in polls. The biggest party on the right is now TOP 09, jointly led by former foreign minister Karel Schwarzen-
berg, but, at about 11.5%, it is also well down on its 2010 figure (16.7%). The third party in that government – Public Affairs (Veˇci verˇejné) – has disappeared.
Filling the void Into this vacuum has stepped the president, Miloš Zeman. As the SSD’s leader, he served as prime minister in 1998-2002 thanks only to the formal support of his minority government by the ODS. He has said, however, that he will not allow a grand coalition between right and left, an option to which the leaders of the ODS and TOP 09 have said they would be open. Sobotka could look to the left, but he has ruled out
linking up with the Communists, a party unreformed since 1989. The Communists are currently vying for second place and have historically fared better on election day than in opinion polls. Zeman has also ruled out an SSD-Communist coalition, but has said he could imagine the Communists acting as a “tolerating minority”. This is taken by some commentators as an indication that the longterm goal of Zeman, who founded his own party in 2009, is to encourage the formation of a single leftwing bloc. If Sobotka cannot link up with the main parties on the right and turns his back on the Communists, he will
struggle to put together a government that brings in some or all of the three or four other parties that could enter parliament. These may include the party formed by Zeman, the Party of Civic RightsZemani-ites (SPOZ). Although six ministers in the caretaker government are among the party’s candidates and despite active campaigning by Zeman, ostensibly in the form of a national presidential tour, the party may not win enough votes. The other parties include two new parties built on personalities. One, ANO, is led by a billionaire Andrej Babiš, who recently acquired two of the country’s biggest newspapers. In mid-September,
its ratings were just above the 5% threshold to enter parliament; they are now between 11% and 16%. The other, Dawn of Direct Democracy, is the party of Tomio Okamura, a 41-yearold Czech-Japanese senator. Okamura has adopted a populist and nationalist note, including suggesting that the Czech Republic should “democratically support” the emigration of Roma “to the country from where their ancestors came, and so, best of all, to one of the states of India”. “With such a hand, it is impossible to form a government, however accommodating President Zeman is,” says a Czech commentator, Petr Holub, suggesting that new elections may be inevitable.
ELECTIONS Luxembourg
Juncker’s future in doubt as rival parties open coalition talks Nicholas Hirst n.hirst@europeanvoice.com
Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s prime minister, could be excluded from government for the first time since 1989 as the leaders of three rival parties have begun coalition talks after elections on Sunday (20 October). Agreement between the liberal, centre-left and green parties would relegate Juncker’s centre-right Christian Social People’s party (CVSP), which won the largest share of votes in Sunday’s election, to the opposition for the first time since 1979. This would see Juncker lose his seat at the European Council, of which he has been a member as Luxembourg’s prime minister since 1995. But it could also free him up to bid for other roles, with European Parliament elections and nominations for the next European Commission next year.
Luxembourg’s head of state, the Grand Duke, yesterday (23 October) appointed Georges Ravarani, who presides over Luxembourg’s administrative court, as “informateur”, who will report back on the state of the coalition talks. Under Luxembourg’s procedures for forming a government, following elections the Grand Duke must appoint either a “formateur”, who is charged with attempting to form the next government, or an “informateur”. Étienne Schneider, Luxembourg’s minister for the economy and trade, and one of the leaders of the centreleft Luxembourg Socialist Workers’ Party (LSAP), which has been in a coalition government with the CVSP, said that a new government was unlikely to be in place before December. The current government will remain in office until then. The CVSP won 23 seats in
the 60-strong parliament on Sunday, a loss of three compared to the 2009 election and one fewer than in 2004, but still far ahead of its rivals. The LSAP won 13 seats, unchanged from 2009. The liberals, the Democratic Party (DP), made the greatest gains, also winning 13 seats, up from nine in 2009. The Greens won six seats, one fewer than in 2009.
Power to choose Bolstered by its success, the DP – led by Xavier Bettel, the mayor of the city of Luxembourg – is in a position to choose whether to join a coalition with the LSAP and the Greens or with the CVSP. The CVSP won 33.7% of the vote, the LSAP 20.3% and the DP 18.2%. Immediately after the election, Juncker insisted that his party must figure in the government. “In 2009, we were enormously successful,” he said. “This
time round, we have been very successful and the gap between us and the other parties remains very large.” He welcomed the possibility of a coalition with the liberals, while several CVSP politicians said it was undemocratic for the other parties to enter into coalition talks without the CVSP since it won the biggest share of votes. Elections are usually held every five years and the next vote was due in June 2014. But this July Juncker announced that he was calling elections early after a parliamentary committee criticised the conduct of the intelligence service. Juncker, who will be 59 in December, came under fire for being too busy with EU business to maintain proper oversight of the service, which was accused of unauthorised phone-tapping and misuse of funds. Between 1999 and 2009,
JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER Luxembourg’s prime minister insists his party must figure in the government. REUTERS
Juncker combined the top job with the post of finance minister, a role he had held since 1989. He chaired meetings of the eurozone’s finance ministers, the Eurogroup, from 2005 until January of this year, when he was succeeded by Jeroen Dijsselbloem.
A referendum in San Marino proposing to begin accession talks with the European Union was rejected on Sunday because of a low turnout. On Sunday (20 October), citizens of the microstate, which has a population of 33,000 and lies within northern Italy, were asked if they wanted to begin accession talks with the EU. Though a narrow majority of people who voted approved the measure (50.3% versus 49.7%), a referendum needs 32% of eligible voters to vote yes in order for the measure to pass. The ‘yes’ vote amounted to just 20%. The Republic of San Marino is an independent sovereign state that has close ties to Italy, but no formal relationship with the EU. It sits within the EU customs union but is not part of the Schengen area of borderfree travel. It uses the euro as its currency after striking a bilateral monetary agreement with the EU. The referendum was not called because of an offer of EU membership but because citizens collected enough signatures to force a vote on the issue. Last year, the European Commission issued a report on San Marino, Andorra and Monaco in which it discouraged the microstates from seeking to join the EU as full members, recommending instead a multilateral framework association agreement or having them join the European Economic Area (EEA). However, the ‘Yes’ campaign in San Marino focused on the rights available to EU citizens, arguing that San Marino should be able to shape the laws that it must follow by virtue of being part of the common market. Sammarinese citizens cannot work in the EU without a visa and are not eligible for benefits such as medical care in EU member states or reduced rates of tuition at universities in the EU. Nicolas Bucci, a Sammarinese citizen working in Brussels for a public affairs company, said the rejection was partly because many of the people affected do not live in the republic. “One-third of the population lives abroad, and we were not able to vote in the referendum,” he said. He said that those who voted ‘No’ were not necessarily rejecting the EU. “Some are Eurosceptic, but others were just voting ‘No’ to that particular way of being integrated in the EU.” Liechtenstein, which is similar in size to San Marino, is a member of the EEA along with Iceland and Norway. However, Norway is wary of other microstates joining the EEA, for fear it could turn into a group focused on their specific interests. Dave Keating
NEWS
9 24 October 2013
NEIGHBOURHOOD Georgia
Saakashvili era comes to an end Successor to have a more limited role as president Prime minister says he plans to leave politics Andrew Gardner a.gardner@europeanvoice.com
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cause of one of the early battles in the election, over the date. Saakashvili initially announced the election for 27 October, then changed it to 31 October. Under pressure, he reverted to 27 October. Under Georgian practice, the president would be inaugurated on the third Sunday after his election. Saakashvili’s successor will have a more limited role, as under the new constitution agreed in 2010, most powers will be transferred from the president to the prime minister, who, since last October, has been the 57-year-old billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili.
Nino Burjanadze, a former ally of Saakashvili but now one of his fiercest opponents. In July, Maia Panjikidze, Georgia’s foreign minister, told European Voice that “after the elections you will see that it was the last test of democracy in Georgia, because after these elections it will be as normal as in your country”. An initial assessment by the National Democratic Institute has been positive: it described the electoral atmosphere as more open than in the past. However, there is a risk that the first round will result in a political crisis. Margvelashvili has said that he will not stand in a second round if he does not obtain a decisive 50% in the first round. The run-off, if there is one, should be held two weeks after the first round’s results are announced – but the official figures cannot be confirmed until after an appeals process has been completed. More significantly, politics has been thrown into uncertainty by Ivanishvili’s announcement on 2 September
ikheil Saakashvili’s ten turbulent years as president of Georgia will enter a last phase on Sunday (27 October) when Georgians vote on his successor. Saakashvili will almost immediately head to Brussels to meet the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, to whom he is expected to give his private assessment of the elections and of his probable successor. It may not, however, be his farewell to the European Union, as he may still be in power on 28-29 November when the president of Georgia is expected to initial political and trade agreements with the EU at a summit in Vilnius. The prospect of a grand finale appears to have been the
In the running
TRADE
SECURITY South Sudan
FOREIGN AFFAIRS Myanmar
Airport security mission in doubt
Suu Kyi wants stronger EU support
The next president is also likely to be a less colourful character. The main contenders are Georgy Margvelashvili, a former education minister chosen by Ivanishvili as the candidate of his Georgian Dream coalition, and David Bakradze, a former speaker of parliament who represents Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM). The outsider is
Andrew Gardner a.gardner@europeanvoice.com
Canada and EU strike trade deal The European Union and Canada on Friday (18 October) announced a wide-ranging trade deal removing most tariffs on EU-Canada trade. The agreement will open up the market for government contracts and liberalise trade in services, in particular financial services, telecommunications, energy and transport. The Commission projected that the deal could benefit the EU by as much as €11.6 billion annually. Official negotiations between the EU and Canada began in 2009, but negotiators struggled to overcome issues relating to intellectual property rights, in particular the duration of EU pharmaceutical patents, and agricultural products. The signing of the deal frees EU negotiators to focus on trade talks with the US. The ratification process in Canada and the EU may take up to two years. By Nicholas Hirst
The merits of the European Union’s first mission focused on aviation security are under renewed questioning following a series of setbacks in the field and disputes about funding between the EU’s institutions. The South Sudan mission – known by the EU as EUAVSEC South Sudan – is intended to train and mentor South Sudan’s security services at the airport in the country’s capital, Juba. However, as the mission approaches the end of its 19month mandate, it has struggled to make significant headway in its two principal tasks, training airport staff and helping to create a government organisation responsible for aviation security. The airport has yet to be completed because of gaps in South Sudan’s budget caused by the country’s decision in 2012 to cut off oil to Sudan in the wake of border clashes. Although South Sudan has been pumping oil to Sudan since this April, the
budget shortfall has disrupted construction and delayed recruitment of security staff. In addition, the EU’s member states failed to second enough staff for the mission, which was supposed to have 64 trainers and other staff. As a result, the mission has been scaled back.
Early doubts There had been doubts from the outset about the value of a mission to improve national security at an airport yet to be built. However, a group of member states wants to show continued support both for South Sudan, which gained independence from Sudan in July 2011, and for the EU’s ‘comprehensive approach’ to security. They have suggested that the mission should be continued beyond mid-January and that the bill (the mission’s original budget was €12.5 million) should be picked up by the European Commission’s development department. That department has, however, indicated that funds for the mission are not available. See page 19
MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI President of Georgia. REUTERS
that he will leave politics soon after the presidential election. He had always said he would return to business sooner rather than later. This would make it easier for the 46-year-old Saakashvili, who remains leader of his party, to return to government if UNM wins subsequent elections. However, Ivanishvili on Sunday (20 October) suggested that, once out of power, Saakashvili may be subject to investigation over
crimes committed during his presidency. “I think that there are too many questions for Saakashvili to answer and therefore there is a high probability that he will face questioning,” Ivanishvili told AFP. A series of Saakashvili’s allies have been investigated since the UNM was removed from power. This prompted the European Commission to appoint Thomas Hammarberg, a former commissioner for
human rights at the Council of Europe, to assess allegations of selective justice in Georgia and, more broadly, the rule of law in the country. His long report, published in September, avoided judgement on the allegations of selective justice, instead stressing the need for Europe to maintain its scrutiny. The report paints a nuanced picture of progress toward the rule of law, but highlighted lingering serious concerns.
Andrew Gardner a.gardner@europeanvoice.com
Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s opposition leader, this week urged leaders of the European Union to push the military-led government in Myanmar to pursue political reforms begun in 2011. “We are still very, very far away from a genuine democratic form of government,” Suu Kyi said on Monday (21 October) at a meeting with the EU’s foreign ministers. “I would like the EU to come out unambiguously with regard to the need to amend the constitution.” The current constitution reserves the presidency for a former member of the military, permits the military to appoint 25% of the members of parliament, and gives the military-dominated national security council power over most security issues.
Toughening up Suu Kyi said the EU should adopt a tougher tone than in its July statement by foreign ministers that Myanmar’s “constitution should be amended, in line with the requirements of a modern democracy”. Suu Kyi also met the European Council’s president, Herman Van Rompuy, on Sunday (20 October). On
REUTERS
Tuesday (22 October), she addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg and picked up the Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for human rights awarded to her in 1990, when she was at the start of nearly 20 years under arrest. In mid-November, the EU will announce a substantial package of support for Myanmar, intended to consolidate democratic reforms, boost the economy and encourage EU companies to invest in the country. The EU’s outreach will include visits by the European commissioner for industry, Antonio Tajani, and by Dacian Ciolos¸, the European commissioner for agriculture.
Since 2011, Myanmar’s government has released hundreds of political prisoners, commuted all death penalties, relaxed restrictions on the press and begun peace talks with rebels. In response, the EU has lifted all but one sanction, an embargo on the sale of arms and equipment that could be used for internal repression. Over the same period, it has also doubled its development funding, to €200m. But rebels continue to fight in some areas, and members of Myanmar’s Muslim minority have been attacked. As a result, over the past year the EU has provided €19.5 million in the form of humanitarian aid.
10 24 October 2013
COMMENT International Press Centre, Résidence Palace, Rue de la Loi 155, Box 6, 1040 Brussels, Belgium
Bad blood with US will be costly llegations of spying in France by the national security agency of the United States could hardly have surfaced at a worse time for the European Union. The outrage voiced by French government ministers on various public platforms, and in a telephone call from President François Hollande to President Barack Obama, is understandable. If the allegations are even half-true, the outrage is justified. The revelations have created bad blood between the US and a country that is, whatever its current economic woes, one of the most important countries in the EU, not least in matters of defence and security. Over the years successive French governments have been at the centre of extremely difficult negotiations between the EU and US on trade matters, defending, among other things, their farmers and l’exception culturelle. So the French were always going to be among the least enthusiastic about a free trade deal with the US – to which the TTIP talks that began earlier this year aspire. How much more problematic will the French be, now that they have been given reason to doubt the good faith of their American counterparts. The allegations include suggestions that espionage was targeted against French companies, notably Wanadoo, a telecoms firm, and Alcatel-Lucent, a French telecoms infrastructure company. In other words, the French corporate world has been alerted to American hostility. Attempting to excuse such behaviour with the truism that spying is commonplace among developed nations will not bear much scrutiny and can hardly be invoked by the EU. The EU is a rules-based system. It depends on its members – and those with whom they deal – abiding by certain rules. When the rules are broken, there will be consequences, or the rulesbased system is worth nothing. Lest any member state of the EU should feel torn between loyalty to France, a fellow member state, and loyalty to the US, the guiding principle should be loyalty to the rules. There are likely to be consequences for the EU of this cooling in relations. Negotiations on an EU-US trade deal and efforts to establish a digital single market could suffer. Both those initiatives were billed by the EU’s leadership as helping Europe’s economic recovery. They also promised economic benefits for the US, which may now not be realised, or realised more slowly. The US administration should learn from this. A cost-benefit assessment of its excessive surveillance should take into account the economic benefits forgone. The US administration may well be paying more attention to economic and political relations with Asia, but it cannot afford to destroy its relations with older allies in western Europe. The loss of those good relations would be a heavy price to pay for whatever intelligence the alleged spying harvested. Diplomats and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are duty-bound to repair relations. Trust will have to be re-built because the EU needs a prospering transatlantic relationship – but it cannot come at just any price.
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PARESH NATH, THE KHALEEJ TIMES, UAE © PARESH/CAGLE CARTOONS
TEN YEARS AGO Brussels, 23 October 2003
EU and NATO clash over defence policy Talks between European Union and NATO diplomats have done little to defuse tensions – most acute in Washington – over plans by some member states to create an independent military capability for the Union. Although this week’s meeting between EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana and political heads
of the Alliance clarified the “misunderstandings between what the Europeans want to do and that the Americans think they want to do”, they “still do not see eye to eye on this”, one diplomat said. Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s prime minister, said “there is a certain
immaturity in transatlantic relations” over the question. George Robertson, NATO’s secretary-general, attacked the four countries leading the drive towards an independent military planning structure – France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg – warning that Europe needs “more usable soldiers and fewer paper armies”. He dismissed their plans to create a separate European headquarters and urged Belgium “to invest in usable capabilities rather than wasting money duplicating expensive assets and headquarters which already exist in NATO”.
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COMMENT Do you want your politicians in Europe to be influential? Then you should ask if they speak English before you vote for them, Olav Øye writes
11 24 October 2013
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ext May, European voters will again be asked who they want to voice their concerns in the European Parliament. Across Europe, candidates will be selected in the upcoming months. The problem is that at the European Union level, political negotiations take place in a language that many of them do not speak. In a speech in February, Germany’s president, Joachim Gauck, called for a common European language. This would help create a “European agora, a forum for discussion to enable us to live together in a democratic order”. The idea is of course controversial. A wish to protect national languages is not restricted to France and its exception culturelle. The European Parliament said in a 2009 resolution that the European Union institutions have a “crucial role in ensuring respect for the principle of linguistic parity in the EU institutions themselves”. But does the Parliament practise what it preaches? No. I recently carried out a study on the use of English in the Parliament, based on in-depth interviews with parliamentarians and their assistants. All said that English is by far the predominant language of the political game. Political players with good English skills, be they native or non-native speakers, have a clear advantage over the rest. Some said that southern and eastern Europeans are often the worst English-speakers – if they speak English at all, that is. What are the consequences? In an interview for the study, a German parliamentarian said that those that do not master the English language are “not capable of action”. The assistants largely confirm this view. The European Parliament says that its interpretation service enables members to speak in their own language. It avoids mentioning that many of them will not be listened to. Much nuance and information is lost in
Learn English or stay home interpretation. More importantly, negotiations often take place exclusively in English, sometimes with no or limited access to interpretation services. How well does your representative perform in those situations? If a speech is delivered in English, almost none of the assistants I interviewed listen to interpretation into their mother tongue. The reason is that they do not think that interpreters can render speech adequately. Mistakes are made. Body language is lost. In politics, such nuances matter greatly. In order to understand, to create alliances and to persuade politicians from other countries, the representative will need to have a very good command of English.
A licence to thrill? Territorial licensing is the bedrock of the European Union’s creative economy, writes Alice Enders
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he vision behind the European Commission’s digital agenda is a “unified online market” of half a billion people to attract European Union-sized suppliers of “innovative online services across the different creative content/ entertainment sectors (audiovisual, music, e-books, video games)”. One immediate objective is to ensure “that European consumers can legally get the creative/entertainment content they want, whenever and wherever they want”. It is true that the public internet is the only medium that can connect the 28 national markets of the EU, and that the free flow of digital content is impeded. For example, English speakers living in France cannot get access to Netflix, the video-on-demand (VOD) service available in the UK. Most Europeans living outside their home
country or travelling cannot gain access to full versions of the catch-up TV services of their home country, as broadcasters block external internet-provider addresses. (A limited BBC iPlayer service is available outside the UK, on subscription from the iTunes stores serving 18 EU markets.) Last month, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, emphasised forcefully: “Isn’t it a paradox that we have an internal market for goods, but when it comes to digital we still have 28 national markets?” This fragmentation of the European online audiovisual market is due, says the Commission, to the prevailing practice of territorial licensing. But bigger hurdles than licensing stand in the way of the creation of a unified online market for audiovisual content. Unlike the United States, a natural barrier in the EU is the presence of 24 official languages. Most consumers prefer entertainment in their own language. Income levels vary widely, and they correlate with the rates of adoption of the high-speed broadband connections essential to consume audiovisual content online.
In a well-functioning democracy, most of us will feel that we should vote for the candidate with whom we agree the most. But if this candidate is unable effectively to put your and his/her ideas forwards, what is the point? Would a French voter elect a representative to their national assembly if the candidate did not speak French? When a non-English speaker votes, this representative will have had difficulties in following the preceding meetings and discussions. She or he might have uncritically to take the advice of her or his English-speaking assistants. Or blindly follow the leaders of the party groups. This matters, because the European Parliament matters. The Parliament
There is also wide variation in the willingness to pay for audiovisual content and in the adoption of ecommerce enablers, such as payment systems. Nevertheless, the supply of TV-like VOD services is substantial in the EU. According to data from the European Audiovisual Observatory in May, the EU is served by 3,087 TV-like VOD services, including channels of the YouTube and DailyMotion platforms. Each connected consumer with a recognised means of payment has the choice today of legally purchasing payper-view events on iTunes, which serves all EU markets individually. Larger markets are served by subscription VOD services from Netflix and/or Lovefilm. Territorial licensing prevails in Europe because the principal channels to serve audiovisual content to the consumer are territorial in scope. They include cinemas, TV broadcasts, the retailing of DVDs/Blu-Rays and through-themiddle VOD services from cable and IPTV (internet protocol television) providers. This value chain generated combined revenues of €129 billion in 2010, sustaining a tissue of 126,000 small and medium-sized firms engaged in production, post-production, distribution and retailing activities, employing 560,000 people earning €21bn.
can refuse to appoint unfit candidates for the European Commission. It can accept or reject the outcome of the trade negotiation with the United States. And it co-decides on legislation for protection of our digital privacy. The people that European citizens elect will have an impact on our lives. Voters and the press should therefore ask the candidates for the European Parliament if they have mastery of English, the language of politics in Europe. Otherwise citizens risk wasting their vote. Olav Øye, who is Norwegian, works for The Brussels Office, a consultancy. This article is based on the thesis (“E pluribus English”) for his master’s degree at Université libre de Bruxelles.
This value chain has contributed significantly to Europe’s recovery from the financial crisis, a point recognised by the Commission. The bulk of this value is created by the TV broadcasters, whose output – which still accounts for most of the time that consumers spend viewing films and other types of entertainment – is funded by pay-TV subscriptions and advertising but above all by licence fees. Territorial licensing therefore funds original European content production, which in turn helps to preserve the EU’s linguistic and cultural diversity. While the vision of a unified online market for the EU may be compelling, territorial licensing is the bedrock of the audiovisual industries of the EU, allowing them to serve efficiently the markets in which they are located. PanEuropean licensing will eventually emerge when the foundations of the online market in Europe are in place. This should be the overriding priority of EU leaders when they discuss the digital agenda, including copyright, at the European Council. Alice Enders is an economist and media expert at Enders Analysis, a research firm based in the UK. She is a former senior economist at the World Trade Organization and was professor of economics at York University, Canada. She is the author of a report about “The value of territorial licensing to the EU”.
12 24 October 2013
PROFILEARTIS PABRIKS
Tolerant fighter
atvia, like nearly all postcommunist societies, has been slow to learn the wisdom of tolerance, particularly over sexual minorities. This was painfully obvious in the years after joining the European Union, and especially in 2006 when protesters hurled eggs and excrement at gay and lesbian-rights activists gathered in Riga. Through it all, politicians tended to maintain an embarrassed silence – with one exception: Artis Pabriks, Latvia’s defence minister. During the 2006 events he was minister of foreign affairs, and he held what would be seen as a seminal press conference. He slammed Latvia and confessed to being ashamed of what was taking place in the country. The Baltic state had disgraced itself in the eyes of the EU community and embarked on the slippery slope of obscurantism, he said. “What’s next?” Pabriks asked indignantly, “book-burning?” These were the strongest words spoken at the time, and the only condemnation from a high-ranking member of the then centre-right government. Over a year later, Pabriks again found himself at loggerheads with cabinet colleagues. The then prime minister, Aigars Kalvi¯tis, wanted him to vote for the sacking of Latvia’s top anti-corruption investigator, which Pabriks reluctantly did out of loyalty. Adding insult to injury, Kalvi¯tis asked him a few days later to defend the sacking – extremely unpopular among Latvians – on national television. “I myself was against [the sacking], since it was difficult for me to defend a decision which was against my personal conviction. But I still agreed to go [on air], and that TV show turned out to be a disaster,” recalls Pabriks. “The next day I called the prime minister and told him I disagreed with what had been done, and I resigned my position.” A month later, toward the end of 2007, Pabriks quit the People’s Party, a centre-right party he had helped create. It was a career-altering gambit for the Danish-trained political science professor, and many might have assumed that Pabriks, who currently teaches graduate-level courses at Riga International School of Economics and Business Administration, would return to the classroom full-time. But Pabriks, who consistently receives one of the highest personal votes during elections,
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opted to stay in the political arena. “It’s like that old song by Simon and Garfunkel,” he says with a grin during an interview lunch. “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail.” This Latvian hammer was forged in the revolutionary milieu of the late 1980s, when the dream of independence suffused the Baltic air. Pabriks, who had just completed his mandatory two-year stint in the Soviet army, joined the Popular Front independence movement while studying history at the University of Latvia. In early 1991, when the communist regime in Moscow was struggling to contain separatist revolts in Lithuania, Georgia and other republics, Pabriks won a Danishfinanced grant to enrol at Aarhus University. He enjoyed the programme so much that he stayed until 1996, when he was awarded a PhD for a thesis on nationalism and ethnic policy. Once back in Latvia, Pabriks continued to scratch the political itch while teaching political science and working as an analyst on human rights and ethnic issues. In 1998, he helped establish the People’s Party, and, while for the first six years he was merely a rank-and-file member, in 2004 his political career took off. In January of that year, Pabriks was asked to fill an empty parliamentary seat, immediately becoming head of the foreign affairs committee. He made such an impression that in August his party called on him to take over another empty chair – that of the foreign minister. Those were heady years for Latvia’s external relations: NATO and EU membership, a border agreement with Russia. The latter landed Pabriks on nationalists’ blacklist, since he failed to insist that Moscow return the Abrene district (currently Russia’s Pytalovsky region), a rump of land that had been part of Latvia during the inter-war period, but after the Second World War was carved out and given to Russia. Radical thugs fired shots at Pabriks’ seaside home in the village of Lapmežciems, approximately a onehour drive west of Riga, but it was not enough to keep the foreign minister’s signature off the agreement. During those years Pabriks would also become a bona fide Turkophile. His Turkish counterpart at the time was Abdullah Gul, who left an indelible
He is a third-degree black belt in “ti”, an ancient fighting form that is the precursor of modern karate and taught by only a handful of Okinawan masters
CURRICULUM VITAE 1966: Born, Ju¯rmala 1988-90: Researcher, Latvian Academy of Science 1992: Graduated, history faculty, University of Latvia 1996: PhD in political science, Aarhus University 1997Lecturer, Vidzeme 2006: University 2001-03: Policy analyst, Latvian Centre for Human Rights and Ethnic Studies 2002-: Latvian representative for Council of Europe’s anti-racism commission 2004: Member of Parliament 2004-7: Foreign minister 2007-10: Member of Parliament 2010-: Defence minister 2011-: Professor, Riga International School of Economics and Business Administration
impression on the Latvian. When possible Turkish membership of the EU was raised at a recent conference in Riga, Pabriks, who speaks fluent Latvian, Russian, and English, as well as some German and Danish, was concise: “The European Union needs Turkey more than Turkey needs Europe.” Like all Latvians, Pabriks, who has a daughter from a previous marriage and two children from his wife Undine, an ethnic German, was profoundly affected by the country’s bankruptcy and threeyear recession. He knew sweeping change in both politics and mentality was unavoidable. “It’s not just a matter of how much gross domestic product per capita you have – it’s a question of how it’s distributed. Social equality is a big problem in our country,” he says. In 2008, together with like-minded social liberals, including the sacked anti-corruption prosecutor, he formed an upstart grouping, Society for a Different Politics, which a year later merged with two other parties, including Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis’ New Era. The resulting conglomerate, Unity, won nearly a third of the vote in 2010, and, although Pabriks had hoped to return to foreign affairs, the centrist coalition entrusted him with the defence ministry, an unexpected development he now enthusiastically endorses, since the job still allows him to be active abroad, albeit from the standpoint of security. The minister’s core battle is to procure defence funds, which fell 50% during the crisis and currently comprise 1% of gross domestic product, only half of what is needed for NATO membership. To relax from professional battles, Pabriks indulges in another type of fighting: martial arts. He is a thirddegree black belt in “ti”, an ancient fighting form that is the precursor of modern karate and taught by only a handful of Okinawan masters. He runs a class in Riga, which this writer has attended for the past four years. Reflecting on his future, Pabriks, who does not rule out running for a European Parliament seat next year, says there are only three directions left for him: a position in the EU, a higher position in Latvia, or bowing out from politics for good. “At this moment, the third is not yet an option,” says Pabriks. Words of a fighter, for sure. Gary Peach
COMMENT
13 24 October 2013
A sensible selection process? Political parties are pushing to give the European Parliament a greater say in who becomes president of the Commission, but John Wyles has his doubts
W
ith President François Hollande largely silent on European matters, it is being left to others in France to bring into focus the political questions hanging over the European Parliament elections next May, arguably the most important in the European Union’s history. Separate and very different interventions last week by former European Commission president Jacques Delors and by Marine Le Pen’s Front National party have sharply profiled the two core issues of current political concerns: is it wise to have put the Parliament at the centre of the process for selecting the next president of the European Commission? And will the arrival in Strasbourg next summer of between 150 and 200 politicians deeply hostile to the present European Union push the tide of integration into reverse? Seizing an opening offered by the Treaty of Lisbon to drive the choice of the next president, the main European political families will choose their own candidates and build their election campaigns around them. While Lisbon does not impose a cast-iron obligation on the European Council to nominate the candidate from the party that wins the most seats, the strategem’s avowed aim is to forge a more direct link between the election results and the appointment of the successor of José Manuel Barroso. This way it is hoped to stimulate greater interest among voters and encourage more of them to vote. Not everybody thinks this a good idea. An excellent paper by Heather Grable and Stefan Lehne, published by the Centre for European Reform, argues that a partisan president will undermine the Commission’s legitimacy by politically tainting powers and responsibilities that need to be exercised super partes. On this reading, the Commission is supporting the agent of its own destruction. But Commissioner Viviane Reding, who features on many lists as a possible European People’s Party candidate, says that this will help “to strengthen the people’s voice in European democracy and to make next year’s European elections a real debate about the future of Europe”. Delors reminded his audience last week that since 1999 he has supported the idea of the European Parliament’s political parties running their own candidates for the Commission job. However, his public recommendation to the Party of European Socialists (PES) to make Pascal Lamy its candidate highlights more than the controversy over the Parliament’s role. It also raises issues of competence and nationality. Lamy was Delors’ all-powerful chef de cabinet for five years and went on to become a highly effective European commissioner for trade (1999-2004). He has just completed two terms as director-general of the World Trade Organization. Although he has never been elected to public office, Lamy’s qualifications for the presidency as the Socialist candidate are immensely stronger than those of Martin Schulz, who is some people’s favourite to carry the PES banner in next year’s campaign. A long-serving parliamentarian, Schulz has never held a higher office than the one he currently occupies as president of the European Parliament. Questions about his
competence and lack of experience may not be his only handicap. He is German at a time when few people think Germany’s power and influence in the EU needs strengthening. Since the European Council is obliged by the Lisbon treaty, somewhat vaguely, to take into account the election results, and since the centreright European People’s Party is likely to be the largest grouping, it may be that neither Schulz nor Lamy will be in the running. However, if the European Council does not want the EPP’s candidate then there will be an institutional clash in very uncharted territory. Optimists say that neither side would relish such a battle and there will be plenty of scope for a deal, since not only the Commission presidency, but also the
The Front National’s by-election victory two weeks ago in an area traditionally run by communists was so complete as to raise the distinct possibility that it will be the largest French party in the next European Parliament posts of president of the European Council and high representative for foreign and security policy, will be in play. Whoever becomes Commission president, he or she will be confronted by a very large group of those hostile to the EU. The Front National’s byelection victory two weeks ago in an area traditionally run by communists was so complete as to raise the distinct possibility that it will be the largest French party in the next European Parliament. Britain’s UKIP could score highly as well, while even the German Eurosceptic party AfD will pass the required 3% threshold to take some seats. It may well be that the Eurohostiles will be so diverse as to be incapable of effective co-operation – Nigel Farage’s UKIP, for example, recoils from the FN’s anti-semitism. It may also be the case that theirs will be a one-off success borne of economic recession and popular anger at both Europe and the mainstream parties. Nonetheless, it is likely that the governing parties will be concerned and worried enough to dampen down EU legislative activism. We may even see a David CameronAngela Merkel axis favouring a flexible repatriation of some competences. Nothing can be taken for granted, except that the EU28 will continue to do business with each other every day, and that the euro and the single market will be stoutly defended. Unappeased, however, will be the visceral resentment among many voters at the extent of the EU’s reach, especially into domestic fiscal management. They are questioning the value of democracies that allow them to change national governments but not European policies. John Wyles is an independent consultant based in Brussels.
REUTERS
Russia’s picnic cookbook There are more ways to show solidarity with Russia’s neighbours than just buying Lithuanian Džiugas, writes Edward Lucas
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krainian chocolates, Moldovan wines, Georgian mineral water and now Lithuanian dairy products: Russia’s trade war is a freedom-lovers’ feast. Or a least a picnic. The Kremlin’s thinking is simple. Trade bans will create economic hardship, exerting political pressure on governments to change their stance. Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine must be deterred from signing deals with the European Union at the Vilnius summit on 28 November. The host Lithuania must be punished too. The Kremlin’s thinking is also wrong. Russia is no longer the only market for the former empire. I remember the days when Moldovan wine came with a generous helping of dead wasps (I assumed nobody bothered to wash the dirty bottles before refilling them). Georgian wine was cloyingly sweet to a Western palate, and of what might be politely described as variable quality. Lithuanian cheese was bland, greasy and indistinguishable from the other cheeses of the Soviet empire. Even in the mid-1990s, Lithuanian liquors came with a label reading “Kind of Brendy” (when I politely told the manufacturer that this was not standard English, they were snooty and disbelieving). Now that has changed. My local supermarket in London sells Georgian wine – an award-winning 2005 Saperavi, which at £16.99 (about €20) per bottle is sadly out of my price bracket. At a shop close to my nearest railway station I can buy the ideal complement: Lithuanian Džiugas, matured for 36 months. Fans liken it to Parmesan. (It is available online too, via internationalcheese.com.) The Kremlin’s trade war is a tremendous marketing opportunity for agile producers. Cartoonists have been having fun. So have people on social media. I lived in Lithuania during previous Kremlin blockades so this cause is close to my heart. I and others have been promoting #freedomcheese on Twitter (I like the snappier hashtag #3domcheese – try saying it out loud). With luck, Russia’s import ban will
end up boosting sales elsewhere. Kremlin foes and victims of all kinds now have a practical way of showing solidarity. Foreign ministries can do their bit too: Poland has ordered Moldovan brandy for its banquets. Using purchasing power to blunt Russia’s trade war, or even make it backfire, is fun. But it is not enough. Russia has joined the World Trade Organization, but is making a mockery of its rules. A formal complaint backed by all Western countries would send a strong signal. But the trade war is only part of a wider pattern of thuggish behaviour, including the persecution of the perpetrators of a Greenpeace stunt in the Arctic, and even an ominous instance of the use of coercive psychiatry against a protestor, Mikhail Kosenko. The beating of a Dutch diplomat in Moscow also looks like a classic bit of bullying by the FSB, the Russian secret service. That calls for a wider reaction. Postponing, downgrading or cancelling official visits would help. Many Dutch people are wondering if an upcoming royal trip to Russia should go ahead. (They might also question if their country’s single-mindedly tradecentred approach to Russia in recent years has been the right one.) The Winter Olympics in Sochi would be a good place to show distaste. Russia wants heads of state and government to adorn the occasion. Western countries should say that they are sending athletes, but no dignitaries. They should also deny visas to Russian officials involved in humanrights abuses. The United States’ ‘Magnitsky’ list (named after a whistleblower who died in prison after exposing a huge fraud against the taxpayer) has set a commendable example. (A London court has just nixed a libel claim by one of the officials named.) The US can now widen the list. Other countries can start applying it. And don’t forget the cheese. Edward Lucas edits the international section of The Economist.
14 24 October 2013
COMMENT
LETTERS Over the past few years, the European Union has worked hard towards the creation of a digital single market in Europe, but lots of work remains to be done. We now stand at a crossroads: we have to take the next decisive steps to bring the EU digital single market to life. I have put forward a set of proposals, based on the experience and the ongoing work in the digital field in my own country, Estonia. Most importantly, we should do our utmost to bring digital signatures into widespread use across Europe. Since their introduction in 2002, more than 130 million digital signatures have been used in Estonia, both in private and public use. The only time you need to be there in person to say ‘Yes’ in Estonia is at a marriage. All you need for everything else is your electronic identification or mobile phone, a PIN number and an internet connection. This means greater convenience as people can sign their applications, contracts or bank transactions without leaving their office or home. It also saves millions of hours and many sheets of paper. The benefit is enormous – estimated at a whole week of every person’s life in my country, or 2% of annual gross domestic product. The effect would obviously be multiplied if secure digital signatures were used and accepted across the EU – by citizens and by governments. Trusting the underlying technology is fundamental to achieving this goal. There is already a proposal for an EU regulation leading to mutual recognition of digital signatures. It is of utmost importance that the regulation be adopted by the end of the current mandate of the European Parliament next spring. We also have to move ahead with its implementation, including via the ongoing work on relevant EU-wide platforms (such as STORK 2.0). With the framework in place, all member states should take up digital signatures in forms that will be convenient and viable in each country. This could be a mobile application or a special card or something else, as long as each person’s electronic identity is assured. In addition, we need to make the life of our citizens and businesses easier by creating a framework of reuse and sharing of data provided between public authorities in the EU. Since 2007, there has been a law in my country that citizens may be required to submit their data to public authorities on just one occasion. With the subject’s consent, the authorities must share and reuse the data if they
REUTERS
Sign up to a digital revolution need it for delivering other services. For example, this enables the Estonian government to provide pre-filled annual tax declarations for citizens and pre-filled annual reports for businesses that simply need to be checked and signed digitally. Such reporting takes minutes, not hours, as could otherwise be the case. Based on my own experience, I propose that from 2016 onwards, EU citizens and companies should have a similar right to not submit data more than once to any public sector agency in the whole of the EU. If a Spanish or a German company would like to do business in Estonia, they should not be asked to provide a certificate on tax arrears from their own tax authorities to be presented to public agencies in Estonia. As their home government already has this information, we should instead have common EU-wide data exchange platforms – or at least administrationto-administration links – so that we can reuse the data. Finland and Estonia are already working on an automated exchange of data, based on a cross-border version of the Estonian ‘X-road’ project (go to www.x-road.eu). This allows us to
connect our governments. As a result, Finland and Estonia can jointly deliver efficient and effective cross-border services to people and companies. Asking for data just once would make this happen everywhere in the EU. And Estonia is ready to offer X-Road for free. Furthermore, developing language technologies to facilitate services and sharing the best efforts of all member
states means we can yet again be at the digital forefront. That is why I offer our experience and I hope that in this way we can bring about the essence of the digital economy and the digital single market: seamless cross-border services in the whole of the European Union. Andrus Ansip Prime minister of Estonia Tallinn
Election observation missions Your articles last week on Azerbaijan raise some legitimate concerns about the discrepancies and mixed messages resulting from overlapping election observation missions as well as the presence of official and unofficial observers in the country (“MEPs must explain trips to Azerbaijan”, 17-23 October). However, you spoil your analysis with your unwarranted and somewhat gratuitous conclusion. You may be surprised to learn that the leadership of the ALDE group does not control or approve every visit and trip undertaken by its MEPs unless they are part of an official parliamentary delega-
tion. In this instance, Norica Nicolai was the official ALDE representative on the European Parliament’s election observation mission covering the Azerbaijan elections. As you acknowledge, ultimately the voters are the ones to deliver the final verdict on how MEPs and political groups have acquitted themselves over the course of the legislature. Hopefully they will not jump to the same hasty and unfair conclusions as your editorial did.
Sola (Italian). A swindle in which you don’t share the loot with your accomplice. Lipoushka (Russian). A stick with glue on one end for stealing money from a counter (literally, flypaper). Butron (Spanish). A type of jacket with inner pockets worn by shoplifters. Levare le scarpe (Italian). To steal the tyres from a car (literally, to take someone else’s shoes off ). Rounstow (Scots). To cut off the ears of a sheep, and so remove its distinctive marks of ownership. Forbice (Italian). Pickpocketing by putting the index and middle fingers into the victim’s pocket (literally, scissors). Komissar (Russian). A thief who impersonates a police officer. Ladenlichter (Dutch). Someone who steals from a till. Belochnik (Russian). A thief specialising in stealing linen off
clothes lines. Obez’ yannik (Russian). A detention ward in a police station (literally, monkey house). Bufala (Italian). A meat ration distributed in jail (literally, she-buffalo: so-called because of its toughness). Schwedische Gardinen (German). Prison bars (literally, Swedish curtains: the Swedish had a reputation for fine quality steel). Barathrum (Ancient Greek). A deep pit into which condemned criminals were thrown and left to die.
Neil Corlett Spokesperson, ALDE group Brussels
WORDS Heaven knows I’m miserable now The causes of unhappiness are many and varied and not always easy to put your finger on: Avoir le cafard (French). To be down in the dumps (literally, to have the cockroach). Dastehen wie ein begossener Pudel (German). To look depressed (literally, to stand there like a soaked poodle). Lítost (Czech). The state of torment created by the sudden realisation of one’s own misery. Kusat sebe lokti (Russian). To cry over spilt milk (literally, to bite one’s elbows). At være i kulkælderen (Danish). To be very sad or depressed (literally, to be in the coal cellar). Mal ikke fanden på veggen (Norwegian). To be very pessimistic (literally, to paint the devil on the wall). Bondeanger (Danish). To have done
something that you knew you would regret, and now you regret it. Kummerspeck (German). The excess weight you will gain from emotionrelated overeating.
A life of crime Some people will do whatever it takes and stoop accordingly low to get it: Accordéon (French). An extensive criminal record. Squadretta (Italian). A group of prison guards who specialize in beating up inmates (literally, a small squad). Kassiber (German). Letter smuggled out of jail; a secret coded message Alba (Italian). The day one leaves prison. Kukla (Russian). A roll of money in which the inner bills have been replaced by worthless paper (literally, a doll). Bustarella (Italian). A cash bribe (literally, a little envelope).
You can respond, with comments, additions and, where necessary, corrections, through our website, www.europeanvoice.com, where our words column will regularly be found. Adam Jacot de Boinod is the author of “The meaning of tingo and other extraordinary words from around the world”, published by Penguin Books, and the creator of the iPhone app Tingo.
FEATURE
15 24 October 2013
The new European Ombudsman tells Toby Vogel that she wants her office to devote more time to the concerns of the marginalised
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mily O’Reilly, the European Union’s new ombudsman, believes that she should be launching more investigations on her own initiative and her office should be spending less time on employment complaints from EU staff. O’Reilly, who took up her new role at the beginning of October, after being Ireland’s national ombudsman for ten years, said that she wanted to be “very strategic” about what she did. “Outcomes are critical,” she said, adding that she had to “make sure that what we do has a significant impact and we are not spending too much time on small complaints which should be dealt with by the institutions themselves”. The European ombudsman is appointed by the European Parliament “to receive complaints from any citizen of the Union or any natural or legal person residing or having its registered office in a member state concerning instances of maladministration in the activities of the Community institutions or bodies”. The ombudsman can conduct inquiries either on her own initiative or on the basis of complaints, except where the alleged facts are or have been the subject of legal proceedings. O’Reilly suggested that her office was receiving too many complaints from EU staff. “We have to ensure that…the vast majority of complaints from staff members are dealt with by the institutions and don’t clog up the resources in this office that should best be used by more marginalised citizens and residents of the EU,” she said, suggesting that EU institutions should take as a model the work of the European Commission’s internal mediator for staff issues. The ombudsman’s office does not keep statistics on the number of complaints brought by EU staff, but last year one in six of the completed and closed inquiries – 65 cases out of 390 – concerned administration and staff regulations.
Frontex investigation O’Reilly told European Voice that a high-profile investigation begun by her predecessor, Nikiforos Diamandouros, into the EU’s border management agency, Frontex, would be published “within weeks”. “A core [issue] for us is that people have an opportunity to complain” about alleged maladministration by Frontex, O’Reilly said, describing this as a “huge issue” in the case of Frontex. Many of its clients – people seeking to enter the EU without authorisation – are not in a position to lodge effective complaints since they might be in detention or, indeed, in hiding, or no longer on EU territory. When she was Ireland’s ombudsman, O’Reilly made a point of hearing complaints without regard for the immigration status – legal or illegal – of a claimant. Since the EU treaty allows the ombudsman to receive complaints from anyone residing in the EU, she has some room for manoeuvre.
WATCHING THE EU Emily O’Reilly, the European ombudsman.
A question of priorities We have to ensure that the vast majority of complaints from staff members are dealt with by the institutions and don’t clog up resources in this office that should best be used by more marginalised citizens “How the EU deals with these issues…comes down to EU institutions living up to the standards and principles they have set themselves,” O’Reilly said, adding that she had “not just a legal but also an ethical obligation” to pursue complaints against the institutions. Another long-term investigation that the ombudsman’s office has been conducting is into EU officials who leave the institutions to pursue careers in the private sector – often lobbying their former colleagues on behalf of clients. O’Reilly said that the ultimate goal of the investigation into how the EU handles a ‘revolving door’ between government and business was “a change in culture in terms of secrecy” that would allow real or apparent conflicts of interest to emerge. The results of a parallel investigation into the case of Michel Petite, a former head of the Commission’s legal service, are to be published in the coming weeks. Petite now works for Clifford Chance, a law firm whose clients include tobacco companies, and is also a member of an ethics panel that advises the Commission on lobbying issues.
Dispute resolution The ombudsman provides a mechanism for alternative dispute resolution, ie, a way to settle disputes that does not involve legal action. The ombudsman has no enforcement powers but merely recommends to an institution found to have engaged in maladministration to remedy the situation, for example by changing a decision or providing compensation.
A controversial campaign O’Reilly was elected by the Parliament in early July, at the end of a campaign dominated by controversy over whether serving MEPs should be candidates for the post. O’Reilly was eventually elected by 359 votes against 276 for Ria Oomen-Ruitjen, a Dutch centreright MEP who was her closest rival. O’Reilly’s initial appointment runs only until next year, ie the remainder of the term of her predecessor Nikiforos Diamandouros, who was first elected in 2003. O’Reilly will be up for re-election next year for a five-year term.
European Voice announcement
European Voice continues its expansion inside and outside the Brussels beltway. The newspaper is now distributed in both the French and British parliaments, as we extend our reach to more policymakers. Read us online and in print.
16 24 October 2013
COMMENT
The drawbacks of forward guidance Central banks’ extensive promises, assurances, and pre-commitments have lured market players into a false sense of security, writes Marcel Fratzscher
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he nomination of Janet Yellen to succeed Ben Bernanke as chairman of the US Federal Reserve comes at one of the riskiest moments in the recent history of the Fed. The Fed’s announcement in May that it might start tapering its long-term asset purchases surprised many central bankers, and triggered a sell-off from markets worldwide. But some of the good news about the United States’ economy was bad news for financial markets, because investors considered the Fed’s potential policy tightening in response to such news to be more relevant than the news itself. Then, last month, when the Fed postponed its withdrawal from so-called quantitative easing, markets quickly turned euphoric. Indeed, investors today appear less concerned about the real economic story than about the Fed’s interpretation of it. This underscores an important risk that Yellen must now reckon with as she guides US monetary policy: in the longer run, the dominance of the Fed’s views in the market may cause serious economic harm. The problem for the Fed and other central banks lies not in monetary accommodation, but in their communication strategies. Their extensive promises, assurances, and pre-commitments have lured market participants into a false sense of security. This has induced market players to take on the wrong types of risk, leaving them poorly prepared for adverse changes in
the economy and posing a broader threat to long-term financial stability. Central banking is all about managing market expectations. Monetary authorities have, in recent years, made the way they communicate – about their thinking and possible actions – their primary tool to guide markets and anchor expectations. This is especially true of socalled forward guidance on policy rates – and increasingly so as central bankers’ scope for policy action has become more limited. Unfortunately, major risks and costs arise from over-reliance on communication strategies. Because the voice of central banks has become so dominant in financial markets, price movements have come to reflect responses to their statements and actions, rather than to changing economic and financial realities. For example, when policymakers promise to act if certain risks arise, markets inevitably discount the impact of such risks. In May, Bernanke issued an unusually stern warning about excessive risk-taking in financial markets. Yet investors have pushed equity indices to all-time highs, despite the feeble and uncertain recovery, while the VIX index, a proxy for investors’ perceptions of risk, fell to levels not seen since the boom years of 2005 and 2006. A second consequence of the dominant role of central banks’ communications in financial markets is that it crowds out private sources of information, thereby depriving the monetary authorities themselves of an invaluable, independent
SUCCESSOR US President Barack Obama nominates Janet Yellen. REUTERS
view of trends that they need for sound policymaking. Worse, private actors no longer see the need to collect, analyse, or deploy their own information to the extent that they once did. A third drawback is that when central banks are seen to give misleading assurances and to over-commit themselves to certain outcomes, they risk losing their most important asset: their credibility. What will the Fed do, for example, if inflation rises sharply, but unemployment remains high? The Fed’s inability to anchor expectations would not only harm its credibility with investors, but would also make it much harder to fulfil its dual mandate of pursuing price stability and maximum employment. These drawbacks apply to central banks’ forward guidance generally, and are leaving them hostage to fortune. The recent failure of the Bank of England’s guidance to move markets in the desired direction might mean that investors are more optimistic about the British economy. Or it might mean that centralbank guidance was ineffective, jeopardising the Bank of England’s credibility. The European Central Bank faces similar risks. For central banks, planning the exit from an accommodative policy stance is
less important than exiting their current communication strategies. They should start withdrawing from their overly explicit policy commitments and attempts to micro-manage financial markets. Specifically, they should stop giving forward guidance, including announcements about when they will begin to tighten monetary policy and by how much. They need to reintroduce true two-way risk, so that asset prices again reflect underlying fundamentals. Rather than trying to nudge investors toward certain outcomes and explicit numerical targets, Yellen and other central bankers need to communicate more clearly how they think about risks and opportunities in the economy and financial markets, and then let private investors decide the balance of risk and reward for themselves. This would help markets become more self-sufficient and resilient, thereby enhancing financial stability and providing support for economic recovery. Marcel Fratzscher, a former head of international policy analysis at the European Central Bank, is president of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) and professor of macroeconomics and finance at Humboldt University, Berlin. © Project Syndicate, 2013.
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CEZ Group Offers Solution for Failing Emissions Trading System Eight years ago, the European Union launched its CO2 emissions allowance trading system (EU ETS) aimed at reducing carbon emissions that pollute the atmosphere. However, due to the economic crisis and disproportionally high support of renewable energy sources, the market has experienced a surplus of allowance supply that has resulted in the price of emission allowances dropping to record lows. Therefore, the entire system has failed to achieve its original purpose and is on the verge of collapsing. more environmentally friendly, we should not just let it die. However, it needs to be fundamentally reformed. The European Commission certainly did not intend to stimulate the operation of the dirtiest energy sources, yet unfortunately this is what is happening today. Then how can the system be made effective again? Daniel Beneš, CEO ČEZ, a. s. Why should energy corporations be interested in reviving the EU ETS, which would lead to higher emission allowance prices and, thus, increase their power generation costs? Since this system has already been implemented, forcing energy companies to invest tens of billions of euro into making their production portfolio
First, it is necessary to implement a “backloading” measure as soon as possible. A more thorough systemic solution must then follow to stabilise the entire sector – and CEZ is offering a solution of this kind. We call it F-CAT, a Flexible Cap -And-Trade system based on a supply that is just as flexible as demand for CO2 allowance. Therefore, it can immediately respond to the market situation and effectively compensate any market fluctuations.
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of generating, transmitting and distributing power, ensuring that the electricity price is not used to support other policies. Therefore, the EC should define just one binding objective – reduce CO2 emissions, and not three mutually cannibalistic schemes.
For more detailed information on F-CAT, please visit www.cez.cz/fcat.
CAREERS JOBS Chemicals
Reach for a new career
17 24 October 2013
EU ADVICE
France Capon tells Ian Mundell why expertise in the nickel industry will be relevant for years to come
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hen the European Commission talks about job creation, it is unlikely to be thinking about France Capon. Yet her career in the nickel industry exists thanks to the way the Commission has regulated chemicals over the past decade: to be precise, Reach – the regulation on registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals. Capon knew nothing of this, or indeed the metals industry, in 2003. She had been studying art history at the University of Liège, but her PhD funding had ended prematurely and she was looking for something to tide her over. She found work as personal assistant to the head of the nickel section at Eurometaux, an association representing Europe’s non-ferrous metals industry. “When I joined it was for six weeks,â€? Capon recalls. “Reach arrived exactly at that moment, and the director wanted a little more support for the back office, lawmonitoring and so on.â€? The regulation makes industry responsible for assessing and managing the risks posed by chemicals and providing appropriate safety information to their users. Formally proposed in 2003, it came into effect in 2007. Any company making or importing more than a specified quantity of a chemical must complete a registration process showing that it has identified and can manage the risks involved. If the authorities have concerns about a particular substance, they can request a further evaluation; if these concerns persist, an authori-
sation system is foreseen which will control the risks and line up alternatives. Capon learned as she went along, reading successive drafts of the legislation and working out the implications for the nickel industry. Her training in art history turned out to be a good preparation, particularly courses she had followed in historical criticism. “This analytical reasoning was really helpful.� After a year, her temporary job became permanent and at the end of 2005 she followed Eurometaux’s nickel section to the newly created Nickel Institute. When the institute drew up a plan to help the industry implement Reach, Capon was put in charge. “My role was co-ordination, management and sometimes asking naive questions so that everyone around the table understood each other.� One aspect of this plan was to set up broad industry consortia to allow co-ordinated implementation of Reach. The Nickel Institute brings together large-scale producers, but Reach requires data-sharing across the whole supply chain, including importers, traders and downstream users. Initially, these consortia focused on registration, but once this was completed in
2010 they extended their scope to consider any moves towards evaluation. Meanwhile, Capon turned her attention to the possibility that the nickel industry might be drawn into the authorisation process. “Since we saw that we were under scrutiny, we decided to put in place a plan on authorisation, and now that is the core of my work,� she says. This involves liaising with the French authorities, who are taking the lead in Europe on the nickel industry. Even with the Reach legislation in place, advocacy remains a part of Capon’s job. “You have the law but you also have all the implementation rules, which are still under development. There is still room for interpretation, and guidance and criteria which are under discussion.� Now the institute’s senior adviser on chemicals management, she is also following regulatory systems elsewhere in the world, making sure the lessons from Europe are learned. Europe will be implementing Reach for years to come, with relevant experience in great demand. Capon thinks it is quite possible to make a career of it. “Here we were talking about nickel and inorganics, but then you have the organic world, with very different concerns and challenges. [Co-operation] makes sense at association level, but also at company level, and a lot of consultants are also looking for the right expertise.� Ian Mundell is a freelance journalist based in Brussels.
MOVERS & SHAKERS þ Karl Soukup has been promoted within the European Commission’s competition department to the post of director for state aid, a position that includes responsibility for policy cohesion, research, development and innovation as well as enforcement. In 2001-04, the Austrian was in charge of state aid in the cabinet of Mario Monti, the then European commissioner for competition. Soukup, who joined the Commission in 1996, currently heads the department’s unit for merger control in the areas of financial services, chemicals and health-related industries. He takes up his new post, which had been assumed temporarily by Gert-Jan Koopman, a deputy director-general, on 1 November. þ Irena Pelikånovå has been named as a judge at the General Court of the European Union, to serve until August 2016. The 64-year-old Czech, a university professor at Charles University in Prague, has been a judge at the European Court of First Instance since 2004. Before that, she was a member of the Czech government’s legislative council and a member of the board of the Czech Securities and Exchange Commission. þ Lauri Madise has been appointed to serve as Estonia’s judge at the General Court of the European Union until August 2016. The 43-year-old was previously a circuit judge in Tallinn. Early in his career, he served as a legal expert in Estonia’s justice ministry and then as adviser to the head of the secretariat of Estonia’s parliamentary committee on constitutional affairs. þ Maciej Szpunar has been appointed to the post of advocate general to the European Court of Justice for five years. The 42-year-old former assistant professor of law at the University of Silesia served for a year as secretary of state in Poland’s Committee for European Integration before becoming Poland’s deputy foreign minister in January 2010. He retained the post until this April. þ Richard Weber has been elected president of Eurochambres, the European association of chambers of commerce. Weber, who is president of the Saarland Chamber of Commerce in Germany, was previously Eurochambres’ vice-president. He will take up the post on 1 January, replacing Alessandro Barberis, who has been president since 2010. þ Pierfrancesco Vago will take over the helm of the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) Europe from Manfredi Lefebvre d’Ovidio at the end of this year. Lefebvre d’Ovidio, who is the chief executive of Silversea Cruises, had led CLIA Europe for the past three and a half years. Vago has to date been his deputy, as well as heading MSC Cruises.
NEW PARLIAMENT NEW COMMISSION NEW PRESIDENTS
bm.brussels@bm.com @BMBrussels Burson Marsteller Brussels
is recruiting CIRCULATION AND MARKETING INTERN – REF CMI Established by The Economist Group in 1995, European Voice provides essential, independent insight into the Brussels beltway for insiders and outsiders, both in print and online. As the leading source of news and analysis on key EU policies, laws and institutions, European Voice informs business leaders, policymakers and all those who have a stake in EU decisions. European Voice has a well-earned reputation for independence and excellence. If you want to work for us and have relevant direct marketing experience – contact us now. About the role European Voice has ambitious development objectives and needs new direct marketing experts. As a member of the marketing and circulation team, you will be managing email campaigns from start to finish, establishing contact lists, and personalising emails based on recipients’ interests and needs. You will also help to develop our digital products and e-newsletters. About you You will have excellent B2B direct marketing skills and an understanding of the B2B industry’s best email practices. Strong writing and communication skills are essential. You will have experience using MS office, advanced knowledge of Excel, working knowledge of Access, Google Analytics and other analysis tools. You will be familiar with HTML and email marketing tools. You will be selfmotivated with a desire to succeed and shine. You must be proactive, efficient and work well under pressure. You will be fluent in English, and other European languages will be an asset. Enthusiasm is a must. We know it is a numbers game – so do you. We offer The opportunity to be part of an ambitious and exciting project at a renowned media company. European Voice is proud of its history and has exciting plans in place for an even brighter future – for this we need dynamic and innovative people on our team. This is a paid internship of at least three months. Position based in Brussels.
Ăľ Paul Meller has been appointed communications director at DigitalEurope, a trade association representing companies in the IT, telecoms and consumer electronics sectors. He has been a consultant for tech-related clients for the past three years. Before that he was a reporter for publications including the New York Times and the Dow Jones newswire. He will take up the newly created post at the beginning of November.
Applications, quoting the reference CMI, including curriculum vitae and a covering letter, should be sent to interns@europeanvoice.com
18 24 October 2013
DEPUTY DIRECTOR-GENERAL (GRADE AD15)
EUROJUST is the judicial cooperation unit of the European Union and the ďŹ rst permanent network of judicial authorities anywhere in the world, dealing with individual criminal cases and speciďŹ c types of criminality at a strategic level. EUROJUST now invites applications for the post of:
Head of Communications and External Relations The Head of Communications & External Relations of Eurojust will lead, oversee and deliver Eurojust’s communications, media and external relations strategy while ensuring and safeguarding consistency in the organisational brand and image. The basic monthly salary, before any deductions or allowances, is approximately EUR 7127. Remuneration is exempt from any national taxation. Closing date for applications: 17 November 2013 A full description of the vacancy notice, selection criteria and application details can be found on Eurojust’s website under the careers section.
The European Commission’s Legal Service, Brussels COM/2013/10341 The Legal Service assists the European Commission and all its departments in providing legal support and advice; it also represents the Commission in all court cases, including whenever requests for preliminary rulings are submitted. Your responsibilities: Conducting and coordinating analyses of institutional questions and preparing the Commission’s response to initiatives with implications for the institutional architecture; Directing the analytical work concerning the integration of intergovernmental instruments into the EU’s institutional and legal system; Ensuring coordination with the Commission’s DGs and services and exchanging information with other European institutions and Member States.
Your skills: Legal knowledge and expertise of a very high level; Good knowledge of the European Union policies and current legal questions;
APPLICATIONS / INFORMATION: al Journal C 302 A of 18 October 2013 for the detailed vacancy notice as well as the eligibility and selection criteria. Registration for applicants: https://ec.europa.eu/dgs/human-resources/seniormanagementvacancies/ The closing date for registration is 18 November 2013, 12.00 CET.
www.eurojust.europa.eu
PROFILES The people who are shaping Europe
16 January 2014 High-quality A4 magazine containing the 45 profiles published in European Voice in 2013, featuring key people who are shaping Europe Also available as an iPad app Distributed to a selected, audited circulation of 15,000 of the EU s most influential figures in and around the major institutions Readership includes EU officials, national diplomats and decision-makers in the regulatory authorities, lobbyists in trade associations, consultancies, large corporations and NGOs On sale in Brussels in trade outlets around the EU institutions Promoted on EV social media and in our weekly e-newsletter sent to more than 20,000 key EU influencers
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19 24 October 2013
ENTRE NOUS !
The European Economic and Social Committee is so accustomed to being criticised for living beyond its sell-by date that it is now looking to pass on to others the secrets of eternal life. The EESC last week (17 October) released an opinion calling for a total ban on “planned obsolescence” – things designed and made to ensure they need replacing. Committee members Jean-Pierre Haber and Thierry Libaert, the Frenchmen who drafted the report, have proposed a labelling system that would guarantee a minimum lifetime for each product. They believe that manufacturers should cover the cost of recycling if goods have a projected lifetime of less than five years. The authors condemn the fashion industry as “built around consumer demand for new and different styles not the durability of individual garments… new models are often designed to make their predecessors look ugly or out-of-date”. The EESC is 55 years-old.
Freedom fighters ON THE WAY OUT Rosalind Marsden’s unorthodox leaving do.
What price upheaval in Sudan?
SIKORSKI AND BILDT Taking the measure of the wine case.
Political protest can take many forms. The ban imposed on 7 October by Russia on Lithuanian dairy products has provoked a strong reaction from Europeans once derided in the United States as cheeseeating surrender monkeys. As our columnist Edward Lucas details on page 13 of this edition, there is now a consumer movement to encourage the consumption of “freedom cheese” – ie Lithuanian-made cheese. According to a map on the website freedomcheese.com, such cheese is available in
Brussels from Ivan da Maria, a shop specialising in foreign foodstuffs. Those seeking to help Lithuania stand up to the Russian imperialist bullying should not be swayed by the address of the shop: boulevard de l’empereur 25. Radosław Sikorski and Carl Bildt, the foreign ministers of Poland and Sweden, embarked this week on a whistlestop tour of Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia – countries that the EU is seeking to reward next month at the Eastern Partnership summit, much to the displeasure of Russia,
which among other things has banned imports of Moldovan wine. Sikorski sent out a tweet this week saying that he was drinking toasts to “Moldova’s bold European reforms” in a “1988 vintage of #freedomwine at Milestii Mici, Europe’s biggest winery”. Whilst admiring the nuances of a political protest that uses wine predating Moldova’s independence, Entre Nous would be more impressed if Sikorski’s wineconsumption was accompanied by a 1988 vintage Lithuanian cheese.
Rosalind Marsden, the EU’s special envoy to Sudan and to South Sudan, has been saying her farewells in Juba. Her mandate as a special representative of the EU has not been extended beyond 31 October, though she has won plaudits for her work since September 2010. The decision not to prolong her contract can hardly be attributed to a lack of need in Sudan, where hundreds were killed in protests last month. Fighting continues in the south of the country, and there are power struggles in Darfur. For the EU, Sudan – or, more specifically, President
Omar al-Bashir, a warcrimes indictee – is at the epicentre of one of the most difficult and burning issues in EU-Africa relations: the role of the International Criminal Court. Meanwhile in South Sudan, the president has recently suggested delaying elections. Marsden may, however, be a casualty of a broader battle. Special representatives have, up to now, been appointments made by the Council of Ministers on a recommendation from Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief. Ashton wants envoys and their staff to be placed under
her direct control and paid less – and their budget to be transferred to the European External Action Service. At present, funding comes from the European Commission, with member states seconding some support staff. For the moment, Alexander Rondos (an Ashton favourite), the envoy for the Horn of Africa, has had the Sudans added to his portfolio, which already includes that quiet corner of the world, Somalia. The upfront savings for the EU will be a few salaries. What the costs are will emerge more gradually.
IN THE MONEY A raft of legislation on financial services POWER OF A UNION The EU’s plans for a banking union
Don’t miss out on EV Special Reports. Subscribe today. Birthday celebrations for Europe’s single market cannot hide some persistent and deep flaws, writes Ian Wishart
There is no shortage of conflicting views on the single market. Some people regard it as the greatest achievement of the European Union. Others doubt that it exists. Some credit it with doing more to bring its peoples together than any other development in post-war history. Others maintain that it is a painful and all13 too-clear illustration of the 25 October 2012 EU’s inability to join up fragmented markets and establish the most basic of common standards. There will be plenty who approach next month’s ‘20th anniversary’ celebrations with some weariness. The celebrations are as much to do with wanting to inject the single market with 15 LOSING THE WILL However political priorities change, global warming 15 remains a threat fresh impetus as marking a 11 October true2012 starting-point. The 13 September 2012 DISCUSSIONS IN DOHA Will countries show their commitment to the climate-change roadmap? 20th anniversary is an ap- YOU WIN SOME... Trade unionists demonstrate in 2006 against the proximation to what was, step too far for many Europeans, was a bruising experience for the E EMISSIONS TRADING The flagging price of carbon and bad press for the ETS back in 1992, a deadline. France and the Netherlands. REUTERS BEING PREPARED Why adapting to climate change is as important as mitigation The single European act actually took effect in 1987. It GREEN MONEY Tying funding to environmental issues could solve budget stalemate was inspired by the report drawn up in 1985 by the then European commissioner for the internal market Arthur Cockfield. That report set out 297 measures 15 GEM OF AN IDEA OPAL looks at how national parliaments engage in EU politics that were needed to com4 October 2012 plete the single market by out, broken up and nationMore subtly, the spectre of EIB INSTITUTE Applied economics and reaching out to university networks the end of 1992. From 1986 alised. They have withdrawn an EU of variable speeds is o GENDER AND THE EU Is enough attention paid to gender issues in EU policies? to 1992 the EU adopted from cross-border lending to up and running and threat- B nearly 280 pieces of legisla- retrench on their domestic ening the uniformity of a m tion aimed at breaking down markets. The idea of a uni- single market. The rancour m the barriers between mem- tary patent, which has been of the European Council of u ber states. What the 20th talked about longer even 8-9 December, when David b anniversary celebrations are than the single market itself, Cameron, the British prime is trying to re-create is the at- lingers frustratingly on the minister, blocked treaty h mosphere of those formative drawing board (see page 16). change after failing to win y years during the European The European single cur- exemptions from financial U 17 EXPENSIVE TASTES The rising cost of food Commission of Jacques De- rency, which was meant to service regulation, brought in 27 September 2012 lors, and the widespread realise the single market’s home the extent to which u WHAT A WASTE From field to plate to dustbin awareness of “1992”, which potential, instead threatens the member states fall short th in the business world took to undermine it. The wave of of a common vision of the c GROWING CONTROVERSY The battle over GM rages on on an almost millenarian austerity that has swept single market. Proposals for s DESIGNER LABELS What information should be on our food? image. across the continent tempts a banking union that the s member-state governments Commission published yesinto protectionism, Changing times TORTILLA TROUBLE state aid, terday (12 September) (see D other behaviour anti- page 20) will be a formida- P But how to achieve fresh im- Aand protest in Mexico City thetical to a single petus? Much of the early in- against increases in the market. ble challenge: How can a le of corn.parties REUTERShave capi- single eurozone banking su- w Anti-EU nocence about the single price market’s potential has faded. talised on the eurozone’s dif- pervisor be made compati- c LEGISLATION Is the economic crisis dethroning the 2020 targets?Some of its ideals are in tat- ficulties – and even main- ble with the EU’s single mar- p parties are ket? The UK suggests that ters. The dream of cross- stream d 13 Septe SOLAR SUBSIDIES Sudden changes are discouraging potential investors border consolidation be- tampering with the free- tighter European integra- in tween large banks to provide doms of the Schengen area tion conflicts with the free- g FORWARD PLANNING The European grid needs adapting to accommodate new energy sources of borderless travel that once doms of the single market. H deeper and more liquid capMuch of the rest of the EU epitomised the achieveital markets is tarnished. r FRIEND OR FOE? Changing attitudes towards biofuel Banks have had to be bailed ments of the single market. argues the opposite. E
SPECIAL REPORT Climate change
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SPECIAL REPORT
Twenty yea
EU Studies
SPECIAL REPORT The future of food
TWO OF THE GREAT THINKERS Voltaire and Schulz.
School’s in! Classes in Bruges at the College of Europe for the academic year 2013-14 began on 9 September, but the official opening ceremony of the academic year will not be until 5 November. As is the established custom, the ceremony will feature speeches by the chairman of the College’s governing council (Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, Spain’s minister for Europe), the rector of the College (Jörg Monar), and an eminent European. This year, the role of eminent European falls to Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament. Coincidentally, of course, this is the year that Schulz is campaigning for the presidency of the European Commission. So the college students might want to hear from him, and he will be grateful for the attention. The college’s practice is to name each cohort of students after an eminent (dead) European. The 2013-14 cohort, or “promotion” in the jargon of the college, is French enlightenment philosopher Voltaire. Pretext enough for the College to adorn its invitation to the ceremony with Voltaire’s definition of tolerance – the one about humans being “formed of frailty and error” and the first law of nature being to “pardon reciprocally each other’s folly”. Contact: p.dallison@europeanvoice.com
SPECIAL REPORT Renewable energy
SPECIAL REPORT The single market
REUTERS
ON AND ON AND ON The struggle for a Europe-wide patent BOARD GAMES A blueprint for companies’ senior executives
Throughout the year, European Voice takes an in-depth look at some of the main issues affecting Europe. For news, features and the facts Birthday celebrations for Europe’s on the subjects affecting the headlines, single market European Voice’s Special cannot hide some persistent and Reports are your most reliable source. deep flaws, writes HIT THE SWITCH Liberalising Europe’s energy markets
IN THE MONEY A raft of legislation on financial services POWER OF A UNION The EU’s plans for a banking union
he proposed services directive. The proposal, which aimed to deepen the single market, proved a European Commission and was blamed for the ‘No’ votes on the EU constitutional treaty in
Food forice On ever-thinner ars of progress? Subscribe today and you’ll never miss out on our unique coverage. Ian Wishart
thought New worlds of study There is no shortage of conflicting views on the single market. Some people regard
But with pressure come opportunities. Michel Barnier, the European commissioner for the internal market, has set in motion an unprecedented conveyor belt of financial-service legislation that would scarcely have been thinkable five years ago (see pages 18-19). Using the crisis to justify the introduction of tighter, more uniform regulation across the EU, the results might yet create a real and credible single market in financial services.
mittee on internal market and consumer protection. “It also brings into sharp focus where we have problems. On things like copyright and [orphan] works and the ability to source digital products across borders.” He says that technology has altered people’s perception of how the single market can benefit them. “People are doing more remote transactions and they want to be able to pay and to have their data secure – and data protection which would have been seen as a civil liberties issue is now a crucial single market issue as well,” he says. In the age of the internet,
it as the greatest achievefor ensuring that it is applied ment of the European and promoted in member Union. Others doubt that it states. He and other EU exists. Some credit it with politicians and officials doing more to bring its peoknow that proposals to overples together than any other haul Europe’s copyright development in post-war history. Others maintain regime, to establish alternathat it ispatterns a painful andditional alltive dispute resolutionchallenges laws, food is strongly tive of increasing agricultur- ments such as the drought in Demographic demand new European too-clear illustration ofidentified the with regional cul- al output and fishing yield. the United States this sumto enable the mutual recogEU’s inabilityDave to join up fragin growing, distributing and consuming food, writes ture, which perhaps explains In some ways the policies mer. Spiking commodity nition of professional qualimented markets and estabwhy Europeans have been so have been victims of their prices are already having an fications, and to carry out a Keating lish the most basic of comsuspicious of new food tech- own success. Today, 75% of effect on grocery stores revision of public procuremon standards. Therenology will like genetically mod- Europe’s fish stocks are over- across Europe. ment rules are of pressing The growing middle class secu- ified Last year, humanity reached global conundrum beset by curity is beabout plentyhuman who approach nextcrops (see pages 18-19). fished, according to the Euimportance: withoutmileeco- looming health and environ- rity.” month’s ‘20th anniversary’ But while the rest of the ropean Commission, and in- in India and China will also a rather unsettling nomic therepopulawill be mental concerns. But celebrations while the number world worries about food tensive agricultural practices alter the picture. As those stone.growth The earth’s withof some is growing, the shortages, Europe is dealing pose dangers to biodiversity populations earn more, they Recent increases in food peopleweariness. reached billion, notion solution to seven the eurozone of land on earth is are with up from three billion just five prices, which have already amount The crisis. celebrations as the opposite problem. and water supply. Reforms choose to eat more meat and means new ways of The decades Expertsthe expect much to do with wanting toabundant supply of food of both policies currently be- fish. This will drive up prices As well ago. as leading cel- led to food riots and mass not. This must used to in Europe over the past half ing debated by MEPs and in Europe, and could oblige the population nine hunger, are already re- farming inject the be single market with ebrations, theto reach European yield (see aspage century billion by 2050. That means minders of the dangers increase fresh impetus marking a has led to overcon- member states are attempt- Europeans to switch to kinds Commission will set out a and, in turn, rising ing to balance this out, re- of meat and fish not traditionnine billion mouths to feed. posed by an inability to feed 18). More true controversially, starting-point. sumption The further list of items under its people (see page 16). “We biotechnology eatenthe before, such as low- directive. The proposal, which aimed to deepen t companies farming and fishing obesity concerns. If there is to be any chance 20th anniversary is anhealth ap- and YOU WIN SOME... Tradestricting unionists demonstrate in 2006ally against proposed services ‘single market will act’be blueprint that everyone fed the will have to produce the say new breeding methods Policymakers have struggled in order to make it more sus trophic fish (see page 20)
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Digital economy Progress in other areas is no less essential. “The area which has evolved dramati-
20 24 October 2013
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