Grahnlaw

ACTA signatures and content

2012-01-27T08:15:00.002+02:00

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan has published a note on the signing of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement between the European Union and its Member States, Australia, Canada, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Mexican States, the Kingdom of Morocco, New Zealand, the Republic of Singapore, the Swiss Confederation and the United States of America (ACTA) by the European Union and its member states.

At the first signing ceremony, 1 October 2011, ACTA was signed by Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and the United States.

Yesterday, 26 January 2012, ACTA was signed for the EU (Council or Commission) and 22 of the 27 member states: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

In other words, Mexico and Switzerland have not signed yet. The EU member states which did not sign the agreement yesterday are expected to do so on the completion of respective domestic procedures. They are: Cyprus, Estonia, Germany, the Netherlands and Slovakia.

ACTA contents

The ACTA negotiations were conducted as a master class in undermining trust by and in governments and the European Union, but many of the public comments, for instance on Twitter #ACTA, give an impression that the contents of the agreement should be better known before being understood.

The proposal for a Council decision COM(2011) 380 exists in 22 official EU languages, with the agreement annexed. The English version is here.

INTA rapporteur and events

The ACTA rapporteur in the EP Committee on International Trade (INTA), Kader Arif, renounced his preparatory task as a protest move against the process (in French).

The Pirate MEP Christian Engström offers an orderly view of a chaotic situation. The text of the blog post is in Swedish, but the links lead to items in the original languages.

Ralf Grahn

P.S. Follow events on Bloggingportal.eu, the multilingual aggregator of euroblogs.

A communication disaster called ACTA

2012-01-27T06:14:00.000+02:00

During the negotiations of ACTA the participating states did their best to undermine public trust by secrecy and obstinate refusal to publish various documents (Techdirt). When the first batch of countries signed ACTA in October 2011, the EU Commission and Council ignored the occasion (Grahnlaw).

The going is still pretty wild on Twitter under the hashtag #ACTA after the new signing ceremony yesterday for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement between the European Union and its Member States, Australia, Canada, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Mexican States, the Kingdom of Morocco, New Zealand, the Republic of Singapore, the Swiss Confederation and the United States of America.

The web pages of the European Parliament are accessible again. Actually it was ironic that Anonymous took down the EP pages (New Europe and European Voice), when ACTA was signed for the Council of the European Union and 22 member states (The Register).

How did the European Union inform about the signing?

DG Trade offers us a news archive with the latest items from the past two months – empty. Trade commissioner Karel De Gucht has nothing new on ACTA.

The signing of ACTA has not made it to the front page of the European External Action Service (EEAS), with the Delegation of the European Union to Japan equally dismal.

The Council of the European Union did not deem the ACTA signing in Tokyo worth a press release.

In other words, the EU Commission (DG Trade) and the Council have learnt nothing from their continuing communication disaster among internauts. As incompetent and insensitive as before, the EU institutions seem to act on the presumption that a majority in the European Parliament is (once more) going to do what the governments of the member states want it to do. Public trust is not essential.

Ralf Grahn

P.S. Follow events on Bloggingportal.eu, the multilingual aggregator of euroblogs.

Information society, online media and Bloggingportal.eu

2012-01-25T10:14:00.000+02:00

What can you expect from a three year old? I decided to see if the new posts on Bloggingportal.eu are good for other people than those interested in how many EU institutions can dance on the head of a pin.

Instead I opted for one or more policy areas related to the European information society (tag: infosoc) and online media (tag: media) during the last 24 hours or so.

Here is what I registered:

Eurooppaoikeus: Tekijänoikeustoimikunta verkkopiratismia vastaan

Grahnblawg: Framtiden online i Riksdagen

The IPKat: Congress 1, Public 0 – the U.S. Supreme Court's Big Decision in Golan v. Holder

The IPKat: Gambling on appeal? Seeing Red over 32

Europolice: EU surveillance

Mathew Lowry's Tagsmanian Devil: Dear Sony, so much for .eu

FT Brussles blog, Stanley Pignal: Steelie Neelie takes on the Hungarians

Google, European Public Policy Blog: Promoting small businesses and economic growth in Europe

TheIPKat: When reporting ”trumps” copyright: the sad case of Declan Hainey

Waltzing Matilda: Tools Tuesday: The Archivist

Groenlinks: ACTA rampzalig voor ontwikkelingslanden

Erkan's Field Diary: anti France imagery after the genocide bill in Turkish twittersphere

Eva en Europa: Hungría y el liberticidio se topan con la Unión Europea

Netzpolitik: ACTA: Kontaktiert den EU-Entwicklungsausschuss

Recent developments in European consumer law: EU data protection reform

Public Service Europe, Sabine Wils: Electronic waste – Europe living beyond its means

Rhein on Energy and Climate, Eberhard Rhein: EU is going ahead with stricter recycling of electric and electronic Waste

Comment

Not bad, I would say, for a day and a night. Theoretically Bloggingportal.eu has 904 euroblogs listed, but blogs come and go, so some are now inactive. However, during the last seven days close to 250 blogs have published one or more blog posts, which is quite impressive.

If I look at the information society themes, such as copyright, e-commerce, piracy, entrepreneurship, data protection etc., as well as matters related to online media, I feel that you can keep fairly well up to date by following all new posts on Bloggingportal.eu, not only the editors' choice (front page).

However, many of the best European tech and policy blogs have not yet found their way to Bloggingportal.eu, even if the EU is an important hub for the ITC issues debated both at global and at national level.

You can propose both individual articles and new blogs to Bloggingportal.eu. Perhaps you have a few policy oriented examples you could share, because the future of Europe is online.

Ralf Grahn

ACTA in European Parliament committees: Legal Affairs (JURI)

2012-01-24T08:07:00.002+02:00

After the roundup of ACTA blog posts in Finnish, Swedish or English on Grahnlaw Suomi Finland, IPR trade protection: ACTA controversy, I have published two recent updates about the agreement in the European Union:

Grahnlaw (EN): ACTA update (in part) (22 January 2012)

Grahnlaw (EN): ACTA in European Parliament committees: International Trade and Development (23 January 2012)

The Development Committee (DEVE) draft opinion by Jan Zahradil enthusiastically brushed aside all doubts regarding the anti-counterfeiting agreement.

Is it really this simple? Yesterday I found two new items to update my blog post. For your convenience, here they are again, with slight modifications:

La Quadrature du Net sees ACTA as the international counterpart of the SOPA and PIPA copyright bills in the USA. La Quadrature blogged about ACTA in the European Parliament both in English and in French.

European Digital Rights (EDRi) published a critical paragraph-by-paragraph assessment of what must be the DEVE committee draft opinion regarding ACTA.

Even if you do not buy the counter-arguments lock, stock and barrel, there are enough questions and references to merit serious thought.

JURI

The Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) is preparing an opinion for the committee responsible in the European Parliament, the Committee on International Trade (INTA), which offered us the timetable. If we look at the JURI minutes 19-20 December 2011, we find the following:

24. Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement between the EU and its Member States, Australia, Canada, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the USA

JURI/7/06357
*** 2011/0167(NLE) COM(2011)0380

The following spoke: Marielle Gallo (rapporteur), Christian Engström, Alexandra Thein, Eva Lichtenberger, Antonio Caiola (Parliament Legal Service)

There is nothing specific about ACTA on the JURI draft agenda 25 and 26 January 2012.

Marielle Gallo MEP

Somehow the JURI committee, too, has managed to select a gung ho rapporteur. Marielle Gallo MEP is known for her unwavering support for holders of intellectual property rights.

The IP Policy Committee blog offers a background picture about the rapporteur in the previous committee discussion, as well as the legal and political doubts expressed by other participants: Shoving ACTA down the throat of the European Parliament.

There is a Spanish version of the article, published by the Asociación de internautas: Haciendo tragar con el ACTA al Parlamento Europeo.

Erich Moechel, on FM4 ORF.at, discussed the proposals of Marielle Gallo with regard to the customs enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR): ACTA wirft seine Schatten voraus.

Christian Engström, the Green (Pirate) MEP, wants the European Union Court of Justice (EUCJ) to scrutinise if ACTA is compatible with fundamental rights. He has blogged about the JURI discussion, as well as on several previous occasions about the anti-counterfeiting agreement both Swedish and English.

When Futurezone.at discusses the imminent signing of ACTA by Austria, the worries of internet service providers (ISPs) are highlighted, and these concerns are shared by the Green MEP Eva Lichtenberger.

***

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) remains controversial, but the two rapporteurs we have looked at this far seem to be on auto-pilot to bulldoze through the agreement.

Ralf Grahn

ACTA in European Parliament committees: International Trade and Development

2012-01-23T06:00:00.003+02:00

Yesterday I offered some information about the state of ACTA in the institutions of the European Union: ACTA update (in part). Now for some complementary information.

INTA

The Committee on International Trade (INTA) is the responsible committee in the European Parliament.

The INTA minutes 20 December 2011 (INTA_PV(2011)1220_1) offer us this decision by the coordinators (page 2/13) about the EP timetable during the committee stage:

- To ask the INTA rapporteur for ACTA to fix the timetable so that the first exchange of views takes place in February and the vote in committee takes place in April or May 2012.

The draft agenda for the INTA meeting 25 and 26 January 2012 makes no specific additions regarding ACTA.

DEVE

According to the draft agenda (item 6), the Committee on Development (DEVE) 24 and 25 January 2012 is going to have an exchange of views Tuesday about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement between the EU and its Member States, Australia, Canada, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the USA (procedure 2011/0167(NLE), based on COM(2011)0380).

While INTA is the committee responsible (Kader Arif S&D rapporteur), the rapporteur for the DEVE opinion is Jan Zahradil (ECR).

The DEVE draft opinion PA – PE478.666v01-00, dated 6 January 2012, is strongly supportive of measures to protect intellectual property and welcomes the conclusion of ACTA, commending the Commission for ”having ensured that ACTA provisions comply with the Union acquis and that nothing in ACTA contradicts the obligations between parties under existing agreements, including the TRIPS Agreement”.

After four paragraphs of vigorous endorsement (and one other), the last two paragraphs of the DEVE draft fittingly note development concerns regarding the legitimate trade in generic medicines and access to medicines.

Update 23 January 2012: La Quadrature du Net has now blogged about ACTA in the European Parliament both in English and in French.

Update 2, 23 January 2012: European Digital Rights (EDRi) has published a critical assessment of the (DEVE committee) draft opinion regarding ACTA.

Ralf Grahn

ACTA update (in part)

2012-01-22T08:59:00.000+02:00

In October 2011 I wrote a blog post Greens challenge ACTA legality. The two proposals from the Commission (DG Trade) had been published in June. They are:

Proposal for a COUNCIL DECISION on the signing, on behalf of the European Union of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement between the European Union and its Member States, Australia, Canada, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Mexican States, the Kingdom of Morocco, New Zealand, the Republic of Singapore, the Swiss Confederation and the United States of America; Brussels, 24.6.2011 COM(2011) 379 final; procedure 2011/0166 (NLE)

Proposal for a COUNCIL DECISION on the conclusion of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement between the European Union and its Member States, Australia, Canada, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Mexican States, the Kingdom of Morocco, New Zealand, the Republic of Singapore, the Swiss Confederation and the United States of America; Brussels, 24.6.2011 COM(2011) 380 final; procedure 2011/0167 (NLE)

COM(2011) 380 is available in 22 official EU languages. Thus, the text of the annexed agreement is available in most of the European languages.

Formal adoption

As an 'A item', without discussion, the Council (Agriculture and Fisheries, 15 December 2011) adopted a decision to authorise the signing of ACTA:

3137th Council meeting Agriculture and Fisheries; Brussels, 15-16 December 2011 (document 18708/11)

You find the text on page 43, under the headline TRADE POLICY:

Anti-counterfeiting trade agreement

The Council adopted a decision authorising the signing of an anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA) with Australia, Canada, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States.

ACTA is aimed at establishing an international framework to improve the enforcement of intellectual property right laws and create improved international standards for actions against large-scale infringements of intellectual property. Negotiations were concluded in November 2010.

According to the Legislative Observatory Oeil, the issue of approval of ACTA by the European Parliament is still at a preparatory stage (although for a while the Oeil and committee pages have been impossible to access).

Ralf Grahn

Norway almost as deeply integrated in the EU as the UK

2012-01-19T06:39:00.001+02:00

When we think about Norway and the European Union, Britain tends to surface. But what is Norway's EU relationship in reality?

Media shortcut

EurActiv alerted me to the publication of the study on future EU relations of Norway. The article presents the current position of Norway as a member of the European Economic Area (and member of the European Free Trade Associaiton EFTA), as well as the main findings and quotes from Norwegian experts.

When Kirsty Hughes offers the main points on BBC News, Britain crops up early on:

"We are almost as deeply integrated as the UK," says report committee chairman Prof Fredrik Sejersted.

Views and News from Norway contribute with an assessment of the opinion climate in the country, and predict that the current relationship will continue with little change.

Official information

The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs offers a press release about the review of Norway's agreements with the European Union. The study forms the basis for a white paper on EU relations to be published later this year, says foreign minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

Chapter 1 (17 pages) of the massive report Outside and Inside – Norway's agreements with the European Union (Official Norwegian Reports 2012:2) is available in English. It offers and introduction, the main messages and an overview.

Readers of Norwegian are able to find the relationship explored in painstaking detail in the original, which runs to 911 pages including the annexes:

Utenfor og innenfor – Norges avtaler med EU (NOU Norges offentlige utredninger 2012:2, 17. januar 2012)

Some thoughts

In the wake of the national leaders' inability to solve the crisis in the eurozone, between seven and eight Norwegians out of ten are now opposed to EU membership. Thus, Norway seems set to continue the necessary ties with a huge democratic deficit.

The EU accession of Norway's EEA companion Iceland (some EU views here) would strain the agreement on the European Economic Area, but I would be astonished if the population of Iceland actually decided to join in the upcoming referendum even if the negotiations lead to an agreement.

Ralf Grahn

P.S. Those of you who are interested in the European online public space, as well the issues of information and propaganda from the institutions of the European Union, should read Mathew Lowry's blog article about an alternative overaching EU communication strategy.

EU Council: Evaluating the Danish presidency programme

2012-01-16T06:54:00.000+02:00

For friends of melodrama we suggest Public Service Europe's take on the Council of the European Union, but let us return to bumbling through the primary sources about the Danish presidency. Our roadmap is the programme presented by the government of Denmark:

Europe at work: Programme of the Danish Presidency of the European Union 2012, 1 January to 30 June 2012 (61 pages)

Since our readers come from many countries, there is reason to mention the language options. The presidency web pages offer you the programme in

Danish: Europa i arbejde

French: Europe au travail

German: Europa bei der Arbeit

Council configurations

After the introduction and the four priorities (discussed in earlier blog posts), the presidency programme presents the main issues for the different Council configurations (from page 23): General Affairs (23-25), External Affairs (24-29), Economic and Financial Affairs (30-33), Competitiveness (34-37), Transport, Telecommunications and Energy (38-41), Justice and Home Affairs (42-45), Agriculture and Fisheries (46-49), Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs (50-53), Environment (54-57) and Education, Youth, Culture and Sport (58-61).

Evaluation

Following the introduction and the four priorities, about two thirds of the Danish presidency programme deal with ongoing policy issues sorted under the different Council configurations.

The policy area of each configuration and the current priority issues are clearly described. The main questions are then discussed with some detail added about proposals and the aims for the near future.

The presentations are fairly readable and could be suited for politicians and officials addressing general audiences, as well as for students and other interested readers who want a quick overview of a certain policy area in the European Union.

Mostly the matters are covered in the neutral[ish] fashion of an honest broker, although the attentive reader finds points which reflect viewpoints specific to Denmark (and likeminded countries).

The programmes and proposals are often mentioned exactly enough to enable a reader to do a general web search (Google) to find additional material, but in most cases the presentation is quite general.

It is a light-touch presidency programme, but not really a heavy-duty work programme.

It is often far from clear if the papers referred to are existing or forthcoming proposals, or how far the process of preparation and decision making has advanced.

Would exact references and links to documents have spoiled the programme? It would have become less pleasing to the eye, but more helpful for serious readers.

Ralf Grahn

EU Council presidency of Denmark in the media 2/2

2012-01-14T12:34:00.000+02:00

Jon Worth's earlier as well as his two latest blog posts (here and here) about his press trip to Denmark and the launch of the Danish presidency of the Council of the European Union offer both his personal impressions and references to media. He has also actively taken part in the Twitter discussion under the hashtag #eu2012dk (although many tagged tweets seem to disappear into a black hole, here as elsewhere).

In the first part I limited my references to the blogs of Worth, the Copenhagen British Embassy and myself, but here I am going to widen the scope with regard to the Danish presidency.

EU Council presidency

Commission and official

Officially the presidency was kicked off by festivities in the host country, where the European Commission met the government in customary fashion to discuss the priorities for the next six months. Commission president José Manuel Barroso issued a press statement where he emphasised fiscal consolidation, growth reforms such as in the single market and the next long term budget (Multiannual Financial Framework).

Barroso did not volunteer a single word on the fascinating Danish paradox between four priorities and four opt-outs from the EU treaties (the paradox I discussed in a Finnish entry).

Those interested can see the press conference of prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Barroso through the presidency pages, which offer the presidency programme in four languages (English here).

The home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmström blogged briefly about her discussions in Copenhagen (in Swedish here and English translation here). She has just become active on Twitter: @MalmstromEU.

The European Parliament published short comments from the Danish MEPs Bendt Bendtsen (EPP),
Dan Jørgensen (S&D), Morten Løkkegaard (ALDE), Margrete Auken (Greens) and Anne Rosbach (ECR), as well as Morten Messerschmidt (EFD) who only answered the second question, about the greatest challenge for the EU as a whole and for the Danish presidency.

According to set patterns, the European Parliament is going to hear and debate the Danish priorities at the first 2012 plenary session in Strasbourg next week.

For people interested on what happens at Council level, the agenda shows the high level events during the next two weeks.

Presidency communication

The communication expert Michael Malherbe saw the invitation of the euroblogger Jon Worth to participate in the press tour as a step towards recognition of bloggers. He also discussed how Denmark profiled itself as a low-cost presidency and made interesting comparisons between how the new and seven previous Council presidencies positioned themselves.

A number of observers (I included) have remarked on the tap water presidency, where the government of Denmark created a symbol for both economic and ecological thinking by announcing that it would replace bottled water with tap water at the meetings it chairs. One of those to notice was EUobserver.

Georgi Gotev saw the less flamboyant and more frugal Danish style as a message to president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Media

Here is an assortment of articles in EU media, including euroblogs.

Encarna Hernández, on Más Europa, emphasised the green agenda of the Danish presidency in a pedagocical blog post where she presented the essentials of the four priorities. She also discussed the Maastricht Treaty and the resulting Danish opt-outs (in Spanish).

Recent developments in European consumer law presented the Danish programme priorities.

Gli Euros (the Italian version of The Euros) saw the Danish programme as ambitious and farsighted, in the short article: Danesi in cattedra.

Contributors.ro discussed the background and the aims of the Danish presidency, but also mentioned Romanian interests and finally tried to assess the chances for a small country during the severe crisis (in Romanian).

The defence blog Bruxelles2 reported that Denmark intends to scrap its defence opt-out and to reduce its opt-out concerning justice and home affairs (JHA) to an opt-in. The other French defence blog EGEA took this as its starting point for a short discussion about Denmark in Europe.

Bruxelles2 has also discussed Denmark's desire to strengthen the international influence of the European Union in international affairs, as well as the loss of 27 consular service points managed by other EU countries (due to the security policies of the previous government).

Green hiccup

Quite a few observers noted the uncannily timed layoffs announced by the Danish wind power company Vestas during the launch of the green presidency.

The FT Brussels blog commented on an awkward start, EurActiv spoke of sidewinds blowing the Danish presidency off course and Europaportalen.se noted the disappearance of green jobs.

***

Hopefully these examples help to give you some indications of politics and policies during the Danish presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Ralf Grahn

EU Council presidency of Denmark in the media 1/2

2012-01-14T07:58:00.003+02:00

After a look at media reporting about the Danish presidency of the Council of the European Union, the euroblogger Jon Worth pronounced ”perhaps not stellar, but at least there is some online discussion about the Press Trip and the launch of the Presidency”.

UK official blogging (FCO Blogs)

You can check Worth's blog for several entries about the press trip and the Danish presidency. He proceeded to give sound blogging advice to the presidency blog launched by the Copenhagen British Embassy (FCO Blogs), based on the post by the UK ambassador Nick Archer about the beginning of the Danish presidency.

According to the ambassador, the prime minister and the deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom are passionate enough about some of the (thirty plus) policies of the European Union to abstain from heading for the exit, namely growth, jobs, Single Market and free trade.

Linking and engaging

I am not going to start providing photos, but let us take Jon Worth's blogging lesson about linking and engaging (discussing) seriously, just adding that substance and sources have a role in political and legal affairs.

It may be somewhat self-centred to start by linking to myself before beginning the wider media tour, but my blog posts present and discuss the Danish priorities and make references to primary sources, while occasionally linking to news reports and media comments, including blog entries.

Grahnblawg (SV): Ekonomisk politik under pågående kris: Danmark ordförande i EU:s råd

Grahnlaw (EN): Growth and jobs: Denmark's EU Council presidency

Eurooppaoikeus (FI): Tanska vesijohtovedellä maineeseen: Painotukset EU:n neuvoston puheenjohtajana

Grahnblawg (SV): Danmark första gröna ordförandeskapet för EU:s råd?

Grahnlaw (EN): A safe Europe a priority Denmark has opted out of

Grahnlaw (EN): EU Council presidency with opt-outs

Grahnlaw (EN): Thorny questions for Denmark and EU Council

Eurooppaoikeus (FI): Tanska: neljän prioriteetin ja poikkeuksen paradoksi EU:ssa

***

Far from stellar, but an introduction to the next six months of monitoring. In part 2/2 I am going to look at some of the news and opinion I have noticed and gathered for my readers with regard to the EU Council presidency of Denmark.

Ralf Grahn

Thorny questions for Denmark and EU Council

2012-01-12T19:00:00.000+02:00

Each EU Council presidency has to confront a number of difficult issues. Denmark is no exception. Here I am going to name but two thorny issues, both relating to the area of freedom, security and justice (AFSJ), or justice and home affairs (JHA).

Schengen entry: Bulgaria and Romania

Wikipedia offers an overview of the Schengen Area covering 26 countries and 400 million people, with common external border controls, but free travel within.

The challenge for the Danish presidency is the Schengen entry of Bulgaria and Romania, approved by the European Parliament but still not clear of the Council.

On 9 December 2011 the European Council concluded (document EUCO 139/11, paragraph 15, page 6):

15. Recalling its discussions of June and October 2011, the European Council notes that all legal conditions have been met for the decision on Bulgaria's and Romania's accession to the Schengen area to be taken. It calls on the Council to adopt this decision as soon as possible. If necessary, the European Council will return to this issue at its March 2012 meeting.

Finland had dropped its resistance, but the entry was still vetoed by the Netherlands. The Danish Council presidency tries to find a way to clear the last obstacle (Novinite.com).

Can anything be done between now and 1 March 2012?

Hungary

The Fidezs government in Hungary has energetically legislated and governed away an astonishing number of European founding values, fundamental rights and legal rules.

Essentially, when an EU member state starts taking leave of the Copenhagen criteria, the crisis is political, and the responses should be political and principled, while the legal remedies are more limited. Primarily, the Europarties and the governments of the member states should react, but we have seen worrying lacunae and minimalistic approaches.

The Commission has now stated that Hungary has not taken effective action to curb its budget deficit. The Commission is also investigating the compatibility of new Hungarian laws with EU legislation regarding the independence of the national central bank, measures concerning the judiciary and in particular mandatory early retirement of judges and prosecutors at the age of 62 instead of 70 and the independence of the national data protection authority.

Liberal and centre-left parliamentarians in Denmark voiced serious concerns about core values of the European Union being threatened (EurActiv), but leaders of the EU member states have been awkwardly silent and the European People's Party has been legalistic and minimalistic in its belated response.

News and activities

You can follow events through the web pages of the Danish presidency, or subscribe to news by different channels. You can find and participate in Twitter discussion under the hashtag #eu2012dk, as well as follow the presidency @eu2012dk and its spokespersons in Brussels @SpoxBrx_DK.

Ralf Grahn

Denmark: EU Council presidency with opt-outs

2012-01-12T13:57:00.000+02:00

The previous Grahnlaw post mentioned three of the Danish EU opt-outs. Let us take a brief look at all of them.

Danish opt-outs

At least on paper, Denmark looks like Britain, having four opt-outs from European co-operation. These opt-outs concern defence policy, justice and home affairs, the euro and union citizenship, the Folketinget (parliament) mentions in its presentation.

Earlier governments as well as the current one, led by Helle Thorning-Schmidt, have toyed with the idea to scrap one or more of the opt-outs. It would be in the national interest according to the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), but the politicians have not yet braved the uncertain outcome of a national referendum.

The atmosphere in Denmark is much more cooperative, constructive and positive than in the United Kingdom, where obstructionism, vetoes, repatriation of powers and calls for secession compete for the top spot, interspersed by occasional reminders about the importance of the internal market for British jobs and businesses.

Fiscal pacts and Schengen

Denmark participates in the Euro Plus Pact and in the negotiations aiming at a new, intergovernmental fiscal compact. The UK remains outside the first and has forced the intergovernmental route for the second.

Denmark is also a part of the Schengen Area with common external borders and free travel inside.

***

The NYT IHT offers a description of Denmark's position at the beginning of the Council presidency.

Ralf Grahn

A safe Europe a priority Denmark has opted out of

2012-01-12T07:24:00.000+02:00

The government of Denmark offers four wide headings as its priorities for the first six months of Council life in the European Union 2012:

A responsible Europe (see Grahnblawg in Swedish and Eurooppaoikeus in Finnish)

A dynamic Europe (see Grahnlaw in English and Eurooppaoikeus in Finnish)

A green Europe (see Grahnblawg in Swedish)

A safe Europe

As we see, A safe Europe is one of the four priorities of the Danish presidency of the Council of the European Union, and the one we have not looked at yet. The programme:

Europe at work: Programme of the Danish Presidency of the European Union 2012, 1 January to 30 June 2012 (61 pages)

The programme is available in Danish, French and German as well, through the presidency web pages.

A safe Europe

The presidency programme dedicates the pages 19-22 to the security theme. Many of the concrete issues are within three of the Danish opt-outs, namely defence policy, justice and home affairs and EU citizenship.

With only slight exaggeration we can say that a safe Europe is a Danish priority Denmark has opted out of.

Here are the questions covered by the safety priority:

Both wide and complex are the issues related to area of freedom, security and justice (AFSJ), or often justice and home affairs (JHA) in British parlance, including cross-border crime, external security threats (terrorism), criminal proceedings, support for victims of crime, migration policy (integration), asylum (EASO), external borders (Frontex) and free movement across internal borders.

This section deals with food safety and cross-border health threats as well.

The risk of natural and man-made disasters requires both prevention and civil protection responses.

At the macro level EU enlargement (Copenhagen criteria plus absorption capacity mentioned) and the implementation of the neighbourhood policy of the union both in the east and the south are recalled in this respect.

Denmark wants to strengthen common representation of the EU internationally by the president of the European Council (Herman Van Rompuy) and the high representative (Catherine Ashton).

The programme wants to improve the link between the EU's humanitarian aid and long-term development programmes, striving to move towards a more global sustainable economy.

If there was anything about the need for a European defence, I must have missed it.

***

After the general part with the priorities, the presidency programme becomes more detailed when it turns to the main tasks of the different Council configurations (from page 23). Recommended reading for those who want to dig deeper in a specific area.

Ralf Grahn

Growth and jobs: Denmark's EU Council presidency

2012-01-09T21:01:00.000+02:00

Prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and the rest of the Danish government presented the presidency programme Friday:

Europe at work: Programme of the Danish Presidency of the European Union 2012, 1 January to 30 June 2012 (61 pages)

The programme is available in Danish, French and German as well through the presidency web pages.

Priorities

The government of Denmark offers four wide headings as its priorities for the first six months of 2012:

* A responsible Europe
* A dynamic Europe
* A green Europe
* A safe Europe

The introduction presents the themes in a nutshell (pages 4-6), with more detail added for each of them in the general part of the programme (pages 7-22).

I already commented in Swedish (Grahnblawg) on A responsible Europe facing the financial and economic crises in the euro area.

After the macroeconomic section, in this blog post I turn to the second prioroity A dynamic Europe, on pages 10-14.

A dynamic Europe

The catchwords are growth and jobs, and the means include revitalising the single market (the Single Market Act). The reform of the European patent system is mentioned as a concrete measure. A digital single market requires a number of actions.

The Danish government underlines the social dimension(s) of the single market. Simplified rules for public procurement, effective standardisation, as well as better framework conditions for companies and consumers are outlined, together with an internal market for energy.

The next generation of EU programmes for education, research and innovation is treated under the headline A competitive single market for knowledge, which includes the programme Horizon 2020.

Social aspects regarding mobile workers and eHealth have already brought some Danish nuances to the fore, and the same can be seen in relation to the subheading Sustainable growth and development throughout the EU, which gravitates around cohesion policy as an important part of the next long term budget (Multiannual Financial Framework).

The programme takes account of the European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations (2012), discussing the health of older people as well as their participation in the labour market. Gender equality and labour market flexibility can be seen as Danish highlights.

Denmark wants to see fewer boys dropping out of school and more young women enrolling in education programmes in growth areas. Legal immigration of qualified labour is seen as essential for the future, as is freer movement for services and workers within the EU.

The programme aims at promoting external trade with the EU neighbourhood and other countries.

Comments

The Danish presidency programme is very much in line with the purposes of the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth (although the EU2020 strategy is explicitly named just a few times).

Most Council presidencies have mentioned knowledge, social aspects, labour market flexibility, gender equality, sustainable growth etc., but my feeling is that these are among the areas where the government of Denmark wants to export some of its ideas, solutions and experiences to the European Union as a whole.

Denmark's combination of competitiveness, equality and functioning institutions make it one of the success stories in the light of international comparisons, so most EU countries could profit.

All in all, despite some emphasis with country colouring, the Danish presidency programme gives the impression of being quite mainstream: an honest broker diligently carrying the torch for a period of six months.

Media

Perhaps the next priority, A green Europe, goes a bit beyond that, as the Espacio de Ideas blog by Pau Solanilla comments (in Spanish).

The CTA Brussels Office Blog has reported briefly on the priorities and the Open Europe blog has compared the (slim) presidency budget with others.

On the European Voice, Simon Taylor offered some background to the Danish EU Council presidency: a country outside the eurozone and a government from the left.

If we believe that ”no news is good news”, we can conclude that the Danish presidency has caused few ripples in media dedicated to European affairs. Perhaps Danish design evokes sinister plots much less than it does sleek form and function.

Ralf Grahn

Military: Yankees go while European leaders sleep

2012-01-07T10:35:00.002+02:00

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from president Barack Obama that private Ryan and his comrades should redeploy to Asia, where the action is going to be.

The strategy document Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense tells us that in keeping with this evolving strategic landscape, our (US) posture in Europe must also evolve (meaning far less men and weapons in Europe). This can hardly come as a surprise to even the most casual of news followers.

While both sides want to maintain the NATO alliance, this long expected move leaves European leaders naked with regard to the state of EU foreign, security and defence policy, especially their inability to even begin the construction of a common European defence.

Since a press statements on every mishap in the world seems to be the extent of EU foreign policy, perhaps the high representative Catherine Ashton could crank out a few lines to let the heads of state or government continue sleeping on the job(?)

Update 11 January 2012: Analysis from Reuters on the state of European thinking and action on common defence.

Ralf Grahn

Eurotroll Cameron

2012-01-07T08:40:00.002+02:00

UK prime minister David Cameron ”has promised to do "everything possible" to stop other EU states discussing the single market without the UK” (BBC News UK Politics).

According to the Open Europe blog the EU institutions are ”all over the draft proposal” for an international treaty for a reinforced economic union. The signatories of the treaty will work towards "deeper integration in the internal market".

The EUobserver tells us that ”British PM David Cameron on Friday (6 January) vowed to do "everything possible" to prevent EU institutions from being used in a new fiscal treaty the UK has refused to join, but admitted there were legal difficulties in pursuing that path”.

It looks as if Cameron's strategy and tactics aim at driving as many of the non-eurozone member states as possible towards the euro core. With or without the EU institutions – where Britain has both the voice and the vote – the governments, or most of them, are bound to begin laying the groundwork concerning all aspects of economic policy, including competition, the internal market, tax issues etc. intergovernmentally.

Previous UK governments laid the foundations for Britain's obstructionist position in the European Union, but Cameron's policy of Eurotrolling is achieving a qualitative shift towards irrelevance in all matters except his country's potential for sabotage in Europe on (many fundamental) issues requiring unanimity.

The draft international treaty will do little to remedy the fundamental flaws of the European Union or the euro currency, but the government of the United Kingdom seems dead set on retaining as few allies among the EU members as possible, when they are forced to choose between the European Union and Britain.

I am waiting for how the English tabloids are going to construct Cameron's isolation as splendid.

Update 8 January 2012: Via @EuroCelt David Garrahy I noticed an op-ed piece on Irishtimes.com, where Paul Gillespie discusses how Ireland should handle Britain's self-marginalisation in Europe. - The UK seems to have set in motion a process of alignment by EU members with the eurozone core.

Ralf Grahn

EU2020 stands for 20 missing languages

2012-01-03T06:49:00.004+02:00

What does the Commission's Europe 2020 web page Annual Growth Surveys have in common with Economic and Financial Affairs (Ecfin) page EU economic governance and president José Manuel Barroso's own res gestae on New action for growth, governance and stability?

They all offer access to the Annual Growth Survey 2012 and its four annexes in three of the 23 official languages of the European Union: English, French and German.

In my humble opinion it might be easier to inspire politicians and officials at local, regional and national level, people engaged with EU funds and civil society players, as well as the public in most member states, if the Commission cared enough to inform them in their own language.

It is not really that hard, since the Annual Growth Survey 2012 proper seems to exist in 22 of the EU languages, with Irish Gaelic the only exception. (Contrary to normal practice the English, French and German versions were not posted on Eur-Lex where the 19 other language versions were tucked away, but without links to the important annexes.)

Even the four annexes exist (ADD 1, 2, 3 and 4), if you search for Council document 17229/11 in all languages (or the language of your choice).

In other words, the Commission could easily remedy its omission with regard to 19 of the missing languages. After all, the Annual Growth Survey with its annexes is where the Commission wants to show its leadership.

Ralf Grahn

Update: For some reason, after posting, the link to the Annual Growth Survey 2012 on Eur-Lex turned up the Draft Joint Employment Report instead, but without links to the AGS or the other annexes. Mysterious.

Update 2, 6 January 2012: When the Commission seemingly added the English, French and German versions of the Annual Growth Survey 2012 (AGS) to the 19 existing language versions, it linked to one of the annexes instead, so the number of correct versions is still 19 on Eur-Lex. The annexes in national languages are still missing on the EU2020 pages.

Any hope for Europe?

2012-01-02T19:48:00.000+02:00

My article Any hope for Europe? has now been published by New Europe (Our World In 2012).

Ralf Grahn

European Commission Work Programme 2012: Internal market and services

2011-12-31T15:54:00.000+02:00

For some reason Eur-Lex stubbornly renders the headline of the bibliographic notice in Danish, although the rest of the text is in English. Anyway, the Commission work programme 2012, available in 22 official EU languages, is a suitable read when we are transiting from one annus horribilis to the next. The English language version of the CWP (pdf):

Commission Work Programme 2012: Delivering European renewal; VOL. 1/2 Brussels, 15.11.2011 COM(2011) 777 final (11 pages)

The CWP 2012 offers a convenient overview of ongoing work and planned actions.

Planned actions

If the CWP is Volume 1/2, there should logically be a Volume 2/2, but I was unable to locate it on the legal portal Eur-Lex.

There is, however, an alternative route. If we navigate to the web page The Commission Work Programme, we can find both the CWP proper and an Annex (also in 22 languages). The latter turns out to be the more substantive:

ANNEX to the Commission Work Programme 2012; VOL. 2/2 Brussels, 15.11.2011 COM(2011) 777 final (45 pages)

This is the document for people more deeply interested in one or more areas of the Commission's work in the near future.

About half of the document (pages 2-23) is dedicted to the 129 legislative proposals and other actions planned by the Commission for 2012.

The paper is divided into policy areas, with brief descriptions of each action.

Internal market and services

In this blog post I am going to mention the actions regarding the internal market and services even more briefly:

78 Legislative proposal regarding the protection of investors: Amendment of the UCITS Directive as regards rules on UCITS depositary functions, on manager remuneration policy, and on administrative sanctions
79 Shadow banking communication
80 Legislative proposal on the protection of investors: PRIPs (precontractual disclosures of complex investment products
81 Follow-up to the Performance Check for services: Deepening the single market for services
82 Legislative proposal on collective rights management: Music rights – music online
83 Legislative review of single market and pension funds: Institutions for Occupational Retirement Provision (IORP)
84 Legislative proposal: Revision of the Insurance Mediation Directive (IMD)
85 Legislative proposal: Revision of the Community Trade Mark Regulation and of the Directive approximating national trade mark laws
86 Initiative on disclosure of non-financial information by companies
87 Communication about on-line gambling in the Internal Market
88 Enforcement of intellectual property rights – adaptation of the Directive 2004/48 known as IPRED
89 Legislative proposal: Securities Law Directive
90 Legislative proposal: Close-out netting
91 Digital Single Market: Initiative on notice and takedown procedures
92 Legislative proposal: Insurance Guarantee Schemes
93 Legislative proposal: Third Anti Money Laundering Directive
94 Legislative proposal: Amending the Financial Conglomerates Directive (FICOD II) (2002/87/EC)

There are also proposals in the pipeline for 2013 (page 27), a simplification initiative concerning the Statute for a European Company (SE; regulation 2011/2157)(page 39) and a few proposals to withdraw (pages 43-44) in the area of the internal market and services.

Ralf Grahn

P.S. For an interesting and different take of what politics and policies should be about, you can read the blog post by Ronny Patz, #28c3: “The coming war on general purpose computation” as THE 2011 speech, as an introduction to the video presentation by Cory Doctorow.

End user perspective: BEREC Guidelines on Transparency in the scope of Net Neutrality

2011-12-30T16:05:00.000+02:00

The previous blog post referred to the scope and structure of the transparency guidelines approved for publication by the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC):

BEREC Guidelines on Transparency in the scope of Net Neutrality: Best practices and recommended approaches BoR (11) 67 (December 2011; 69 pages)

Chapter II promised to deal with requirements for a net neutrality transparency policy and states, as a general principle, that the end users’ perspective is paramount. The guidelines discuss how to best adapt a transparency policy to net neutrality-related issues, in particular by taking into account different types of end users and usages.

End user perspective

In Chapter II the guidelines discuss major requirements for a net neutrality transparency policy, identifying a set of criteria (page 14):

A fully effective transparency policy (which can be composed of various approaches and measures) should aim at satisfying all of the following characteristics:

- Accessibility
- Understandability
- Meaningfulness
- Comparability
- Accuracy

These criteria are then explained.

Horse's mouth or third party?

The guidelines discuss two approaches to providing end users with information. The direct approach means that the Internet Service Provider offers the user information directly. This route is compulsory.

The complementary, indirect approach means that third parties – such as technical experts in the Internet community, price comparison sites , content providers or NRAs - provide information.

The NRAs have to devise the obligations of the service providers in a proportionate manner, bearing in mind the costs of regulation. Proportionality is discussed on pages 19-20.

Offer and limits

Discussing various aspects of transparency, the guidelines conclude (page 24):

Finding: for net neutrality transparency, information is needed on both the general scope of the offer and on the limitations (general and specific) of the offer.

Traffic management

Chapter II ends with the following finding (page 26):

Finding: Common terms of references about aspects of the Internet access service, including where some agreement can be reached on traffic management measures considered reasonable, can help to make the transparent information to end users simpler, and therefore can make a transparency policy more effective.

Ralf Grahn

Scope and structure: BEREC Guidelines on Transparency in the scope of Net Neutrality

2011-12-30T05:34:00.000+02:00

The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) approved the transparency guidelines for publication:

BEREC Guidelines on Transparency in the scope of Net Neutrality: Best practices and recommended approaches BoR (11) 67 (December 2011; 69 pages)

Executive summary

The Executive summary on pages 3 to 5 offers a short introduction to the thinking of the Board of Regulators (BoR).

The guidelines stress net neutrality as a key pre-condition to the end users’ ability to choose the quality of the service that best fits their needs, but transparency alone is probably insufficient to achieve net neutrality.

At this stage, the guidelines seem to promise a discussion about various approaches to a number of issues, without clear-cut rules to apply.

Scope

The guidelines discuss transparency from three angles (pages 6-7):

- the types of information that different groups of end users (consumers, business customers at a retail level - see section 1 for a more precise description of the beneficiaries) and institutions need in order to promote the ability to make informed choices regarding the quality of the Internet access services;

- the best means of conveying this information to end users;

- possible ways for end users to monitor the features of their services, and for NRAs to verify operators’ information, and the related requirements.

Related, but separate issues under investigation are (page 7):

Other BEREC projects are closely linked to this work, namely projects on “Competition issues related to Net Neutrality” and “Net Neutrality and Quality of Service”.

Structure

The presentation of the structure of the paper offers an overview to prospective readers (page 7):

Chapter I focuses on the role of transparency with regard to net neutrality, explaining why it is important, but is not sufficient on its own to address the “net freedoms” objective (nor other concerns expressed in the net neutrality debate). In addition, we give an overview of the legal context and touch on the situation within EU Member States.

Chapter II deals with requirements for a net neutrality transparency policy and states, as a general principle, that the end users’ perspective is paramount. We discuss how to best adapt a transparency policy to net neutrality-related issues, in particular by taking into account different types of end users and usages.

Chapter III talks about the contents of a net neutrality transparency policy, including the most appropriate data to be used, and provides practical examples and case studies.

Chapter IV explores different ways to ensure transparency, talking about the way information is transmitted and discusses mechanisms for monitoring transparency.

Chapter V details the possible roles of the various institutions involved, in particular through case studies, and draws some general conclusions of the report.

Regulatory context

On the pages 10-13 the guidelines present the main EU provisions relating to transparency in the revised eCommunications framework and the role of different players (MS = Member State, NRA = National Regulatory Authority, ISP = Internet Service Provider):

The new EU Regulatory Framework for Electronic Communications was required to be transposed by Member States by 25 May 2011. It brought important changes to the 2002 Regulatory Framework and also tackled the question of net neutrality by imposing on MS, NRAs and ISPs several obligations related to traffic management techniques.

Ralf Grahn

EESC on open internet and net neutrality in EU

2011-12-29T18:26:00.000+02:00

On 26 October 2011 the advisory body, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), adopted an opinion on the communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions – The open internet and net neutrality in Europe COM(2011) 222 final.

Differing from the EU institutions (Commission, later Parliament and Council), the EESC was prepared to advance more decisively and rapidly, recommending that the principles of an open internet and net neutrality should be formally enshrined in EU law as soon as possible.

According to the EESC, the definition of the principles should contain at least the following elements:

i. Freedom and quality of Internet access

The European Commission should agree a common EU standard on "minimum quality of service" according to the principles of general interest, and should ensure that there is effective monitoring of its application.

ii. Non-discrimination between Internet traffic streams

As a general rule, no differentiation be made between the way in which each individual data stream is treated, whether according to the type of content, the service, application, device or the address of the streams origin or destination. This applies to all points along the network, including interconnection points.

There may be exceptions to this principle, provided they comply with the guidelines set out in proposed recommendation no. iii.

iii. Supervising Internet traffic management mechanisms

Marking exceptions to the principles stated in proposals nos. i and ii, and to limit any possible deviations from these, when ISPs do employ traffic management mechanisms for ensuring the quality of access to the Internet, that they comply with the general principles of relevance, proportionality, efficiency, non discrimination between parties and transparency.

iv. Managed services

To maintain the capacity of all players' to innovate, electronic communications operators must be able to market "managed services" alongside Internet access, , provided that the managed service does not degrade the quality of Internet access below a certain satisfactory level, and that vendors act in accordance with existing competition laws and sector-specific regulation.

v. Increased transparency with respect to end users and a defined set of standardised information

There should be clear, precise and relevant information on the services and applications that can be accessed through ISPs: their quality of service, their possible limitations, and any traffic management practices. The EC should guarantee transparency for consumers, including clear information on terms and conditions, the right to use any lawful application and the means of switching providers. The EC should promote more dialogue and effective co-regulatory mechanisms between industry and the national regulators, under the auspices of the EC, in order to agree on EU-wide transparency principles and a set of standardised information.

Ralf Grahn

BEREC consultation on draft Guidelines on Net Neutrality and Transparency

2011-12-28T04:43:00.000+02:00

At the political level the European Parliament, the EU Council and the Commission (Digital Agenda, Digital Single Market) have all been active on net neutrality issues recently. Closer to the ”factory floor”, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) tries to find common ground among some 35 national eCommunications regulators, aspect by aspect.

Draft guidelines

This autumn the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) published:

Draft BEREC Guidelines on Net Neutrality and Transparency: Best practices and recommended approaches BoR (11) 44 (October 2011; 64 pages)

Transparency and net neutrality consultation

BEREC launched a public consultation on 3 October 2011 (the announcement provided informationa about related net neutrality issues, but did not contain the end date of the consultation). The deadline, 2 November 2011, did appear on the News page.

Stakeholders, including individuals, delivered 77 contributions, available on the consultations page.

Board of Regulators

The Board of Regulators (BoR) 8-9 December 2011 gave its broad support to the documents submitted for approval. The BoR approved the Guidelines on transparency and the report from the public consultation for publication. The two documents:

Draft report on the contributions received during the public consultation on the draft Guidelines on transparency as a tool to achieve net neutrality BoR (11) 66

Revised draft Guidelines on transparency in the scope of net neutrality: best practices and recommended approaches BoR (11) 67

Consultation report

In other words, the report about the public consultation has been published:

BEREC report on the public consultation on the draft BEREC Guidelines on Transparency in the scope of Net Neutrality BoR (11) 66 (December 2011; 15 pages)

With a variety of respondents from different backgrounds, the contributions contain a number of approaches and opinions on the best manner to proceed regarding many issues.

Thus, the consultation report mainly provides a general summary of various opinions, without delving into specific contributions. Recommended reading for people interested in net neutrality issues.

One outcome is worth mentioning in order to link the draft guidelines with the final version (page 15):

Since the received general comments on net neutrality were very numerous and extensive, it was decided in particular to change the title of the document to “BEREC Guidelines on Transparency in the scope of Net Neutrality: Best practices and recommended approaches”, to better reflect the intended scope of the guidelines and avoid any further confusion in this respect.

Approved guidelines

The guidelines approved for publication by the BEREC Board of Regulators (BoR):

BEREC Guidelines on Transparency in the scope of Net Neutrality: Best practices and recommended approaches BoR (11) 67 (December 2011; 69 pages)

Ralf Grahn

eCommunications: BEREC Work Programme 2012

2011-12-27T08:22:00.000+02:00

The blog post What is the EU doing for growth and jobs? presented the main economic reform programmes in the European Union. The entry Electronic communications in EU: BEREC blog posts focused on one part of the ongoing work on the Digital Agenda and the Digital Single Market, by compiling recent articles about the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC).

BEREC Work Programme 2012 documents

The public process started with the draft Work Programme BoR (11) 40 Rev1 (October 2011; 16 pages).

After the public consultation from 6 October to 4 November 2011, including an oral hearing 21 October, BEREC published a report on the public consultation BoR (11) 61 (9 December 2011; 15 pages). The contributions from fifteen interested parties are available on the BEREC page for public consultations.

I presented the consultation procedure and the consultation report.

The BEREC Board of Regulators, meeting in Bucharest (Romania) 8-9 December 2011, decided to publish the consultation report and the adopted WP 2012:

Work Programme 2012 BEREC Board of Regulators BoR (11) 62 (9 December 2011; 18 pages)

BEREC Work Programme 2012

BEREC noted that the Digital Agenda complements the objectives of the revised 2009 regulatory framework for eCommunications and welcomed the goals and ambitions set out therein (page 3).

BEREC contributes to the development and better functioning of the internal market for electronic communications networks and services by aiming to ensure a consistent application of the EU regulatory framework for electronic communications (page 4).

The Work Programme 2012 discusses BEREC's key objectives and planned actions with regard to (pages 5-11):

* Framework Directive Article 7/7a procedures
* International roaming (including the reforms proposed by the Commission)
* Universal service provisions (including the recent review communication from the Commission)
* Consumer empowerment (including transparent pricing and broadband speeds)
* Network neutrality (with key issues: transparency, minimum service requirements, discrimination, IP interconnection)
* Next generation networks (NGN) and access (NGA)
* Evaluation of BEREC and its office

Further topics are presented from page 11. They include (although I have not respected the difference between levels of headlines):

* Consistency of remedies and further developments
* Review and update of BEREC Common Positions (CPs)
* Implementation of key remedies
* Non-discrimination
* Regulatory accounting
* Implementation of recommendations
* Recommendation on termination rates
* Benchmarks
* Promotion of broadband
* Access to special rate services
* Cross-border and demand side related issues
* Business services
* Cooperation with RSPG and ENISA
* International cooperation

The BEREC Work Programme 2012 offers clear information about the ongoing and future activities, but leaving scope for queries from the EU institutions.

Nit-picking: BEREC is a body for cooperation between national regulators and its other stakeholders are mainly expert market participants. Still, even among them, far from everyone is a walking dictionary of English acronyms. BEREC could afford the luxury to explain each abbreviation at least when it first appears.

Ralf Grahn

Electronic communications in EU: BEREC blog posts

2011-12-27T04:49:00.000+02:00

The previous blog post What is the EU doing for growth and jobs? painted a background picture of main reform programmes in the European Union.

In this context the Digital Agenda and the Digital Single Market are among the catchwords for growth-enhancing and life-enriching reforms in the EU.

If we go beyond the EU institutions in the important area of electronic communications, we find BEREC as a link between political declarations and market realities.

BEREC blog posts

In a number of blog posts we have discussed the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), established by EU regulation 1211/2009 and with its office recently inaugurated in Riga (Latvia). These background posts are in English (EN), Finnish (FI) and Swedish (SV).

Grahnblawg (SV): Berec om nätneutralitet och öppenhet

Eurooppaoikeus (FI): Euroopan sähköisen viestinnän sääntelyviranomaisten yhteistyöelin (BEREC)

Grahnlaw (EN): Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC)

Grahnlaw (EN): EU electronic communications: BEREC medium term strategy consultation

Grahnlaw (EN): EU electronic communications: BEREC Work Programme 2012

Grahnlaw (EN): BEREC draft Work Programme 2012 consultation procedure

Grahnlaw (EN): Report on the consultation of the BEREC draft Work Programme 2012

Grahnblawg (SV): Elektronisk kommunikation i EU: Bakgrund till Berec 2012

Eurooppaoikeus (FI): Sähköisen viestinnän sääntely EU:ssa: taustalla BEREC

***

Our next step takes us from the BEREC background to the substance of the Work Programme 2012.

Ralf Grahn

What is the EU doing for growth and jobs?

2011-12-26T15:38:00.000+02:00

The European Council has repeatedly endorsed and called for a Digital Single Market, as well as other growth reforms. This quote comes from the conclusions 9 December 2011 (EUCO 139/11; page 1, point 2):

Recalling the key priority areas for growth it identified in October 2011, in particular, the Single Market Act, the Digital Single Market and the reduction of overall regulatory burden for SMEs and microenterprises, the European Council stressed the need to swiftly adopt the measures with the most potential to boost growth and jobs. It therefore supports the principle of a fast-track programme and invites the Council and the European Parliament to give particular priority to the speedy examination of the proposals identified by the Commission, including in its Annual Growth Survey, as having substantial growth potential. It endorses the actions proposed by the Commission in its report on minimising regulatory burdens for SMEs.

In most EU member states the government coffers are empty and for some countries public borrowing (even refinancing) has become prohibitively expensive. Despite the glide into recession, there is scant hope for massive stimulus through state budgets.

Governments are mainly left with the opportunity to undertake qualitative growth reforms, in order to unleash the potential for a return to economic growth, prosperity and job creation. The sooner, the better, but becoming competitive often means breaking societal taboos in the very member states where the reforms have been lagging.

Without going into the substance, here is a compilation of the main EU level programmes to engender growth and new jobs.

Reforms for growth and jobs

Competitiveness is a key concept. For the convenience of readers, here are a few sources regarding proposals and developments to unleash growth potential in the European Union.

Single Market Act

The Single Market Act – twelve levers to boost growth and strengthen confidence – and the latest developments.

EU2020 and flagship initiatives

The Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, with seven flagship initiatives:

Digital Agenda for Europe, including the fresh Annual Progress Report 2011 (22 December 2011), where developments regarding the Pillar 1 aim ”A vibrant digital single market” are recorded on pages 2-6.

Innovation Union, including the report State of the Innovation Union 2011; Brussels, 2.12.2011 COM(2011) 849 final

Youth on the Move

A Resource-efficient Europe

An Industrial Policy for the Globalisation Era, including the monitoring report Industrial Policy: Reinforcing competitiveness; Brussels, 14.10.2011 COM(2011) 642 final, or the fuller version including SEC(2011) 1187. Also the European Competetiveness Report 2011.

An Agenda for New Skills and Jobs. Also the report Employment and Social Developments in Europe (15 December 2011), downloadable here.

European platform against poverty and social exclusion. Also the report Employment and Social Developments in Europe (15 December 2011), downloadable here.

Annual Growth Survey 2012

Annual Growth Survey 2012 VOL. 1/5; Brussels, 23.11.2011 COM(2011) 815 final

The four AGS Annexes Progress Report on Europe 2020 (Volume 2), Macro-economic Report (Volume 3), Draft Joint Employment Report (Volume 4) and Growth-friendly tax policies in Member States and better tax coordination in the EU (Volume 5), are downloadable here.

Smart Regulation

The communication Smart Regulation in the European Union, Brussels, 8.10.2010 COM(2010) 543 final, is a part of the Better Regulation strategy. The recent report Minimizing regulatory burden for SMEs - Adapting EU regulation to the needs of micro-enterprises, Brussels, 23.11.2011 COM(2011) 803 final, was endorsed by the European Council, as we saw above.

Ralf Grahn

Report on the consultation of the BEREC draft Work Programme 2012

2011-12-25T16:35:00.000+02:00

BEREC, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, is an important cog in the machinery to deliver on the Digital Agenda for Europe. BEREC enhances cooperation among national regulatory authorities (NRAs) and strengthens the internal market in electronic communications networks.

In the previous blog post I looked at some procedural aspects (transparency) and the scope of ”interested parties”. Here I turn to the contents of the report with the Work Programme 2012 consultation summary.

Following the WP 2012 public consultation from 6 October to 4 November 2011, including an oral hearing 21 October, BEREC published a report. The fifteen stakeholder contributions are available in full on the BEREC page for public consultations.

The consultation summary title more exactly:

BEREC report on the consultation of the BEREC draft Work Programme 2012 BoR (11) 61 (9 December 2011; 15 pages)

WP consultation report

The report advances through the draft WP, mentioning both the comments made by the interested parties and the proposed reactions prepared for the Board of Regulators (BoR).

Thus, the contributions offer an overview of issues seen as critical, at least by some. They also indicate (group) interests of individual contributors regarding electronic communications in Europe.

In addition to themes covered by the draft WP, contributors proposed additional issues to address in the course of BEREC work.

WP 2012 adapted

Here are a few issues where BEREC indicated a clear will to adapt the text of the final Work Programme 2012 (although naturally feedback can influence future actions without textual adjustments). I quote the theme and the BEREC comment.

Universal Service Provisions: The remarks made by PhoneAbility, Telecom Italia and SFR where taken into account and the theme of calculation of net costs has been added to the Work Programme.

Recommendation on termination rates: As a result BEREC added the evaluation of SMS termination to the Work Programme.

Benchmarks: BEREC added the evaluation to include further benchmark exercises in the future to the Work Programme.

Access to special rate services: BEREC takes note of the comments. The concrete suggestions such as DQ services have been added to the Work Programme.

Cross-border and demand side related issues: BEREC is glad to see so much support for this issue. The harmonisation question as well as further detailed evaluation in the field of cross-border issues and business services will be covered in the Work Programme with regard to the outcome of two reports on this issue by the end of 2011.

Cooperation with RSPG (Radio Spectrum Policy Group) and ENISA (European Network and Information Security Agency): BEREC will evaluate questions of further harmonisation in the Work Program Programme.

Additional items... Migration from legacy services: BEREC welcomes the comment made on this issue and will look into it within the existing EWGs.

***

In some cases, such as the adoption of certain standards for seamless interoperability and the creation of a single market for pan-European businesses, BEREC saw the proposals as going beyond its remit.

Ralf Grahn

BEREC draft Work Programme 2012 consultation procedure

2011-12-25T13:01:00.001+02:00

After the public consultation from 6 October to 4 November 2011, including an oral hearing 21 October, BEREC published a report on the public consultation. The fifteen stakeholder contributions are available in full on the BEREC page for public consultations.

The consultation summary:

BEREC report on the consultation of the BEREC draft Work Programme 2012 BoR (11) 61 (9 December 2011; 15 pages)

In this blog post I present the basic procedural aspects, before I look at the ”interested parties”.

Transparency

The BEREC Regulation 1211/2009, published two years ago, is available in 23 official EU languages; the English version:

REGULATION (EC) No 1211/2009 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 25 November 2009 establishing the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) and the Office (Text with EEA relevance); OJEU 18.12.2009 L 337/1

With regard to transparency, Article 17, in Chapter IV General Provisions, lays down a general rule on consultation, subject to confidentiality (Article 20) and further to the rules on public access to documents (Article 22):

Article 17
Consultation

Where appropriate, BEREC shall, before adopting opinions, regulatory best practice or reports, consult interested parties and give them the opportunity to comment within a reasonable period. BEREC shall, without prejudice to Article 20, make the results of the consultation procedure publicly available.

The annual work programme is specifically mentioned as requiring consultation ahead of adoption, in Article 5(4) about the tasks of the Board of Regulators:

4. The Board of Regulators shall, after consulting interested parties in accordance with Article 17, adopt the annual work programme of BEREC before the end of each year preceding that to which the work programme relates. The Board of Regulators shall transmit the annual work programme to the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission as soon as it is adopted.

By publishing the draft, the consultation announcement, the contributions, the consultation summary and the final Work Programme 2012, BEREC acted in accordance with the principles on transparency. (A minor detail: The calls for contributions could further identify the document in question by adding the number to the name as well as by linking.)

Interested parties

During this consultation regarding future activities BEREC received contributions from fifteen stakeholders interested enough to want to influence electronic communications policies at the European level (summary page 2, consultations web page): EIDQ Association – the Association for the Directory Information and Related Search Industry, FTTH Council of Europe, The Number – Directory provider, The Voice on the Net (VON) Coalition Europe, Virgin Media, Telekom Austria, Telecom Italia, Belgacom, INTUG – International Telecommunications Users Group, ECTA, Cable Europe, Bundesverband Breitbandkommunikation, ETNO, Phone Ability and SFR.

In comparison, on a more concrete issue, the public consultation on draft guidelines on Transparency in the scope of Net Neutrality received 77 contributions (report BoR (11) 66).

On the other hand, some public consultations have received far fewer comments than the draft Work Programme 2012.

Participation is still way below the true numbers of participants in market and regulation activities. My impression is that the public and private players in the European electronic communications markets have not yet fully discovered BEREC as a new hinge between Digital Agenda aims at the European level and (converging) regulatory activity at the national level.

Ralf Grahn

EU electronic communications: BEREC Work Programme 2012

2011-12-25T10:35:00.000+02:00

After the brief presentation of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), we looked at the ongoing public consultation on the draft BEREC medium term strategy outlook.

Relating to the Digital Agenda for Europe, in this blog post we turn to the BEREC Work Programme 2012 documents.

Board of Regulators

The conclusions of the BEREC Board of Regulators meeting in Bucharest (Romania) 8-9 December 2011 deal with the Work Programme for next year in point 7 (page 3). The conclusions after some editing:

7. Draft 2012 BEREC WP

Summary of the contributions received during the public consultation on the 2012 draft BEREC WP BoR (11) 61

Revised 2012 draft BEREC WP BoR (11) 62

Proposal for operationalisation of the BEREC WP 2012 – set-up of EWGs BoR (11) 63

Background

The 2012 BEREC Chair (RTR) presented the results from the public consultation on the BEREC WP for 2012, held in the period 6 October - 4 November 2011, the revised draft WP and a proposal for operationalisation of the BEREC WP 2012, incl. the set-up of EWGs.

Conclusion

The BEREC 2012 WP and the consultation report were approved for publication and implementation.

Documents

If we concentrate on the main documents for the public, we have the draft Work Programme BoR (11) 40 Rev1 (October 2011; 16 pages).

After the public consultation from 6 October to 4 November 2011, including an oral hearing 21 October, BEREC published a report on the public consultation BoR (11) 61 (9 December 2011; 15 pages). The fifteen contributions are available also on the BEREC page for public consultations.

The final WP:

Work Programme 2012 BEREC Board of Regulators BoR (11) 62 (9 December 2011; 18 pages)

***

For the future BEREC could consider linking directly to the relevant documents in its conclusions.

I am going to look at the consultation summary and the final Work Programme 2012 in future blog posts.

Ralf Grahn

EU electronic communications: BEREC medium term strategy consultation

2011-12-24T10:15:00.000+02:00

In the introduction to the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), I mentioned that BEREC has announced a public consultation, which runs until 16 January 2012.

Board of Regulators

The latest meeting of the Board of Regulators (BoR) took place 8 to 9 December 2011 in Bucharest (Romania).

According to the conclusions the BoR held an extensive discussion on the draft medium term strategy and decided to publish it for consultation. The draft:

Draft BEREC medium term strategy outlook; 14 December 2011 BoR (11) 58 (7 pages)

Medium term strategy

In order to achieve a multi-annual perspective, BEREC is elaborating strategic goals and promises to present a document outlining its midterm strategy in the course of 2012.

According to the BEREC announcement the public consultation runs until 16 January 2012. The draft strategy document outlines the activities of this advisory body for the next 3 to 5 years.

Internal market for electronic communications

In the draft, BEREC starts by setting out its role in general terms as a contributor to the Digital Agenda, before going into detail (page 2):

BEREC’s task is to promote the consistent application of the regulatory framework and thereby contribute to the development of the internal market for electronic communications. In doing so, BEREC aims to play its part in the promotion of growth and innovation in the EU. BEREC can also provide considerable expertise and professional advice on European policy initiatives and related debates in the electronic communications sector.

Emphasis on the digital single market is added through the announcement of the main focus (page 3):

The main focus of BEREC in the medium term will be on its contribution to the realisation of the internal market. The contributions in this area, both upon request from the EU institutions and on its own initiative, will include in particular:

a. Adopting common regulatory approaches and best practices in areas where differences impede the internal market, and monitoring conformity with those approaches thereafter.

b. Issuing robust and respected opinions on Article 7 cases. [Footnote 1 adds the explanation: Article 7 and article 7a of the amended Framework Directive describe the process in case an NRA takes a market analysis decision. That NRA has to notify its draft decision to the Commission and to BEREC. Both BEREC and the Commission can then provide the NRA with advice. If, in a later stage, a final decision is notified, the Commission may have serious doubts regarding the decision. In such a case, the Commission has to ask BEREC for advice. The Commission has to take the utmost account of that advice.]

c. Advising the EU institutions on draft legislation and regulation.

Priorities

After describing some trends in infrastructure and services and among consumers (page 3-4), the BEREC draft discusses the following core or priority issues for the coming years (page 4-5):

1. Infrastructural developments: Next generation networks
2. Consumer empowerment: boosting consumer choice and protection
3. Service related developments

The BEREC draft then turns to the quality of its output, by describing its level of ambition regarding common positions, guidelines, the sharing of best practices, information and experiences between NRAs, the monitoring and benchmarking exercises, as well as Article 7/7a procedures related to the Framework Directive (see above) (page 6).

The last page mentions the need for efficiency during times of budget austerity for the NRAs.

Comment

In this first draft strategy BEREC has placed a few signposts outlining main goals and principles for the longer term. For those interested, it offers an introduction to the activities of BEREC.

In the midst of budget consolidation and weakening growth prospects, the European Council has repeatedly called for the establishment of a European digital single market as a means to engender economic growth and job creation. BEREC and the NRAs are in a strategic position between European level aims and the reality of national level regulation.

The stakeholders – including telecommunications enterprises, online service providers and content creators - now have the opportunity to contribute to the final version, although the annual Work Programmes can be expected to remain the main source for plans in the short term.

***

I wish the readers of my blogs, as well as my Facebook and Twitter friends, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2012!

Ralf Grahn

Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC)

2011-12-24T07:27:00.001+02:00

One part of the new EU regulatory framework for electronic communications, the telecoms package approved in 2009, was the establishment of BEREC.

The BEREC Regulation 1211/2009, published two years ago, is available in 23 official EU languages; the English version:

REGULATION (EC) No 1211/2009 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 25 November 2009 establishing the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) and the Office (Text with EEA relevance); OJEU 18.12.2009 L 337/1

It did not take the governments of the EU member states more than about half a year to agree to establish the BEREC office in Riga (Latvia), or maybe they waited for the transposition date of the telecoms package to pass:

DECISION TAKEN BY COMMON ACCORD BETWEEN THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE MEMBER STATES of 31 May 2010 on the location of the seat of the Office of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) (2010/349/EU); OJEU 23.6.2010 L 156/12

The BEREC office was inaugurated 14 October 2011, so it has been fully operational in Riga for less than three months.

The BEREC website can be described as spartan. Given the area – electronic communications – the absence of an RSS feed comes as a surprise. There is no social media presence (blog, Twitter, Facebook) I am aware of.

Board of Regulators

According to Regulation 1211/2009, BEREC is composed of a Board of Regulators (BoR), with one member from the National Regulatory Authority (NRA) in each member state. (BoR Rules of Procedure)

The NRAs from European Economic Area (EEA) states and from the candidates for EU accession have observer status.

The Regulation 1211/2009 established the office as a Community body with legal personality, with a Management Committee composed of one representative per member state NRA. (MC Rules of Procedure)

National Regulatory Authorities NRAs

In addition to the 27 EU member NRAs, there are observer NRAs from Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey. The names and links are on offer here.

Digital Agenda & digital single market

At the inauguration ceremony in Riga, Commission vice-president Neelie Kroes outlined the contribution of BEREC and the National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) in the success of the Digital Agenda for Europe goal of a vibrant digital single market. The crucial tasks she mentioned were roaming, net neutrality, superfast broadband and getting every European digital.

BEREC medium term strategy consultation

BEREC has announced a public consultation, which runs until 16 January 2012. The draft strategy document the stakeholders are invited to comment on is:

Draft BEREC medium term strategy outlook; 14 December 2011 BoR (11) 58 (7 pages)

BEREC Work Programme 2012

The recently published Work Programme for 2012 offers more detail about the coming activities in the short term:

Work Programme 2012 BEREC Board of Regulators; 9 December 2011 BoR (11) 62 (18 pages)

Ralf Grahn

European Union versus SOPA and Protect IP Act?

2011-12-21T10:06:00.000+02:00

The European Parliament took a stand against the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill debated in the US House of Representatives and its sister, the Protect IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011) discussed in the Senate.

Both bills raise serious concerns regarding the integrity of the internet as well as for service providers and businesses, not only in the United States, but globally.

How about the other EU institutions?

Here are the results of a quick search for public EU materials through the EEAS web pages.

European External Action Service EEAS

We start from the country page for the United States of America at the European External Action Service EEAS, where we find no specific item dedicated to the issue. However, there is material about the recent summit between the European Union and the United States of America.

EU-US summit

We take a closer look at the recent EU-US summit, 28 November 2011. Did the president of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy and the president of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, the high representative Catherine Ashton or trade commissioner Karel De Gucht raise issues related to the internet in their discussions with president Barack Obama and secretary of state Hillary Clinton?

In the EU-US Summit Joint statement, Washington, 28 November 2011 (document 17805/11), paragraph 4 mentioned the work of the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC), underlining the need to avoid unnecessary divergence in regulations and standards affecting trade, but also highlighting the the efforts to protect intellectual property rights (IPR):

4. We applaud the success of the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC) on a wide range of issues and welcome the progress achieved in secure trade and supply chain security, electric vehicles and related infrastructure, regulatory practices, small and medium-sized enterprises, and in the Information Communications Technology (ICT) sector. We encourage the TEC’s continued leadership in helping us avoid unnecessary divergence in regulations and standards that adversely affects trade. We urge the TEC, together with our regulators and standard-setters to step up co-operation in key sectors such as nanotechnology and raw materials to develop compatible approaches to emerging technologies. We also instruct the TEC to pursue its work on strategic economic questions, not least in the field of investment, innovation policy, and the protection of intellectual property rights to level the playing field for our companies in third countries, in particular emerging economies.

The leaders did pay respect to an undivided global internet, before plunging into the security-driven concrete agenda, in paragraph 22:

22. We share a commitment to a single, global Internet, and will resist unilateral efforts to weaken the security, reliability, or independence of its operations — recognizing that respect for fundamental freedoms online, and joint efforts to strengthen security, are mutually reinforcing. We welcome the progress made by the EU-U.S. Working Group on Cyber-security and Cyber-crime, notably the successful Cyber Atlantic 2011 exercise. We endorse its ambitious goals for 2012, including combating online sexual abuse of children; enhancing the security of domain names and Internet Protocol addresses; promotion of international ratification, including by all EU Member States, of the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime ideally by year’s end; establishing appropriate information exchange mechanisms to jointly engage with the private sector; and confronting the unfair market access barriers that European and U.S. technology companies face abroad.

The mandate of the new TEC high level working group on jobs and growth includes regulatory issues affecting trade (press release MEMO/11/843). Thus, it could be a forum for the prevention of new barriers.

Transatlantic Economic Council TEC

The Commission's DG Trade provides an overview of the meeting of the Transatlantic Economic Council TEC, i.a.:

Information and Communication Technology: The EU and US reviewed the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) trade related principles which were agreed earlier this year and discussed ways of promoting the implementation of these principles within their bilateral economic relationship and in their trade negotiations with third countries. (IP/11/402)

The press release IP/11/402 notes the agreement on a set of ten fundamental principles for trade in information and communication technology (ICT) services, bilaterally and in order to open up markets for EU and US companies worldwide.

Logically, bilateral and globally propagated standards for information and communication technology (ICT) should exclude the creation of unilateral barriers, although the agreed principles come equipped with a caveat, far from clear in scope:

The EU-US Trade Principles for ICT Services have been agreed on a best endeavour basis and do not affect the rights of the EU or the US to maintain their respective policy approaches to the protection of intellectual property, privacy and personal data and the enhancement of cultural diversity.

The two-page document adds that financial services (one of the SOPA concerns) are excluded from the scope:

European Union-United States Trade Principles for Information and Communication Technology Services (4 April 2011)

The ten principles are briefly defined. Many of them could be affected by the SOPA and Protect IP bills.

Security and intellectual property or fundamental rights?

TFTP, ACTA, PNR... the list of invasive treaties problematic with regard to fundamental rights in the EU has grown.

The summit declaration and the TEC principles contain a few vague pointers, but what if the legislative powers in the USA decide to go even further than the executive, which works hard enough as it is to export its agendas on internet security and protection of intellectual property?

What have the EU institutions said and done? Where do they stand on freedoms and rights?

Ralf Grahn

European Parliament versus SOPA and Protect IP Act

2011-12-21T08:16:00.000+02:00

If passed, the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill debated in the US House of Representatives and its sister, the Protect IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011) discussed in the Senate raise serious concerns regarding the integrity of the internet as well as for service providers and businesses, not only in the United States, but globally.

How has the European Union reacted?

I hope that Commission vice president Neelie Kroes, who is in charge of the Digital Agenda for Europe - @NeelieKroesEU on Twitter – responds to the question I tweeted yesterday.

We can record at least one reaction from an EU institution. Ahead of the EU-US summit in Washington DC on 28 November we saw a resolution from the European Parliament (EP).

European Parliament

Based on a joint motion for a resolution, replacing motions by the ECR, ALDE, S&D and PPE groups, on 17 November 2011 the European Parliament adopted a resolution P7_TA(2011)0510 on the EU-US Summit of 28 November 2011. The EP stressed that the imperative of safeguarding freedom and security at home should not be met at the cost of sacrificing core principles relating to civil liberties and the need to uphold common standards on human rights.

Paragraph 26 was more specific:

26. Stresses the need to protect the integrity of the global internet and freedom of communication by refraining from unilateral measures to revoke IP addresses or domain names;

Vikki Chowney on Econsultancy interprets this as a call by the EP for SOPA to be abandoned. So does Edward J. Black in the Huffington Post.

The EU affairs consultant Caroline De Cock - @linotherhino on Twitter – has tweeted on SOPA, including a reference to an article by three professors, Mark Lemley, David S. Levine and David G. Post, in the Stanford Law Review: Don't Break the Internet.

I would expect the EU to monitor and react visibly to such proposed long-arm statutes and jurisdiction. While we wait for the Commission to respond, we can search for statements from the EU and the US administration.

Ralf Grahn

EU telecommunications: Public consultation on net neutrality (2010)

2011-12-18T15:25:00.000+02:00

From the Digital Agenda for Europe communication 26.8.2010 COM(2010) 245 final/2, our next step regarding the open and neutral nature of the internet takes us to the public consultation.

Public consultation

The Commission launched the promised public consultation on net neutrality 30 June 2010 (press release IP/10/860, available in 22 languages). The Commission wanted to know more about potential problems linked with certain forms of traffic management and whether the new telecom rules are sufficient to tackle them; technical and economic aspects; quality of service considerations; and whether net freedoms may be affected.

The Commission web page about the public consultation on the open internet and and net neutrality offers i.a. the consultation questionnaire, the responses and a summary, as well as video recordings from a seminar (”summit”) which discussed the issues in November 2010.

The Commission's questionnaire (12 pages) offers a presentation of the issues and indications of what the executive wanted respondents to comment on, but the focus was on (page 2):

This questionnaire therefore focuses principally on the behaviour of operators, and in particular how they may manage traffic flowing over their networks (through a set of practices commonly referred to as 'network management' or 'traffic management'), in order to see how this behaviour might impact on the 'net freedoms' of citizens (i.e. their 'ability to access and distribute information or run applications and services of their choice') [reference in footnote 1: This is a regulatory policy objective enshrined in Article 8 of the amended Framework Directive.]

This consultation invites views on how best to preserve the open and neutral character of the internet, given the will of the European Institutions to enshrine this goal as a policy objective and regulatory principle to be promoted by national regulatory authorities, and to consider whether further public policy responses are needed.

For your convenience: Annex I on page 10 contains the Commission's 2009 declaration on net neutrality (also published in the Official Journal).

Responses

The consultation ended 30 September 2010, and on 9 November the Commission informed about the 318 responses through a press release (IP/10/1482, available in 22 languages), with main findings.

A summary report on the responses offers more detail (6 pages). The EU telecoms framework had still to be tested on the ground and various concerns were expressed with regard to the future, but the main findings indicated no need for new legislation, although further guidance might be welcome.

The responses of individual stakeholders can be found here.

Ralf Grahn

EU Digital Agenda: Open internet and net neutrality background

2011-12-18T11:51:00.000+02:00

I mentioned the EU TTE Council (transport, telecommunications and energy) 12 and 13 December 2011 on my blogs in Finnish, Swedish (here and here) and English. The TTE Council adopted conclusions which on five pages establish the open internet and net neutrality as a policy objective in Europe, while balancing between contradictory claims and interests.

Here I am going to take a web log approach on my blogs, recording the steps from the Digital Agenda.

Digital Agenda for Europe

Let us start upstream, returning to A Digital Agenda for Europe. The original communication was published 19 May 2010, even if the revised version is dated 26 August 2010. The proposal kicked off one of the seven flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.

The communication from the European Commission is available in 22 EU languages; here the English version:

A Digital Agenda for Europe; Brussels, 26.8.2010 COM(2010) 245 final/2

Open internet

The Digital Agenda communication offered this introduction to the openness of the internet (page 20-21), with a few indications about the occurring questions:

2.4.3. Open and neutral internet

The Commission will also monitor closely the implementation of the new legislative provisions on the open and neutral character of the internet, which safeguard users' rights to access and distribute information online and ensure transparency about traffic management [Footnote 27 reference to: Article 8(4)(g) of the Directive 2002/21/EC on a common regulatory framework for electronic communications networks and services; Articles 20(1)(b) and 21(3)(c) and (d) of the Universal Service Directive]. The Commission will launch a public consultation before summer 2010 as part of its more general commitment to report by the end of the year, in the light of market and technological developments, on whether additional guidance is required, in order to secure the basic objectives of freedom of expression, transparency, the need for investment in efficient and open networks, fair competition and openness to innovative business models.

Net neutrality

Wikipedia offers a long introduction to the controversial topic Network neutrality. The article is general in scope, but most of the contents deal with developments and opinion in the United States. However, it discusses the legal situation in the European Union and a few member states (with some need for editing and updating).

Ralf Grahn

Open internet and net neutrality in EU

2011-12-17T12:38:00.000+02:00

The TTE Council of the European Union met to deal with transport and telecommunications issues:

3134th Council meeting Transport, Telecommunications and Energy; Brussels, 12 and 13 December 2011 (document 18416/11; 27 pages)

The general TTE conclusions offer an overview of the Council's response to the open internet and net neutrality, issued in relation to the Digital Agenda (pages 19-20):

Open internet and net neutrality

The Council adopted conclusions on the open internet and net neutrality in Europe (17904/11).

These conclusions were drawn up on the basis of the Commission communication on the subject published in April 2011 (9350/11). This communication seeks to fulfil the Commission commitment to preserve "the open and neutral character of the internet, taking full account of the will of the co-legislators now to enshrine net neutrality as a policy objective and regulatory principle to be promoted by national regulatory authorities". This commitment was made in its declaration on net neutrality when the 2009 telecoms package was concluded (OJ C 308, 18.12.2009, p.2).

In the conclusions the Council underlines, inter alia, the need to preserve the open and neutral character of the internet and consider net neutrality as a policy objective. It welcomes the Commission's intention to assess the need, based on investigations by the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications' (BEREC), for more stringent measures and to publish additional guidance on net neutrality if necessary. In addition, it welcomes the Commission's commitments to monitor the implementation of the EU regulatory framework for electronic communications and services and to issue a code of existing EU online rights by 2012.

The Commission is invited, inter alia, to assess, jointly with BEREC, the discrepancy between advertised and actual delivery speeds occurring in member states, and report to the Council and the Parliament on the situation thereof by 2012. Furthermore, the Commission is invited to provide additional information on the best practices in traffic management and on how to respond to the requirements of global service providers concerning quality and pricing of services.

Open internet and net neutrality

The general conclusions refer and link to the specific conclusions prepared by Coreper and dated 1 December 2011:

Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions - "The open internet and net neutrality in Europe" - Adoption of Council conclusions (document 17904/11, available in the other EU languages as well; 9 pages)

If you want to be on the safe side, you can compare with the text distributed to the press after TTE adoption, at this point in English and French.

COM(2011) 222

There is a link to the communication from the Commission (Council document 9350/11), but through Eur-Lex we can access COM(2011) 222 in 22 languges and three document formats. Here to the English version (pdf):

The open internet and net neutrality in Europe; Brussels, 19.4.2011 COM(2011) 222 final (10 pages)

Ralf Grahn

Euro sovereign

2011-12-15T15:18:00.000+02:00

@HECParis has tweeted a manifesto by Jean Monnet chairs Stabilizing the Euro Area and the EU, posted on Facebook. Even if the article was posted 30 November 2011, many of the basics concerning the common currency are presented in a clear manner.

One fraught European summit and about two weeks of increasing turbulence later I want to turn to one aspect relating to my discussion about the need for a euro sovereign (latest post here), since some have doubted the relevance of the issue, while others have evaded this fundamental discussion.

If the debt levels and deficits of the basket cases USA, the UK and in the eurozone are more or less comparable, why do the markets shun the euro area?

The main difference seems to be the lack of a European sovereign for the common currency.

Are there better explanations?

Ralf Grahn

European democracy or euro crash?

2011-12-15T09:56:00.000+02:00

Prime minister David Cameron did not get off the Titanic. He blocked the Euro ambulance.

The Titanic metaphor catches the imagination, but it is wrong because the United Kingdom was not aboard the Euro vessel, so it is logically impossible to get off.

Bagehot's notebook offered a more apt simile, Chernobyl. Fixing it, or containing and limiting the continent-wide fallout is in Britain's interest.

Sadly, the UK Parliament instead hailed Cameron, promised more vetoes and rebalanced Britain's EU relationship towards limiting them to economic ties. These formulas are wide enough for those who want the UK pissing in, both on the inside and from the outside of the EU tent.

The Euro ambulance was forced to make a detour, but the team of 17 was joined by up to nine voluntary well-wishers, all except Britain.

Alignment

We should not overrate the success.

We do not know what the fiscal compact will turn out to be in the end. We do not know if even all eurozone countries are going to join. We know even less about how many of the other EU members will participate.

What I see is more of a slow process of alignment by EU countries around the euro core, leaving Britain less able to form and lead alliances.

Far from enough

I think that the eurozone and the other EU members showed more resolve than before, but the Euro ambulance went to fetch only one of the several casualties, leaving the rest on the ground.

The high borrowing costs, the falling euro, the sliding stock markets, the coming downgrades, the troubled banks and the glide into recession show that the structures and powers in place are not robust enough, the agreed remedies are insufficient and moving in slow motion is far from enough.

Just three examples from my Twitter stream yesterday.

@JasonBWhitman (Policy chairman US Young Republicans) asked me about the probability of the euro crashing. @spignal (Stanley Pignal of the FT) tested the waters with a question about how probable a new eurozone summit was becoming before the end of the year. @JSLefebvre (French EU journalist) retweeted a 'complicated' poll showing that the French are attached to Europe, but do not believe the euro summits have brought results.

This leaves us with a number of unanswered fundamental questions about European integration and the future of the eurozone.

To put it plainly:

The common European currency, the euro, needs a sovereign. In the Western political tradition of democracy and fundamental rights, this sovereign must be based on the citizens to be legitimate and accountable (democracy), equipped with robust structures and sufficient powers, as well as providing good governance and transparency.

No taxation without representation, but also a real federal budget and taxes, a lender of last resort (federal reserve) with broad enough mandate.

Foreign policy, security and defence, are among the policies to conduct at the European level.

European democracy or euro crash?

Our leaders have not yet faced up to the challenges, and their national electorates are far behind, but the alternatives should concentrate minds, hopefully sooner rather than too late.

Ralf Grahn

Defiant UK Parliament praises Cameron and rebalances EU relationship

2011-12-14T09:32:00.001+02:00

Yesterday the UK Parliament (House of Commons) adopted, by 278 votes to 200 (all Liberal Democrat MPs abstaining), the following motion:

That this House commends the Prime Minister on his refusal at the European Council to sign up to a Treaty without safeguards for the UK; regards the use of the veto in appropriate circumstances to be a vital means of defending the national interests of the UK; and recognises the desire of the British people for a rebalancing of the relationship with our European neighbours based on co-operation and mutually beneficial economic arrangements.

BBC News UK Politics offer additional information.

Comments

When prime minister David Cameron defended his EU summit blunder, he also soothingly said that Britain remains a full member of the European Union and that EU membership is vital to Britain's national interest.

Parliament has now changed tack in the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union (and its member states).

The general tenor of the debate and the wording of the praise can be described as defiant.

Parliament calls for a rebalancing of the UK's relationship with the European Union towards economic arrangements solely.

When Parliament commends prime minister Cameron for his refusal to allow an EU agreement – not affecting Britain – to pass, it has to be noted that the ”safeguards for the UK” had nothing whatsoever to do with the treaty proposal at hand at the European Council.

There is a positive expectation from Parliament for more British vetoes to come.

Leaders of the EU institutions and in the member states have expressed wishes to see the United Kingdom become a responsible and constructive member of the European Union, but in vain as we now see.

If the Liberal Democrats were able to explain Cameron's European summit catastrophe as an unfortunate accident, the new course set and the hostility shown from the government benches breaks the moral backbone of the coalition.

This is a watershed for the Liberal Democrats, who have tried in vain to temper the tribalist spirits among the Conservatives. If Nick Clegg and the other LibDem ministers do not resign, they make a historic mistake. Better to live with honour, than to suffer the contempt from such coalition partners.

Ralf Grahn

EU in Britain: When David comes marching home again... (Updated)

2011-12-13T10:04:00.001+02:00

Before discussing if the decisions of the European summit were enough in the face of increasing headwinds, I published one more assessment of the EU politics of the UK government led by Cavid Cameron.

Having read the prime minister's statement, I wondered (on Twitter):

Would #Cameron statement stand 10 minutes of scrutiny by young solicitor's clerk first day on the job? #UKpolitics #euro

Cameron's public reasons

Cameron described his demands to the other EU members:

Those safeguards – on the single market and on financial services – were modest, reasonable and relevant.

We were not trying to create an unfair advantage for Britain.

Analysis

Irrelevant: First of all, Cameron's demands were not relevant to the issues at the European summit and these issues figured nowhere on the agenda.

Immodest and unreasonble: Springing totally irrelevant demands on the EU leaders, could Cameron even imagine that they would be accepted? Was this his 'good faith'?

How can he call proposals to roll back the internal market to decision-making based on unanimity, modest and reasonable?

Qualified majority voting replaced unanimity in 1966 in the common market, and without this step there would be no internal market today (imperfect as it is).

Loss of credibility: There are only two major EU policy areas, where the United Kingdom has been a visible driving force. One is the internal market, the other is (never-ending) enlargement.

Unfair exception: If no unfair advantage was intended, why did Cameron require the introduction of a new national veto on a specific part of the internal market (financial services)?

How are special exceptions for Britain compatible with the 'level playing field' he asks for, the the very soul of the internal market, including competition rules and enforcement?

Wouldn't you expect president Sarkozy to bemoan the the lack of proper protection, sooner than the premier of free market and free trade Britain?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update 13 December 2011: In the European Parliament Commission president José Manuel Barroso said that one member state, the United Kingdom, 'asked for a specific protocol on financial services, which, as presented, was a risk to the integrity of the internal market. This made compromise impossible'.

This has been contested by the lobby group Open Europe on Twitter and with a link to their blog post on the matter:

Read our latest blog post explaining why #Barroso was wrong to suggest Cameron's demands threatened the single market

Barroso has the advantage over Open Europe and me that he was there, and one leaked paper does not necessarily tell the whole story, but I think that added clarity would not go amiss, so I have tweeted:

@OpenEurope Hopefully #EUCommission #EUCouncil & member states open up what #Cameron sprang on #EUCO and how. bit.ly/uHG6Tn

Let us wait and see what we learn during the next days.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Symbolically and at a practical level, David Cameron shot decades of UK credibility as a champion of the internal market to pieces. Apply the flexibility of a network to the single market, and what do you end up with?

'Some would call' was the formula, based on internal assessment.

Some would call this a disingenuous statement about an unprincipled blackmail operation gone wrong, despite the jingoistic hero's welcome indicative of the political climate in England.

Fall-out in Europe

The other EU members hoped that the UK would accept and ratify a treaty fix, which would have enabled the euro countries to enshrine their agreement on budget discipline, without affecting non-euro Britain. For the UK, simply to allow it to happen. Cameron chose to be unhelpful.

Some commentators have explained that Cameron had no choice, because he could not face the House with such a simple request. Besides being fairly self-indulgent, what does that tell us about the prime minister?

If sorting out the problems in the eurozone was Cameron's main wish (and most definitively in the interest of Britain and its banks), his actions made it harder to achieve.

He made even Britain's closest EU allies furious, and the looming political and legal problems they have to contend with in an intergovernmental setting are numerous. (This does not mean that the other leaders minus Britain achieved more than a tiny proportion of what is needed.)

Cameron returned without the safeguards he ostensibly was looking for. Internal market rules, including financial services, are still agreed at EU level, but after losing friends, influence and people, it is going to be harder for the United Kingdom to influence the outcome of future negotiations.

Fall-out at home

As I see it, Cameron launched his political blackmail operation to pacify his secessionist backbenchers. They have succeeded in turning the UK's sour EU relations toxic, scored a victory with the anti-EU mass market press and public opinion, revealed Cameron's dependence on them and devastated the Liberal Democrats. So the taste of blood will egg them on, instead of placating them.

Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats are in a terrible bind. It looks as if they would be all but annihilated in a new general election, but swallowing the latest grave humiliation until the end of the parliamentary term will only bring a stay of execution. Is it worth the pain to grin and bear?

Scotland got one more reason to contemplate independence.

Businesses generally and the financial industry are worried.

Bottom line?

If helping the eurozone and defending Britain's interests were the aims of Cameron, how do you assess the outcome?

Cameron in House of Commons

The BBC provides both a video report of the Cameron statement and the debate in the House of Commons and interviews, as well as a live blog dealing with the fall-out from the UK walk-out.

There are many interesting comments and a number of helpful links to further reading.

If your intellectual curiousity drives you, try to find the references to the needs of the European Union and EU citizens, or for constructive contributions from its member state Britain.

Then think about why national level polities with veto powers are perhaps not the best level or form to promote common European interests, which in my view are those of EU citizens.

Ralf Grahn

New resolve in euro crisis – Is it enough?

2011-12-12T10:39:00.000+02:00

Despite up Eurs style unhelpfulness, twisted Tory priorities and possibly continuing sabotage from the UK government of David Cameron, the eurozone countries and the other EU members still have the main task in front of them.

For those too busy to read and interpret the official statements, the outcome of the European Council and the euro area statement have been simplified into this graph:

Economic governance in graphs (European Commission, Europe 2020)

Let me be clear about this: The summit(s) do not sort out the fundamental weaknesses of the euro currency (economic union).

The common European currency, the euro, needs a sovereign. In the Western political tradition of democracy and fundamental rights, this sovereign must be based on the citizens to be legitimate and accountable (democracy), equipped with robust structures and sufficient powers, as well as providing good governance and transparency.

The European leaders have refused to even broach the fundamental issues.

As a result of the British block to progress, the disciplinarian and intergovernmental ”fiscal compact” is harder to manage, but it also fails to address the need for the European Central Bank to act as a lender of last resort, of eurobonds to mutualise debt and of a real federal budget.

With glee, many enemies of European integration (in the UK) point to the failings and predict the rapid crash of the euro.

Given the consequences globally, I would not be as merry, but more important is how the steps taken will be interpreted by the markets and citizens in Europe and globally.

My interpretation is that the arrangement, contorted as it is, marks a step forward. There is now more resolve in the eurozone and in the European Union generally to advance. Despite looming downgrades of member states, the EU and European banks, the EU and the ECB may eventually progress in face of the strong headwinds.

The beginning recession is not going to make matters easier, but the leaders and citizens in Europe realise that we are in this together.

We do not know if it is going to be enough, but it is still more than nothing.

Since the resolve of Winston Churchill has been much in evidence lately, let me conclude with a quote (1942):

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Ralf Grahn

EU: Economic crisis, Tory priorities and euro bully-boys (Updated)

2011-12-12T08:13:00.004+02:00

Here is a thoughtful tweet from @Nosemonkey (J Clive Matthews) in London:

Question: Is there a single foreign leader that respects Cameron? Just wondering if the UK has any friends left anywhere...

To the warlike atmosphere created by campaigning anti-EU media and secessionist Tory backbenchers and which has fed into popular images of a bulldogian Churchill defending Britain from nazi invasion, I add a tweet of my own:

Churchill was still wedded to Empire, Commonwealth & Anglosphere but IMHO would today be smart enough to be European.

Admittedly, it is speculation. At which stage would Churchill, who in 1946 proposed a United States of Europe built around France and Germany, but with Britain among its friends and sponsors, have taken the plunge to engage fully as a constructive member?

Perhaps it would have taken new generations not rooted in the Boer War and the imperial past to start playing a positive part as a key player in Europe. But the new generations found it hard to shrug off their tribal legacy, with David Cameron the bulldog biting 26 heads of state or government before withdrawing to the company of his secessionist backbenchers at Chequers for R&R [victory celebrations] (The Independent, Financial Times).

The bully-boys (The Sun) and blithering idiots (The Telegraph) on the Continent may be forgiven for thinking that their simple demand for a laissez-passer for a treaty fix among 27, but affecting only the willing, was a reasonable demand. They may have been misguided in thinking that the euro crisis and the global financial crisis, combined with worsening economic prospects globally, were weightier aims even for the future of the United Kingdom (Reuters), but they were taught a lesson about UK Tory priorities (Mail Online).

Naturally, there are some domestic quislings bickering against these new heights of unhelpfulness, but they only add to the festive spirit.

The Liberal Democrat leader and the coalition partner Nick Clegg has, belatedly, come out against Cameron's blocking move (The Telegraph). Alex Salmond, the first minister of Scotland, has accused Cameron of damaging Scottish interests (AFP Google News). British business leaders are troubled by the prospects of isolation in Europe (BBC News Business).

After slamming down criticism from Clegg (Huffington Post UK), foreign secretary William Hague is going to meet US secretary of state Hillary Clinton to discuss wisely chosen topics such as Syria and Iran, where there is still life in the 'special relationship' (The Guardian, question 6 out of 7 Britain is facing).

Let us end our exposé of the statecraft of unhelpfulness here.

Update 12 December 2011: We now have the PM's statement on what he did at the European Council, but IMHO neither the wording nor the reasoning stand much rigorous analysis. Cameron's 'good faith' negotiations did not sound attractive enough to entice deputy prime minister Nick Clegg to sit on the government bench in the House of Commons (BBC News UK politics).

Just wondering... (on Twitter)

Would #Cameron statement stand 10 minutes of scrutiny by young solicitor's clerk first day on the job? #UKpolitics #euro

Ralf Grahn

EU: I'm ”privately furious” at UK Coalition

2011-12-11T09:44:00.000+02:00

We know that politics make strange bedfellows, but it becomes worrying when they reside in the same head.

At the European Council UK prime minister David Cameron struck at the root of decades of British EEC and EU involvement, by wanting to scrap the integrity of the internal market (the four freedoms, or free movement of goods, persons, services and capital).

The other Coalition leader, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has first been in on the act, then defended Cameron's use of the veto and finally let anonymous sources make known that he is ”privately furious” over the failure when the tactics backfired.

How's that for credibility?

Ralf Grahn

David Cameron and EU Single Market

2011-12-11T07:32:00.000+02:00

We know that politics make strange bedfellows, but it becomes worrying when they reside in the same head.

In March 2011, just ahead of the spring summit, nine national political leaders sent a joint letter on European growth to the president of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy and the president of the Commission José Manuel Barroso.

Together with the leaders of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden, UK prime minister David Cameron was seemingly still at that point for the integrity of the internal market and calling for forceful action to liberate the potential of the single market, with the increasingly important services markets on top:

First, we must deliver the full and untapped potential of the Single Market. The Single Market is Europe’s greatest economic achievement – the core foundation of the world’s largest economy encompassing 500 million consumers and €12 trillion of economic activity. But it is far from finished business.

Services now account for almost four fifths of our economy and yet there is much to be done to open up services markets on the scale that is needed. While significant efforts have been made to put in place the provisions of the Services Directive, many sectors still remain closed off by opaque, disproportionate and disparate regulation. Restrictive practices are rife. And implementation overall falls far short of what is needed to open up markets fairly to competition. So we must do for services markets what we have done for markets in goods – removing the restrictions that hinder access and competition, reducing the number of regulated professions, and making a firm commitment to implementation and enforcement, building on and extending the mutual evaluation process and publishing scorecards of national performance. Succeed and we could add €140 billion to the European economy. We welcome the commitment given by the Commission in its Annual Growth Survey to take action in this area and invite the Commission to report at the earliest opportunity on the steps needed to realise these gains.

Striking at the root of decades of British EEC and EU involvement at the European Council last week stunned more than the 26 heads of state or government present.

Ralf Grahn

European Council: UK's heroic obstructionism?

2011-12-10T19:49:00.000+02:00

It was not much the other EU member states asked for, but UK prime minister David Cameron and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg were unwilling or unable to allow the eurozone to proceed with a treaty fix to strengthen economic coordination within the euro area.

A responsible member state government would have given a helping hand, by signing the agreement and its parliament would have nodded through ratification (a simple laissez-passer). End of story.

The United Kingdom, however, was mean-spirited and obstructionist, even if the agreement would not have altered its relationship with the EU, only given the willing member states the opportunity to advance.

Mass market media have elevated the prime minister to Churchillian proportions, totally forgetting that putting out fires in the eurozone (with Britain a close neighbour) and the global financial system is a civilian rescue operation completely different from defending your country from foreign invasion. Actually, it is in Britian's interest.

After this we have to wonder, are there any rational voices left? At least well wishes have a hollow ring, when accompanied by gratuitous acts of sabotage.

A blog roundup gives us some indications.

Blogs etc.

On Global Dashboard, Britain and Europe after the veto discusses various consequences for the United Kingdom in an instructive manner.

The Labour leader Ed Miliband mostly seems content to accuse prime minister Cameron of failure to defend the interests of Britain, its financial industry and export businesses, but he is extremely thin on what a Labour government would do.

Timothy Garton Ash sees the split between the vast majority (at least 23 countries) and Britain as a turning point in history, even if the eurozone has plenty of crises to come. Cameron has not served British long term interests, but Europe will be weakened too: David Cameron's 'no' is bad for Britain and for Europe.

At the end of the day it is always the kids who end up paying the price of a messy divorce, says Mojo Working.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland never saw itself as European, but the fiscal compact means a first step on the road towards greater unity, says Dadefinspeaking (in Spanish).

Jason O'Mahony portrays The British eurosceptic as a maligned victim, adding a lighter touch to the überserious discussion, but correctly accuses the unrepresentative UK political system of failure.

Éoin Clarke puts a different spin on the matter on Liberal Conspiracy by arguing in purely domestic terms why Cameron's No is a vote-winner.

I on Europe sees Britain isolating itself in a story with enough general background on European integration to fill in for instance US readers: Europe forges fiscal union, sees way out of crisis.

Michael Heaver, who among other things dislikes the EU, questions what exactly Cameron delivers, since no powers are repatriated.

Even the UK's usual allies in the American media were aghast, the Gulf Stream Blues blog chips in: 9 December 2011: The day Britain left Europe.

The European Union Law presents the main components of the new fiscal compact and the toxic role of the United Kingdom: What's Behind the New Eurozone Fiscal Stability Union?

The Independent has a list of quotes which show that people in or close to Cameron's government publicly support his rejection at the EU summit.

Kosmopolito discusses Cameron's diplomatic failure, since his demands had nothing to do with the issues on the agenda and nobody knew about his demands in advance. ”Moreover, Cameron has no allies whatsoever.” The post deals with many of the salient points.

If Cameron had signed the treaty offered, then the opposition and his own party would have launched a further attack on his leadership, says Tom Scholes-Fogg.

Noëlle Lenoir discusses Camerons No to the fiscal compact at the European Council and his withdrawal from the discussions about the alternative, an intergovernmental treaty. She takes note of different steps the United Kingdom and the Tories have taken towards the outer rim of Europe. On the other hand, chancellor Angela Merkel has imposed her will (including the limits on action) on the rest of the members (in French).

Ralf Grahn

UK flunked in Europe

2011-12-10T14:49:00.000+02:00

If blocking an EU treaty fix between 27 members and complicating the euro rescue mission was not the finest hour of UK prime minister David Cameron and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, what was it?

Sony Kapoor of Re-Define flunked both the European Council and UK government.

The NYT IHT discusses the pros and cons of UK government the wisdom with regard to the future of the City: In Rejecting Treaty, Cameron Is Isolated.

Spiegel Online International tries to make David Cameron's acting against a background of anti-EU sentiment comprehensible for European readers, while preparing them for the next British blockades: The Man Who Said No to Europe.

PlaceLux.EU tries alternative history writing by exploring: How Cameron's kamikaze act could have been prevented.

MarketWatch was fairly upbeat about the fiscal compact between the EU member states minus Britain, but cautious about the ECB stepping up to the huge task of calming sovereign bond markets: New EU deal leaves ECB nowhere to hide.

Before the number of fiscal compact participants shrinks back somewhat, The Guardian noted Britain's unprecedented loneliness in the European Union: UK isolation grows as three more countries reconsider eurozone treaty.

The Economist has covered the EU summit(s) from a number of angles, naturally keen to discuss domestic British issues. From Bagehot's notebook: The moment, behind closed doors, that David Cameron lost his EU argument last night.

Earlier in the day, Bagehot had written: Britain, not leaving but falling out of the EU. If you have ever had doubts about the Britishness of The Economist, read: 'we have started falling out'. Bagehot sees Cameron's No as an indication of his weakness within his own party, which led him to walk away empty-handed, but the blog post also offers a detailed discussion about different aspirations in the UK and Europe.

Charlemagne's notebook contributed with Europe's great divorce, right after the fateful all-nighter in Brussels.

Ralf Grahn

UK in Europe: This was their finest hour?

2011-12-10T12:59:00.000+02:00

If John Bunyan described The Pilgrim's Progress towards the Celestial City, I have depicted the Cameron's regress from bystander through growing weakness to near-isolation in European affairs.

Rejoice, Rejoice

The surreal atmosphere in England is illustrated by EUbusiness: British eurosceptic press jubilant at EU treaty veto.

Here is a German roundup of the British press, by Sandra Fiene (ZDF).

(Let me add that there is nothing sceptic about eurosceptics, led by campaigning anti-EU media aiming at poisoning Britain's EU relatiosnhip until the day of UK secession. Thus, I only use the euphemism in direct quotes.)

These are the sentiments prime minister David Cameron and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg have decided to placate, instead of even allowing the fiscal compact to take shape within the EU framework.

This was their finest hour?

Thinking writers

Let me offer you a roundup of a few actors, thinkers and writers I respect, many of them British citizens (if the concept does not appear too alien) or residents. I won't refer to the contents much, but hope that you take time to read and think.

From free market Sweden, with its own difficulties to remain close to the EU core, foreign minister Carl Bildt - @carlbildt on Twitter – tweeted this:

A very pessimistic analysis by a very competent observer on the consequences of marginalizing oneself in Europe.

Bildt linked to the blog post by Charles Grant, of the Centre for European Reform (CER): Britain on the edge of Europe.

On the CER blog, Simon Tilford mentions Britain only in passing, but his pessimistic assessment of the euro salvage operation is a reminder that Europe needs people outside the governments and institutions willing to discuss the big picture: EU summit: Enough to save the euro?

Just ahead of the fateful summit dinner, The European Citizen set out Britain's Bad Negotiating Position, questioning the repatriation strategy amidst potential euro meltdown (although the power to block financial regulation turned out to be the rabbit Cameron pulled out of his hat).

On the British Politics and Policy at LSE blog the headline by Simon Hix offered a shortcut to the conclusions: David Cameron's EU treaty veto is a disaster for Britain. But do read his reasoning.

Also on the LSE blog, Olaf Cramme saw David Cameron going to Brussels ill prepared and under domestic pressure: Cameron's pandering to euroscepticism and the illusionary 'national interest' is a failure of leadership and leaves Britain in a lose-lose situation.

Ralf Grahn

European Council: centrifugal Cameron

2011-12-10T02:50:00.000+02:00

Hopefully the political leaders, their teams, the EU officials and the journalists on duty during the European Council 8 and 9 December 2011 get some well deserved rest.

Soon enough they are going to be confronted with an astonishing number of political and legal questions needing to be sorted out.

First we have to look at what the summit(s) produced.

European Council conclusions

The traditonal conclusions are available in all the 23 official EU languages; the English version:

European Council 9 December 2011 conclusions (EUCO 139/11; 7 pages)

If you take a closer look, you notice that just over two text pages are dedicated to general economic policy issues, with many references to the Euro Plus Pact. The rest of the conclusions deal with energy, enlargement and some other topics.

For the second time in a short while, the meeting in the EU27 framework reminds us of the plain sliced bread roll of a hamburger, but without the beef or garnish.

This is not that far from the hastily called meeting where the EU heads of state or government were informed about the preparations for the Euro Summit later the same day, 26 (to 27) October 2011.

Now the ”bouches inutiles” of those unproductive in the defence during ancient sieges left the formal European Council conclusions gutted: the sliced roll.

To the extent that there is beef and garnish, they belong to the defenders of the euro, in the euro area statement in the official languages; in English (revised version):

Statement by the euro area heads of state or government; 9 December 2011

Centripetal forces

By Friday morning the 17 eurozone were joined by the same six non-euro countries which had earlier adopted the Euro Plus Pact in order to stay as close to the core as possible.

When prime minister David Cameron rejected regular treaty reform (without permanent powers for the United Kingdom to block financial regulation), the Czech Republic, Hungary and Sweden realised that they were on course towards marginalisation.

Despite their governments, parliaments and public opinions being cool towards deeper integration, deliberate loss of influence is not an attractive option. Difficult domestic discussion await, but they wanted to secure the option to join the new fiscal compact and to participate in fleshing out the details.

The euro area statement was revised accordingly, and the last sentence now reads like this:

The Heads of State or Government of Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Sweden indicated the possibility to take part in this process after consulting their Parliaments where appropriate.

Potentially there could be 26 participants in the new fiscal compact, leaving Britain alone. It is more probable that the six non-euro members of the Euro Plus Pact are willing to take the next step together with the eurozone 17: Bulgaria, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania.

For the Czech Republic, Hungary and Sweden the fiscal compact (and, I imagine, belatedly joining the Euro Plus Pact) would mean reorientation, against the grain of their previous policies. However, few national leaders embrace loss of influence, if they can avoid it.

The eurozone chaos has done little to sweeten the deal. Less than 10 per cent of the Swedes support euro adoption, down by around 40 percentage points in two years.

United Kingdom

Let us still call a 27-1 European Union a theoretical outcome, but prime minister David Cameron's centrifugal strategy has brought something close to it into the realm of reality.

By falling on his sword to please his backbenchers, he did not become more fit to defend the one square mile of Britain he ostentatiously cares about. On the contrary, the UK's goodwill deficit grew considerably, so the government is less useful for the City in the future.

I wonder why deputy prime minister Nick Clegg signed up to the strategic disaster.

Cameron's reaction leaves the door open for reprisals to prevent the rest of the EU member states from using the institutions and facilities of the European Union:

When we can’t be given those safeguards in the treaty, it is better this is done by intergovernmental arrangements, outside the treaty and outside the institutions of the European Union. That is what will happen, and that is what is in Britain’s national interests.

As I said, there is an astonishing number of political and legal questions to sort out after the European summit(s), without Cameron including active sabotage in his well wishes to the countries joining the fiscal compact.

Soon enough the participants will find the difficulties all by themselves.

Ralf Grahn

Cameron in European Council: Weak, weaker... (Updated)

2011-12-09T10:54:00.001+02:00

Without democratic government and sufficient powers at the European Union or eurozone level, the national leaders have been forced to proceed further on the road of intergovernmentalism, although credible and sustainable solutions need durable and legitimate foundations.

While we wait for the conclusions from the European Council, this is how the leaders of the euro area countries and other EU member states have tried to manoeuvre despite these self-imposed structural weaknesses: Statement by the euro area heads of state or government (9 December 2011; 7 pages).

United Kingdom

If Britain has been a constant gardener of weakening its position in the European Union, prime minister Cavid Cameron managed to drive the wedge further in, by alienating almost all the rest of the participants, by demanding escape clauses for British financial services from internal market rules.

With the global financial system in danger, Nero would have been proud of Cameron's priorities.

Let us look at some early reactions after the EUCO all-nighter, especially with regard to the United Kingdom.

Financial services are, as we know, part and parcel of the internal market. What remains of UK goodwill capital to press for future concessions among the 27? Le Monde quotes the French president Nicolas Sarkozy on Britain's ”unacceptable” demands regarding financial regulation, the absence of which Sarkozy sees as a root cause of the current problems.

On Fundación Civil, the headline of Mario Conde says that the English have become ”anti-system” in the European Union, but he also notes that the fiscal compact is all discipline (Merkel), but no eurobonds or new tasks for the ECB (in Spanish).

According to David Cameron, the agreement between the EU countries is not in Britain's interest, so he hopes that the EU institutions will protect British interests and he wishes the rest of the union well in their endeavours to safeguard the euro.

How many Europeans do you think, by now hope that Cameron arranges an exit referendum?

***

Update 9 December 2011: The euro area statement has been revised, tentatively bringing the participants to 26 (all but UK). Here is the web page with the statement in all EU languages.

Ralf Grahn

New ”fiscal compact” for eurozone (2 x updated)

2011-12-09T07:23:00.005+02:00

How can anyone defend (or even call for more) intergovernmental solutions to common problems at the European level, or even tolerate the EU our leaders and their predecessors have built?

With democratic government and sufficient powers the European Union, the eurozone and we would not be in this impotent mess.

Well, upon leaving Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB) called it a very good outcome for the euro area countries, although the deal has to be fleshed out in the coming days.

The European Council dinner finally broke up and after 5 o'clock Friday morning (local time) the announced press conference of European Council and Euro Summit president Herman Van Rompuy and Commission president José Manuel Barroso took place.

Update 9 December 2011: Herman Van Rompuy's written statement has now been posted, and it offers more detail.

Update 2, 9 December 2011: Statement by the euro area heads of state or government (9 December 2011; 7 pages). This is the paper to read, both for actions and blank spaces.

A ”new fiscal compact” is the novel Sesame between 17 eurozone members and six others, an intergovernmental agreement between 23 member states (perhaps more).

Self-imposed structural weaknesses force the leaders to continue on the road of intergovernmentalism, although credible and sustainable solutions need durable and legitimate foundations.

The United Kingdom is clearly a problem, not a part of the solution, as shown by the Financial Times report on prime minister David Cameron's demands for Britain to be able to be excepted from regulation of a crucial part of the internal market, financial services.

Thus, Cameron wants to undermine the integrity of the internal market.

Ralf Grahn

European Council: competing agendas

2011-12-08T07:25:00.000+02:00

The heads of state or government meet in the European Council today in a weird atmosphere. The two largest ”shareholders”, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy (Merkozy) have ganged up to sort out their internal differences and to impose their solution on the rest of the participants, leading to much discussion.

Then we have the formal (provisional) agenda, written by the president Herman Van Rompuy, the man who was mandated by all the leaders to produce a report on stronger economic union. This he did, although the public had to rely on leaks to get access.

With the Merkel & Sarkozy letter on the one hand, and the Van Rompuy report on the other, the meeting looks set to start with two competing agendas (in a wider sense).

Would credible, accountable and democratic government look like this?

If this is how it starts, how will it end?

Ralf Grahn

EU and eurozone transparency: DIY

2011-12-07T18:54:00.001+02:00

Transparency moves in a mysterious way in the European Union. As far as I have been able to ascertain, the president of the European Council and of the Euro Summits, Herman Van Rompuy, has not published his interim report on improving economic union.

Perhaps 502 or 332 million people are wrong to believe that the matter merits public interest in advance of the European Council 8 to 9 December 2011.

Thus, EU citizens are left with recourse to documents leaked, which offends the basic principles of equal treatment and openness.

It also mean a waste of time and effort. Beggars can't be choosers, so let us record our somewhat disparate findings.

In the blog post Réforme de traités, mode d'emploi the journalist and euroblogger Jean Quatremer offered a discrete link to Van Rompuy's letter in French, on the Coulisses de Bruxelles blog.

Le Figaro offers an English version of Van Rompuy's report.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and president Nicolas Sarkozy (Merkozy) promised to finalise their proposals to Van Rompuy and then to publish their joint letter. The Elysee website offers the document in French.

The Bundeskanzlerin website offers the ”Merkozy” letter in German.

I found no English version in either place, so I was happy to note that the quality blogger @placeduluxemb had found the Merkozy letter in English via widely followed @zerohedge (although I did not see the source mentioned).

Ralf Grahn

European Council 8 to 9 December 2011: Euro solution or failure? (Updated)

2011-12-07T11:55:00.004+02:00

Paris, Berlin or Brussels... Credible, accountable and democratic government is not on the cards for the European Union or the eurozone, so what can we expect from the European Council Thursday and Friday, 8 to 9 December 2011?

Among many, many, let us look at some of the best contributions on the web.

BBC News Europe offers Q&A: Key EU summit on debt crisis, a clearly written introduction to main issues.

Place du Luxembourg presented a well documented and more detailed analysis in The latest Franco-German Agreement: Is it enough?

Jean Quatremer has been busy on the Coulisses de Bruxelles blog, covering important aspect of the euro crisis. Among his contribution is Vers une union budgétaire européenne.

Credibility is not confined to market players and credit rating agencies, but the solutions offered by the national leaders are evaluated by EU citizens. On Social Europe Journal, Fredrik Jansson notes that support for euro entry has dropped to less than ten per cent in Sweden, opposition having climbed to 88% (an increase of about 40 percentage points in two years).

FT Alphaville notes condemnation from Martin Wolf: Merkozy failed to save the eurozone.

The FT Brussels blog notes a Twitter rebellion against automatic sanctions, by the commissioner @LaszloAndorEU.

For Tsigos the crisis is fundamentally political. A truly united Europe can only be a Federal Europe, with a directly elected European government for the European citizens.

On Europe 27 etc, Jamel de l'Or takes on the unstable duopoly Merkozy, in L'Union budgétaire – pour qui ? Russian style democracy or the United States of Europe?

***

It is hard to be an optimist, or even optimistic, these days.

Update 7 December 2011: Just saw this blog post a few minutes old, by Place du Luxembourg on why intergovernmental solutions do not work.

Ralf Grahn

Merkozy euro proposals face EU members and Standard & Poor's

2011-12-07T08:12:00.001+02:00

Even if the web is overflowing with reports and comments on the Merkozy proposals, there is cause to record the primary sources from the last two days.

Paris

The German chancellor Angela Merkel met the French president Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysée Palace in Paris Monday, 5 December 2011. The Elysée web pages offer a video recording of the press conference (with French voice-over for Merkel) and a French transcript on the same page:

Conférence de presse conjointe : Mme Angela Merkel et M. Nicolas Sarkozy

The detailed proposals will be presented in a letter to president Herman Van Rompuy Wednesday, and subsequently published. They want a new Treaty, preferably among the 27, but between the 17 eurozone countries and open for others if needed, Sarkozy said before outlining the six proposals to be detailed in the letter.

Sarkozy sees that Franco-German unity leads towards a Europe of governments. Eurobonds are no solution to the problems.

According to Merkel, mandatory (golden) budget balance rules are needed, which can be verified by the Court of Justice of the European Union in order to make the governments respect their engagements regarding the stability and growth pact. The desired changes cannot be made without Treaty change.

Merkel described the monthly Euro Summits as thematic meetings dedicated to growth issues - labour law, innovation, development of infrastructure – in a spirit of convergence and competitiveness.

The leaders want clarity in principle during the European Council Thursday and Friday, and the conclusion of the Treaty amendments in March 2012.

The leaders dedicated a joint statement to the credit rating agency Standard and Poor's (in French and English):

Communiqué conjoint franco-allemand

Berlin

The German chancellery offers a web page with the six proposals outlined:

Strategie zur Überwindung der Staatsschuldenkrise

Germany has now reinstated ”economic government” (Wirtschaftsregierung) to describe the monthly Euro Summits.

The German transcript of the joint press conference:

Pressestatements von Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel und dem französischen Staatspräsidenten Nicolas Sarkozy (5 December 2011)

The recent German government policy statement:

Regierungserklärung: Ziele und Leitlinien für den Europäischen Rat (2 December 2011)

The technical decision of the eurozone finance ministers to expand the the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) through leverage:

EFSF: Maximierung beschlossen (30 November 2011)

Brussels

The president of the European Council and of the Euro Summits, Herman Van Rompuy, has invited the heads of state or government. His invitation letter 6 December 2011, a day after the meeting between Merkel and Sarkozy, refers to draft conclusions prepared on the basis of his interim report, unpublished.

Intergovernmental Europe

Above we saw the state of main sources for the public, news reports and opinion: an outline of the unfinished the Franco-German proposals and the unpublished interim report by Van Rompuy.

Intergovernmental Europe remains true to its role as an underachiever with regard to democratic rule, good governance and transparency at the European level. The citizens of the EU are promised even more intergovernmentalism in the future, instead of credible, accountable and democratic government.

Standard & Poor's

However, one essential piece we have to add is the flurry of negative assessments from the credit rating agency Standard & Poor's between 5 and 6 December 2011 for eurozone sovereign debt and the EFSF. Since there are several announcements and new developments are possible, I link to the thematic page:

European Sovereign Ratings and Related Material

For those in a hurry the synthesis announcement offers the main picture. It promises a review based on the upcoming European Council 8 to 9 December 2011, with possible downgrades of one notch for the strongest governments and eventually two for the rest:

Standard & Poor's Puts Ratings On Eurozone Sovereigns On CreditWatch With Negative Implications (5 December 2011)

***

I have put the eurozone on democracy watch, with negative implications.

Ralf Grahn

EU social media and online public space

2011-12-06T11:54:00.000+02:00

What if the European public sphere owes its existence to social media, asks Michael Malherbe (Décrypter la communciation européenne blog), continuing the interesting presentation by Mathew Lowry on the EU online public space (although reading a Prezi presentation can be a pretty hallucinating experience).

Comments

There is an online European public sphere, available through social media such as Bloggingportal.eu, Twitter and Facebook.

There are still great opportunities ahead, building bridges within groups with common interests and between national discussions and the ”Brussels bubble”.

Some EU institutions and politicians, as well as civil society groups and business associations have joined social media sites in order to narrowcast their messages, but few of them have advanced to the level of engagement and sharing (with the exception of some frontline individuals within these behemots).

Hordes of academics and teachers, as well as officials in EU institutions and agencies, or engaged in EU co-funded projects at national level are still surprisingly uncommunicative.

Language barriers are an obstacle to cross-border communication, but active and educated Europeans are often able to understand one or more languages in addition to their own. Some of them can build bridges between different language communities.

Social and other media

Malherbe and Lowry did not ponder media in general that much, but it would be well worth a separate discussion.

The EU online public space (Lowry) is broader than its social media sub-group. Malherbe seemed to reject the notion of traditional pan-EU media, perhaps rightly so if we look at the mass market level, but what about the ”movers and shakers”?

Much material from the EU institutions (primary sources) and mainstream media content is available online.

Renowned media offer both traditional editorial material online and social media content across borders, blurring the lines between the two.

Call them ”elite” if you will, but European political and business leaders are consumers of the same sources for news and opinion, de facto promoting the free movement of ideas.

It may hurt linguistic sensitivities, but many of these sources and publications operate in English (partially or wholly): The Financial Times, The Economist, WSJ Europe, BBC, DW-World, Spiegel Online (International), France24, Euronews, EUobserver, EurActiv, Presseurop, EUbusiness etc.

How does today differ from the Enlightenment with regard to the diffusion of ideas?

Ralf Grahn

Euroblogs in German

2011-12-06T07:58:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I looked at the euro crisis and euroblogs on Bloggingportal.eu, the multilingual aggregator. As I said:

Increasingly Europeans realise that they are in the same boat, although some design the improved vessels for the future, some recall scrapped luxury liners of past glory, some see the Titanic fatally heading towards the iceberg (while deck-chairs are being arranged) and some remind us of the harsh and unjust treatment (austerity) which led to the Mutiny on the Bounty.

German and Germany

According to Wikipedia, German was (2007) the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union (18 per cent of EU population; plus the mother tongue of 4.6 million in the enclave Switzerland). Some 32 per cent of people in the EU were able to speak German, making it the second most widely understood language after English (51%).

In political terms, the rest of the European Union and the eurozone have been waiting for Merkozy to stop fiddling, while the UK prime minister David Cameron can mostly watch and hope on the sidelines, so it is impossible to ignore Germany, the most populous nation of the EU in addition to having the strongest economy.

Indeed, together German speaking Germany (82 million) and Austria (8.4 million) represent about 27% of the population in the eurozone and about 18% of the EU total (Eurostat).

Euroblogs in German

In the spirit of cross-border discussion and understanding, Europaeum - @mteu on Twitter – one of the Bloggingportal editors, has compiled an English presentation of the active EU blogosphere in German, including Austrian ones, three from the Baltic states and a Franco-German blog.

Martin then continued with an entry with German language blogs listed on Bloggingportal, which have published since July 2011, a much longer list including a number of policy blogs and blogs by MEPs.

If your euroblog is still missing (or someone else's), you can propose the blog on EU politics or policy areas to Bloggingportal.eu.

Ralf Grahn

Merkozy fiddles while eurozone burns

2011-12-05T10:27:00.000+02:00

The president of the European Council and the Euro Summits, Herman Van Rompuy, and the leaders in the 25 other European capitals sit twiddling their thumbs, waiting for Merkozy.

What makes it even more absurd is that few expect the German chancellor Angela Merkel and the French president Nicolas Sarkozy to sort out much of their mutual differences today, let alone the euro crisis.

The Elysee blog of Arnaud Leparmentier (Le Monde) discusses the issues on the table and the persisting malfunction of the Franco-German ”engine”:

Accords et désaccords entre Merkel et Sarkozy, juste avant leur énième rencontre (4 December 2011)

The hopeless machinations of ”sovereign Princes” continue, instead of the needed rise to the federal level, records Jean Brochier.

Laurence Boon states on Telos that an intergovernmental eurozone just does not work.

Trisha Craig notes the impassioned plea for German action from the Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski (via The Economist).

If it does not work, try more of the same, is how Andy Carling sees the EU institutions and the political parties reacting to the existential crisis.

***

Despite the imminent bankruptcy of intergovernmental Europe and the Franco-German duopoly, the two (and other) national leaders refuse to change tack.

Our national leaders never have time for EU democracy, but there is always time for another eurozone failure.

What impact can we expect from the European Council 8 to 9 December 2011 in the real world?

Ralf Grahn

Euro crisis and euroblogs on Bloggingportal

2011-12-05T08:16:00.000+02:00

The euro is the currency of 332 million people, more than the home of the United States dollar (about 313 million). The severe euro crisis affects not only the 17 countries of the eurozone, but the economic prospects in the whole European Union (population 502 million) and beyond, actually the world economy.

We have seen the leaders of the eurozone and EU countries struggling to find credible intergovernmental solutions to European level problems. Another week of high level meetings is about to begin, without clear and comprehensive proposals for all to see.

Small wonder that the crises in the euro area, which turned into the crisis of the euro itself, have spawned cross-border discussion on an unprecedented scale. Euroblogs are among the movers in the emerging European public sphere, where common challenges and shortcomings are recorded and evaluated above the level of national politics.

Increasingly Europeans realise that they are in the same boat, although some design the improved vessels for the future, some recall scrapped luxury liners of past glory, some see the Titanic fatally heading towards the iceberg (while deck-chairs are being arranged) and some remind us of the harsh and unjust treatment (austerity) which led to the Mutiny on the Bounty.

The euro crisis and other European questions are treated in the new blog posts which are aggregated on multilingual Bloggingportal.eu. At this moment 887 euroblogs are listed, although not all of them remain active. During the last seven days 256 blogs published at least one post, but some blogs produce several entries each week.

Somewhat erratically the voluntary editors of Bloggingportal select good blog posts for the front page, which sends them off to Twitter and includes them in the daily newsletter (email subscription).

There are RSS feeds for the editors' choice and for all new posts. You can propose a relevant blog post or a new blog dealing with EU affairs. You could also show community spirit by volunteering for the tagging and the selection of blog posts as an active editor of Bloggingportal.eu.

Most weeks the Bloggingportal.eu blog offers a roundup of the Week in Bloggingportal, with light comment on promoted posts.

Ralf Grahn

Euro: Waiting for Merkozy

2011-12-04T11:45:00.000+02:00

Heads of government (or state) in most European capitals may think about Samuel Beckett, as they wait for Merkozy.

At least publicly their common president of the European Council and the Euro Summits, Herman Van Rompuy, has not published proposals to overcome the euro crisis.

More than anything, we seem to experience a cacaphony of silence from the national capitals and Brussels.

Franco-German positions

Monday, 5 December 2011 at 13:30, the French president Nicolas Sarkozy receives the German chancellor Angela Merkel for a working lunch at the Elysee Palace.

What, if anything, are they going to bring to the table?

Friday, 2 December 2011 the German Parliament (Bundestag) heard and debated the government policy statement presented by chancellor Angela Merkel (Regierungserklärung durch die Bundeskanzlerin zum Europäischen Rat am 9. Dezember 2011 in Brüssel).

The Toulon election rally speech by the French president Nicolas Sarkozy and the government statement by Merkel have been widely reported and commented. Here are a few attempts to compare the two messages, ahead of the meeting between Sarkozy and Merkel in Paris tomorrow, 5 December 2011.

Charlemagne published two blog posts on the common euro problem, but two differing visions (part I and a more detailed comparison in part II).

On the Coulisses de Bruxelles blog, Jean Quatremer discussed similarities and differences. The European Council may continue until Sunday.

Le Figaro offers another synthesis of the Franco-German views.

Bystanders

In addition to David Cameron and Herman Van Rompuy the list of bystanders ahead of the European Council (#EUCO on Twitter) 8 to 9 December 2011 seems long, with few exceptions to date.

One of the few government sources I have stumbled across is the Swedish foreign minister and euroblogger Carl Bildt, whose message is more Europe, but not more Europes. Splitting Europe into new groups is not the way forward.

Ahead of the General Affairs Council (GAC) 5 December 2011 the Swedish government is positive about the need for improved budgetary discipline, but reserved about the need for treaty changes. The customary annotated agenda offers some background, but no concrete proposals.

The Swedes may be happy to be outside the eurozone right now, as The Economist reports, but how realistic is Bildt's hope to evade the consequences of being a euro outsider by reaching effective decisions unanimously and then ratifying them in 27 EU member states?

The government of Finland refers to president Herman Van Rompuy's proposals on ways to strengthen the economic union, improve fiscal discipline and deepen the euro area's integration. The debate will concentrate on the possibility of limited Treaty changes or corresponding arrangements. The President’s proposals are based on the mandate he was given in the October meeting.

This text and one about the General Affairs Council are written as if Van Rompuy's proposals existed (and only the public was kept in the dark).

The Irish Independent sees prime minister Enda Kenny capitulating to Merkel on budget rules, anticipating that the European Central Bank would build a ”firewall” to give eurozone governments time to repair their finances. Another national referendum looms on the horizon. Here Van Rompuy is said to be preparing his proposals, with national (Irish) officials participating in the process.

***

The markets and EU citizens need democratic and sufficient powers, good governance and transparency to the European level from Merkozy.

The governments, too, are waiting for Merkozy, but with varying apprehensions and reservations, based on their national agendas.

Ralf Grahn

EU and euro crisis: Internal weaknesses and unanimity

2011-12-04T07:32:00.000+02:00

Some countries are born weak, some achieve weakness and some have weakness thrust upon them. The United Kingdom joined the EEC (later EU) late and grudgingly, after its EFTA strategy failed. Britain has worked hard to drag the course of European integration down to its own level, reluctantly agreeing to further steps while opting out of essential policy areas and core groups. Representing a member state seen as playing as much against as for its team, prime minister David Cameron is and has thrust himself into the position of being an obstacle, a nuisance or an irrelevance.

However, weakness is not confined to Britain. The European level is a shining example. The less than robust and democratic structures of the European Union and the eurozone are root causes of the worsening euro crisis. Given the structural weaknesses, calls for more or better leadership often have a hollow ring.

Yesterday we looked at the eurozone ”institutions” with regard to economic policy; informal gatherings with the Euro Summit as the icing on a cake of impotence.

A few days ahead of the European Council, there is no public proposal from president Herman Van Rompuy (who is also the president of the Euro Summits, and has been mandated to propose solutions). An apt illustration of the state of EU and eurozone level power, governance and transparency.

Through the feebleness of the European level, common solutions become hostages of national perspectives and power struggles, since fundamental remedies need unanimity among the EU members or participating states.

Never underestimate internal weaknesses as an explaining factor in intergovernmental Europe.

However chancellor Angela Merkel and president Nicolas Sarkozy patch up their mutual differences on Monday in Paris, the next ”comprehensive solution” requiring unanimity will be met by 25 other national lists of caveats at the European Council 8 to 9 December 2011 (somewhat fewer if the serious talks are restricted to the euro area members or a core within the core).

Does this have the look of credible structures and convincing solutions to the euro crisis, based on democracy at the right level?

Ralf Grahn

Eurozone: Cameron can watch and hope

2011-12-03T10:25:00.000+02:00

UK prime minister David Cameron is not in an enviable position. If the euro crashes, the troubled British economy would take a severe turn for the worse. The United Kingdom has to hope that the leaders of the eurozone finally get their act together next week.

This means deeper integration among the 17 euro area countries, or at least a core within the core, since the UK itself is among the reasons why significant progress among 27 EU member states is a utopian vision.

The kind of protectionist eurozone the French president Nicolas Sarkozy has in mind would undermine European economic integration based on open external and internal markets, common competition rules, free movement and Schengen, but Britain has placed itself off-side.

Caught by UK opt-outs and constant obstructionism, the new-fangled referendum lock, secessionists in his own party, campaigning anti-EU media and hostile public sentiment, Cameron is in a position of weakness. He can only offer the well-meaning advice of a bystander, after lunch at the Elysee Palace in Paris (BBC News):

"In the end, what that is about is convincing the markets that the institutions of the eurozone will defend and promote and protect the currency with everything they've got," he said.

Eurozone institutions?

What are these eurozone institutions (within and alongside the institutions of the European Union)?

With regard to economic policy we have the informal Euro Group enshrined at treaty level, i.e. president Jean-Claude Juncker and the finance ministers of the 17 eurozone members. Formal decisions have to be taken by the EU institutions (Council) or intergovernmentally.

The eurozone war chest, struggling to find sponsors to provide leverage, is the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), a company registered in Luxembourg. The temporary EFSF should be supplanted by the permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

The European Council 23 October 2011 and the Euro summit 26 (27) October 2011 have now instituted the Euro Summits as a regular feature, with Herman Van Rompuy as the first president. This is the cabal the French president wants to turn into the ”government” in his own image for eurozone convergence, including tighter rules on work and tax.

According to the EU Treaties, monetary policy is conducted by the European Central Bank (ECB), restricted by its inflation-fighting mandate and limited scope of action compared to lenders of last resort.

The eurozone needs deeper integration and ground-breaking action, but David Cameron can mostly watch and hope.

Ralf Grahn

Media reports: Sarkozy's euro speech in Toulon

2011-12-02T07:13:00.001+02:00

I already tried to present the essentials of the speech by the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, plus a few comments.

President Sarkozy's speech in Toulon is frontpage news in Europe, but what do the media reports emphasise?

The Financial Times sees the emerging shape of a last-ditch eurozone deal.

The New York Times runs through the views of the different proponents.

Reuters underlines Sarkozy's view that governments must keep control of the European Union, as well as the looming presidential election in five months.

The Guardian thinks that Sarkozy's focus appeared to be on a new deal enabling the leaders of the 17 eurozone countries to strike political bargains among themselves.

The Wall Street Journal brings up the internal challenge from the right-wing populist leader Marine Le Pen.

The BBC highlights the Franco-German ties central to Sarkozy's thinking.

EUobserver draws attention to Sarkozy's intergovernmental credo.

Financial Times Deutschland leads with an intergovernmental European Monetary Fund.

Ralf Grahn

Sarkozy: French president and German chancellor to save euro

2011-12-02T05:11:00.001+02:00

Yesterday, 1 December 2011, president Nicolas Sarkozy promised the French people later retirement, longer working weeks and smaller public deficits. Europe offers more sovereignty through added opportunities to act.

If France and Germany are united, Europe is united. On Monday the two countries are going to make proposals to guarantee the future of Europe. Sarkozy promised to do his utmost to create an area of stability and confidence at the heart of the eurozone.

Europe has to be rebuilt on more solidarity and discipline. More political responsibility means rejecting blind adherence to the rules of competition and free trade.

Europe needs more democracy. The accountable politicians make the decisions. No march towards supranationality. The heads of state or government and intergovernmentalism are the road ahead for European integration.

The eurozone needs more qualified majority voting [in the Council]. Europe has to protect its commercial interests and to rethink Schengen.

Europe has to end social and fiscal dumping among EU member states. Europe needs to protect its industries against global predators. Europe needs to protect the common agricultural policy.

The euro has to be defended. This is the reason for the heads of state or government as the government of the euro area. France has proposed a European Monetary Fund to serve as a bastion against speculation.

Sarkozy is confident that the European Central Bank will act. The euro area countries have to accept stricter budgetary discipline, including scrutiny of budgets, quick and automatic sanctions and a ”golden rule” on balanced budgets. Convergence is the key concept.

France and Germany campaign for a new Treaty.

Comment

Internally the all but confirmed presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy showed some bravery in Toulon by exhorting the voters to work longer and harder and to prepare for public belt-tightening.

More than ever since the Fouchet plan, Sarkozy assumes the Gaullist legacy to marginalise the EU institutions permanently, especially the Commission and the European Parliament.

He casts the president of France and the chancellor of Germany as the saviours of the euro currency, although even these two countries still have to agree on a joint proposal ahead of the European Council 9 December 2011.

The rest of the eurozone countries and particularly the other EU member states are relegated to pawn status.

Sarkozy's ferociously protectionist blasts may go down well in France, but how many among the 17 – now divided into core and non-core countries - or 27 welcome his calls to scrap free trade and the competition rules underpinning the internal market, as well as social and fiscal ”dumping” [later remembered and added: plus free movement and Schengen]?

Perhaps Sarkozy sees a golden opportunity to create a eurozone core in his own image, when a euro crash seems imminent without extraordinary measures and most of the new EU member states are still outside the eurozone, as are the open market economies Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Ralf Grahn

EU Ecofin set European Semester in motion

2011-12-01T08:01:00.000+02:00

Ronny Patz has recently blogged about how EU institutions can helpfully interact with human beings, or continue to operate like a permanent diplomatic congress where solidarity between governments is paramount.

From a slightly different angle we can look at the quality of what the institutions communicate, with an Ecofin sample earlier and having a new stab at quality assessment below.

European Semester 2012

The EU Ecofin Council was going to do its part to set the European Semester in motion, by hearing the Commission present the Annual Growth Survey 2012 (AGS).

The EU institutions enlighten us through the Ecofin conclusions:

3129th Council meeting Economic and Financial Affairs; Brussels, 30 November 2011 (provisional version, 17683/11; 26 pages)

On pages 8-9 the Council brilliantly copy-pastes and paraphrases what it already said in the background note (quoted in my blog post).

After reiterating that in March, the European Council will assess implementation of country-specific recommendations made under the 2011 European Semester and will provide macroeconomic and fiscal guidance for 2012, comes the scoop for the patient reader:

To this end, the Council asked the Economic Policy Committee and the Economic and Financial Committee to prepare conclusions for the Council's meeting on 21 February, to be submitted to the European Council.

I believe that the Committees would have acted without public prodding, but after Ecofin's intervention I am sure that the next round of fiscal consolidation and growth reforms in the EU member states is going to turn out a resounding success.

Ralf Grahn

EU: Ecofin followed up G20 Cannes summit

2011-12-01T05:20:00.000+02:00

When I waded through the documents published by the G20 summit in Cannes 3 to 4 November 2011, I wondered if the Ecofin Council of the EU would find anything intelligent to say, something to highlight for posterity.

Now we have the Ecofin conclusions:

3129th Council meeting Economic and Financial Affairs; Brussels, 30 November 2011 (provisional version, 17683/11; 26 pages)

We are able to see that Ecofin bravely resisted any temptation to offer unmerited attention to any detail at the expense of the whole (page 7):

FOLLOW-UP TO THE G-20 SUMMIT

The Council took stock of the outcome of the G-20 summit held in Cannes on 3 and 4 November, on the basis of a debriefing by the Commission and by the French delegation (in its capacity as G-20 presidency).

The G-20 summit covered:
• coordination of economic policies;
• the G-20 framework for growth;
• reform of financial regulation;
• reform of the international monetary system;
• commodity price volatility;
• other issues, such as food security, global governance, development cooperation, trade, corruption, employment and energy

We leave the sherpas to prepare the next G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, in June 2012, and we look forward to the next Ecofin follow-up.

Ralf Grahn

EU: Ecofin and Annual Growth Survey 2012

2011-11-30T09:01:00.001+02:00

The agenda of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council 30 November 2011 promises a presentation by the Commission of the Annual Growth Survey (AGS).

Here is a recent blog post about the second European Semester and AGS, with links back to the first round.

The Ecofin Council background note underlines the need for implementation of the guidelines this time around:

Annual growth survey

The Commission will present its annual growth survey, outlining priority actions to be taken by member states in order to ensure better-coordinated and more effective policies for putting Europe's economy on a path to sustainable growth (doc. 17229/11).

As the Commission's autumn economic forecasts show, economic recovery has come to a standstill and low levels of confidence are adversely affecting investment and consumption, due to a negative feedback from the sovereign debt crisis and a slowdown in the global economy. As a result, the outlook for growth in 2012 is gloomy and unemployment levels are likely to remain high. In such a situation, the Commission would have expected stronger progress in following up on last year's guidance. This year's annual growth survey therefore puts strong emphasis on the need for implementation.

For 2012, it suggests that efforts at national and EU levels concentrate on the following priorities:
- pursuing differentiated growth-friendly fiscal consolidation;
- restoring normal lending to the economy;
- promoting growth and competitiveness for today and tomorrow, with particular emphasis on the digital economy, the internal market for services and external trade, as well as better use of the EU budget;
- tackling unemployment and the social consequences of the crisis, in particular mobilising labour, supporting employment of young people and protecting the vulnerable;
- modernising public administration.

The annual growth survey constitutes the starting point for the European Semester, which involves simultaneous monitoring of the member states' fiscal policies and structural reforms, in accordance with common rules, during a six-month period every year.

The European Semester was implemented for the first time this year (it concluded in July) as part of a reform of EU economic governance. The 2012 European Semester will be the second such exercise; presentation of the annual growth survey has been brought forward this time, in order to facilitate implementation

In March, the European Council will assess implementation of country-specific recommendations made under the 2011 European Semester and will provide guidance for 2012.

Annual Growth Survey 2012

The Annual Growth Survey 2012 consists of five volumes, the AGS proper plus four Annexes (about 95 pages in all). This COM document is not available through the legal portal Eur-Lex (yet). You can probably get the best overview from the Europe 2020 web page Annual Growth Surveys - Annual Growth Survey 2012. Below in English:

Annual Growth Survey 2012 VOL. 1/5; Brussels, 23.11.2011 COM(2011) 815 final (18 pages)

Progress report on the Europe 2020 strategy VOL. 2/5 - ANNEX I; Brussels, 23.11.2011 COM(2011) 815 final (27 pages)

Macro-economic report VOL. 3/5 - ANNEX II; Brussels, 23.11.2011 COM(2011) 815 final (21 pages)

Draft joint employment report VOL. 4/5 - ANNEX III; Brussels, 23.11.2011 COM(2011) 815 final (16 pages)

Growth-friendly tax policies in member states and better tax coordination in the EU VOL. 5/5 - ANNEX IV; Brussels, 23.11.2011 COM(2011) 815 final (13 pages)

You can access the other language versions of the AGS 2012 web page through the menu in the upper right hand corner.

***

The Annual Growth Survey 2012 and its Annexes are among the most important documents from the Commission with regard to the coming year at EU level and in the member states.

Ralf Grahn

Euro Group 29 November 2011 on EFSF

2011-11-30T06:37:00.000+02:00

Ahead of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council today, the finance ministers of the eurozone countries gathered in the informal Euro Group yesterday evening, 29 November 2011. You can watch the late press conference with the Euro Group president Jean-Claude Juncker, Commission vice-president Olli Rehn (Ecfin) and EFSF chief executive officer Klaus Regling (a little less than half an hour).

The EU Council Press Office offers a page with six documents concerning the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).

Business Insider and Bloomberg offer a condensated views of the technical work to leverage the EFSF, but the main finding is that fresh real money is not yet in sight to reach the one trillion euro goal.

The FT Alphaville blog says the problem is that it’s become more and more clear that whatever the final amount of firepower achieved through these options probably won’t be adequate. Talks are under way to involve the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Meanwhile the clock keeps ticking for the eurozone.

Ralf Grahn