European Commission Work Programme 2012: Internal market and services

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.

Policy euroblogs: economy and eurozone

Ronny Patz made some interesting observations about policy-oriented euroblogs. He mentioned and linked to a number of interesting blogs in different policy areas.

Patz mentioned the growth of economic blogging during the ongoing crisis, even if he did not name individual blogs.

There are now 888 blogs listed on Bloggingportal.eu, the multilingual aggregator of euroblogs.

In order to pick up the thread where Ronny Patz had left off, I went back through the last few days of blog posts and marked the blogs which dealt mainly with the economy and the eurozone.

The choice is subjective, and some general euroblogs (not mentioned) manage to produce more quantity and quality in a few different fields than many specialised blogs in one.

Some of the economics blog are penned by mainstream media journalists, while others are written by individual economists and people interested in economic policies or politics more broadly.

Even if economics blogs tend to publish more during office days, I was surprised to find 32 blogs dealing mainly with the economy and the eurozone, and which had published these last days.


Here are the ones I stumbled across (with no claim to accurateness):

M.G. in progress

Protesilaos Stavrou

Arend-Jan Boekestijn (in Dutch)

I on Europe

WSJ Emerging Europe

FT Alphaville

Reinhard Bütikofer MEP (in German)

Kantoos Economics (bilingual German & English)

Open Europe blog

Lost in EUrope (in German)

Guardian Comment is free Europe (all areas)

WSJ Real Time Brussels

Berni's View (bilingual English & German)

Karpfenteich (in German)

Beyond Brussels (daily digest)

Social Europe Journal

Yanis Varoufakis

IIEA blogoshere (a number of writers)

Euro area debt crisis

Telos politique économique (in French)

French Politics

EU Weekly (bilingual French & English)

Revolting Europe

FinancialGuy

FT Brussels blog

European Welfare States

€uro-thoughts

A Fistful of Euros

Eurdemocracy

Place du Luxembourg

Crooked Timber

Coulisses de Bruxelles (economic and political issues, in French)



Ralf Grahn

Ecofin: Eurozone bailout Portugal

It is a telling sign of weak EU structures that the chief outcome of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (Ecofin) is produced ”in the margins” of the Council:

Statement by the Eurogroup and ECOFIN Ministers (16 May; no document identifier)

The unanimous decision by ministers is there, but references (links) to decisions and other documents in final or draft form would have made the statement more credible and readable.


Ecofin

Until the conclusions of the Ecofin meeting (16 and) 17 May 2011 are released, interested readers find guidance in the agenda and the background note (including a few paragraphs about Portugal).



Ralf Grahn


P.S. The members of the French blog collective ”les Cabris de l'Europe” produce the must-read Euroblog Europe 27etc, which discusses the shortcomings and feats of EU politics in France and elsewhere. Critical and constructive.

P.S. 1: Has the EU Council really internalised the newish Lisbon Treaty? The discussion about access to documents and Council transparency continues on Ronny Patz's blog post.

Citizens first: EU Council ignores the Treaty

In his blog post The schizophrenic Council, Ronny Patz saw the real face of the Council of the European Union as that of an EU institution

…that may have started to understand how 21st century PR works but that has not yet understood how 21st century democracy should look like.

Kudos to Reijo Kemppinen for presenting the Council view about restricted and privileged access to information.

However, Kemppinen's arguments miss the fundamental principles of equality of and equal attention to the citizens of the EU (Article 9 TEU), as well as the guiding values of a union 'in which decisions are taken as openly as possible and as closely as possible to the citizen' (Article 1 TEU).

This is more than a bureaucratic slip.

The guiding principles are relevant to both the apples of access to documents and the oranges of running communication work of the EU Council (as well as the other EU institutions).

The fruits belong to the citizens of the European Union.



Ralf Grahn

EU publication update: Single Market Act in English, French and German

Yesterday morning, the final version of communication from the European Commission on the Single Market Act (SMA) COM(2011) 206 had not yet been posted in any language.

We can now bring the glass-half-full people some good news.


English

The final English version has now been posted on the EU's legal portal Eur-Lex, under preparatory documents. Search by year and number, if needed, but here is the link:

Single Market Act Twelve levers to boost growth and strengthen confidence "Working together to create new growth”; Brussels, 13.4.2011 COM(2011) 206 final (26 pages)


French

In the same manner, we now have the final French language version:

L'Acte pour le marché unique Douze leviers pour stimuler la croissance et renforcer la confiance "Ensemble pour une nouvelle croissance”; Bruxelles, le 13.4.2011 COM(2011) 206 final


German

We now have the communication in German, one of the three working languages of the Commission, and the version is designated as final:

Binnenmarktakte Zwölf Hebel zur Förderung von Wachstum und Vertrauen „Gemeinsam für neues Wachstum”; Brüssel, den 13.4.2011 KOM(2011) 206 endgültig


Glass-half-empty

Remembering the allegiance of sixteen EU member states to the motto 'United in diversity' (Lisbon Treaty declaration 52), it is fitting to offer something to the glass-half-empty crowd as well.

Although the three working languages of the Commission are now covered, we still have to wait for the communication COM(2011) 206 in twenty official EU languages, namely Bulgarian, Spanish, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Greek, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Maltese, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Finnish and Swedish.


Commission Staff Working Paper

In many cases Commission Staff Working Papers (SWP) are much lengthier than the communications. They are targeted mainly at officials and stakeholder representatives at EU level and in the national capitals, as well as researchers, teachers and students.

While the communications (the official proposals and main findings) are usually translated into 23 or 22 languages, i.a. in order to enable the national administrations and parliaments to deal with them, the SWPs are usually published in only one to three languages, often only in English.

Thus, I only checked to see that no French or German version was available, at least right now, before establishing that the accompanying SEC(2011) 467 has now been posted in English on Eur-Lex. Exceptionally, I'll give you the full name:

COMMISSION STAFF WORKING PAPER Overview of responses to the public consultation on the Communication ‘Towards a Single Market Act’ Accompanying document to the COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS A Single Market Act Twelve levers to boost growth and strengthen confidence "Working together to create new growth"; Brussels, 13.4.2011 SEC(2011) 467 final (32 pages)

***

In other words, we now have the SMA communication in English, French and German final versions, as well as the consultation summary SWP in English.



Ralf Grahn


P.S. On the Polscieu blog, Ronny Patz dissected the Brussels jungle in a sharp and entertaining post 'The Advanced User Polity or: Why the EU is like a primeval forest'. The blog platform Ideas on Europe is administered by UACES (the University Association for Contemporary European Studies). On Ideas on Europe you can find other interesting Euroblogs as well, written by academics, researchers and advanced students. (Why not start a blog there, if you fit the bill?)