Posts Tagged European Commission
The EU’s Digital upgrade: European Digital Agenda!
The European Commission has finally published its anxiously awaited European Digital Agenda, or “EDA” to add a further official acronym to the alphabet soup of the EU. During the past few months the European Parliament, Council, consumer groups and industry have all been frantically busy drafting and presenting their recommendations and advice as to how the final document should look. Well, the framework programme is finally here and given the importance of this document, it’s worth taking a few minutes to take a closer look at what it actually says. After all, this framework will be the ICT’s contribution to Europe 2020 and will shape EU policy in the area for at least the next 5 years.
All in all, the document ceremoniously presented by the Commission met the general expectations. From a political observer’s perspective, the framework has taken a good middle ground and has been carefully worded so as not to overly offend the extreme positions on most of the contentious issues a stake, i.e. copyright aka Intellectual Property Rights and net neutrality. The framework paints a vision of an interoperable, trustworthy digital environment, where digital goods and services can move freely throughout the market and that all levels of society can truly benefit from the technologies that are out there. It tackles this vision by addressing Europe’s infrastructure (100% broadband deployment), legal regime (copyright) and technical specifications (standardization).
WHAT NEXT?
The Commission has essentially identified the most important areas in the sector. The art now will be to deliver a coherent and complementary implementation of all priority areas to ensure that Europe benefits from the “sustainable economic and social benefits from a digital single market based on fast and ultra fast internet and interoperable applications.” Europe must not be tempted to address the various priorities as isolated areas independent of each other. This won’t be an easy task, because as it happens, the devil tends to be in the detail. As the framework begins to be translated into concrete deliverables we are likely to see the various old conflicting interests emerge. Europe must look beyond specific commercial interests and national egos to avoid being trapped in , on all levels, a fragmented ICT market.
Europe should see the EDA as a fresh start, a tabula rasa where new and practical ideas can develop to ensure that citizens across Europe can enjoy the full benefits of innovative technologies and services on an equal footing, at last catapulting Europe into becoming a truly digital society.
Philip
3 comments May 24, 2010
Carbon Market – The EU Goes It Alone?
Yesterday at the FH/Barclays Capital Conference on Financing Energy Needs, a lot was said about financing mechanisms for energy investments and climate mitigation measures.
As argued by Philip Lowe and Jos Delbeke, the lion’s share of funds will have to come from private sources, because of Member States’ reluctance to dedicate national funds in these times of economic crisis. Another source of revenue will eventually come from carbon markets, but with current low carbon prices, this is a long-term perspective rather than an immediate solution. A high carbon price is deemed necessary for expensive technologies such as CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage). Participants generally argued in favour of a global carbon market, which would yield more benefits and generate more revenues (estimated at $2 trillion by 2020 if the U.S. gets on board).
Jos Delbeke underlined the Commission’s willingness to link up cap-and-trade systems by 2015 at a global level. Today this perspective seems unrealistic, given that other big emitting countries are still far away from adopting a model comparable to the EU ETS.
It is still unsure whether the US will enter the race. As described in The Economist last week, the cap-and-trade provision in the US Senate Climate Bill will not be a centrepiece of the legislation, as it should only apply to electrical utilities and leave out transport and industrial emissions – at least for now. Reasons for this are threefold: industry reluctance, skepticism for market mechanisms as a result of the financial crisis and fear for the US competitiveness when China does not intend to put a cap on its emissions for the time being.
In Japan, the Cabinet approved a Climate bill early March, but its provisions on a cap-and-trade system have been watered down. The text will now be examined in Parliament and industries covered are still to be defined, but for the same reason as in America, the end result may differ greatly from the EU ETS.
In sum, there are still several hurdles to a global carbon market…
Clara
Add comment March 25, 2010
Financing Europe’s Energy and Climate Action Needs
Greatings from a sunny, if cold, Washington D.C. where we’ve been having our global public affairs meeting over the past couple of days. Many highlights in the course of the two days, much of which you can catch at the FH Public Affairs twitter account. DC colleague Silvio Marcacci patiently sat at the back of the room tweeting away as various colleagues gave their views on everything from food safety and healthcare to energy and financial services. We’ve also some video that we shall be seeking to upload on the FH Public Affairs Youtube Channel.
On energy and financial services, I bring news from DC of something that is happening in Brussels later this month.
The first annual conference that is seeking to bring together those who know about energy with those who know about finance. Tackling climate change and answering our energy needs as a continent are going to take some serious investment of both political will and cold hard cash. It seems, at least to me from a personal perspective, that Europe needs to put as much ‘political leadership’ in this domain as it expends in seeking to lead in negotiations for binding targets on climate change at an international level. As such, it will be interesting to hear what some of our speakers have to say, especially as they include the Director Generals of both Climate Action (Jos Delbeke) and Energy (Philip Lowe) amongst others.
You can find out more about the event on March 24, which F-H is co-sponsoring, here.
1 comment March 4, 2010
About me: could you add that my dog is a poodle named Fredo?
After tweeting and blogging about the Commission’s own biographies of the Commissioner-designates the week before last, the FH team duly set about writing our own bios of the incoming members of the college. This was done with some trepidation given our own ribbing of the Commission’s efforts, but we felt safe in the knowledge that it was hard to make as much as a hash of it as they had.
The bios were circulated to direct contacts by our team members early last week. They are now available for general consumption on our own website. Happily, our bios have already made their way around Brussels as we’ve been receiving some phone calls from the institutions themselves about the content.
As you may expect, assistants in the EP have been asking for the telephone numbers of the offices of the Commissioner-designates. However, the most stand-out call was from a Commission delegation in an not-to-be-named Member State. It would appear that the Commissioner-designate had read our bio of them and wished to include further biographical details about their family life. We were of course happy to oblige.
Any more biographical information on pets, people that are not your former lovers and/or people that are, which Commissioner-designates wish to share with us are happily received.
James
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2 comments December 11, 2009
Commission staff (mis)use wikipedia as often as the rest of us shocker
It’s been an exciting day. We cut our weekly staff meeting short. We gathered around our computers shortly after midday to watch the press conference that saw the announcement of the proposed make up of the new Commission. Some we knew, some we didn’t. From our MD to our intern, we love this kind of stuff. We duly dashed off notes to clients. Climate Action Commissioner and DG confirmed. French get Internal Market. Transport to Kallas. Obscure DG ENVI unit transfered to DG SANCO etc.
However, the communication emanating from our office that probably caused the activity today was our tweet on the official biography of the new Irish Commissioner – Máire Geoghegan-Quinn. We tweeted on it as it shocked us to read that the new Irish Commissioner had chosen to set the facts straight about her relationship with another Irish politician, Charles Haughey, in the bio that accompanied her announcement as the Commissioner-designate for Research.
In the office we couldn’t believe it. Why on earth would you want to repeat such an accusation, even if untrue, in your official bio? Did Brussels really care? Would the Irish press really focus on this? We discussed what we believed the strategy behind this bold move could possibly be. Surely they couldn’t believe that a premptive strike on an old story that no-one in Brussels had read anyway was the right way to go? Did the Commission-designate care so much as to insist that this statement was inserted in the bio?
Well, no. The answer would appear to be the bio was in part a cut and paste job from her wikipedia entry, rather than an original piece of work. (Thanks to @ako9000 for the detective work). If you’re looking for the bio, it was here. This evening it’s not online due to technical errors…
It goes to show a few things. Firstly, if you’re writing a biography of a Commissioner-designate you probably don’t want to lift it from wikipedia. Especially if wikipedia repeats salicious and untrue details about your new Commissioner’s private life. Wikipedia may be a good starting point for research, but it aint necessarily the truth. Secondly, you can seek to insert balance into a wikipedia article, but balance is not necessarily a good thing. The fact that wikipedia says an accusation was made but it’s untrue does stop the accusation from being repeated. Finally, twitter can be a powerful tool to spread news – however pointless – quickly. Within seconds of our tweet, our own followers had retweeted and theirs had retweeted again. 174 followers had clicked on our tinyurl within an hour of our tweet according to hootsuite.com
James
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5 comments November 27, 2009
Fun and games in Strasbourg: politics, climate and science
- Image via Wikipedia
The European institutions rarely do party politics well, but this week was a rare exception as the current European Commission (EU executive) President Jose Barroso fought for the approval of the European Parliament (lower house one part of our bicameral legislature) for a second five year term in office. The verbal jousting between the Green leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Barroso was a delight; proof that the Punch and Judy politics regularly seen at Westminster can take place in a chamber hampered by simultaneous intepretation, stilted debates and differing national traditions.
In the end Barroso scraped together enough votes for approval by an absolute majority (not required but politically important). Portuguese and Spanish Socialists ignored their own group and joined the centre-right, liberal centre and looney right in voting for a renewal of his term of office.
There may be some scepticism as to whether Barroso will shake lose the shackles of the 27 Member State governments or whether his policies have contributed rather than dealt with the recent financial and economic crisis but he was in effect the only candidate and everyone knew it. The negotiations in recent weeks between Barroso and the political groups were as much about the structure and programme of the Commission as anything else.
While the programme (Political Guidelines for the next Commission) includes sweeties for all deserving children – promises for financial services regulation, a decarbonisation of transport and electricity etc – I’d like to concentrate on two new structural changes announced in Tuesday’s debate that interest me:
- A Commissioner for Climate Action
One of the 26 other Commissioners in Barroso’s yet to be formed team will get the climate change brief. Green members I met down in the Parliament this week remain concerned rather than overjoyed. While Barroso once again pointed out the EU’s leadership globally on climate change issues, they fear that a new Climate action Commissioner will get the climate change part of the department for environment (DG Environment) and put it together with the large energy department (DG Transport and Energy). For Greens, this is disaster time. Energy cares about market liberalisation, energy security and has an unhealthy like for nuclear they would say. The climate change activists at DG Environment will be drowned out by the energy obsessed hoardes, or so goes the theory. In reality, climate change is not going away and the debates that currently occur between the different departments are now likely simply to take place within the department. The issue of ambition is probably more about which politician gets the portfolio. Do they come from a big Member State and carry the political clout to push the agenda on Member States, who like to talk good game but then shy away from hard legislation (see the current debate on the energy performance of buildings as an example). We shall watch with interest as Member State’s lobby for their own nominees. It would not be a surprise if the UK went for the brief.
- Chief Scientific Adviser
Barroso also announced the creation of a Chief Scientific Officer who has “has the power to deliver proactive, scientific advice throughout all stages of policy development and delivery.” The EU institutions, mainly Parliament to be fair to the Commission, are hampered by a lack of access to scientific advice at appropriate stages in the policymaking process. The Commission’s scientific committees and agencies such as EFSA (food) and ECHA (chemicals) provide a good service upon request but suffer from work programmes and the need for both consensus and time. It shall be interesting to see what role such an adviser takes, how political or independent they will become, how proactive they can be and how they fit into the current structure of scientific advice. How would BSE, phthalates in toys, melamine in milk have played out should such a figure have existed at those times? Would some of our more reactive Members of the European Parliament have been slapped down or encouraged by this person’s presence? We await the details and of course the person.
James
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- Barroso wins EU commission second term (guardian.co.uk)
- Barroso faces vote on new mandate (news.bbc.co.uk)
- Europe’s institutions and what they do (telegraph.co.uk)
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4 comments September 17, 2009
Iceland’s path to EU membership may be a rocky one
- Image via Wikipedia
I see that the EU Council of Ministers has asked the European Commission to deliver an opinion on Iceland’s application to join the EU, just 10 days after Reykjavik submitted its formal request for membership. The Swedish presidency wants the report by the end of the year, and foreign minister Carl Bildt has implied that Iceland’s status as an EEA country could speed the process of the application, in contrast to the slow progress for the Balkan applicants.
The Icelanders no doubt remain shell-shocked by the collapse of their banking system and the consequent halving in the value of the krona, and crave the stability of the eurozone, but it strikes me that the path to membership may be far from smooth. At the end of the process – say in 2011 – lurks a referendum: by then the mood of the country may have changed.
Fisheries could be a major stumbling block. Seafood accounts for almost half of Iceland’s exports and 10 per cent of its gross domestic product, which is quite something when another chunk of the country’s economy – the banking system – has disintegrated. The cod wars of the 1970s, when Iceland extended its territorial limits to 200 miles and the Royal Navy sent frigates to protect British fishing vessels, showed the depth of national feeling on this issue.
Even now international relations on fisheries policy remain poor. I gather for instance that Iceland has been excluded from negotiations on the management of mackerel stocks in the North Atlantic and has therefore opted out of catch allocations. The country is very concerned to rebuild cod stocks, which is a key economic asset. Stocks may be recovering but there will be intense opposition to surrendering quota to EU fishermen under the common fisheries policy. Just to add to the sensitivities, Iceland still has a whaling industry.
At least the review of the EU common fisheries policy is timely, with signs that ministers have accepted the need for fundamental change (just as well, as many fish stocks in European waters are on the point of collapse – and see Sarkozy’s change of heart). However, the fisheries chapter in the Commission’s Iceland report will be one of the most difficult to compose. Could it be the catalyst for the creation of a new fisheries policy, or will it hark back to the disastrous EU policy which has been pursued since 1973?
Becoming part of the eurozone is the big driver for Iceland, but there could be difficult issues here as well, given the level of Iceland’s public debt (about 100 per cent of gdp). For Iceland to qualify for eurozone membership could be an even greater challenge than is faced by the Baltic states and Hungary.
The vote in the Althing to apply for membership was a close run thing – 33 in favour, 28 against – and it would certainly be wrong to underestimate the negotiating difficulties which lie ahead. If the Irish vote “no” on Lisbon then the prospects for any enlargement would be gloomier still.
Meanwhile Britain’s Conservative shadow foreign secretary William Hague continues to inveigh against Lisbon. But whatever you think of his views, he is a consummate speaker. You may like to savour his recent performance in the House of Commons on the possibility of Tony Blair becoming president of the European Council under a ratified Lisbon Treaty. No wonder Gordon Brown needs a holiday!
Michael Berendt
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- European Union Puts Out the Welcome Mat for Once-Aloof Iceland (nytimes.com)
- Iceland’s pain moves closer to EU gain (telegraph.co.uk)
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Add comment July 28, 2009
Enterprise underlines Commission’s naked ambition
I am sure this video shall spark debate, as I guess it is supposed to.
Alas the story would have been so different had Sarah passed the concours.
Is it me or is the idea of the Commission putting out a video (even a good one) to promote careers in the private sector ironic on so many levels?
James
4 comments May 11, 2009
Rubbish ideas and the future of Europe
- Image by World Economic Forum via Flickr
Elections are in the air, as is the Commission, its President and the European economy. So what better way to get a strategic direction for where Europe should focus its efforts than an online survey of citizens. After all, we can’t make more of a meal of it than 20, or for that matter 27, heads of state and government.
A rather Jed Bartlett looking* (hands in pockets, relaxed look about him) President Barroso asks you to tell him what you think at tellbarroso.eu
Undertaking to “tell Barroso” is, I found, a relatively painless experience and could be described more as an online brainstorm than a survey. You are asked to write down the first things that come to mind tp a simple question about what Europe should be concentrating on. Now remember folks, at this first stage in the “ideation” process it’s quantity not quality that matters. Stick to individual words or phrases and keep ‘em coming. As with your traditional brainstorm, you then get the chance to expand upon your ideas in the comments box. Lots of opportunity for the ramblers amongst us to ramble, at length.
Finally and perhaps most pleasurably you get to see other people’s brainwaves and then place those you don’t like in a rubbish bin. Fantastic – there was lots of trash and I was sorting it (for energy recovery, you understand).
Now I’m a little bit of a novice at netiquette, but in normal life one is not allowed to commit such a heresy as binning ideas once they’ve been written on a post-it and placed on the wall. In traditional brainstorms ideas are all good and should be generally built upon, expanded, challenged and improved through debate and discussion. Under no circumstances should one suggest that the idea your colleague has just come up with is infantile rubbish deserving only of the waste paper bin/recycling tray. It got me thinking though, if such a heresy were allowed within the EU institutions wouldn’t our legislation be just a little bit better? Now that’s an idea someone should tell Barroso about.
James
*It occurs to me that Jed Bartlett does this at the end of Series 2 of the West Wing – when he decides to run for re-election. Apologies to all readers who are not addicted to the West Wing. May we suggest picking up the box set of all seven formidable seasons on Amazon for 50 quid, you’ll never be stuck for an evening’s entertainment ever again.
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Add comment April 1, 2009
Green Week goes live
Word up to the European Commission’s DG Environment, who launch this year’s Green Week shebang with obligatory webpages on Europa, YouTube channel (featuring as yet a review of 2008), blog (Dimas fittingly recycled) and a Flickr page. It also features handy buttons to download in the press corner.
The event takes place 23-26 June in the Charlemagne building on Rue de la Loi and the topic in this year of Copenhagen is of course climate change.
You can find out more here.
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Add comment March 10, 2009
