It outlines the growing attention around European Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding’s latest crusade: increasing quotas for the percentage of women in the executive boardroom.

The European Parliament advised EU businesses last week to increase numbers of women in their boardrooms by next year or face a mandatory quota of 40% by 2020. While their recommendation is still non-binding at the moment, should voluntary efforts to increase female representation at the highest levels of EU businesses fail by next year, they encourage the European Commission to table legislation to make it binding. And here is where Commissioner Reding steps in.

As the FT points out, she has a tough job ahead. While some countries such as France, the Netherlands and Spain support binding quotas – Norway already has them – some expect the UK and others to resist. Social legislation has always been an uphill battle in Europe and this will be no exception. Yet if anyone can do it (I’m agreeing with the FT here), Viviane Reding can. You can keep track of the pledges she is collecting here.

As a colleague and I just discussed, were we policymakers, we’d be more eager for the social benefits that enable women in the workplace to come through (wide spread access to good childcare, proper maternity & paternity leave, etc). But obviously this isn’t enough.

Bottom line is, I have a general mistrust of quotas – but I more or less support any initiatives that try to even out the playing field…

But let’s open it up: what do you think?

Jess

PS – Looking forward to following what groups that regularly talk about such issues in Brussels think about the initiative, including the European Women’s Lobby and WIIS Brussels.

Much has been said and written on the European Citizens’ Initiative. Discussions however have mainly focused on whether it would be a success or a failure, the potential risks of the instrument – more than the opportunities – and what its impact could be on the EU decision-making equilibrium. Few commentators wondered whether there had already been pan-European petitions that reached one million signatures, and if there had been, how they managed to do so. We had already raised this point in the panel we organised in October at the Personal Democracy Forum with MEP Marietje Schaake, Julius van de Laar from Avaaz, and Euroblogger Jon Worth.

As we like the ECI so much, we have pursued our analysis in our brand new FH paper, looking specifically at how pan-European petitions have managed to gather one million signatures in the past, how the Internet has helped them do so –our favourite topic- and what the first European Citizens’ Initiatives might be about. Yes we are making predictions! Let’s see in two years from now if we got them right. I’m personally very curious to see how the European Citizens’ Initiative will evolve. Will it be overexploited or hardly used at all? Only time will tell. One thing is for sure: it has the potential to change the well-established dynamics of the Brussels bubble and take us out of our comfort zone.

Laurence

This is only the first step in what is likely to be a long and arduous process.  But let’s leave the nitty gritty of the document to the army of lawyers, managers, government officials and activists that are undoubtedly leaving no syllable unturned in assessing the legal, business and fundamental rights ramifications of what the Commission is proposing.

I for my part would just like to take a step back and have a look at what exactly we are trying to achieve.  In today’s modern and digital society, data has become a valuable traded commodity.  An entire industry has been built around the ability to store, ship, sell and manage all forms of individual data and its broader implications on privacy have not yet been fully comprehended. This however is where the problem begins –  our modern societies thirst for information and our quest for efficiency, convenience and security has come into direct conflict with our own proclaimed fundamental rights.

But where does that leave Europe’s citizens and is a trade off needed?  Consumers and citizen’s are becoming increasingly transparent not only through their own behavior in the internet but new technologies allow for a more targeted tracking, profiling and storing of data. In return consumers receive convenient and tailored user experience, services and applications.

The question remains, can Europe tailor a regime that will ensure citizen’s privacy in the digital age without dampening innovative technologies and services?

Or will a child cry out that the Emperor is naked?

Philip

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Related articles by Zemanta

• 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)

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

Related articles by Zemanta

• European Union Puts Out the Welcome Mat for Once-Aloof Iceland (nytimes.com)
• Iceland’s pain moves closer to EU gain (telegraph.co.uk)