European Union

Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU trade commissioner, during a press conference last week

Meet the Miculas: two twin brothers, Ioan and Viorel, whose battle with EU law will be of interest to anyone following Europe’s fitful trade negotiations.

The duo’s battle to save their beer-to-biscuits food empire in northern Romania may not seem an obvious proxy for an increasingly bitter fight over the EU’s trade deals with the US and Canada. But it cuts to the heart of one of the most politically contentious issues surrounding both trade accords: the status of international investment tribunals.

The brothers, who also hold Swedish citizenship, have had a terrible start to the week.

On Monday, the EU said they would have to repay all the subsidies they received to build up their business in the poor northern Romanian county of Bihor, on the Hungarian border. Their factories, which produce brands such as Servus beer and Rony biscuits, depended on what Brussels ruled was illegal state aid. According to their lawyers, the pair had decided to invest in a region as impoverished as Bihor on the understanding that Romania would subsidise them. On that pledge hang some 9,000 jobs.

Their business model, which predated Romania’s accession to the EU, came unstuck when Bucharest decided to join the European club. Competition authorities no longer allowed this kind of state largesse. In 2005, Bucharest cut the funds to the brothers in Bihor. (Romania finally joined in 2007).

This is where things get interesting legally, and the trade aficionados will start to realise something is afoot.

As Swedish citizens, the Miculas took their case to an international tribunal and won. At the end of 2013, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes awarded a settlement of $250m from the Romanian government because of its suspension of the subsidies. It was one of the largest sums ever awarded by an international investment tribunal. To Brussels, the award of damages meant state aid was now effectively being paid “through the back door”.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras at a cabinet meeting Sunday night in the Greek parliament

There has been lots of analysis on a new list of economic reforms that the Greek government sent to its bailout monitors over the weekend, including this incredibly comprehensive report from the Athens-based analytical website Macropolis.

But before everyone goes concluding that this is the final list that eurozone creditors will rule on, remember: nothing has been submitted yet to the eurogroup – the committee of 19 eurozone finance ministers that will ultimately rule on whether the reforms are sufficient to unlock the remaining €7.2bn in bailout funds Athens desperately needs.

And tonight’s “deadline” for bailout monitors to approve a submission, and then forward it onto the eurogroup, is nothing more than a self-imposed one; in reality, there is no deadline other than the date when Athens eventually runs out of cash.

People on both sides of the negotiations say that despite three days of talks, the list is not comprehensive as yet. “There was no such thing as an original list,” insists an official from one of the bailout monitoring institutions. “There were contributions, tables, pieces of paper.”

Indeed, on the Greek side, some involved in the discussions say a fuller, longer, and more detailed document is in the works. They argue the issue is not, as many among the bailout monitors claim, a lack of detail. The issue is getting all the details – some 72 reforms, according to one person in the Athens camp – into a well-organised document, in English, without mistakes in substance or politics.

As part of its wide-ranging digital single market strategy, the European Commission is considering introducing regulations which would bring about major changes for on-demand video providers like Netflix or Amazon Instant Video.

The Commission Vice-President for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip has firmly set his sights on the practice of geo-blocking, claiming it’s unfair that citizens across Europe can’t access the same digital services on equal terms. With the European Commission committed to ambitious legal steps in its digital single market strategy, geo-blocking is close to public enemy number one in the eyes of the EU’s executive branch.

Far too often, consumers find themselves redirected to a national website, or blocked. I know this from my own experience. You probably do as well….In the offline world, this would be called discrimination. In the online world, it happens every day.

Andrus Ansip, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Single Market

The Commission seems to think that distributors, like these on-demand services, are deliberately signing contracts to distribute content selectively across the EU, then using this as a defence for geo-blocking, by claiming they only have the rights to distribute certain content in certain territories or languages (for example, when Netflix launched in Belgium, you could only watch the massively popular House of Cards if you set your language to English, as they’d sold the French-language rights to another channel).

The Commission, considering this an unacceptable situation for consumers, is actively considering banning arrangements like these, which could leave online services with the simple choice of licensing content for all of Europe, or none of it.

Operators like Hulu and Crave TV, or even Singtel have the advantage of watching the situation play out from the outside, even if they won’t be able to ignore the EU market and its 500 million consumers forever.

And when they do enter, they along with those already present, will likely have to deal with a new European-level law governing the sale of digital content, as the Commission looks to update existing rules on e-commerce and introduce new ones. This could even include forcing content providers to strip back their contract terms, presenting consumers with only the most important ones in an easy-to-read format, instead of the 100+ page agreements we are used to seeing.

As the definitive form of the digital single market plan evolves, all eyes will be on the European Commission ahead of the planned release of the strategy on May 6th.

Tiernan Kenny