European Union

WB
Area of Freedom, Security and Justice
Les notaires en Pologne, dressant un certificat d’hérédité à la demande conjointe de toutes les parties à la procédure notariale, ne sont pas des « juridictions » au sens du règlement sur les successions et, par conséquent, ledit certificat n’est pas une « décision » en matière de successions

Steinhoff and Others v ECB
Law governing the institutions
The General Court rejects the action for compensation brought against the ECB by private investors who suffered losses as a result of the restructuring of the Greek public debt in 2012

Fellow Euroblogger and friend EuroPasionaria started a blog chain to discuss what has happened in EU blogging and social media in the past decade, especially since the 2009 European Parliament elections until the 2019 European Parliament elections. After La Oreja de Europa has posted her views – in Spanish – here are my five cents in English.

If you ask me what has changed since 2009, I can clearly say that the European Parliament elections of 2009, 2014 and 2019 feel fundamentally different. And they are fundamentally different when it comes to my own use of social media, my interests and focus, and the way in which myself and others use blogs, Twitter or Youtube.

Here’s the short summary:

• In 2009, I was just a citizen blogger, following EU politics through the digital lens of my blog while living in Chisinau (Moldova) and in Potsdam (Germany). Everything was new about these elections, most of it was exciting (especially online), and some of it was disappointing. But blogging was at the heart of social media, and so I lived European politics through a medium that back then was the centre of digital discussions.

• In 2014, I was a professional activist with Transparency International in Brussels, following the pre-electoral process from a watchdog and advocacy perspective. I did so both online and offline, because I was in Brussels and could meet people, but I knew the strength of social media. I travelled through seven EU countries for a European project to discuss with students, voters and activists; I used Twitter, blogging (incl. on Tumblr), Facebook, Youtube and traditional media work to cover our work and get our message out “to Europe”. Social media was mainly work.

• And this year, in 2019, I’m an academic in Munich with a focus on the United Nations and on European Union politics. I’m following the EU elections process mainly via social media (mostly Twitter, some Facebook and some Youtube) and online media. I watch all this as a citizen and voter, and to some degree an academic. As an academic, I’m invited to speak at local events and media outlets about the EU. I share my expertise and my 10-year perspective and profit from watching all of this online for the past decade, but I’m far, far less involved than in the previous two elections.

Notably, however, we are also very far from where we were in 2009:

Earlier today, I sent a WhatsApp message to my grandmother to tell her to listen to a radio show tonight in which I discuss about Europe and the EU elections. I sent an email to the rest of my family with the podcast link. And I’m discussing with people on Facebook and Twitter about the show, before the recording and after. In 2009, this would have been unthinkable, both technologically but also when it comes to discussing with so many people about EU politics.

With this in mind, let me answer Europasionaria’s question about how the last 10 years have changed EU social media and how this has changed us:

Did (some of) our dreams for the EU online sphere come true? Did reality exceed expectations? Or are we old(er), bitter & disappointed?

Honestly speaking, I’m quite happy with where we are today in terms of social media and in terms of how I look at the EU.

I’m clearly not 25 anymore, but I’m definitely not bitter. Social media is light years from where it was in 2009, and only my EU enthusiasm has changed into a more realistic view of EU life and life in general. But knowing the past 10 years also makes me more optimistic about what I see (despite the multitude of crises).

Thanks – or due – to the Eurocrisis, thanks or due to the humanitarian crisis that made migration the most salient topic of the last years, and after three years of Brexit discussions, European topics are everywhere. They are online and offline, and we discuss them across borders on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube – and wherever else others are discussing them (like in WhatsApp groups, in the comments below news media articles…).

If you think back at 2009, this is way beyond what we tried to build as young – mostly idealistic – social-media savvy (or so we thought) online citizens.

Youtube videos that everyone had seen did not exist (outside the Youtuber bubble); Netflix shows that everyone would watch were not yet there, so there were no memes we could play around with; and the Eurosceptic trolls spent most of their time on EU-focused blogs in the UK, so life was mostly peaceful, but confined to a small euroblogger bubble.

At that time, we just started to become the very first truly transnational digital EU politics community. Some of us had already been around a few years (see reports by Nosemonkey, Jon Worth, A Fistful of Europe, Blogactiv/Mathew; or see Grahnlaw), some like myself had just started using blogs in the year before the 2009 EP elections. Twitter was gaining in traction in 2009, and so did the hashtags #eu09, #ep09 or #ue09, but this was not the large transnational community that it is now.

For myself, the road to the European Parliament elections 2009 was the main reason to start Euroblogging. My alter ego published 120 blog posts between July  2008 until June 2009 about the process leading up to the European Parliament elections, including a failed Spitzenkandidaten process that would only come to life in 2014 (and is rather unimportant this time around again).

It was the period in which I got to know many of my later fellow Bloggingportal.eu editors, most of them just online, but some like Jon Worth and Kosmopolit also offline. This was thanks to the Th!nk About It blogging competition organised by the European Journalism Centre, that brought together European bloggers from around the EU who blogged about the elections. I wasn’t in the competition, but I got invited and for the first time in my life did see what it meant when a community that had formed only online materialised in real life.

This online-goes-offline seems so normal today in a world where people communicate for months and years on Youtube or Twitter or Instagram before they might ever meet in real life. 10 years ago this was still a novelty (at least for me and for an EU-focused sphere), and I felt privileged to be part of this.

Thanks to us Eurobloggers speaking at re:publica 2010, I got in touch with the EU transparency and open data scene. (I would return to re:publica in 2012 to talk about the “Euroblogsphere”, which by then had already passed its peak.)

Thanks to these contacts, I became a volunteer activist with Transparency International in Brussels in mid-2010. I helped set up their blogging activities and I started their Twitter account. The account @TI_EU today has almost 19k followers – so my early experience in the digital EU sphere was useful in helping to spread the ideas of a more transparent and ethical EU.

What this means is that being part of this early community of EU bloggers was helpful beyond myself. I hope.

Thanks to my blogging, I became part of the group of people who started to bring European civil society online. From 2012 to 2014, I would do this professionally while working in the EU office of Transparency International.

This did not feel the same as blogging and tweeting in private about the EU, but it was nonetheless important and necessary. In a world where the EU institutions and politicians also started to become more professional online, they needed the counterbalance of an active civil society online! So while I still used social media “in private” (outside my professional activism) – as the hundreds of posts on this blog demonstrate – I started to see EU social media through professional glasses. But EU glasses nonetheless.

Fast forward to today: Social media is so much more for me than the EU bubble that I used to be part of between 2008-2014.

Today, I’m using social media to talk about my work as an academic (mainly on Twitter and this blog). I listen to what’s happening around the world (on Facebook, Youtube, Twitter). I communicate with UN and EU officials, I discuss with people here in Munich about what’s going on in Bavaria. I argue with others in Australia or Poland or Mexico about recent developments, in changing communities depending on the topic. Most of these people do neither care about the EU nor about the UN, so using social media today feels much less bubbly than I felt as a Euroblogger.

In this way I agree with La Oreja de Europa:

Nuestro resumen sobre lo que ha cambiado desde las elecciones de 2009 a 2019 es que quizás ya no hay ese sentimiento de orgullo que nos hacía escribir sobre la Unión Europea para poder mostrar a los ciudadanos europeos lo que está hacía por nosotros.

*machine translated* [this also did not exist 10 years ago!]

Like her, I don’t feel the urge anymore to write about EU issues just because nobody writes about them. Everything is written about today, EU-related or not, so mostly it’s enough to just share what others are writing (or vlogging), you don’t have to write about it just for the sake of it.

And despite all of this, I still do feel connected to the community of fellow EU bloggers that we were back in 2009.

Ten years after the first digital European elections – at a time when we were part of a small group of early social media users focused on EU affairs – I still appreciate what we did when EU social media was still comparatively small and nerdy.

Some of you fellow bloggers have become and stayed friends, even if we meet less frequently today. Some of us have died way too early, but are not forgotten!

So thank you, European Parliament elections 2019, as dull as you may be (in some ways like 2009, in others totally different), for bringing us together again, and do what nobody does anymore: a European blog chain!

The post has been slightly edited after the first version.

The post #EU09vs19 – What has changed in the EU social media sphere since 2009? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

Commission v Hungary
Free movement of capital
In cancelling the rights of usufruct over agricultural land in its territory that are held, directly or indirectly, by nationals of other Member States, Hungary has failed to fulfil its obligations arising from the principle of the free movement of capital and the right to property guaranteed by the Charter

Poland v Commission
State aid
The General Court annuls the Commission’s decisions concerning the Polish tax on the retail sector

Nope

I spent most of the day yesterday hanging around* a big bunch of procurement managers: I was very well-behaved and even at the point of speaking to a trio of Chief Procurement Officers I didn’t make a Star Wars droid joke.

This was an annual world congress for such individuals and it was very instructive to get a different take on Brexit from them, while enjoying the superior catering afforded by corporate sponsorship.

The first big message was that Brexit has become ever more normalised into their practice. It was a shock, it required attention (very substantial in many cases), but now it’s just hanging there and there’s no much to be done.

Most obviously, the contingencies for no-deal were put in place for 29 March, so the big leg-work on that front has been done. There was a recognition that those plans would need on-going attention, especially as a short-term contracts for stockpiling come to an end, but the procedural side was taken as being more permanent.

The second message was that Brexit sits within a much wider context of change. Sustainability got a lot of discussion as a factor that would be shaping every aspect of the business cycle in profound ways, from production to packaging to consumption patterns. To listen to the CPO of a large brewer talk about moving from mega-breweries to micro-breweries where customers will bring their own glass to one around the corner was to be struck be a shift that is much more disruptive to practice than what happens to UK membership of the EU.

But the third message was that the ideal posture on all this was agility: being willing and able to jump into new modes and exploit the opportunities that come with change.

I’ll admit that this is where I part company with the procurement crowd, mainly because politics isn’t like business.

One of the great strengths of capitalism has been its willingness to turn over what there is and offer something new, be that a product or a process. If it produces outputs that are more attractive to consumers then it wins out, propagating out and pushing the old to the side, to atrophy and die.

But representative democracy offers a different approach. It allows (indeed, promotes) the competition of ideas, but within a closely-bounded market. Changing the rules of the game requires the buy-in of all involved, because the rules are there to protect everyone’s interests.

All of which explains better why business seems to have moved on when politics hasn’t on Brexit.

The former sees uncertainty and costs and seeks to minimise both: initially that meant generally being pro-Remain, but then switching post-referendum to the likely course of leaving, and more recently talking more about simply making a decision, so that the contingency plans can either be used or rolled up.

Politics also wants to minimise costs, but here the costs are multi-directional: it’s not simply (or even primarily) an economic calculation. The choice itself on whether to leave with a deal, leave without one or no leave at all was follow success in political decision-making: you can’t have all three and then see which is working out best.

If business (or these procurement managers, at least) talk of agility, I’d talk of resilience: how to make political decisions that permit the rules of the game to endure?

This isn’t to criticise business, but to note that it’s all too easy to draw across learning points that don’t really work in a new context.

That said, there is one commonality that informs both worlds: you have to work with what you have. It’s great to dream of a different world where the problems you face don’t exist, but that doesn’t make them go away.

Instead you have take things as they come and build from there. the best path to the world-as-we-want-it-to-be is from the world-as-it-is, not the world-as-we-hoped-it-would-be.

* – To be clear, they’d invited me.

The post A business view of Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Moreira v EUIPO - Da Silva Santos Júnior (NEYMAR)
Intellectual and industrial property
The General Court of the EU confirms that registration of the mark ‘NEYMAR’ by a third party is invalid

M, C-77/17 X, C-78/17 X
Area of Freedom, Security and Justice
The provisions of the Refugee Directive relating to the revocation of and refusal to grant refugee status on grounds connected with the protection of the security or the community of the host Member State are valid

CCOO
SOPO
Member States must require employers to set up a system enabling the duration of daily working time to be measured

The 2015 European Agenda on Migration envisaged a significant role for FRONTEX, EASO, and EUROPOL, the function to operationally implement the Agenda and closely cooperate in the management of the hotspots established in Italy and Greece. Due to the extraordinary migratory pressure at the external borders of these frontline Member States, FRONTEX, EASO, and EUROPOL were called to support the competent national authorities “on the spot”.

EUROPOL is present in the hotspots and actively participates with FRONTEX and EASO. EUROPOL’s core mission in the hotspots is threefold: to reinforce the exchange of information, verify such intelligence within the relevant databases, and deploy teams of experts on the ground. The objective is to ensure a comprehensive European law enforcement approach and operationally assist the concerned frontline Member States in averting and combating migrant smuggling, human trafficking, and terrorist networks.

To achieve such an objective, EUROPOL is namely responsible for fast-tracking information, improving the national investigations, conducting operational and strategic analysis, being present at the screening of the arrived migrants, and providing forensic support in the hotspots. However, Regulation 2016/794 on EUROPOL does not mention the operational role that the agency plays in the hotspots.

The main tool employed by EUROPOL to assist the concerned Member States in the hotspots was the JOT-MARE, followed by the EMSC. Since February 2016, the EMSC has assisted the competent national enforcement authorities by providing secure-information, sharing opportunities and strategic and operational analysis, gathering evidence, and undertaking investigations against the smuggling networks facilitating the illegal entries, onward secondary movements, and residence of migrants in the EU. Not only is the EMSC active in supporting the national authorities in exchanging intelligence and investigating existing criminal networks operating in the Mediterranean, but EUROPOL’s officials, jointly with FRONTEX and the concerned Member State, also debrief on the migrants at the hotspots and assess the data gathered from the interviews and investigations.

The second activity report of the EMSC details that the Center has assisted the competent national enforcement authorities in cases related to migrant smuggling and document fraud through: forensic support in relation to questioned documents and materials used to produce suspicious documents, on-the-spot technical support to provide assistance and expertise in investigating forged documents and dismantling illegal print shops, and permanent deployments in the hotspots. The officials of EUROPOL deployed in the hotspots offer expertise, coordinate operational meetings, provide analytical support, and perform cross-checks against the databases of the agency (see here).

The key operational novelty of the EMSC, which is not established in Regulation 2016/794 on EUROPOL, consists in deploying investigative and analytical support teams (EMIST and EMAST) on the ground, as well as guest officers to undertake systematic secondary security checks and support Greece in the hotspots. The presence of EUROPOL in the hotspots is permanent and the EMIST and EMAST are responsible for delivering regional operational support and serving as a platform to ensure trustworthy relationships with national authorities.

EUROPOL’s Review 2016-2017 highlights the strong operational capacity provided by the agency in the hotspots and particularly in the secondary security checks undertaken by the deployed officials. Specifically, it is pointed out that “EUROPOL experts worked side-by-side with national authorities at the EU’s external borders to strengthen security checks on the inward flows of migrants, to disrupt migrant smuggling networks and identify suspected terrorists and criminals”.

In the hotspots, EUROPOL advises and operationally assists the competent national enforcement authorities in effectively implementing their executive measures, to both dismantle the smuggling and trafficking networks and to combat other serious criminal activities (i.e. organized crime and terrorism). Despite EUROPOL’s operational role, in the recently adopted Regulation of EUROPOL there is not a single mention of this agency’s operational powers in the hotspots, unlike in the EBCG and the future EUAA Regulations. Hence, the total secrecy surrounding the operational support of EUROPOL in the hotspots and the lack of any legal reference to the activities of the agency on the ground prevent the general public from assessing the actual implications, meaning, and extent of EUROPOL’s operational support.

This lack of transparency was brought to the European Ombudsman in 2017 as part of my PhD research. Unfortunately, on 10 May 2019, the Ombudsman agreed with Europol’s explanation that the disclosure (full and partial) of documents regarding the agency’s operational activities in the Greek and Italian hotspots “would risk prejudicing the effectiveness and the outcome of the ongoing, but also future, operations in the hotspots”.That is, while Europol is undertaking operational activities in the hotspots, citizens cannot have access to what the agency does in practice and to what extent it operationally assists the national authorities in illegal migrant smuggling investigations. This lack of transparency is clearly problematic in order to effectively hold the agency accountable.

The post The Lack of Transparency Surrounding EUROPOL and the Hotspots appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

As Poland is heading for a General Elections in the Autumn this year, both the governing and opposition political parties are treating the European Parliament election, that is only weeks away, as secondary to the General Elections.

Yes, both sides are running a campaign to mobilise their activists and supporters to increase their share of the seat in the EP.

However, as far as I can observe, the primary concern for both sides is whether the EP election results can tell them anything about how well they will do in the autumn elections and if the EP election could be used to galvanise their support bases to attract more votes.

Plus while the governing political party the Law and Justice Party (PiS) escapes from offering any concrete policy proposals to the real issues of Poland in the EU during this election campaign. The opposition political parties are not any better; generally, they miss their focus by paying unnecessary attention to PiS and its shortcomings and somewhat exaggerating their criticisms, instead of putting forward their agenda.

The PiS, which has been in power since 2015, is in constant search of bogeyman in shaping its campaign narrative. Rather than concentrating on the real issues the EU and the Polish government is clashing over.

For instance on the top of the list is the effective application of EU law, from the protection of investments to the mutual recognition of decisions in areas as diverse as child custody disputes or the execution of European Arrest Warrants. The Polish government does also clash with Brussels over environmental protection and migration.

Only in April this year, the European Commission has launched an infringement procedure against Poland regarding the new disciplinary regime for judges. While the government has two months to respond, so far the PiS turned a blind on this.

Instead, Jarosław Kaczyński gave an alarming speech about Euro. He said Poland is not going to join the Euro before its economy is as big as of Germany and demanded that the opposition political parties take a similar stance of his.

As far as his past Eurosceptic policy positions are concerned, this was not a surprise; having made this speech during the EP elections campaign period, however, was not a coincidence.

Since he is not able to campaign on the real issues concerning the future of Poland in the EU, he worked out a way out of this predicament by creating an issue that was not part of the public debate.

At the EU level, it is well known to everyone that there is not an appetite in the EU for the expansion of the Eurozone, but for someone in Poland who is not following daily EU related news might think that joining the Euro can be severe and potentially could jeopardise his or her living standards. Hence Kaczyński would win their vote.

One other issue, which the PiS has lately been vehemently campaigning on, do concern the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities in Poland. Kaczyński’s response to a question about a movie called Kler (The Clergy), a 2018 film, which depicts fictional clerics as drunken child abusers, sparked a debate about the PiS’s position on the LGBT in Poland and how in line it is with the EU’s expected standards.

He said:

“We are dealing with a direct attack on the family and children – the sexualisation of children, that entire LBGT movement, gender. This is imported, but they today threaten our identity, our nation, its continuation and therefore the Polish state.”

Additionally, Rafal Trzaskowski’s, Mayor of Warsaw, approval of the declaration in favour of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights raised the tension.

While politicians are expected to bring people of different backgrounds, sexual orientations, races and religions together, Kaczyński chose to appeal to the religious and conservative sentiments of the Polish voters. In contrast, Kaczyński not only disregarded the real issue, which is the rights of the LGBT communities in Poland but also has thrown the blame on to another agent, in this case, it is the Western countries.

Moving on to the opposition political parties; five of the most prominent opposition political parties including the Civic Platform (PO) as well as the Modern party (Nowoczesna), Polish People’s Party (PSL), Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), and Greens have joined forces in order to challenge the PiS at the EP election, which is called European Coalition.

Either the campaigning tactics used by the opposition alliance group or due to the lack of vision on the opposition’ side, the only campaign slogan that is coming through is “Polexit”, which is ironic because I live on Brexitland, which makes me and my sources of information more susceptible to any talks of having another member states living the EU.

Broadside at the PiS leadership was launched as quick as at the European Coalition’s election campaign takeoff, claiming that the PiS’s policy choices are making Poland close to exit the EU.

For instance, Grzegorz Schetyna, the leader of the PO, said: “there is a great choice ahead: either strong, rich, democratic Poland in a strong Europe or what we see today — party state, on its way to leave the EU”.

I believe that the opposition political parties do usually give a good kick to the governing political parties when they utilise their campaign time in explaining to the electorate what they are proposing to do if and when they are elected, instead of attacking the opposition political party head-on.

One reason for this is that the governing political parties are in a better place in being familiar to the electorate since they are in power and they are the decision makers.

Thus either for good or bad, the electorate knows the policy choices of the governing political parties while being vaguely informed of what the opposition political parties are standing for.

Consequently, it would have been in the interest of the Coalition Europe, had they explained to the electorate what they see as the real issues facing Poland, what they propose to do about these problems and how they plan to deliver on these proposals.

Of course, it does not make me an EU legal expert, but in the past few months, I have been researching about the evolution of the EU’s the Rule of Law framework and the new and the existing rule of law governing mechanisms, used by the EU.

So as far as I can understand that there is not a single mechanism that connects the membership of the EU to Rule of Law practice in a member state, which makes the Coalition Europe’s argument about Polexit baseless, ingenious and careless, to say least.

Politics at this level and of this seriousness should be well rehearsed and addressing the real issues, instead of creating one of their own. Only then elections can be won.

The post #EP2019—Insights from Poland: the PiS vs the Coalition Europe (IV) appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The Financial Times has published an article which provides the raw truth for the Remain movement: Britain’s Remainers are too divided.

It’s something I have been complaining about for some years. My disappointment in the inability of Remainers to work effectively together has moved to frustration, to anger, and now to resigned despair. Truly, deep, despair.

By not working together, we are giving a bigger chance of a crushing victory to the direct enemy of Remain, Nigel Farage’s ‘Brexit Party’, which we should be under no illusion, has enormous and unbridled ambitions to turn our country into an isolated, nasty, right-wing state.

Three years before the referendum, I asked Dirk Hazell, leader of the strongly pro-Remain European People’s Party in the UK (UK EPP) what he thought would be the likely scenario if there was a referendum in which Brexit won. He replied:

“England would get more like Spain under the dictator Franco, but with worse weather.”

At the time, I thought this was ridiculously far-fetched. Now, I am not so sure. The threat of the far-right in the UK is serious, but I fear that it is not being taken seriously enough.

The Remain parties and groups, being splintered, ego-driven, brand-orientated and power-hungry, have hopelessly underestimated the threat of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.

Remainers lack a true realisation that only by working together, with a common cause, can there be the greatest chance of decisively defeating both Farage and Brexit.

Credit needs to be given to the LibDems for reaching out to the other pro-Remain parties to try and achieve some sort of collaboration, but their overtures were rebuffed.

It was Nigel Farage that caused the referendum to happen in the first place.

He promised “an earthquake” before the previous European elections in 2014, and he delivered. His UKIP party won that election with more MEP seats than any other UK party.

Consequently, the Tories, terrified that UKIP would steal their power base, responded by promising an in/out EU referendum in their manifesto for the general election in the following year, 2015 (which David Cameron never expected to win outright).

Labour and the LibDems did not offer a referendum, and if Labour had won the 2015 election, we would not now be on the road to Brexit.

Brexit was never previously a mainstream call in the years and decades leading up to the referendum. Leavers were always only in a minority, on the far extremes and side-lines of the Tory and Labour Parties.

Now, they are in charge.

Most people in Britain don’t want Brexit, they never did. Only a minority of registered voters voted for Leave (just 37%).

In most democracies across the world that hold referendums, such a minority vote could never have resulted in Leave winning, as a minimum threshold, or ‘super majority’, would have been required for a Brexit victory.

Now, all polls show that more people in Britain want us to Remain in the EU than leave.
That’s been the case in over 60 consecutive polls from different organisations since the 2017 general election: Britain doesn’t want Brexit. It’s most unlikely that all those polls could be wrong.

Yet, a low turnout in the European elections, combined with a divided, splintered front by the Remain movement, could give an unnecessary win to the Brexit Party.

Yes, the European elections are run on a form of proportional representation in the UK, but not a very good version of it.

You don’t get a second or third choice. You can only vote for one party. With several Remain parties represented on your ballot paper, it means that some Remain parties may not even reach the minimum threshold needed to get a seat.

Hugo Dixon, editor of Infacts, argues that a key test will be the total number of votes cast for all five Remain parties taken together. That will give a good indication of how strong the popular momentum is behind staying in the EU, he says.

But it will be seats that truly count, more than the number of votes, and if the five Remain parties had agreed to work together in the European elections, they could have got many more seats for the same number of votes.

It’s a truly lost opportunity.

The polling company, YouGov, has calculated that if an anti-Brexit pact had been formed between the LibDems, the Greens and Change UK for the European election, in say a notional 6-seat constituency, the pro-Remain alliance would have won two seats, the same as the Brexit party.

Instead, YouGov argues, without an anti-Brexit alliance, the Brexit party will take three seats in such a constituency, Labour two and the Conservatives one.

As the Financial Times reported:

‘The forthcoming European elections ought to be a golden opportunity for British politicians who want a second referendum and, ultimately, a reversal of the Brexit process.

‘But unfortunately for the Remain side, it’s an opportunity that is not being fully grasped.

‘With a little under two weeks to polling day, most of the campaigning momentum lies with Nigel Farage and his slick Brexit party.

‘His movement is united around his image; it is focused on an unrelenting message about a hard Brexit; and it is attracting large numbers of disillusioned Conservatives to big rallies.’

The newspaper added:

‘By contrast, there are no fewer than five parties across the UK advocating Remain and a second referendum. These are the Liberal Democrats, Change UK, the Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru. And thus far they are making a lot less noise.’

Of course, the pro-Remain ‘noise’ could be much louder and more effective if allies worked together.

A serious example of ‘not-working-together’ is the failure of pro-Remain parties to coalesce around a single candidate in the forthcoming Peterborough by-election on 6 June.

It was thought that pro-Remain parties would all support Femi Oluwole, a young and dynamic Remainer activist. But the accord fell through.

Remainers need to practice the ideology of the European Union: working together.

Why have Remainers learnt so little since the catastrophic loss of the referendum in 2016, that frankly, Remain should have won, if only they had been better organised, and united?

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
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The post Remainers unite! Divided we fail appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The truth is out: the EU does not exist. It’s a hoax, made up by a vast conspiracy. I have evidence. You can look it up on my Facebook page.

I always believed that the story of a French foreign affairs minister proposing a coal and steel community under a yet-to-be defined supranational high authority (a what?) lacked all credibility.

What I suspected is now revealed to be true: I can finally confirm the Schuman Declaration is fake news. It never took place. Turns out Mister Schuman had well planned to read out his text, based on the draft by Jean Monnet, but he was prevented from doing so in the last minute.

It all started with a tweet by the leader of the ‘National Alliance’, the country’s main opposition party, which revealed what the government had plotted in all secrecy: ‘HOW SCHUMAN THE TRAITOR FOOLS THE PEOPLE – MINERS AND STEELWORKERS SOLD TO THE GERMANS!!!’. It went viral in no time.

Simultaneously, a video was anonymously uploaded on YouTube, a short edited clip showing Jean Monnet in government circles in London, Washington, and Bonn. The pictures were accompanied by a voice-over describing the conspiracy instigated by this ‘citizen of nowhere’ portrayed as ‘lobbyist on the payroll of the global business élites’. Shared by a multitude of Facebook feeds and WhatsApp groups, it accumulated hundreds of thousands of hits in a few days only.

On the news channels and late-night shows, the polemic went wild. Experts, politicians and the usual talking heads came together in rightful indignation about the government’s dangerous initiative. One of the country’s best-known TV pundits shook his head in disbelief: ‘A supranational coal and steel community! They really have lost all sense of reality. Tomorrow they’ll come up with a single market, then they’ll propose open borders, and why not a common currency while we’re at it?’

In the surveys, Mister Schuman’s popularity reached unprecedented lows. The pollsters provided robust evidence of the French public’s growing distrust towards their political leaders, who were about to sell out the French social model and its entire industrial culture.

The final blow was dealt by one the most influential editorialists, for whom this ‘so-called proposition by Mister Schuman’ was nothing short of ‘the ultimate triumph of the ultra-liberalist ideology promoted by unelected technocrats like Mister Monnet’.

Facing spontaneous demonstrations in several cities calling for the immediate resignation of the government, as well as an online petition launched by the ‘France souveraine’ movement and signed by tens of thousands of angry citizens, Robert Schuman finally gave in and cancelled the conference initially scheduled for 9 May 1950.

This is the naked truth, whatever the #FakeNews want us to believe.

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Praxair MRC
SOPO
The calculation of compensation payments for dismissal and redeployment of an employee who is on part-time parental leave must be carried out on the basis of the full-time salary

Villar Láiz
SOPO
The Spanish legislation on the calculation of retirement pensions for part-time workers is contrary to EU law if it is found to be particularly disadvantageous to female workers

The people of the United Kingdom are lucky that they have a chance to vote in the Euopean parliamentary elections of 2019. If Theresa May and the Brexit wing of her party had had their way, then the United Kingdom would have left the EU on 29th March this year, excluding the British people from the opportunity to participate in European democracy. However the debate during the European election campaign must go beyond whether the UK leaves or stays in the EU, because the threat of climate change is even more dangerous than Brexit.

British participation in the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCHJU) is essential if the United Kingdom wants to fight climate change and build a post carbon economic future for itself. If the UK leaves the EU, then it is difficult to see how the country could continue being involved with the FCHJU, which is a European partnership. The purpose of the FCHJU is to make clean energy a reality, improve air quality, and reduce CO2 emissions by implementing hydrogen technologies coupled to renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, tidal, and wave power, while at the same time developing a new industry which will create employment.

The key to this new industry is “green hydrogen” produced by electrolysis using electricity from renewable sorces. Today modern PEM electrolysers allow electricity to be stored as hydrogen, so the energy source can be used when the supply from renewables does not meet demand. Research projects funded by the FCHJU have allowed electrolysers to become more powerful and efficient. According to a brochure produced by the FCHJU: “The second strand relates to FCHJU projects that have demonstrated the increasing power of electrolysers. This has risen from 100 KW, with project Don Quichote in 2011, to 6MW in the 2016 H2Future project.”

We are living through a hydrogen technology revolution, which is going to make diesel and petrol burning internal combustion engines obsolete, as more and more cars are built in the form of hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). If the United Kingdom is not a partner in the process, it will be left behind. When a Japanese car manufacturer is looking for a location to build FCEVs for the European market, it will choose a country involved in the FCHJU, because the FCHJU is a collaborative partnership of the European Commission, industry, and research, which is developing hydrogen transport and refuelling infrastructure.

The United Kingdom’s involvement with the FCHJU is essential in order for the country to meet its net-zero-emissions targets by 2050. Several important projects in the UK have already benefitted from FCHJU finding such as the BIG HIT project on Orkney. BIG HIT works in partnership with the European Marine Energy Centre Ltd (EMEC) in Orkney. The Orkney Islands are already self sufficient in electricity produced by tidal and wave power. BIG HIT follows on from the Orkney Surf n’ Turf initiative, producing hydrogen from wind and tidal energy using a 1MW capacity electrolyser on Shapinsay and a 0.5MW electrolyser on Eday. The hydrogen is then stored as a high pressure gas in tube-trailers which are transported by ferry to Kirkwell, where the gas is used to heat and power buildings and as fuel for a fleet of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles used by Orkney Islands Council.

Only political parties that are committed to the UK remaining within the EU could make a positive contribution to politicies that will help Europe fight climate change. The policy of the Eurpean Parliament should be to phase out all fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas across Europe before 2050. This can only be achieved if new green industies are created in the former coal and steel industrial regions of Europe to create employment and save the environment. The first policy of the newly elected European Parliament should be to ban shale gas fracking in Europe, and allow the green hydrogen industry to grow as part of the energy transition process.

Sources

https://www.fch.europa.eu/publications/fch-ju-success-stories

http://www.emec.org.uk/research/hydrogen-projects/

https://www.bighit.eu/about“>

https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/net-zero-the-uks-contribution-to-stopping-global-warming/

https://h2revive.eu/

http://www.itm-power.com/

©Jolyon Gumbrell 2019

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The European Parliament concluded the last plenary session of its 8th term on 18th April

Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

The EP concluded the last plenary session of its 8th term on 18th April

Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP