European Union

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Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

AMENDMENTS 1 - 20 - Draft opinion 2016 discharge: EU general budget - European External Action Service
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

On 7 December 2017, AFET/SEDE will hold an extraordinary joint hearing on North Korea to discuss the continuing deterioration of the security situation on the Korean Peninsula. The aim of the hearing is to assess the threat posed by the DPRK's nuclear and ballistic missile build-up and possible consequences for the global non-proliferation regime. Members will also analyse different options for the EU and international community to prevent further escalation of the crisis.
Location : Altiero Spinelli 5E-2
Further information
Draft programme
Hearing documents
Speaking notes by Antoine Bondaz, Research Fellow, FRS and Associate Professor, Sciences Po, Paris
Presentation by Ramón Pacheco Pardo, Korea Foundation VUB and King's College London
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

On 7 December 2017, AFET/SEDE will hold an extraordinary joint hearing on North Korea to discuss the continuing deterioration of the security situation on the Korean Peninsula. The aim of the hearing is to assess the threat posed by the DPRK's nuclear and ballistic missile build-up and possible consequences for the global non-proliferation regime. Members will also analyse different options for the EU and international community to prevent further escalation of the crisis.
Location : Altiero Spinelli 5E-2
Further information
Draft programme
Hearing documents
Speaking notes by Antoine Bondaz, Research Fellow, FRS and Associate Professor, Sciences Po, Paris
Presentation by Ramón Pacheco Pardo, Korea Foundation VUB and King's College London
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

AMENDMENTS 1 - 63 - Draft opinion The next MFF: Preparing the Parliament’s position on the MFF post-2020
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

On 14 December in Strasbourg, the Subcommittee will consider the amendments to the draft opinion establishing the European Defence Industrial Development Programme aiming at supporting the competitiveness and innovative capacity of the EU defence industry by Ioan Mircea PASCU (S&D).
Further information
Draft agenda and meeting documents
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

will take place on Thursday 14 December, 9:00-10:00 in Strasbourg and on 24-25 January 2018 in Brussels.

Organisations or interest groups who wish to apply for access to the European Parliament will find the relevant information below.

Further information
watch the meeting live
Access rights for interest group representatives
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Brexit Secretary David Davis will have the perfect excuse when Brexit destroys the United Kingdom.

Ignorance.

He admits he hasn’t done any in-depth research on the impact of Brexit. He doesn’t believe in it. He just believes in Brexit; it’s a faith for him.

Who needs facts when you’re a self-described “determined optimist”?

But Theresa May will have no such excuse. She’s known all along that Brexit will be bad for Britain. She said so before the referendum when she advised the country to vote against Brexit:

“Remaining inside the European Union does make us more secure, it does make us more prosperous and it does make us more influential beyond our shores.

“I believe the case to remain a member of the European Union is strong.

“I believe it is clearly in our national interest to remain a member of the European Union.”

Mrs May knew then, as she knows today, that the UK cannot get a better deal with the EU than the one we have now.

She knows, and so that makes her far more culpable than David Davis, who knows very little, and cares even less.

What’s more, Theresa May is in charge. She could put a stop to this farce at any time.

Or, if she really had principles, she could resign.

The EU is the world’s largest free trade area.

As a member, we receive huge benefits worth enormously more than the net annual membership fee of £7.1* billion a year (net amount calculated by the UK Statistics Authority) 

As a member, we enjoy free, frictionless trade with our biggest trading partner by far, right on our doorstep, where almost 50% of our exports go to and over 50% of our imports come from. Nowhere else in the world comes close to that.

Prime Minister Theresa is desperate to continue to enjoy similar membership benefits of frictionless trade with the EU after we have ended our membership, because she knows, more than David Davis, that our economy’s survival depends on it.

She has said she wants Britain to continue to enjoy membership benefits as an ex-member, without being part of the EU Single Market or customs union, without agreeing to the rules of the EU and its market, without being subject to the European Court of Justice to oversee those rules, and without paying anything to the EU for access.

She says she aims to achieve this with a new trade agreement with the EU that’s unique to us, that no other country in the world has ever achieved.

It’s never, ever going to happen. And Mrs May knows this.

Before the referendum she said clearly and loudly:

“It is not clear why other EU member states would give Britain a better deal than they themselves enjoy.”

And this weekend, EU officials have echoed a similar home truth. They have insisted that a bespoke deal more favourable to the UK than other non-EU nations was out of the question.

If the EU allowed the UK to have a better deal than members and non-members enjoy, it would effectively mean the end of the EU.

Already, non-EU countries are complaining that the UK should not have a better deal with the EU than they have.

This weekend an EU official close to the EU talks told The Guardian:

“We have been approached by a number of [non-member] countries expressing concerns and making it clear that it would constitute a major problem for them if suddenly the UK were to get better terms than they get.”

The official added that once the UK is out of the Single Market and customs union in March 2019, there could be no replication of the terms of the current trading relationship, or anything close to it, and no special treatment.

“It is not just an indication of some strange rigid principle. It is because things won’t work,” he said.

“First and foremost we need to stick to this balance of rights and obligations, otherwise we will be undermining our own customs union and single market. Second, we cannot upset relations with other third countries,” the official said.

“If we were to give the UK a very lopsided deal, then the other partners with whom we have been engaging and who entered into balanced agreements would come back and question those agreements.”

The Guardian also reported that Lord Kerr, the former diplomat who drafted the article 50 process for leaving the EU, said:

“The chances of concluding even a modest deal [like the EU- Canada deal] and getting it ratified in all 27 [EU]countries, during a two-year standstill period, verge on zero. So, the cliff-edge still beckons: the standstill only postpones it.”

The UK is heading for a sheer cliff edge, that will cause us all enormous damage, from which it may take decades to recover.

David Davis isn’t fully aware of this. He simply doesn’t know, and doesn’t want to know.

He’s walking us over the cliff with his eyes wide shut. The ‘determined optimist’ just thinks we’ll all be able to walk on air.

But Theresa May, she knows. She is fully aware of the dangers ahead.

She knows there is not a hope in hell of the UK getting anywhere near as good a deal with the EU as we have now.

She knows that leaving the EU is going to cause her country, our country, incalculable pain. Yet, she is still taking us over the cliff.

May is acting with malice aforethought. Davis is acting without any thought.

If you love our country, it is incumbent upon you to speak up.

There is only one group of people who can bring the nation to its senses, and urgently apply emergency brakes to the terrifying Brexit juggernaut now hurtling at speed towards the sheer cliff edge.

It’s our Members of Parliament. They are the ones who are supposed to represent us. They are the ones who are supposed to act in the best interests of the country.

This coming week the Commons will vote on an amendment to give MPs a “truly meaningful vote” on Brexit.

The “meaningful vote” amendment is the brainchild of former attorney general, Dominic Grieve, and calls for MPs to have a binding vote on the final Brexit deal before ministers can go ahead with Britain’s departure from the EU.

Senior figures from across the Commons told the Observer last night that MPs considering whether or not to support the amendment should “put the national interest, not party politics, first”.

For the love of Britain, please write to your MP today urging him or her to back this amendment (known as Amendment 7 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill).

Only those against Parliamentary sovereignty would not want our MPs to have a “truly meaningful’ say on our country’s future.

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The post The best possible outcome is to stop Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, says Britain can vote to change the Brexit deal at the next general election, scheduled for June 2022.

But that will be too late. Mr Gove made his comment for an article for The Telegraph because he’s clearly concerned that Theresa May’s Brexit has now gone from hard to soft.

This is about Mr Gove wanting a harder Brexit than Mrs May is now pursuing, and probably more importantly, (to him), he wants to be Prime Minister.

He said that if the May administration proves too cautious, the electorate will be able to demand a more radical split with the European Union at the next general election.

“The British people will be in control. If the British people dislike the agreement that we have negotiated with the EU, the agreement will allow a future government to diverge,” wrote Mr Gove.

But if the British people are really in control, then we should be able to vote on the direction of Brexit now, and not after the deal has been done.

There is confusion and disarray within the Cabinet this weekend as to exactly what Theresa May and her sidekick, David Davis, agreed with the EU’s negotiators.

The thorny issue of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland after Brexit was completely side-stepped, to be settled at a future date. And if it can’t be settled, the fallback position according to a joint statement by the UK government and the EU Commission will be for the UK to “maintain full alignment” with the rules of the Single Market and Customs Union.

But this option was completely ruled out this morning by cabinet member Andrea Leadsom, leader of the House of Commons, who stated categorically that the UK will be leaving the EU, and its Single Market and Customs Union.

Justice Minister Dominic Raab clearly outlined how unclear everything is when he said on BBC’s Newsnight last night:

“You can call it strategic ambiguity, you can call it constructive ambiguity… what I am admitting to you, very openly, and honestly, is that we have agreed principles, but that the details still need to be ironed out on this very bespoke set of issues around Northern Ireland which can’t be dealt with properly and responsibly outside of the context of the broader negotiation on customs and trade and all of those other things we have said all along.”

According to media reports, the UK will pay a “divorce settlement” of between £35 and £39 billion. But EU officials have indicated that no firm figure has yet been agreed.

Who really knows what’s going on?

Certainly not the Cabinet. According to The Telegraph Mrs May is now facing a ‘Cabinet battle’ over Britain’s future relationship with the EU amid claims that a “very soft” Brexit had now become inevitable.

Certainly not the British people. Nobody knew in last year’s referendum what Brexit really meant, and we still don’t know.

The government has admitted that they haven’t even done any in-depth research on the impact of Brexit.

Everyone is in the dark, and it’s into the darkness that the government is now taking us.

Our political leaders are blindly going ahead with Brexit because, they say, that’s what “the people” told them to do.

But “the people” were only offered the option of a one-word answer to the extremely complicated question of whether the UK should leave the EU.

Slightly more people chose ‘Leave’ as their one-word response rather than ‘Remain’. But it was not an informed response, because the country was not informed. On the contrary, we were misinformed.

When you have an operation, you have to sign a form that says you give ‘informed consent’ for the operation to go ahead.

Nobody gave informed consent for Brexit, and yet it is still going ahead.

It’s now time to properly inform the nation, and then for the nation to have an opportunity to properly inform our political masters of the true ‘will of the people’, based on the facts.

Only those who are against democracy would disagree.

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The post We need a new vote on Brexit now appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Unless a solution can be found on the question of avoiding a hard border post-Brexit between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, then the UK will be staying in the EU Single Market and customs union.

That on the face of it appears to be the outcome of last night’s frantic talks to reach a phase one agreement between the UK and the European Union. At least, that’s how paragraph 49 of the 15-page agreement is being interpreted.

You see, the thing is, nobody thought that Mrs May could find a magic way to have an open border on the island of Ireland once Britain leaves the EU. And the thing is, she hasn’t.

The issue has been hung in the air, to be resolved later. And if it can’t be resolved, then the only solution available will be to stay in the Single Market and customs union. Something that Theresa May had – foolishly – completely ruled out.

On the question of the Irish border, paragraph 49 of the agreement states:

“In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement.”

Labour MP Chuka Umunna explained what this means on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning regarding the specific issue of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland:

“Given that there was consensus in the House of Commons not to have special arrangements for one part of the UK… it’s clear that the fallback position is that we would remain in the Customs Union and the Single Market if at the end of this process they haven’t been able to resolve that issue.

“I mean that’s a radical altering of the government’s position to get to the next phase and it’s necessary, I’m not attacking them for that, I just don’t think they should have set those red lines in the first place.”

So, in summary, nothing’s really been settled yet. The hard talks are still to come.

The Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, was right to paraphrase Winston Churchill this morning, “This is not the end, but it is the end of the beginning.”

The Evening Standard reported that, “While opposition politicians questioned whether the deal would satisfy hardline Brexiteers on Conservative benches, UK business leaders said they were “breathing a huge sigh of relief”.

Whether that relief will be short-lived we will see in the difficult days, weeks and months ahead… but not years. There is less than a year to resolve the issues.

All Theresa May has done is to give herself some breathing space… but not much. 

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The post If the talks fail, will we stay in the Single Market? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Plenary session and committee meetings in Strasbourg

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

On 7 December 2017 the Council approved agreement between social partners on better working conditions for seafarers.

Main agenda items, approximate timing, public sessions and press opportunities.

Declaration by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union on the alignment of certain third countries with Council Decision (CFSP) 2017/2074 of 13 November 2017 concerning restrictive measures in view of the situation in Venezuela.

The Council agreed a general approach on a draft regulation on the European agency for the operational management of large-scale IT systems in the area of freedom, security and justice (eu-LISA).

On 7 December 2017, the Council agreed its position on accessibility for products and services directive.

On 7 December 2017, the Estonian Presidency of the Council and European Parliament representatives reached a provisional agreement on the reform of type-approval and market surveillance for motor vehicles.

The Council adopted the regulation improving the EU's instrument contributing to stability and peace.