European Union

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The Agriculture and Fisheries Council takes place on 11 May 2017, in Brussels to adopt a general approach on technical measures in fisheries. The Council is also being informed on the MedFish4Ever strategy, the Ocean Conference and the situation of African swine fever in Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova.

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Chavez-Vilchez and Others
Citizenship of the Union
A third-country national may, as the parent of a minor child who is an EU citizen, rely on a derived right of residence in the EU

Chavez-Vilchez and Others
Citizenship of the Union
A third-country national may, as the parent of a minor child who is an EU citizen, rely on a derived right of residence in the EU

In March this year the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the European Union member states are not obliged, under EU law, to grant humanitarian visas to people who wish to enter their territory to apply for asylum. However, member states are free to do so on the basis of their national laws.

The background for the ruling was the case of a Syrian family challenging the refusal by Belgian authorities to grant them humanitarian visas at the Belgian embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.

Applications for humanitarian visas can indeed be made at an EU member state embassy in a non-EU country. These visas then allow asylum-seekers to legally access the state in question to lodge a formal asylum application.

The decision on the substance of the asylum application is made on that state’s territory. This practice enables asylum-seekers to reach the EU safely and legally without having to put their lives at risk by crossing the Mediterranean Sea in unseaworthy vessels and paying unscrupulous smugglers enormous amounts of money.

“Let’s face the facts: people will continue to come to Europe whether we try to shut them out or not”

There are currently no EU schemes for humanitarian visas per se. But under the EU Visa Code Regulation, which sets out the procedures for issuing short-stay and airport transit visas within the Schengen area, visas can be issued on “humanitarian grounds” at the discretion of individual states should the admissibility requirements for a visa application not be fulfilled.

Beyond the Visa Code provisions, member states can also issue national long-stay visas. But the concept of “humanitarian grounds” is undefined in the EU law and leaves it up to the individual member states to decide when ‒ or if ‒ they consider it necessary to issue a visa under such terms. In the majority of cases, as was the case with the Syrian family, this means that member states decide not to grant such a visa, neither under the Visa Code provisions nor under national schemes.

As the lead MEP (shadow rapporteur) on reform of the Visa Code Regulation for the Greens / European Free Alliance group in the European Parliament, I had hoped that the ECJ ruling would shed light on this issue, advancing the negotiations between the Parliament and national governments in the Council.

The process of reforming the Regulation has been going on for more than two years, but is now halted due to differing points of view on whether or not to include more specific provisions on humanitarian visas in the Visa Code. While the Council has argued that humanitarian visas have no place in the Visa Code due to the short-stay nature of visas, the European Parliament has tirelessly claimed the opposite.

“By securing safe and legal channels into the EU through humanitarian visas, we are saving lives that otherwise would be put at risk at sea”

I was disappointed but not surprised to learn that the court had kept status quo. The ruling does not encourage member states to take a bigger responsibility for people fleeing war and persecution, and it does not prevent refugees from taking lethal journeys to arrive on EU territory.

Let’s face the facts: people will continue to come to Europe whether we try to shut them out or not.

By securing safe and legal channels into the EU through humanitarian visas, as well as through labour migration, family reunification and academic programmes, we are saving lives that otherwise would be put at risk at sea. My conviction is that we need a fully-fledged EU humanitarian visa scheme and unified procedures for granting such visa applications. The ruling from the ECJ only confirms the need to quickly put in place common rules at the EU level.

In my own country, Sweden, politicians have realised the urgent need to create more and better legal avenues of entry into the country. That is why the government, with the Green Party as a coalition partner, has launched an inquiry into this issue. The result of the inquiry’s report is expected by the end of 2017, and I hope that the findings will not only help to improve the Swedish migration framework but provide inspiration for a reform of the EU-wide polices on legal immigration.

IMAGE CREDIT: CC/Flickr – UNHCR Photo Unit

The post The EU needs a humanitarian visa scheme – now appeared first on Europe’s World.

General : Although few of them were allowed to vote during the referendum, the millions of EU citizens living in the UK will be among those affected the most by Brexit. The EU wants to reach a deal to protect their rights as soon as possible during the upcoming negotiations with the UK. This week Parliament is holding a hearing on the situation and rights of EU citizens in the UK. Watch the meeting live online and check out our infographic for the facts.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

General : Although few of them were allowed to vote during the referendum, the millions of EU citizens living in the UK will be among those affected the most by Brexit. The EU wants to reach a deal to protect their rights as soon as possible during the upcoming negotiations with the UK. This week Parliament is holding a hearing on the situation and rights of EU citizens in the UK. Watch the meeting live online and check out our infographic for the facts.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

General : Globalisation offers great potential to create wealth and jobs, but it also has the capacity to disrupt. The EU has always tried to make the most of it, while mitigating its negative effects by setting rules and working together with other countries. As the European Commission publishes on 10 May a reflection paper on how the EU should deal with globalisation in the future, we take a look at what Parliament has already done recently.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

General : Globalisation offers great potential to create wealth and jobs, but it also has the capacity to disrupt. The EU has always tried to make the most of it, while mitigating its negative effects by setting rules and working together with other countries. As the European Commission publishes on 10 May a reflection paper on how the EU should deal with globalisation in the future, we take a look at what Parliament has already done recently.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

General : Europe Day, celebrated on 9 May, is all about our common journey from war to peace and cooperation. It was on 9 May 1950 that then French foreign minister Robert Schuman put in words a dream of a different Europe working together to overcome conflicts and growing stronger step by step. In 1958, this dream took shape in the Rome Treaties that set the basis for the European Union. Francesco Fresi was present in Rome at the signing and shared with us his thoughts on Europe’s extraordinary journey.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

General : Europe Day, celebrated on 9 May, is all about our common journey from war to peace and cooperation. It was on 9 May 1950 that then French foreign minister Robert Schuman put in words a dream of a different Europe working together to overcome conflicts and growing stronger step by step. In 1958, this dream took shape in the Rome Treaties that set the basis for the European Union. Francesco Fresi was present in Rome at the signing and shared with us his thoughts on Europe’s extraordinary journey.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

The European Union is finished: long live Europe! Not only can we move towards a new and completely redesigned European utopia, we must do this to save the European project from ending in a dystopia of populism and nationalism. We have forgotten that without a utopia – an ideal society – there is no chance of achieving a better future. As German philosopher Ernst Bloch once said, society needs a permanent stream of utopian thinking. The ebb of utopian energy is therefore Europe’s most serious problem.

It is high time to overcome the idea of the nation state, and rediscover what Europe once wanted to be: a true transnational democracy. Democracy is not necessarily secure when left in the hands of a single nation, as Europe experienced in the 1920s, and as we are seeing today. This was precisely the motivation for Europe: to disentangle democracy from nation states and avoid nationalism. Europe needs to return to the roots of its own idea.

The utopia is simple: a single market, a single currency, a single democracy. And two of them – the market and the currency – have already been achieved, thanks to the EU. Yet now – if we do not want to sacrifice them – we need to press on and put in place the final, most difficult piece: one democracy. For that to happen, we need to wake up from the dream that nation states will ever deliver ‘Europe’.

As much as national elites were willing to Europeanise the market and currency, they were unwilling to do the same in the political arena as it would have undermined their own power bases. In recent years they have administered their national democracies through largely neutralised grand coalitions that lack political contours, leading to a perfect erosion of state functions at a national level. It suited them to cling to fictional national power while accepting economic governance at a European level. Therein lays the reason for today’s populism.

National elites have fiercely resisted every attempt to build channels of communication, processes of mutual recognition or transnational voting and party systems – all of which would allow peoples of different nations to merge their interests. Such moves would have challenged the monopoly of representation by the national ruling classes, both internally and at the supranational level, and diminished their position as the inevitable conduits between ‘their’ people and the European institutions. In other words: the desired ‘politicisation’ of Europe, where political decision-making would be organised beyond nation-state sovereignty, never took place.

“It is time to discover the place of citizens in the European project”

The political system of the EU, with the Council at its heart, inherently mirrors this pattern: projects in the collective interest of all European citizens, whether a common refugee policy or a European unemployment scheme, are systematically torpedoed by ‘national cards’. If Europe wants to become a democracy, politics must trump national affiliation: the Council must go.

It is also time to let go of the EU and to move away from the idea of a United States of Europe. It is time to discover the place of citizens in the European project and to remember that citizens – not states – are sovereign. As French sociologist Pierre Rosanvallon put it, the EU was built on a lie. The lie is that the EU is equally a union of states and a union of citizens, as promised in the Treaty of Maastricht. But the union of citizens does not exist. Brexit is the best example: if European citizenship really existed, the United Kingdom as a country could leave the EU while Brits could remain citizens of the union. In reality, they will not. Here is the betrayal.

Upgrading citizens within the European political project ultimately means striving for a European Republic. When citizens embark together upon a political project, they don’t go for ‘united states’; they create a republic. A republic is created by people who decide to be equal before the law. Nationality is not in the definition. A republic does not have ethnic contours or prerequisites; rather it has, in the definition of Cicero, ius aequum – equal law – for all citizens.

The EU is far from offering that. European citizens remain compartmentalised by national law, and a political project can never function like this. If we want to realise one European democracy, we need to strive for the principle of political equality. If the French revolution brought legal equality beyond social class, the European revolution of the 21st century must bring legal equality beyond nations. That would be a compelling offer behind which Europeans citizens, from south to north, from east to west, could unite. This is probably the only way to heal the wounds of the cumulated European crises. And there is no reason why this should remain a utopia.

“We have forgotten that without a utopia there is no chance of achieving a better future”

The principle of political equality means voting equality, tax equality and, over time, equal access to social welfare. Europe cannot succeed if, within the same political project, the nation state is used as tool for competition, whether on taxes or on welfare. The entire reshuffling of the political system of Europe stems from the principle of political equality: this is the essential condition for a fully-fledged transnational, representative parliamentary democracy in Europe, corresponding to the principle of division of powers. The principles of political equality and division of power are two things that are never questioned in national democracies. It is time to give European democracy the same treatment.

Putting aside the myth of state sovereignty and leaping from the United States of Europe to a European Republic would just achieve what the EU’s founding fathers once aspired to. “We do not form a coalition of states, we unite people,” wrote Jean Monnet, who envisioned a radically denationalised European society.

This comes very close to what political theorist Hannah Arendt described as ‘integral federalism’. Arendt’s essay ‘What is freedom?’ could be the compass towards a European Republic – a network democracy of autonomous European regions and towns, something made easier in a digital era that offers citizens new forms of direct interaction and political participation. Arendt was in search of the hidden tradition of freedom, and in favour of spontaneous forms of political organisation, among citizens, in towns or small entities, which form republican bodies. She distinguishes between state sovereignty and freedom, because, if sovereignty is the right of non-interference, it contradicts the principle of pluralism:

“The famous sovereignty of political bodies has always been an illusion, which, moreover, can be maintained only by the instrument of violence, that is, with essentially non-political means…if men wish to be free, it is precisely sovereignty they must renounce”.

Arendt’s ‘integral federalism’ is in line with the thinking of contemporaries such as Swiss cultural theorist Denis de Rougement and French philosopher and author Albert Camus, who at the genesis of European political and economic integration in the 1950s advocated strongly against state-based, intergovernmental federalism. That would end, as Arendt predicted, in the hollowing out of European democracy, or in what German sociologist Jürgen Habermas recently has called “executive federalism”: the capture of people’s freedom by nation states.

As the EU marks its 60th birthday, this is the Union we live in. If we really want European democracy, it’s time to move out of it and to head for the utopia of a European Republic in which sovereign European citizens manage their democracy free from nation states.

IMAGE CREDIT: Jorisvo/Bigstock

The post Vive la République européenne! appeared first on Europe’s World.

Written by Enrico D’Ambrogio,

© Rawf8 / Fotolia

South Korea has been shaken by a succession of corruption scandals involving politicians, judges, senior officials, businessmen and even academics. Impeachment of the country’s first female president, the conservative Park Guen-hye, was confirmed by the Constitutional Court, and snap Presidential elections take place on 9 May 2017.

Moon Jae-in, a liberal politician and a leading Minjoo (Democratic Party) personality, leads the polls and is the prospective next President of South Korea. Whoever will run the country is expected to launch an era of political and constitutional reform, as well as reducing the power of the chaebol, business conglomerates which enjoy outsize influence and impunity. Moon and the Minjoo are critical

of deployment of the US-developed anti-missile shield, Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). A new direction to relations with North Korea is also expected, with a shift from military deterrence to an engagement attitude.

This new course could favour stability in the region, paving the way for a new role for the European Union, which could offer its experience in dialogue and integration to engage in a possible future denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.

Read the complete briefing on ‘South Korea’s presidential election: Potential for a new EU role in the Korean Peninsula’.

Map – Central eastern Asia

 

Filed under: International Relations, PUBLICATIONS Tagged: Asia and Pacific, briefings, Enrico D'Ambrogio, EPRS briefings, EU relations, national elections, political situation, South Korea

Emmanuel Macron had no chance of winning the presidential election. Every textbook on French politics or contemporary history will tell you so. He had no chance, and he seized it.

After his first large-scale rallies, in Strasbourg in October 2016 or in Paris in December, all serious commentators indulged in gentle mockery. Partly because his voice went shrieking like a radio football reporter at the 1998 World Cup final, partly because of his vocabulary. At that time, he tended to describe his ideas as ‘disruptive’, an adjective borrowed from the current Silicon Valley discourse.

It turns out that now that he does no longer use the word, he has indeed become a major ‘disruption’ in the long history of French democracy. So many rules that seemed graved in stone need to be erased from the textbooks.

1. A French president can only be hard-boiled veteran politician toughened by numerous election campaigns, having earned his ‘presidentiability’ over a long period of time in major functions. Persons under 40 who never stood for any election on any level should refrain for fear of being ridiculed.

2. Within the framework of the electoral system of the presidential election under the Fifth Republic and the resources that are required for a successful election campaign, it is only possible to envisage a candidacy in earnest with the backing of an established party, firmly rooted in constituencies across the nation. ‘Exotic’ candidates from outside the party spectrum may be tolerated to amuse the audience in the first round before being ejected when serious things start.

3. The left-right dichotomy – which he French invented in the first place – is so fundamental to French political culture that even smart, sympathetic and widely appreciated centrists like Jean Lecanuet or François Bayrou may only create an ephemeral illusion, but are condemned to fail eventually.

4. Because of a massive and irreversible semantic shift over a significant period of time, a candidate wishing to build a presidential majority shall by no means use the adjective ‘liberal’ to describe his or her fundamental beliefs or economic orientations. In case the label is conferred by the media, he or she shall consistently deny it. There is no majority for liberal values.

5. Due to the Gaullist dogma of national sovereignty, the tendency of each and every successive French government to blame economic failure on ‘la Commission de Bruxelles’, and the refusal of French mainstream media to engage with Europe, this most boring of all possible topics, there is no way to lead a successful nation-wide election campaign with and explicit and ostensible commitment to the European Union, European symbols and underlying European values.

Of course, as all the French papers I had the opportunity to consult today at Charles Gaulle airport (of all places!) pointed out in their rather well-balanced and pertinent analysis of yesterday’s disruption, Emmanuel Macron benefitted tremendously from unforeseeable, unprecedented circumstances.

Of course, the entire squad of his major rivals all were either ousted before even being able to run – Juppé, Sarkozy and Valls in their respective primaries – or kind enough to sabotage themselves irremediably – Hollande with his stupid revelations book in the crucial phase last autumn, Fillon through the Penelope affair and even more through his handling of it, and Marine Le Pen in a surrealistic television debate.

And of course, many of the votes he obtained were only given to him with the aim of barring Le Pen. Not to mention the incredibly high number of ‘active abstentions’ in the form of 4 million so-called ‘blank votes’, which indicates that his programme and the reforms he envisages are not very likely to have the support of 66% of the French citizens.

All this is true. Still, he did it. As Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet frankly acknowledged on television last night: ‘it is impossible to remain insensitive to his achievement’.

There is, however, no time for admiration, since the historical feat will not be worth much if Macron does not succeed in repeating the same accomplishment over again. He does not have any real power so far, and the legislative elections, as argued earlier in this blog, may well turn him into a ‘fake president’, eclipsed by a more or less hostile parliamentary majority. The latter will be formed after a highly intensive five-week campaign during which he will face staunch resistance from all established parties who are eager to put him back in his place.

Let’s face it: it is not possible to win 289 seats in the parliament from zero, with a bunch of mostly unexperienced candidates. It would be a major disruption. He has no chance whatsoever to obtain a majority. Every textbook will tell you so!

Albrecht Sonntag
@albrechtsonntag

This is post # 21 on the French 2017 election marathon.
All previous posts can be found here.

The post France 2017: Disruptive appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Written by Angelos Delivarios (1st edition),

© Rawf8 / Fotolia

In the context of the work of reviewing the fitness of current regulations (REFIT), the Commission has decided to amend Regulation (EC) No 184/2005 and repeal 10 legal acts in the field of business statistics. The aim is to reduce the administrative burden for businesses, especially SMEs, and to put an end to legal fragmentation in the field of European business statistics. The Commission is proposing to establish a common legal framework for the development, production and dissemination of European statistics related to business structure, economic activities and performance, as well as on international transactions and research and development activities in the EU economy; and for the European network of national statistical business registers and the EuroGroups Register. The regulation includes provisions covering business registers, the data sources to be used, and the exchange of confidential data for the purpose of intra-Union trade in goods statistics. It is expected to reduce red tape for businesses by at least 13.5 % annually.

Versions

• May 2017: European business statistics (1st edition)

Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and the Council on European business statistics, amending Regulation (EC) no 184/2005 and repealing 10 legal acts in the field of business statistics)
Committee responsible: Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) COM(2017) 114
6.3.2017
2017/0048(COD)

Ordinary legislative procedure (COD) (Parliament and Council on equal footing – formerly ‘co-decision’)

Rapporteur: Not yet appointed Shadow rapporteurs: Not yet appointed Next steps expected: First exchange of views

Filed under: Economic and Social Policies, PUBLICATIONS Tagged: Angelos Delivorias, briefings, EPRS briefings, EU Legislation in Progress, EU statistics

Written by Angelos Delivorias (1st edition),

© Maxim_Kazmin / Fotolia

The ESP 2013-2017 is ‘the legal framework for the development, production and dissemination of European statistics’. The European Commission is of the view that the current statistical infrastructure is not flexible enough and that the European Statistical System partnership does not yet deliver sufficient cost savings because of lack of investment. That is why, in line with the ten priorities of the Juncker agenda, it proposed an extension of the current programme, additional funding, and modifications to the main text of Regulation (EU) No 99/2013 and its annex. The European Parliament and the Council also inserted amendments – mainly to the annex of the regulation, which sets out the statistical infrastructure and objectives of the ESP – to enrich the statistics used for the implementation of the programme with statistics capturing employment, quality of life, gender inequality, the situation of migrants, education and healthcare.

Versions

• May 2017: Extension of the European statistical programme (ESP) to 2018-2020 (1st edition)

Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EU) No 99/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the European statistical programme 2013-17, by extending it to 2018-2020
Committee responsible: Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) COM(2016) 557
7.9.2016
2016/0265(COD)

Ordinary legislative procedure (COD) (Parliament and Council on equal footing – formerly ‘co-decision’)

Rapporteur: Roberto Gualtieri (S&D, Italy) Shadow rapporteurs: Gabriel Mato (EPP, Spain)

Bernd Lucke (ECR, Germany)

Enrique Calvet Chambon (ALDE, Spain)

Miguel Viegas (GUE/NGL, Portugal)

Sven Giegold (Greens/EFA, Germany) Next steps expected: Vote in plenary

Filed under: Economic and Social Policies, PUBLICATIONS Tagged: Angelos Delivorias, briefings, EPRS briefings, EU Legislation in Progress, EU statistics

General : The European Parliament’s official Twitter accounts have hit the one million follower milestone. Parliament first dipped its toes into Twitter back in April 2009, launching accounts in 22 EU languages. Eight years later, it boasts more than a million followers for its 26 accounts, including Europarl_photo, where you can find the best images of the Parliament and the people in it.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

General : The European Parliament’s official Twitter accounts have hit the one million follower milestone. Parliament first dipped its toes into Twitter back in April 2009, launching accounts in 22 EU languages. Eight years later, it boasts more than a million followers for its 26 accounts, including Europarl_photo, where you can find the best images of the Parliament and the people in it.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Committee and political group meetings, Brussels

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

General : The rights of EU citizens living in the UK and how they will be affected by Brexit is the focus of a hearing organised by three parliamentary committees this week. In addition the inquiry committee investigating the Panama papers holds a meeting with representatives from the Channel Islands, Gibraltar and Madeira to discuss their tax regimes.Political groups also prepare for next week's plenary session.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

General : The rights of EU citizens living in the UK and how they will be affected by Brexit is the focus of a hearing organised by three parliamentary committees this week. In addition the inquiry committee investigating the Panama papers holds a meeting with representatives from the Channel Islands, Gibraltar and Madeira to discuss their tax regimes.Political groups also prepare for next week's plenary session.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP