European Union

Three weeks before presidential elections in Austria Czech President Miloš Zeman will meet with Norbert Hofer, the candidate of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). Commentators voice surprise at this new friendship between the two opponents of immigration.

Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us here at the Eurogroup press conference in Bratislava. I would like to take the opportunity to thank our Slovak hosts for the excellent organisation and the splendid venue where we are today. We welcomed to the Eurogroup Petteri Orpo, the newly appointed Finnish Minister of Finance. He was with us for the first time. We also welcomed Alenka Smerkolj who is the Acting Slovenian Minister of Finance.

So this was our first Eurogroup after the summer break, with many challenges ahead. Reading the newspapers which you (journalists) deliver to us, you sometimes feel that there is an atmosphere of doom and gloom over the eurozone. I would like to say that the economic recovery is progressing, growth has returned to almost all of our countries and becomes stronger year on year. Unemployement is going down in most countries so there are some very positive signes throughout the eurozone. Growth is keeping up with the US - that is also an interesting perspective to take - and the support of policies that we have in place: monetary policy, support for investments, structural reforms, improving the quality of public finances, on all of those areas we will continue to push the effectiveness of what we do and see what further steps are needed.

Today we discussed first of all the state of affairs in Greece. We took stock of the progress. There are number of milestones still pending to fully complete the first review and coupled with those are further disbursements. So we took stock of those and heard a little about the issues at stake. There was a general feeling that we must not lose time - the time scale that was drawn up and agreed in May 2016 - so more progress is needed and we strongly encouraged the Greek government as a whole to speed up the implementation of the remaining milestones. That of course could also help in ensuring a timely start and completion of the second review. The work on that will have to start very soon also. Against this background, we were happy to hear from our Greek colleague his commitment to do that work very quickly. We will be following  that closely in the coming weeks.

We also discussed three fiscal issues:

First of all, we looked at the issue of early and late submissions of the draft budgetary plans. We have looked at this a couple of times in recent years and I am glad to announce that all Ministers are committed from now on to submitting draft budgetary plans in the window of 1-15 October. So let's not have anymore early submissions, let alone late submissions. The draft budgets plans need to come in within that timeframe, and that will also allow the Commission to synchronise the horizontal assessment of the draft budgetary plans that then follow.

The issue on what a caretaker governement should do in that period was also discussed -the general line of course being that they can submit a no-policy-change-budget. On these two elements, the guidelines, I believe it is the two-pack, will have to be adjusted and that work will now proceed and come back to us in Ecofin.

Secondly, we took stock of the Commission preparations and the dialogue with the European Parliament in relation to the partial freezing of structural funds commitments following the Spanish and Portuguese EDPs. The Commission informed us on the state of play there and I think we all agree that that the process needs to be completed as soon as possible. As you know the Spanish and Portuguese governments need to, on top of their draft budgetary plans, submit by the latest on 15 October a specific report on the effective action that they need to take. I am sure that Commissioner will say more about that.

Third, we were informed on the progress on the technical work on making the stability and growth pact simpler, more predictable and understandable for all of us - this is about the indicators needed to see whether countries comply with the act. This is the debate we had in Amsterdam during the informal Ecofin and Eurogroup. There is good progress and we should be ready to take some decisions on these budgetary indicators later this year. We will come back to that, probably in November 2016.

Finally, we held another discussion on the quality of public finances in our countries, we have discussed it before - today we focused on spending reviews, which is for ministers of finance a very useful and effective way to get a better insight into improvements on the effectiveness of public spending - to assess priorities, and to ensure that public money is spent wisely and effectively. So we exchanged information and experiences on this topic, and number of ministers informed us how they use the instrument and how it works, and we have designed a number of common principles on the use of this instrument of expenditure reviews. We will come back to that in the first half of 2017 and on a regular base after that.

Those were the key issues today. Let me give a floor to Commissioner Moscovici.

The Eurogroup considers spending reviews to be a useful tool for improving the quality of public finances. They offer a complementary means of supporting fiscal responsibility through reviewing priorities in public expenditure, and can contribute to a more growth-friendly composition of the budget. They have particular relevance for the euro area, where sound fiscal policies are a key matter of common interest and whose Member States have chosen to closely coordinate fiscal policies. In times of high public debt and historically low economic growth rates, there is more need than ever to ensure that taxpayers' money is used efficiently. The Eurogroup therefore calls on euro area Member States to actively use spending reviews. 

The Eurogroup has looked at the experience with spending reviews in  euro area Member States and beyond, and noted a number of principles that need to be followed if spending reviews are to have an optimal impact on the quality of public spending. The Eurogroup therefore endorses the following set of common principles for improving the quality of public finances through the use of spending reviews: 

• Strong and sustained political commitment at a high national level, throughout the project, is essential for successfully carrying out spending reviews and implementing their findings into meaningful reforms.
• The designand implementation of spending reviews should follow best practices that include: (i) a clear strategic mandate specifying the objectives (potentially including quantified targets) the scope (a significant share of general goverment spending across several policies) and a centre of coordination, (ii) the use of pilots to build expertise, (iii) the provision of adequate resources and access to data, (iv) the use of guidelines for consistency in producing diagnosis, baselines, reform options and implementation roadmaps, (v) the use of fact-based analysis linking spending across budget and administrative structures to policy outcomes.
• Monitoring and communication to the public on the progress and outcome of reviews  should be regular and transparent.  Spending reviews themselves should be subject to independent ex-post evaluation to learn lessons for future reviews.
• The ambition and conclusions of a spending review should be consistent with annual and multiannual budget planning. The national fiscal framework should include the principle of running regular spending reviews to inform budget making.

The Eurogroup approves these common principles as a reference point for reviewing national reform efforts to improve the quality of public finances in euro area Member States. The Eurogroup thus invites the Commission to assess developments in this field within its usual processes and surveillance mechanisms, with a view to allowing periodic monitoring by the Eurogroup. Also to this end, the Eurogroup invites its preparatory committees and the Commission to develop a workstream on the exchange of best practices and lessons learnt on spending reviews undertaken in euro area Member States. The Eurogroup expects to revisit this workstream on a regular basis starting in the first half of 2017, drawing on further experiences made in Member States. 

Plenary session and committee meetings in Strasbourg

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Those squealing tyres you can hear are coming from the Berlaymont. Days after launching their proposed “fair use” policy on roaming, the European Commission has pulled the guidelines.

An initial draft was published on 5.9.2016. The Commission services have, on the instruction of President Juncker, withdrawn the draft and are working on a new version.

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Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

General : From Brexit and the economy, to the migration crisis and the terrorism threat, Europe is facing many challenges. The annual State of the EU debate on 14 September is an opportunity for MEPs to discuss the direction for the EU to take with Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. Read on to find out what political group leaders expect and how you can follow it yourself.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

General : From Brexit and the economy, to the migration crisis and the terrorism threat, Europe is facing many challenges. The annual State of the EU debate on 14 September is an opportunity for MEPs to discuss the direction for the EU to take with Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. Read on to find out what political group leaders expect and how you can follow it yourself.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

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Francois Hollande’s rentrée speech yesterday was first and foremost a feel-good exercise. For an hour, the French socialist president, whom nearly 90 per cent of the French do not want to see running for a second term next year, was surrounded by true friends – zero risk of betrayal à la Emmanuel Macron.

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Media coverage of the European Union is key to understand the mainstreaming of Euroscepticism in Europe and its impact on democracy in old and new member states.

The UK referendum made the headlines of newspapers throughout the world. Croatia, the EU’s newest member state, was not an exception. “Should I stay or should I go?” asked the daily Slobodna Dalmacija on June 23, while the tabloid 24sata quoted a YouGov poll that predicted a victory of the “remain” camp with 52% against 48%.

The increased coverage of the final week before the UK referendum contrasted with the typically rather modest coverage of British politics by the Croatian media. In fact, even after the meeting between David Cameron and former Prime-Minister Zoran Milanovic in October 2015, Brexit was still only sporadically mentioned. The focus of national local media remained largely on domestic matters, economic relations and the support to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s EU membership bid.

Picture 1: “Could Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker urge non-Eurozone states to adopt the common currency? Croatia is not ready yet.”

A press release from the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs published in February 2016 summarised Croatia’s position regarding Brexit: concessions made to Westminster would require “concrete solutions” from the EU, as put by Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic. The institutional crisis triggered by Brexit could slow down the accession of Balkan countries, which would go against Croatia’s economic interests. Zagreb could also face a severe political crisis if the Commission pushes for a fast enlargement of the Eurozone and for the adoption of austerity measures (Picture 1).

Croatia’s road to membership to the EU has its roots in 2000, when a reformist coalition rose to power following the death of President Franjo Tudjman, from the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). A year later the Parliament launched a communication strategy aimed at informing the public about the integration process and how it could strengthen Croatia’s sovereignty.

Graph 1: Visibility of the EU in Croatian media since 2004

Public attitudes towards accession have varied depending on the status of the negotiations and coverage of EU affairs by the Croatian press (Graph 1). The overwhelming support for membership in the early 2000s gave way to rising Euroscepticism once negotiations began, and reached its lowest point in 2005, when talks were delayed because of failure to cooperate with the UN war Crimes Tribunal (ICTY). At that time, only 42% of the population believed that membership would be beneficial to Croatia. In order to respond to this trend, the government launched a second communication strategy to convey “realistic optimism” concerning Croatia’s future. The strategy highlighted the economic, social and political benefits of the EU in various policy areas – agriculture, rural development, public administration and judiciary system – and targeted specific groups such as civil society organisations, local governments, farmers and recipients of social benefits.

The accession process, which involved not only economic and trade matters, but also cooperation with other former Yugoslavian republics and the ICTY, was concluded in 2011 after seven years of negotiations. EU membership was approved by referendum on 22 January 2012 (66.27% against 33.13%), despite the low turnout (43.51%), and on 1st July 2013 Croatia became the 28th EU member state.

British and Croatian Euroscepticism
Limited knowledge about the EU, distrust in politicians, and worsening of economic and social indicators are key issues that contribute to the spread of Euroscepticism across Europe. However, this phenomenon affects member states in different ways. Media coverage is an important factor in understanding how public opinion about the EU is formed. EU communication strategy still tends to be perceived as excessively technical and inaccessible to citizens, thus contributing to the perception that the EU does not work in favour of its citizens.

Table 1: Awareness of EU institutions

The 2004 enlargement presented an opportunity for the EU to come closer to citizens. In the new member states, considerable effort has been placed on informing audiences about the opportunities brought up by EU membership. Poor knowledge of the EU remains a problem, but awareness of EU institutions has significantly increased since negotiations started (Table 1).

The same trend is not observed in the UK. In 2004, 75% of British citizens knew about the European Commission, while the EU average was 80%. Ten years later, the British public are the least aware of the Commission (75% against 84% EU average), despite the fact that 8 out of 10 adults use the internet on a daily basis.

Graph 2: Positive image of the EU over time: Croatia and UK compared

To large part of the British public, the EU is associated with the financial crisis, which explains the growing awareness of the European Central Bank (ECB), and also a rather negative attitude towards the EU. Contrary to Croatia, EU enlargement has been reported in the UK as a source of instability, and a threat to national identity. As a result, progress in the negotiations with candidate countries have reinforced the image of the EU in the former, but led to higher levels of mistrust in the latter (Graph2).

National media in Croatia also reacts differently to the outcome of negotiations with the EU. Whenever Zagreb and Brussels reached a deadlock, EU affairs became less prominent in the media, as in the impasse regarding cooperation with the ICTY in 2005-2006. When disputes were resolved – such as the 2009 arbitration concerning the border with Slovenia and the agreement on Ecological and Fisheries Protection Zones (ZERP) with Italy and Slovenia – EU integration became more salient in the media. In the UK, by contrast, media coverage increases whenever there is a conflict between the interests of the UK and those of other member states or those of the EU. These relations are generally framed in the media as a zero-sum game; the EU is presented as an obstacle to national interests, and the main one to blame for deterioration of the “British Way of Life”. The side-lining of experts’ advice and the extensive discourse around the idea of taking back control over policy-making led to the victory of the “leave” camp in the UK referendum. “Remainers” seem to have learned very little from the French “non” in 2005 and from the Dutch opposition to the association agreement with Ukraine last April. Pro-EU forces from various British parties have been unable to coordinate themselves and use mass media portray the overall benefits from EU membership that go beyond financial advantages.

It is unlikely that relations between Croatia and the UK will suffer major changes following the Brexit vote, as the economic and cultural ties between the countries have not developed significantly over the last ten years. Brexit, however, represents a challenge for the EU to act as cohesive actor. Populism and anti-immigrant sentiment are rising throughout Europe, which could be a destabilizing force in the coming years. Communication strategies remain of vital importance in informing citizens – most notably young cohorts, who show lower levels of political participation worldwide – about the potential benefits of the EU (as well as of its problems), and about how they can have an active role in the European project.

The post Euroscepticism in Old and New Member States: The Role of the Media in the United Kingdom and Croatia appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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EU Finance Ministers of the eurozone meet in Bratislava on 9 September 2016.

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Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

The European Parliament should give its consent to the ratification of the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, recommended Environment Committee MEPs on Thursday. They also urged all EU member states to conclude the ratification process, to ensure its rapid entry into force. In a separate resolution, they also called on the EU to upgrade its emission reduction pledges, so as to close the gap between the individual targets agreed by the Parties and the Paris goals.
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

The European Parliament should give its consent to the ratification of the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, recommended Environment Committee MEPs on Thursday. They also urged all EU member states to conclude the ratification process, to ensure its rapid entry into force. In a separate resolution, they also called on the EU to upgrade its emission reduction pledges, so as to close the gap between the individual targets agreed by the Parties and the Paris goals.
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

General : The EU’s budget has been criticised for years for relying too much on member states’ contributions and for being too inflexible when unexpected crises occur. MEPs discussed the issue with their national counterparts during a conference on how to finance the EU's budget on 7-8 September. Most panellists agreed that a reform was necessary to ensure more transparency and efficiency.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

General : The EU’s budget has been criticised for years for relying too much on member states’ contributions and for being too inflexible when unexpected crises occur. MEPs discussed the issue with their national counterparts during a conference on how to finance the EU's budget on 7-8 September. Most panellists agreed that a reform was necessary to ensure more transparency and efficiency.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

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Brussels is pressing on with a plan to bulk up the EU’s military capability. The FT’s European diplomatic correspondent Arthur Beesley broke the story.

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General : The Conference of Presidents today appointed Guy Verhofstadt (ALDE, BE) as European Parliament point man for Brexit negotiations.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

General : The Conference of Presidents today appointed Guy Verhofstadt (ALDE, BE) as European Parliament point man for Brexit negotiations.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP