European Union

If you ever find yourself in a room filled with people working on European transport policy, the moment you mention “decarbonisation” heads will turn in curiosity (or despair). We bet this is what happened during the two-day informal council meeting in Amsterdam over the past two days!

Since the 2030 Climate and Energy Package and COP21, everyone has been talking about “decarbonisation of transport” yet no one really knows what the Commission has in its mind in order to solve this complex puzzle. Any action to reduce CO2 emissions from transport could impact everyone, from public transport users to freight operators.

Last week, the Commission shed some light on the strategy with the publication of its long-awaited Roadmap on decarbonising the transport sector. As expected the initiative (which is due to be agreed upon in College at the end of June) will not include legislation, but will provide the framework for a number of other initiatives that advance the transition towards carbon-free or less carbon intensive fuels, improving vehicle efficiency, and managing transport demand.  

The publication of the roadmap was preceded by rumors that the Commission was focusing on electrification, especially considering the long and complex discussions on the sustainability of biofuels and the rather weak agreement in favor of alternative fuels a couple of years ago. While the roadmap does not necessarily reflect this strong push on electrification, a study on third countries policies by the Joint Research Centre discusses in depth the many options including electrification.

Realistically, the approach showed in the roadmap is the most promising one to achieve results as it focuses on the idea that reducing emissions from transport requires coordinated action on several fronts:

• CO2 emissions from cars and vans
• Monitoring emissions from heavy duty vehicles
• Action plan for the deployment of electrification and advanced biofuels
• Revision of the Eurovignette Directive and electronic tolling
• Decision on Effort Sharing for non-ETS sectors
• Initiatives on intelligent transport
• Urban mobility initiatives
• Rules for market access for the haulage market

Daunting list, right?! Whether you are a vehicle manufacturer or provide components for vehicles, or even if you work in the electricity generation sector or are a fuel supplier, we would recommend that you:

• Look out – many initiatives will be coming your way in the next months and the time to engage is now
• Brush up your stats – whilst the Commission will not be conducting a public consultation on the Communication, some of its element will require engagement from stakeholders, with concrete data on business impacts preferred.
• Meet with key decision makers – technology neutrality is still the rule, so if you expect to see something specific about your sector this is not going to happen. If you want to stick out, act now.

Ilektra Tsakalidou, Laura Rozzo, and Michael Stanton-Geddes

On 21 April, SEDE will hold a public hearing to address the cyber defence and resilience from the CSDP perspective at the EU level and national levels. How to build the resilience and efficiently protect critical infrastructures? Which are the cyber warfare capabilities in our changing world? Given that cyber security stays high on the European agendas and is one of the Presidency priorities, it will be extremely interesting to gather different experts and hear which their insights are.
Location : Paul-Henri Spaak 5B001
Programme
Programme
Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Two years ago, the European Union had its first true electoral campaign held in public for the selection of the EU’s chief administrator, the President of the European Commission. Now, although within a different institutional context, we witness a similar process in the United Nations: the first open nomination procedure for the next chief administrator of the UN, its Secretary-General.

Is Helen Clark a UN Spitzenkandidat(in)? (Screenshot from the hearings live stream, 14 April 2016)

The so-called Spitzenkandidaten-process (‘Spitzenkandidat’ means ‘top candidate’ in German) in 2014 was basically a power-struggle between the European Parliament, especially the main European political parties represented therein, and the European Council, the representation of all 28 heads of state and government in the EU. I  blogged occasionally about this process here, and I followed the process professionally while working at Transparency International.

By now, there’s also ton of research discussing the Spitzenkandidaten-process and how to interpret it. Most arguing it was a win of the European Parliament, but others disagree. The question is whether there is any resemblance to the UN’s (s)election procedure for the next Secretary-General.

With this week’s public hearings of the (first) nine candidates for the post of UN Secretary-General, the UN is also entering a new period that will require a lot of interpretation once the process is over. At UNdispatch, where the hearings and the social media reactions have been nicely covered, Mark L. Goldberg and Richard Gowen have discussed the hearings and how to interpret them in a 30-minute podcast episode well worth listening to.

Interestingly, some elements of the UN Spitzenkandidaten-process are pretty similar to that of the EU’s:

1. Just like the EP asserted the power of de-facto nomination from the European Council, so did the UN General Assembly when proposing in April 2015 to have a more transparent nomination process and now imposing the hearings upon the Security Council.
2. Just like the United Kingdom (and some other European Council members) disagreed with the parliamentary (s)election process and has tried to stop it, Russia and China do not seem to be big fans of the open nomination process. As Goldberg and Gowen discussed in the podcast, Russia was the only permanent member of Security Council not asking questions to the candidates and China only was represented through the G77 representative.
3. Similar to the EU’s Spitzenkandidaten, the ones who have come forward so far include a former prime minister with extensive UN experience – i.e. Helen Clark, kind of the Jean-Claude Juncker of the UN process – or with previous experience as presidents of the UN’s General Assembly – making Vuk Jeremic and Srgjan Kerim the Martin Schulzes of the process.
4. The UN candidates are not just present and visible in the formal hearings, but they are actually campaigning publicly, by touring around the world and (some) use social media campaigns to be visible to a wider public (as did the EU Spitzenkandidaten), although the UN’s public are rather diplomats and political leaders around the world.

There are some other elements that are relevant in both arenas, such as geographical balance, in the UN a rotation between the different regional groups, in the EU a geographical and political balance between the various top posts (European Parliament and Commission presidents, High Representative and European Council president).

The big different is the institutional setting: first, the UN General Assembly is a member state body, whereas the European Parliament is a directly elected assembly. Thus, whereas the Spitzenkandidaten-process in the EU can be seen as a struggle between (supranational) parliamentary forces and (intergovernmental) executive forces, the transparency-process in the UN is rather a struggle between the “Big Five” and the 188 other countries, or, as suggested by the absence of Russia and China in the hearings, a geopolitical fight between public policy making of the “West” and the politics of backroom diplomacy in search of traditional stability by the “East”.

There is a second difference: in the European Council, the United Kingdom could be outvoted thanks to the voting procedures for the nomination of a candidate. In the UN Security Council, each of the Big Five has a veto. In his 2015 article “The Secretary-General We Deserve?” (Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations 21:4), Simon Chesterman suggests that this could lead to a situation in which there is an institutional deadlock:

If the favourite candidate(s) of the General Assembly emerging from the open hearings is (are) blocked by one of the five permanent members, a potential compromise candidate of the Security Council might be blocked by the General Assembly. A similar situation was considered possible after the 2014 European elections, when it was still unclear whether the European Council would ultimately nominate the candidate of the European People’s Party, Jean-Claude Juncker, or some other name.

The majority in the European Parliament pretty much threatened to refuse any other candidate, and in the end won this fight. However, different to the General Assembly, candidates were actually put forward by wider political groups which, in the end, could claim to be legitimised by a popular vote, no matter how invisible the Spitzenkandidaten-process had been in most countries. There is no such legitimising force in the UN General Assembly, and so it will be interesting to see how this plays out when the end of the year comes closer and the term of Ban Ki-Moon comes to an end.

In summary, whereas the two recent or ongoing (s)election procedures for the President of the European Commission and the Secretary-General of the European Council share some common dynamics and elements that make them look similar in some sense, the institutional setting and the geopolitical dimension of the (s)election of the UN Secretary-General makes this process a much different beast to the EU’s recent process. Nevertheless, it is still interesting to see whether the UN’s General Assembly manages to impose its transparent process onto the Security Council, just like the European Parliament did on the European Council.

The post (S)electing the next Secretary-General of the United Nation: similar to the EU’s Spitzenkandidaten-process? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Location : Brussels JAN 2Q2
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Programme
Poster
Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

The Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs will hold on 20 April, jointly with the Subcommittee on Security and Defence, a hearing on "Securing the External Borders of the EU - a challenge for External and Internal Security".

The objective of the hearing is to discuss the way the EU's naval operation to combat people smuggling in the Mediterranean, border assistance and capacity building in the Sahel, and Frontex operations function together. The current crises in the EU neighbourhood demonstrate how deeply internal and external security are interlinked.

Location : Room Paul-Henri Spaak (5B001), Brussels
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Programme
Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

On 20 April, SEDE will hold an exchange of views with Amada Paul, European Policy Centre and a representative from the EEAS (tbc) on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and its impact on the stability in the South Caucasus. In the 1920s, the region was assigned the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. Upon the end of the Soviet Union, this frozen conflict escalated into open war which lasted from 1988 to 1994. Recently hostilities erupted again with mutual shelling of positions along the line of contact.
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Draft agenda and meeting documents
Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

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Will Sunday's referendum help or hurt Beppe Grillo, right, leader of the FIve Star Movement?

Referendums in Europe are often a blunt weapon against the establishment. Italians will be voting in one on Sunday and, of course, it could end badly for Matteo Renzi, the country’s restless centre-left premier. But more likely the result will buck the trend. Indeed this referendum may actually turn the tables and leave the anti-establishment Five Star Movement licking its wounds.

The issue is slightly obscure – oil and gas drilling rights – and the politics is far from straightforward. As the FT’s James Politi explains, Italians will vote on whether to stop renewing offshore licenses for facilities within 12 miles of the coast. The latest polls show the pro-ban environmentalists will win handsomely. But the critical question is whether they will come near the 50 per cent turnout threshold. That is where the real politics comes in.

Mr Renzi is firmly on the side of indifference. He says the referendum is a waste of time and has urged voters to not to bother. In an interview today with La Repubblica he calls it “a hoax”. This all conveniently helps him hedge his position and avoid looking too friendly with Big Oil and Italy’s energy giant Eni. More importantly, it also puts Italy’s leading populist party, the Five Star Movement, to the test.

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The current crises in the EU neighbourhood demonstrate how deeply the EU’s internal and external security interlink, how essential it is for the EU and for its Member States to ensure effective and appropriate controls over the external borders. The SEDE/LIBE joint hearing on 20 April will in particular address how the EU's naval operation to combat people smuggling in the Mediterranean, border assistance and capability building in the Sahel, and Frontex operations function in concert.
Further information
Hearing programme
Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Dalli v Commission
Law governing the institutions
The Court has confirmed the inadmissibility of the action brought by former Commissioner John Dalli in relation to his resignation allegedly requested by ex-President Barroso

All European Final of the European Law Moot Court Competition will take place at the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg on 15 April