European Union

The EU-Ukraine Association Council held its second meeting on Monday 7 December 2015 in Brussels.

The Association Council took stock of developments in EU-Ukraine relations since the first Association Council held in December 2014 and welcomed the significant progress realised since. Both sides reaffirmed the significance they attach to the partnership, as well as their continued commitment to deepening the political association and economic integration of Ukraine with the EU on the basis of respect for common values and their effective promotion.

The Association Council welcomed the ratification of the Association Agreement by a large majority of Member States and looked forward to its full entry into force.

Ukraine and the EU will provisionally apply the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) part of the Association Agreement as of 1 January 2016. Ukraine and the EU agreed on the need to ensure full compliance with the commitments undertaken in the context of the DCFTA, including by further enhancing Ukraine's preparatory efforts. The Association Council also took stock of the trilateral talks on DCFTA implementation. The EU and Ukraine reiterated their readiness to continue talks at the ministerial and expert levels by using the flexibilities offered by the DCFTA. They underlined that any solutions found must respect relevant WTO provisions and commitments.

The EU welcomed substantial progress in implementing reforms that have been achieved this year in particular the launch of work of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and new national police, completion of the selection process of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor, adoption by Verkhovna Rada in the first reading of amendments to the Constitution on decentralisation and adoption of the law "On natural gas market" aimed at bringing the gas sector of Ukraine in compliance with the Third Energy Package.

The EU welcomed the strong political commitment of the Ukrainian authorities to bring  the reform process forward, despite the challenges faced by the country, notably the conflict in eastern Ukraine. 

The Association Council acknowledged the importance of swift and thorough implementation, and enforcement, of new policies and legislative frameworks and of further acceleration of political and economic reforms in the following areas in the short term:

• constitution;
• fight against corruption;
• justice system;
• public administration;
• electoral legislation;
• decentralisation;
• civilian security sector;
• energy;
• public finance management;
• business climate.

 The Association Council recognised that reforms have to be made first and foremost in the interest of Ukrainian people.

The EU reiterated its firm commitment to a political and peaceful solution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine based on the respect for Ukraine's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, including through the complete implementation by all sides of the Minsk agreements. In this regard, the Association Council endorsed all diplomatic efforts within the Normandy format and the Trilateral Contact Group, and recalled that the duration of EU economic restrictive measures against the Russian Federation is linked to the complete implementation of the Minsk agreements. Furthermore, it expressed concern over the recent increase in the number and gravity of cease-fire violations, and stressed that all hostages and illegally detained persons related to the conflict in eastern Ukraine, including Nadiya Savchenko should be released, in accordance with the Minsk agreements.

The Association Council highlighted the need to continue addressing the humanitarian situation resulting from theconflict and encouraged Ukraine to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid into conflict-affected areas as well as to comprehensively address the rights and longer term needs of Internally Displaced Persons. The EU expressed its willingness to step-up its support to de-mining activities in eastern Ukraine.

The Association Council expressed concern over the deterioration of the human rights situation in the Crimean peninsula, including that of the Crimean Tatar communityand called for the provision of full, free and unrestricted access to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol to international human rights actors. The EU reiterated its demand for the immediate release of Mr Sentsov and Mr Kolchenko and their safe return to Ukraine. The EU recalled that it does not recognise and continues to condemn the illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol by the Russian Federation.

Ukraine and the EU took stock of the progress made in relation to the respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and agreed on the need for continued efforts. The EU welcomed the good overall conduct of the local elections held on 25 October 2015, demonstrating progress in the respect for democratic principles. 

The Association Council welcomed the progress made so far by Ukraine towards visa liberalisation. Both sides looked forward to the next progress report on the implementation of the Visa Liberalisation Action Plan, which will be published later this month. 

The Association Council welcomed the first signs of economic stabilization in Ukraine and called for a continued implementation of sound macroeconomic and financial policies.

The Association Council acknowledged the significant financial support of over €7 billion by the EU and European Financial Institutions provided since 2014. Itunderlined that this financial support is helping Ukraine stabilize its economy, reforming it in line with international standards and improving the livelihoods of its citizens over time. 

The Association Council welcomed the adoption on 2December 2015 of a new EU programme in support of decentralisation worth €97 million (€90M from the EU budget, €6M from Germany and €1M from Poland), as well the complementary support under the Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace for the restoration of governance and peacebuilding in the eastern part of Ukraine worth €10 million.  

The Association Council also welcomed the signing of the Administrative Arrangement between the European Defence Agency and the Ministry of Defence of Ukraineby the High Representative Federica Mogherini in her capacity as Head of the European Defence Agency and the Minister of Defence of Ukraine Stepan Poltoraktoday.  

Both sides looked forward to putting into practice the enhanced mandate of the EU Advisory Mission for Civilian Security Sector Reform (EUAM Ukraine) aiming at better responding to Ukraine's needs in its efforts to reform the country's civilian security sector, taking into account current security challenges. The Association Council also noted the recent extension by two years of the European Commission Border Assistance Mission to the Republic of Moldova and to Ukraine (EUBAM), as well as the agreement signed enhancing the mission's mandate in respect to border and customs related aspects of the Association Agreements and the implementation of the DCFTAs.

As additional demonstration of deepening relations, the Association Council welcomed Ukraine's accession to Creative Europe and progress towards the accession of Ukraine to the EU Programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, COSME as well as the shared aim to open negotiations toprovide satellite-based Augmentation Services in Ukraine based on the European satellite Navigation Programme EGNOS. Both sides positively assessed the progress made towards the association of Ukraine to the Euratom Research and Training Programme 2014-2018 complementing the EU Programme on Research and Innovation “Horizon 2020”, which will allow an effective association from 1 January 2016 onwards.

The Association Council welcomed the energy reforms initiated this year, in particular in the gas sector, and underlined the need to finalise the legislative framework on energy regulation and on electricity market. Both sides expressed readiness to continue cooperation on energy efficiency and the modernisation and operation of the Ukrainian gas transportation system and on storages and on securing gas supplies between Ukraine and the EU. Ukraine and the EU looked forward to the launching of the negotiations on a Memorandum of Understanding for a Strategic Energy Partnership.

Recalling the commitment made in the 17th EU-Ukraine Summit and the latest Summit of the Eastern Partnership in Riga to conclude the EU-Ukraine Agreement on Common Aviation Area, as referred to in the Association Agreement, at the earliest possible date in 2015, the EU renewed its commitment to a prompt signature of the Agreement. 

The Association Council welcomed the joint Communication of the High Representative and the Commission on the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) review adopted on 18 November and committed to its implementation stressing the non-confrontational nature of the ENP. It will be the subject of further discussion in 2016, while work will continue on the basis of existing contractual arrangements. Differentiation and enhanced ownership will be the hallmark of the reviewed ENP.

Finally, Ukraine and the EU stressed the importance of effective strategic communication and agreed to close cooperation to this end, including through the newly established EU Strategic Communications Task Force focused on the Eastern Neighbourhood and beyond.

The meeting was chaired by Mr Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Prime Minister of Ukraine. Ukraine was also represented by ministries of Foreign Affairs, Economic Development and Trade, Justice and Defence. The EU was represented by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini and the Commissioner responsible for European NeighbourhoodPolicy and Enlargement Negotiations, Johannes Hahn.

Most university seminars on the European Union begin with a seemingly simple, yet in truth remarkably complex exercise: defining Europe. Some answers can be quite creative, ranging from definitions based on who partakes in the Eurovision Song Contest to geographic, cultural, as well as political definitions. Very clearly, Europe means different things to different people.

Even the political entity that is Europe needs an expert to distinguish between the European Union, the eurozone, the Schengen area, as well as a variety of judicial and defence arrangements in which only some EU member states engage. The confusion is worsened by a large-scale lack of everyday “Europe” in public consciousness. While Europeans have probably never heard as much about the EU as over the past few years, the news has only been about the debt crisis, the refugee crisis or the Ukraine crisis. The European Union would appear to function in a constant state of emergency.

When one combines the difficulty of understanding how the EU influences everyday life with this perpetual nature of European crises, it is hardly surprising that public support for the European idea is faltering. Bridging this divide is crucial to ensuring the Union’s survival, and is a herculean task that requires a multitude of responses. Just like the European Union’s motto, “unity in diversity”, there needs to be diversity in the messages that point citizens to the added value Europe can bring to them as individuals.

Today’s 28-member European Union is considerably larger than it was little more than a decade ago, and is home to more than 500m people. With this size and scope come very different realities for different Europeans.

When asking an average German, Spanish or Greek citizen about Europe ten years ago, their answer may have included something about the facility to travel, the common currency or the country’s economic success – with the added twist for Spain being Europe’s role in the country’s democratisation. Today, a German would probably cite a feeling of the EU being a lame duck that’s unable to come to an agreement. Today’s radically-different Spanish response would see the European Union blamed for the country’s disastrous economic and labour market outlook. The Greek assessment would be even worse, since political contests in the country now appear a mere movement of pawns in a big game of European chess.

Looking to a country like Latvia, on the other hand, the answer would probably be based much more on security concerns, and the European Union’s apparent disregard for the country’s difficult situation vis-à-vis its gigantic neighbour Russia. When asking a Briton, meanwhile, many of the commonplace answers about borderless travel or the common currency would not even be present, as the UK does not partake in either.

The way in which Europe’s elites communicate on the European Union has not helped bridge the gaps. After important sessions of the European Council, all heads of state and government disappear into different rooms and hold separate press conferences tailored to their national audiences. The established discourse is one of securing gains for national benefit, or the defence of crucial positions against a strong tide. The one thing these national messages have in common is that they are completely incompatible. The on-going debate on the refugee crisis offers perfect examples of such communication strategies.

On the other side of the aisle stands a grand message on the benefit of Europe at the largest possible scale. Not a single week will pass without a senior politician pointing to the well-established fact that the EU has brought peace to the continent for longer than it has ever known. The problem, though, is that neither of these two kinds of messages matches the reality of individual Europeans. With instant access to all kinds of information, it is all too easy to see that an alleged national success or a supposed common European interest is a lie compared to the actual inactivity of Europe’s political apparatus.

Europeans have to be able to connect messages on the merits of Europe to their daily realities. Looking at the history of our neighbour across the Atlantic could help us realise this. When the founding figures of the United States tried to rally their population around the idea of full political union, rather than remaining a confederation of separate states, the situation was equally diverse. New Englanders worried about the British threat from Canada; those living on the seaboard feared a loss of trade to pirates now that ships were no longer protected by the Royal Navy; residents in the Carolinas were worried by the Spanish presence on the continent; and those living on the internal frontier were afraid of native Americans. While their reasons for signing on to the project of the United States were broad, they were nevertheless convinced by tailored messages that it was the only insurance policy to effectively alleviate their fears. European leaders now too have to tailor the right messages on the European Union to the different concerns across the continent.

When looking to Europe’s south, which has been hit hard by the economic crisis, one can observe an increasing concern about the state of democracy. When political contest has to bow to economic necessities dictated by abstract Europe, one need not wonder about the current lack of EU support. The late British historian Alan Milward posited that the very reason why European states signed onto the European project in the 1950s was a “European rescue of the nation state”. Europe’s economies were in such a disastrous shape and found themselves suddenly sandwiched between two superpowers; the only way to guard some sovereignty was to give other, less crucial aspects of it up. Today, one similarly needs to communicate to citizens in the EU’s south that to best preserve their right to democratic contest, their voice needs to count at European level more than at an increasingly-irrelevant national level, hence the need to pursue fully-empowered representative European institutions.

For those to the east, it is important to consider citizens’ increasing security concerns about the unpredictability of Russia. No contemporary European nation can uphold even the semblance of being capable of defending its own territory alone; only a reformed and deepened European Union with NATO can compensate for the diminished U.S. interest in our continent’s security.

Lastly, when looking at the current influx of refugees into Europe, a similar message can be tailored to citizens in all affected countries. Europe is currently a strange space of concurrently semi-open and semi-closed internal and external borders, with small outlying countries easily being overwhelmed by the influx of refugees. So again, no European country can cope on its own.

All in all, Europe needs more messages of this kind, tailored and actively communicated to Europeans in different parts of the Union. The task ahead is not easy, but if we do this right, we can create a symphony of reasons as to why Europeans should support the continuation of the European project towards an ever-closer, yet diverse union.

The post Arranging the European symphony appeared first on Europe’s World.

Cybercrime is a reality. It is not just a matter of attacks against machines but a threat to the core values of democratic societies. This is illustrated by the proliferation of private data theft; by cyberattacks against the media, civil society organisations, parliaments and individuals; denial-of-service attacks against public institutions and critical infrastructure; sexual violence against children; xenophobia, racism and radicalisation; and terrorist misuse of information technologies.

Even when they are not committed against, or by using, computers, most criminal offences nowadays involve electronic evidence stored on computer systems, including on servers somewhere in the cloud. Electronic evidence is volatile and securing it for criminal justice purposes is fraught with technical, practical and legal complexities.

Governments cannot argue the problems away. They have an obligation to protect society and individuals against crime in cyberspace.

“Most cybercrime is never reported, particularly in the private sector where organisations tend to stay clear of criminal justice”

At the Council of Europe’s Octopus Conference on Cybercrime in June 2015, cybercrime experts from all over the world were asked about the rule of law online. Survey results showed they did not consider that “cyberspace is basically safe, that crime and violation of rights are the exception and that offenders are brought to justice.”

Most cybercrime is never reported, particularly in the private sector where organisations tend to stay clear of criminal justice. A large share of reported cybercrime is never investigated, few of the offences that are investigated result in prosecutions and, of those, few end up with court rulings.

Progress has been made in recent years, in Europe and worldwide, to establish legal frameworks, set up specialised cybercrime units at police and prosecutorial levels, and intensify international cooperation. The Council of Europe’s Budapest Convention on Cybercrime serves as a framework for cooperation for a growing number of countries. International police-to-police cooperation is improving with the support of organisations such as the European Cybercrime Centre at EUROPOL and the Global Complex for Innovation at INTERPOL.

Many governments are realising that considerable resources need to be allocated not just to protect critical information infrastructure but also to beef up the criminal justice response. Increasing investments in capacity building programmes by the European Union, the Council of Europe, the United Nations and others are beginning to yield results.

Nevertheless, the ability of governments to ensure the rule of law in cyberspace will remain limited unless they can overcome impediments to accessing data and thus to electronic evidence for criminal justice purposes. No data means no evidence, no justice and thus no rule of law.

Many investigations are abandoned for lack of data. This is also true for non-cybercrime offences which involve electronic evidence, including serious and violent crime, such as location data in murder cases, subscriber information related to a ransom e-mail sent during kidnappings, data to identify and locate victims of child abuse, or data on communications between terrorists.

The sheer scale of cybercrime, the number of devices, users and victims involved, and technical complications such as encryption or anonymisers, present major challenges for criminal justice.

These issues become much more complex in the context of cloud computing. While law-enforcement powers are tied to the principle of territoriality, data may be stored somewhere in the cloud, held by, or moved between, multiple layers of cloud service providers in various jurisdictions.

“In the absence of clear international rules, governments increasingly take unilateral action. The result is a jungle of diverse approaches with risks for state-to-state relations and the rights of individuals”

“Cloud services may entail a combination of service models (Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS), Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)). It is often unclear … which service provider is in possession or control of which type of data – subscriber information, traffic data, content data – so as to be served a production order” according to the Council of Europe’s Cybercrime Convention Committee in May 2015

Current mutual legal assistance practices are not sufficiently effective. To whom should a mutual legal assistance request be sent in such situations?

In the absence of clear international rules, governments increasingly take unilateral action. The result is a jungle of diverse approaches with risks for state-to-state relations and the rights of individuals.

That raises other fundamental issues: how to reconcile the need for efficient law-enforcement access to data while respecting rule-of-law and human-rights requirements; and how to avoid the trap of undermining the rule of law through actions meant to protect it?

Searches of computers, interception of communications or other law-enforcement powers can interfere with the rights of individuals. They must be prescribed by law, pursue legitimate aims, be necessary and proportionate, allow for effective remedies and be subject to guarantees against abuse.

For criminal procedures and coercive measures at domestic levels, safeguards are normally in place and rule-of-law conditions can be met, at least in democratic societies.

When it comes to access to evidence in foreign jurisdictions, the mutual legal assistance process is designed to ensure that conditions are met and the rights of individuals are protected.

This however presents a dilemma: how to allow for more efficient access to evidence in the cloud in order to strengthen the rule of law through criminal justice, and at the same time ensure that rule-of-law and human-rights conditions are met where current mutual legal assistance rules and procedures are of limited effectiveness.

The Cybercrime Convention Committee of the Council of Europe – comprising the State Parties to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime – has been reflecting on this for some time. In December 2014, the Committee adopted a set of recommendations to render the mutual legal assistance process more efficient. At the same time, the Committee created a “Cloud Evidence Working Group” to identify additional solutions.

Specific proposals should become available in the course of 2016. They may take the form of non-binding guidelines or of an additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime. Such a binding international legal instrument may be necessary to meet rule-of-law as well as data-protection requirements. It remains to be seen whether agreement can be reached on such a complex matter, but the Budapest Convention appears to be the most realistic framework for negotiating additional international rules.

The post Evidence in the cloud and the rule of law in cyberspace appeared first on Europe’s World.

Yesterday, the Danes voted no in their latest EU referendum on whether or not to change the current situation, where Denmark is not participating in the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) cooperation in the EU. It was rejected!

But let’s start with a little bit of background. A referendum on the ‘justice-opt-out’ has been planned for a while now. The opt-out, along with 3 others, was created as a response to the Danes initially rejecting the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. However, the justice opt-out became much more relevant with the Lisbon Treaty, in which the JHA pillar is set to move to the supranational level, a level at which the Danes legally can’t participate while their opt-out is active. So consequentially, six pro-EU parties agreed to take the matter to the ballots and negotiated for an ‘opt-in’ solution, which includes that the Danish Parliament would be able to choose which JHA policies to negotiate about and join on a case-by-case basis. They identified 22 justice policies (including Europol) that Denmark would have joined immediately, and guaranteed they would hold another referendum in case they wanted to join a common asylum framework in the future.

Confused? So were the Danes. The debate leading up to yesterday’s vote was arguably more about explaining the content of the complicated proposal, and the outcome is more a reflection of rising Euroscepticism and dissatisfaction with the established political parties, rather than a response to the actual content of the referendum. Despite the fact that the Danes are one of the most pro-EU countries in Europe, the “Yes” parties failed to make the population understand why an ever closer Union is needed in order to preserve EU benefits Danes are already enjoying. But combined with the EU being perceived – not only by Danes – to be in complete disarray (particularly its justice framework) over the ongoing refugee crisis and its consequences, the referendum was never going to be as safe as the “Yes” campaign had hoped.

Now, why do we care about the Danes voting to continue their status quo? While the referendum has gone more or less unnoticed in Brussels with the Brussels bubble waking up to Copenhagen’s intentions only in the past week, and a lack of comments from any EU official on the referendum, it is rather difficult to predict. Still, we can and should start thinking about what implications it will have for other, more high-profile EU topics.

For one, there is Europol! The parallel-agreement Denmark will likely have to negotiate on Europol will certainly be interesting to follow. No other EU member state has a similar agreement on any policy so essential to the functioning of a borderless Europe, and the result will likely help us understand what a potential two-speed Europe could effectively look like. The model could even set a precedent for how potential future opt-outs by Eurosceptic member states are handled. Most importantly, however, the Danish the vote comes at a time where people are expecting more integration on the justice front, not less, in particular amid talks of a “European FBI” and increased information-sharing is demanded for security reasons. Thus the Danish “No” could arguably not have come at a worse time.

The Danish government needs a solution to being left out of Europol fast in order to show that they haven’t completely lost the ability to act in the European arena. However, their European partners might feel less urgency; on the one hand, no one wants to be seen to be heavy-handed with the Danes or to not be respecting democracy. On the other hand, there is little appetite for rewarding bad behavior, so the other capitalso are likely to “hurry up slowly” during the negotiations. The content and pace of the negotiations will however not be decided by the Danes and their partners’ ability to come to a compromise, but rather will be decided by the impact it may have on much more important issues and debates, such as Brexit. After all, whether the Danes decide to move from a small reluctant player in JHA to not playing at all is unlikely to matter much for the rest of EU, nor indeed for the essential progress on key security challenges.

From a Brussels perspective, there is an important link between yesterday’s referendum and the British referendum, as the Danish “No” is likely to be picked up by the British “out” advocates. Former Labour Europe Minister Denis MacShane predicts that out voices will “praise the freedom loving Danes who dare say no to more European integration”. Furthermore, the “out” side will be very interested in Brussels’ response to the Danish vote. If Brussels gives the Danes a custom solution that is perceived to benefit Denmark, it is very likely that the British “out” campaigns will use it to show to the British public that a national can in fact easily reap the benefits of the EU while opting out in parts of the Union. Hence for those decision-makers who would like to avoid a Brexit, it is essential to convince their electorate of why the European Union has to be ever closer, whilst also making sure the debate doesn’t stray from discussion about the concrete benefits of staying in the EU and into vague and Eurosceptic territory – something that the Danish politicians seemed to have failed to do.

The trouble for Brits, however, is the Danes might just have made it a lot more difficult for them…

by Martin Bresson and Malte Helligsøe

Following the Justice and Home Affairs Council confirmation of the deal on the EU Passenger Name Record (PNR) directive, the Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee lead negotiator, Timothy Kirkhope (ECR, UK), said:
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Following the Justice and Home Affairs Council confirmation of the deal on the EU Passenger Name Record (PNR) directive, the Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee lead negotiator, Timothy Kirkhope (ECR, UK), said:
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Johan Van Overtveldt, Belgium's finance minister, has vowed to fight Vestager

Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief, is regularly in the headlines for her corporate tax battles with big US companies: Google, Amazon, Apple and now McDonald’s. But don’t overlook her investigation into Belgium’s tax perks scheme for multinationals. A verdict appears to be imminent, and the repercussions will be felt well beyond the country of 11m.

Earlier this week, Johan Van Overtveldt, finance minister, told the De Standaard daily that Belgium was “highly likely” to have to claw back €700m from companies that have benefited from Belgium’s special tax incentives package.

Van Overtveldt is promising to resist Vestager’s tax justice campaign, but she isn’t a commissioner to change her mind too quickly.

Read more

A delegation of 15 MEPs will take part in the UN climate conference in Paris, France, from Monday to Friday. The European Parliament says that the 2015 Protocol must be legally binding and ambitious from the outset, with five-year commitment periods. In a resolution voted in October, MEPs also proposed that a share of revenues from the EU carbon market allowances should be earmarked for climate finance, and that aviation and shipping sectors should initiate measures to curb their emissions.
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

A delegation of 15 MEPs will take part in the UN climate conference in Paris, France, from Monday to Friday. The European Parliament says that the 2015 Protocol must be legally binding and ambitious from the outset, with five-year commitment periods. In a resolution voted in October, MEPs also proposed that a share of revenues from the EU carbon market allowances should be earmarked for climate finance, and that aviation and shipping sectors should initiate measures to curb their emissions.
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Political group and committee meetings, Brussels

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP