European Union

Now we’re back into the normal flow of things, I’ve been giving more talks about Brexit, and writing pieces for other sites. As I decried in my previous posts here (and here), a major challenge for pursuing Brexit is that there is no clarity on either side about what the objective might be.

That in turn makes it almost impossible to know how to get to a conclusion of any kind, let alone one that meets the needs of the various negotiating parties.

At the same time, I find myself increasingly bored with having to say that there’s no real plan on the table and that nobody is trying: it’s easy to take an ‘academic’ perspective and point out problems without offering any solutions. In that spirit, I’m going to offer a solution to you, right now.

In essence, what is proposed is a mechanism that could lead to a new UK-EU relationship. Recall that Article 50 only deals with immediate arrangements for a member state’s exit, running alongside another negotiation for the future. Practically speaking, the points below represent the second half of that Article 50 agreed text.

The first half would deal with the immediate practicalities of leaving – employment of UK nations in the institutions, re-location of agencies, etc – Andrew Duff and David Allen Green are good on these elements (here and here). Think of this as the partner moving out of the family home and the immediate changes that happen (‘I’m taking my toothbrush and a suitcase of clothes’): what follows is more like the divorce procedings proper.

The proposal is predicated three core assumptions. Firstly, that the UK must leave the EU, as per the referendum result. Secondly, that the EU27 are willing to tolerate  some ambiguity and flux, if it maintains a working relationship with the UK. Thirdly, that since the UK is a member state now, it is easier to work from that starting point than one of no relationship at all.

I accept now that all three assumptions can be (and are) challenged, but in the absence of a solid and agreed alternative agenda, there is still a good chance that this approach might be acceptable.

In particular, the model doesn’t make any assumption about what the final relationship will look like. Rather than just tell you what my ‘red lines’ are – which is of little interest to anyone but me – it is aimed at encouraging a rolling debate in the UK (and the EU27) about where issues specifically lie and ways in which to address them.

The Proposal

Enough set-up, now for the detail. The text would cover the following core elements (comments in italics):

• Agreement would close Article 50: UK would cease to be an EU member state upon its entry into force (which would need unanimity, given the following content);
• UK would commit to continued respect of all current EU acquis, plus all further such, subject to revision as below. This address the issue of transitional states between the UK and EU;
• EU would commit to respecting UK’s transitional status when agreeing new decisions, with institutionalised dispute resolution mechanism (including sanctions). It would also grandfather UK’s participation into existing third-party agreements until revised terms could be agreed by UK. This addresses UK-third party relations in transition;
• Creation of a standing EU-UK committee at ministerial level until conclusion of final agreement;
• The UK will notify EU of intention to dis-apply areas of acquis. EU will provide binding and reasoned opinion on any knock-on effects within 3 month timeframe. UK would then confirm dis-application, at which point would come into effect, with detailed annex appended to this agreement. Reversal is also allowed, with Commission confirmation of compliance with then-current acquis. Budgetary adjustments would also be made, drawing on existing principles for allocation of income and expenditure. This is the main mechanism, with the EU being able to minimise challenges to the integrity of the four freedoms, while the UK is able identify specific de-applications of EU law/acquis. The reversal option is there to recognise that this will be a fluid arrangement that might need to adapt to changing circumstances;
• Requirement that UK leaves no longer than 6 months between notifications, otherwise EU will assume fixed UK position and will treat then-status quo as the legal text for the new relationship. UK can also notify EU that it has now reached final position, with same consequence. This aims at both ensuring a high level of interaction between the parties and avoidance of kicking matters into the long grass; it also short-circuits ratification issues long the line;
• Subsequent amendment of agreement would require amendment under agreed mechanism, but one that is more ponderous than the rolling mechanism outlined above. Again, in the spirit of a need for dynamic adaptation, this is simply the conventional amendment mechanism found in all third-party agreements;
• Optionally, agreement that should UK wish to re-join EU, an abbreviated re-accession procedure could be followed, with broad principle of a priori compliance with acquis (except in excepted areas), but continued Article 49 requirement to accept full requirements of membership (i.e. no a priori renewal of current British exemptions). The particular status of the UK as an ex-member state does matter, as for the foreseeable future it will continue to apply very substantial amounts of the acquis: however, this clause would sit within the current treaty provisions and would be a marker of intended on-going close relations.

Some final comments

This is a sketch of an idea, but one that I want to come back to. I appreciate that many readers will have problems with it, and I’d like to read those. Recall however that the intention is to establish a framework, not a particular objective. For this to work, it needs a British government that is sufficiently engaged with the matter both to support public debate within the UK and to discuss matters with the EU27. It also needs an EU27 that feel that UK will be a reliable negotiating partner: if not, then it is unlikely to support this kind of approach.

The post How to achieve a new UK-EU deal when no-one knows what they want appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Schmitt
Approximation of laws
Advocate General Sharpston considers that bodies monitoring the quality system of manufacturers of medical devices may be liable to patients for failure to fulfil their duties arising from EU product safety rules

Mc Fadden
SERV
The operator of a shop who offers a Wi-Fi network free of charge to the public is not liable for copyright infringements committed by users of that network

OPINION on the proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council on establishing an information exchange mechanism with regard to intergovernmental agreements and non-binding instruments between Member States and third countries in the field of energy and repealing Decision No 994/2012/EU
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Eduard Kukan

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Morningstar v Commission
Competition
The General Court of the European Union confirms the Commission’s decision to accept the commitments of Thomson Reuters intended to remedy its abuse of a dominant position in the market for consolidated real-time datafeeds

To receive the Brussels Briefing in your inbox every morning, sign up here

If Brexit is viewed as a divorce, then Britain has only just moved into the spare bedroom. But the other 27 members of the EU have to start moving on now.

Read more

Tag: Mogherinimigration crisis

DRAFT OPINION on the draft Council decision on the conclusion of a Protocol to the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement establishing a partnership between the European Communities and their Member States, of the one part, and the Republic of Uzbekistan, of the other part, amending the Agreement in order to extend the provisions of the Agreement to bilateral trade in textiles, taking account of the expiry of the bilateral textiles Agreement
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Ulrike Lunacek

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager won wide support from MEPs, in a Wednesday afternoon debate, for the Commission’s state aid verdict that the tax benefits that Ireland granted to Apple Inc., enabling it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years, were illegal.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager won wide support from MEPs, in a Wednesday afternoon debate, for the Commission’s state aid verdict that the tax benefits that Ireland granted to Apple Inc., enabling it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years, were illegal.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

AMENDMENTS 1 - 96 - Draft opinion Women's Rights in the Eastern Partnership States and other neighbouring countries
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : Europe needs a forward-looking industrial strategy to improve operating conditions for companies, make the best use of existing European financial instruments, and protect workers, said MEPs in Wednesday's afternoon debate with employment Commissioner Marianne Thyssen and delegated minister for the Slovak Presidency of the Council Ivan Korčok.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : Europe needs a forward-looking industrial strategy to improve operating conditions for companies, make the best use of existing European financial instruments, and protect workers, said MEPs in Wednesday's afternoon debate with employment Commissioner Marianne Thyssen and delegated minister for the Slovak Presidency of the Council Ivan Korčok.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

https://tvnewsroom.consilium.europa.eu/uploads/council-images/thumbs/uploads/council-images/remote/http_7e18a1c646f5450b9d6d-a75424f262e53e74f9539145894f4378.r8.cf3.rackcdn.com/bcfe1a18-7a7d-11e6-8e02-bc764e093073_78.79_thumb_169_1473859348_1473859320_129_97shar_c1.jpg

In this section you will find videos of Federica MOGHERINI, EU HR for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, at the European Parliament.

Download this video here.

Well before the Brexit shock, the EU institutions in Brussels were being criticised for carrying on with ‘business as usual’ – for fiddling while Rome burned. But business as usual is nothing to be ashamed of. The strength of the EU is the wide range of business that it quietly and efficiently conducts whatever the headlines may be screaming about. Its weakness is that so much of that crucially important business goes unsung.

As the EU’s machinery gets back into high gear after the summer break, the focus of attention will be on looming catastrophes. The UK government’s Brexiteers will be causing political and economic uncertainty, and may be about to open the floodgates to ‘me too’ EU membership referendums elsewhere. Everyone knows the eurozone’s malaise is not cured, only in remission. Yet these difficulties need to be placed in perspective. Important though they are, they pale in comparison with the EU’s continuing achievements.

So Brussels must start to fight back. Faced with mounting Euroscepticism right around the EU, it needs to present the cold, hard facts about the benefits of Europeans working together. The European Commission contributed in no small way to the Brexit debacle by retreating behind the alibi of ‘not interfering in a member state’s domestic affairs’. It failed to arm the UK’s ‘Remain’ campaigners with independent statistics and examples to refute the nonsensical claims of the Brexiteers. It must not make that mistake again.

There’s a bland assumption within the Brussels ‘bubble’ that voters know about the contribution EU-level actions and agreements make to their own prosperity and security. That’s not remotely the case, of course. We all know that for national politicians, success is home-grown and failure is born in Brussels.

This sad fact of life is generally accepted by anyone whose work has a European dimension. But it hasn’t led the Commission to sing the EU’s own praises more forcefully. EU citizens may know about Brussels’ fight to ban mobile roaming charges (although even with this success story, the Commission has had a communications mis-step in recent days). But how many are aware of the EU’s contributions on issues ranging from, say, climate change to social protection to competition policy? You name it and the EU has done much to achieve it – yet now the EU is an endangered political experiment.

The Commission should draw the necessary conclusions from its silence during the UK’s Brexit debate. It must use its resources of manpower and money to prepare factsheets that Europhile politicians, journalists and corporate and NGO opinion-formers can use to counter-attack those seeking to exploit the EU’s growing credibility gap.

The ‘information’ churned out by Commission spokesmen and communications staff is largely incomprehensible to all but specialists. No one denies that these details are essential to the smooth running of the EU machinery, but they do little to regain popular support for Europe.

The European public needs the bigger picture. Information is a second-class activity within the Commission, often handled by junior officials. The painting of convincing ‘warts and all’ pictures of Europe’s response to its challenges is above their pay grade. That is because it demands frank and realistic assessments of member governments’ shortcomings and of the EU itself. The result is that the Commission’s communications material is at best bland, and at worst unreadable.

The answer is for the senior echelons of the Commission to wake up an uncomfortable truth: popular perceptions are political reality. The EU – for the first time – faces an existential threat.  So however pressing the policymaking priorities of commissioners and directors-general may be, explaining the EU’s more routine business is just as important, if not more so.

Giles Merritt is the Founder and Chairman of Friends of Europe. His book “Slippery Slope – Europe’s Troubled Future”(Oxford University Press, May 2016) is one of the three non-fiction essays shortlisted for this year’s European Book Prize.

IMAGE CREDIT: Bombaert Patrick/Bigstock.com

The post The EU must extol the virtues of ‘Business as Usual’ appeared first on Europe’s World.

DRAFT OPINION on the draft Council decision on the conclusion of a Protocol to the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement establishing a partnership between the European Communities and their Member States, of the one part, and the Republic of Uzbekistan, of the other part, amending the Agreement in order to extend the provisions of the Agreement to bilateral trade in textiles, taking account of the expiry of the bilateral textiles Agreement
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Ulrike Lunacek

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : Populism, unemployment and social injustice are among the key challenges for the EU, said Commission President Juncker in his annual State of the Union speech in the EP on Wednesday. The refugee crisis, Brexit and counter-terrorism were also debated with political groups’ leaders and other MEPs, who put forward their visions of how to address people’s deepest concerns about the future.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : Populism, unemployment and social injustice are among the key challenges for the EU, said Commission President Juncker in his annual State of the Union speech in the EP on Wednesday. The refugee crisis, Brexit and counter-terrorism were also debated with political groups’ leaders and other MEPs, who put forward their visions of how to address people’s deepest concerns about the future.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : Draft legislation designed to protect retail investors was rejected by MEPs on Wednesday as so “flawed and misleading” that it could actually lose them money. Unusually, it will be returned to the EU Commission for revision.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP