European Union

Plenary sessions : Undeclared work represents a major problem in Europe, which accounted for 18.4% of the EU's gross domestic product in 2012. Not only do governments miss out on revenue, but workers are also less protected. On 2 February MEPs approved a proposal to establish a European platform to tackle the issue. How will it work? Watch our interview with report author Georgi Pirinski, a Bulgarian member of the S&D group, to find out more.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : Undeclared work represents a major problem in Europe, which accounted for 18.4% of the EU's gross domestic product in 2012. Not only do governments miss out on revenue, but workers are also less protected. On 2 February MEPs approved a proposal to establish a European platform to tackle the issue. How will it work? Watch our interview with report author Georgi Pirinski, a Bulgarian member of the S&D group, to find out more.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

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The very first informal meeting of EU Trade and Developmentm ministers takes place on 2 February 2016, in Amsterdam.

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Plenary sessions : Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves called on the European Union to act decisively regarding the migration crisis during a speech in plenary. "Let us now gather our wits and strengths," he told MEPs. "Leave behind the indecision, finger pointing and ducking of responsibility. We will handle this migration crisis if we show the resolve of our forebears."

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves called on the European Union to act decisively regarding the migration crisis during a speech in plenary. "Let us now gather our wits and strengths," he told MEPs. "Leave behind the indecision, finger pointing and ducking of responsibility. We will handle this migration crisis if we show the resolve of our forebears."

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of our new Brussels Briefing. To receive it every morning in your email in-box, sign up here.

For most of Europe, the sharp decline in oil prices since the summer has been an economic boon, lowering costs for everyone from energy-intensive manufacturers to run-of-the-mill consumers. But the one place in Europe where the free-fall has been no boon at all has been the Kremlin treasury, where oil and gas sales account for more than half of revenues. Already, Russian officials have announced a 10 per cent cut in spending for this year’s budget, and have toyed with the possibility of aggressively hedging against future losses. Now comes word that President Vladimir Putin may be putting pressure on seven of Russia’s largest state-owned companies – including energy giant Rosneft and airline Aeroflot – to at least partially privatise as a way to raise funds.

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Plenary sessions : MEPs approved on 3 February Parliament's position on the Trade in Services International Agreement (TiSA), which is currently being negotiated by the EU and 22 World Trade Organisation partners. Read on for more on the agreement and check out our infographic explaining TiSA.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : MEPs approved on 3 February Parliament's position on the Trade in Services International Agreement (TiSA), which is currently being negotiated by the EU and 22 World Trade Organisation partners. Read on for more on the agreement and check out our infographic explaining TiSA.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : Parliament endorsed draft EU legislation establishing a “European platform” to enhance cooperation in combatting undeclared work in a vote on Tuesday. The platform would enhance cooperation among EU member states' labour ministries, trade unions and employers' associations about how best to tackle a problem that is damaging the EU economy and distorting the labour market. The undeclared economy accounts for 18% of EU GDP.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : Parliament endorsed draft EU legislation establishing a “European platform” to enhance cooperation in combatting undeclared work in a vote on Tuesday. The platform would enhance cooperation among EU member states' labour ministries, trade unions and employers' associations about how best to tackle a problem that is damaging the EU economy and distorting the labour market. The undeclared economy accounts for 18% of EU GDP.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : Corporate tax avoidance costs EU countries €50-70 billion in lost revenue a year, according to the European Commission. On 2 February it discussed with MEPs how it plans to make corporate taxation fairer and more efficient. The Lux Leaks scandal showed that EU countries sometimes court multinationals with advantageous tax schemes. Parliament has set up two special committees to investigate and called on the Commission to introduce legislation to restrain these practices.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

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In this section, you can find some videos concerning the relations between the United Kingdom and the European Union.

Download this video here.

Plenary sessions : To deal with China’s recognition as a “market economy”, the EU must find a solution, in line with WTO rules, that retains its ability to shield its economy against unfair competition from dumped imports from China, whilst acknowledging it as a strategic trading partner. This view was broadly shared by MEPs and EU trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström in a plenary debate on Monday night.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Keeping the unity of the European Union is the biggest challenge for all of us and so it is the key objective of my mandate. It is in this spirit that I put forward a proposal for a new settlement of the United Kingdom within the EU. To my mind it goes really far in addressing all the concerns raised by Prime Minister Cameron. The line I did not cross, however, were the principles on which the European project is founded.

I deeply believe that our community of interests is much stronger than what divides us. To be, or not to be together, that is the question which must be answered not only by the British people in a referendum, but also by the other 27 members of the EU in the next two weeks.

This has been a difficult process and there are still challenging negotiations ahead. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. I am convinced that the proposal is a good basis for a compromise. It could not have been drafted without the close and good cooperation of the European Commission. In order to facilitate this process the Commission also made political declarations that are included in this package.

Let me briefly refer to all the four baskets of the proposal.

On economic governance, the draft Decision of the Heads sets out principles to ensure mutual respect between the Member States taking part in further deepening of the Economic and Monetary Union and those which do not. By doing that we can pave the way for the further integration within the euro area while safeguarding the rights and competences of non-participating Member States.

The respect for these principles is backed up by a draft Decision establishing a mechanism that while giving necessary reassurances on the concerns of non-euro area Member States, cannot constitute a veto nor delay urgent decisions. The exact conditions for triggering this mechanism remain to be further discussed.

On competitiveness, the draft Decision of the Heads, together with a more detailed European Council Declaration and a draft Commission Declaration, will set out our commitment to increase efforts to enhance competitiveness. We will regularly assess progress in simplifying legislation and reducing burden on business so that red tape is cut.

On sovereignty, the proposed Decision of the Heads recognises that in light of the United Kingdom's special situation under the Treaties, it is not committed to further political integration. It also reinforces respect for subsidiarity, and I propose that the Member States discontinue the consideration of a draft legislative act where a number of national parliaments object to it on the grounds of subsidiarity, unless the concerns raised can be accommodated. The importance of respecting the opt-out regime of Protocols 21 and 22, as well as national security responsibilities is also underlined.

On social benefits and free movement, we need to fully respect the current treaties, in particular the principles of freedom of movement and non-discrimination. Therefore the proposed solution to address the UK concerns builds on the clarification of the interpretation of current rules, including a draft Commission Declaration on a number of issues relating to better fighting abuse of free movement.

The draft Decision of the Heads notes, in particular, the Commission's intention to propose changes to EU legislation as regards the export of child benefits and the creation of a safeguard mechanism to respond to exceptional situations of inflow of workers from other Member States. A draft Commission Declaration also relates to this mechanism. This approach, as well as the exact duration of the application of such a mechanism need to be further discussed at our level.

Most of the substance of this proposal takes the form of a legally binding Decision of the Heads of State or Governments. We should also be prepared to discuss the possible incorporation of the substance of a few elements covered by the Decision into the Treaties at the time of their next revision.

Our Sherpas and Permanent Representatives will meet on Friday this week to have the first discussion of the proposal. The clear objective is to have an agreement of all 28 at the February European Council. To succeed we will all need to compromise. To fail would be compromising our common future.

Donald Tusk, President of the European Council

Elements of the proposal

Affum
Area of Freedom, Security and Justice
According to Advocate General Szpunar, a foreign national who was not stopped when illegally crossing an external border of the Schengen Area cannot be imprisoned solely on the basis of his illegal entry into the territory of a Member State

Plenary sessions : European Central Bank President Mario Draghi defended the ECB's monetary policy decisions in a debate with MEPs on Monday evening, saying that the Bank will revise its monetary stance in March and acknowledging that the December 2015 inflation outlook was too rosy.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

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It’s been a rough few months for US tech giants doing business in Europe. Apple is fighting a rearguard action to prevent EU competition authorities from ordering it to pay billions of back taxes to Ireland; Google has been accused by Brussels of abusing its dominant position in internet searching; and Facebook has faced a series of legal setbacks over its data privacy policies. Unless EU and US negotiators can sew up a deal in the next 24 hours, add another item to that litany: the disappearance of the legal agreement that has allowed tech groups to seamlessly move data on customers back and forth across the Atlantic.

In reality, that legal structure disappeared four months ago, when the European Court of Justice struck it down following disclosures by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden that, the court ruled, meant the US wasn’t living up to its side of the “safe harbour” agreement — which is based on the assumption that privacy practices are relatively the same in both jurisdictions. But while the ECJ ruling came in October, European data protection agencies decided to give EU and US authorities to the end of January to strike a new “safe harbour” deal. In the interim, companies that regularly transfer personal data — be it payroll information or your latest posts on Facebook — were left in a legal limbo. They were not quite sure if their alternative measures would would suffer the same legal fate as safe harbour.

European Commission and US Commerce department negotiators spent most of a drizzly Sunday in Brussels attempting to strike a deal, but here we are on February 1 and none has been reached. Although the deadline has officially passed, negotiators can actually use today for one last push.Europe’s national data privacy authorities (DPAs) won’t meet until tomorrow to decide on their next steps. But absent a “safe harbour” deal, this meeting could trigger hunting season for the more adventurous DPAs, who will look to the US West Coast for some big game.

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MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION on 2015 Report on Kosovo; 2015/2893 (RSP)

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Remember the spy novels of Cold War times? Where pretty much everybody was suspected of being a ‘mole’? The master storyteller of brilliant double agents was John Le Carré, and one of his very best novels was Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,  published in the spring of 1974, incidentally one month after Willy Brandt had resigned because he had an East German spy among his closest collaborators.

The more the Brexit referendum debate unravels, the more it reminds me of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the title of which refers to the code names given to some of the suspects and borrowed from an old nursery rhyme (not that this is of any importance for this post). The parallel between the Cold War spy novels and the Brexit referendum campaign is the haunting question whether there is a double agent, seemingly pursuing a publicly proclaimed preferred outcome, but secretly aiming at provoking the exact opposite.

If the Brexit referendum was a TV series like Borgen or Deutschland 83, the best possible cast for the double agent would undoubtedly be David Cameron. He would actually be too good to be true. The most brilliant and efficient ‘moles’ always have the appearance of bland people, underestimated by everybody. They are unspectacular, not really stupid but not particularly bright either, sometimes clumsy, but almost touching in their awkwardness. They have cover stories that have been built over years, so patiently that they have become entirely credible, so convincing, so obvious. If I had to write the scenario of this TV fiction I would therefore lay great emphasis on the perfect fake identity for my double agent.

The cover story would go like this:

Here is a rather average politician who has been put by circumstance in the position to lead the country. From the beginning it has been ‘evident’ that he was not madly in love with the European Union, but had come to the pragmatic conviction that EU membership was on the whole a better option for Britain than splendid isolation.

Then, the scenario would unfold like this:

Unfortunately, to his sincere regret, he has to put up with a bunch of obnoxious backbenchers and an aggressive, populist alliance of Eurosceptics and xenophobes that forces him – against his will! – to commit to holding a referendum about EU membership. There’s no danger, though, the polls predict a stable majority for remaining. Relief!

In the meantime he is bravely trying to limit the damage, by cleverly turning things into a win-win situation. He engages in a renegotiation of the terms of membership with his European partners, the positive outcome of which should strengthen his position and enable him not only to keep Britain in Europe but actually be perceived as an energetic reformer. Of course, he goes about it in somewhat clumsy manner, almost jeopardising his chances of success. And he also seems to handle all other details – the wording of the question, the fixing of the date, the issue of party discipline etc. – in his own hesitant, awkward way.

Some cliffhangers later the dénouement would be written in the future past, why not narrated in emotional flashbacks. He will have dauntlessly fought and argued in favour of membership, and once it’s all over and the leavers pop their (probably EU-produced) champagne, he remembers the day when he warned all stakeholders that his personal commitment and charisma may not be sufficient to counter-balance the momentum of nationalism spurred by a hateful press.

Looking back, the spectators will recognise that there will have been something inevitable about Brexit from the beginning; it’s just they were tricked by the scenario and the main protagonist into not noticing it. And with relations between the UK and Europe being what they are, the end of the story would be somewhat open, leaving the possibility to shoot a second season soon.

If this sounds all too silly, it’s probably just that I read too many Cold War spy novels in my Cold War youth. Apologies for letting my imagination run wild. At the same time, you will have to admit: if ever there was a soviet master spy like John le Carré’s mysteriously named ‘Karla’, driven by the long-term objective to dislocate the European Union, he could not possibly have recruited a better double agent than David Cameron, could he?

 Albrecht Sonntag, EU-Asia Institute
at ESSCA School of Management.
Follow us on Twitter: @Essca_Eu_Asia

The post Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, … Brexit! appeared first on Ideas on Europe.