European Union

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Ministers in charge of competitiveness have a first discussion on the new internal market strategy. Better regulation, Competitiveness check-up, and European Research Area are also on the agenda of the Council, on 30 November and 1 December.

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Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Human rights have become an integral part of most donors' development cooperation. In addition to their intrinsic value, human rights are considered instrumental in achieving sustainable development. Implementing the international development goals related to civil and political rights and governance will be challenging. The EU has gradually refined its policy on integrating human rights into development cooperation. The EU approach includes imposing different forms of conditionality, supporting projects and programmes, and mainstreaming human rights across development actions. Aid to governance and civil society has increased in the last decade, reaching 9 % of the EU’s sectorallocable aid in 2013. Implementing a rights-based approach to development will be decisive, but challenging. The European Parliament, a strong supporter of integrating human rights into development cooperation, has its own toolbox to support human rights abroad.
Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Barack Obama speaks with Angela Merkel on the sidelines of the Paris climate summit

Now that the EU has signed a tentative deal with Turkey to help it stem the flow of migrants coming from the Middle East, Brussels appears to be turning to other allies for help – including the US.

According to diplomats, the Obama administration has for months been asking for a “wish list” from the EU on ways it can help, and in recent weeks it finally got that list from the European Commission. Brussels Blog got its hands on the five-page memo, titled “Potential areas of US political and operational support on international immigration and refugee crisis”, and has posted it here. (To give credit where credit is due, our friends and rivals over at the Italian daily La Stampa got their hands on it before we did.)

The document contains few surprises, including a lot of requests for US funding. But there are a couple of “asks” that are particularly interesting. First, the Commission is seeking Washington’s help in pressuring Sunni allies in the Gulf to both help with money and with the more politically combustible issue of accepting some of the hundreds of thousands of refugees that have been fleeing Syria. Or, in the words of the document:

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Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

As Brussels began a lockdown on November 21 to search for suspected terrorists following the murderous attacks in Paris, I was on my way to Jakarta to attend the second world Forum for Muslim Democrats, a still little-known but potentially powerful platform for reflection on 21st Century Islam.

Islam was on the agenda in both cities – and on both continents. But with a big difference.

In Brussels and other European capitals, the talk was of militant Islam, the alleged link between Islam and violence and why young European Muslims were being drawn to fight with and for the so-called Islamic State.

The talk was harsh, angry and negative, at times darkly Islamophobic. Europe was hurting and it wanted to know why. What was wrong with its Muslim minority? What was wrong with Islam?

As the Far Right thundered “I told you so”, many blamed the refugees streaming in from Syria, others raged against Belgium for “allowing” its towns to turn into hotbeds of Jihad. It was nasty and unpleasant  – but understandable as a first, raw reaction.

The Forum in Jakarta also fretted about IS and its global ramifications – and the damaging shadow the terrorist group and its sponsors had cast over the world and over Islam.

But, refreshingly and importantly, discussions were also about renewal and revival of the religion, the importance of democracy and good governance and replacing the IS/Wahabi version with a fresh narrative of Islam as a religion of moderation, tolerance, understanding and inclusiveness.

Although none of the official documents mention Wahabism by name, the message was loud and clear: it was crucial to get Islam out of its Arab stranglehold, to end the equation between Islam and IS. It was time to listen to other voices, other interpretations and to highlight diversity and freedom of thought.

There was consensus that to counter the cruel Wahabi interpretation of Islam, non-Arab Muslim nations would have to take the lead in spotlighting what the organisers of the Forum described as the “true, peaceful and pluralistic nature of Islam.”

“Muslim democrats must not allow the deep state or terrorists to continue hijacking the course of history. We must chart a new course,”  according to the Forum’s initiator Malaysian opposition politician Anwar Ibrahim who is still in prison.

In a speech read out by his daughter Nurul Izzah, a Malaysian member of Parliament, Anwar insisted, “we must strive to stamp out bigotry and intolerance within ourselves. Islamophobia begins at home.”

“Islamic resurgence is about ensuring the rule of law, clean government, social justice and cultural empowerment where women are not treated as second class citizens…and minorities are not marginalised,” he underlined.

The message from others, including Surin Pitsuwan, the former ASEAN Secretary General who is from Thailand’s small Muslim minority, was that Muslim nations on the “periphery” should have the self-confidence to take ownership of Islam, to take the dominant narrative of the religion “away from the heartland”.

As economic power moves to Asia, the continent should also take the lead in crafting and disseminating a different narrative of a religion to challenge existing interpretations. As one participant put it, “let’s forget the Middle East for a while and focus on our priorities: good governance, education, science and technology”.

“Diversity of opinion is a blessing, we should be critical, curious and question,” said Surin. “There must be an open space for a dialogue amongst ourselves.”

The Forum illustrates the importance of “track two” civil society initiatives in tackling much-needed global challenges.  Plans for expanding membership are being considered – current members include Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey – but it’s not going to be easy. Authentic Muslim democrats are few and far between. And even the existing members face trouble at home.

Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, is clearly well-placed to lead the struggle for Islamic renewal given its largely positive record in transiting from dictatorship to democracy. Nahdlatul Ulama, an Indonesian Muslim organisation which claims more than 50 million members has taken the lead in campaigning against extremism.

But even as we met to discuss the role and challenges facing Muslim Democrats, Jakarta was on alert against terror attacks. Human rights organisations warn against creeping intolerance in the country. There are sporadic attacks on churches and against Ahmediya.

Malaysia’s political troubles are worsening, with Anwar Ibrahim still in prison, and Turkey is slipping dangerously towards authoritarian rule.

The challenges are enormous. As Anwar underlined in his message to the Forum, many Muslim countries are poor, ruled by ruthless dictators and autocrats who act as “incubators of fanatics” whose only option is to blow themselves up.

But the meeting in Jakarta showed that the future need not be as dark as many predict, that Islam and Muslims can thrash out a new course for their religion and themselves. But it requires a fundamental shift in attitudes and mindsets.

The future of Islam’s renewal probably does lie in Asia and the non-Arab world. But for that to happen the region’s intellectuals, scholars and democrats will have to stop looking to the Middle East.

Instead, they should consult and dialogue more with each other. And become more assertive and self-confident. If they succeed, the world could still become a more peaceful place.

This article was written by Friends of Europe Director of Policy, Shada Islam, after the World Forum for Muslim Democrats held in Jakarta last week.

IMAGE CREDIT: CC / FLICKR – Matthew Kenwrick

The post Islam and the role of Asia appeared first on Europe’s World.

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The 2015 Climate Change Conference in Paris aims to achieve for the first time in over 20 years of UN negotiations a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C.

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Tackling challenges related to the collaborative economy appears to be a priority for the European Commission as it seeks to strengthen the EU’s Internal Market.

A section on “enabling the balanced development of the collaborative economy” features prominently in the Commission’s Internal Market Strategy published October 28. In it, the Commission quotes a recent study suggesting global revenue from the five main collaborative economy sectors – peer-to-peer finance, online staffing, peer-to-peer accommodation, car sharing and music video streaming – have the potential to reach €300bn by 2025.

The Commission launched a public consultation in September that deals, in part, with the regulatory environment for the collaborative economy. It aims to develop a European agenda for the collaborative economy that will include guidance on how existing EU law applies to collaborative economy business models.

For these initiatives to be successful, the Commission will require input from stakeholders to develop a European approach for tackling some of the tricky issues raised by the new business models.

“Increased competition between traditional taxi services and car-and-driver hire and technology mobility services would respond to demand from consumers for greater flexibility”

The collaborative economy offers clear benefits in terms of jobs, competitiveness and consumer choice. However, it also raises uncertainties in areas such as consumer protection, labour laws and potentially unfair competition with traditional service providers. There is considerable divergence in national regulations covering the sector.

Competition law can be invoked by both new collaborative economy operators using digital platforms and traditional service providers. The former may argue current regulatory measures hamper effective competition; the latter will contend that fierce competition is unfair because the new businesses models are not subject to the same regulatory rules imposed on traditional services.

From both point of views, it is the regulation that seems problematic. Member states’ reactions differ. Several wonder about the legality of companies operating under these new business models.

The Uber saga illustrates this situation very well. In France, UberPOP has been banned since July following violent protests from taxi drivers claiming the new service represented unfair competition. The French Constitutional Court upheld the ban in September on the basis of a law banning services that use private car owners without a formal license or training. Similar bans are in force in Germany and Spain.

Uber has complained to the European Commission that Germany’s law on taxis and other competition rules violate EU legislation. These rules date back 50 years and are no longer adequate for covering new services being made available to consumers. A similar complaint was launched against France.

“The collaborative economy raises uncertainties in areas such as consumer protection, labour laws and potentially unfair competition with traditional service providers”

Uber’s supporters ask why there are bans on a service that is more effective and beneficial to consumers in order to preserve traditional taxis from competition.

In response to the complaints, the European Commission has opened probes into whether French and German laws respect general principles on freedom of establishment. By doing so, the Commission has answered Uber’s call for help against national regulators and reiterated its will to embrace the opportunities of the collaborative economy.

In Spain, a national court has referred several questions on Uber to the European Court of Justice. If it is considered a transport company, the main question will be whether Uber will be subject to the regulatory regime applied to the provision of public services. If it’s considered a digital service it will be difficult for national regulators to impact upon Uber’s activities.

In Italy, while UberPOP faced a court ban based on passenger safety, the Transport Regulation Authority and the Competition Authority have advocated reducing differences among the various non-scheduled transport services.

Increased competition between traditional taxi services and car-and-driver hire and technology mobility services would respond to demand from consumers for greater flexibility and more price competition between service providers.

It is clear from the Internal Market Strategy, that the Commission does not intend to oppose collaborative economy business models, but rather wants to create a level playing field so they can compete fairly and effectively with traditional providers for the benefit of consumers.

This is a difficult challenge. It is crucial all relevant operators engage in dialogue with decision-makers to find a way for these different business models to compete fairly for the benefit of citizens.

The post Uber debate highlights need to tackle collaborative economy challenges appeared first on Europe’s World.

Back in 2008, Kevin Rudd, then Prime Minister of Australia, proposed an initiative to create an Asia-Pacific community by 2020.

He told the Asia Society in Sydney that he aimed to bring together countries as disparate as the United States, China, Japan, India, Indonesia and Australia – a community of about three-and-a-half billion people or half the inhabitants of the planet.

By his side was Richard Woolcott, the Australian envoy who had negotiated the formation of APEC, the Asia-Pacific Economic Community, in 1989. With ambitious talk of security pacts and free-trade agreements, Rudd announced he was recalling Woolcott – at the tender age of 80 – to persuade other countries to set up the new community that would cement the region’s position “at the centre of global affairs”.

“The feature that makes the EU stand out amongst the alphabet soup of regional organisations around the world is the fact that European law is binding upon the member states”

Reading Rudd’s recent article in Europe’s World, ‘Asia needs its own EU more than ever’, it is difficult to avoid the impression that seven years on nothing much has been achieved.

A lot of consultations, a ‘high level’ of interest and (of course) a Policy Commission, but a limited appetite for new institutions and, despite the title of Rudd’s article, a definite reluctance to have anything like the EU.

Partly this is for the perfectly valid reason that Asia’s history and traditions are very different from those of Europe. It is also because Rudd doesn’t want anything that smacks of pooled sovereignty – and the pooling of sovereignty is the one necessary condition for any grouping of nations that aspires to be more than a talking shop.

The feature that makes the EU stand out amongst the alphabet soup of regional organisations around the world – ASEAN, MERCOSUR, SICA, ECOWAS, SADC and so on – is the fact that European law is binding upon the member states. Member states who infringe this law are subject to sanctions, usually in the form of fines that increase until it is in their overwhelming economic interest to pay them. This has been an essential condition of the development of an effective single market.

In the early days, when there were just six member states, it was soon recognised that barriers to the free movement of goods between members of the European Economic Community (as it was then called) could easily be maintained even after customs duties had been abolished. You could deem the products of your neighbour unacceptable on your own market on the basis of technical considerations. These disputes could only be resolved if there was a judicial body whose decisions could be binding on all concerned. Here the role of the European Court of Justice was crucial. The binding nature of its decisions could certainly be controversial but without them the achievement of the free movement of goods would face insuperable national obstacles.

Rudd wants a ‘free-trade area’ in Asia, but one of the well-known paradoxes of economics is that you don’t get free trade without regulation. Some judicial body has to ensure that market forces are not being interfered with. It can only do so effectively if its decisions are binding upon everyone involved. Attempts to create single markets elsewhere in the world have shown that nothing else will be effective.

Of course Rudd faces a problem. If he really wants to begin with China, India and the US all inside the same regional organisation, he clearly can’t even whisper the phrase ‘pooling of sovereignty’. The Americans and the Chinese would walk away at the very mention of such an idea.

It was possible in Europe amid the ruins left by the Second World War. For defeated Germany, shared sovereignty appeared better than none at all. For France it was harder to accept, but Paris recognised it was the only way to recover economically. In the UK, which emerged from the war victorious and retained delusions of grandeur, the system took much longer to accept. Once the Common Market was in place and the UK recognised it might be missing out on something interesting, the country took the plunge and joined. A degree of reluctance never went away and will be tested again soon in a referendum, but it is likely that the economic arguments will prevail. Does the UK want to be outside the most powerful trading bloc in the world? Does it want to have the sort of deal with the EU that Norway has, signing up to the single market and even contributing to the EU budget without having any influence on the way the single market operates? It’s unlikely it will vote to leave – though referendums are unpredictable things.

When it started, the EU was a modest affair. It had a limited number of members and of policies in which they were prepared to pool sovereignty – initially it was just a Coal and Steel Community. Only gradually did it bring in more members and expand its remit to include a broad range of economic activities.

This gradualist, one-step-at-a-time approach contrasts with Rudd’s ambition which appears to want half the world involved from the start discussing everything from a comprehensive free-trade pact to security and foreign policy – including holding ASEAN defence ministers’ meetings under the umbrella of the future Asia-Pacific Community.

This approach is unlikely to succeed. It would be better to do something of real substance within a smaller range of policies and a more limited number of countries. That however would involve a pooling of sovereignty in some areas. If that is successful with a small grouping of nations, it can attract more hesitant – and perhaps larger and more powerful – neighbours.

The European Economic Community was the sprat to catch the British mackerel and the same would be true for Asia. Let Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia, for instance, agree to pool sovereignty and create an Asian Economic Community. After some time, as it began to work effectively and produce economic results, China and India might be enticed to join.

“Europeans are in no way superior to others around the world, but they happen through adversity to have tripped over the right way of ordering their relations”

Perhaps Australia, an agricultural powerhouse, could help to build an Asian Food Security Community running a regional food reserve. The idea would be to moderate the natural price volatility of agricultural markets. It could prevent farm prices falling to catastrophic levels, threatening the livelihoods of Australian and other farmers. It could prevent food prices becoming unaffordable to millions of Asians who live on or close to the poverty line. That could be a modest beginning, requiring a very modest sharing of sovereignty. If it worked, it could lead to the broader and deeper Community Rudd argues for.

Kevin Rudd’s idealism is to be applauded, but there is a reason why it has not yielded results after seven years of hard work and endless meetings. What he calls the ‘EU model’ is a model of sovereignty-pooling which took hold in Europe because a shattered continent needed to find its way back after two horrendous world wars.

The situation in Asia is different, but the EU model remains appropriate. A form of binding law above the level of the nation-state is the one and only method of ensuring a peaceful and prosperous future for any region of the world, or indeed for the world itself (since the UN is certainly not modelled in this way and as a result has had very little success). Europeans are in no way superior to others around the world, but they happen through adversity to have tripped over the right way of ordering their relations. It is a model that other regions might well adopt, but not if they reject the very engine that makes effective regional governance possible.

The post If Asia wants its own EU, it will have to bite the bullet of pooled sovereignty appeared first on Europe’s World.

The hearing will look at the use of private security companies in external operations and the relevant rules in Europe.
Location : Altiero Spinelli 3G-2
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Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP