European Union

The publication on 21 July of the UK government’s Command Paper came just before the end of the Parliamentary session. Flagged for several weeks, it was presented as the culmination of a long push to secure changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Undoubtedly, the Paper does cap the numerous public statements of Lord Frost, Brandon Lewis, Boris Johnson and others in government, not least in saying that a root-and-branch reformulation of the entire text is needed, rather than some tweaking at the edges.

But it is another aspect of culmination that is more striking: the lack of credibility behind the proposals advanced.

Put briefly, the UK’s position appears to be one of “we didn’t mean to sign the Protocol, so let’s change it”, an approach that has no grounds in either international law or basic political common sense.

The international law aspect is something I’ve covered already, but to recap the basics: if you freely sign a treaty, you’re bound to stick to it, unless there’s some very fundamental change of circumstances. And no, disliking it isn’t enough.

The political angle is one that’s not too complex to unpack either.

In any potential negotiation, you need to know what your best alternative to a negotiated agreement (or BATNA, for acronym fans) is. As long as you can get a better outcome by negotiating than by not negotiating, then you should negotiate and agree.

Note that this is purely relative: the negotiated outcome might be poor, but it just needs to be less poor than not agreeing. And so it is for Brexit.

The EU might not like the Protocol much, but it was better than any other option on the table, or walking away from the table altogether.

As such, the UK’s proposal to renegotiate the Protocol needs to be a clear improvement on the status quo.

And yet, the Command Paper barely deals with the EU’s needs (beyond Single Market integrity), which means the case has not been made to even start on this, so the Commission’s rejection of renegotiation is less than surprising.

Since the UK knows all this, the question has to be why bother pursuing a route that isn’t going to lead anywhere good? Playing with invocations of Article 16 (which isn’t what the UK government thinks it is, but that’s a different point) can only result in numerous legal and trade retaliations from the EU, and a big telling-off by the US, only to leave the UK with the original problem still in place, so it’s not really going to work.

As with so much of the Brexit process, this isn’t really about the external aspect, but the internal one. The deep allergy of Number 10 to signing up to anything that gives a formal role to the EU in UK affairs is driven by the pressures of backbenchers, regardless of the views of public opinion, businesses or anyone else.

Indeed, the most telling sentence in the entire Command Paper is from para 14:

Nevertheless, the revised Protocol delivered the fundamental requirement of enabling the UK as a whole to leave the EU in a genuine and meaningful way

British policy is thus about what mustn’t happen, rather than what must; a strategy that has failed repeatedly since 2016.

The hope is still, clearly, that someone will come up with a cunning wheeze to square the numerous circles, so all that’s needed – and fortunately all that’s possible – is to keep things from settling into any kind of regularity, so that no one gets too comfortable.

I’ve set out some further thoughts on the Command Paper in this thread, but the key is that this isn’t any kind of unblocking process, but rather a holding pattern:

Right, a first reading of Cmnd Paper on NI Protocol

tl;dr is tl;dr [sic]https://t.co/NqnUdWSqRP

1/

— Simon Usherwood (@Usherwood) July 21, 2021

As a bit of a side-note, I’ll also mention that the DUP made various positive noises about the proposals in the Command Paper, largely because they talk to the same people.

The DUP’s seven tests from last week did highlight the problems of the current Protocol, but also of all the other options out there. Those that do meet the DUP’s requirements don’t work for either the EU or Number 10.

This suggests that we are still a very long way from any kind of stable equilibrium on Northern Ireland.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic88

The post tl;dr – The UK’s Command Paper on the Northern Ireland Protocol appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The European Commission proposed on Tuesday rules that would see companies transferring cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, collect details of senders and recipients, in order to help authorities detect money laundering or terrorism financing, Reuters reported. This will ensure "full traceability of crypto-asset transfers," the commission said. Anonymous crypto-asset wallets will be banned since anonymous bank accounts are already forbidden under EU anti-money laundering rules.

Moroccan intelligence agencies targeted French president Emmanuel Macron with the Israeli-made spyware software Pegasus, according to Le Monde newspaper. Although targeted, it remains unclear if his phone was compromised by the software. They also reportedly went after EU Council president Charles Michel, when he was prime minister of Belgium.

The UK will pay France €62.7m to prevent migrants from crossing the English Channel, in a deal hammered out on Tuesday. The plan includes doubling the number of French officers deployed along the coast. The deal comes a day after a record 430 people crossed the Channel on small boats.

Greece has launched an investigation into four NGOs, accusing them of facilitating illegal entry of foreigners and espionage. Among those targeted is Aegean Boat Report, which details pushbacks of migrants and refugees. Greek migration minister Notis Mitarachi last December accused it of helping migrant smugglers, a charge denied by the NGO.

The European Commission on Tuesday proposed a new set of anti-money laundering and countering terrorism-financing rules. The legislative package includes the creation of a new EU-level Anti-Money Laundering Authority, which will seek to coordinate with national authorities to ensure the rules are applied consistently throughout the private sector. The package has been described a major step forward by the Greens.

A recent study shows that gun homicide has increased in Sweden - as opposed to the rest of Europe, where it's been in decline for years.

The concern of Germany's Constitutional Court was that the European Court of Justice did not sufficiently check the action of other EU branches of power. The Polish situation is the exact reverse: the government is taking control of the courts.

The rule-of-law report comes in a crucial moment as Brussels is currently approving member states' recovery plans, conditional on having a robust justice system and anti-corruption framework.

OPINION on the proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on measures for a high common level of cybersecurity across the Union, repealing Directive (EU) 2016/1148
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Markéta Gregorová

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

The governing body of the Conference on the Future of Europe agreed on Monday to allocate six more seats in the conference plenary to both regional and local representatives, and four more seats to social partners. This means that the current 534 plenary would become a body with 550 representatives. The first European Citizens Panels will take place in September, when some 200 people will discuss about the way forward.

Today, the Executive Board agreed to allocate more seats in the Conference Plenary to regional and local elected representatives, as well as to social partners.
Committee on Constitutional Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

Today, the Executive Board agreed to allocate more seats in the Conference Plenary to regional and local elected representatives, as well as to social partners.
Committee on Constitutional Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, EU Member States managed to agree on key financial instruments to support the economic recovery of Europe. The decision to manage these instruments within the existing European Semester procedure has put this procedure into the spotlight. Adequate parliamentary involvement in this procedure is crucial. The pandemic can serve as a new opportunity to enhance the involvement of parliaments. Beyond providing stronger incentives for national parliaments to get involved more actively in the procedure, the pandemic could also encourage governments to include their national parliaments more systematically.

There is room for improvement in involving national parliaments in the European Semester. Illustration: Georges Boulougouris

The European Semester: less technocratic and more democratic?

In 2021, member state governments submitted National Recovery and Resilience Plans for the first time. These documents outline national reform measures and investment plans for mitigating the negative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuring sustainable recovery. Based on the Commission’s assessment of National Recovery and Resilience Plans, member states can receive available EU financial support for implementation via the Recovery and Resilience Facility.

This process is linked to the European Semester procedure. Originally introduced in response to the Eurozone crisis, this procedure is designed to ease coordination between EU Member States and EU institutions in planning and implementing economic and fiscal policies. The aim of the procedure is to assist EU Member States in maintaining responsible fiscal policies and achieving their growth potential.

Yet, this is a complex and intensive procedure that manages key national policies in a largely executive and expert-level manner. It therefore has often been emphasised that corresponding parliamentary involvement is necessary to ensure greater accountability, justifications of decisions taken in the procedure, and contribute to the openness of its complex processes.

For this reason, research has started to examine the extent to which and how exactly national parliaments participate in the European Semester. However, one unexplored question is how governments engage with their parliaments in this procedure. In this blog post I will present data on government activities related to the timely and systematic consultations with their parliaments in the European Semester before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Governments’ Efforts to Involve National Parliaments in the European Semester

The European Semester policy coordination mostly evolves around intensive exchanges between the European and national executives (the Commission, the Council and national governments). The procedure has several important stages with a clearly defined timeline. A particularly relevant stage for national parliaments is when governments prepare national European Semester programmes. In the National Reform Programme (NRP), which is one of those programmes, governments provide detailed elaborations of national macroeconomic policy plans and outline how they will contribute to the EU defined objectives. The Commission assesses this programme and prepares EU policy recommendations that should be implemented at the national level.

National parliaments largely depend on the information provision from the governments in the European Semester, especially with regard to the national programmes. It is then relevant to consider whether governments provide their parliaments with timely and sufficient information about these programmes, as this is a necessary element of the accountability. Because governments need to submit their National Reform Programme to the Commission by 30 April each year, providing sufficient information about this programme to the parliament before the submission is important for the overall parliamentary scrutiny. And, in order to ensure political responsibility in the procedure, parliaments should also have an opportunity to assess the government’s actions and decisions in the European Semester. Thus, considering whether the representatives of the government appear before the parliament to report on the National Reform Programme and justify their actions is important, as it increases political accountability. To what extent does this happen in practice?

Drawing from the larger data collection of my own doctoral research, the data below shows appearances of the government’s representatives before the parliament to present and discuss the National Reform Programme in the pre-Covid-19 pandemic period. The data covers national parliaments of 25 EU member states, including both lower and upper chambers in bicameral parliaments (not included are the parliaments from Cyprus, Greece and Malta).

Presentation of the NRP by the government’s representatives to the parliament. Source: author’s own

Overall, government representatives appeared in person to report and/or discuss this programme with the parliament/chamber before the 30 April submission deadline in less than a half of the 38 parliamentary chambers during the observed period (2014-2017). Generally, in about one quarter of parliaments/chambers, this was done only after the programme was submitted to the Commission. Still, there are several parliaments where government representatives did not present the National Reform Programme. Some parliaments/chambers did not scrutinize this programme at all, and therefore, government’s representatives did not report on it. This might be due to the lack of formal competencies or because parliamentary elections took place in a particular year. Nevertheless, some parliaments/chambers might also not scrutinize this programme, even though they have formal rights to do so.

A closer look at the data in Table 2 below reveals that before the 30 April submission deadline, government’s representatives mostly appeared only once before the parliament to present and discuss the National Reform Programme. There were only few parliaments that tend to have more than one discussion with the government’s representatives during the observed period, such as the Italian, the Luxembourgish and the Portuguese parliaments.

Number of the government’s appearance before the parliament to report on the NRP before the 30 April deadline. Source: author’s own

Towards more open and democratic management of the European Semester

In addition to a parliament-centred perspective, in this blog I suggest to look at the issue of the parliamentary involvement in the European Semester from a governmental perspective as well. Representatives from the government made efforts to appear in person before the parliament to present and discuss the National Reform Programme in the pre-Covid pandemic period. Still, less than half of the examined parliaments had a chance to discuss this programme with government representatives before they are sent to the Commission, and did so mostly only once. This indicates that there is still room for improvement concerning the systematic consultations with, and adequate involvement of, national parliaments in the European Semester.

The developments brought by the pandemic can serve as a new opportunity to strengthen the dialogue between representatives of the government and national parliaments in this procedure. Available EU financial support for member states recovery now depends on the EU’s assessment of proposed reforms and investments in the National Recovery and Resilience Plans, and their follow-up implementation.

Since these directly concern important questions of the longer-term national socio-economic development, governments should increase their efforts in seeking the parliamentary input during the preparation of National Recovery Plans to ensure that different views, opinions and needs are expressed and accounted for, and that planned measures and available EU financial support adequately and effectively address challenges on the ground.

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The Treaty of Maastricht (1993), which established the EU and introduced a three-pillar system of policymaking, formalised intergovernmental cooperation in the field of asylum and migration between the 12 EC states.

The first pillar, also known as the European Community, was the only pillar with a legal personality and covered the vast majority of EU legislation. The second and third intergovernmental pillars were termed ‘common foreign and security policy’ (CFSP) and ‘justice and home affairs’ (JHA), respectively.

The 3-pillar structure introduced by the Treaty of Maastricht, 1993 (Source: ADST, 2016).

In other words, the twelve member states committed to collaborate in issues related to asylum and migration, however, only on an intergovernmental basis reflecting their unwillingness to surrender sovereignty to the supranational level (Van Oudenaren, 2004).

Therefore, despite the indispensable step provided by Maastricht in the process leading to the development of EU asylum and migration policies, the third pillar did not produce the desired results. Consequently, the deficiencies of the third pillar led to the Treaty of Amsterdam, agreed by European political leaders in 1997.  This will be discussed in the following post.

References

ADST, Association for Diplomatic Studies & Training (2016) How Did We Get Here? A Look Back at the Creation of the European Union, 22 June. Available from: https://adst.org/2016/06/get-look-back-creation-european-union/

Treaty on European Union (Maastricht Treaty), 7 February 1992 [OJ C 191, 29.7.1992]

Van Oudenaren, J. (2004) The European Union: From Community to Constitution. In: Tiersky, R., (ed.) Europe Today: National politics, European integration, and European security, 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, pp. 21-58. 

 

 

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by Taro Nishikawa This article is based on research presented at the UACES Graduate Forum Research Conference 2021 (17-18 June, online)

 

After the European Community (EC) launched the Common Commercial Policy (CCP) in 1970, the question of who influences EC/EU positions in international trade negotiations became an important scholarly research topic. On the one hand, greater control by Member states vis-à-vis the European Commission and the limited autonomy of the European Commission are stressed—ex-ante controls (e.g., negotiation mandates) and ex-post controls (e.g., Article 113/133 Committee, current Trade Policy Committee). On the other hand, the European Commission’s multiple sources of autonomy are pointed out—agenda-setting, agency slack, norm repackaging, and rhetoric/cognitive framing.

 

The reality of EC/EU positions in international trade negotiations might be more complicated. As Dür and Zimmermann, and Elsig point out, the influence of the European Commission and Member States can depend on the stages of trade negotiations. When issuing the mandate, the EC/EU position would be directed by Member States’ preferences, especially those with a majority in the Council (cf. a liberal intergovernmentalist approach). However, when negotiating with trading partners, the European Commission would have the ‘reframing ability’ to decide how to achieve the objectives of the Council’s mandate within a win-set of the EC/EU (cf. two-level games model). This article applies this hypothetical model of vertical interplay between the European Commission and Member States to the EC-Japan trade negotiations in the 1980s.

 

In the 1970s, the EC was hugely concerned about trade imbalances due to the ‘torrential’ export of certain manufactured goods from Japan. Many Member States made bilateral agreements with Japan to put voluntary export restraints (VERs) in place. However, in the 1980s, the EC faced new changes and challenges. Firstly, the role of the European Commission in the EC-Japan trade negotiations grew, e.g. the first EC-level voluntary export moderation on ten goods in 1983. Secondly, even though they had been concerns for the EC and the US since the 1970s, market opening and domestic structural impediments became key discussion points in international trade negotiations, especially between Japan and the EC and between Japan and the US.

 

In this context, this article focuses on the trajectory of trade negotiations concerning the EC’s request for a Japanese import target in November 1985. The idea of an import target was first introduced confidentially in the Japan-US Semiconductor Agreement in 1986. The request by the EC was the first official request for an import target from foreign countries to Japan, although it did not focus on specific products and was never accepted by the Japanese Government.

 

Since 1982, in response to the US’s and the EC’s continuing concerns, the Japanese Government introduced several market-opening measures, including tariff reductions, easing restrictions on imports, and improving the standards and conformity assessment system. In April 1985, in line with recommendations from the Advisory Committee for External Economic Issues, the Japanese Government decided to set up comprehensive market-opening measures in six areas, ‘the Action Programme for Improved Market Access’.

 

In June 1985, in response to this move, the Foreign Affairs Council stressed the necessity of ‘a clearly verifiable commitment […] to a significant, sustained increase’ in Japanese imports of manufactures and processed agricultural products in the forthcoming action programme. Moreover, according to diplomatic documents (no. 2019-1333) of the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (DA-MOFAJ), during the EC-Japan summit in July 1985, then-Commissioner Willy De Clercq, in charge of external relations, requested the increase of Japanese import rates on manufactured and processed agricultural products, according to a numerically verifiable method. During a press conference after the summit, Jacques Delors, the then-President of the European Commission, also mentioned the necessity of a concrete import target. This clearly shows that both the Council and the European Commission were already requiring Japan to commit or target its imports.

 

After the Japanese Government’s announcement of ‘the Outlines of the Action Programme’ in July 1985, the European Commission’s Communication to the Council in October emphasised that Japan should set concrete and measurable targets for a significant increase in its imports of manufactured goods. Based on this communication, the Article 113 Committee and the Foreign Affairs Council discussed the EC’s relations with Japan. According to diplomatic documents of the DA-MOFAJ (no. 2016-1088, 2016-1089, 2016-1091), the majority of Member States supported the idea of requesting an import target; the UK, France, and Italy were especially proactive, and only Denmark, the Netherlands were opposed to the idea. West Germany was opposed to the idea but later accepted it reluctantly. As a result, in its conclusion, the Council instructed the European Commission to request Japan to set ‘a quantified target with a timetable for a significant increase in [Japanese] imports of manufactured goods and processed agricultural products, as a complement of its Action Programme’.

 

According to diplomatic documents of the DA-MOFAJ (no. 2016-1089), the European Commission first unofficially requested the Japanese Government to set an import target, by sharing with Japan the Council’s confidential conclusion. Interestingly, after the Japanese Government declined the request, the European Commission ‘reframed’ the Council’s mandate. Although the conclusion mentioned ‘a quantified target with a timetable’, during a meeting with Japanese then-Foreign Minister Abe, prior to the EC-Japan Ministerial Meetings, then-Commissioner De Clercq proposed a ‘complementary proposal’, the introduction of ‘a forecast of the estimated effect on imports’ of the Action Programme and ‘a Long Term Import Vision’. In November 1985, during the Ministerial Meetings, the Japanese Government officially declined this proposal due to the impossibility of a quantitative estimation of the Action Programme.

 

The above case shows that the influence of the European Commission and Member States over the EC/EU position in international trade negotiations can depend on the stage of negotiations. However, considering that the European Commission shared similar preferences with the Council before issuing the mandate, it was empirically difficult to determine the origin of the idea of an import target within the EC. To prove this hypothetical model of vertical interplay between the European Commission and Member States, it is necessary to investigate subsequent international trade negotiation cases, e.g. the EC/EU-Japan trade negotiations in the late 1980s and in the 1990s, and more recent cases such as the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).

 

 

 

Photo credit: Rob Stevens

Taro Nishikawa is a PhD candidate at the Leuven International and European Studies (LINES), the Faculty of Social Sciences, the University of Leuven (KU Leuven). His PhD project deals with European Community (EC)-Japan trade conflicts in the 1980s and the Early 1990s from a perspective of International Political Economy (IPE). His wider research interests include IPE of trade and external economic policies of the European Union (EU). As a double degree program student, he has a Master of European Studies: Transnational and Global Perspectives (M.A., Cum laude) from the University of Leuven (Belgium) in 2018, and a M.A. from Kobe University (Japan) in 2019. After getting a B.A. in Policy Management from Keio University (Japan) in 2013, he worked as an administrative officer at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan and at the Cabinet Secretariat of Japan until 2016.

Institutional website: https://researchportal.be/en/researcher/taro-nishikawa

 

 

The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

 

 

 

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MEPs adopted rules to facilitate making more data available to help create new products and innovation, in particular in Artificial Intelligence.
Committee on Industry, Research and Energy

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

MEPs adopted rules to facilitate making more data available to help create new products and innovation, in particular in Artificial Intelligence.
Committee on Industry, Research and Energy

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

The European Parliament is in recess over the summer holidays from 26 July to 22 August 2021.

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

On 14 July, the Committee on Foreign Affairs in association with the Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Subcommittee on Security and Defence held an exchange of views with VP/HR Josep Borrell Fontelles, Members discussed the foreign policy priorities to be reflected in the 2021 Commission Work Programme stressing the importance of multilateralism in a changing geopolitical order and emphasising in particular the prospect of strengthening transatlantic relations with the new US administration.

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP