European Union

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Donald TUSK, President of the European Council, attends the conference on the Syria crisis in London, co-hosted by the UK, Germany, Kuwait, Norway and the United Nations, on 4 February 2016.

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Plenary sessions : The start of EU accession negotiations with Serbia and the progress made in normalising relations between Serbia and Kosovo was welcomed by MEPs in two resolutions passed on Thursday. They also stressed that these relations would be helped if all EU member states were to recognise Kosovo.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : The start of EU accession negotiations with Serbia and the progress made in normalising relations between Serbia and Kosovo was welcomed by MEPs in two resolutions passed on Thursday. They also stressed that these relations would be helped if all EU member states were to recognise Kosovo.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

On 29 October 2015, the Council adopted Council Decision (CFSP) 2015/1957[1] amending Council Decision 2012/642/CFSP.

The Decision extends the existing measures until 29 February 2016 and at the same time suspends the measures for 170 persons and 3 entities designated under Decision 2012/642/CFSP until 29 February 2016. The Decision also amends the list of persons and entities as set out in Annex to Decision 2012/642/CFSP.

The Candidate Countries the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia*, Montenegro*, Serbia* and Albania*, the country of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidate Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the EFTA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, members of the European Economic Area align themselves with this Declaration.

They will ensure that their national policies conform to this Council Decision.

The European Union takes note of this commitment and welcomes it.

 [1] Published on 30.10.2015 in the Official Journal of the European Union no. L 284, p. 149.

* The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Albania continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.

We are here today to forge a common response to the biggest humanitarian challenge of our time: the Syrian refugee crisis. Refugees have had little choice but to flee their country. Many of them have lost everything. And now after so many years of conflict, people have lost hope. We have a moral duty to bring their hope back.

Syria's neighbours have shown tremendous efforts in accommodating over 4.6 million refugees. The international community recognizes that countries like Lebanon, Jordan or Turkey are providing a global public good in assisting refugees. We are all here because this public good has to be financed by the global community. We have to support Syria's neighbours in accommodating refugees.

Since the start of the conflict the European Union has spent 5 billion euros helping to manage this crisis. Last year, the European Union exceeded its commitment to give an additional 1 billion euros to the region. We now stand ready to offer more help.

I am pleased to announce that the European Union and its member states will commit more than 3 billion euros to respond to the needs of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey for 2016. Looking beyond that, from 2017 onwards, the EU and Member States intend to maintain this level of financing.

On top of this pledge, the EU's bank will also play its part. The European Investment Bank plans to lend around 12.5 billion euros to Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt over the next five years. This could be stepped up to a possible total of 23 billion euros for the whole of the Middle East and North Africa. President Hoyer from EIB will present the details later today.

I will continue to convince my G7 and G20 partners to step up our global efforts.

The European Union and its Member States pledged today more than € 3 billion to assist the Syrian people inside Syria as well as refugees and the communities hosting them in the neighbouring countries for the year 2016.

The pledge triples the EU support offered at the last donor conference in Kuwait on 31 March 2015, and comes on top of the €5 billion that the EU has already committed in response to the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II. 

The announcement was made at the Supporting Syria and the Region conference hosted by the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Kuwait and the United Nations by the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk and High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini.

Tusk and Mogherini represented the EU alongside Johannes Hahn, Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement and Christos Stylianides, Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management.  The London-based conference drew leaders from of over 70 delegations.

European Council President Tusk conveyed a message of hope: "With this pledge we hope to offer millions of people better lives. Refugees have had little choice but to flee their country. Many of them have lost everything. And now after so many years of conflict, people have lost hope. We have a moral duty to bring their hope back."

HRVP Mogherini recalled that only a political solution would put an end to the immense suffering experienced by the Syrian people and reiterated the EU's full support to the efforts undertaken by UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura to ensure constructive peace talks.

She added: "As the European Union, we share with the entire international community the responsibility to save Syria, for the sake of its citizens and the whole region. That's why we bring proposals to further step up our existing engagement of the last five years, when the EU has already been the leading donor on the Syria crisis. While we provide humanitarian and development aid, and propose economic and financial support in different forms also for Jordan and Lebanon, we keep working for a political transition in Syria that can put an end to the war. The intra-Syrian talks in Geneva have opened a window of opportunity.  This window will not be open forever, and it is crucial that all the parties engage constructively in a dialogue that has to bring concrete results on the ground. The EU and its Member States will continue to provide life-saving assistance, but also to push all parties to ensure access to those in need across Syria, to work on ceasefires and to protect civilians. The humanitarian work and the diplomatic efforts have to go hand in hand: they can reinforce each other, or weaken each other. The EU is committed to making both deliver."

Over the past five years, the war has claimed more than 250,000 lives, most of them civilians, while over 18 million people are in need of assistance, including 13.5 million inside Syria. The war has led to major displacements inside the country (6.5 million internally-displaced) and beyond. With over 4.6 million people having fled primarily to Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, the war has had a deep impact on Syria's neighbours.

The continued hospitality and generosity of Syria's neighbours and especially the communities hosting the refugees is widely appreciated by the international community. At the London conference, the EU announced its intention to significantly increase its support in particular to Lebanon and Jordan, the two countries with the biggest number of refugees in terms of proportion of refugees to the host population. The EU is ready to start negotiating 'EU Compacts' with both countries, to strengthen its political, economic, trade and social ties in addition to improving the living conditions of refugees and affected host communities. 

C & J Clark International
External relations
The regulation imposing an anti-dumping duty on imports into the EU of certain leather footwear originating in China and Vietnam is partially invalid

Plenary sessions : MEPs debated the issue of sexual harassment and violence against women in public spaces on Wednesday evening, with Commissioner Corina Crețu. Everything possible must be done to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice, regardless of their culture or origin, they insisted.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : MEPs debated the issue of sexual harassment and violence against women in public spaces on Wednesday evening, with Commissioner Corina Crețu. Everything possible must be done to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice, regardless of their culture or origin, they insisted.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

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EU law may preclude the imposition of penalties in respect of the unauthorised cross-border intermediation of sporting bets carried out in Germany

This is Thursday’s edition of our new Brussels Briefing. To receive it every morning in your email in-box, sign up here.

Mr Kenny with Irish president Michael Higgins after formally dissolving parliament Wednesday

To date, no eurozone leader who has guided his country through a bailout has emerged politically unscathed on the other side. Portugal’s Pedro Passos Coelho was deposed as prime minister in November after inconclusive general elections. Earlier last year, Greece’s Antonis Samaras suffered a similar fate at the hands of leftist Alexis Tsipras. And Spain’s Mariano Rajoy is looking increasingly unlikely to win back the premiership in Madrid after informing King Felipe VI this week that his coalition-building efforts were going nowhere. Can Enda Kenny end the losing streak?

The Irish prime minister asked for parliament to be dissolved yesterday, setting the stage for a three-week sprint to election day on February 26. Mr Kenny is already touting his economic record, and to any outsider, that would seem to be enough to put him over the top. Ireland is expected to be the fastest-growing economy in the EU in 2016, which would be the third year running. Its unemployment rate of 8.6 per cent, while still high, is lower than the eurozone average and well below the 14.7 per cent rate when Mr Kenny assumed office in 2011.

Despite that record, opinion polls have stubbornly shown his Fine Gael party unable to get much above 30 per cent, a good-sized decline from the 36 per cent they took in the last general election. More troublingly for Mr Kenny is the demise of his coalition Labour party, which has seen its support cut in half. Without Labour, it’s unclear who Fine Gael would go into coalition with – which could produce a similar result to that faced by Mr Rajoy and Mr Passos Coelho, who emerged from their elections atop the largest party, but one too small to cobble together parliamentary majorities.

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EU data protection authorities have hinted at more uncertainty for companies when it comes to EU-US data transfers, at least until April.

So what do we know?

Companies which are still relying on the Safe Harbor framework to transfer data between the EU and the US could be investigated by national data protection authorities in the EU, said the chair of the Article 29 Working Party in Brussels today. Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin heads the group, which brings together all the national data protection authorities in Europe. In a live statement this afternoon, she confirmed that companies using other legal mechanisms to transfer data (such as Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) or Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs)) would escape investigation for a few more months, as data protection authorities continue to carry out a review on this issue which won’t be concluded until April at the earliest.

This review includes a thorough analysis that it has done on the US surveillance systems. The Article 29 Working Party has raised concerns that the scope of surveillance in the US and remedies available to citizens could impact the effectiveness of BCRs and SCCs.  The new Privacy Shield agreement could help improve the situation, but the devil is in the details. A recent statement outlines four essential guarantees for intelligence activities (which Mrs. Falque-Pierrotin during the press conference made a point that it applies to EU countries as well):

1. Processing should be based on clear, precise and accessible rules where people are reasonably informed should be able to foresee what might happen with her/his data where they are transferred;
2. Necessity and proportionality with regard to the legitimate objectives pursued need to be demonstrated: a balance needs to be found between the objective for which the data are collected and accessed (generally national security) and the rights of the individual;
3. An independent oversight mechanism should exist, that is both effective and impartial: this can either be a judge or another independent body, as long as it has sufficient ability to carry out the necessary checks;
4. Effective remedies need to be available to the individual: anyone should have the right to defend her/his rights before an independent body.

Why wait until April? What’s the delay?

The Article 29 Working Party has not yet received any documentation on the new Privacy Shield agreement from the Commission. They have received verbal statements from Commissioner Jourova this morning with a promise to receive the detailed texts by the end of February. Once the documents have been received, the Article 29 Working Party will need to review and meet again to make a final decision.

It is worth noting that there was a lot of optimism in the voice of the Article 29 Working Party’s President today, but much still needs to be reviewed.  Will the new measures announced by Commissioner Jourova yesterday be robust, enforceable and secure enough to pass the data protection authorities’ test?

 

Ray Pinto