European Union

'The Policy Department is pleased to invite you to a workshop on EU preparedness against CBRN weapons with: • Dr Claude WACHTEL, Associate senior research fellow at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (Paris, France). • Elisande NEXON, Senior research fellow at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (Paris, France).
Location : Paul-Henri Spaak Building - Room P5B001
Further information
Workshop programme
Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

SEDE is organising a public hearing on 'The threats posed by drones to Europe's armed forces' on Tuesday 20 November 2018, from 09.30 to 11.00, with three external experts
Further information
Draft programme
Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

The Policy Department is organising a workshop on 'EU preparedness against CBRN weapons' which will be held during the SEDE meeting on Monday 19 November 2018, from 15.00 to 16.30
Further information
Workshop programme
Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

SEDE is organising a public hearing on 'The threats posed by drones to Europe's armed forces' on Tuesday 20 November 2018, from 09.30 to 11.00, with external experts
Location : Paul-Henri Spaak, room 5B001
Further information
Draft programme
Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

Tempus Energy and Tempus Energy Technology v Commission
State aid
The General Court annuls the Commission’s decision not to raise objections to the aid scheme establishing a capacity market in the UK

Kuhn
Area of Freedom, Security and Justice
The ‘Brussels Ia’ Regulation is not applicable in determining which Member State’s courts have jurisdiction to rule on claims brought against the Greek State by an individual holding Greek sovereign bonds following their forced exchange in 2012

Opinion on the European Defence fund
Report on Military Mobility
Report on the Common Security and Defence Policy
Report on Human rights and Democracy in the world 2017
Implementation report on the EU association agreement with Ukraine
Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

Verbraucherzentrale Baden-Württemberg
Transport
Air carriers who do not express air fares for intra-Community flights in euros are required to indicate those fares in a local currency objectively linked to the service offered

Deutsche Telekom v Commission
State aid
The General Court upholds the decisions of the European Commission classifying the Spanish tax scheme for the amortisation of ‘financial’ goodwill as State aid incompatible with the internal market

Plenary - Strasbourg

Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

Yesterday’s publication of the provisional final text of the Withdrawal Agreement (and associated Political Declaration) marks a crucial point in the process of Brexit, opening the door to an approval and ratification process and the first major step in establishing a new basis for UK-EU relations.

Weighing in at nearly 600 pages of text, it’s easy to get lost in the details, so what basic messages can we extract from it?

Most of this is about the past, not the future…

As the name implies, the Withdrawal Agreement is largely concerned with the ending of the UK’s membership of the EU. That means the tying off of existing arrangements and the creation of interim management structures and processes.

Hence a lot of the text is occupied with marking out what stops and what liabilities remain and require attention. In that latter camp we can find provisions on finances and on citizens (who have been a rather marginal concern in the negotiators’ scheme of things, it has to be said).

In that sense, the main thrust of this is backward-looking and points to the extent of the EU’s entanglement with the UK that now has to be unpicked: bear in mind that this document – lengthy though it is – is dwarfed by the pile of acquis that the UK will have to work through under the mechanisms of the Withdrawal Act.

This might be a source of frustration to the casual observer, who might be forgiven for thinking that all the debate might have produced light on the future direction than the rather bland Political Declaration.

…but what there is on the future will matter

However, that Declaration – with its commitments to work together to maintain cooperation in a wide range of areas – is not the only part of the text that concerns the future.

As has been discussed at very great length, the Withdrawal Agreement also contains provisions on the ‘backstop’ to the Irish dimension.

As anticipated, this now takes the form of a complex protection of the current open border between the two parts of the island of Ireland: should it not be possible to put into effect a comprehensive future trade deal by the end of transition, then a UK-wide customs arrangement will come into effect, with lots of regulatory alignment to ensure that border checks are kept to an absolute minimum. That alignment also reduces the risk to the EU of the UK exploiting its access to the single market by undercutting standards.

If this had been evident for some time, it is important to stress two aspects of this that were less so.

Firstly, the Political Declaration places this customs arrangement in a central position for the future relationship, forming the basis for that comprehensive cooperation. This is likely to cause many headaches for the hard Brexit opponents of the text, given the potential limiting of UK free trade agreements with other countries.

Secondly, while there is now a one-off extension to the transition period, this will still not be long enough to conclude the treaties envisaged in the Declaration. Indeed, it is telling that the published draft doesn’t actually say how long that extension will be (although it’s likely to be one year, given other references in the text), highlighting just how contentious this point will be.

The brevity of transition means that all of the backstop arrangements are very likely to come into effect, raising the stakes for all involved, despite Michael Barnier’s words on the intention never to have to use them.

There will be no simple model of Brexit

Often overlooked in all this is the fact that this stage of Brexit – the ending of UK membership – was always going to be the easier and more contained part. It’s been overlooked mainly because it has been so difficult and sprawling.

But the agenda was very limited in Article 50 negotiations and the options relatively constricted: there were only a small number of ways to handle each of the elements.

By contrast, the future relationship contains multitudes. Each paragraph of the Political Declaration contains possibilities that might run to many hundreds of pages of a future deal, all framed by the same legalese that we find in the current texts.

And this is not very transparent.

Possibly, it’s not meant to be: the burying of the specifics of the backstop is a case in point on the political exigency of not saying too explicitly what you mean.

But for a British public that already has low levels of confidence in the process and the outcomes, such obfuscation can only heighten their sense of disengagement.

It also raises the risks of individuals misrepresenting what this represents: a considered attempt to move to a new post-membership relationship.

It may not be pretty, but for now it is the only text on the table and it cannot and should not be ignored.

The post Three messages from the Withdrawal Agreement appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

OPINION on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the European Defence Fund
Committee on Foreign Affairs
David McAllister

Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

AMENDMENTS 1 - Draft opinion on the proposal for a Council decision on the conclusion of the Agreement in the form of an exchange of letters between the European Union and the Kingdom of Morocco on the amendment of Protocols 1 and 4 to the Euro-Mediterranean Agreement establishing an association between the European Communities and their Member States, of the one part, and the Kingdom of Morocco, of the other part
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

REPORT on the 2018 Commission Report on Albania
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Knut Fleckenstein

Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

REPORT on the 2018 Commission Report on Montenegro
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Charles Tannock

Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

REPORT on the 2018 Commission Report on the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Ivo Vajgl

Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

Workshop participants

How do new technological developments influence security in Europe? What role do drones, artificial intelligence and social media play in contemporary European society and security? And what to expect from recent trends in European Union’s (EU) security policy such as plans to fund defence research? These were some of the questions addressed at the workshop ‘Science and Technology Studies and the study of Europe’ that took place at University of Bath, UK on 6-7 November 2018.

 

This workshop was organized by the ‘INTERSECT: Technology-Security-Society Interplays in Europe’ research network that promotes academic research and public debate in this novel area on the interplays between technological developments, security practices, and societal changes in Europe. Its focus includes topics such as cybersecurity, surveillance, counter-terrorism and dual-use research and development. Launched in 2017, INTERSECT is one of research networks supported by UACES – The academic association for contemporary European Studies. The workshop was organized in cooperation with the Nordic Centre of Excellence for Security and Technologies and Societal Values (NordSTEVA). This was the second INTERSECT workshop following ‘Rethinking the Technology – Security Nexus in Europe’ last year in Malmö, Sweden.

 

The programme of this thought-provoking two-day workshop in Bath included a range of interrelated theoretical and empirical topics that explored changing technology and security interplay in Europe by combining insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS), European Studies, International Relations as well as other disciplines and research fields. These were presented and discussed by some 20 researchers from all over Europe in three sessions, a keynote address and a concluding roundtable.

 

In the first session, Derek Bolton discussed information warfare in the modern age, while Tom Hobson suggested to use STS concepts of co-production and socio-technical imaginaries to think more critically about relationship between technology and warfare. In light of EU’s recent developments of setting up defence research programme, Jocelyn Mawdsley asked some timely questions about what can be expected from EU defence research funding and what can be learnt from the United States in this respect.

Keynote by Professor Mireille Hildebrandt

In the second session, Brett Edwards presented his forthcoming book ‘Insecurity and Emerging Biotechnology. Governing Misuse Potential’ discussing ethical considerations and security dilemmas related to emerging technologies. Chantal Lavallée explored the EU’s support for the development of drone sector, while Raluca Csernatoni focused on power dynamics in another ‘hot’ dual use technology field, namely, Artificial Intelligence. In her broad-ranging keynote ‘Law, Science, Technology and Security (LSTS) Studies: Legal Protection by Design’, Professor Mireille Hildebrandt addressed numerous conceptual and empirical questions emphasizing the need to scrutinise security technologies and to involve those who will suffer the consequences.

 

In the third and final session, Inga Ulnicane presented on responsible dual use research and changing research funding landscape in the EU that involves support for civilian, dual-use and since recently also defence research. Two final presentations in the workshop showcased research from the European Research Council funded project ‘FOLLOW – Following the Money from Transaction to Trial’. Tasniem Anwar demonstrated how social media activities such as WhatsApp messages have become essential legal evidence in terrorism financing court cases. Her colleague Esmé Bosma explained her research on how private banks use transaction monitoring system to counter terrorism financing.

Inga Ulnicane talking about responsible dual use in the European Union

In the final workshop roundtable, André Barrinha, Kristofer Lidén, Karen Lund Petersen and Bruno Oliveira Martins took stock of and identified future directions in this highly interesting and relevant research and policy area. One of the themes that emerged was the importance of bringing in public in anticipating and evaluating future technologies, their ethical and legal aspects as well as their potential uses in security field. That would democratize and make the process of developing and applying security technologies more transparent. A number of exciting topics and questions for future research and debate were outlined including the need to overcome gendered nature of security and technology fields, to go beyond artificial distinction between politics and economics of technologies in international relations and to address dilemmas such as security versus academic freedom.

 

The post Making sense of changing relationships between technology, security and society in Europe appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Memoria and Dall'Antonia
Freedom of establishment
The Italian legislation prohibiting private companies from performing an activity of safekeeping of cinerary urns is contrary to EU law

Milivojević
Area of Freedom, Security and Justice
Advocate General Tanchev proposes that the Court should rule that a national law that allows loan contracts concluded with foreign lenders who were not authorised to provide credit services in that country to be retroactively annulled is contrary to EU law when the same law does not apply to Croatian lenders

Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP