The Irish Presidency Work Programme

Ireland took over the presidency of the Council of the European Union at the start of the year, and last Wednesday Taoiseach Enda Kenny, leader of the Fine Gael-Labour (EPP-PES) coalition government, outlined the priorities of the presidency to the European Parliament. Sustainability, jobs and growth are the central mantra of the presidency, though the familar buzzwords didn't stop Kenny from attempting rhetorical flight in the Strasbourg chamber, enthusing about the European family.

In his speech to the European Parliament, Kenny outlined a large work programme, from CAP and CFP reform to collective copyright management and data protection. The Data Protection package is one of the biggest legislative changes and a flagship policy of the Commission. There's been worries that the law won't be passed before the parliament ends, causing the draft to lapse and the work to go to waste, so there will have to be a big push from the presidency to make progress here.

Interestingly, while he stressed the need to pass the 2-Pack of legislation (which I’ve written about here) and the importance of the European Semester, Kenny also expressed a willingness to engage with the Parliament on the democratic deficit – let’s see if any constructive measures make it to the statute books.

A major topic was, of course, breaking the link between sovereigns and banking debt, with the banking union and progress on the implementation of the Single Supervisory Mechanism. On trade, Kenny looked forward to the authorisation and opening of negotiations with the US, along with negotiations with Japan, Canada and ASEAN.

Finally, Kenny couldn't help plugging Ireland's big tourism campaign - The Gathering!

 

You can see a list of the measures behind these priorities here.

Vote for the Irish Council Presidency's logo

You can now vote for the logo of the Irish presidency of the Council of the European Union (to be held in the first have of 2013; currently held by Poland, but Denmark will take over in the new year). You can find the designs and vote here.

I liked the spirals and connections designs best, but as I can only vote for one, I went for the connections one.

Blog Action against Hungarian Media Law

Bloggingportal.eu has called for a Blog Action against the new media law that will come into force in Hungary on January 1st. Hungary will assume the rotating presidency of the Council for the next 6 months, and has set up a presidency blog, so it is a great time for the Euroblogosphere (and national blogospheres) to highlight the dangers to press freedom, and to push for the law's repeal.

You can find the OSCE's damning assessment of the legislation here: PDF.

OSCE Report:

"They will introduce a highly centralized governance and regulatory system, with many new and unnecessary bodies of oversight and supervision and with many decision-making processes involving a succession of inputs by disparate bodies – probably breeding conflicts and inefficiencies, but also multiplying opportunities for political control. The whole system may have a serious chilling effect on media freedom and independence ((by encouraging selfcensorship) and on the exercise of freedom of expression.

[...]

The new institutional framework may, if deliberately (mis)used for this purpose, create conditions for the realization of the “winner-takes-most” or indeed “winner-takes-all” scenario in the current term of Parliament, in defiance of the principle of the division of powers and of the checks and balances typical of liberal democracy. As such, the design of this framework runs directly counter to democratic standards in the field of media system organization and governance. Accordingly, this package, which exceeds what is justified and necessary in a democratic society, is cause for very serious concern."

The legislation covers traditional and internet media, though the OSCE report fears that the legislation is framed so all internet content could conceiveably be covered by the law. In any case, the law will change the media landscape in Hungary significantly, by bringing in content regulation where previously the content itself had been "virtually free" of, and which is "without precident in democratic countries" (page 6 of the report PDF). The legislation will set up a National Media and Telecommunications Authority, which the Hungarian government will be able to appoint officials to, and will oversee media (including group blogs) in Hungary, without the national parliament being able to form a adequate check on the government:

"...the manner of appointment of the Media Council Chairperson
amounts to nothing less than government capture of Parliament. Parliament is left no choice but to vote for the Prime Minister’s candidate. Moreover, should it fail to elect that person, its decision will be disregarded in the sense that the President would still chair meetings of the Media Council (with a voice, but not a vote) and the only option left to Parliament would be eventually to elect that same person to this position – or leave the position unfilled, thus considerably weakening the MC. This is very likely if the governing party/coalition does not have a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Then, the solution designed to promote the development of consensus on the chairmanship of the MC could easily turn into an opportunity for obstruction by opposition parties."

Group blogs are another issue, as in Hungary group blogging is popular. As blogs can be fined if they are "edited" or written by several people, this could have a chilling effect on blogging in Hungary, where people are afraid of blogging together and risking suffering for what other people write. Mathew Lowry has written about this over on his blog.

I won't go into the law in greater detail (other blogs and the OSCE have done a good job - the OSCE Report is 57 pages long, after all!), but the vagueness of "appropriate" information, the vagueness of the idea of content and the political nature of appointments are a threat to freedom of the press and to blogging, so I would encourage everyone to join in with the Blogging Action, and raise awareness through blogs and Tweeting. Though the Presidency has argued that this is a purely national matter, and the presidency shouldn't be "hijacked" by it, but the freedom of the media is fundamental to democracy, and we should be concerned about such laws taking root in other countries. Not only is it a question of how we can ensure the same standards of rights, openness and democracy in Member States after they've joined the EU, but just as the presidency used the argument that none of the measures were not found in other Member States, tolerating the erosion of rights in one Member State makes it easier for such erosion to spread.

Belgium Assumes the Council Presidency

Today Belgium takes over the rotating Council Presidency from Spain. The rotating presidency chairs the Council committees in the different policy areas (justice and home affairs, economy and finance, etc.) apart from the foreign affairs committee, which is chaired by the High Representative for CFSP, Baroness Ashton. What will make this presidency interesting is the fact that there isn't yet a federal government in Belgium since last month's elections. In the elections the Flemish nationalists came first, and the French speaking Socialists second. Given that they're not exactly ideological allies, it will probably take several months before they can form a coalition. Like the Czech presidency, the Belgian presidency will have a caretaker government run the presidency.

It will be interesting to see how much the European Council President, Van Rompuy (a former Belgian Prime Minister), will fill the void left by the stalled federal government. The President's Belgian roots might make it easier for the caretaker government to let this be "Van Rompuy's Presidency". Whether this could lead to a more permanent empowerment of the E.Council presidency is harder to say - even a country as pro-integration as Belgium will want to preserve the role of the rotating presidency to a large degree, and Poland has big plans for its presidency in 2011, so it's likely that any inroads that Van Rompuy makes would be quickly recaptured by an assertive member state government with a vision.

The website of the Belgian presidency is here.

Conclusive proof that Van Rompuy is now too powerful

I've just read conclusive proof that Van Rompuy has become so powerful that he has eclipsed the rotating presidency of the Council via Open Europe: apparently, neither he or Barroso thanked the Spanish presidency for its work during the last European Council meeting.

"Those who worried that the Lisbon Treaty and the creation of a permanent EU president would sideline the rotating presidency held by national governments have been proved right. Spanish Daily El Mundo notes that during a speech in the European Parliament yesterday, neither President Herman Van Rompuy, nor President Barroso mentioned or thanked Spain’s EU Presidency for its role in last week’s European Council summit. It seems that even the fact that Van Rompuy sat next to Spaniard Diego Lopez Garrido..., the secretary of state for the EU, failed to remind the officials of Spain’s role. Barroso managed to find the time, however, to thank Catherine Ashton, the Parliament, the Commission, and the Council."

Oh noes!

Obviously, this is an attempt to avoid embarrassing discussion about Spain, or something similarly nefarious or insulting to the pride of member states:

"The incident could be part of a larger EU effort to avoid any discussion of Spain, hoping people will forget it may be the next eurozone domino to fall. Or perhaps it demonstrates that the Brussels elite have little time for national governments..."

Or it could be a mistake or omission.

The short article seems to be very lazy and over-sensitive and it's a wonder that anyone took the time to write anything on it at all without anything more substantial. What substantive evidence is there that Van Rompuy is becoming over-powerful versus the rotating presidency? It's hard to measure this because the argument is neither defined nor backed up. Those who feared that the permanent presidency would sideline the rotating one? The aim of the permanent post was to give greater continuity and voice to the European Council, so how should we examine the "fear" that Open Europe had and the reality? If the rotating presidency went on as before, then Open Europe and others would (justifiably) be shouting that the permanent post was unnecessary and costly. If it does fulfil its role, then it would necessarily be more prominent than the rotating presidency, so where do you draw the line and say that the permanent post has infringed on the role of the rotating one?

So far, there have been no reports of Van Rompuy chairing Council formation meetings - despite all the European Council meetings to address the economic crisis and the eurozone crisis, I haven't heard anything about Van Rompuy chairing the Ecofin Council formation, which is the meeting of EU finance ministers. Van Rompuy has proposed chairing an economic task force, and other reforms to deal with the crisis, though this seems to me to be over-shadowing Barroso and the Commission. After all, the member states have not shied away from giving their own two eurocents on what reforms are needed (France and Germany unsurprisingly being the most vocal). Perhaps what holds Spain back in being vocal here is its own domestic crisis - in which case the question is, "if a permanent presidency can keep things going politically, and not just administratively, is that not a good thing to have?"

Again, it should be pointed out that neither Van Rompuy nor the Spanish rotating presidency could get these things done without the consent of the European Council/Council. Which consists of the member states. The member states are not co-opted or bullied by presidents into doing things; negotiation between them is the key aspect here.

Given that Madrid has ensured that there have been EU meetings held in Spain and not all in Brussels, and the willingness to promote its leadership role domestically and abroad (mostly to the detriment of the High Representative Aston), I don't think that the rotating presidency is dead or meaningless yet.

But it's good to know that Think Tanks like Open Europe are spending their time coming up with constructive policy proposals and not just wading through pages of information to pick up on irrelevant details to push a political message.


UPDATE: here's a link to an article on Ideas for Europe "President Paradox" which argues the opposite. As you can see from the comments, there are powerful counter-arguments to the article's reasoning (I largely agree with the counter-arguments), but at least the arguments and reasoning here is clear: clear arguments with a target, not just a lazy assertion.