Commission Work Programme 2015

The Commission’s Work Programme for the year is just 5 pages (opposed to the usual 30 or so pages), due to the efforts of Commissioner Frans Timmermans to whittle down the amount of legislation to be and to focus on political priorities. The Programme covers 11 areas:

-          A New Boost for Jobs, Growth and Investment;

-          A Connected Digital Single Market;

-          A Resilient Energy Union with a Forward-Looking Climate Change Policy;

-          A Deeper and Fairer Internal Market with a Strengthened Industrial Base;

-          A Deeper and Fairer Economic and Monetary Union;

-          Trade: A Reasonable and Balanced Free Trade Agreement with the U.S.;

-          An Area of Justice and Fundamental Rights Based on Mutual Trust;

-          Towards a New Policy on Migration;

-          A Stronger Global Actor; and

-          A Union of Democratic Change.

These wordy headings consist of most of the document. While aiming to show the legislative and political priorities of the Commission, it empties the document of a lot of its traditional content (no anti-alien measures here). The priorities are pretty much what you would expect from a Union beset by crises (in fact and in political confidence) over immigration, energy security and the Eurozone. Interestingly, the internal market proposals include a capital markets union and a labour mobility package that references “abuse” of social security systems, which should please London.

The most interesting priorities from an institutional perspective are an inter-institutional agreement on law making (it appears that Timmermans is concerned over how many proposals are “pre-agreed” in triologue – and wants to have more transparency and debate over proposals) and a mandatory Transparency Register (very much a live issue).

Will Juncker’s Investment Fund really create 1.3 million jobs?

The Commissioner for Jobs and Growth, Jyrki Katainen, has claimed that the €315 billion European Strategic Investments Fund will create 1.3 million jobs. Katainen said the projects the Fund invests in in will be in line with EU policies – highlighting developing technologies and the EU’s digital networks programme.

While this all sounds very good, some in business and the media are skeptical that the €315 billion will even be raised. The main concern is that the public seed money for the Fund, which will take the first hit before any private investors, is simply too small to be leveraged by private investment to the magic €315 billion goal. Initial public investment of €21 billion is supposed to achieve a multiplier effect of 15 times to reach the target (PDF). Indeed, it’s hard to not to feel that the Commission’s chart, showing where the money is supposed to come from, is plagued by asterisks and fine print.

The truth is that there is very little money available for the Fund from the public sector in the first place. Germany refuses to put more money into it and the EU’s budget, itself being cut, cannot afford much more. This may be all that’s possible. How the funds will be targeted is still a big issue - despite Katainen's assurances that the decisions will be "non-political", there was a scheme for Member States to "buy" influence with the Fund if they contributed more to it. The Visegrad countries of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic are planning to lobby hard for a sizable share of the investment. Will this skew the focus of the Fund away from potentially more economically valuable or job-rich investments?

The Fund is recognised by all as being far from a magic bullet for the continent’s economic woes, but it could provide a much needed, if minor, economic boost. 1.3 million jobs is almost certainly over-optimistic, but until we know what the projects are, it’s hard to gauge how effective it will be - can it reach anywhere near that number?

Commission’s compromise PNR bill gives few concessions to civil rights’ concerns

The Commission is revisiting the Passenger Name Record Directive again, this time hoping that it has struck the right balance between privacy and security. It’s an issue that’s been around for a long time – the draft directive was rejected at committee stage in the last parliamentary session.  Older versions of the proposed directive centred on detailed information being collected from passengers on flights into and out of the EU. The aim was to harmonise the collection and use of such information for anti-terrorism and serious crime offences across the EU – and start such collection in the Member States that didn’t already collect it.

The issue has been argued over for the last decade. The EU already has treaties with the US, Canada and Australia mandating the transfer of the personal data of passengers by airlines operating in the EU to the security services of those countries. While some of the Member States, such as the UK and France, have their own national PNR regime, the EU as a whole does not “benefit” from having the same haul of data. Rather than look at what data is really necessary for fighting terrorism, however, the Commission has essentially copied and pasted the scope of the US’s data haul, apparently on the basis that Europe cannot receive less information than the US. It’s a pity this approach has been taken rather than looking at what was necessary, drafting European law on that basis and then seeking to change the US Treaty in line with data protection standards.

The various treaties have been up for renegotiation and review. The European Parliament has recently voted to refer the Canadian PNR Treaty to the European Court of Justice to test its compliance with data protection rights enshrined in EU law. As the Court recently annulled the Data Retention Directive (PDF), data protection rights are still a big issue and the legal test is a serious one.

The Commission’s compromise draft of the EU PNR directive however, retains the list of 42 categories of passenger information. Another change is that the data will be “depersonalised” after 7 days rather than anonymised after 30 – though this would actually weaken the data protections as depersonisation can easily be reversed while anonymisation can’t. There are positive changes, such as the narrowing of the purpose of data collection to terrorism and serious transnational crime rather than “serious crime” (which was always a bit vague), and the appointment of data protection officers to oversee the use of the data.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, one of the anti-terrorism measures passed by the EU was the Advance Passenger Information Directive which concerned information from the machine-readable part of the passport (name, date of birth, nationality, passport number and expiry date). This, along with the Schengen Information System* and the Visa Information System gave authorities identity verification and border management tools. It’s not clear why simply adding flight information to API – to track suspects’ movements using the API parts of PNR – would not be sufficient information.

There is an understandable desire on the part of law enforcement agencies to gather as much information as possible in the hopes of becoming more effective, but too much information can not only be an unnecessary infringement on privacy but could even obscure the relevant information and make their job harder. Anti-terrorism legislation needs to be both necessary and proportionate. As the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has just reported, mass surveillance is counter-productive and endangers human rights. We need a leaner, controlled approach to security that will preserve as well as defend our way of life.

*Note: EU interior ministers have called for Schengen Information System checks to be made more systemic.

Merkel’s savaging of Orban is sadly all too necessary

“Honestly, I can’t understand what is meant by illiberal when it comes to democracy,” said Merkel at a joint press conference with Hungary’s Prime Minister Orban on Monday.  With demonstrations against the Fidesz government’s authoritarian streak, Merkel was right to raise these concerns with her fellow EPP premier.

Orban has famously said “not all democracies have to be liberal”, and has been the subject of EP debate over whether or not to invoke Article 7 sanctions against Hungary (essentially suspending its voting rights for breaching EU values) over his government’s meddling and restrictions in the judiciary and the media.

While voices from outside a country can inflame nationalist opinion, it’s important to voice concern over the health of Hungarian civil society, as Merkel has done. The health of Hungarian democracy affects us all in the EU as we are part of the same system – and one that has liberty and democracy written into its founding treaties as fundamental values.

Can Syriza build a debt forgiveness alliance?

The Syriza-led Greek government has launched into action, sending ministers across Europe to drum up support for a debt forgiveness conference and to sound out their negotiating partners. This week Tsipras will travel to Brussels and Paris. His finance minister, Varoufakis has already hit London and Paris – getting support from his French opposite number that France will help Greece settle with its creditors, but his British counterpart used the opportunity to warn about the uncertainties Greece was plunging the Eurozone into (which may have something to do with the upcoming UK election in May). With Merkel and various other European figures signalling that there will be no further debt relief for Greece, what are Syriza’s chances in building a coalition?

“Europe comes first”, Varoufakis says, but there may be some reticence in even the crisis-hit countries to do a deal. The governing parties in Dublin and Madrid are keen to not be seen as another Greece (in fact “we’re not Greece” is a constant refrain during the worst parts of the crisis), and are worried about giving political comfort to Sinn Féin or Podemos by letting what they see a brinkmanship politics succeed – or appear to succeed. Debt reduction could be a benefit, however. Ireland is looking for a retroactive direct bank recapitalisation, for instance. Since Ireland’s bailout was essentially spent on the banks (which in turn could use it to pay off their France and German banking creditors), this would shift the debt burden off the public purse.

The Irish approach has the advantage of being rooted in an earlier promise (although in 2012 it was also promised that further debt restructuring for Greece would be looked at), and isn’t as blatant as debt forgiveness. It fits more neatly into the banking union narrative, and the narrative that Ireland’s crisis was different.

France and Italy are more promising allies as they look to Greece as a catalyst to change the EU’s austerity course. Greece is crying out for debt relief – years of austerity have increased the debt burden to 175% GDP and shrunk the economy by 25%. To continue placing such burdens on a society is politically poisonous and counter-productive even for those who back reforms. The road to debt relief might be rockier than it first appears even in the other crisis countries, but debt and austerity will have to be revisited if Greece and the Eurozone are to grow again.