European Union

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EU opened accession negotiations with Iceland on 27 July 2010

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Finance Ministers of the Eurozone meet on 11 July in Brussels to discuss the Greek government's request for an aid programme.

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While the European Commission is not revealing much about its vision on how to achieve a “circular” economy, the European Parliament has now made its mind up. The own-initiative report from rapporteur Sirpa Pietikäinen, adopted yesterday in plenary with 394 votes in favour, 197 votes against and 82 abstentions, aims to inspire the Commissions’ discussions on the new Circular Economy package, which is expected before the end of the year. Whether the EP’s recommendations will put further pressure on the Commission to come up with an ambitious proposal remains to be seen but one thing is certain, the Parliament has its “wish list” ready.

Last June, the adoption of Mrs. Pietikainen’s report by 56 votes in favour reflected a large political consensus in the Environment committee. However, in the period leading up to the plenary vote, the tabling of new amendments and the request for split votes for various provisions showed that diverging views may challenge this consensus. And it did indeed. Interestingly, while the content of the report remains mostly the same, a few key changes shed a new light on the Parliament’s approach of the dossier. In an attempt to offer more flexibility and address the risk of over-regulation, the Plenary has noticeably softened the Parliament’s language and readjust some expectations downwards.

Parliament softens overall resource efficiency target and confirms waste targets

It is on targets that the plenary vote had most striking and symbolic impact. While the Environment committee decided to call for a binding target to increase resource efficiency by 30% by 2030 compared with 2014 levels; the target is no longer legally binding. On waste however, expectations are unchanged. The Commission should foresee a waste reduction target for municipal, commercial and industrial waste for 2015 and increase recycling and reuse target to at least 70% of municipal solid waste and 80% recycling of packaging waste by 2030. The Parliament wants such targets to be the same in all Member States while the Commission has already indicated that it will not be excluding differentiation to a certain extent. The binding food waste target (30% by 2025) and marine litter target (50% by 2015 compared with 2014 levels) also remain on the Parliament’s wish list.

Indicators are still on the menu as well. A lead indicator and a dashboard of sub-indicators on resource efficiency should measure resource consumption, including imports and exports, at EU, Member State and industry level. Interestingly, the Parliament points out the need to adopt a lifecycle approach and to apply a footprint methodology. In other words, products and services should be considered broadly and indicators should reflect at least land, water and material use as well as carbon emissions. According to verbal statements from Commission officials, the Commission is indeed planning to measure circular economy progress by using a dashboard of indicators.

Access to information reduced to consumers’ awareness

Access to information is another area where yesterday’s vote had a significant impact. Until then, the Environment committee had come to the conclusion that information about products should be enhanced:  consumers as well as businesses should have access to information about the resources a product contains and on its expected lifetime. Now the Parliament simply and vaguely “notes that it is crucial to raise consumers’ awareness and increase their proactive role.”

Product design remains high on Parliament’s agenda

Product design is another key aspect for the European Parliament. Products should be durable, repairable, reusable and recyclable. The Eco-design Directive is considered as the best instrument to meet such ambitions. On this matter the Plenary aligned with the Environment committee: the directive should be reviewed by the end of 2016 in order to expand its scope, introduce mandatory product passports and implement self-monitoring and third-party auditing.

The reference to Green public procurement disappears

During the conference organised by the European Commission on June 25, a significant number of speakers and participants mentioned the use of green public procurement as a tool to boost the circular economy. At that time, these views were reflected in the Environment committee report which called on the Commission to propose compulsory green public procurement procedures. The reference to compulsory green public procurement has been watered-down as it now just refers to public procurement without the “compulsory green” component.

 

The Circular Economy will keep EU institutions and stakeholders busy in the months to come. While the Parliament has now clarified its expectations, the European Commission must make important decisions. When withdrawing the previous Circular Economy package, they promised “a more ambitious” package. The question is whether the new proposal will meet this high level of ambition or whether the Commission is, rather optimistically, shooting for the stars. We will be able to judge in a few months when the Commission is expected to publish the new package. Until then, stakeholders have the opportunity to express their views by contributing to the Commission’s public consultation which is open until 20 August.

Lara Visser and Pauline Tawil

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Terrorism and migration are on the top of the agenda of the Informal meeting of Ministers of Justice and Home Affairs, on 9 and 10 July, in Luxembourg.

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Committee meetings, Brussels

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Public hearing "Arms export controls"
Location : Altiero Spinelli, room A1E-2
Programme
Programme
Poster
Poster
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Plenary sessions : The Greece debt crisis took centre stage during July's plenary session, as Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras came to Strasbourg to discuss the search for solutions. MEPs also adopted their recommendations for Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and approved a reform of the EU's emissions trading scheme that should boost incentives for green investments. Read on for our summary of what happened in Strasbourg in a busy summer week.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Euclid Tsakalotos, the new Greek finance minister, at Tuesday's eurogroup meeting

Late on Thursday, the Greek government submitted its long-awaited economic reform proposal to go along with Wednesday’s request for a new three-year bailout programme.

The package sent to creditors included three documents: first is a letter from Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, which we’ve posted here; second it a more detailed letter from Euclid Tsakalotos (here), the new finance minister; and the third is what’s called the “prior actions” – a 13-page plan of reform measures that must be completed prior to winning bailout aid (here).

We will more completely gut these documents in the morning, but a few things that stand out. First, none of the documents mentions debt relief. This was a major demand of Yanis Varoufakis, Tsakalotos’ predecessor. And while it is obliquely mentioned in Wednesday’s bailout request, there’s nothing in the documents sent to Brussels Thursday night that mentions the topic.

Instead, what is interesting about both the Tsipras and Tsakalotos letters is their explicit mention of wanting to remain in the EU’s common currency. As Tsipras puts it:

With this proposal, the Greek people and the Greek government confirm their commitment to fulfilling reforms that will ensure Greece remains a member of the Eurozone and ending the economic crisis. The Greek government is committed to fully implementing this reform agenda – starting with immediate actions – as well as to engaging [sic] constructively on the basis of this agenda, in the negotiations for the ESM loan.

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AMENDMENTS 1 - 120 - Draft opinion The prevention of radicalisation and recruitment of the European citizens by fundamentalist movements
Committee on Foreign Affairs

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Plenary sessions : MEPs call, in four separate resolutions, for the withdrawal of the Cambodian government's law on NGOs and trade unions; the release of Yves Makwambala and Fred Bauma in the DRC; the release of human rights defender Nabeel Rajab in Bahrain; and of two Christian pastors detained in Sudan, Michael Yat and Peter Yen Reith.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

General : The 10 films competing for this year's Lux Prize have been revealed at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, including five by first-time directors, a mix of genres and the selection's first-ever Icelandic film. The European Parliament awards the prize to the best European film every year. At the end of the month it will be announced which three films have been short-listed for the finals, meaning they will also be screened all over the EU as part of the Lux Film Days.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Of the four main European Institutions,[1] the European Parliament (EP) has most struggled to be heard on the recent crises affecting Europe (monetary, economic, social, environmental…).[2] At a time when the European project is at great risk, and when European leaders struggle to define a common European interest, it is perhaps time to turn to the EP, and to give more powers to the only directly elected institution at EU level. After all, the EP is conventionally presented[3] as less bound by national interests, and in certain policy areas such as environmental policy, social justice or civil liberties, as being more ambitious than the Council of Ministers. Hence empowering the European Parliament could be a way of determining a common European interest and alternative solutions to the European crises than those currently supported by the European Commission and the European Council.

But all of these speculations rest on one key assumption: that we know how a stronger European Parliament would behave. More precisely, that it would rise above national interests and deliver a greener EU that is more socially-inclusive and respectful of civil liberties. But would the European Parliament necessarily behave like that? In this blog post, I argue that before granting yet more power to the European Parliament, we need to analyse what impact new powers have had on the EP in the past.  I argue that we cannot always expect the European Parliament to be more liberal and greener than the rest of the institutions. But even though the EP is not green by default, including the EP in policy discussions yields interesting outcomes, opening the way for an alternative take on the different crises to be aired at EU level. I build this argument based on a paper I presented at the 16th UACES Student Forum conference held at Queen’s University Belfast last week, as well as on the other papers on our panel on the EP as an actor, by Martin Wirtz and Ching-Yi Chen.

There is a growing literature which investigates whether greater power means the EP’s more radical policy positions (greener, more attentive to civil liberties etc.) gain greater clout at EU level, or whether the EP changes positions once granted further powers, becoming a tame team player. Work by Burns & Carter on the environment or by Ripoll Servent on civil liberties and trade [4] tend to stress that the EP is losing its unique voice as it gets more powerful. To a certain extent, our discussions in Belfast confirmed this finding. Thus,  by looking at the recent 2013 CAP reform, Martin Wirtz showed in his paper that MEPs are not necessarily impervious to national interests — when distributed costs among member states are clear, national voting patterns can emerge. This raises doubts as to whether the EP could be better at coming up with a common solution than the European Council or the Council of Ministers, if it is also bound by national interests in situations with clearly distributed costs. Not only is it doubtful that the EP would propose a more “European” solution, it is also doubtful that it would propose a greener one. Hence in my paper on greening in the latest CAP reform I explain how the European Parliament, working together with the Council of Ministers, hollowed out the Commission’s flagship greening initiative, the Green Payment.

These two cases offer a clear warning to people keen to pin their hopes on the European Parliament. But we should not take these cases to mean that we can expect nothing new or different from the Parliament compared to what the other institutions would produce. For example, our discussions in Belfast shed light on two key characteristics of the EP’s actions: the EP can be unpredictable and it can be increasingly independent. First, Ching-Yi Chen’s paper on ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is a perfect example of the EP’s unpredictability. As directly elected politicians, MEPs can be more easily swayed by citizens’ mobilisation than the rest of Brussels. In the case of ACTA, civil protest in Central and Eastern Member States served to shed light on the negative impacts ACTA would have on the rights of internet users. This helped foster opposition to ACTA among left wing parties in the EP, as well as to split the main right wing group, leading the EP to reject ACTA. The shadow of ACTA’s rejection still hangs over the current discussion within the EP about TTIP – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, currently discussed with the US government – which contrary to ACTA could have strong environmental consequences – making other EU actors as well as the EP leadership very wary of how a vote on TTIP would go. Second, my paper on the CAP reform puts forward the argument that the EP did not simply weaken the Commission’s green agenda, it proposed and fostered an alternative path to greening the CAP – through stronger voluntary payments – a clear sign of the EP following its own independent path.

To conclude, looking back at the effects of recent changes to the EP power, it is far from certain that  further empowering the European Parliament would give way to a more “European” and greener response to the different crises shaking the EU. The EP is not always impervious to national interests, nor is it necessarily greener. But empowering the EP nevertheless shakes up discussions in Brussels, giving voice to an unpredictable and increasingly independent actor.

[1] The European Parliament, European Commission, Council of the European Union (ex. Council of Ministers) and the European Council.

[2] As illustrated by Angelos Loukakis’s paper on discussions on the Greek crisis and the EP’s failure to reply to the European Commission’s 2015 Work Programme, even though the programme contained some highly contested measures regarding environmental policy.

[3] Indeed a previous post on this blog presents a short overview of the academic debate on the question.

[4] See for example Neil Carter & Charlotte Burns’ project “Is the European Parliament an Environmental Champion?” and, on trade and civil liberties, the work of Ariadna Ripoll Servent.

The post Empowering the European Parliament: a greener, more European way out of the European crises? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Plenary sessions : Parliament condemned in the strongest possible terms the genocide in Srebrenica of 11 July 1995 and said that "such horrendous crimes must never happen again", in a vote on Thursday. MEPs regret that the UN Security Council failed to pass a resolution commemorating the genocide and call for acceleration of war crimes prosecution at international and domestic level.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Plenary sessions : Forthcoming proposals to reform EU copyright law for the digital era must ensure a fair balance between the rights and interests of both creators and consumers, said MEPs on Thursday. They called for ways to improve access to online content across borders, while recognizing the importance of territorial licences, particularly for TV and film productions.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Plenary sessions : The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) must return to its original aim of creating an area of prosperity, stability, security and good neighbourliness, Parliament said on Thursday. The EU must go “back to basics” and place these goals at the top of its agenda, say MEPs. They stress that the revised policy must be more political, differentiated and based on EU values and principles, democracy, the rule of law and human rights.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Plenary sessions : The EU needs to use natural resources more efficiently - a 30% increase in resource productivity by 2030 could boost its GDP by nearly 1% and create an extra 2 million sustainable jobs, say MEPs in a resolution voted on Thursday. But to achieve this growth, it needs binding waste-reduction targets, revamped ecodesign laws and measures to uncouple growth from resource use, they add, calling on the European Commission to table legislation by the end of 2015.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP