European Union

AMENDMENTS 1 - 234 - Draft opinion on a new EU-Africa Strategy - a partnership for sustainable and inclusive development
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Anna Fotyga

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

This article was first published on The UK in a Changing Europe.

The negotiations between the UK government and the European Union make it
quite clear that neither Boris Johnson nor Michel Barnier would buy a used car
from the other on trust.

That’s not because they differ about whether the driver’s wheel should be on the
right or the left. It is because there is mutual distrust, albeit for different reasons.
The Prime Minister doesn’t want the guarantee that Barnier is offering for
enforcing any agreement about the UK’s future trade relations that they must
meet an autumn deadline in order to avoid having no deal. This is because the
EU would like any guarantee with the UK to be settled by EU law.

Barnier wants an enforceable guarantee because he does not trust Boris
Johnson to keep his word. In order to get Brexit done, Johnson signed a
Withdrawal Agreement that promised a significant customs barrier between
Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

This lost him the trust of the Democratic Unionist Party. To assuage their
concerns, Johnson has since said the new policy would be enforced with a light
touch, and this lost him the trust of Barnier.

The normal thing to do when buying a used car is to ask the salesperson if there
is a guarantee if its condition is not as promised. No guarantee means no deal.
By contrast, the normal thing in reaching a political agreement with a group of
countries is to treat their commitments with a light touch, because there is no
guarantee that the terms can be enforced.

The agreement that the UK and EU teams are currently negotiating is intended
to cover a substantial number of commitments. These could include the rights of EU and British citizens living in each other’s jurisdiction, tariffs, state aid, competition and the protection of workers’ rights and the environment.

As with any set of regulations, especially when they are stated in both French
and English, issues can be expected to arise about how each partner
implements the agreement.

The potential for disagreement is high, because the purpose of Brexit, as far as
Downing Street is concerned, is to allow the UK to depart from EU policies and
rules.

In discussions with the EU, British negotiators say new standards will be as high
or higher than EU standards.

In discussions with Conservative MPs, the emphasis is on Britain differing from
EU regulations in ways that give it a competitive advantage.

How British standards affecting trade will differ from the EU in practice is
unclear, because the UK government has yet to spell them out.

This is not so much a Machiavellian strategy of hiding a well-prepared plan of
action, as it is a sign of the UK government not yet having decided what specific
measures will be changed to give substance to the Brexit rhetoric of ‘taking back
control.’

To Europeans who believe in a social market rather than in an unregulated free
market this signals that the UK might engage in social dumping, seeking to
boost exports by adopting lower standards than its EU competitors.

Before buying an agreement with a Prime Minister with a used-car salesman’s
reputation, Michel Barnier wants a guarantee that can be enforced. What he doesn’t want is what is implicit in the rhetoric of British negotiators: enforcement
provisions that the UK can slip out of.

The starting point for enforcement puts the two sides in a position of political
distancing. The EU would like enforcement by the ECJ whereas the UK
government veto this as inconsistent with regaining sovereignty.

Consultation is accepted in principle by both sides. This can reveal whether a
complaint is due to a misunderstanding that can be resolved by discussion or
whether there is a substantive disagreement about what obligations their political
agreement imposes.

There is recognition in principle of the need for arbitration when disagreements
arise about the rules governing future UK-EU resolutions.
Since neither Britain nor the EU is willing to let the other’s courts having the final
say, a special arbitration tribunal will be required to which each side can
nominate one judge and they can agree a tie-breaking third judge.

The first point of disagreement is about the scope of arbitration: the EU wants it
to cover all points in a single general-purpose agreement, while the UK wants it
to leave some matters free of binding arbitration.

The disagreement could be resolved by narrowing the scope of the agreement
by dropping those issues that the UK government wants to leave free of binding
arbitration. Narrowing would be welcomed by hardcore Brexiters and
acceptable to the EU because, by default, all the remaining topics would be
subject to arbitration.

The biggest dispute is about what rules an arbitration panel should follow. The
EU does not want any terms of the agreement to be dismissed as non-binding if
they contradict a hastily adopted Act of Parliament. It wants the arbitration panel
to refer to the interpretation of disputes to the ECJ.

While this is logical from a Brussels perspective, the chief British negotiator,
David Frost, has stated that the superiority of EU to British laws would be
contrary to ‘the fundamentals of what it means to be an independent country’.
To maximize the enforcement of the agreement, EU negotiators are insistent
that if any arbitration finds any one condition violated, then the offended side can
unilaterally suspend the whole agreement.

The British position is that this would be disproportionate punishment. But that is
just the point. If the UK government showed it was untrustworthy, the EU would
be glad to be quit of further disputes by abruptly cancelling the UK’s favoured
access to EU markets and leaving Britain with no deal.

The effect would be relatively small for the EU. However, this would affect not
only British sellers of used and new cars but also all engaged in EU trade, from
the Conservative red-wall constituencies in the north of England to the City of
London.

By Richard Rose, Professor of Public Policy at the University of
Strathclyde. His newest book is: How Referendums Challenge European
Democracy: Brexit and Beyond.

The post Would you buy a used car from one of these men? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

By Pier Domenico Tortola

The European Central Bank “needs a rocket scientist, not a rock star”, quipped the website Politico shortly after the nomination of Christine Lagarde to succeed Mario Draghi at the helm of the ECB, starting November 2019. The risk, the commentary continued, is that the presidency of Lagarde, a central banking outsider more renowned for her stellar political achievements than for her macroeconomic expertise, will bring about a dangerous “politicization” of the Bank.

That may well be. However, what seems forgotten in analyses like the foregoing is that it does not necessarily take a politician to politicize the ECB. Or at least this is what it would appear from the public debate on the ECB over the past decade or so, in which the (alleged) politicization of the Bank has been a recurrent narrative, particularly under the tenure of Draghi—an MIT trained economist.

Calling the ECB politicized is a strong accusation, which goes directly at the legitimacy and credibility of one of the most consequential European institutions. It is therefore surprising to see how foggy the term politicization remains, for all its use on both the hawkish and dovish side of the Eurozone crisis debate. What is it, exactly, that makes the European Central Bank political?

In an article recently published in the Journal of Common Market Studies I try to put some order and clarity into this issue by, first, reconstructing the ways in which the term politicization is currently employed. Looking at the existing literature and debate, politicization is used (more or less explicitly) in three ways, corresponding to deviations from three types of expected central bank behavior: the ECB is politicized if it violates, respectively, its independence, impartiality, or policy convention.

While each of these three meanings gives us some clues into the question of ECB politicization, none of them offers a solid enough basis for defining the concept, due to logical or empirical shortcomings. Seeing politicization as a loss of independence, for instance, sits uncomfortably with the several policy rifts between the ECB leadership and the German government—arguably the most powerful among the Bank’s principals—in recent years. Nor is defining politicization as a violation of impartiality much more helpful, given that virtually anything the ECB does (including, one could say, inaction) has some distributive effect. The idea of politicization as a departure from convention, finally, is only logically defensible if the latter is interpreted formally as the Bank’s legal mandate. But if that is so, does it really make sense to still speak of ECB politicization after both the Outright Monetary Transactions and quantitative easing, the Bank’s two most controversial non-standard measures, have been certified as lawful by the EU’s Court of Justice?

To exit this conceptual impasse, one then needs an alternative approach to ECB politicization, which can overcome the limits of the three conceptualizations just described, and provide common ground among them—therefore being able to function within and improve on the existing debate. For this, we need to shift the focus to the preferences of central bankers, and define politicization as a deviation from technocratic policy-making.

Like any other technocratic body, the ECB should move within a policy-making space located between zero and full autonomy vis-à-vis its political principals. On the one hand, the Bank needs enough room for manoeuvre to be able to formulate monetary policy based on macroeconomic knowledge and reasoning. On the other, it must bound by a mandate establishing the ultimate goals of monetary policy, which cannot be set but politically due to their inherently normative nature.

It is the violation of either of these boundaries between technocracy and politics that politicizes the ECB. At one end of the spectrum, this violation causes the ECB to make decisions that are no longer guided by expertise but by the desire or necessity to please some of its principals. At the opposite end, it makes the Bank start serving political ends other than the ones defined by its mandate. In both scenarios, the Bank ceases to act technocratically to turn, de facto, into a partisan political actor—whether doing someone else’s bidding or pursuing its own views of the “good society”.

To be sure, interpreting ECB politicization as proposed here poses its own challenges, above all the difficulty to gauge central bankers’ decision-making preferences with precision. The good news is that recent scholarship on (European) central banking has made several advances in this direction. Three methodological avenues, in particular, have already produced results that are directly relevant to the notion of preference-based politicization. The first, and more traditional, relies on elite interview and surveys of central bankers. The second looks at the latter’s professional and intellectual networks. The third, finally, measures preferences by examining the public language of the ECB. Taken together, these three approaches can be viewed as the nucleus of a promising research program on which to expand in the future, so as to study the issue of ECB politicization with the depth and clarity this topic deserves.

 

 

This blog post draws on the JCMS article, ‘The Politicization of the European Central Bank: What Is It, and How to Study It?’

 

Dr. Pier Domenico Tortola (@pierotortola)

Assistant professor of European Politics and Society

University of Groningen, the Netherlands

The post Taking central bank politicization seriously appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Le courtier BDSwiss propose à ses clients d’échanger un grand nombre d’instruments financiers sur sa plateforme. Il s’agit d’un avantage considérable pour les traders à domicile qui vont pouvoir diversifier leurs portefeuilles et limiter les risquent de manière considérable, sans devoir dévier de leur stratégie de trading. Aussi, ils peuvent bénéficier d’un effet de levier plus élevé, qui dépasse même le seuil maximal que l’ESMA accepte.

Si vous désirez essayer cette plateforme, vous avez la possibilité d’utiliser un compte démo. Ce dernier est accessible si vous contactez le support client.

BDSwiss : un courtier légitime ? Les frais de BDSwiss sont surtout avantageux pour les débutants !

Le broker suisse est reconnu sur plusieurs pays dans le monde. Il a obtenu l’approbation des autorités des pays suivants :

• Suisse
• France
• Luxembourg
• Allemagne
• Italie
• Grande Bretagne
• Danemark
• Suède
• Norvège
• Hong Kong
• Qatar
• Kuwait
• Arabie Saoudite
• Emirats Arabes Unis

Même si certains autres pays, comme la Grèce, n’interdisent pas clairement le trading chez BDSwiss, d’autres le font. Voici la liste des pays qui interdisent formellement le trading chez BDSwiss :

• Belgique
• Congo
• Afrique du Sud
• Inde
• Etats Unis
• Chypres

Les atouts majeurs de BDSwiss :

La question à se poser avec tous les brokers consiste à savoir pourquoi on devrait choisir un courtier en particulier, plutôt qu’un autre. Il se trouve que BDSwiss a plein d’arguments pour nous convaincre.

Tout d’abord, ce broker fait partie des rares qui proposent un effet de levier aussi important. Cet avantage vous permettra de générer davantage de bénéfices, sans que vous ayez à investir des sommes colossales. En d’autres termes, il s’agit d’une excellente alternative pour les débutants du trading, qui cherchent à tester leurs limites, avant de se décider à investir plus sérieusement.

Ensuite, la phase d’inscription est claire et extrêmement facile à suivre. Vous n’avez pas besoin d’avoir une grande expérience dans le domaine du courtage en ligne pour créer un nouveau compte et vous lancer sur les marchés boursiers.

La diversité des actifs boursiers vous permettra de multiplier les sources de revenus avec facilité. Aussi, cet avantage a d’autres bienfaits. Par exemple, vous serez en mesure de trouver un plus grand nombre d’opportunités, et vous ne serez presque jamais dans l’obligation de trader des instruments qui ne vous intéressent pas, ou sur lesquels vous avez peu d’informations. Lisez cet avis sur BDSwiss pour en savoir plus !

Le courtier enrichit sa base d’instruments de manière constante !

Les défauts de BDSwiss :

A vrai dire, comme avec le broker FXCM, il n’y a pas grand-chose à critiquer avec ce broker. Cela dit, nous trouvons dommage qu’il soit impossible d’accéder à un compte de démonstration ou aux guides de trading du courtier, avant d’avoir créé un compte réel. Cette pratique devient de plus en plus répandue parmi les courtiers en ligne. Même si elle est partiellement justifiée, elle reste problématique.

Aussi, nous avons constaté que BDSwiss ne propose pas de rabais sur les frais des traders qui investissent plus. Certes, ce problème n’affecte pas les débutants et les traders à petits budgets, mais il reste important à noter.

L’horaire de travail :

En ouvrant un compte réel chez BDSwiss, vous allez pouvoir consulter tous les horaires de trading sur les différents marchés boursiers accessibles. Pour cela, vous devez simplement aller sur l’onglet du Market Overview.

Jesse Powell a créé Kraken en 2011, mais la plateforme de trading en ligne n’a commencé ses activités qu’en 2013. Depuis, le broker n’a pas cessé de gagner en popularité et fait partie actuellement des courtiers les mieux réputés du marché des cryptos. Son siège central se situe à San Francisco, et pour cela, il a dû obtenir certaines régulations qui lui permettent de travailler aux Etats Unis, dans un cadre légal.

Durant toutes ses années d’activité, Kraken a consolidé sa position de leader sur le marché et il bénéficie du support de sa communauté, qui compte plusieurs investisseurs institutionnels.

Que faut-il savoir sur Kraken avant d’ouvrir un compte sur sa plateforme ? Kraken a su attirer une bonne partie des clients de Binance !

Puisqu’il est actif légalement sur le territoire américain, Kraken a dû faire quelques concessions. Contrairement au courtier Binance, il se conforme aux exigences de l’Etats américain en exigeant de connaître l’identité de ses clients. Même s’il dit protéger les données personnelles de ces derniers, les autorités peuvent le forcer à leurs communiquer des informations sensibles dans le cadre d’enquêtes contre le blanchiment d’argent, par exemple.

La Tokio District Court a choisi Kraken pour gérer la compensation des clients du courtier Mt.Gox qui s’est effondré en 2014. Ce choix se base probablement sur la popularité de Kraken et sur sa capacité à protéger les fonds de ses clients. Après tout, il s’agit bien du premier broker à avoir passé l’audit cryptographique du Proof Of Research et qui fournit des informations relatives aux prix des cryptos à Bloomberg Terminal.

Les régulations de Kraken :

Comme nous l’avons indiqué au début de cet article, Kraken est un courtier régulé, qui se conforme aux exigences des autorités des pays où il est actif. Voici la liste complète des régulations de Kraken, classées par pays :

• Etats Unis : MSB (Money Services Business), reg numéro 31 000 136 371 793.
• Canada : FINTRAC ; reg numéro M19 343 731.
• Grande Bretagne : FCA (Financial Conduct Authority), reg numéro 757 895.

Tandis qu’il siège à San Francisco, le broker possède des bureaux dans plusieurs pays, comme à Londres en Grande Bretagne, à Chivoda City au Japon, et Pulau Ujong à Singapour.

Selon plusieurs sources, Kraken aurait reçu un capital de plus de 125 millions $ en capital risque. Cela lui a permis de financer des acquisitions d’un nombre de startups qui se spécialisent dans le domaine des cryptos, comme :

• CryptoWatch
• InterChange
• Crypto Facilities
• Bit Trade
• Coinsetter
• CleverCoin

En ce moment, plus de 4 millions d’utilisateurs de plus de 200 pays différents profitent des services de Kraken.

Les frais de courtage de Kraken :

En plus de la qualité de ses services et sa sécurité, Kraken mise sur ses tarifs avantageux pour attirer le maximum de clients. D’autre part, la simplicité de ses frais et la manière avec laquelle il place ses commissions, le courtier ne risque pas de dérouter ses traders. En effet, tous les frais de courtage de Kraken sont prélevés sur chaque trade. Ainsi, il n’y aura pas de frais additionnels, hormis ceux des dépôts et des retraits. Cependant, lorsque vous tradez les cryptos, il faut savoir que les tarifs peuvent varier en fonction de votre performance durant le mois précédent. Avec le danger de la finance actuelle, il serait judicieux de se protéger en investissant dans les cryptos.

Au total, il y a quatre catégories de frais (simple, stablecoin, dark pool, trading sur les marges).

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

The Monthly Highlights publication provides an overview, at a glance, of the on-going work of the policy departments, including a selection of the latest and forthcoming publications, and a list of future events.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

So, only the 6 months until Brexit is done. Or possibly not. The passing of the deadline for an extension of the transition period at midnight on Tuesday means that on a chilly Thursday night on 31 December, the UK will pass out of that period into, well, something. What that something might be isn’t known yet, but we can make a number of reasonably confident predictions about it. Firstly, it’s not going to be the last word in EU-UK relations. Not only are the minimum requirements of the two sides not overlapping in either scope or detail, but there will be a need for implementation of what is agreed. As the Irish Protocol is showing already, that’s a big block of work in itself and with many difficulties and issues. Secondly, it’s liable to be little more than a staging post for a post-Covid world. The rapid rise of resilience as a core part of the new global economy, with all its attendant requirements for more re-shoring and robust supply lines – not to mention new demands on international coordination of public health management – is bound to change the shape of the external agendas of all states, in ways that will also impact formal links. Quite what that requires, specifically, is not likely to become clear in the next 4 months, so any EU-UK agreement will need to be adapted to the changing realities in the coming years. Thirdly, it’s not going to put the European issue to bed in the UK. As the recent ESS showed, British voters are still well-split on the EU, a continuation of the cleavage so deeply marked by the referendum four years ago. Chuck in the generational drift towards more positive views, an agreement that suits neither the hard Brexiters nor the Remain rump and you have the recipe for a whole new cycle of discontent about EU relations. Of course, that discontent will be much more about wider issues than the EU, but the latter will continue to play its symbolic and totemic role in the debate. Membership (and non-membership) has always been a proxy for other things in the British post-war debate, only rarely being considered on its own terms. To balance all this, I would argue that all three elements listed above would still apply if there had been an extension to the maximum of two years beyond end 2020, but the rush to complete on the original timetable will certainly exacerbate them. Sustainable, durable and resilience public policy requires a number of factors to align. Technical-bureaucratic elements around the efficiency and effectiveness of a policy need to be married to broader societal aspects of legitimacy, including public involvement in formulation and management. At present, none of those elements are in place. Preparation for any outcome in January 2021 is still to ramp up, from completing the domestic legislative programme to commissioning the new IT systems to facilitate the newly-defacilitated flow of trade. And public consultation is absent, hidden behind the slogans of getting Brexit done and exhortations to ‘prepare’ (without saying for what). This all puts much more pressure on the Future Relationship negotiations to deliver some clarity, if only to set out some points of reference for everyone to work to. But however that turns out, it’s important to remember that it will only be through a bigger public debate that the UK will be able to move to some new situation that suits it and its setting. And that’ll need a conscious effort by a government that wants to open itself to a policy outcome that might not be its preferred one.

The post Tick. Tock. (pt. 746) appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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On 6 July, the Committee on Foreign Affairs will hold an online hearing on the geopolitical implications of the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic has had profound geopolitical consequences that inevitably affect key aspects of EU foreign policy, including relations with major global powers, humanitarian aid, development and peacekeeping, and the fight against disinformation and cyber-attacks.
The hearing will provide AFET Members with more insights on foreign policy consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak from leading experts in the area.
Geopolitical implications of the COVID-19 crisis - online hearing
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

On 6 July, the Committee on Foreign Affairs will hold an online hearing on the geopolitical implications of the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic has had profound geopolitical consequences that inevitably affect key aspects of EU foreign policy, including relations with major global powers, humanitarian aid, development and peacekeeping, and the fight against disinformation and cyber-attacks.
The hearing will provide AFET Members with more insights on foreign policy consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak from leading experts in the area.
Location : (Remote) - 2Q2 - European Parliament - Brussels
Draft programme
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

OPINION with recommendations to the Commission on framework of ethical aspects of artificial intelligence, robotics and related technologies
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Urmas Paet

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

The Subcommittee on Security and Defence will discuss major European defence issues with French Minister of the Armed Forces, Florence Parly, on 2 July. The recent initiatives launched by the European Union and the French President's proposals will also be discussed.
Meeting agenda and documents
Livestream
EU Fact Sheets: Security and defence
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

The new EU-Africa Strategy presented by the Commission on 9 March puts a reinforced emphasis on the creation of a real partnership with a continent whose relevance for Europe is growing by the day. The three briefings focus on different aspects of this new partnership, the first one dealing with the implications for the political dialogue with a focus on (good) governance and the even bigger challenge of security and migration. The second briefing has a look at more ‘traditional’ aspects of this relationship, development and humanitarian aid, complemented with the rising challenge of climate change. The new approach is also illustrated by the emphasis put on the promotion of bilateral trade and investment relations, the topic of the third briefing. All these briefings also try to incorporate first elements on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the bilateral relationship.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Much has changed since the creation of the Joint Africa-European Union (EU) Strategy in 2007. The developing world has been changing fast. Development policy and practices are also transforming, albeit at a slower pace. The divide between emerging economies and ‘fragile states’ is increasing. This is also the case in Africa. As not only Africa, but also the EU-Africa relationship is changing and evolving into new dimensions, there is clearly a need to develop a new European strategy, constructed on the basis of an emerging continent. Africa is home to the youngest population in the world and some of the world’s most fragile states. However, it is also a continent with emerging markets and more effective governments. This brief aims to clarify how well the new Strategy must manage to mainstream a European approach to Africa that considers both the inter-continental dialogue and the diversity of development on this emerging continent within the fields of governance, security and migration. As the COVID-19 has turned into a pandemic, the brief also suggests that the new European strategy must reflect this development and the European Parliament should closely monitor the situation as it discusses the Strategy.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

The new EU Strategy for Africa attempts to reflect the continent’s growing relevance within a partnership rather than through a donor-recipient framework. However, this leads to a prioritisation of the formal, productive and technology sectors as well as climate mitigation at the expense of agriculture, informal sector, human development and climate adaptation. With such skewed priorities, this Strategy is ill-adapted for the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. Institutionally, political will is needed to ensure that the continent-to-continent approach is not hampered by parallel, contradictory and fragmenting forces within the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) and the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) governance frameworks. Financially, mutual accountability must be strengthened by joint funding of joint actions. An inclusive institutional mechanism is also needed to promote political and civil society participation as well as policy coherence for sustainable development beyond migration and climate. More generally, the Strategy advances a government-to-government type of partnership at the expense of a more people-centred approach that is more in line with the ‘principled pragmatism’ of the EU.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

The new European Commission (EC) is putting EU-African relations to the fore. A Joint Communication of the EC towards a comprehensive Strategy with Africa stresses the African Continent’s strategic importance and the EU’s need to strengthen its partnership with (and not for) Africa. Proposals in the Joint Communication maintain promotion of sustainable investments with Africa on top of the EU’s agenda. Partnership with Africa to attract investors and boost regional as well as continental integration are specific actions aimed to attain sustainable growth and jobs in African countries. This emphasis is not new, being in line with a geopolitically oriented Commission and the European Union’s (EU) trend of shifting from a Donor-recipient model to a relationship based on mutual cooperation, pursuing common interests and mutual benefits. As the COVID-19 pandemic takes hold in Africa during 2020, it is becoming more urgent that EU and African relations post COVID-19 be tailored to a new scenario and show tangible action using partnership rhetoric.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

The Subcommittee on Security and Defence will discuss the impact of COVID-19 on the European defence industry on 25 June, with Internal Market Commissioner Breton. The debate will focus on ways of improving Europe's resilience and develop credible defence capabilities that would allow Europe to tackle similar situations in the future. The question of adequate financial support needed to achieve a genuine Defence Union, and improve the EU's strategic autonomy, will also be addressed.
Meeting agenda and documents
Live streaming
EU Fact Sheets: Security and defence
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP