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Ecommerce Europe: pros and cons of new proposal for Regulation on ePrivacy

By: EBR | Thursday, January 12, 2017

Ecommerce Europe believes that a review of the ePrivacy Directive was needed in order to make this legislation fit for the future of online retail

Before Brexit, and despite the ever-intensifying security challenges, EU governments had progressively lost interest in the Union’s defence policy. As a result, the French do not assume that their EU partners will always rush to support their military operations. In general, they haven’t robustly supported France in Africa in recent years, although Germany has enhanced its presence in Mali since the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks. But if acting through the EU could help ensure more military support from other EU members, France would find that preferable to acting alone.

Can France and Germany lead European defence?

By: EBR | Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Soon after Britain voted to leave the European Union in June, Ursula von der Leyen, the German Defence Minister, said that Germany and France would lead talks with other EU member states to assess their appetite for closer defence cooperation

For the Europhile elites, accepting that the people want to keep a certain identity, sovereignty and security is unthinkable. I think they have been extremely condescending. This is why we saw the rise of protest voting and now see real electoral rebellions.

Hubert Védrine: ‘European elites showed disdain for the people’

By: EBR | Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Hubert Védrine is a French Socialist Party politician. He is a former member of the French Council of State and was minister for foreign affairs from 1997 to 2002 under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. Védrine recently published a book entitled Saving Europe

Our Europe is, and has been, one of diversity: rich in distinct regional cultures, languages and identities. The love for our great literary traditions as well as of democratic principles belongs to all, both across Europe and around the world.

What does it mean to be European?

By: EBR | Wednesday, December 28, 2016

What does it mean to be European in the 21st century?

What however is surprising are the latest news coming from Denmark, a country which is generally considered as being extremely efficient and “progressive” in dealing with various social problems.

Greece, Denmark and European madness

By: EBR | Tuesday, December 27, 2016

The last months articles appeared in the international-especially German-press concerning the inefficiency of the Greek state in guarding its borders and preventing dangerous elements from moving from Greece to the rest of Europe

The topics of immigration and terrorism, narrowly, and safety and security, broadly, bring back the essence of European collaboration. These were the core principles that started European cooperation 60 years ago. This is what people truly wanted. This has an emotional value. Fortunately, most people today have not known wars in Europe. Seventy years ago this was different. If you were a young European, you would have lost millions among your age group on the battlefield. The military graves across Europe show the tangible remains of hundreds of thousands of young French, Germans, American, British and soldiers of other nationalities.

Europe in 2017: These are the key events to watch out for

By: EBR | Friday, December 23, 2016

What are the key events to watch in Europe in 2017?

The failed example of the Agenda 2020, which was never implemented, dragging to failure a series of ECB programs should not be repeated. Similarly, we should avoid mistakes of the past that made Cohesion Policy cumbersome and unpopular: bureaucracy, formalism and excessive costs gave the (wrong) impression that funds in European Regions are wasted to no avail. The first EFSI assessments, however, also indicate the same conclusions: labyrinth procedures, complex bank mechanisms and difficulties in participation from the administrative mechanisms of the Member States. This leaves one to wonder whether Europe has stopped being effective for good.

The Juncker Plan and funding opportunities for public works

By: EBR | Monday, December 12, 2016

The announcement of the Juncker Plan in 2014 and the consequent creation of funding tools have already-from the previous funding period- established a new framework for investments in the public sector in Europe

Dragnea succeeded the former Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta at the helm of the Social Democratic Party in 2015 and served as his deputy from 2012 to 2015. His intervention comes in the wake of a two-year investigation by the Environmental Investigation Agency US (EIA), an NGO, which says it recorded officials from an Austrian firm, Holzindustrie Schweighofer, offering to buy illegal timber from investigators posing as buyers and filmed unmarked logs dumped at the company’s depots in apparent violation of Romanian law.

EU urged to help combat ”devastating” illegal logging in Romania

By: EBR | Thursday, December 1, 2016

Liviu Dragnea, the leader of Romania’s Social Democratic Party (PSD), has called for “more effort” to preserve Europe’s last remaining virgin forests in Romania. At a meeting with Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern, Dragnea described the forests as a “national treasure”

”The best thing, from a European perspective, should be that this is not a Russian company but one from Kazakhstan, which controls the world’s 12th largest reserves of crude oil and gas,” says Wilson. But the company is now embroiled in a potentially highly damaging dispute with Romanian prosecutors. It comes after KMG announced in April that it was selling 51 per cent of its subsidiary to a Chinese company in a joint venture that would open up bigger investment in the Black Sea region. Two weeks later Romanian prosecutors announced that they were freezing company assets worth an estimated $2.1 billion as part of a corruption inquiry.

Romania case could pose ”real threat” to EU’s energy security

By: EBR | Thursday, December 1, 2016

This is the season for voting across Europe, truly a referendum on how governments across the EU are performing, post Brexit and Trump, and after Moldova and Bulgaria seemed to go pro Russia. Romanians go to the polls on 11 December

Still, almost a year after the COP21 in Paris, the EU has shown little appetite to put in place a process to ensure a timely review of its inadequate 2030 climate targets or to adjust its policies to deliver on agreed pre-2020 action. The EU must recognise that being a signatory to the Paris Agreement creates a new obligation that overrules the targets agreed by EU leaders in October 2014. EU leaders must show consistency and honesty and tackle the gap between their plans and the action that is needed for them to take on a fair share of the responsibility for the Paris objectives.

Europe must step up its game to reach Paris climate goals

By: EBR | Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Business as usual is not good enough anymore. For the EU to stay at the top of the class on climate action, it urgently needs to review its targets and boost its post-2020 efforts, writes Wendel Trio

It is right for policymakers to study online platforms, as they are a relatively recent phenomenon which underpins much innovation on the Internet. In short, platforms bring together distinct types of users with different objectives in such a way that transactions on both sides are made easier.

Europe in the great new age of communication

By: EBR | Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Regulation can improve the competitive environment and give consumers a better deal, but the EU’s proposal to enforce “neutrality” on internet platforms does the opposite, argues Diego Zuluaga

Saving the euro is vital, and a European benefits scheme would be a first step towards the fiscal integration the eurozone needs. It would also focus attention on Europe’s huge but overlooked demographic problem. By the middle of this century there will be only two working-age Europeans per pensioner (down from a four-to-one ratio today). Social protection will fast become the hottest political challenge of all time.

Euro-dole: A German initiative that Berlin doesn’t welcome

By: EBR | Wednesday, November 23, 2016

In the eyes of most Europeans, the EU is cold and remote. “Nobody could ever fall in love with the Single Market,” warned Jacques Delors in the late 1980s, when the pioneering Commission president was at the height of his popularity and making the single market a reality

The EU average for absorption amounts to around 1.5 percent at the moment. The official absorption rates are: Bulgaria, 0.07 percent; Cyprus, 0.23 percent, Spain, 1.87 percent, Hungary, 0 percent, Italy, 0.39 percent, Poland, 0.87 percent, and Romania, 0.18 percent.

Question mark over long term EU funding for Romania

By: EBR | Thursday, November 17, 2016

Romania has not managed to draw any EU funds from the 2014-2020 financial allocation and the absorption rate estimated for the big programmes for this year is zero, according to the European Commission

Donald Trump’s election reflects an alarming mood swing in America. It echoes the Brexit referendum in the UK and populist trends around Europe. Many voters in the rich industrialised countries of the West now contest globalisation. At first it was welcomed, opening new markets; but increasingly globalisation is being rejected as unfair because business investors are moving to lower-wage countries.

Why the EU must fashion a tough pre-Trump agenda

By: EBR | Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Lulled by the opinion polls and its own wishful thinking, Europe expected US foreign policy continuity following a Hillary Clinton victory. Now, Europeans must awaken to the unpredictable change and volatility a Donald Trump presidency will bring

One positive to emerge from the UK referendum is the spotlight it has shone on the interdependence of EU member states and the reality that membership is embedded in every single aspect of our lives, communities and economy. And that for a member state to try and extract itself from that deep relationship is extremely difficult. ”The exit process is legally challenging, as the UK has discovered, politically divisive and hugely disruptive,” she said.

MEP McGuiness: need for stronger links between the European and National parliaments

By: EBR | Tuesday, November 8, 2016

The EU needs to be careful that Brexit does not become the tail that wags the dog and results in the EU 27 losing focus on the major challenges and opportunities facing it, Mairead McGuinness Fine Gael MEP and Vice-President of the European Parliament warned

While heavily criticized by internet platforms like Facebook and Google, the introduction of publishers rights is about cooperation, and acknowledging the role of the publishers in this value-chain. While they have grown valuable businesses using publishers’ content, without investing in the content itself, the European Commission’s proposal now introduces a better balance in the asymmetric relationship between publishers and internet platforms to negotiate a fair remuneration for the use of publishers’ content.

Copyright: Guaranteeing the sustainability of news media in Europe

By: EBR | Monday, November 7, 2016

The press publishing industry is often seen as an old-fashioned, analogue industry

The leveraging of competitiveness by the euro accounts to a considerable degree for the widely varying performance between north and south. The German and other northern economies’ superior competitiveness is further boosted, while the competitiveness of the Greek and other mostly southern economies is negatively leveraged.

Correcting the Euro’s flawed architecture demands a focus on competitiveness rather than productivity

By: EBR | Thursday, November 3, 2016

On September 20, the European Council adopted a recommendation calling on the Eurozone member states to establish national productivity boards

The converge criteria were that countries had to keep their deficits and debts relative to their GDP down. That was viewed as the necessary and almost sufficient conditions for making the euro work. Several of the countries that went into crisis, Spain and Portugal for instance, actually had a surplus before the crisis and a very low debt-to-GDP ratio. But they still had a crisis. That tells us an important lesson: what the people who were behind the creation of the euro thought was going to be a critical condition was not!

How a common currency threatens the future of Europe

By: N. Peter Kramer | Thursday, November 3, 2016

The Euro started 17 years ago, and was supposed to enhance commercial ties, erode borders and foster a spirit of collective interest, furthering the evolution of former wartime combatants into fellow nations of a united Europe, the European Union

The constellation of power on Brussels is still that of the old establishment, drawing the anger of new forces. Indeed, there is a time lag between national and EU-level political change. New parties gain power at the EU level only once they enter national government while more establish the power basis first at the regional or local level or online. As a result, that may be very influential in setting a new political agenda in national politics but it is the old parties that still represent their countries in Brussels.

The EU and its ancient enemies

By: Athanase Papandropoulos | Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Seventy years after the famous speech of W. Churchill in Zurich the specter of nationalism is once again present in Europe. On September 18, remind us the Foreign Affairs Magazine, the Alternative for Germany, the Islam and anti-immigrant party won 14.2 % of the vote for the Berlin’s regional parliament

Europe must regain control of its frontiers; its citizens must believe that their union can prevent an unending flow of migrants across the sea and over land. This means more naval power in the Mediterranean and expanded surveillance of Europe’s frontiers. It also means building up European hard-power capacities (including intelligence and military options) to better manage events in North Africa and the Middle East that affect vital European interests.

Europe needs its realist past

By: EBR | Monday, October 24, 2016

The founders of the European Union were hard headed pragmatists—and their wisdom could help today’s leaders handle Putin, migration and Brexit

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EU Actually

The climate hysteria is officially over

By: N. Peter Kramer

In his weekly column, N. Peter Kramer writes that the climate hysteria is officially over, a turn that doesn’t come as a surprise to insiders.

Europe

To ignore ageing’s threats to the young is to imperil Europe

Giles Merritt reports on the vivid warnings of Debating Europe’s “Voice for Choices” report on ageing’s impact

Business

Hotpot, bubble tea and sportswear: China’s new exports take on the world

Step into pretty much any shopping mall in Singapore and you’re likely to find queues snaking outside shops with catchy names and bright-coloured branding.