New EU anti-discrimination directive

Upon a proposal issued by the Commission in July, the Council of the European Union is discussing a new anti-discrimination directive.

The Commission document titled

"Implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation"

wants to supplement "the existing EC legal framework under which the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation applies only to employment, occupation and vocational training." You can find the Commission proposal from page 17 of the linked PDF file.

In a recently published document, the state of discussion in the EU Council is presented comprehensively. However, it is a pity that the positions of individual countries have been erased from the public version. What we know is the following:

All [member states'] delegations have general scrutiny reservations on the proposal at this stage. [Denmark], [France], [Malta] and [Poland] entered parliamentary scrutiny reservations. [Cyprus] entered a linguistic scrutiny reservation.

The proposed directive was also included in the documentation of an extraordinary meeting of the European Parliament Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (website) in July. So the Parliament should also be aware of this policy proposal.

Looks like this document will have some way to go.

Related articles:

• 11 December 2008: Follow-up: New EU anti-discrimination directive
• 14 July 2009: The new EU anti-discrimination directive: Arghh!

Why the USA should join the European Union

Stephen Colbert on the question, why and how the United States of America should "Join the European Union" (the video is still available, just click on it).



My favourite: "Geographical discrimination". Turkey can use this against France and Germany in the future...

World trade, the French, and New Labour

These days, world trade negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (in Geneva) are under way to see whether the so-call Doha Development Round can lead to a new global agreement or if Doha will ultimately fail. All details of the negotiations are constantly published on the WTO homepage. Prospects are low to mixed.

What interests me is the inner-European personal conflict that has evolved: French president Nicolas Sarkozy and EU-Commissioner Peter Mandelson (Trade) are at loggerheads with each other about "the" European position and are playing a nice little blame game. If we add another figure, Pascal Lamy, French Director-General of the WTO, the whole story become a nice little ménage à trois:

• Nicolas is the current president of France (in office since last year) and president of the EU Council (since this month). The centre-right politician has won his campaign and started his French presidency with comparatively extreme reformist policies. He is not one of the typical French "Ecole National d'Administration (ENA)"-elites who have captured a large share of top posts in French politics.

• Pascal is exactly one of these typical ENA-guys. Specialisation in economics. Member of the Socialist Party. Rather straight carreer. In his WTO office for almost three years now. Before he was... EU-Commissioner for Trade. To get into his WTO position, there must have been extensive lobbying by the French president and/or the Prime minister - at the time Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin (also an ENA-guy).

• Peter is one of those British "New Labour" architects, hence a social democrat with pro-market orientation. His political career was interrupted several time by charges of corruption. He is in office as EU Commissioner since 2004.
  

So we have these three man: Two social democrats and one centre-right/conservative. Two French and one Brit. On self-made ego-mane double president, the elitist WTO Director General, and one EU-Commissioner with quite some controversies during his career.

And now they are playing the big interests game: French ("European") farmers vs. EU power and world markets vs. global free trade with a piece of the pie for everyone. Yet, negotiations are carried on by individuals. And these three individuals have quite a fascinating mixture of personal, cultural and political similarities and differences with a big potential for conflict besides their political responsibilities. Alpha-males, dependent on each other but nonetheless in the constant thrive to get the maximum for themselves.

Yes, WTO is about trade, global questions, and power plays between powerful blocs. But on the second track it is also the arena for personalities. In the end, there will be winners and losers. On the first track, the winners and losers will be countries and their people. On the second track, it will be high-level political individuals.

Both will influence the course of the upcoming years, for the EU and the rest of the world

Powerful Women (I): Meglena Plugchieva

The category "Powerful Women", which I will continue in the future, will be dedicated to European women with influence on the national or supranational level but with relevance for both.

As seen in the "Females in Front" petition, looking for qualified women for top European jobs is a permanent task and my "Powerful Women" series will be part of this work.

The first woman to be mentioned is Meglena Plugchieva (photo). Mrs. Plugchieva is Deputy Prime minister of Bulgaria and in this function responsible of monitoring and coordinating the EU funding.

Those of you following the news will have read that the preliminary publication of an EU Commission report on the state of affairs in Romania and Bulgaria has provoked intense discussions in Bulgaria and in the European Union - not least because huge amounts of EU funds will have to be repaid due to corruptive practices and misappropriation.

These bad news show that Mrs. Plugchieva, in office since April/May (before she was the Bulgarian ambassador to Germany), has quite a tough way to go. Yet, she has shown in her statements that she is ready to be as tough on this subject as it is necessary:

"I will not be Brussels' carrier pigeon. I will coordinate the work of each group of experts responsible for the EU funds absorption. However, this does not mean that the ministers, who have taken commitments to absorb funds under operative programs of the EU are exempt from their responsibilities and duties."

(STANDART)

Today's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the leading national newspapers in Germany, calls her the "Guardian of [public] virtue" and remarks that she does not appear like a "woman with the back to the wall" but like a hard working and assertive politician willing to eliminate all corruptive practices in her country.

And in June, a high official of the Bavarian government (the most important German federal sub-unit) said about her:

"The nomination of Mrs. Plugchieva is an important signal for the earnest effort of the Bulgarian government to fight the misappropriate use of European funds. With Meglena Plugchieva, this task is in good hands."

(Compliance-Magazin)

We will see whether the pressure from Brussles will be helpful for Mrs. Plugchieva. From my side, I can only hope that she is successful in bringing corruption and criminal practices down. This is as important for her country and the European Union as it is - supposedly - for herself!

Good luck, Mrs. Plugchieva!

Females in Front

Have you heard about the initiative "Females in Front"? It is an all-EU initiative that aims at a small but very important goal, namely that at least one of the future top EU-posts will be held by a woman.

You may think that this is irrelevant but even from a very minimalist standpoint, as Foreignpolicyblogs has argued, we have to have at least one woman on top EU-post:

Arguably, though none of the posts in question are truly democratically representative offices, nominating at least one woman would serve as a better reflection of the Union’s actual population (more than half of it are female)

Since the initiators are looking for 1 million signatures, it has still a long way to go, but until today, almost 20,000 people have signed the petition.

And since I hold this an extremely important issue, both in terms of political representation and even more in terms of gender equality, I can only ask you to join!! Go to the website and sign!