The Stockhom Games: Malmström equalises against the Council

10 days ago I reported that the Council looked very unhappy with the Stockholm Programme Action Plan that Malmström had proposed not long before.

The reaction from the Commission (in the annex) doesn't look very friendly either, at least when you read between the diplomatic lines.

The translated version: Go f*** yourself! We heard your complaints but we didn't do anything wrong; to the contrary: we did what citizens and the Parliament expected from us!*

And so they threw the staplers back to towards the Council to equalise in the Stockholm games that will keep going on...

* This is a very rough translations. Commission officials are trained not to speak like this in public, so I am just making a rough guess.

Council is unhappy with Cecilia Malmström

It looks like Cecilia Malmström doesn't have too many fans in the Council.

Because if I read the diplomatic language of the Draft Council Conclusions on the Stockholm Action Plan, a plan that Commissioner Malmström presented last month, correctly, then the EU Council is punching the Commissioner right in her face*.

My translation of the draft conclusions into everyday language would be this:

"The document you presented is rubbish and incomplete, and we will only work with the original Stockholm Program."

I don't recall having seen such clear comments in a diplomatic text for a while...

* Note: This is an exaggeration for the purpose of dramatising the blog post. Usually, Council bureaucrats/diplomats would probably prefer to throw with staplers.

History blogging: Why is SCIFA still there?

Just details of EU history:

According to a Council document from June 2008 in which you find a summary of the preparatory work for the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty at that time (document version with handwritten comments), "many delegations" of EU member states thought that the SCIFA, the Council's Strategic Committee on Immigration, Frontiers and Asylum, should be abolished in order to streamline the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) structures (see page 7).

However, in November 2009, right before the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the Council decided to keep SCIFA until 2012.

This means that "many delegations" had changed their mind within one year regarding the streamlining of JHA structures.

The EU in German blogs (9): Leak of Swedish Presidency draft of Stockholm Programme (updated)

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UPDATE (16 October 2009, 17:45): About 24h after netzpolitik.org informed about the leak, and some 15 hours after this blog post was published, the Swedish EU-Council Presidency announced via Twitter that they had made their draft of the Stockholm Programme public.

Here is the webpage with the announcement and here is the official document.
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In general, the German blogosphere is swinging between apolitical nothingness and overpoliticised commentaries, but it lacks a sense of investigative or analytical blogging that would fill the gaps left by classical media outlets.

And there is even less relevant content on EU-related subjects, not to speak of "news".

But yesterday, the most important German blog, netzpolitik.org, helped to inform about the leak of the latest Swedish EU-Council Presidency draft of the Stockholm Programme (own translation; 1 link added, 1 link adapted):

"We had just reported about it, and now a current version of the Stockholm Programme has been leaked from the negotiations in the EU Council of Ministers. Here is the PDF [and here a better version; JF].

The document dealing with internal security in the EU between 2010 and 2014 is the basis for the decision of the Justice and Home Affairs Council at the end of November and of the European Council at the beginning of December.

It would be nice if someone could produce a synopsis where one could easily see the differences to the first version issued by the Commission in June. In other words: Who could make a diff?"

Thanks a lot to netzpolitik.org for spreading the news!

Maybe some of the European readers will find this document - and also others provided by Statewatch.org - helpful to prevent our governments and the EU administration from making our Union a place where state security and fear dominate over freedom and the rights of citizens (or of any human being staying within our borders).

The EU in German blogs (7): EU-US payment data exchange

Last Tuesday, the most important German blog Netzpolitik published a very critical article on the recent Council EU-US payment data exchange guidelines that - very simplified - would allow the US Treasury Department to continue to access bank transfer data of EU citizens in the fight against terrorism.

The decision is put in the context of the so-called Stockholm Programme, the EU's Justice and Home Affairs programme for 2010-14, which is also criticised by the author.

The article is a good example of well-done national reporting on EU politics, using hyperlinks to European and national sources, including Council Presidency press releases and original Commission proposals. This allows a wider audience to understand the whole story without going into all details within the article, thus leaving room for those of us who are interested in the details - just as I argued recently.

It is also putting the right attention to the EU-level dimension of the problem, while still linking it to the national debate.

If this would be the standard on EU reporting, we'd be much better off!

Also on this topic: Planet in Progress (ZEIT), Krüdewagen

A Single Point of Contact for Comparable Statistics on Crime: Council discussions

I like to see Council documents that give an idea about discussions behind the scenes.

Today I found a document (published now, but issued in November) for the "Multidisciplinary Group on Organised Crime" in which discussions for setting up a "Single Point of Contact for Comparable Statistics on Crime" are summarised, indicating also the positions of member states.

Background is the following assessment:

[O]ne of the obstacles to producing comparable crime statistics at EU level was the absence, in many cases, of a single point of contact in the Member States, capable of meeting the various requests with a view to providing the necessary statistical data, regardless of whether those requests came from the Commission, Eurostat, Europol, Eurojust, or other international organisations. In many cases, that meant delays in dealing with questionnaires and requests, duplication and difficulties in collating data dispersed over different ministries and administrations. In other cases, points of contact did exist, but there were just as many ministries affected by this horizontal problem (Ministry of the Interior, Justice, etc.).

So now the question is whether member states want to set up one supranational contact point that would unite European statistics on crime.

Most of the countries, contrary to the statement above, seem to have respect national contact points, and they are now discussion about the pros and cons of setting up a European structure. 14 countries, at the time, had answered a short questionnaire:

We learn for example that Germany is the only country that is against the proposal, apparently because of its internal federal structure. Belgium and Latvia have some hesitations, inter alia because they see difficulties in actually producing comparable statistics. Nevertheless, most countries having replied see room for better co-ordination and thereby more efficient information flows and economy of resources through such a unified contact point.

Altogether, discussions seem to be very premature, but we get at least an idea on what level and with which arguments member states are discussing. At the end of the document, we also get a list of some national contact points for crime statistics, which might also be useful for some.