COSAC meets in Madrid

From Sunday, 30 May, to Tuesday, 1 June 2010, the Conference of the committees of the national parliaments of the European Union Member States dealing with European affairs (COSAC will meet in Madrid.

A goog number of meeting documents is available online, including the draft conclusions (Word format!) which do not seem very interesting except maybe for the following paragraph:

COSAC urges national Parliaments to intensify their use of IPEX and other forms of cooperation in order to provide mutual information concerning their respective activities and standpoints.

I agree that this kind of co-operation is quite important when national parliaments actually want to work together to have their say and influence over EU law- and decision-making.

But I still think IPEX isn't a very good platform; it is not very intuitive and I'm not sure many people, neither in the national parliaments nor among us citizens understands how it can be used.

It is thus nice to have IPEX, but I don't really see that it is of much help as of today.

Spanish embassy in Berlin invites bloggers to breakfast

Europaeum has just blogged about it: The Spanish ambassador in Berlin invites bloggers to a breakfast next Tuesday to "inform" about the work of the Spanish EU Council Presidency.

The move that appears to be a move towards transparency looks pretty much like a standard PR event. And a secretive one.

On the website of the Spanish embassy in Berlin there is no hint to this breakfast, not even in the news section. So what they did is sending out an invitation via email to some organisations hoping that this would replace a transparent announcement of the initiative.

And why do they want to "inform" about the work of their Council presidency when they are half-way through their term? Why should I go to a breakfast to be informed now in a closed room when the presidency isn't able to inform about their work publicly before?

I know that the Council is used to work in secret, and that diplomats are used to work in secret. They are used to give one-way information to the public, but only as much information as they think is appropriate:

"You come to us, we don't come to you!"

Since they didn't announce this big time - I didn't see any blog post in the German blogosphere showing awareness of the meeting - they show that they want to control this thing, they don't want to let this go public. What they want is a photo with a number of people who are then said to stand for "the blogosphere" or "the web". Symbolic transparency.

Afterwards they won't care about what bloggers write, because this would involve substantive interaction instead of symbolic interaction - but that is what our governments haven't understood about this web thing so far.

In advance, the "blogger breakfast" sounds like a big PR move, a story-teller on how transparent they are, while they actually don't change their intransparency, they just extend it to a bunch of citizens who then write a blog about a two-hour breakfast paid by taxpayer money.

PS.: Martin from Europaeum will go there to let himself convince from the contrary.

Success in Spanish: Everyone agrees that good things shall be done

I just came across a press release by the Spanish celebrating the success(es) of their first month as the rotating Council presidency."

"The institutions and our partners have given their full and unconditional backing for the fundamental objectives of our Presidency. It's been a good start", the Secretary of State said during a press conference."

Okay, so success is when other people agree with you. That's great. But what do they agree on with you?

"Among these objectives, he emphasised economic recovery and the creation of quality employment, the strengthening of Europe's role in the world, further development of citizens' rights - above all in terms of equality between men and women - and security."

It must have been really hard to convince the others about these fundamental objectives - because we all know how everyone else is against controversial goals like "economic recovery" or "security"...

Social media, the EU-USA summit & the question who will be important

By chance I saw that there is a Facebook group supporting that the coming EU-USA Summit will not take place in Madrid but in Brussels.

This seems to be part of the power struggle between the institutions after the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty that foresees the weakening of the rotating Council presidency in favour of the permanent European Council President Herman van Rompuy.

I agree that a summit in Brussels might be more natural, but why having everything in Brussels - our Union is more diverse than the faceless Eurodistrict!

But there is more story to the EU-USA summit:

The main German online news Spiegel Online also reported yesterday that the summit in Madrid is seeing extreme diplomatic battles over who will shake Obama's hand first - Zapatero or van Rompuy - and who will sit next to the US President during the dinner later on.

According to the news, van Rompuy's team offered to Zapatero that he may have the first handshake while the European Council President will sit on the right side of Obama, Barroso will sit on the left and Zapatero will sit opposite to the US-President, a position without camera exposure.

If anyone from the Council or the Council presidency is reading this: I don't care where the summit is, but this kind of diplomatic bullshit that you spend your time (and thus our money) on is ridiculous!

Update: It seems to be confirmed as it has found its way into national media what Blaat has already written in the comments - that Obama apparently won't come to the summit which isn't much of a summit anymore if the president is missing. And there are sources quoted saying that it was exactly this kind of diplomatic comedy about who has the bigger ... that made the American side decide not to come on highest level.

Spanish EU Council website is not secure?! (Updated 6x)

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Update (Tuesday, 00:10): According to a statement of the Spanish government, there has been an XSS weakness in the presidency website.

However, this resulted not in a manipulation of the content of the site itself but in a manipulation of what the user was seeing on the screen (as you can see on the screenshots below). These manipulated websites are supposed to be only accessible through the specific URLs they are linked with and are thus no general threat for the users, the officials say in the statement. I hope I have translated this correctly; the original version applies.

There is also a very informative blog post in Spanish explaining the factual and technical background of this story (via a tweet of the Spanish state secretariat for communication), including the shortcomings and misinterpretations in the coverage of this story.

Update (20:10): The Spanish secretary of state for communication has been issuing a message on Twitter saying that the pictures below are photomontages.

However, these are original screenshots from subpages (not the frontpage!) of the presidency website (the links to these subpages are below in the text although they don't reproduce the original shots anymore). Other users on Twitter confirm this here and here.

More important than the Mr. Bean photo that has been taken up by many was the "hi there" window that opened in my browser when opening the second link provided below - this was definitely some kind of code because it triggered a direct browser activity, and I then had to close the little window that you see on the screenshot.

As I have said in my post, I am no technical expert and I cannot say how grave such kind of things are, but they happened in front of my eyes.

Update (12:00): Presidency website is down right now. (Back online; may have been a short problem but occurred here and in Brussels, and after it re-appeared, the "What is going to happen" category is empty again)

Update (11:30): It seems like the problem has been fixed, both the picture of Mr Bean and the "hi there" message have been removed, the links provided below just show ordinary "no results" pages now.

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I am no expert in IT security, but it seems like the website of the Spanish EU Council Presidency is not secure, despite the fact that Spain spends almost 12 million Euros Spain spends 9.65 million Euro for web services (including security) during its presidency.

At the following web discussions - here, here and here - people say that the site can be attacked due to XSS, and they provided two links - here and here - that brought the following two results on the actual web page of the presidency (though on sub-sites, not on the frontpage), apparently externally embedded code showing a picture of Mr Bean and a message saying "hi there" (both screenshots made at 03/01/2010 23:00):

I suppose that this is no minor problem and needs rapid fixing.

PS.: I was made aware of this problem by alvaromillan on Twitter.

Update: I tried to send an email informing about the issue to the contact address of the Telefonica web team - ue2010 [..at..] telefonica.es - as provided on the Contact site of the presidency website, but the email was returned as "Unknown user". Very, very strange...

Update: At around 10 am I have sent an email to the Communication Advisor of the Spanish Representation informing about the issue.

How the Spanish EU Council Presidency can be a success

In two days, the Spanish EU Council Presidency will take over from the Swedish Council Presidency, and the Spanish will be the first rotating presidency under the Lisbon Treaty system.

The new institutional setting will need some adaptation, people and institutions will need time to find their roles and their routines, and we shouldn't be too critical if some things don't work out perfectly at the beginning.

But in my point of view, the Spanish presidency can only be a success if they try to stay in the background, if they focus less on policy and put all their forces behind the new leadership trio - van Rompuy, Ashton, and (to some extend) Barroso - in order to make them look good.

If van Rompuy and Ashton are able to stand out positively throughout 2010, the acceptance of the Lisbon Treaty could be significantly raised, which is important both for the core EU institutions as well as for the member states, including future presidencies.

This doesn't mean that the Spanish need to reduce the power or influence of the member states, but just that this coming presidency should refrain from the typical instincts of large member state presidencies - try to heavily influence the EU agenda and to receive international attention. This will be in favour of the Council and the member states, letting them focus on the legislative work while giving van Rompuy and Ashton the freedom to get into their roles, both within the EU and on the international stage.

As a citizen, there is a second direction into which I would like to see the Spanish work: Openness and transparency.

I have major doubts that the Spanish are the right country to foster these two, but if they managed to bring in at least some more transparency and openness, this would be a major success for their presidency.

The Council is the second chamber of the political system of the EU, and most of its structures are law-making or law-interpreting in character. These laws are not made for that EU institutions or member state officials but for us, the citizens. We should thus be able to observe every important decision taken, including a more detailed insight into bargaining dynamics and the voting and drafting behaviour of our own and other EU countries.

Only if the Spanish are able to bring about changes into this direction, their presidency can be a real success.

And so at the end of June 2010 we shall ask: Were the Spanish able to communicate with us, the citizens? Did they manage to make decision-making in the Council more visible, more traceable, more understandable? Did they follow the Swedish in communicating on Twitter and in blogs or did they even find other innovative means get us, the interested public, involved in their work? And: Were they able, through their intelligent work, to support the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty changes?

In the last 1 1/2 years we had the "Ego-Presidency" of the French, the "Chaos-Presidency" of the Czechs, the "Efficency-Presidency" of the Swedes - what kind of over-simplifying label will we use for the Spanish after the coming semester?

EU & Latin America: The cautious approach by the EU Foreign Affairs Council

Now that we are approaching the Spanish Council Presidency, the first rotating EU Council presidency that will not lead the European Council, one of the main foreign policy issues for Spain - Latin America - is gaining importance on the agenda, yet without gaining importance.

Grahnlaw has already written some words on the coming Council presidency in November. And last week, the Spanish have presented their priorities, quite vague priorities as Eva notes, but it seems clear for analysts like Carlos Bohigas that the relations to Latin America will be one special colour of the next presidency's work.

However, if you read through the Council conclusions on EU - Latin America relations agreed upon this week at the Foreign Affairs Council (based on a Commission communication from October plus Annex), you will find a very hesitant and cautious approach by the foreign ministers that will not give much room for the Spanish in the first semester of 2010.

There are some details about possible fields of action in these conclusions, but the document is best summarised by its last paragraph:

"The Council considers that the Madrid Summit [with the Latin American countries in May] should focus on reaffirming the common priorities, and concentrate on delivering concrete and tangible strategies and actions [...]. In this context the Council recognises the value of launching new initiatives at the Summit."

In other words: We don't want anything new, let's try to work on agreed matters that haven't been functional until now.

And the foreign ministers consigned the European Council to decide on any further initiative - which is not much knowing that Latin America is not mentioned with a word in the European Council conclusions from yesterday's summit, the last one this year.

So anyone expecting the Spanish to be able to put Latin America higher on the agenda than this status quo consensus of EU member states as of today might be disappointed at the end of next June, especially since Spain will not be chairing the European Council (van Rompuy) or the Foreign Affairs Council (Ashton) to push the issue as much as previous presidencies were able to do with their own topics.

Creating a European Public Sphere: Blogs translated (1)

The creation of a European Public Sphere will need more efforts to bring different linguistic spheres together.

One of the efforts I will undertake in this regard is to translate, from time to time, articles from other blogs into English.

This will mostly relate to blog posts in French, Spanish, or Romanian - the languages I can read well enough besides English (and German for which there is already the category "The EU in German blogs".)

If you are the one I am translating, don't hesitate to tell me if you don't like this or when you find any mistakes in my translation.

Let's start today with a post from the Spanish blog europe@as titled "La ciudadanía europea en un click" which covers one of my favourite topics, that is the creation of a European Public Sphere:

The European cititizenship in one click

On europe@as we like to ask questions, but we are not used that we are questioned. Hence, I was perplex when Robert Rode, from the Europe Direct & Luis Vives Foundation sent me a mail asking me to answer a questionnaire. This was the result:

The abstention at the ballot boxes at the last European elections has marked the disinterest of the citizens for the process of constructing Europe. The "democratic deficit" for which the European institutions are frequently blamed comes together with a "communication deficit". The key to escape from this one-way street would be a communication aiming at the creation of a European Public Sphere. In between the initiatives to get Europe closer to the citizens via communication, europe@as sticks out and has been awarded by the European Commission representation in Spain as the blog with the best European news article (for "The United States of Europe").

Question: Your blog has been recently awarded by the Representation of the European Commission in Spain. What importance do such awards have for a blog like yours?

Answer: In my opinion, there is a double importance. On the one side, this has objectively given more visibility to a European blog which was operating at the margins of visibility and that has seen the number of visits multiplied. If this competition will continue, we will see very interesting things. On the other side, from a more personal, subjective point of view, I thought that the articles published were not followed by anyone who wasn't among the regular visitors coming to this blog. However, I realised that people working in and around the Commission were following the comments with interest, including those critical to the functioning of different aspects of the EU.

Question: Today, the European Union consists of 27 member states, it has 23 official and many regional languages. Is it possible to create a common public space?

Answer: I am sure that it is not only possible but that it is necessary. There were some previous attempts in the written press and in audiovisual media. But it is in the internet where this utopia - a European Public Sphere - is going to be a reality. Here are some examples: Presseurop, Café Babel, etc.

Question: Do you think that without the internet one can reach 500 million Europeans?

Answer: If in Europe at this time there was an effort in the audiovisual field to reach out to all Europeans, we now would have the field covered by the internet. But I don't think that the internet alone can reach out to the 500 million Europeans. Among other reasons, it is necessary not to lose sight of the fact that there is also illiteracy for new technologies in certain parts of the population. Under the present circumstances, there is a need to combine audiovisual media and the internet to reach the majority of the population.

Question: In which way the European institutions will have to engage more and better in order to overcome this so-called "communication deficit"?

Answer: This is the One-Million-Question, and to a large extend this is the question which at that time (2003) I tried to answer with my doctoral thesis titled "The press and education in the process of European integration".

European Parliament elections 2009 (82): Eurotopics' press review on the Eurobarometer results

Eurotopics has a nice little press review with translated article extracts from Luxembourg, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and Finland on the recent Eurobarometer results that project a low participation rate for the EP elections.

That's worth reading!

Let me also use this opportunity to praise the work of the people from Eurotopics (background information) who provide me and other Europeans with an excellent English language multinational press review (which also exists in German, French and Spanish) every day.

It's taxpayers money involved here, but it is spent for a very good purpose, and it is done in a very pleasant way, so I can only applaud for this initiative!

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Under the category "European Parliament elections 2009" I am following up national and European activities on the path to the European Parliament elections 2009.

For an overview over all articles in this category have a look at the overview article.

For the five newest post see also the sidebar.

European Parliament elections 2009 (76): PES and JEF activists request socialist candidate for EU Commission presidency

In an open letter addressed to the Spanish and Portuguese Prime Ministers and published on Taurillon, two PES members from Britain and Spain - both also members of the Union of European Federalists (UEF) and in leadership positions at the Young European Federalists (JEF) - ask for a socialist candidate for the EU Commission presidency:

When probing why the PES failed to nominate a candidate in Madrid, to go along with its pan-European manifesto, the blame lies squarely at your feet, Messrs Prime Ministers. You, the two socialist leaders of Spain and Portugal, already assured Mr. Barroso late last year of your support for him to serve a second term as EC president, despite the fact that he is a leader of the European People’s Party (centre-right).

[...]

As PES activists, we are well placed to know that the elections will be at best an uphill battle. If the election were held today, the EPP would win by a landslide.

[...]

For the PES to win the election, a significant new factor needs to come in play. Having a candidate would make a substancial difference! Putting a face and a name on the Manifesto’s action would help enormously in imparting the PES’s message that a new direction is needed for Europe. Additionally, Mr. Barroso is strongly disliked by large parts of the electorate for his general lack of leadership, but is practically guaranteed under the status quo to keep his post; merely giving the choice to voters to elect someone else at the EC presidency would be a giant step for European democracy, as well as a strategic move for the PES.

This letter comes very late, but it asks something that would be natural in a national polity:

Political leaders from the same party should not support the candidate of the opponent. When regionalistic or nationalistic politics won't dominate over the politics of ideas, of principles, of values anymore, there might be room for a European democracy, but as long there is no choice, we'll just remain in the antechamber of a democratic polity.

I hope the open letter will be seen and heard in Madrid and Lisbon. For the sake of democracy.

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Under the category "European parliament elections 2009" I am following up national and European activities on the path to the European Parliament elections 2009.

For an overview over all articles in this category have a look at the overview article.

For the five newest post see also the sidebar.

European Parliament elections 2009 (59): Spanish news ElMundo.es features EP elections

Via La Oreja de Europa ('The Ear of Europe') I just learned that the major Spanish newspaper El Mundo ('The World') features the European Union and the European Parliament elections with a special subsection of its website.

All major (and minor) newspapers in European countries should follow this example!

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Under the category "European parliament elections 2009" I am following up national and European activities on the path to the European Parliament elections 2009.

For an overview over all articles in this category have a look at the overview article.

For the five newest post see also the sidebar.

The Union for the Mediterranean to be seated in Barcelona

The Union for the Mediterranean, a project that already started with low expectations, seemed to be in great difficulties until yesterday.

The foreigh ministers of the countries participating in the Union met in Marseille to discuss several issues. The International Harald Tribune told that

the Union for the Mediterranean is deadlocked over where to base its headquarters, who should attend meetings and who should get the top jobs.

It seemed as if the prestige project of French EU-Council president Sarkozy had been shipwrecked by different expections and national selfishness.

However, overnight, there has been at least the agreement to seat the Union in Barcelona. And although this might be seen as a blow to those non-EU countries participating in this Union and interested in having the seat (like Tunesia), as a follow-up to the Barcelona Process, Barcelona seems to be a quite natural host city.

Yet, this is again just a technical agreement - the form is as so often more important than the content. And so far, there seem to be many unresolved issues between EU countries, and the countries from northern Africa and western Asia.

So I do not see any success, I just see the name of a city, and a lot of money wasted for new premises (although the building will be provided by Barcelona, if I understand correctly) and for a lot of new staff that will spend most of their time on form - and not on substance...

For me, it looks as it looked several month ago: Let's keep expectations low!

EP elections: Spain hopes for Lisbon

According to the Spanish secretary of state for European Union affairs, Diego López Garrido (cited in El País), in an ideal situation the Lisbon Treaty would be ratified early enough so that it could be applied for the upcoming European Parliament elections. The reason he presents: Spain receives four more seats under the Lisbon rules compared to the present (=Nice Treaty) situation. If Lisbon enters into force too late, the four seats have to be added at a later stage.

I am glad that some politicians are as open as this. Why talking about common values, balance of powers, or the possibility of future enlargements? For Spain, the timing of the ratification of Lisbon is as simple as the calculation x + 4 = better then x (while x would be 50 according to Nice). Politics are much nicer if you keep them this simple!

(To be fair: López Garrido also adds that with the Lisbon Treaty the Union would gain in legitimacy thanks to the strengthening of the Parliament and the inclusion of the Charter of Fundamental Rights.)