Draft EU-US SWIFT agreement published

Green MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht has published the draft EU-US SWIFT agreement formally sent to EU parliamentarians today.

According to Albrecht, the agreement still contains many issues already criticised in the last version rejected by MEPs earlier this year, e.g. the transmission of data packages containing data of innocent EU citizens.

This sounds like the Commission didn't really listen to the European Parliament - Malmström seems to love the conflict.

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.

German minister against Three-Strikes & website blocking

The German Minister of Justice Leutheusser-Scharrenberg has published a long article (Google translated) in which she defends a free internet against demands to block websites or to introduce Three-Strikes-Legislation in case of copyright violations.

She underlines that she will fight against those proposals both on the EU level as well as during the ACTA negotiations.

Campaign for a Cleanternet

More: http://www.cleanternet.org

(via Netzpolitik.org)

Cecilia Malmström & transparency in the EU Commission

In a recent blog post (Google translated), Commissioner Malmström told that she would (partially) publicise her official communication on a special Commission website called CaROL (Cabinet's online register)*.

In the comments to the post I asked her:

Will you be able to convince your colleagues in the Commission to do the same?

and her Cabinet assistant Love Berggren today gave me the following answer:

Cecilia Malmström’s would certainly welcome if other Commissioner’s were to follow, and hopes to provide a good example by making this register available. But the decision is up to each and every Commissioner.

I want to thank her assistant Love for the answer - and I definitely hope that Ms Malmström will serve as an example for her colleagues, indeed!

PS.: This seems to be "Commissioners' Reactions Day", since fellow euroblogger Samuel just received a reaction to one of his blog posts from EU Commissioner for Agriculture Dacian Ciolos.

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* You can use the following short link for direct access to all the correspondence of Commissioner Malmström: bit.ly/9H8ib8 - which can be helpful because in default it shows only the last ten letters.

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Picture: © european_parliament / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0