European Union

Sandro Gozi, a former Italy's undersecretary to European affairs in both Renzi and Gentiloni cabinet, will serve as EU affairs advisor to French Prime minister Edouard Philippe, casting doubts over a potential conflict of interests.

Britain's Boris Johnson lost his first test as prime minister on Friday (2 August) after his candidate was edged out by a pro-EU rival in a by-election that slims his parliamentary majority to one.

Europeans should also clarify that they are unwilling to tolerate restrictions on freedom of navigation or a further significant expansion of Iran's nuclear programme. Diplomacy can resolve the standoff over the captured British and Iranian tankers.

EU finance ministers on Friday will choose, by a qualified majority vote, Europe's candidate to succeed Christine Lagarde as the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) next manager. After weeks of negotiations, the 28 ministers will choose from Dutch former eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Finland's central bank governor Olli Rehn, Spain's finance minister Nadia Calvino, and Bulgarian Kristalina Georgieva, World Bank chief executive, the Financial Times reported.

Britain's pro-EU Liberal Democrats won a parliamentary seat in Wales from the governing Conservatives on Thursday, in a blow to prime minister Boris Johnson, whose majority shrinks to just one. Johnson is expected to clash with MPs in September as he prepares for a no-deal Brexit. "Boris Johnson's shrinking majority makes it clear that he has no mandate to crash us out of the EU," liberal leader Jo Swinson said.

EU Commission president-elect Ursula von der Leyen is meeting Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte on Friday. Conte was one of the EU leaders who strongly opposed the nomination of her rival, the Dutch commissioner Frans Timmermans, for the top job last month. Italians have been eyeing an economic portfolio for their commission candidate, who is yet to be named.

Thousands of Poles took to the streets on Thursday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw uprising, the largest military underground insurgency in Nazi-occupied Europe. Polish resistance took up arms in Warsaw against their Nazi occupiers to liberate the capital before the Soviet Army arrived, to prevent the Soviet occupation. Some 200,000 Poles, most of them civilians, died in the uprising, while the city was almost completely destroyed.

German carmaker BMW's chief executive Harald Kruger on Thursday urged British prime minister Boris Johnson to find a compromise on Brexit with the EU, saying a no-deal Brexit would be a "lose-lose". BMW earlier warned that it might be forced to stop making the Mini at its Oxford plant, putting 4,500 jobs at risk. The UK is the biggest-single export market for the German car industry, the Guardian reported.

The power of the European Parliament

The only directly elected European Union (EU) institution; the European Parliament’s (EP) power and influence in pursuit of citizens’ interests have evolved significantly, transforming it into a full-fledged legislative body and forum of discussion and engagement at the heart of representative democracy, whose influence is felt in virtually all areas of EU activity.
What are then the European Parliament’s main powers?

What difference does the Parliament’s work make to how Europeans live their lives? This series highlights some practical examples of EP impact during the 2014-2019 legislative term.

The food supply chain ensures that food and drink products are delivered to the public. It affects all consumers in the EU. The final price paid by the consumer is impacted by the number of participants in the food supply chain. While the single market has brought benefits to operators in the supply chain, through more market opportunities and a larger customer base, it has also brought challenges. Structural changes have occurred, leading to different levels of bargaining power and imbalances between actors in the chain. The abuse of such differences may lead to unfair trading practices (UTPs).

Over recent years, the European Parliament has actively highlighted imbalances in the food supply chain. It has also made the case very strongly that there is a need to ensure adequate incomes for farmers.

To strengthen the position of smaller producers (such as farmers) in the food supply chain, in April 2018 the European Commission presented a proposal for a directive on unfair trading practices. The proposal focuses on the protection of smaller actors in the food supply chain, and aims to protect them from trading practices imposed unilaterally.

The Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI) welcomed the proposal as a long-expected legislative instrument to defend the position of agricultural producers in the food supply chain. Following AGRI’s consideration, the European Parliament priorities were to have a clear definition of what constituted an unfair trading practice, extending the scope of suppliers and buyers in the food supply chain and the scope of products to all agricultural products (i.e. not only food products). The Parliament also sought to deliver an increased list of prohibited unfair trading practices. In trilogue negotiations, Parliament and Council negotiators reached an agreement on 19 December 2018, after six meetings. Parliament’s negotiating team achieved important modifications to the legislative text, especially on widening the scope to agri-food businesses bigger than SMEs (up to a certain threshold) and an extension to the list of prohibited unfair trading practices from 8 to 15.

Directive (EU) 2019/633 of the European Parliament and of the Council on unfair trading practices in business-to-business relationships in the food supply chain was signed on 17 April 2019.

Thanks in part to Parliament’s efforts, the new legislation will ensure fairness in the market and the food supply chain and will remove the ‘fear factor’ experienced by small-scale operators in the food chain and/or those with less bargaining power. It will lead to a more balanced distribution of consumer spending along the food supply chain and, finally, it will provide for a designated authority to enforce the new rules and sanctions where infringements are proven.

Law-making powers

a mapping of EP powers

Together with the Council, the Parliament participates in the shaping of European laws in what may be seen as a bicameral legislature at EU level. The nature of the Parliament’s involvement depends on the area in question and may mean Parliament being consulted (consultation procedure), giving its consent (consent procedure), or legislating on an equal footing with the Council (the ordinary legislative procedure, or co-decision).

The latter procedure consists of the joint adoption of an act by the European Parliament and the Council on the basis of a proposal by the Commission. Here, both legislators need to agree on an identical text before it becomes law, which may take up to three readings in each of the two institutions. On average, it takes about 22 months for legislators to agree on a legislative file, starting from the Commission proposal until the signature of the final act.

The number of areas in which the Parliament co-legislates has expanded greatly over time and now includes the EU internal market, environment, consumer protection, food safety, regional development, agriculture, transport, energy and many others. Indeed, most legislative acts are now adopted following the ordinary legislative procedure.

Besides the power of consent with regard to legislative acts, the Parliament’s consent is required in many other instances not related to legislative acts in the strict sense. For example, it is needed before any new country joins the EU (Article 49, Treaty on European Union, TEU), but also before any withdrawal treaty can be concluded when a country decides to leave it (Article 50 TEU). The Parliament’s consent is also required before concluding agreements with third countries, for example association agreements, as well as before the Council determines that an EU Member State is breaching – or is about to breach – EU values (Article 7 TEU).

Read the complete study on ‘The power of the European Parliament: Examples of EP impact during the 2014-19 legislative term‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

President Hassan Rouhani said on Thursday (1 August) that Iran was ready for the worst in an uphill struggle to salvage its nuclear deal with world powers abandoned by the United States, but that he was sure Tehran would eventually prevail.

The EU Commission president-elect said she had a "good talk" with Hungary's controversial premier. Orban returned the praise, saying said the former German defence minister "thinks with [a] central Europeans' head".

(picture: Défense Conseil International, DCI)

Joint diving operations involving different EU Member States’ Navies remain almost impossible because up till now, there are no common European diving standards which would allow such cooperation. This lack of interoperability has led to a severe shortage in ships and rescue divers which are indispensable assets in every national or international naval operation.

To enable cooperation and enhance interoperability among Member States' military diving squads, EDA’s Project Team Naval Training launched a ‘Naval Training Support Study’ (NTSS) in 2012, focused on three aspects: navigation training, naval mine warfare, and diving training. The aim of this study, the results of which were presented in 2014, was to provide a landscape of existing capabilities, propose possible common requirements, derive shortfalls based on a gap analysis, and propose recommendations to solve them. As regards Diving Training, the study made several recommendations, including to establish a doctrine concerning military diving (starting with air/ship diver), to establish a shared diving regulation to meet the operational needs, to standardise training & operational qualification criteria and to have a common certification process for diving centres. A follow-up to the NTSS study (phase 2) was commissioned in 2017 and completed in December 2017. It delivered, among others, a comprehensive set of data and analyses of Member States’ national diving standards, a common requirements list for ship divers and minimum qualification standards for military divers. The results were presented to EDA’s Project Team Naval Training in January 2018.

Based on the extended NTSS study and the conclusions of a diving workshop held in La Spezia (Italy) in September 2017, EDA launched a new project in spring 2018 in order to design and conduct a course module to harmonise European ship diving and ship-based rescue diving standards and practices. The overall objective is the identification, recognition and mutual certification of common EU military diving standards.
 

Showcase event held in Toulon

As part of that ongoing project, and in order to test and confirm the practical implications involved in joint diving training and operation, an EDA ‘showcase event’ was held on 3 April 2019 in the harbour of St.Mandrier, near Toulon (France). Four diving teams from Germany, Spain, Poland and Romania participated in this exercise, as well as high ranking naval officers from Bulgaria, France, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Poland and Romania. The aim was to conduct joint interventions under real conditions based on realistic naval incident scenarios and to demonstrate how the proposed common standards would successfully work in practice. As an example: Romanian and Polish divers worked hand in hand to recover an anchor while Spanish and a German diving team jointly inspected a Frigate’s hull and performed repair work on a pier using heavy underwater welding equipment. The practical part of the event was complemented by a static display of different equipment and procedures ashore.

The event was hailed as a great success by all participants.  EDA’s Project Team Naval Training was encouraged to continue promoting the identified standards and seek their swift endorsement by EU Member States as a next step.  Commodore Michael Malone, Flag Officer Commanding the Irish Naval Service, who attended the event commented that “EU common diving standards will facilitate greater pooling and sharing of diving training across Member States, while enhancing interoperability”.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson's EU advisor David Frost held "introductory meetings" with senior EU officials on Thursday in Brussels, where both sides reiterated their existing positions, a commission official said. Johnson said the divorce deal is "dead", while the EU said it will not renegotiate. Johnson and EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker will meet "at the latest" on the G7 summit in France in August, the spokesperson said.

The contest is in full swing. Six female and fourteen male politicians from the Democratic Party who hope to be chosen to challenge Donald Trump - and will have to convince US voters in the next stage - have faced off in two televised evening debates. Only those who scored at least two percent and have secured the backing of at least 130,000 donors will be invited to take part in the third round. How will the Democrats position themselves for the 2020 presidential election?

In reaction to France's introduction of a digital tax that will mainly affect the technology giants Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon (Gafa), US President Donald Trump has threatened to tax French wine. While some commentators voice concern for French wine producers, others focus on the sensitivities of the US economy.