Week in Europe 03/09-09/09/03

EU news in brief

Small countries discuss common interests in IGC

Deputy foreign ministers from most of the smaller Member States of the enlarged EU met in Prague on 1 September to prepare a common position for the intergovernmental conference starting on 4 October. Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden issued a call for changes to the draft EU Constitution, proposed by the European Convention in July.

The 15 countries ignored warnings by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer that the compromise reached by the Convention should not be tampered with. They said in a statement that "some issues ranging from aspects of institutional structures to decision-making procedures would require further consideration". One of the key demands of the smaller countries is that each should be guaranteed a post of a commissioner with full voting rights. Under the Convention's proposal there would be only 15 commissioners with full voting rights for 25 Member States. The smaller countries also want to reopen the proposal for a permanent president to replace the current six-month rotating presidency which gives each Member State equal rights at leading the EU. The smaller countries are convinced that the current proposal favours the bigger Member States, notably Germany, France and the UK.

For more details see EurActiv.com

Commission statement on Amina Lawal's case

The European Commission has been closely following developments in the case of Ms Amina Lawal in Nigeria who was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery. The Sharia Appeal Court in Katsina, Nigeria, has announced that it will pronounce its verdict on the appeal on 25 September. Recalling that President Prodi has previously raised the issue with President Obasanjo, the Commission wishes to restate its firm opposition to the use of death penalty and certain particularly cruel forms of executions that cause excessive suffering, such as the abominable practice of stoning punishments which are still applied in far too many countries. The Commission sincerely hopes that Ms Amina Lawal will be cleared of the charges against her. The Commission trusts that the Nigerian federal government will ensure full compliance with its international human rights commitments. The Commission would also like to acknowledge the important role played by civil society, in particular human rights non-governmental organisations associated to this case.

WTO Cancun: EU determined to make trade work for all a stronger multilateral trading system at hand

On 10 September 2003 the World Trade Organisation will open its 5th Ministerial Conference in Cancun. This meeting is an important staging post on the road to a successful conclusion by end 2004 of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), the round of trade negotiations launched two years ago in Qatar. The DDA is crucial for bolstering international economic growth, and helping developing countries integrate into the global economy. So it is critical that Cancun is a success, and the EU has pushed hard for progress on the outstanding issues. But all WTO members must do their part, to ensure that progress is maintained on market access issues (agriculture, industrial tariff negotiations and services), as well as on global rule-making in areas such as trade and environment, investment, competition, trade facilitation and government procurement and that the all-important development dimension of the negotiations is respected in full. For more information:

http://europa.eu.int/comm/trade/issues/newround/doha_da/cancun/index_en.htm

[Background paper IP/03/1198]

EU acts to make Internet and mobile phones safer

The European Commission has published a call for proposals to help make the Internet a safer place. € 11.7 million of EU funding is made available to promote safer use of the Internet and new online technologies including mobile phones.

This call will establish a European network of safer internet awareness centres and will continue to support for two more years the existing network of hotlines that allow users to report illegal content. Other areas covered include a study on children's use of new media, quality labels for Web sites and benchmarking of filtering systems. The EU's Safer Internet programme covers the internet and new online technologies, including mobile and broadband content, online games, peer-to-peer file transfer, and all forms of real-time communications such as chat rooms and instant messages. It is particularly designed to help protect children and young people from being exploited.

The closing date for proposals is 14 November 2003. For more information, please visit the following websites: http://europa.eu.int/iap, http://www.saferinternet.org/

[Background paper IP/03/1204]

Eurostat news releases

July 2003 Euro-zone unemployment stable at 8.9%; EU15 up to 8.1%

Euro-zone seasonally-adjusted unemployment stood at 8.9% in July 2003, unchanged compared to June, Eurostat reports. It was 8.4% in July 2002. The EU15 unemployment rate was 8.1% in July 2003, compared to 8.0% in June3. It was 7.7% in July 2002. In July 2003, lowest rates were registered in Luxembourg (3.7% in June), the Netherlands (4.2% in June), Austria (4.5%) and Ireland (4.7%). Spain's 11.4% remained the EU's highest rate. Among the twelve Member States for which data are available for the most recent two months, all recorded an increase in their unemployment rate in the last twelve months. The Netherlands (2.8% in June 2002 to 4.2% in June 2003), Portugal (5.0% to 6.9%) and Luxembourg (2.8% in June 2002 to 3.7% in June 2003), recorded the most important relative increases.

[Background paper STAT/03/100]

Eurostat Yearbook 2003 European statistics from A to Z

Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities in Luxembourg, publishes the 8th edition of its Yearbook.

The Eurostat Yearbook 2003 is a wide-ranging statistical guide that provides a good understanding of the major economic and social developments in the EU. It covers the period 1991 to 2001. This new edition of the Yearbook is more user-friendly. A new structure and table of contents make it easy to find one's way through European statistics, rewritten introductions explain the relevance of the data, help in interpreting them and outline other Eurostat sources. For the first time, the Yearbook is a combined product consisting of a book and a CD-ROM. The CD-ROM contains more than 1000 statistical tables and graphs, a selection of which is presented in the paper publication. Hyperlinks on the CD-ROM lead to further reading either on the Eurostat Internet site or on web sites of other General Directorates of the European Commission. All tables on Structural Indicators are now marked with an icon and linked to the respective Eurostat web page.

[Background paper STAT/03/103]

A new Eurostat survey on investment in education and training in the EU 25

A new Eurostat report published on 29 August 2003 on public expenditure on education shows that EU Member States devote an average of 5 per cent of their GDP on education, based on data from 1999. There is a large variation between the countries, ranging from 3.6 per cent in Greece, to 7.5 per cent in Sweden and 8.1 per cent in Denmark. On average in the EU 15, the public sector spent 10.4 per cent of its budget for education. Denmark, Ireland, Portugal and Sweden all spent more than 12 per cent of their public budget on education while Germany, Greece and Italy spent less than 10 per cent. In the EU 15, 5.222 euro were spent on average per pupil/student. In the future Member States, the figure goes from a high of 4.266 euro in Cyprus and 2.835 euro in the Czech Republic to a low of 1.875 euro in Poland and 1.716 euro in Latvia.

Enlargement news

Estonia opens discussions on Structural Funds

Estonia is the latest acceding state to start talks with the European Union over its use of structural funds assistance. Negotiations started in Tallinn on 8 September, aimed at finding an agreement on the strategy and priorities for promoting the development and structural adjustment of regions whose development is lagging behind for the years 2004 to 2006. The whole of Estonia is eligible for this funding.

Easing local traffic over Europes new borders

European Union enlargement means that many citizens living just on the other side of its new borders will face new controls when they want to cross into what will become EU territory on 1 May 2004. Short family or business trips from Russia into Latvia, or Ukraine into Poland or Hungary, for instance, could suddenly become administratively complicated.

So to make life easier for people from non-EU countries who face this situation, the European Commission made proposals last week on what is known as "local border traffic" which is defined as "the crossing of borders by nationals of third countries who live in border areas and regularly travel for legitimate reasons to a member state of the Union without constituting a threat to security".

Possible solutions include special border-crossing points or corridors reserved for the inhabitants of border areas. And new types of document could be issued - such as a special visa for local border traffic, with limited territorial validity, but allowing the holder to cross repeatedly into the member state issuing the visa, for stays of up to seven consecutive days, but for less than three months every half-year. It could be valid for at least one year, and be issued free of charge.

Each member state would be entitled to negotiate bilateral agreements with each of the non-EU neighbours concerned, because of the local nature of small-scale cross-border traffic, but the Commission's proposal lays down some common concepts. Border-control authorities issuing these special visas would need to conduct full security checks on applicants, who would have to have lived for at least a year in the country where they make their application, and would have to demonstrate why they need to cross the border on a regular basis. And any bilateral agreement would have to confer reciprocal rights on EU citizens wanting to cross in the opposite direction.

The new rules would not apply to two of the candidate countries Bulgaria and Romania during their pre-accession phase, because their nationals do not need a visa to enter the EU. The same is true for Croatia.

For some years, non-EU citizens will also find themselves subject to additional controls when they want to cross from a new member states into the Schengen Area of free movement such as from the Czech Republic into Germany or Austria. This is because the new member states will not become full members of Schengen until at least 2006, and until they do they will have to maintain checks at their borders with Schengen states too. The Commission is also proposing that its new rules should apply at these "temporary" borders, as long as they remain in place. Here local traffic could be allowed to cross the border without having to get passports stamped, or use a separate corridor to EU citizens.

The proposals will now be examined by the EU Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions.

New EU grants for environment in future Member States

The European Commission approved funding last week for fourteen nature conservation projects in six future member states, under the LIFE-Nature programme 2003. The projects will help establish the EU-wide Natura 2000 network through the physical restoration of protected areas, the establishment of sustainable management structures and the strengthening of public awareness.

In the 2003 selection round the Commission received 182 applications from current and future member states. Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Romania, Slovenia and, for the first time, Slovakia were among the winners (with a further 63 projects selected in 12 of the current member states). The participation of future member states in LIFE-Nature has allowed six of them to prepare for practical implementation of the Birds and Habitats Directives. The sustainability of LIFE-Nature actions is an important criterion in selecting projects. Particular attention is also given to the involvement of citizens and local communities. Beneficiaries are obliged to undertake public awareness actions in their projects and a preference is given to projects which provide long-term assurance of the management of sites.

Solution in sight on acceding states' US investment treaties

Problems with future member states' bilateral investment treaties with the United States are on the way to being solved. Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia still have such treaties, and some of their provisions raise compatibility issues with the EU acquis. In particular, they offer wider rights for US investors than the EU allows, in agriculture, energy, telecommunications, services, and audiovisual policy.

But now preparations are in their final stages for a Memorandum of Understanding which envisages amendment or abandonment of these bilateral agreements by the time of accession. European Enlargement Commissioner Günter Verheugen and European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy last week set out the plan, and received authorisation from the Commission as a whole to sign a memorandum later this month, which should deal with most of the outstanding issues. Further negotiations will be needed, however, to modify provisions that exclude the possibility for governments to intervene economically at times of balance of payments or debt crisis; EU rules require that member state governments should enjoy this right.

The United States welcomed the move, too. "The United States supports EU enlargement and is pleased that we have reached an understanding that both maintains a positive investment environment in the accession states and furthers the objective of assuring compatibility between the obligations of US bilateral investment treaties and the obligations of membership in the EU," it said.

Enlargement "should boost attention to minority languages"

European Union enlargement will more than double the 60 known indigenous regional or minority language communities in the EU, and the European Parliament has firmly backed the idea of giving greater attention to them. The multiplicity of new regional and minority language communities brought by enlargement will further enrich the European Union's linguistic and cultural diversity, according to a resolution voted by Parliament at its plenary session in Strasbourg last week.

By a large majority, the Parliament adopted an own-initiative report from Italian MEP Michal Ebner (EPP-ED) which criticises the lack of EU legislation on regional and less widely-used languages used regularly by around 40 million people in the EU. The Parliament wants the Intergovernmental Conference, due to formalise a new EU Treaty later this year, to include in the provisions on EU culture policy a reference to the promotion of linguistic diversity.

It also urged member states and candidate countries that have not yet done so to ratify, as soon as possible, the Council of Europe's European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and its Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and to compile reliable data on ethnic, linguistic and religious minority groups, including immigrants and refugees. And it recommended creating a European Agency for Linguistic Diversity and Language Learning, and a multi-annual programme on linguistic diversity, with adequate funding, to promote acceptance of multilingualism.

A budget line introduced in the 1980s by Parliament to support these languages remains unused following the 1998 ruling by the Court of Justice that there is no appropriate legal basis for the policy.

Warning over rush to the Euro

Acceding states were cautioned last against being over-ambitious in their bids to switch to the Euro. The warning came from senior German finance ministry official Caio Koch-Weser - who is also the new chair of the EU's economic and finance committee, which advises EU finance ministers and also has a key role in deciding who can join the Euro. His reasoning is that a premature focus on meeting conditions for switching to the Euro would be likely to impede attempts by the acceding states to sort out their economies. Instead, the acceding states should deal with high deficits and high unemployment first - particularly since in most cases they will have to complete their restructuring without the public finance cushion of privatisation revenues now that most state assets have been sold off. Koch-Weser was insistent that the Euro itself should not be compromised by any political decisions to admit new members before they were ready: he said acceding states' economies would be monitored very closely.

European Ombudsman to tour acceding states

The European Ombudsman, P Nikiforos Diamandouros, is to make an information tour of all ten acceding states. His aim is to inform citizens of their rights: "All EU citizens who might have a complaint to make to the European Ombudsman should be informed of how to do so. The general public should know that there is a European Ombudsman and of the role he plays in ensuring that the EU institutions and bodies conform to the highest standards of administration", he said as he announced his programme. He is starting this week with a visit to Estonia, where will meet Estonian president Arnold Rüütel and prime minister Juhan Parts on September 11, as well as the country's legal chancellor, Allar Jőks, his counterpart there. He will also deliver a public lecture at the National Library, and meet the chairman of the constitutional committee of the Estonian parliament, Urmas Reinsalu.