“Si hace 50 años no…”
Charlotte Elisabeth Leskinen
21 de febrero, 2007
En su artículo “Si hace 50 años no…” en Foreign Policy José Ignacio Torreblanca se pregunta qué tipo de Unión Europea crearíamos si empezáramos hoy. En su opinión,el comienzo sería la identificación de las prioridades y los objetivos, luego se decidiría cómo tomar las decisiones para realizarlos y, finalmente, la financiación de la Unión. Las tareas de la UE se limitarían a cinco políticas, una política exterior y de cooperación, una política de libertad, seguridad y justicia, una unión económica y monetaria acompañada de una política fiscal armonizada, una política medioambiental y una política de investigación y desarrollo. Las decisiones se tomarían únicamente por mayoría y ningún país podría impedir a los demás de avanzar los objetivos de la UE. José Ignacio Torreblanca imagina de este modo una Unión con pocos miembros que constituyan un núcleo duro homogéneo, cumpliendo criterios elevados en cuanto a su compromiso político, económico y en cuestiones de seguridad. Los países que no pudieran cumplir todavía las condiciones de adhesión o que no quisieran una adhesión completa, quedarían fuera de este núcleo, pero con la opción de estar asociados a ciertos aspectos de las políticas de la UE. Además, propone que se cree un Gobierno europeo, elegido por el Parlamento Europeo, relegando a los Estados miembros a un papel sólo como poder legislativo. (more…)
La propuesta de la Cumbre de los 18 sobre la Constitución Europea: ¿Ingenuidad o Estrategia?
María López-Contreras González
16 de febrero de 2007
La víspera de la ya conocida como Cumbre de Madrid se presentó en esta ciudad, en la sede de la Comisión Europea, un interesante informe del Real Instituto Elcano denominado “El futuro de la Constitución Europea: opciones para España”. Se trata de un brillante análisis donde se establecen los problemas que han podido llevar a la crisis que se está viviendo en Europa y se identifican cuatro escenarios de futuro de la Unión. Se analizan cada uno de ellos y se determina cual se adecúa más a los intereses españoles, estableciendo cual debería ser, en todo caso, la posición española en cada una de estas cuatro situaciones. Este Informe, elaborado por José Ignacio Torreblanca, es fruto de la labor de análisis y reflexión llevada a cabo por un grupo de trabajo sobre el Futuro de la Unión Europea en la que han venido participado importantes especialistas en cuestiones comunitarias desde Junio de 2005. Animo, desde aquí, a todos los que nos visitan a que lean este magnifico informe que se caracteriza por su enorme claridad y por la sencillez de sus soluciones sobre cuestiones que, sin embargo, son complejas, lo que hace especialmente amena su lectura. (more…)
Plan B without a Plan B
José M. de Areilza
February 14, 2007
The European Union can cope with failure to ratify a European Constitution. Even if it is now evident that the 25 governments that solemnly adopted the Treaty in Rome on October 2004 had no Plan B, the rules of ratification were clear. Failure also meant respecting the democratic will of Europeans. But if the German driven attempt to rescue this text between now and 2009 fails, what would be the impact on the Union’s credibility? What is the Plan B of Plan B? Is it a good idea to try to reopen the constitutional debate, but only half way, limiting the agenda to favorite articles of Part I of the Constitution and push for an agreement in only a few months? What if “difficult” Member States decide to hold referenda after all on the new text and the no vote wins? What if some National Parliaments vote it down?
In my view, the Union has two clear options that are better than the Merkel-Sarkozy inspired “Plan B-with-no-Plan-B”. First option would be to “think big”, go back to square one, and dare to use again the lengthy method of European Convention + Intergovernmental Conference. We would renegotiate the rules of the game with an open agenda. Even if there is no resulting agreement or the new text would be considered by some as “sub-optimal”, this political process would enjoy high legitimacy. Second option, a minimalist one, wait until the accession of Croatia is about to happen, negotiate just enough institutional changes to bring this country in, continue with the existing Nice arrangements until the new political community of 27 Member states is more consolidated. Meanwhile concentrate on solving European substantive problems like competitiveness, energy, security, inmigration policy, that can be tackled with the existing rules, provided there is enough leadership.
A bunch of cynics
J. Ignacio Torreblanca
February 5, 2007
On December 7th, 2005, Condoleezza Rice had a really friendly dinner with European foreign ministers. According to the revelations of Spanish Daily El Pais (26/01/2007), who had access to the minutes of the meeting, the US Secretary of State admitted the accusations that the US government was using the European soil and airspace to move detainees illegally captured in Europe and other countries back and forth from Guantánamo to secret CIA prisons all over the world [We know today that the CIA operated at least 1,000 flights and that at least 10 persons were kidnapped in Europe and transferred to third countries in order to be tortured].
At the meeting, Rice asked European foreign ministers to be understanding about the special conditions imposed by the US “war on terror”. She went even further when she specifically asked her colleagues “to show courage to confront the media, which is trying to condition European public opinion against the US”. Guess what the foreign ministers did? Fortunately for European decency, the Foreign Ministers of Norway, Denmark, Belgium and Portugal condemned US approach to human rights and expressed their concern that their countries were being used for those purposes.
Unfortunately, decency was not the majoritarian position. Among the “new Europe” countries, the British Foreign Secretary justified US practices, immediately followed by the Czech, who argued in favour of flexibility to combat terrorism. But the most interesting were the French Minister, who recognized that the world was confronting a new type of war and expressed his satisfaction about US-French anti-terrorist cooperation; and the German Foreign Minister, Steinmeier (Socialist and former main foreign advisor of Schröder!) who said he was “very happy” with the explanations offered by Rice. (more…)
Why are we giving the US such a hard time on ‘data protection’ grounds?
Tomás F. Serna
February 2, 2007
There is no need to resort to a legal scholar to obtain a general grasp upon the overall different approaches towards ‘privacy’ both from the EU and the US perspectives.
We, Europeans, seem to be very wary towards perceived potential threats to the ‘fundamental right’ to privacy. Thus, Directive 95/46 saw the light, the European Data Protection Supervisor was created, as well as many ‘national regulators’ among the different European member states. In Spain furthermore, we have a number of ‘local’ sub-state public data protection authorities.
And by the way, the most exquisite ‘administrative law’ (public), resolutions and readings that I have come across in my professional life, came from both the Spanish national one: the ‘Agencia Española de Protección de Datos’, as well as from the ‘Agencia de Protección de Datos de la Comunidad de Madrid‘, (Madrid’s local one). (Credit where credit is due: the Spanish CMT deserves a golden honorific mention here too.) I think most lawyers would agree with me on this one.
Contrary to popular belief, the US approach is not a careless one. (more…)