Bald kein Zivildienst im Ausland mehr!?
Wie MountEUlympus berichtet steht das Freiwillige Soziale Jahr im Ausland (dass auch den Andereren Dienst im Ausland ermöglicht – oder besser finanziell fördert) auf der Kippe. Die Bundesregierung plant wohl die Finanzierung einzustellen – und das schon ab diesen Sommer!
Ich habe selbst den ‘Anderen Dienst’ gemacht und unterstütze deshalb den Aufruf zum Protest.
Hier gibts alle Details zu den Plänen der Bundesregierung (soweit sie schon bekannt sind…).
Und hier gibt es ein vorgefertigtes Anschreiben für euren Abgeordenten!
Was kann man also noch tun? Hier ein paar Tips von Andre:
1. Bittet leitet diese Email an euren Bekanntenkreis weiter und sorgt dafür, dass die Menschen von den Plänen der Bundesregierung erfahren und ihre Ablehnung zeigen.
2. In der weitergeleiteten Mail unten findet ihr die Email-Adressen der zuständigen Ministerin Kristina Schröder sowie den Bundestagsabgeordneten des zuständigen Ausschusses, der die Mittelkürzung bestätigen muss. Bitte schreibt diesen Politikern eine Email in der ihr euch für den Erhalt des Zivildienstes FSJ14c im Ausland stark macht. Dazu findet ihr im Anhang ein vorgefertigtes Anschreiben.
3. Auch euer persönlicher Bundestagsabgeordneter ist eine starke Macht, wenn es darum geht, gegen diese Pläne zu kämpfen. Wenn es euch möglich ist, bitte nutzt das angehängte Anschreiben, um ihn oder sie auf dieses Problem aufmerksam zu machen. Je mehr Post die Abgeordneten bekommen, desto mehr Druck können wir aufbauen.
The forgotten Trio
Among the institutional changes brought about by the Lisbon Treaty, some have been more present in the media and public debate than others. Three months after the Treaty entered into force, we can still read at least a couple of articles a day about the President of the European Council, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and, of course, the External Action Service that is now being designed. But with all the attention given to these new actors, one of the old ones has been slightly forgotten. In fact,with all the confusion in the media, it took quite a while for people to learn that the rotating Presidency of the Council of Ministers will still exist and work pretty much as before, with the unofficially existing 18-months Trio now being ‘officialised’ by the Treaty.
Three waves | Roll into port together | The trio is home. (Herman Van Rompuy)
What does this mean in practice, what are the advantages of the Trio and its relations with the newly established players? It might be too early to judge, but we can already get some insight from the experience of the Spanish-Belgian- Hungarian Trio. Its work has been reflected on at the launch of a report on the contribution of 14 European think-tanks to the Spanish, Belgian and Hungarian Trio Presidency of the European Union.
While, in the pre-Lisbon setting, the past, current and forthcoming Presidencies were encouraged to work together in order to ensure coherence and continuity, the fact that now this collaboration is made official (and compulsory), gives it a boost, by creating common practices. The civil servants from the three countries meet regularly, in sectoral structures and at various levels, to discuss the priorities for the 18 months. This starts about two years before the first Presidency takes office and ends after the third has finished its mandate, not before making a thorough evaluation of the Trio’ s performance. All this may sound like a normal bureaucratic procedure, a pure coordination task. Yet, it is more than that. It is an exercise that helps civil servants and politicians with different (sometimes very different) administrative and political cultures to get to know and understand each other and start thinking out of the “national” box. Thus, in order to draft a common programme, the three countries try to take on board each other’s interests, apart from their own national one, leading to a set of priorities that each of them can feel the ownership of. Moreover, these priorities that have been agreed by three Member States have a bigger weight when it comes to defining each country’s own strategic lines for he 6 months period.
The protagonists of the first official trio, Spain, Belgium and Hungary, seem to have found this exercise very useful. At the symbolic level, they decided to use the same logo design, with only the colours of the national flags changing. A common website was also created (www.eutrio.eu); however, contrary to expectations, this web address is currently used just as an alias for the Spanish Presidency website (which, in its turn, does not have a lot of references to the Trio and not in the most visible of places). At the more practical level, the Trio has drafted a single programme, instead of three different programmes as it used to be the case; however, it seems that each country still follows its own set of priorities, de facto reducing the common programme to a strategic framework, while still allowing specific Member States to take credit for certain achievements that happened to take place in their 6 months term. (Update: the Spanish Presidency is already “taking stock” of the achievements of the first third of its term, coming up with a very positive assessment. No reference to the common Trio programme and the progress in terms of that, in case you were wondering).
During the preparatory stage, the Trio had some daring ideas, such as having one country chairing one working group or/and Council formation for 18 months, while the other two countries chair others, or to have interchangeable chairs from the three countries. These arrangements would have reinforced the idea of a common programme and a common identity; but they proved to be too forward-thinking for this moment, adding up to the current post-Lisbon institutional confusion. Perhaps this is still something to think about for the next Trio (Poland, Denmark and Cyprus).
It still remains to be seen what role the rotating Presidency will carve for itself in the new interinstitutional power balance. Even though most of the visibility is taken up by Herman Van Rompuy, one has to remember that it is still the rotating Presidency that chairs the 270 Council Working Groups, the COREPER meetings, as well as nine out of ten Council formations, including the General Affairs Council (GAC), whose horizontal coordination role can prove to be very important strategically. Another key issue is how the Trio Presidencies will relate to the newly established institution- the European Council- and its growing powers, especially in the economic area. While the usual working practices of the Council are of a bottom-up nature (starting at Working Group level, then going to COREPER and only then- and only the controversial, unsolved issues- going to the level of Ministers), the increased role of the European Council might see these practices change, allowing for the possibility of a top-down approach in certain areas.
Irrespective of the way the Trio will interpret and fulfill its tasks, it is important to remember, when looking at the institutional structure of post-Lisbon EU, that the rotating Presidency is still playing an important role. Practice will show, in the following months, if the idea of an official Trio has given it more strength, coherence and continuity. And all this beyond a common logo and a programmatic set of common priorities.
I don’t want to be rude, but…
More youtube fame for Mr Farage but the “non -country” strikes back: http://idontwanttoberude.com/
Sunday EU geek quiz: What is NLE?
Try to imagine what the Eurocrats have been filling up their days with lately. Well, the Lisbon Treaty has spiced up their boring bureaucratic routines, giving some headaches especially to those working in the Secretariats General and the Legal Services of the institutions.For the rest, of course, all the novelties and how they will impact their work are still a well-kept secret. Or perhaps a yet non-deciphered mystery.
There has been a big debate about the SWIFT affair in the last weeks. But, looking into the file in more detail, something else than the often discussed content got my attention: the code of the procedure: NLE/2009/0190. A quick research led me to the full name of the procedure: Interinstitutional non-legislative procedure. For those who (for one reason or another) are interested in knowing what this procedure covers and cannot figure it out from the large list of documents labeled post-Lisbon with the NLE code, I am afraid I don’t have good news. The new code covers all the procedures where the European Parliament is involved but which do not fall under the new ordinary legislative procedure (formerly known as co-decision) or the special legislative procedures (the old consultation and assent).
Quite broad, right? Well, some refining will be on the agenda of the institutions, threatening to keep some people busy for at least a few months until all the innovations and their implications have been spelled out at the practical level.
The first European Citizens’ Initiative is here!
Hooray! Every day some more Lisbon Treaty innovations. Today I came across a campaign for the first European Citizens’ Initiative. (Hat tip: Andrew Burgess) Good news is that it is not an animal rights campaign but a campaign for a “Free Sunday“. Regardless of the idea behind the “free Sunday”, the timing and the execution of the campaign seem amateurish and may well backfire (see below).
First of all what is this European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI)? It is a new tool to involve citizens in EU decision making. Basically you need 1 Mio signatures of European citizens to call on the European Commission to draft a policy proposal. Read some background info here.
Let’s look in the treaty, Art 11 of the TEU:
Not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the European Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties.
The procedures and conditions required for such a citizens’ initiative shall be determined in accordance with the first paragraph of Article 24 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
The problem is the last sentence. At the moment negotiations are under way about how the specific details should look like. The European Commission published a green paper and a public consultation just ended on 31.1.2010. Legal uncertainty is a problem if you start a campaign now, but there are even more problems of the “Free Sunday” campaign:
(1) Legal uncertainty. It is risky to start a campaign when the legal details are not yet clear. The amount of the signatures might be clear but what about electronic votes? What personal details need to be submitted? What is a “significant number” of Member States? Will there be a time limit between the first and the last signature? Some of the things have been debated but as long as there is no certainty it seems like a waste of time to start collecting signatures or even to “build momentum”.
(2) Campaign backing: The idea comes from Martin Kastler a Bavarian MEP, not the most innovative start but fair enough. At the moment there are 5 civil society organisations supporting the campaign: 2 Christian groups that are closely linked to the German WWII expellees (“Heimatvertriebenen”) , two national association of Catholics and a local (protestant) working group of the CDU. First of all, this is a relatively small amount of organisations. All of them Christian groups and all of them based in Germany. One the one hand it is not surprising that religious groups are among the supporters for such an idea, but is it enough to get support only from Germany when you want to organise a European campaign? The main Catholic and Protestant organisations in Germany are not even included and you can’t tell me that religious groups in other countries are not well organised… But to give the campaign more credibility it is certainly a good idea to include other non-religious groups. Trade unions spring to mind, but also various NGOs and parties might support you. Interestingly, Kastner mentions that in his press release that he hopes to get the backing of other groups as well – but why start a campaign page already if you could get massive support with some more lobbying?
(3) Website and social media: So you have a campaign website. Very good. But is it clever to have it in 2 languages only (English and German)? I know it is difficult to translate a page into many languages but if you had more supporters in other countries it might be easier. And I found a facebook fan page. Well done. But again: only in German and only 377 fans… Other social media gadgets are missing, no twitter, no blog, no discussion and most importantly no tools to spread the message: banners, maybe user submitted campaign material. A successful online campaing needs to be creative!
(4) Media campaign. There is none. A quick look into the German google news reveals clearly that there is no hype whatsoever. A couple of regional and Christian German newspapers copied the press release, that’s it.
(5) Problem with the free-sunday.eu campaign is the lack of content. Keep the Sunday free of work – ok, but how exactly? There is no background info, no specific legislative proposals, no overview of the legal situation in different European countries, only one page with a couple of bullet points that outline some objectives. However, lacking a clear legislative proposal, the danger is that others label you as not being relevant, which might not only kill the campaign itself but also discourage others. First thing to remember is that there needs to be a specific issue in which the Commission can act in accordance with the Treaties! So is it an appropriate proposal for an ECI? Unfortunately we cannot evaluate this based on the campaign website!
In case the the campaign has the aim to get more support for the cause and start a proper ECI later – make it clear and ask for specific proposals for example as part of a “public citizen consultation”! After all you want to include citizens, right? Are you looking for actual signatures or just for supporters that are willing to contribute to the real campaign – again this is not clear and might not be beneficial for your campaign.
(6) The slogan. “Mom and dad belong to us on Sunday.” is inspired by a German trade union slogan from 1956. Is that enough for 2010?
First impressions, unfortunately, count – especially for campaigns. The free-sunday.eu campaign is unprofessional and looks amateurish. Let’s hope the next campaign looks more promising (animal rights groups are usually very professional…)
Article would have not existed without Moray Gilland – Thanks a lot for the twitter discussion 
Update: Another rather critical take on the issue by Matthew Lowry’s Tamsanian Devil.
Apply for TH!NK3 – Millennium Development Goals
The third edition of Th!nk about it has been announced. It is a blogging competition run by the European Journalism Centre which will focus on on the developing world and the Millennium Development Goals (MDG):
The competition will bring together journalists, journalism students, academics and experts from 27 EU Member States, neighbourhood countries and beyond, to write about global cooperation in international development. TH!NK3: Developing World will run from 24 March, 2010 to 31 August, 2010.
If you want to participate, just apply here! Since I was involved in the project last year I can assure you that Th!nk is a lot of fun and an amazing learning experience. You can also have a look at the previous rounds that focused on the European Parliament elections and climate change.
Here is the official trailer for TH!NK3:
The animated President of the European Council
Do you remember our little series with the terrible name “How to explain a political process with a video?“ No? Well, today, it is time to revive this category as I found a new animated EU video about the role of the President of the European Council produced by the TV Newsroom of the Council of the European Union. OK, it might not be that new – especially if you are a regular visitor of the TV Newsroom of the Council (well, these people do exist!) or a twitter addict…
Anyway, the video is a nice reminder what the POTEC (that sounds quite cool – is there also an official short form?) actually does – arguably not that much. So no need to get overexicted by this new position. A video that should definitely be watched by journalists and governmental website editors:
How To Report The News
and while we’re at it:
One year Bloggingportal.eu
Happy birthday to bloggingportal.eu! We are celebrating 1 year of Bloggingportal.eu! Last January we launched the page and it has been a great first year. More than 500 euroblogs, 25 editors and thousands of visitors! Thanks for all your support and help! Do continue to spread the word – and feel free to give us your feedback!
To mark this anniversary the European Journalism Centre (EJC) published a nice article about the project. In a way we reached the aim there: Bloggingportal.eu as a “featured resource” for journalists all over Europe
Don’t forget to stay updated with bloggingportal.eu issues: You can become a fan of bloggingportal on facebook and you can follow us on twitter! If you are a twitter addict you might want to check out our editors choice on twitter!
We are also looking for new editors and volunteers that would like to get involved. Just write us an email and we will get back to you!
