Author Archives: Anda

Dec 11 2011
5 Comments
Digital Public Sphere, EU politics

The new European Parliament website: a journey of discovery

Who would have thought that if you want to learn some useful tips about website (re)design you have to search no further than the new European Parliament website? And who would have thought that, in the age where, thankfully, the various EU websites are becoming more user friendly, there is one website that, well, has a slightly “out of the box” design? But the EU (and its web universe)  is full of surprises, so here we are, being offered a brand new European Parliament website. And since it seems to be quite different (in look and logic)  than the new websites of the other EU institutions (European Commission,  Council of the EU and European Council), maybe we can learn a few lessons in website design:

1. Place a large banner on the homepage; the bigger the better. You have to make sure that people who have netbooks *only* see the banner when they land there and those with a normal/big laptop screen have at least half of the screen covered by your banner. They are on your website –> they are interested –> they are eager to scroll down to actually see content. Bullet-proof logic, can’t fault it really.

2. You have a website with a lot of information. You also have a mandate to ensure “transparency”. Now, what is your main concern when designing the website? Form or function? For those of you who answer function, I suggest you think again. Or try to learn something from this guide. Form is, of course, the key. The page has to look cool. Full stop. So try to make it as similar to the magazines and social network pages people are used to. If that means making some compromises on its actual use, be bald and go for it.

3. You’ve decided to go for the *cool look*. Good. This makes things easier. You don’t actually need to care about navigation. Why try to design menus that actually help people go through your page? Menus are there to look cool, who said they actually need to also have a function? Gather some random words (thinking of categories is really a waste of precious effort and time), add sleek icons to them and there you go: you have your main menu. Does it capture the essence of your activity? This should really be the least of your concerns. It is the main (and sometimes the only) thing people see when coming to your page and you made it look cool. Ah, and if you feel it’s not sleek enough, add a slow-moving (but cool looking) arrow that is, by chance, the only means of navigation  through the menu. Now you’re all set.

4. You have one main menu, on top. Really, no matter how cool that looks, you simply cannot rely on only one menu. This would be really careless of you. The more menus, the better. It shows the complexity of your activities. You think that’s difficult to achieve? Think twice. Who said the menus should look the same or be linked in any way? In fact, it’s just the opposite: the more diverse, the better. It won’t confuse people, it will simply make them stay longer on your site, searching for the information they need. After all, isn’t that what you actually want?

5. When designing your various menus, be creative and come up with new ideas. Drop-down menus are out of fashion. So is the left side menu. Place all your menus and sub-menus on top. The viewers will be confronted with a sea of words and ever-foldable menus that will push the actual information even lower on the page. Same as in lesson 1: if they are really interested, they’ll find their way. And don’t give them any help, by streamlining the categories or putting them in an order that makes sense. This would make it far too easy and not challenging.

6. Since we’ve established already in lesson 2 that navigation and usability are rather low on your agenda, you only have to make sure of one basic thing: the viewers should *never* be able to come back to the exact point of their search where they were before. This is, after all, a journey of discovery and you wouldn’t want to spoil the fun, would you?

7. Let’s go now a step further, to the actual content. I know, this is drifting a bit away from the coolness factor, but believe me, there are a few things you can do with the content to keep the viewers’ excitement alive. Firstly, you can put the same information in various places, therefore allowing for various paths of discovery (don’t worry, you don’t have to think of any logic behind it). Alternatively, you can split the information on one topic in different parts of the website (obviously each one with a different look). It would be too boring if everything was grouped and the readers could actually find what they need immediately. A good example here is the information on EP committees. You can find the list of committees here, under the item “Policies” on the main menu; general  information about committees can be found here, under “Organisation”, some 3 clicks later, through the labyrinth of menus; and the latest news about Committee activities are here, on the top right menu of the main page, under “Committees”. There you go. This type of structure (!) opens many opportunities: you can, for instance, create quizzes asking people to find all the information on a certain topic. And no worries, this is just for fun. No one will actually find every single item, you can always hide something so well that it might even take you a couple of hours to locate it. The fun of searching! Ah, I almost forgot, it might seem like a detail but it’s quite important: if you link on your page to a very specific item (like a treaty article, for example), do not create a new page dealing specifically with that, but have the readers download hundreds of pages of PDF documents. It will certainly enrich their knowledge of the topic and give them the context to understand the specific item. Remember, it’s all about the readers and offering them the best online learning experience.

8. What is a website nowadays without a matching social media presence? In fact, sometimes, social media presence is even more important. Therefore, why not pay more attention to the Facebook page than to website itself? After all, that’s where your fans are. Compared to that, coolness-wise, your website will anyway be just a boring repository where die heart geeks go to find more information. Or try. Oops…that’s a small lapse of logic there, but never mind….

9.Designing a new website, or redesigning the old one, can be a daunting task. That’s why the best thing is to try to involve all departments; share the fun, give them ownership of their section. Why not even create a  competition and thus encourage them to keep their work secret from the others. Coherence is overrated. Who (apart from few geeks) will have an overview of the entire website anyway? If in the end some pieces really don’t fit together, blame complexity. It always works.

10. Your page is almost ready. You’ve worked so hard on it and are eager to show it to the world. Just go ahead! Really, don’t bother with testing its usability (or if you’ve done that already, don’t bother with incorporating the changes suggested). This will only delay your launch and you really don’t want that. And if, on the very first day, your page crashes and it’s  not accessible for most of the day, well, bad luck for whoever needed it then, for you it’s simply a sign of popularity. Be happy that so many people (much more than you could ever anticipate!) are checking the new look.

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Dec 03 2011
1 Comment
Eastern Europe

Who owns the Carpathian forests?

It is not often that Romania’s image is associated with positive things. That is why I was nicely surprised to see Transylvania and the Carpathians featured both in the Financial Times (here) and on Travel Channel (video below), all in the last couple of months. What is even more important is that both reports, beyond praising the beauty of the Romanian landscape and its rural life stuck a few centuries ago, warn us about a problem that few are really aware of: the threat to the forest ecosystem in the Carpathian mountains.

The message is clear: the potential is there for great Eco-tourism initiatives, but the priority should be protecting the wild life and the rural life, enforcing a ban on illegal logging (that has been destroying the forests in the last two decades at a scary pace) and starting to value this natural heritage for its uniqueness. There have been many recent initiatives and NGO campaigns lobbying for the preservation of the Carpathian habitat but more often than not these are mostly coming from Western Europe,  from organisations and people passionate about nature and charmed by the purity of the Romanian landscape. What is still missing, in my opinion, is a bit of “sense of ownership” by Romanians in all these plans and projects. And this can only be encouraged by a strong belief in the value of the natural habitat and its need for preservation. It is not enough to admire, one needs to be aware of the broader balance of the regional ecosystem, in which the Carpathian forests play an important part. It takes some effort, but it’s worth it!

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Nov 29 2011
2 Comments
EU politics

A geeks’ guide to the Secretariat General of the European Commission

Did you ever find yourself desperately looking for a small piece of information of the EU, usually a geeky procedural detail, and were unable to find it on any of the EU institutions website? Are you sometimes wondering who deals with rather specific (technical and legal) EU matters that have an inter-institutional dimension? Where do you search for information on cross-cutting issues like transparency & access to documents, impact assessments, implementation of EU law or the evaluation of EU policies?

Search no more. The Secretariat General of the European Commission could be just what you’re looking for. Of course you’ve heard of it. It’s that boring support service, lacking the high profile of a specific policy field, mainly functioning “behind the scenes”, with very low (if any) visibility in the mainstream media. But what exactly is the Secretariat General and what is it’s role in the functioning of the EU? Here are just a few key facts, who knows, they might come in handy for one of our next EU geek quizzes.

The Secretariat General is one of the departments of the European Commission, having a staff of around 600 people and reporting directly to the President of the Commission. Its main role is to ensure the overall coherence of the Commission’s work at every stage of policy-making, from initiating legislation, through coordinating with the other institutions throughout the decision-making process, to the implementation of EU law. The Secretariat plays a key role in the internal decision-making process of the European Commission, being the nodal point for both the internal, inter-departmental consultation and the consultation of the external stakeholders. It is the Secretariat General that ensures the smooth running of the Commission’s work, including the detailed planning, impact assessments and final evaluation.

Moreover, it’s also important to note that the Sec Gen is also the Commission’s interface with the other European institutions, as well as national parliaments and civil society actors. In other words, it is the Sec Gen that, through its strategic position, is coordinating the spider-web of inter-institutional interactions that take place throughout the EU decision-making process. And that, you might imagine, is not the easiest of tasks. It requires a thorough understanding of the procedural intricacies of EU policy-making as well as a global overview of the various actors and their respective roles.  In other words, it might seem boring, but that’s where it’s all happening, even though this is far from being the message we get from politicians, MEPs or the media.

Beside its key procedural role- and actually because of it- the Secretariat General is worth some attention also from the perspective of finding information on EU issues. And this time, it’s really getting geeky. We’re no longer talking about the nice general information on the EU, it’s impact on our lives and general activities reports. On the website of the Sec Gen is all about details, it’s all about the things you could not find (or hardly find) on any of the other EU websites. And, no, I would not even pretend this is in any way helpful or enlightening to the normal EU citizen. If anything, it could be rather puzzling. This information is targeted to “insiders”, “EU geeks”, “specialists” or however they may be called.

Just to tease your appetite for discovery, here are 7 interesting things you can find on the Sec Gen website:

  1. Better regulation and impact assessments. You can read here about the Commission’s “better regulation” approach, learn how are impact assessments conducted and by whom, find out what simplification, codification and recasting mean and what the Commission plans to do with all the “red tape”;
  2. Inter-institutional relations. Here you can find information about the framework agreements on the interactions between the Commission and the other EU institutions. There are quite interesting to look at, as they outline in detail whatever procedural issues the Treaties have left (on purpose or not) ambiguous.
  3. Registers of expert groups offers an overview of the consultative entities that help the Commission in relation to the preparation of legislative proposals, policy initiatives and delegated acts as well as the implementation of existing EU legislation. This might come in handy in case you are wondering who does the Commission consult at the early stages of policy preparation and how are the formal and informal expert groups operating.
  4. Consultation standards. You can read here the main principles and guidelines on which the consultation of external stakeholders by the Commission is based. For a list of open consultations, that can also be filtered by policy area, go here.
  5. Application of EU law. Are you looking for a quick guide through the labyrinth of EU law implementation? You are in the right place. Read here about the various types of EU legislation, how to implement EU law into national legislation (with a link to N-lex, the portal that gives you access (in so far as your language abilities can take you) to national legislation) and infringements of EU legislation. Don’t expect an in-depth EU law course, but it can be a good starting point for your search, as you have links to all relevant legislative monitoring portals.
  6. Transparency and access to documents (including transparency register). A recurring topic throughout the EU institutions. Here you get links to all the relevant legislation on the topic, as well as links to the various registers of documents. You can also find out how you can ask for access to Commission documents and that can prove to be quite useful as you might come across references to documents you cannot find online but you could obtain by asking for access.
  7. Evaluation of EU policies. Here you can take a peek in the Commission’ “kitchen” and read about how the various past initiatives were evaluated (ex-post, as opposed to the impact assessments which are an ex-ante form of evaluation), in terms of their results and impact. You can find here the evaluation results from the previous year. The evaluation is carried out by each DG but it’s centrally coordinated by the Secretariat General, similarly to the impact assessments.

This is by no mean an exhaustive overview of what you can find on the Sec Gen’s website (for example a list of  gifts received by Commissioners is also available). It’s just a brief collection of what I consider interesting and useful links (despite the pretty old design and low quality of some of the sites, which, I hope, are currently being redesigned so that they become more than mere repositories of information). Next time you have a geeky question about EU procedures, it’s worth paying a visit to the Secretariat General’s website, or even trying to contact someone working there. They might turn out to be a richer and more precise information source on the overall functioning of the EU than you imagine.

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Nov 28 2011
2 Comments
EU politics

Beyond the “pilot era”: the impact of EU funding

There is one phenomenon that anyone more or less connected with the EU bubble (even loosely, based at local or national level) is quite familiar with: EU-funded projects. They have been around for the last decades and it seems like they are here to stay.

There’s nothing wrong with that, one may say and indeed, there is generally nothing wrong with funding schemes, whether they are coming from the EU, foundations or other generous actors. But, all too busy with monitoring calls, applying, feverishly awaiting the response, managing, reporting and organising countless events, we seldom question the real impact of all these projects. And by impact I don’t mean in the immediate impact on the organisation(s) involved, but the long-term impact on general policy orientations.

It doesn’t take more than bit of hands-on experience and a slight change of perspective- i.e. leaving your personal office space and pile of forms to fill and looking at the broader context- to realise that in all this funding process there is little or no focus on effective implementation and further follow-up. The proliferation of pilot projects, while not a bad thing in itself, does not automatically translate into policy change. This would not necessarily be a problem, if it were not for the very ambitious aims mentioned in the Calls for Proposals, talking about such elusive things like: “modernisation of Higher Education”, “establishment of sustainable transnational networks” or “reinforcing excellence, dynamism and creativity in European research”. These are, you must agree, very precise, achievable and especially measurable goals.

On the positive side, EU funded projects do achieve something rather important: bringing together organisations from various countries and regions, active in various sectors (academia, non-profit sector, private sector, etc). The requirement to find partners abroad and work together is in itself, I think, one of the greatest achievements of the EU funding schemes. And sometimes, on the odd occasion, the partnerships do last longer than the duration of the project or are revived in the context of other projects, which is by all means a good thing and a proof of long(er) lasting impact.

Nevertheless, when making the effort to look beyond that, all we see is an almost never-ending chain of projects, arguably keeping busy a large number of people, regardless of the sector they work in, but that unfortunately have no long-term, sustainable impact. It’s a vicious circle of “projects for projects’ sake”, each one reinforcing the need for the next, but always missing a clear link with the overall goals. One could even say the actually are missing a “reality check”.

So what are the main problems? And why do we even talk about “problems” when at first sight the process is running smoothly, deadlines are met, money is being spent, reports are being written and event-hopping has almost become a new sport? Here are three structural issues that make us question the overall efficiency of the EU funding process and its impact on policy-making:

1. The whole approach is somewhat faulted: the funding guidelines are encouraging applications from various grassroots organisations, in an attempt to outline what is often labeled as “best practices”. The outcome is a variety of projects, focusing on a variety of issues, from a variety of perspectives. Yes, the key word is “variety”. However, in order to have any noticeable impact, there needs to be consistency, both in the way projects are selected and in the way they are/ should be followed-up. There is nothing wrong per se with a rich collection of projects, but their value would be infinitely increased if they belonged to a “grand design”, or, to put it bluntly, if anyone (ranging from the EC to the project partners) could explain in plain language (and not in the project management meaningless jargon) what’s the main point of a certain project, why it was selected, how it fits in the larger funding scheme and, most of all, how it will be followed-up. Maybe then one would avoid useless duplications and, even more importantly, countless ephemeral “success stories”.

2. Project management has become a new industry. The whole project management cycle, from application to management and dissemination, is becoming an occupation in itself, instead of being the means to reaching goals. Moreover, the system seems to play to the advantage of the same organisations that are successful in their applications, for the simple reason that they already know what the EC wants to read in the application forms. New jobs are created and are being financed by EU funds (nothing bad as such) but unfortunately they are not sustainable jobs: you are useful as long as you can bring more money to finance your salary. This is a weird logic, but who has time to think of that when caught in the spider-web of project coordination, reporting, organising countless events and, obviously, always being alert to new funding opportunities? Indeed, who has time, in this ever so dynamic work environment, to think what, if any, role the project plays, in the greater scheme of things? Or if there is a greater scheme of things. There is only one moment when this thought briefly, but painfully occurs: as the end of the funding period looms, one question becomes more and more present: “What next?”. But before any more meaningful answers comes up, the obvious one is: “Next project”.

3. The requirements of the calls for proposals are quite specific, but they do tend to repeat over several calls. The result: a list of projects that reproduce the same features, as every project manager tries hard to reinvent the wheel, while totally aware there are many “wheels” already out there, most likely also the result of EU funded projects. A good example here are online collaborative platforms. There is a still ongoing trend to require that part of the project should be dedicated to establishing such platforms, with the (again, very achievable) aim of linking various target groups, be it researchers and policy makers, industry and academia and so on. Not only is an overview of all the platforms not  publicly available for those interested, but the potential applicants are strongly advised to come up with a new one, more innovative (!?) than the ones before. Never mind that there are several social networks out there that could be used. Never mind that this takes up a big chunk of the grant itself, that could be used for better purposes. Never mind that the whole collaborative platform approach has had mixed results and actually requires a huge amount of resources (especially human resources) to be successful. It is trendy, so it’s a catchword to be used in the application. The rest will be dealt with at a later stage.

It is interesting to see that, beyond the hundreds of small successful projects, there is a lack of long-term vision that prevents the different projects to fulfil their full potential. It is like a table full of puzzle pieces, with various colours and designs. The only thing the puzzle designer left out is the instruction sheet. And soon it becomes clear that it will take quite a bit of shuffling to make the pieces fit and complement each other in what is to be a meaningful, recognisable picture. Or, in other words, an effective EU funding policy.

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Jan 06 2011
15 Comments
Eastern Europe, EU politics

Romania’s clumsy way to Schengen

Four years after its accession to the EU, Romania is facing its first big test: the accession to the Schengen zone. Part of the accession treaty, but conditioned by the fulfilment of clear technical criteria regarding border management and security, the accession of Romania and Bulgaria was scheduled to take place in March 2011. But, as we all know, the EU seldom functions by written Treaty rules only. Instead, it is all about a perpetual horse-trading, formal and informal negotiations and- not to be neglected- political games. The old Member States know this game all too well and naturally use it to their advantage. The new Member States (and I cant help wondering how much longer we will be calling them “new”, after 7 and respectively 4 years from accession) are still learning. And like in every learning process, some pupils are learning quicker than others.

Unfortunately Romania proves to be one of the slow learners and the way it is handling the Schengen accession issue is a very good illustration. After France and Germany made it clear that they would rather see Romania’s and Bulgaria’s accession postponed to a later date when the two countries will be better prepared, bringing as the strongest argument their still very corrupt justice system, Romania decided to take a strong position. That would be all perfectly justifiable, especially given the fact that technically, it is ready to join the Schengen area, if only Romanian politicians had benefited from the socialisation process in the last four years and had learned how to properly use the rules of the game in their favour. Instead, the messages Romania has been sending in the last days come across as desperate childish attempts to threaten the EU with blocking ongoing processes such as Croatia’s accession (on the pretext that any future Member States should also have a Co-operation and Verification Mechanism (CVM), like Romania and Bulgaria do) and the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty amendment allowing for the new 18 MEPs to take their seats in the European Parliament. What Romania is naively trying to achieve with this is to “hurt” France and Germany (although it is Spain that benefits the most from the additional MEPs), but such statements and, even worse, actions fit much better in a kindergarten than in the EU arena.

What Romania is proving in the last days is that:

  1. it has not learned anything in the last four years about how the EU really functions, what are the main institutional players, what is the balance of power and how can one best influence the decision-making process; and here I mostly refer to the informal mechanisms, the things one learns by doing, the product of the so called “socialisation process”, although I still have doubts about how clear the formal mechanisms are to Romanian politicians, and the latest developments are only reinforcing these doubts;
  2. it lacks a coherent strategy to reach the goal of Schengen accession; after the EU accession process was completed, the various political forces in Romania have not been able to work together to create a constructive position for Romania to assume at the EU level; instead, contradictory messages from Romanian officials kept reaching Brussels, each one defending its domestic political position, without even realising the harm they do to Romania’s image and interest. In a sense, one can say that all these inconsistencies and the lack of a clear official stance fueled the arguments against the March 2011 accession. Romania has thus shot itself in the foot, thanks to the messy internal political scene but also to the ignorance (and lack of interest) regarding the functioning of the EU and the role Romania can and should be playing in it;
  3. its officials lack tact and diplomatic skills; not that this is any news, but this situations proves once more the inability of Romanian politicians and diplomats to, first of all, prevent such incidents from occurring and, secondly, once they’ve occurred, to try to suggest reasonable solutions or at the very least (and I am really lowering my expectations here!) refrain from making ridiculous statements. Not only was it bad enough that the Foreign Minister said that Romania can, and probably should, unilaterally withdraw from the CVM, President Basescu suggested yesterday, while assuming his responsibility for the possible postponing of Schengen accession, that in case Romania is not offered a clear and definite deadline to join Schengen, the funds that were meant to be used for securing the borders should be used for other purposes, such as helping SMEs. No comment.

While, on the one hand, it does not seem fair that new conditions are added while the process is ongoing (the criteria are, after all, just of a technical nature, although, in principle, one can easily link corruption with border security), Romania should have been prepared for such a situation and should have come up with a lobbying strategy for the major EU capitals instead of the lame attempts to blackmail the big Member States with issues that can, at best, only backfire and hurt the country’s image in the EU. Unfortunately, this is just an example of Romania’s negotiation “skills” (or lack thereof) in the EU arena; if this trend continues, Romania can forget about ever exerting any influence (despite its size) in the decision-making process. The first lesson it needs to learn is how to use the power of informal mechanisms in its favour instead of falling victim to it, like in the Schengen accession story.

Update 7/1/2011:  According to EUobserver, Romania’s president Basescu announced that Romania would not take any of the proposed retaliatory measures (see above) because they could “backfire against Romania”. But Basescu  also complained about the lack of solidarity: “It was overnight and without a warning. I would have expected that one of my colleagues in the Council – either Mr Sarkozy or Ms Merkel – to say ‘look, Mr President, we will be against it.’ But they didn’t and you know that normally in the Council there is talk about solidarity.” Be that as it may, early warning  is also the task of the Romanian diplomats in Brussels…

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Jun 15 2010
15 Comments
EU politics

Internal decision-making of the European Commission – A quick guide

So you (think you) know everything about how the EU works? Mastered the intricacies of codecision? Ah, so you already know it is not called codecision anymore, but ordinary legislative procedure. Good. So you probably already know about all the changes brought by the Lisbon Treaty. We all do. What, of course, we still don’t know are their implications for the day to day work of EU institutions. But don’t worry, few people working there have understood them.

While the interinstitutional decision-making process is making headlines (of course, depending on the topic), the internal decision-making mechanism within each EU institution is somewhat more obscure to the general public. Nevertheless, the internal workings of the institutions do influence a lot the overall EU policy making. The European Commission, with its right of initiative, is placed at the very beginning (and thus also at the core) of this process. This is where all the policy proposals originate, making it interesting to look into how they are drafted and decided upon.

First of all, we have to be clear: a policy proposal is not a mere document; it is a file that contains, beside the legislative act, a memorandum explaining the context of the decision, the results of the impact assessments and ex-ante evaluations that need to conducted, financial information, the results of the inter-service consultation, a draft press release as well as, yes, you are reading correctly, a “citizen summary” (an explanation of the decision in more accessible terms than the usual jargon). This file has to be prepared, involving formal and informal internal coordination procedures as well as the consultation of external stakeholders. All this needs to be done at this very early preparatory stage. And then there is the translation. Only after the file is complete can it go further, to the level of Heads of Cabinet. They prepare the agenda of the College meeting, by thoroughly analysing all the files at hand and trying to reach consensus in order to pave the way towards a swift adoption.

The type of procedure used for adopting a file is determined by the degree of consensus already reached at the inter-service consultation level and at the level of Heads of Cabinet.

  • the oral procedure is used for the files that require a debate of the College of Commissioners; the documents concerned are usually of a more political and controversial nature and there might have been disagreements among the services concerned. The College meeting takes place every Wednesday and is prepared by the meeting of the Heads of Cabinet (the so called “Hebdo”) taking place on Mondays. The files adopted through oral procedure are the ones that stand out and attract media coverage. However, it is interesting to note, that they represent a very small percentage of the total number of Commission decisions. For example, in 2009 alone, only 215 files went through oral procedure, compared to 3129 adopted by written procedure.  Most of the oral procedure decisions are in the fields of Economic and Financial Affairs and Competition.
  • the written procedure is used when all the services concerned agree and a College debate is not necessary; the file is submitted to all the Commissioners and is deemed to be adopted if none of them has any reservations before the deadline. The idea behind using this procedure is to take away some of the burden of debating files without major political interest. The number of files going through this procedure has been around 3000 each year, in the last 10 years. The written procedure is mainly used in fields like Health and Consumer Protection, Agriculture, External aid and Enterprise.
  • the  empowerment procedure consists of a mandate given by the College in its meeting to one or several of its members to take measures in its name and under its responsibility, within strict limits and conditions; it is used for clearly defined management and administrative acts. After being by far the most used procedure before 2003, in the years thereafter the number of files going though this procedure ranged between 2000 and 3000 per year, with 2247 having adopted in 2009. The fields where empowerment is mostly used are Competition, Regional policy and Agriculture.
  • the delegation procedure was introduced in 2003 and took away part of the file load previously decided by empowerment. The interesting thing about it is that the decisions are no longer adopted by the College as a whole or even by an empowered Commissioner; in the case of the delegation procedure, the Commission gives a mandate to a Director General or Head of Service to act in its name. This procedure is usually used for technical matters, very well regulated and where the margin of discretion is strictly limited. However, when we look at the numbers, something is quite striking: since 2003, there were on average 4000 files adopted every year through delegation (with around 4500 in 2009), making it the most used internal decision-making method of the Commission.

The policy preparation process within the Commission is a rather complex process, most of the time taking place outside the limelight. A thorough coordination amongst all services is required, which takes place both informally (e.g.meetings of thematic inter-service groups, written inter-departmental consultation, etc) and formally (the Inter-service consultation procedure, where all services must give their opinion on a certain file within a set deadline- usually 10 days and 15 days if the file has more than 20 pages). This process has an impact on the method used for adopting the decision. Something that should not be ignored is the fact that the Commission also has to consult externally, which it does through Green Papers, White Papers, expert groups meetings, etc. An impact assessment on the economic, social and environmental consequences of a proposal needs to be conducted for all major policy initiatives and legislative proposals. There is, thus, scope for the various stakeholders to interact with the Commission at this very early stage and action during the preparation stage is usually the most successful in terms of influence over policy-making.

An interesting observation can be made by looking into the various internal decision-making methods: what we usually read in the media as Commission proposals is just the tip of the iceberg- the few files that go through oral procedure every year- accounting for about 2,5% of the approximately 10000 acts adopted yearly by the Commission. The core of Commission activity rests with adopting mainly technical and administrative acts, without much political weight and thus being delegated to the bureaucratic levels of the Commission. It is a clear proof of its technocratic character that does, by no means, undermine its image as policy initiator, but puts its activity in a more balanced light.

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Jun 15 2010
7 Comments
EU politics

EU geek quiz: What is the Finalisation Written Procedure?

After officially becoming a EU Girl Geek, I decided to give one more try to our (very infrequent) EU geek quiz series. So, digging deeply, for mere academic purposes,  into the Commission’s internal rules of procedure, as amended in February 2010, I did not have many difficulties in finding some very geeky details.

Now, of course, no one would blame you for not knowing this. You might even pass a concours and start working for the EU institutions, completely ignoring its existence. But just in case you come across it and want to show off with your EU knowledge, here are a few facts about the finalisation written procedure. You may be aware that the Commission takes decisions either by oral procedure, written procedure, empowerment or delegation. But what if a file starts as an oral procedure and ends up in a written procedure? And in what circumstances does this happen?

The Commission’s most visible activity consists of the decisions coming out of the weekly College meeting. These are the issues that are decided using the oral procedure and are usually the ones with a big political weight or/ and that have stirred controversy already at the stage of inter-service consultation (the earliest step in policy preparation). But there is always a limit to the  issues that can actually be discussed at the College meeting and that can thus make top headlines at the press conference thereafter.

This is the main reason behind the more and more frequent use of the finalisation written procedure. According to this procedure, the Heads of Cabinets (at their weekly meeting on Mondays) or the Commissioners, at their Wednesday meeting, can decide to switch some items initially assigned to the oral procedure to being decided through the written procedure. Thus, the decisions can be taken after the College meeting (usually Thursdays), allowing the Commissioners to focus on the most important and controversial issues and, at the same time, being likely to attract media attention that they might have missed by being just a part of a busy Wednesday agenda. Smart move…

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May 21 2010
6 Comments
EU politics

Belgium takes over. Not.

What will be “sober, plain and simple”? But also “tricky” and “not glamorous”?

Estonian Euro coins? No, it is the upcoming  Belgian Council presidency – at least this is the characterisation of  senior Belgian officials. As we are approaching its start, on July 1st, everyone is eager to hear about the famous presidency priorities. The fact that nowadays there is a set of common priorities for the 18 months trio presidency seems to be forgotten, by both the great public and, strangely, sometimes even by the respective countries. Every country still seems to have its own agenda, or at least it is expected to.

Belgium, however, is in a rather awkward, not enviable position right now. Not only does it have to deal with the Euro crisis, while trying to implement the institutional changes brought by the Lisbon Treaty, it is also facing yet again an internal political crisis with the government’s resignation in late April and elections scheduled on June 13th, merely two weeks before the beginning of the Presidency. Furthermore (as if all this alone was not enough), Belgium has one of the most complex federal systems, with three government levels with various (exclusive and shared) fields of competencies. A miniature EU, one might dare to say. This could mean good news: since it has developed a rather complicated but still quite manageable system at home, Belgium must have enough experience to steer the EU in all its changing (and challenging) complexity. But it could also mean bad news, when misfortune strikes both in its own backyard and beyond it. And this seems to be the current situation.

So what are the Belgian presidency’s priorities? Well, this is quite a “tricky” topic, seeing all the above reasons and baring in mind the expectations, the much talked about “need for leadership”, combined with the rather unclear EU representation responsibility envisaged by the Lisbon Treaty. No diplomatic effort is spared to convey the message that the 2010 Belgian presidency will be rather low key, “sober, plain and simple”. Not much of an own agenda (we do have the agenda of the Trio Presidency, remember?), not much visibility (we do have a permanent President of the European Council- which happens to be a Belgian- and a High Representative for Foreign Affairs); and probably a weaker authority, due to internal political instability.

In practical terms, the Presidency will probably not suffer a great deal from the domestic struggles. Even if a new government will not be in place by July 1st (which will probablybe the case), the current government will act as a caretaker and will start the Presidency. Later on, if a new government will be formed during the 6 months, it will take over and, of course, this will mean a change at the level of ministerial representation. However, in practice, this is not as bad and destabilising as it seems. Luckily, as I mentioned before, the Belgian system is complex enough to ensure that things keep working in times of political instability. Due to its federal nature, the representation in the Council is shared between the various levels (federal, regions and communities), depending on the topic. The system is very well organised and for the shared competences a rotation mechanism is put into place whereby the various regions, communities and the federal level succeed each other in chairing the respective Council formations. So well thought through, that even when one piece of the puzzle is missing (in this case a federal government) business as usual continues. The downside of this power-sharing mechanism is that if the various stakeholders disagree on a certain topic, Belgium is bound to be silent in the EU arena. It happened before (see the “Service directive”) and it might prove to be problematic if it happens during the Belgian presidency.

The focus on action and output, instead of a long list of priorities that might all be turned upside down by surprise events (Belgium was holding its last EU Presidency when the 9/11 events took place) is commendable. It is, nevertheless, questionable whether what Europe needs right now is a voiceless, low key leader, adopting an “ostrich strategy”. We can only hope that, if not a memorable Presidency (like some of the previous Belgian ones), the upcoming 6 months can prove that the Belgian model of  functioning without a government for fairly long periods of time without the day to day life of its citizens being directly affected can be successfully copy-pasted at EU level. It is, by no means the visionary approach on EU integration of the EU’s founding fathers, but in the current situation we would probably be better off with the least harm.

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May 20 2010
12 Comments
EU politics

Brussels and the EU institutions. How it all began.

Fact: Brussels is the centre of EU activities, the main seat of its institutions. It is enshrined in the Treaties as such. But was it like this from the very beginning? And why was it chosen to play this role?

Going down history lane, we find Belgium, one of the founding members of the European Communities, holding the first ever Council presidency, in January 1958, when the Rome Treaties entered into force. It was, of course, by alphabetical order that this was decided. But since that was the very beginning and no precedent existed, the seat of the EC institutions was also not set. Luxembourg declined to get the seats of all EU institutions. However, the Council had to start meeting somewhere, and with Belgium at it helm, Brussels was the obvious choice. For practical reasons, the Commission came along. This was thought of as a temporary solution but in reality the provisional situation became the permanent location of the two EU institutions (formally confirmed by the Amsterdam Treaty, “only” 40 years later). The European Parliament, initially based in Strasbourg,  got its Brussels seat a bit later, when it became closely associated in the decision-making process by the introduction of the codecison procedure.

So if you thought that the choice of Brussels was somehow based on logical, historic, economic, common sense or whatever other types of reasons you can come up with, think again. It was indeed, by chance, and later by inertia that Brussels hosts the EU institutions. One can also look at it as a “legacy” of the first ever Belgian presidency. An interesting thought, now when we are approaching the start of Belgium’s 12th edition of EU Council Presidency. Back then the EC institutions had just been created and lots of nitty-gritty details of their working were to be decided in the first months. Now, the EU structure, redefined by the Lisbon Treaty, needs to be implemented in practice. Coincidentally, both times Belgium gets to play a leading role (baring in mind of course the very different historical context and the evolution of EU integration). As we saw, Belgium left quite a strong mark back then, putting Brussels at the centre of the EU. Will something similarly relevant be said about the 2010 presidency, 50 years from now?

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Mar 07 2010
5 Comments
EU politics

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.

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