Watch the video, download it and share with your friends: Patent Absurdity — How software patents broke the system:

(click the poster to watch the video!)

Bedauerlicherweise hat unser Land, Deutschland, damals eher die Rolle der Bremse statt des die des Motors gespielt, und dieser Rollenwandel Deutschlands, der keiner bewussten Strategie entspringt, sondern im Zuge des politischen Generationenwechsels in allen demokratischen Parteien sich einfach ereignet, macht einen nicht geringen teil der gegenwärtigen europäischen Probleme aus.

Laut Fischer haben sich Deutschland und Frankreich nach dem französischen Nein zum Verfassungsvertrag entfremdet. Der Vertrag Lissabon kommt auch um Jahre zu spaet und ist keine Antwort auf die Herausforderungen der Zukunft. Aber vor allem seine “Abrechnung” mit dem Bundesverfassungsgericht in Karlsruhe ist lesenswert:

Ich finde das Karlsruher Verdikt zu Europa schockierend, ja unter demokratischen Gesichtspunkten sogar skandalös, weil es erstens unter dem Banner der Verteidigung des Demokratiegebots Bundestag und Bundesrat europapolitisch faktisch entmündigt hat und sich selbst fortan die europapolitische Souveränität zuspricht, was ich für einen unerhörten Vorgang halte.

Weil es zweitens jeder weiteren institutionellen Integration dauerhaft einen Riegel vorzuschieben sucht, indem es Scheinalternativen aufbaut, bei denen es in Wirklichkeit nur um Blockaden weiterer Integrationsfortschritte geht.

Wo die EU vorher Prozess war, der bisher nicht gekannte Formen der Souveränität mit unterschiedlichen demokratischen Legitimationsformen zusammenzuführen und fortzuentwickeln versuchte, erklärt Karlsruhe autoritativ das Ende dieses Prozesses. An seine Stelle tritt die Alternative: europäischer Bundesstaat oder Ende der institutionellen Integration, und genau um diesen letzten Punkt geht es dem Gericht.

Drittens zeigt uns das Urteil von Karlsruhe, dass, wenn es um die Ablehnung einer weiteren europäischen Integration mittels der Demokratiefrage geht, die einzige direkt von den europäischen Völkern in freier und geheimer Wahl gewählte europäische Institution, nämlich das Europäische Parlament, ganz offensichtlich in seinem demokratisch-repräsentativen Charakter delegitimiert werden muss.

Das Demokratieprinzip setze die Gleichheit der Stimmen voraus, so Karlsruhe, und diese wäre auf Grund der mitgliederstaatlichen Kontingentierung der Sitze nicht gegeben. Eine deutsche Stimme zähl deshalb weniger als eine aus Malta oder Luxemburg. Daher wäre das EP letztendlich keine Vertretung der Bürger, sondern „eine Vertretung der Völker der Mitgliedsstaaten.“

Abgesehen davon, dass man im innerstaatlichen Wahlrecht große Unterschiede zwischen ländlichen und städtischen Wahlkreisen kennt, ohne deshalb am Demokratieprinzip zu zweifeln, so stellt sich vielmehr die Frage, wie eine europäische Demokratie denn unterhalb eines Bundesstaates, den es nicht geben wird, eigentlich funktionieren soll.

Die Unterschiede in den Bevölkerungsgrößen der EU-Mitgliedsstaaten sind sehr viel größer als z.B. in den USA. Würde man Karlsruhe folgen, so hätten die Bürger der kleinsten Mitgliedstaaten keine Chance auf eine parlamentarische Repräsentation und die Abgeordneten aus den großen Mitgliedsstaaten hätten eine Dominanz, die den Integrationsgedanken nachgerade auf den Kopf stellen würde. Was daran demokratisch sein soll, verstehe ich schlicht nicht.

Nein, es geht Karlsruhe nur vordergründig um das „Demokratieprinzip.“ In Wirklichkeit wurde hier versucht, die zentrale europapolitische und eben nicht die verfassungsrechtliche Kernfrage zu entscheiden, nämlich ob die EU ein Prozess für ein neues völkerrechtlich-demokratisches Projekt sui generis bleibt oder auf die Alternative zwischen Bundesstaat und Status Quo zusammenschrumpft und damit zum Stillstand verurteilt wäre.

Damit wir uns nicht missverstehen, ich glaube nicht, dass sich Karlsruhe durchsetzen wird, aber es hat ohne Zweifel die Euroskeptiker gestärkt und damit die Hindernisse auf dem Weg der europäischen Integration vermehrt. Nicht umsonst werden die britischen Konservativen nicht müde, unser Bundesverfassungsgericht als Kronzeuge für ihre euroskeptische Politik zu zitieren. Ich finde das bizarr!

(via @kbojens)

Oh, and this is not only a matter for the US, in fact the EU has been quite active in the negotiations about the ACTA agreement. If you want to know more read Michael Geist’s blog who published a series of very useful posts on ACTA.

The most important thing is that there will be another negotiation round in Lucerne/Switzerland next week! Check out La Quadrature du Net and the campaign how you can help to  Stop ACTA!

Despite the economic crisis and the struggle to save the euro, the European dream is not dead yet: what Europe needs is an “economic vision and game plan that would create a seamless, distributive energy grid” to build a third industrial revolution.

Read the complete  interview with Jeremy Rifkin here.

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.

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…

So why do we need to talk about the future?

• bloggingportal.eu is a loose network of bloggers. The site has been developed and maintained by volunteers in their free time which is not the most sustainable structure…
• There is only a small core group of bloggers that is actively engaged.
• There is no permanent organisational structure.
• And you might have guessed it: no money, no funding, nothing
• The page is rather slow and could certainly be made more user-friendly.
• We don’t have  enough users – only a highly specialized group of EU geeks.
• The link to national blogospheres is missing.

What needs to be done?

• We need to think about whether we need bloggingportal at all? What is the niche for bloggingportal?
• We need more bloggers to be actively engaged in the project.
• We need  more users and more visibility.
• We have to think about what core functions should be developed? How to attract more users?
• How to organise permanent links to national blogospheres? How to get an overview of EU debates in different national blogospheres?
• What are possible incentives for bloggers that decide to  help bloggingportal?
• We might need a complete re-development of the page (new design, new user interface, new functions…). But what exactly are the functions we should focus on? (are categories or tags necessary? what about different languages?) And the underlying problem is how to finance a new version of bloggingportal? Or is there any volunteer out there who would like to develop a new version of bloggingportal?

The solutions?

• Where to get funding for a redesign of bloggingportal? I think the only agreement we have is that we should not seek EU funding for the site.
• Should bloggingportal become some sort of social media business? Is there a business model somewhere?
• Is sponsorship the solution? If yes who would be interested?
• Is there a chance to cooperate with NGOs or private foundations or other institutions?  Who would be interested?
• How to create a sustainable service that is a credible and independent source for EU content in social media?
• How to get more people interested in collaborating with bloggingportal?
• How to attract more editors and users?

As you can see: a huge list of problems and a lot of question marks!  We would like to hear from you – whatever your background is. Maybe you can help us to think a bit outside the box.  Are there any similar projects around that we could draw inspiration from (organizational structure and design/usability)? Do you know anyone that might be interested in getting involved? Do you have a good idea for the future of bloggingportal?

Just leave a comment here or start the debate on our editors’ blog.

So, what if political scientists covered EU news in newspapers in that way?

(no, unfortunately I don’t have time to write something…possibly something for my to-do list

Simon Hix on The State of European Democracy After Lisbon at the IIEA – The Institute of International and European Affairs.