The most significant positive event will have been the signature by the European Parliament and the Council of the Regulation on the Recovery and Resilience Facility on 12 February. We can also hail the success of the SURE instrument to fight unemployment and other initiatives of a social nature launched by the Commission: proposed directives on the minimum salary and on the transparency of pay, the action plan to implement the European pillar of social rights, the proposal for the European Child Guarantee to combat child poverty, the new strategy for the rights of the child and the launch of a platform to tackle homelessness.
Additionally, the Parliament and Council rubber-stamped agreements on many programmes for the period 2021-2027: Horizon Europe, EU4Health, InvestEU, Life, Digital Europe, Erasmus+, Justice, Rights and Values, as well as on reinforcing civil protection, the fisheries fund and the single financial instrument for the neighbourhood policy, development and cooperation. All of this came not a moment too soon. There are other achievements also worthy of mention: the regulation for the Connecting Europe Facility, amendments to the European securitisation framework, the seventh revision of the directive in the field of taxation, the agreement on a “Plan B” for fisheries in the event of a breakdown of negotiations with London.
At last, European space policy is back on the agenda! Collaboration between the competent agency (ESA) and the Commission is looking promising: the institution has proposed an action plan for synergies between the civilian, military and spatial sectors. If it still lacks a clear vision of common action in space, the European Council has at least agreed on reinforcing the EU’s defence capabilities. It was also able to come to a decision on individualised sanctions targeting the Russian, Belarusian, Burmese and Venezuelan regimes. Aid to Belarusian civil society has just been signed off. But the best news of this year so far is without doubt the restoration of the transatlantic link, confirmed very quickly by cordial relations with the Biden administration, as embodied by the provisional suspension of punitive customs tariffs stemming from the Airbus/Boeing row and indicating that pro-democratic multilateralism is back in business. Watery rays of hope have been seen in Cyprus, where dialogue may resume, and in Libya, where a government of national unity has been formed.
Let us move now to the less triumphant areas, for which the EU bears much of the responsibility. Goodwill is not a currency accepted by Russia; the crushing failure of the Borrell mission to Moscow will not be forgotten anytime soon; Germany is sticking to its guns over its pipeline – a future weapon of blackmail to be used against it. At the end of December, a bilateral investment agreement was signed with Beijing. In March, the EU handed down sanctions against four individuals and one entity, all Chinese, for their activities against the Uighur population; China hit back immediately, targeting five members of the European Parliament and two institutions of the EU. Meanwhile, far from taking care of their own people first, these two dictatorships distributed their Covid-19 vaccines throughout the world: public-health war was declared and the principal victim would be the democratic model.
In Turkey, the regime upped the ante, banning an opposition party and dealing a symbolic blow to gender equality by withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention. In offering Ankara the option not to be put on the black list of tax havens, senior EU figures still hope to engage in fruitful dialogue. It would surely be more fruitful to engage with North Macedonia and Albania but, despite the best efforts of the Parliament, accession negotiations have still not begun. As for respect for the rule of law in Poland and Hungary, the Parliament and Court of Justice will be remembered by history as the only ones to have defended Europe’s honour. It is, again, the Parliament that is most active in favour of press freedom and the safety of journalists, a problem that is silencing many countries in the EU.
The divorce with the United Kingdom has not brought about much peace. Less than three months later, the Commission was forced to launch infringement proceedings over violations of the Northern Ireland protocol. The EU had sold 9 million doses of vaccine to its neighbour: the favour was not returned. It will be interesting to see how the European Parliament votes on the trade and cooperation agreement, as it is scheduled to do on 26 April.
In the internal institutional machinery, a number of dossiers are making little or no progress: the ‘climate law’, the migration pact (while Frontex is distinguishing itself for all the wrong reasons), coordination of the social security systems (on ice after 16 trilogue sessions!), the financial transactions tax, country-by-country tax transparency (proposal from 2016), the revision of the ‘eurovignette’ directed, the regulation on online confidentiality (proposal from 2017), access to electronic evidence, the revision of the Treaty on the energy charter (despite much pressure from citizens), to name but a few.
The decision on own resources, which was approved by the Council in December, must be ratified by all member states. In Germany, following a positive vote by both houses, the Constitutional Court has suspended ratification while it examines an appeal against the recovery plan. Until all 27 ratifications have been secured (and we are only up to 16 at the moment), the Commission cannot issue the loans underlying the plan. What’s more, the national recovery plans have to be approved before anything gets up and running. In the best-case scenario, it won’t launch until the summer, i.e. (at least) one year after the decision of the European Council. In the United States, the new President took up office on 20 January. His recovery plan, with an envelope of 1600 billion euros, was approved by the Congress in a vote on 10 March. It will start to produce its effects many months before its European counterpart.
It is not my intention to dwell on the delays in supply of the Covid-19 vaccines ordered by the EU, in which the champion turned out to be none other than the scandal-hit AstraZeneca. By its own admission, the Commission completely underestimated the difficulties of mass production. The lack of transparency in the contracts did nothing to bolster public confidence. National bureaucracies failed to anticipate the logistical challenges of vaccination on a huge scale. In the meantime, new strains of the virus have created a third wave that was long considered unlikely.
A year late, European circles are becoming aware of the need for a strategy to support the tourism industry. Total travel bans outside the national territory are making the crisis in the sector far worse. As an emergency measure, the Commission proposed a ‘green digital certificate’ containing some basic medical data: a passport, in other words. Parliament and Council will be called upon to approve this regulation: can they do so before the summer holidays? Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.
The speed at which the EU makes its decisions: that is the top and bottom of the problem.
The subject is deserving of a hard-hitting communication by the Commission, a resolution of the Parliament, a debate of the European Council – and why not also as part of the Conference on the Future of Europe? The setting in train of this conference will, incidentally, have been… quite exemplary in its slowness.
Renaud Denuit