*** ERIC VAN DEN ABEELE: L'agenda Mieux légiférer de l'Union européenne. Centre de Recherche et d'Information Socio-Politiques (CRISP, 1 A place Quetelet, B-1210 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 2110180 - Fax: 2197934 - email: info@crisp.be - Internet: http://www.crisp.be ). "Courrier hebdomadaire" series, No. 2028-2029. 2009, 79 pp, €12-40. ISBN 978-3-631-56953-5.
This issue of CRISP's weekly newsletter by a Belgian civil servant working for Belgium's Permanent Representation Office to the European Union sheds extremely useful light on the Better Regulation approach at the European institutions, which has taken on the ring of a magic incantation rather like the equation heading a European Commission press release in March 2005: "Less Bureaucracy =More Jobs". Has the Better Regulation push actually improved governance of the European Union? Has it provided value-added to the work of the European institutions and the Member States? Has it altered the relations between the stakeholders and their relationship with ordinary citizens? The author, Eric Van den Abeele, answers all these questions in a wholly circumspect manner that some will interpret as being a softly-softly condemnation of ideological abuse of the Better Regulation idea, an idea that is highly praiseworthy a priori because it is about simplifying EU legislation and ensuring better regulations are formulated and introduced.
The author starts by briefly pointing out in a highly pedagogical manner exactly what the positive characteristic of all this work is - the conceptual foundations of rules and regulations and the basic principles underlying the act of passing legislation. He goes on to describe the foundations of regulation, observing that the principle of mutual recognition, in the wake of the Cassis de Dijon ruling of 1979, enabled the first simplifications of EU law to be made, but that the road to legislative harmonisation, "which has the benefit of setting out a basic set of compulsory common rules that are a minimum common denominator among all Member States," has often been undermined by the temptation of introducing "the smallest common denominator" and the resistance of some Member States that only trust the market and tools other than legislation (along the lines of codes of good conduct and voluntary agreements). After these initial comments, the author paints an overview of the Better Regulation agenda, whose roots go back to the Maastricht Treaty, with the years 1993 to 1999 being a time during which the institutions concentrated "exclusively on improving the quality of legislation, subsidiarity and the proportionality of EU action". At the Lisbon European Summit of the year 2000, the philosophy underwent a sea change when a direct link was introduced, in the Lisbon Strategy, between the regulatory environment on the one hand, and competitiveness, growth, investment and innovation on the other. The focus suddenly shifted to assessing the impact of legislation on competitiveness, and in its March 2005 package of action, the Barroso Commission focussed on a drastic cutting of the costs of administering EU legislation. The author then examines how the Competitiveness Council dealt with the overarching responsibility for the policy it inherited, particularly in the light of the recent French and Czech Presidencies. The author detects a fault line between the larger number of Member States that want to use Better Regulation "to free up company competitiveness and deregulate the EU, using non-legislative instruments instead of legislation wherever possible" and France, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Luxembourg, which oppose this. The author argues that the Competitiveness Council conclusions document on industrial policy that was adopted under the Czech Presidency on 28 May 2009 marked "a new turning point" because it made a connection between "the regulatory burden - rather than red tape alone - and factory relocation," targetting "social and environmental protection as generating excessive costs". Pointing out that the European Parliament is dragging its feet over this evolution, the author expresses concern about the use of groups of experts to advise the Commission and the Council of Ministers. He writes with gritted teeth: "One may ask questions about whether these consultants have all the necessary expertise and independence required for the task in that they are sometimes advisors to big areas of industry or big industrial companies," referring to a consortium of external independent experts disturbingly featuring names of big companies that are supposed to be helping the Commission. He adds that these expert consultations often take place in advance and over the top of the compulsory consultation of bodies like the European Economic and Social Council, "and this can have the effect of bypassing the standard decision-making process"…
All the above leads Eric Van den Abeele to detect "a hidden side" to the Better Regulation agenda, along with its "biased nature". He explains that "the legislative burden and red tape seem to be enmeshed in a single movement," and does not hesitate to wag a finger: "Confusing law and red tape discredits the legislator and suggests that the administrative quid pro quo as a pointless or even abusive requirement. This ignores the fact that legal security and predictability sometimes require a necessary administrative quid pro quo". The author sums up by calling for a return to common sense: "If the European Union is to remain a relevant area of regulation and solidarity, the new European Commissioners and European Parliament must move away from a purely market-focussed and quantitative vision of regulation towards balanced regulation with coherent, qualitative and effective rules". Every cloud has a silver lining, so the expression goes. What if the financial crisis as a result of the failure of operators to regulate themselves and the complicit passivity of the public authorities came just at the right time to put an end to some ideological posturing?
Michel Theys
*** EULALIA RUBIO: Social Europe and the crisis: defining a new agenda. Notre Europe (Paris. email: info@notre-europe.eu - Internet: http://www.notre-europe.eu ). "Policy Paper" Number 36. 2009, 37 pp.
Available free-of-charge on the website of the foundation so dear to the heart of Jacques Delors that is now chaired by Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, this brief study looks at the social impact of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The author, a young Spanish researcher working for Notre Europe, argues that the financial and economic tsunami encourages us to look at how the European social model can be preserved, long with the EU's social governance. She says the focus in recent years on stimulating the labour market should be relaxed in order to ensure "an approach that strikes a better balance between the promotion of society, social protection and the prevention of social problems". As we approach the end of the Lisbon Strategy, Eulalia Rubio makes four recommendations to this effect.
(MT)
*** THOMAS RIIS, MAREIKE HANSEN (Eds.): Poverty: its Degrees, its Causes and its Relief. A Multidisciplinary Approach to an Urgent Problem. Solivagus-Verlag (29 Lundemannstrasse, D-24114 Kiel. Tel: (49-431) 62044 - Fax: (49-1805) 01980087362 - email: info@solivagus-verlag-mail.de - Internet: http://www.solivagus.de ). 2008, 352 pp, €40. ISBN 978-3-9812101-1-8.
This book comes at the right time, several months before the start of 2010 "the European Year of Tackling Poverty and Social Exclusion" which, as the European Parliament and the European Commission that introduced the idea see it, will reassert and strengthen the initial political commitment made by the European Union when it launched the Lisbon Strategy to give a decisive stimulus to eliminating poverty. The book is a series of essays in different languages, the contributions of twelve authors to a conference at Kiel University in Germany in the autumn of 2005 under the direction of Prof. Riis of Kiel and Prof. Leboutte of Luxembourg, supported by the European Science Foundation. The conference was prudently sub-titled "ESF exploratory workshop" and perhaps this "exploration" should be followed up. Maybe the European institutions are intending to take inspiration from it in 2010? We will not have to wait long to find out…
The essays look at the history of poverty in European Union countries with the aim of explaining the current situation in the light, for example, of the perception of poverty by those who live in it - frequently from one generation to the next - and those who live next to it without concerning themselves about the extent of it or examining the causes. The essays by Prof. Thomas Riis - whose ideas ran throughout the conference - are remarkable, as is the essay by Prof. Jean-Pierre Gutton (of Lyons in France) on "Les institutions charitables de l'Europe moderne et la question de leur efficacité". Readers will also read with interest the essay by a young German academic living in Brussels, Tobias Teuscher, on a subject that has not yet been studied much by historians and politicians, namely "Quart Etat, Lumpenprolétariat et Quart monde".ß His essay does historical and socio-political research into the conceptual relationship between some little known aspects of the 1789 French Revolution, Marxist analysis of those forgotten by History (along with workers' struggles) and the contemporary ideas of Joseph Wresinski and the 'Mouvement ATD-Quart Monde' in France.
(J-RR)
*** VALERIE ROSSO-DEBORD, CHRISTOPHE CARESCHE, PIERRE FORGUES, ROBERT LECOU: Les services sociaux d'intérêt général. Pour un cadre européen clarifié et respectueux de nos équilibres républicains. Commission chargée des Affaires européennes de l'Assemblée nationale (Boutique de l'Assemblée nationale, 7 rue Aristide Briand, F-75007 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 40630033 - Internet: http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr ). "Documents d'information" series, No. 1574. 2009, 95 pp, €3-50. ISBN 978-2-11-124122-0.
As usual in this series, this research casts a useful eye over a single topic, the role of social services in connection with the European Union, highlighting French sensitivities. The four reports are representative in France of both the majority and the opposition view in government. Unsurprisingly, the parliamentarians who penned the research believe that the EU legislation on services of general interest does not go far enough and this can be put down to the passivity of the European Commission in this domain and the varying attitudes to the subject in the Member States. The authors believe that the EU rules governing services of general interest, which directly arose from cases taken to the European Court of Justice, is overly biased in the direction of the competition rules and fails to provide the legal security required to ensure sustainable financing and the operating modes of some of the services in question. They therefore recommend "a political clarification" that can only be achieved, they say, by making the most of the hearings at the European Parliament of the candidates for the new European Commissioners and President of the Commission. They argue that the protocol annexed to the Lisbon Treaty also potentially provides a way of making some progress towards establishing a set of EU rules that fully respects the principle of subsidiarity.
(MT)
*** CHRISTOPHE CARESCHE, GUY GEOFFROY: Lutte contre les discriminations: une nouvelle directive pour compléter et faire progresser le cadre européen. Commission chargée des Affaires européennes de l'Assemblée nationale (see above). "Documents d'information" series, No. 1653. 2009, 45 pp, €3-50. ISBN 978-2-11-124137-4.
This newsletter analyses the draft directive to extend the EU rules tackling discrimination in the field of access to welfare, healthcare, benefits, education and, more generally, the provision of goods and services, including housing. The French parliamentarians who wrote the newsletter call for clarifications to be made to ensure greater legal security in areas like secularism. They also want the draft directive to be changed to be more like the United Nations Convention on the rights of the disabled.
(PBo)
*** SUE ARROWSMITH, PETER KUNZLIK (Eds.): Social and Environmental Policies in EC Procurement Law. New Directives and New Directions. Cambridge University Press (The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, United Kingdom. Tel: (44-1223) 326050 - Fax: 326111 - email: directcusterve@cambridge.org - Internet: http://www.cambridge.org ). 2009, 509 pp. ISBN 978-0-521-88150-0.
Examining the practice of EU procurement law, this book concentrates on new issues like the innovation clauses incorporated in the EU directives of 2004, academic trends, the connection between trade and the award of tenders and the potential dominance of EU objectives over Member States' objectives. The incorporation of social and environmental questions in the criteria for award of contracts is the main issue running throughout the book. The authors note that many areas of procurement have not yet been explored but the imposition of social criteria, like sustainable development or sexual equality, greatly complicates access to markets. The authors describe the obstacles and suggest ways of overcoming them.
(TBa)
*** WALTER LEAL FILHO, MARZENNA WERESA (Eds.): Fostering Innovation and Knowledge Transfer in European Regions. Peter Lang (1 Moostrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen, Switzerland. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). 2008, 340 pp, €34-40. ISBN 978-3-631-58195-7.
Throughout this book's ten chapters important issues are examined in connection with the transfer of technology, knowledge and innovation through case studies from all four corners of Europe. Noting the gap that exists between organisations that generate knowledge and organisations that can make commercial use of the knowledge, the authors also examine regional innovation strategies in Germany, the United Kingdom, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Spain. They make a full assessment of the situation, analysing the limits of the initiatives and the lessons to be learned from mistakes. The book makes an important empirical contribution, arguing the case for a strengthening of the ties between European science and industry.
(TBa)