Jason Bateman va réaliser “Bad Words”, son premier long métrage.
Jason Bateman va réaliser Bad Words, son premier long métrage, dans lequel il devrait également tenir le rôle principal. Ecrit par Andrew Dodge, le film suivra un homme aigri qui profite d’une faille de système pour s’inscrire à un concours d’orthographe pour enfants. Jason Bateman, qui a déjà mis en scènes des épisodes des séries télévisées Arrested Development et La Vie de famille, est actuellement sur le tournage de la comédie de Seth Gordon : Identity Thief.
était sur la scène du Krakatoa de Mérignac hier soir, pour un concert donné en faveur des sinistrés du tremblement de terre qui s’est produit au Chili en février dernier. Deux autres membres de Noir Désir étaient également présents.
Après une apparition très remarquée au Rendez-Vous Des Terres Neuves, à Bègles, il y a une dizaine de jours, Bertrand Cantat était cette fois (très) attendu au Krakatoa de Mérignac. Cette salle au nom de volcan était le lieu choisi pour venir en aide aux victimes d’un tremblement de terre, celui qui a frappé le Chili en février dernier. C’est donc un Krakatoa bondé et au bord de l’éruption qui a accueilli plusieurs groupes comme 0800, Guaka, Eiffel et The Hyènes, auquel appartiennent deux Noir Désir, Denis Barthe et Jean-Paul Roy.
Bertrand Cantat a commencé par accompagner le groupe sud-américain Guaka avec lequel il a interprété deux chansons dont une magnifique reprise de I Put A Spell On You de Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Puis avec ses fidèles complices de Noir Désir, membres des Hyènes (manquait juste à l’appel Serge Teyssot-Gay), Cantat s’est lancé dans les reprises de It’s A Long Way To The Top d’ACDC, d’Ace Of Spades de Motorhead et de I Fought The Law des Clashs. Le chanteur a ensuite terminé avec ses potes du groupe Eiffel sur A Tout Moment La Rue et Search And Destroy des Stooges. Un rappel a offert au public chanceux une version acoustique de Tostaky. Le premier morceau de Noir Désir joué sur scène depuis le come back de Bertrand Cantat. L’histoire est en marche….
Visiblement en forme et content d’être là, le chanteur a fait preuve d’humour en s’étonnant que «tant de gens s’intéressent à la cause des indiens Mapuche et au tremblement de terre du Chili». Une telle publicité avait été faite sur la présence de Cantat à cette soirée caritative que les gens n’étaient bien évidemment pas venus uniquement pour l’aspect caritatif de la soirée. En même temps, tous les billets se sont vendus et c’était bien le but aussi.
En revanche, que les spectateurs qui seront au Zénith de Paris demain pour voir Eiffel soient avertis: Bertrand Cantat ne sera pas de la fête. Histoire de ne pas semer la confusion: son groupe, c’est bien Noir Désir!
Si vous avez récemment parcouru les Champs-Elysées à Paris, vous aurez sans doute aperçu Catwoman sur les abribus de l’avenue. Ou comment la promotion de “The Dark Knight Rises” s’affiche de manière originale.
Si vous avez récemment parcouru les Champs-Elysées à Paris, vous aurez sans doute aperçu Catwoman/Anne Hathaway vrombir sur les abribus de l’avenue à bord de sa moto (voir ci-dessous). Ou comment la promotion de The Dark Knight Rises s’affiche de manière pour le moins originale. Et vous, avez-vous vu d’autres affiches de ce type à Paris ou ailleurs ?
Géant, le film de George Stevens en 1956 réunit de jeunes acteurs qui rentreront dans la légende, James Dean, Rock Hudson et Elizabeth Taylor. Géant sera le dernier film de James Dean.
La chatte sur un toit brûlant, adaptée de la pièce de Tenessee Williams, lui apporte la consécration en 1958. Elle forme avec Paul Newman un duo mythique.
Un an après La chatte sur un toit brûlant, Elizabeth Taylor joue dans un second film adapté d’une pièce de Tenessee Williams, Soudain l’été Dernier. Un rôle qui lui vaut un Golden Globe de la meilleure actrice en 1960.
A 27 ans, Liz Taylor épouse l’acteur Eddie Fisher qui a quitté sa femme Debbie Reynolds pour les beaux yeux de la future Cléopâtre. C’est pendant leurs années de mariage, entre 1959 et 1964, qu’Elizabeth Taylor fait la connaissance de Richard Burton et que débute leur histoire tumultueuse.
Ce n’est pas le film le plus marquant de sa filmographie qui lui vaut sa première statuette. Mais certains ont vu là une manière de récompenser l’actrice pour ses précédents films et des rôles qui lui auraient largement valu l’Oscar.
C’est LE rôle de sa vie, tant par la gloire et l’argent qu’il lui apporte que par toutes les histoires qui ont marqué son tournage: liaison avec son partenaire Richard Burton, dépassement de budget, conditions climatiques… Peu importe: Hollywood est aux pieds d’Elizabeth Taylor.
Liz Taylor a quitté Eddie Fisher pour Richard Burton. Les deux amants terribles d’Hollywood officialisent leur liaison en se mariant en 1964. Ce premier mariage entre eux durera dix ans, jusqu’en 1974. Ils se marieront une seconde fois en 1975, mais l’union ne tiendra même pas un an.
En parallèle de sa carrière d’actrice, Elizabeth Taylor s’est toujours battue pour de grandes causes, notamment la lutte contre le SIDA. Un combat qu’elle a engagé en apprenant que son grand ami Rock Hudson était touché par la maladie.
Peu d’hommes résistaient à l’incroyable beauté de Liz Taylor. L’actrice s’est mariée huit fois mais a eu de nombreuses liaisons, notamment avec des personnalités comme George Hamilton, Franck Sinatra, Stanley Donen, Richard Brooks…
L’actrice est toujours restée fidèle à roi de la Pop, même quand celui-ci était au coeur de la tourmente. Lorsque Michael Jackson est mort en 2009, Elizabeth Taylor a déclaré: « Mon coeur, mon âme sont brisés. J’aimais Michael de tout mon coeur et je ne peux pas imaginer ma vie sans lui ».
A la surprise générale, elle épouse en 1991 Larry Fortensky. Ce mariage durera cinq ans et sera le dernier pour Liz Taylor. Pendant longtemps, la rumeur a couru qu’elle allait épouser son dernier compagnon en date, Jason Winters. Le décès de l’actrice ne leur en a pas laissé le temps.
Avec le décès d’Elizabeth Taylor, c’est encore un mythe hollywoodien qui disparait. L’actrice était une vraie légende notamment grâce à ses rôles dans Cléopâtre, La Chatte sur un Toit Brûlant ou encore Qui a peur de Virginia Woolf. Elle aura aussi alimenté les gazettes people par ses huit mariages, sa liaison orageuse avec Richard Burton et ses nombreuses liaisons. Album souvenir de la la vie d’une immense star internationale.
Member states make last-minute concessions to secure MEPs’ backing.
The European Parliament has extracted concessions from the member states on the European Union’s budget for 2014-20.
Concessions made in last-ditch talks in Brussels this morning between the EU’s main institutions open the way for the revised formula to be put to a vote at next week’s meeting of the Parliament in Strasbourg. Martin Schulz, the Parliament’s president, gave his backing to the compromise deal this morning at a meeting with Enda Kenny, Ireland’s prime minister, representing the member states, and José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission.
“This is not an easy compromise, I must fight in the European Parliament for a majority,” Schulz said.
Kenny agreed to more flexibility to shift unspent funds between budget headings and fiscal years – a core demand of Parliament – and to frontload (ie, bring forward in the seven-year budget period) funding foreseen for youth employment, research, the Erasmus student exchange scheme, and support to small and medium-sized enterprises.
Barroso said that there was more flexibility both on the budgeted commitments (ie, undertakings to pay) and on actual payments. Unused payment appropriations in any budget year can be fully rolled over to the next year in 2014-17; after that, each year has a ceiling for such roll-overs – €7bn for 2018, €9bn for 2019, and €10bn for 2020. unused commitment appropriations from 2014-17 may be used, from 2016, for policies to do with growth and employment. Barroso said that member states that wish to increase European aid to the most deprived were being given greater freedom to do so.
The member states also provided assurances to Schulz and to Alain Lamassoure, the Parliament’s budget negotiator, that there would be a substantial mid-term review of the multi-annual financial framework, another core demand from Parliament. Schulz also claimed an advance in that the post-2020 multi-annual financial framework would be aligned with the EU’s institutional calendar and run for five rather than seven years.
Linked to the discussions on the 2014-20 budget, which amounts to €960 billion, is an agreement on amending the annual budget for 2013. On the European Commission’s request for an additional €11.2bn to cover outstanding payments during the 2013 budget year, the member states agreed to adopt a first instalment, of €7.3bn, no later than a meeting of finance ministers on 9 July.
On the balance, they committed themselves to consider new figures on outstanding payment claims that the Commission is asked to submit in “the early autumn”.
Barroso read out part of the text of the agreement on 2013, saying: “The Council commits [itself] to decide without delay on a further draft amending budget to avoid any shortfall in justified payment appropriations.”
The Parliament and the Council will now each take steps to advance the revised deal on the 2014-20 budget through their decision-making machinery. The Parliament has convened a meeting of the leaders of the political groups this morning, which is asked to approve putting the budget on to the agenda of next week’s plenary session of the Parliament. There will be a special meeting of the Parliament’s budget committee in Strasbourg on Monday (1 July).
The plenary vote, likely to be held on Wednesday, will be on a general political resolution to approve the deal. Votes on the legal texts would happen after the summer break.
On the Council’s side, the deal will be put to a special meeting of member states’ ambassadors in Brussels tomorrow (28 June). Unanimous approval is required from the Council of Ministers and formal adoption would come after the Parliament’s vote.
Kenny said: “We can bring all the member states with us on this.”
Schulz said: “This is now a question of mutual trust. I hope that all member states will follow one member state – Ireland – who did a great job.” He said: “I can live with the result and I will fight for the result.”
He said the Parliament’s main demand had been “to make sure that the €908bn foreseen in payments are really available”, and that this demand had now been met through greater flexibility and a revision clause.
Failure to reach a deal today, before next week’s plenary and before Ireland hands over the rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers to Lithuania, would have greatly complicated spending from 1 January 2014.
Today’s meeting had been convened by Barroso as a last chance to agree a deal before the institutions’ summer break.
A compromise deal struck last week between Lamassoure and Eamon Gilmore, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, unravelled when a majority of political groups in the Parliament came out to oppose it, saying that Parliament’s demands had not been met.
The €960 billion budget had been agreed by member states’ leaders at a summit in February, but rejected by the Parliament in March.
A look back at a European Council that sidelined ambitious economic reform in favour of tackling youth unemployment.
The leaders of the European Union’s member states left their two-day summit in an upbeat mood, satisfied with pledges to direct money towards youth employment and small businesses and ready to welcome Croatia into the EU fold.
It was a far cry from the urgency of last year’s June European Council when, with sovereign-bond markets volatile, they outlined a radical plan for deeper economic and monetary integration that promised to change the EU and eurozone forever.
This year’s gathering was supposed to have been the moment when much of that plan came together. It did not happen – and had not been likely to for many months – largely because of much calmer financial markets and September’s federal elections in Germany.
The need for decisions on deeper eurozone integration had not gone away – and the idea of tying member states into contracts to hold them to economic reform promises was resurrected at this meeting – but these were pushed back to summits in October and December.
Instead, this was a much more workmanlike meeting, the sort of ‘business-as- usual’ discussions that leaders have craved since turbulence intensified with May 2010’s bail-out of Greece.
Employment spending
This summit was still significant. Agreement to spend at least €6 billion of the EU budget on youth unemployment over the next two years and a call on the European Investment Bank (EIB) to increase its lending activity in the EU by at least 40% by 2015 sent out an important message about the subtle shift in the balance between austerity and growth. The approval, without too much debate, of the country-specific recommendations based on national budget plans indicates that, for now at least, leaders are still willing to stick to the tougher economic governance agenda.
What is crucial now is to see whether economic and monetary integration does indeed move forward in the autumn or whether a description by one top EU official last week of “the air [going] out of this process to a remarkable extent” becomes entrenched.
“We need to keep up momentum,” said José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, at the conclusion of Friday’s meeting as leaders lined up to explain how difficult decisions would be. “There are very different views among the member states of what is essential for growth,” Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said. “We can only have a shared understanding of what needs to be done once we have a shared understanding of what is important.”
On the backburner
The question of member state contracts, as well as the possibility of setting up a separate eurozone budget – both ideas floated at the summit this time last year – were discussed, but are still far from becoming a reality.
“These issues are by nature complex and further investigation is needed. We will return to them in October and December,” said Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council.
For now at least there is some buoyancy, after more than three years of economic disarray. Croatia became the EU’s 28th member state on Monday (1 July), and agreement was reached at the summit on negotiations for Serbia and Kosovo that might lead to their joining the Union one day. Member states formally approved Latvia’s admission to the eurozone in 2014. All leaders welcomed the determination to spend money on tackling youth unemployment – even if there was discord between some who think the problem needs more money and others, such as Merkel, who believe €6bn over the next two years is “ambitious” enough.
And despite some irritation, particularly from France, that the UK used the opportunity of the summit to get further reassurances about its budget rebate, the leaders succeeded in making the summit’s main message those measures to tackle youth employment. Deals on the EU’s budget up to 2020 and rules to deal with failing banks represent progress.
While difficult decisions have not gone away, leaders are confident enough to go into the summer break with their next gathering not scheduled until October.
Before then, Germany will hold its parliamentary elections, so it is possible that this was Merkel’s last European Council. If that is the case, then October’s meeting will be very different in tone.
Arnaud Montebourg, the firebrand champion of French industry.
It is a peculiar curse of French politics that some of its practitioners read a little too much history and fancy themselves to be ‘providential’ men.
Refusing to be held back by petty constraints like European Union treaties or the inability to print money, these politicians – armed with ‘voluntarism’, élan and always with audacity – will defend old jobs and create new ones at home while leaving the French model essentially unchanged and steering the EU in the direction of Colbertian state intervention. Five years ago, it was Nicolas Sarkozy who went back on his predecessor’s fiscal commitments, advocated “Community preference” and tried to link carmakers’ subsidies to domestic production. Today, it is the turn of a man of the left to learn that even Charles de Gaulle would have been constrained by the single market and the single currency.
Arnaud Montebourg, France’s minister responsible for industrial revival, is a man with a vision. Aged 50, he is a self-declared “economic patriot” who campaigned against the EU’s constitutional treaty in 2005. Montebourg graced a magazine cover in a Breton marinière as part of his ‘Made in France’ campaign and regularly pops a tricolour pocket square into his jacket for factory visits. Inspired by Jean-Pierre Chevènement, a left-wing minister for industry under President François Mitterrand, Montebourg’s goal is to stop France turning into a “vast ski resort for the rich, or a luxury spa hotel” by re-conquering the labour-intensive heavy manufacturing it has lost.
Montebourg’s high-profile attack on ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steelmaker, was meant to be a pivotal moment in this campaign. On learning that the company intended to close two already mothballed blast furnaces at Florange in Lorraine while continuing to operate part of the facility, Montebourg declared in late November that “we no longer want Mittal in France because they do not respect France” and threatened transitional nationalisation of the whole plant while an unnamed buyer prepared his offer. His target was made to measure: an old heavy industry in a depressed region owned by an absentee transnational capitalist in the form of Lakshmi Mittal, an ostentatious Indian billionaire who is resident in that magnet for French tax dodgers, London.
But Montebourg had, as so often, acted alone. While his bosses, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, could support transitional nationalisation in principle, it was a last resort. They and Labour Minister Michel Sapin, a long-time ally of President François Hollande, were aghast at Montebourg’s threat to Mittal, which employs 20,000 in France. The media war over 629 jobs was also undermining their newly agreed policy focused on restoring competitiveness through cost reduction. To the unions’ fury, a deal was quickly struck that sidelined Montebourg and kept the two furnaces closed.
A humiliated Montebourg is a dangerous prospect for Hollande and the right wing of the Parti Socialiste, which is why Hollande spent last weekend talking his junior minister out of resigning. Montebourg’s style has always been that of a provocateur, part real and part a lawyer’s trick. Meetings and interviews often begin with accusations and threats to wrong-foot his opponents and interlocutors. But Montebourg is not a typical junior minister with negotiating skills, but a man with a following. Hollande may have won the party’s presidential primaries in 2011, but it was Montebourg who won the headlines with his surprising 17% of the vote – well ahead of his nearest rivals, Ségolène Royal and Manuel Valls, now the government’s most popular minister.
Realising his primary campaign was stalling on a vague message of “renovation”, Montebourg found his inner Chevènement and became the tribune of “deglobalisation”. He bagged nearly half a million votes, tapping into a current on the left (typified by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s 11% vote in the presidential elections) that believes it possible to roll back more than two decades of change since the creation of the single market and the globalisation-enhanced rise of China.
He will not care that a poll shows that only 38% approve of his actions in the Mittal affair. For a start, he will be delighted to be noticed for his politics rather than his love life, after his recent split with a former news anchor, Audrey Pulvar. Much more importantly for him, the poll also found that, among left-wing voters, 70% agreed with his approach and 91% supported nationalisation.
Fact File
CV
1962: Born in Nièvre, Burgundy
1990: Becomes an advocate at the Paris bar
1997-: Deputy for the Parti Socialiste (PS) for Saône-et-Loire
2003: Member of the PS’s national bureau
2005: Campaign against the EU’s constitutional treaty
2006: Spokesman for Ségolène Royal’s elec tion campaign
2008: President of the general council of Saône-et-Loire
2011: Comes third in the PS’s presidential primaries
2012-: Minister for industrial revival
The only child of a tax-inspector father and a Spanish-language teacher whose father was Algerian, Montebourg was born and raised in Nièvre in Burgundy – Mitterrand’s electoral fiefdom – and studied law in Dijon, before finishing at Sciences-Po in Paris.
As a young lawyer in Paris, his debating skills won him the post of first secretary of the Conférence du Stage, an élite group of new attorneys. It also helped him acquire high-profile legal work, such as the defence of the killer of René Bousquet, a Mitterrand confidant who had served in the wartime Vichy regime.
Montebourg had been active in student and socialist politics from the age of 18, but early on showed his loathing of party organisation and discipline by quitting the Objectifs 89 current within the PS. Nevertheless, he entered the national assembly in 1997 as the member for the sixth district of Saône-et-Loire, a department in Burgundy. He quickly developed a reputation as a political loner and moralist by making allegations of corruption on both sides of the political divide.
Dismayed with the ‘social liberalism’ of Lionel Jospin’s 1997-2002 socialist government, Montebourg decided to align himself with near-contemporaries on the left, Vincent Peillon and Benoît Hamon, in forming the Nouveau Parti Socialiste (NPS) within the PS. Again, however, he quit in 2005 over differences on policy and discipline.
Though on his own again and though a parliamentarian for just nine years, Montebourg was already in 2006 toying with the idea of running for the presidency. As it became clear that Royal was the best roadblock to the social democratic ambitions of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Montebourg aligned with her and became her campaign spokesman until, of course, his verbal indiscipline got the better of him. Describing Royal, Montebourg said she had “only one fault: her partner”. At the time – as far as the public knew anyway – this was Hollande.
In the wake of his 2011 first-round showing, Montebourg repaired the damage with Hollande sufficiently to guarantee himself a place in the new president’s first government. He will be hard to shift without causing major headaches for the government in the National Assembly and on television. Montebourg is highly ambitious and does not lack self-belief. Given the opportunity, he will put both characteristics to the service of his vision of an EU ‘Made in France’.
MEPs back proposal and throw out compromise amendments crafted after first rejection.
The European Parliament voted today (3 July) to back a slightly amended version of the European Commission’s proposal to ‘backload’ allowances in the European Union’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) in order to raise the flagging price of carbon.
However in a surprise result, the compromise amendments that had been painstakingly negotiated between the political groups ahead of the environment committee’s vote last month were rejected by the full plenary. Instead, only the original compromise put forward by centre-left German MEP Matthias Groote, who has been leading to fight to approve the backloading, was accepted.
The Groote amendment would specify that the Commission can not withhold more than the 900 million allowances it has proposed, and it can only undertake this exercise once. The Commission must also conduct an impact assessment to ensure that industry will not flee Europe if the carbon price is artificially raised.
A compromise crafted by Austrian centre-right MEP Richard Seeber that would have mandated that the delayed allowances be introduced earlier than proposed (2016 rather than 2019), which was backed by all groups in committee, was rejected in plenary. Another compromise crafted by Seeber that would have earmarked proceeds from 600 million of the withheld allowances to go to a fund for energy-intensive industries like steel and chemicals was also rejected.
The compromise amendments were supported by a group of ‘swing’ EPP MEPs led by Seeber. But they were rejected by the hard-line ‘no’ camp of some EPP and all ECR lawmakers led by Finnish MEP Eija-Riitta Korhola.
The compromises were also rejected by Green MEPs, who said they weakened down backloading so much as to make it a meaningless excercise. But the Greens then voted to support the proposal as a whole, delivering a majority both for rejecting the compromise and for passing the proposal as a whole.
The proposal passed by a vote of 344 for versus 311 against, the second vote saw a split roughly equal to the outcome the first time the proposal was put to a vote in April.
Cultural exception debate overshadows launch of EU-US trade negotiations
Diplomats still sure that a mandate will be agreed.
Trade ministers from the European Union will gather on Friday (14 June) to approve talks on a transatlantic trade deal, knowing that the formal launch of the EU’s largest-ever trade negotiations is being overshadowed by France’s cultural sensitivities.
France wants to ensure that no questions would be asked during the proposed free-trade talks with the United States about the support that EU states provide to their cultural industries. Renewed efforts in recent days by the European Commission and other member states to persuade France that the ‘cultural exception’ would not be affected have had little effect.
Nonetheless, diplomats have no doubt that a mandate will be agreed. They say that ministers cannot ignore the backing for talks given by EU leaders – including France’s President François Hollande – at the European Council in February, and nor would they be able to justify preventing negotiations to ease trade between the world’s two biggest economies. An EU official said he expected the final decision would maintain the tradition of agreement by unanimity.
At issue, instead, is whether defence of the ‘cultural exception’ should prevent any discussion about audiovisual services. That is the approach taken in all previous trade deals, and again is advocated by France. Others oppose any exclusions at this point, arguing that it would encourage the US to ring-fence its own sensitive issues.
The substance of the issues is less important than the perceptions around the debate, according to one diplomat, who said: “We would not lose much by losing the audiovisual chapter, and what we can give to the US is less than what is there in terms of market access already.” In his view, the European commissioner for trade, Karel De Gucht, is anxious to demonstrate to US negotiators that he can deliver even against a background of EU dissension. At the same time, Hollande is faced with the predicament that his authority would not be enhanced by making any concessions so soon after publicly rejecting the European Commission’s advice on adjustments to his economic policy.
Leading the way
The Commission hopes that a previous trade deal agreed by the US – with South Korea – could offer a route out of the impasse. That deal contained explicit safeguards for Korea’s cultural sectors.
The other principal concern for member states relates to the possible inclusion of investment protection. The US currently has bilateral investment-protection agreements with eight EU states, mainly from central and eastern Europe, dating back to shortly after their emergence from the communist system. Other countries are reluctant to accept a possible expansion of the US’s aggressively litigious corporate culture into Europe.
Recent reports have suggested that the mandate could exclude competition rules and include data privacy. The Commission denies both possibilities. “We want to develop a model for the rest of the world,” an official said about competition rules.
Trade ministers will also discuss the state of negotiations on a trade deal with Canada, which are in their final phase.
A gathering of national leaders of the G8 group of the world’s largest economies on 17-18 June is viewed as an extra incentive for ministers to agree a mandate for the US talks and for negotiators to strike a deal with Canada.
Because little is known about the likely impact of shale gas on the EU energy market, the Commission cannot yet provide regulatory certainty.
Over the past decade, as the United States embraced new extractive technologies for mining unconventional oil and gas, Europe has remained cautious. But now the European Union’s skyrocketing energy prices, in contrast to decreasing prices in the US (see page 17), are forcing a rethink on this policy.
When EU leaders met at a summit in Brussels in May, shale gas was high on the agenda, along with discussions on the slow implementation of the internal energy market. “While the United States is on its way to becoming a net exporter of gas instead of an importer, as a result of the shale-gas boom, Europe’s import dependence is further increasing and, for oil and gas, is set to grow to over 80% by 2035,” José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, said ahead of the meeting.
But the Commission is in a delicate position. Some member states want to plough ahead with shale exploration, while others are adamantly opposed over environmental concerns. Barroso has tried to walk a tightrope, saying those member states that wish to begin should do so.
Barroso wrote to EU leaders in May, saying that the EU needs a “Union-wide approach” on shale gas and that “we need to act swiftly”. But this sort of timid encouragement is not enough to give oil companies the certainty and encouragement to start explorations, the industry warns. They want more positive signalling from the EU.
The problem is that nobody knows yet if the same potential exists in Europe. Some countries want to push ahead with exploration, particularly Poland. But other countries have serious concerns about the environmental impact. There are concerns that the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing – or ‘fracking’ – can seep into water supplies. There have also been concerns that the horizontal drilling necessary for extracting this type of gas, which is embedded into narrow fissures in the rock, can cause small earthquakes. France and Bulgaria have banned extraction. This has left the Commission awkwardly stuck between the two sides. But energy companies say they need more regulatory certainty and encouragement for investment.
A consultation conducted by the Commission found that the majority of respondents want some kind of EU legal framework on shale-gas extraction. But nearly half of the respondents were from Poland, shale’s most enthusiastic supporter. The Commission plans to put forward a proposal for a framework on shale gas by the end of the year, but it is not yet known whether it will be just guidelines or something more robust.
Derek Magness, general manager for Europe for energy company Chevron, says an EU legal framework should work on the same timeline as in the US, where state laws cover the early exploration process but federal law comes into play later. Chevron is drilling four exploration wells in Poland and hopes for two more later this year. A balance needs to be struck, he says, between setting enough guidance to establish regulatory certainty, and setting onerous rules that do not take into account the varying geography of Europe.
“If the EU tried to write a big comprehensive manual with all possible environmental risks, that would take ten years,” he says. “It’s better to have an umbrella policy, with national rules under it.”
Magness says that the industry is looking for the Commission to share best practice with the general, non-geographically specific aspects of shale-gas extraction, so that each member state is not learning on its own. The lack of regulatory clarity has been cited as a factor behind other companies, such as Exxon Mobil, pulling out of some exploration operations.
Unknown impact
Although little is known yet about the potential for shale gas in Europe, few would claim that Europe’s deposits have the same potential as in the US. “We know that it won’t be a boom like the US had, but a more modest development that could compensate for the decline in the current conventional gas production,” says Monica Cristina of industry group Shale Gas Europe. She says shale gas could maintain the current EU’s import dependency at 60%, rather than seeing it rise to 80% by 2035 as Barroso predicted.
A report published earlier this year by A.T. Kearney, a consultancy, found that exploiting shale-gas reserves in Europe could cause gas prices to fall by up to 6%.
Environmentalists, however, say the potential benefits of shale gas in terms of energy independence and prices are being wildly exaggerated. Janez Potoc?nik, the European commissioner for the environment, cautioned earlier this year that the EU should not get overexcited by the idea that shale gas can reduce Europe’s energy dependence or solve high prices, given that at most it can only stop an increase in dependence.
The debate is not going away any time soon. But at the very least, May’s discussion of shale gas by EU leaders sent a positive signal to the industry. “We’re hearing more positive signals than we were 18 months ago,” says Magness.