Ansip tops class on digital matters

Nominee to be vice-president for the digital single market seemed to suggest that the incoming Commission would radically reform Europe’s copyright rules.

Andrus Ansip, who has been nominated to be vice-president for the digital single market, again and again used examples from “the country I know best” during his hearing. Fortunately, the country in question is digital high-flyer Estonia (rather than, say, Cyprus) and the assembled MEPs, journalists and consultants learnt plenty about the digital revolution that has run rampant in Ansip’s small Baltic state.

Did you know that Estonians enjoy 4G mobile connections, can vote from home and complete their tax returns in as little as 30 seconds online? Indeed, for many the hearing was a lesson in what technology can do in modern society.

There is no doubt that Ansip, who spoke in slow, measured English and is extremely well-versed on technology matters, impressed. He has a clear vision of what a digital future should look like.

Ansip repeatedly pushed two headline issues. The first was the importance of trust on the internet. Protecting privacy is the “cornerstone” of the digital single market. “We have to have trust if the full value of the digital environment is be utilised,” he said.

The second was the need for more e-government across the EU. “There is no reason why public service cannot be put online,” said Ansip, before promising that the Commission will lead by example by becoming a “paperless government”.

Questioning by MEPs was rewarded with some fairly clear and, at times, polemical positions. Asked about the general issue of net neutrality, Ansip started speaking quite specifically about possible neutrality issues arising from search engines.  “Quite often it is quite impossible to gain visibility in some search engines,” and this is a disadvantage for European SMEs, he said. Ansip also came out clearly in favour of open-source software and applications, and called for a European bill of internet rights to protect users.

Ansip believes that creating a digital single market would provide the growth boost that the EU’s lagging economy needs. With the right reforms, the EU economy could “gain 1.7% in annual growth”. The EU’s postal services emerged as the bad guys of the story. “Postal services are really blocking e-commerce”, said Ansip, before calling the cost of cross-border shipping “disproportionally high”. He also called time on territoriality rules, which block users in one member state from watching or listening to content from another member state. Recounting how such rules prevented him from watching Estonian football on the internet, he described them as “old-fashioned” and “unfair”.  That could mean a controversial reform of the EU’s entrenched copyright rules.

Equipping Europe’s youth with digital skills was an issue to which Ansip returned on several occasions. Schoolchildren should be taught to programme and code, he said. He called tax avoidance in the digital age “a huge problem”.

Like many other hi-tech politicians, Ansip came equipped with catchy phrases. “Culture and digital are not enemies: they are allies”, was one. Querying the added cost of sending packets cross-border, he said: “As we know, the European Union is a union of no borders.” But there is no question that his signature quote was: “Trust is a must.”

By the end of the hearing, it was clear that Ansip is a good communicator armed with a deep understanding of the digital sector, with plenty of experience to draw on.

Yet perhaps the main point of note from the hearing was not so much about Ansip himself, but rather the extent to which he contrasts with the commissioner specifically responsible for the digital agenda, the German Günther Oettinger. For many MEPs, the latter is a pro-business candidate, with limited understanding of the challenges to human liberties posed by the internet and only limited interest in the subject itself. If ever they were looking for a complement to Oettinger, Ansip is their man.

 

Read the live blog from the hearing – as it happened

 

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Parliament vice-president

The Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament has chosen Ioan Mircea Pascu, a centre-left Romanian MEP, to replace Corina Cretu as a vice-president of the Parliament.

Cretu was elected one of the Parliament’s 14 vice-presidents in July, but last week left the Parliament to become Romania’s European commissioner. Under the Parliament’s unofficial system of sharing out senior posts, the S&D group is still entitled to the spot.

The formality of an election will happen during the mini-plenary session in Brussels on 12 November. Pascu, 65, was minister of defence in the cabinet of prime minister Adrian Nastase. He became an MEP on 1 January 2007.

Cretu’s seat in the Parliament is being taken by Emilian Pavel.

Malmström: EU leaders must fight for TTIP

EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström on Thursday urged member states to boost their engagement for the EU-U.S. trade deal, acknowledging the power of vocal opposition.

“The Commission’s mandate for TTIP negotiations comes from all 28 EU members. And they want this agreement,” Malmström said at the POLITICO event ‘The Politics of TTIP’ in Brussels. “So it’s their responsibility to explain the value of TTIP to their citizens.”

The Commissioner spoke a day after she released a revamped proposal for the most delicate issue in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the legal dispute solution. A swell of opposition over the past year has put trade deal backers on defense with critics complaining that the so-called investor-state dispute settlement mechanism, known as ISDS, puts too much power in the hands of corporations.

Opposition is particularly intense in Germany, where only 39 percent of the population backs the trade deal.

Malmström said it remains the task of political leaders in Berlin to soften the widespread skepticism. “This is not my job,” she said.

Yet, she acknowledged that German trade minister Sigmar Gabriel is already doing a lot and seemed optimistic that the new ISDS will help to win back the increasingly distrustful public.

The new proposal would turn the ISDS mechanism into a transparent dispute settlement court with 15 independent judges and an appeals mechanism. The judges would publicly appointed by the U.S., the EU and a third country.

Responding to critics from the Green party in the European Parliament who called this initiative a “marketing stunt,” Malmström said “they haven’t probably read it fully,” but acknowledged that “you can’t please everybody.”

“This system is not about taking into question states’ right to regulate, it is designed only for very few cases in the U.S. or EU where business is actually discriminated,” the trade commissioner said, adding that it “will also set the standards for all upcoming trade deals.”

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Still, MEP Philippe Lamberts, co-chair of the Green party in the European Parliament, accused the Commission at the POLITICO event of slavishly following the interest of big business. “Who was asking for TTIP? It wasn’t small business, it was the American Chamber of Commerce and Business Europe: I have no time for these guys.”

Later in the event, Malmström won the backing of former Commission Vice President Viviane Reding, now an MEP, who lauded her “efforts to reform ISDS.”

Malmström also gave some insight on what’s on the table during the next TTIP negotiation round in mid-October: “There is a lot to discuss on market access and public procurement, but we have already advanced a lot with regulatory cooperation.“

Meanwhile, the sensitive ISDS issue will remain “frozen” in the negotiations with Washington until her new proposal has been discussed with member states and Parliament.

The trade commissioner will fly to Washington on Monday to prepare the negotiation round.

Despite the fact that she is seeing U.S. chief negotiator Michael Froman frequently, she said their relationship remains strictly business: “We don’t share hobbies, we don’t Whatsapp, we just call each other and have meetings.”

Watch: Viviane Reding on how she thinks Europe will benefit from TTIP.

Ryan Heath and Laura Kayali contributed to this story.

VIDEO: Being in Denmark is part of Vestager’s strategy

Plus find out why the Europe’s competition commissioner keeps a ladder in her office.

Margrethe Vestager, the European competition commissioner, has been asked several times on why she spends so much time in Denmark. POLITICO asks how she will watch the Danish elections, which are scheduled to take place by September 2015 at the latest, from afar.

Inside European Commissioner Vestager’s office from POLITICO Europe on Vimeo.

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Eastern Partnership summit likely to disappoint

The EU shows little sign of putting out the welcome mat for non-member ex-Soviet republics to its east.

MINSK — Thousands of Ukrainians braved clubs and bullets last year to show they wanted a European future for their country; this week’s Eastern Partnership summit in Riga will likely show them that the door still isn’t open.

According to signals from Brussels, the EU is not only going to avoid mentioning Ukraine’s possible membership, something EU diplomats have gone into contortions to avoid spelling out in the past, but has even decided to postpone the introduction of a visa-free regime for Ukraine and Georgia.

The draft resolution of the Riga summit, leaked before the event, is significantly less ambitious in comparison with the one adopted at the previous Eastern Partnership meeting in Vilnius at the end of 2013. That summit, taking place in the heady days before Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine,  acknowledged “the European aspirations and the European choice of some partners.” The new draft text instead puts the onus on Brussels to set the terms, saying, “It is for the EU and its sovereign to decide on how they want to proceed in their relations.”

The draft “underscores the European Union’s drift away from stronger engagement with its partners,” writes Robbie Gramer of the Atlantic Council.

That careful language is a sign of the uncertain status of the Eastern Partnership. The idea of forging a closer relationship with the ex-Soviet republics to the east of the EU was a 2009 idea of Sweden and Poland and folded into the bloc’s broader neighborhood policy. But the six partnership countries — Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan — have become increasingly different, and the EU increasingly wary of provoking Russia.

Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova have signed Association Agreements and free trade deals with the EU; Moldova has visa-free status. But Armenia is moving closer to Russia and oil-rich Azerbaijan is an oppressive dictatorship that is of interest mainly for providing an alternative to Russian gas for the EU. Belarus’s authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko is under EU and US sanction for cracking down on the opposition.

In recent months, officials in Kiev have tried to assure Ukrainians that the main obstacle to a visa-free regime is the EU’s unwillingness to remove restrictions while a war continues in the country’s eastern regions. However, Brussels says Kiev is moving too slowly in introducing the technical reforms necessary for the abolition of visas. There are also fears that liberalizing visa rules could create a huge influx of labor migrants from cash-strapped Ukraine, with a population of 45 million.

But Ukraine is not giving up. On Tuesday, President Petro Poroshenko talked with the UK Prime Minister David Cameron. stressing that Kiev is expecting “clearer signals” from the EU on the introduction of a visa-free regime and “recognition of the prospects of its European future.”

Looming over the summit is Russia. Ukraine’s Association Agreement with the EU sparked the Maidan protests that led to current crisis with Russia. Moscow is keeping a close eye on what happens in Riga. This week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on the EU to prove the Eastern Partnership is not a threat. “Our European partners … have pledged that the Eastern Partnership will not develop to the detriment of Russia’s interests. The words are sound and we would like to see them substantiated with concrete deeds.”

“Russia wants to play a ‘zero-sum’ game,” while our cooperation [with the Eastern Partnership member states] are based on a win-win approach,” said Maira Mora, the head of the EU delegation to Belarus.

While the more enthusiastic of the partnership countries are likely to be disappointed by the outcome of Riga, Belarus is coming back into favor — largely the result of the EU wanting to balance Russia’s influence. While a few years ago, Lukashenko was derided as “Europe’s last dictator,” the recent behaviour of Russian President Vladimir Putin has made the Minsk authoritarian seem a little more benign.

Johannes Hahn, the Commissioner for Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, met with Lukashenko last month. Lukashenko has received positive reviews for his backing of peace talks leading to the ongoing Minsk II ceasefire in eastern Ukraine. “We appreciate Belarus’s balanced stance on Ukraine and the positive steps it has taken with regards to relations with the EU,” said Maja Kocijančič, Hahn’s spokeswoman.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t still grit in the relationship. A decision earlier this month to transfer Mikalai Statkevich, a presidential candidate from the disputed 2010 election, from a penal colony to a prison, drew EU criticism. “The importance of releasing all political prisoners remains crucial in the context of improving EU-Belarus relations,” said a Commission statement.

But the view on Belarus was spelled out in a recent comment by Latvian President Andris Bērziņš. “Our interest is clear — we should do everything possible for our relationship,” he said.

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Ukraine, Russia extend stop-gap gas deal

European Commission mediates extension of “winter package” deal until mid-summer.

A short-term deal brokered by the European Commission to ensure supplies of gas from Russia to Ukraine has been extended until mid-summer.

The extension, which was announced by the Ukrainian gas distributor Naftogaz this morning and has now been confirmed by Gazprom, means that a pricing formula established to cover the winter months – from November to the end of March – will be extended to the end of June.

Another important element of the agreement obliges Ukraine to pay in advance for gas.

The extension will be included in what Naftogaz described as a technical addendum to an agreement struck on 31 October in Brussels. October’s agreement ended a period of four and a half months in which Russia stopped supplying Ukraine with gas for domestic consumption. Gazprom continued to supply customers in the European Union via Ukrainian pipelines.

Naftogaz did not make immediate use of October’s agreement, preferring to use gas sent to Ukraine by European distributors. This year, Ukraine has taken more gas from Europe than from Russia and Naftogaz has indicated that it intends to take advantage of the lower prices offered by European companies.

Both Naftogaz and Gazprom calculate that, under the extension announced today, Ukraine will pay €227 per thousand cubic metres of gas in the second quarter of the year.

The Commission is currently trying to convince both sides to reach a longer-term agreement that would last until a ruling by an international arbitration court in Stockholm. The arbitrators have been asked to rule on an agreement dating from 2009 in which the Ukrainian government agreed to a price formula that left the country paying far more than other European countries. It also included a ‘take or pay’ clause that obliged Ukraine to pay for a set volume of gas even if it did not take delivery of that much gas.

The Commission brought together the two sides on 20 March and another meeting is pencilled in for 13 or 14 April. Today’s agreement was reached without a formal meeting, after a letter sent by the Commission and exchanges between the chief executives of Naftogaz, Andriy Kobolyev, and of Gazprom, Alexei Miller.

Miller, who has not attended the last two meetings with the Commission, said today that today’s agreement waives the ‘take or pay’ clause until mid-2015.

Naftogaz says that it expects the extension to set the principles of a deal to take it through to a ruling by the Stockholm arbitrators.

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The former Tottenham boss wants to see an influential figure get back on the pitch as soon as possible after stepping up his recovery from injury

Harry Kane could inspire Tottenham to a top-four Premier League finish if he returns to action ahead of schedule, according to Harry Redknapp, who thinks the striker has all the attributes to “push them over the line”.

Kane hobbled off with a hamstring injury during Spurs’ defeat to Southampton on New Year’s Day and underwent surgery on the issue after being assessed by the club’s medical staff.

It was initially feared that the 26-year-old would miss the remainder of the 2019-20 campaign, which also made him a doubt for England ahead of this summer’s European Championship.

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However, Tottenham boss Jose Mourinho was able to deliver a positive update on Kane’s recovery last week, revealing the forward could be welcomed back into the first-team fold for the “last few games of the season”.

Redknapp believes Kane is capable of boosting Spurs’ chances of qualifying for the Champions League, with five points currently separating Mourinho’s men and fourth-placed Chelsea in the top-flight standings.

“To have him available for the Euros is going to be very important and, for Tottenham, they’re still looking to get a top-four finish so he could help push them over the line and get where they want to be,” the ex-Spurs head coach told the PA News Agency.

“It’s going to be tight there. It’s very open. Tottenham have got a good squad of players. I know they’ve got a couple of injuries at the moment but they’ve still got enough good players to really push for that fourth spot.

“It’s great to see Harry getting fit. He’s a fantastic boy, great professional and a great player.”

Mourinho has helped Tottenham climb back up the table since taking over from Mauricio Pochettino in November, but the Portuguese boss has come under fire after run of three successive defeats in the last fortnight.

A 3-2 loss at home to Wolves on Sunday marked Tottenham’s latest setback, but Redknapp is confident that Mourinho is the right man to “bring some trophies” to the club in the coming years.

“I still think Tottenham have got probably the third-best squad in the Premier League,” said Redknapp.

“He’s a top manager, his record shows that. Tottenham’s a top club. A fantastic new stadium, great training ground. I think they’ve got outstanding players. It’s a great job for him.

“I’m sure he’s looking forward to the next few years being the manager of Tottenham and bringing some trophies to Tottenham.

“We all loved Poch but he didn’t manage to win anything. Tottenham supporters would be delighted to win anything I would have thought.”

Nationalists gain a seat in Bosnia’s presidency

Early results from three elections in Bosnia suggest that Croat and Serb nationalists will gain some control of Bosnia’s policy toward the EU.

Early results from three sets of elections held in Bosnia yesterday (12 October) suggest that the country’s leading political parties and personalities will remain in power for another four years, despite widespread disenchantment among voters, with a strong showing by nationalists in elections to the country’s three-member presidency.

A lack of political, social and economic progress – reflected in the very low number of laws passed by the outgoing state parliament – has led to significant public unrest, culminating in protests in February in each of the country’s three major ethnic communities – Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), Croats and Serbs. Bosnia’s politicians have also been criticised by international donors – most vocally by the United States – for a failure to channel international funds to the victims of floods this May that are estimated to have caused €2 billion in damage.

A review of the past year published on Wednesday (8 October) by the European Commission concluded that Bosnia is at a “standstill” in the European integration process and has made “very limited progress in addressing the political criteria” set by the European Union. Commission officials said that the country was suffering from “a lack of collective political will”.

Turnout was, at 50.1%, well down on the figure for 2010, 56.5%.

Voters cast their ballots for the country’s presidency, the state-level parliament and the parliaments in the two constituent regions – the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Republika Srpska.

The principal preliminary results so far are for the country’s three-member presidency, which is responsible for foreign and defence policy, including the process of EU integration. The Bosniak member of the presidency, Bakir Izetbegović, has retained his seat, fighting off a challenge from Emir Suljagić, while Dragan Čović, a leading figure in the Croat community, is poised to take the Croat position vacated by Željko Komšić, who had reached his constitutional limit of two terms in the position. In the ethnically Serb-dominated Republika Srpska, Željka Cvijanović, a close ally of the  Republika Srpska’s president, Mirorad Dodik, is ahead of Mladen Ivanić, a former foreign minister and prime minister of Republika Srpska. Čović and Cvijanović hold positions that would increase the ethnic segmentation of Bosnian politics enshrined in the Dayton accords, the peace agreement that ended the 1992-95 war. Izetbegović, a more pragmatic figure, would like more power to be given to the central control.

The international community has been pressing for Bosnia to adjust its constitution to bring it more into line with other European political systems, with the EU linking Bosnia’s prospects for membership to changes in Bosnia’s constitutional set-up.

The results of elections to parliament in the country’s two constituent regions – the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Republika Srpska – are expected later today. The outcome of elections to the state-level House of Representatives should also become clearer towards the end of the day. The 42-member House of Representatives is the lower house of the state parliament; the 15-member upper chamber – the House of the Peoples – consists of representatives selected by the regional parliaments.

Dodik’s nationalist Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) is likely to remain the dominant force among ethnic Serbs. Among the Croats, the principal question is whether the emergence of Čović, a nationalist, as a successor in the presidency to Komšić will translate into more seats for Čović’s Croatian Democratic Union (HZD). Komšić had portrayed himself primarily as a Bosnian rather than a Croat, helping to secure him support among Bosniaks in the Muslim-Croat Federation, where ethnic groups can vote for candidates without regard for their ethnic origin.

The Bosniak vote may also be affected by the death in late September of the long-time leader the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), Sulejman Tihić, who, though he had left politics a year before his death, had remained a leading figure among the party’s less nationalistic and more socially minded wing.

The election was conducted under old rules that have been condemned both by the Council of Europe and the EU. Under the 2009 Sejdić-Finci ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, Bosnia is obliged to change electoral rules that limit membership of the presidency and of the House of Peoples to Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats. Štefan Füle, the outgoing European commissioner for enlargement and neighbourhood policy, warned last year that the EU would regard the election as illegitimate, as did the Council of Europe. Füle said last Wednesday that the EU would work whatever government emerged from the election.

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Paul Merson admits he is shocked if Tottenham hired Jose Mourinho to “excite the fans and not win football matches”.

Spurs have lost their last three matches in all competitions, including two Premier League games against Chelsea and Wolves, who are two of their rivals for Champions League qualification.

Questions are being asked after Tottenham conceded three goals at home to Wolves, despite most of the pre-match talk surrounding their lack of strikers.

OPINION: Tottenham are broken as Mourinho prophecy is self-fulfilled

And former Arsenal midfielder Merson has been “shocked” at the way Mourinho‘s team have been playing.

“How many times has Mourinho since he has been in the Premier League have you seen him involved in these goals fests?” Merson said on Sky Sports’ The Debate.

“That’s not Mourinho like. And even though they haven’t got them two [Kane and Son], one thing I would expect is for them to be rock solid.

“I am shocked by the way they are, at the moment. They are so open and all over the place. I think this manager is good enough to set a team up not to let in goals they are letting in.

“I think they have got the wrong manager [if Mourinho has to set up Spurs to play], and I don’t mean that in a horrible way because this man is a legend.

“But he wins football matches, it doesn’t matter how he does it. I have been to Chelsea, we have been 2-0 up at bottom of the league at half-time and that’s it, it stays 2-0.

“It’s not like a Man City where you go and win five or six. He would rather win 2-0 than 4-1. It worries me that he has to go out there and excite the Tottenham fans.

“That worries me. If he is brought in to excite the fans and not win football matches is a shock – I have seen Mourinho with lesser players [than his current ones] and keep clean sheets.”

 

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Jurgen Klopp admitted his suggestion that Liverpool could “play free football again” after losing to Watford sent the wrong message.

Liverpool had their 44-game unbeaten run and 18-match win sequence ended by Watford on Saturday.

The Reds were well-beaten at Vicarage Road as their attempts at breaking a number of records went up in flames.

OPINION: Liverpool can redefine brilliance…or become a synonym for it

Klopp was almost relieved after the game, stating that his squad “can play free football again” without being inhibited by chasing statistics or history.

But the German went back on those comments when previewing the FA Cup game with Chelsea on Monday.

“It is a bit difficult. I don’t know what I said 100 per cent after the game,” he said.

“I go in the dressing room then I go out and people confront me, like always, with questions which I didn’t think about until a second before.

“I say the things I say. If I say from now that we can play free football again, that would mean I felt we couldn’t do that before. I didn’t feel that, to be honest.

“Would we have loved to have won game number 19? Yes. Absolutely. But then you don’t win it and we know how difficult it is.

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“We don’t have to make it bigger. We lost a football game.

“Whenever it happens, it feels really average. Really, really bad. That’s how we felt.

“But it is not like we are now relieved of all the pressure and we can focus on football again. It was just an answer, to be honest, without long thinking!”