Uber’s X-factor

Uber will start a higher-cost service in Brussels in a bid to soften political opposition.

Uber will launch a more expensive service in Brussels in September as a part of a strategy to overcome resistance from legislators and taxi drivers, POLITICO has learned.

Under a premium offering known as UberX, the digital ride-sharing service is expanding its presence ahead of an expected legalization of Uber’s business model by the Brussels regional government.

At a private meeting Monday, Uber introduced the new model to drivers, giving them the option to register as licensed chauffeurs to qualify for a service already offered in cities like London and Paris.

The expansion comes amidst speculation that Uber would be phasing out UberPOP, a budget service that was used to introduce the car-sharing to Brussels. But a company spokesperson said they plan to introduce UberX alongside UberPOP.

“We’re not planning to suspend POP,” said Uber spokesperson Susanne Elias-Stulemeijer. “We’re always looking at launching new products and Brussels is not an exception.”

Paris, Italy and Berlin were forced to suspend their budget service under pressure from local taxi drivers and legislators, and instead offer UberX.

According to the Uber spokesperson, UberPOP is 40-50 percent cheaper than a taxi and UberX is 20-30 percent cheaper.

That means, however, that the new UberX service — while marketed on Uber’s application as ‘The Low Cost Uber” — will actually be a 50 percent price hike on the current offering.

However, in Stockholm, the only other city in the European Union to offer both services, UberX is about twice the price of UberPOP.

Drivers in Brussels were told they should plan for a launch in September at information sessions held earlier this week. Only drivers with cars less than seven years old and with a minimum of four doors are eligible.

In advance of the launch only weeks away, drivers must pass a test on knowledge of Belgian cities and relevant legislation, according to an application obtained by POLITICO. Drivers must also visit the ophthalmologist.

“I was at a meeting Monday with many other drivers,” one driver said, in reference to the legal tangles Uber has faced in Brussels. “We are interested to change from UberPOP because it is too complicated now.”

In 2014, a Brussels court ruled the ride-sharing service was illegal and mandated fining drivers €10,000 per passenger.

One driver, Gvanni Tiney, has been on a mission to register his fellow Uber drivers as licensed chauffeurs to encourage the launch of UberX.

“I have requested the license and they [Brussels government] will arrange that for me,” Tiney said. 

“It will take four to six weeks because of the holidays,” he said, raising his eyebrows regarding Uber’s target of launch by September. 

Uber executives also distributed talking points to drivers to help them promote and defend the legality, insurance and privacy of the service.

The packet, titled “10 truths about Uber,” has been making the rounds as they prepare for the expansion.

It includes a map of where Uber rides are taken across Brussels to argue that the service complements public transport.

Uber also argues in the documents that Brussels has a specific problem with parking which blocks traffic and creates a need for services like Uber to help reduce congestion.

Notably, Uber declared that it’s in favor of regulation, which could be seen as an admission that it has failed to get around the demands of regulators who have dogged the company across Europe.

“We are collaborating with politicians to build new rules,” the document states.

Antoine Sander contributed to this report

The Danish tax reaper cometh

A primer on Margrethe Vestager’s crackdown on tax avoidance.

The days of multinationals avoiding paying their share of taxes in Europe could be coming to an end.

Margrethe Vestager, Europe’s competition commissioner, ordered Fiat and Starbucks on Wednesday to cough up tens of millions of euros in unpaid taxes. And she’s unlikely to stop there, with Apple and Amazon next on her hit list.

The rulings will have far-reaching consequences for EU countries that are eager to attract corporations with favorable tax deals, for companies that fear they are the next targets, and for Vestager as she continues to burnish her reputation as an enemy of corporate greed.

The Fiat Group and Starbucks took an equal hit in Wednesday’s announcement. Fiat made billions selling Italian cars to the world. Yet the Italian-owned firm parked its profits in tiny Luxembourg, a country with half a million people and fewer than 400,000 cars.

The automaker scored a tax deal in 2012 with the Grand Duchy’s tax authorities that allowed the Turin-based company to pump billions of euros through its internal bank in Luxembourg, safe in the knowledge that its tax bill was capped in the hundreds of thousands.

Vestager, who has already picked fights with corporate giants such as Google and Gazprom, tore up the deal and ordered Fiat to pay Luxembourg as much as €30 million in extra taxes — even though Luxembourg’s treasury says it does not want the carmaker’s money. Vestager ordered the Dutch tax authorities to also recoup between €20-€30 million from Starbucks.

One year into the job, this was Vestager’s toughest decision yet. She must face down a wide spectrum of interests, from multinationals to member countries to U.S. officials concerned at European protectionism.

Above all, she must tread a fine political line over public outrage at aggressive tax planning while not incriminating her boss, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who as Luxembourg’s prime minister positioned the Grand Duchy as a low-tax haven.

Here some key questions she’ll face Wednesday:

Wait a second, can Vestager actually set corporate tax rates?

No, she can’t. Tax rates is one of the areas where national capitals reign supreme. But some of them — especially Luxembourg City and Dublin — have been offering ultra-low tax rates to attract some of the world’s biggest corporate names, and the money, jobs and prestige that come with them.

Ultra-low tax rates are fine, says Vestager, provided they are available to all companies and not just the chosen few, who would enjoy an advantage over smaller, less-well-connected rivals. Think Starbucks over local coffee shops, Amazon over family-owned retailers, Apple over smaller mobile phone makers, or Fiat’s subsidiaries over the makers of car parts. Giving the big players such an advantage would breach EU competition rules, says Vestager.

All four companies deny breaking EU law.

Why is Vestager first targeting Fiat and Starbucks, not Apple or Amazon?

Since taking office, Vestager has charged Google with breaching EU competition law, and opened probes into Qualcomm and Amazon. So maybe she felt it was time to give U.S. tech firms at least a temporary break. Charging one European carmaker and one U.S. coffee shop chain avoids the accusations of only bashing Silicon Valley.

She could, however, be testing the waters. Apple is the big one.

A report by the U.S. Congress in May 2013 concluded that Apple paid “a corporate tax rate of 2 percent or less” in Ireland, through which it channeled its non-U.S. global sales. According to company reports, Apple’s 2013 global profits were around €20 billion, with around a fifth of all revenues generated in Europe.

Lawyers suggest the Commission has more cases in the pipeline.

How bad will it hurt?

A recovery in the region of €100 million would have sting, but wouldn’t have brought a company the size of Fiat, officially known as Fiat Chrysler Automobiles since 2014, to a standstill. The owner of luxury brands such as Ferrari and Maserati earned €87 billion in revenue in 2012. Company records suggest it paid less than €100 million in tax that year.

Starbucks claimed €11 billion in global revenues last year, but found itself in the public eye after it was revealed it paid European taxes on only a tiny fraction of that money.

Luxembourg, in particular, may appeal the decision for fear that it undermines years of hard work to attract multinationals and investors to the Grand Duchy.

Is Juncker in the clear?

Probably. Vestager is examining two tax deals that were dished out when her boss was Luxembourg’s prime minister (including one when he was also the country’s finance minister).

The Lux Leaks revelations in November 2014 confirmed what many suspected: that during Juncker’s 20 years at the helm, Luxembourg cut sweetheart tax deals with all and sundry. The scandal broke during Juncker’s first week in office. He responded by promising not to interfere in Vestager’s cases and to push tax reforms at the European level — reforms he had vetoed when prime minister.

That promise has bought him the support of MEPs.

“If they [MEPs] play the man and not the ball by going for Juncker, there is a risk they will lose the entire reform agenda,” said Fredrik Erixon, directer of the European Center for International Political Economy, a think-tank in Brussels.

How are the EU’s tax reforms going?

At full speed. Just eight months after Juncker’s Lux Leaks fightback, he convinced member countries to automatically exchange certain information about the tax deals they strike with multinationals. Juncker is also working on controversial plans to harmonize corporate tax rules across Europe.
“To a certain extent the excesses of the past have been resolved,” said one lawyer involved in the probes.

The European reforms come as part of a global push to clamp down on aggressive tax “minimalization,” in the wake of the financial crisis. Long-mooted reforms are suddenly making progress. Earlier this month, the world’s largest economies committed themselves to reforms that would make it more difficult for companies to bend international tax rules.

“This is probably the biggest change in the system of global taxation since I started working in tax,” says Marvin Rust, a senior tax partner at FTI Consulting.

What does the U.S. say?

It has been a challenging year for EU-U.S. economic relations. An antitrust probe into Google, coupled with talk of regulating big Internet players like Google, Facebook and Twitter, has raised eyebrows across the Atlantic.

Then came Maximilian Schrems, the Austrian law student who challenged U.S. snooping practices before the EU courts and won. That left U.S. companies in Europe scrambling to comply and complaining about legal uncertainty. Making U.S. firms top-up their European tax contributions retroactively will only stoke those complaints.

U.S. officials have also warned that any extra taxes paid in Europe may be deducted from U.S. taxes, leaving American citizens to foot the bill. They will be carefully watching for any case against Apple.

These decisions will inevitably raise suspicions voiced by U.S. politicians that Europe is using regulation to level the playing field, protecting local businesses against stronger U.S. rivals.

This story was updated to include news of the announcement.

Catherine Day to stay

The European Commission’s top staffer will keep her job a while longer.

As Brussels awaits the result of a high-stakes reshuffling of top European Commission staff expected to be announced by President Jean-Claude Juncker at the end of June, one name is locked in.

Catherine Day, the Commission’s secretary general since 2005, is going to stay on in the powerful position, according to Commission sources, but will almost certainly not serve out the full five-year term of the current Commission. She has told an EU peer that she may leave as early as in 2016. 

Day had been thought to be preparing for transition to academia or to retirement after an unusually long 10-year run as the most senior civil servant post in the EU executive, but Juncker asked her to stay on, the sources said.

Contacted by POLITICO to ask about her decision, Day said only that it was her policy not to reply for requests to comment about personnel matters.

Juncker took office in November 2014 with a promise to shake up the way the Commission does business — streamlining not only how it makes laws but also its organizational chart. He has already restructured the executive, creating a two-tiered system that puts most decision-making power in the hands of seven vice presidents who oversee the work of Commissioners. 

Now he is working on a new roster of top officials, the 35 directors-general who run the Commission’s main policy portfolios. Currently only six of these positions are held by women (nine of the 28 Commissioners are women).

For the last decade, Day has been at the head of that short list of top female EU staffers. The 60-year-old Irish national served during parts of three different Commissions, first under President José Manuel Barroso and now under Juncker.

“Juncker quite likes her,” a Commission official said of Day in explaining the decision to ask her to stay. “She was very helpful during the transition.”

Other officials told POLITICO that Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who came into office the same year that Day was named secretary general, got to know her at the regular EU summits and is fond of her. 

Day, who is just the fifth person to hold the Secretary General post since it was created in 1957, is a Commission-lifer. She began her career in the institution in 1979, working in a variety of key jobs including deputy chief of staff to UK Commissioner Leon Brittan, and director positions on external relations and EU enlargement. From 2002 to 2005, she was the Commission’s director general for environment.

Jockeying for top Commission jobs combines bureaucratic intrigue and political horse-trading with issues of national and, now, gender balance. By keeping the respected Day on at the top for the time being, Juncker can avoid at least one potential headache as he seeks to fill the rest of the DG jobs to everyone’s satisfaction. 

“President Juncker has said himself the basic element for this should be the right chemistry and empathy between people. Between the generals and commissioners,” Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said. “What is equally important is an increased number of women. This process is ongoing and it will be finalized in June.” 

But there may have been other forces at work. A commission spokesperson denied that Merkel had made any direct appeals to Juncker to keep Day on, but others said it made sense that the German chancellor would see the benefit of continuity in that role.

For one thing, Day worked closely with Uwe Corsepius, the secretary general of the Council of Ministers, who is leaving for Berlin later this month to work as Merkel’s top European affairs advisor.

“[Day and Merkel] have a lot of respect for each other,” said Florian Koebele, a German political analyst and former official in the Commission’s Secretariat General. “They have a good cooperation. From the way they are thinking, they are both rather cautious people and not impulsive.”

Another reason that sticking with Day makes sense for the Commission is that it leaves out the thorny national politics that often come into play when filling the post — and it means that Merkel can rest easy that someone she likes is in the job, without having to push for a German candidate to fill a vacancy.

“There is a perceived sense that the Germans already have a lot of DG spots, so to keep [Day] would keep that conversation away from ‘another German,’” said an official in the Council.

Sources said the Italians were vying for the plum post, as they currently only have two DGs on the current list after having lost two DGs in the past year. Italy’s permanent representative to the EU, Stefano Sannino, was among the other candidates said to be considered for Day’s job. Sannino told POLITICO that to his knowledge “the post has never been ‘advertised,’ neither formally nor informally.”

Also considered for the post was Alexander Italianer, currently the director general for competition policy. Italianer, who is Dutch, declined to comment. 

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Another Commission staff veteran, Jonathan Faull, the British director-general of Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union, was vying for the promotion. His passport and seniority hurt him, according to a senior EU diplomat. If Juncker and his Chief of Staff Martin Selmayr were going to make a change, this diplomat said, they prefer to go with someone from the next generation of senior Commission officials. Now this decision has been put off for at least a year, according to officials. 

Jacopo Barigazzi contributed to this article.

This story has been updated.

Drone rules hover into view

European Commission package is expected to address safety, security, privacy and noise pollution.

The European Commission plans to draft regulations for commercial drones this fall in an effort to keep up with the rapidly growing industry and new legislation in member states.

The Commission is expected to take its lead from the European Aviation Safety Agency, which published a proposed regulatory roadmap last month. At the same time, members of the European Parliament have launched a working group in an attempt to forge a quick consensus when the Commission releases its package. And conservative British MEP Jacqueline Foster is working on her own report on drones.

“Drones are the talk of the year and Europe needs to be ambitious and embrace them as an essential part of the future of flying,” said Violeta Bulc, European commissioner for transport, who signed the Riga declaration on civil drones in March. She said the Commission will include drones in its aviation regulatory package.

The key elements are expected to address safety, security, privacy and noise pollution.

MEPs are particularly concerned that the fast pace at which the drone market is moving will make any regulation eventually adopted obsolete.

Sales of drones, including military, are estimated to be worth €4.57 billion globally, and they are expected to more than double in by 2023. Europe is an industry leader with 114 manufacturers and 2,495 operators of small drones, according to the European Aviation Safety Agency.

“There is a huge gap between the developments of drones and the need for clear European rules,” said Matthijs Van Miltenburg, aa Dutch MEP and the shadow rapporteur for the report for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.

“We need legislation about safety, privacy and data protection and it has to be future-proof and flexible, as industrial developments move quickly. Europe is already behind the curve on this,” he added.

But member states may not welcome the EU intrusion, with some wanting privacy and security concerns dealt with nationally instead. At least 11 EU countries have enacted legislation on drones and more are drafting it.

The risks drones could pose made headlines in December when one carrying mistletoe injured a diner in a UK restaurant. But there are additional risks, including to other aircraft.

“Emergency services helicopters operate at very low levels and they aren’t necessarily designed to withstand drone strikes,” said Paul Reuter, pilot and technical director of the European Cockpit Association, which represents 38,000 pilots. “Even a small one-or-two kilogram drone could fatally damage a helicopter and cause it to crash.”

Given that drones are already being used for such things as land surveillance and photography, privacy protections are expected to be a major concern.

“We have to think about data protection, because drones will collect enormous amount of data,”  said Mady Delveaux, a Luxembourgish MEP and rapporteur for the working group. “To whom does this data belong?”

This article was updated to clarify the position of Matthijs Van Miltenburg.

Protesters block Polish parliament

Standoff was sparked by a government attempt to curb media access to parliament.

WARSAW — Poland’s long-running political crisis took a dramatic turn in Warsaw, with the action playing out live on television screens in prime time Friday and continuing into Saturday.

Anti-government demonstrators blocked access to the parliament buildings and opposition MPs staged their own protest inside after the ruling party pushed through the annual budget in a vote without the participation of most of the opposition.

Polish opposition leaders called for days of protests in Warsaw and other Polish cities, saying the government led by the Law and Justice party is violating the constitution.

European Council President Donald Tusk, the former prime minister of Poland and an adversary of the current leaders, appealed “to those who have real power for respect and consideration of the people, constitutional principles and morals.”

Poland’s interior minister accused the opposition of attempting a coup by occupying the parliament’s central hall. Prime Minister Beata Szydło and Jaroslaw Kaczyński, the Law and Justice leader and de facto leader of Poland, had to be evacuated from the building early Saturday morning.

The crisis started when the ruling Law and Justice party pushed through rules earlier this week that limited journalists’ access to the parliament buildings. The government said the reporters’ presence made for a chaotic work environment.

Polish journalists have long had the run of the parliament building, conducting interviews in the building’s main hallways and easily interacting with MPs. Their presence has also led to embarrassments, with reporters filming MPs munching sandwiches in the debating chamber, sleeping in hallways or showing up for work drunk.

The opposition and most of the press were strongly opposed to the new rules, and opposition MPs blocked access to the podium in the main debating chamber of parliament on Friday.

In response, the speaker of parliament called for a meeting in a separate room. There he said that a quorum of 237 MPs had shown up. With most opposition MPs outside the room, the government adopted the budget — the most important bill of the year —by a show of hands. It also passed another bill slashing benefits for pensioners who had served in the communist-era secret services.

The opposition insisted that the budget vote was illegal.

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“We have no evidence that there was a quorum. Speaker [Marek] Kuchciński was not in control of the voting. There was no electronic counting,” Sławomir Neumann, parliamentary leader of the opposition Civic Platform party, told reporters.

Law and Justice insisted nothing was wrong.

“There was a quorum. The budget was legally adopted,” said Kaczyński, the leader of Law and Justice.

Law and Justice won the presidency and a majority in parliamentary in elections last year. Since then, it has taken a firm grip on the public media, purged the leadership of state controlled companies, and hobbled the country’s top constitutional court.

The party argues it is acting to bring down a web of corruption holding the country back. Its actions have sparked growing domestic protests and put Poland at odds with the European Commission, which has launched an unprecedented procedure against Warsaw for violating the bloc’s democratic norms.

This article has been updated to clarify that most opposition MPs were not present during the budget vote.

The Blues boss saw his side squander a number of chances in a 2-2 draw with Bournemouth which has dented their ongoing bid for a top-four finish

Frank Lampard admits his Chelsea side are not clinical enough at present, with a brace from left-back Marcos Alonso required to get them a point in a 2-2 draw with Bournemouth.

A lack of end product has been an issue for the Blues over recent weeks.

They dominated again at the Vitality Stadium on Saturday, seeing over 70 per cent of the ball and firing in 23 efforts on goal.

More teams

Only two of those hit the net, with Alonso rescuing a share of the spoils five minutes from time having earlier fired Chelsea in front.

Lampard concedes that more is required from his team in the final third if they are to cling on to a top-four standing in the Premier League.

He told BBC Sport when reflecting on stalemate with the Cherries: “We expected a fight and they gave us a difficult game but we should win the game, we had a lot of possession and chances.

“The character of the team was great, it wasn’t for the want of trying but we need more goals.

“Marcos Alonso has had a big week but I don’t want my left-back top of the scoring charts. I want our attackers scoring goals and they haven’t.

“We wanted to win, we should have won but it’s a difficult league. It’s that cut throat part of the season. If we keep having games like this and we are not clinical it’s tough.

“The way the season has panned out, we should be pleased that we are fourth but it means nothing at this stage. If we manage to get in the top four the achievement is huge but we are a long way from that yet.”

Alonso, who was also on target in a 2-1 derby win over Tottenham, gave Chelsea the lead against Bournemouth after 33 minutes.

Lampard saw his side shoot themselves in the foot just before the hour mark, with Jefferson Lerma and Joshua King turning the match on its head with two goals in the space of 176 seconds.

“We should win, we had many chances,” added Lampard, who suffered a humbling 3-0 Champions League defeat to Bayern Munich in midweek.

“We had a bad 10-minute spell where they scored and that I don’t like. I’m pleased with the character to get a draw but we should win the game.

“Against Bayern we conceded twice in a short space of time, it’s not the first time. Could it be a lack of concentration? Possibly from the players.

“People talk about the defence but if you are 1-0 up and leave teams in the game then one set piece can change the game. We should score more goals and then we don’t have that problem.”

Chelsea will be back in action on Tuesday when they play host to Liverpool in the fifth round of the FA Cup.

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Transparency groups target lobbying weak spot

NGOs say national delegations should be required to disclose lobbyist meetings.

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Transparency groups took aim Tuesday at what they say is a weak spot in the EU’s lobbying disclosure rules: the Brussels-based delegations of the bloc’s member countries.

The study from ALTER-EU, an umbrella group of transparency campaign groups, found that at least six of the 28 permanent representations to the EU had no record at all of the lobbyists they have met, while seven others were unwilling to provide information about who lobbied them and when.

The four permanent representations that did disclose their lobbying interactions — Poland, Romania, Ireland and the Netherlands — provided a first-ever look at the relationship between lobbyists and national diplomats in the EU bubble. The report showed that corporate interests accounted for 80 percent of meetings between 2014 and mid-2015, while NGO lobbying efforts made up 20 percent.

“This report demonstrates that there is a worrying level of corporate lobbying directed at the EU’s permanent representations,” said Vicky Cann, a campaigner for Corporate Europe Observatory, one of the NGOs which worked on the survey. “These national government offices play an important role in EU decision-making but in a way which is largely under the radar, making them an ideal target for big business lobbyists.”

Permanent representations, which among other tasks do the important preparatory work on EU legislation ahead of ministerial meetings, are under no legal obligation to disclose their contact with lobbyists and have traditionally been reluctant to do so.

The EU’s Council of Ministers has resisted moves by other institutions to extend transparency requirements to the permanent representations’ work. As a result, most national diplomats working for permanent representations are able to meet lobbyists who are not signed up to the EU Joint Transparency Register — something senior European Commission officials cannot do.

It is unclear the extent to which permanent representations of member countries are covered by national lobbying rules. New lobbying regulations in Ireland extend to the country’s permanent representative and deputy permanent representative; however, for other countries freedom of information laws do not extend to missions abroad.

The ALTER-EU report requested meeting information from 17 permanent representations relating to a period between 2014 and 2015.

Three provided all information of their meetings with lobbyists (Romania, Ireland and Poland); one provided some information (the Netherlands); six countries said they did not keep track of their meetings with lobbyists (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Sweden); and two refused to provide information (the United Kingdom and Malta).

A further five member countries (Austria, Cyprus, Greece, France and Italy) did not reply to ALTER-EU’s request for information.

Disclosure concerns

Both Malta and the United Kingdom rejected the NGOs’ requests for information, which were made through national access to information legislation.

A spokesperson for the Maltese permanent representation said the delegation had been asked to provide a full list of meetings and contacts with stakeholders over the course of 12 months — a request it considered too broad and one it was not under a legal obligation to accept. However, the spokesperson said that in most cases the Maltese government does respond to requests under the country’s freedom of information provisions and publishes the results online.

Other countries denied access to the information on the grounds that they did not keep lists of meetings with stakeholders. “We have no such list and have no plans to start one,” a spokesperson for the German permanent representation said.

A French diplomat also said there was no reason to hand over lobbying information. “We cannot provide a document which does not exist,” the spokesperson said, arguing that permanent representations were not decision-making bodies that deserved the scrutiny reserved for other institutions. “We are not the Commission, we are an administration. We do not make decisions, we can only pass along information and positions.”

But the NGOs argued that the transparency rules should apply to the national delegations. “To find that most permanent representations do not even keep a record of lobby meetings and, in some cases, even refuse disclosure of this basic information is shocking,” said Andreas Pavlou from the NGO Access Info Europe.

Some Brussels lobbyists said they would welcome greater transparency in how the permanent representatives deal with them.

“Being transparent is a more efficient way to gain access to people,” said Karl Isaakson, the managing partner of lobby firm Kreab. “And I would not mind having permanent representations in the [EU Joint Transparency] Register, even if that seems very unlikely at the moment.”

But Isaakson says he would not welcome a requirement for lobbyists to register in all 28 capitals in order to have meetings with permanent representatives in Brussels — as mandated, for example, by Ireland’s new lobbying legislation. 

Other lobbyists claimed that NGOs are focusing on this issue because they have been outmaneuvered by industry players in the effort to lobby the EU institutions and member countries.

“I sense that the grievance from the authors of these reports is that they are not able to get out from behind their desks and lobby themselves, which is what their donors are paying them for,” said Aaron McLoughlin, a senior adviser at FleishmanHillard who previously served as head of the World Wildlife Fund’s European Marine Program.

“It is about 10 times easier to get a meeting if you are from an NGO than if you are from an industry organization,” he said. “Yet the NGOs are losing. […] They need need to spend less time in internal dialogue and more time speaking with decision-makers in a constructive way.”

Deflated Steven Gerrard admits he needs time to think over his Rangers future after seeing Hearts dump his side out of the William Hill Scottish Cup at Tynecastle.

The Ibrox boss was crestfallen after witnessing his side falter again on the domestic front just three days on from their stunning display in Braga.

It means the former Liverpool skipper is staring at a second trophyless season since moving to Ibrox unless they can complete that unlikely march from the Europa League last 16 to glory in Gdansk.

Gerrard had hoped Wednesday’s win in Portugal would provide the spark to turn around their flagging season.

But Oliver Bozanic’s Gorgie winner means the Scottish Cup is gone, with the Ladbrokes Premiership title also out of reach after falling 12 points adrift of Celtic.

Gerrard confessed the Gorgie set-back was the lowest point of his 20-month reign.

Senior Ibrox sources insist the Champions League winner is not considering stepping down but when quizzed on his future, the Rangers manager gave an answer that will leave the Ibrox faithful worried he is preparing to walk way.

“I need to think,” he said. “The plan was to have a day off (on Sunday). I need to think hard about where we are at as a group. I need to do some real, serious thinking in the next 24, 48 hours.”

Asked if that would include his own future, he replied: “I just need to think. I need to think. I am feeling pain right now because I want to win here, I am desperate to win here.

“Looking from the side today, I didn’t get the impression that the feeling amongst my players was the same.

“I am not doubting myself. We have given these players everything, me and my staff have given these players absolutely everything for 20 months, held their hand on and off the pitch and improved everything for them.

“But it is tough when every other performance you feel the way you feel. It is tough. I need to analyse myself, for sure. This is the toughest moment I have had since I have come here.

“I think it will be extremely difficult in the short-term (to win trophies) because of where we lie from a league point of view. We all know that we have punched above our weight in Europe so far. This is what I need to analyse in the coming days.

“I’m very disappointed. It’s the lowest I felt since I came into the job by a long way.”

 

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Ralph Hasenhuttl thought the goals Southampton conceded in their 3-1 defeat to West Ham were “an absolute joke”.

Jarrod Bowen marked his first start for West Ham following a deadline-day move from Hull by firing the Irons ahead with a chipped finish in the 15th minute.

Southampton equalised in the 31st minute when Michael Obafemi converted a cutback from James Ward-Prowse.

West Ham, though, regained the lead five minutes before half-time as Sebastien Haller slotted in from a tight angle.

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Michail Antonio made it 3-1 in the 54th minute after being put clear by Pablo Fornals’ lofted pass, sealing victory for the hosts.

Hasenhuttl told BBC Sport: “I think we conceded goals that were an absolute joke. One long ball. We trained the whole week, we know what will come and cannot defend this ball. For me, simply not enough.

“If you want to take something you cannot give such simple goals. Simply not aggressive enough, not committed enough and if we play like this against a team that is in a relegation battle, then you are also very quickly back in the relegation battle, so pay attention.

“The opponent had showed that they want to fight for everything and we didn’t seem to be serious enough. We are only a winning team if we defend like they did today, and that was the big difference today.

When asked if the players think they’re safe from relegation already, Hasenhuttl replied: “If they do, they have a problem.”

 

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Mikel Arteta says Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was “gutted” after he missed a huge chance as Arsenal were knocked out of the Europa League in midweek.

Youssef El Arabi’s goal in the dying minutes of extra time ensured it was Olympiacos who advanced to the last 16 on away goals following a 2-2 aggregate draw.

The Gunners struggled to get going and fell to a 2-1 defeat on the night, though Aubameyang thought he had done enough to send Arsenal through when he equalised with an overhead kick in the second period of extra time, after Pape Abou Cisse’s header took the tie into an additional 30 minutes.

Aubameyang then squandered a glorious opportunity to spare Arsenal’s blushes after El Arabi’s decisive goal.

“He was gutted,” Arteta said after the former Dortmund striker missed the late chance.

“Obviously he scored a wonder goal that was putting us through in the competition, and with the last kick of the game, he had the best chance of the game.

“He felt very responsible about it, we will try to be right behind him. He has been phenomenal all season for us and now the players have to support him, I think his reaction after the game – to face the media and the way he talked, it was a very mature reaction from him.

“We are all very down, frustrated, disappointed, but my message to the players was that I am right behind them.

“I thanked them for the effort they put into the game, for the attitude and the personality they played with and the way they reacted after we conceded the goal.

“We tried, tried and tried again and completely deserved to win the game but there were aspects of the game that we have to dominate better if we want to keep competing at that level.

“It is part of the profession. We can fall and have disappointments, it is about how we react individually and collectively.

“Then my job is to try to convince them that in the process in which we are at the moment, there are a lot of positive things and as well things we have to improve if we want to much better as a team.”

 

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