EU tells Iran to stop high-tech censorship

Iran should stop jamming TV, radio satellite broadcasting and the Internet, EU foreign ministers said yesterday (22 March). The possibility of retaliating by preventing Iran from broadcasting on European territory was rejected, however, with ministers declaring that the EU is against censorship.

At the request of Germany, the UK and France, whose TV channels including Deutsche Welle, the BBC and France 24 have been jammed by Teheran since last year, the ministers gathered in Brussels adopted a statement following a consensual discussion, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told journalists.

“The European Union expresses its grave concern over measures taken by the Iranian authorities to prevent its citizens from freely communicating and receiving information through TV, radio satellite broadcasting and the Internet,” the statement says.

In addition, it claims that the Iranian authorities regularly prevent their citizens from freely accessing, communicating and receiving information on the Internet, and restrict or block mobile telecommunications.

“Our protest is more political than real,” Kouchner said, adding: “We are against Iran jamming our programmes. Are we in favour of jamming their programmes? No, we are not censors,” the minister said.

The jamming of Western shows serves as a reminder of the not-so-distant past, when Communist countries jammed Munich-based US radio station ‘Free Europe’, which broadcast in the languages of the countries under Soviet domination. The novelty, however, is that this time around the jamming affects high-tech satellite broadcasting.

Almost 70 radio and television stations which transmit via the Eutelsat satellite to Iran were jammed on 11 February, the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, Deutsche Welle reported.

“The EU stresses that freedom of expression throughout the world is a universal right which includes the right of individuals to seek, receive and impart information regardless of frontiers. Restrictions and limitations on the use of new technologies have emerged as a key challenge to the respect for human rights in many parts of the world, undermining the potential the technologies have to promote freedom of expression,” the declaration says.

Kouchner expressed hope that the protest would be heard by the Iranian authorities. Protest movements in Iran are still strong, if not even stronger that during the anti-government protests which took place after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election last June, underlined the French minister.

Biden calls on EU help to face 21st Century threats

On a visit to Brussels yesterday (6 May), US Vice-President Joe Biden stressed the importance of the EU-US relationship in responding to 21st Century threats such as climate change and the fight against terrorism.

Speaking to the European Parliament, Biden said “much has changed” since late US President Ronald Reagan addressed the EU assembly in 1985.

Referring to America’s help in rebuilding Europe after the Second World War, Biden said Europe continues to be the United States “most important ally” and trading partner.

“It’s no accident that Europe is my first overseas destination as vice-president. We need each other more now than we ever have.”

Among new challenges, Biden cited climate change, Afghanistan and the threat of Iran starting “a nuclear arms race in the Middle East” just as the US and Russia were reducing their nuclear arsenal, something he said would be “an irony”.

That is why a missile defence shield is needed “to deter and defend against missile attacks on this continent,” he said amid applause (EurActiv 05/02/10).

“The past 65 years have shown that when Americans and Europeans devote their energies to common purpose, there is almost nothing that we are unable to accomplish.”

Call for responsibility

He also called on the European Parliament, which has won new powers since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty last year, to face up its newly-found responsibilities.

“Under the Lisbon Treaty, you’ve taken on more powers and a broader responsibility that comes with that increased influence. And we welcome that, because the United States needs strong allies and alliances to help us tackle the problems of the 21st century.”

“The world has changed. It has changed utterly,” Biden said, referring to the threat posed to citizens “by non-state actors and violent extremists.” This “scourge”, he said, could only be contained “if we make common cause”.

Biden called on the Parliament to back a draft EU-US banking data exchange deal as part of anti-terrorist activities, saying “the terrorist finance tracking programme is essential to our security”.

The so-called SWIFT agreement was rejected by Parliament the day before amid concerns that it would violate European citizens’ right to privacy (EurActiv 05/05/10).

But Biden said the two objectives could be reconciled. “I am absolutely confident that we must and can both protect our citizens and preserve our liberties,” he said.

“The longer we are without an agreement on the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme, the greater the risk of a terrorist attack that could have been prevented,” he stressed.
Positions

Reacting to Joe Biden’s speech, Dutch liberal MEP Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert (VVD; ALDE), the European Parliament’s rapporteur on the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme, said Biden had “struck the right tone and message of an administration that is willing to listen and not just lecture”.

Both the EU and US “agree on the imperative of reaching a mutually acceptable agreement as soon as possible to plug the current vacuum,” she said.

But she stressed that the European Parliament “cannot be complicit in any agreement that goes against our own laws”.

EU, US try to defuse Turkey-Israeli tensions

Tensions between Turkey and Israel escalated yesterday (5 July), as Ankara warned it would cut ties with the Jewish state unless it apologises for a deadly attack on a humanitarian flotilla on its way to Gaza or accepts an international inquiry into the incident. EurActiv Turkey contributed to this report.

“Israel has three paths ahead: It either apologises or accepts the findings from an international commission investigating the raid, or Turkey will cut off ties,” said Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, quoted by the Turkish press.

Nine people, all of Turkish nationality, were killed on 31 May, when the Israeli navy intercepted ships carrying aid and pro-Palestinian activists towards the Gaza Strip (see ‘Background’).

Turkey withdrew its ambassador to Israel, cancelled joint military operations and barred Israeli military aircraft from Turkish airspace after the incident.

Foreign media were quick to report that Davutoğlu’s statement was the first time Ankara has explicitly threatened to cut ties with Israel, having previously said it was reviewing relations with the Jewish state.

However, Turkish officials stressed the nuances of the statement, EurActiv Turkey reported.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Burak Özügergin, confirmed what Davutoğlu said about Turkey-Israel relations. But he also mentioned that “diplomatic break” does not necessarily mean that Turkey would not recognise Israel at all. Instead, the break would mean that relations would be affected “in a very negative way,” he explained.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said his country had no intention of apologising.

“We don’t have any intention to apologise. We think that the opposite is true,” he told reporters during a visit to Latvia, according to Reuters.

US, EU come to the picture

In an effort to patch up the dispute between its two allies, the White House announced that President Barack Obama is due to meet Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington today (6 July).

In the meantime, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini was quoted by French daily Le Monde as saying on Monday that he would visit Gaza “in the next few weeks,” together with French Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Kouchner and Spanish colleague Miguel Angel Moratinos.

The visit reportedly comes at the invitation of Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman, who invited EU representatives to monitor the softening of import restrictions in the Gaza Strip, announcing plans to allow “civil” goods into the enclave.

Frattini said he was worried about talk of “severing relations” between Israel and Turkey.

“It is better to turn towards the future […] and wait for the results of the Israeli inquiry [over the flotilla attack],” he was quoted as saying.

However, Turkey is insisting on an international inquiry and rejects the idea that the instigators of the killings should also be the investigators.

Speaking about the EU’s reaction to the flotilla attack, Turkey’s European Affairs Minister and chief EU negotiator Egemen Bagiş said the first reaction by Catherine Ashton, the Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, which called for an inquiry by Israel, had been “a joke” (EurActiv 10/06/10).

In that reaction, Ashton had called on the Israelis themselves to investigate the incident. But Bagiş added that the next statement by Ashton on behalf of the EU-27 had been better.
Positions

Şahin Alpay of Turkish newspaper Zaman Daily was clear in his view of what should now occur, saying “Israel must meet Ankara’s demands to improve relations with Turkey. But more importantly Israel must come to its senses and understand that it cannot assure its security by continuing the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people and by relying on military power alone, regarding as enemies all that disapprove of its militaristic policies.

If Israel wants to recover relations with Turkey, she should apologise”. If this were not to take place, Mr Alpay believes “relations should be suspended at least until a new government arrives which would apologise”.

Parliament to back new EU-US data-sharing deal

The European Parliament is tomorrow (8 July) expected to rubber-stamp a revised EU-US agreement on bank data-sharing, called ‘SWIFT’, that is set to give significant new powers of oversight to US anti-terror investigators. Some MEPs feel, however, that the ongoing saga represents “misuse” of parliamentary power.

The vote, expected to be carried by a large majority, will draw to a close one of the most heated debates of 2010.

The new deal, struck earlier this week (5 July), was backed by a clear majority of MEPs on the Parliament’s justice and home affairs committee, who said earlier concerns over the protection of citizens’ privacy had been met.

An earlier version of the agreement had been rejected by MEPs in February, forcing EU countries and the European Commission to renegotiate a deal with the US authorities (see ‘Background’).

The only major parliamentary group still opposing the new deal are the European Greens, who made a last-ditch attempt to sway their fellow MEPs yesterday (6 July).

German Green Jan Philipp Albrecht called on MEPs to hold out for a better deal, arguing that the new agreement – despite its concessions – was “premature” and would make it “difficult to anchor a high level of fundamental rights at the international level”.

“The EU now seems to be satisfied with the low level of protection in US law, in which legal protection by independent judges is replaced by the will of the administration, and ubiquitous surveillance is preferred to individual judicial decisions,” he claimed.

Under the new agreement, so-called “scrutineers” appointed by the European Union will become part of the US Treasury’s operations that examine the financial transactions of terror suspects. In the medium term, this new commitment will “guarantee the end of non-individualised transfers of data to the US authorities,” said German centre-right MEP Alexander Alvaro, the Parliament’s rapporteur on this complex brief.

Parliament sources speaking on condition of anonymity told EurActiv that Alvaro was right to be pleased, given that the Parliament had won “huge concessions” from the US.

What happens next?

The European Socialists, having been among those pushing hardest for a revised agreement, hailed the new deal as a success. Greek Socialist MEP Stavros Lambrinidis said that “instead of the ‘swift’ SWIFT agreement they were aiming for, the involvement of Parliament forced the Commission and the US Administration to negotiate a ‘good’ SWIFT agreement”.

The new agreement, while not perfect, “brought a new – and much needed – spirit of openness and cooperation in the American Administration’s relations with the EU,” he argued.

However, the Greek MEP cautioned that while the new agreement strikes a better balance for the EU, what happens next is also crucial.

Under the deal, European police agency Europol will be responsible for interacting with US authorities requesting EU banking data. Lambrinidis believes that Europol is ill-equipped to do this task alone and will require additional legal experts to protect the EU interest.

“Europol is hardly the ideal EU body to conduct the initial review of US data requests,” he argued, adding: “I therefore hope that Commission can devise a way to station in Europol a representative of the European Data Protection Supervisor to oversee those initial bulk data grants, just as we have succeeded in stationing an EU overseer in the Treasury.”

Misuse of new parliament powers?

In the broader context of EU power politics, opinions are divided as to whether the Parliament acted shrewdly or foolishly in so muscularly brandishing its new Lisbon Treaty powers of approval over international agreements.

Lambrinidis neatly explained the socialist line on this debate when he argued that the debacle “demonstrated that Parliament is a serious interlocutor that can exercise its new powers responsibly and effectively”.

However, the European Conservative Group (ECR), which is dominated by the strongly pro-Atlantic UK Conservative party and supported the original SWIFT deal, believes the Parliament exercised power for power’s sake.

An ECR source told EurActiv that the Parliament “misused its new Lisbon powers,” adding that it was “unfortunate that the US got caught up in this new experiment”.

The US has from the start approached the debate with a great degree of goodwill, and the Parliament has not responded in kind, they argued.

However, the ECR spokesman on civil liberties, UK MEP Timothy Kirkhope, nonetheless backed the revised deal, arguing that while it is “not perfect, we do not live in a perfect world”.
Positions

Centre-right MEPs Manfred Weber (Germany) and Ernst Strasser (Austria) argued that their group, the European People’s Party (EPP) “firmly supports this new Agreement following the changes introduced in order to guarantee higher standards of data protection, including a thorough European oversight of data extraction on US soil”.

“Negotiations were reopened to take Parliament’s final demands into account, such as the request for a binding twin-track approach to establish a European Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP) at the earliest,” they said.

Speaking in Strasbourg ahead of Thursday’s vote, European Conservative Group (ECR) spokesman on civil liberties, UK MEP Timothy Kirkhope, told MEPs who still opposed the agreement that while “the agreement is not perfect […] we do not live in a perfect world; that is exactly why it is needed. It is why we do not just have a duty to protect the data and rights of our citizens, which we have achieved, but also to protect their security and their safety”.

He argued that the new deal “has achieved a great deal compared with last time, including judicial review, EU oversight, review procedures and blocking mechanisms, and presents us with the future possibility of our own EU TFTP system. This agreement is undoubtedly more equal, more open, and more democratic”.

Parliament mellows on EU diplomatic service

The European External Action Service (EEAS) is to become official after the summer recess and start recruiting in autumn, it became clear after a key European Parliament committee gave its green light yesterday (6 July) to the EU’s diplomatic service.

Two weeks after the Madrid deal on the EEAS was struck (see ‘Background’), recommendations on its organisation and working methods, set out in a text by Elmar Brok (European People’s Party, Germany) were approved by the Parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

Under the most optimistic scenario, the European Parliament could have given its final blessing to the EEAS at its current plenary session, which ends on Thursday. However, as leading MEPs explained, more time proved to be needed for the political groups to digest the Madrid compromise.

Parliament’s negotiators Elmar Brok, Guy Verhofstadt (ALDE, Belgium) and Roberto Gualtieri (S&D, Italy) said that on the whole, Parliament’s requests had been fulfilled.

The Parliament’s services published a brief summing up the major decisions on the EEAS, where the MEPs had impacted upon the consultation process.

Substitution

MEPs who were reluctant to see civil servants (such as the executive secretary-general) deputise for Lady Ashton when briefing Parliament have won an undertaking that, where necessary, she will be replaced either by the EU commissioners for enlargement, development or humanitarian aid or by the foreign affairs minister of the country holding the EU presidency for Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) issues.

External co-operation

Control over EU external co-operation programmes (development and neighbourhood policies) will remain the responsibility of the European Commission, contrary to Ashton’s original proposal, which would have given more power to the EEAS.

Proposals for changes in development policy (European Development Fund and Development Co-operation Instrument) will be prepared jointly by the EEAS and the Commission, under the commissioner’s responsibility, and then jointly submitted for a decision by the EU executive.

EEAS: At least 60% EU staff

MEPs have also obtained an undertaking that at least 60% of EEAS staff will be made up of permanent EU officials. This will guarantee the diplomatic service’s Community identity. Officials from national diplomatic services – to constitute one third of the staff when the service has reached its full capacity – will be temporary agents for a duration of up to eight years with a possible extension of two years.

Recruitment will be “based on merit whilst ensuring adequate geographical and gender balance,” Brok’s report says. Measures to correct possible “imbalances” could be taken during the 2013 review of the service.

On 1 January 2011, a total of 1,525 civil servants from the Commission and the Council’s General Secretariat will be transferred to the EEAS. 100 new posts have been created. Recourse to seconded national experts will be limited to these experts, who will not be counted as staff from member states (one third of the total).

Headquarters

The EEAS will have its headquarters in Brussels and will be made up of a central administration and the 136 former Commission delegations.

The central administration will be organised in directorates-general comprising geographic desks covering all countries and regions of the world, as well as multilateral desks.

Political and budgetary accountability

Before taking up their posts, EU Special Representatives and Heads of Delegations to countries and organisations which Parliament considers “strategically important” will appear before the foreign affairs committee.

The HR will also seek Parliament’s views on key CFSP policy options and MEPs holding institutional roles will have access to confidential documents.

The service’s political and budgetary accountability to Parliament is guaranteed, with full budget discharge rights over the service.

The operational budget will be the Commission’s responsibility. Parliament will receive from the Commission a document clearly accounting for the external action parts of the Commission budget, including the establishment plans of the Union’s delegations, as well as the external action expenditure per country and per mission. The EEAS administrative budget will be in a new section X “European External Action Service”.

The foreign affairs committee and the budgets committee bureaus will have stronger scrutiny rights over CFSP missions financed out of the EU budget.

Basic organisation

The statement on basic organisation stipulates that there will a human rights structure at headquarters level and locally in the delegations as well as a department assisting the HR in her relations with Parliament. On crisis management and peace-building, the statement says that CSDP structures will be part of the EEAS.

Next Steps

After the summer recess, changes to the Financial Regulation, the Staff Regulation and the 2010 budget, on which Parliament has joint decision-making powers with Council, will be voted upon.