European Union

For France's over three million 'precarious workers' the retirement age has long been 67 — if they ever do retire.

Coming to Europe to work from outside the EU is hard. Despite dramatic labour shortages across sectors and EU countries, work permits for non-EU workers are few and those that exist often leave workers at the mercy of exploitative employers.

Meanwhile, in Brussels and Berlin talks are expected to intensify after Germany threw a spanner in the works last week on a bill to ban the sale of new combustion-engine cars and vans in the EU from 2035.

Belarus' jailing of a Nobel-prize winning activist was a "fake" judgment in a "sham trial", the EU's top diplomat has said, amid threats of further sanctions against the regime in Minsk.

Pro-transparency MEPs are asking probing questions into possible conflict of interest between a senior EU commission official and Qatar, following revelations his business class trips were paid by Doha while negotiating a market access deal for its national airline.

Corporate profits have been the dominant driver of inflation since the Covid-19 pandemic, yet the ECB consistently is more concerned about labour costs spiralling out of control.

Failure to urgently reconsider its support for Russia's war will further damage China's relations with the West and the global community, which would ultimately be disastrous for its economy and international standing. However, China could still choose another path.

Committee and political group meetings, Brussels

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Judicial statistics 2022: proceedings marked by the major issues facing today’s world (the rule of law, the environment, the protection of privacy in the digital era and so forth) and by the restrictive measures adopted by the European Union in the context of the war in Ukraine

LONDON, MARCH 2019: Hundreds of thousands marched in favour of EU membership.

For all the UK’s five decades in the EU, most Britons were happy for us to stay in. They didn’t want us to leave.

The issue was settled in the 1975 referendum when, by a massive 2-to-1 landslide, the electorate voted to remain in the European Community.

In the years that followed, calls to leave were on the far side lines of politics.

Yes, Brexiters will argue that the 2016 referendum settled the issue for Brexit. But it didn’t really.

Unlike in the 1975 referendum, when all the four countries of the UK positively voted to stay in the European Community, in 2016 half of them didn’t.

And whilst the margin win for Remain in the 1975 referendum was a stonking 35%, in 2016, the margin win for Leave was an abysmal 4%.

A mere 37% of the UK electorate gave their support for Brexit in 2016. A minority, which did not reflect the true feelings of most of the country, and certainly not all the countries of the UK.

Today, poll after poll show that a significant majority of British voters think Brexit is a mistake, and they would now vote to rejoin.

If the 2016 referendum had been held just a year or two earlier, polls indicate that Remain would have won by a landslide, just like in 1975.

Two years before the referendum, in 2014,  Ipsos UK polling showed that Britain’s support for wanting to remain in the EU was the highest it had been in 23 years – 56% in favour of remain, just 36% for leave.

This, despite the apparent rise of UKIP, that the Tories and Labour seemed so scared about.

One year before the referendum, in 2015, the Ipsos poll showed that support for continued EU membership was even higher – a staggering 61% in support of remaining, with just 27% supporting leave.

The 2016 referendum now looks like an aberration, a statistical quirk that didn’t, and now certainly doesn’t, represent the nation’s feelings as a whole.

Every year since the EU referendum, hundreds of thousands of pro-EU supporters have marched in London and other cities.

In March 2019, it’s estimated that the People’s Vote march in London attracted over a million marchers demanding a new vote on Brexit.

Brexiters, be honest: your side never could, and never did, attract such numbers for a pro-Brexit demonstration; not even a small fraction of such numbers.

Why? Because Brexit only ever had minority support, and today, that support has collapsed.

Of course, Britain now needs a new vote on Brexit.

In a democracy, no decision is permanent, and any decision can be changed if that has the support of the electorate.

Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer: Are you interested to know today’s ‘will of the people’? Then ask us.

• Video: Every British Prime Minister from 1957 to 2016 wanted the UK in the European Community.

• We miss EU – short video



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The post Britain is naturally pro-EU. Read why. appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Who defends Putin's interests in Brussels, how, and why: An investigation into four years' of data by Novaya-Europe names MEPs who loyally vote along pro-Russian lines.

The European Parliament's environment committee voted to end so-called 'super greenhouse gases' — used in cooling systems power transmission stations.

As the body count continues to rise from the Crotone shipwreck off the Calabria coast, authorities in Italy are looking for who to blame. At least 68 people are now confirmed dead, including children, after a 20-metre boat sank.

The pandemic, war, and inflation have only worsened a situation that already required urgent action. MEPs and NGOs fear that the lack of binding rules for member states will not ensure that those most in need are actually covered.

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

The unveiling of the Windsor Framework this week was important in many ways.

Not only did it provide a set of solutions to the most pushing and tricky problems facing the Northern Ireland Protocol, but it also marked a return to more conventional modes of British diplomacy towards the EU.

To watch Rishi Sunak and Ursula von der Leyen at their press conference on Monday speaking in not only warm tones but also in very coordinated language, as they sought to generate (successfully) buy-in for a package of measures that had been put together under close secrecy.

As someone observed in my presence this week, no more of the leaking and briefing of the Johnson period, when everyone had an agenda and was just using the issue to get ahead.

Even if we still await a final confirmation of acceptance from both Tory backbenchers and the DUP, the signs are that this is the only game in town: evolving the Protocol into the Framework and (hopefully) letting everyone focus on further refinements to its operation and on other points of UK-EU cooperation.

So it matters.

But it’s also fair to say that the drafters of the Framework have decided to go for the ‘let’s make life not easy for the casual reader” approach.

Partly that’s because of the necessary mix of political statements and legal work, but it also conveniently makes it much harder for critics to point to obviously unacceptable language.

With that in mind, I’ve been working on trying to get a clearer picture of what’s going on.

My first graphic today organises the 21 documents by their status and effects: as you’ll see, much of this is about political clarifications and unilateral actions to resolve points.

There is one Joint Committee Decision that is crucial, and we’ll come back to that in coming weeks, not least to explore the new mechanisms of the Stormont Brake and the question of whether the CJEU’s role has actually changed at all (spoiler: not obviously).

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic117

Secondly, I took a quick go at the most significant obstacle to the Framework’s successful agreement and implementation: DUP approval for it.

Note that even if the DUP accepts the Framework, that does not necessarily mean it will either return to the Assembly or form an Executive under a Sinn Fein First Minister, even if the Stormont Brake is designed to get them to do exactly that.

Given that a functioning Executive is at least as important to Downing Street as making the Protocol work, the DUP’s decision matters.

Their seven tests from 2021 are still their baseline and as you’ll see while the Framework has indeed made progress on all points, none of them are unambiguously resolved to narrow readings of the DUP’s demands.

So still things to be played for and debates to be had.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic116

If you have some aspect of the Framework you’ll like me to work on, just drop me a line and I’ll be happy to give it a go.

The post Starting to unpack the Windsor Framework appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

559 employees of TNT Belgium at Liège Airport who lost their jobs following a transfer of operations to Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport should receive €1.9 million in EU aid.
Committee on Budgets

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

559 employees of TNT Belgium at Liège Airport who lost their jobs following a transfer of operations to Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport should receive €1.9 million in EU aid.
Committee on Budgets

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP