Dialogue - Page 29 of 39

Digital Single Market Strategy: Implications for European audiovisual content

Dialogue , Op-ed
10 May, 2015

By Sally Broughton Micova

There were no real surprises when European Commission Vice-President Andrus Ansip and Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Günther H.Oettinger stood on the podium together yesterday [6 May] to launch the EC’s Digital Single Market (DSM) strategy. Draft versions and the evidence file had been leaked and commentators have remarked on a radical overhaul of copyright in the EU, but there seems to have been a slight retreat on the issue of territoriality and geo-blocking for content between the leaked and final versions of the document. A bit more caution is wise because there remain significant deficiencies in the evidence base on the incentives for European content production, and particularly the potential implications for the EU’s many smaller linguistic markets.

Europe was built on political courage

Every year, the 9th of May is celebrated across Europe by young and old, by cities and schools, by Europeans and by their non-European friends. They organize competitions, concerts, flash mobs, or activities with a more educational component such as identifying EU member states on a map or associating them with their national flags. Europe Day plays the role of a unifying European symbol, but it is also an important historic day that teaches the lesson of political foresight. On this day, 65 years ago, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman gathered international correspondents at Quai d’Orsay on the shores of river Seine to announce his famous Declaration, which would lay down the European Union’s foundations.

Echoes of 1992 in the UK (or, Reasons to be Cheerful for the UK Left)

By David Yarrow

The polls got it wrong – support for the Conservative Party was under-reported. The election produced a slim Tory majority. This majority was delivered by a moderate leader much closer to the centre ground than his backbenchers. Britain’s relationship with Europe subsequently becomes the defining issue of the Parliament, bitterly dividing the right. And five years down the road the Conservatives suffer their biggest electoral defeat since 1945. This is a description of the 1992 United Kingdom general election, but it could well prove a fairly good approximation of the outcome of the 2015 election too.

What-Does-Europe-Want Day

“It’s Europe Day!” my wife called out when I showed her the invitation flier to Kriek & Frites party on May 8-9 at Place Jourdan in Brussels. Neither the flier nor its typically Belgian offer implied any connection with the EU. Given my early school days were spent in the Soviet Union, I associated the dates rather with the end of World War II. So what’s this Europe Day anyway? I distantly remembered that it had something to do with the day on which France and Germany decided to unite their coal and steel industries, hoping that this would prevent them if not from ever again piling up tanks and cannons…

Wiretapping scandal in Macedonia casts doubts on judicial independence

Dialogue , Op-ed
5 May, 2015

By Jasmina Dimitrieva

The political opposition in Macedonia, led by the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), continues to publicly air wiretaps of government officials and other VIPs from the judiciary, the state secret service and the media, which have been obtained from an undisclosed source. The content has been rocking the country for the past three months as it unveils alleged corruption in all areas of public life. It appears that the law enforcement, the judiciary and the prosecutor’s office are being plagued by widespread political coercion and bargaining despite long-standing judicial and security sector reform funded by the EU and the US.

The UK General Election 2015: Political cross-dressing and the technocrat’s straightjacket

By Sean McDaniel

In less than a week, the UK will go to the polls in an election that has been billed as ‘the most important in a generation,’ and certainly the most unpredictable. In addition to choices over cuts in public expenditures to be determined by the party that forms the next government, there could be significant constitutional implications as well.

The Art of Looking Busy

By Marta Garayoa

Apparently, efficiency is losing its status in favour of exaggerated dedication; even if that dedication is just a façade and lacks consistency, because we can all guess what happens with the seat-warmers: they explode. None can handle that amount of pressure, lack of sleep, lack of free time… especially if all those sacrifices are not accompanied by a great amount of money, so they end up suddenly exploding, leaving the company, reconsidering all those lost hours spent warming someone else’s seat, all the missed plans, beers, potential relationships…

Welcome to the world, little princess!

She is finally here. Kate Middleton and prince William have presented us their second child at St. Mary’s Hospital in London, where Duchess of Cambridge has given birth to a baby girl, who has become the fourth in the line of succession of Britain’s royal family. There isn’t an official name for the baby girl…

Happy May 1st, International Workers’ Day!

Cover , Work
1 May, 2015

But remember that not everybody is celebrating… For more visit Eurostat online.

Malpractice in the Mediterranean

Libya is sick. And on 23 April, the European Council effectively wrote a prescription for ibuprofen. The absolute horror currently taking place in the Mediterranean- individuals packed onto a rickety boats like sardines in a can, trapped behind locked doors, drowning slowly as their last hope for a future escapes along with the last bit of air in their lungs- is symptomatic of the utter hell plaguing the failed state. A hell, bear in mind, that the West had a heavy hand in creating after the UNSC invoked the Responsibility to Protect, paving the way for military intervention and the subsequent ousting of Muammar Gaddafi.