EUROPP

May 16 2013

As the EU gears up to reform data protection rules, the rift between individuals and companies over online personal data processing is gaping.

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Posted in: Giacomo Luchetta, Justice and home affairs (including immigration, asylum policies etc), Kristina Irion

The EU is currently seeking to replace its nearly two decade old policy on data protection for the Internet, social networking and smartphone age. Its proposed reforms seek to deliver better data protection, legal certainty and trust, with the aim of enhancing the EU’s competitiveness. Kristina Irion and Giacomo Luchetta discuss their new report on Online Personal Data Processing and EU Data Protection Reform, arguing that the reforms may fail due to the real risks of the politicisation of data protection, the still fragmented nature of regulations on electronic privacy, and a lack of innovative elements in the proposals.

Data protection policy has developed from being a niche regulatory subject into a mainstream concern for policymakers, individuals and businesses. The issue’s salience today can be explained by the role that is envisaged for personal data in the emerging information-rich economy. The Boston Consulting Group has estimated that the volume of global data transactions is increasing annually by 45 per cent and in the near future 8 per cent of the EU’s GDP will be directly attributable to extracting value from information. When personal data is a most valuable commercial asset on which many online businesses thrive, companies’ stakes in any regulation that would restrict their ability to use personal data as they see fit are understandably very high.

As online technologies develop, connected mobile devices proliferate and the use of social media grows exponentially, users appear to divulge information about themselves and to accept a company’s terms and conditions with a quick click of the mouse. But it is not just carelessness that makes users surrender their privacy but the fact that consumers are often not empowered vis-à-vis online companies. Numerous studies have shown little consumer confidence in the way many online companies make use of personal data and resignation about users’ effective ability to control their personal data.

Source: Pixabay

Since the 1990s a distinct European approach to data protection has developed which is firmly embedded in a constitutional recognition of the right to privacy. Moreover, the “right to the protection of personal data” has evolved to become a modern fundamental right in the EU. In the face of ongoing transformations that have been spurred on by Information and Communications Technology, we may not yet fully comprehend the importance of these rights for individuals and our democratic culture even in a commercial context. Certainly, data protection should be enabling for modern business models, including those that require sophisticated analytical techniques, as long as this is in the interest of consumers and their ability to influence if and how their personal data is used is respected.

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Posted by: Posted on May 16, 2013 by Blog Admin Tagged with: data protection, eu, regulation.

May 15 2013

History suggests that Norway is in line for a change of government in September’s elections.

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Posted in: Elections, party politics and government across Europe, Sveinung Arnesen

Norway is due to hold parliamentary elections in September. Sveinung Arnesen looks ahead to the elections, arguing that the cost of ruling is taking its toll on the governing centre-left coalition. Despite the country’s oil-rich economy, evidence suggests that the incumbent government is still likely to lose support. He concludes that the stage is set for a centre-right government to come into power in September, unless they stumble like they did in the last elections four years ago.

The political scientist Helmut Norpoth once wrote that “as long as people have chosen political leaders through some form of election, it has been noted, almost like a law of politics, that popularity diminishes with time in office.” The general argument for the cost of rule is that decreasing support comes as high expectations of the newly elected leaders turn into citizen disillusion when they realise the gap between their expectations and what is actually being fulfilled. An alternative explanation is that the electorate changes governments so that the policy outcomes over time remain stable at the centre of the ideological spectrum.

Jens Stoltenberg, Prime Minister of Norway (Credit: Kjetil Ree, CC BY SA)

This regularity is also found in Norway, as there is empirical evidence of a general depreciation in support for incumbents. For example, Gallup polls going back to the mid-1960s describe a negative relationship between holding office and maintaining support among citizens. Whenever one or more parties from the left side of the spectrum are governing, the left bloc as a whole is punished in the poll ratings. Supported by the Socialist Left Party and the agricultural Centre Party, The Labour Party has now lead a majority red-green coalition in Norway for eight consecutive years. Even though more seasoned voters can recall both majority governments and long periods of Labour party reign, the norm in recent decades has been minority governments and fairly frequent changes of government – to be sure more often than every eighth year. For this reason, the sitting government is paddling against the current.

Out of sync with other European countries, Norway is experiencing an oil-induced economic boom almost unprecedented in the history of the nation. One might think that this would help the sitting government gain reelection, but for a red-green coalition, economic prosperity is not good news when it comes to winning votes at the ballot. In the research field of economic voting, it is known that voters punish failing governments, but do not necessarily reward successful ones. Therefore, the incumbent parties cannot expect to reap benefits in the form of vote shares when election day comes. What is more, voters do not fear for their jobs, something which could have helped the parties on the left win over the electorate in September. As paradoxical as it may seem, the economic situation is not likely to help the red-green coalition get reelected.

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Posted by: Posted on May 15, 2013 by Blog Admin Tagged with: elections, forecasting, Norway, Norwegian elections 2013

May 15 2013

In the wake of the EU brokered agreement, Serbs in Northern Kosovo are more likely to pursue pragmatic co-existence with Pristina

France has almost entirely failed in its strategy to prevent English taking over as the lingua franca of the EU.

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Posted in: David Fernández Vítores, Democracy, identity and culture

Prior to the accession of the United Kingdom to the European Economic Community in 1973, the French language held a privileged position as a lingua franca of the Community. David Fernández Vítores assesses the demise of the French language’s status and the failure of France to develop an effective strategy for preventing the advance of English. He notes that the country is now refocusing its efforts on consolidating the position of French in the legal sphere, one of the few areas where it still enjoys a privileged position in comparison to other official languages.

France is not only one of the founding members of the European Community, but also one of the main drivers of the integration process. However, this does not necessarily mean that France has systematically allowed the erosion of its political identity as a result of European integration. In fact, it has done the opposite. France’s attitude regarding the position of the French language in the EU is a good example of its savoir-faire. Since the early years of the Community, France’s strategy for safeguarding its language has focused solely on adopting measures aimed at promoting the language or strengthening the privileged position it previously enjoyed in the institutional arena.

Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Public Domain)

The main challenge to this privileged position came in 1973 with the accession of the United Kingdom, as well as Ireland and Denmark. In addition to concerns about the French language losing its importance on the European stage as a result of English becoming an official Community language, this first enlargement brought with it a proposal to reform the EU language regime. Interestingly enough, the proposal for reform did not come from the states in which French and English were spoken, but from one with a minority language in the Community: Denmark.

On its entry into the Community, Denmark proposed not to use its national language, Danish, in an effort to help reduce the number of official Community languages to just two – English and French – thus streamlining institutional functioning. To avoid favouring native speakers of these languages, the only condition put forward by Denmark was that French members spoke English and English members spoke French. However, both the United Kingdom and France rejected this proposal, which is altogether surprising, especially in the French case, since the measure would have involved legally recognising the predominant role of the French language that France had been advocating up until that point. Opposition from the Italians and Dutch also influenced the stance of the French. However, from a rational standpoint, France’s refusal can be understood because if it accepted the criterion of functionality as an excuse for reducing the number of languages to two, this same criterion could be used in the future to suppress French permanently, leaving English as the single working language.

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Posted by: Posted on May 14, 2013 by Blog Admin Tagged with: Anglo-French relations, English, French, language policy, lingua franca, subsidiarity

May 14 2013

The EU’s fading influence over Turkey is weakening the country’s democratic reform processes.

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Posted in: EU institutions, government and politics and enlargement, Firat Cengiz

The EU and Turkey have been in dialogue over the country’s potential accession since the 1980s. As Firat Cengiz notes, however, the EU’s influence has diminished following the accession of Cyprus in 2004, and the on-going Eurozone crisis. She argues that fading EU influence is weakening current reform processes aimed at drafting a new constitution and recognising the cultural and linguistic rights of Kurdish minorities.

Turkey is currently going through two historically significant reform processes. If successful, the reform processes will profoundly affect the country’s future governance. On the one hand, the Turkish Parliament is drafting a new constitution for the country. On the other hand, peace talks between the Turkish government and the Kurdish PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) are underway. In a breakthrough development, the Kurdish PKK has initiated the process of withdrawing its armed militants from Turkish territory.

Since the EU’s recognition of Turkey’s candidateship in 1999, constitutional reform and the Kurdish issue have constituted the two key pillars of the democratic conditionality relationship between Turkey and the EU. Turkey’s current constitution is essentially authoritarian, as it came into force as a direct result of the 1980 coup. The Turkish Parliament has amended the constitution more than a hundred times so far, primarily in response to EU demands. Those reforms improved the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms and limited the leverage of non-majoritarian institutions over daily politics. Nevertheless, the authoritarian approach is largely still alive, particularly in the constitutional definition of citizenship that takes Turkishness as its basis, thus denying Turkey’s cultural and linguistic diversity. Similarly, the state’s military approach to the Kurdish issue since the 1980s has exacerbated fundamental rights violations. Consequently, the Kurdish issue has received extensive critical treatment by the EU.

Credit: earthprod (CC BY 2.0)

Despite the key position of the two issues in the conditionality relationship, the EU’s role in the on-going reform discourses has been limited. The EU’s conditionality on Turkey has become gradually weaker since Cyprus’ EU accession as a divided island in 2004 caused a stalemate in Turkey’s accession negotiations with the EU. Since then other factors have contributed to the deterioration of Turkey-EU relations: some EU Member States, particularly Austria, France, Germany and the Netherlands have continued to voice their increasingly sceptical rhetoric against Turkey’s EU membership. The EU’s financial crisis and bail-outs have also rendered EU membership a much less desirable prospect for Turkey. After the Arab Spring and the Syrian Crisis, the focus of Turkish foreign policy increasingly shifted to the Middle East in light of the Turkish government’s primary objective of establishing itself as the leader of its region.

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