What happened to CETA?

Now that the CETA free trade deal is signed between the EU and Canada, one can investigate without the dramatic overtones what happened.
First, the European Commission promised - in a reaction to protests, some of which also saw CETA as a trojan horse to the TTIP - that CETA will be submitted to national parliaments for approval. Voices were heard already before that one way of giving legitimacy to the European political process could be to submit European decisions - mainly legislation - to national parliaments. It has to be known that the Lisbon treaty already foresees a right of protestation for national parliaments (see for example: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271649945_After_Lisbon_National_Parliaments_in_the_European_Union or

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/the-secretary-general/resource/static/files/Documents%20section/SPforEP/Consultation_with_national_parliaments.pdf)

Draft legislative acts sent to the European Parliament and to the Council shall be forwarded to national Parliaments (each parliament has two votes, if they are bicameral, each chamber holds one vote and it is up to the national Parliaments to consult the regional Parliaments - this is a duty by Belgian law). They may send a reasoned opinion the Presidents of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission why they consider that the draft in question does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity Where these opinions represent at least one third (in the area of the area of freedom, security and justice, one quarter) of all national Parliaments the draft must be reviewed. If half of the national parliaments  protests, the Commission has to justify why it does not change the proposal. These opinions will be submitted to the European Parliament and the Council.
(Article 12 and Protocols 1 and 2 to the Treaty on the European Union.)

The EU has an exclusive right to sign trade agreements with third countries. If, however, an agreement is covering topics other than trade, this prerogative can be questioned. An analysis can be found here: A guide to EU procedures for the conclusion of intl. trade agreements.pdf
Thus, the Commission decided that the CETA will be submitted to national Parliaments for approval (it contains among others a mechanism for settling investment disputes. This system was subject to heated debates (although independent investment dispute resolution mechanisms already exist, like the MIGA associated to the World Bank. Left-wing groups, however,  were weary of the perspective that their state could be sued in front of a private court. The mechanism (both in CETA and in the future TTIP) has been improved but this was not enough for the protesters.

And so came that one regional Parliament of Belgium, that of socialist Wallonia, rejected the CETA. One small region (in a country having maybe the most complex political system in Europe, where the Flemish part would greatly profit from free trade while the French-speaking Wallon part's economy is ailing) almost torpedoed the deal of whole Europe - this caused a brouhaha abroad and frustrated the Canadian trade minister Chrystia Freeland (she was even said to be choking back tears - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37735409).

The background is more in Belgium's internal politics: "The reason why the Walloon Region is trying to block or at least delay the CETA is political only. The Belgian federal government is run by the right wing whereas the Walloon Region is dominated by the socialists. The problem for the Walloon socialists is that there are losing ground to the extreme left. Hence, it is critical for them to show that they are fighting the CETA whose benefits would only to large multinational corporations. All this fuss about the CETA has thus to be seen in the context of Belgian politics. Belgium has an extremely open economy and exports much more than it imports. We are net beneficiaries of free trade." says Damien Geradine, Founding Partner of EDGE | Legal Thinking, a Brussels-based boutique law firm specialized in EU competition law and intellectual property law and Professor of Competition Law & Economics at Tilburg University (the Netherlands) and at George Mason University School of Law (Washington, DC).

Anybody who followed the ups and downs while Belgium tried to form a government after recent elections (not just one but the last two anyway), can understand this.

The Commission finally succeeded to convince the Wallons to approve the deal. This is not the first time that  a vote first hindering EU actions is repeated  - it happened to Denmark on the Maastricht Treaty, Ireland on the Nice Treaty and Ireland again on the Lisbon Treaty. The Dutch and French no to the Constitutional treaty of the EU was accepted, but the project restarted and resulted in the (somewhat weaker and legally more complex but less strong) Lisbon treaty. It was, however, not just repeating the votes, the situation or the arguments have also changed, as explained in http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2015/10/19/asking-the-public-twice-why-do-voters-change-their-minds-in-second-referendums-on-eu-treaties/
There are two questions lingering: Will the Brexit vote also be repeated? What will happen to the TTIP? The latter question may be irrelevant, given that the TTIP faces much more resistance and that enthusiasm for it may fade in the U.S., too, if not already faded - and neither of the two presidential candidates is eager on it. No question that with Trump, we may bury it entirely but Clinton also treads carefully on it. 

The Schrems-Facebook saga continues

The Irish High Court turns to the European Court of Justice with a reference to preliminary ruling in the second case of the Austrian law student Maximilian Schrems against Facebook.
In the first, the European Curt of Justice invalidated in its judgment the "Safe Harbour" agreement between the U.S. and the EU. (Other "adequacy decisions" declaring that countries comply with European data protection principles, can be found here.)
This system enabled U.S. companies to self-certify and register at the U.S. Department of Commerce that they comply with EU data protection rules.
Based on the Snowden revelations, the European Court of Justice found that the "indiscriminate and mass surveillance" of the U.S. government agencies and the lack of legal redress for EU citizens (which redress was ensured for U.S. citizens) against illegitimate use of data by them is not compatible with EU data protection principles and therefore the Commission decision that companies participating in this arrangement don't have the right to use EU citizens' personal data based on this was invalidated.
An alternative was that the U.S. companies commit themselves through "standard contractual clauses" defined by the European Commission to ensure the same protection as if they were obliged by European Law. This is now also attacked before the Irish High Court, who decided to refer a question to the European Court of Justice. This was announced early June but the question is not available yet on the Court website.
Meanwhile the Irish High Court also endorsed some requests to testify in front of it as "Amicus Curiae". The U.S. also received this right. The representative of the U.S. will testify under oath and is not bound by U.S. secrecy laws.
The 8th June actually the European member states endorsed the "Privacy shield", the system intended to replace the "Safe Harbour". The U.S. ensured the adequate legal redress also for European citizens and thus - apart from the question of how indiscriminate and mass character the U.S. surveillance has - the main problem was declared solved.
The arrangement had no smooth ride neither in the U.S., where the republicans introduced last minute amendments to the bill, weakening its guarantees, nor in the EU, where the so-called "Article 29 working party", the community of national Data Protection Authority chiefs (which will become the European Data Protection Board, a much more powerful and institutionalised group after the entering into force in May 2018 of the new General Data Protection Regulation - a post about that will follow) and the European Data Protection Supervisor requested changes to the already agreed text and of course this was very difficult to make the U.S. swallow. Certainly, this "Privacy shield" will also be tested in courts. However, the changes in U.S. law will also influence the decision on the standard contract clauses, as their government environment has changed.
One interesting aspect of the U.S. rules on personal data access of the government is that they are valid in principle to subsidiaries of U.S. companies, even to companies outside the U.S. who have a subsidiary or important operations in the U.S.  This was, however weakened when Microsoft won a case in Ireland, and thus does not have to disclose data to U.S. authorities.
The opinion of the EDPS on the "Privacy shield" can be found here.

Miscellaneous

Although Sunday evening isn't the best time to blog, the last weeks were so full that it is worth reviewing some of the events.
As I write this, the first exit polls are out on the Greek referendum: they predict a narrow win for the "No" while the official data an overwhelming "No". No is no, so what is the difference? Well, an overwhelming "No" would give a much stronger mandate for the government (as counts progress, it seems "No" is over 60% - oh wait, what for?
No one knows (pun not intended). We will see, what the Greek government does - they also had several proposals on the table, the last two or three maybe not so far from the proposal of the Troika - which is off the table but probably would be acceptable for them again.
While we wait to see, let's talk about Hungary (and also about the U.S. Supreme Court). It's Pride weekend, and just before it, the SCOTUS (official abbreviation of the Court) ruled that same-sex couples have a right to marriage. And this stirs waves in Hungary. OK, the decision to save Obamacare by correcting the badly written law is not so relevant, but that Hungarian facebookers totally ignored the other decision (from early June) about a threat on Facebook, is somewhat surprising. A man was writing on Facebook (apparently in a rap poem - according to experts it was disastrously bad) about wanting to see his ex-wife killed. He was condemned by a court, and actually isn't off the hook due to the Supreme Court's verdict. But the verdict reinforced the "clear and present danger" principle. If the husband really wanted to have her wife killed and called others who could do it to do it, he is guilty (my simplistic interpretation). But if he did not really want it (here the "literary" expression comes into play), or it was unrealistic that anybody do it, he is protected by the freedom of speech.
Meanwhile Hungary is receiving almost as many refugees (asylum seekers) as Italy. And the government wants to seal off the Serbian boarder by a big and strong fence, costing 22 bn forints (itself sufficient to feed 14 thousand refugees for a year - although the decision to accept or reject their demand for asylum should be decided within months and a lot of them go further to the west). Let's forget about the money for the fake "National consultation" and the outraging publicity campaign.
What is more important that first a collection was started to counter the government giant poster campaign. The estimated cost was 3 million forints (as compared to a hundred times as much for the government giant posters), but within a week or so, ten times as much was donated by private individuals.
Then real actions started to emerge: groups of volunteers sacrificed their free time to help them, information leaflets were translated and printed (why only by volunteers? - the link is there, you can see what vital information it contains), food, drink (there is a heat wave also in Hungary) clothes, toys for children, medicines, blankets etc. etc. collected. The coordination runs of Facebook, even between groups in different locations to try to warn when a bigger group is due to arrive (they have to travel usually changing at least once but sometimes more - see also the leaflet). But the group is kept closed to exclude those who would only post rude comments (I see them on posts on articles dealing with the problem).
I should close now on an optimistic note - it is heartwarming what these, mostly young people do and tell about the solidarity they encounter - people bringing donations, coming to help, travelling dozens of kilometres to go to help.

Voting patterns again

Votewatch published the voting patterns in the European Parliament on the mandate for the EU-US trade agreement: The Hungarian EPP delegation casted the most abstentions, some French and German MEP-s from the EPP voted against see here There were some more votes against by members of the ESD group, also French and Germans. Another vote on an amendment showed the following: German and Estonian EPP members cast against votes and also most ECR and ALDE MEPs (except for French, Italian and Bulgarian delegations) opposed the exclusion of cultural and audiovisual services from the mandate, as did a minority of Members of the EPP (German and Spanish delegations, while most of the Italian delegation didn’t vote) and S&D (UK and Danish delegations in their entirety).

National sentiment and European Myth(s)

In a previous post I already talked about national sentiment. In the European Voice Tim King argues that the big disadvantage of Europe to the U.S. is the lack of common myths. His point is that even the rise of Europe from the second World War which he likens to the rise of the U.S. from the Civil War, is interpreted differently by different groups of European people. Nothing illustrates his point more than the debate (or I could rather call it non-debate) about the pre-war years in Hungary. In the Basic Law (replacing the Constitution) the ruling FIDESZ fixed that Hungary was not independent (using a term which suggests the exclusion of all responsibility) from the 19th March 1944 till the first democratic elections in 1990. The time before the German occupation is depicted as the ideal world. I.e. all responsibility for what happened to the Jews, the Roma, the political enemies, is declined. On the other hand, squares and streets are named after Horthy and statues are erected. In the abbey of Pannonhalma a bust of prime minister Teleki, the promoter of the first "Jews' law", the "numerus clausus" in universities, was erected. Horthy and the system is even credited with protecting the Jews and introducing the limitations, their expropriation as necessary to protect their lives. Some simply only talk about the period under the prime ministership of István Bethlen, who consolidated the country by taking a loan from the League of Nations (as the IMF is a specialised organ of the U.N., practically the legal predecessor of IMF), although the scandal of a large-scale French franc forgery also was in this period. The centre operating the schools now, a huge administrative organisation, is named after Kuno Klebelsberg, whose ambition was to overtake the neighbouring nations by educating the people better. He had a concept but this is somewhat antiquated in the 21st century. And these are the softer variations. However, these are the really dangerous ones as it is more difficult to counter their half-truths. In particular as these false myths are set up to feed national pride while it is much more difficult to present the complex reality in a way that it should also be emotionally appealing. A balanced narrative about what happened, how the treaties closing the first World War contributed to the second and how Europe was able to get over its divisions, would already be a big achievement. Maybe this could over time give rise also to a myth...

What we can know from PISA

Pisa test results usually stir waves when published and countries complain that their education systems are not up to the mark. This is true in particular for countries with Prussian school systems, like Hungary (which started modernising but is now set to slip back to more rigid solutions). Fewer people take the pain to look behind the results. The European Commission organised recently a conference about performance auditing , and one of the presenters was Andreas Schleicher from the Pisa project of the OECD. He outlined (At 177.17 of the Day 2 the webstream or if this link does not work, select day 2 here ; you can watch his presentation) some results of the analysis which may surprise us: excellent results can be achieved in countries which spend a lot or which spend less (per student) on education, the real question is what this money is used for. Only twenty percent of the variation in results is explained by the amount of money spent. So they looked at how Where teachers are not paid well and technical and infrastructural conditions are weak, the results are worse. This seems plausible. However, this means that there will be larger class sizes for the same amount of money per student. That's why Korea performs better than Luxembourg where they spend both a lot on education and Finland better than the U.S. who both spend less. And this correlation was proven for a lot of other countries as well They bought a lot of tuition time and gave also a lot of time for teachers to develop, so the proportion of teaching time is smaller. Methodology you can hear from 180.00, the comparison from 187.00. Another interesting conclusion, not from that presentation but from the PISA report : Over the period, there was a decline of two percentage points in the share of students in OECD countries who reported that students cannot work well during their reading classes. However, some of the countries with the worst records in this respect showed large improvements. In 2000,69% of students in Israel and 74% of students in Hungary disagreed with the statement that students can “never” or “almost never” work well during their reading classes; by 2009, this proportion had increased to 77% in Israel and 80% in Hungary. And this challenges the traditional truth that class discipline is continuously deteriorating. Instead of conclusion, let me quote also fro the PISA report: "Many of the world’s best-performing education systems have moved from bureaucratic “command and control” environments towards school systems in which the people at the frontline have much more control of the way resources are used, people are deployed, the work is organised and the way in which the work gets done. They provide considerable discretion to school heads and scho ol faculties in determining how resources are allocated, a factor which the report shows to be closely related to school performance when combined with effective accountability systems. And they provide an environment in which teachers work together to frame what they believe to be good practice, conduct field-based research to confirm or disprove the approaches they develop, and then assess their colleagues by the degree to which they use practices proven effective in their classrooms. Last but not least, the most impressive outcome of world-class education systems is perhaps that they deliver highquality learning consistently across the entire education system, such that every student benefits from excellent learning opportunities. To achieve this, they invest educational resources where they can make the greatest difference, they attract the most talented teachers into the most challenging classrooms, and they establish effective spending choices that prioritise the quality of teachers."