“Why” you might ask, “is a greeny EU politics blog telling me to look for a piece of music I’ve never heard of, by a Colombian pop star?” Well, it is precisely that the song is not available in Britain, while it is available here in Belgium (and indeed around most of the rest of the continent). Does it not seem just a bit wrong that I can only buy this song with my Belgian bank account and address? If I try in the UK, no luck; the Dizzee Rascal infused hispanophone pop will have to wait.

Call me an idealist with a questionable taste in music, but I thought half the point of the diplomatic motorcades, Council of Ministers hoo-haas, European Commission, and all that which blights and brightens life here in Brussels, was to “establish an internal market”. If the music industry is still segmented so distinctly between countries, then surely, this cannot be called an internal market?

Now, my first instinct (once I had laboriously procured the Loca Freemasons Radio Edit), was to think that this sort of prohibition must be contrary to the treaties of the EU! How can the maintenance of strict, nationally demarcated markets for a whole industry possibly be allowed under EU law? Sadly, since it doesn’t seem that any governmental involvement to perpetuate the divisions exists, it looks like it is quite possibly legal.

But—and if it wasn’t already clear enough, from the fact that I have spent my evening with a copy of the treaties and European Court of Justice cases, that I’m a bit of a politics/legal geek, it will soon become apparent—I couldn’t leave it there.

Now, it does say in a Regulation that breaches of the rules on the internal market can be caused by people as well as governments, so there’s scope perhaps for the licensing bodies which enforce the national music market divisions to be breaking the rules. But this does all rather rely on a definition of what music is.

Not that I’m asking whether you could place a legal definition on whether the disturbingly bouffanted warblings of JedWard can be defined as constituting music; rather I mean, when I click ‘Buy’ in iTunes, what precisely am I buying? Is it a product (under one set of EU rules), or merely an intellectual property right to use and copy the music in a restricted set of circumstances (under another set of rules)?

In its terms and conditions, iTunes calls itself a service, and talks of me buying “a licence for digital content (“Products”)”. Amazon MP3 also mentions my “right to use the Digital Content”, once I’ve handed over some cash. So it sounds like, as far as the online stores are concerned, I’m buying a licence to intellectual property, which doesn’t count as buying a “good” under European law.

Thanks to this contractual nicety, the inclusion of private actions in the list of things which can cause obstacles to the internal market might not be justified in this matter (I’m certainly not  lawyer, just good at quoting case references), but assuming it is justified, would a concerted effort to segment the market for music downloads count as a violation of EU law? Well, assuming that my trashy Colombian pop download is a ‘service’, then quite possibly, yes; though the distinctions which need to be made here are far beyond me.

Of course, I’m in no position to engage a lawyer and bring a case to the ECJ, if it could even get that far (my non-lawyerlyness can’t be stressed enough), but to have a single market for media across the EU would be of massive benefit to European Citizens. Imagine not having to download pirated copies of songs by The Dø that you hear and love when listening to Studio Brussel over the Internet in the UK. Imagine being able to legitimately watch the latest episode of Come Fly With Me or Spooks when you’re sitting in a student flat in Holland.

Ok, so most Europeans don’t have quite the same cross-border tastes as me, but the prohibition on enjoying the music I want to listen to, and the films and TV programmes I want to watch has got to be as much against the principles of a single united Europe as you can get.

One solution to all this mess of barriers would be to simply ignore the idea of buying a licence for the music I listen to; plenty of people already do so, and thus free themselves of the boxing-in that media industries inflict on their customers. The thing is, I want to pay for the music I listen to. Maybe Madonna doesn’t need the few cents I send her way when buying a song, but the cost of developing, recording, and distributing music has to be covered somehow. Anyway, despite the fact I don’t sell any of it, I do produce content (this blog, my photos on Flickr, etc.), for which I appreciate my right to determine how other people can use it (most of it, but not all, is licensed under Creative Commons).

There is some hope, in that the EU has recognised the problems presented by a fragmented market in online music, but whether anything will be done… I don’t think it too likely. Maybe, whenever it eventually becomes an option, this would make a good subject of a Citizens Initiative.

If there are any legally minded people who’d care to enlighten me on the many points where I’m sure my attempts at legal thinking have gone disastrously wrong, then feel very free to use the comments section.

Finnish lake image from daneen_vol on Flickr. The Shakira statue image is in the public domain. Fishing rod image from tsmall on Flickr. Graphic  is licensed under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-SA 2.0) which applies only to this image. The copyright to this article is reserved, and it should not be considered to be licensed as the rest of this site.

I’m a bit surprised that Sarkozy is still pushing on, claiming support from other heads of state and government, despite the fact that he really does seem to be standing alone on this one. I suppose it shows a modicum of decency in the leaders in the EU that there have been public condemnations of the French Government’s actions, and it certainly is nice to see a Commissioner willing to publicly criticise a member state, but I can’t help but feel that it is all a bit too little, and a bit too late. I don’t want Europe to be tiptoeing around, with everyone playing diplomacy. The EU should be part of the rough and tumble of politics, just like any national capital or regional government. Maybe the next time a member state does something reprehensible—though obviously it’d be nice if whatever it was simply didn’t happen—the Commission and Parliament speak out sooner.

I could never quite bring myself to proclaim, “anyone but Barroso”, last year when the post of Commission President was being considered—what with the implications that I’d plump for Wilders or Griffin instead—, but still, I really can’t say that I think he’s any good.

When I think of Barroso, I think of the grey concrete and soulless boulevards of the European quarter of Brussels. He is a civil servant and a bureaucrat; I can’t summon any idea of what he stands for, and, perhaps more importantly, where he wants to take the EU. Maybe this could be seen as a good thing, for the EU to have a settled time to get used to its new system with Lisbon &c., but while the EU is doing the equivalent of breaking in a new pair of shoes, where does it leave public perception and opinion of the Union?

Various blogs and newspaper articles have suggested that the post-war idealism of peace in Europe, brought about by the unity between nations, is meaningless to most people of my generation. Frankly they’re right. I still think it is one very positive contribution of the European project, but it isn’t something that can motivate people to accept what is still an oddity in most people’s conceptions of what a state is, and where laws come from.

Ultimately I wasn’t surprised by Barroso’s first State of the [European] Union. It was as much of a feast of buzzwords as many have predicted, and it didn’t really seem to say anything astonishingly new or push forward a continuing vision of where the European project is going. Perhaps it will prove a worthwhile contribution to the political process of the EU, with a growing acceptance that the citizens, and thus their representatives in Parliament, are prime, with the executive reporting to them, but I have little faith that this isn’t just going to end up like the sort of mechanical and contrived show that so much of EU politics and governance manages to perform. The fact that the compulsory attendance of MEPs was discussed before, with members being infantilized by a requirement to press voting buttons to confirm their presence is perhaps testament enough to the unnatural character of such an occasion.

Image from the European Parliament on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons licence.

“… and enhances further the democratic functioning of the Union by providing inter alia that every citizen shall have the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union and that not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the European Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties.”

Extract from the proposal for a Regulation on the citizens’ initiative.

A bit of background first: the Lisbon Treaty included a provision for a citizens initiative, essentially being a petition by individual citizens to get whatever the issue at stake might be, considered by the Commission. Lisbon however, left most of the detail for later. Now is later, and the details are here.

With the current Council proposals, a minimum number of citizens (in proportion to the number of MEPs from a state), in at least one third of member states, will need to sign the initiative for it to be accepted. I don’t know about you, but I certainly would struggle as an ordinary European Citizen to pull off something like that. Even with a movement of some form behind the issue being dealt with, it’d take a lot of international coordination (I’d say more than Twitter could achieve) to get the initiative off the ground, let alone successfully submit it to the Commission. There’s also a slightly sinister provision that, “the Commission should reject the registration of proposals which would be manifestly against the values of the Union.” From a legal perspective, that’s not too controversial a statement. It means that initiatives which contradict the positive and sunny opening articles of the treaties—where all the good things the EU wants to do and thinks are important are laid down—would be dismissed without the Commission having to publish the initiative on its website, or give it any serious thought at all. From a non legalese point of view though, the language is unfortunate. Politically, it could be thrown back at the EU, for it reserving the right to dismiss things based on values that it, not the people, decides. And to citizens thinking of organising an initiative, it is as clear as mud in its meaning.

The citizens initiative, as it is being proposed now, needs someone with a fairly well developed knowledge of how the EU works. Most people don’t have that sort of knowledge about their own political systems, but they aren’t barred at the door for that ignorance. In Scotland, ordinary people (am I using that term too much now?) can start or participate in a petitions system which triggers discussion on the topics in a committee of the Scottish Parliament. Knowledge of the intricacies of this system, and a reading of the Scotland Act to determine the details of reserved and devolved powers. or the ‘values’ of Scotland, isn’t needed. An interest in a political issue (and isn’t everything political?) and an understanding of how to get people to sign a petition means that any person in Scotland can “participate in the democratic life of the” country, to borrow a few words from the Council’s suggestions.

The Citizens’ Initiative will be pretty good for some though. Lobbying groups, NGOs, and campaigning networks will love this. It offers a way to get the EU to, at the very least, think about something. This is good to some extent, but it means that it is wrong to go about thinking that having this wonderful Citizens’ Initiative helps to lessen the democratic deficit of the EU. I still support the idea of the initiative, but it is not something that many ordinary citizens will ever have a chance of using to further a cause dear to their hearts.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9NsqO9YkYs

“The Union shall establish an internal market … It shall promote economic, social and territorial cohesion, and solidarity among Member States. It shall respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity, and shall ensure that Europe’s cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced.”

To me, these provisions suggest that a copyright licensing system that reinforces national borders and locks some truly fantastic content (naturally not just TV, but also music &c.) into the member states would be contrary to the principles on which the EU is built. I have a feeling it’ll take a tad more than an EBU workshop with Tom Dice and his guitar to make cross-border copyright work.

I like Article 11, paragraph 4, but I’m annoyed with it as well. Why am I annoyed? I’m annoyed because I signed a petition calling for the EU to raise its carbon emissions reduction targets from 20% to 30%; while that’s all well and good (why not head on over to the petition yourself?), it could be so much better if I was signing the form of petition found in Article 11: a citizens’ initiative.

A bit of digging revealed that the European Commission has consulted on implementing the initiative, and will be drawing up a regulation this year, before actually unleashing this little bit of direct democracy in 2011. I know it takes time to make laws, and it isn’t a job to rush, but Lisbon has been around for ages, surely the fleshing out of the text of the article* could have happened sooner?

*4. Not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the European Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties.

Article 11, paragraph 4, Treaty on European Union

Leaving aside the fact that this only covers new-builds, not existing structures; will be so woefully late in implementation that its impact will be somewhat limited; and doesn’t seem to offer a definition of “nearly”, its nice to hear of a bit of greenery getting close to being passed.

Oh all right, I’ll admit I’m just grasping at the smallest fragment of news to satisfy my self-imposed commitment to blog every day for the next fortnight.

I blame the sheer number of presentations, essays, and exams which have thrust themselves upon me over the past few weeks for the absence of any updates to this blog, but with the final line of a dramatic interpretation of the Stability and Growth Pact, I have (briefly) been freed from all that, so I’ll have a go at keeping things a little more updated. What an awful lot has happened since my last post! Lisbon is ratified, a President of the European Council chosen, and a foreign mi…High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy appointed. But my question is, does anyone recognise the man in the photo above?

Obviously, those of us following politics right now know that he is President van Rompuy, but if a more nondescript character who stands for nothing could be thought of, I’d be very impressed. We now have a EU with what will probably amount to a visionless President, more of the same (ie. nothing of any note) from Barosso in the Commission, and a foreign minister who has little foreign policy experience. I know that the consensus way of filling these posts inevitably means that the most bland will rise, but this isn’t what Europe needs! It will ensure that no one outwith the group of politics geeks like myself, and others with EurActiv on our RSS feeds, will really care what is happening in Brussels, and the same old legitimacy arguments can carry on being wheeled out by all the Union’s detractors.

P.S. The title of this post should mean (if my Dutch is up to scratch) “the boring president”.

“I am the only candidate. I am the only one who presented before the elections”

Is it just me, or does that just sound like someone with a total lack of vision for what Europe should be, and what the Commission should do for the next four years? He gives the impression that he’s interested in power for power’s sake, and feels entitled to the office. Hardly what is needed to take the EU forward, and tackle the significant things it should be tackling.