In his first major initiative since taking up his new role on January 1 2010, European Council president Herman Van Rompuy has convened a summit for February 11 to prepare for the 2020 Strategy, a ten year programme for creating a more competitive Europe. But can these plans really achieve anything? Only if they lay [...]
What a frustrating time this must be for Sweden’s EU presidency! Stockholm’s ambitious plans to demonstrate its dynamic management of the Union are becalmed. Two days after confirming the Council’s candidacy of Barroso, prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt was obliged to announce that the European Parliament had postponed until mid-September its vote on renewing the Commission [...]
It seems that any major transfer of power from the national level to the European Commission for EU telecoms regulation has been scuppered by the Council of Ministers.
Commissioner Reding had threatened ten days ago to withdraw Commission proposals if ministers refused to go along with them, but the Council’s political agreement on November 27 was [...]
So Commissioner Viviane Reding has decided to play hardball over telecoms reform. Some weeks ago we discussed how the Commission’s proposed telecoms package would hand over extensive new powers to Brussels.
The European Parliament watered down these proposals in first reading, but it seems that the revised version to be sent to the Council gives little [...]
Nobody knows where the IRG begins and the ERG ends, Commissioner Reding complains to the European Parliament.
You can see just how irritated the Commission is that the Independent (telecoms) Regulatory Group (IRG) with 31 European members should have been registered as a private company under Belgian law, to do things which (she believes) [...]
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