Why is this ?

keep to the Fen Causeway

For example, I'd be interested in if the EU will use its economic and political muscle to effectively encourage, for lack of a better word, the United States to improve its poor human rights record (torture, renditions, Guantánamo, etc) and environmental record (greenhouse gas emissions, etc)?

What is the EU prepared to do to answer the United States next aggressive war with Iran? Are war crimes acceptable if the United States does them as opposed to say small, economically insignificant countries?

What would these measures be? Incentives? Sanctions? Carbon tariffs?

Telecommunications data retention - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Directive requires Member States to ensure that communications providers must retain, for a period of between 6 months and 2 years, necessary data as specified in the Directive

• to trace and identify the source of a communication;
• to trace and identify the destination of a communication;
• to identify the date, time and duration of a communication;
• to identify the type of communication;
• to identify the communication device;
• to identify the location of mobile communication equipment.

The data is required to be available to competent national authorities in specific cases, "for the purpose of the investigation, detection and prosecution of serious crime, as defined by each Member State in its national law".

It does conflict with some arcane laws on personal liberties.

heise online - New doubts about the legality of telecommunications data retention

In an expert opinion the Scientific Services of the lower chamber of Germany's federal parliament, the Bundestag, have voiced serious doubts about the implementability into German national law of the controversial EU directive on the retention of telephone and Internet data. "There are serious doubts about whether the directive in the form adopted is compatible with the law of the European Communities," it says in the study which heise online has seen. These doubts on the one hand touched upon the choice of legal basis and on the other upon the compatibility of the directive with the fundamental rights recognized in European Community law, the study notes. Should the Bundestag nonetheless pass a law on the retention of telecommunications data the scientists engaged to advise parliament on such matters fear that such an Act would inevitably in addition raise the issue of incompatibility with the basic rights to informational self-determination and the privacy of telecommunications.

Lets not forget it is a part of the internal market. Nothing to do with terrorism or crime.

Press Freedom Under Attack: Big Brother Eyes German Journalists - 2 - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

The fact of the matter is that proponents of the directive pulled a fast one at the EU level. Instead of calling the data retention regulations a crime prevention initiative, they billed it as a series of measures to foster the internal market.

There was a special reason behind this labeling switcheroo. A framework decision on combating crime would have required a unanimous vote by the Council of Ministers. This trick made it possible to sidestep small countries like Ireland and Slovakia.

I think I have seen somewhere that the switcheroo also lowered the EPs influence on the matter, but I lack good links for that.

It would also appear that this matter conflicts with Article 8 in the European Convention on Human Rights.

European Convention on Human Rights - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Article 8 - right to respect for private life

Article 8 provides a right to respect for one's "private and family life, his home and his correspondence", subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society". This article clearly provides a right to be free of unlawful searches, but the Court has given the protection for "private and family life" that this article provides a broad interpretation, taking for instance that prohibition of private consensual homosexual acts violates this article. This may be compared to the jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court, which has also adopted a somewhat broad interpretation of the right to privacy. Furthermore, Article 8 sometimes comprises positive obligations: whereas classical human rights are formulated as prohibiting a State from interfering with rights, and thus not to do something (e.g. not to separate a family under family life protection), the effective enjoyment of such rights may also include an obligation for the State to become active, and to do something (e.g. to enforce access for a divorced father to his child).

Main points would be allowing the EP and the media to receive documents upon request, the way this works in the US, and in addition allowing the EP to 'open up' pre- and post- legislation procedures in COREPER and through comitology to the public or at least themselves (say, by a parliamentary committee vote).

The sense of exclusion and disenfranchisement is almost total. So an interesting question would be to ask what the 'quite senior staff' plan to do about this.

And if they had to explain to an ordinary non-politician in a single sentence what the EU is for, what would they say?

More background on the project here: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/albena_simeonova/2007/10/an_error_of_seismic_proportions.html

The Italian government has challenged Directive 38 (right to move and reside freely) as being too weak to handle massive population displacement within the Union.

The commission has already replied that they consider the present rules and funds adequate to deal with integration. Commission Vice-President Franco Frattini declared that there were 273,000 Romanians legally present in Italy before Romania entered the Union. Critics replicated that the Romanian population in Italy has ballooned to over 306,000 since last January although that reflects those that have been facilitated to take residency or go legal precisely because Romania is now in the Union. (Only Spain is preferred where 555,000 Romanians now reside).

There are a few precisions to be made. Not all Union states (Great Britain and Ireland) belong to the Schengen zone, while two non-members, Iceland and Norway do belong.  On December 21st, all 2004 members will become part of the Schengen zone: Malta, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. A date has yet to be set for the entry of Bulgaria and Romania in the Schengen zone.

My personal take on the matter for what it's worth. 1) The immigration problem in Italy is overblown. It's been around for at least two decades and is as physiological as elsewhere. The real danger is that it's the battle horse of the rightwing, ends up heavily influencing public opinion and consequently the government. 2) The strange Italian policy of relegating Rom to camps has in no way helped integration. It's based on the false premise that the Rom are nomads. And as much as I may like the nomad mystique, it's no justification for creating ghettos where, for example, Serbian Muslims are forced to cohabit with Romanian Orthodox Rom. The camps are hell.

Be that as it is, any feeback on this issue will be welcome in the days to come.

what abut helping t implement the Finn model?

What about a model to start filtering out the bad teachers, controlling resonsability with parents? Implementing different curriculum for different people?

what about gettign serious about formation cuuricula (ciclos formativos)...

And of course to the conomic guy.. you can ask how to keep a strng EU economic policy if te oil gets to 300$.. do they really have a back up plan for keeping inlation udner cotnrl (transport of goods without using oil)... and what to do witht he displacemnts inteh car industry?.

As a first raw top of my head questions...

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

And DGEF would be damned if they let slip anything on the gas monopsony... but some people in my circles start to talk about it as a possibility (no probability yet).

Any luck?