tl;dr
The political groups and Member States are still negotiating the next
Commission President. The committee appointments will become public next
week. Meanwhile work on the transposition of the copyright reform is
picking up across Europe.
This and previous reports on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor
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Dust Settling… Slowly
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Unlike national parliaments, in Brussels it can take a while to know the
strength of each political group. The reason is that many MEPs are elected
from national parties with no prior EU-level affiliation. So there is a lot
of wooing and negotiating going on. We can now work with almost final
numbers:
*EPP Group (center right) - 181 (down 35)
*S&D Group (social democrats) - 153 (down 35)
*Renew Europe (rebranded liberals & Macron) - 108 (up 39)
*Greens/EFA (Greens, Pirates, Regionalists) - 75 (up 23)
*Identity and Democracy (Salvini, Le Pen & co) - 73 (up 37)
*ECR (UK Conservatives, Polish PiS et al.) - 62 (down 15)
*GUE (radical left) - 41 (down 11)
The Italian 5 Star Movement and Farage’s Brexit party failed to agree on a
joint group this time around and are sitting as non-inscrits, which means
less staff, less talking time and fewer chance to lead on files. They may
form a group at any time.
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Mathematically majorities could be found even by just adding up EPP, S&D
and Renew Europe. [1] However, if you follow the EP you will know that many
MEPs don’t vote with their groups, which is why broader support is being
looked for. Currently the four largest and pro-European groups (EPP, S&D,
RE, Greens) are trying to negotiate something like a “work programme” and
agree on key issues they will push for together. This has never been tried
before, as the EP depends on the Commission for initiating legislation. We
are not sure what will come out of it, but it is interesting to observe the
EP trying to “grow up”.
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Committee members and chairs will be announced next week.
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We still have no idea who is going to be the new Commission President, as
the lead candidates don’t seem to have a majority. The political deal that
one of the lead candidates in the elections has to be Commission president
(instead of a back-room nomination) is being heavily torpedoed by Macron’s
government. The person must get the support of a majority of Member States
and of a majority of the Parliament. We know that Commissioners Vestager
and Commissioner Gabriel (DG CNCT) will stay on, but we can’t say which
portfolio they will receive.
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E-Privacy
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The E-Privacy file, which will rewrite the rules for cookies, tracking and
messaging, was stuck for quite a while because the Council and Parliament
positions are too far apart. Now the Finnish Presidency is trying to get
things moving again by asking Member States to flag the parts they find
most problematic. [2]
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Privacy Shield
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Privacy Shield is an agreement between the EU and US that allows services
to transfer personal data of their users across the Atlantic. It is
basically a certificate by which the European Commission attests that the
USA are a “safe” country when it comes to data protection. The prior such
agreement was therefore called “Safe Harbour” in Europe. It was declared
invalid by the Court of Justice of the EU, because the judges agreed with
plaintiff Max Schrems that there is no way for EU citizens to defend their
data protection rights in the US. The US Senate now confirmed and filled
the position of “Ombudsperson for EU-U.S. Privacy Shield”, someone EU
citizens can petition. [3] The new agreement is again being challenged in
court. [4]
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Transposition of Copyright Directive
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We know of government actions and interaction in the following countries:
AT, BG, EE, CZ, FI, FR, DE, IT, NL, SE, UK
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We have people already working on transposition in the following countries:
AT, BE, BG, CZ, DK, EE, FI, FR, DE, GR, IE, NL, PL, PT, SK, SI, ES, SE, UK
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If you like to join the national working groups, drop me a line. If you
know people, especially in Cyprus, Lithuania and Liechtenstein, who are
keen on copyright, please get in touch! :)
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Big Fat Brussels Meeting vol. VI
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June is the month when Europe comes to Brussels! We had many of our dear
friends from all over EU over in our offices to discuss the post
EU-election aftermath, but also reflect on the copyright reform trajectory
and plan initial transposition activities.
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The meeting was very lively and left us positively exhausted, pondering on
questions such as "what gets you up in the morning?" and how we can talk to
extremist elected representatives without normalising the presence of the
agenda in public discourse. We were also happy to see that there will be
many meetings and actions by the participants, related to the upcoming
transposition of the copyright directive into national legal frameworks. [5]
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As per request we vow to include more pictures of goats and kittens in
future events.
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Strategy for Advocacy
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As you know, our movement is busy devising its strategy 2030 in 9 key areas
[6], one of them being advocacy. That one is quite a challenge, as there is
no one size fits all approach on how we make the world a better place with
free knowledge. Throughout the summer you can also weigh in with comments
and insights - simply go to the scoping document [7] and provide feedback
and ideas how to best address the most pressing questions.
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[1]
https://www.politico.eu/2019-european-elections/european-parliament-electio…
[2]
https://www.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/EU/XXVI/EU/06/97/EU_69760/imfname_10912605…
[3]
https://www.huntonprivacyblog.com/2019/06/24/senate-confirms-keith-krach-wi…
[4]
https://iapp.org/news/a/eu-high-court-hearings-to-determine-future-of-priva…
[5]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Big_Fat_Brussels_Meeting_VI
[6]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy
[7]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Co…
Hello, All:
Is anything happening in Europe or elsewhere to try to make it
easier for governments to censor the internet?
I ask in part because I just posted a comment to the strategy
discussion about "Revenue Streams" suggesting we might be able to get
major philanthropies to fund development of noncommmercial Wikisocial
that social activist groups could help popularize to counter the
Balkanization and exploitation of the international body politic by
commercial media, especially social media like Facebook.[1]
I posted something on this two years ago to Wikiversity,[2] and I
gave a lightning talk on it at Wikimania 2018.[3] I'm seeing more
evidence that it's needed and that people working for social change
might see how leaving Facebook for some kind of Wikisocial could help
them become more effective. Tomorrow, I plan to post similar comments
with with the "Partnerships" discussion.
However, I'd be please to hear your thoughts on this.
Thanks,
Spencer Graves
User:DavidMCEddy
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/20…
[2] https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Everyone%27s_favorite_news_site
[3]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Countering_the_Balkanization_of_the…