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-elections-2019/
[2]https://www.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/EU/XXVI/EU/06/97/EU_69760/imfname_10912605.pdf
[5]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Big_Fat_Brussels_Meeting_VI