The highs and the lows (original) (raw)
2013 was the year in which the eurozone crisis was no longer the dominant theme – although, as Cypriots can attest, the single currency was far from secure. As the year drew to a close, the focus moved from the EU’s long-term budget to 2014, when a new European Parliament and European Commission will take office. We look at how the year unfolded.
January 8, 2014 8:50 pm CET
January
As Ireland began its presidency of the European Union’s Council of Ministers, its nearest neighbour was causing a stink. David Cameron, the UK’s prime minister, under pressure from Eurosceptics in his own party and the anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party, gave a speech in which he sought to re-write the UK’s relationship with the EU. He called for an ‘in-out’ referendum on EU membership in the first half of the next British parliament (between 2015 and 2017), and in doing so opened up the possibility of the UK becoming the first country ever to leave the Union.
Cameron based his speech (delayed by a week because of a hostage crisis in Algeria) on the expectation that the EU would embark on some kind of reform through treaty change after the elections to the European Parliament this year. He said he would argue in those treaty negotiations for a major repatriation of powers.
Although there were some supportive words from EU politicians, the response was mostly negative. Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, predicted that Cameron’s speech “will not impress many of the UK’s European partners”, while François Hollande, France’s president, told MEPs in early February that no member state could “cherry-pick” the EU policies that suited.
High on the list of foreign-policy concerns for the EU at the beginning of the year was Mali, after France sent in troops in response to a military offensive by Islamists. At an international donors’ conference in May, the EU promised to provide €1.35 billion to help Mali recover from its security, political and humanitarian crises.
There was a change at the top of the Eurogroup (the monthly meeting of the eurozone’s finance ministers) when Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister, replaced Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, who had been the Eurogroup’s president since the post was created in 2005.
There was a sting in January’s tail when a report by the European Food Safety Authority claimed that a pesticide widely used throughout the EU could be causing the bee population to decline. There were immediate calls for the substance to be banned. At a meeting at the end of April, member states failed to block a proposal to ban three types of seed treatment pesticides that it was feared may be harmful to bees. A majority of member states – 15 – voted to approve the Commission’s proposal. Although this was not enough to achieve a qualified majority based on weighted voting, the result gave the Commission a mandate to enact the ban.
Milos Zeman scored a comprehensive victory in a presidential election in the Czech Republic. Zeman, who was Czech prime minister between 1998 and 2002, defeated Karel Schwarzenberg, the foreign minister. Zeman took office on 7 March.
Germany succeeded in changing the content of a European Commission proposal on the liberalisation of railways. The Commission withdrew an element of the proposal that would have obliged member states to separate the companies that run train services from the companies that own and manage the tracks. The idea was fiercely opposed by Deutsche Bahn, Europe’s biggest rail company.
February
In the early hours of 8 February, leaders of the EU’s member states emerged from 15 hours of negotiations with a deal on the headline figures of the EU’s next long-term budget (2014-20). Spending commitments would not exceed €960 bn, they decided, while actual payments would be capped at €908bn. That was exactly what Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, had wanted, and exceeded the demands of some of the EU’s budget hawks. For the first time, the EU’s budget had gone down rather than up. No matter what their position was before the talks, every EU leader claimed to be delighted with the result. It “was one of the happiest days of my life”, said a rather excited Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister. Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark’s prime minister, had threatened to veto the budget unless Denmark was added to the list of rebate beneficiaries. She won €130m per year. The budget ball was now firmly in the European Parliament’s court.
The budget deal meant that stalled talks on reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) could be re-started. EU leaders had decided that overall CAP spending for 2014-20 would be reduced by 13% compared to the 2007-13 period.
The Bulgarian government led by Boyko Borisov resigned on 20 February after days of increasingly violent protests against rising energy bills. The country’s energy regulator – later sacked by Borisov – had ordered a 13% hike in bills back in July 2012, but the full effects were not felt until winter bills arrived. Borisov, of the centre-right GERB party, later rejected a request by President Rosen Plevneliev to form an interim administration. That led to snap elections on 12 May at which there was a record low turnout (51.3%) and no clear winner. On 29 May, Plevneliev succeeded in breaking the deadlock by persuading the national parliament to back a technocratic government supported by the centre-left, with Plamen Oresharski as prime minister.
There was also upheaval in Slovenia, where Janez Jansa was ousted as prime minister over a corruption scandal. Alenka Bratušek, a financial expert from the opposition centre-left Positive Slovenia, the largest party in parliament, was asked to form a new government. In June, Jansa was given a two-year jail term for taking money for awarding a defence contract to a Finnish company.
Ireland, in the first major breakthrough of its six-month presidency, brokered a deal on rules to strengthen economic convergence in the eurozone. Negotiations between member states and MEPs on the ‘two-pack’ had taken seven months. As a result, the European Commission will have greater say over national budgets. The Commission will inspect each budget plan before it goes to the national parliament, and will warn member states if the plan does not conform to stability-and-growth pact obligations. The Commission will also have greater powers over eurozone countries that it judges to be experiencing “severe difficulties”.
A general election in Italy caused consternation around the EU, with 57% of the votes going to parties arguing against a continuation of the spending cuts introduced by Mario Monti, a former European commissioner who was installed as caretaker prime minister in November 2011. There was instability until late April, when Enrico Letta, deputy leader of the centre-left Democratic Party, was sworn in as prime minister.
Fisheries ministers voted to end the controversial practice of discarding fish (when unwanted or unusable fish are dumped overboard after being caught). Under the agreement, discards would be phased out between 2015 and 2016, later than proposed by the Commission and MEPs.
Nicos Anastasiades became president of Cyprus after a sweeping victory in an election on 24 February. The centre-right Anastasiades won 57.5% of the vote, the largest popular mandate for a president in decades.
The scandal over beef sold in the UK that contained horsemeat spread to a European level after the meat in question was found to have travelled throughout the EU. The European Commission and the member states began a testing programme to check for horse DNA in beef products and for an illegal horse drug in the food chain. The Commission released the results in April, revealing that horse DNA was found in 5% of beef products tested across the EU.
March
The centre-left gained power in Malta for the first time in 15 years after a decisive victory in a general election on 9 March. Labour, led by Joseph Muscat, a former member of the European Parliament, secured 55% of the vote, with the centre-right Nationalist Party, led by Lawrence Gonzi, picking up 43%. Gonzi resigned, to be replaced as Nationalist leader by former MEP Simon Busuttil.
The European Commission gave its backing to a plan for Europe’s main political parties to put up candidates for the post of Commission president as part of their manifestoes for the elections to the European Parliament. The hope is that it will increase voter turnout, which was just 43% in the 2009 election.
Just over a month since EU leaders struck a deal on the long-term budget, the agreement was rejected by MEPs. Two-thirds of MEPs said ‘No’ to the deal, paving the way for more talks.
Alarm bells rang when Hungary’s parliament approved far-reaching changes to the country’s constitution once again. The amendments, the fourth set of adjustments since the constitution was revamped in 2012, change the constitutional court’s powers, the definition of marriage, restrict political advertising, and adjust how religious groups are recognised. The presidents of the European Commission and European Parliament joined the Council of Europe in warning that the changes could threaten the rule of law. In April, Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for justice, became embroiled in a spat with Europe’s main centre-right party, of which she is a member, about her perceived aggressive stance towards the Hungarian government.
The first major eurozone crisis of the year was unfurling in Cyprus. Finance ministers had struck a deal under which the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund would lend the stricken country €10bn as long as it found a further €5.8bn itself. The plan involved imposing a levy of 6.75% on bank deposits below €100,000 and of 9.5% on anything above that. But amid criticism from around the EU, and with panic setting in as people began withdrawing money to avoid the levy, the Cypriot parliament rejected that deal. Sharon Bowles, who chairs the European Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee, summed up the anger at the proposed bail-out deal when she said that “the single market has been sold down the river for a shoddy price”. A revised deal was reached on 25 March to restructure Cyprus’s banking sector in return for a bail-out of €10bn from the eurozone and IMF, with no levy on bank deposits below €100,000. Instead, the country’s banking sector would be completely restructured and shrunk. The Popular Bank of Cyprus, known as Laiki, would be shut down immediately.
At a European Council on 14-15 March, France and the UK went on the diplomatic offensive, announcing that they wanted the EU to end its arms embargo on Syria so that they could start arming the rebels. Foreign ministers on 27 May agreed to disagree, in effect ending the arms embargo. The Syrian conflict raged throughout the year, with more than 2 million people forced to flee the country.
Ireland brokered a compromise between the Parliament and the Council on the single supervisory mechanism for banks in the eurozone (and in other countries that choose to join). The European Central Bank is preparing to take up its role as the supervisor.
OLAF, the EU’s anti-fraud agency, was pushed into the spotlight over its handling of the investigation into the resignation in 2012 of John Dalli as a European commissioner. There were calls for Giovanni Kessler, OLAF’s director-general, to quit over his role in the case. The relationship between Kessler and his supervisory committee was described as one of “open hostility”.
April
The Commission requested an amendment to the EU’s budget for 2013, asking for an extra €11.2bn to cover invoices for EU funding submitted by the member states and increased spending in the current budget. The amendment came on top of the agreed budget for 2013 of €132.8bn in payments. “This is totally unacceptable,” was the UK’s response. In May, national finance ministers authorised a payment of €7.3bn out of the €11.2bn, and agreed to deal with the balance later in the year.
Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher died on 8 April, aged 87. Looking back at her career, European Voice wrote: “What makes Thatcher unique…is that people ascribe to her a vision of Europe that is still the subject of fierce political debate today.”
The EU’s troubled emissions-trading scheme was dealt another blow when MEPs rejected a Commission proposal to delay the auctioning of carbon allowances in the ETS so as to raise the flagging price of carbon. But MEPs approved the measure in a second vote, in July.
EU officials were under fire as member states unveiled proposals that would increase the retirement age to 67, see staff contributions to the EU pension scheme increase, and see automatic promotions be abolished. Unions reacted by calling strikes.
Anti-EU parties secured a comfortable victory in a general election in Iceland. The pro-business Independence Party and the mainly rural Progressive Party together won just over 51% of the vote. The governing Social Democrats of Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir slumped to 12.9% of the vote. Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson of the Progressive Party became prime minister in May, aged 38. Iceland opened EU membership talks in the summer of 2010. In June, the new government put the talks on ice.
The EU brokered a historic agreement between Serbia and Kosovo on the governance of northern Kosovo. The deal, which had appeared unattainable a year earlier, will see Serbia stop its financing of parallel structures – police, courts, hospitals, schools – in majority-Serb northern Kosovo and allow those structures to come under the formal authority of Kosovo’s government, dominated by ethnic Albanians. In exchange for Serbia’s implicit acceptance of Kosovo’s sovereignty, Kosovo will grant the four Serb-majority municipalities north of the divided town of Mitrovica extensive powers to run their own affairs. The agreement was greeted with relief by the two sides and by the European Union. The immediate reward for Serbia and Kosovo was their advancement to the next stage of the EU accession process: talks with Kosovo on a pre-accession stabilisation and association agreement, membership negotiations with Serbia. At a summit on 27-28 June, EU leaders gave the green light for Serbia to start membership negotiations in January 2014.
The Swiss government set a limit on the numbers of European Union citizens allowed to work in Switzerland. The cap for five-year residence permits for EU citizens was set at 56,000 for the year ahead.
The unauthorised publication of the results of an investigation by OLAF, the European Union’s anti-fraud office, into John Dalli forced the European Commission to defend its decision to demand his resignation as European commissioner for health and consumer policy. Malta Today, a newspaper, published on 28 April a leaked report of OLAF’s investigation into Dalli, Malta’s former European commissioner. The leaked version contains no direct evidence that Dalli was aware of an offer made by a Maltese businessman, Silvio Zammit, to influence – through his links with Dalli – imminent tobacco legislation, in exchange for €70 million.
May
Three-way negotiations began on the EU’s long-term budget, two months after MEPs rejected the deal that member states struck at their summit in February.
The European Commission signalled its intention to relax deficit-reduction targets for three of the eurozone’s largest members. Presenting the Commission’s spring economic forecasts on 3 May, Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs and the euro, said that France, Spain and the Netherlands were expected to miss their targets of bringing their budget deficits below 3% of gross domestic product this year. But Rehn said that he was prepared to give them additional time to meet their targets – a two-year extension for France and for Spain, and one year for the Netherlands.
The EU’s relations with China had a rocky 2013. On 15 May, Karel De Gucht, the European commissioner for trade, formally warned China that he was prepared to impose sanctions on two telecoms equipment-makers, Huawei and ZTE Corp, if the Commission concluded that they had received illegal subsidies or dumped their products on the European market. That was just the warm-up. On 4 June, De Gucht announced the imposition of temporary punitive tariffs on Chinese producers of solar panels, starting on 6 June. For the first two months, the punitive tariffs would be imposed at a uniform rate of 11.8%. The tariffs would then quadruple to an average of 47.6% from 6 August, with a lower rate of 37.2% for companies that co-operated with the Commission during its investigation. China’s solar industry exported €21bn of goods to Europe in 2011. Separately, permanent – five-year – anti-dumping tariffs against Chinese producers of ceramics and stoneware came into force on 16 May, a decision that won unexpectedly strong backing from member states on 4 April.
China did not take all this lying down. In July, China formally launched an investigation into allegations that European producers had been selling wine at below cost and enjoyed unfair subsidies. The Chinese authorities said that they would spend the next 12 months, possibly 18 months, testing whether Chinese wine-makers were justified in claims filed in mid-May.
The solar-panel dispute was effectively settled on 27 July. The agreement set a minimum price for Chinese exports of solar panels to the EU, and also a limit on the volume of exports. That paved the way for trade ministers from the member states in October to give the Commission a mandate to negotiate an investment agreement with China.
Austria and Luxembourg relinquished some of their resistance to expanding the scope of the savings-tax directive at a summit of EU leaders on 22 May. They agreed to a timeline that states a deal would be made by the end of the year. However, on 10 December the two countries blocked a proposal for more information to be exchanged automatically between member states’ tax authorities.
June
Allegations of mass spying by the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) sent shockwaves around the globe. Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the NSA, revealed systematic eavesdropping by the NSA on phone and internet communications around the world, including the offices of the European institutions and on data from the European Union’s member states. José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, ordered a security sweep of Commission offices in the wake of the allegations.
The scandal refused to go away. In October, it emerged that the mobile phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel had been tapped.
The EU and the US agreed not to let the spying scandal derail talks on potentially the world’s biggest bilateral trade deal. But the official launch of the transatlantic talks on 8 July was overshadowed by France’s cultural sensitivities. France wanted to ensure that no questions would be asked during the negotiations about the support that EU states provide to their cultural industries. Renewed efforts by the European Commission and other member states to persuade France that the ‘cultural exception’ would not be affected had little effect. Two more rounds were held by the end of the year.
Germany’s constitutional court held a two-day hearing into whether the European Central Bank went beyond its mandate with its outright monetary transactions (OMT) programme. The court was expected to rule on the case in September, but has not yet done so. The OMT programme has never been used, but was credited as the most successful measure taken by the EU to calm turmoil in the eurozone.
Neven Mimica, Croatia’s nominee to the European Commission, had a fairly easy time during his confirmation hearing at the European Parliament. Mimica was given the consumer-policy portfolio.
Member states agreed to resume accession talks with Turkey, after a gap of three years. But plans to restart the talks were thrown into disarray by deaths and injuries caused by the Turkish police’s response to demonstrations against the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As a result, the member states delayed the official launch of the talks until November, after a Commission review of Turkey’s progress.
The Czech Republic was in crisis (again) in June, with police raiding the seat of the Czech government, the prime minister resigning, and eight people – including two aides to the prime minister and three former MPs – being charged. One strand of the police investigation involved Jana Nagyová, the chief aide – and lover – to the departing prime minister, Petr Necas. Nagyová had allegedly persuaded two heads of military intelligence to track Necas’s wife. A caretaker government was formed in July, with Jirí Rusnok as prime minister. It lost a vote of confidence and resigned in August.
The Social Democrats won a narrow victory in early parliamentary elections in October. But there was still no government in place at the close of the year.
The Commission proposed that the EU should cut its spending in 2014 by 5.8%, with the cuts to be felt in all areas other than administration. The 2014 budget proposal adopted by the college of commissioners on 26 June set spending commitments at €142bn and actual payments at €135.9bn.
July
Lithuania took over the rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers.
Croatia became the 28th member of the European Union on 1 July. Just days before it joined the Union, the Croatian government made changes to the law on judicial co-operation with EU member states. The new law limited application of the European Arrest Warrant to crimes committed after 2002 – widely seen as an attempt by the ruling Social Democrats to shield Josip Perkovic, a former Yugoslav intelligence operative wanted in Germany in connection with the 1983 assassination of a Yugoslav dissident. The row came to an end on 1 January 2014 when Perkovic was arrested.
MEPs on 3 July backed a deal struck with the member states on the EU’s next long-term budget. The deal will allow greater flexibility in using the annual expenditure limits set by the multiannual financial framework for 2014-20, a key demand of the Parliament. The figures agreed by leaders of the member states in February (spending commitments of €960bn, and actual payments capped at €908bn) remained unchanged.
In mid-July, the EU published rules that, from 2014, allow Israeli organisations, groups and companies to receive EU funding only if they are based within Israel’s pre-1967 borders. The guidelines caused consternation in Israel, and led to an internal inquiry into how Israel’s diplomats failed to thwart the EU’s move. In December, the EU made its most detailed promise yet for “an unprecedented package” of support if agreement on the future of Palestine is reached. However, the EU will pay less top-level time trying to forge agreement between Israel and Palestine, as the EU’s foreign policy chief has abolished the role of EU special envoy for the Middle East peace process.
Emily O’Reilly, Ireland’s national ombudsman, was elected as European Ombudsman. The third person to hold the post, created in 1995, she replaced Nikiforos Diamandouros on 1 October.
A dispute between Germany and the European Commission over Daimler’s use of a particular air-conditioning coolant escalated into a test of the single market in July, with France banning the registration of new Mercedes cars. France’s highest administrative court suspended the ban on 27 August while it deliberated on a final ruling. Sales of all Mercedes cars in France fell by 37% in August compared to last year, a fall attributed to the ban.
The US nominated Anthony Luzzatto Gardner, a financier and lawyer, to be its next ambassador to the EU. The US Congress had not confirmed him by year-end.
August
Months of anti-corruption protests began in Bulgaria. The protests were triggered by the nomination of a 32-year-old from a well-connected family to be the country’s top national security officer, even though he has no intelligence experience. Protests continued after his resignation, and continued each day for the rest of the year.
Tensions between the UK and Spain over the British territory of Gibraltar escalated when the Spanish government objected to Gibraltar putting an artificial reef of concrete blocks in its sea bed to increase fish yields, saying that it was an attempt to restrict Spanish fishing. In retaliation, the Spanish government threatened to impose a border fee for people entering or exiting the British territory from Spain.
September
The EU’s policy towards its eastern neighbours was thrown into disarray by a decision by Armenia to abandon a pending free-trade agreement with the EU. Armenia instead pledged to join the Russian-led Eurasian Customs Union. The change of heart came as a blow to the EU’s Eastern Partnership programme, formed in 2009 in an attempt to encourage ex-Soviet states to move towards the EU.
The European Commission on 12 September adopted a wide-ranging reform of EU telecoms rules that contained both consumer measures and efforts to make it easier for telecoms firms to compete across the EU. The proposal would not create a European telecoms regulator, contrary to an idea championed by the Commission’s competition department. Instead, it would create a single EU authorisation for telecoms operators that all national regulators would have to accept. It would also give the Commission the power to overrule national regulators in areas such as spectrum allocation for broadband.
Angela Merkel won a third term as Germany’s chancellor in a federal election on 22 September. Merkel pledged to continue pushing for fiscal stabilisation and increased competitiveness in the eurozone. Merkel was sworn in on 17 December. Also sworn in were 15 ministers from Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union, its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), whose leader, Sigmar Gabriel, became vice-chancellor and minister for energy and economy. The new grand coalition holds a sweeping majority in the Bundestag, with the opposition far-left Die Linke and the Greens reduced to 64 and 63 seats respectively in the 631-seat chamber. The CDU’s former coalition partner, the Free Democrat Party (FDP), was wiped out, losing 9.8% percentage points and dropping below the 5% threshold required to enter the Bundestag.
There was no clear-cut victory in Austria’s general election on 29 September. The ‘grand coalition’, in power since 2007, gained a new lease of life, but both the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the centre-right People’s Party (ÖVP) lost votes, ending up with a combined electoral share of just 50.9%. A new government was sworn in in December.
October
EU policymakers pledged to step up maritime surveillance and co-operation with countries that serve as staging posts for migrants after a disaster in which hundreds died off the coast of Lampedusa. Enrico Letta, Italy’s prime minister, described the sinking of a boat carrying refugees from Eritrea and Somalia on 3 October as a “European drama”. The death toll was estimated at 360.
The European Parliament’s credibility as a guardian of democracy was damaged by a report on Azerbaijan’s presidential election that was markedly kinder than the verdict of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The OSCE found significant problems with every stage of the campaign. The election on 9 October returned Ilham Aliev as president with 85% of the vote. An official election observation mission by the European Parliament, however, concluded that the election was “free, fair and transparent”.
The European Commission on 22 October adopted its work programme for 2014, setting out a plan containing 29 initiatives between then and the end of its mandate in October 2014. Of the 29, just four were legislative (on resource efficiency and waste; EU accession to the European Commission on Human Rights; framework for crisis management and resolution for financial institutions other than banks; and OLAF reform). The remaining 25 were primarily reviews of existing legislation and communications on issues such as state aid modernisation or industrial policy.
Jean-Claude Juncker’s 18-year prime ministership came to an end after an election in Luxembourg on 20 October. Juncker’s centre-right Christian Social People’s party (CVSP) won 23 seats in the 60-strong parliament but a coalition of the liberal Democratic Party (DP), the centre-left LSAP and the Greens meant Juncker’s days were numbered. Xavier Bettel, the mayor of the city of Luxembourg, was sworn in as prime minister on 4 December.
A European Council on 24-25 October was supposed to focus on adding momentum to the project of developing a digital single market in Europe. But the summit was overshadowed by revelations of US spying, on France, Italy and – perhaps most significantly – on Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor.
November
A UN climate-change summit in Warsaw narrowly avoided collapse, with last-minute compromises on two issues that had threatened to derail the talks.
The first was a divide over when and how countries should have to put their emissions reduction pledges ahead of a December 2015 summit in Paris, at which a global climate deal is supposed to be reached. The European Union, backed by the United States and the least developed nations, was insisting that commitments be put forward in the first quarter of 2015, to allow enough time to review them before the Paris summit. However Brazil, Russia, India and China were resisting this, wanting to submit their pledges in Paris and avoid a review process. A compromise was agreed that will see submissions in the first quarter of 2015. But the submissions will be ‘contributions’ rather than ‘commitments’.
A debate over climate finance was also resolved. Delegates agreed to set up the ‘Warsaw mechanism’ that would come up with a systematic way for rich countries to compensate developing countries for the impacts of climate change, such as severe storms or sea level rise, because of their historical culpability.
On the eve of an Eastern Partnership summit – a meeting between the EU and its eastern neighbours, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus – Ukraine decided not to sign political and trade agreements with the EU. Ukraine’s decision was directly related to strong Russian economic pressure, coupled with Russian “myths and misinterpretation” about the trade deal offered by the EU to Ukraine, according to Štefan Füle, the European commissioner for the neighbourhood policy.
In August, Russia imposed restrictions on Ukrainian imports. A presidential aide, Sergei Glaziev, explicitly described that decision as a foretaste of economic relations should Ukraine take the “suicidal step” of signing a free-trade deal with the EU. The EU’s proposed trade deal with Ukraine would have precluded the possibility of Ukraine joining the Russian-championed Eurasian Customs Union, which at present includes just Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
The move led to mass street protests against the decision. In December, Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, held talks with Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president, in Kiev. She said that Yanukovych “made it clear to me that he intends to sign the association agreement”.
MEPs gave their final approval to the EU’s long-term budget and the 2014 budget on 19 November.
MEPs and member states reached a compromise agreement to revise a deal limiting carbon dioxide emissions from cars. Germany objected to the original deal, struck in June. Germany demanded that a limit of 95g/km fleet average set for 2020 be phased-in over a four-year period. But Socialist, Liberal and Green MEPs said that any phasing-in was unacceptable. On 26 November, MEPs agreed to a limited one-year pahase-in period. Under the deal, 95% of new car sales will have to comply with the target in 2020 and 100% in 2021. The compromise would also expand the controversial ‘supercredits’ scheme, which allows electric vehicles to count more towards the fleet average.
Valdis Dombrovskis, Latvia’s prime minister, announced his resignation on 27 November, in the wake of a national disaster on 21 November – the collapse of a supermarket in a suburb of Riga. The resignation threw into disarray a country preparing to join the eurozone on 1 January.
Representatives of the member states gave their approval to a revision of European Union tobacco law that will, controversially, tightly regulate the content and marketing of electronic cigarettes. The e-cigarette issue had threatened to derail talks between the European Parliament and member states. MEPs insisted that the devices should be regulated for general sale. National governments, concerned about the unknown long-term health effects, wanted them to be regulated as medicines. Member states also wanted to ban refillable cartridges over concerns about safety and nicotine content. But MEPs refused to allow such a ban. Under the deal, e-cigarettes will be regulated for general sale at EU level, but member states would be allowed to regulate them as medicines if they so choose. Refillable cartridges will not be banned. However member states can ban specific types of cartridges, if the ban can be justified by safety concerns.
An international agreement to constrain Iran’s nuclear programme saw a great deal of praise heaped on the EU. Under the deal, Iran committed itself to suspending the programme and rolling back some critical elements.
December
Finance ministers from the member states agreed a joint position on creating an EU authority with the power and the funds to rescue or wind up failing banks. The agreement followed months of negotiations on a crucial part of the EU’s planned banking union and will now be discussed with MEPs.
A bid to reduce indirect land use change (ILUC) caused by traditional biofuel was in trouble after member states rejected a compromise proposal from the Lithuanian presidency of the Council. The compromise was vetoed by member states such as Denmark and the Netherlands that want EU support for traditional biofuel severely restricted and those, such as Hungary and Poland, that want no change to existing policy. The European Parliament is also split on the issue. Although MEPs in September backed a call for restrictions that went beyond even those proposed by the Commission, centre-right MEPs blocked French Liberal MEP Corinne LePage from beginning negotiations with member states. The file will now be handed to the Greek presidency.
Gazprom, the Russian state-owned gas giant, presented a proposal to the European Commission in a bid to settle a year-long anti-trust investigation into its activities in central and eastern Europe. Gazprom faces a fine of up to €10 billion for allegedly blocking rival gas suppliers in the European Union’s central and eastern member states, and for overcharging customers by linking its gas price to the price of oil. The EU has not yet formally charged Gazprom, and has issued only a warning.
MEPs backed a controversial fisheries agreement with Morocco, new restrictions on deep-sea fishing, and reform of the Common Fisheries Policy. The Morocco agreement includes waters off the disputed territory of Western Sahara.
The Commission’s battle with Google continued throughout the year. The internet giant was told to improve a second settlement offer aimed at avoiding a potentially huge fine by Joaquín Almunia, the European commissioner for competition, on 20 December. The Commission has been formally investigating Google since 2010, and has expressed concerns that Google may be abusing its dominant position in the search-engine market (it has a market share in the EU of 90%) by giving favourable exposure to links and adverts for its own services and by using the content of rival websites.
Ireland exited its bailout programme on 15 December. It negotiated an €85bn bailout in 2010 after rescuing its biggest banks. As a condition, the government implemented strict austerity policies.
Just before the Christmas break, member states and MEPs finalised negotiations on a large number of financial dossiers that constituted the EU’s response to the financial crisis. banks, insurers, investment firms and traders will be subjected to new rules in the coming years.