Nice work again, Ms. Reding:

UK laws protecting the privacy of people’s communications are inadequate, the European Commission has said. The Commission has launched a legal case against the UK over its implementation of European Union Directives.

The Commission’s investigation was sparked by outrage over trials by BT of a system which monitors web use and tries to match advertising to people’s perceived interests. The trials were done without BT customers’ knowledge or permission.

The Commission has investigated complaints made to it and to police and has found the UK’s laws inadequate in protecting the privacy of communications.

The UK.gov’s reaction to the Phorm fiasco, and its attitude to privacy in general, is best described by the following lolcat:

So I welcome this intervention, and hope that the UK gets slapped around the face and fined an enormous sum of money.

You can read the full article at out-law.com.

I’ve had a passing interest in the UK’s relationship to the Schengen group within (and outside) the EU for a while now. Schengen is a an agreement, originally stand-alone but now incorporated into EU law, which entails the removal of internal border checks. As well as being able to walk across borders with nothing more than a sign to mark the transition, Schengen makes it possible to fly from (say) Brussels to Berlin as – effectively – a domestic passenger. At no stage are you required to show a passport – unless you’re using it as your photo ID for the airline.

Schengen also means that the states involved share a common set of visa rules to external applicants, and a common visa issued in one Schengen state is valid in any other.

Needless to say, it makes a lot of sense. It better reflects personal freedoms of movement granted by EU rights, and from a practical point of view, eliminates passport check queues from a great many flights. Recently, Switzerland joined, and although there are some special issues (e.g. the land border with Liechtenstein, and Switzerland’s non-membership of the EU customs zone), it works very well.

Which makes the UK and Ireland’s positions increasingly curious. They are the only EU member states that have permanent exemptions from the border removal measures. Could things be about to change?

“But Britain’s luck may be on the wane. The political and legal problems associated with its half-in, half-out status are growing. Although the country retains its own border controls, its police officers are allowed to follow criminal suspects into the Schengen area if they are on a surveillance mission. It has also been agreed that the UK’s national police computer can connect to the Schengen-area police database. But the Schengen countries object to either Britain or Ireland having access to valuable data on who is refused entry to the Schengen area, or to having a vote on the board of the EU’s border agency since they do not share the pain of maintaining a common EU border. When Britain tried to challenge this in 2008, the European court of justice (ECJ) ruled in favour of the Schengen countries.”

Nothing will likely change until the Labour Party administration in Westminster get off their security power-trip, but nonetheless, there are some interesting observations in this article.

Read more at the Centre for European Reform.

Not to bang on about it, but if you are interested in the upcoming referendum on Switzerland’s EU freedom of movement agreement, please note the following event:

Personenfreizügigkeit mit der EU: Veranstaltung mit Micheline Calmy-Rey

Event info:
Host:
SP6

Time and Place
Date:
22 January 2009
Time:
19:00 – 23:00
Location:
Kirchgemeindesaal Paulus
Street:
Scheuchzerstrasse 180
Town/City:
Zürich, Switzerland

Description
Referat von Bundesrätin Micheline Calmy-Rey. Im Anschluss Gespräch mit Markus Spillmann (Chefredaktor NZZ)

Miss Calmy-Rey is currently serving on the Swiss Federal Council and is head of the department of Foreign Affairs. She is a member of the Social Democratic party.

More info on the Facebook event page. I’m assuming it’ll be in Schwyzerdütsch.

Interesting times ahead in civil liberties in the post-Lisbon treaty era? An interesting analysis from the Centre for European Reform:

The new politics of EU internal security:

This is area of international co-operation that has long been the exclusive domain of national governments. For over 20 years, interior ministries – meeting in the EU, UN and Council of Europe – have quietly agreed and implemented inter-governmental agreements on internal security and judicial co-operation between themselves. There was little need to accommodate outside views and concerns. Now officials look nervously to 2009 when euro-parliamentarians should begin to use their new authority.

The ministries are right to be anxious. The European Parliament’s civil liberties and justice and home affairs (JHA) body – known as the LIBE committee – has made no secret of its intention to exercise the new powers to the full. The committee wants to reverse a trend in EU decision-making on terrorism, crime and immigration that many parliamentarians feel is wrongly skewed towards state security at the expense of civil liberties. For example, MEPs have been wary of the member-states’ eagerness to create databases and new information-sharing arrangements for terrorism and other cross-border crimes. They complain that the member-states are conspicuously less interested in reaching an agreement on data protection legislation needed to ensure such data is not mis-used.

That is, of course, after Ireland is coaxed into a ‘yes’ vote on the Lisbon treaty itself.

There has not been much debate on the costs of intergovernmentalism, and Council dominance in these areas of European integration. In Britain particularly, justice and home affairs is the area where national governments have been most keen to be seen to preserve national vetoes.

Perhaps as Lisbon rolls out, the parameters of the debate will change as the benefits of European Parliament involvement become clear.

This is probably a complete brain-fart, but I thought I should post it anyway. I’m studying for an exam on the subject of European integration, and I came across this paragraph by Brigid Laffan. It’s the most eloquent description of the problem of the national political environment within a transnational/supranational body like the E.U.

Political players within the member states have so far not communicated the realities of power in contemporary Europe to their electorates. They persist with an old language of national interest when in reality, janus-like, they serve both the national governments and collective European government.

Laffan, B (1999) ‘Democracy in the European Union’ in Cram, L.,
Dinan, D. and N. Nugent (eds.) Developments in the European
Union, London: Palgrave.
WorldCat reference

Things like the 2004 and 2007 accessions make me nervous about dealing with these things in Britain. They were presented consistently and positively by the media as being in Britain’s national interest, or ’supported by Britain’. The accessions were positive, but for different reasons: historical imperative, for one, and expanding and improving the single market by extending the same freedoms of movement, work and consumer protections as exist here to eastern Europe. But we must do a better job of discussing these things in the UK.

The European Union is not a series of treaty negotiations every few years, where the coffee is brewed strong, tempers get frayed, and we either ‘win’ or ‘lose’. It’s much more important than that. It reaches into almost every aspect of our political lives despite the disingenuous effort, or perhaps unconscious ignorance, of political actors and (sadly) the media to present it as if it is something which the national political space can exist alongside, but separate from.

Sovereignty is dead. Long live the new sovereignty.