Brussels Briefing - A lighter look at European events
It’s official — the Irish are the most obsessed with water in the European Union, with the exception of tiny Cyprus that does not have much of the stuff.
More Irish per head of population sent their views to the European Commission on revising the Drinking Water Directive than any other country.
But some of their responses to an EU-wide survey are strange.
For instance 40% said their water was not affordable weeks before they received their first bill.
Just 40% said they cook in tap water while just 21% drink tap water.
The results, and the demand by EU citizens in their Right2Water initiative, are feeding into a review of the Drinking Water Directive.
But the first step — letting EU states decide how and for what their water is monitored — may not be what citizens had in mind.
Environmental groups are warning that Europe’s nature is at risk from plans to merge the two pieces of legislation that have brought many birds and plants back from the brink of extinction.
But preserving the Birds and Habitats Directives in their current forms got a huge boost from nine countries — Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Romania, Luxembourg, Croatia, and Slovenia, when they wrote to the commission warning they were not in favour of “merging them into a more modern piece of legislation”.
So far Ireland has been silent, as on many other aspects of preserving a sustainable environment in the country. More than half a million people, including around 7,700 Irish, have signed a Save Our Nature Campaign, and BirdWatch Ireland wants people to write to Environment Minister Alan Kelly, Agriculture’s Simon Coveney, Heritage’s Heather Humphreys and to MEPs.
The European Central Bank is making itself a little more transparent.
Famous for its tight-lipped attitude, with even messages at press conferences relayed in insiders’ code, the bank will publish its board members’ calendars of meetings in future.
While this will show who is trying to influence them, there will be a delay of three months in the publication, so February’s release will deal with this month’s meetings.
Renting a car can be a tricky business, with all kinds of nasty surprises lying in wait on your next credit card bill if you fall foul of dodgy practices.
In fact there were close to 1,000 complaints made to the European Commission about car rental companies in the first nine months of this year alone.
MEP Brian Hayes, having received lots of complaints from Irish citizens, is pushing the EU to force rental companies to play fair with customers, especially on their booking sites.
This is a huge €10bn-a-year industry in the EU and while the big five companies have agreed to provide clear information and adopt practices, such as taking into account a half-tank of fuel, lots of smaller providers have not.
Farmers are the least powerful group in the food chain, despite being the producers of our daily nutrition.
As a result they are often forced to sell at or below the cost of producing their products to the major supermarket chains.
After years of yielding to these powerful multinationals with soft pedalling voluntary codes of practice, the European Parliament is now pushing for legislation.
MEP Mairead McGuinness, who authored a report on unfair trading practices for the EPs Agriculture Committee, told the internal market Commissioner Elzbieta Bieknowska ‘clear action’ was needed in the Commission’s report due next month.
There were four votes between MEPs who see the whistleblower Edward Snowden as a human rights defender, and those who don’t. The vote was part of a follow-up by the Parliament to the revelations that almost everyone including national leaders are spied on by the US.
The vote followed political group lines with the centre right EPP, including its four Fine Gael MEPs, voting not to give him asylum in the EU, while the more left-leaning groups including Sinn Féin calling on EU states to “drop any criminal charges against him, grant him protection and prevent his extradition in recognition of his status as whistleblower and international human rights defender”.
A low-key announcement from the European Commission on a new agreement with the Human Brain Project masked a potential €1bn mess.
The EU flagship project chosen two years ago to ‘build a human brain’ promised to unlock all kinds of mysteries from mental illness to Alzheimers.
But it quickly ran into controversy as scientists threatened to boycott it, work with those in charge gridlocked, and the commission was blamed for failing to set it up properly.
After months of work behind the scenes the main movers adopted the proposals of outside reviewers.
So far the project has released the highest resolution 3D map of the human brain ever and the first digital reconstruction of the micro-circuitry of a section of the cortex of a rat brain.
Peter Mark Emanuel Graf von Wolffersdorff Freiherr von Bogendorfe is a 52-year-old German who started life as Nabiel Bagadi.
He adopted his new moniker by deed poll while living in London.
Now he wants Germany to register it on his birth certificate, but the authorities have refused, on the basis that Graf and Freiherr — the equivalents of Baron and Count — are titles of medieval nobility that were abolished decades ago.
He says Germany should recognise his new name since it has been legally registered in Britain.
The European Court of Justice will hear the case next week
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
