US snooping, seen through a European PRISM

There are few things that can unite the quarrelling factions of the European Parliament, but somehow US President Barack Obama managed to accomplish it this morning. One by one, MEPs from various political factions denounced in the strongest terms the recent revelations of US government access to user activity data from internet giants like Google, Facebook and Microsoft – a programme that went under the codename PRISM.

Interestingly, it was the assurances the US President gave to the American people this weekend that seemed to infuriate the European lawmakers the most. The PRISM programme “does not apply to US citizens and it does not apply to people living the United States,” he told a press conference on 7 June. 

These words may have reassured many Americans, but they have put America's allies in an awkward position. Sites like Google and Facebook are global, after all, and widely used in Europe. If they aren't spying on Americans' internet use, then that means they are spying on people in other countries - including allies in Europe.

“What is coming from other side of the Atlantic is very worrying because they are justifying this system by saying it is not applicable to US citizens, only to foreigners,” Belgian Liberal MEP Guy Verhofstadt said in Strasbourg this morning. “Who are the foreigners? I think we are the foreigners, the Europeans.”

EU bans cheaper auto insurance rates for women

Female drivers in the EU will likely see their insurance premiums rise significantly next year following today's European Court of Justice ruling that charging lower rates for women than for men constitutes illegal gender discrimination. At the same time, men are about to see their insurance premiums drop.

Insurance companies across Europe as well as in North America generally charge women much less for auto insurance than their male counterparts. Statistics show they are less risky drivers and are therefore less likely to get into an accident. The difference in pricing is particularly large for people under the age of 30, where women typically pay half of what men pay.

Previously such a distinction in pricing was allowed through an exemption for insurers from having to follow national discrimination laws. But a Belgian consumer group challenged the exemption, saying that assuming men are dangerous drivers simply based on their gender constitutes unlawful discrimination. The court agreed, and insurers in the EU will have to end their systems of separate rates by December 2012.

UK ends ban on TV product placement

Starting today television viewers in the UK are going to start noticing a lot more Coke cans, Sony TVs and Motorola phones in their favourite television programmes – as the ban on product placement is officially lifted in the UK. But it won't be the anything-goes system now prevalent in America - product placement for a wide variety of products including unhealthy foods will still not be allowed and viewers will be alerted by a 'P' logo on their screen when they are watching a show with product placement.

The change in policy follows years of lobbying from Britain's private broadcasters, who said they needed the revenue from product placement to ensure their long-term survival. Product placement has been allowed in the European Union since the Broadcasting Directive was passed in 2007. At that time, most EU states that had bans ended them. But the UK opted to maintain their ban, with Labour's Culture Secretary Andy Burnham saying at the time that the UK needed to "maintain levels of trust between audiences and broadcasters, and protect the standards of broadcasting for which Britain is known worldwide."

EU to create "right to be forgotten"

As the public's concern over internet privacy violations on sites like Facebook continues to grow, the EU unveiled new proposals yesterday to give people more control over how their online personal data is collected and used. The new update to EU privacy laws would oblige service providers to make personal information and user-supplied content easily and quickly deletable. Citing the effect such information can have on a person's professional and private life, the European Commission says the issue is important enough to take EU-wide action. The commission says it has even received complaints from its own staff about Facebook's privacy policy. And that must be a big deal, because most of the people I know who work for the commission are on Facebook all day!

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the proposal is that it would create a new right for EU citizens, a so-called "right to be forgotten." The original EU data protection rules date back to 1995, when such issues of online privacy did not yet exist. In theory the right to control over one's own personal stored information is already enshrined in EU law, but the commission said yesterday its applicability to the online world has been patchy and unclear.

EU just wants a little love

Let's face it, these days the EU is just not very popular with the European public. Gone are the heady days in the early 2000's when there was boundless and perhaps unrealistic ambition in Brussels for what the EU could accomplish. Today, as the financial crisis bites and people's confidence in the common market has been damaged, one of the EU's biggest problems is how to win the love of its public.

This week Justice and Citizenship Commissioner Vivane Reding and Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier unveiled a new bundle of consumer protection mesures, and the main message seemed to be, "Please, love us!" But Reding seems determined that this raft of new rules, coupled with the introduction of a new 'Single Market Act', will be accompanied by an assertive communication campaign that will try to make sure EU citizens know that these new benefits and protections are coming from Brussels.

Gypsy exile in Europe mirrors wave of Islamophobia in US

It’s been an intense day of cannon fire shooting back and forth between Brussels and Paris, as the European Commission abruptly broke its silence on France’s deportation of Roma (gypsies) and came out swinging. EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding held a press conference this morning calling the French deportations a “disgrace” and said the EU is now considering taking legal action against France for violating EU law. It was a shockingly strong condemnation that caught the Brussels press corps completely by surprise, considering Brussels is usually loath to criticize anything France does. Reding even thumped the podium as she spoke, comparing the expulsion campaign to the persecution of Jews during World War II.

Within minutes Paris was reeling from the shock. At a hastily organized press conference in Paris, a spokesman for the government said they were “astonished” to learn of Reding’s declarations. He then accused Reding of standing in the way of France’s efforts to "improve the situation" of Roma, which he said was “at the heart of the government’s concern and action”. Later in the day, France's Europe minister showed just how unprecedented EU criticism of France is when he warned, "This is not how you speak to a major power like France."

The issue has been on a low boil since August, when French president Nicolas Sarkozy first took the decision to deport camps of gypsies who are foreign nationals (mostly Romanian but also Bulgarian) back to where they had come from. Only problem is, Romania and Bulgaria are now part of the EU, and as such their citizens have the right to free movement within the union. But for weeks the commission was silent on the issue. That is, until today’s explosion from Reding.

Gay marriage conflict brewing in European Parliament

     Same-sex Marriage      Same-sex Civil Unions      Issue under political consideration      Unrecognized      Constitutional ban on gay marriage

On Tuesday night, members of the European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg held a debate with Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding seeking an answer to a complicated but inevitable question: Now that a majority (16 out of 27) of EU member states have some form of gay marriage, how are free movement rules going to work if those married couples wish to move to one of the 11 member states that do not have gay marriage?

As I wrote earlier this summer, now that Ireland has become the latest country to adopt gay civil unions, a clear pattern is emerging of a two-speed Europe when it comes to gay rights. In Western Europe, every country except Italy has now adopted some form of gay marriage. While in Eastern Europe, nine countries have adopted constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. It is a geographic divide reminiscent of the situation in the United States, where states on the East and West coasts have adopted gay marriage while states in the center and South have adopted constitutional bans. It would seem both the EU and the US are soon going to have to grapple with the challenge of establishing how a marriage can be valid in one state and invalid in another.