EU internet roaming charges to be slashed

From 1 July this year using a mobile phone to surf the web in another EU country will be about 70% cheaper, following an agreement on rate caps reached today by European Parliament and member state negotiators.

For the first time, the EU roaming caps will limit the rates phone companies can charge you for using the internet in a different EU country. The cost per downloaded megabyte will be capped at 70 cents as of 1 July 2012, 45 cents in 2013 and 20 cents as of 1 July 2014. The current average cost of roaming within the EU is €2.23 per megabyte.

The EU first started limiting the rates EU carriers could charge for roaming within the EU back in 2009, limiting the charge for making calls to 45 cents a minute. That cap has steadily decreased over the past three years, and today's agreement will lower them a further 20% from the current 35 cents to 29 cents, dropping to 19 cents in 2014. Before then, it used to cost an average of €1.50 per minute to make a call elsewhere in the EU. Now, for the first time, internet usage will be capped as well.

Of course this only applies to people with an EU phone carrier. So if you're travelling to Europe from the United States, you'll still pay the high fees.

Switzerland buries its head in the sand

Switzerland's foreign minister was in Brussels yesterday for some awkward discussions with EU leaders, and despite the beaming smiles following her meetings it was clear that by this point Brussels and Bern are operating on two different wavelengths.

The visit was arranged following a serious souring in relations between Switzerland and the EU after a resolution from EU foreign ministers in December warned that the relationship between the two had become incoherent and unwieldy. While Switzerland is not a member of the EU, it is a sort of "pseudo-member" and is allowed to participate in the EU single market thanks to a series of bilateral agreements. These 120 agreements were negotiated in two rounds in 1999 and 2004. In exchange for allowing Switzerland the benefits of access to the common market, the EU expects certain things in return - such as the right for any EU citizen to live and work in Switzerland (and vice versa). But in return, the EU position is that if Switzerland violates any of these accords, all 120 of them will be torn up.

So far this arrangement has suited the Swiss just fine - probably because most Swiss citizens are unaware of the extent of the accords and think their country remains completely independent and separate from the EU. But Brussels has grown frustrated with the unwieldy and complicated arrangement, and now they are saying Switzerland needs to move over to a more defined relationship as exists in the other pseudo-EU countries - Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Will the ugly ducking CAP get a beauty makeover?

There's an episode of the 1970's sitcom The Brady Bunch where middle child Jan Brady decides she's sick of being overshadowed by her pretty, popular older sister Marcia and resolutely decides her problems will be solved by wearing a bizarre black wig at a friends birthday party. So she trots confidently down the stairs in her new 'do, announcing, "Look everyone, it's the new Jan Brady". But the wig looks so incongruous on her petite frame that the partygoers just look confused.

I started thinking about this scene (mocked hilariously in the Brady Bunch movie of the 1990's) as I sat in the European Commission press conference today unveiling its ideas for 'the new common agricultural policy (CAP)'. Agriculture commissioner Dacian Ciolos insisted that the function of CAP would have to be widened beyond just the simple mission of producing food and instead take on a climate change and biodiversity mission in order to gain legitimacy with the non-farming public. But as I listened to the raft of green measures that may be incorporated into the policy, I wondered if the CAP wasn't going to end up looking a little bit like poor Jan Brady, a 14 year old girl standing in the middle of the birthday party wearing a wig clearly designed for a 60 year old woman.

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.

Dutch get green light to ban foreigners from coffee shops

The Netherlands has long been known, particularly by many Americans, as a drug tourism destination. For years, the Dutch have complained that while they support the decision to end the prohibition on marijuana use, the fact that other countries don’t have the same policy means the country has become a magnet for wacked-out partiers and troublemakers.

One Dutch town decided it had had enough, and it banned foreigners from its ‘coffee shops’, the name for establishments that sell marijuana. That town is Maastricht, which says it is particularly vulnerable to drug-tourism because of its geography in the thin Dutch tail at the Southeast of the country. Sandwiched between Belgium and Germany, Maastricht, much like its border neighbor Breda, has gained a reputation as the place where Belgians, French and Germans go to buy weed. So Maastricht banned its coffee shops from selling to foreigners, and when a coffee shop was shut down for selling marijuana to two non-Dutch EU citizens, that coffee shop sued.

Right from when they established the law, Maastricht must have known they would have a legal fight on their hands. Banning EU citizens from other countries from consuming a product which Dutch citizens can consume is a blatant violation of EU free movement law, which stipulates that EU citizens must be given equal treatment to native citizens in any EU country. This right is perhaps the cornerstone of the European Union.