Venu présenter en Compétition “Après la bataille”, le réalisateur égyptien Yousry Nasrallah a déclaré en conférence de presse qu’il ne souhaitait pas que son film, ayant pour cadre les événements de la place Tahrir en 2011, soit vendu à Israël.

Serait-ce le début d’une amorce de scandale à Cannes ? En tout cas, les propos tenus par le cinéaste égyptien Yousry Nasrallah en conférence de presse ne risquent pas de passer inaperçus. Venu présenter en Compétition son nouveau long métrage Après la bataille, ce dernier a en effet déclaré ce jeudi qu’il ne voulait pas que le film soit vendu à Israël, estimant que ce pays n’est “pas un allié” de la révolution égyptienne.

 

“Je ne sais pas du tout si le film a été vendu à Israël mais si vous voulez connaître mon avis, non, je ne veux pas qu’il soit vendu à Israël. Pas tant que les Israéliens occupent encore les territoires palestiniens”, a-t-il dit au cours d’une conférence de presse, suscitant les applaudissements de plusieurs journalistes. “De merveilleux réalisateurs israéliens sont mes amis, Avi Mograbi par exemple ou Amos Gitaï”, a-t-il ajouté. “Ce n’est moi qui décide si les films sont vendus ou pas en Israël. De tout façon, ils sont montrés là-bas.” Mais “je ne pense pas qu’au moment où les Egyptiens sont encore en train d’essayer de franchir la première étape vers une libération vis-à-vis de leur propre régime, de l’oppression et d’une gouvernance militaire, Israël soit un allié pour cette libération”, a-t-il conclu sur le sujet.

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La bande-annonce…

Barnier to seek sweeping reform of intellectual property regime

Strategy to highlight initiatives until 2014.

The European Commission is set to announce a wide-ranging strategy on intellectual property rights (IPR) and to signal its belief that internet service providers (ISPs) should share more of the responsibility for halting illegal downloading.

The long-awaited IPR strategy, which is to be published on 24 May, is aimed at bringing together all issues related to intellectual property. It will lay out what initiatives Michel Barnier, the European commissioner for the internal market, intends to present by 2014.

The launch of the strategy has been delayed several times as the Commission struggled to balance the conflicting aims of liberalising copyright systems – for example, to make it easier for music and film to be licensed across the EU – with the desire to protect artists’ rights and cultural diversity.

One of the most controversial aspects of the strategy will be enforcement of copyright law. Telecoms and internet companies fear that the Commission may place too great a burden on ISPs for policing illegal downloading and file-sharing.

Although Barnier is expected to say that all options remain open, he is likely to announce that the Commission will put forward proposals to revise the IPR enforcement directive of 2004 and to signal his belief that ISPs should play a role in preventing illegal sharing.

Concerned industry

Thierry Dieu, the acting director of the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association (ETNO), expressed concern. “Instead of evolving towards a more repressive approach, the upcoming IPR strategy should focus on how to address the cause of the problem and to ensure a wider availability of legitimate online content by adapting the copyright and licensing regimes to the online world and increasing consumer demand,” he said.

Barnier may allay some of the industry’s fears if, as expected, he indicates that the changes will not clash with existing rules on the liability of ISPs, notably those in the e-commerce directive.

The commissioner is also likely to disappoint groups that argue that existing national copyright systems should be replaced by a pan-European copyright licence. Proponents of this approach include music publishers and consumer groups.

Common rules

Similarly, Barnier is expected to stop short of proposing a complete overhaul of collective management of copyright. Instead, he is likely to say that the Commission will seek common rules for collecting societies, which license the rights of creators and collect and distribute their royalties. The rules would be designed to introduce greater transparency and to create a legal framework for the multi-territorial licensing of musical works online.

The strategy will also suggest that a range of other changes should be made, including reform of trademark systems and the extension of ‘geographical indications’ – a form of intellectual-property protection for food and drink – to other products. It will propose consultations on the online distribution
of audiovisual works and plans to resolve problems in the administration of copyright levies.

There is more uncertainty about whether the paper will announce at this stage a legislative proposal to facilitate the digitisation of ‘orphan works’ – books, newspapers or films that are protected by copyright but whose authors cannot be traced.

Markets will test eurozone claims of strength

Details of permanent mechanism now in place as Germany wins longer timeframe for contributing.

● No to a bail-out (for the time being)

● Support for nuclear safety tests

● Encouraging growth

● Show of unity on Libya marred by criticism of French leadership

The eurozone now has the tools to deal with future crises as well as economic policies to prevent a repeat of the meltdowns of the Greek and Irish economies last year. These were the bold claims made by eurozone leaders at the end of the 24-25 March European Council.

The first of those claims is likely be tested soon if, as widely expected, Portugal is forced to call for multi-billion-euro assistance from the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund.

José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, said at the end of the summit on Friday: “In the unlikely event we need it, we have real firepower in place.” He was referring to the agreement on the detailed arrangements for financing a permanent eurozone rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism, able to lend €500 billion to eurozone countries in financial difficulties.

The deal to set up the mechanism was reached in principle in December. Eurozone finance ministers agreed at the start of last week (21 March) that the mechanism, which will have €700bn in assets, should receive paid-in capital of €80bn, with the remaining €620bn in ‘callable’ capital and government-backed guarantees.

Germany will provide €190bn of the mechanism’s total capital base, but the Free Democrats in the country’s governing coalition objected to paying €11bn in 2014, as they hope to be able to cut personal taxes in that year.

Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, won a longer timeframe for contributing, and the start-up capital will now be provided in five instalments, rather than four, starting in July 2013.

While the solution helped Germany, it created additional problems for other eurozone countries such as Italy, which do not have the benefit of a triple-A credit rating and must provide callable capital rather than guarantees.

Lending capacity

Fact File

To the rescue 

How the European Stability Mechanism will work:

It will succeed the European Financial Stability Facility from June 2013

It will have an effective lending capacity of €500 billion and subscribed capital of €700bn

€80bn in paid-in capital will be provided by eurozone countries from July 2013 (paid in five equal instalments), and callable capital and guarantees will be worth €620bn

Between 2013-17, member states have agreed to provide, if necessary, appropriate financial instruments more quickly to maintain a 15% ratio between paid-in capital and the outstanding amount of ESM issuances

The contribution key will be based on the European Central Bank capital key. Countries with a per capita gross domestic product of less than 75% of the EU average will have a temporary correction for 12 years after joining the euro (three-quarters of the difference between gross national income and ECB capital shares)

The ESM will be able to buy on the primary market the bonds of a member state experiencing severe financing problems

Pricing of loans: ESM funding cost, plus a charge of 200 basis points (bps) on the entire loan and a surcharge of 100bps for loans for more than three years

There will be collective action clauses for private-sector involvement

The ESM will have preferred creditor status

If Portugal cannot fund its debt on capital markets and needs to seek assistance, it will be provided by the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), an existing temporary mechanism to be replaced by the ESM in 2013.

An agreement in principle by eurozone leaders on 11 March to increase the effective lending capacity of the EFSF from around €250bn to €440bn will also require participating countries to increase their contributions. The Finnish government cannot win parliamentary approval for the higher contribution until after elections on 17 April. Leaders at the summit therefore set a deadline of June to agree the necessary changes to the EFSF.

Barroso also claimed on Friday that the EU had agreed a new set of economic governance rules that would ensure that the crises of the last 12 months are not repeated. He referred to the euro-plus pact, which requires countries to ensure that national economic policies improve competitiveness. The measures include monitoring developments in unit labour costs, ensuring that pension and welfare systems are affordable, and working on tax co-ordination. Barroso also noted tougher rules for the Stability and Growth Pact, with countries facing financial penalties for breaching debt and deficit limits.

The outcome of the summit was a victory for the German vision of how to maintain the stability of the eurozone, with Berlin-style control of wage inflation and strict limits on public spending. Unsurprisingly, Merkel expressed satisfaction, insisting that, after the global crisis plunged parts of the eurozone into acute financial difficulties, “the euro has passed its first test because everyone has backed the euro politically”.

As the demise of the Portuguese government shows, pushing through the economic reforms needed to reassure financial markets that eurozone countries can manage their debts comes at a very high political cost. The true test of the agreement reached at last week’s summit will be whether other governments are prepared to pay that price, and, if they do, whether they can survive the wrath of voters.

Towards a fairer EU agriculture policy?

As the EU embarks on further reform of the Common Agriculture Policy, the Union’s newest member states are demanding that their views are taken into account.

Agriculture no longer absorbs most of the European Union funds. But even now, when summit communiqués are peppered with references to “innovation” and “competitiveness pacts”, some of the EU’s biggest rows are still about how much money farmers get.

The farm subsidy row will resurface in the coming months. The EU has embarked on another reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which is currently worth €56 billion, or 42% of the EU budget. As ever, CAP reform is not just for agriculture ministers, but will be closely tied to setting the EU’s next seven-year budget. But one difference is clear in comparison to the last round of talks in 2002, when Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder stitched up a deal that set agriculture spending in stone for a decade. This time, central and eastern European countries will no longer be candidate countries sitting on the sidelines, but full member states and very active players.

Will the EU’s most recent entrants operate as a bloc? The ‘new’ member states have very different farm sectors. The Czech Republic gets just 0.5% of its national wealth from farming; Romania gets 5.4%. Likewise, while the Czech Republic has a small number of farmers with large holdings (90 hectares on average), Romania’s farmland is parcelled out between 3 million smallholders.

Common goals and grievances

Despite these differences, many states share common goals and grievances. Most would like a so-called strong and efficient CAP that at least maintains the current level of spending. This was the message of a 2010 declaration signed by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic – and Cyprus. (The Czech Republic did not sign, but Prague is not so far off this line, despite its early flirtation with the ‘anti-CAP’ countries, Denmark, Sweden and the UK.) Essentially, the declaration defends the CAP and puts central and eastern European countries in line with the majority of the ‘old’ member states. The declaration’s stress on food security, containing market volatility and maintaining spending suggests that most do not want a revolution in farm policy.

Central and eastern European countries share a common goal of overturning the unequal farm subsidy regime. The current system, based on historic calculations, disadvantages newcomers: a Greek farmer can get around six times more money per hectare than his Latvian counterpart. Farm payments to the EU10 are on an upward trend, but even by 2016, when they will reach their highest point, the gulf remains wide.

For new member states, self-interest is buttressed by solidarity and the single market. One diplomat from the EU10 points to the difficulties facing farmers in his country, who have to compete with those only 20 miles over the border who are getting substantially higher payments. As well as competitive distortions, there is also the simple question of fairness. “The problem is the disparity, when someone receives six or seven times more,” Imants Liegis, a member of the Latvian parliament, told European Voice earlier this year. He explained that Latvia is arguing for all payments to be on a scale of €200-€300 per hectare. This does not mean that all countries should get the same, he said. But it could make the politics of CAP reform difficult to swallow for today’s beneficiaries. “If we receive more, someone will have to receive less,” he said.

Increasing productivity

Fact File

 

Central and eastern European countries also have a common interest in modernising farms and improving productivity. The 12 countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007 increased the EU’s arable land area by 40%, but production for most products went up by only 10-20%. Poland, in particular, makes a strong argument for maintaining direct payments to enable “investment” in modern farming equipment and methods.

Central and eastern European officials also sound a sceptical note about the European Commission’s talk of making farming less damaging to the environment. “European agriculture is already green and it is hard to make it greener,” says one EU diplomat. This is only slighter blunter than the recent conclusions agreed by a majority of EU ministers, which also sounded lukewarm about a greener CAP.

But it will be far trickier to find consensus on spending priorities among the EU10, especially over whether farm money should take second place to protecting structural funds – the EU money for economic catch-up in disadvantaged regions, which is another priority for the EU10. One EU10 diplomat talks about trading farm spending for regional funding. “We can imagine that the CAP would be cut in favour of keeping cohesion policy and structural funding,” the diplomat says. But in contrast, others do not want farmers to lose out. Other EU10 countries want the cohesion funds and agriculture budget to remain intact. “We don’t want structural funds to be strengthened at the expense of agriculture,” says the diplomat.

New v old

Countries from the EU10 will also make alliances with ‘old’ member states when there is a common interest at stake. A recent example is the statement against a Commission proposal to cap payments to large farms, which attracted support from Germany, the UK, the Czech Republic and Romania, among others.

Although it is unlikely that the newer members will act as one united bloc in farm and budget negotiations, their common interests will carry weight in the negotiating game. This time round, it will be far harder for just two countries to fix the future of Europe’s farm policy in a backroom deal.

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A Union punctured by internal and external border hot-spots

A look at the EU’s border issues.

Europe’s borders, and those of the European Union, are the product of awkward geography, as in the case of Lampedusa, or of historical accident, with Kaliningrad and Ceuta and Melilla prime examples. They may be hard, as is the dividing line on Cyprus, or soft, as the Greek-Turkish land border used to be last year, when thousands crossed it illegally in search of a safer, better life.

Schengen

National borders have become invisible for people travelling on the European continent, as long as they stay west and north of a line that runs from Russia and Belarus through Ukraine, Romania and Serbia to Croatia. No border guards check identity documents, no customs officers ask intrusive questions. Travellers on international flights go through the same checks as domestic travellers – provided they do not stray outside the EU’s Schengen area. This includes non-EU members Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, but excludes Ireland and the UK and, for the time being, Bulgaria and Romania. Recent tinkering with the Schengen rules, which would in theory allow the temporary reintroduction of border checks, appears to be political posturing rather than a genuine threat to travellers’ convenience. The same may very well be true of the additional checks that Denmark has put in place. It does show, however, how fragile this core achievement of European integration has become.

Ireland and the UK

Boarding the Eurostar to London in Brussels or Paris is a throwback to 20 years ago in Europe, when travellers had to show identity papers at most national borders. Anyone seeking to cross the English channel by train, boat or plane still needs to show their identity card or passport, as neither the UK nor Ireland is part of the EU’s Schengen zone. Permanent residents of the EU who are citizens of a non-member state may also face a rude shock: as a rule, they will have to produce a visa, even for short visits to the UK and Ireland.

Ceuta and Melilla

Ceuta and Melilla are two European outposts on the African continent, Spanish enclaves with their back to Morocco; Ceuta faces the motherland across the Strait of Gibraltar, Melilla is further east along the Mediterranean coast, toward Morocco’s border with Algeria. Both have the same problem: they are the easiest way for Africans to reach European soil without having to cross the treacherous waters of the Mediterranean or the Atlantic. As a reaction to waves of immigrants in the 1990s, Spain built tall wire fences around the two enclaves; a decade ago, they were reinforced, and in 2005 Morocco and Spain deployed additional security forces to keep would-be migrants out.

Lampedusa

Lampedusa, with a permanent population of just 6,000, lies closer to Tunisia than to Italy, to which it belongs. That has been its misfortune. In February, thousands of Tunisians began arriving, after the demise of their dictatorial regime. They were followed by – far fewer – citizens of Libya (and citizens of other countries) escaping the civil war there. In all, around 45,000 passed through the tiny island in search of a better life. When many of them received temporary papers from the Italian authorities, which made it easier for them to travel to other countries in the EU’s Schengen zone, France led a move by member states to pull up the drawbridges. An overreaction, many policymakers grumbled – but one which matched the public mood in Europe, dejected after three years of recession, defensive of employment possibilities, and even more suspicious of newcomers than usual. Today, the flood of Tunisians has been reduced to a trickle, although occasionally a large vessel with hundreds of people arrives. (Next-door Malta is in a similar, although less dramatic, situation.)

Cyprus

In the early hours of 29 December 1963, Major-General Peter Young, the commander of British forces in Cyprus, used a green chinagraph pencil on a map of the island to draw a dividing line between the Greek and Turkish communities. With Turkey’s invasion of the northern third of Cyprus in 1974, that Green Line became a hard boundary, patrolled by UN peacekeepers and impenetrable for ordinary Cypriots. Walls, fences and other fortifications were erected, often cutting across villages and, in the capital Nicosia, across streets and backyards. Since a failed reunification plan in 2004, the year the island’s Greek-controlled segment joined the EU, the Green Line has become more porous, and Cypriots have been able to visit the other side for the first time in more than a generation. But this has yet to lead to definitive rapprochement between the two communities.

Kosovo

A diplomat from an EU member state once described Kosovo as “a black hole within a black hole” – a particularly troubled spot even by the standards of the western Balkans, by long tradition Europe’s most troubled region. A former Serbian province whose independence, declared in 2008, is not recognised by Serbia and five EU member states (Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain), Kosovo is landlocked and at the mercy of its neighbours for trade and transport. Kosovo is the only country in the western Balkans whose citizens still require visas to enter the Schengen area. As a result of weaknesses in the rule of law (despite the presence of the EU’s largest mission abroad) and its vast family networks extending across Europe, Kosovo is an important transit route for all kinds of illegal trade, from people to drugs, adding a further tarnish to its negative image. See Page 15

Greek-Turkish border

The land border between Greece and Turkey, which cuts across the historic region of Thrace, last year became the main entry point for illegal immigrants to the EU, with a 45% increase in detected crossings compared to 2009. For a period last autumn, every day around 350 further irregular migrants crossed a 12.5-kilometer section near the town of Orestiada, prompting the first-ever deployment of rapid intervention teams by Frontex, the EU’s border-control agency. In all, almost 50,000 illegal entries took place in 2010, according to the Greek authorities, compared to previous peaks of 30,000 in the Canary Islands (2006) and 31,300 on Lampedusa (2008). Since the Frontex deployment, detections – like, it is assumed, illegal migrants – have declined sharply.

Moldova

In April 2009, Romania’s President Traian Basescu made it easier for Moldovans to receive Romanian citizenship, citing concerns about post-election violence and a political swing in Moldova towards Russia. The simplified regime has remained in place under subsequent pro-Western administrations in Chisinau. Many Moldovans can claim one Romanian grandparent, and hundreds of thousands have so far used this opportunity to secure a Romanian passport – and, with it, the ability to travel and work within the EU. This bilateral policy is something over which the EU has only political influence. It does, though, add to the political challenge that Romania faces in securing membership of the Schengen zone.

Kaliningrad

Until 2004, bilateral agreements enabled the one million people of this Russian exclave to travel to Russia and to neighbouring Poland and Lithuania with substantial flexibility (in Lithuania, for example, Kaliningraders needed visas only for a visit of longer than 30 days). When Poland and Lithuania acceded to the EU, some flexibility was maintained by the issue of ‘facilitated transit documents’ for regular rail and road travellers to and from Russia. In addition, the EU’s local-traffic regime allows the exclave’s residents to travel 30 kilometres into Lithuania and Poland, provided they live within 30 kilometres of the border. However, this theoretically excludes the 430,000 residents of the city of Kaliningrad, since the city is 35km from Poland and 70km from Lithuania. Poland is using its presidency of the Council of Ministers to push for everyone in the exclave to have local-travel rights, a position that the European Commission says “may be justifiable”.

Croatia

Thanks to its unusual shape, Croatia, which is expected to join the EU on 1 July 2013, has a border of 7,817 kilometres, the 31st-longest in the world, even though Croatia is only 128th by surface area. It also has the world’s 22nd-longest coastline, with 5,835 kilometres, thanks to its more than 1,000 islands in the Adriatic. At the stroke of a pen, the EU, when Croatia joins, will acquire a 932-kilometre border with Bosnia and Herzegovina. That may well make it more difficult for EU policymakers to ignore that country’s internal troubles, which have allowed many illegal activities to thrive. Given that Bosnia’s prospects for joining the EU anytime soon are dim, expect that border to become even more tightly controlled than it is now.