NYT By JONATHAN ZITTRAINMAY 14, 2014 The Opinion Pages A right to be forgotten? "THE European Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday that Europeans have a limited “right to be forgotten” by search engines like Google. According to the ruling, an individual can compel Google to remove certain reputation-harming search results that are generated by Googling the individual’s name. The court is trying to address an important problem — namely, the Internet’s ability to preserve indefinitely all its information about you, no matter how unfortunate or misleading — but it has devised a poor solution."
A pro-European and former chief economist of Britain in Europe, Legrain is nonetheless downbeat about the prospects for the EU unless it takes radical steps to raise productivity and make itself more democratically accountable. He is particularly concerned about the survival of the single currency. "The EU will survive, but I think the euro zone might ultimately break up," he said. "My base line scenario is that the euro zone is headed for a Japanese-style period of stagnation and deflation."
Interview wirh Jo Leinen about the European elections and the Ukraine crisis. Leinen: "The "single" idea of Europe no longer exists. After WWII it was easy to agree on the idea of peace. Now it has become more diverse. While the idea of peace still remains – just look at Ukraine – there is the concept of being able to continue living a good life in Europe. In the 21st century we want to defend our values and our interests in an ever-shrinking world. Granted, that is a bit more complicated to explain but it is just as important as the idea for peace." Leinen has called it a disservice that the German Constitutional Court ruled to remove the 3% electoral threshold". He says: "The Court underestimates the role of the parliament as a legislative body and as a means of assembling the European executive. It seems to have compared the European level to the level of a city council, where it does not matter how many parties emerge. That is wrong. We need to bundle interests. A fragmented European parliament is less able to make decisions than one in which political currents and interests are bundled into various political groups. Everything else hinders and complicates its work."
13.5. Dans un entretien à Euractiv, l’économiste « star », Thomas Piketty évoque ses propositions de réformes institutionnelles pour démocratiser l’Union et la zone euro. Et s'étonne que le PPE ait choisi de présenter un candidat originaire du Luxembourg, un paradis fiscal.
In March 2014, ALTER-EU and its supporter organisations, including Corporate Europe Observatory, will launch a campaign to demand that candidates in the upcoming European elections “stand-up for citizens and democracy against the excessive lobbying influence of banks and big business”.
Quick, S., Prior, G., Toombs, B., Taylor, L., & Currenti, R. (2013). Cross-European survey to measure users’ perceptions of the benefits of ICT in public libraries (funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation).
20.12.2013 London - Die Rating-Agentur Standard & Poor's (S&P) hat der Europäischen Union (EU) die Bestnote entzogen. Die Note für die Kreditwürdigkeit sei wegen der schwächeren Verfassung ihrer 28 Mitgliedsländer um eine Stufe von AAA auf AA+ gesenkt worden, teilte S&P mit. Den Ausblick hielt die Agentur allerdings auf stabil. Damit ist zunächst nicht mit einer weiteren Abstufung zu rechnen.
This is the first newsletter of Troika Watch. With this newsletter, we want to cover news about the Troika, the situation in the countries affected by it and the opposition and resistance against it. We hope that this can help connecting struggles and be a contribution to strengthen resistance against austerity policies. We are a group of people that mostly know each other from meetings like the European Social forum, Firenze 10+10, the Altersummit, EU in crisis or Blockupy. Some of us work for progressive NGOs like the Bretton Woods Project, CEO, CADTM or TNI, others are activists in networks like Attac or ICAN. We plan to publish this newsletter once or twice a month in English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. You can subscribe to this newsletter at www.troikawatch.net/lists and contact us by sending an email to info@troikawatch.net .
They want capitalism without democracy, we want democracy without capitalism Statement of the Blockupy coordinating committee, 5.6.2013 Blockupy 2013 – we experienced intense and powerful days of collective action and common resistance. On Friday, more than 3000 activists blockaded the entrance to the European Central Bank, making good on our announcement to carry our resistance deep into the heart of the European crisis regime.
In sum the draft confirms the will to impose greater regulatory "convergence" and "harmonization" of future regulations between the EU and the US in the only interest of transnational corporations and the financial industry. The vagueness of the draft would allow the Commission great freedom to achieve this. Social, labour and environmental rights in both sides of the Atlantic are under fire.
Attac France 18.3.2013: "En revanche, que l'Union européenne valide une taxe exceptionnelle et progressive sur les grandes fortunes pour rembourser la dette des banques constitue un précédent très intéressant. Il est donc possible de faire payer les riches par une méthode ô combien expéditive, un prélèvement direct voté par le Parlement sur les avoirs bancaires, y compris les produits financiers. Le réseau des Attac d'Europe demande depuis plusieurs mois la mise en place d'une taxation exceptionnelle sur les grandes fortunes pour réduire les besoins de financement des Etats. Le précèdent chypriote, avec toutes ses limites, montre qu'il suffit d'une volonté politique."