Brussels Blogger

Banking data: Why MEPs must say no to SWIFT agreement

2010-02-07T15:18:41Z

I have written before why the SWIFT agreement is bad for Europe. This post is an update based on the final agreement and the new arguments that have been brought forward. In short: the situation has not changed and MEPs should reject the SWIFT agreement.

If you have not done so, read first my post about the SWIFT agreement which I wrote in November. This week, on 11 February, the Members of the European Parliaments (MEPs) will vote on the agreement that will allow US authorities to tap into EU bank data.

Here is a list of arguments why MEPs must reject the agreement:

1) EU’s financial messaging data will be transferred in bulk

The European Parliament’s rapporteur on the SWIFT agreement, Jenine Hennis-Plasschaert, made it very clear in her report that SWIFT is actually unable to provide tailored data about individual transactions (for technical and governance reasons). This means that, in accordance with the following provision in the agreement with the USA, SWIFT will need to provide all of its data in bulk:

“If the Designated Provider [SWIFT] is not able to identify and produce the specific data that would respond to the request because of technical reasons, all potentially relevant data shall be transmitted in bulk, subject to Article 5(2), to the competent authority of the requested Member State.” (SWIFT agreement, article 4 point 6)

In other words: instead of prohibiting SWIFT to provide all of its data at once to the US authorities it expressly permits this. This should already be enough to reject the whole agreement. If the possibility to get all data exists then you can be 100% sure that the United States will use it.

2) Privacy: It’s about European business and industry and not about citizens

In the discussions about the SWIFT agreement many people mentioned the privacy concerns with regard to the banking data of European citizens. But in reality European companies and industry will be much more affected than citizens because businesses are likely the ones to have the majority of trans-border transactions running through SWIFT.

The bulk transfer of data (see above) opens the door to industrial espionage on European businesses’ financial transactions - something that the US of course will never openly admit - but can they withstand this outstanding opportunity? (The German industry federation has warned already in November about this - without success it seems.)

3) The scope of the agreement is completely unclear

Everybody talks about SWIFT but the agreement applies to all companies dealing with financial transactions. Furthermore the agreement does not specify which transactions are concerned: bank transfers to and from EU countries or also intra EU countries. Even SEPA (Euro transfers) could be affected by the agreement.

4) There is no limit in time that the US can store the SWIFT data

While in principle the agreement says that transmitted data shall be deleted no later than 5 years from receipt (article 5 l) this is on the condition that the data is “no longer necessary to combat terrorism or its financing” (article 5 i). Such a weak regulation of the retention of the data cannot be acceptable. It means that all SWIFT data could potentially be used by US administrations in decades. Five years is already much above the 2 years maximum retention used by the EU’s telecom data rentention directive.

5) There is not much evidence that the SWIFT data / TFTP programme has had major benefits in the fight against terror

The US administration claims that several terrorist leads have been shared with EU member states. But how many terrorists have been convicted? We don’t know. But I’d assume that we would know by now if there were several of them.

The European Union has assigned a person that is overseeing the SWIFT data transfers. This person is Jean-Louis Bruguière, a former judge and French conservative politician with apparently close ties to the CIA and FBI, according to Wikipedia. Bruguière has produced two reports on the implementation of the previous SWIFT agreements. These reports are classified as secret. No MEP other than rapporteur Hennis-Plasschaert has seen them.

The US administration especially stresses Germany as a country that has benefited from the TFTP programme and the searches in the SWIFT banking records. But in December last year the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) critisised the SWIFT agreement and (according to an internal paper cited by Der Spiegel) is of the opinion that there is “no need” and “no operational interest” in the SWIFT data searches.

All in all not very convincing arguments for the necessity of the TFTP programme, don’t you think?

6) The EU must not outsource the terror intelligence to the USA

Maybe you don’t know this: the TFTP programme has been set up only for the purpose of accessing SWIFT data. The majority of SWIFT transactions however concerns European banks and not those of US banks.

So what has the EU done? Article 8 of the SWIFT agreement expressly permits EU Member States to request a search for relevant information. The US will do the search for the EU Member State and hand back the information. The EP rapporteur has this summary:

“It cannot be denied that the EU continues to outsource its financial intelligence service to the US.” EP comittee report, 3 February 2010

The EU’s anti-terror investigations on (largely) its own data should - if deemed necessary - be done by the EU itself. And please don’t tell me that no EU Member State has the technical capability to do searches in a large database of financial transactions.

7) This is the last chance for the European Parliament to improve things

Just step back a bit and think about what has happened: the US administration has secretly set up the TFTP programme in 2002 without informing the EU Member States. This programme was in breach of Belgian and European data protection legislation. When uncovered by US newspapers the EU Council of ministers tried to get a few assurances on the use of the data.

Then, when drafting the new interim agreement in 2009 the Council of the EU showed complete ignorance with regard to the European Parliament - ignoring the demands set out by the EP in September 2009, signing the agreement just one day before the Lisbon Treaty came into force (30 Nov 2009) and giving the Parliament one week to decide whether it agrees with it. And now MEPs are expected to rubber-stamp the agreement?

Yes, the interim agreement will only be valid until the end of October 2010 - and the European Parliament has already demanded that it will be fully involved in the negotiations. Nothing substantial has been promised. (The commission is apparently preparing some concessions, counter-check them with the above points!) Do you really think the final agreement will be very different from the interim agreement? How much negotiation power will the European Parliament have if it already agrees to the interim agreement?

The European Parliament must NOW say no to the interim agreement. Only this will give them the opportunity to be really heard and involved in the final agreement.

But apparently the US threatens now quite openly - in the case of a no - to stop EU level negotations and to make a bilateral agreement with Belgium (the seat of SWIFT): do you really say yes to something because the other party is threatening to ignore the European Union and its legislative bodies? SWIFT and European banking data is a European issue and must be dealt at European level. If necessary, European safeguards must be established for other EU Members states banking data that is stored in other EU countries. Individual Member States must not be left alone when the US (or any other Member States) is forcing them to undermine fundamental rights like data protection, privacy and trade secrets.

Many in favour are saying that only a yes will provide security to Europe. In fact they are playing with the security of European businesses and citizens. If you re-read the points above it must be impossible to say yes to such a sub-standard agreement.

Legal concerns

Finally, if this has not been yet convincing, let me give you a quick summary of other legal concerns mentioned by the EP rapporteur in her recent report:

The TFTP must be considered “as a departure from European law and practice in how law enforcement agencies would acquire individuals’ financial records”.
The “transfer of all, or virtually all of its data [bulk transfer] [...] violates the basic principles of [EU] data protection law”.
The SWIFT agreement “does not expressly provide that transfer requests be subject to judicial authorisation”.
The conditions for sharing SWIFT data with third-party countries are “not sufficiently defined”.
Access, rectification, compensation and redress outside the EU are “not defined adequately”.
The Council “failed to clarify the precise role of the ‘public authority’” with the responsibility to handle the requests from the USA.

Background documents:

SWIFT agreement - published in EU Official Journal on 13 January 2010
EP Civil liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee’s recommendation to say to SWIFT agreement (3 February 2010)
Rules on processing of SWIFT data (2007) - [if you read carefully you will see a 8 pages full of blabla]
European Parliament legal service opinion on SWIFT agreement

5 reasons why the SWIFT deal is very bad for Europe

2009-11-27T07:46:50Z

Today I will list the 5 main arguments against the EU bank data transfer deal with the US.The background of the deal has already been described in my blog post yesterday.

These are the 5 reasons:

There is no reciprocity: The US will receive EU banking data and the EU will NOT receive any US banking data. Basically the EU will outsource a data mining center to the US authorities and hopes to get back some interesting data on its own citizens.
The bank data won’t stay in the United States: The transferred data is able to move outside the US for anti-terrorism mesaures. Given how many countries cooperate on anti-terrorism this is very worrying.
No parliaments to be involved: neither the European Parliament nor any national parliment will be involved.
No courts involved: no courts are involved before the transfer of data takes place. There is no possibility for European citizens or businesses to launch legal procedures against the data transfers. Compared to the data retention directive concercing telecom operations (which was heavily discussed in the European parliament, in media and at national levels) this is very very weak.
Everything is done in completele secrecy: There is no press release, no memo. The draft agreement is not public and held secret until today. Hence there is very little media coverage, especially outside Germany.

SWIFT - EU to grant USA nearly unlimited access to all EU banking data

2009-11-26T07:22:49Z

The EU justice and home affairs minister are about to agree on a large-scale banking data sharing plan with the United States. The agreement will have a massive impact on the privacy of banking data of European businesses and citizens.

Background of the deal

It’s everything about SWIFT, a company that handles the bank transactions for thousands of bank, inluding most European banks. SWIFT is based in Belgium but has also a branch in the USA. Under the TFTP programme the US government forced the US branch (which mirrors all data based in Belgium) to allow government access to all these bank transactions in order to help anti-terrorism operations.

SWIFT is now moving all its data centers outside the EU and the US, to Switzerland. In order to continue allowing the US authorities accessing all banking data a high level agreement between the EU and the USA is currently being negotiated. It is likely to be agreed on in the EU council of minister meeting next Monday, 30 November 2009.

Why is the SWIFT deal dangerous?

The move of SWIFT the data server to Switzerland would be an excellent opportunity to stop the nearly unlimited access of US authorities on EU bank transactions. But EU justice and interior minister are apparently keen agree a deal as soon as possible, on 30 November. Why 30 November? Because one day later, on 1 December 2009, the EU’s Lisbon Treaty will be in force and would allow the European Parliament to play a major role in the negotiations of the deal with the USA. A deal one day before will be a slap in the face of democracy in the EU.

SWIFT handles 15 mio bank transactions daily for more than 9000 banks worldwide. Nearly every transnational bank transaction within the EU is recorded in the SWIFT data centers, including amount, sender, recipient, and transaction comments. The agreement will even allow to transmit “other personal data”.

This will allow US authorities to establish a huge data mining database, allowing to query every substantial business link within the EU. No question that the United States will never admit that openly. But data protection agreements should not be based on hope but on principles. The current draft is based on hope.

Is there no opposition to the deal?

When German media reported about the deal about 2 weeks ago some opposition to the deal was raised. Germany, France and Austria seem to had important data protection concerns. Finally it was reported that Germany would even block the deal. Two weeks later all the opposition apparently has disappeared and Germany will now abstain from the vote on Monday, paving the way for the agreement coming into force.

MEPs in the European Parliament have raised concerns as well, but if the deal is agreed before 1st December, there will be no way for them to have a say.

No reciprocity

The most suprising fact related to the EU negotiations with the US is the missing demand of reciprocity. In other words: while the US will be able to access EU banking data no access to US banking data by EU auhtoirties is being foreseen.

Open questions

It is unclear to me what exact legal form the agreement with the United States will have. To my knowledge it will probably not require any ratification by national parliaments. It needs to be seen whether procedures against the deal will be able to be launched at the European Court of Justice. They could potentially be based on the EU’s current, rather strict data protection legislation.

Documents

Draft SWIFT agreement (EU council document, prepared by Swedish presidency)
TFTP - Draft EU-US agreement - Q/A (unclear source of paper)

I am very interested in your opinion on this topic. Please use the comments below.

Update: See also this follow-up article before the vote of the MEPs on 11 February 2010.

Updates

Thursday 26 Nov at 14:00: Pressure grows on opponents of bank transfer data deal (European Voice)

Thursday 26 Nov at 22:00: Facebook group against SWIFT data transfer deal

Friday, 27 Nov at 09:00: Follow-up post: 5 reasons why the SWIFT deal is very bad for Europe

The Barroso vote: political transparency vs political privacy + the role of the Socialists

2009-09-17T03:06:25Z

Like many people in Brussels I was following yesterday the election of Jose Manuel Barroso as Commission President in the European Parliament. Specifically I was asking myself what role the Socialist Group in the EP played.

The official line of the Socialist & Democrats Group was to abstain in the vote on the Commission President. Asked on Twitter how he voted, German Social Democrat MEP Matthias Groote answered yesterday afternoon that he did not support Barroso. He did not want to clarify whether this meant that he voted no or that he abstained, saying that the vote was secret and that he respects that.

Now it is his perfect right not to disclose his personal choice in a secret ballot. I would even say that it is remarkable that an MEP takes the time to answer and explain on Twitter his reasons why and how he voted on a certain issue.

But I want to take this as a starting point to ask two questions:

Is a secret ballot adequate for electing a European Commission President?
What is the reasoning behind the abstention of Socialist MEPs in the Barroso vote?

The secret ballot

The vote on the Commission President is cast by a secret ballot, in accordance with the EU Treaties.

The key aim [of a secret ballot] is to ensure the voter records a sincere choice by forestalling attempts to influence the voter by intimidation or bribery. (Wikipedia)

Now I have to admit that I have no idea of the practice of using secret ballots in the European Parliament or national parliaments. So far, I haven’t noticed any votes in the EP that were secret, with the exception of the vote on the President of the European Parliament.

One the one hand I think that the aim of the secret ballot described above holds also true for important votes in the EP. MEPs of a certain political group could be (or could fear to be) intimidated and could face some pressure to vote with their political family in case their vote would be made public.

One the other hand it is exactly the Commission and its President that many people in Europe describe as not having the required democratic legitimacy that it should have. Does it improve or hinder democracy when the directly elected MEPs cast their vote on the Commission President in a secret ballot. I don’t know enough about parliamentary principles to make up my mind. Would be interesting to hear your opinion on it.

The role of the Socialist in the Barroso vote

The official line of the Socialist MEPs was to abstain from the vote on the Commission President. Now you could say that this is the only realistic option for the S&D group as they had no own candidate and no majority in the EP to prevent Barroso remaining at the head of the European Commission.

But why not simply voting against Barroso? If the headline of the S&D Group website after the vote was “Weakest Commission President in history” then I think it would have been consequent to vote no. Such a headline suggests that the Socialists feel more in opposition than in a constructive dialogue about key policies of the Commission, something Tony Robinson, Head of Press and Communications of the S&D Group, wanted to stress in another tweet yesterday:

“People wrongly think today’s Barroso vote is the end of the affair. The big vote comes later on the new Commission and its policies.”

Now it is difficult for me to understand how it will be possible for the Socialist MEPs to influence key policies of the new Commission when they have no alliance with others to block the whole Commission. Does really anyone think that the center-left political groups in the EP will build up an alliance to reject the entire new Commission based on reservations about not being “social” enough? Yes, there was the issue of Buttiglione in 2004, but this only is an option for rather extreme cases, not “influencing policies”.

The irony in all this is: 117 MEPS abstained in the vote. 382 voted for and 219 against Barroso. As the vote was secret we don’t know how each MEP voted. All comments suggest that the abstentions come from the Socialists and that the yes votes are all from EPP, Liberal and ECR Group. But we don’t know. Maybe Barroso has convinced several Greens in their public hearing? Or there are Liberals that abstained rather than voting for Barroso. So how will Barroso know who really supported him?

There is one further interesting remark by a Poul Rasmussen, President of the Party of European Socialists. In a first reaction, according to EurActiv, he said:

“For the coherence of Europe, we insist on having the post of High Representative, or if the Lisbon treaty is ratified, the European Council president. We have several excellent candidates for these positions.”

I am very interested in knowing which candidates will be put forward (and why they wouldn’t have been suitable as Commission President).

Always interested in your comments!

Note: comments are now back. Sorry for the delay, which was caused by a technical problem on Blogactiv.

Sending a letter in Brussels? Good luck with the Belgian Post.

2009-09-09T09:24:45Z

I wanted to write about this since long time. I strongly believe the Belgian Post (”La Poste“) is one of the worst customer service experiences which the country has to offer. And an ideal exampe of where competition will help improve it.

I could tell dozens of such stories (and each one would be worth a blog article), but I will just explain my quest for stamps yesterday. The simple goal: post 26 letters, in standardised format, after 18:00 in Brussels’ city center (aiming for next day delivery, so with same-day pick-up still).

At 17:50, knowing that my closest post office (at city 2 shopping centre) closes at 18:00 (17:45 to be more correct as they will close doors 15 minutes before) I head directly to the large post office at De Brouckere.

Bad luck, it also closes at 18:00. Arriving there at 17:55 the security person tells me the office is closed (which is not the problem as such here). I ask where the next open post office would be. He tells me further down Anspachlaan but couldn’t tell me exactly where. On the way back to my bike I see the post box in front of the post office stating 19:00 as last pick-up time. I return to the person at the entrance and ask whether they’d have an automatic vending machine for stamps. He says no and refers me to the press shop on the other side of the street.

The man in the press shop tells me that he doesn’t sell stamp, I would only get them at the post office (and this corresponds with my experience that you can’t buy stamps anywhere else than at post office or post partner). So why does the person at the post office send me to the press shop?

Not knowing where I could find any other open post office with pick-up time later than 18:00 I decide to cycle to the poor-man’s post office at Midi train station. I call it poor-man’s office because it often the last possibility to go for when you need to post something late and despite being located at the largest train station of Belgium it is actually more used by many people from Anderlecht, one of Brussels’ less-rich communes.

I arrive there at 18:12, take a ticket (number 989) and look at the screen. It shows 960. “Only” 29 people in front of me. While ticket systems are actually a really good invention they are so often abused in Belgium.

The number of people is misleading. The real queue is shown on the screen.

While waiting in the “queue” I discover in a corner a vending machine for stamps. However, the instructions are very clear: the machine sells only stamp per stamp and you need to insert exact cash for each stamp. Money is not returned. Paying with Proton (Belgium’s well-working electronic wallet on bank card)? No way.

After waiting 25 minutes I tell the man behind the counter I’d like 26 stamps for national standard delivery. He tells me that they are only sold per 10. I said this can’t be (knowing that I bought single stamps the day before in another post office) but he insists that I can only get 20 or 30. I decide that I don’t want to spend more time discussing pricing and packaging for my stamps and go for 30 stamps. I return home and note that it took me again 1 hour to post a few letters in Brussels. Having done this before, I was not surprised.

The story above is maybe not super exciting but it clearly shows how bad customer service can become if you have a monopoly (in this case on delivery of letters).

“A monopoly exists when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it.” (Wikipedia)

I am normally not the one who cries loud for liberalisation of markets but unfortunately I have given up any hope that regulation or political pressure can still improve anything at the Belgian post. The only solution is strong competition via the European Union’s liberalisation route for postal service in Europe. and hopefully nobody needs to go still to the Belgian Post after 2011/2013 (anyone knowing the exact date of liberalisation for Belgium?).

Further questions

Why do post office in Belgium close often at 17:00 or 18:00 while many other shops sell until 18:30, 19:00 or even 20:00? Why is there no spread of opening times among neighbouring post offices?
Why does it cost 1,25 € or 1,30 € to send a non-standardised 50g letter from Germany or Austria to Belgium but 2,70 € if you send the same letter from Belgium to those countries?
Why is the cheapest rate for European countries for standard letters 90 cent in Belgium, but 70 cent in Germany and France and 65 cent in Austria?
Why does it cost minimum 5,70 € (!) to send a registered letter in Belgium? (I spare you the country comparisons)
Why can you get Coca Cola, coffee, bread, phone credit, public transport and your money via automatic vending machines but not stamps?
Why can’t you buy stamps in any press shop or whoever wants to sell them? (Remember: the post makes the money at moment the stamp is sold, not when you post a letter)
Why do Belgian stamps not carry any value (the € amount)?
Why is it not possible in Belgium to distinguish a stamp for Belgium from a stamp for Europe? (you have to know the colours)
Why is it possible that a post office like the one at Brussels north station is in such a bad shape, smelling like piss, and nobody cares.
Why is it possible that management of the post accepts that its clients have to wait often 20-40 minutes before being able to use the services of the post?
Why do I have the feeling that Belgian politicians never ever go themselves to a post office?
Why is the post allowed to sell gas & electricty, mobile phone contracts and financial services when it can’t even deal properly with its core service clients?
Why does nobody care about bad customer service in Belgium?

The most important for me is the waiting time. Could you image a restaurant letting each client wait for 20-40 minutes before coming to their table and would you expect those clients ever coming back to that restaurant?

Please use the comments to le us know what your experiences have had with La Poste in Brussels. I am also interested in other blog or news articles about customer service at the Belgian post (also in FR/NL).

Inside Brusselsblogger: what this blog is about

2009-09-03T10:45:55Z

A new, interesting tools has been launched to detect the online traces of any person. Here is what it shows for “Brusselsblogger”
The tool is called Personas and was developed by the MIT Media Lab. You can try it out here: http://personas.media.mit.edu (click on “launch personas” to start a search)

First I was surprised to see how many topics I already seem to have covered on this blog. And after looking more closely at the graphic it seems that I cover mainly professional politics online. Hmm. I somehow miss “Europe” in here. And professional EU reporting is rather done here and here.

Anyway, it might be interesting for private person and politicians like MEPs to check out their online profile.

As I pointed out in an earlier post this blog will in the future have more stuff on Brussels as a city than the EU related notion of Brussels.

By the way, here is another nice visualisation tool that exists since a while already. This is the Wordle graphic based on the Brusselsblogger feed.

Belgium is expensive for heavy GSM users

2009-08-21T16:10:29Z

A recent OECD report compares mobile phone charges in OECD countries. Many readers will not be surprised to hear that - for high-usage customers - Belgium is one of the more expensive countries.

To put this more into an EU context: I have taken the data available via the OECD press release, added percentages for easier comparison and removed all the non-EU countries (note that not all EU countries are OECD members, so some countries are missing).

This is the overview, based on the high-usage OECD basket (prices are USD, base August 2008):

EU career opportunities - staff selection to become easier?

2009-03-20T16:41:00Z

About two weeks ago the European Union Personel Selection Office (EPSO) announced that selection and recruitment of EU staff will become easier. However, how exactly the new test will look like is unclear.

The press release announcing the change in the recruitment competitions (”concours”) is full of blah-bla. Only in the “background” part it explains the two main changes to the selection procedure:

From 2010, candidates will be tested on the basis of competence rather than knowledge.
The time lag between a candidate’s initial application and taking up employment will be cut from over 15 months today, to just 5-9 months.

The second point is of course very welcome, no one is in favour of waiting nearly two years for a job after making an application.

The first point, however, is not very clear yet. Up until now, all candidates for EU civil servant jobs had to pass a pre-selection test followed by a written test and an interview. The pre-selection test is currently composed of multiple choice questions testing EU knowledge (history, policies, facts) and numerical and verbal reasoning. It is followed by a another multiple choice test and a written test in the specific subject area. Finally there is an personal interview before candidates will apppear on a reserve list, from which they can be recruited.

How will the new tests assess the “competencies” of candidates? Let’s look at the definition of “competence”:

Competence is the ability to perform a specific task, action or function successfully. (Wikipedia)

Now compare this to the term “knowledge”, which is also used to “mean the confident understanding of a subject with the ability to use it for a specific purpose if appropriate” (Wikipedia).

I cannot really see how the pre-selection test could be anything different than multiple choice questions: in this first phase several thousands of candidates go through the tests and only an automatic computer-based analysis of the answers allows quick procedures. So maybe the only change will be that pre-selection tests will already contain questions specific to the policy area that candidates apply for. We will only know when the new rules are in place, which will not be before end of 2009.

In the meanwhile you can watch the promotion video below and look at the new, but still rather confusing EU careers website (which now runs on the address eu-careers.eu - a bit too similar in my view to the commercially run eu-careers.com)

Update: I found a document which explains quite in detail how the new selection procedures will work. In short: the EU knowledge test seem to disappear and you will have “behavioural test” in the first phase and group exercises and presentations in the second phase. See the full document for all details. Here is a quick overview of the new phases:

This is how Brussels’ EU quarter could look like in 2025

2009-03-05T19:10:43Z

The European Commission and the city of Brussels presented today the winners of a design competiton for the Brussels EU quarter. This is how Rue de la Loi could look like:

Tram on Rue de la Loi

To illustrate the drastic difference, this is how Rue de la Loi looks today:

Rue de la Loi (picture by guzi4real/flickr)

So will there really be a tram on Rue de la Loi? I’d say that it is quite unlikely. Already Brussels minister-president Charles Picqué was cautious in the press conference: one would have to evaluate the proposals in light of several constraints, he said.

I certainly welcome a more-or-less car-free Rue de la Loi, but I doubt having an underground metro and a tram at ground level on the same street would be practical. But one has to see this probably in the light of the completely re-built mobility hub around Schuman, which will include a modernised train station.

Appartment buildings on Rue de la Loi?

One interesting aspect of the plan is to have more mixed areas within the EU quartier. This means that there will also be residential buildings on Rue de la Loi.

I just wonder: who will want (and will be able to afford) an appartment on Rue de la Loi, except eurocrats? It’s a nice idea, but it comes a bit late (50 years ago the whole area was full of residential houses). It will in my view not improve the link between (Belgian) citizens and the EU in Brussels.

The whole view

Finally the big picture (the skyscrapers would be among the tallest buildings in Brussels):

Winning design of the Brussels urban planning competition for the EU quarter

One last note: this is just a project, although Picqué said works could start already in 2011.

Read also: Making Brussels beautiful by Honor Mahony.

Where is the video of Klaus’ speech? (updated: here it is!)

2009-02-25T08:00:50Z

I went to Europarl TV this weekend to watch the speech of Czech President Klaus in the European Parliament. But to my surprise I didn’t find any full video of the speech. The only material available in this context on Europarl TV is a short editorial video about the speech (which is the video you see above Blogactiv/Wordpress and EuroparlTV seem not to work together, you have to click on the link to see the video).

Now you can think about Klaus and his EU opinions what you want (and I’m certainly not a Klaus supporter). But he addressed nevertheless the European Parliament and people should have the possibility to judge themselves.

Ironically, I think that a video of the full speech of Klaus could help Europarl TV increase its not-so-great number of viewers

Update 24/02/2009: The video can indeed be viewed on the website of the European Parliament. I have uploaded it to YouTube and you can view it here:

Update 25/02/2009: Apparently the video below that I put on YouTube only contains the introduction by Hans-Gert Pöttering. For the moment please view the full speech directly on the EP site (click on “Formal Sitting - Czech republic” and then “Vaclav Klaus” in the speakers box).

–> Watch the full speech here: http://www.vimeo.com/3377065 (aarg, it’s in Czech now)