Tag: Jean-Claude Juncker

For Slovenian Media, A CNN/Obamacare Moment

Earlier today the Constitutional Court ruled on the constitutionality of the 2013 banking bail-in. Back then, Slovenia was on the brink of a financial meltdown with investors and money-men in general being overtly nervous that the country will follow Greece and Cyprus and further lengthen the odds of survival of the common European currency. Once the amount of bad debt and other toxic assets within the banking system was established (5 billion euro cumulative) the nitty-gritty of actually coughing up the dough was worked out. It was decided, mostly by the European Commission, that state-aid-like recapitalisation of the mostly state-owned banks was allowed only if private investors took the hit along with the taxpayers. Effectively, a complete nationalisation.

20161026_podrejenci

Continue reading For Slovenian Media, A CNN/Obamacare Moment

Rule 34a

That Slovenia fought against watering-down of the Telecom Single Market directive (a.k.a. Single Digital Market) was for all intents and purposes the most surprising piece of information coming from this sorry little excuse for a country in the last ten days or so. Even more surprising than the decapitation of the bad-bank where the CEO and chief of the supervisory board were dismissed over excessive pay. And infinitely more surprising than the story of the NSA and German BND bulk-intercepting international calls from Slovenia between 2005 and 2008. Both of which will get written up here in due course. But first, this net neutrality thing.

20151009_sti
(source: savetheinternet.eu)

You can read it up, but the nuts and bolts of it are fairly simple: either everyone gets to use the web under the same conditions in terms of speed, access and services provided or network operators get to decide which services or users get preferential treatment (for a price, of course) and which get to crowd with the rest of us sorry bastards on the slow end of the interwebz. Or, what could happen is that the network operators get to pick their favourite service(s) and charge less – or nothing at all – for their use, relegating every other competing service to the status of an also-ran. Point being that under the proposed Single Digital Market directive the telcos get to pick the winners and the losers.

This is about where and how you’ll get your news, for example. Or your porn. Not that there’s much difference, but still. On the neutral net, where telcos/network providers compete with one another with plans, prices and ease of access, you’re able to pick and choose between RTVSLO, BBC, Russia Today, NaturalNews.com (yuck) or even FoxNews. On the not-so-neutral net your provider will most likely limit you to a handful of news sites, at least one of them being their own. Everything else will either be available at a premium or at lower speeds. Or both. The same goes for porn. The neutral net brings you PornHub, Redtube or plain old /hc/ board on 4chan.org, depending on your fancy. The other web brings you your provider’s porn service. It is a sort of Rule 34a.

 

If it exists, there is porn of it – no exceptions. Provided you pay for it and we get to deliver it.

 

And would you really like your network provider to know exactly what sick turn-ons you have? Methinks not.

And this is just the way things are today. Imagine a couple of years from now, when the IoT takes off for real. You buy a net-enabled fridge telling you what’s missing and updating your shopping list. But on the not-neutral web your network operator gets to choose which brand of the fridge gets preferential treatment within its network or which on-line shops are available for such a device. Hell, it can even limit your online shopping experience, preventing you from getting the best deal out there. Or maybe it can charge you extra if your wifi-enabled car needs an update. The list goes on forever.

Also, this is about cats.

All of the above makes it all the more astounding that Slovenia actually took up the issue on the EU level. I mean, here we have arguably the single most important long-term policy issue since the introduction of the euro and this country actually wants to do something? Wow. Just wow. In fact, Slovenia and the Netherlands were out-voted on the issue, with Croatia and Greece abstaining, while the 24 remaining member states green-lighted the draft (page 13 of the link).

You see, the thing is that next to the Netherlands, Slovenia is the only EU member to have set net neutrality as a legal norm. More or less. In Slovenia at least the legislation was watered down via lobbying by the telcos, but not enough to prevent the first-ever rulings by AKOS, the comms watchdog, which in January fined the two largest mobile providers for providing zero-rating services. And now, as the year slowly draws to an end, the European Commission put forward a draft Single Digital Market directive which would have made these rulings next to impossible as it basically trades the much-hailed abolition of roaming charges (two years hence) for a two-speed Internet (most likely to commence in various forms immediately). Little wonder Slovenia and the Netherlands have problems with it since it directly undermines their national legislation, several orders of magnitude better than what the draft directive provides for.

At its most crudest, this is a case where a drop in profits in one segment of the industry is mitigated by a free-fire zone of surcharges in another segment. Not to mention the fact that the move will have massive repercussions far beyond the consumer sector. Limiting speed and/or access to information will impact education and research, creative industries will once again be divided into haves and have-nots and home will no longer be simply where the wi-fi is.

This, despite the name, will be anything but a single digital market.

The ball is now in the European Parliament’s court. Last year, the EP shot down a directive draft which – compared to the current one – was more than acceptable. But with Brussels packing more lobbyists than Washington D.C., one can never be sure of the final outcome. (Slighty OT: Here is a handy tool on lobbying stats, courtesy of Politico.eu).

Which is why a number of grass-roots initiatives sprang up all over the EU to, well, save the internet. In Slovenia, too, where media and the politicos have apparently finally started paying attention. Whether this will be enough remains to be seen, but if the fate of the ACTA treaty a few years ago and the recent Safe-harbour ruling by the European Court are omens to go by, then this whole thing can still be overturned.

Because as it stands, for all the goodies it brings vis-a-vis mobile roaming, the TSM directive in fact heralds yet another social stratification. This time of a digital nature, ordained by the industry whose hey-day has long since passed.

Brussels Bruises For Bulc And Bratušek

As pengovsky writes this, Jean-Claude Juncker (yes, he of selfie-with-a-convict fame) concluded his meeting with Violeta Bulc, Slovenia’s second entry for the post of the European Commissioner later today. Thus a sordid saga of backstabbing, ruthless power-play, misoginy and blatant incompetence continues, reportedly with Bulc being nominated for the transport portfolio.

20141014_blog
JCJ with Frau Komisaar vol. 1 and vol. 2 (photo credit: @NatashaBertraud)

Pengovsky sadly didn’t have the time to cover the first instalment of this particular tour-de-clustefuck as he was too busy covering Ljubljana local elections for The Firm™ and has yet to write it up for this blog as well (Janković won, in case you didn’t know). But you all know the final outcome: Alenka Bratušek, Slovenian former MP in the end withdrew her nomination after a humiliating 113-12 vote rejecting her appointment as Commission VP for Energy Union.

Bratušek debacle

Now, what happened to Bratušek was about as brutal as can get and in all honesty her being singled out as the lone reject of the Juncker Commission is unfair at very least. From the moment the former prime minister was appointed as one of three possible nominees from Slovenia a chain of events was set in motion that – combined with her (admittedly) very much lacking performance during the committee hearing – could only end in a disaster.

You see, the main sticking point of Bratušek nomination in Slovenia (as presented by her political rivals and happily carried by numerous newsmedia) was not her lack of expertise, but rather the fashion in which she was nominated, her supposed singing of communist songs at an event last year and her potential paycheck (the latter two being typically Slovenian issues). The fact that she knew about as much about the emerging Energy Union as the next guy came a distant fourth.

While some criticism was well deserved, Bratušek was subject to daily, no, hourly abuse that was blatantly misoginous in nature and was not unlike all the shit thrown at her during her year-long reign as this country’s PM, from the length and pattern of her skirt, colour of her shoes, the dress she wore when she met the pope to rampant speculation whom was she sleeping with to get where she was. And yes, at one point Jucker was mentioned as her bed-trophy. Despicable doesn’t even being to cover what Bratušek was subjected to. Thus the character assassination that commenced immediately after Juncker picked her from the list containing Tanja Fajon (Slovenian MEP for S&D) and Karl Erjavec (foreign minister and leader of the pensioners’ party DeSUS).

Adding to that was the anti-graft commission (KPK) which took issue with her (self-)nomination process and the fact that Bratušek handled that part of the equation pretty badly, giving the appearance that he was avoiding a quick closure of the case by first waiting until the last possible day to pick up the registered mail, then letting her attorney deal with it and in the end even picking a new attorney. Pengovsky is still dumbfounded as to why she didn’t tackle the issue head-on, especially as the KPK found her actions amounted only to a conflict of interest and not a full-blown corruption (while we’re on the issue: in formulating the case against Bratušek, KPK created an infinite loop and more or less emasculated itself. More on that soon)

And then there was the horse-trading in the European Parliament where no-one even bothered to hide that it was going on over Bratušek’s back. The EPP and the S&D struck a deal to rub each others’ backs regardless of their respective nominees inappropriateness for selected portfolios, perhaps with a few cosmetic adjustments. This left Bratušek (an ALDE nominee) as the odd one out and boy did they let her have it.

But, at the end of the day, it was her under-prepairedness that made every other piece of her downfall-puzzle to fall into place. A blunder here, a blunder there, her signature lackluster and repetitive performance, sub-par use of euro-speak (where the fuck were phrases like “fully acknowledging the sovereignty of member states we will strive to create a fair, transparent and effective single market, blah, blah, subsidiarity, blah, blah, competition, blah, blah, and so on) and – finally – the fact that the Energy Union still but a figment of European imagination, this horse was not only out of the race, but was lying by the race track, panting, being kicked, screamed at and reduced to sun-dust.

The only one who on the surface at least played a fair game was Jean-Claude Juncker, who stood by his nominee and had his PR people maintain there were no changes to the Commissioners’ roster until Bratušek withdrew herself. Whether Jucnker really stood by her, helped Bratušek reach that decision or was only happy to see EPP and S&D do his bidding, we’ll never know. But at the very least, the next EU top dog kept his composure and class, which can not be said for anyone else involved in this story.

This goes for Slovenian PM Miro Cerar as well. The ruckus he raised when outgoing Bratušek government (acting well within its authority) put forward its list of nominees, was epic. He later came about but only after he was told by Juncker personally that it was he (Juncker) who is putting together the Commission, not Cerar or any other PM. And when Bratušek came tumbling down, it was up to Cerar to come up with a nominee.

Enter Bulc

The newly minted PM all of a sudden found his spine and flat-out rejected demands by EPP and S&D to appoint Tanja Fajon as the new Slovenian nominee, going with Violeta Bulc, his government’s VP for development instead. And almost immediately the whole wheel of disqualifications-ad-nauseam started turning yet again. To be sure, Bulc nomination carries a few gems, as well. Mostly, these have to do with more-than-eyebrow-raising entry of her being an alumnus of Shamanic Academy in Scotland and her statements about “syntropy”. But on the other hand, Bulc has had a successful career as a businesswoman, both in IT as well as a consultant. Her main drawback, however, are not crackpot theories about space and time. After all, how many MEP believe in the existence of a super-natural being which will ultimately judge our lives on this Earth? Or, how many of them are anti-vaxxers? (I’m shooting at random here).

Her main drawback is her lack of experience in a senior governmental position. Which – unless Bulc gave a stellar performance tonight during here tete-a-tete with Jucnker – means that a Commissioner from Slovenia will not be appointed Commission VP. Serves us right, I guess. At any rate, this wasn’t a “Slovenian” job Bulc is now aiming at, it is a Bulc job, formerly a Bratušek job, both of them got to have a shot at because they’re Slovenian. But I guess this still is a lesson we need to learn as a nation. There seems to be an unhealthy notion prevailing that we should do everything possible to prevent any of our compatriots from making it outside Slovenian borders. And if he/she makes it despite everything, we collectively expect this individual to disperse the goodies of his/her position among the rest of us. Just because.

But as far as lessons go, the biggest one was served not to Bratušek nor to Bulc but to Miro Cerar. For if there never was more poetic a justice served when the new Cerar government had to rush their decision on the new nominee and did so in a correspondence session, the very same way Bratušek rushed her outgoing government’s approval for Juncker’s original roster and drew some serious flak over it. Indeed, questions were raised as to legality of the issue. Bogus questions, but still. At the time they added to the fog-of-war surrounding Bratušek nomination.

And you can expect the same pattern to repeat again in the next few days. Even though the whole thing is not about Violeta Bulc, Alenka Bratušek or even Slovenia as a whole. What we have here is a power-play between the Juncker Commission and the European Parliament where the latter is looking to draw first blood (which it did) and keep the upcoming Commission in check for the duration of the five-year term. On the other hand, new new Commission boss has more than enough experience to know that in the curious menage-a-trios of EU top institutions he must subjugate the parliament early on lest he be spending more time fighting off rabid parliamentarians than actually making policy.

Which means that the Bulc hearing in the EP will quite possibly be just as bruising as Bratušek hearing was. Juncker did not go along with his own conservative EPP and socialist S&D suggestions-cum-blackmail about Tanja Fajon, nor did Slovenian PM Cerar. And with the credibility of any Commissioner candidate from Slovenia being question to begin with (and highly likely to go south from there), Juncker and now Bulc are fighting an unexpectedly steep uphill battle. Of course, say the EPP and S&D, if Commission President-elect were to nominate Tanja Fajon, or perhaps, former EPP MEP Romana Jordan, then all of his remaining problems could simply just.. go away. Get it?

In this respect (the inevitable portfolio reshuffle notwitstanding) Slovenian nominees were nothing more than collateral damage in a high-level, high-stakes game of political poker. And yet, a good portion of this country was weighing in as though Juncker was waiting for their opinion before he made his next move. In reality, however, it was just a freak-show at the outer edge of the circus, where they keep the ugly people.

Related articles across the web

    When Jean-Claude Met Janez (It’s The Company You Keep)

    Pengovsky didn’t quite start covering EU elections yet, especially due to the early election tug-of-war in this sorry little excuse for a country. But a curious thing happened on the “European front” last night. Namely, during an EPP huddle in Bratislava, Slovakia, leader of the SDS Janez Janša tweeted a selfie with himself and Jean-Claude Juncker, EPP candidate for president of European Commission.

    20140507_jj_juncker
    BFF (source)

    Now, this particular campaign seems infested with selfies and yours truly vowed to unfollow anyone trying to do Ellen on Oscars. Needless to say, victims are aplenty. But selfies aside, Ivan’s tweet raises a whole different set of questions.

    First and foremost, the very fact that the EPP candidate for the top European job apparently hangs out with a convict. As both readers of this blog know, Janša was sentenced to two years in prison for his role in the Patria Affair. His appeal was overruled last week which means that barring a deal to commute the sentence, the leader of the opposition will soon see the inside of a prison cell. Granted, in the photo Jean-Claude doesn’t seem exactly exuberant, but hey, it’s the company you keep, right? Doubly so if you want to land the EU boss gig.

    Moreover, this photo begs the question, what exactly does Monsieur Juncker think of Slovenian justice system. Does he have nothing but contempt for it, not unlike Janša? Does the EPP candidate for president of European Commission stand by the resolution of the EPP Political Assembly adopted last November which deals with Janša specifically and basically puts him above the law, while reducing Slovenia to a banana-republic? And last, but certainly not least, what is the position of both Jean-Claude Juncker and the political group he represents on the outcome of the trial of Janez Janša?

    But since answers to these questions will a) probably never be given and b) if given, can be guessed at quite easily, the real question is, just what exactly does Mr. Juncker (if elected) plan to do about corruption which apparently is not uncommon even at the very top of political elite of EU member states.

    OK, so maybe president of the Commission can’t do anything about it on the national level. But the problem is, we can’t really ask Janša about it either. The only steps he’s taking are apparently steps delaying being formally served with the verdict.

    But perhaps I’m being unfair. Maybe Jean-Claude and Ivan only shared experience on how to politically survive a spy-scandal. Bob knows Janša’s got a lot of mileage in that department.

    Related articles across the web