Publications Archive

In its Strategy for a Digital Single Market, the Commission lays down numerous measures to strengthen the European digital economy. This cepPolicyBrief deals with the second pillar of the Strategy (Digital networks and services). It deals, inter alia, with the reform of telecommunications regulations, the examination of the rules on audiovisual media services, online platforms, and with the rules on illegal content on the Internet.

The European requirements for economic reform and consolidation are being ignored in many capitals. The eurozone countries openly disagree on what role the market should play as a mechanism for ensuring discipline and coordination. To overcome this dilemma, the eurozone should agree on a sovereign default regime for its member states.

Many of the power plants currently still in the market will be shut down in the medium term due to their age. As, in addition, the incentive to invest in new secure power-plant capacity is low, due to low wholesale electricity prices, more and more Member States are starting to develop "capacity mechanisms" which provide extra remuneration for the provision of secure capacity.

In its revision of the Directive on the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), the EU should even after 2020 issue free allowances to companies at risk of emigrating in order to prevent the relocation of carbon emissions to non-EU countries.

The negotiations between the EU and the US on the free trade agreement TTIP are a hot topic at the moment. Investment protection in particular is the subject of heated debate. The cep takes a closer look at what kind of investment protection is really needed.

In the three years since its introduction, over 50 European Citizens’ Initiatives (ECI) have been started. Nevertheless, the hurdles are tough: at least one million citizens from at least seven Member States must support the Citizen’s Initiative before the EU Commission will look into it.

The European Commission has announced a reform of the copyright rules in the EU before the end of this year. It intends to reduce the differences between national copyright rules by way of harmonised exceptions. The cep assesses the benefits and problems of mandatory exceptions to copyright.

Yet again the EU Commission is trying to revise the Working Time Directive. For years, business has had to live with the case law of the European Court of Justice relating to on-call duty. These blanket rulings meet the needs of only a small minority of companies. cep has been grappling with the problem of the Working Time Directive.

The European Commission makes suggestions on how to speed up the construction of cross-border power lines. This is intended to implement the "electricity interconnection target", according to which the capacity of cross-border electricity interconnections with other Member States should constitute at least 10% of the domestic electricity generating capacity of every Member State.

As part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 90 developed and developing countries, including those of the EU, have pledged to "curb" their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 in order to prevent damaging consequences for climate change. As these commitments are not sufficient to prevent the severe impact of climate change, a Climate Change Agreement, legally binding for all parties, should be concluded as a Protocol to the UNFCCC in Paris in December 2015 and implemented from 2020 onwards. The European Commission wants to prepare the EU for the final round of international talks prior to the Climate Conference in Paris and therefore defines the requirements that the EU has in relation to the planned Paris Protocol.