Political News-Irish ‘No to Lisbon’ camp faces an 'uphill struggle' say experts

As Ireland’s second vote on the Lisbon Treaty nears, concesssions won by the Irish government coupled with a resurgent civil society ‘yes’ movement could see the ‘No to Lisbon’ camp face an uphill struggle in the coming weeeks.

Background:

Ireland rejected the Lisbon Treaty in a referendum in June 2008 effectively stalling the reforms contained in the treaty and causing widespread consternation among European politicians.

Following the result of the referendum, the Irish government conducted detailed research into why the public voted against the treaty and found concerns over military neutrality, the potential impact on Ireland's corporate tax rates, workers' rights and ethical issues related to the position of the family and abortion. Question marks over whether Ireland would lose its European commissioner were also said to be of concern.

Leaders meeting in Brussels in December 2008 agreed to find a legally-binding solution to clear up confusion over how the treaty would affect Ireland in the hope that this would allow a second referendum.

Following June’s European elections, where only one of Ireland’s 12 MEPs was elected on an anti-Lisbon platform, EU leaders reached a compromise in offering Ireland legally-binding guarantees on the Lisbon Treaty without requiring other countries to re-ratify the text.

The Irish government set Friday 2 October as the date for the second referendum.There is a precedent for Ireland having a second vote on a European treaty, as two referenda were required to pass the Nice Treaty.

With the second referendum six weeks away, both pro and anti-Lisbon campaigns are grinding into gear. While many of the 2008 arguments from both sides are being re-circulated this time around, experts told EurActiv that the political backdrop to this year’s referendum is profoundly different to that of last year.

According to the sources, who did not wish to be named given the politically sensitive nature of the current debates, many of the grounds for argument raised by the ‘no’ camp in 2008 are no longer in play, given that the guarantees and concessions granted to Ireland by EU leaders appear to have assuaged many of the fears expressed by Irish ‘no’ voters last June.

As a result, they indicated, the ‘no’ campaign could face an 'uphill struggle' to recreate its 2008 success.Given the changed context, the ‘no’ camp will largely have to base its arguments on issues they feel have not been addressed by the EU guarantees, using, in particular, workers’ rights as a spearhead for its campaign.

Indeed, the combined ‘no’ campaign was launched earlier this week with a warning that the treaty would leave workers worse off and more exposed to spending cuts.

A profoundly undemocratic document says ‘no’ camp

Speaking at the launch, Ireland’s sole anti-Lisbon MEP, Socialist Joe Higgins, argued that the Lisbon Treaty “is a profoundly undemocratic document, which seeks to turn right-wing economic policies into the only show in town”.

According to the MEP, if Lisbon is passed, “the EU Commission would uphold the right of big business to profit from public services, over and above the rights of workers to take action to defend these services”.

However, Andrew Byrne, Chief of Operations for pro-Lisbon advocacy group Ireland for Europe, dismissed the ‘no’ camp’s claims, arguing that its “scattergun approach” continues to falsely portray Lisbon as part of a “neoliberal economic agenda”.

According to Byrne, the ‘no side’ “will continue to misrepresent and distort the truth, playing on peoples’ fears and anxieties”.

Groundswell of groups adds legitimacy to ‘yes’ camp

But pro-Lisbon Byrne believes that despite what he sees as the fear-mongering on the ‘no’ side, the emergence of a plethora of civil society ‘yes’ bodies are giving a stronger legitimacy to the overall pro-Lisbon campaign.

“You only have to look at the number of groups out there to see that there is a groundswell of people who are not part of the normal political scene, who care about the future of the country and feel that Lisbon is a big part of that,” he said.

This “shows that there are people throughout Ireland who feel this issue is too important to leave to politicians and traditional groups”.

Byrne argued that the proliferation of civil society ‘yes’ groups “takes the wind out of the ‘no’ camp’s sails”, in that “it doesn’t allow the ‘no’ groups to paint Lisbon as merely an ambition of the political establishment”.

“We’re making the point to people that there is a new deal on the table and their concerns have been addressed. The loss of the Commissioner, for example, was a huge concern to people,” said Byrne.

The Ireland for Europe representative concluded that in his opinion, the ‘no’ camp is weaker this time around, but urged against “complacency,” among pro-Lisbon activists, arguing that all groups should remain active on the ground until the referendum.

Industry News-Commission tables EU winter gas storage plan

The European Commission yesterday (16 July) proposed a new regulation on the security of gas supplies, obliging member states to take pre-emptive measures to avoid disruptions in the wake of a January dispute between Russia and Ukraine.

Background:
In November 2008, the European Commission presented a revised version of a 2004 directive on the security of gas supplies as part of the Second Strategic Review, aiming to reduce Europe's reliance on foreign energy imports.

The January gas dispute between Russia and Europe's main transit country Ukraine made the revision of the existing 2004 directive on gas supply security imperative, as it revealed the EU's inability to respond to emergencies. The row led to widespread supply disruptions for a fortnight in Eastern Europe, reducing the EU's gas supply by 20%.


"We have known for some time that the existing arrangements to deal with gas emergencies are insufficient […] All member states recognise that we need common standards for security of gas supply for the whole EU," said the bloc's energy commissioner, Andris Piebalgs.

The proposal authorises the Commission to declare a Community emergency at the request of a single member state, or when the Union loses more than 10% of its daily gas import from third countries. It also entitles the EU executive to coordinate member-state actions between one another and towards third countries.

EU states have a three-year transitional period until the end of March 2014 to ensure that they have either enough gas storage capacity or diversified energy supplies to handle a 60-day supply disruption in extreme winter weather.

But unlike the proposal for a revised directive on oil stocks approved by ministers last month (EurActiv 15/06/09), the gas regulation does not require compulsory strategic stocks as it is replaceable in most uses, the Commission said.

Instead, the document sets common standards for member states to define "serious gas supply disruptions", called 'N-1'. This refers to the preparedness of a country to satisfy its total gas demand during 60 days of exceptionally high gas demand if there is a disruption in the largest gas supply infrastructure.

In order to meet the N-1 standard, member states have to designate a competent authority to assess risks and establish both preventive and emergency plans.

The Commission reserves the right to require that plans be revised if they do not comply with the regulation.

To meet the infrastructure requirements, the regulation obliges transmission system operators to ensure reverse flow capacity on all interconnections within two years after the entry into force of the directive, if it would enhance the security of supply of a member state.

Piebalgs said Baltic nations would face the biggest challenges in meeting the standards, with the largest investments needed in Lithuania and Slovenia,where gas consumption is significant. Denmark, on the other hand, is best placed with its own production, while Germany and Belgium have "decent storage capacity" and are doing fine, he added.

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Industry News-European Industry chiefs call for sectoral approach to climate change

A fair, new international climate regime should include sector-based agreements, leading to binding targets for emissions cuts in developing countries, the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), an influential group of CEOs, said in a paper published yesterday (15 July).

Background:

International negotiations are proceeding at full speed in order to agree a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

The first United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks in Bonn (29 March–8 April) launched negotiations for a draft agreement in view of the final conference in Copenhagen later this year.

The draft negotiating text, prepared ahead of June's second round of climate talks, revealed a divide between rich and poor countries.Developing nations are asking their industrialised counterparts to commit to sizeable CO2 reductions and to offer financial aid to help poor nations in their efforts. But developed countries have not made any firm commitments on funding, and only the EU has taken on a firm CO2 reduction target, which nevertheless fails to meet the developing world's demands.

In the meantime, the negotiating text has ballooned to hundreds of pages as all parties have reacted with amendments. No agreement was reached at the June talks on financing for developing countries to mitigate and adapt to global warming.

At the sidelines of a G8 meeting in Italy on 9 July, the Major Economies Forum, comprising 17 countries that are accountable for 75% of global emissions, agreed for the first time to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius.

The EU will be able to upgrade its 2020 objective of slashing emissions of global warming gases from 20% to 30% only if an international agreement is struck to spread obligations evenly among the global community in order to avoid competitive distortions, the group said in the paper.

"Seen from a European perspective, an effective international framework is one that allows the EU to continue competing in the global market by ensuring that the gap is minimised between those leading on the implementation of emission constraints and those following as their economies build capacity to
manage emissions," said Jeroen van der Veer, former CEO of Shell and chair of the ERT's Energy & Climate Change Working Group.

The ERT is a forum of around 45 chief executives and chairmen of major national companies, including E.ON, GDF Suez, Siemens, Nokia, BT and Fiat.

The business leaders see a global greenhouse gas emissions market as the principal tool to deliver emission cuts. Industrialised countries with binding targets should link national cap-and-trade systems together to finance clean technology programmes in developing countries, the group said.

"This will establish a widespread market price for emitting CO2 (and other GHGs) into the atmosphere and deliver the reductions at lowest cost to the global economy," the paper reads.

UN projects to go large-scale

The UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows industrialised countries to earn offset credits by financing mitigation efforts in the developing world, should be redesigned to support large-scale projects - notably in the electricity sector - that are driven by a carbon price, the ERT argues. Lower-cost measures such as energy efficiency would largely be financed by developing countries themselves, it says.

More advanced developing countries, on the other hand, should "stabilise their absolute emissions in the medium term through nationally appropriate actions and thereafter, make a firm commitment to reduce absolute emissions," the report states.

This could be done via sectoral agreements with industrialised countries, the paper argues. The agreements would enable developing countries to adopt emissions reduction programmes in specific sectors like cement or steel to tap into funding and build capacity.

"Each agreement should include the eventual implementation of a long-term binding target for the sector or sectors in question," the ERT says. It adds that the approach could be extended to areas such as deforestation and afforestation. This has been envisaged under the UN's REDD mechanism, which is likely to feature as part of the deal in Copenhagen (EurActiv 20/04/09).

In order to reduce the need for protection for EU sectors that have the price of carbon added to their production costs, each agreement would have to involve at least 80% of world production of products in each particular sector and lead to CO2 reductions comparable to what the EU has set, the paper states.

One of the technologies that the business group would like to see transferred to the developing world through revamped CDM projects is carbon capture and storage (CCS). It calls for an international carbon storage certification, which would deliver a certificate for each tonne of carbon buried underground.

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Political News- Irish Energy Policy central to economic growth

Opportunities for growth in the Irish Energy Market

The Irish National Board for Enterprise and Science Forfas reported that the country has shown strong sector growth in renewable energies, efficient energy use and management, waste management, recovery and recycling, and water and waste water treatment.

Forfas believe that the decisions that are taken today on Irelands Energy policy will influence the prosperity of the country for the next twenty years.

The government is under pressure to create employment and to stop the rise in immigration of the educated migrants who are starting to leave due to the Economic down turn. The simplest move is to refocus the work force from a failing construction industry on the energy sector and it’s supporting sectors.

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A number of priority areas have emerged for investment including;ICT control systems for energy efficiency, Eco-construction, Carbon trading and green technology investment. For these opportunities to be taken improvements are required to the framework conditions of skills, regulation, public procurement and R&D.

In line with the US and the EU the Forfas report points to a dual strategy of investing in Energy as a way to fight the two challenges ff rising unemployment and climate change. However with the public purse at an all time low and leading Irish Economists such as Colm McCarthy calling for cut backs of five billion Euros the government will be hard pressed to find the investment needed.

By accident or by design there are a few positive aspects for the Irish energy sector. The timely delivery of Ireland’s planned energy interconnections (i.e., the north-south tie line and the east-west interconnector) and new generation plants are important to ensure adequate generation capacity and to improve energy cost competitiveness. The unbundling of the transmission network is an important element in attracting new

investment in generation capacity into the Irish market and should be progressed as a matter of priority.

The Forfas report calls for the government to prioritise the work of the Energy Research Strategy group so that it can accelerate and increase the capacity for the Irish Energy market to benefit from existing technology in and outside of Ireland. The government must now respond as to how they intend to fund future research and bring this body forward.

Energy Related Goods and Services

Forfás completed an assessment of the opportunities for Ireland within the Energy Related Goods and Services sector, matching international trends in investment to technological advances and domestic capabilities. In Ireland decisions made on energy policy will provide the operating context for businesses inIreland over the next 20 years.

The report sets out a range of recommendations to enhance the development of the Irish Energy Sector. A key outcome of this work has been the establishment of a High Level Action Group on Green Enterprise with a mandate to report back to Cabinet with an action plan for taking advantage of the opportunities identified by this piece of work. Forfás will provide the secretariat for this High Level Action Group.

http://www.forfas.ie/