More than half of the times the lights were red cars stopped more or less completely in the cycle box. More than half the black cabs, to my surprise, broadly respected the cycle box. I wonder how many drivers actually know they are breaking the law though? Will £60 fines help?

Both figures are absurd. We are at the start of an immensely complicated process to conclude a trade deal between the EU and the US. While there might be plenty of political will to conclude a deal overall, the devil will be in the detail. What will, and will not, be part of any such deal? Many European countries, led by France, want audio-visual to not be included (the so-called exception culturelle), while politicians of various colours argue for the exclusion of anything touching on GMOs, animal hormones, data protection, and financial services.

If all of these exceptions actually happen then TTIP is not going to be worth 2 million jobs (even if that figure stands up to scrutiny – which I doubt).

Also the danger is that the more pro-TTIP politicians like Cameron over-hype the need for a deal, so opponents will become suspicious, and will try to torpedo the whole thing. This is exactly what happened with ACTA – both benefits and dangers were over-sold, positions became entrenched, and the whole thing fell apart. No deal was the outcome, rather than a more minimal, more pragmatic deal.

It would be only sensible to hope that a few people would have learnt from ACTA, but looking at the TTIP debate so far it looks like they have not.

[Note: my thinking for this blog post was started thanks to an event run by VoteWatchEurope in Brussels yesterday, looking at EP voting behaviour on trade. The slides from that event, as a PDF, are here.]

Channel Tunnel Safety (train length)
The current Eurostar trains are 387m long, composed of a locomotive at each end, and 18 short carriages in between, and can be split in half if necessary. The idea is that in case of an accident or a fire in the tunnel, at least one door of the Eurostar trains would be close to an escape passage into the safety tunnel – and those escapes are at 250m intervals. DB proposes to run two 8-carriage ICEs coupled together through the tunnel, but passengers cannot pass between the two halves of coupled ICEs (see the coupling in a pic here). So would the ICEs get the safety permit to run? However at no time has a Eurostar ever been evacuated into the safety tunnel through one door. In short: not too complicated to solve.

Channel Tunnel Safety (distributed traction)
Current Eurostar trains have a locomotive at each end, and unpowered passenger carriages in between. Were a fire to break out in the traction or electrical components this would easily be isolated from passengers areas. ICEs, and the new Eurostar e320 sets being procured, both use another system – distributed traction – where all traction and electrical components are under the floor below the carriages where the passengers sit. This could theoretically pose a greater fire risk, and the trains not be granted permission to operate in the tunnel. However Eurostar was itself ready to procure such trains, so must have been confident of approval. In short: not too complicated to solve.

Procurement and approval delays
Both Eurostar’s new e320 trains, and the DB’s new Velaro D ICEs are essentially the same trains, just with Eurostar’s being a 16-carriage version, and DB’s an 8 carriage version. The problem is that procurement of these trains has been beset by delays – Eurostar now admits it will see its first trains only in 2015, rather than 2014 as hoped, while DB’s 16 new ICE were due to be running in 2011 but still are not approved fully, even in Germany. That’s before we come to the issue of approving them for at least Belgium and France, and possibly also Netherlands too. Approval of ICEs has been a nightmare before – current DB ICEs are only allowed to travel at 250km/h in Belgium due to concerns with flying ballast, and approval for the older ICEs on French high speed lines took 7 years to complete. Meanwhile signalling problems continue to beset the Belgium – Germany ICE connection. In short: a nightmare all round. Whatever the companies and manufacturers say, expect timetables to slip.

Security control
Bags of all passenges boarding Eurostars in London, Lille, Brussels and Paris are scanned as passengers enter a secure terminal. This is why passengers are required to arrive 30 minutes ahead of departure. While one might quibble as to whether this security paranoia is necessary, it is nevertheless here to stay. The question then arises how DB, or Eurostar for its through services, could scan bags in different stations? While it might be possible to get a secure platform arranged in Frankfurt(Main) Hbf or Genève, I cannot see how this could easily be done in Köln Hbf, Rotterdam Centraal or Amsterdam Centraal. In short: could be complicated, and may necessitate services not stopping in some stations, or disembarkation (see below).

Passport Control, and the UK Border
The UK is not in Schengen, and this issue has already posed significant problems with the Lille Loophole. The basic idea with Eurostar is that passport controls should be conducted in Paris, Lille and Brussels (so-called juxtaposed controls) and not in London, because if an illegal immigrant gets to London (before a check there), then there is no obligation for Eurostar to transport them back to France or Belgium. The result of this is that for Eurostar’s through service from Aix-en-Provence to London, all passengers are required to disembark at Lille Europe for passport checks (and presumably a security control too), making the France-London journey take 55 minutes longer than the outward trip. DB has proposed that UK border checks be conducted on board the train, but I would imagine that Eurostar also proposed this for its Aix service and was refused. In short: this is the biggest headache, and could – on its own – kill the prospect of cross border through services. But a system of passport checks on arrival would require political will to deliver.

So if you’re waiting for your ICE to Frankfurt(Main) or your Eurostar to Geneva, you might well be waiting a while.

Only not in Brussels any more.

In Belgium my 3G is with Jim Mobile, a part of the BASE network. Coverage on BASE around the EU institutions where I most often work was always patchy – either no signal, or a decent connection that worked. Yet for the last 6 months, and notably in the last month, the data speed has plunged, even in areas with a full 3G or HSDPA signal. Today websites would not load at all at Schuman, Place Jourdan or Place Flagey. Signal strength showed as 2 out or 5 bars at Schuman, and 5 out of 5 in Jourdan and Flagey.

What the hell is going on?

Both Ryan Heath and Andy Carling have told me about the problems mobile phone firms have had getting approval for 4G masts in Brussels, but I was unaware that the same 3V/m standard that prevents 4G rollout is now having an impact on 2G and 3G networks too, as detailed on BASE’s blog here (Sept 2012) and here (April 2013). The situation is so severe that even BECI (Brussels Enterprises Commerce and Industry) has got involved in the issue. Interestingly indoor sites – including the Brussels Metro – have longer to comply… and in the Metro is more or less the only place I can actually get a 3G connection!

BASE says it simply cannot find the locations to add the extra masts it needs to maintain its coverage, and with any political decision to solve the issue in Brussels kicked until 2014, and with data use doubling each year, this issue is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. And all this in the city that hosts the EU institutions that are trying to legislate to improve broadband speeds… Do the Brussels politicians who have forced the 3V/m standard just never use smartphones I wonder?

1) The profitable long distance route
This is the ideal location for competition in rail services. Think Hamburg-Köln, Wien-Salzburg or Praha-Brno Ostrava. Spare capacity is available, the route is between major cities and is profitable. New, private operators (HKX, WestBahn, LeoExpress respectively) can step in and challenge the incumbent operator. If one of the providers goes to the wall then at least there will be other services still. Competition prospects: good.

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2) The profitable route with constraints
These are routes where technical problems mean that competition is difficult. Either the route already operates at capacity (West Coast Main Line in the UK for example, anything through the Midi-Nord axis in Brussels), or technical issues with the route make competition difficult – security incompatibilities, or the high speed of the line (except NTV in Italy (which has plenty of headaches) there is no proper high speed competition anywhere in Europe – it’s too complex and expensive to procure trains as an entrant). Competition prospects: limited.

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3) Competitive tendering
The system in place in various countries, most notably in Germany and Sweden for the tendering of regional routes. In the UK the franchise process is wider and more complex. These regionally tendered routes are not always profitable, and contracts are given by local governments and supported accordingly. Services like Metronom can bring genuine service improvements, while experience like ODEG can show what happens when things go wrong. Competition prospects: good in theory, at the tendering stage.

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4) Unprofitable long-distance national routes
Here the incumbent, normally state-owned, operator has to cope with high costs, creaking infrastructure, and low passenger numbers. But public service obligations mean that services are still broadly maintained. Think SNCF’s Intercités services, or RENFE’s non-AVE long distance services. Competition prospects: close to none.

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5) Unprofitable long-distance or regional international routes
Here no-one cares at all. These are services like Marseille-Genova, Venezia-Villach, Bayern-Praha, Berlin-Krakow. So while the infrastructure exists, the demand does not, and the public service obligations do not either. There is no prospect for competition as the routes are, on their own, not profitable. So the trains do not run, and are replaced with buses instead. Competition prospects: none.

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Thoughts, comments and additional examples most welcome!

Images – all CC Licensed from Flickr: LeoExpress by Petr Dadák | TGV Duplex by Stefano Bertolotti | ODEG by Tegeler | Renfe Arco by Jordi | DB Bus by MvM84

Charles Grant’s poor pieces yesterday

Yes, I respect ECFR and Bruegel, but EU democracy is not the main focus of either of them. Some of the work of EPC, CEPS and CER is useful, but rarely is it pointed and agenda-setting on the big issues of EU democracy. I asked for suggestions on Facebook and Twitter about what organisations – if any – were providing answers, and this is what people said (with sources if from Twitter):

Fondation Robert Schuman

New Direction

European Foundation for Democracy

Open Society Initiative for Europe

Centre for Liberal Strategies

Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (suggested by @WillParkerBrux)

Libnet (suggested by @sandrogozi)

SWPBerlin (suggested by @annelaumen)

Anthony Zacharzewski, founder of Demsoc, was clear he was not providing answers himself at the moment, but thought that a Demsoc-EU could. Something to build in future maybe?

The last word however goes to Mathew Lowry for this cyncism.

Comments and further suggestions are most welcome – I am not altogether convinced by any of the above…

As far as I am concerned this national parliaments and the EU thing is based on two false premises that need to be challenged. The first is that national parliaments are necessarily more trusted than the European Parliament is, and the second is that national parliaments actually give a damn about the EU.

In the latest EU Barometer (from Autumn 2012), 28% of Europeans say they trust their national parliaments (p. 39 of the PDF here), versus 27% who trust their national governments. Meanwhile 44% “tend to trust” the European Parliament (p. 71 of the same PDF). So Grant’s case that greater involvement of national parliaments is necessary to legitimise the EU does not really hold true. Also only in 2 Member States – Denmark and the Netherlands – do people trust their parliaments significantly more than governments.

Secondly, if you are a member of a national parliament, why should you actually care about EU matters? Experience to date seems to show that unless it’s something major – like Eurozone bailouts and votes on that in the German Bundestag – national parliaments actually are pretty lousy at using the powers they currently have in EU affairs. I explore some of the reasons for this here. National parliaments could better scrutinise ministers before they go to Council meetings, and hold them to account, but that’s hard and time consuming work. Why do that, rather than be pictured meeting some children in the local school, or talking about healthcare? Grant seems to completely miss this point in his piece – no new forum of national parliamentarians is needed. They do not collaborate because they have no incentive to do so, not because they lack the forum to do so.

Grant criticises the European Parliament thus: “But few voters are aware of the Parliament’s good work and many of them are sceptical that MEPs represent their interests; a lot of MEPs have little connection to national political systems.” But he fails to examine why this is so, or indeed work out how things could work differently.

The basic problem with the European Parliament is not its lack of powers per se, because it is a full co-legislator. But the European Parliament lacks the power to shape the direction of European integration in any way that could be understandable to a voter. It does not comply with Schumpeter’s basic four points of a functioning party political system*:

Parties present programmes
Voters make an informed choice between competing parties
The successful party puts its programme into practice
The governing party judged on its successes at the next election

This is at the heart of the issue of why the European Parliament, and indeed the EU as a whole – it does not function as a representative democracy in the way any other level of representative democracy does, and the only way to improve the input legitimacy of the EU is to address this issue (by making the Commission dependent on the outcome of the European elections for example).

Trying to make the EU more legitimate through emphasising the role of national parliaments is the wrong issue to address. So, Charles, here is the one word answer to the question you pose in the title of your piece: NO.

* - Adapted from Schumpeter, J.A. [1943] (1976), Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 5^th Edition, London, Allen & Unwin, quoted in Judge, D. & Earnshaw, D.,The European Parliament

[UPDATE - 1955]
Turns out that writing this rubbish for CER was not enough, but he has followed it up on Comment is Free as well. Sorry Charles, but this is poor.

So what has been the conclusion from the 8 weeks that have passed?

As expected, the accounts have not become extraordinarily popular – they only tweet news, and never reply. However with a total of 167 followers, and 377 tweets, some interest has been generated. Remember that these accounts all follow zero people, and never reply if anyone tweets or RTs them, and are not linked from anywhere other than this blog.

The account that has tweeted the most – @UM_dk – also has the most followers. Accounts with odd or abbreviated names seem to be the ones least followed – are people just searching Twitter for Ministries perhaps?

Lastly, and as shown by the table below, some of the accounts have received some fairly high profile followers. That the official account of the Copenhagen Region – @RegionH – follows one of my unofficial accounts is especially welcome.

I think all of this shows that were Danish Ministries to invest just a little time and energy in social media – even if only for news purposes – it would be worthwhile.