NYT By JONATHAN ZITTRAINMAY 14, 2014 The Opinion Pages A right to be forgotten? "THE European Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday that Europeans have a limited “right to be forgotten” by search engines like Google. According to the ruling, an individual can compel Google to remove certain reputation-harming search results that are generated by Googling the individual’s name. The court is trying to address an important problem — namely, the Internet’s ability to preserve indefinitely all its information about you, no matter how unfortunate or misleading — but it has devised a poor solution."
A pro-European and former chief economist of Britain in Europe, Legrain is nonetheless downbeat about the prospects for the EU unless it takes radical steps to raise productivity and make itself more democratically accountable. He is particularly concerned about the survival of the single currency. "The EU will survive, but I think the euro zone might ultimately break up," he said. "My base line scenario is that the euro zone is headed for a Japanese-style period of stagnation and deflation."
Interview wirh Jo Leinen about the European elections and the Ukraine crisis. Leinen: "The "single" idea of Europe no longer exists. After WWII it was easy to agree on the idea of peace. Now it has become more diverse. While the idea of peace still remains – just look at Ukraine – there is the concept of being able to continue living a good life in Europe. In the 21st century we want to defend our values and our interests in an ever-shrinking world. Granted, that is a bit more complicated to explain but it is just as important as the idea for peace." Leinen has called it a disservice that the German Constitutional Court ruled to remove the 3% electoral threshold". He says: "The Court underestimates the role of the parliament as a legislative body and as a means of assembling the European executive. It seems to have compared the European level to the level of a city council, where it does not matter how many parties emerge. That is wrong. We need to bundle interests. A fragmented European parliament is less able to make decisions than one in which political currents and interests are bundled into various political groups. Everything else hinders and complicates its work."
13.5. Dans un entretien à Euractiv, l’économiste « star », Thomas Piketty évoque ses propositions de réformes institutionnelles pour démocratiser l’Union et la zone euro. Et s'étonne que le PPE ait choisi de présenter un candidat originaire du Luxembourg, un paradis fiscal.