How America's Shale Revolution Could Ruin The European Union Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/shale-will-ruin-the-eu-2012-12#ixzz2IhDMsDN1

The story of the year is arguably the growth of shale oil and gas as a viable part of the U.S. economy. In a New York Times op-ed yesterday, Alan Riley, a professor of energy law at The City Law School at City University London, says that the European Union will get crushed because of it.

The reason is that America will soon become nominally self-sufficient and draw down its fuel exports. As a result, he says, the EU will lose its principal muscle guaranteeing stable fuel flows from classic megaproducers like Russia and Saudi Arabia.

American self-sufficiency in oil is of greatest concern to the European Union. The danger is that the United States will no longer have any direct interest in ensuring supply flows out of the Gulf. At the very least this will mean that Washington is likely to demand greater European investment in its own energy security.

 The EU will have to spend even more on new infrastructure to ensure fuel stability, he says. And where that money will come from is anyone's guess.

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EU happily closes the books on tumultuous 2012

Deutsche Welle analysis.

Russia's Putin says EU energy law is "uncivilized"

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday condemned European Union energy legislation as "uncivilised", particularly the retroactive application of new competition rules. 

Russia is the European Union's biggest natural gas supplier, and in turn the European Union is Russia's biggest customer, but relations between the two are frosty. An EU antitrust case against Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom as well as EU attempts to diversify its energy suppliers away from Russia and legislation to encourage competition have particularly angered Moscow. 

Putin was particularly critical of the Third Energy Package of EU legislation to create a single energy market and prevent those that dominate supply, such as Gazprom, from also dominating distribution networks."Of course the EU has the right to take any decisions, but as I have mentioned ... we are stunned by the fact that this decision is given retroactive force," Putin told reporters on the sidelines of a Russia-EU summit in Brussels. "It is an absolutely uncivilised decision." (...)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/21/us-russia-eu-energy-idUSBRE8BK0WA20121221

EU and Singapore agree free trade deal

The European Union and Singapore agreed terms of a free trade deal (...), a move that should further open the Asian country's markets for financial services and make it easier for European automakers to export there.(...)
After the completion of negotiations by the European Commission, the EU executive, member states and the European Parliament need to sign off for the agreement to come into force. Though EU countries have in the past sometimes rejected such deals for political reasons, this is unlikely to happen with Singapore, as EU leaders in October called for a swift conclusion of negotiations.(...)
The bloc hopes the agreement will give it better access to Singapore, one of Asia's richest countries per head of population, where currently the United States enjoys preferential access. Singapore has a population of only 5 million, but it is also a gateway to the 600 million people in the fast-growing economies of the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The EU is the city state's second biggest trade partner after neighboring Malaysia, with bilateral trade in goods amounting to 46 billion euros ($60 billion) in 2011. The EU had a trade surplus of 8 billion euros, with cars making up a large chunk of its exports.
Singapore's import tariffs are low. The deal will remove non-tariff barriers such as the double testing of cars, as Singapore would start to recognize EU standards, EU officials say. Other key benefits would be the further opening of Singapore's banking and financial services sector, as well as better access to its public procurement markets.
The push for free trade agreements comes as the EU struggles with a sovereign debt crisis and tries to supplement stagnant domestic consumer demand with free trade pacts with major economies. A deal with South Korea came into effect last year and one with Canada is near completion. EU trade ministers agreed in November to start negotiations with Japan, while preliminary talks are underway for an agreement with the United States.
EU trade officials want the Singapore deal to set a precedent for trade deals with other countries in ASEAN. The EU is currently negotiating free trade pacts with Malaysia and Vietnam, and hopes one day to forge a region-to-region trade agreement. "What I think is more important" than just trade with Singapore, said De Gucht, is "setting a number of standards in services that we will try to enlarge to the whole region".
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European governments clinched a landmark deal on bank supervision

EU finance ministers agreed after marathon overnight talks to create a single banking supervisor for the euro zone and like-minded countries. The 27 leaders were set to give their stamp of approval at a summit that opened in a mood of optimism. (...)

"Since the summer, we have made a lot of progress in our efforts to overcome the immediate crisis in the euro zone," European Council President Herman Van Rompuy told the leaders as he opened the summit. "The worst is now behind us but of course much still needs to be done." At the summit, held days after the EU received its Nobel Prize in Oslo, leaders were to discuss closer fiscal integration in the currency union, a drive that some officials worry has lost momentum since ECB President Mario Draghi calmed markets by pledging in July to do "whatever it takes" to save the euro. European officials acknowledge privately that bolder steps towards closer integration of the single currency area will be on hold until after a German general election next September.

The next stages of banking union - creating a resolution fund for winding up troubled banks and coordinating deposit guarantees to protect savers - will be fought over even harder. And then there will be political and financial hurdles to negotiate through the year. "The fact that the situation in the financial markets is now better than before should not be seen by the governments as a way to procrastinate," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters.

The immediate priority is to finalize the legal framework for banking union and get European Parliament backing. Then the ECB must hire staff and decide how to carry out its mandate. It is not expected to be fully operational before March 2014. Under the deal sealed on Thursday, officials said the ECB would regulate some 150 to 200 banks directly - all major cross-border lenders and state aided institutions - with the power to delve into all 6,000 banks in case of problems.

Non-euro Britain, Sweden and the Czech Republic, the most skeptical EU members, allowed the agreement to go through but said they would not be joining the banking union. Other non-euro members left the decision open.

Completing such a complex process would be one of the EU's biggest achievements since the region's debt crisis first erupted three years ago. The aim is to begin to sever the so-called doom loop between indebted banks and shaky governments that has hit Ireland and Spain particularly hard.

Still, creating a full banking union, with powers to wind down failed banks and guarantee deposits across the euro zone, is likely to take several years. And it forms just part of the bloc's masterplan to bolster the architecture of the euro zone and prevent a repeat of the crisis that has threatened to tear the single currency project apart. It promises to be a long and tortuous journey requiring political commitment from euro zone and non-euro members alike, something that countries such as Britain, with a restive Eurosceptic population, will find particularly stressful.

Each step towards closer union means a greater surrender of sovereignty by independent nations and spurs a political backlash, especially in times of economic hardship, social tension and high unemployment.Van Rompuy and the heads of the European Commission, ECB and Eurogroup put forward a bold blueprint for closer euro zone fiscal, economic and political integration to the sumit.

But Merkel has lowered expectations for progress now on that agenda, saying EU leaders should focus on steps notably to improve economic competitiveness that can be implemented in the coming months. She is determined not to frighten German taxpayers with talk of sharing more liability for banks or debts, and wants to avoid any such decisions until after the election in Germany, with campaigning already beginning to warm up.

(...)

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Elfogadta az EP az egységes uniós szabadalmi szabályokat

Az uniós feltalálók hamarosan folyamodhatnak az egységes szabadalmi oltalomért, mivel harmincévi tárgyalássorozat után ugyanis megállapodás született az új rendszerről. Ez 80%-kal csökkentheti az uniós szabadalmak oltalom alá helyezésének költségét és versenyképesebbé teheti őket az amerikaiakkal és japániakkal szemben. A tagállamokkal megkötött kompromisszumos megállapodást, amely tartalmazza az EP költségcsökkentő javaslatait is, kedden szavazták meg a képviselők.

A „szabadalmi csomag” három részből áll - szabadalmi rendszer; fordítási szabályok; szabadalmi bíróság -, amelyet az EP külön-külön szavazott meg. 

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Szabadalmi oltalom olcsóbban és egyszerűbben - Az új rendszerben olcsóbb és egyszerűbb lesz beszerezni a szabadalmi oltalmat, ami nagyobb védelmet jelent az uniós találmányok számára. A jövőben ugyanis automatikusan jár a szabadalmi oltalom az együttműködésben részt vevő 25 uniós országban. Ez csökkenti az uniós vállalatok költségeit és növeli azok versenyképességét. Az Európai Bizottság szerint egy uniós szabadalom beszerzése a jelenlegi 36 ezer eurós átlag helyett 4725 euróba kerül majd.

Így lehet oltalomért folyamodni - Az új rendszerben a szabadalmi oltalmat az Európai Szabadalmi Szervezettől kell igényelni angol, francia vagy német nyelven. A szervezet által e három nyelven kiállított oltalom mind a 25 tagállamban érvényes lesz. Kérelmet más nyelven is be lehet nyújtani, ilyen esetben viszont mellékelni kell annak fordítását is. 

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