SMEs towards a greener economy

A group of 30 journalists from various EU member states gathered in Brussels at the end of March to discuss the future of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in a greener economy during a seminar organised by the European Journalism Centre in partnership with The European Commission.
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Need for more energy efficient SMEs

The seminar “Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) for Green Growth”, included a press conference by EC vice-president Antonio Tajani, who delivered the results from the first in-depth Eurobarometer survey on the topic of SMEs resource efficiency.

According to the survey report, the EU is home to ‘’23 million Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), representing 99 percent of all businesses and providing around 90 million jobs.”

European SMEs, however, are responsible for “64 percent of the industrial pollution” produced in Europe and only “24 percent of them are engaged in actions to reduce environmental impact.”

Tajani explained that the European Commission believes that “the future is green” and that a greener Europe will help European countries to get out of the crisis and become more innovative.

Towards a green economy

Tajani believes this goal cannot be achieved without “SMEs making an effort to promote green jobs, green products and green services.”

“Smaller companies can be more innovative and competitive if they invest in energy efficiency measures,” he said. “By creating new jobs and reducing carbon emissions and energy expenses, they would benefit the EU economy and help Europe get out of the crisis.”

To a journalist who asked him how SMEs are to make more investments in a time of financial crisis, Antonio Tajani replied that by investing in energy efficiency measures, “SMEs would also be able to save costs in a near future”.

Available funding for SMEs

Several journalists asked the panel of speakers to elaborate on initiatives to support smaller companies and funding available for European SMEs.

Mark Pevsner, from the European Investment Bank (EIB), said that EIB has set up “a fund to support SMEs”, adding however that due to the crisis the EIB also “needs EU budget funds to enlarge the capacity and effectively support SMEs.”

Smaller companies can also access funding through the European Commission, explained Joanna Drake, Director SMEs and Entrepreneurship at the European Commission. Drake however also indicated that “there are some difficulties in accessing finance and 11 percent of the applications are rejected.”

Fighting the red tape

The amount and complexity of the paperwork applicants must fill in are some of the problems, European Commission officers acknowledged.

“We are working on the application procedure and trying to reduce bureaucracy,” said Silvia Bartolini from Tajani’s cabinet. “We also noticed that some SMEs don’t know anything about the funding programmes offered by the European Commission and we have to work on that too.”

Green jobs

Greener SMEs

Various EU initiatives aimed at implementing a greener economy among SMEs were presented at the seminar. These included pilot projects, entrepreneurial training programmes in schools as well as The Small Business Act (SBA) policy framework, which sets principles to enhance sustainable growth and competitiveness among European SMEs.

“With the SBA, the Commission is already engaged in a policy action in the EU to push for a third green industrial revolution,” said EC Director-General Enterprise and Industry Daniel Calleja Crespo. “But the challenge now lies in implementation, bringing awareness and support to SMEs on the ground,” he concluded.

By EJC intern Catarina Pinto

Posted on April 26, 2012 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Filed under seminars.

EJC seminar journalists reach the frontpage

A group of 12 EU journalists took part in a seminar organised on 21-23 March in Tunisia. The group spent four days in the capital Tunis, where they met with government officials, NGO representatives and local journalists.

Thanks to the political and social changes the country has been going through since the revolution of 2011, the visit ran very smoothly; all visits were welcomed without the restrictions and the self–censorship common during former President Ben Ali’s rule. For example the journalists were allowed to meet the President’s first adviser at the Presidential palace, whose access was once strictly limited.

The meeting at the Parliament with the President of the Constituent Assembly Mustapha Ben Jaafar reached the front page of the Tunisian leading newspaper La Presse. The article announced the possibility that the first legislative and presidential elections would take place in one year.

La Presse, 23 March 2012

Since its independence from France in 1956 until the revolution in 2011, Tunisia was ruled by a single-party dictatorship. At the end of 2011, the country held an election for a constituent assembly, which represented the first free election since the country’s independence in 1956. The European journalists had asked Ben Jaafar if the members of parliament had already set a date for the elections, an issue of vital importance for a newly born democracy such as Tunisia.

The seminar was organised by the EJC in cooperation with the European Commission.

A visit to Parliament where participants met with President of the Tunisian Parliament, Mustapha Ben Jaafar

Posted on April 16, 2012 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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One continent, one law, one data protection authority

Once a photograph is posted on a social digital platform such as Facebook there is no turning back. Even if it is deleted, there is no guarantee that it will be completely gone and off the web.

In an effort to better safeguard Internet users’ privacy and to unify data protection rules among European countries, Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, has been working on an ambitious plan for a new European law on data protection.

At a recent seminar organised by the European Journalism Centre in partnership with the European Commission, in Brussels, Reding summarised the aim of the new law with the motto:  “One continent, one law, one data protection authority.”

The one-day seminar, which gathered 30 journalists from the 27 EU member states, tackled issues such as the tension between privacy and economic growth, the need to harmonise data protection rules in Europe and the scope of the protection reform the Commission wants to implement. Axel Voss, member of the European Parliament, Francoise Le Bail, Director of DG Justice at the Commission, and Jean Gonie, Microsoft Director for Data Privacy were some of the speakers at the seminar.

The highlight of the day was the keynote speech given by Commissioner Reding and the ensuing discussion with the audience of journalists.

How Europe is dealing with online privacy, photo credit: SaFoXy via Flickr (some rights reserved)

A single Data Protection law for all 27 member states

The European Commission wishes to implement new data privacy rules in all EU countries. The legislation – designed by Viviane Reding – was issued in January 2012, but will not be voted by the European Parliament before 2013. It brings major alterations to the way individuals can control their personal data on the web.

First, the European Commission sees the need to harmonise data protection rules in all 27 member states. Up until now, all countries apply distinct privacy laws.

If the European Parliament approves the new law, users will be able to request companies to erase their data or to transfer it to other services or organisations.

In addition, companies dealing with personal information of more than 250 employees would have the obligation to hire a “data protection officer.”

The right to be forgotten

With large social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and others playing an increasing role in peoples’ lives, current data protection laws seem insufficient to protect individuals’ private information.

One of the most significant changes in the new legislation deals with the right to be forgotten.” The Commission wishes to give citizens the right to remove personal information, such as embarrassing photographs, from the web, whenever they so wish.

“Will the law have implications for journalism, especially in an era where ‘citizen journalism’ seems to be everywhere?” a journalist in the audience asked.

“The right to be forgotten has nothing to do with journalists, nothing to do with the work of bloggers, nothing to do with tweeterers,” Viviane Reding clarified. “It’s about people entrusting information to a company. Freedom of expression is very important and it is something we are taking into account.”

Facebook: Stop invading my privacy, photo credit: The Daring Librarian (some rights reserved)

Fierce lobbying

As the new legislation is expected to bring major changes in the way companies can hold and use consumers’ information, journalists were interested in finding out how online companies would react to it.

“Will big companies try to stop the implementation of these new ambitious rules?” a journalist wanted to know.

Reding’s answer gave him a good quote: “The lobbying from all sides has been fierce. I have not seen such a heavy lobbying operation before,” she said, without specifying which companies or interests were putting pressure on European Commission to withdraw the law.

During a panel discussion on the possible tension between privacy and economic growth, the audience had an opportunity to ask Microsoft Director for Data Privacy, Jean Gonie, what his company had to say about the lobbying efforts.

Gonie’s reply was less controversial than expected, as he said that Microsoft actually agrees with the new legislation to some extent. “We have been advocating for harmonisation for many years,” he said.

Is Data Protection too far away?

At this point, it is difficult to predict the consequences of the proposed legislation. In any case, it is unlikely to be implemented before 2015, which as journalists attending the seminar commented, seems “very far away.”

By EJC intern Catarina Pinto

Posted on February 27, 2012 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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State of play of the Tunisian press after the Revolution

In cooperation with the Luxembourg Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the EJC on 1-4 December organised a two-day meeting in Tunis and Hammamet on the state of play of the Tunisian press after the Revolution.

The event offered a group of 15 journalists - five European journalists from France and Luxembourg and 10 Tunisian journalists - the opportunity to exchange views on topics such as press freedom in Tunisia, journalistic sources and journalism ethics. 

Posted on December 6, 2011 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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Cell.cross(“List of experts”, “Company name”).cells(“Expert name”).value[0]

A review by Nicolas Kayser-Bril of the first in a series of EJC/OKF data journalism workshops on EU spending.

As Friedrich Lindenberg was writing this abstruse code on his MacBook plugged on the beamer at the workshop on EU spending on 9 September, 20 journalists listened attentively as data started to speak before their eyes. In a conference room in Utrecht University’s 15th-century Faculty Club, the group from across Europe watched as Lindenberg compared a list of lobbying firms with the list of accredited experts at the European Commission: Any overlap would clearly suggest a conflict of interest.

More than watching, the audience actually followed in Lindenberg’s steps on Google Refine, an Excel-like tool, and was taming the data on their own laptops. At this point in time, more journalists were engaging in data-mining in Utrecht than in any other newsroom. This practical exercise was the climax of two days of learning to investigate the mountains of data produced by European institutions. Besides Lindenberg, the coder behind Open Spending, EU datajournalist Caelainn Barr, OpenCorporates founder Chris Taggart and Erik Wesselius of Corporate Europe shared expertise with participants.

The EU budget has the advantage of being massive (EUR 120 billion) and fairly open, compared to what a journalist can get from most national governments. It was the perfect topic for the European Journalism Centre and the Open Knowledge Foundation to bring together open data and data journalism. It was also a perfect topic for participants, whose ideas, depicted on the mind-map above, rushed in the first brainstorming session from health issues to real-time data to the always-fascinating lobbyists and regional grants.

Good reporting needed

Journalists reporting on the EU budget face an uphill struggle. Knowledge of the budget among Europeans is abysmally poor. One in three Europeans has never heard of an EU budget and less than one in four of those who have knows that most of the budget is spent on agriculture. More interestingly, the graph shows that the level of ignorance remained fairly constant for the past 10 years with the solidly-anchored belief that administrative costs represent the lion’s share of the EU budget (the actual figure is 6 percent).

 

A lack of access to clear and clean data might be one of the reasons why representations of the EU budget are so far off the mark. Ron Korver, press officer at the EU Parliament, opened the workshop by explaining that EU institutions are sometimes reluctant to giving a clear picture of their finances. He himself had to dig through pdfs published by the Commission to find a comprehensive view of the 2009 expenditures by country. Worse still: as of writing, the brochure ‘Budget 2011: Beyond the crisis, towards new goals’ still redirects to a “page not found” 404 error.

The workshop provided a large overview of the available resources to mine EU-related data, listed on this wiki. Participants were thrilled to see that expenditures could be tracked at the project level, sometimes involving only a few thousand euros (that’s on the Cohesion policy website). Most had no idea that a public register of lobbyists existed (the transparency register).

Data was analysed using Google Refine, powerful spreadsheet software that can be linked to online services. Taggart demonstrated how a journalist could seamlessly extract data from international directory Open Corporates directly in Google Refine using its reconciliation service. The rationale behind these efforts was that proficiency with such tools will help journalists save time and investigate more efficiently.

The main question in the audience was how to make a story out of data. While databases are interesting in themselves, enticing readers into digging into them is no easy task. Barr explained that her eight-month tracking of EUR 347 billion in Structural funds led to several ‘traditional’ investigations in print and broadcast. She helped uncover how a desalination plant was lying idle after receiving EUR 300 million in subsidies or how cigarette manufacturers were awarded millions to develop their factories.

Getting the data in a structured format using scrapers or character recognition software is only the first step. Next, Barr explained, journalists can look for elements that contradict the rules (e.g. subsidies given to arms or tobacco companies) or around companies known for their mafia or crime connections. Another approach is hypothesis-based. Strange voting patterns around a local legislation might be linked to conflicts of interest, for instance.

The EU expenditures database can be mashed-up with other sources, such as national registers, where additional information can be pulled. Slovak website Znasichdani, for instance, monitors companies that were awarded public tenders. Switzerland’s Infocube released an application that shows the companies national MPs have a stake in. Each of these initiatives provide material for civic-minded and highly compelling journalism.

Databases, which are often not visible in Google’s index, offer factual bits of information that can prove crucial in some investigations. Knowing that a company folded months after it received government funding, for instance, clearly hints at misdemeanor. Relying on hard data in addition to the usual unnamed quotes is the basis for precision journalism (what Wikileaks’ Julian Assange referred to as scientific journalism), a way of working that provides for more robust results than traditional methods.

The juice is at the national level

Despite these efforts to dig stories, the EU budget is likely among the cleanest in Europe. The Santer Commission, for instance, resigned in 1999 over a fraud scandal where the key charge was a dubious hire by Commissioner Edith Cresson. She took in a close friend and had him paid for two year at the tune of EUR 50,000 a year to produce a 24-page report. Outrageous, certainly. But the sum represents less than a minute’s worth of government corruption in Italy, which reaches up to EUR 60 billion a year (no one resigned).

Focusing too much on EU money should not lead European journalists to neglect national and local affairs. The openness of EU institutions (relative to most others in continental Europe) should not work against it but should be used by journalists as a launching pad to investigate bigger organisations. After all, the EU budget represents only about 2 percent of global government expenditures in Europe.

Participants engaged on this path. Brussels-based investigative journalist Mehmet Koksal, for instance, set out during the workshop to scraping the public journal of the Belgian state to mine the relations between public officials and their private-sector activities.

But such initiatives will be hard to implement without more robust coding skills. The workshop showed that there was a profound need for all kind of skills, from data scraping to statistical analysis to data visualisation. Training will be needed in these areas for journalists to become really proficient with data.

What’s more, the question of the value of data-driven reporting is still pushed under the carpet. Barr’s investigation on Structural funds took eight months. A gross approximation would put the price tag of such an enterprise above EUR 50,000. Not many newsrooms can be convinced in putting that kind of amount on the table and fewer journalists still would be able to commit it on their own. Once the value of a data-based investigation is understood, getting funding will be easier. Assessing the profitability of a data-driven approach must be the next step for the #ddj community.

Resources from the workshop:

  * Links to tools and EU spending databases on this public pad.
  * Pictures from the workshop on Flickr.
  * Videos of talks - coming up.

By Nicolas Kayser-Bril, data journalist.

Source: Data Driven Journalism website

 

Posted on September 19, 2011 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Filed under analysis, events, projects, seminars.

Polish economic reform architect to speak at EJC conference

Former Polish Finance Minister Grzegorz W. Kolodko, will be in Brussels on Monday 15 March to deliver a keynote speech at ‘Exiting the Crisis: Europe 2020’, a conference organised by the European Journalism Centre.

Professor Kolodko is widely considered as the key architect of the economic reforms that took place in Poland during the past two decades. In his keynote, he is expected to share his views on the new economic reform plans that are currently under discussion at the European Union.

The conference is open to all accredited journalists in Brussels. You may register your attendance by sending an email to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). The event starts at 9:15 in the Sofitel Europe Hotel on Place Jourdan

Posted on March 12, 2010 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Filed under events, seminars.