The United States exports digital goods worth hundreds of billions of dollars across the Atlantic each year.  And both Silicon Valley and Hollywood do big business with Europe every year.  Differences in approaches to privacy have always made this relationship unsteady but the Snowden disclosures greatly complicated the prospects of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.  In this paper Cameron Kerry examines that politics of transatlantic trade and the critical role that U.S. privacy policy plays in these conversations.

Kerry relies on his experience as the U.S.’s chief international negotiator for privacy and data regulation to provide an overview of key proposals related to privacy and data in Europe.  He addresses the possible development of a European Internet and the current regulatory regime known as Safe Harbor. Kerry argues that America and Europe have different approaches to protecting privacy both which have strengths and weaknesses.

To promote transatlantic trade the United states should:

• Not be defensive about its protection of privacy
• Provide clear information to the worldwide community about American law enforcement surveillance
• Strengthen its own privacy protection
• Focus on the importance of trade to the American and European economies

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Over 200 delegates from 50 countries gather this week in Washington for the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship. The summit hosts entrepreneurs to teach and learn innovative ways to strengthen professional and social relationships between the U.S. and the Islamic world. During his first major address to the Muslim world, delivered in Cairo last June, President Obama pledged to increase engagement through entrepreneurship, exchange programs and multilateral service initiatives.

Volunteer-led development initiatives have begun to act on Obama’s call for citizen diplomacy and private-sector engagement. The Initiative on International Volunteering and Service at Brookings and the Building Bridges Coalition have fueled an emerging legislative initiative that calls for increasing the role of international volunteers in the U.S. diplomatic agenda and development programs. This Service World Initiative has drawn from Brookings research outlining options to advance the president’s call for multilateral service.

As seen last year, for the first time in history, the majority of the world’s population lived in urban areas. And this trend is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. By 2050, urban dwellers are expected to make up about 70 percent of Earth’s total population. These informed 21st century urban citizens demand 24-7 connectivity, smart electric grids, efficient transportation networks, safe food and water, and transparent social services. All these demands place a huge strain on existing city infrastructures and the global environment. Most affected by this rapid urban boom, are the emerging markets. So how do we tackle this development dilemma?

One way is for highly-skilled experts, from a range of countries, to volunteer their time in emerging markets to help improve economic development, government services and stimulate job growth. This type of pro-bono program has many benefits. It benefits the urban areas in these emerging markets by leveraging intelligence, connecting systems and providing near-term impact on critical issues such as transportation, water, food safety, education and healthcare. It benefits the expert volunteers by fostering their teamwork skills, providing a cultural learning experience, and broadening their expertise in emerging markets.

IBM, which chairs the Building Bridges Coalition’s corporate sector, hosts a range of volunteer-led global entrepreneurship programs that improve economic stability for small- and medium-sized businesses, increase technology in emerging markets and open doors for the next generation of business and social leaders. This program connects high-talent employees with growing urban centers around the world and fosters the type of leadership to help IBM in the 21st century.

Recently, IBM sent a group of experts to Ho Chi Minh City as part of its Corporate Service Corps, a business version of the Peace Corps. This was the first Corporate Service Corps mission to be made up of executives, and the first to help a city in an emerging market analyze its challenges holistically and produce a plan to manage them. As a result, the city has now adopted a 10-year redevelopment plan that includes seven pilot programs in areas ranging from transportation to food safety. IBM will also help the city set up academic programs to prepare young Vietnamese to launch careers in technology services. IBM will continue this program throughout the next couple years to evolve the next set of global business and cultural hubs utilizing the volunteer hours of some of its most seasoned experts.

The Presidential Summit this week will further Obama’s call to “turn dialogue into interfaith service, so bridges between peoples lead to action.” The policy initiative of the Building Bridges Coalition, coupled with entrepreneurial innovations such as IBMs, can foster greater prosperity and service between the U.S. and our global partners.

The EU and Turkey have reached agreement on the broad outlines of a coordinated strategy to respond to the migration crisis. According to the plan, discussed at an emergency summit on Monday in Brussels, all migrants crossing from Turkey into the Greek islands would be returned. For every migrant Turkey readmits, the EU would resettle one registered refugee from a U.N.-administered camp, effectively establishing a single legal migration pathway.

The deal, which has not been finalized, includes a pledge to speed up disbursement of a 3-billion-euro fund ($3.3 billion) aimed to help Turkey shelter the roughly 2.5 million Syrian refugees currently on its soil, and to decide on additional support. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has requested that Europe double its funding to 6 billion euro ($6.6 billion) over three years. He also called on European leaders to speed up the timetable on lifting visa requirements for Turkish citizens and to kick-start stalled accession talks.

Rough road ahead

Establishing a framework is an important step forward in the effort to forge a common approach to the mounting crisis. German Chancellor Angela Merkel—facing discontent at home over her open door policy—welcomed the tentative deal as a potential breakthrough. So did Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron.

However, key details remain unresolved: First, it is not clear that all EU countries would agree to take part in such a relocation scheme, given strong opposition to compulsory migrant quotas. On Monday night, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán vowed to veto any commitment to resettle asylum seekers. 

[K]ey details remain unresolved.

Second, Ankara’s demands regarding EU membership and visa waivers are likely to be contested. Turkey’s bid for accession has long been controversial, and will only be made more so by the court-ordered seizure of the opposition newspaper Zaman late last week. Visa-free access for Turkish citizens is likewise contentious. Already, leaders of Germany’s conservative Christian Social Union party have vowed “massive resistance” to any such measure.

Third, human rights groups have called into question the plan’s legality. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees raised concerns about its legitimacy under EU and international law, expressing unease over the blanket return of foreigners from one country to another. Amnesty International called the proposal a “death blow” to refugee rights. While Europe believes the legal questions can be resolved by declaring Turkey a “safe third country,” Amnesty has cast doubt on the concept. 

And so?

Talks will continue ahead of the EU migration summit, which will take place on March 17 and 18. Meanwhile, NATO will begin carrying out operations in the territorial waters of Greece and Turkey to locate migrant boats. According to Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, those efforts will focus on “collecting information and conducting monitoring” in an endeavor to stop the smuggling.

In recent weeks, as many as 2,000 migrants each day have been arriving on Greece’s shores. They join more than 35,000 migrants already stranded there, unable to travel north due to border closures along the Western Balkans route. Those closures cast in doubt the future of the continent’s open border regime—and with it, the unity of Europe.

For months, Europe has been dealing with the hectic, day-to-day struggles of managing a massive migrant crisis. While those challenges dominate in the short term, European leaders must also start thinking about medium- to long-term reforms to the European Union’s asylum and migration policies.

European governments have made clear that they want to reform the Common European Asylum System. The European Commission has proposed reforms of its own, which to become laws would need to be approved by both the Council and the European Parliament. But while these proposals are certainly steps in the right direction, they don’t go far enough in addressing structural weaknesses in Europe’s migration and asylum policies.

Positive momentum in a number of key areas

There are several areas where the Commission has already proposed good reforms:

1. The Commission is proposing to recast a directive aimed at standardizing the processing of asylum procedures across Europe into a fully-fledged regulation. This is good news. The persistent variation in the implementation of asylum procedures across the EU highlights this necessity. Unlike directives, which need to be transposed into national legislation, regulations are immediately and simultaneously enforceable across all member states. 
2. A directive specifying the grounds for granting international protection is to be replaced by a more stringent regulation, which is also a good thing. It’s problematic that asylum seekers from the same country of origin enjoy dramatically different acceptance rates across EU member states. Combined, these changes should force member states to comply with international standards on asylum procedures and increase opportunities for migrants to get asylum (particularly in countries that have applied more restrictive criteria).
3. The Eurodac system, which establishes a pan-European fingerprinting database, is now likely to be expanded as well. It would store data on third-country nationals who are not applicants for international protection. But implementation is again a challenge, since Croatia, Greece, Italy, and Malta already struggle to fingerprint new arrivals (something over which infringement proceedings are still ongoing). 
4. To attract highly skilled professionals, the Commission is working to make the EU Blue Card scheme more appealing. While member states will retain the right to set their own annual migrants quota, Blue Card procedures and rights will be harmonized across the EU. The minimum length of an initial contract offer will be lowered to six months, salary thresholds will be reduced, and the Blue Card will be offered to migrants granted asylum. Other measures—including a directive aimed at students and researchers and another facilitating intra-corporate transfers—are also steps in the right direction. 
5. Finally, the Commission has proposed making permanent a pan-European resettlement scheme that was launched during last summer’s migrant crisis. That’s also a good thing. The framework would harmonize resettlement procedures and financially incentivizes member states to favor the European framework over national ones. At the same time, it would allow asylum seekers to move to Europe without risking their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean. However, given that member states will still determine how many people to resettle annually, the long-term impact of the scheme remains to be seen. 

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere watches as a migrant from Babel in Iraq has his fingerprints taken, during a visit to Patrick-Henry Village refugee centerin Heidelberg, Germany. Photo credit: Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach.

Far more needed but little appetite among national capitals

There are several policy areas where far more should be done: 

1. There is at least one area where the EU is still planning reforms but of a far more limited nature, and that’s on the current directive on basic standards for housing, healthcare, and employment. In private conversations, EU officials stress that the sheer numbers of migrants make it hard for even the best-performing countries to implement this directive. Put simply, member states do not have the political will to do more than what they are already doing. The EU is therefore, understandably, proposing a more moderate reform: it aims to improve reception conditions throughout the EU without dictating to member states how to do so.
2. Less privileged migrants must be provided with safe avenues to contribute to Europe’s economy. Legislation allowing seasonal workers into the Union for a maximum of between five and nine months within any twelve-month period already goes in this direction. Forums connecting local industry associations and countries of origin to better match labor demand and supply would also be welcome. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cape Verde, Georgia, Morocco, Moldova, and Tunisia—which enjoy mobility partnerships with the EU—would benefit from such an approach. More can be done if the political will amongst European capitals is there.
3. Finally, Europeans must ensure that migrants feel welcome to stay. The EU is aware of the need to adequately integrate third-country nationals, but European capitals are in the driver’s seat when it comes to integration. Directives aimed at facilitating family reunifications, integrating long-term residents, and streamlining administrative processes do what they can in this respect. However, the paths to integration and to welcoming foreigners chosen by European countries are exceedingly different, and for the time being likely to remain so. Because of this and until policymakers put integration at the top of their national agendas, foreign nationals will likely continue to struggle. 

Dublin: Still the elephant in the room

The Dublin regulation, which outlines which member state should be responsible for handling asylum applications, still must be radically revised. This is the elephant in the room and the core of the current asylum refugee framework. Member states should consider the Commission’s proposals for a corrective mechanism in case of migrant surges, a new system for allocating applications across the EU based on a distribution key or, ideally, the centralization of competences to the European Asylum Support Office. 

Informal conversations with top national and European officials suggest that the corrective mechanism is the most likely proposal to be accepted by the member states and therefore adopted. Under such an agreement, Dublin would be maintained, but automatic relocations would start in case of exceptional migrant surges—with hefty fines imposed by the Commission on those member states refusing to play their part. Unfortunately, this is not good enough. Such an approach does not address the underlying structural unfairness and unsustainability of a system that leaves the burden of processing arrivals overwhelmingly on frontline states. 

The current situation exemplifies a significant failure of governance that harms the interests of migrants and member states alike. At present, the Dublin Convention largely ignores the needs of migrants in terms of family reunification, language skills, and cultural integration. Unfortunately, the corrective mechanism for the Dublin Convention does nothing more than provide some relief in case of acute emergencies. Meanwhile, it leaves frontline states to continue facing on their own a crisis that only Europe as a whole could solve. “European leaders” still think and act through national perspectives.

Moving along despite European governments

The European Commission faces both legal and political constraints that limit its scope of action. Whenever it can, it is pushing for a significant overhaul of European asylum and migration policies. However, once more, its initiatives are hampered by the so-called “interests” of the member states. For the time being, we are likely to see some degree of integration in the fields of asylum and migration policies. But because of national vetoes, progress is slow and proposals are often watered down. 

Editors’ Note: Turkey’s failed coup may lead to the worsening of Europe’s migration crisis, writes Jessica Brandt. That’s because it could lead to the dissolution of a recent pact between Brussels and Ankara over the plight of refugees arriving on the European Union’s shores. This post originally appeared on Vox.

Turkey’s recent failed coup may lead to the worsening of Europe’s migration crisis. That’s because it could lead to the dissolution of a recent pact between Brussels and Ankara over the plight of refugees arriving on the European Union’s shores. Even before the events of last weekend, the fate of the agreement was uncertain amid quarrels between the parties. Now its future is even more in doubt.

Last year, more than a million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe, roiling politics across the continent. It’s a crisis EU chief Donald Tusk has described as an “existential challenge.”

Under the terms of the deal, Turkey agreed to accept the “rapid return of all migrants not in need of international protection crossing from Turkey into Greece and to take back all irregular migrants intercepted in Turkish waters.” In other words, almost all refugees who cross into Greece are slated to be returned to Turkish soil.

In return, the EU pledged to speed up the allocation of €3 billion in aid to Turkey to help it house and care for refugees, “reenergize” Turkey's bid for membership in the EU, and lift visa restrictions on Turkish tourists and businessmen.

But the European Commission has conditioned changes to the visa restrictions on better governance in Turkey. In particular, it requires a change in President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s controversial anti-terror law, which he has used to crack down on journalists and critics. Erdoğan was already adamantly against narrowing the law to protect free speech. Having now overcome a determined coup attempt, he is even less likely to do so.

Instead, it appears probable that he will further clamp down on civil liberties, acting on his authoritarian instincts and retaliating against his detractors. On Sunday, he suggested that he might reintroduce the death penalty, a practice Turkey abolished in 2004 as part of its bid for EU membership. Doing so would widen the gap in political culture between Turkey and Europe and, as German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier asserted forcefully on Monday in Brussels, derail the already limited possibility of reigniting accession talks.

The pact has already been strongly opposed by the European left, and particularly by humanitarian and human rights groups. Rising authoritarianism in Turkey would only increase resistance to the deal, making implementation even harder, especially if those groups were to scale back their activities on the ground.

That would not be without precedent. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Doctors Without Borders, and the International Rescue Committee, among others, have suspended some of their activities in refugee centers because they do not want to be involved in implementing a deal that they describe as constituting the blanket expulsion of refugees from Turkey back to Greece.

[A] crackdown could also undermine the legal basis of the agreement.

Crucially, a crackdown could also undermine the legal basis of the agreement. One of the agreement’s key provisions is that individuals who cross from Turkey into Greece will be sent back across the Aegean to Turkey. That hinges on the notion that Turkey is a “safe third country” for migrants. A crackdown could prompt refugees to argue that it isn’t.

If that were the case, deporting them to Turkey could be seen as constituting “refoulement”—the forcible return of asylum seekers to a country where they are prone to be subjected to persecution—which is forbidden under both international and EU law.

That’s a problem, since some analysts believe worsening conditions in Turkey could lead even more people seeking refuge to journey onward to Europe. In the past, Erdoğan has threatened to “open the gates” and send refugees streaming into Europe when displeased with the level of financial assistance from Brussels earmarked for managing the crisis. Preoccupied by troubles at home, he may see stability as in his interest and resist taking aggressive steps that would cause an open breach.

For both parties, finding a stable, though imperfect, accommodation—as they were poised to do prior to the events of last weekend—is still the most promising path forward. Let’s hope the parties take it. Managing Europe’s migration crisis depends on it.