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Populism, cartel and contracts with foreign companies – what had happened to the Coronavirus Fund in Ukraine?

Fri, 25/12/2020 - 13:11

This year Europe and the United States have donated millions of dollars to Ukraine to fight COVID-19. In fact almost half of the funds were allocated not for medicines or medical equipment, but slip into the pockets of the Ukrainian construction firm’s cartel and foreign contractors.

klymenko-time.com

Non-earmarked expenditures

The coronavirus pandemic continues to spread around the world and Ukraine is not the exception. There are reports from all over the country on overcrowded hospitals, problems with hospitalization, lack of necessary medicines and oxygen. This spring authorities created the fund totaling $2.3 billion specifically to fight the pandemic and its consequences. The fund consisted of money from the Ukrainian government, European Union, foreign states and grant organizations. Ukraine was provided with funds from the UN ($33 million), EU ($232 million), Germany ($181 million), United States ($15 million), Canada ($0.5 million) and even South Korea ($0.7 million). According to the open sources, international assistance amounted to $462 million, or at least 20% of the Ukrainian Coronavirus Fund. What is more, the EU agreed on an additional $1.5 billion lending program due to the pandemic.

In November a scandal broke out in the Ukrainian media. Former Finance Minister and Adviser to the Head of the Presidential Office Igor Umansky said that money from the Coronavirus Fund was allocated for the construction of roads under the presidential program Great Construction. On the threshold of a new lockdown and, as a result, a new wave of the financial crisis, the Ukrainian authorities allocated $1.2 billion to a populist project. At the same time, only $364 million was reserved for social payments, $570 million for health care, and $94 million for law enforcement.

Ruthless PR-campaign

Great Construction started in Ukraine in March. This is a joint project of President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Government of Ukraine funded by the state budget. The goal of the program is the construction and general maintenance of 6.5 thousand km of roads, 137 educational institutions, 116 kindergartens and 122 sports facilities. The planned budget together with money from the Coronavirus Fund is $4.4 billion. The President actively used the project to increase his own rating and the popularity of his political party in the run-up to the local elections in late October. Vladimir Zelensky has been visiting every region of the country, where among others he inspected the construction sites of the Great Construction. Such actions of the head of state angered both the opposition and public organizations. Chairman of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine Alexei Koshel noted that technically the president cannot be prosecuted for this, but his actions undermined the principles of democratic elections.

facebook.com/UkraineInvest

Obviously, the ruling party counted on the presidential project as a principal trump in the political struggle. Intensive construction in the regions made it possible to associate candidates from the Servants of People with large-scale road building; however, as it turned out after the Election Day, even such measures did not help the party to get the majority of votes.

Large contracts for local oligarchs

Igor Umansky also reported on large-scale corruption schemes in the project. The tender conditions were specially changed that only a limited number of companies or members of the so-called “road cartel” could participate. The former Finance Minister noted that six companies appropriated money from the Coronavirus Fund. According to the article by Nashi Groshi, he was talking about Avtomagistral-South, Onur, Avtostrada, Rostdorstroy, Altkom and Techno-stroy-center. From the beginning of the year to July they received 72% of contracts for the road building.

nashigroshi.org

Ukravtodor quickly published a rebuttal. The department said that for the first time in Ukraine tender documents were not worked out for specific contractors, but for companies that have the appropriate experience, equipment, employees and financial support. In 2020, it allowed to attract more than 60 companies to work at the Great Construction sites. As of November 13, 20 contractors were doing contracts worth $35 million. The department claims that this fact completely excludes the possibility of cartel.

One way or another, the statement of the road department does not refute the existence of the cartel, which was mentioned by former Finance Minister Igor Umansky. In spite of the fact that the conditions of tenders have become more transparent for small firms, “road giants” from the article published by Nashi Groshi, still win the lion’s share of tenders.

Companies of the Odessa Mayor

One of the largest road construction and repair companies in Ukraine is Avtostrada-South. According to July data, the company won contracts totaling $220 million. Formally, the company belongs to Odessa residents Valery Korotkov and Oleg Nalivanny. At the same time, media reports that it is controlled by the inner circle of Odessa Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov. The connection was revealed accidentally during one of the bids. Many participants took part in the tender, and one of them, Kyivshlyakhbud, filed a letter of guarantee where accidentally entered the title of the Avtostrada-South Company. Among the beneficiaries of Kyivshlyakhbud were Yuri Schumacher – a deputy of the Odessa City Council, a member of Trukhanov’s political party, and the famous businessman Alexander Zhukov. Media often call Yuri Schumacher “the main Trukhanov’s road worker”.

klymenko-time.com

Another major’s road company from the list is Rostdorstroy LLC or RDS. From the beginning of the year till July the contractor won tenders totaling $63 million. The beneficiaries of the company are Evgeny Konovalov and previously mentioned Yuri Schumacher. The supplier of Rostdorstroy is Squo Company, which is controlled by Trukhanov’s daughter. Rostdorstroy appears in a number of criminal proceedings in Poltava, Cherkasy and Nikolaev regions. Rostdorstroy was accused of official negligence, poor-quality work, appropriation of funds, overestimation of materials and work, as well as forgery of documents.

Vinnitsa monopolist

The road cartel also includes the Avtostrada Company. According to information published by Nashi Groshi, the company won tenders totaling $161 million. Its owner is Maxim Shkil, founder of MS Capital Holding. Last year, Avtostrada was caught up in a scandal. Avtostrada was accused of arson attacks on competitor’s equipment. The director of the damaged company Poltavabudcenter then stated that corruption in the industry is supported at the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, and Avtostrada is allegedly a contractor close to officials. In Avtostrada, these accusations were called an information attack. Maxim Shkil applied to the court and the defendant had to delete the publication.

autostrada.com.ua

In the Vinnitsa region, the company was accused of violating road construction standards and maximization the cost of projects. During the investigation crimes were not confirmed and the case was closed. Some media attribute this to the fact that the top manager of Avtostrada was Anatoly Vakar, who previously worked in the transport department of Vinnitsa region administration. The company also received most of the contracts in this region. Avtostrada declines any allegations of using an administrative resource.

Igor Kolomoysky

Ukrainian oligarchs also benefited from the Great Construction. In November, it became known that tenders for road construction in the Carpathian region were won by PBS Company, which is closely connected to one of the most influential businessmen in Ukraine Igor Kolomoisky. The founder of PBS is a resident of Ivano-Frankivsk, Galina Nepik. Earlier, Nepik worked at the famous resort Bukovel, owned by the Privat Group belonging to Igor Kolomoisky.

klymenko-time.com

The total amount of the bids under the Big Construction program in the Ivano-Frankivsk region amounted to $125 million. About $32 million of them were allocated directly from the Coronavirus Fund.

Coronavirus Fund for Turkish Firms

Builders of the Great Construction were not only prominent Ukrainian businessmen and oligarchs, but also foreign companies with a questionable reputation. Two Turkish companies Onur and Ozaltin won significant contracts from Ukravtodor in 2020.

Onur is a group of Turkish construction companies, which includes its Ukrainian division Onur Construction International. The company is one of six members of the cartel and, according to July data, won tenders totaling $91 million. The beneficiaries of Onur Construction International are Turkish citizens Onur and Ihsan Chetinjeviz. The company has been building and repairing roads in the country since the beginning of the century.

facebook.com/onurgroup06

The Onur Group is successfully performing around the world, but in Ukraine it has a doubtful reputation. Law enforcement officers and public organizations have many questions about the work of the company. A number of criminal cases were instituted in Ukraine against Turkish company. Most of them were initiated over the embezzlement of state money, illegal mining of materials and forgery.

Another large foreign company at the Great Construction of President Zelensky is the Ozaltin company. According to July data, the Turkish contractor won tenders worth $38 million, but little has been done.

twitter.com/ozaltinholding

In September, journalists of the Perviy Zaporizhzhskiy visited the section of the М18 highway between Zaporozhye and Melitopol which is being constructed by Ozaltin. The company won a tender for the repair of 55 km of highway in the spring. In early autumn the contractor removed only 17 km of the old asphalt and the only 1 km was completely repaired. Journalists believe that the work will not be done by the end of the season. In addition, according to media workers, half of the company’s employees are foreigners while the country faces a 15 years maximum unemployment rate.

Ozaltin has come to Ukraine only this year right before the Great Construction began. The company did not submit leasing agreements for equipment, papers confirming the employment of some workers in the tender offer. However, Ukravtodor ignored violations and allowed the Turkish constructor to work in Ukraine.

The post Populism, cartel and contracts with foreign companies – what had happened to the Coronavirus Fund in Ukraine? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Categories: European Union

Emerging Security Technologies and EU Governance: Actors, Practices and Processes

Fri, 18/12/2020 - 14:07

What role do technologies play in European integration? How EU governance of security technologies is changing and how does it differ from other major players? These and other questions are examined in a recent book Emerging Security Technologies and EU Governance: Actors, Practices and Processes, edited by Antonio Calcara, Raluca Csernatoni and Chantal Lavallée. In this Q&A, they tell about the origins of this book, key themes and emerging topics in this exciting and fast changing area.

 

Q1: What have been the rationales and origins of this book?

The origins of the project date back to 2017, when we were all based at the Institute for European Studies of the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels. Coincidentally, we actually first met during a hot September afternoon in Barcelona, at the 11th EISA (European International Studies Association) Pan-European Conference 2017, where we were paper presenters in the panel on ‘Military Adaptation or a Case of Putting One’s Head in the Sand?’ Notwithstanding different academic backgrounds and scholarly approaches, we were interested to investigate the impact of emerging security technologies in various EU policy areas. The core idea was (and still is!) to understand how new technologies are shaping the rapidly changing European policy processes, governance dynamics, and overall security landscape. We therefore began to discuss these issues on a daily basis and decided to involve scholars with similar research interests and with a very open attitude in terms of inter-disciplinary approaches.

 

Our collective work has especially benefitted from in-depth discussions during the panel on “Actors and Technologies: Towards a New European Security Governance” at the European Union in International Affairs 2018 (EUIA) in Brussels and the workshop on “Theoretical and Practical Implications of Dual-Use Technologies in the European Union” as part of the EISA European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS) at the University of Groningen (2018). We then met several times – both in-person and online – throughout 2019 to finalise the project. We are pleased to have cultivated a close-knit research group over the years and we are also convinced that the main strength of our book is the fact that it gathers scholars at different stages of their careers with various academic backgrounds and research interests. Using varied theoretical perspectives, they shed light on how diverse emerging technologies are being embedded in EU policy frameworks as a common good, with new legal, policy, economic instruments and measures, triggering new governance mechanisms, practices, and patterns of authority.

 

Q2: What role do technologies play in European integration?

Technologies play a key role in the process of European integration. In the last twenty years, the emergence of technologies such as drones, autonomous robotics, artificial intelligence, cyber and biotechnologies has stimulated worldwide debates on their use, risks and benefits in both the civilian and the security-related fields. The book emphasises the importance of studying how these emerging security technologies are governed in practice within the EU’s complex political and institutional machinery. With reference to European governance, the various contributions address the complex interplay of power relations, interests and framings between broad range of stakeholders EU institutions and agencies, state and non-state, public and private actors, and surrounding the development of policies and strategies for guiding the use of new security technologies. Each chapter in the book identifies actors involved in the governance of a specific technology sector, their multilevel institutional and corporate configurations, and the conflicting forces, values, ethical and legal concerns, as well as security imperatives and economic interests.

 

Q3: The EU governance towards security technologies have changed. Since the 1980s the EU has been supporting research and development through its Framework Programmes which have exclusive focus on civil applications. In recent years, EU has also started to fund defence research and set up the European Defence Fund. Why this shift in EU policy? Is the EU still a peace project?

Concerning these changes, we have seen growing concerns in the critical literature and civil society about the militarisation of the EU and the securitization of different policy domains. We believe that this debate should be further contextualised from an institutional point of view taking into account the EU governance structure, a political point of view taking into account power configurations among different levels of authority and a strategical point of view considering fast-evolving, very costly and competitive research and development as well as changing dynamics in transatlantic relations. For what concerns the policy shift from civilian to military research (or vice versa when considering how innovation nowadays predominantly stems from the civilian sector), our book highlights the multi-causal and complex nature of the phenomenon, especially when it comes to dual-use technologies.

 

Technological progress has been framed to be of strategic importance for both the EU’s future military capacity and economic competitiveness. An integrated defence-industrial base (with the support of EU funds), as also specified in the 2016 EU Global Strategy, is portrayed as indispensable, that is if Europe wants to achieve the by now infamous concept of ‘Strategic Autonomy’. In addition, there is no doubt that the European Defence Agency, the European Commission, the European Parliament (especially the Subcommittee on Security and Defence) and defence industry have – for different reasons – pushed for this process. Our book also looks at new patterns of authority and expertise within the intergovernmental-supranational institutional balance and the European Commission’s policy entrepreneurship and activity in framing and governing emerging security technologies. Arguably, such developments have raised important questions concerning the EU’s foundational and integration myth as a ‘peace project’ and whether it can still be seen as such, given recent EU-driven defence technological and industrial initiatives. While this question falls beyond the scope of the book’s research agenda, what is certain is that the EU is undergoing significant policy and institutional transformations that might indeed impact its identity-building as a global security actor and technological powerhouse.

 

Q4: How does the EU governance of security technologies differ from how these technologies are governed in other regions? Is the EU better or worse that other parts of the world in governing its security technologies?

Rather than better or worse than other regional contexts, we argue that the EU governance of emerging security technologies – due to its multiplicity of actors, institutions, discourses and practices – is following a distinctive path that sometimes converges and sometimes diverges from other international approaches. For instance, the EU seems to be accepting the dominant narrative that the development of emerging security technologies such as Artificial Intelligence or drones is essential to bridge the technological-innovation gap, towards the US and China. However, EU representatives are also trying to find a complex balance between creating markets and stimulating cutting-edge research and innovation, and the need to address their normative and ethical implications with legal controls regarding their use and the risks of misuse.

 

Unlike other actors in fact, the EU has used extensively specialised expert groups to legitimize its policies and to involve state and non-state, civil and private actors (industry, civil society, international organisations, civil authorities). This warrants further research into an area that is also covered in the book, namely the role of security and science expertise in establishing and reproducing patterns of authority and legitimate knowledges in the governance of new and emerging technologies. Moreover, we argue that the analysis of the EU governance towards these technologies is also questioning the nature and scope of the European integration. Such technical advancements are transforming civil–military practices as well as their interactions and might have unforeseen long-term effects on the EU imaginaries (of what the EU is) and its global role.

 

Q5: What role do security technologies play during the times of global Covid-19 pandemic?

Security technologies are playing a central role during the global Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic is acting as an accelerator of certain dynamics that were already in place, such as the use of contact tracing apps, drones and biometric technologies for surveillance, coercive control of confinement measures. Our new works, which also build on the research carried out for the book, are looking at the broad use of emerging security technologies to tackle the health emergency. Raluca Csernatoni has noted that whereas tracking apps represent a critical experiment for the role technology will play in tackling future pandemics, scepticism should surround techno-solutionism and AI-powered mass digital surveillance when it comes to complex problems. Chantal Lavallée, in a co-authored piece with Bruno Oliveira Martins, another book chapter contributor, has looked at the extensive use and multiple applications of drones from the outset of the pandemic, the implications in terms of privacy/data protection, security and safety issues and consequences on public acceptance.

 

Q6: What are the most important trends and developments in the governance of security technologies to watch in the next few years?

We believe that there are three trends and developments in the governance of security technologies to watch in the next few years. The first is linked to the previous point on the use of technological silver bullets mobilized during states of emergency and the necessary careful assessment of the trade-offs between democratic principles and technologically mediated emergency politics. Second, from an EU perspective, it will be interesting to see how the relationship between institutions, member states, industries and civil society groups will evolve in the regulation and governance of new technologies, not least those related to artificial intelligence. Third, from a broader perspective, we believe it is important to observe how the debate on strategic autonomy and European technological sovereignty will develop. Both concepts seem to have lost traction after the 2020 American presidential election, but may come back into vogue if there will be further transatlantic turbulence and in the context of US-China rivalry.

 

Q7: What are the main lessons from your book for practitioners and policymakers?

This is the first book that deals with understanding how a unique and complex institutional actor such as the EU adapts and puts forward the governance of innovative technologies. The focus on these emerging and dual-use technologies and key technological areas such cyber, drones, and AI in the EU will certainly be of high interest to stakeholders, expert audiences, practitioners, and policy makers in Brussels, in Europe and beyond, as well as for professionals engaged in these sectors in Europe and worldwide. European policymakers should read our book to understand the role of national actors, but also their interactions embedded within new configurations of actors. National policymakers should read our book to understand more about EU dynamics. Both industrial and civil society representatives and/or ordinary citizens might also better grasp institutional and political dynamics that are already having a significant impact on their lives.

 

Q8: What would be interesting avenues for future research?

From a theoretical point of view, we believe that more conceptual effort should be made to rigorously bridge Science and Technology Studies with Security Studies and European Studies. Besides our book, some recent works are going in the same direction. From an empirical point of view, each emerging technology analysed in the book would deserve a more extensive treatment, which, due to space constraints, we could not go into, and a follow-up as they are fast-evolving technologies and as the framing of new EU policies is ongoing. Perhaps these could be two ideas for a second collective book on the subject.

 

 

Antonio Calcara is Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Political Science of the LUISS “Guido Carli” University in Rome. He is also currently Visiting Lecturer at SciencesPo Paris. His research interests are at the crossroads of International Relations, International Political Economy and Security Studies.

 

Raluca Csernatoni is Guest Professor at the Institute for European Studies (IES) of Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). She is also Visiting Scholar at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, where she works on European security and defence. Her research interests focus on critical theoretical approaches at the intersection of security and technology, as well as new and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and drones.

 

Chantal Lavallée is Assistant Professor of International Studies and Assistant Director of Centre for security and crisis governance (CRITIC) at Royal Military College Saint-Jean (Canada). Her research and publications focus on the contribution of the European Commission to the security and defence as well as emerging technology (drones) sectors.

 

The post Emerging Security Technologies and EU Governance: Actors, Practices and Processes appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Categories: European Union

Circumfession

Fri, 18/12/2020 - 09:45

A mothers existential account through a son’s circumcision 

a la Derrida’s Circumfession

Derrida’s account was what a person feels when he is trying to write, being circumscribed and naked to public, the existential crisis of should I never write or write it down and be forever humiliated. But of course it was his ideas on circumcision, signature and survival as well.
Mine too is a multi-layered account of circumfession; my writing a non English speaker’s writing who thinks, writes and mostly speaks in English however flawed that may be. And also confessions of my borderline heretic thoughts when I was having my second son circumscribed and  later when he healed.
But why should that be on a blog dedicated to Europe because I blame these thoughts to my years spent studying European Oeuvre and Jacques Derrida.

Note beforehand: I wanted to be happy that there was a Azan in Hagia Sophia ( the 6th century church of Byzantium empire converted into a mosque in 1453 during Ottoman rule then was kept as a museum for so many years. This year turned into a mosque again, I wanted to be  jubilant like so many around me; but all I could think was that it was best if Hagia Sophia remained a museum.

And should I or should not blame it on my degree of European Studies?

Derrida must have been circumcised, to be born a Sephardic Jew in Algeria –no questions asked? But were his children?
Because mine are..
It is not the first time,  this is my second son. I went through the procedure three and a half years ago as well with my eldest son . I went and got everything done with a rock solid conscience.
But this time I questioned my husband if that was necessary. And his reply was you were pretty enthusiastic about your first son, why now?

… well I had no answer.

I remember when I gave my final defense of M. Phil. thesis, I gave a practice one to my father a night before, like this girl has been doing since grade I.
And listening to it he only reply was that, “You sound like a secular person.”
Blame me for reading Derrida and only Derrida for such a long time, or blame yourself (Abu) for letting me read Derrida for such long time or blame Derrida alone.
Those were my thoughts.

But was Derrida secular, or is he up there giving recitation of Vayicra and Breshiet.
I need to know, maybe I need to unread him extensively for next eight years
because I have to relearn my AlRahman.

Getting back to my boys’ circumcision, my elder one had a ring that came off in three days of several doses of panadol, three sleepless night, incessantly crying. But since he was rocking the whole house on the top of his lungs from day one; I was okay with his circumcision.

But my second child, he was calm from day one, worried me only for milk and spoiled diapers and would be asleep as soon as his needs will be met. Post circumcision he cried incessantly and he only cried then. The doses of augmentine will calm him but as soon the effect tapers off, his pain will come back (cue: incessant crying). To put salt on my wounds his procedure wasn’t with a ring but with a bandage and cotton that was stuck to his tummy with a tape. The procedure was done like a Naye (desi barber) – so much  for  a Dr. Brigadier in a posh hospital in a posh gated society. The local public hospital I went for my first born did a better procedure.

And did I  mention the lockdown and real impact of pandemic in the month of his circumcision (Mar ’20) in Pakistan. Oh the heightened heresy!

You must be thinking that you couldn’t see a more phallogocentric account of existential crisis- a detailed circumfession, then this.

Well you are wrong. Enter Sir Phillip Stewart

Click here to view the embedded video.

The post Circumfession appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Categories: European Union

The day England turned blue

Sun, 13/12/2020 - 16:07

It was in the early hours of that Friday 13 December 2019 that we learnt the results of the third general election in four years: the Tories had won a landslide, with an 80-seat majority.

England had turned predominantly blue.

It wasn’t so much a shock that the Tories had won – Labour was trailing behind for some time, even though the Tory government was considered by so many to be the worst that any of us could ever remember.

No, it was the size of the Tory majority that shocked and stunned – because they won their huge win with practically the same number of votes that they got in the previous general election of 2017, in which the party lost their majority entirely.

Clearly, something was terribly wrong with the country’s voting system to return such a distorted result, unrepresentative of the nation as a whole.

But, on that day, there were other things on people’s minds.

For one thing, it was over for Remain. Until Friday 13 December 2019, hopes were high among Remainers that Brexit could be legitimately, legally, and democratically reversed in a new referendum – a ‘People’s Vote’.

The European Court of Justice had ruled that, up to the expiry of the UK’s Article 50 notice to leave the EU, Brexit could be cancelled, and we could remain a full member of the EU as if nothing had happened.

But it was not to be. England turned blue. And so did the mood of Remainers.

(I immediately closed my Reasons2Remain campaign, but did relaunch it six months later as Reasons2Rejoin).

It was also over for Jeremy Corbyn. Labour had suffered its worst defeat since 1935.

And it was certainly over for Prime-Minister-wannabe, Jo Swinson, the LibDem leader who lost her seat, her credibility, and reduced her party’s presence in the Commons from 21 seats to 11.

 WHAT TO MAKE OF ALL THIS? Well, those of us who still support the UK’s membership of the EU, and who also support socially progressive polices for the country (i.e. not Tory policies) need to make something of it.

Otherwise, we will never learn from the mistakes of the past five years, and how to democratically turn them around,

Below is my contemporaneous analysis of the General Election result of 2019, written and published on 13 December 2019.

On re-reading it today, one year later, I think my conclusions were correct, but you can judge for yourself.

As a direct result of what happened in that general election of last year, today the UK is about to crash out of the EU Single Market and Customs Union with a no-deal or a skinny-deal Brexit, even though Boris Johnson promised us a ‘fantastic, oven-ready deal’.

It’s going to cause chaos for us all, on top of the devastation already being caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Would people have voted the same way a year ago, if they knew then, what we know now?

IF IT HAD BEEN A REFERENDUM, REMAIN COULD HAVE WON DATELINE 13 DECEMBER 2019: The LibDems, then the SNP, followed by Labour, made a catastrophic error of judgement in agreeing to hold yesterday’s general election.

Instead, the three parties – and others – could and should have worked together to resist Mr Johnson’s desperate plea to hold a new election.

Then, they could have bargained with the Tories to see through their Withdrawal Agreement, subject to it being put to a new referendum – a People’s Vote.

But they went ahead, almost gleefully, and acceded to Mr Johnson’s request, and in doing so (with the glittering exception of the SNP), fell on their swords and lost what was almost undoubtedly our last chance to achieve a democratic reversal of Brexit.

If only the general election yesterday had been a referendum, almost certainly Remain would have won. On the data now available, we know for sure that a majority voted for politicians calling for a new People’s Vote on Brexit.

History analyses are peppered with ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’ – and this pivotal and historical moment was a big one.

The mistake by the LibDems, SNP and Labour in agreeing to the general election, instead of pushing together for that People’s Vote, will now fundamentally change the course and destiny of our country.

A destiny that millions in our country – probably a majority – do not want.

A Brexit that will hurt Britain and Britons, and change us into a more insular and xenophobic country, cut off from the mainland of our continent, pretending that everything is fine, when it won’t be at all.

 A LYING, RACIST PRIME MINISTER In Boris Johnson we have a liar and a racist for Prime Minister. We have known that for some time, but he amplified it when he complained earlier this week that EU migrants here have been able for too long to “treat the UK as if it’s part of their own country”.

That was shocking. Citizens here from the rest of the EU should feel that this is their country. They have made our country their home. And they should be welcomed. We need them, probably much more than they need us.

But in the same speech, Mr Johnson also claimed that “there’s basically been no control at all” of EU migrants coming here.

That’s untrue. EU migration to the UK is well controlled. Nobody from the EU can just arrive in the UK and claim benefits. They mostly come for jobs, and in the main, if there are no jobs, they either don’t come or don’t stay.

Under current rules, EU migrants can only stay for a limited time if they come here and can’t find a job, and they can be ejected or deported if they pose a threat to the country.

We’ve needed larger numbers of EU citizens coming here in recent years because we have millions more jobs than Britons to do them. It’s as simple as that. As we will all discover when Brexit continues to reduce their numbers here, severely hurting our businesses, our NHS, and therefore, us.

Yet, even so, EU migrants currently represent only around 5% of our population – that’s small and hardly mass immigration.

Is Mr Johnson’s new administration really, as he claimed today, ‘the people’s government’? Hardly

Because of the archaic nature of our first-past-the-post system of voting, most people didn’t choose the Tories to be their government with Boris Johnson as our Prime Minister.

 LABOUR’S MISTAKES When the general election was announced, I predicted that Labour would suffer its worst defeat since Michael Foot led his party to disaster in 1983. I got that slightly wrong. Yesterday was a worse defeat for Labour than that.

Labour’s wishy-washy policies on Brexit in great part lost them the general election. Some of their manifesto policies were brilliant, but offering so many radical changes in one go scared the public. And, of course, the public did not warm to Jeremy Corbyn.

Many of those who voted for the Tories did so not because they want Brexit, but because they wanted a government led by Mr Corbyn even less.

That’s the tragedy. Labour, with a different Brexit policy, and with more sellable, albeit radical, plans, under a different leader, could and should have won yesterday’s landslide.

 LIBDEM’S MISTAKES The LibDems were bold – some might say cocky – in having a policy simply to ‘cancel Brexit’ if they won power. The policy might have had more traction if the party had spent serious energy on properly and lucidly explaining to the country precisely why Brexit should be cancelled. But they didn’t.

Jo Swinson, the beleaguered new LibDem leader who is now their ex-leader, thought it would be enough to say that ‘cancelling Brexit’ was what the party believed to be right. But she was wrong.

It’s not enough for the party to believe in an exit from Brexit. The party also needed to work much harder in persuading the nation that this was the right course.

Jo Swinson, in putting herself forward as the next Prime Minister, was also seen as ridiculous grandstanding by many.

Instead – using the same winning principle as the basis of the European Union – all the anti-Brexit parties should have worked united and closely together to see off both Brexit and Boris.

Together, they could have represented a magnificent and winning force against a formidable enemy. Instead, divided, they have given the Tories an easy win, and have to take some responsibility for the bleak future our country now faces.

(Yes, I know, Brexiters will say I am being too pessimistic, and that Brexit will herald a new golden dawn for Britain. Well, let’s see what they say in a couple of years time).

 SNP’S VICTORY The SNP have done well, but their win won’t see off Brexit for Britain – and they could have resisted Johnson’s call for a snap general election. Instead, the new, stronger position of the SNP could see a successful attempt for Scotland to separate from the UK.

With Brexit, we now risk the break away of our country from two unions – the European one, and ours of the United Kingdom.

Some Brexiters respond that they don’t care. We don’t need Scotland, or Northern Ireland, or even Wales, they say.

We might end up as Little England, surrounded by EU countries. Is that really a prospect we can relish?

 REMAIN’S MISTAKES From the start, the Remain movement has been on the back foot, with inept, inefficient and unfocused campaigning.

We wasted the thirty years before the referendum in not seeing off the lies of the tabloids, that led a vicious, daily deluge of hate against the EU and migrants.

And we squandered the three years since the referendum, in not tackling the grotesque and continuing lies of Brexit politicians, and not properly explaining and promoting the positive benefits of EU membership.

The mainstream parties – Conservatives and Labour – should also be blamed for failing to take on Nigel Farage and his nasty, racist, dog whistle populism in the years before the referendum.

Instead, some leading Tory and Labour politicians pandered to his racism and anti-EU rhetoric, when they should have defused and defeated it from the outset.

That lost opportunity, however, directly led to us having a referendum, and to Remain losing it.

Remain should have won the referendum, but after losing, we should have won the chance to have a new referendum on the details of Brexit.

We failed, and many future books and essays will explore why that was the case.

 LACK OF AN EFFECTIVE PRO-REMAIN CAMPAIGN There has never been in the UK (and I really mean never) a proper, effective national campaign of awareness to promote and explain to the nation the positive benefits of EU membership. Many millions across the country are still completely unaware.

Many have no idea that the EU is a democracy, democratically run by its members for the benefit of members. Worse, they believe the exact opposite. That’s our fault.

If we didn’t tell them the facts, who would? Our enemies? Of course not.

I have been campaigning against Brexit since the word was invented (by a Remainer) back in 2012. It’s been a lonely and unrewarding journey.

Despite reaching out to all the main anti-Brexit groups (the ones with money, offices and salaried staff) none of them have wanted to embrace my work or to make use of it, even though it was all freely offered. Subsequently, my reach has been limited, my voice a small one.

Maybe they didn’t think my work – my 2,000+ articles and posters, and 200+ videos, aimed at providing the facts, evidence and arguments for EU membership – was any good. Fair enough.

But why didn’t they themselves launch an awareness campaign to explain about the positive benefits of EU membership? After all, they had the funds (and People’s Vote had 60 members of staff).

During the referendum campaign, the pro-Remain focus was on project fear. That strategy horrendously backfired.

Then, after the referendum, the main pro-Remain campaigning was about getting another vote, but hardly any resources or energy put into winning another vote.

We now won’t get another vote, but if the resources instead had been spent on winning the arguments to remain in the EU, the ensuing mass call for another referendum on Brexit might have been unassailable.

Other anti-Brexit groups, such as Infacts, have done sterling work, but they also had limited reach, and for unknown reasons, they never wanted to use my work (even though I first offered my help to them several months before the referendum).

So many lost opportunities; so many unanswered questions.

 THE END OF REMAIN. THE START OF REJOIN? As I wrote on the eve of yesterday’s general election, if the Tories win power with a working majority, it’s over for Remain.

Well, the Tories have won a landslide majority. We can no longer be Remainers, but we could be Rejoiners – although that is likely to be a long and difficult journey ahead.

Thank you to all our supporters. It’s the end of the road now for the Reasons2Remain campaign. We tried our best, with just a small team of volunteers (to whom I am hugely grateful) and with no funding or resources, or interest from the main players.

Maybe there will be new groupings and opportunities ahead for a resurgence of a pro-EU campaign. I won’t close doors, but it seems now I need to find new pastures, after 7-years of campaigning for the cause.

Despite our huge setback, we should all hope for the best, and if new and credible opportunities arise to undo the terrible mistake that Brexit represents, we need to embrace them firmly, but at the same time, to learn from our previous mistakes.

Best wishes and (hopefully despite everything) a Merry Christmas to you all.

________________________________________________

That was my analysis written one year ago, on 13 December 2019. Since then I have re-launched Reasons2Remain as Reasons2Rejoin.
  • Video: Why the EU was started and why Britain joined:

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Categories: European Union

25 years later, the multifaceted legacy of the Bosman ruling

Fri, 11/12/2020 - 10:04

Not many decisions taken by the European Court of Justice make it beyond the nerdish    case law debates relished by our law colleagues at the UACES conference. True, a few directives make the mainstream news headlines, going as far as to impact major votes, just ask Frits Bolkestein. But, certainly, a simple ruling that triggers heated discussions among ordinary people across the entire continent is more the exception than the rule.

One such exception, perhaps the most striking one, is the judgement of case C-415/93, dated 15 December 1995, known as ‘the Bosman ruling’, in recognition of the second-class Belgian footballer who turned European football upside down with the help of very able Liège-based lawyers and the support of the footballers trade union, FIFPro.

For those who care little about football or have lived on another planet for the last quarter century, here’s the story in a nutshell: by taking the Belgian football federation and European football’s governing body (UEFA) to court, Jean-Marc Bosman imposed the application of the free movement of workers within the European Union to professional football players. As a result, a player whose contract had expired could no longer be held hostage by his club under the pretext of transfer fees, a traditional practice in football that the Dutch MEP Van Raay said amounted to ‘slavery’. The court also ruled that quotas limiting the number of foreign players were, when applied to EU citizens, a discrimination against nationals from other member states and therefore to be abolished.

Cartoon by Chenez for L’Equipe, December 1995.

The football governing bodies – UEFA, national federations, leagues, and clubs – immediately adopted a self-victimising discourse, heralding that this would be the end of football as we knew it. UEFA President Johanssen even went so far as to claim, ‘the EU is trying to destroy football’. They shed crocodile tears over the sacred independence of the sport movement and publicly decried the reign of the market in an activity that was not to be considered an economic one.

This was all the more intriguing as all of them had been extremely busy, over the entire first half of the 1990s, turning football into a full-fledged economic activity, increasingly disconnected from its grassroots. It was not Bosman or the EU who initiated the path-breaking Premier League spin-off (1991) and sold its TV rights to BskyB (1992) under dubious circumstances. It was not Bosman and the EU either who launched the UEFA Champions League (does anyone see the irony here?) as a cash machine to maximise revenues for what became a small elite of super-rich clubs (1992). The massive liberalisation process that shook the European football market in the early nineties was already under way when Bosman simply asked to have his rights respected.

What the Bosman ruling did inaugurate was, of course, a new era of player mobility. The end of the quotas for EU nationals led to a quick and massive change in the composition of top-tier teams, especially as virtually all major leagues, while publicly deploring this disconnection from local and regional roots, were remarkably quick to extend – without being forced to do so – the abolition of quotas to players from beyond the borders of EU-15. (Take note, UACES Graduate Forum, there’s a real knowledge gap to fill by qualitative doctoral research on the opaque decision-making in European football bodies of the 1990s!)

The ruling also had a strong impact on the transfer market, both with regard to (skyrocketing) transfer fees for top players still under contract and, inevitably, an extreme concentration of talent in a small handful of top leagues financially privileged by a large television market. The latter effect was particularly felt in France, which found itself the number one purveyor of talent for top clubs in England, Italy, Germany and Spain: while the French squad for Euro1996 counted 18 players playing in their domestic championship, two years later only 9 of 22 World Cup winners were under contract with a French club.

What it did not change was, surprisingly, the intensity of feelings of belonging invested by supporters in their club. As David Ranc has pointed out in his monograph, supporters identify in manifold ways with their club, and contrary to a widespread assumption, the origin of the players who wear the sacred jersey plays a very negligible role. (Yes, we supporters want our team to win, not necessarily sport a line-up of eleven local footballers).

In retrospective, while the Bosman ruling certainly is a ‘landmark’ in the history of European sports, it is exaggerated to call it a ‘revolution’, as mainstream media like to do. In their longitudinal study of football’s migration patterns, Pierre Lanfranchi and Matthew Taylor referred to is as a mere ‘excuse for deregulation’, which ‘added impetus to a trend already in motion’ (Moving with the Ball, Berg, 2001, p. 222).

Cartoon by Plantu, for Le Monde, Dec. 1995.

In political terms, however, it may even be said the Bosman case and the massive debate it provoked among football lovers across the continent (a non-negligible community) had a lasting impact on the perception of sport by European institutions. It raised awareness among policy-makers that sport was “too serious a business to be left to the sportspeople”, to paraphrase Georges Clémenceau’s famous quote about the military. Very quickly, institutions and sport bodies moved ‘from confrontation to cooperation’, and as early as in a “Declaration on Sport” annexed to the Amsterdam Treaty, it was highlighted that European institutions were to ‘to listen to sports associations’. Another sport-related political declaration was annexed to the Nice Treaty.

Later on, sport found its way into the Lisbon Treaty (the famous article 165), and judging by the remarkable selection of sport-related projects now funded by the ERASMUS+ programme year after year, the awareness-raising process in which the Bosman ruling played a major role, is well under way.

Finally, on a more self-interested note, we owe the Bosman ruling that football all of a sudden became a study of the ‘Europeanisation’ strand of academic research, highlighting the relevance of this fascinating multi-dimensional phenomenon of everyday European integration and providing it with a whole new respectability (for which the development of the Sport&EU association provides convincing evidence).

Merci beaucoup, Monsieur Bosman, and happy 25th birthday to the ruling that bears your name! Your action will be gratefully remembered.

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Categories: European Union

The gap

Thu, 10/12/2020 - 15:19

Is there really something so exceptional and special about Britain that makes the requirements of our country so different to all the other countries of Europe?

British newspapers have today referred to the gap between the UK and the EU, mostly relating to the issue of sovereignty.

But really, this is not about a gap between us and them. That’s an illusion.

If sovereignty is the real issue, why doesn’t Germany, France or Belgium bellyache about their sovereignty?

Are those countries so different to ours that something that seems so important to us is not important to them?

No. The issue isn’t really about our sovereignty. It’s about the power of the people who now govern the United Kingdom.

Remember the mantra – the slogan – of the Brexit campaign? It was:

‘Take back control’

But do you really think that was about the likes of you or me taking any control? Will Brexit give you or me control over our country’s borders, laws or money?

Of course not.

This is not about US but about THEM having control; those people who are now our political masters.

  • If Boris Johnson et al had real respect for the notion of sovereignty, don’t you think they’d behave differently towards sovereignty of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
  • If sovereignty meant something to the hard-line Brexiters now in charge, don’t you think they’d recognise and acknowledge the sovereignty of the European Union?
  • If they really wanted to give us, ‘the people’, more control, don’t you think they would have allowed Parliament a proper say from the start?

Since the referendum result, the Tories in charge have played every trick they can muster to bypass Parliament, whether through Royal Prerogatives, Henry VIII clauses, denial of debates or even to close Parliament itself.

This is not about our sovereignty. This is not about our control. This is about their sovereignty and their control.

For us mere citizens, Brexit means we have lost control.

Of course, if Britain wants to trade freely and fairly with our European neighbours, we have to abide by the rules of trade for our continent – as democratically decided by the remaining member countries of the EU (all of them, that is, except us).

Brexit means we’ve lost all control of those laws. We used to have a say in them. But now, we’ve been stripped of our sovereignty over our continent.

Brexiters in government don’t want to obey the rules of Europe that, through their doing, we no longer help to decide. Of course not.

Instead, they want to control our country’s laws, borders and money.

Not you. Not me. Them.

Don’t believe me? Just look at how the government is handing out multi-million-pound contracts to their mates, without the usual public scrutiny and accountability.

Our money, under their control. Our country, under their control.

Yes, there is a gap. A huge gap in understanding of what is really going on here.

Brexit means we – the people – have lost control. It means we have lost sovereignty. It means we have lost our continent.

We didn’t get our country back. We gave it away to the most right-wing reactionary government in recent history.

Only when we truly ‘take back control’ might we get our country back, and our rightful place as a full and engaging member of our continent.

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Categories: European Union

József Szájer’s conundrum

Wed, 02/12/2020 - 00:21

Just a quick note about József Szájer, the Hungarian MEP, who resigned over attending a party despite the strict lockdown rules in Belgium.

Breaking the lockdown rules is unacceptable, but attending an orgy party is a personal choice, and one should not be bashed for it.

There is one thing that has deeply touched me about Juózsef Szájer’s situation is that how much dishonest he has been to himself about his sexual orientation.

I cannot say for sure, but Szájer’s upbringing or the Hungarian Conservative social structures might have coerced him to disguise and disregard his true identity over the years.

Plus, the fact that Viktor Orban’s, the Hungarian Prime Minister, anti-LGBTQ policy choices and constitutional changes have also come from Szájer, it makes his state of being a bit more complicated and problematic.

I am curious to know if he came up with anti-LGBTQ policies to stay close to power and therefore, to Orban; while doing that he hated himself every day for what Fidesz was doing to the LGBTQ communities in Hungary.  Alternatively, was he okay with it because this is the socially given norm, which he had accepted all throughout life. Perhaps we should all take responsibility for such conundrum.

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Categories: European Union

Strangers at the gates: denying residence rights in Europe in the 21st century

Mon, 30/11/2020 - 19:47

Seeking work and shelter in another EU country proves more difficult today than at the end of the last century. Despite existing EU legislation, national administrations seem reluctant to facilitate the residence of certain European citizens. Julien Bois calls for the European Commission to again clarify citizens’ free-movement rights, taking into account societal and judicial developments and administrative practices that have developed in the last 15 years.

The European Commission should take into account legal developments in the field of free-movement rights and issue a clarification. Photo from Edinburgh by Lāsma Artmane on Unsplash

Seeking work and shelter in another European Union (EU) country proves more difficult today than at the end of the 20th century. National administrations seem reluctant to facilitate the residence of certain European citizens. Despite existing legislation (Directive 2004/38/EC on the right of citizens of the Union and their family members to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States), citizens have difficulties overcoming administrative hurdles when trying to obtain residence documents, have their third-country national family members joining them abroad, or simply obtaining social benefits in their new country of residence.

A genuine political union?

The adoption of the Maastricht Treaty created European citizenship. It meant that every citizen could move and reside freely in another EU country, even if they were not economically active. Discrimination on the grounds of nationality thus proved illegal under EU law, and foreign citizens were given the same social rights as nationals.

The Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) played a key role in favoring cross-border mobility and residence. It granted economically inactive parents and students the possibility to receive support from their new state of residence. The legislator outlined the scope of residence rights with a text that clearly defined the rights and obligations attached to EU citizenship. By tying citizenship less to common market considerations and more to fundamental rights, as Adrienne Yong points to in her recent book, EU institutions took a major step towards a genuine political union.

Restrictions on free movement rights

Yet the mood has clearly changed in the last 10 years. The economic and financial crisis led European countries to tighten public spending. Mobile citizens also became victims of public spending cuts. EU countries restricted access to welfare by denying previously accepted requests or withholding access to needed documents like residence permits.

The CJEU departed from its earlier expansive reach of EU citizenship to a narrow interpretation of the rules regulating free movement. It famously put an end to social tourism in the Union and has not helped former workers to stay beyond six months even if its earlier case law hinted towards this possibility.

The Commission issued further guidance on the application of the free-movement directive in 2009, but has not followed up despite dramatic changes in the socio-economic environment in European countries. As a result, some parts of the directive are not applied. Family members of EU citizens who are third-country nationals (TNC) are often required to provide visas, despite their right to move visa-free in the Schengen area. Some groups remain particularly prone to frequent residence documents checks although this is clearly prohibited.

There is no consensual definition of “public policy grounds” which allow member states to deport or refuse entry of EU citizens into their territory in order to prevent disturbance of social order. The European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless (FEANTSA) reports that member states have adopted different approaches as a result. National authorities in Spain, France, Italy and Portugal keep refusing marriage and birth certificates issued in a non-EU country even for EU citizens or for their TCN family members.

As Martin Risak and Thomas Dullinger have shown, member states also adopt generalized thresholds when assessing the working situation of mobile EU citizens, despite the provision in Directive 2004/38/EC to assess situations on a case-by-case basis. National administrations have adopted either a minimum income threshold and/or a minimum number of hours worked per week for the activity to be considered work, and these thresholds are much higher than those retained by the CJEU’s case law. These are a few examples of the many uncertainties that Sandra Mantu and Paul Minderhoud have identified in EU law regulating cross-border mobility. Others relate to ‘comprehensive medical insurance’, or ‘sufficient resources’.

Same-sex marriage and other societal developments

The adoption in 2004 of a directive regulating the exercise of free movement and residence was a welcome move for EU institutions and national administrations in their task of facilitating the exercise of one of the core freedoms enshrined in the EU treaties. But no such text can foresee the developments in society. Free movement in the EU in 2020 does not hold the same meaning as it did in 2004. Since then, the definition of labor has changed, same-sex marriage lawfully contracted in a member state shall be recognized as such across the EU’s territory (Coman case), the length of residence shall be taken into account when considering deportation on grounds of public policy.

Some of these uncertainties displayed effects early on, which led the Commission in 2009 to issue the above-mentioned clarification of the directive on free movement and residence. It answered some questions raised by citizens, national administrations and judiciaries at the time, which had implications for the situation of thousands of mobile citizens and their family members.

Putting an end to uncertainty

The increasing flow of mobile citizens, the unequal application of free movement and residence rights and the ambiguities displayed by the case-law of the Court of Justice all point to the need for further clarification of the free movement regime, according to the European Citizen Action Service (ECAS).

While a full overhaul of the directive 2004/38 EC does not seem necessary as it provides the grounding rules that still fit the societal situation in 2020, a new communication would be a welcome move to help clarifying certain aspects of a necessary vague text. While the current situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic demands a halt to non-essential travels, the demand for further clarification remains greater than ever for EU citizens who seek to establish themselves in their new member states in these troubled times.

A clarification from the European Commission would hardly be demanding, as it would only have to consider judiciary developments and administrative practices regarding situations not foreseen by the legislator 15 years ago. It would simply be to ask what is required of any political system based on the rule of law: the end of uncertainty. Today, many do not know what may happen when residing in another member state. All it takes is a few words to put an end to uncertainty.

This post was developed during the author’s stay at the European Citizen Action Service (ECAS) as Marie-Sklodowska Curie visiting fellow in March 2020.

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Categories: European Union

Das Bundesamt für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten (BfAA): Ein Update

Tue, 24/11/2020 - 21:49

Anfang September habe ich hier einmal zusammengetragen, was man zu dem Zeitpunkt über das neue Bundesamt für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten (BfAA) wissen konnte. Seitdem sind noch mehr Informationen veröffentlicht worden. Daher gibt’s hier ein Update.

Was wir im September bereits wussten oder was sich aus Quellen andeutet:

  • Das BfAA wird für das Auswärtige Amt (und vielleicht auch für andere Ministerien) Fördermitteln und Zuwendungen, zum Beispiel im Bereich humanitärer Hilfsprojekte, verwalten.
  • Es soll die Visavergabe z.T. managen.
  • Es wird das Auslandsschulwesen betreuen.
  • Die Rechnungslegung des Auswärtigen Amts wird an das BfAA übertragen.

Seitdem sind neue Details bekannt geworden:

  • Die Personalausgaben im Haushalt des AAs werden von 2020 auf 2021 um 96 Millionen Euro reduziert. Laut eines Presseberichts (Business Insider) sei ein Großteil der Einspaarung auf Verlagerungen in das BfAA zurückzuführen. Allerdings spricht eine Pressemitteilung des AAs von einem geplanten Budget von 15,25 Millionen Euro für 2021 für das BfAA.
  • Das BfAA wird für das “Immobilienmanagement Ausland” zuständig sein. Dafür wird es eine ganze Abteilung geben, die sich unter anderem um Baumaßnahmen rund um die Auslandsvertretungen kümmern soll. (Quelle: Stellenausschreibung Abteilungsleiter A16)
  • Das BfAA soll vor allem für die Visavergabe im Inland zur Umsetzung des neuen Fachkräfteeinwanderungsgesetzes zuständig sein. (Quelle: Kleine Anfrage)
  • Stellenausschreibungen im Bereich des Auslandsschulwesens enthalten bereits den Hinweis, dass ab Übertragung der Stelle in das BfAA eine Zulage von bis zu 330€ gezahlt wird. (Quelle: Bundesverwaltungsamt)
  • Das BfAA sucht insbesondere Sachbearbeiter*innen und arbeitet für die Gewinnung von Mitarbeiter*innen mit der Arbeitsagentur in Brandenburg(Havel) zusammen. (Quelle: MOZ; Stellenausschreibungen siehe letzter Blogpost)

Ansonsten gibt es auch eine Reihe von Vorschusslorbeeren: Bundesinnenminister Seehofer sieht das BfAA schon vorab als gelungenes Beispiel für die Verlagerung von (Bundes)Verwaltungen in “strukturschwache ländliche Räume” (Quelle: BR). Der Bürgermeister von Brandenburg(Havel) hob bei seiner Rede zum 30. Jahrestag der Deutschen Einheit die Ansiedlung des Amts als eine der Erfolgsgeschichten der Nachwendezeit hervor. Und der neue Leiter des Bundesamts, der aus Nordrhein-Westfalen stammende Georg Birgelen, freut sich “fast im Rentenalter” nicht nur auf die neue Aufgabe sondern auch auf das Fahrradfahren um die Brandenburger Seen.

In weniger als sechs Wochen soll es losgehen, wobei einiges darauf hinweist, dass ein Großteil der Amtsgeschäfte erstmal noch aus Berlin geleitet wird. Mal schauen, wie schnell das Amt hier in Brandenburg an der Havel Fuß fasst.

 

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Categories: European Union

Another day, another deadline

Thu, 19/11/2020 - 10:05

Today’s a special day, for several reasons.

Most importantly, it’s the launch of our new Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence in the Centre for Britain and Europe, with many excellent speakers (and me). You can follow the discussion on Twitter on #SurreyBritainEurope and by following our account.

But it’s also important as the deadline for talks on the Future Relationship.

Except it’s not.

The continued non-progress in negotiations has meant that today’s informal European Council, slated for several weeks as the decision point, will not now do anything more than receive a status report.

While this might be seen to be a positive, in that talks haven’t collapsed, it’s also clear that any possibility of concluding even a partial ratification on both sides before 31 December is looking vanishingly small. My two regular trackers below highlight the lack of time and the scale of the task.

One silver-lining: it means our keynote speaker, Katya Adler, is unlikely to get called away by breaking news.

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Categories: European Union

Britain’s Brexit negotiator warned against Brexit

Wed, 18/11/2020 - 11:07

Before the referendum, David Frost, Britain’s Brexit negotiator, advised that remaining in the EU would be better than leaving. 

In June 2016, just before the big vote, Mr Frost (as he was then – he’s now Lord) wrote an article for a pamphlet published by Portland Communications on what would happen in the event of Brexit.

Lord Frost’s piece was called, ‘Can the UK secure free trade outside the EU?’

Back then, his answer was not hopeful.

He was the CEO of the Scotch Whisky Association but wrote his article in a personal capacity.

There were two key questions, he asserted.

  • Can any future trading arrangements, as a matter of theory, be as good as the current ones provided by membership?
  • Is it possible to negotiate such arrangements, as a matter of practical politics?

Concluded Lord Frost:

“I have doubts on both points.”

He explained, “There’s a very simple trade-off in this area.

“It is that the more independent your national trade policy is, the more difficult it is to negotiate completely barrier-free access to any other country.”

 A MAMMOTH UNDERTAKING Negotiating new free trade agreements in the event of Brexit is “a mammoth undertaking”.

“Simply setting out the task underlines how risky a decision to Vote Leave will be” he wrote.

If, as is the case with the UK, pointed out Lord Frost, “a country is already part of a customs union and has already adapted its trading arrangements to it, the case for change has to be overwhelming.”

He asserted then, “It isn’t.”

Lord Frost clearly understood the problems in great detail. He wrote that it’s “important to remember that trade is no longer about making one product and sending it across one border.”

The situation in the modern world is much more complicated.

“Most modern products are made up of components from many other countries.

“A car finished in Germany might have components made in Italy, incorporated into a larger component in the UK, be re-exported to France and incorporated again, be sent back to the UK and incorporated in (say) the final car engine, before going back to Germany for final assembly.

“The result is that it would cross the UK border more than once and the administrative costs of doing so would keep mounting up.

“That would be a barrier, over time, to making the components in the UK in the first place.

“So all these arrangements would leave the UK with less access to the single market than before.”

Lord Frost asked a pertinent question.

“Would this be outweighed by freedom to negotiate our own trading arrangements with other countries?

“A simple bit of maths shows the answer is no.”

He went on to explain that the EU already has free trade agreements covering nearly 60% of the UK’s trade, including the EU itself.

“If TTIP and the EU/Japan FTA can be negotiated soon, that figure goes up to 80%.

“It can’t possibly make sense to have less good arrangements with the 60% or 80% in return for slightly better arrangement with the 20%”

In another argument against Brexit, Lord Frost went on to explain that the single market is plausibly worth 5% of GDP, which would be boosted by the EU’s future new trade agreements with other countries, such as Japan and India.

He concluded that:

“It simply isn’t worth jeopardising access to the single market for the sake of global trade.”

 NEGOTIATING REALITIES Negotiating “realities” were another barrier to Brexit.

“After leaving, the UK will have to renegotiate trading arrangements simultaneously with many major countries, including the EU,” wrote Lord Frost.

“Britain will be demandeur* and so it will be Britain that has to make the concessions to get the deal. True, other countries will want deals too, but they won’t be under anything like the same time pressure and can afford to make us sweat.”

[* i.e. the country applying for the trade agreement]

Another barrier to Brexit would be the “formidable administrative task” involved.

“Trade negotiations are complex and a good modern trade agreement requires many stakeholders within a country to be involved in the negotiations and be ready to implement the result.”

Explained Lord Frost:

“That is why negotiations take years not months.”

He added, “The EU is involved in perhaps a dozen live FTA negotiations at any one time and even that puts strain on the system.

“The UK would have to do many more, with few experienced trade negotiators at our disposal.”

 THE BOTTOM LINE The bottom line?

“In reality therefore what we can negotiate will fall short of the theoretical ideal..

“In short, even the best-case outcome can’t be as good as what we have now; and we won’t be able to negotiate the best-case outcome anyway, because in real life you never can.”

That’s not all, because “these negotiations would not be happening in a vacuum.”

Lord Frost pointed out:

“There would be political turbulence in Britain and, no doubt, the EU.”

He continued: “Firms and other countries would see that the future arrangements for British trade were up in the air and that existing tariff-free access could not be ensured.

“So it could be a traumatic and difficult period, with no guarantee of a good outcome.”

 LORD FROST’S RECOMMENDATION (THEN) What would Lord Frost recommend if he was Britain’s negotiator in the event of Leave winning the referendum?

Believe it or not, Lord Frost recommended a Norway Brexit – even though that would mean retaining Free Movement of People.

He explained:

“Exit from the EU to a Norway model is probably the easiest thing to negotiate, because the model already exists, it would be hard to refuse us, and Britain would keep access to the single market and apply single market legislation.”

Over time, he wrote then, the UK could move towards a Swiss style Brexit.

But, he added:

“All this said, there is no doubt that leaving would be fraught with economic risk.

“It would be a step into uncertainty and, in many key respects, into the unknown.

“If this is the situation on 24th June, we will face an anxious and potentially turbulent time.”

Today, Lord Frost seems to be a different man with an entirely different agenda.

He is attempting to negotiate a deal with the EU that he not only wrote before the referendum wouldn’t be possible, but also, wouldn’t be desirable.

In reality, doesn’t this show what a two-faced sham Brexit represents?

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Categories: European Union

Stigma: Perspectives of Nigerian women trafficked into Europe

Tue, 10/11/2020 - 15:46
By Sarah Adeyinka, PhD Candidate at Ghent University

The fields of migration studies and human trafficking research (especially in Europe) are diverse and well-researched. Much work has been done among vulnerable populations such as refugees, unaccompanied minors, and victims of trafficking, including their experiences, push and pull factors, integration, etc. However, more work is needed to understand their experiences beyond the legal and policy aspects to consider their mental health and psychosocial wellbeing in the countries of settlement.

The term stigma dates back to the Greeks, who cut or burned marks into the skin of criminals, slaves, and traitors to identify them as tainted or immoral people who should be avoided. Stigma, however, is more than a physical mark and comprises two fundamental components- the recognition of difference and devaluation. Simply put, recognising differences (which may differ from the norm) in a person and attributing less value to them because of those differences. Stigma, therefore, comprises of intolerance and discrimination. Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become”.

My research, a longitudinal study, adopts a mixed-methods approach and addresses the psychosocial impact of human trafficking on young, Nigerian women in Italy. One of the main findings from 31 interviews was the prevalence of stigma. The majority of the young women expressed how they felt stigmatized during various aspects of the journey, including while transiting in Libya and after arrival in Italy.

Working with or carrying out research among victims of trafficking comes with unique challenges and ethical dilemmas and I discovered that stigma is one of them. The instances of (perceived) stigma experienced by this group and their interpretation of it determine how they relate with others – including researchers.

The interviewees were by virtue of being Black, irregular migrants automatically assumed to be working in prostitution. They described being treated unfairly and pestered by men who said that prostitution was the only job available to ‘people like them’. I gained a bit of personal insight into this reality when in different Italian cities, cars pulled up on the curb next to me and the male drivers asked me how much I charge. Since I was dressed semi-formally and carrying my laptop backpack, I can only deduce that they assumed I worked in prostitution based mainly because I am a Black woman.

Stigma was also experienced at the hands of caregivers as some of the staff assumed that Nigerians are always at fault. A participant shared information with an NGO staff who discussed informed consent with her and promised that the conversation would be treated as highly confidential. Yet, she found her full story, including intimate details, posted on the NGO website as the story of one of their ‘helpees’. This led to others including the shelter manager reading it and confronting her about parts of her story that she had hidden from them, including past experiences of violence and sexual assault. She was distraught and has since refused to trust any NGO staff.

Several participants had similar experience of distrusting people who wanted to ‘help’ them for fear confidentiality would be breached. Indicating that while many actors may have the interests of migrants at heart, some do not effectively take into account or respect the rights of the very people they claim to help.

There were also instances where the participants upon boarding a bus, noticed people covering their noses, making them feel out of place and unwelcome. Thereby, treating migrant bodies (or colour of their skin) as problematic, and devaluing it. These non-verbal indications of discomfort, or even displeasure, communicate a message of difference and that being different is bad.

These experiences of stigma, however, were not only external, they were also internal. Some of the women experienced stigma within the group; e.g. those who had children as a result of rape or who were unsure of the paternity of their children. Leading several of them to make up stories about who and where the father of the child was. It is very important therefore, that confidentiality is highly respected and honoured, and no information is taken for granted or discussed under the assumption that it is common knowledge.

Stigma among victims of trafficking is multi-layered and multifaceted and a topic that requires more research and attention. Since stigma exists in social interactions and not in isolation or solitude, it is imperative that the social contexts are taken into consideration as well.

In conclusion, I want to stress the importance of remembering that the rights of people in vulnerable groups must be respected. These include, but are not limited to, teenage victims of loverboys, victims of trafficking, undocumented migrants etc. Their rights to privacy and confidentiality should be respected like we would respect that of the citizen of an EU country. The recently released EU Pact on Migration and Asylum touches on several important aspects- one of which is ‘supporting legal integration into local communities’. This would be beneficial for my group of participants because it would help them be seen as humans who also desire to add value to society. It would begin the process of changing the narrative that portrays them as less than, and in some cases, a derogatory other.

It is important that actors like NGOs while trying to assist these people and raise the required funds for their organisations take extra precaution in telling the stories of migrants- their express consent without inhibition should be sought. As researchers, we must hold ourselves accountable for how we frame our work and communicate about our respondents because while absolute neutrality is impossible, having a nuanced perspective and an open mind is key. Stigma occurs in social interaction as mentioned earlier therefore, a regular evaluation of policies and programs is important to see what is being done well and what could be improved upon, what could in fact be stigmatising and what could be beneficial.

 

 

Sarah is currently a PhD candidate at Ghent University where she is part of the ERC funded ChildMove project and is conducting research on the impact of transit experiences on the wellbeing of unaccompanied minors. Her part of the project focuses on young Nigerian women that were trafficked into Italy for sexual exploitation. She is also the founder of CoCreate NGO.

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Categories: European Union

Between the European Union and Russia: A Decade in the Contested Neighbourhood

Mon, 09/11/2020 - 16:22

European Union’s (EU) capacity of influencing (and even changing) other actors without recurring to coercion is one of its defining features as an international player. Although it has been seriously challenged by the economic and financial crisis, migration crisis, terrorists’ attacks and the Brexit, the countries to EU’s East continue to look for strengthening of their existing ties with the EU. This makes it important to analyse the Eastern Partnership (EaP), an initiative which celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2019, targeting a group of six countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. The EU made an unprecedented offer to these states: a perspective of Association Agreements and the associated Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas. While this offer could be expected to reinforce the EU’s standing in the region, one cannot forget that the relations between the EU and the EaP states do not evolve in a vacuum, and in this particular region, this means paying attention to an important regional actor, namely, Russia. So how far can the EU project its influence towards the EaP countries?

Georgia and Ukraine are two EaP states that have accepted the Association Agreements as their ‘civilizational choice’, resulting in a course on comprehensive adoption of EU’s norms, values, and regulations, while simultaneously rejecting participation in any Russia-led integration initiatives. Moreover, both have been constantly putting forward initiatives that go beyond their existing advanced relationship with the EU. In addition to Ukraine and Georgia, Moldova has also embraced the EU’s offer of the Association Agreement and all three states have been keen to emphasise the ‘irreversibility’ of their political course. Armenia in its turn has adopted the position of ‘complementarity’ between its advanced cooperation with the EU’s and its adherence to the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union. While explicitly abstaining from references to the EU as a ‘civilizational choice’, Armenia has nevertheless concluded its own Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement with the EU, and has continuously emphasized the importance of reform process. As for Belarus and Azerbaijan, they demonstrated no interest in signing an Association Agreement. While Azerbaijan’s has abstained not only from the EU’s but also Russia-led integration initiatives, Belarus embraced the latter (a position that may be changing in the course of 2020 post-election protests).

There are further important differences among individual countries. For instance, while both in Georgia and Ukraine as well as Moldova, the increasing rapprochement with the EU has been evolving along with detachment from Russia, such detachment has been more moderate in Moldova than in the two other states. At the same time, within the group of ‘contesters’, Belarus and Azerbaijan have been acting upon different premises, and contrary to Azerbaijan, Belarus has never insisted on a special type of (Strategic Partnership) agreement with the EU.

This is not to say that there are no ideas shared by the majority EaP states: the idea of a EU-supported reform process has been central to the leaderships in Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Moldova (and until 2013, also to Azerbaijan). However, even when certain ideas are shared by EaP countries, they need to be approached carefully, since they may reflect radically different positions. For instance, the idea of ‘complementarity’ related to the Association Agreements in Moldova, Armenia as well as Belarus, corresponds to fundamentally different visions of cooperation with the EU. In Belarus, ‘complementarity’ supports the idea of ‘pragmatism’ and the notion of Belarus as a ‘cooperation platform’ between the East and the West. This is contrary to Moldova, where ‘complementarity’ reveals a potentially problematic relationship with the idea of ‘(ir)reversibility’ of Moldova’s integration with the EU. This means that any possible institutional compromises (such as Armenia’s aforementioned advanced cooperation agreement) are not viewed as a unequivocally positive precedent guiding and supporting reform process, but rather associated with a danger of abandoning of the existing Association Agreement with the EU and the ensuing course on reforms.  This explains why the idea to connect, institutionally, the Eurasian Economic Union and EaP has been raising concern in Moldova while welcomed in Belarus.

The systematic analysis of all the EaP states positions between 2009 and 2019 allows for the conclusion that the EU maintains its capacity of influencing and changing the EaP states, even though there are significant variations. The same cannot be said about Russia: its power of attraction is uncertain even in such closely aligned countries as Armenia and Belarus.

This blog post draws on the JCMS article, ‘The European Union’s ‘Potential We’ between Acceptance and Contestation: Assessing the Positioning of Six Eastern Partnership Countries’.

 

 

Alena Vysotskaya Guedes Vieira is Professor at the University of Minho, Portugal, and the Integrated Member of the Research Centre in Political Science (CICP). She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Erlangen-Nuernberg, and was Visiting Research at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, at the Institute for Strategic and International Studies (Lisbon), and at the University of Leuven. She also published several briefing papers and reports for EU institutions and other think-tanks (orcid 000-0002-5643-0398).

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Categories: European Union

Assessing the impact of Covid-19 on the EU’s response to irregular migration

Thu, 05/11/2020 - 12:14

Covid-19 has once again put EU solidarity to the test. While much of the focus has been on the pandemic’s impact on healthcare and the European economy, it has also pushed states further apart on the issue of irregular migration.

Prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, the issue of irregular migration had been at the top of the EU’s political agenda for over a decade. At the same time, the governance of migration proved to be the most complex and problematic area of governance in the EU due to the multiplicity of interests within the Union which are in constant flux.

Disagreement between EU leaders was brought to the fore during the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015-17 when the EU received the largest influx of irregular migrants since the end of the Second World War. Consequently, EU institutions and member states were unable to forge a common approach to deal with the crisis. Indeed, rather than developing a long-term strategy, a series of short-term ad hoc measures were implemented, which ultimately failed to alleviate pressure on those member states facing high migration pressures.

The EU’s inability to develop a coherent response to the crisis resulted in political cleavages both between and within the national and supranational levels. This was primarily reflected in the deadlocked inter-institutional negotiations on the reform of the Dublin Regulation revolving around the question of whether to replace the ‘state of first entry’ rule with a mandatory relocation mechanism to distribute asylum seekers across EU member states. These cleavages were exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic which further exposed serious flaws in EU migration governance as well as the EU’s limitations in the face of crisis.

EU institutions and member states have similarly failed to overcome their differences and pull together in the spirit of solidarity during the pandemic. Even though, unlike the asymmetrical impact of the ‘refugee crisis’, the pandemic has affected all states bar none. Still, following the outbreak of Covid-19, divisions have grown deeper within the EU in terms of its approach to irregular migration, stemming from the fact that policymaking in this field continues to be dominated by national concerns. Accordingly, the pandemic has further strained intergovernmental relations in the EU. Against this backdrop, the EU remains as divided as ever in terms of its response to irregular migration, despite irregular arrivals to Europe decreasing in the aftermath of the 2015-17 crisis.

While the governance of migration in the EU is becoming increasingly fragmented, it is also becoming increasingly restrictive towards irregular migrants. In this regard, the pandemic has augmented the perceived threat of irregular migrants as they are being increasingly viewed as spreaders, resulting in the implementation of more restrictive migration measures in most EU member states. For instance, Italy and Malta have closed their ports to persons rescued at sea for the duration of the health emergency. Both governments later stated that migrants rescued in the Mediterranean would be quarantined at sea in order to prevent the spread of the virus, sparking criticism from NGOs advocating migrants’ rights.

Restrictive measures taken by other member states included reintroducing internal border controls within the Schengen Area to prevent irregular secondary movements of migrants from neighbouring states under the guise of protecting public health. Certain states, such as Austria, Denmark, France, Germany and Sweden, have had border checks in place since the outbreak of the previous crisis in 2015.

Given that the main migratory routes into the EU are across the Mediterranean, the southern EU members have been at the forefront in dealing with the issue of irregular migration and hence have assumed a much higher degree of asylum responsibility. Furthermore, due to their geographical proximity to main departure points for irregular migrants, they are disadvantaged by the Dublin rules, which in most cases assign asylum responsibility to the first EU state in which an asylum seeker arrives. Nonetheless, as in previous years, appeals for solidarity by the southern member states have largely fallen on deaf ears.

One such case in point is the Malta Declaration agreed upon by Italy and Malta together with France and Germany in September 2019 under the Finnish Presidency of the Council of the EU, whereby the five states declared their intent to develop a new scheme for disembarkation and relocation of migrants rescued at sea to ease pressure on Italy and Malta. The proposal, however, was rejected the following month by EU interior ministers in the Justice and Home Affairs Council.

The Covid-19 crisis is giving rise to a similar response from EU member states and the pursuit of national interests rather than common ones. More concretely, the pandemic has revealed the lack of solidarity and unity in the EU response to irregular migration even in an unprecedented situation.

Current European responses to irregular migration thus illustrate that the governance of migration is giving rise to suboptimal policy outcomes. In other words, the tightening of national migration policies has resulted in a ‘race to the bottom’ in asylum standards and rights across Europe. Moreover, the pandemic has exposed the unwillingness of EU leaders to act cohesively in the face of a major crisis. All of this increases the likelihood of the EU developing into an ‘ever looser’ Union, which could ultimately lead to the fragmentation of the European project.

This article was first published on the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) blog on European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) on 23 September 2020.

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Categories: European Union

One decade of Polscieu

Wed, 04/11/2020 - 20:55

Tomorrow, this blog celebrates its 10th anniversary. Much has happened in those ten years. Too much to write a summary, but the 305 posts published still document some of my work, my activism,  and my research over the years.

I published my first post on 5 November 2010, after I had just returned from living in Brussels for half a year. One of my earliest posts — “Reading a Japanese journal article with Google Translate” — still regularly brings readers to this blog, although I don’t know why.

2011 was an amazing year. I returned to Brussels and soon after became part of a series of blogger meetings with the Hungarian Council Presidency spokespersons. As a result, Europasionaria and I become the first eurobloggers ever to officially cover an EU Council meeting from the Council press room. In May 2011, we repeated this with the second bloggers’ coverage of a Council meeting.

When it comes to my academic life, my first participation in academic conference with my own research was the UACES conference in Cambridge in September 2011. A pre-conference blog post showed my worries about the paper I’d present, while my post-conference post sounds more optimistic.

The first half of 2012 was challenging as I was writing my PhD thesis in Berlin while still trying to blog and stay connected to Brussels politics (as I wanted to return). Participating at re:publica and advertising Euroblogging in Germany was definitely the blogger’s highlight of this year. My secret side project in that year—mainly a procrastination from my PhD writing— was authoring a fake Barroso blog for a few months. The blog even got a mention in a German news portal.

After the summer of 2012, my blog became quite quiet as I started working for the Transparency International EU Office and was also responsible for the social media communication. So from the 2nd half of 2012 my favourite post is this one on how the #EUCO hashtag was born in October 2010, i.e. quite exactly ten years ago.

2013 was a year with very little blogging as I was finishing writing my PhD thesis while also conducting a research project at Transparency International. So my post on how “The Matrix” inspired my doctoral research is probably the only text worth highlighting. Maybe alongside this post on Minecraft and the EU.

2014, the year of the European elections, started with a look at the emergence of a true European public sphere, foreshadowing the debates on migration that would follow a year later on a much larger scale. It was also the year when I moved from Brussels to Munich for my postdoc. Part of my research was on EU budgeting, so some of my blogging also moved in this direction while also watching how the new Juncker Commission emerged out of the “political” European elections.

In 2015, my blogging dried down even further, with this post on the network structure of European Parliament committees being maybe one of the more interesting things I did that year. I also did some blogging alongside my teaching on EU affairs in Munich.

In 2016, I managed to write only seven posts, only eight posts in 2017, and only one in 2018. 2019 continued to be a quiet year with only eight posts, and so was 2020 with only a few so far.

The only 2018, German-language post in defence of political science and large conferences against a critical essay in a German newspaper (‘FAZ’) became quite the debate in the German political science sphere. Sometimes writing one good post can replace a dozen boring posts, I guess.

This is clearly true for this year’s article that got a lot of attention when I announced that I’d leave university out of love for academia to create a new kind of research company. I’m still working on this while teaching Global Governance and EU Fiscal and Financial Governance at Hertie School in Berlin. Next year, the economic and overall situation permitting, this will be the focus of my attention.

What I realized over all these years of blogging is that long-form writing has its merits, but for most purposes Twitter (for text and links) or Instagram (for photos) are just the better medium to communicate ideas.

I like Polscieu because it has accompanied me for so long, but while 10 years ago blogging (still) felt like a worthwhile endeavour now few of the people who blogged back then are still doing it actively – Jon Worth being a notable exception (how do you do this, Jon?).

So I won’t put up a cake and candles to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Polscieu tomorrow, but this blog—just like my Twitter account but much less frequent in use—is still an outlet to share interesting insights that come across my way in a long form.

PS: Thanks to Ideas on Europe (by UACES) for hosting it all these years!

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Categories: European Union

Intersection of Religion and Politics– who is on the losing side in this encounter.

Tue, 03/11/2020 - 15:05

 

Over the past two months, I see that religion is playing a significant role in politics, both domestically and internationally. The UK and Ireland archbishops’ warning of the government’s  Internal Market Bill, ongoing confrontation between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the French President Emmanuel Macron over Islam and Secularism, and the Catholic Church’s success in tightening the abortion laws in Poland are good examples of the intersection of religion and politics. In the case of the UK, we see illegitimate religious actors interfering in political processes, while in the other two examples we note that Erdogan and Kaczynski using their association with religious institutions for their political agendas.

The person on the street knows that in democracies, we elect our representatives to represent our interests and make decisions on our behalf on numerous policy areas at different levels of government. There are also mechanisms through which the public can keep the politicians to account. To put it in simple terms, when and if the electorate is not happy with the politicians’ policy choices, in the next elections, they vote them out.  However, not alone the person on the street, but also the person with a certain level of education, do not have an idea about how much religious institutions and actors are involved both in our everyday life choices (private/public). Beyond that, the relationship between the religious institutions/actors and the elected politicians is not always transparent. The interests of the public in this interaction is the one that raises alarm bells.

Following are the questions that have been occupying my mind:

  • Why are religious actors, symbols and expectations are popping up time and again in politics?
  • How and why religious actors are given platforms to express their views on the day of the business?
  • How can you explain the intersection between religion and politics?
  • What is the public’s place in this interaction?
  • Is religious politics an outcome of rational calculations of both politician and religious actors?

I do not have answers for all the above listed questions. Instead I have some observations which may address some of those questions.

Internal Market Bill

On 19th October, the five primates of the UK and Ireland have written a joint letter in Financial Times, setting out their grave concerns about the UK’s Internal Market Bill. They said: ‘the UK government is not only preparing to break the protocol but also to breach a fundamental tenet of the agreement: namely by limiting the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights in Northern Ireland law.’  Additionally, they implicitly implored their fellow peers in the House of Lords to take responsibility and stop the democratically elected government in passing the Internal Market Bill by saying: “We wish to highlight the grave responsibility of peers… as they debate the UK Internal Market Bill’.

I like to make a couple of points in relation to the above. First, the UK government’s Internal Market Bill can be criticised on many grounds, and the legitimate institutions and actors, such as the opposition political parties have expressed their position on this bill. At the same time, the European Commission has already started a formal infringement process against the United Kingdom. Whereas the UK and Ireland archbishops’ interference in the democratic process do raise questions about the role of religious institutions and actors’ role in the UK political system and the impact they may have on the political processes.

Second, I know from my observations that the UK archbishops, if not regularly, occasionally do express their views on the political processes, which means there is a culture of religious actors interfering with the political processes in the UK. Whether they succeed in affecting the outcomes of the political processes, and whether seen as a problem in UK politics, I am not sure.

Third, how an illegitimate and unelected body like the Archbishops of the UK and Ireland can openly ask another unelected House of the Westminster Parliament to interfere and block the passage of a bill. It is this level of interference which makes me ask: whose interest the Archbishops of the UK and Ireland do represent, what kind of relationship Archbishops have with the House of Lords, and is there any mechanism to keep to account.

Islam versus Secularism

The tension between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the French President Emmanuel Macron began to intensify, and to this day it is still escalating when in early October Macron said:  “Islam is a religion which is experiencing a crisis today,” and announced stricter oversight of schooling and better control over foreign funding of mosques. Macron’s statement was an open provocation beyond disrespect for Erdogan, who responded:  “Who are you to talk about the structuring of Islam?” What made the relationship between Macron and Erdogan worst was the tragic murder of Samuel Paty, a French history teacher, for showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to his students. Upon this, Macron said that “We will not give up caricatures and drawings, even if others back away”.

I like to offer a couple of points. First, Macron and Erdogan are seating on the opposite side of the seesaw. Macron is an advocate of Secularism, on the other hand, there is Erdogan, who in all his political career fought against ‘French-inspired Turkish version of Secularism’.  Therefore, it is only average for them to disagree and confront each other at this level.

Second, Erdogan, from his first day in politics to this day, has gradually, but consistently, both favoured use of religious symbols in everyday life and allowed involvement of the religious institutions and actors in the political processes in Turkey.  That meant religion continuously have a high impact on the policy decisions and choices made by Erdogan. Having said that when the intersection between politicians and the religious institutions and actors has become constant and persistent in Turkey, ultimately it became harder to work out on who is influencing who, whose interests the government and the religious institutions do represent, and more importantly, where do the public’s interests lie in this interaction.

Third, as far as what motivates Erdogan and Macron in their attack for each other apart from having a different position on the separation of government institutions and persons from religious institutions. I do not think Erdogan is standing up against a secular and Christian leader in the best interests of the Muslims. Erdogan, who earned a name across the globe for his vociferous character and a strong opinion about religion, is using religion to create a smokescreen to cover up the downturn of the economy and rising COVID-19 cases in Turkey. Every news outlet in Turkey has been covering this story, hailing him for his words, used against Macron. While the interest of his loyal voters and Muslim communities is the least of Erdogan’s concern, the problem is that it is difficult to prove to these people that Erdogan is only confronting Macron because it serves well his current political interests. As for Macron, he is representing one of the most secular country  in Europe, but his dispute with Erdogan is not only motivated by Secularism. There is a suggestion that Macron likes Erdogan using this situation in his benefit, as 2022 Presidential Election is looming, and he is head-to-head with far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the opinion polls.

Polish Women versus the Catholic Church

On 22nd of October, the Polish Constitutional Court outlawed abortion in cases where the foetus is severely damaged or malformed; which meant that in practice now means almost all forms of abortion are banned. The tightening Poland’s abortion laws were welcomed by senior church figures, including archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, head of Poland’s episcopal conference, having pushed for it for a long time. However, the women whom this ruling most concerned took to the streets to protest against the Court’s declaration and have disrupted masses and spray-painted churches. Whereas the Jarosław Kaczynski, who is the leader of ruling Law and Justice political party and Deputy Prime Minister of Poland, regarded demonstrators’ action as an ‘attack to destroy Poland’ and called on for his supporters to turn out on the streets to defend churches at any cost, in a way he permitted violence against the protesters.

First, since 2015 the PiS has been overhauling the Polish Legal system regardless of the EU’s criticism and the Article 7 procedure. Thus the constitutional courts have been going through a reform. I cannot say for sure, but the judges may have been sympathetic to the PiS’s agenda, as well as to the Catholic Church’s demands when declaring the tightening of the abortion law.

Second, Kaczynski’s harsh critique of the protestors and his call on his supporters are an indication of a deeper problem Kaczynski may have. Kaczynski is failing to read the public mood about abortion law, but more so on women’ place in the society. This might cost him women’ vote in the next elections.

Third, the interaction of Catholic Church and the leadership of the PiS, the close connection between them and how out of touch they are with Polish society, but particularly with women who are demanding a voice in political processes and want to decide for themselves, in this case, whether they want to have an abortion or not. I think that women screaming in the face of a local priest for the first time and chanting at them to “go back to church”, is a piece of evidence that Polish women are saying ‘no’ to status quo, pointing to Churches where priests should be based, not interfering with politics and in women’s personal choices.

In conclusion, religion and politics together do not seem to serve in the interests of us all, either religious actors want to see politicians representing their demands in the political processes, or politicians use religion for their political agendas. The losing side in this interaction is us all; but like the Polish Women, we can always stand up to them.

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Categories: European Union

Gaps to a new deal

Thu, 29/10/2020 - 10:32
The eerie quiet of negotiators, um, negotiating means we’ve seen very little of the Future Relationship process of late: everyone’s too busy trying to work up texts and compromises to brief outsiders. Which makes it a good time to consider an aspect of the ratification problem that’s not been much seen so far: what happens if there’s a deal, but ratification can’t be finished by the end of 31 December? So far, we’ve tended to think about things as a case of there being a deal or not and then sticking to that as a binary. But clearly, this isn’t the case: as we know, a collapse of the Future Relationship process still leaves the door open to future efforts to address each sides’ interests. And it’s also true that if the current talks do produce a treaty that each side wants to ratify, then failure to do so by the end of the year doesn’t kill it. This is because while the transition period – with the UK following all elements of EU membership, bar representation and voting – runs until New Year’s Eve, there is no such time limit on the negotiating mandate of either side. Yes, both are committed to ‘best efforts’ to hit the deadline, for a seamless jump from one arrangement to another, but as we know from earlier discussions about this, it was both practically and legally impossible to make that an obligation. So the possibility of a gap exists. Broadly speaking, we could see this gap in one of two variants. The first is the ‘half a mo’ version, where ratification is underway, but someone just runs out of time to complete their processes (the IfG have a good run-down on this): if we have to go down a route of EU27 national ratifications, this is a distinct possibility, even if Christmas closures do leave some margin for extra sitting days for legislatures (I leave you to ponder how sympathetic parliamentarians might feel to that, especially given everything else on their plate). In this scenario, the gap is likely to be small and everyone’s pretty obviously on board with the programme. This points to a short window when no arrangement would be in legal effect, but the rapid arrival of the new deal would give much leeway to let everyone neglect to enforce the full weight of a no-deal scenario. Given that there’s been much discussion in EU circles about progressive introduction of controls post-January in the latter scenario, this could be an extension of that principle, knowing that things would be on a firmer footing shortly. In brief, here we might see a short period of soft-pedalling, which itself might be used as a way of demonstrating good faith. Which is also why we might think it less likely than the second variant of the gap: the ‘err, hang on chaps’ model. Precisely because the first version is grounded in some genuine procedural problem, we have to imagine that both sides would know this was coming and would seek to avoid it at all: better to have no gap than even a small one, especially if we’re trying to rebuild trust. However, as we’ll recall from 2018-20, ratification is not only about your relationship with the other negotiating party, but also your domestic constituency. To take the obvious case, will Number 10 be able to carry the backbenches on a wave of a ‘world-beating’ deal, at speed and without rebellion? Particularly given that some of the scales might have fallen from their eyes now that they’ve had time to consider whether the Withdrawal Agreement was actually what they thought/said it was? One consequence of that saga is that the EU will be pushing for more explicit language about dispute settlement and governance, which even the less assiduous readers of treaty texts might pick up on. And the sailing might be no easier on the EU side, especially if the concessions made fall too obviously on any one member state (e.g. France and fisheries): clear problems for one might be enough to put the brake on and to send Barnier back to try again. Again, the calculation here might be that the UK needs this more than the EU, so the former will have to cave in. However it goes, big problems on any side are liable to mean that we’re back into that territory of renegotiation, and that would be occurring through the end of transition. Here it would be much harder to sell the gap as brief or underpinned by rebuilding trust, which in turn makes it harder to keep everyone on board. Indeed, if it turns out that the world doesn’t fall apart on 1 January, some in the UK might decide that it’s actually not so bad after all and pack it in (even though that would be partly because of that progressive re-introduction of controls mentioned earlier). At the very least, this kind of gap would be one that contained much more potential to collapse the process of negotiation, and to see the full effects of no-deal occur. Even if a deal could be patched up and pushed through, the experience would do little to improve the quality of the relationship between the EU and UK. All of which might be a long way to say that if you want a deal, you also should really not want a gap.

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Categories: European Union

Foreign aid to Ukraine. Part I: Bottomless barrel for European and American taxpayers

Tue, 27/10/2020 - 16:55

According to leading analytical agencies, Ukraine’s sovereign credit rating did not exceed “B” for more than 20 years, but international organizations and foreign countries keep pouring money into the country.

politeka.net

It was announced during the visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the UK in October that London will provide Kyiv with an additional £5 million in humanitarian assistance. The amount involved is not much for the state, but financial support of this kind from Europe and the United States has been received by Ukraine regularly since 2014. Dollars and euros help the economy to maintain a precarious balance on the background of general fall in the industry and the global turbulence due to the coronavirus pandemic. Part of the international assistance comes to the country as donations, but significant amounts come to Ukraine in the form of investments or loans.

According to the senior analyst of the Ukrainian Council on Foreign Relations Vladimir Denisyuk, there are no official statistics on how much money and from what sources Kyiv received. Such information is not systematically collected in one particular agency. According to information from the open sources, the main donors of the country are the United States, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, which over the past 6 years have transferred tens of billions of dollars to Kyiv.

Foreign aid from Washington

Since 2014, the US has been annually providing to Ukraine from $306 to $518 million financial assistance. By 2020, the total amount represents more than $2.7 billion. Funds were used to diversify energy, support government institutions and encourage anti-corruption efforts. More than a billion of donations were spent to strengthen the Ukrainian armed forces and improve cooperation with NATO. Washington donated equipment, military hardware, lethal and non-lethal weapons to Kyiv, organized courses for retraining officers.

From Brussels with love

According to approximate estimates Ukraine received financial support from Europe totaling €15 billion for the last six years. The European Union’s spokesperson for foreign affairs Maja Kocijancic underlined that the EU’s support to Ukraine in the past years has been “unprecedented and consistent.” European aid was divided into several tranches provided by various institutions, states and organizations.

economics.segodnya.ua

Since 2014, the European Commission has donated four macrofinancial assistance tranches totaling nearly €4 billion to Ukraine. In addition, the EU provided Kyiv with grants for development and humanitarian aid totaling about €1.5 billion. This year, Ukraine received another €190 million from the EU to purchase medical supplies, personal protective equipment and reduce the consequences of COVID-19. Brussels has repeatedly emphasized that Ukraine is the largest recipient of European financial assistance among non-EU countries.

Particular EU member states also supported Ukraine in the form of grants, loans and investments. In 2014-2017, the total amount of tranches had reached €1.5 billion. Germany allocated the most funds – nearly €1 billion. Other important donors were Sweden (€122 million), Poland (€118 million), Great Britain (€106 million) and France (€62 million). Based on open source data, the European Commission and EU member states donated at least $7 billion to Kyiv.

Another part of financial assistance from European countries was grunted in the form of loans. In 2014-2019, the European Investment Bank and its partners in Kyiv signed commitments worth €3.8 billion. The projects involved investments mainly in the public sector (municipal infrastructure, education, transport, etc.).

From June 30, 2014 to June 30, 2019, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development allocated to Ukraine about €3.5 billion as loans and capital investments.

The IMF loans

The main pillar of financial support for Ukraine is the IMF. In just 25 years of cooperation, the Fund provided the country with loans totaling $31.3 billion. Active borrowing occurred right after the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. In April 2014, the IMF approved a two-year stand-by (SBA) program for Ukraine costing about $17 billion, under which only $4.5 billion was allocated.

ukraina.ru

In the summer of 2014, it became clear that as a result of the events in Crimea and the conflict in southeastern Ukraine, a large-scale economic crisis has been triggered in the country. The current cooperation program between Kyiv and the IMF has been revised. In March 2015, the IMF replaced it with a new $17.5 billion expanded financing plan. According to it, Ukraine received $6.6 billion in 2015, and $1 billion each in the next two years. In return, the Ukrainian government agreed to take austerity measures: cut social payments, increase the retirement age and gas tariffs.

In December 2018, the IMF Executive Board approved a 14-month SBA program totaling about $3.9 billion, under which Ukraine managed to get only $1.4 billion. The assistance was not paid in full, as Kyiv could not fully meet the requirements of the Fund. Although Ukraine adopted a law creating an anti-corruption court, the stumbling block were slow increase in gas prices and a high budget deficit. However, soon cooperation was resumed.

To date, Ukraine has agreed with the International Monetary Fund on another support amounting to $5.5 billion. The conditions for the provision of financial assistance were the continuation unpopular with the people medical, land, and educational reforms, as well as the growth of utility bills. In June 2020, Kyiv received the first tranche under a new agreement in the amount of $2.1 billion. In general, since 2014, the IMF has provided Ukraine with loans totaling $16.7 billion.

Digging the debt hole

As of February 2020, Ukraine ranks third in the world in terms of debts to the International Monetary Fund. Multibillion-dollar financial injections into Ukraine’s economy over the past six years have driven the country into debt, which constitutes for almost half of GDP. At the end of this summer, Ukraine’s external debt has already crossed the $85 billion mark, which is about $7500 per citizen, while $2000 of them everyone owes exactly the IMF.

glavcom.ua

Servicing such an external debt is expensive for the government. According to experts, new tranches from the IMF go to repay previous loans to the Fund, and not to restart the economy and gradually recover from the debt. Indeed, international aid today is only a refinancing of previous loans. Within 3 years, Ukraine has to return $5.3 billion to the Fund, and the IMF is just allocating $5.5 billion for 3 years under the updated cooperation program. It turns out that the state needs even more money from foreign donors to revive sustained grow of the economy.

Ukraine is a risky asset

Relations with the IMF are considered on a strategic level for Kyiv. Most other organizations, world banks and funds agree to lend to the country only after the decision to open a loan program made by the IMF Executive Board. Cooperation with the IMF is a kind of “investment anchor” for Ukraine. Other international credit organizations, funds and states have invested tens of billions of dollars in Ukraine over the past six years thanks to the Kyiv’s long history of relations with the Fund.

At the same time, the largest analytical agencies have been assigning extremely low credit ratings to Ukraine for more than 20 years. On the Standard & Poor’s, Fitch or Moody’s scale the country needs to overcome at least 5 more steps to become attractive to foreign investors. In 2014-2015 (when foreign states were most actively allocating money), estimates of the Ukrainian economy predicted a default. Current ratings of international experts recommend not to invest in Ukraine due to the significant risks of such investments. In September this year, Fitch left the credit rating of Ukraine unchanged at “B” with a stable forecast. At the same time, a minimum acceptable and attractive for investors rating is «BBB-».

mof.gov.ua

In exchange for risky investments in the Ukrainian economy, foreign donors demand that the government comply with strict austerity measures. In addition to cutting social payments, creditors insist on implementing structural reforms unpopular with the people.

Who pays the piper calls the tune

When agreeing on financing programs with the IMF, Ukraine each time signed a memorandum of cooperation, which was an indispensable condition for receiving funds. In 2014, Kyiv agreed to increase gas tariffs, conduct judicial, anti-corruption reform and reform of state-owned enterprises, including Naftogaz. Among the requirements was also the lifting of the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land and raising the retirement age. When signing a new memorandum in 2015, Ukraine agreed with the IMF to privatize the largest commercial PrivatBank, legalize gambling, even more increase utility tariffs, and again promised to open the land market and continue the fight against corruption. Despite the pressure of creditors, Ukraine never hurried to implement the points of the memorandum. For example, laws on the legalization of gambling and the opening of the land market were adopted only in 2020.

The current program of cooperation with the IMF of December 2019 implies even more serious requirements. Ukraine pledged to continue pension, medical and educational reforms, reduce welfare payments and benefits for age and hazardous employment. The new conditions again prescribe lifting restrictions on utility tariffs, boosting the privatization of large state-owned enterprises, as well as further reforming of land market, allowing foreigners to buy vast Ukrainian lands.

In the following articles we will try to explain what foreign aid to the Ukrainian economy was spent on. We will also try to answer for what purpose Europe and the United States continue to invest taxpayer money in Ukraine, and how do they intend to return these investments.

 

The post Foreign aid to Ukraine. Part I: Bottomless barrel for European and American taxpayers appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Categories: European Union

Britain is naturally a pro-EU country

Tue, 27/10/2020 - 16:40

Although hard to believe now, for most of the UK’s four decades as a member of the European Union, Britain didn’t want to leave. On the contrary, most Brits wanted us to stay.

What’s the proof of that? Well, apart from polling over the years, look at governments and general elections.

  • From 1959 to 2016, every UK government and every UK Prime Minister strongly wanted Britain to be a member of the European Community.
  • Since we joined the Community in 1973 right up to 2016, at every general election, all the main parties wanted us to stay in the EU, with just one exception.

What was the exception?

It was the general election of 1983, when Labour’s manifesto – described then as ‘the longest suicide note in history’ – pledged to get Britain out of the European Community.

Labour lost that election by a huge landslide. Arch Eurosceptic, Tony Benn, lost his Bristol seat.

Since then, Leaving was a minority call on the far side lines of British politics for most of our decades of membership.

Just two years before the referendum, in 2014, Ipsos Mori polling showed that Britain’s support for wanting to remain in the EU was the highest it had been in 23 years – 56% in favour of remain, just 36% for leave, as reported at the time by The Guardian.

This, despite the apparent rise of UKIP, that the Tories and Labour seemed so scared about.

The Guardian from 22 October 2014

A year later, in 2015, the Ipsos Mori poll showed that support for continued EU membership was even higher – a staggering 61% in support of remaining, with just 27% supporting leave, as reported by The Independent.

Independent from 19 June 2015

What does this all mean?

It means that many, if not most, of those who voted Leave in the 2016 referendum would have voted Remain just a year or two earlier.

Somehow, in the months, weeks and days leading up to the referendum, many of those who previously would have supported Remain were cajoled and convinced to switch to Leave.

Of course, many of them now realise that they were conned with lies and false promises in what was a fundamentally flawed referendum. That is going to become more apparent from 1 January 2021 onwards.

  • That’s when Brexit arrives for real.
  • That’s when all of us can compare Brexit Britain with Remain Britain.
  • And that’s when the truth will trump the lies.

It’s when it will become increasingly, painfully and shockingly obvious that Brexit cannot deliver its promised land, and that Britain – and Britons – were better off remaining in the EU.

Remainers – now Rejoiners – must be ready to say to vast numbers of ex-Leave supporters:

“Welcome back. We missed you.

“Let’s now work together to undo the mess of Brexit; legitimately, democratically and with a huge show of numbers.”

  • 8-minute video by Jon Danzig: Why the EU was started and why Britain joined.

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Categories: European Union

ECJ, C-54/07 – Feryn; Implications of a discrimination in terms of the recruitment process

Thu, 22/10/2020 - 16:59

ECJ’s interpretation of Community law must be useful to the national court

 It should be noted, at the outset, that Article 234 EC does not empower the Court to apply rules of Community law to a particular case, but only to rule on the interpretation of the EC Treaty and of acts adopted by European Community institutions (see, inter alia, Case 100/63 van der Veen [1964] ECR 565, 572, and Case C‑203/99 Veedfald [2001] ECR I‑3569, paragraph 31). The Court may, however, in the framework of the judicial cooperation provided for by that article and on the basis of the material presented to it, provide the national court with an interpretation of Community law which may be useful to it in assessing the effects of one or other of its provisions (Case 20/87 Gauchard [1987] ECR 4879, paragraph 5, and Joined Cases C‑515/99, C‑519/99 to C‑524/99 and C‑526/99 to C‑540/99 Reisch and Others [2002] ECR I‑2157, paragraph 22). (C-54/07, par.19)

Public statements that constitute direct discrimination; an identification of the victim is not required

Nevertheless, it cannot be inferred from (…) that the lack of an identifiable complainant leads to the conclusion that there is no direct discrimination within the meaning of Directive 2000/43. The aim of that directive, as stated in recital 8 of its preamble, is ‘to foster conditions for a socially inclusive labour market’. For that purpose, Article 3(1)(a) states that the directive covers, inter alia, selection criteria and recruitment conditions. (C-54/07, par.23)

 The fact that an employer declares publicly that it will not recruit employees of a certain ethnic or racial origin, something which is clearly likely to strongly dissuade certain candidates from submitting their candidature and, accordingly, to hinder their access to the labour market, constitutes direct discrimination in respect of recruitment within the meaning of Directive 2000/43. The existence of such direct discrimination is not dependant on the identification of a complainant who claims to have been the victim. (C-54/07, par.25)

Distinguishing direct discrimination (the conceptual requirement) from the legal procedures (the practical minimum) implies a space for Member States to introduce higher protection in that regard.

The question of what constitutes direct discrimination within the meaning of Directive 2000/43 must be distinguished from that of the legal procedures provided for in Article 7 of that directive for a finding of failure to comply with the principle of equal treatment and the imposition of sanctions in that regard. Those legal procedures must, in accordance with the provisions of that article, be available to persons who consider that they have suffered discrimination. However, the requirements of Article 7 of Directive 2000/43 are, as stated in Article 6 thereof, only minimum requirements and the Directive does not preclude Member States from introducing or maintaining provisions which are more favourable to the protection of the principle of equal treatment. (C-54/07, par.26)

It is up to the national court to assess according to the national legislation, whether an actio popularis in the name of employment equality is permitted.

Consequently, Article 7 of Directive 2000/43 does not preclude Member States from laying down, in their national legislation, the right for associations with a legitimate interest in ensuring compliance with that directive, or for the body or bodies designated pursuant to Article 13 thereof, to bring legal or administrative proceedings to enforce the obligations resulting therefrom without acting in the name of a specific complainant or in the absence of an identifiable complainant. It is, however, solely for the national court to assess whether national legislation allows such a possibility. (C-54/07, par.27)

The presumption of Discrimination; the defendant carries the burden of proof

Article 8 of Directive 2000/43 states in that regard that, where there are facts from which it may be presumed that there has been direct or indirect discrimination, it is for the defendant to prove that there has been no breach of the principle of equal treatment. The precondition of the obligation to adduce evidence in rebuttal which thus arises for the alleged perpetrator of the discrimination is a simple finding that A PRESUMPTION OF DISCRIMINATION has arisen on the basis of established facts. (C-54/07, par.30)

Public statements give rise to the presumption

Statements by which an employer publicly lets it be known that, under its recruitment policy, it will not recruit any employees of a certain ethnic or racial origin may constitute facts of such a nature as to give rise to a presumption of a discriminatory recruitment policy. (C-54/07, par.31)

The content of the adduced evidence

It is, thus, for that employer to adduce evidence that it has not breached the principle of equal treatment, which it can do, inter alia, by showing that the actual recruitment practice of the undertaking does not correspond to those statements. (C-54/07, par.32)

The national court will assess the sufficiency of the evidence

It is for the national court to verify that the facts alleged against that employer are established and to assess the sufficiency of the evidence which the employer adduces in support of its contentions that it has not breached the principle of equal treatment. (C-54/07, par.33)

The scope of the sanctions

Article 15 of Directive 2000/43 confers on Member States responsibility for determining the rules on sanctions for breaches of national provisions adopted pursuant to that directive. Article 15 specifies that those sanctions must be effective, proportionate and dissuasive and that they may comprise the payment of compensation to the victim. (C-54/07, par.36)

The scope of discretion granted to Member States; de minimis EU requirements

Article 15 of Directive 2000/43 thus imposes on Member States the obligation to introduce into their national legal systems measures which are sufficiently effective to achieve the aim of that directive and to ensure that they may be effectively relied upon before the national courts in order that judicial protection will be real and effective. Directive 2000/43 does not, however, prescribe a specific sanction, but leaves Member States free to choose between the different solutions suitable for achieving its objective. (C-54/07, par.37)

The form of the sanctions

If it appears appropriate to the situation at issue in the main proceedings, those sanctions may, where necessary, include a finding of discrimination by the court or the competent administrative authority in conjunction with an adequate level of publicity, the cost of which is to be borne by the defendant. They may also take the form of a prohibitory injunction, in accordance with the rules of national law, ordering the employer to cease the discriminatory practice, and, where appropriate, a fine. They may, moreover, take the form of the award of damages to the body bringing the proceedings. (C-54/07, par.39)

 

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Categories: European Union

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