Ideas on Europe Blog

So, no breakthrough, but also no collapse. Not the most ringing endorsement for yesterday’s European Council discussion on Article 50, but given the possible alternatives, certainly not the worst it could have been.

Still the focus remains on the backstop for Ireland.

Usefully, we might remember that this backstop has become an issue for two, interlinked reasons.

Firstly, it’s evident that the period from leaving the EU next March to the end of 2020 is almost certainly not long enough to negotiate a comprehensive new EU-UK relationship that would provide a durable legal basis for keeping the Irish border as open as it is now. Secondly, even if it were long enough, the UK still hasn’t settled on a confirmed consensus view on what that new relationship should be.

Next-to-impossible to negotiate something when you don’t know what you want.

As a result, the EU (driven by Ireland) wants a backstop to protect those parts of the Good Friday Agreement that fall within its competence, not because that’s optimal, but because it can’t rely on the UK to get its act together.

That the UK hasn’t been the most reliable of negotiating partners also hasn’t helped.

In any case, it’s been that time shortage that has been central in driving backstops: neither the EU nor UK wanted an indefinite transition period, so they extemporised.

This past week has seen a revisiting of this assumption, for what seem to be rather obvious reasons.

A longer transition means more time to sort out that new relationship, so less likelihood of needing a back-up plan in the form of a backstop.

Of all the options on the table, it is one of the very simplest, not least because both sides agreed the terms of transition already, so the paperwork is almost entirely ready to go. Indeed, when that was agreed, back in the spring, there was almost no opposition to its existence or form from opponents of Theresa May and it attracted minimal attention from any one (excepting the occasional academic).

Despite what Nigel Farage and others say, transition is not ‘staying in for longer’, because transition’s entire existence is based on the Withdrawal Agreement, which in turn supposes that the UK and EU have agreed terms for leaving. Thus, in strict legal terms, the UK would no longer be a member state.

But…

But yes, there are problems, and some big ones at that.

While May will go with the line that she’s delivered on getting the UK out of the EU on her schedule next March, it will be into a transition that is as close to membership as it’s possible to imagine: literally everything as before, but without representation or a vote. In that sense, Farage would have a point and getting over a line on a technicality is never a good look, even if you’re not already on a caution from your own party.

Moreover, extending transition beyond December 2020 means that the UK will find itself entering a new financial cycle of the EU budget, without a rebate mechanism – so net contributions would go up considerably – and without full planning by the EU for accommodating spending allocations to the UK – so some substantial financial engineering will be required in 2020.

Crucially, a longer transition means more chance of the EU making a decision that causes real problems for the UK, which will undermine the already-thin legitimacy and accountability of the transition system.

And there’s the moral hazard argument: more time is well and good, but it reduces the pressure to reach a timely agreement on the future relationship, so both sides will still be likely to face a situation where another extension to transition is required to avoid a new cliff-edge moment.

So…

The temptation in all this to work just to immediate concerns: what can May get through Parliament, or what will fly for the Irish to sign up?

That’s important, but it can’t be the only perspective. These decisions are going to have lasting impacts on the lives of millions, and the more that they can be discussed and evaluated, the better.

However, one key point is going to have to be accepted in this process.

Brexit is about change, divergence and disentanglement. It necessarily and fundamentally implies costs, primarily in the shorter-term but also beyond that. Whatever form Brexit takes, there will be negativities – opportunity costs to businesses, citizens, politics – and there is no cost-free option. Indeed, even abandoning Brexit entirely isn’t without substantial costs, certainly in reputational terms.

In all the debate about how Brexit proceeds, this basic reality is too often brushed to one side. Maybe now is the time to face up to it.

The post The pros and cons of a longer transition appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This article is based on research presented at the UACES Graduate Forum Conference 2018 (12-13 July, KU Leuven, Belgium)

In parliamentary democracies the cabinet makes policy decisions. When a cabinet is formed around a coalition of parties, the responsibility for decision-making is shared. However, coalition parties remain politically independent actors, resulting in competition and disagreements over policy issues. Whilst coalition partners may not always disagree, they often do: Saskia Smellie considers recent developments in German coalition politics and its effects on domestic policy-making and international politics.

Reichstag parliament, Berlin © travelwitness/AdobeStock

The ramifications of coalition politics have become starkly apparent during the European Union (EU) migration crisis; not least in the case of Germany in June 2018. The German Minister of the Interior, Horst Seehofer, leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s junior coalition partner and conservative sister party in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union (CSU), sparked a crisis described as the ‘greatest challenge ever to Merkel’s authority’.

The dispute, which came ahead of elections in Bavaria later in the year, stemmed from a breakdown of emergency talks on refugee policy, related to Seehofer’s so-called ‘master plan for migration’. The 63-point proposal, which falls largely within the Interior Minister’s remit, included measures enabling asylum-seekers registered in other EU countries to be turned away at the Bavarian-Austrian border, without initiating the Dublin regulation.

Under the Dublin regulation asylum seekers claim asylum in the first country through which they enter the EU and can be sent back to that country to make a claim. Turning away asylum seekers at the German border without implementing the Dublin return procedure would effectively mean suspending the regulation and reinstating an internal EU border. With the CSU supporting Seehofer’s plans, the junior and arguably more ideologically driven coalition partner held the more moderate and senior conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party to ransom. If Merkel were unable to reach a satisfactory deal with other EU member states to reduce immigration, Seehofer and the CSU threatened to act unilaterally and impose the border checks in Bavaria against the chancellor’s will. The crisis deepened still further when Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz stated that he planned to reinstate Austrian borders if Seehofer went ahead with his proposals.

This is not the first time that disagreement between coalition partners on immigration policy has had far-reaching consequences in Germany. Refugee policy is cited as one of the reasons for the collapse of coalition negotiations after the German federal elections in September 2017, which left the country without a government until March 2018. When a new Grand coalition between CDU/CSU and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was finally formed, the leader of the CSU secured the cabinet post of Interior Minister. Seehofer has been Merkel’s harshest critic since the summer of 2015, and the most vocal member of the government to come out in opposition of Merkel’s Willkommenskultur. In his new role as Interior Minister he has greater power to oppose, contest and constrain Merkel’s immigration policies.

It is striking that the crisis incited by Seehofer’s controversial migration ‘master plan’ threatened not only the German coalition government but also negotiations on the future of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker hosted a mini-summit on migration in Brussels on 24th June 2018, ahead of a European Council summit, reportedly on Merkel’s request. The initiative provoked anger from the Italian government when the Commission sent out a draft EU accord, ahead of the summit, which included key measures Merkel required to placate Seehofer and the CSU.

The perception was that greater priority had been given to Germany’s domestic crisis than to member states experiencing a high influx of migration on the eastern and southern EU borders. Moreover, the Commission was seen as overstepping its remit in a policy area reserved to the European Council. The Visegrad Group (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic), which are united in their anti-immigration policy and opposition to the redistribution of refugees in the EU, chose not to attend the mini-summit at all. Nevertheless, Merkel appeared to secure a commitment from Macron that France would take back returned asylum seekers, in an agreement with Germany, suggesting a possible resolution to her domestic crisis through bilateral means. In the end, Seehofer was persuaded to soften the language in his plan and remove the point on turning back asylum seekers, in return for the coalition government agreeing to introduce tougher asylum policies.

This episode demonstrates the impact that coalition politics can have not only on domestic politics but also on international negotiations and relations. In the case of immigration policy, a junior coalition partner that holds the role of Interior Minister and demonstrated arguably more populist views on immigration ahead of a regional election, not only came close to collapsing the coalition government but also directly affected negotiations at an EU level. Within the context of the EU migration crisis and the increasingly salient and international nature of migration politics – with a growing focus on controlling borders, push and pull factors between neighbouring states, and outsourcing immigration controls to third countries – this example of domestic actors constraining international negotiations is one of many.

The ongoing consequences of Germany’s coalition disputes on immigration, for both the federal government and future negotiations on the Common European Asylum System remains to be seen. However, the incident does clearly demonstrate how a dispute between coalition partners in a cabinet can quickly escalate to have ramifications for international relations and negotiations on the international stage.

Please note that this article represents the views of the author(s) and not those of the UACES Graduate Forum, UACES or JCER.

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Shortlink for this article: http://bit.ly/2J3ThBu

Saskia Smellie | @S_Smellie

Saskia Smellie is a PhD researcher in Politics & International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include comparative immigration policy, EU asylum and refugee policy, ‘burden-sharing’ and foreign policy analysis. She is a co-author of the report ‘Scottish and UK Immigration Policy after Brexit: Evaluating Options for a Differentiated Approach’.

 

The post Merkel, Coalition Politics and Negotiating the Common European Asylum System: Constrained by Domestic Actors? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

There will be a lot of talk about the extreme right’s entry into the Bavarian parliament and the impact of yesterday’s election on the federal government in Berlin. But the most important fall-out may reside in a significant shift in political semantics.

For as long as I can remember, Bavaria has always been described to me as a very particular Bundesland. Not because it was my parents’ favourite holiday destination during my childhood (and has remained, indeed, a blessed corner of Europe), but because the Bavarians insisted on being ‘different’ from the rest of the bunch (to which they generically referred to as ‘Prussians’).

Strictly speaking, it’s not even a Bundesland, since it’s officially called a Freistaat, as if it wanted to remind the others that they could quit the federation any time. Some Germans consider the Bavarians as ‘arrogant’, but that’s the kind of reproach you earn mainly by performing better than anybody else. And they do, in practically all statistics: economy, security, health, education, employment, football, you name it.

The impressive Bavarian mansion in Brussels.

Even on a European level, it’s difficult not to be impressed with Bavaria. With its 13 million inhabitants it would the 9th biggest member state, and in economic terms, with its GDP of 600 bn Euros, it would even be number seven, before Poland. And they don’t hide their opulence: their wonderfully megalomaniac ‘château’ representation in Brussels, in direct vicinity of the European Parliament, does not go unnoticed.

***

For as long as I can remember, this model region was managed by the CSU, the powerful local variant of the Christian Democrats, whose hyper-domination of Bavarian politics over half a century was shoulder-shruggingly explained by the fact that the country was ‘deeply conservative’. A very appropriate adjective for a region that not only did have quite a few assets worth ‘conserving’, but that had also managed to reconcile, as pointed out in a famous slogan, ‘laptops and leather trousers’. Developing world-class industry, research, and infrastructures was not mutually exclusive with preserving a strong, surprisingly inclusive, cultural heritage embodied in ostentatious identity markers (including a nightmare dialect).

Yesterday’s election to the regional parliament in Munich has attracted unprecedented international attention. This was mainly due to the fact that the CSU has been identified as the main problem child of the current coalition in Berlin, at least partly responsible for the stalemate in an increasingly ‘ungovernable’ Federal Republic, as well as for the apparent decline in Angela Merkel’s authority. European media are already wondering whether the Bavarian election results will weaken the federal government even further.

Results as provided by the Bavarian authorities.

And there will be quite some hand-wringing about the extreme right’s entry into the Bavarian Landtag. The AfD went from zero to ten percent – how shocking! Was not Munich the birthplace of Adolf Hitler’s movement? The kind of fear-mongering that shallow international television coverage loves to indulge in. They could just as well point out that 10.2% for an openly xenophobic party with an aggressive single-issue anti-migrant agenda is actually a rather poor result in the very region that has been more exposed than any other to the influx of refugees from the famous ‘Balkan route’ since August 2015. To put it differently: both parties who focused massively on the migration issue were rather unsuccessful in Bavaria. The CSU lost roughly a fourth of their voters in comparison to the 2013 election, and the AfD, which recruited 28% of their electorate precisely from former CSU voters, remained below their score in the federal elections a year ago and way behind current national opinion polls.

In a nutshell: Bavarians proved remarkably resistant to several variants of populism. They rejected the religiously tainted identity populism of current minister-president Markus Söder – whose infamous ‘crucifix law’ backfired even among many Bavarian Catholics – and only a minority of them were ready to embrace the xenophobic and nationalist populism of the AfD. At least that’s my reading, against the very particular backdrop of a soul-searching Germany in the autumn of 2018.

The most intriguing fall-out from this election is, however, the hi-jacking and re-definition of the term ‘conservative’ by the Greens, who doubled their results from five years ago, reaching an all-time high of 17.5%. They managed to do so in proposing a new brand of ‘conservatism’: the one they promote – not unlike their successful neighbours in Baden-Württemberg – shifts the core connotation of the term towards ‘sustainability’. And it carries, mostly implicit, but visibly understood by many, a secondary connotation of urgent change, transposing to their country Tancredo’s famous message to the Prince from Lampedusa’s Leopard: if we want to preserve what made Bavaria a great place, we need to change our ways.

How green has Ms Bavaria become?

Are we witnessing the arrival of climate change and biodiversity worries, in combination with issues of social sustainability, in mainstream politics in Western Europe? It would be about time. It’s probably too early to earmark 14 October 2018 as a ‘potential turning point for Europe’, as Florian Eder suggests in his (always excellent) Brussels Playbook today. In Bavaria, the Greens will remain in opposition, but the fact that they obtained 30% of the vote in the region’s major cities shows that their influence is not likely to decline over the next years. Especially if birds and insects continue to disappear, overhot summers last forever, and the automotive lobby has nothing to offer but big, fat SUVs and threats about job losses.

The future of German politics will be conservative. The question is what people will want to conserve, and who are the politicians who will propose the most credible brand of conservatism.

The post Deeply conservative appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Arron Banks, the insurance tycoon and Brexit campaigner who bankrolled both UKIP and Leave.eu, has launched a vitriolic campaign to deselect Remain-supporting Tory MPs who represent ‘Leave’ constituencies.

Mr Banks, whose application to join the Conservatives was rejected, said the aim and slogan of his campaign, called ‘The Blue Wave UK’, is to:

‘Make the Conservatives Conservative again’

But if Conservatives are to be ‘Conservative again’, they would naturally support Britain’s membership of the EU.

That’s because, traditionally, all Tory Prime Ministers and governments had, until now, strongly and consistently favoured Britain being in the European Community.

• It was because of Conservatives that the UK applied to join the European Community in the first place.
• It was because of Conservatives that the UK eventually joined the European Community.
• It was because of Conservative support that Britain’s continued membership of the European Community was won by a landslide in the first referendum of 1975.
• It was because of Conservatives, under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, that the Single Market of Europe came into existence.
• The Conservative government in the 2016 referendum officially supported the UK’s continued membership of the European Union.
• Most Conservative MPs voted for Remain in the 2016 referendum.

Since the European Community was founded in 1957, with just one exception, the passionate resolve of all past Conservative Prime Ministers was that Britain should join it and remain in it.

That one exception is today’s Conservative Prime Minister, Theresa May.

Mrs May is Britain’s only Prime Minister ever to go against membership of the European Union and the cherished Single Market of Europe.

Some argue that Conservatives of today are not the same as Conservatives of yesterday. They have become more like UKIP.

Indeed, shortly after Mrs May became Prime Minister, the then UKIP MEP, Roger Helmer, told BBC Radio 4 in October 2016:

“I like what Theresa May is doing.

“She seems to have picked up about 90% of UKIP’s programme. In some ways, she’s gone far beyond what we would have done.”

Theresa May is taking Britain out of the EU, whereas all previous Prime Ministers (both Tory and Labour) wanted Britain to be in.

If only today’s Conservative MPs – and today’s Tory Prime Minister – were true Conservatives of the past, then the party that championed our membership of the European Community would not now be relishing the prospect of Britain’s departure from it.

What would past Tory Prime Ministers make of their legacies being destroyed by their own party?

 WINSTON CHURCHILL: It was one of the Tory party’s greatest leaders, Winston Churchill, who passionately promoted the ‘Union of Europe as a whole’ and is recognised as a founder of the European Union.

In his famous Zurich speech of 1946, Churchill said,

‘We must build a kind of United States of Europe.. The structure of the United States of Europe, if well and truly built, will be such as to make the material strength of a single state less important..

“If at first all the States of Europe are not willing or able to join the Union, we must nevertheless proceed to assemble and combine those who will and those who can.’

At London’s Albert Hall, in May 1947, just a few months after his Zurich speech, Churchill spoke as Chairman and Founder of the United Europe Movement to ‘present the idea of a United Europe in which our country will play a decisive part..’

In May 1948 Churchill said in the opening speech to the Congress of Europe in Holland, that the drive towards a United Europe, ‘should be a movement of the people, not parties’.

Churchill, who also proposed a European ‘Charter’ and ‘Court’ of Human Rights, continued,

‘We aim at the eventual participation of all the peoples throughout the continent whose society and way of life are in accord with the Charter of Human Rights.’

During this momentous speech, Churchill proclaimed:

‘We cannot aim at anything less than the Union of Europe as a whole, and we look forward with confidence to the day when that Union will be achieved.’

When in in 1961 Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, applied for Britain to join the European Community, Churchill wrote:

“I think that the Government are right to apply to join the European Economic Community..”

He added:

“We might well play a great part in these developments to the profit of not only ourselves, but of our European friends also.”

 HAROLD MACMILLAN: In a pamphlet explaining to the nation why he had applied for the UK to join the European Community in 1961, Prime Minister Macmillan wrote:

“By negotiating for British membership of the European Economic Community and its Common Market, the present Conservative Government has taken what is perhaps the most fateful and forward looking policy decision in our peacetime history.

“We did not do so lightly. It was only after a searching study of all the facts that we came to accept this as the right and proper course.”

Mr Macmillan continued:

“By joining this vigorous and expanding community and becoming one of its leading members, as I am convinced we would, this country would not only gain a new stature in Europe, but also increase its standing and influence in the councils of the world.”

Of great pertinence to today, Mr Macmillan added:

“Accession to the Treaty of Rome would not involve a one-sided surrender of ‘sovereignty’ on our part, but a pooling of sovereignty by all concerned, mainly in economic and social fields.

“In renouncing some of our own sovereignty we would receive in return a share of the sovereignty renounced by other members.”

 SIR ALEC DOUGLAS-HOME: Mr Macmillan’s successor, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, was briefly prime minister for one year from 1963. He supported Britain’s application to join the European Community, although Harold Macmillan’s application had been vetoed by the French President, Charles de Gaulle.

In his party’s manifesto for the general election of 1964, Sir Alec stated:

“We remain convinced that the political and economic problems of the West can best be solved by an Atlantic partnership between America and a united Europe. Only in this way can Europe develop the wealth and power, and play the part in aiding others, to which her resources and history point the way.”

Later, as Foreign Secretary in Edward Heath’s government that took Britain into the European  Community, Sir Alec said in a speech in Parliament in June 1971 on the importance of the United Kingdom’s membership:

“I think the time has come when we must say to the public in our country that the future prospect ahead of us is uncertain unless we can expand our markets and unless we can become part of a bigger organisation; for trade, for investment, and also for political reasons.”

The following month in Parliament he said:

“I have never made it a secret that I cannot see an alternative which would offer as good a prospect for this country as joining the E.E.C. [European Community].”

And he also stated:

“I, too, have concluded through the years that membership of the Community would be advantageous to Britain.”

 EDWARD HEATH: It was Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath, who joined Britain to the European Community on 1 January 1973, following the backing of Parliament after 300 hours of debate.

On the evening of 28 October 1971, Mr Heath addressed the House of Commons during the momentous debate on Britain joining the European Community. He said:

“Surely we must consider the consequences of staying out. We cannot delude ourselves that an early chance would be given us to take the decision again.

“We should be denying ourselves and succeeding generations the opportunities which are available to us in so many spheres; opportunities which we ourselves in this country have to seize.

“We should be leaving so many aspects of matters affecting our daily lives to be settled outside our own influence. That surely cannot be acceptable to us.

“We should be denying to Europe, also – let us look outside these shores for a moment – its full potential, its opportunities of developing economically and politically, maintaining its security, and securing for all its people a higher standard of prosperity.”

Mr Heath added:

“..tonight when this House endorses this Motion many millions of people right across the world will rejoice that we have taken our rightful place in a truly United Europe.”

Parliament did endorse the Motion by 356 votes to 244, and Britain subsequently joined the European Economic Community on 1 January 1973.

 MARGARET THATCHER: Two years later, in 1975, the Labour government offered the British people a referendum on whether the country should remain in the European Community. Tory leader and future Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, strongly campaigned for the country to remain in the Community.

In a speech in Parliament on 8 April 1975 supporting Britain’s continued membership of the European Community, Mrs Thatcher said:

“Membership of the Community enhances our effective sovereignty by giving the British Government increased influence and bargaining strength.”

She added:

“That is what sovereignty in the modern world is really about and that is why Britain is stronger inside the Community than she would be outside it.”

And pertinently to today, Mrs Thatcher said:

“If we were now to withdraw, it would be a leap in the dark. We should not have any idea of the trading conditions into which we were coming out or of the effect on sterling.”

In another keynote speech on 16 April 1975 during the referendum campaign she said:

“It is not surprising that I, as Leader of the Conservative Party, should wish to give my wholehearted support to this campaign, for the Conservative Party has been pursuing the European vision almost as long as we have existed as a Party.”

As Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher also pushed for, and made possible, the Single Market of Europe.

In September 1988 in Bruges, Mrs Thatcher gave a major speech about the future of Europe. She said:

“Britain does not dream of some cosy, isolated existence on the fringes of the European Community. Our destiny is in Europe, as part of the Community.”

Mrs Thatcher added:

“Let Europe be a family of nations, understanding each other better, appreciating each other more, doing more together but relishing our national identity no less than our common European endeavour.”

Crucially she said in support of the Single Market:

“By getting rid of barriers, by making it possible for companies to operate on a European scale, we can best compete with the United States, Japan and other new economic powers emerging in Asia and elsewhere.”

 JOHN MAJOR: It was former Conservative Prime Minister, John Major, who negotiated and won Parliament’s backing to sign the Maastricht Treaty, that among other benefits gave us EU Citizenship rights allowing us to reside, work, study or retire across a huge expanse of our continent.

He called for Britain to be at ‘the very heart of Europe’.

At the Tory Party Conference of 1992, just six months after John Major won a surprise victory that year in the General Election, he said to the party faithful:

“I speak as one who believes Britain’s future lies with Europe.”

And Mr Major warned about Britain walking away from Europe:

“We would be breaking Britain’s future influence in Europe. We would be ending for ever our hopes of building the kind of Europe that we want. And we would be doing that, just when across Europe the argument is coming our way. We would be leaving European policy to the French and the Germans.

“That is not a policy for Great Britain. It would be an historic mistake. And not one your Government is going to make.”

And Mr Major crucially added:

“Let us not forget why we joined the Community. It has given us jobs. New markets. New horizons.

“Nearly 60 per cent of our trade is now with our partners. It is the single most important factor in attracting a tide of Japanese and American investment to our shores, providing jobs for our people..

“But the most far-reaching, the most profound reason for working together in Europe I leave till last. It is peace. The peace and stability of a continent, ravaged by total war twice in this century.”

 DAVID CAMERON: Theresa May’s predecessor, Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, also strongly supported Britain’s continued membership of the EU, and his government’s official advice to the electorate during the Referendum was to vote for Remain.

In a speech on 9 May 2016 in support of the UK remaining in the EU during the referendum campaign, Mr Cameron said:

“I believe that, despite its faults and its frustrations, the United Kingdom is stronger, safer and better off by remaining a member of the European Union.”

And he added:

“We are part of a single market of 500 million people which Britain helped to create. Our goods and, crucially, our services – which account for almost 80% of our economy – can trade freely by right. We help decide the rules. The advantages of this far outweigh any disadvantages.”

Most pertinently to today’s debate within the Tory party on what kind of Brexit Britain should have (which has still not been settled), Mr Cameron said:

“The Leave campaign are asking us to take a massive risk with the future of our economy and the future of our country.

“And yet they can’t even answer the most basic questions.

“What would Britain’s relationship be with the EU if we were to leave? Will we have a free trade agreement, or will we fall back on World Trade Organisation rules?

“The man who headed the WTO for 8 years thinks this would be, and I quote, ‘a terrible replacement for access to the EU single market.’

“Some of them say we would keep full access to the EU Single Market.

“If so, we would have to accept freedom of movement, a contribution to the EU budget, and accept all EU rules while surrendering any say over them.

“In which case, we would have given up sovereignty rather than taken it back.

“Others say we would definitely leave the single market – including, yesterday, the Vote Leave campaign – despite the critical importance of the Single Market to jobs and investment in our country.

“I can only describe this as a reckless and irresponsible course. These are people’s jobs and livelihoods that are being toyed with.

“And the Leave campaign have no answers to the most basic questions.”

Of course, today’s Conservative Prime Minister, Theresa May also shared these sentiments before the Referendum, when she campaigned for Remain and declared:

“I believe it is clearly in our national interest to remain a member of the European Union.”

And she concluded then (as opposed to now):

“Remaining inside the European Union does make us more secure, it does make us more prosperous and it does make us more influential beyond our shores.

“I believe the case to remain a member of the European Union is strong.”

So yes, Mr Banks, lets support your campaign aim to make “Conservatives Conservative again.”

The truth is that today’s Conservative MPs who support Britain’s  membership of the EU – the ones you want deselected – are in fact the true Tories.

We need those traditional pro-EU Conservatives, more than ever, to represent the majority of Britons who now don’t support Brexit.

• Video: Winston Churchill makes the case for a United Europe

• Video: Former Prime Minister, John Major, on the case for another referendum

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes

• Follow my Stop Brexit campaign on Facebook: Reasons2Remain

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Prime Minister Theresa May has unveiled the first details of Britain’s new tough Brexit immigration system, claiming that it will bring to an end free movement of people “once and for all”.

But this new ‘system’ will considerably hurt Britons and UK businesses.

The Prime Minister declared:

“Two years ago, the British public voted to leave the European Union and take back control of our borders. When we leave we will bring in a new immigration system that ends freedom of movement once and for all.”

It means EU citizens will no longer have the right to come and live and work in the UK.

But it also works the other way around:

• UK citizens will lose ‘the right’ to live, work, study or retire across much of our continent (all 27 EU countries, and any new ones joining, plus Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein).
• We may also have to apply and pay for visas to go on holiday or business trips across much of our continent.

Theresa May’s announcement assumes that ‘free movement’ has been bad for Britain, and that it’s meant we lost control of our borders. This is incorrect.

Free movement of people – a cornerstone and foundational principle of the EU – has been a boon not only for our continent, but for our country too.

• It’s meant that British workers have all of the EU and EEA countries to seek work.
• And it’s meant that British businesses have all the of the EU and EEA to seek workers.
• This system has worked well.

Britain has record numbers of high employment and low unemployment. So, what’s the problem?

Citizens from the rest of the EU in the UK represent just 5% of our population – that’s small, and hardly ‘uncontrolled immigration’.

Furthermore, the vast majority of those citizens are in gainful employment, making a significant NET contribution to our Treasury and economy, and doing jobs that we simply don’t have enough Britons to do.

Only a small proportion are taking unemployment benefits (about 2% of the UK’s total claimants).

As for borders, we already control them. Everyone coming to the country or leaving has to pass border controls.

Under existing rules, EU citizens are not allowed to move to another EU country unless they can afford to do so. They can’t just arrive and claim benefits. Furthermore, Britain can refuse entry to, or deport, EU migrants who are considered a threat to the country’s security, health, etc.

Our jobs market has been an excellent controller of inward EU migration. If there are no jobs, EU migrants either mostly don’t come or don’t stay.

We need millions of migrants in Britain because we have millions more jobs than Britons to do them.

But under Mrs May’s new plans, complicated and burdensome tiers of bureaucracy will be imposed on businesses before they can hire a member of staff from the EU or any other country.

Lower paid foreign workers will be given the lowest priority and British firms will be discouraged and deterred from hiring them.

So, who will work in our care homes, restaurants, hotels, farms and factories when we don’t have enough Britons to do that work, and just as pertinently, not enough Britons who want to do that work?

In a statement announcing the immigration shake-up Mrs May said:

“For the first time in decades, it will be this country that controls and chooses who we want to come here.” 

But this is a smokescreen.

When she says “we” will control and choose who comes here, she doesn’t mean you or me. We will have no control over who comes here.

It will be civil servants deciding who can come here, in a new and complicated system that will involve businesses having to pay the government considerable fees before they can hire an employee from abroad.

If Britain had many millions of unemployed Britons, such a policy could be understandable. But with more Britons at work than ever before, and the lowest unemployment rate for decades, there is no evidence that EU migrants here have taken British jobs.

On the contrary, there is considerable evidence that EU migrants here have helped to expand our economy, creating more jobs for all of us.

But as well as hurting British businesses, Mrs May’s new plans will hurt Britons. Brexit means we will lose ‘the right’ to live, work, study or retire across a huge expanse of our continent.

How backward is that?

Ironically, the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, this month ridiculously compared the EU to the defunct USSR. But it was the USSR that also restricted free movement of people.

By contrast, the EU has opened up our continent for its citizens to freely move across it.

Free movement of people across Europe was a prescient vision of Winston Churchill.

After the first British victory of the Second World War at El Alamein, Prime Minister Churchill wrote to his foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, on 21 October 1942:

‘Hard as it is to say now.. I look forward to a United States of Europe, in which the barriers between the nations will be greatly minimised and unrestricted travel will be possible.’

In a lecture about this in December 2011, Oxford Professor of Government, Vernon Bogdanor, described Churchill’s letter as, “remarkably prescient” adding that he thought the comment, “would get him expelled from the Conservative Party today”.

EU citizenship rights have taken decades to win and achieve. These rights were fully debated and democratically passed by our Parliament in Westminster.

Our current burgundy UK passports, embossed with ‘European Union’ on the front, currently give us the right to reside, work, study or retire across the entire European Union plus Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Those rights for Britons will be lost when we are scheduled to leave the EU in March 2019, although the right is anticipated to be briefly and temporarily extended in a so-called transition period until December 2020 (but only if we leave the EU with a deal in place).

But Brexiters apparently can’t wait for our passports to turn from burgundy to blue, and to lose the EU symbol on the front and all that it represents.

• Our new blue British passports will give us the privilege of enduring longer queues at border controls when visiting EU/EEA member states after Brexit.

That will be fun, won’t it?

• Our new blue passports will also mean we will NOT have any guaranteed rights to live, work, study or retire across our continent.

So much for progress.

Over the course of our membership of the EU, millions of Britons have taken advantage of our EU citizenship rights, mostly to work in other EU countries, but also to study, retire and buy holiday homes and residences.

Without EU membership, going to live and work in other EU countries will still be possible, but it won’t be a ‘right’, so it won’t be as easy as now, and in many cases, it simply won’t be achievable.

• Before the EU, British citizens most often had to apply for work and residency visas to live in other European countries.

Nostalgia beckons. Those times are soon to return.

• Our EU citizenship rights also mean that when we live and work in any other EU country, we can enjoy many of the same rights as the citizens of that country, including reciprocal employment rights, the right to access state healthcare and education, and to vote in local and European Parliament elections.

Not to worry. We will also lose those rights after Brexit.

Losing the right to free movement to live and work across our continent will be a HUGE LOSS when Brexit happens, scheduled for 11pm on 29 March 2019.

It’s no surprise that many Britons living in the rest of Europe, and many citizens from the rest of Europe now living in Britain, are still anxiously awaiting the outcome of the Brexit negotiations to know for sure what will be their rights after Brexit, if any.

Let’s summarise what’s on the horizon, unless we can democratically reverse our course:

• Brexit means losing rights, not gaining any.
  
• Brexit means Britain cutting itself off from the mainland of Europe.
• Brexit means we will be poorer, and with less sovereignty, fewer rights and protections, restricted trade and travel, and diminished power after we’ve left.

No wonder so many Britons are now saying, ‘We want our continent back’.

• Video: What we lose when we leave

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The government has drafted in a minister to oversee the protection of UK food supplies following rising fears about the impact of a no-deal Brexit.

Tory MP David Rutley, a former Asda and PepsiCo executive, was appointed to the post of Food Supplies Minister on 3 September, but the appointment was only announced at the end of last month.

Mr Rutley previously ran the home shopping and e-commerce businesses at Asda.

The possibility that the UK will leave the European Union in March next year without having secured a deal has raised serious concerns about food shortages, with some manufacturers stockpiling ingredients.

The UK is not self-sufficient in food and has to import most of it.

Last month, the government published its latest ‘No Deal Technical Notice’ providing further details of the implications of the UK leaving the EU without any deal in place.

Ian Wright, chief executive of the Food and Drink Federation warned that it laid bare “the grisly prospect of a no-deal Brexit.”

This included, he said, chaos at the ports, serious disruption to food supplies, increasing business costs, rising consumer prices and more bureaucratic burdens on producers, suppliers, manufacturers and retailers.

Commented Mr Wright, “While the UK may not run out of food and drink it will certainly be scarcer and more expensive.”

He added:

“UK shoppers, who have become accustomed to all year-round availability of a wide range of safe, high-quality food and drink at all price points, will face a very rude awakening.”

The Guardian reported that food industry insiders welcomed the appointment of Mr Rutley as food supplies minister, after warnings that delays of only half an hour at UK ports and the Irish border would risk one in 10 British firms going bankrupt.

One food industry business leader told the newspaper:

“The issue at the ports is a big threat. The UK always has been a net importer of food. If the ports don’t work then exporters will be struggling and importers will have a challenge too.”

The executive added that while some food manufacturers were already setting aside additional supplies, stockpiling was not possible for products with a short shelf life, such as milk or vegetables.

Many have reacted with shock to the news that Britain needs a minister to ensure the country has enough food.

Commentated writer, Emma Kennedy:

“Oh joy. We’re getting a Food Supplies Minister for when the food chain collapses. Brexit’s just SUPER isn’t it?”

LBC radio presented, James O’Brien added:

“We are about to become the first country in history to impose economic sanctions on ourselves.”

Labour MEP Seb Dance described the move as “bonkers”. He said:

“The government – instead of looking at imminent Brexit food shortages and thinking, ‘It’s our duty to ensure that doesn’t happen’ instead appoints a food-shortage minister to oversee the mess.”

Government ministers have previously considered plans to deploy army helicopters and trucks if a Brexit-deal cannot be agreed.

The army would take food and medical supplies to vulnerable and elderly people, according to news reports.

Whilst the government has tried to play down the risk of such drastic shortage, it is feared that not securing an agreement with the EU could stop imports of food and vital supplies.

Earlier in the summer the Prime Minister, Theresa May, did not deny stockpiling, but told Channel 5 News the Government is being responsible. She said:

“Far from being worried about preparations that we are making, I would say that people should take reassurance and comfort from the fact that the Government is saying we are in a negotiation, we are working for a good deal.

“I believe we can get a good deal – but because we don’t know what the outcome is going to be let’s prepare for every eventuality.”

The news that Britain is to appoint a new Minister to ensure adequate food supplies for the country has brought back memories of when Britain was facing a food shortage because of World War Two.

In April 1940, Lord Woolton, a prominent businessman, was appointed Minister of Food.

His mission was to guarantee adequate food supply. In the dark days of summer 1940, with a German invasion threatened, Woolton was responsible for ensuring food stocks were in place, even if the shipping could not get through.

Although the country is not now at war, the circumstances seem eerily similar to today.

The brief of our new food supplies minister, Mr Rutley, is also to guarantee adequate food supply.

In the dark days of autumn 2018, with a no-deal Brexit threatened, Rutley will be responsible for ensuring food stocks are in place, even if the shipping cannot get through after March 2019.

But there is one big difference. Brexit is self-inflicted. We don’t have to do it.

Was life in Britain really so bad before 23 June 2016?

Yes, there were many things that needed fixing. But instead of fixing them, Brexit is going to burden Britain with yet more things to fix.

There are no benefits to Brexit. Not even one.

• Photo of Lord Woolton by Yousuf Karsh

• Photo of David Rutley, MP, by Chris McAndrew

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When viewed as a normative power, is the European Union (EU) an exceptional actor? Aiste Pagirenaite dissects the Economic Partnership Agreements negotiated between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States, and argues that the EU’s norm promotion tools also serve its strategic interests.

© Image by Corgarashu

Two of the most prominent accounts explaining the EU’s role as a global actor are known as Normative Power Europe (NPE) and Civilian Power Europe (CPE). These accounts, introduced by Ian Manners and François Duchêne respectively, are marked by at least one common flaw – they present the EU as a type of exceptional actor, a ‘civilising power’ and value promoter.

It is doubtful to what extent the EU acts in a normative way: the normative dimension of the EU global actorness should not be disclaimed but it is unlikely that the EU has an exceptional normative role in international sphere, as some kind of ‘force for good’.

The ability to spread norms is not a phenomenon unique to the EU – for example, the United States (US) foreign policy has been usually marked by ‘strong normative under-, if not overtones’ and even the Soviet Union sought to adopt a certain kind of ‘normative’ or ‘civilizing’ role.

Interestingly enough, the US international actorness is often presented at odds with normative EU power. However, the US foreign policy has clearly been marked by normative aspects, especially during the first part of the twentieth century when Woodrow Wilson’s announced his Fourteen Points and ‘institutions that would civilise international politics’ were created.

Even events such as the invasion of Iraq, led by hawkish foreign policy, should not be interpreted as merely a manifestation of hard power politics. US actions were also driven by a Wilsonian view of liberal democracy. Wilson’s original objective was similar to the one of the EU today: strengthen peace in the world by incentivising the creation of ‘binding normative commitments’ among countries. However, over time the importance of US military means has overshadowed its normative power, hence it is less surprising that the US image as a norm promoter tends to be met with scepticism.

The US experience is a useful lesson for the EU because it reveals that attempts to justify external action by referring to norms ‘often lead to suspicions of hypocrisy and hidden agendas’. Returning to the example of Iraq invasion: the official rhetoric attempted to justify the US actions as a fight against human rights violations of the Saddam Hussein’s regime. However, ‘many countries, especially non-democratic Arab countries’ perceived the US normative rhetoric as a veil for its self-interested intentions.

The US experience clearly exposes the consequences of promotion of non-reflective and self-gratifying normative image in the international arena.

Although military methods of norm spreading took over in the case of the US, it does not guarantee that the EU’s external relations, which are civilian in nature, protects them from becoming a ‘self-righteous [and] messianistic project’. Therefore, it is argued by scholars Thomas Diez and Sonia Lucarelli that a significant amount of self-reflectivity is needed in EU actorness studies, while paying attention towards perceptions of ‘others’.

The investigation of the EU actorness reveals that norm promotion tools can sometimes be utilised for the EU’s strategic interests. This revelation does not necessarily deny any normative role of the EU, but it should be kept in mind that the organization is not blind to its own needs.

This issue is clear when external perceptions of the EU’s global action are analysed, which reveal that attempts to portray the EU as a type of different normative force are sometimes seen as hypocritical (especially in the Southern countries), thus actually harming the image of the EU, instead of promoting it.

Most of the criticisms towards the EU, coming from the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP), are directed towards inconsistencies between development aid, human rights and trade policies.

The bargaining style of the EU’s elites is often perceived as patronising, arrogant and inconsiderate of ACP concerns, thus being more reminiscent of attitudes of colonial patron rather than a normative actor. EPAs (Economic Partnership Agreements) are often blamed by African elites for ignoring Africa’s heterogeneity because of their ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach and efforts to impose the EU’s own model of integration externally. Investigation of EPAs negotiations reveals that critical attitudes regarding the EU’s domineering bargaining style have strong substance.

For example, the EU insisted that EPAs were to be signed with seven regions within the ACP and not with the group as a whole, reducing its negotiating power, since regional groups are smaller and thus it was harder for them to push for agreements favouring developing countries. Moreover, EPAs are based on WTO rules regarding trade ‘reciprocity’ which disadvantages poorer economies (such as the ACP block) because their goods and services cannot compete with the EU’s. In addition, a neoliberal economic model is assumed to be the ‘aspiration’ for the ACP countries without more profound discussion about possible alternatives.

In brief, the EU only vaguely follows its normative rhetoric in its action towards African countries. More often, it adopts harsh bargaining techniques of ‘coercion and manipulation’.

Accounts on the EU actorness contributing to the NPE/CPE discourse often lack careful investigations of the measures used by the EU to spread its norms – sometimes criticised for their imperialist nature. Jan Zielonka compares the EU to an empire because of its aim to ‘assert political and economic control over various peripheral actors through … economic and political domination’.

However, the EU is a different type of empire than the contemporary US or nineteenth-century Britain. Zielonka claims that because of the ‘polycentric’ governance, indefinite borders and ‘soft forms of external power projection’ which resemble the world system in the Middle Ages before the emergence of capitalism and nation states, the EU could be understood as a ‘neo-medieval empire’.

Instead of asserting its power through military instruments, which conventionally could be expected from an imperial power, the EU uses bureaucratic and economic means while also claiming that its norms and policies are ‘right’. Thus, the EU is able to legitimise the use of ‘sanctions, bribes and even coercion’ while achieving its own goals.

Claiming that the EU’s integration model is universal and pushing other actors to accept its norms ‘by applying economic incentives and punishments’ (for example, the EU included conditions regarding democracy into trade agreements with Latin American and North African countries) indeed manifest patronising under-tones.

To sum up, even though the EU can be seen acting as a normative actor in some areas (e.g. the famous Manners example of the EU’s endeavour of international death penalty abolition), the NPE/CPE discourses should be investigated more attentively. A wide range of the EU’s policies towards developing countries and their negotiating processes must be taken into account. Furthermore, the image of the EU as a ‘force for good’ is too idealistic and self-righteous, because the EU also follows its own interests in policy areas.

Please note that this article represents the views of the author(s) and not those of the UACES Graduate Forum, UACES or JCER.

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Aiste Pagirenaite is a Master’s graduate in International Politics and Europe at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. She previously studied Journalism and European Politics at Vilnius University, Lithuania, and Danish School of Media and Journalism, Denmark, where she analysed the EU’s relations with the Visegrád countries. Her master’s dissertation analyses the relationship between EU development policy and issues of global distributive justice while in general her research focuses on European Studies and questions of social equality.

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An opinion by Jolyon Gumbrell

Elections for the European Parliament will take place from the 23rd to 26th May 2019. If the UK leaves the European Union on 29th March 2019 – then the British electorate will not have the chance to vote in the European elections of that year or ever again, and therefore forgo the right to send their elected representatives to the European Parliament. It is therefore quite urgent that Article 50 is rescinded in order to allow the British people the right to participate in European democracy. A true peoples vote would be to allow the British people to vote in the European elections of 2019.

I signed the e-petition to “rescind Art. 50 if Vote Leave has broken Electoral Laws regarding 2016 referendum”, which was later debated by the House of Commons on 10th September 2018, as the petition had gathered almost 200,000 signatures. I do not believe there has to be a second referendum to rescind Article 50 in order for the UK to remain in the EU. It has already been proven that the referendum was a fraud and the public were lied to by both the Vote Leave and Leave.EU compaigns. There are also may questions of the source of the multi-million pound donation made by Arron Banks the founder of Leave.EU, and the contacts he had with the Russian embassy in London in the run up to the 2016 referendum. The result of the 2016 referendum should be proclaimed null and void on grounds of national security, because of Russian government interference in the referendum campaign.

The public were not given the correct information to make an informed choice, and were not told that they would personally be stripped of their EU citizenship – as they would no longer be citizens of an EU member state. They were also not told they would lose many of the rights and freedoms which are offered to citizens across Europe, as well as losing the freedom to travel, study, and work in another EU country without visa restrictions. My view of the referendum is that some dodgy salesmen peddled a dodgy product called Brexit to an unsuspecting British public in 2016.

The Labour Party does not need to go along with this Brexit scam, and I was unhappy that Jeremy Corbyn pushed his party to vote with the government to trigger Article 50 last year, when the public should have been told the uncomfortable truth about the terrible consequences of Brexit.

Many people believe that the UK can remain in the European Single Market and the Customs Union after the UK has left the EU. However this would still be bad for the country as the UK would no longer have representation in the European Parliament, the European Council, or the Council of the European Union. I believe the only option for the UK is to retain its full membership of the European Union or face economic decline and isolation. We also need to remember that the 27 other members of the EU may not wish the UK to cherry pick which parts of the EU it wants to remain in, as that would endanger the integrity of Europe.

The only safe deal is for the UK to remain a full member of the EU along with all of the rights and obligations which that involves. The peoples vote would then be for British citizens to elect their representatives for the European Parliament in May 2019, which would not be the case if the UK leaves the EU in March 2019.

Sources

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-09-10/debates/765648D6-5872-49B6-AA13-4E9AC0DA923C/VoteLeaveCampaignElectoralLaw

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/publications/Democracy_in_the_Crosshairs_.pdf

©Jolyon Gumbrell 2018

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It’s crunch time in Art.50. Or, at least, a crunch time.

Rather than try to follow the individual twists and turns, many of which aren’t in the public gaze just yet, I’d like to step back and consider an environmental factor to these negotiations, namely who carries the cost.

As I’ve discussed before, Brexit is unusual for a negotiation in that it is not a positive-sum, but a negative-sum, exercise: there are costs to be apportioned, on both sides.

(In correspondence about that post, Michael Lipton (emeritus of Sussex) rightly pointed out this actually makes it an “all-round negative game”).

As a result, each side loses from playing.

Quite aside from the question of “why then play?”, the main issue is thus one who carries what cost, and what will they do when they find out about it?

And that’s why this matters now, since assorted pigeons are coming home to roost, pennies are dropping and any other metaphor you care to use is occurring, as the potential points of compromise come into focus.

But one thing I’ve not really done here yet is set out the potential set of losers and their veto powers, i.e. what they can do to slow or block decisions being made against them.

So let’s have a try.

The UK

We can start by looking at those who will be carrying costs, but who have no immediate power over the negotiations, because they have no formal role. That includes the general public, economic operators and civil society in general. Not everyone loses in this, as the reconfiguration of economic and social relations with the EU will allow some to thrive: however, globally-speaking, they will be outweighed by those who have to soak up transitional costs and opportunity costs on future behaviour.

For those who do have a formal role, there is a distinction between those who have a simple veto role – to just block – and those who can get ideas taken up. Of course, the former should derive some of the latter’s powers from their veto-player role, but I’d argue that is limited by the practice of the process.

To illustrate, let’s think about the parties in the Commons other than the Conservatives.

They can use their votes on the Bill to implement the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) to block its progress. However, both the government and the EU say that amendment of the WA can’t happen, because no re-negotiation is acceptable to the EU. This means the Bill is largely a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.

It’s clear that part of Theresa May’s strategy to make sure that this means those parties (and her own) are faced with a choice of the deal she brings back or leaving with no-deal. As much as parties might not like the deal, if the only alternative is no-deal, then the calculation is that bad is better than worse, so one buys into it.

For the DUP, there’s the added frisson of whether breaking the confidence and supply agreement is worth voting against a deal that might then get approved in any case.

Of course, Parliament could decide to go down the second referendum route, but this does not – in of itself – change the shape of the WA, except possibly re-opening the revocation pathway. But it also opens right up the dangers of a public voting to leave with no-deal, at a time when no party is looking particularly competent on matters Brexit.

Which brings us to the Tories. individual MPs can vote against the WA, but again with the danger of producing a motion of no-confidence that could take Parliament into a snap general election, where May might not look like the same kind of credible leader they had in 2017 [sic].

Alternatively, they could push for a leadership contest, but with no certainty about whether they could remove May, or replace her with someone more amenable to their objectives.

As a result, much of the action in the party seems to have been to let May get on with crafting a deal, while simultaneously getting arguments in early about why they could change course after 29 March, when they move to replace her: whoever’s in charge has poor choices to make, so let May make them, then blame her further down the line.

This also seems to apply to Cabinet, given May’s tight control of the negotiations (via Olly Robbins) and her rhetorical steadyfastness in defending ‘Chequers’: there seems to be enough division among Ministers to make a December 1990 move against the PM unlikely.

The EU

Things are a bit simpler on the EU side, in part because the costs look more manageable (especially compared to the UK’s): in all the viable outcomes, EU costs are markedly outweighed by those to be borne by the UK.

In attention, the most crucial concentrations of costs have become key parts of the EU’s mandate. Ireland is central in this, with the backstop intended to protect against worst-case scenarios.

Of course, what’s not clear is whether the Joint Report commitments given by the UK could still be made to apply in the event of no-deal: this is, at best, debatable. Hence the relatively advanced state of no-deal contingency planning in Ireland.

More protected is the protection of the integrity of the single market within the EU, which continues to be challenged within and without.

There’s also the ring-fencing of Article 50 from the rest of the negotiations that the EU and UK will have on their future relationship. By demanding resolution of the end of membership issues, the EU has hoped to increase its leverage and ensure that the future isn’t too entangled in the past. However, once again, it’s not clear if that will work, especially the likely difficulties of transition.

All this comes before we even get to the outlines of any WA deal. That’s going to set up a path to a reduction in market access and alignment with the UK, plus potential knock-on effects in non-economic domains of policy. Plus there’s the wider reputational cost of losing a key member state.

The danger still remains that if Brexit is just treated as ‘oh, those Brits’ then the EU will miss how it is also a reflection on the state of European governance and a call for further action to address political and social disconnection and discontent.

To pull this together, no-one really comes out of this looking better than before. The question is whether that’s enough to push local or general status quos into question, in which case we’ll be seeing the effects of Brexit reach very much further than they already have.

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Britain’s vote to leave the EU has led to a flood of books, articles, blog posts, and more than enough tweets. I know because I’ve added my own share. It includes my new textbook, Understanding Brexit: A Concise Introduction. Concise is 75,000 words and whether anyone can fully understand Brexit is a moot point. Brexit is the dominant issue in UK politics because so much is at stake. But are we – academics, writers, Leavers, Remainers, journalists, politicians, officials, businesspeople – talking and writing about it in ways that make sense? I’m reminded of how before the EU referendum there was discussion of, to borrow from the report from British Future, ‘How (not) to talk about Europe.’ It’s time we discussed ‘How (not) to talk about Brexit.’ As a start, I would like to suggest seven rules.

Rule 1: Be more specific about what it is you’re referring to when you say ‘Brexit’. 
Academics love to define things, except, it seems, when it comes to large all-encompassing terms, which is what ‘Brexit’ has become. It’s increasingly as useless as ‘globalisation,’ ‘neoliberalism,’ or ‘Europeanisation.’ Brexit can be used to summarise a series of political processes unfolding at various levels and timeframes, but we would benefit from examining and naming them more specifically. Failure to do so risks turning ‘Brexit’ into a shorthand for most of British politics.

Rule 2: Don’t let talking about Brexit drown out the rest of British politics.
Given how much it touches on, studying Brexit can be the best way to understand the contemporary UK. To a point, that is. Brexit is not British politics, only a part of it. It has, however, taken up so much of the bandwidth of British politics that one would be forgiven for thinking that it is British politics. That does a disservice to the many challenges and debates facing the UK that are largely independent of Brexit and always have been. Of course, Brexit will have an effect on so much of life in the UK, but the UK already has the powers to change such absurdities as an unelected House of Lords, the UK’s stark and growing levels of inequality, poor infrastructure spending, or the need for sustainable military capabilities. Obsessing about Brexit can be a distraction from these and other issues.

Rule 3: You cannot be neutral. Whatever you say will be part of the fight to define the narrative of Brexit. 
The fight to define the narrative of Brexit, i.e. what it was the British people meant when 52% of them who voted did so for Leave, has, whether you like it or not, been the central struggle of British politics since the referendum. Onto it have been hooked a whole host of issues ranging from choices about the UK’s political economy through to the UK’s standing in the world. This fight won’t end soon. Not only because withdrawing from the EU is not a short-term process, but because Brexit is about what sort of country the UK wants to be. This doesn’t mean everything you say has to be driven by politics. There exists a wealth of data, information and analysis which goes beyond the partisan bickering found in most outlets where the focus can be on the internal bickering of the Conservative and Labour parties. Whether it’s the plethora of EU reports on Brexit or UK parliamentary reports (never overlook the evidence sections), a lot of issues have been covered by high quality analysis that can, if we use it, create a better informed and high-quality fight.

Rule 4: Don’t assume the British people or elite understand the UK state and politics. 
In the early stages of drafting Understanding Brexit my publisher warned me not to take for granted a general reader’s knowledge of the topic. I sympathised from having taught political science for over a decade. Knowing how few people understand the EU, I included a section on the EU’s evolution, institutions and key policies. In doing so I overlooked that a lot of people in Britain, including all the way up to Ministers of the Crown, have rarely thought about or been taught about the UK state, its evolution and how it operates. If Brexit is about what type of country Britain wants to be, then that in part stems from varying levels of knowledge and satisfaction at its current setup. I’ve often found that explaining Brexit involves helping fellow Britons understand our country.

Rule 5: Recognise that the British (and you) are on a steep learning curve about the UK, the EU, and the wider modern world (especially trade).
It follows from Rule 5 that when talking about Brexit you need to take into account that many in Britain are being presented with a series of questions and debates about the country’s identity, society, political economy, trade, security, international position, constitution, legal system, sovereignty, unity, party politics and the attitudes and values that define it. Those debates long predate the vote, but the referendum and result not only brought them together but poured fresh fuel into each. And this is before we turn to the need to learn about such matters as free trade deals, tariffs, non-tariff barriers, regulatory convergence, WTO schedules and so forth. Whether it’s the British public, ministers, officials, journalists or experts, we have all been put on a steep learning curve. The process involves lots of uncomfortable questions and silences for everyone including you.

Rule 6: Remember that Brexit can bore people. A lot. 
It might have come to dominate British politics, but that does not mean Brexit excites people. Pollsters have long pointed out that the issue of Europe has rarely excited the British people. The topic only excites when it connects to issues that people do care about: immigration, the economy, housing, English identity, Scottish independence, or the NHS. For those ‘Brexhausted’ there is no sign of a let-up. The outpouring of books, articles, chapters, reports, media articles, TV programmes, conferences, assemblies, workshops, speeches, art work, plays, even poems, looks set to continue. In part this is because so much remains to be explored and discussed, not least some big questions about the UK itself. Hopes the referendum would be cathartic, settle Britain’s ‘European question’, or be a great exercise in democratic debate have been dashed by a debate and result that has instead added to existing divisions, created more questions than answers, and left Britain with a debate that often distracts from the day to day needs of the country.

Rule 7: Don’t patronise, belittle or ignore the British people. 
All sides have been doing this, including Leave. Too often I have heard Remain supporters belittle the British people for the choice made with a slim majority. That result has left some on the Remain side too willing to apologise for Britain and dismiss it as a country doomed to oblivion. It has added to a certain sense of decline and guilt about Britain’s past that has long overhung and hamstrung British pro-Europeanism. Commentators elsewhere in the EU have not helped. The UK is not the aberration some elsewhere in the EU want it to be. British Leave voters are not all peculiar, racist hangovers of Britain’s imperial past. They can and do, to a certain extent, mirror feelings found across Europe. The vote was a vivid reminder that nation states and nationalism still matter. Leave campaigners and those who have rushed to study Leave have also failed, and sometimes failed miserably to not patronise the British people.

Despite protestations to the contrary, it’s clear to all but the most ardent Leave voters that the process of withdrawal has not been going to any Leave plan because, of course, there was no plan. The rush to celebrate, sympathise with, or study the 52% who voted Leave has meant largely ignoring or taking for granted the voice and concerns of the 48% who voted Remain. That explains why Theresa May, Leave campaigners and many analysts blinded by a one-sided focus on Leave voters were shocked when in the 2017 General Election it was the votes of angry Remain voters that played a crucial part in unexpectedly depriving the Conservatives of their parliamentary majority.

This post first appeared on the Clingendael Spectator, the magazine of the Clingendael Institute.

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I’ll be frank with you: I’ve never done a full party conference. Some fringe activities, yes, but not the whole shebang. Indeed, the nearest I’ve got is the pile of DVDs of an early 2000s UKIP conference, back when I worked more on euroscepticism (and when UKIP sold DVDs of their conference).

This is all a prelude to saying that I also don’t think that party conferences matter as much as some say.

In media terms, they are convenient staging posts in the year, with all the merits of having the key players in one place for long enough that they might let their hair down a bit. In political terms, the gathering also allows for plotting and planning.

But for European policy, conference is almost never the place to look. None of the major interventions in either Brexit or the pre-Cameroonian period came from conference, but from stand-alone speeches and events.

That’s largely because both Conservatives and Labour are split, have been split and (probably) will continue to be split on matters European. And basic party management says you don’t wash your dirty laundry when everyone’s watching.

I write this despite having marked Birmingham as one of the key staging posts to an Article 50 deal (along with Salzburg). On reflection, that was because I thought by Birmingham, Tory Chequers-rebels would have had to have made their move, rather than at the conference proper.

That they didn’t – possibly couldn’t – reflects my long-held view that May is the convenient scapegoat, carrying the UK out next March with whatever’s needed to avoid immediate disaster, only to be cast aside by critics who will point to their grumblings now as evidence of “why this was never the right way to go about it.” Why own the problem when someone else is there to carry the can for you?

It also underlines how wedded to Chequers May has become. Ironically, the range of criticism seems to have made it easier for her to bluster through her conference speech, redirecting fire at second-referendumers and connecting Brexit to a domestic project. Conference season appears to have had no appreciable impact on her policy.

This is Brussels calling

But this is not to say that policy isn’t changing.

The coming week is going to see a lot of work going into Article 50 negotiations, building up to next Wednesday’s release of a draft Political Declaration by the EU.

That work will entail movement by both sides, but also some careful framing of what is happening.

Importantly, the Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration aren’t going to embody ‘Chequers’, in the sense that the focus of the former is on the ending of the UK’s EU membership and the focus of the latter is a set of principles guiding the negotiations for a future relationship. Those principles do not necessarily – maybe even necessarily cannot – map out the specific shape of that relationship, given the incompleteness of both sides’ positions.

Thus the Article 50 ‘deal’ potentially could be sold not as ‘Chequers’, but as a stepping stone to what comes next. For all those Tory rebels and opposition parties planning to ‘vote against Chequers‘, this might come either as a nasty surprise or as a means to get themselves out of a hole (given that there’s little enthusiasm for a no-deal alternative).

With rumours of new options on the Irish dimension flying about, it is going to be in Brussels that this next stage of Brexit is going to be determined, rather than Birmingham (or even London).

This was both inevitable and necessary.

Brexit was never just about the UK, but also about the UK’s relationship with the EU. To pretend that as long as the British had worked out what they wanted, that was that, was always a foolish enterprise. Instead, it needs the involvement of both the UK and EU in finding mutually-acceptable solutions.

If that much is now better recognised by British politicians and commentators as a result of the past and coming weeks, then we should count that as an advance in our public understanding of how the EU (and Brexit) works.

Perhaps also it will underline how the contingent issue of Brexit (and it’s a huge contingency) sits within the bigger picture of the UK’s place in the world.

I’ll fall back on that trope of self-help instagram posts – “no man is an island entire of itself” – with its message that connections and context are indispensable.

And then I’ll remind you that this particular stanza finishes with the equally famous line about who the bell is tolling.

 

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Apart from protection from hostile forces, security also refers to a wide range of other issues, such as the absence of harm, the presence of an essential good, quality or conditions in which equitable and sustainable relationships can develop within political systems, institutions and states.

 

There are various hazards, faced by the Ukrainian state in the region of Transcarpathia (Zakarpattya), rich in cultures, ethnicities, political preferences and bordering Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. The challenges of insuring constitutional order, prevention of separatism by co-opting and locking-in, surprisingly, could be done by promotion of neopatrimonial ties, clientalism, patronage and policies of controlled corruption and other informal mechanisms.

 

In the December 1991 referendum 78% of the region´s voters approved a proposal for Transcarpathian autonomy. Rather than employing force, the Ukrainian state exerted other kinds of control on local officials. Regional movements were defused through co-opting and brokeraging mechanisms, in which local politicians were included into the political networks with the center, whereby the voices demanding autonomy were stifled.

 

Dissatisfaction and high aspirations for separate identity recognition and redistribution of resources and power present obstacles for stability internationally and successful nation-building/consolidation domestically. Various political groups thus tend to vigorously compete for their right to influence the level of societal (in)security. Since 1991 Ukraine demonstrated an easily identifiable polarization along regional and cultural lines. These cleavages attained political dimension through regionally based political parties. This polarization often led the country to the brink of political confrontation. An examination of this regional case shows the importance of the actual control means in the ability to defuse separatist movements.

 

Regionalism is the constant factor in Ukrainian political life, and is likely to remain so in the foreseeable future. The country’s principal regional cleavages are result of a historically separate political development under heavy foreign domination. In this context, unconstitutional establishment of autonomy structures may inflame tensions and raise various hazards, as groups may mobilize different ethnicities around the issue. Furthermore, once an autonomous structure has been established, it can easily serve as an institutional foundation for separatist movements and inflate claims. Region´s elites advancing their own political careers may use autonomy as a vehicle for the mobilization of ethnicity, thus producing violent conflict.

 

Authoritarian governments often view autonomy claims as a zero-sum game, responding harshly and provoking further resistance. Violent conflict may also be more likely under authoritarian regimes because minority groups often fear that extreme action will be the only way to produce a response from such a government. More democratic regimes, however, are more likely to deal with demands more pragmatically, with a strategy resulting in non-violent compromise. In the state hierarchy, based on the Weberian legacy, the center is stronger than the periphery and commands the local agents, who entertain control on the exercise of power in the region. The exceptions to this model may include the situation, where local actors hold stronger de facto control, often by informal means.

 

Ukraine´ state leadership successfully exercised informal mechanisms of control in relation to the periphery. It allowed and even encouraged corruption by local elites. But the state also collected information on illicit activities of local elites and carefully stored it. When directives from the center were given to local elites for implementation, the locals had nothing but to comply in order to avoid criminal prosecution.  Another means of control was the promise of jobs and positions to individuals who support central policies of elites. These types of patronage control are quite effective and inexpensive, compared to direct coercion.

 

Hub-and-spoke pattern of a network with little connection between subunits is a more effective way of control, compared with other. This type of structure balanced the power in favour of the center, as regional actors had to go through the center in order to communicate with each other, and “blackmail state” could effectively forbid collusion between regional actors.

 

The elite that emerged in independent Ukraine came out of the old Soviet-era nomenklatura bred in a neo-patrimonial culture. Thus in Ukraine emerged the system of party of power, characterised by dependence on state, rather formal ideology, barely realized in practice, and strong linkage to specific interest groups, who increasingly took control of political power. The parties were not meant to become autonomous political forces in their own right, but were utilised by the center. They also served the regime in upholding a network of patronage relationships with the major socio-political, economic and administrative actors.  At the same time Ukraine has not managed to achieve a level of national consolidation where regional and national identities could be complementary rather than competitive.

Alexander Svetlov

 

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Publication resulting from the UACES Graduate Forum Conference 2018

Perceptions of vulnerability within small states can lead to stronger national identity, but also to affiliations with bigger organisation, such as the EU, which grant external shelter. Using Scotland as an example, Alastair Mackie asks whether these dynamics can impact European identity among citizens of small states.

Scottish parliament building at Holyrood, Edinburgh © TheStockCube/AdobeStock

‘Chèrs collègues, do not let Scotland down!’ Scottish MEP and member of the Scottish National Party Alyn Smith received a standing ovation for his speech in the European Parliament on the 28th of June 2016.

He was eager to point out that 62% of Scottish voters had chosen to remain in the European Union. Smith also mentioned that he considers himself to be both Scottish and European. The Brexit vote marked the beginning of a new argument being used by those seeking Scottish independence: that Scotland will be taken out of the EU against its will.

Two years earlier, in the run-up to the referendum on Scottish independence, continued EU membership was still used as an argument against independence. Clearly, the role of the EU within the debate has changed.

Although the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence resulted in a strong wish to remain in the United Kingdom, a large number of people in Scotland continue to support independence and hope for a second referendum. In this second independence referendum campaign, Brexit and the European Union would inevitably feature heavily.

I am interested in the role of European identity in this debate. How have the independence and EU membership referendums influenced the perception of European identity in Scotland? Will Europe’s role in the formation of local identity change?

In January 2018, I started a PhD project which is to be an ethnological study on small state perception of European identity. Here, I present the framework I will use for my study.

An independent Scotland would be a relatively small state in Europe, and as other small states, it would have to work around the consequences of its size. It has been argued that small states are more vulnerable than larger states due to their limited (natural, human, military, etc.) resources. Such states therefore need to find strategies to counteract this vulnerability. There are two common strategies: (1) the building of an internal buffer by focussing the interests of the state and remaining flexible; and (2) by taking external shelter with a larger state or international organisation, such as the European Union.

Small state studies have predominantly focussed on these political and economic consequences of state’s size, not as much has been done on how size influences identity within the state. It has been argued that a perception of vulnerability within small states might contribute to a stronger sense of national identity. If we follow that argument, a vulnerable small state with a strong national identity should seek political and/or economic shelter by joining the European Union. However, it is unclear what the impact of such perceived vulnerability is on the formation and perception of European identity within small states.

Identity can be understood as being created by the stories we tell ourselves and others. These stories form the boundaries that define us and our communities (the Self), and those outside them (the Other). European identity, like other collective identities, can be understood as a shared narrative that controls the boundaries of a network of actors, as argued by Klaus Eder. Different understandings of European identity are based on differences in how this narrative is constructed in relation to Europe. By researching narrative networks, we can learn the role of Europe in people’s identity construction and how it might relate to perceptions of size and vulnerability. To conduct such a study, a bottom-up, ethnological approach is necessary, which focusses on people’s personal narratives of Europe.

In his speech, Alyn Smith emphasized progressive values shared by Scotland and Europe: ‘I want my country to be internationalist, cooperative, ecological, fair, European.’ By doing so, Smith used Scotland’s ‘Europeanness’ to make a clear distinction between it and the majority of the UK which voted for Brexit. In other words, his European identity was supporting his vision for an independent Scotland. It will be interesting to see whether this attitude is widespread among Scots.

Scotland is of course not a state, even though it already functions as one because of the devolved status of its parliament. But the possibility of it becoming one while its relationship with the EU is being questioned at the same time has put into focus the questions I would like to research: (1) what role does Europe play in the identity formation of small state’s citizens, (2) how do perceived size and vulnerability influence the perception of Europe and (3) how is the perception of Europe used to counteract the perceived vulnerability of the state’s citizens?

These research questions will form the basis of ethnographic fieldwork I will be undertaking during 2019. By means of participant-observation and ethnographic interviews in a variety of communities around Scotland, I aim to learn about how people’s narratives of Europe are used in connection to their local narratives.

Although I will start by focussing on Scotland, the findings of the research may be applied to other small European states at a later stage. The results of the project will offer a new perspective on how Europe is understood in small states.

Please note that this article represents the views of the author(s) and not those of the UACES Graduate Forum, UACES or JCER.

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Alastair Mackie is a PhD candidate at Heriot-Watt University investigating how European identity is perceived in small states, with a particular focus on Scotland.

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In her new book, based on long-standing research on the politics of nuclear energy in the European Union, Pam Barnes, associate researcher at the EU-Asia Institute (ESSCA School of Management) retraces how public perceptions and political discourses on nuclear power have evolved since the signing of the EURATOM treaty in 1957.

Researching developments in EU environmental and energy policies from the early 2000s I became increasingly aware that the EU’s evolving energy and climate strategy included the use of nuclear energy. But I was confronted by a riddle. How could something that seemed to have so much early promise have created so many controversies? Indeed the use of nuclear fission technology to generate electricity in the European Union is arguably the most controversial of all the available electricity generating technologies: nuclear energy deeply divides public opinion both within and between the EU’s member states.

In the early 2000s civil use of nuclear as an energy resource had been portrayed by the European Commission as ‘a less than perfect energy option…’ linked as it was to military use of the technology. At that time, levels of support for the sector still suffered from the widespread devastation caused by the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. As the 2000s advanced, however, a number of factors combined to lend a new credibility to nuclear energy.

I began to question why this change had taken place and what the implications of the change might mean for the future of the nuclear energy sector in the European Union. Today, the peak periods of reactor development in the EU European states have clearly ended but this does not mean the demise of nuclear energy in the EU. As a consequence, the structures that have been developed within the EU for safety and research cooperation and collaboration, supported by the often over-looked 1957 European Atomic Energy Community Treaty [Euratom], continue to have value and must be maintained.

The economic, political and social environments for the nuclear sector in the EU are very different in the twenty-first century from those of the mid twentieth century when European governments began to support the use of the technology to generate electricity. There has been no significant large-scale reactor building programme since the 1990s in the EU, with many currently operating reactors being at risk of closure before the end of their operating licenses. At the end of 2017 only 4 reactors were under construction in EU countries with major controversies surrounding a small number of planned developments.

Some EU states evidence a long standing and deeply held opposition to the use of the technology [Austria, Denmark]. Germany’s energy transition programme the ‘Energiewende’ is based on twin objectives – to move from fossil fuels to a largely carbon free sector and at the same time to phase out nuclear generation of electricity by 2022. Even in France, second only to the US as a producer and user of nuclear energy globally, a decision was taken in 2015 to cut back on the use of the technology from 75% of electricity generated to 50% by 2025, although more recent debates in the French government suggest the target year will rather be 2035.

This does not however signal the end of use of nuclear technology to generate electricity in the EU. The process of enlargement from 2004 to 2013 increased the number of EU member states where nuclear energy was generated and used. Enlargement of the EU also increased the challenges of EU energy dependency and the search for indigenous energy resources. Nuclear energy relies on small amounts of imported uranium and with the potential for re-processing nuclear energy could arguably be included as an indigenous resource. As such, nuclear energy has a role to play in providing energy security at a time of high import dependency.

But the most important factor gathering support for continued use of the technology has been the questionable identification of nuclear energy as a sustainable, low carbon, and thus desirable, energy resource in the transition to a low carbon economy in Europe.

Despite spectacular growth in the use of renewable technologies, green technologies are portrayed as incapable of reducing fossil fuel consumption in European countries in the short to medium term. Indeed in most policy scenarios the search for an environmentally and economically sustainable energy resource to replace fossil fuels includes consideration of nuclear generation of electricity.

The longer-term future for nuclear energy in the EU appears to be as a resource in an increasingly diversified energy mix as more use of renewable technologies is made. The outcome may bring a new dimension to the European nuclear sector with a focus on more limited electricity generation but with increased levels of employment in a range of varied technology developments associated with small modular reactors, fusion technology and the growth of de-commissioning and waste management programmes and facilities.

In any event using nuclear technology will be reliant on a combination of consensus in the political discourse and acceptance in the public discourse. It depends on the credibility of emerging storylines in the narrative that portray nuclear energy as capable of making a significant contribution to curbing greenhouse gas emissions and providing energy security, both of which are contested arguments. Public attitudes to the use of nuclear technology remain divided but re-framing the discourse in terms of the threat from climate change has brought with it an element of acceptance and some of those previously vehemently opposed to nuclear energy are ‘thinking again’. The discourse presents a ‘win-win’ situation from using nuclear electricity as it is depicted as a significant provider of volume base-load energy that limits greenhouse gas emissions and enables access to electricity at a stable price. But this political discourse would appear to have been captured by a narrative that represents ‘cynical idealism’ [global warming and environmental protection need the use of nuclear technology, irrespective of economic costs and public concerns] and pragmatic acceptance [energy demands may only be met by the use of nuclear technology], rather than unconditional and enthusiastic public support.

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It’s not because the messenger is particularly unpleasant that the message is necessarily wrong. And its not because many of his messages are plain lies, narcissistic bragging or whining paranoia that each and every message is automatically beside the point.

This may be, in an admittedly crude nutshell, one of the main lessons for Europeans in its dealing with Donald Trump. Almost two years into the Trump presidency, the research seminar on the current state of transatlantic relations held on 21 September at the Paris campus of ESSCA School of Management (and which I had the pleasure to attend) was an excellent opportunity to bring together again some of the authors of the excellent special issue on transatlantic relations put together by Anna Dimitrova in spring 2017 for L’Europe en formation, the bilingual quarterly on European Integration and Federalism studies.

Kristian Nielsen

As Kristian L. Nielsen from Copenhagen Business School rightly reminded the audience, ‘Trump is a fact of life’ and Europeans in general (and European political leaders in particular) would be well advised to ‘keep their emotions’. In the field of security and defence policy, for instance, it was under Barack Obama’s presidency that European NATO members committed to reach the 2% of GDP threshold in defence spending. Trump may be wrong in many details about the functioning (and actually the purpose of NATO), but he definitely ‘has a point’ in reminding Europeans that they are currently not assuming their responsibilities.

And fact-checking Jean-Claude Juncker’s argument according to which EU member-states are so much more generous when one includes development and humanitarian aid in the equation reveals the embarrassing truth that the figures don’t quite add up in his sense.

As for Germany – who is certainly not short on money – Angela Merkel’s growing awareness that ‘the times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over’ and that ‘Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands’ has so far not been followed by really significant measures to upgrade the Bundeswehr, whose equipment is reportedly in a pitiful state. For Kristian Nielsen, blaming the traditionally pacifist German public opinion or a lack of absorption capacity for inactivity in this field boils down to an increasingly objectionable pretext for not being up to one’s own commitments.

Thomas Hoerber agreed. As he pointed out in his paper, ‘the peace dividend of the 1990’s is no longer there, and the world has become a more dangerous place.’ Trump-style populism, with its high dose of anti-intellectualism, and his utter lack of reliability, does not contribute to making it safer again. Trust, once lost, is not so easy to obtain again. I guess that much will depend on how the US institutions and political class will digest the Trump years (whenever these will be over…).

In the meantime, as Thomas recalled, history shows that the Trump administration’s translation in financial terms of ‘the return of realism in international politics’ – the permanent request for a ‘Return-on-Investment’ – is nothing essentially new: ‘John Foster Dulles, in the 1950s, was even more serious on this point’. What strikes Thomas as new, however, is the rather permanent rhetoric battle against European integration. A very worrying trend indeed – who needs an enemy when you have a best friend like this?

Anna Dimitrova

Worrying, but explicable. According to Anna Dimitrova’s meticulous analysis of the four major facets of American foreign policy strategy, Trump’s ‘MAGA’ mantra is not just a baseball cap slogan, but can be understood as a ‘resurgence of Jacksonianism’, a 21st-century update of the seventh president of the United States. Trump’s mix of ‘neo-isolationism-sovereignism-unilateralism-protectionism’ is not all of his own making but strikes a chord in US foreign policy history.

What did I take home from this thought-provoking exchange?

Mainly that now is a moment to keep calm. But also one to worry on. Focusing on transatlantic relation, on how they are currently suffering under Trump and how their deterioration may actually provide a welcome push for Europeans to intensify their cooperation on security and defence issues, turns our eye away from the greatest damage that Trump may be causing in the long run: the harm he is doing, day after day, to democracy itself. By shredding truth to pieces and creating ‘alternative facts’, by turning other powers than the executive into ‘enemies of the people’, by polarising and radicalising a political debate that no longer deserves this name.

Transatlantic relations always had their ups and downs. In the long run, even major disagreements can be fixed, that’s what diplomacy is for. But these relations always have included various forms of cultural transfer, too. It’s in the spill-over of what is currently happening to liberal, pluralistic democracy in the United States that the real reason to worry lies.

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Poland and Hungary are the main members of the Visegrad group. They have common cultural and political interests and have shown similar standpoints on the EU’s migrant relocation scheme or the burden sharing policy, but they starkly differ on whether to do business with Russia or America. In fact last week we witnessed that Hungary is opting for Russia’s Putin, while America’s Trump was Poland’s choice in forming new economic and security alliances. Most crucially however both of these countries are facing the Article 7 procedure of the Treaty of the European Union.

Just to give a little bit of background to the most talked about Article 7 of the EU Treaty; it was introduced by the Amsterdam Treaty so to mitigate and prevent member states from backsliding on European values and the rule of law. It is activated against a member state, when it has been thought that there is “a clear risk” of an EU member state breaching the bloc’s core values: human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. It includes two mechanisms: preventive measures, if there is a clear risk of a breach of EU values; and sanctions, if such a breach has already occurred.

However activating the Article 7 is not the first option in the context of handling the misbehaving member states—there is the process of Rule of Law Framework of 2014. The European Commission adopted this process when it felt confronted with crisis events in some EU countries that revealed systemic threats to the rule of law. The objective of the Rule of Law is to prevent emerging threats to the rule of law to escalate to the point where the Commission has to trigger the mechanisms of Article 7.  This is done through dialogue which consists of three key stages: Commission assessment; Commission recommendation and monitoring of the EU country’s follow-up to the Commission’s recommendation. If no solution is found within the rule of law framework, Article 7 of the TEU is the last resort to resolve a crisis and to ensure the EU country complies with EU values.

In the case of Poland, initially the European Commission launched an inquiry under its new Rule of Framework into whether Poland’s government has breached the EU’s democratic standards. This was followed by a number of recommendations to the Polish government as to how they could improve the situation in Poland, as well as in the hope of forming a constructive dialogue with the Law and Justice Party (PiS) . However when its efforts fell on deaf ears, in December 2017 the Commission proposed to activate the Article 7 of the EU treaty against Poland and then in January 2018 Members of the European Parliament voted by a large majority in favor of urging the EU to put Poland on the path toward sanctions for breaching the bloc’s laws by passing constitutional reforms that undermine the independence of the judiciary. Whereas in the case of Hungary, most recently the Article 7 was launched against Hungary on 12th September 2018, when the European Parliament passed a motion, with 448 votes in favor and 197 against, declaring that Hungary is at risk of breaching the core values of the Union – judicial independence, freedom of expression, academic freedom, rights of minorities and others, in other words approving Sargetini’s report of April 2018.

So far Poland and Hungary have presented an uncompromising attitudes towards this process; in fact the PiS and the Hungarian Civic Alliance (Fidesz) continue to fiercely defend their controversial reforms or policy choices. This means that the EU is left with activating the subsequent stages of the Article 7. 

Ultimately what drastic action the Article 7 allows the EU to take is impose sanctions against Poland and Hungary, such as suspension of its voting rights in the European Council. This is however unlikely to happen since sanctions require a unanimous sign-off from EU governments. It is believed that both of these countries will support each other out by blocking the process. That said the Bulgarian government also expressed their support for Hungary if and when the process comes to that stage.

So what is the point then?

As seen from the above the processes of the both Rule of Law Framework and Article 7 are time consuming and involves meticulous work on the European Commission’s and the European Parliament’s part. However it does not look like they are making any impressions on the Polish and Hungarian governments, since they continue business as usual. Then one asks: what is the point of activating the Article 7 against Poland and Hungary if there is not going to be any consequences for their departure from the core values of the EU.

I believe these processes are successful about putting pressure on the member states like Poland and Hungary. Since these processes produce vast amount of expert knowledge and information about the details of what reforms and the policy the PiS and Fidesz are making, the general public, journalists, policy-analysts,non-governmental organisations and the governments of other member states and non member states do get informed about these countries and their standings in the EU. Having legal frictions with the European Commission and the European Parliament do not only damage these countries’ standing in the international relations, but it is also a cause of concern for the countries that the Polish and the Hungarian governments would want to do business with. Clearly the Polish and the Hungarian governments have not yet felt negative implications of their policy choices in their relations with other countries, but this may be on the horizon for them.

Additionally, one reason why these countries are uncompromising for now is because they have a strong sense that at the next European Parliament elections the right-wing and anti-migration political parties will increase share of seats in the European Parliament, which will then strengthen the PiS’s and Fidesz’s hands in the European Parliament and at the EU level. Recent study however has shown that there is not a surge for the right-wing political parties in Europe as it is suggested in the Media and by some academics. Thus I believe after the next European Parliament elections, the PiS and Fidesz will begin to put their policy choices in line with the core values of the EU. 

Of course, let’s wait and see.

 

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This article is based on research presented at the UACES Graduate Forum Conference 2018 (12-13 July, KU Leuven, Belgium)

While progress has been made, the EU-Mercosur association agreement still struggles to get off the ground. Bruno Theodoro Luciano argues that some of the greatest challenges are the insufficient discussion of political cooperation as well as the EU’s preferential treatment of Brazil.

Mercosur Parliament, Montevideo © Dario Ricardo / Adobe Stock

Over the past few years, after almost two decades of negotiation, the EU-Mercosur association agreement is very close to be concluded. However, both sides recognise that there are still some key standing issues to be resolved before reaching a political commitment. This article argues that although the conclusion of the EU-Mercosur association agreement is closer, important issues remain open, which could once again paralyse these bi-regional negotiations. Moreover, the privileged Strategic Partnership with Brazil might hinder the potential of EU-Mercosur relations to move beyond a mere free trade agreement, towards a more political and multi-dimensioned dialogue.

Negotiations started in 1999, in a very different context for both regions: Mercosur countries aimed to counterbalance trade talks with the United States in the framework of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The EU saw Mercosur as a promising regional integration project in the Americas, as well as a relevant market to be explored. However, due to protectionism on both sides, the negotiations reached a deadlock in 2004. Although formally revived in 2010, the EU-Mercosur agreement only gained a new momentum more recently, from 2016 onwards. The political changes observed within South American countries, especially in Argentina and Brazil, altered Mercosur’s political agenda. Therefore, trade liberalisation via the negotiations of trade agreement with external actors became a foreign policy priority in the region.

For the EU, the paralysis of the commercial negotiations with the United States via the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – most remarkably since the beginning of the Trump administration – pushed the European Commission to intensify and diversify its trade agenda with other global partners. Therefore, the EU readjusted its external trade strategy, aiming to both sign new trade agreements with countries as Canada, Japan and Korea, and to conclude negotiations previously paralysed such as the association agreement negotiated with Mercosur.

While Mercosur countries such as Brazil have in the 2000s invested in deeper relations with other nations from the Global South, especially with the other members of the BRICS countries (Russia, India, China and South Africa), the EU in the past years had to deal with its successive crises (financial, economic, migratory), being Brexit the most recent one. Now, contextual transformations in both regions, led to the strengthening of a relationship that was never prioritised by either sides.

The bi-regional deal would represent one of the world’s biggest trade agreements ever signed. However, there are still some important chapters of the negotiations to be closed. As stated by the European Commission after the conclusion of the June 2018 round of negotiations, areas such as cars and car parts, geographical indications, maritime transport and dairy still require further discussion. Moreover, the section on subsidies is still a problematic chapter of the negotiations, even though the EU has presented a revised proposal to Mercosur countries.

Besides trade, the initial set up of the EU-Mercosur agreement included two additional spheres, cooperation and political dialogue, as the main pillars for the future bi-regional relationship. Neither was thoroughly addressed during the last rounds of negotiations. However, the proposal submitted by the EU to include a ‘regional integration clause’ might point to the direction of adding more political aspects of a so far very much commercial talk. In this sense, the future of EU-Mercosur relations within the areas beyond trade are not clear-cut.

Furthermore, the EU and Brazil (biggest Mercosur country) signed a Strategic Partnership in 2007, which may hinder the potential of Mercosur to become a more relevant regional actor. This agreement expanded bilateral relations between the EU and Brazil in many sectorial dialogues, marginalising the rest of Mercosur countries from the discussion of many multilateral issues with the EU. Privileging individual relations with Brazil has raised discourses of fragmentation and rivalry within Mercosur countries, especially with regard to Argentina, Mercosur’s second biggest country.

Considering the previous stalemates of these bi-regional negotiations, the conclusion of EU-Mercosur agreement is not a guaranteed outcome. Sensitive sectors in both regions might still stall the negotiations depending on the level of concessions given in key areas such as agriculture and beef. Also, the future electoral outcomes in Brazil might turn again the political wind of the region and also undermine the negotiating progress recently achieved. In addition, the departure of the United Kingdom from the EU may alter the political pendulum within the EU’s decision-making, reducing the European support to conclude free trade agreements worldwide.

Nonetheless, the eventual conclusion of the EU-Mercosur trade agreement might not substantially transform the nature of this bi-regional agenda. Even though South American countries are nowadays more open to trade liberalisation, the region is much more interested in integrating its market to the Asia-Pacific region, and in particular to China, which has recently become the top trade partner of several Latin American countries. Moreover, the conclusion of EU-Mercosur agreement will probably follow the tendencies observed within the EU’s relations with the rest of Latin America. Although the EU has signed many trade agreements with the countries and regional blocks of the region, the signature of these deals has not necessarily pushed forward the relationship of Europe with Latin America to new domains, indicating how both regions, despite contextual changes, have not been a priority to each other.

Please note that this article represents the views of the author(s) and not those of the UACES Graduate Forum, UACES or JCER.

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Bruno Theodoro Luciano is a Doctoral Researcher in Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. He was a visiting researcher at the Institute for Latin American Studies (ILAS), German Institute of Global Area Studies (GIGA), Hamburg, and at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. His research focuses on regional integration and regionalism and he is developing a PhD investigation on the institutional development of regional parliaments in Europe, Latin America and Africa.

The post Finally Reaching a Bi-Regional Trade Agreement? The Potential and Challenges of EU-Mercosur Relations appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

One year ago, on 20 September 2017, I gave a talk for Stratford4Europe called, CAN BRITAIN STOP BREXIT?

In my 50-minute presentation, which included over 100 graphics and historical video clips, I gave a resolute response to the title of the talk:

“Yes. Britain can stop Brexit, if that’s what Britain wants. Anything democracy decides, democracy can also undo.”

But, I pointed out, the more important question is:

‘Should Britain stop Brexit?’

In my presentation, already watched by tens of thousands of people, I explain how the EU was started, how Britain joined, and how we’re now leaving based on an entirely flawed referendum.

All the points in my talk are as valid today as one year ago – more so, because we are now possibly just weeks away from Brexit reaching a point of no return.

For anyone who wants a clearer understanding of how Brexit represents the biggest con in recent British history, please watch and share this video. Here’s an easy-to-remember URL link so you can tell all your friends, family, colleagues and associates:

CanBritainStopBrexit.com

The post Can Britain stop Brexit? Yes. appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Away from Salzburg and its repeat performance of ‘how we don’t really understand each other‘, the question that I’m getting asked a lot is whether there can be a second referendum.

This is an interesting one, because it’s often asked of me by people who’d like to see the end of Brexit and a return to How Things Were. In that sense, it’s a bit of an advance on fighting the first referendum, time and again.

That’s not to say it’s a bad thing to pursue, but rather to invite some reflection on the politics of it all and especially the framing.

Why do it?

Importantly, much hangs on why a second referendum would be happening at all, since at present there is very little chance of this government taking this course of action.

That matters because right now the people pushing for it, as I’ve just mentioned, are those who clearly would like a result that allowed a stop to the process of leaving. The overnight comments of the Czech and Maltese PMs that they’d also support such a vote merely reinforces that impression.

If Theresa May were now to accept the need for a vote, it would go much against what she has previously argued and worked to, namely as limited as number of people making decisions as possible: remember how hard she fought against even just Parliament having a role.

For that to change, May would have to find herself fully out of alternative options, probably after a hostile Parliament left her no other choice. Despite everything, that still looks a long way off.

As long as a second vote looks more like a means to an end, rather than an end in itself, it will struggle to have the credibility of the 2016 referendum (insert any punchline you feel like here), at least in the sense of having a fighting chance to overturn that decision.

How to do it?

That problem is heightened by the very obvious challenge of what might be on the ballot paper.

The UCL Constitution Unit has written a series of fine pieces on this (here), looking at technical ways one could manage the various options, but ultimately this would be an intensely political choice.

Broadly speaking, either you’re offering voters a choice between leaving with a deal or leaving without one, or also adding in an option not to leave at all. And that’s on top of any issues around wording (which were already problematic last time around).

Because that basic choice will be a political one, it offers up much scope for campaigners to suggest that the exercise is ‘rigged’ in some way that hurts their interests: two of the three options are about leaving; two of the three are about a deal; why muddy the waters with staying at all?

That’s problematic if the object of the exercise is to calm passions and rebuild popular engagement with the process and with the political system at large. If nothing else, a three-way vote risks an outcome that ‘wins’ without an absolute majority of votes.

These problems are well-understood and form a big part of the resistance to holding another referendum, but it’s worth chucking a couple more points to ponder.

Firstly,it’s not clear what a second referendum would be on.

As a reminder, the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) is a very limited document. It covers the resolution of various liabilities arising from the end of UK membership, including finances, regulation and governance, plus some arrangements to bridge to whatever new relationship might arise in the future (as long as that arises by the end of 2020).

What that document doesn’t do is set out that new relationship. Yes, there’ll be a Political Declaration alongside the WA, but that will not have the same full force of law and will be necessarily vague about the aspirations that both sides in that still-to-be-started negotiation might have.

As such, ‘Chequers’ doesn’t really get much of a look-in; certainly not in the WA, and not very much in the Declaration. That makes it harder to mobilise a narrative of ‘rejecting Chequers’, because it’ll not be the locus of the documents under consideration.

Moreover, what is the locus is not that pretty for the UK. It’s about the settlement of financial liabilities, the creation of an Irish backstop, the continuation of legal and regulatory obligations and a transition period where the UK is a pure rule-taker. The counterbalancing goodies in the Declaration are promissory and vague.

If you wanted to get people to vote against that document, then you’d find it easy to paint a picture of a failed negotiation process and of an opportunity to escape the grasping hand of an EU that seems to just take and not give.

The people factor

Secondly, any discussion of a referendum needs to take account of how people might vote.

Here, the evidence is very mixed. John Curtice points to the centrality of economic calculations, while YouGov reminds us that there’s no clear consensus on any outcome. In short, there’s no slam-dunk on the table, for anyone.

That matters because a second referendum is likely to be a one-shot policy: the chances of a third vote within the medium-term would be effectively zero. As Sarah Ludford rightly noted at an event I spoke at this week, it’s the best change for Remainers to stop Brexit, but it comes with a sizeable risk of resulting in a no-deal outcome.

(and just a quick reminder here that the last two national votes – in 2016 and 2017 – didn’t go how their authors thought they would)

Taken together, all of this points to a number of substantial issues that campaigners on all sides will need to get their heads around and then actively prepare for. Otherwise, we might find that a second referendum leaves more questions open than before.

The post The framing of a second referendum appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

It’s 72 years ago, on 19 September 1946, that war leader and former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, gave his landmark speech at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. He called for Europe to, “build a kind of United States of Europe” to create lasting peace.

Following the Second World War, Churchill was convinced that only a united Europe could guarantee peace. His aim was to eliminate the European ills of nationalism and war-mongering once and for all.

He proclaimed his remedy, just one year after the end of the war:

“It is to re-create the European family, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom.

“We must build a kind of United States of Europe.”

Although Europe did not become, as Churchill then visioned and promoted, a federal ‘United States’, it did become a Union of 28 independent sovereign countries, trading and working together in peace and prosperity.

In remembering his grandfather’s speech, Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Soames said in the House of Commons:

“The speech was of great prescience and great vision. And it was also a speech of the most profound analysis.”

Sir Winston Churchill is recognised as one of the 11 ‘Founding Fathers’ of the European Union.

At the time of his 1946 speech, Churchill envisaged Britain helping to establish the ‘Union of European countries’, but not actually joining it.

But Churchill’s views later changed, as the British Empire and Commonwealth diminished, and Britain’s world influence shifted.

Churchill made his last speech about Europe at London’s Central Hall, Westminster in July 1957; some four months after six founding nations established the European Economic Community by signing the Treaty of Rome (France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg).

Churchill welcomed the formation of a ‘common market’ by the six, provided that ‘the whole of free Europe will have access’. Churchill added, ‘we genuinely wish to join’.

But Churchill also warned:

‘If, on the other hand, the European trade community were to be permanently restricted to the six nations, the results might be worse than if nothing were done at all – worse for them as well as for us. It would tend not to unite Europe but to divide it – and not only in the economic field.’ *

* (Source: Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches Vol. 8 page 8681)

During the 1960s Churchill’s health rapidly declined, but his support for a united Europe didn’t.

According to Churchill’s last Private Secretary,  Sir Anthony Montague Brown, in August 1961, Churchill wrote to his constituency Chairman:

‘I think that the Government are right to apply to join the European Economic Community..’

Sir Anthony also confirmed, in his book  ‘Long Sunset’, that in 1963, just two years before he died, Churchill wrote in a private letter:

‘The future of Europe if Britain were to be excluded is black indeed.’

• Watch an extracted version of Winston Churchill’s speech of 19 September 1946, together with a commentary in the House of Commons by his grandson, MP Sir Nicholas Soames. (Video production by Jon Danzig):

• Related article by Jon Danzig: Winston Churchill: A founder of the European Union

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
• Follow my Stop Brexit campaign on Facebook: Reasons2Remain

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