Ideas on Europe Blog

It has been just over two months since Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary and the leader of Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Alliance), is back in power in Hungary. In these past two months Orban and his newly elected government’s policy proposals, such as the so-called ‘Stop-Soros’ bill has been under close scrutiny by the international press, Non-governmental organisations (NGO) and the European Parliament party groups. However what I found most striking about Orban and his political party Fidesz since April are Orban’s emphasis on ‘Christian democracy’ at his inauguration speech of May, the effect and implications of the European People’s Party’s (EPP) criticisms of the ‘Stop-Soros’ bill and Fidesz’s rigid position on the EU’s migration quota system. With these in mind the electoral success of right-wing Eurosceptic political parties across the EU such as the Italian Northern League (Lega Nord) and the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) also have made me wonder about the next year’s European Parliament elections and how the anti-immigration and Eurosceptic political parties across the EU might consolidate the basis of what Orban stands for and what this may mean for the future direction of the EU.

When the ’Stop-Soros’ bill was part of Orban’s April election campaign, from the international media to human rights organisation, such as the Amnesty International, and the European People’s Party group have all overlooked the details of Orban’s electoral promises. However now that Orban is moving forward with the bill for which he has the mandate, his government is under fire from left and right and it is widely covered in the press. It is not that I support the bill and what it means for those it covers, but it would have been more affective had the critical voices of today were lauder while Orban was promoting his anti-immigration and anti-Soros rhetoric and policy proposals across Hungary earlier this year during the election campaign.

Right after the elections in May 2018, Orban delivered his traditional inaugural speech at the Hungarian Parliament. His 2014 talk is still vividly remembered—what has now come to be known as ‘illiberal democracy’ speech. In which he claimed that the future it would be systems that were “not Western, not liberal, not liberal democracies, and perhaps not even democracies” that would create successful and competitive societies. Fast forward in May 2018, Orban did not make any reference to ‘illiberal democracy’, instead he emphasised on Christian culture and values and how that has been put at risk by the non-Christian refugees. Perhaps he believes he already formed an Illiberal form of government in Hungary, so it is not an urgent matter for him in this term. Additionally his form of government is treated as a ‘good practice’ by Poland and Slovenia, not mentioning the popularity of his illiberal democracy rhetoric in Turkey. This means: Orban reached his goal of normalising ‘illiberal democracy’ in the EU and now he moves on to his next challenge for his new term, his speech points to immigration as the one.

It is suggested that when Orban visited Brussels in early May, he was actually summoned by the two main names of the EPP: Joseph Daul and Manfred Weber. During the De Volkskrant interview, Weber revealed that Orbán had been read the riot act. A growing number of MEPs in the EPP delegation are demanding Fidesz’s expulsion from this basically Christian Democratic group. Allegedly they asked Orban to alter the ‘Stop-Soros’ bill as demanded by European Commission’s Venice Commission and if he continues his illiberal and antidemocratic policies, Fidesz may face expulsion. Since then it is reported that Orban does not particularly refer to this bill as ‘Stop-Soros’, for instance in his visit to Poland, he referred to it as ‘immigration bill’. In terms of content of this bill, It is true that assisting illegal immigration will be a crime, necessitating an amendment to the Criminal Code, but some of most objectionable items will not be included in the new law, including a 25% tax on all financial assistance arriving from abroad.

Ahead of a crucial EU summit due on 28-29 June, EU migratory reform have been a hot topic and the countries that have rejected obligatory quotas for accepting refugees have been at the centre of this debate. Since 2015 how to share the burden of asylum seekers has been a dividing matter in the EU, particular Italy and Greece has been complaining that they are overstressed. This meant disunity and conflict at the EU level. At this summit there is a plan for migratory reform so to overcome some of these problem, since Hungary and Poland do not change their positions on the obligatory quotas. Which meant that the other EU member states had to come up with new ways to get countries like Hungary to make a contribution in some form. Some suggested a flexible system in which countries that refuse quotas could compensate by making contributions in other areas. There is also a serious consideration for reforming the Dublin regulation. However it is also likely that at this EU summit an agreement may not be reached. In fact newly emerging Eurosceptic political parties and Fidesz are now promoting the idea of reform the EU migration policy after the European Parliament elections, probably expecting alike political parties doing significantly well at these elections. Whether there will be an agreement on the EU Migratory Reform I do not know. However it is for sure that the rise of Eurosceptic and anti-immigration political parties will change the future direction of the EU in many areas.

 

 

 

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Construction site of the European Spallation Source in Lund, Sweden. Image credit: ESS

Isabel K. Bolliger, Katharina Cramer, David Eggleton, Olof Hallonsten, Maria Moskovko, Nicolas Rüffin[i]

We are witnessing the emergence of ‘grand challenges’ impacting societies on a global scale. These include climate change, artificial intelligence, and access to resources. Large-scale research and internationally coordinated collaboration in science, technology and innovation (STI) policy are viewed as the means by which we may find solutions to these challenges while at the same time contributing to scientific progress and basic research. The importance of international research organisations that combine large-scale research and multilateral collaboration are therefore expected to increase.

 

Considering these developments, it is time to thoroughly examine the main concepts and the role and influence of actors and different processes in policymaking on research infrastructure and ‘Big science’. An understanding of these phenomena will help professionals optimise these collaborations and may have further applications elsewhere in STI policy.

 

Rising attention for research infrastructures in Europe and beyond

In the past two decades, the European Union (EU) has established itself as a key actor in European innovation policy by virtue of the European Research Area (ERA) framework, as well as the intensified programmes under Horizon 2020 and the creation of the European Research Council (ERC). Another important component of current EU innovation policy is the focus on research infrastructures (RIs) and the identification that pan-European RIs function as a “pillar” of ERA and a “motor” of the European knowledge-based economy. This prominent role of RIs in EU policy-making is an under-researched area in science and innovation policy studies, as well as European studies. Although there is much to suggest that the institutions and processes of policy-making act out in partly new ways in this area, with new dynamics of decision-making and new constellations of actors involved.

 

In the United States, we observe pronounced research systems that developed in the post-war period. Many of the technologies we depend on today developed as a result of mission-oriented research policies where the government took active steps to shape markets. Through its many funding agencies including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the American research system provides a model that many try to emulate with varying results. Now we witness a retreat in some fields of publicly funded research as government allows the private sector to fund significant basic research. We also observe some sub-domains of applied research, particularly in space, being yielded to private enterprise with the government incentivising such work in the form of resupply contracts to the International Space Station. While the gravity of some research has shifted to Europe such as high energy physics, the United States still plays an important role in providing funding and industrial capacity.

 

Elsewhere, new players are entering the stage of big science research. China is investing heavily in new laboratories such as the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS). Both China and India are pursuing ambitious programmes for space exploration. The increasing interest in mega science projects may present new opportunities for international collaboration.

 

Each of these developments deserves to be studied in detail from multiple disciplinary and international perspectives.

 

A new network for research on big science and large-scale research infrastructures

In January 2018, a group of junior researchers focusing on research infrastructures were brought together for seminar at Lund University, where a research project on “The Rise of the New Big Science: Opportunities and challenges for nations, universities and science” studying present efforts in Lund to construct a new Big-Science facility the European Spallation Source (ESS).

 

The seminar resulted in a successful panel proposal for the ECPR General Conference 2018. The next step planned is the establishment of an interdisciplinary network to bring together researchers focusing on big science and research infrastructures. The aims of the network is to provide a forum for researchers around the world to exchange knowledge and experience on various aspects of big science and research infrastructures and therefore bring forward a very young field of research. Network members have a variety of backgrounds and analytical perspectives; these include historical studies, political science, psychology, sociology and physics. If you are interested in our activities or would like to get involved please contact Nicolas Rüffin for further information.

 

The next major event will be the panel on “Research infrastructures in Europe: Big science, Big Politics, Big Decisions” at the ECPR General Conference in August 2018, which is composed of four papers reporting on a variety of studies. The contributors of the panel deal with different aspects of European scientific collaboration in view of Big Science and Research Infrastructures, which is characterized by incoherent policymaking and ad hoc solutions. Nevertheless, European countries are able to come together and establish world-leading RIs despite the lack of pre-existing frameworks. The panellists examine different facets of this puzzling contradiction. These include looking at the role of the EU in coordinating and improving strategic planning, the history and politics of bilateral and intergovernmental collaboration, and different tools of policy-making such as foresight and roadmapping.

 

The panel will constitute a much-needed effort to raise visibility to these topics and begin a debate on the main concepts by analysing what actors and processes are involved in policy-making around RIs in Europe. Furthermore, we hope to be able to reach other researchers interested in the topic, in order to continually growing the network.

 

Authors: Isabel K. Bolliger, PhD Researcher at University of Lausanne (Switzerland). Katharina Cramer, Research Fellow at University of Konstanz (Germany). Dr David Eggleton, Associate Tutor at University of Sussex (UK). Dr. habil. Olof Hallonsten, Researcher at Lund University (Sweden). Maria Moskovko, PhD Researcher at Lund University (Sweden). Nicolas Rüffin, Research Fellow at Berlin Social Science Center (Germany).

[i] Authors are listed in alphabetical order.

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When Prime Minister, Theresa May​, said in Florence last autumn that, “the United Kingdom has never totally felt at home being in the European Union”, she not only misrepresented the history of her country, she betrayed the legacy of her party.

It was only because of the passionate resolve of past Conservative Prime Ministers that Britain joined the European Community in the first place.

Now, Mrs May is Britain’s only Prime Minister ever to go against membership of the European Union and the cherished Single Market of Europe. She will be taking Britain out, whereas all previous Prime Ministers (both Tory and Labour) wanted Britain to be in.

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.

When the European Economic Community (now called the European Union) was created in 1957, Churchill welcomed the formation of a “common market” by the six founding countries, 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.”

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 Britain had applied 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.”

SIR ALEC DOUGLAS-HOME: Mr Macmillan’s successor, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, was briefly prime minister for one year from 1964. He supported Britain’s application to join the European Community. Sir Alec 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 am acutely conscious that there are two questions which have to be asked: not only whether we should go in, but what is the prospect for Britain if we stay out. Those two questions have to be asked because, whether we are in or out, the Community goes on.”

EDWARD HEATH: It was Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath, who joined Britain to the European Community following the backing of Parliament after 300 hours of debate (contrast that with the scant time given to Parliament by the current Conservative government to debate the triggering of Article 50 and the European Withdrawal Bill.)

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, and Britain subsequently joined the European Economic Community on 1 January 1973.

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

In a keynote speech at the time 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.”

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

In September 1988 in Bruges, Prime Minister 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: And 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.

At the Tory Party Conference of 1992, just six months after John Major won a surprise victory 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: Previous 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.

Of course, Theresa May also shared these sentiments during 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 added then:

“If we do vote to leave the European Union, we risk bringing the development of the Single Market to a halt, we risk a loss of investors and businesses to remaining EU member states driven by discriminatory EU policies, and we risk going backwards when it comes to international trade.”

But now, Mrs May has volunteered to go against her own wise words prior to 23 June 2016, and as our Conservative Prime Minister, seems determined to wreck the legacy of all the past Tory Prime Ministers – indeed of all UK Prime Ministers – of the last 60 years. Why?

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Srsly???

Following the Common’s debates on and around the Withdrawal Bill alongside my Twitter feed has been instructive at a number of levels, not least the volume of comment that can be generated around a man standing up.

But one of the more striking moments was the comments surrounding the continuing lack of knowledge that many in the chamber appear to display. The on-going conflation of the customs union and freedom of movement, or the assumption that the Irish border is only a matter of customs checks, are taken as emblematic of ‘The Mess We’re All In’.

To that I want to advance a somewhat different proposition, namely that since not everyone is as engaged in the ins-and-outs of Brexit as the kind of people who read blogs about it, they use short-cuts and heuristics to guide their way, and those are sometimes insufficient.

In the two examples I gave just now, the customs arrangements are a common element, because right now that what a lot of the British debate is about, even if – as Ken Clarke noted – no-one ever talked about it during the referendum.

Customs arrangements matter, but not to this degree, so why the focus?

Simply put, it’s because it’s a more manageable hook on which to hang a number of other big questions without getting too lost. Solutions to customs carry with them implications for those other questions, including free movement and regulatory alignment: win the narrow battle and you carry a big advantage through to the rest.

Hence the max-fac/customs partnership tussle: the former accepts hard borders, while the latter doesn’t.

Partly this is about the nature of political debate: fix on something that people feel they can understand and build out, rather than trying to convey a broad and detailed platform. That’s why ‘Brexit means Brexit’ lasted so long: it made enough sense to show that May was serious about, well, Brexit, without getting bogged down in the fine print.

Obviously, that doesn’t meant you don’t need the fine print. Or even some of the larger print, for that matter.

But partly, it’s also about Brexit. It’s a genuinely massive undertaking, well beyond the scope of any other matter of public policy. And that means there is no one master key, no one slogan that can capture that.

I’m hesitant about this, since I’m generally of the opinion that the worst way to engage people in a subject is to tell them it’s complicated. So my ju-jitsu move is to say that the shape of the problem is simple, even if the substance isn’t.

The problem is that in the face of such complexity, simple heuristics don’t work. They obscure more than they reveal and they suggest extrapolations that aren’t appropriate.

To return to the case in point, sorting out customs does offer a way into issues such as freedom of movement or regulatory alignment, but they don’t deal with the full range of those issues. Indeed, customs barely touches the sides of freedom of movement of goods, tell alone anything else.

Moreover, there are plenty of areas that can’t be addressed at all by the customs issue: the security relationship is an obvious example.

This prompts the observation that there’s a lot of stuff we’re not really giving enough attention. And a prime exhibit here is the Withdrawal Bill itself.

Recall that the purpose of the Bill is to cover the uncertainty around the status of the EU’s acquis once the UK leaves: it’s an essential counterpart to the Withdrawal Agreement. And the solution it offers, of rolling over all that acquis for the government to decide what to keep and what to chuck, matters hugely for the balance of executive and legislature in the UK, given the scale and scope of what it deals with.

And yet, we had scant discussion of that – despite numerous outstanding critiques of its model – and a focus on an (admittedly meaningful) amendment relating to the role of Parliament in the event of a failure to reach a deal with the EU by November.

The issue is essentially one of bandwidth: there’s only so much that can be a priority issue at any one time, so something’s got to give. That’s true in normal times, and these are not normal by any stretch of the imagination.

The risk is that important decisions are made by accident, or without due consideration, or even by default.

That’s a problem for everyone, both those who don’t get what they want – i.e. the large majority – and those that do – because the other lot will feel rightly aggrieved. Even the cry that “you should said something at the time” is weakened by the scale of the problem, even before we get to contemporary values about the instantaneous satisfying of one’s needs. In short, it’s a recipe for future instability.

The process of Brexit will matter as much as the outcome for the future development of the British polity. Consider how already the dissatisfactions carried by remainers shape political debate, much as the disconnect between elites and publics contributed to the referendum in the first place.

Participation is the life-blood of democracy, not only because of the need for some transmission from people to government, but also because inclusion through political channels is a means of building and maintaining a community. If we fail to heed that point, then we risk dealing with even greater problems than those posed by Brexit.

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Based on her prize-winning article in JCER on the Sino-European Solar Panel Dispute, Astrid Pepermans examines how the European Union (EU) risks losing a trade war which China and the US initiated. She argues that the EU must respond by remaining united and sticking to its values of quality and rule-based trade. 

Container ship in the port of Rotterdam, Holland © rob3rt82 / Adobe Stock

Lately, free traders all over the world must be having a hard time when opening their newspapers. Donald Trump is unleashing a trade war with Xi Jinping. Meanwhile, the EU is also increasingly agitated about its imbalanced trade relationship with China. And, while having similar worries about China’s mercantilist economic strategy, the US and the EU find themselves dragged into a tit-for-tat trade conflict which is not so different from the Trans-Pacific trade quarrels.

Nothing new under the sun, you may think. Trade conflicts have existed since the birth of human economic interaction. However, this is the first time that the ‘strategic triangle’ of China, the EU and the US has been so close to reaching deadlock. The EU may well get squeezed between the two superpowers, which know exactly how to play on the EU’s internal divisions. The EU risks losing a trade war which China and the US initiated.

One could argue – and some experts do – for a Sino-European alliance against President Trump’s foolhardy catalogue of requirements for every country with whom the US has a trade deficit. However, as my recent article on the Sino-European solar panel dispute illustrates, existing worries about Chinese overcapacities, dumping practices, mercantilist policies and technological transfers are far from ill-founded.

In fact, these unfair trade practices have been, and are, harmful to the EU. While the European Commission has some trade defence instruments to tackle them, the same case demonstrates how China can bypass the Union with ease by playing member states against each other. In short, while fighting the eagle by joining the panda sounds like a good idea, history has shown that the latter has claws too and that it will use them whenever it feels its interests are endangered.

Others argue for the opposite: a western front forcing China to deliver on all the promises it made when it entered the WTO in 2001. These promises include opening up the Chinese market to foreign goods and investment; transforming the economy from state-directed to market-orientated; making consumption rather than investment the main driver of Chinese growth; and liberalising its monetary system etc. Nevertheless, it is clear that Trump is planning on playing cavalier seul on this one. Even if the US and the EU worked together to press for Chinese concessions, it is highly unlikely (and equally unconducive) that all the EU member states would join the US’s extremely hard stance in the debate.

Whether by means of hard protectionism or offensive mercantilism, both the US and China are laying claim to the top spot of the global economy. The only way for the EU to cope with its position between the hammer and the anvil is to remain united and to set its own course. Such a course does not include closing off its market, nor does it mean that it should make an enemy of China or the US.

It means sticking to what is at the core of the Union: rule-based trade. Trump is wrong on many points, but not on his argument that China should follow trade rules. The prospect of tapping into the huge Chinese consumer market has blinded the 28 EU member states to China’s economic nationalism, which has stood in the way of a level economic playing field since China’s entry into the WTO.

Having arrived at a point where Chinese strategic investments have made clear the enormous competitive pressure unleashed by the ‘opening up’ of the Chinese economy, it is only now dawning on countries like France and Germany that their position in global trade is being challenged. However, their efforts to establish a decent screening mechanism at European level to scrutinise Chinese investments in sensitive industries have been hampered by the desire among many other member states to attract Chinese capital.

Creating a European policy and tackling the challenge mean that the member states must refrain from short-term thinking, which implies not giving in on every financial carrot China dangles before them. As a unified whole, the EU28 still carries serious economic weight and the member states should be less afraid of using it to press for fair competition. In the same vein, quality should remain Europe’s central yardstick. Competition is important for innovation and economic progress, but not when it causes international price wars and a global race to the bottom. Whether for European, Chinese or American goods, quality standards should be agreed upon and upheld.

Fair international competition and a consistent focus on quality will in turn create room for manoeuvre for Europe to increase its productivity and prosper economically. The threefold approach of regaining Europe’s economic competitiveness, sticking to European values such as quality and rule-based trade, and conveying them in a forceful and unanimous way is the only option for Europe to tackle both the China and Trump challenges.

This article is based on the author’s article in the Journal of Contemporary European Studies (JCER) Vol 13 No 4, which won the 2018 Luke Foster Prize for Best JCER Article. 

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

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Shortlink for this article: http://bit.ly/2sT5FNE

Astrid Pepermans 
Free University of Brussels / Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Astrid Pepermans obtained a Masters degree in Political Sciences and started working as a teaching assistant at the Free University of Brussels in 2015. She is currently preparing a PhD thesis on the Sino-European political/economic relationship.

 

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Last week Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, proposed that President Donald J. Trump should be in charge of Brexit.

“Imagine Trump doing Brexit,” Johnson said, according to a leaked audio recording obtained and published by BuzzFeed.

“I have become more and more convinced that there is method in his madness.”

“He’d go in bloody hard … There would be all sorts of breakdowns, there would be all sorts of chaos.

“Everyone would think he’d gone mad. But actually, you might get somewhere. It’s a very, very good thought,” he said.

In reality, it’s a very, very bad thought.

Trump causes discord in his wake every time he talks or Tweets.

His method of management is to abandon diplomacy and use bellicose, bully-boy tactics, causing as Johnson so gleefully admires, “all sorts of breakdowns… all sorts of chaos.”

Which is also exactly what Brexit offers us too. Breakdowns and chaos.

During the USA election campaign Donald Trump called himself ‘Mr Brexit’. The name fits. Trump’s style of populist nationalism and insular policies are isolating America just as Brexit is isolating Britain.

Brexit, Trump, populism, nationalism, bigotry…they all come from the same DNA. We should have learnt from history that this strand of politics leads to disharmony, conflict and yes, even war.

This weekend Trump huffily left the G7 summit causing rifts and ruptures. He yanked the USA out of a previously agreed summit communique, and accused the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, of being “dishonest and weak”.

All, of course, straight out of the book, ‘How to win friends and influence people.’

The G7, which is supposed to be a network of global co-operation between the world’s leading countries, has been turned into a fiasco.

All because a dangerous bully has been put in charge at the White House. A guy who uses shockingly harsh, belittling language towards fellow democratically-elected leaders of allied countries to enforce his way.

The guy Boris Johnson thinks should be in charge of Brexit.

Trump is setting America on a perilous course, alienated from its allies, isolated, abandoning co-operation and attempting to win dirty trade wars with those previously considered to be friends.

Brexit is doing exactly the same to Britain. We are cutting ourselves off from our nearest and most important allies; our friends and neighbours in Europe.

We think we can ‘go it alone’, just as Trump thinks that America will be great again, alone.

It’s not too late to extricate ourselves from this mad path to pandemonium. We don’t have to follow Trump’s method of madness, so admired by Boris Johnson.

We should be working with our allies in Europe, not leaving them at just the time when we need our friends close at hand.

It’s complete folly to believe that Brexit will bring anything good to Britain. The country needs an urgent opportunity to do a democratic U-turn on Brexit, and return to sanity.

The alternative is to follow Trump, and Boris, on a road to ruin.

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Although there’s hardly anything about it in the news, one year ago Theresa May held a snap General Election in a bid to win a bigger mandate for her Tory version of Brexit.

Instead, she lost her mandate entirely.

The Tory’s majority in the House of Commons was crushed in the General Election of 8 June 2017. Any sane Prime Minister would take that as a message from the electorate that the country didn’t want the Brexit she was planning.

Instead, Mrs May is carrying on as if last year’s election hadn’t happened; unfortunately, aided and abetted by Her Majesty’s Opposition, the Labour Party, who have squandered opportunity after opportunity to effectively challenge Brexit following the Tory’s election defeat.

Leading Brexiters claim that since around 80% of the electorate voted for Brexit-supporting parties, that means the country has endorsed Brexit. That’s nonsense.

Voters didn’t vote for Labour because they wanted Brexit. They voted tactically for Labour because they didn’t want the Tories.

Most Labour voters voted for Remain, and according to current polling, most Labour members and supporters want Britain to remain in the EU or at least the Single Market.

• The Tory Brexit lost last year’s General Election. But they are ignoring that result.
  
• They will not let us, ‘the people’, have another say on Brexit.
  
• They are trying their damnedest to prevent our Parliament from having a ‘meaningful say’ on Brexit.
  
• They insist that Brexit is permanently irreversible, even though in a democracy, no decision is supposed to be beyond recall, or perpetual.

This is no longer just about Britain leaving Europe. This is about democracy leaving Britain.

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Below is my story of 8 June 2017, the day of the General Election, written for my Reasons2Remain campaign, as the country was going to the polls to give Mrs May a message that she has still not read.

→ A vote against Mrs May can stop her plans – please share WE SAY: VOTE TO STOP HER Today’s snap general election is as close as we may get to a second EU referendum. This is our chance to soften Brexit, if not to stop it completely.

When, on 18 April, Mrs May stood outside 10 Downing Street to announce a surprise general election, she said (yet again) that, “Britain is leaving the European Union and there can be no turning back.”

Don’t believe her on that.

Just one year ago, Mrs May campaigned for Britain to remain in the European Union, which she urged then was in Britain’s best interests. But she turned her back on that and instead volunteered to be the gung-ho Brexit Prime Minister.

And Mrs May also turned back on her pledge that there would not be another General Election until May 2020. Out of the blue, she called for a General Election three years early.

Now it’s our turn to turn our backs on Mrs May.

She cynically called an early General Election because she thought she could make a political land grab. She seeks a new mandate to bulldoze Britain out of the European Union, with a hard, harsh version of Brexit that will only benefit speculators, spivs and off-shore spongers.

Mrs May said in April:

“Every vote for the Conservatives will make it harder for opposition politicians who want to stop me from getting the job done.”

So, let’s vote to stop her.

The General Election today is our legitimate, democratic opportunity for a softer Brexit or even to stop Brexit. That would be almost impossible if Mrs May is returned to power.

Mrs May said Brexit means Brexit, but has made clear that she wants her version of Brexit, without us, the people, having any further say on the matter.

In announcing the snap General Election, May said she had a “simple challenge to the opposition parties.”

She continued, “you have criticised the government’s vision for Brexit, you have challenged our objectives, you have threatened to block the legislation we put before Parliament.

“This is your moment to show you mean it, to show you are not opposing the government for the sake of it, to show that you do not treat politics as a game.”

Agreed. Now is the opportunity for opposition parties to show they mean it. And now is our moment to vote to stop Mrs May’s true-blue right-wing Brexit plans for Britain.

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

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The post The day the Tory Brexit lost appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Today Paul Dacre, Editor of the Daily Mail, and the man who more than any other helped to cause Brexit, handed in his resignation.

In the years leading up to the EU referendum, and since, the Daily Mail has published a daily deluge of stories that spread hatred of migrants and the EU.

“Without Dacre there would be no Brexit,” said David Yelland this evening, the former editor of The Sun.

“In a 52-48 vote, I have no doubt, and nobody in politics would disagree with this, he pushed us over the edge on Brexit.

“By the way, he’s very proud of that, although he’d never say that publicly. He would say his readers did, of course.”

It’s been announced today that Geordie Greig, editor of the Mail on Sunday and a strong Remain supporter, is tipped to be the next editor of the Daily Mail.

Commented Guido Fawkes today, “Greig is a huge Remainer so it would be quite a change of direction.”

However, Mr Dacre is not stepping down until November, when he will then become editor-in-chief and chair of Associated Newspapers, the ower of the Daily Mail.

As Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee commented, “His hot, fiery breath and sweary bollockings may bear down on his successor.” She added,

“As he reputedly frightens his proprietor, Lord Rothermere, Dacre may be the one to appoint an editor in his own image.”

In the year before the referendum, I gave a speech at an international media conference in Germany, on how newspaper lies in Britain promoted xenophobia. I quoted the Daily Mail more than any other newspaper as being guilty of this.

The following year, Britain voted for Brexit, citing ‘too many migrants’ as one of the main reasons.

There is a connection. Please share my video.

• News update: Remainer and currently editor of the Mail On Sunday, Geordie Greig, is to replace Paul Dacre as Editor of the Daily Mail next November.

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

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• Join and share the discussion about this article on Facebook:

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How newspaper lies led to Brexit

→ Paul Dacre, Editor of the Daily Mail, resigns – Please shareVIDEO: HOW NEWSPAPER LIES LED TO BREXIT Today Paul Dacre, Editor of the Daily Mail, and the man who more than any other helped to cause Brexit, handed in his resignation.In the years leading up to the EU referendum, and since, the Daily Mail has published a daily deluge of stories that spread hatred of migrants and the EU.“Without Dacre there would be no Brexit,” said David Yelland this evening, the former editor of The Sun. “In a 52-48 vote, I have no doubt, and nobody in politics would disagree with this, he pushed us over the edge on Brexit.“By the way, he’s very proud of that, although he’d never say that publicly. He would say his readers did, of course.”It’s been announced today that Geordie Greig, editor of the Mail on Sunday and a strong Remain supporter, is tipped to be the next editor of the Daily Mail. Commented Guido Fawkes today, “Greig is a huge Remainer so it would be quite a change of direction.”However, Mr Dacre is not stepping down until November, when he will then become editor-in-chief and chair of Associated Newspapers, the ower of the Daily Mail. As Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee commented, "His hot, fiery breath and sweary bollockings may bear down on his successor." She added, "As he reputedly frightens his proprietor, Lord Rothermere, Dacre may be the one to appoint an editor in his own image."In the year before the referendum, journalist and Reasons2Remain founder, Jon Danzig, gave a speech at an international media conference in Germany, on how newspaper lies in Britain promoted xenophobia. Jon quoted the Daily Mail more than any other newspaper as being guilty of this. The following year, Britain voted for Brexit, citing ‘too many migrants’ as one of the main reasons. “There is a connection,” said Jon this evening.Please share his video.• News update: Remainer and currently editor of the Mail On Sunday, Geordie Greig, is to replace Paul Dacre as Editor of the Daily Mail next November. theguardian.com/media/2018/jun/07/new-daily-mail-editor-to-be-geordie-greig

Posted by Reasons2Remain on Thursday, 7 June 2018

 

 

The post How newspaper lies led to Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This week I found myself in one of the leafier parts of the stock-broker belt, giving an after-lunch talk on the Brexit process. As we pushed the meat-and-two-veg around the plates of the clubhouse, I listened to tales of how the Germans were trying to do what they didn’t manage in the world wars, and of how Whitehall was trying to spike the whole thing.

Tragically, for the bathos of this tale, cake wasn’t on the menu, but a rather good summer-fruit pudding instead.

This experience, plus the continued agonies of the government this week, invite me to consider the role of trust.

Trust is a central part of politics: indeed, one might argue it’s fundamental, given the need to work with others to achieve any political process or outcome.

At the same time, it’s also necessary to recognise that trust is sometimes in short supply, as in the case of Brexit: a lot of participants – both principals and the wider public – don’t trust any one, including those on ‘their own’ side.

Once again, I’ll take you back to some negotiation theory, because this isn’t an uncommon issue. The principled negotiation model that I’ve discussed before offers a number of strategies for dealing with those you don’t really trust: indeed, one of the motivations for using this approach is that it is grounded in always taking your relations with others with a pinch of salt.

The first key concept is that you’re trying to solve a problem, not a person. That means focusing your efforts on the matter in hand, but it also implies that you can be sympathetic to the other needs they might have, albeit without making it part of the negotiation. Indeed, being able to empathise with their situation might help you understand better how to address the problem you both face. Acknowledgement of how they feel doesn’t have to mean acceptance or concession, but rather opens up new ways to tackle and resolve the issue.

Secondly, and related to this, is the need to recognise and manage one’s emotions. Often there are problems of vicious circles of emotion, as each side becomes frustrated or annoyed by the other side’s frustration or annoyance. Being able to step out of one’s own self and see how you come across is a vital step in this: a useful rule of thumb is that if you don’t think you need to do this, then you need to do it. If you don’t want to dress it up in quite such grand terms, then it’s largely about being self-aware. As I’ve noted elsewhere, it’s not what you say that matters, but what people hear.

Linked to this is the notion of getting away from tit-for-tat. Old Testament-style an-eye-for-an-eye approaches might feel satisfying, but they tend to produce the kind of downward spirals just mentioned: retribution usually only begets more retribution. Instead, there has to be a willingness to step back from the brink of kicking back. This links to the first idea, inasmuch as if you can appreciate that they have emotions too, then you’re more likely to let them vent, so you can then get on with the core work of solving the problem. Sure, this can make you somewhat annoying, as you wait for them to finish, but if it produces results then that might be a price worth paying.

Incidentally, the Commission is doing a lot of this right now: letting the various factions in the UK put out their desires and vent their furies, before working through the issues of whatever document comes out of it all.

There’s a final idea here too, that takes me back to my Surrey lunch: the question of alternatives.

Usually in a negotiation, failure to agree leaves things as they were: you don’t buy the car, or sign the trade deal. But it’s also essential that you understand what the best alternative to an agreement might be, because if that’s not as good as what’s on offer in the negotiation, then you should take the negotiated outcome.

In the case of Brexit, the alternative to an agreed deal is departure from the EU in March 2019 with no deal. There is nothing either the Germans, or Whitehall, or anyone else can do to stop that happening, now that Article 50 has been invoked.

Moreover, the decision to invoke was the UK’s, with Parliament following the decision in the referendum, so it’s not an unforced error, but an outcome of democratic politics. Ultimately, that means that the outcome of all of this rests with the government laying a deal that it has agreed with the EU before Parliament to be approved: that too will be a democratic process.

Parliament thus already holds the power to frustrate the supposed will of others: what it has to decide is whether rejecting any final deal is better than accepting what is offered. That power can, and does translate into the ability to encourage the government to pursue certain objectives that it, Parliament, deem important, but that can only happen in a short window between new and the autumn.

Whether everyone can hold their emotions in check in the coming weeks remains to be seen.

The post Negotiations in low-trust environments appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has been criticised for rejecting a House of Lords amendment for Britain to remain a member of the EEA (European Economic Area) after Brexit.

Instead, Mr Corbyn said Labour would push for a ‘new Single Market’ deal with the EU, giving Britain full access but without accepting all the rules, such as free movement of people.

But newspapers reported that his proposal had ‘split the party’ amid accusations that he was making a ‘fudge’ of Brexit and offering ‘weak leadership’.

The EU has already said the UK cannot have a bespoke arrangement that retains all the benefits of the Single Market without the obligations that membership entails.

But that’s exactly what both the Tory government and the Labour opposition are proposing. They are both spending energy pretending we can keep EU benefits without being a member of the EU or its Single Market.

The EU has flatly said no to such an idea.

Even before the referendum Theresa May said:

“It is not clear why other EU member states would give Britain a better deal than they themselves enjoy.”

And before the referendum, Jeremy Corbyn said:

“Labour is convinced that a vote to Remain is in the best interests of the people of this country.”

He added,

“The Labour Party is overwhelmingly for staying in.”

But whatever their positions were before 23 June 2016, they both now support Brexit, in one form or another.

Neither are willing to give Britain another chance to consider the issue.

Jeremy Corbyn has said that, “we have to respect” the referendum decision. Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell agreed, adding that, “We must not try to re-fight the referendum or push for a second vote.”

Theresa May has also agreed, saying it wouldn’t be right to give people another vote, adding that, “people voted and politicians should respect that.”

Even though a YouGov survey published this week found that a significant majority of voters now think that the decision to leave the EU was wrong.

According to the poll, Remain now commands a lead over Leave of 47% to 40%. It’s the biggest margin for Remain since the regular survey began two years ago.

Commented our polling expert, Professor Adrian Low of Staffordshire University, “This translates into a 10.7% lead for Remain.”

And a recent poll of over 200,000 local newspaper readers showed that most Britons would now vote to remain in the European Union if there was another referendum.

But like a broken record, both May and Corbyn are stuck in a time warp, repeating their mantra of having to ‘accept the will of the people’ as expressed two years ago.

On this, both of Britain’s two main parties seem to be locked hand-in-hand with each other. Brexit has been decided, so we must stick with it, regardless, they say.

It seems so odd, since before the referendum, both the Conservative government and the Labour opposition were in complete agreement with each other: Britain should remain in the EU, because Brexit would be damaging to our country’s best interests.

How on earth did we get stuck with Brexit?

After all, Brexit used to sit on the far side-lines of politics. Indeed, the word ‘Brexit’ was only invented in 2012, and until the lead up to the 2016 referendum, most people didn’t even know what it meant. (Now it’s in the Oxford English dictionary.)

For over 40 years Britain didn’t want to leave the EU.

Britain’s membership of the EU was never previously a majority interest subject. Some on the fringes of the Conservative and Labour Parties thought Britain should leave the EU, but they were small in number.

The vast majority of MPs and members of the House of Lords strongly supported Britain’s membership of the EU, and most of them voted for Britain to remain in the European Union.

With the notable exception of the current Tory government, every single UK government and Prime Minister since we applied to join the European Community back in 1961 has supported our membership of the EEC/EU.

And for most of our membership, the vast majority of people in Britain also didn’t want Britain to leave the EU. We’d been members for around 40 years and it was not a big deal. There was not a groundswell of opinion for Britain to leave.

Even one year before the EU referendum, polling showed that support for our continued membership was running at three-to-one in favour.

Nevertheless, Britain – to the shock of everyone – voted for Brexit two years ago, and we are now on the road to leaving the EU in March next year.

Now Brexit is on the news every single day, most often the lead news item.

Parliament, politics, the news, discussions at work, in the pub and in living rooms across the country, are often dominated with talk of Brexit.

How did it happen?

It started when politicians, who should have known better, got scared of a little Eurosceptic party called UKIP. A party so fractured, small and splintered that they have now sunk into oblivion.

But senior politicians in both the Conservative and Labour Parties were fearful of UKIP.

Instead of bucking the UKIP trend, they fell for it; they unwisely helped to promote and prolong it, along with the majority of British newspapers, also guilty of inciting UKIP’s message of xenophobia.

Just before the 2015 general election, the BBC reported on the rise of UKIP:

‘David Cameron’s historic pledge to hold an in/out referendum on UK membership of the EU if the Conservatives won the next election was interpreted by some as an attempt to halt the rise of UKIP, which senior Tories feared could prevent them from winning an overall majority in 2015.’

(Repeat: Previously hardly anyone in Britain was concerned about Britain’s EU membership – it was a minority issue on the side-lines of politics.)

In 2014 Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP told The Telegraph:

“Parts of the country have been taken over by foreigners and mass immigration has left Britain as unrecognisable.”

It was complete nonsense of course. Most Britons didn’t have a serious problem with migration before the likes of Nigel Farage, UKIP’s on-off-on-off leader, told them they did.

If you look at a map of where UKIP had the highest support, it was mostly in the areas of Britain where there was the least migration. And conversely, in the areas with lots of migrants, UKIP mostly had the least support.

The foreign-born of Britain only represent about 12% of the population – that’s a normal proportion for most modern, thriving western democracies. Even among those 12% of foreign-born are many considered to be British, such as Boris Johnson, born in New York, and Joanna Lumley, born in India.

And citizens from the rest of the EU living in the UK represent only 5% of the population – that’s small and hardly ‘mass immigration.’

Tory MP, Sir Oliver Letwin, agreed. He said that British politicians “made a terrible mistake” in failing to take on the argument about immigration, the argument spread by UKIP.

He told The Sunday Times just after the referendum result:

“We all, the Labour party and the Conservative Party alike … made a terrible mistake, which was not to take on the argument about migration.”

He added that UKIP exploited the failure of mainstream politicians to “put the counter-argument” that “migration enriches the country in every way.”

But even Mr Farage, who married a German and has a foreign name, probably doesn’t believe most of what he says. What he really means behind his Ukipish words are:

“Scaring people and the other political parties about immigration has spectacularly worked for us.”

Gandhi got it right when he said:

“The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is fear.”

It’s time to stop being fearful. Brexit came about because of unfounded fear.

Now our leading politicians are too fearful to challenge Brexit; scared that they would be going against the ‘will of the people’ as expressed on one summer’s day two years ago, without any interest in finding out what that will is today.

We need to let the politicians know, clearly, loudly and boldly, that Brexit is not our will.

Our political leaders should have the courage to state what they already know in their hearts and heads to be true: it’s in our country’s best interests to #STOPBREXIT.

Especially now that polling confirms that the country agrees: Brexit is a big mistake.

• Related interview with Jon Danzig: The tide is turning on Brexit:

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• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
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By Caroline McEvoy (University College Dublin)

© Rawpixel.com / Adobe Stock

What influences public support for or trust of the European Union (EU)?

Political scholars continue to grapple with this precise question, which is especially relevant for our contemporary politics. The change in public attitudes towards the EU over the past two decades is striking. In 2013 only 31 per cent of Europeans reported trust for the EU compared to 50 per cent, nine years previously.  As of 2017 trust levels sit at 41 per cent.

In the last ten years, the public image of the EU has been of an institution fighting multiple fires including an economic recession, a refugee crisis, an increase in support for Eurosceptic populism in several member states, and a contentious ‘divorce’ process with the United Kingdom.

One way to view the UK’s decision to leave the EU is to see it as a consequence of low levels of support. While many have already argued that the vote to leave was driven by concerns over immigration and the cost of membership to the economy, I go further to argue that there is an underlying logic to these drivers.

This logic was encapsulated in the simple message promoted by the Leave campaign – take back control. The Leave campaign capitalised on the low levels of trust among the British public to convince enough voters that the EU does not listen to the voice of the British public and that policy is effectively made without their input.

This discourse is of course not new. Those who have long argued that the EU has a democratic deficit argue that policy-making is too distant from the citizens and Brussels politics is perceived as removed from everyday democratic processes. Yet, the majority of studies that have examined the public’s perception of the EU tend to focus on material gains from membership rather than perceptions of substantive representation.

Such research argues that the public lacks a collective “European” identity which prevents them from trusting the EU’s democratic processes over the long term, particularly during times of political and economic crises. According to this narrative, a person who does not feel European will have little reason to trust and support the EU if it does not create material benefits for them. As a consequence, researchers argue, support for the EU largely comes from short-term economic gains. If the EU stops delivering economically, public support is withdrawn.

My article challenges this dominant thread in the literature. In it, I focus explicitly on the importance of voice on public support for the EU. While there is evidence that material gains related to economic conditions are an important feature of support for the EU, I argue that a belief that one’s voice is heard in the EU – a concept known as external political efficacy – is, at least, as influential in explaining public attitudes.

In bringing the role of political efficacy back into the debate, I show that when a citizen feels that their expressed interests are taken into consideration in the EU’s decision-making processes they are more likely to support it. Importantly, they are likely to continue to support it even when their attitudes towards the economy are pessimistic. Put another way, citizens are less inclined to withdraw their support for the EU during periods of economic downturn provided they feel that the system is, at the very least, listening to their interests. Understood in this way, public attitudes toward the EU are reflective of David Easton’s classic typology of political support. Effectively, citizens must have their policy needs met some of the time within a political system; however, since it is impossible to satisfy all individual preferences all of the time, the public must also hold a ‘reservoir of favourable attitudes’ towards the system which allows them to tolerate unfavourable outcomes. This allows for them to continue offering long-term legitimacy to democratic institutions.

Using a standard Eurobarometer survey from November 2013, I test propositions derived of Easton’s typology.

The below graph (Figure 1) shows the results for individuals with both high and low levels of political efficacy. People with high efficacy believe their voice counts in the EU while those with low efficacy believe it doesn’t.

Figure 1:  Public Support for the EU at Varying Levels of Economic Expectations.

The results are clear. When a person believes that their voice counts in the EU, their belief that economic conditions are declining (or improving) has little impact their support for the EU (a difference of about 6 per cent).

The top line in Figure 1 is almost flat, showing that people who feel heard by the EU are likely to support it regardless of how they feel about the state of the economy. By contrast, when people feel that their voice is ignored by the EU they are much more likely to rely on their perceptions of the economy when considering how much (or how little) they support the EU.

The lower line in Figure 1 shows how the likelihood of supporting the EU is lower, in general, for such individuals but is particularly pronounced when they believe economic conditions are worsening (a decline of about 31 per cent compared with those who believe the economy is getting better).

Ultimately, these findings highlight the importance of voice among the European electorate and show how feeling that one’s voice counts in the EU can bolster support for the system, even at times when the economic outlook is poor. The results of the article speak to the wider debate of declining support and the EU’s so called democratic deficit particularly after economic austerity.

Citizens need to feel that their interests are heard and articulated in the decision-making process if the EU is to thrive in the long run as a democratic system.  This is something that the EU has struggled with in the past, but it has become clear that the EU can no longer ignore it, particularly when faced with successive crises.

This blog draws on the research originally published in JCMS Volume 54, Issue 5. It won the best article prize for 2016.

Please note that this article represents the views of the author(s) and not those of  Ideas on Europe, JCMS or UACES.

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Shortlink for this article: http://bit.ly/2M1mVIy

Caroline McEvoy | @carolineamcevoy

Caroline McEvoy is Lecturer / Assistant Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin.

Her research interests are in the areas of political behaviour and public opinion with a particular focus on political representation in Europe. Previously, Caroline was an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral fellow at UCD (2015-2017) and Teaching Fellow/Adjunct Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin (2013-2016).

The post The Key to Public Support for the EU is Efficacy appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Almost a year into our editorship of JCMS, we are very proud to launch our official blog. The purpose of the blog is to facilitate the space for debate on issues of academic importance and policy relevance in European and comparative regionalism studies.

As we stated in our editorial note a couple of months ago, we intend for JCMS to remain the place for original and exciting research. Moreover, we seek to actively promote the diversity inherent within this field and thus undertake to support new approaches and multidisciplinary stances.

In this sense, we acknowledge the inequalities in our field, and will work with others to decrease the gender citation gap while supporting the work of early career researchers towards publication. Moreover, we aspire to increase representation especially for scholars in the global South.

Already, we believe that the global nature of our team, a change to the previous editorial model, is a great start to attaining many of the objectives of our term as editors. Within our team, we have attained gender parity and have a mix of expertise within European and regionalism studies.

Looking to the future, we believe our ambitions have practical implications. With more scholars and readers accessing online-only content, we will be moving to an electronic format in the medium.

The 2020 JCMS Special Issue will be our first to appear online only. The online only format allows us to provide the benefits of rapid publication, while still offering the thematic and topical grouping of content for readers. We are grateful for the support of our professional association, UACES and our publishers John Wiley & Sons in facilitating this move.

This blog will support the work of our authors, by giving visibility to the articles published in the main journal and the JCMS Annual Review by communicating key themes of published articles. This will also be the space for scholars in the discipline to communicate new ideas, pedagogical innovation and support other authors, especially early career researchers.

The blog will also communicate news and additional content on the JCMS. The use of alternative forums, including this blog and other modes of social media, is essential to promoting new research, strengthen dissemination and generally enhance the visibility of newly published research.

Through our new journal website, designed and supported by Wiley, we hope that you will see our commitment to ensuring easy access to forthcoming articles, see the journal’s most cited and most downloaded pieces and allow for the editors to promote details on citations and the journal’s Twitter account.

We hope that through the of social media, and especially through the JCMS blog, we will be able to reach our contributors and reviewers in manner that allows for greater interaction with the journal and creating a space for communicating the cutting edge ideas and research that is the hallmark of the journal.

The Editors in Chief
Toni Haastrup and Richard G Whitman (University of Kent)

 

JCMS Editorial Board

Editors in Chief
Toni Haastrup, University of Kent, UK
Richard G Whitman, University of Kent, UK

Co-Editors
Heather MacRae, York University, Canada
Annick Masselot, University of Christchurch, New Zealand
Alasdair Young, Georgia Tech University, USA

Book Review Editors
Ruby Gropas, European University Institute, Italy
Gaby Umbach, European University Institute, Italy
JCMSBookReviews@EUI.eu

Annual Review Editors
Theofanis Exadaktylos, University of Surrey, UK
Roberta Guerrina, University of Surrey, UK
Emanuele Massetti, University of Surrey, UK

The post Welcome from the Editors appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

After being busy getting elected in May 2017, Emmanuel Macron used the traditionel French ‘Bridges of May‘ in 2018 to take a trip to Aachen in order to accept the so-called ‘Charlemagne Prize’ that the city bestows each year on a prominent individual ‘for work done in the service of European unification’.

Some might argue that Macron has actually not yet had the time to do much for European integration, but it seems that in the troublesome period we are currently going through, winning an election with a distinctly pro-European agenda  already qualifies.

Macron interviewed (in French!) by Tagesthemen.

For Macron the trip was an opportunity to hammer some messages home to his German audience in the largest sense. And he seized it in his typical manner: not only in his acceptance speech – broadcast live, then quoted and commented upon by the entire media spectrum – but also in a television interview for the renowned evening news show ‘Tagesthemen’. And, of course, in a friendly meeting with the crowd at a street festival in the city centre, and a more focused visit to the (reputed) University to meet and exchange with students.

But since his visit coincided with the first anniversary of his coming to office, it was also an occasion for the Germans to take stock of his first year in the Elysée. For instance, the prime-time geopolitical TV magazine ‘Weltspiegel’ dedicated an entire (well-balanced) special issue of 45 minutes to the French citizens’ perception of their new President.

As Voltaire’s Professor Pangloss would have concluded, everything was fine ‘in the best of all possible worlds’. There are still some TV journalists around who do high-quality work and have an international mindset – how many of the Parisian know-all pundits would have been able to interview Angela Merkel in German? Just asking. And the ease with which Macron adapts to different settings and interlocutors without reducing the quality of his spoken language remains amazing. Add to this the tangible sincerity of Franco-German friendship that can be felt on such occasions among all audiences, and you have a perfect little spring break.

And yet, even though Macron himself seems to be appreciated by the Germans (including Mrs Merkel), despite his very frank messages about the need to stop procrastinating and clinging to budgetary ‘fetishism’ at a historical moment of European integration, there is a strange atmosphere in Germany these days, as if the new government was paralysed under a lead blanket.

True, quite a few quality media acclaim the European plans of this both ‘uncomfortable and praiseworthy’ friend. But this does not really come as a surprise: rather than being populated by the losers of globalisation and European integration, these editorial offices are staffed with enlightened liberals, who would have massively voted for Macron if only the German political system allowed for the emergence of such a Maverick.

And now – surprise, surprise! – the Chancellor has gone so far as to formulate a prudent response to Macron in a Sunday paper interview. It is unclear, however, whether her proposals are simply politely put red lines disguised as constructive compromises, or pseudo-offers that she expects to be diluted anyway in the domestic and European debate. Perhaps she simply wants to recover leadership on the domestic debate again, after the publication last week, in the same newspaper, of a manifesto against the deepening of monetary union signed by 154 professors of economics (whose predictions are, as we all know, always right on target).

Overall, the political class seems to be well in line with the professors and responds with a wall of silence. They listen politely to what Macron has to say about their ‘taboo on financial transfers’ and their lack of will and capacity ‘to project themselves’ towards a common future, ‘like our founding fathers were capable of doing’, but it’s evident they don’t hear a word. At the same time, they are forced to recognise that Macron’s domestic reforms robs them of their good old pretext of sending the French back to their own failings and request they ‘do their homework’.

Their attitude was summed up recently by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who diagnosed a flagrant ‘intellectual laziness in Germany that blocks them from addressing Macron’s proposals’.

It might be even more appropriate to quote Bob Dylan, according to whom ‘we live in a political world, where courage is a thing of the past.’ In GroKo Germany this definitely seems to be the case. The political élite, is not only ‘slumped on the sofa of complacency’ (Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian), but actually afraid of the electorate that renewed their mandate. They cannot imagine that the public would be ready to accept the simple truth that Germany has been and still is the biggest beneficiary of the monetary union and the single market altogether. Some of them may realise that it’s about time this truth is spoken out – and some of them, once out of office like Sigmar Gabriel, actually say it out loud – but they all know it is utterly incompatible with the traditional home-grown narrative of Germany as Europe’s ‘cash cow’. And they are convinced it would provide the AfD with even more momentum.

This is no longer ‘intellectual laziness’ but ‘intellectual panic’.

And it is deeply dishonest, after having published a solemn coalition agreement that starts with the very commitment to ‘A new awakening for Europe’. I would be glad to be told wrong by a sudden ‘new awakening’ in German politics, but for the time being, this is nothing short of hypocrisy.

The only encouraging variable in this strange configuration is that the German political class, after having successively dealt with Chirac, Sarkozy and Hollande, totally underestimate Macron’s capacity of opposing them with a rare mix of compelling intellectual persuasiveness and pig-headed obstinacy. Remember my football metaphor of Gegenpressing !

Macron may be imbued with his own brilliance and so much convinced by his own ideas that it borders on arrogance. But his character is a glimpse of hope for Europe.

The post Mr Macron goes to Germany appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This post first appeared at the EU Law Enforcement Blog

 

The “refugee crisis” has led to the establishment of the European Border and Coast Guard (EBCG) (the successor of Frontex) in 2016 and the transformation(still under negotiation) of the European Asylum Support Office (Easo) into a European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA). The expansion of the operational tasks of the EBCG and the future EUAA in comparison to Frontex and Easo is clear. While Frontex and Easo have traditionally been characterized by their operational role and assistance to the frontline Member States on the ground, Europol under the recently adopted Regulation 2016/794 has also started to assist those national authorities subject to the extraordinary and sudden arrival of mixed migratory flows.

Europol is a hub of information and intelligence that is starting to develop a significant presence on the ground by providing operational support to the national migrant smuggling and human trafficking investigations. Nonetheless, the extent of Europol’s involvement and assistance to the Member States remains unclear. The recently adopted Regulation 2016/794 neither refers to the operational tasks of the agency, nor the deployment of staff of Europol in the hotspots. Hence, in this blog post the emerging operational role of the agency in migrant smuggling matters is examined. In particular, the participation of Europol in Joint Investigation Teams (JITs), the establishment of the European Migrant Smuggling Center (EMSC), and the tasks that the agency undertakes in the Greek and Italian hotspots is analyzed.

Firstly, according to article 6 Regulation 2016/794, Europol is authorized to request the competent authorities of the Member States to initiate, conduct or coordinate a criminal investigation. Interestingly, in the case that the concerned Member State decides not to accede to such a request, the competent national authority is required to inform Europol of the reasons for their decision within one month of receipt of the request (article 6(3) Regulation 2016/794). Regulation 2016/794 vests a nascent operational role to Europol by determining that the agency may coordinate, organize and implement investigative and operational actions to support the Member States. Europol is, however, not authorized to apply coercive measures to conduct any of its operational tasks (article 4(5) Regulation 2016/794), which would ultimately contravene article 88(3) TFEU (“the application of coercive measures shall be the exclusive responsibility of the competent national authorities”).

In particular, Europol may participate in JITs and coordinate, organize and implement investigative and operational actions in order to support the national enforcement authorities (article 4(1)(c) and (d) Regulation 2016/794). According to article 5(1) Regulation 2016/794, “Europol staff may participate in the activities of joint investigation teams dealing with crime falling within Europol’s objectives”. Although the agency no longer needs the authorization of the concerned Member States to take part in a JIT, Europol remains unable to independently initiate a JIT, and may only propose such a measure to the Member States and take actions to assist the competent national authorities in setting up the team (article 5(5) Regulation 2016/794) (see, Council Resolution on a Model Agreement for setting up a JIT and the JITs Practical Guide).

Since Regulation 2016/794 entered into force on 1 May 2017, Europol participated in several JITs (see here or here). For instance, Europol coordinated an investigation regarding an organized criminal group that was illegally transporting migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Syria to the EU through the Balkan route. Europol also took part in a JIT that dismantled a migrant smuggling network operating across Europe. Specifically, the agency facilitated the investigation’s information exchange, provided extensive analytical support, deployed its mobile offices to Belgium and the UK, and analyzed, exchanged in real-time and immediately cross-checked against Europol’s databases the information gathered.

Moreover, article 4(1)(l) Regulation 2016/794 states that Europol shall “develop Union centers of specialized expertise for combating certain types of crime falling within the scope of Europol’s objectives (…)”. These centers aim to coordinate, organize and implement investigative and operational actions to assist the Member States in combating transnational crime and terrorism. On22 February 2016, Europol launched the EMSC. This center aims to proactively support EU Member States in dismantling criminal networks involved in organized migrant smuggling, and to be a single entry point for inter-agency cooperation on smuggling.

Since February 2016, the EMSCassists the competent national enforcement authorities by providing secure-information, sharing opportunities and strategic and operational analysis, gathering evidence, and undertaking investigations against the smuggling networks facilitating illegal entry, onward secondary movement, and the residence of migrants in the EU. The assistance of the EMSC is divided into five main areas for action: 1) Operational support, coordination and expertise; 2) Strategic support to EU Member States and partners; 3) Platform for EU Member States and partners; 4) Support to the European Union Regional Task Force (EURTF) and Hotspots; 5) Deployments on-the-spot via Europol Mobile Investigation Teams (EMIST) and Europol Mobile Analysis Teams (EMAST).

According to the first EMSC Activity Report, the leading role of the Center is assisting and coordinating cross-border, anti-smuggling operations, which requires close coordination with partner agencies (namely, Eurojust and the EBCG). The second activity report of the EMSC further details that the Center assists the competent national enforcement authorities in cases related to migrant smuggling and document fraud through forensic support in relation to questioned documents and materials used to produce suspicious documents, on-the-spot support to provide technical assistance and expertise in investigating forged documents and dismantling illegal print shops, and permanent deployments in the hotspots. As of September 2017, the EMSC had supported 68 investigations against criminal networks in 2017 and 93 in 2016, 3 JITS in 2017 and 2 in 2016, and identified and monitored 830 vessels that may be involved in illegal migrant smuggling (Commission, “Communication on the Delivery of the European Agenda on Migration”, COM(2017) 558 final, 27.09.2017, p. 7).

The key operational novelty of the EMSC consists in deploying investigative and analytical support teams (EMIST and EMAST) and guest officers to undertake systematic secondary security checks and support frontline Member States in the hotspots. Europol’s Review 2016-2017highlights the strong operational capacity provided by the agency in the hotspots and specially the secondary security checks undertaken by the deployed officials: “Europol experts worked side-by-side with national authorities at the EU’s external borders to strengthen security checks on the inward flows of migrants, to disrupt migrant smuggling networks and identify suspected terrorists and criminals”.

Europol’s core mission at the hotspots consists in reinforcing the exchange of information, verifying such intelligence within the relevant databases, improving the national investigations, conducting operational and strategic analysis through the deployment of teams of experts on the ground, being present at the screening of the arrived migrants and, providing forensic support. The officials of Europol that are deployed in the hotspots thus offer expertise, coordinate operational meetings, provide analytical support and cross-check against the databases of the agency (see here, here and here). They aim to ensure a comprehensive EU law enforcement approach and operationally assist the concerned frontline Member States in averting and combating migrant smuggling, human trafficking and terrorist networks. As of March 2018, 19 Europol’s guest officers and 2 Europol staff were deployed in the Greek hotspots,and 16 guest officers and 2 Europol staff were deployed in the Italian hotspots to conduct secondary security checks (Commission, “Communication on Progress report on the Implementation of the European Agenda on Migration”, COM(2018) 250 final, 14.03.2018, pp. 5 and 9).

Not only is the EMSC active in supporting the national authorities in exchanging intelligence and investigating existing criminal networks operating in the Mediterranean, but Europol’s officials, jointly with the EBCG and the concerned Member State, also debrief the arrived migrants at the hotspots and assess the data gathered from the interviews and investigations. However, while Regulation 2016/794 of Europol explicitly indicates that the agency may establish centers of specialized expertise like the EMSC, it does not further clarify the specific and significant operational tasks that Europol may conduct through these centers. Furthermore, unlike the EBCG and EUAA Regulations that expressly cover the support of the agencies to the Member States in the hotspots, Regulation 2016/794 on Europol does not mention the operational role that the agency plays in the hotspots.

To conclude, while it is true that Europol still plays a secondary operational role in comparison to the EBCG or the future EUAA, the agency conducts tasks on the ground that may affect the individuals’ fundamental rights. In fact, only during October 2016, the guest officers deployed by Europol in Greece checked 1,490 persons. Currently, there is a lack of transparency regarding the specific operational support of Europol to the national enforcement authorities in their illegal migrant smuggling and trafficking of human beings investigations, which makes it almost impossible to effectively monitor the activities undertaken by the agency. If the operational role of Europol keeps expanding, the appropriateness of creating a Consultative Forum, a Fundamental Rights Officer and an individual complaint mechanism within Europol should be examined. These fundamental rights structures, which are already established within the EBCG, might be a useful way of mainstreaming fundamental rights and adding transparency to Europol’s operational tasks.

 

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Both the Prime Minister, Theresa May​, and the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn​, are offering the people the same thing. Cake.

They both think that it’s possible for us to have a cake and eat it. That’s their answer to Brexit, and it just shows how little they understand about cake… or how the EU functions.

Theresa May expects us to keep most of the benefits of EU membership – what she calls ‘frictionless access’ – without being an EU member, or staying in the Single Market or the EU’s custom union.

Of course, that’s impossible.

Even before the referendum, Mrs May said that the EU was unlikely to give Britain a better deal than their own members enjoy.

Even though she’s constantly reminded by EU leaders that it’s simply not possible to have her cake and eat it, she keeps expecting just that.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is also expecting cake after Brexit.

He says that Labour wants to keep the benefits of EU membership “with no new impediments to trade and no reduction in rights, standards and protections.”

And, just like Mrs May, he also does not want Britain to be a member of the EU, or the Single Market, or the EU’s custom union.

The only slight difference is that Mr Corbyn says that Britain would be in ‘a’ customs union with the EU, but not ‘the’ customs union. Again, it just won’t work. It’s classic ‘cake and eat it’ fantasy.

As Sean O’Grady, deputy managing editor at The Independent, commented:

‘Jeremy Corbyn’s plan is just as fantastical as Theresa May’s’.

In a speech earlier this year, Mr Corbyn’s said:

“Labour would seek a final deal that gives full access to European markets and maintains the benefits of the Single Market and the customs union… with no new impediments to trade and no reduction in rights, standards and protections.”

And last year Labour’s manifesto stated:

‘We will scrap the Conservatives’ Brexit White Paper and replace it with fresh negotiating priorities that have a strong emphasis on retaining the benefits of the Single Market and the customs union – which are essential for maintaining industries, jobs and businesses in Britain.’

But Mr Corbyn also confirmed that the UK would not be subject to the rules of the EU and its Single Market, such as Free Movement of People, and would be free to negotiate its own independent trade agreements with other countries.

Labour is playing as dangerous a game as the Tories, pretending to us that we can enjoy the benefits of the EU and its Single Market, without having to be in it, or having to accept its rules such as Free Movement of People.

Labour is trying to fob us off with cake, just like the Tories.

No country in the world enjoys the benefits of the Single Market without being signed up to it. The EU has already rejected Britain’s cake fantasies, but we keep being told we can have the cake, and we can eat it.

Theresa May said that whilst our relationship with Europe will be different after Brexit, “I think it can have the same benefits in terms of that free access to trade.”

Brexit Secretary, David Davis, said that his aim was to achieve, “a comprehensive free trade agreement and a comprehensive customs agreement that will deliver the exact same benefits as we have.”

It’s not going to happen.

What’s the point of a club if you are going to allow non-members to enjoy the same or better benefits as members? What club allows that?

Both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn need to be honest with the nation and explain clearly what Brexit means.

It means loss of jobs and industry. It means the country suffering economically. It means losing comradeship with our allies in Europe.

After all, that’s what Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn told the nation before the referendum.

This is the bottom line: We can have Brexit, or we can have EU benefits, but we cannot have both.

And if we lose EU benefits, the country will suffer.

For Mrs May and Mr Corbyn to pretend otherwise is a shocking betrayal of the country. And it’s daft, because sooner or later the country will find out the truth.

Then, the Tories and Labour will have to own up to their dishonesty.

Wouldn’t it be better to own up now, before it’s too late, and for the sake of the country?

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Europe and Colonial Guilt in the Age of Apology

by Mike Ungersma

“The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being- it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.”

― Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter

In philosophy, there is a concept known as ‘infinite regression,’ a helpful notion in trying to establish causation.  It involves determining what caused whatever one is examining, and then looking at the cause of that event, and the one before that, and so on. Or, as the website Conservapedia puts it: “An infinite regression is a proposed chain of causation in which each purported cause itself requires another event of exactly the same type to cause it.” According to one contemporary philosopher however, there is an important qualification before infinite regression can be accurately employed in examining any cause back to its origin.  Steve Patterson writes:

. . . each proposition in the chain – without exception – is contingent on its preceding premises. Each proposition is like an empty vessel, dependent on the truth-value of the premise before it. If there’s a falsehood anywhere in the chain, it poisons every conclusion which follows.

In the complex world of history, where trying to figure out why events took the turn they did, such reasoning may be problematic.  But it nonetheless seems to form the basis for countless arguments currently raging around colonialism.  Occupying someone else’s land for profit and exploitation is bad, hence all of the bad events that followed that initial action must also be bad, unlawful and immoral. As an example, take Owen Jones, columnist for Britain’s Guardian, and earlier, The Independent.  It was in the latter that Jones attempted ‘exposing’ the evils of especially British colonialism. In one column, after citing instances of colonial cruelty in British India, South Africa and the Sudan, he goes on to argue that while colonialism might have technically ended decades ago, its legacy lives on:

Hundreds of millions still suffer from the consequences of colonialism. As the then-South Africa President Thabo Mbeki put it in 2005, colonialism left a “common and terrible legacy of countries deeply divided on the basis of race, colour, culture and religion”. Across Africa, the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent, conflicts and divisions created or exacerbated by colonialism remain.

Jones, and countless other commentators, are now part of a growing cottage industry condemning colonisation.  They are joined by thousands of students and their professors, action groups and charities, and even many politicians.  Their collective viewpoint is the accepted canon in academia and elsewhere.  To question them or their reasoning can be a perilous business.  Ask Bruce Gilley.  A professor of political science at Portland State University in Oregon, Gilley questioned the long-established orthodoxy in an article last year for the academic journal, Third World Quarterly, entitled “The Case for Colonialism.”

“Western colonialism,” he claimed, “was, as a general rule, both objectively beneficial and subjectively legitimate in most of the places where it was found.”

Gilley went further: “The countries that embraced their colonial inheritance, by and large, did better than those that spurned it.”  And, “It is hard to overstate the pernicious effects of global anti-colonialism on domestic and international affairs since the end of World War II.”

The Third World Review, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, is published by Taylor and Francis.  Within weeks of airing Gilley’s article, it was withdrawn “at the request of the academic journal editor, and in agreement with the author.”  Taylor and Francis claimed to have been threatened with violence, as did Galley himself.

The London-based Independent, covered the incident extensively:

An online petition calling for an apology and retraction from Third World Quarterly, attracted 6,936 signatures and accused Prof Gilley of “pseudo-scholarship” and arguments that “reek of colonial disdain for indigenous peoples … with the predictably racist conclusion.”

The lead drafter of the petition, Jenny Heijun Wills, associate professor of English and Director of the Critical Race Network at the University of Winnipeg added: “In our current political context, the lives and safety of refugees, and allies are being threatened by radicalised white supremacist groups.

“These kinds of ideas are not simply abstract provocations, but have real, material consequences for those who Prof Gilley seeks to dominate and objectify.”

The Independent, 12 October 2017

The rage about colonialism feeds into so many contemporaneous disputes: immigration, nationalism, populism, racism itself, issues surrounding multiculturalism, overseas aid, ‘state-building’, and on and on.  As long ago as 1971, in his T. S. Elliot Lecture Series at the University of Kent, cultural historian George Steiner identified the trend: “Seeking to placate the furies of the present, we demean the past.” He went on:

We soil that legacy of eminence which, whatever our personal limitations, we are invited to take part in, by our history, our Western languages, by the carapace and, if you will, burden of our skins. The evasions, moreover, the self-denials and arbitrary restructurings of historical remembrance which guilt forces on us, are usually spurious.  The number of human beings endowed with sufficient empathy to penetrate genuinely into another ethnic guise, to take on world-views, the rules of consciousness of a coloured or ‘third-world’ culture, is inevitably very small.  Nearly all of the Western gurus and publicists who proclaim the new penitential ecumenism, who profess to be brothers under the skin with the roused, vengeful soul of Asia or Africa, are living a rhetorical lie.

It is what another academic, Professor Amikam Nachmani, of Bar Ilan University, Israel, has called ‘the haunted present,’ the title of his 2017 book.  He notes:

This European colonial debt is prevalent particularly among the Left and liberals of the continent’s political map and is a paralysing drug.  These circles feel guilty because of their countries’ imperialism, slavery, ethnocentrism, racism and oppression of minorities in Europe and suppression of national aspirations in the colonial world.  They consequently reveal their understanding and even express sympathy with the Muslim migrant who reacts violently against the ‘white’ majority. The paralysing result is manifested in calls for European authorities not to insist on the assimilation of the newcomer, not to expatriate immigrants already on the continent.

“The essential element of a nation is that all its individuals must have many things in common”, and “they must also have forgotten many things.” A remark attributed to the 19th century French philosopher, Ernest Renan.  In other words, part of being a nation can involve getting its history wrong, and most do.  Moreover, most are highly selective about their history, understandably so since a country’s collective memory is its collective identity.  Self-evidently, Britain’s heavy involvement in the slave trade – a hugely profitable ‘business’ – was morally wrong.  And remarkably, it went on for half a millennia.  Can it be judged in terms of today’s morality?  Of course, just as future generations will condemn and chastise the present generation for its failure to stop war, halt the spread of disease and famine, and tolerate inequality.

So, in the ‘Age of Apology’ what is to be done about the sins of our fathers?

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, “my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault” – lines from the Confiteor that are part of the Roman Catholic Mass.  In an echo of that ritual, the colonial nations of Europe approach the ‘altar of history,’ acknowledging their forefathers were wrong and behaved badly, pushing the very topic into the mainstream of public awareness almost to a level of self-loathing.  This is unique in human history.  George Steiner:

What other races have turned in penitence to those whom they once enslaved, what other civilizations have morally indicted the brilliance of their own past?  The reflex of self-scrutiny in the name of ethical absolutes is, once more, a characteristically Western, post-Voltairian act.

On bended  knee and prostrate before their God, Catholics strike their breasts with each utterance of this passage from the ancient Latin mass, praying for forgiveness of their sins.   Is Europe now sharing in a similar rite of mea culpa?  Self-flagellation is meaningless to those who were harmed over the centuries of colonial oppression.  And on a practical level, what meaning can it have to their descendants?  Would it not be better to employ the energies expended in this bitter debate dealing with the sins of our own age which future generations will hold the us responsible?  In the words of the priest at the end of another Catholic rite, the confession, “Go forth and sin no more.”

Mike Ungersma, Cardiff, Wales, May 2018

 

 

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All major politicians sooner or later find themselves in a hole of their own making. Even if they don’t make mistakes, they will fall into an elephant trap dug by their opponents. There are three laws to follow when in a hole: stop digging; keep afloat; and watch out for someone pulling the plug and sending you down the drain.

First law

The first law, stop digging, means first check the facts. After all, maybe you are in a hole for good reason. Amber Rudd failed to do so and had to resign after issuing a denial that was buried by evidence. Peter Mandelson’s first cabinet resignation is another classic example.

Another error is trying to climb out of the hole with a rope ladder made of cover-ups. That tactic was famously adopted by both John Profumo and Richard Nixon but couldn’t take the weight of facts. Donald Trump’s modification is: When you are in a hole, throw mud, false facts or abusive terms which the media will publicise and your friends will cheer.

The Brexit negotiations make it difficult for Theresa May to do nothing, as Brussels briefings regularly pour barrowfuls of mud down her hole. If her words don’t begin to make sense in ‘Eurospeak’ as well as in British parliamentary language, the Brussels calendar-clock will keep ticking until she is out of her hole and over the cliff of Brexit without a deal in March next year.

Second law

The second law of holes is exemplified by Theresa May’s concentration on keeping afloat. This is consistent with Michael Oakeshott’s old Tory philosophy that politics is not about sailing toward goals, but instead about keeping afloat in a boundless sea. It is matched by Harold Wilson’s dictum that keeping afloat for a week is ‘a long time in politics’.

Theresa May cannot take survival to the end of a week for granted. Last week she avoided the Cabinet’s Brexit sub-committee breaking up by offering home-made fudge. This is the political equivalent of the Emperor’s clothes, a compromise statement about a customs union that is palatable to her divided party but contains ingredients unacceptable under EU regulations. The EU is offering British negotiators the choice of real Belgian chocolate or nothing.

A small but strategically important number of pro-EU Tory MPs would like to serve fudge cooked in the House of Lords according to Walter Bagehot’s recipe. It would be wrapped in symbols of tradition such as the Union Jack.

Inside would be a fudge full of ingredients familiar in Brussels, such as the rights and obligations of participating in a customs union and single market. It is certain that this would be rejected by most Tory MPs as making Britain a vassal of Brussels. It is uncertain whether this would meet the diverse tastes of Labour MPs to be favoured by a cross-party majority in the House of Commons.

Third law

For anti-Brexit campaigners such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and members of the Eurosceptic European Research Group, the key question is: when to pull the plug and see their opponent disappear down the drain of history?

Under Conservative Party rules only 48 Tory MPs need to sign a letter requesting a vote of confidence in the Prime Minister by Tory MPs. This is less than the number of Tory MPs who would like to remove the ‘stain’ of Brussels blue from the UK and repaint the map of the world imperial pink.

A letter can be handed to the chair of the backbench 1922 Committee any week when the Commons is in session and a draft letter can be scribbled during a Cabinet meeting or parliamentary debate when the time appears right to do so. The only safe time for Theresa May before the summer holidays is the two-week recess at the time of the late May Whitsun holiday.

For a theoretical economist, the answer is easy: Pull the plug when you are sure to win. For the most ideological Brexiteers, victory would take the form of a new Conservative prime minister insisting that the European Union accept uncompromising British terms for Brexit.

If this is refused, then Britain would turn its back on Europe and sail off to explore a global future as it did in days of old. This policy could also be delivered by Theresa May if, in order to stay afloat, she accepts what Brexit means to hardline Tories.

For many pragmatic Tory MPs important issues in a vote of confidence are: How likely is it that a new Conservative prime minister would offer me a post in government? Would a new Conservative prime minister improve my chances of re-election?

For all MPs, the big question is: who will come forward with a new spade after Theresa May is buried politically? A cross-party majority vote in the Commons for a soft Brexit motion would not produce a Tory prime minister. Nor can such a majority favour terms that would be acceptable to Brussels.

A general election vote giving Labour the most MPs would put the spade in the hands of Jeremy Corbyn. He would only dig a hole for an EU flag that was purple turning red. However, this risks burying the British economy.

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A fundament of negotiation – and indeed of politics – is the notion of interaction. They are necessarily relational constructs: us and them, me fighting the system, let’s work it out together.

If politics can be about an agent’s interaction with a set of societal values rather than any one individual or group, the negotiation is more limited in that it requires two agents.

Of course, the necessity of two agents isn’t the same as saying that both will be willing participants. I might try to negotiate a pay rise, but I can get stonewalled by my employer, just as you can try to get 50p off some biscuits in the Tesco (where I like to imagine you shop).

What is much less common is a situation where one agent creates a situation where a negotiation is a logical next step, then fails to engage substantively with that negotiation, even as they continue to talk about the importance and necessity of the negotiation.

Imagine you smashed up the fancy flatscreen on purpose during your house party, then standing around saying something has to be done, not least because your parents are coming back home any time now. And they loved that TV.

It’s not the best look.

And here are, again, back at the Article 50 process.

The absence – and it really is an absence – of progress since the March draft of the Withdrawal Agreement poses a very similar problem, albeit one that probably doesn’t involve people but planes getting grounded.

Put differently, it’s not enough to say something must be done: something actually has to be done.

Quite apart from the impact on the UK, there is also an impact on the EU: while you might think an absence of ideas from the other side means they can get to just think about themselves when drawing up documents, it’s not that simple.

The root of the dilemma is that the UK isn’t completely powerless, even if it is unhelpful. In particular, the structure of Article 50 requires that the EU and the UK both approve any final Withdrawal Agreement: the EU can’t simply impose that on the UK.

Thus the EU necessarily has to take account of the UK’s preferences, because at some point the British government will have to sign off the deal, a process which now requires a vote in Parliament.

But those preferences aren’t clear at all.

Often, it’s possible to work on the basis of ‘revealed preferences’: the actions that betray what someone actually wants. Like the child who says they don’t know what they want in the candy store, but keeps looking at the gobstoppers.

Unfortunately, the only consistent revealed preference to date from London is that they would like this all just to go away and not be a problem any more. In that, it’s been a consistent policy since the end of the Second World War, but consistency doesn’t equal substance.

It’s a mark of how far things have gone that there’s a sense that any preference would be better than no preference – Nick Gutteridge had a thread on just this yesterday – because it would give everyone something to work with/around.

Of course, the added urgency behind all this is that there’s the tick-tock of the Article 50 clock: we don’t have until 29 March 2019 to do this, because we have to have got the deal ratified by then.

Arguably, that has actually complicated matters, so the model of a big all-nighter European Council seems to hang in the air of Westminster: this situation is all just posturing, so we only have to get the key players in a room with some more severe time pressure and it’ll be sorted in no time.

However, because ratification has to be fitted in too, that extra time pressure isn’t so easily created: you can always just lop off another day given to pushing this through the two parliaments.

Moreover, the European Council itself has not been a site for debating Brexit very much, but rather for confirming the work of technical talks in and around Task Force 50’s work.

This isn’t a situation that offers any easy solutions. There’s limited time, but not limited in a way that’s conducive to getting to a deal; there’s a default outcome that no-one wants; and there’s one party that is apparently incapable of deciding what it wants, but whose wishes cannot be ignored.

Expect a very hot autumn.

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This final post in the series on group project work looks at the oral group exam, which is a traditional Danish type of exam. Oral exams are integral to the Danish educational system from primary school through to university and can take different forms. This post explains the oral group exam based on a project, where it highlights some of the benefits and challenges.

The exam is structured as follows; there are two examiners (the supervisor and either an internal or an external examiner depending on the project level), who discuss the written project before the group enters the room. Each student has a right to 30 minutes examination, including assessment. Consequently, a project exam lasts between 30 minutes and three hours depending on the size of the group (1-6 persons). The students leave the room after the exam, and the examiners discuss the individual student’s performance and the written project, then each student comes into the room to receive their individual grade and feedback on their exam performance and the project. Sometimes groups decide to receive the grades together.

Colleagues who have never tried oral group exam often ask ‘how can you distinguish between the different students and their performance?’ Firstly, I always ask the students to make a nametag, so the other examiner (and me) knows who is who in the group. Secondly, it is important to take notes during the exam, so that you afterwards can assess if the individual student answered all the questions and thereby assess the level of the answers. Thirdly, some students are very nervous during exams and do not say much, whereas other students talk a lot, here it is important for the examiners to ensure the quiet students are given the opportunity to talk, this might involve asking a talkative student to be quiet. Often, the students are good at giving space to each other to allow everyone to answer the questions.

The exam starts with a short presentation by each student, before the examiners begin asking questions about all aspects of the project in relation to the formal requirements outlined in the degree programme. The dialogue between the students and the examiners sometimes leads to interesting discussions and reflections relating to methodological and theoretical choices or further implications of the empirical findings. These exams are interesting and fun, whereas other exams can be painful, for both students and examiners, because the project is not very good and the students struggle to answer basic questions. Here, it is important to give constructive and instructive feedback to the students, at the end of the exam, so that they know how to improve their research skills the following semester.

The individual grade is based on the written project and the oral examination, where the student’s performance can either drag the grade down or pull it up. Colleagues sometimes discuss the extent to which we differentiate grades between the students in a project group. Whilst it is important to differentiate between students’ grades when appropriate, there are often good reason for giving the students the same grade. Often students choose to work with peers who have the same interests and get the same grade, so there is a natural selection bias in project formation especially as the students get to know each other (see blog post on group formation and group dynamics).

Overall, the oral group exam based on a project is time and resource intensive, but they provide a good opportunity for the students and examiners to discuss the research project in details, thereby helping the students to develop their presentation skills and ability to discuss different aspects of research, including reflecting on the research process.

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It seems that the Eurozone is now moving towards a true OCA. But caution needs to be exercised as to the pace of this process as well as its detailed institutional set-up, especially in relation to democratic procedures which have been, so far, somewhat inefficient in ensuring true legitimacy and oversight.

It is no secret that the Eurozone is not a complete Optimum Currency Area (OCA). Chief among its shortcomings is the uneven level of integration between its monetary and economic aspects. When the Eurozone was created, capital restrictions were eliminated but inflation was slow to converge between the core/Northern low-inflation and the periphery/Southern high-inflation Member States (Walters critique).

Economic booms in the periphery/South, financed by excessive and cheap capital inflows from core/North, led to a loss of competitiveness that could not be restored through monetary policy. This resulted in severe trade imbalances, further weakening the import-led, deficit-expanding economies of the periphery vis-à-vis the export-led, highly competitive economy of the core Eurozone Member States. Meanwhile, the absence of a banking union and of a proper Eurozone-wide framework for resolution of problematic banking and finance institutions created moral hazard issues related to predatory lending and unsustainable borrowing, (bailouts became the only alternative for problematic banks).

A rain-check is not an option anymore for the Eurozone’s set-up. In order for EMU to function properly, avoiding crises or at least addressing them effectively, additional steps have to be taken towards a full OCA. The relevant theory, developed by Robert Mundell in the 1960s, identifies three primary characteristics: factor (mainly labor) mobility (in the event of a potential asymmetric shock, workers could move easily to low unemployment areas), convergence (similarity in economic structures of members), and fiscal integration (system of budgetary transfers that enable temporary assistance to members affected by recessions). Developments in finance after the 1960s have also raised the need for a single Central Bank that is also the lender of last resort, a backstop function for bank resolution, and for a banking union.

Have these been achieved within the Eurozone?  First, labor mobility. Improving its rather disappointing outcome has been a permanent aim for the EU. It has been calculated that US labor mobility is approximately ten times higher. The EU has accordingly  proposed, inter alia, reforming the European Employment Services Network, boosting rights of posted workers through better enforcement of EU rules, etc.

Second, economic convergence. The most advanced of the Eurozone’s post-crisis proposals here is  creating the post of European Minister of Economy and Finance, who would also assume represent the Eurozone as a whole externally. A Vice-President of the European Commission would be chosen and the same individual would also serve as the Eurogroup President. The other principal proposals here include:

• the introduction of the Capital Markets Union, which was first advanced in an EC Green Paper and which is suggested as a way of strengthening EMU by “supporting economic and social convergence … in the euro area;”
• the establishment of a financial instrument for structural reform support, monitored through the European Semester process and focusing “on those reforms that can contribute most to the resilience of domestic economies…” (e.g. product or labor market reforms, tax reforms, etc.):
• the introduction of National Competitiveness Authorities coordinated by the Commission;
• the creation of a European Fiscal Board to assist national fiscal councils;
• and the utilization of the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure to formalize the convergence process.

There is also the proposal for a form of Eurobonds called European Safe Bonds (ESBies); this, however, remains at a very early stage.

Third, fiscal integration. There are two key EU policy initiatives here. The first is the creation of an EU-wide Stabilization function to be activated in the event of asymmetric shocks and to complement any relevant corresponding measures within national budgets. To be effective, this function should “allow for overall net payments of at least 1%” of GDP for the Eurozone alone, to be channeled through some type of borrowing capacity (e.g. increasing EU co-financing, ESIF pre-financing, etc.), without leading, however, to permanent transfers between Member States. The second is the upgrade of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to a European Monetary Fund (EMF) and its incorporation within the EU legal framework, with greater involvement in the financial assistance process (the ‘Troika’ have so far dominated the negotiation and monitoring of bail-outs with little ESM involvement).

Fourth, the banking union and a backstop for bank resolution. The banking union has already been set up during 2013-14, consisting of the Single Supervisory Mechanism, the Single Resolution Mechanism and the Single Rulebook (primarily  CRD IV, CRR and BRRD). However, it remains incomplete in two main aspects: a full-proof backstop for bank resolution and an EU-wide Deposit Guarantee Scheme (EDGS; other minor elements including proposals on business insolvency, reduction of non-performing loans, etc., also need to be addressed). Regarding the first, an international agreement between EU Member States was signed in 2014 establishing the Single Resolution Fund and, to complement this, the proposal that the EMF be activated when this Fund is insufficient has been suggested. Regarding the second, an EDGS has been proposed from November 2015 to develop from “a reinsurance scheme into a fully mutualized coinsurance scheme” and then into a full insurance scheme covering national schemes.

Final element of an OCA is a unified Central Bank that can also serve as the lender of last resort. The ECB is indeed a common Central Bank, except for its inability to be a lender of last resort. However, this has been indirectly addressed by several ECB initiatives such as the Securities Markets Program, the (Very) Long-Term Refinancing Operations, the Outright Monetary Transaction program and Quantitative Easing. In addition, the proposed EMF could step in as a lender of last resort within the Eurozone in a more direct manner.

Overall, it seems that the Eurozone is now moving towards a true OCA. But caution needs to be exercised as to the pace of this process as well as its detailed institutional set-up. The crisis was not only caused by structural inefficiencies, but also by a malfunctioning or overcomplicated institutional set-up (e.g. when France and Germany pushed for more relaxed SGP criteria in 2005). However, caution is necessary in the implementation of these new measures,  especially in relation to democratic procedures which have been, so far, somewhat inefficient in ensuring true legitimacy and oversight. These elements are important if the public is to believe and participate in the integration process moving forward .

First published in Social Europe on 28.05.2018.

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