European Union

General : Is the EU still fit for purpose in its current form? With no shortage of challenges facing us the European Parliament has looked into how the EU can be improved. On 16 February MEPs adopted three reports setting out how they believe the EU needs to be reformed in order to boost its capacity to act, restore people’s trust and make the economy more resilient.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

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The prime concern is to avert any threat to the Good Friday agreement of 1998 that settled decades of violence in Northern Ireland. Further anxiety surrounds the potential to disrupt more than €50bn in annual trade flows between Ireland and Britain.

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To whom it may concern

This is to certify that Ms Theresa May successfully passed the admission exam of the ‘Higher Management and Governance’ executive education programme, generally known as ‘HMG’, in July 2013.

At the end of her first semester, during which her performance was evaluated through continuous assessment, she has now submitted her final semester exam, consisting of a research paper on the topic ‘The United Kingdom’s exit from and new partnership with the European Union’. She also has successfully completed her practical assignment of pushing a ‘Notification of Withdrawal‘Notification of withdrawal through parliament in a simulation exercise of democratic procedures. Her second semester is due to start on March 9 with a study trip to Brussels where she is expected to present this notification to a panel of peers.

Please find below her full semester grades and selected comments on her performance. Each grade is an average calculated from the assessment of the professors participating in the jury. Please note that HMG programme only employs renowned experts based in the United Kingdom.

Honi soit qui mal y pense!

The post Semester grades for Theresa May appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

DRAFT REPORT on addressing human rights violations in the context of war crimes, and crimes against humanity, including genocide
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Cristian Dan Preda

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

General : The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is at a critical juncture and the EU and its member states should recognise Palestinian statehood, according to members of Parliament’s Palestine delegation. Led by delegation chair Neoklis Sylikiotis, the five members visited Jerusalem and the West Bank on 20-24 February. In addition MEPs discussed the Israeli government’s recent decision to retroactively legalise settlements illegally built on Palestinian land during a plenary debate on 14 February,

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

General : The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is at a critical juncture and the EU and its member states should recognise Palestinian statehood, according to members of Parliament’s Palestine delegation. Led by delegation chair Neoklis Sylikiotis, the five members visited Jerusalem and the West Bank on 20-24 February. In addition MEPs discussed the Israeli government’s recent decision to retroactively legalise settlements illegally built on Palestinian land during a plenary debate on 14 February,

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

DRAFT OPINION on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the financial rules applicable to the general budget of the Union and amending Regulation (EC) No 2012/2002, Regulations (EU) No 1296/2013, (EU) 1301/2013, (EU) No 1303/2013, EU No 1304/2013, (EU) No 1305/2013, (EU) No 1306/2013, (EU) No 1307/2013, (EU) No 1308/2013, (EU) No 1309/2013, (EU) No 1316/2013, (EU) No 223/2014,(EU) No 283/2014, (EU) No 652/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council and Decision No 541/2014/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Andi Cristea

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Place:        Europa building, Brussels
Chair(s):    Dr Jose A. Herrera, Minister for sustainable development, the environment and climate change of Malta

All times are approximate and subject to change

+/- 08.00
Doorstep by Minister Herrera

+/- 09.00
Beginning of Council meeting (Roundtable)
Adoption of the agenda
Adoption of non-legislative A Items

+/- 09.10
Review of the Emissions Trading System (ETS) (public session)

Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

Greening the European Semester and the environmental implementation review (EIR)

+/- 13.45
Working lunch on EU Environmental Implementation Review (EIR)

+/- 15.15
Review of the Emissions Trading System (ETS) (public session)

Other business
-      Emissions Trading System (ETS) - Aviation (public session)
-      Low-emission mobility
-      Paris Agreement: International developments
-      EU action plan for the circular economy
-      Natura 2000 in the European solidarity corps
-      Luxembourg circular economy hotspot (Luxembourg, 20-22 June 2017)
-      Environmental concerns regarding Belarus nuclear power plant
-      Scientific Conference on "Sustainable development and climate changes in the light of the encyclical letter of Holy Father Francis, entitled Laudato Sí" (Warsaw, 15 October 2016)
-      Environmental liability and mining waste

+/- 17.30
Press conference (Justus Lipsius building press room - live streaming)

Place:        Europa building, Brussels
Chairs:      Konrad Mizzi, Maltese Minister

All times are approximate and subject to change

+/- 08.45
Doorstep by Minister Mizzi

+/- 09.30
Beginning of Council meeting (roundtable)
Adoption of the agenda
Adoption of non-legislative A items
Adoption of legislative A items (public session)

+/- 09.50
State of the Energy Union

+/- 10.35
Clean energy package (public session)

+/- 14.30
Any other business:
a)  Current legislative proposals (public session)
     i)   Security of gas supply
     ii)  Energy labelling
b)  European Nuclear Energy Forum
c)  Ocean Energy Forum

+/- 15.45
Press conference (live streaming)
Press room, Justus Lipsius building

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

AMENDMENTS 22 - 72 - Draft opinion EU guarantee to the European Investment Bank against losses under financing operations supporting investment projects outside the Union
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

I’ve been looking back at my posts from last summer, when things Brexit-y were in much more obvious flux. this was triggered by last week’s post on the looming Article 50 notification, which reminded me that I’d sketched out some options.

Briefly re-stated, these suggested that the UK would aim for either close or distant relations with the EU in the initial post-membership phase and then in the longer-term relationship: thus, you could have a ‘Norway’ (close, then close), ‘reverse accession’ (close, then distant), ‘abyss’ (distant, then close) and ‘hard’ (distant, then distant) path.

Clearly, debate has moved on since then, but the ‘abyss‘ option is worth revisiting, for reasons that will be fairly obvious.

The basic conceit is that the government would push hard for a distant relationship, only then to row back hard, having seen how perilous that route is in practice. The benign version would be a genuine change of heart – ‘we must think of the national interest’-type rhetoric – while the more cynical might consider it possible that the government always had this in mind, but it was the only way to build public support for what looks like a reversal of policy.

As regular readers will know, I incline in general to cynicism, but the past 8 months as surely the clearest ever example of cock-up over conspiracy. If there is someone in Whitehall or Westminster with a masterplan for all this, then it is the equal of any paperback thriller, and about as likely.

This, sadly, should be no comfort to any of us: there has been a palpable sense of ‘making it up as we go along’ in the corridors of power, strengthened by the repeated failures to demonstrate even the minimal level of intent needed to conduct negotiations with the EU27.

So if the abyss option is to be used, it will be because it looks like the best course of action at the time. This raises two basic questions: why would that happen, and what would be the effect?

Inasmuch as the government does know what it wants from Brexit, the direction is currently set for something between ‘reverse accession’ and ‘hard’ Brexit: no to free movement, but trying to keep as much as possible of the rest. Rhetorically, Theresa May has placed herself firmly in this position, accepting no advice and encouraging no debate beyond her very immediate circle. The unwavering opposition to any amendment of her ‘plan’ is a strong part of this: firm, if futile, resistance to the Millar case; parliamentary manoeuvring to avoid amendments to the EU(NOW) Bill.

The upshot is that May has made it very hard indeed to move away from her position, vague though it might be. As a result, it would need something of very great weight to move her.

Logically, that great weight would be an economic collapse, something at least in the order of 2007-8 and possibly even more. This means a need for dramatic visuals of shuttered factories, sharply rising inflation and unemployment, stark collapses in the exchange rate: moreover, it needs to be clearly linked to Brexit.

Ironically, the dithering caused by David Cameron’s abrupt departure in June makes this all much less likely. The hiatus has not only given economic agents time to start lying plans and make adjustments, it has also changed public opinion. The failure of the Leave vote to result in the economic calamities forecast by Remain campaigners has given many voters the impression that Brexit won’t (maybe even can’t) be so bad, economically speaking. Yes, the UK hasn’t actually changed anything about its status in the EU, but that is to miss the point: many people don’t see it that way. Put differently, ‘Project fear’ only works if people buy the fear: otherwise, it’s all a bit Wizard of Oz.

As a result, even if economic disaster did loom, it might not actually have the effect outlined above. Instead, it might simply encourage a ‘more of the same’ attitude: it’s only hurting because we haven’t yet followed through. Politically, the advantage of taking that view is that it’s unknowable, and that if things do go belly-up, then one can always argue that it was because we didn’t make the right choices earlier on. Unsatisfactory perhaps, but probably more attractive an option than having to eat humble pie as you scramble to rebuild links with the EU.

And this is the second element: the EU would probably be willing to accept a contrite UK, returning to the table to ask for more. Quite aside from the political and personal satisfactions of seeing the EU model be vindicated by the UK’s return, such a development would be a positive one for EU exporters and EU security (both narrowly and broadly). Practically, if this all happened relatively quickly, then the legislative gap would be minimal and things could be put together at some speed.

But to put all of this down on paper/screen simply highlights how much more unlikely the abyss option has become. If it ever had a chance, then that chance looks to have been spent somewhere between May’s election as party leader and the non-amendment of the EU(NOW) Bill in the Commons.

This matters, because it points once again to the central importance of the opening of Article 50 negotiations and the initial ask that will come with that. This will be the central determinant of the path of Brexit, which is why May has held on to control of it so very firmly. The big question now is whether she knows what to do with the power she now holds.

The post What about the abyss? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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It has been an excruciating decision for Mr Bayrou: the mayor of Pau has spent decades cultivating the centreground, coming close to qualifying for the presidential runoff in 2007 (but Segolene Royal made it to the second round against Nicolas Sarkozy).

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Mauritania, an important ally of the EU in the fight against terrorism in the Sahel, faces several inter-related development challenges: ensuring an efficient use of the revenue derived from natural resources, economic diversification and improved governance. The severity of these development challenges is increased by difficult political relations between the three main ethnic groups in the country, the dominant group being the Arab-Berber Bidhan. They constitute less than one-third of the country’s population, but dominate economically and politically. The Haratin, the largest group in the country, is made up of descendants of black Africans enslaved by the Bidhan (freed or still enslaved). The third group in the country is the West Africans or Black Mauritanians. Mauritania’s post-independence history is marked by repeated attempts by this group to assert its non-Arab identity and claim for a more equitable share of political and economic power. The tension that these divisions create is a problem in itself, but they can also be appropriated by violent Islamist insurgencies in the region. The urgency of this challenge is further complicated by the likelihood of increased climate change effects that the country is currently not adequately prepared for. This study therefore discusses the main political, economic and development challenges that contemporary Mauritania is faced with, illustrating how these challenges can only be properly grasped with consideration to their historical evolution. Based on this, the study investigates the current basis for EU-Mauritania relations and suggests a select number of policy areas for consideration, as this relationship continues to evolve around issues of mutual concern such as security and development.
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

DRAFT RECOMMENDATION on the draft Council decision on the conclusion, on behalf of the Union and its Member States, of the Protocol to the Stabilisation and Association Agreement between the European Communities and their Member States, of the one part, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, of the other part, to take account of the accession of the Republic of Croatia to the European Union
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Cristian Dan Preda

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

For a paper I am writing in the context of my research on EU leaks, I looked at all disciplinary proceedings against leakers in the European Commission from 2006 to 2015, as documented in the annual reports of the IODC, its internal investigation office.

Here’s the data that I extracted from IODC’s annual reports (uploaded here) that I received through a freedom of information request to the Commission:

 

The types of cases vary and several concern information leaked in the context of tender procedures, so not the typical political leaks that many of you may have in mind when you hear the term.

In fact, the first mention of the term “leaking” in the IDOC reports can be found in  2012. The EU’s staff regulation (Article 17) call the offense “unauthorised disclosure“; in the latest report this is covered under the headline “failure to comply with rules on confidentiality“, even though in the narrative of the report this is called “leaking“.

What does leaking involve? Here some quotes from the different reports:

• 2009: “ Providing information obtained in the line of duty to a national news organisation in exchange for payment” (p. 8)
• 2011: “An official was dismissed and his pension rights reduced to the minimum subsistence level for 20 years […] for having received gifts and other favours of considerable value from various stakeholders in the industrial sector in which he exercised his duties. This same official had regularly provided these entitities, outside of the Commission, with confidential information or information which had not been made public” (p.6)
• 2015: “An official who leaked an internal draft policy document to an external industry stakeholder and incorporated their comments into the document without consulting his line management was temporarily downgraded” (p.8)

It was surprising  how few cases seem to be followed up in disciplinary procedures, given that this an official offense under the staff regulation and given how many there are. I’ve discussed leaks in EU politics in this recent paper and in my doctoral thesis.

The reason could be what Ryan Heath deducted from my thesis:

“ you would need to stop so-called inter-service consultations between departments if you want to stop leaks. That would, if nothing else, have negative effects on policy-making.”

In other words, leaking is in the DNA of the Commission.

I will argue in my paper that leaking it is part of the Commission’s regular bureaucratic politics. Preventing leaks more forcefully would either mean to reduce the number of internal consultations, to undermine relations with the press or stakeholders, or to undermine strategic leaking that those in political position use to influence the outcome of politics in ways that please them.

Past research has shown that leaking often happens from the top, so those on top of the Commission probably have most to fear from a strict anti-leaking policy. But you’ll see the full argument in my final paper once it is published.

In the meantime: Do you have something to tell me about how leaks are prevented in the Commission? Did you observe a change in how leaks are prevented or encouraged inside the Commission in recent years? Get in touch under ronny.patz@gsi.lmu.de for any hints. I will also be in Brussels for some time in mid-March, so I’m happy to meet up for further insights!

 

The post Leaking in the European Commission: Is it in its DNA? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Political science, probably like many other social sciences, seems stuck in an age that many of our students have never lived, and will never live. They live in an age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and of problems that are far beyond local borders in a world dominated by thinking within borders. In this age, it is time to work together on a global scale and to develop the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for political science to be able to keep up with the social and technological developments of the coming years.

The political science LHC is one where large-scale collaboration of people of diverse backgrounds,  use of new technologies, and fast and open science come together to understand and provide ideas for a world that is evolving so fast that our local political systems and global institutions cannot follow suit unless political science evolves at the speed of society and technology.

Why the political science LHC?

The World Wide Web is here because academics wanted to collaborate to build humanity’s largest machine – the LHC – to study the universe’s smallest particles. This machine is revolutionizing our understanding of physics, advancing engineering to levels unknown a few decades ago, and showing how seemingly outlandish theoretical physics can be tested when a large group of people collaborates to construct and run an outlandish machine while having another large group of people that can make sense of unprecedented amounts of data.

At the same time, as a ‘by-product’, the LHC led to the creation of the internet that we know today and that is changing societies beyond recognition. Technology-driven solutions are what is shaping today’s political and social reality.

In comparison to the 21st century science around the LHC, my discipline – political science or social science at large – feels stuck in the middle of the 20th century, with little glimpses to 21st century ideas because some of my colleagues have started to leave the borders of narrow ideological institutions, beyond the established working groups in professional associations of political science – national or international – and beyond the boundaries of faculties that still educate students like they used to do when Google, WeChat and the Ethiopian space program did not yet exist.

Faculty today does not mean, in many instance, collaboration at the scale of technological advancement. It mostly means turf war. The same seems true for professional associations.

The established political theorist does not trust the quantitative methods postdoc because she prefers numbers over meaning. The political systems PhD does not want to collaborate with the international relations professor because of some obscure epistemological difference in world view that has been breeding over the last 100 years. And the Canadian ethnographic researcher studying a local community and its politics in The Gambia never meets the IR ethnographer from Vietnam who walks through the halls of UNESCO to study the weird global culture of diplomatic politics.

At the same time, technology developed in the California in a political and social spirit of innovation is copied and perfected in China because of a combination of national policy and local industry development. The radical political shift towards renewable energy paid by German tax payers is partly responsible for revolutionizing the global distribution of solar and wind power allowing for new energy policies and much less costly political decisions.

The historical evolution of nations and borders usually credited to the Peace of Westphalia is still the most powerful idea dominating most politics around the globe while AI-enabled automatic translation and cross-border migration are reframing how many people perceive, shape or resist a world in which cultural differences and the value of nation states are shape-shifting beyond comprehension. This is why the political system of ISIS is influencing security policy across Western political systems. This is why the ‘Panama Leaks‘ story could combine global financial flows, morally corrupt individuals from around the world, international journalistic cooperation and political reactions at national and international scale.

The LHC of political science takes all this together and combines it into a connected research programmes linking the smallest socio-political dynamics with politics on a global scale.

Knowing the complex and conflictuous political history of our planet; knowing the path dependency created by ideas, languages and institutions and the disruptive changes that still happen from time to time; knowing how human beings are both rational and irrational, biologically programmed and socially shaped; and observing the massive technological and related socio-economic changes of the past century, in particular the the advent of AI, one of the questions that we need to answer could be:

Is it possible to advance at the current speed of technological evolution without losing the ability to shape humanity’s destiny through collective human decision-making that we think of in terms of traditional politics?

You may ask: What does AI have to do with all of that?

My answer is simple: We are probably approaching a time when AIs know better about our individual, cultural and political preferences than politicians have ever known in the history of our political systems. Depending on the reach of AI(s), they will be able to analyse and deduct from individual interests and collective dynamics reaching from local, culturally close groups to the aggregated global system of humanity, beyond comparable abilities designed into traditional political institutions.

There are two options coming out of this for future political systems:

There may be those political systems in which traditional politics makes use of this knowledge and policy recommendations generated by AI to shape our collective destiny (or destinies). The others will be systems where the AI(s) take(s) over because we may collectively trust these all-encompassing new technologies more than the bounded rationality and limited knowledge of human representatives.

Knowing this, the question is: Can we even shape where all this is going, for example sending people’s ambassadors to global companies who design AIs like Denmark? Is a culturally divided but technologically interdependent humanity even able to organize meaningful collective action that is successful enough to influence how AIs shape the planet? Or is it even unnecessary to try this because AI-system as the new political systems will represent our collective will anyhow?

Will we give the nuclear launch codes to our AIs and let them decide to start global wars like we give AIs the power to decide on drone strikes? Will we, in the future, elect the best decision-making machine to lead our global institutions, simulating all possible decisions to agree on the best possible option for all humans, all cultures, all technologies?

To answer these questions, we need to build a new type of political/social science research organization, one like CERN for physics, but adapted to the knowledge and social realities of 2017 and the years to come.

We need to be fast and we need to work against the old social system of academic knowledge generation – build up reputation for 20 years, become a professor and then pass on your existing knowledge and decide over what get’s published and what doesn’t until you die.

Instead, we need people with various skills, from theory to practice, from big data to micro-ethnography, from introvert analysts to extrovert talkers, from those who are creative to generate knowledge to those who are creative to communicate it audio-visually, from the experienced researchers who know how to run effective research operations to new researcher who know how to run new technologies.

We need to include people of all cultures, genders and social background,  embedded both in local and in global society, because we need to be as good as the present and future AI(s) – or we need to be able to make intelligent use of AI – in understanding what’s going on in our socieites, helping to shape future technological advancement so that it reflects human and humanity’s interests. To answer these questions, we need a collective exercise and theorise within and beyond existing schools of thought, do empirical research within and beyond existing borders, go for data analysis at the scale of AI far beyond human capabilities and at the scale of intersubjective human understanding.

And we need open science. Knowledge production may remain complex and long-term but the results have to circulate fast. Intermediate findings have to be immediately discussed and  knowledge about arcane developments at one end of the world are made accessible in fast and meaningful ways to researchers at the other end of the world. Only open social science will be able to keep up with the speed of technological evolution.

This all may sound a little over the top, but seeing how slow and how disconnected  from technological advancement most of the social sciences seem to work today, I’m convinced that our generation needs to change this. Either we start building the political science equivalent – or social science equivalent, if you want – to the LHC now or we may miss to jump on a train that is accelerating fast.

This probably needs big money. We don’t need these large sums to pay exorbitant salaries to a few self-declared academic leaders but we will need it because we have to be many and we need to work together in new way. This probably means using both public and private funding, or combining resources from both worlds as borders between the two are anyway disappearing where global-scale corporations compete alongside global-scale public organizations.

We need those funds because we have to invest in technology adapted to the requirements of a social science that works on a global scale, that collaborates beyond disciplinary borders and that can stand up to the AI revolution that is on our doorsteps. This means communication   between well equipped research facilities around the world, combining languages, social science disciplines and local and global knowledge.

We need translation technology that works so that insights from minority languages can be injected into global research questions, and vice versa. We need data analysis facilities that can run calculations at the scale of planetary humanity while we need ethics ombudspersons around the world who can ensure that research respects cultural differences while new knowledge is generated.

We need to pay for new people to join the research endeavour regularly and to make everybody learn and adapt, simply because technology will be advancing faster than ever before. And we need money to ensure that those working with us can still live social lives, take timeout to get children, to care for their parents and friends, to take creative timeouts, to return to their local communities or global societies not to lose touch while working on a big research endeavour, short: being what makes humanity while going with the times.

Thus, it’s time to start constructing the social science CERN and build the political science LHC, turning our current academic system and its social scientists towards those who are already shaping the future of our planet. If we want it or not, those working on technology beyond our imagination, in China, in the USA or wherever else, they are already rushing ahead. Only when social science works with them or at least understands what is going on can we design political systems that keep up with where technology will be in 5, 10, or 50 years.

This essay is a experimental, summarizing ideas that aren’t fully thought through but that have grown over my time inside and outside political science as a profession. Feel free to discuss and to contradict. And if you are already building the social science CERN, I’d be happy to know about it and eventually join.

The post Political Science in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Cultural Differences, and Global Institutions appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The President of the European Council, Donald Tusk received the letters of credentials of the following Ambassadors:

H.E. Mr Jasem Mohamed A.A. ALBUDAIWI, Head of the Mission of the State of Kuwait to the European Union
H.E. Mr Dato' HASNUDIN BIN HAMZAH, Ambassador, Head of the Mission of Malaysia to the European Union
H.E. Mr KIM Hyoung-zhin, Ambassador, Head of the Mission of the Republic of Korea to the European Union
H.E. Mr Colin Michael CONNELLY,  Ambassador, Head of the Mission of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago to the European Union

SPD chancellor candidate Martin Schulz has called Germany's Agenda 2010 reforms into question: his campaign will focus on corrections to the social reforms introduced under the SPD-Green Party government between 2003 to 2005. Among other things Schulz plans to extend unemployment benefits. Can he beat Chancellor Merkel with this strategy? And what role will refugee policy play in the campaigning?