European Union

General : If you find the EU's inner workings and policies hard to understand, then help is now at hand. Our How it Works videos are there to answer all your questions on topics ranging from data protection to the European Council. Continue reading to find out more.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

General : If you find the EU's inner workings and policies hard to understand, then help is now at hand. Our How it Works videos are there to answer all your questions on topics ranging from data protection to the European Council. Continue reading to find out more.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 42 per cent of Europeans were keen for some ‘powers’ to be returned to the national level, with only 19 per cent favouring further centralisation at EU level. The idea of ‘less Europe’ is not new: calls for it date back to the great subsidiarity debate of the 1990s that followed the Danish ‘No’ vote on the Maastricht Treaty. But have these repeated demands led to anything? Does the European Union have a reverse gear, or is ‘more Europe’ always the default choice?

Rollback, or policy dismantling, is a distinctive direction of policy change. It is the opposite of policy expansion. As policy is made at different levels in the EU, in theory so can policy dismantling happen both at the EU and national (even regional) levels.

In the EU context, national policy dismantling can happen when disparate national policies are removed and replaced by a common EU rule (‘positive integration’). Conversely, EU policies can be dismantled if certain policies are ‘returned’ back to the Member States. Crucially, despite repeated calls for returning certain policies, no such ‘repatriation’ of EU policies or competences has happened.

This does not mean that EU policies are necessarily eternal, or that further policy expansion is a given. Instead, it means that dismantling may still be happening, but from within the EU policy-making system. Indeed, EU policies can in principle also be dismantled at EU level, through legislative reform, if a new directive removes or waters down existing provisions, reduces the scope of application or the penalties for non-compliance.

In order to investigate whether the EU has a reverse gear, we studied changes to EU environmental rules, a policy area which has featured prominently in calls for cutting EU ‘red tape’ and for greater subsidiarity. In the 1990s, EU water and air directives were targeted, and in the 2000s, the EU’s waste legislation and again air policy were the focus. The 2010s saw calls to weaken biodiversity, chemicals, waste and air legislation.

We identified all pieces of EU environmental legislation targeted for dismantling over a 22 year period (1992-2014), which had been subsequently revised through the EU legislative system. The dataset comprises 19 directives and regulations, revised between one and five times, which yielded 75 legislative texts. These policies cover a wide range of environmental issues from bathing water and eco-labels, to air quality and electronic waste.

We developed a new coding scheme and policy typology, and coded changes to directives and regulations across six different dimensions: changes to policy density (eg the number of instruments within a directive, or directives within a policy area), scope (eg how many businesses are affected by the rules) and settings (eg how ambitious it is) at both the level of the entire piece of legislation and that of its individual instruments, comparing different generations over tim

We found that some EU policies have been dismantled in part. But dismantling is not a frequent direction of policy change. In our 19 directives, 16 experienced some kind of policy dismantling. Most policy dismantling appeared to take place at the level of instruments, not of the whole piece of legislation – small changes to policy instruments, not cuts across the board. Within policy instruments, dismantling was most frequent when considering density (removal of existing instruments), not scope or settings (weakening of existing instruments).

These results are striking, as our dataset is composed of directives and regulations openly targeted for dismantling. Yet even for these, dismantling was the least frequent direction of policy change (Figure 1). Moreover, there was more policy expansion than policy dismantling.

Figure 1. Directions of policy change across policy instruments’ density, scope and settings (own data)

These results confirm that the EU has a reverse gear. The EU is not only a driver of policy dismantling in its Member States. It has become a new locus of dismantling in its own right. These results, along with growing calls for austerity and cutting red tape at EU level, underline the need for further research.

First, how significant is policy dismantling? This question raises major methodological considerations regarding how dismantling is measured, in particular whether expansion in one area can offset dismantling in another. Second, is it just a story of EU environmental policy, or does it apply to other policies as well? Recent work on the reduced rate of policy proposals has shown that the European Commission has slowed down policy expansion across a number of policy areas, but is dismantling also widespread?

Third, what of the politics of dismantling? Why (and how) is dismantling taking place at EU level? The mix of expansion and dismantling found at EU level echoes existing research on welfare state retrenchment in consensual systems and ‘expansionary dismantling’. Examples of policy dismantling occurring through the EU legislative process appear to confirm that supranational institutions, namely the European Commission and the European Parliament, are not ‘hard-wired to seek ever closer union’ through policy expansion, or even in favour of maintaining the status quo.

More research is needed to understand these respective roles and rationales in pursuing policy dismantling. Addressing these and other questions, such as the role of non-state actors or the strategies used to build dismantling coalitions in the EU, constitutes a rich and promising research agenda on EU level dismantling.

This blog post draws from the authors’ recent open-access publication in the Journal of European Public Policy special issue ‘Best Papers from the European Union Studies Association 2015 Biennial Conference’: Does the European Union have a reverse gear? Policy dismantling in a hyperconsensual polity. It was originally published on European Futures, the academic blog on Europe and European affairs from the University of Edinburgh and the Edinburgh Europa Institute. 

The post Can European policies be dismantled? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

To pit one narrative against another, that is the way of human life. Imagine all the people, living life as one – but people do not live lives as one. They live lives deeply embedded in spaces – space and orientation, Ordnung und Ortung, or perhaps rather a dis-orientating orientation through ordered space.

Institutionalised politics is the most widely known form of how human beings deal with power and the distribution of power. The distribution of power has vast effects on how we see and deal with reality. The proliferation of nation states and nation state borders in the 20th century was a shaky ride, but the solidification of borders as national and the subsequent post War ordering and orienting of politics based on the assumption of the reality of these borders gave rise to a new geopolitical reality. The response in Europe was premised on the assumption  that, to prevent the 20th century atrocities  in the future, the possibility for warfare should be minimised.

Integration and cooperation were seen as the best bet. Given recent history in western Europe, they were quite probably right. Yet the European Union, despite populist talk of faceless bureaucrats and a ‘loss of control’, is itself premised on the reality of nation states. The legal constructions that allow for free travel of people, goods, services and capital throughout many EU countries is created in response to having to take borders not as a spatial reality, but at least as one that bears a cultural-political expression that cannot be denied.

In what follows, I discuss the nature of borders, the symbolic aspect of bordering through physical as well as mental representations, their relation and bearing on spatial constructions of identity and lay out some of the consequences of exporting political ideologies in the recent past. In the concluding paragraphs I briefly outline the major implications.

 

Bordering is filtering

The real nature of a border is a farce. Even the mightiest, and perhaps oldest, symbols of bordering – the construction of walls -  find most of their power in a symbolic, fictive display of stability. Such impressive symbolic powers have stifled through from popular imagination into political discourse (if it were ever absent there). Even in historical themes central to Western thought and identity construction – the onset of philosophy, the age of the Greek  – walls come to set the stage. The stage – order and orientation: The walls of Troy, but also how it was passed and hence surpassed. In the digital world walls have equally come to occupy our imagination. The Great Wall of China became the Great Firewall, and like of old, filtering is its purpose. And although the symbolic power and place of walls in our thinking is perhaps stronger than ever, it is hardly a coincidence that the symbolic power of the Trojan Horse has accompanied the concept of the wall throughout history.

Borders always have to be created and maintained in order to be real. Not merely physically. Physically, the imagination only needs to be stirred briefly to think of borders as real. From feeble fence work to billion dollar concrete walls equipped with cameras, barbed wire and mines that attempt to settle any doubt as to its real nature. I  remember well the holidays to Germany as a kid and how upon approaching the border, the attention of my parents, sister and me would immediately be drawn to our surroundings. How that space was ordered would simply draw your attention. And you would orientate yourself, wouldn’t you? Signs telling the remaining distance to Germany; the different colours, brands and striping of police cars; the concrete booths with thick, protective glass and the boom barriers. It just so happened that with the booths unoccupied and the border police standing with carefully maintained stern, but rather forlorn expressions, it was always quite an odd impression. More than anything, it made me feel that borders – that which separates where I live from where others live – were becoming a thing of the past.

 

Bordering an identity

National language and identity are compellingly persuasive as complementary political arguments in the construction of a territorial history that belongs to a nation state. Such history is normative. It is premised on the belief in national borders as stable, whereas they never have been. The ordering and orientation of borders has only ever changed. Our thinking on these matters – often the result of an emotional, much more than a rational response – has been shaped by many forces. One of these is a striking resemblance to religion: Were you to be born in France, your nationality would be French. If you are born in a predominantly Christian region, you would most likely become Christian too. This is not to say that it cannot be any other way, only that  identity is a spatial concern. Spatial concerns enter our thinking from a young age. At primary school, the first maps of this world – with stable lines and given names – start to shape your perspective. It is nothing short of learning a rendered version of geography based on ideological cartography that is existentially tied to a state. This coupling of language, identity and territory determines the scope of the discourse-framework of political sovereignty, but sadly also often that of political participation.

It is almost amusing to think how far this can go. I am not a nationalist. I’d almost be offended if you thought I were. Yet this does not mean that nationalism has no effect upon me. For me, even as a football fan , this year’s European Cup was always going to be boring with the absence of the Netherlands. Now I’m not talking about the football being dreadful – it was, we’ve all seen it – but about the experience of enjoyment,  emotional bondage and passion. There was no narrative I have grown up to relate to, not in an environment where nothing other than national identity is decisive. So suddenly nationality becomes a factor in terms of whom I do or do not support. Persuasion comes at the end of reasoning, when all else ceases to be an argument, not because the argument to support the best playing team has no value in terms of sports-value or entertainment-value, but simply because it is not persuasive. I have already been persuaded to support Holland. A long time ago.

This is odd, to say the least. And with odd I do not mean explanatory evasive, but odd because of my natural habitat. Despite the geographical closeness to Germany of the region where I was born, the cartographic representation of the Netherland determined the orientation. Dutch language made up the world – literally. And it did so effectively, because to this day, I often refer to the Netherlands as Holland – effectively the centre of its economic activities, now and historically – even though it is not. To this day, I support the Dutch football team. To this day, I remember the song about Piet Hein, celebrating the sinking of the Spanish Silver Fleet. Narratives of nationality are pitted against one another. If there is no ‘them’, there is no ‘us’. This is not the same as saying that narratives always exclude other narratives, but that there is always a struggle of recognition. The cartographic map must first be drawn, before there is territory to be recognised in the first place. Between Spain and France this works quite well, but between Spain and Catalonia things are not quite so simple. The construction of political reality has followed this principle of recognition – of sovereign recognition of sovereignty, the founding myth of the state. Think only of the League of Nations, the European Union or any other collection of states.

What’s in a map?

What modern maps primarily show are economic zones. These economic zones are within states, but it is an illusion to think that all that dwells within these zones is subject(ed) to sovereign law. The reality of economic life is that it has to act in response to the ordering of space as national, but this also means it can profitably adapt to any shortcomings of such an ideology. Here one could think of migrating flows of money through tax havens – effectively using one recognised national order to avoid the financial consequences of another – but also of infamous ghost companies, where both the economic  and legal complexity in and among states have granted creative accounting a realm of its own.

The colonial heritage is that a commonplace approach towards the global market is fashioned in neo-liberal outfits, developed, produced and reproduced in the US and EC/EEC. Through international institutions – the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, etc – the global economy has been ordered and oriented around vested interests, and as a result political norms that shape our judgement of what constitutes a correct political response are heavily biased. This influence reaches far and goes deep. In the 1980’s, for instance, the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Policies demanded structural cuts from governments without exempting health care and education. If governments would not agree, no loans would be provided. In that same decade, the World Bank, WHO and UNICEF suddenly came to envision healthcare with similar ideological charge. Only a couple of years after the famous Alma Ata healthcare conference on universal primary healthcare, selective primary health care became a trending topic: Investing only where significant gains could be expected, while expressing metrically and in the jargon of finances where results would make political sense.

The world is dealing with this legacy. The cartographic drawings determined the political order and orientation in Africa and the ‘Middle-East’ were drawn and solidified in our thinking in the aftermath of colonialism. Many states’ border lines have created divisions where there were none before, through geopolitical decisions based on the political interests of those who were drawing the lines on the map. Only narrow (and often economic) depictions of what modern states are – and modern nominally, not as the equivalent of the developed-developing dichotomy – depend on the popular belief in national borders. This is a phenomenon that can easily be observed. The influx of migrants into Europe has upset political status quo in a few years’ time.

Control issues: in denial

What has happened since? States have vehemently tried to reshape landscapes. They have created borderscapes, frontiers and god knows what else, but they have always done this somewhere. Somewhere is essential. No politics without a place. Migrant detainee camps have become political tools in gathering round everyone that has not passed European border-filtering practices. To too many a passport means that you shall not pass, or – if you do – at least a political attempt will have been made to make it difficult. Attempts at isolating groups happen, but in Western European countries, in a time with more information and research available to critically assess the development of political discourse, it is striking to see how states’ political spheres mimic the type of order and orientation that is based on a fictional, narrow and normative history of demarcated and supposedly sovereignly controlled territory.

It was only ever to be expected that the horrors that have taken place in Europe in the 20th century would fade from memory. The reality of war has become a reality of other spaces. Terrorism has already questioned the naïve but popular perception of a walled world where whole populations can be isolated at will, if only we tried. No politics without space. We have built and most likely will continue to build walls, create borderscapes and filter at hubs near popular routes in accordance with a set of norms, just to prove the reality of an internally ordered space. To prove the difference between the there and here, or perhaps to create it.  So in order to solve European political concern, politics is simply relocated to other places. Turkey, Libya or Lebanon – if the problem is not on our property, the problem must be someone else’s, so the question of responsibility becomes one of international relations, where a different order allows for a different orientation.  So long as peace and serenity at ‘home’ continue, we may yet succeed in keeping the fiction of a bordered world alive, but what inflated price tag will come with it?

 

——

Should you be interested in topics that relate to states and borders, be sure to read Wendy Brown’s ‘States of Injury’. To explore border enforcement from a conceptual point of view, Brown’s book ‘Waning Sovereignty, Walled Democracies’ is an excellent, accessible introduction. Also, have a look at some of the articles published by the Guardian on walls. Simply googling ‘walls the guardian’ will get you there.  

The post Bordering Identities appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

On 8 August 2016, the Council agreed not to impose fines on Portugal and Spain for their failure to take effective action to correct their excessive deficits. 

It also stepped up the excessive deficit procedure for both countries, setting new correction deadlines and giving notice of measures to be taken. 

On 12 July 2016, the Council found that neither country had taken effective action to reduce its deficit below 3% of GDP, the EU's reference value for government deficits. The Council's decisions triggered sanctions under the excessive deficit procedure, on the basis of article 126(8) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Fines of up to 0.2% of GDP could be imposed but, following reasoned requests from Portugal and Spain, the Commission proposed on 27 July 2016 to cancel the fines. The Council decided on 8 August not to reverse the Commission's proposal. 

EU fiscal rules additionally require the Commission to propose a suspension of all or part of the EU's structural and investment fund commitments or payments for 2017. The Commission decided however to make the proposal at a later stage, following a structured dialogue with the European Parliament. 

The new deadlines set by the Council are based on article 126(9) of the TFEU. Portugal is now required to correct its deficit by 2016 and Spain by 2018 at the latest. Effective action must be taken by 15 October 2016, and both countries must submit a report by that date. 

Portugal 

The Council calls on Portugal to reduce its general government deficit to 2.5% of GDP in 2016. Portugal must implement consolidation measures amounting to 0.25% of GDP this year. All windfall gains must be used to accelerate deficit and debt reduction, and Portugal must be ready to adopt further measures should budgetary risks materialise. 

Fiscal consolidation measures must secure a lasting improvement to the government's budgetary balance in a manner conducive to economic growth. 

Portugal has been subject to an excessive deficit procedure since December 2009, when the Council issued a recommendation calling for its deficit to be corrected by 2013. 

In April 2011 however, after several months of market pressure on its sovereign bonds, Portugal requested assistance from international lenders. It obtained a €78 billion package of loans from the EU, the euro area and the IMF. In October 2012, the Council extended the deadline for correcting the deficit by one year to 2014, in the light of the recession in Portugal. 

Economic prospects deteriorated further, and the general government deficit reached 6.4% of GDP in 2012. In June 2013, the Council extended the deadline for correcting the deficit by another year, to 2015. It set headline deficit targets of 5.5% of GDP for 2013, 4.0% of GDP for 2014 and 2.5% of GDP for 2015. 

Portugal exited its economic adjustment programme in June 2014. 

However, it missed the deadline set by the Council as its general government deficit came out at 4.4% of GDP in 2015. Portugal didn't correct its deficit by 2015 as required, and its fiscal effort fell significantly short of what the Council recommended. 

Thanks to policy measures taken in its 2016 budget, Portugal's general government deficit is expected to fall below the 3% of GDP reference value this year. In the light of uncertainties regarding economic and budgetary developments however, the safety margin against breaching the reference value again is narrow. The Council considers therefore that a credible and sustainable adjustment path requires Portugal to attain a general government deficit of 2.5% of GDP in 2016.

Spain 

The Council calls on Spain to reduce its general government deficit to 4.6% of GDP in 2016, 3.1% of GDP in 2017 and 2.2% of GDP in 2018. In addition to savings already foreseen, Spain must implement consolidation measures amounting to 0.5% of GDP in both 2017 and 2018. All windfall gains must be used to accelerate deficit and debt reduction, and Spain must be ready to adopt further measures should budgetary risks materialise. 

Fiscal consolidation measures must secure a lasting improvement to the government's budgetary balance in a manner conducive to economic growth. 

Spain has been subject to an excessive deficit procedure since April 2009, when the Council issued a recommendation calling for its deficit to be corrected by 2012. 

In December 2009 however, the Council extended the deadline to 2013. The Commission forecast that Spain's 2009 deficit would reach 11,2 % of GDP, five percentage points more than its previous estimate. In July 2012, the Council extended the deadline for a further year to 2014 on account of renewed adverse economic circumstances. 

Also in July 2012, the euro area member states agreed to provide up to €100 billion of loans to Spain for the recapitalisation of its financial services industry. 

In June 2013, the Council found that Spain fulfilled the conditions for extending the deadline for correcting its deficit by a further two years, setting a new deadline of 2016. It set headline deficit targets of 6.5% of GDP for 2013, 5.8% of GDP for 2014, 4.2% of GDP for 2015 and 2.8% of GDP for 2016. 

Spain exited the financial sector financial assistance programme in January 2014. It had used close to €38.9 billion of loans for bank recapitalisation, plus around €2.5 billion for capitalising the country's asset management company. 

However, general government deficits of 5.9% of GDP in 2014 and 5.1% of GDP in 2015 were above the intermediate targets set by the Council. Moreover, a relaxation of fiscal policy in 2015 had a large impact on the country's fiscal outcome that year. 

As a consequence, Spain is not set to correct its deficit in 2016 as required by the Council in its June 2013 recommendation. Its general government deficit is currently set to amount to 4.6% of GDP in 2016, 3.3% of GDP in 2017 and 2.7% of GDP in 2018, according to the Commission's updated 2016 spring economic forecast. And the country's fiscal effort has fallen significantly short of what the Council recommended. 

Granting Spain one additional year to correct its deficit would require a structural balance adjustment that would have too negative an impact on growth. The Council therefore considers it adequate to extend the deadline by two years. 

The Council considers that a credible and sustainable adjustment path requires Spain to achieve general government deficits of 4.6%, 3.1% and 2.2% of GDP in 2016, 2017 and 2018 respectively. 

General : Launched in 2011, Snapchat has been expanding rapidly. More than 100 million people use it every day to watch and send stories to their friends and follow events from around the world. As one third of Snapchat users live in Europe, the European Parliament opened an account in May 2015 to give them the chance to find out more about European politics. Already more than 15,000 people follow the Parliament on Snapchat. Read on to find out more details.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

General : Launched in 2011, Snapchat has been expanding rapidly. More than 100 million people use it every day to watch and send stories to their friends and follow events from around the world. As one third of Snapchat users live in Europe, the European Parliament opened an account in May 2015 to give them the chance to find out more about European politics. Already more than 15,000 people follow the Parliament on Snapchat. Read on to find out more details.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

The Summer Olympic Games open today in Rio de Janeiro. The run-up to the event has been overshadowed by protests at the torch relay and debate over whether to ban Russian athletes from competing because of the doping scandal. Commentators wonder whether the event hasn't long since lost its lustre.