European Union

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Framework Agreement on Partnership and Cooperation between the European Union and its Member States, of the one part, and the Republic of the Philippines, of the other part (2013/0441(NLE))
Framework Agreement on Partnership and Cooperation between the EU and its Member States, of the one part, and the Republic of the Philippines, of the other part, to take account of the accession of the Republic of Croatia to the EU (2014/0224(NLE))
Accompanying motion for a resolution to the Framework Agreement on Partnership and Cooperation between the European Union and its Member States, of the one part, and the Republic of the Philippines, of the other part
Space capabilities for European security and defence
Peace Support Operations - EU engagement with the UN and the African Union
Recommendation on the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly
Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Isn’t it strange how history sometimes seems to repeat itself? Not always in exactly the same way, but in ways to make it seem uncanny.

Take the remarkable resemblances between the referendum of 1975 and the one we’re having now, both regarding Britain’s future in Europe.

Back in 1974 Labour leader, Harold Wilson, won a general election with a very slim majority.

One year earlier Britain joined the European Economic Community (later to be called the European Union) under a Conservative government led by Edward Heath.

Prime Minister Wilson promised to re-negotiate the terms of Britain’s membership and then to hold a referendum on whether to remain in the EEC.

The Labour government was in favour of Britain’s continued membership. But the cabinet was split. So Mr Wilson suspended Cabinet collective responsibility. Cabinet members were allowed to publicly campaign against each other.

In total, seven of the twenty-three members of the Labour cabinet opposed EEC membership, mostly the left-wing stalwarts of the Labour Party, such as Michael Foot, Tony Benn and Barbara Castle.

In some ways, the 1975 referendum was a mirror image of today.

Unlike today, in 1975 the Labour Party and the TUC were against Britain’s membership of what was then nicknamed the Common Market. Indeed, the Labour Party conference voted 2-to-1 against continued membership.

Also unlike today, in 1975 all main British newspapers were in favour of Britain’s continued membership.

And unlike today, Conservative Party members in 1975 were mostly in favour of Britain’s membership. Indeed, the then leader of the Conservative Party and the Opposition, Margaret Thatcher, fervently campaigned for Britain to stay a member.

Some of the same language was used in the 1975 referendum as today. When Labour cabinet minister, Tony Benn, claimed that Britain had lost half-a-million jobs as a result of membership of the EEC, the Daily Mirror responded by calling him, “The Minister of fear.”

Although many Eurosceptics today claim that, in 1975, they were only told that the European Economic Community was to do with free trade, that wasn’t reflected in the campaign literature of the time. In the ‘No’ campaign brochure voters were warned about Common Market membership:

• To end a thousand years of British freedom and independent nationhood is an unheard of constitutional change.

• Do you want us to be a self-governing nation, or to be a province of Europe?

• Do we want self-government as a great independent nation, or do we want to be governed as a province of the EEC by Commissioners and a Council of Ministers, predominantly foreign, in Brussels?

• Do we want to lose the whole of our individual influence as a nation, which is still great, in order to enhance the status of Europe, which would then function largely outside our control?

David Cameron also only won the General Election in 2015 with a very slim majority.

Just as Prime Minister Harold Wilson had promised in 1974, Prime Minister David Cameron also promised in 2015 that he would renegotiate Britain’s membership of the European Union and then hold a referendum.

Just as detractors in 1975 described Mr Wilson’s reforms of Britain’s membership as ‘cosmetic’, so have Eurosceptics today similarly described Mr Cameron’s reforms.

Just as Harold Wilson’s Labour government was in favour of Britain’s continued membership, so is David Cameron’s Conservative government.

Just as the Labour Party membership was mostly against EEC membership in 1975, in 2016 most Conservative Party members are against Britain’s membership of the European Union.

And just as Harold Wilson allowed his Cabinet Ministers in 1975 to campaign against each other on the question of Britain’s future membership, so has David Cameron in 2016 allowed his Cabinet Ministers to campaign against each other.

Just as in Harold Wilson’s Labour government of 1975, a total of seven of David Cameron’s 22 Cabinet Ministers are campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union.

They are mostly the right-wing stalwarts of the Conservative Party including Michael Gove, Chris Grayling and Iain Duncan-Smith (who recently resigned as a Cabinet Minister).

In June 1975, the electorate voted overwhelmingly – two-to-one – in favour of Britain remaining a member of the European Economic Community.

However, the Labour Party was never the same again.

Nine months after the referendum, Prime Minister Harold Wilson resigned.

Four senior Labour Party members later split from the party and formed the Social Democrats in 1981, later to be merged with the Liberal Party.

The 1974 Labour victory wasn’t to be repeated again for 23 years, when Tony Blair won the General Election for Labour in 1997.

Of course, to what extent, if any, the 1975 referendum was responsible for the change in Labour’s fortunes is difficult to prove, and there were many other factors.

However, it’s interesting to compare the striking similarities between Britain’s referendum of 1975 and the one we are about to have in ten weeks time.

Britain’s second referendum campaign on the question of our membership of the European Community has now officially begun. The vote will take place on 23 June, and we will know the result on 24 June.

Will there be any other similarities to the 1975 referendum? We will have to wait and see..

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Other stories by Jon Danzig:

• EU is the not the USSR
• What does Brexit look like? Nobody knows
• Can’t vote or don’t vote?
• List of the latest articles by Jon Danzig

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The post The EU Referendum Repeat appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

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Today is a landmark in European Union (EU)-Indonesia relations with the visit by the President of the Republic of Indonesia to the EU's institutions. We have agreed to boost economic relations and advance cooperation on global and regional challenges. 

The EU and Indonesia are important economic partners. We see a strong prospect to further expand trade and investment links given the size and the complementary nature of our economies. We welcome the conclusion of the preparatory discussion (scoping paper) for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) which should pave the way for deeper and wider economic engagement between the two sides. We look forward to the formal launch of the CEPA negotiations in the coming weeks once internal procedures have been finalized. 

Indonesia and the EU are close partners in addressing environmental challenges. We are committed to the sustainable management of forests and to fighting illegal logging and related illegal trade. The EU welcomes the implementation for all types of wood products of the Indonesian Timber Legality Assurance System. We welcome the full implementation of the Indonesia-EU Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) and agree to move expeditiously towards the start of the FLEGT licensing scheme. We look forward to the first shipment of FLEGT-certified timber from Indonesia in the coming months. The EU is committed to ensuring the uniform and effective implementation of the European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR). 

We acknowledge the significance of palm oil for both economies and are committed to strengthen cooperation on sustainable palm oil. 

We recognize Indonesia's maritime vision and Indonesia welcomes EU's support in realizing the vision. 

Promoting tolerance through dialogue and cooperation is key for both sides, as is enhancing mutual respect and understanding among people. 

We welcome the visa waiver extended to all EU Member States by Indonesia and underscored the importance of easier access and movement among the people to increase close relations and bring mutual economic and social benefits. 

We welcome the adoption of the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). We look forward to strengthening our climate cooperation and will focus on making the Paris Agreement a reality. 

We welcome recent progress in the implementation of the EU-Indonesia Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Partnership and Cooperation (PCA) and look forward to the convening of the Joint Committee before the end of the year. We also welcome the launch of the Ministerial Strategic Dialogue in Jakarta on 8 April 2016. 

We strongly condemn recent acts of terror in Jakarta, Brussels and elsewhere. Terrorism cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization, or ethnic group. We commit to stepping up our cooperation in the fight against terrorism and radicalism as well as in the security field, both bilaterally and in the international sphere. 

The EU welcomes Indonesia's recent appeal for restraint in the Middle East. We reaffirm our commitment to support the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and will continue to contribute to international initiatives working to this end. We reaffirm our support for a political solution to the conflict in Syria. 

We are concerned with trafficking in persons and people smuggling: this is an increasing challenge worldwide. We will work closely on this through relevant regional and international fora. The EU raised efforts to address the current migration and refugee crisis, through cooperation with countries of origin, transit and destination, in the context of the UN and G20. 

The European Union supports ASEAN's unity and centrality in various ASEAN-led mechanisms and in the evolving regional architecture. Indonesia welcomes the EU's interest in furthering engagement in all ASEAN-led mechanisms and its continued support to ASEAN. 

The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) celebrates its 20th anniversary this year; we are determined together to ensure a successful outcome at the 11th ASEM Summit on 15-16 July 2016 in Mongolia.

The European Union and Indonesia enjoy close relations based on shared values of democracy and good governance, respect for human rights, and the promotion of peace, stability and economic progress. We came together today to demonstrate our ambition to bring the European Union and Indonesia even closer together.

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The EU-Indonesia Partnership and Cooperation Agreement entered into force in May 2014 and provides for wide-ranging cooperation in the areas of political dialogue and security, trade, investments and economic cooperation as well as in the strengthening of people-to-people ties through mobility, educational and cultural exchange programmes.

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The opening of the official campaign on the EU referendum hasn’t been all fireworks; instead, it’s been mostly more of the same. Each side trading consequences and perils, questioning the other side’s competence or intent. In particular, we’ve been lacking vision.

The vision thing is an easy one of trash: too many overtones of Tony Blair, too much of a hostage to fortune. But vision matters: when no one seems to agree about the state we’re in, speaking instead of the state we might achieve looks less problematic.

This is particularly true for Leave. Saying that the status quo isn’t good will only get you so far, whereas a vision of the brighter, better future might well draw in more people. As Sunder Katwala noted some time ago, without that positive construct, Leave lacks a focus to its energies. While that might be a painful process, the potential value of a pre-agreed plan to a Leave side that won the vote would be immense, not least in the Article 50 negotiations that followed.

Again, the problems here are legion. Leave covers a huge array of ideological and party political positions that barely agree on what’s wrong with the EU, let alone what’s to be done. Any attempt to push a plan is thus likely to meet with internal resistance, since it will implicitly favour one worldview or another. As such, it might push away as many as it attracts.

All of which makes Michael Gove’s speech this week all the more interesting.

Gove is one of the more thoughtful figures in the Leave camp, in the sense of working through the implications of different decisions and being grounded in the politics of the situation. However, on this occasion, that thoughtfulness seems to have led him to a strange destination (thanks to whoever on Twitter reminded me of this on the confusion of opinion and action).

Gove’s argument is that the UK will be able to move out of the EU’s control but still maintain full access to its markets. He talks of a free trade area stretching across the European continent, which the UK – by virtue of its size and importance – could almost not help be part of. Moreover, the sheer success of the UK in this new position would start a contagion of democracy and would presage the collapse of the EU itself.

This ‘Goveland‘  obviously suffers a number of problems, as commentators (and Remain) were all too happy to point out. Yes, the UK is a large market for the EU, but not nearly as large as the EU market is to the UK. Coupled to the lack of incentive for other member states to give a generous deal to the UK – which would only raise further demands from domestic eurosceptics – and this ‘Albanian model’ looks not only less appealing but also less likely. Finally, as Pawel Swidlicki rightly pointed out, how could the UK negotiate access to an EU that was falling apart?

If the mechanics of the proposal are dubious, then the politics is less so. This speech has been one of the few big moments so far in the debate, where someone has tried to move things on. The absence of a clear leader of Leave means that there is opportunity for Gove to take up the reins, which might serve him well in the future, whatever the outcome. In addition, Gove’s proposal is open enough/lacking enough detail that it could act as an umbrella for many Leavers, at least in the broadest terms.

Gove’s speech matters not for its plan, but for its projection of a strong, independent and confident Britain. It taps into many of the themes that Leave have pushed over recent months, about not doing down the UK and about holding up our heads. For many voters that might be enough to convince them that Leave is the ‘right thing to do’, and we’ll work out the details as we go.

However, this doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There has been something of a swing towards Remain in the past week or so, which might be down to the government leaflet, or to the numerous statements about economic uncertainty caused by the potential of Brexit. While Remain has even less of a vision of the future than Leave – essentially, they’re relying on “it’ll be like it is now” – that doesn’t hurt them in the same way. Thus it falls to Leave to make their case stick better in the coming weeks.

The post Leave’s painful choices appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This is Thursday’s edition of our daily Brussels Briefing. To receive it every morning in your email in-box, sign up here.

There has been no shortage of reasons for outrage over last month’s refugee return deal between the EU and Turkey that, for now, has slowed the influx of migrants into Greece to a trickle. The UN believes the expulsion of migrants arriving in Greece may be illegal under international law. Human Rights Watch yesterday found the deportations “riddled with abuse”. Others have been more upset about the sweeteners given to Ankara in exchange for its cooperation in the crackdown, including €6bn in new aid and the unfreezing of negotiations over Turkish membership in the EU – which nearly upended Cypriot reunification talks and has given Brexiteers a new tool to scare UK voters.

But there may not be an issue as politically sensitive as the EU concession to provide Turkish nationals visa-free travel in Europe as early as June. Yesterday Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU’s migration commissioner, said Brussels will issue a progress report on May 4 outlining how far Ankara has gone in meeting 72 benchmarks required before the short-term visits can be allowed. “No visa liberalisation can be offered if all benchmarks are not met,” he intoned at a midday news conference.

There is increasing nervousness in several EU capitals, including Paris and Rome, that Turkey may actually clear those hurdles – or, if they’re close, the European Commission will give Ankara a pass and force national governments to decide what to do about the visa deal. That would be awkward for domestic politics in several EU countries; critics are already complaining that a refugee crisis that has caused an anti-immigrant backlash in some quarters because of the high number of Muslims arriving in Europe will have to be solved with a Turkey deal that will allow even more Muslims to travel to Europe. Some governments have begun looking at measures that would allow them to hedge their promise to Ankara, including safeguard clauses, extra conditions or watered down terms. But Ahmed Davutoglu this week made it clear: if there’s no visa-free travel deal, “no one can expect Turkey to adhere to its commitments.”

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