European Union

General : EP President Martin Schulz travelled today to the Greek island of Lesbos in order to visit a refugee registration and identification centre where almost 2,500 people are recorded on a daily basis. Speaking at the so-called hotspot at Moria, he said: "We must urgently reinforce efforts to complete hotspots. To be effective, however, all member states must take part in the relocation." While in Greece the President also visited Athens for the first relocation of refugees from Greece to Luxembourg.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

General : EP President Martin Schulz travelled today to the Greek island of Lesbos in order to visit a refugee registration and identification centre where almost 2,500 people are recorded on a daily basis. Speaking at the so-called hotspot at Moria, he said: "We must urgently reinforce efforts to complete hotspots. To be effective, however, all member states must take part in the relocation." While in Greece the President also visited Athens for the first relocation of refugees from Greece to Luxembourg.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Twelve years after the Thessaloniki promise that the future of the Balkans is within the European Union, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, fYRoM, Montenegro, and Serbia remain excluded with no foreseeable accession date in sight. Despite initial success, the current approach to enlargement has reached its limits, as it seems to be slowing down the integration process rather than accelerating it. In the meantime, in addition to the democratic and economic setbacks in the region, renewed tensions are threatening to undermine fragile regional stability. Moreover, the EU’s unfinished business in the Balkans opens the door to various political, economic and security alternatives. This is precisely why the main message of this study is that the current autopilot mode of enlargement cannot continue.
Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Location : Brussels JAN 2Q2
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Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

General : Turkey is the gateway to Europe for hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war zones and as such an essential partner for the EU to help tackle the refugee crisis. Following Sunday's elections in Turkey, we talked to Greek EPP member Manolis Kefalogiannis, chair of the delegation to the EU-Turkey joint parliamentary committee, about the need for an agreement on migration between the EU and Turkey, the country's human rights situation as well as its progress towards joining the EU.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

General : Turkey is the gateway to Europe for hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war zones and as such an essential partner for the EU to help tackle the refugee crisis. Following Sunday's elections in Turkey, we talked to Greek EPP member Manolis Kefalogiannis, chair of the delegation to the EU-Turkey joint parliamentary committee, about the need for an agreement on migration between the EU and Turkey, the country's human rights situation as well as its progress towards joining the EU.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

All aboard the two-level train to a Federal Superstate. Or not.

One of the staples of academic understanding of the EU is the notion of the two-level game. The idea – first articulated by Robert Putnam - is simply that there are situations where you can only understand an actor’s intentions and actions in one game/interaction if you also accept that these intentions and actions are shaped by their involvement in other games. Putnam was interested in the entanglement of international and national political arenas, so it’s not so surprising that EU scholars have taken to using the approach, since the tensions we find in European-level negotiations are often only understandable if we know the domestic pressures that national representatives are facing.

Central to this model are those representatives, since they connect the two level. Thus they function as conduits, as well as gatekeepers, since the relevant pressures at both levels might not be public knowledge. Most importantly, they work as arbitrators, trying to find acceptable compromises to trade off the array of interests and pressures. As an aside, we might note that this has the practical implication of strengthening national executives, as they are usually the representatives, and so can use European-level negotiations to out-manouver legislative and civil society elements.

It’s helpful to look at the UK’s renegotiation-n-referendum exercise in the light of this model, because it doesn’t yet fit very neatly.

Undoubtedly, the key driver is domestic politics: as I’ve long argued, David Cameron’s European policy is no more than a function of internal party management, framing by a broad desire to pursue the path of least resistance. The referendum commitment itself still looks like a misguided effort to put his backbenchers back into their box, at a time when a Tory victory in May 2015 looked less than likely.

This isn’t inconsistent with Putnam’s model, but where there is an issue is in the nature of the European level.

George Osborne’s speech to the German BDI this week was a case in point. While the BBC and other British media providers tagged along and provided copious amounts of coverage, the lack of German media interest was palpable: beyond some wire reports, none of the major German providers ran with the story.

This might be partly explained by the continuing failure of Osborne/the UK to provide any real detail of the renegotiation objectives – the least possibly alluring Dance of the Seven Veils – but it also reflects the general indifference in other member states – and, by extension, in much of the EU – to what Cameron is trying to do.

As we roll around to the end of the first six months of this government, the persistent impression from other member states has been that this is a British problem, that the British government has to sort out. The most telling comment around Osborne’s came from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg: “German govt source ‘Osborne must have his crusade… We are happy to play along’”

Evidently, the inability of the government to provide any detail on its demands only reinforces this dynamic, since it conveys the impression that the key issue is whether the Tory party leadership can ‘sell’ the renegotiation package to their backbench and to the public, rather than any particular matter of principle.

The challenge to the UK then is this: do national representatives still maintain their gatekeeping function?

At a functionally level, they still do, but the increased awareness of what’s happening in the other arena of negotiation makes it ever harder for them to play an arbitration role. All of the key British negotiation team are being closely watched at home for any sign of weakness or duplicity – even in the most tenuous of ways - with the very presence of the referendum given them cause to be concerned about displeasing too many people. Likewise, the very public nature of the British debate – again, causing in part by a government that won’t set a clear agenda – means that other member states have a good fix on what Cameron’s bottom-line will be.

In short, the space for the British government to build space between the two levels is getting smaller, rather than larger. Even the broad construction of the four key areas is under constant challenge, as both British and European voices try to close down particular interpretations or approaches.

Strikingly, the situation looks to be rather asymmetric, in that British visibility of the domestic constraints in European counterparts looks to be much weaker than vice-versa. This manifests itself in a number of ways, but again Osborne’s speech gives us an insight into the problems.

Osborne knows enough that his speech needed to be framed in more positive language than that of simple demands. To read the text is to see an approach that stresses collective benefits of both EU membership and reform for Germany and the UK. This message – that British intentions are actually good for the whole EU – make clear sense in building alliances of support, but they only get made outside of the UK: Domestically, the rhetoric is about fighting for British interests (whatever that might mean). And, unsurprisingly, that domestic rhetoric is heard outside of the UK.

In essence, the British renegotiation looks more and more like a single-level exercise for the UK. Unless and until the government can come to a public statement of its intentions from the exercise, the only people it’s really negotiating with are themselves.

The post Can the UK still play a two-level game in the EU? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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On 23 and 24 March, EU hosts a meeting of 34 Libyan mayors and local leaders as part of the UN-led Libyan Political Dialogue.

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After a string of bad-tempered, late-night summits, leaders from across the EU agreed an ambitious programme of policies to try to solve the refugee crisis.

There has been one – pretty major – hitch: member states have so far been reluctant or unable to do what they said they would. Now, in a bid to get national capitals to hurry up, Operation Guilt Trip is go.

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The literature on European environmental policy has rapidly expanded over the last ten years. Between 2010 and 2015, there were over seven hundred articles about the European Union and environmental policy, compared to only two hundred and fifty articles between 2000 and 2005.[1] Ironically, given its focus, much of this literature is written outside of the major European studies journals.[2]  However, it is important to study the topics and approaches that environmental policy scholars use when publishing in European studies journals because of the key role these journals play in the field.[3] Therefore, in this post I explore environmental policy articles in two of these journals: the Journal of European Public Policy (JEPP) and the Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS).[4] JEPP and JCMS were chosen because they “play an integrating function by holding the various subfields of EU studies together”.[5]

To keep the analysis manageable, I examined environmental policy articles in JEPP and JCMS that were published between January 2010 and October 2015. I searched article titles and keywords for environmental topics, which led to a total of thirty-six articles in both journals (eleven in JCMS and twenty five in JEPP). This amounts to approximately 4% of the articles published in these two journals during this time.[6] I then categorized the articles along two dimensions: the environmental issue studied (“climate change” or “other environmental issues”[7]) and whether the article dealt with internal EU/European policy or the EU’s external policy in international negotiations.

The results of this analysis are shown below (the full list of articles is available here). Eleven articles focus on EU/European internal climate change policy (including the EU Emissions Trading System and the Biofuels Directive). Nine focus on the EU’s role in international climate negotiations, six on external EU environmental policy more generally , and ten on internal non-climate policy.

Environmental policy articles in JEPP and JCMS (2010-2015), categorized according to environmental issue and internal/external focus

What this matrix does not show is the relationship between these thirty-six articles. Here I focus on one aspect: the references that the articles cite in common. The articles being studied here cited a total of 1,702 references. Of these, 127 (~7%) were cited by more than one article.[8] I used this data to analyze when two articles cited the same source, and created a network visualization from the results.

JEPP/JCMS environmental policy articles, connected by the number of shared references

I followed this with a “network density” analysis, which looks at the percentage of articles that are connected to each other. The highest possible network density is 100%, if every article shared at least one reference with every other article. A network density of 0%, on the other hand, would mean that none of the articles shared any references in common.

The overall density of the thirty-six article network is 25%. When the analysis focuses only on climate change articles, the density is slightly higher (28%), while environmental and internal policy articles are lower than average (19% and 23% respectively). The real outlier is the external policy category, which has a much higher density, at 51% (see figure below).

JEPP/JCMS article categories, percentage of articles in each category which share at least one reference

The higher density of the external policy articles can also be shown by visualizing the network again and color coding the articles according to the internal/external dimension:

JEPP/JCMS environmental policy articles, connected by the number of shared references. Categorized into internal policy (blue) and external policy (red)

What explains the difference? One important factor seems to be that there are more central, influential references in the external policy category. For example, the internal EU policy category has eighteen sources tied for top citations, all with three articles citing each. In contrast, scholars working on external policy are more likely to cite the same articles. Especially influential is Ian Manners’ 2002 article on the EU’s international position as a “normative power” in international negotiations.[9]

Concluding thoughts

The articles I have analyzed make up a small percentage of those on European environmental policy, and an equally small percentage of the articles published in JEPP and JCMS. Therefore it isn’t clear whether the patterns identified here are representative of the entire literature on European environmental policy, or are only a feature of JEPP and JCMS articles.

Regardless, a few key points should be highlighted. This group of articles has a strong focus on climate change and the EU’s role as a negotiator in international institutions. What drives the focus on these topics? It could be a product of scholars’ interest, or alternatively due to choices made by the journals’ editors to accept certain types of research.

The network analysis suggests that the scholars publishing articles on the EU external environmental policy are more likely to cite from similar sources than scholars working on EU internal policy. There are a number of possibilities to explain this. One is that as a more recent field of inquiry, external policy-focused scholars are more likely to cite more references in common.

Finally, focusing on the big picture, this analysis has made me realize the sheer extent and variety of the literature on European environmental policy. As the field grows, this suggests that scholars working on these issues could reflect once again on this diversity and work to find connections between their work.

 

[1] Based on a search carried out in the Scopus database for documents with “environmental policy” and “European Union” in the title, abstract, or keywords, carried out on October 29, 2015 for the 2010-2015 time period (742 results), and on October 31 for the 2000-2005 time period (251 results).

[2] The top five journals were Energy Policy, Science of the Total Environment, Climate Policy, Land Use Policy, and Environmental Policy and Governance.

[3] Jensen, M.D., Kristensen, P.M., 2013. The elephant in the room: mapping the latent communication pattern in European Union studies. Journal of European Public Policy.

[4] Other European studies journals include European Union Politics, West European Politics, the Journal of European Integration, and the Journal of Contemporary European Studies.

[5] Jensen, M.D., Kristensen, P.M., 2013. The elephant in the room: mapping the latent communication pattern in European Union studies. Journal of European Public Policy, pg. 1. doi:10.1080/13501763.2012.699656

[6] 36 environmental policy articles out of a total of 940 articles (as of October 29, 2015).

[7] “Other environmental issues” included articles that focused on a non-climate topic (such as fisheries management) as well as those that looked at a broad range of issues (including climate change).

[8] This figure is an estimate based on the references available on Scopus. It should be considered an underestimate, due to the fact that some types of documents (e.g., European Commission communications) are relatively likely to be counted as distinct sources by the database.

[9] Manners, I., 2002. Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms? JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 40, 235–258. doi:10.1111/1468-5965.00353

 

The post Mapping five years of environmental policy research in European studies appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

General : On Wednesday and Thursday European Parliament President Martin Schulz will travel to Athens and Lesbos to discuss the migration crisis and will be present for the departure of the first relocated refugees from Greece.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP