European Union

This study addresses cross-border restitution claims to looted art, considering Nazi-looted art and colonial takings, but also more recent cultural losses resulting from illicit trafficking. Although these categories differ considerably, commonalties exist. The study highlights blind spots in the legal and policy frameworks and formulates recommendations on how these could be bridged. This study was commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the JURI Committee.
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EU leaders are to hold emergency talks by video-link, as EU commission said it was tripling Palestine's humanitarian aid.

Over one million people cannot in reality leave Gaza City overnight in line with Israel's order, the EU's top diplomat has said.

Plenary session Strasbourg

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The fact that three of Iran's enemies — the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia —would form an alliance will have set off alarm bells in Tehran. For Hamas, too, such an agreement goes against everything it stands for.

For our weekly editorial by UACES on euradio, the University Association for Contemporary European Studies, we have the pleasure to welcome Dr Cleo Davies, from the University of Warwick, in the United Kingdom. Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

 

 

Earlier this month, on 7 September, it was announced that the United Kingdom finally joined the European research programme “HORIZON” again.

That’s right. The UK becomes the seventeenth non-EU member state country to be associated to the EU’s flagship funding programme for research and innovation, alongside countries like Israel, Norway, Türkiye, Tunisia and Ukraine. With negotiations either finalised or ongoing with New Zealand, South Korea, Canada and Morocco amongst others, the UK’s research institutions and researchers are being plugged back into the world’s largest research programme.

 

So that puts an end to an uncertainty which lasted three years.

It’s because the UK’s continued association post-EU membership got entangled in the politics of Brexit.

Participation in Union Programmes was negotiated in 2020 as part of the future UK-EU relationship and included in the “TCA”, the “Trade and Cooperation Agreement”. It was not a sticking point during the negotiations. But whilst the terms of participation were agreed in the TCA, the details were not adopted because the EU only agreed in December 2020 on its Multiannual Financial Framework, and had not yet finalised the programme’s legal framework. Instead, two draft protocols were part of a Declaration attached to the TCA in which both parties stated their ‘ambition that UK entities would be able to participate from the beginning of the programmes’.

 

But that was not the case.

No. When in March 2021, the UK government announced the extension of grace periods under the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland, in a unilateral move and without first informing its European counterpart via the governance structures of the Withdrawal Agreement, levels of trust between the EU and the UK reached a new low point. The EU looked for ways to apply pressure. It took the decision to halt progress on finalising the provisions for association to Union programmes, in spite of its own interests. Indeed, not only were UK research institutions major partners for EU-based institutes, but fragmenting research capacity also goes against the very purpose and principles of Horizon Europe.

Nevertheless, to ensure continuity and avoid uncertainty, UK research institutions and researchers were able to apply to the first calls under Horizon Europe. Furthermore, the UK government launched the Horizon Europe Guarantee in November 2021 to plug the gap in funding for successful bids in the first wave of calls.

 

Did the famous Windsor Framework, signed earlier this year, have an impact on the situation?

It certainly broke the deadlock in EU-UK relations, also paving the way for a resolution on the UK’s association to Union Programmes. But it took another six months.

Once again, the politics of Brexit threatened to derail finalising the UK’s participation in Union programmes.

In April, just as discussions had resumed, the UK government published its provisions for an alternative to the UK’s association to Horizon Europe, the so-called Pioneer Prospectus. With the UK concerned to secure ‘value-for-money’, Brussels was getting weary over the UK’s perceived attempts to renegotiate terms agreed in the TCA. In July 2023, amid rumours that a deal with the EU had been agreed, Rishi Sunak delayed his decision further, weighing the pros and cons of the UK’s alternative. Had the Pioneer Prospectus been rolled out, it would have set the UK on a different path and made association to the EU programme less likely.

 

So what does this all mean concretely?

The UK joins Horizon Europe and the Copernicus Programme. It will have access to EU Space Surveillance and Tracking services. UK researchers will be able to access Horizon Europe funding from 2024 work programmes and onwards until 2027. They will be hoping that by then, UK-EU relations will have further normalised, avoiding any future prospect of a repeat of the delays and uncertainty of the past two and a half years.

 

Interview conducted Laurence Aubron

The post The UK’s Association to EU Programmes appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan paved the way for a new clash between Brussels and Ankara by challenging the authority of the European Court of Human Rights, after a landmark ruling against the detention of a teacher imprisoned after the 2016 coup.

A recent decision on a detained Saudi dissident by Bulgaria's supreme administrative court has cast a long shadow over the legal system for people seeking asylum there.

France, Britain, the US and Nato have urged Israel to minimise Palestinian deaths, as it prepares to invade Gaza and publishes photos of Israeli victims. Ursula von der Leyen and Roberta Metsola will visit Israel on Friday.

AMENDMENTS 1 - 371 - Draft report Implementation of the common foreign and security policy – annual report 2023
Committee on Foreign Affairs
David McAllister

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Spokespersons for Parliament and for political groups will hold a briefing on the 16 - 19 October plenary session on Friday at 11.00, in Parliament’s Anna Politkovskaya press room.

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EU action aimed at improving the living and working conditions of the 87 million people with disabilities have shown little impact in recent years, a new report by the European Court of Auditors found.

The EU refrained from calling out possible Israeli war crimes for laying siege to the Gaza Strip, while ratcheting up its condemnation of Hamas, likening the group to Islamic State.

Opening another front against Israel will be met with a severe response. The expansion of the arena of combat against Israel will not be tolerated, writes the ambassador of the Israeli EU Mission.

The finalists for the 2023 Sakharov Prize are women in Iran fighting for their rights, human rights defenders from Nicaragua and legal abortion activists.

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AMENDMENTS 1 - 151 - Draft report Security and defence implications of China's influence on critical infrastructure in the European Union
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Klemen Grošelj

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The profound impact of mRNA technology on pandemic preparedness cannot be understated, making it a cornerstone in our collective efforts to safeguard public health.

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dr Kathryn Simpson, Associate Professor in Politics & Economics of the European Union, Keele University. Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

Together with Nick Startin, whom we know well at Euradio, you have recently published a piece of research on “how the tabloid press shaped the Brexit vote” back in 2016.

That’s right. There has been a wealth of academic research attempting to explain the Brexit vote, with a lot of different approaches. What we were interested in was to find out to what extent did the UK’s tabloid press shape public opinion during the referendum and whether this did influence the outcome.

In Britain ‘hard’ euroscepticism stemming from the tabloid press has long been widespread. Since the Maastricht era, tabloid newspapers such as The Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express have become renowned for portraying the EU in negative terms and as against the national interest. Some infamous headlines such as The Sun’s ‘Up Yours Delors’ front-page have become iconic reference points for British eurosceptics.

 

So how did you go about your research?

We analyse the final stages of the EU referendum campaign by focusing on the front pages of the five British daily tabloids – The Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Express and the Daily Star – looking at the four weeks prior to the referendum, which coincided with the so-called ‘purdah’ period during which no official information is released any more.

We found that the tabloid press progressively centred on the theme of immigration to shape its eurosceptic narrative and set the agenda in the final stages of the campaign. Which is in line with other research that found ‘coverage of immigration more than tripled over the course of the campaign, rising faster than any other political issue’.

In terms of support for Brexit by readership, The Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, with a combined readership of almost four million outnumbered the Remain supporting Daily Mirror by four to one. Scrutiny of the front pages of the five tabloids also illustrates how the three tabloids supporting Brexit devoted their front pages to Brexit far more frequently than either the Remain-supporting Daily Mirror or the neutral Daily Star.

 

So people were bombarded with Brexit-supporting front pages?

Yes, they were. The Daily Express and the Daily Mail devoted over three quarters of their front pages to the referendum. Overall, there were 48 pro-Brexit front pages, compared to the seven Remain or neutral front pages in the final stage before the referendum. And of these 48 front pages, 27 were directly (or indirectly) related to immigration. By contrast, the Remain-supporting Daily Mirror only started to illustrate its support for EU membership with front-page headlines in the final three days of the campaign.

Our analysis is reinforced by an IPSOS Mori opinion poll published on the day of the referendum which showed that ‘concern with immigration had risen by ten percentage points [to 48%] since May, when concern stood at 38%.’ Concern with immigration was particularly high – over 60% – ‘for Conservative supporters, those aged 65 and over and those from the socio-economic category C2, referring to qualified workers. All three of these demographics are core in terms of the readership of the British Tabloid Press.

 

But do people actually believe what they read in these newspapers?

It’s a long-standing debate, and we recognise this limitation of our conclusions. However, research in this area does reinforce our argument about the impact of the agenda-setting, anti-immigration, ‘bombardment approach’ on influencing tabloid readers. In a referendum, where one third of voters made up their mind which way to vote in the final stages of the campaign, such a highly polarized framing undoubtedly had an impact.

 

This post draws on the article ‘Tabloid Tales: how the British Press Shaped the Brexit Vote‘, co-authored with Dr Nick Startin, Associate Professor of International Relations, John Cabot University, Rome, and published in the Journal of Common Market Studies. A version of this blog was also published on the UK in a Changing Europe website.

 

Interview conducted Laurence Aubron

 

 

The post Tabloid Tales appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This Sunday Poles head to vote in the most consequential parliamentary elections since the partially-free elections in 1989 that turned a Soviet satellite state into a burgeoning democracy. Here is what's at stake.

MEPs have shortlisted Jina Mahsa Amini and the Woman, Life and Freedom Movement in Iran, Nicaraguan human rights activists and women fighting for a free, safe and legal abortion.
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Committee on Development
Subcommittee on Human Rights

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