European Union

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EU Heads of State or Government of the Eurozone meet in Brussels on 7 July 2015 to discuss the urgent situation in Greece after the referendum of 5 July.

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What I want to offer you, is a simple definition of globalization. I said, a simple definition. But what I mean by that is, in fact, two things. Globalization is two things. It’s the extension, intensification, and acceleration of consequential worldwide interconnections. And at the same time, it’s a big buzzword. A big buzzword of political speech that’s used by business leaders, by political leaders, by protestors, in different ways but nevertheless, used as a buzzword to make politically charged arguments about how the world is shaping up and where it should be headed.

Now, to understand globalization we have to understand both these definitions at the same time and look carefully at how they interact with one another. So let’s look first at globalization in the first sense. Globalization as the extension, intensification and acceleration of consequential worldwide interconnections. What are those interconnections? Well, all together they form ties, global ties, or interdependencies as some social scientists call them. These include global trade ties, the global ties of workers and consumers, the ties of global finance and money flows, the ties of global law-making through trade agreements and human rights law-making, the ties of governments to one another, but also the ties that markets increasingly have around and through government action, including the ties markets have on our governance of our personal relation, the ties also of our spaces, between spaces, between territories, and ties that therefore also change the meaning of territory and the ties of global health.

These are all some of the key interdependencies that we’ll be looking at in the upcoming articles. But as we do so, I want to emphasize that it’s very important that we keep the second definition of globalization in our minds at the same time. This is  globalization with a capital G or big G globalization, as I refer to it in some of the upcoming articles.

Now, looking at globalization with a capital G means paying close attention to how it does discursive work, how it makes political arguments in a simple sound bite. The protestors in Seattle, back in 1999, who were protesting the World Trade Organization often carried banners that said, no globalization without representation. And they, in a sense, were using globalization as a, a political politically charged term of discourse when they were doing so. Of course, they were harkening back to the old  arguments of the American revolutionaries of no taxation without representation. But they were doing so to make an argument that global market ties were creating a kind of market like globalization that came without any kind of political representation for ordinary people. So they were contesting a certain standardized vision of globalization, a packaged market vision of globalization. And so they were using the term in the big G kind of way. But as they did so, I think they did another thing, whether they meant to or not.

They basically said with that slogan no globalization without representation, that globalization is always an act, when it’s used as a term, it’s always an act of representation. It involves representational politics. And this is something I want to address both today and in the upcoming lectures.

So why the need to distinguish between little g globalization, the term for global interdependency, and big G globalization, the term for the buzzword in political speak? I think there are at least three good reasons for doing this. First of all, I want to avoid gesture or tendency that’s found in a lot of other introductions to globalization. Introductions by other academics who offer great studies of the interdependencies, but who often think that we can put the politically charged arguments to one side.

When they do this, they go through what I like to call the Globalization 3 Step. They say first of all, that there’s too much exaggeration by what they call hyper-globalists. The hyper-globalists who exaggerate globalization, who make too much a big deal out of big G globalization, and confuse everybody by making exaggerations and making politically charged arguments. They don’t want to be like that. But secondly, the second move of their 3 step, they also don’t want to be like, what they call the skeptic. The skeptics who are so serious, they think everything is just continuing the way it always has done historically. You know, nothing much has changed, the governments of the world still run their countries, borders still exist. Globalization is all hog wash and too much exaggeration, say the skeptics.

Well, the advocates of the middle way between hyper-globalism and skepticism think that the skeptics have got it wrong too. That things have changed, that the interdependencies are consequential and they have really changed the world. They’ve changed our everyday lives. They think, therefore, that we can chart a sober and unbiased analytical middle way between hyper-globalism and skepticism. And in some respects, I want to follow them in, in, that middle way myself. But, I don’t want to put big G Globalization to one side. I actually am interested in why some people want to be skeptics and why other people want to be hyper-globalists.

I want to look at what arguments those people are making and what they want to achieve politically by making them. So introducing this term, big G Globalization, allows us to do that. It allows us to look at the impact of the discourse on the reorganization of
society around the world. And there are a number of scholars to have done this. Manfred Steger, for example, in his book Globalisms is an example of someone who’s interested in how discourses about globalization make a difference in the world.

So introducing this doubled up definition of globalization not only allows us to look at how big G discourses of globalization have shaped the world, but it also allows up to look at how the world and global dynamics, global interdependencies shape discourses
about globalization.

The relationships go both ways and this in turn helps us understand how academic approaches to globalization have themselves been shaped by the history of global development. The modern social sciences and the humanities the fields of study that give us the, the richest picture of globalization, at least in the way it’s going to be discussed in my upcoming lectures, are all disciplines that have emerged out of a particular kind of global history.

This has enabled them to see the world in particular ways, but it’s also limited what they can see, particularly in our own contemporary moment of globalization. And that’s because many of them were founded in the 19th century and the 20th century, when the nation state was the major object of focus of study, the major analytically counting center for all kinds of statistics. The word statistics goes back to the nation-state, state-istics.

I want to explain why it’s important by turning to the old, very globally traveled fable of the elephant and the blind villagers. Now in the traditional telling of this story, the villagers can’t work out what the elephant is. They feel the side and thinks it’s a wall. They feel the tusk and thinks it’s a spear. They feel the tail and they feel, they think it’s a rope. That’s the traditional idea.

In some religious retellings of this story, it’s as if the elephant is a God that ordinary mortals cannot understand. And to some extent, that’s a good metaphor for big G Globalization, because it’s often invoked as a kind of God about which we cannot fully understand, that has all these grand effects that we can’t fully come to terms with, but that’s not my main point here. I’m interested more in, in how the social sciences are a little bit like the the blind villagers and that they all need to go beyond the limitations of their own particular perspectives by fashioning an interdisciplinary perspective on globalization, the elephant as a whole. To make my point a little bit clearer, let’s think about some social sciences. Economics, for example, sees something of a tusk or a spear of globalization in following the money flows of global finance and of global economic integration. But it doesn’t always put those money flows and economic data into a political context. Political science does focus on the political context but because of its foundation in the modern 20th century tends to look at nation states as the most important political context and doesn’t always look at the transnational state making that has arisen because of economic ties across borders. Geographers my own discipline, tend to focus on what globalization looks like on the ground and the way it’s changed the ground, but in ways that don’t always fully examine the history of globalization. Historians, and, and scholars of English literature, or other world literatures, tend to focus on national history or national culture in ways that don’t fully examine the interconnections of culture and history globally.

Now in all these disciplines you can find examples of scholars, many examples, in fact, of scholars who reach beyond the national template and try to fashion an interdisciplinary perspective on globalization.

 

The post Defining Globalization. appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

General : From 1 July the rotating six-month presidency of the Council of the EU has been in the hands of one of the smallest, yet most experience member states. On 8 July MEPs hold a plenary debate on the challenges it will have to tackle, including the Greek debt crisis, an increase in irregular migration and the preparation for the climate change conference in Paris in December. Just before the start of the presidency, we asked all of the country's six MEPs for their views.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

DRAFT RECOMMENDATION on the draft Council and Commission decision on the conclusion by the European Union of the Protocol to the Framework Agreement on comprehensive partnership and cooperation between the European Union and its Member States, of the one part, and the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, of the other part, to take account of the accession of the Republic of Croatia to the European Union
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Sandra Kalniete

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

On Tuesday, 7 July, Laimdota Straujuma, Prime Minister of the Republic of Latvia, addressed the plenary session of the European Parliament (EP) and presented overview of the Latvian Presidency in the Council of the EU.

On Tuesday, 7 July, Laimdota Straujuma, Prime Minister of the Republic of Latvia, addressed the plenary session of the European Parliament (EP) and presented overview of the Latvian Presidency in the Council of the EU.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Plenary sessions : The EU must do more to help farmers to earn a fair return from the food supply chain, introduce better tools for dealing with market disturbances and help farmers to find new outlets for produce shut out of the Russian market, MEPs say in two non-binding resolutions voted on Tuesday. Member states should help them join forces in producer organisations to boost their bargaining power, they add.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Plenary sessions : Integrated ticketing for travel across EU borders using more than one mode of transport would increase the use of public transport, said MEPs on Tuesday. They call on EU countries to improve and connect timetables and on providers to develop multimodal cross-border "journey planners". If there is no progress by 2020 they will call for legislation.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Plenary sessions : Three agencies managing migration flows into the EU and two EU funds for migration measures should get a €69.6 million budget boost for extra staff and other expenses for this year, after Parliament backed a European Commission proposal on Tuesday. Parliament has been calling for the bigger budgets in the wake of the April tragedies that cost the lives of around 1,200 migrants.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Federcoopesca and Others v Commission
Agriculture and fisheries
Italian fishermen’s associations cannot challenge before the General Court an action plan providing for national measures in the field, inter alia, of swordfish fishery

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Ministers of the Eurozone meet on 7 July in Brussels to discuss the consequences of the 5 July referendum in Greece.

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EU Ministers responsibles of Sport meet on 6 July in Luxembourg.

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This study provides an overview of China’s current approach to foreign policy and external relations. It focuses more particularly on the role and actions of China in global governance, its territorial claims and relations with countries in Asia, and its emergence as an important actor in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood. It assesses the implications for the EU and makes recommendations on how the EU should deepen its strategic partnership with China. The study argues that China has not made a unilateral and exclusive turn towards assertiveness in its foreign policy. China’s foreign policy assertiveness represents a policy choice that should be understood in the broader context of its external relations, which is one of uncertainty. Both the impact of China’s emergence in international affairs and the use China intends to make of its power and influence remain uncertain. This uncertainty is explained by the interdependence between a number of international and domestic factors as well as by the absence of a grand strategy. The uncertainty in China’s foreign policy opens avenues for the EU to influence China and further deepen the scope of the EU-China Strategic Partnership.
Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

This study provides an overview of China’s current approach to foreign policy and external relations. It focuses more particularly on the role and actions of China in global governance, its territorial claims and relations with countries in Asia, and its emergence as an important actor in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood. It assesses the implications for the EU and makes recommendations on how the EU should deepen its strategic partnership with China. The study argues that China has not made a unilateral and exclusive turn towards assertiveness in its foreign policy. China’s foreign policy assertiveness represents a policy choice that should be understood in the broader context of its external relations, which is one of uncertainty. Both the impact of China’s emergence in international affairs and the use China intends to make of its power and influence remain uncertain. This uncertainty is explained by the interdependence between a number of international and domestic factors as well as by the absence of a grand strategy. The uncertainty in China’s foreign policy opens avenues for the EU to influence China and further deepen the scope of the EU-China Strategic Partnership.
Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

DRAFT REPORT containing a motion for a non-legislative resolution on the draft Council decision on the conclusion of the Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Partnership and Cooperation between the European Union and its Member States, of the one part, and the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, of the other part
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Barbara Lochbihler

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

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Eurojust is a judicial cooperation body created to help provide safety within an area of freedom, security and justice set up in 2002 to improve the fight against serious crime by facilitating the optimal co-ordination of action for investigations and prosecutions.

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Greece’s recently-departed finance minister Yanis Varoufakis repeatedly argued that Greece could never leave the eurozone because there is nothing in the EU treaties that permits exit from the bloc’s common currency. But that hasn’t stopped EU lawyers from looking.

According to eurozone officials, EU legal scholars have been combing through the treaties to find provisions that would allow for Grexit – not because it is something they’re pushing for, but rather because they’re worried the country could be soon entering a legal limbo that could prevent it from getting the financial aid it desperately needs.

If Greece begins printing its own money – which could happen in a matter of weeks if the European Central Bank decides to cut off emergency loans to Greek financial institutions – it may no longer be eligible for aid from the eurozone’s €500bn rescue fund, since it is using a different currency.

But because Greece would still be legally part of the eurozone, it wouldn’t be eligible for the aid scheme reserved for non-EU countries, known as a “balance of payments assistance” programme. Hungary, Romania and pre-euro Latvia all received so-called “BPA” programmes during the crisis.

The traditional assumption is that because there is no explicit way to leave the eurozone, the only clause that comes into play is Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, which allows for withdrawal from the entire EU. This would require Greece to request a departure, however, which is unlikely, and while there are an increasing number of leaders willing to let Greece leave the eurozone, none want it to leave the EU.

Officials say lawyers are instead looking at Article 7, which was adopted for a very different reason: In the wake of the Austrian government’s decision to include the far-right Freedom Party of nationalist Jörg Haider in a coalition, EU leaders wanted a way to punish countries that did not live up to European values.

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