European Union

Reti Televisive Italiane
Freedom of establishment
Hourly limit for television publicity spots: promotional announcements for radio programmes broadcast on television channels belonging to the same corporate group are not, in principle, announcements about those television channels’ own programmes

Direktor na Glavna direktsia "Natsionalna politsia" pri MVR - Sofia
Area of Freedom, Security and Justice
Right to erasure: the general and indiscriminate storage of biometric and genetic data of persons convicted of criminal offences, until their death, is contrary to EU law

Landeshauptmann von Wien
Area of Freedom, Security and Justice
A recognised unaccompanied minor refugee has the right to family reunification with his or her parents even if he or she reached the age of majority during the family reunification procedure

by Giselle Bosse (Maastricht University)

The EU’s response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 has been unprecedented, displaying rare unity among its member states, especially during the first four months following the invasion. The EU agreed on far-reaching economic and financial sanctions, the most severe sanctions ever imposed by the EU on a third country. The EU also provided military support to Ukraine through the European Peace Facility for the first time in its history. In another unprecedented move, the EU has implemented the Temporary Protection Directive, granting Ukrainian nationals and permanent residents the temporary right to live and work in the EU. Moreover, Ukraine and Moldova have been offered EU candidacy status. The EU’s rapid and determined response was unexpected in many ways, given member states’ previously diverging interests vis-à-vis Russia and on security and defense, significant differences on migration, and their general reluctance to expand the Union, or even grant candidate status to applicant countries. In my recent article in JCMS, I examine how the EU’s forceful response on such high-salience and contentious issues can be explained.

What we do(n’t) know so far about the EU’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

The emerging scholarly debate recognises the unexpected and unprecedented rapid and determined response by the EU to the invasion, but few works examine the factors that facilitated agreement among member states. The main driver of the EU’s response is seen to be the sheer fact of a full-scale military invasion launched on the European continent, and the resulting threat to the fundamentals of European security. Yet, security considerations did not drive the EU’s responses during the first four months following the invasion. The EU’s most powerful member states Germany and France, whose role is considered essential to EU joint action by realist scholars, did not initially perceive the invasion as a direct threat to their national security and were later absorbed in domestic discussions on redefining their national foreign policy, which curtailed their ability to drive the EU’s response.

Approached from a different angle, the EU’s forceful response was possible because of a collective commitment to norms linked to international law and the principles of sovereignty and self-determination. Scholarship on the EU’s response to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea demonstrated that, back then, member states accepted the political and economic costs of sanctions against Russia due to such a collective commitment. These norms were clearly visible again in 2022, as the EU has emphasised Ukraine’s ‘territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence’. However, in contrast to the EU’s ‘soft’ response to Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2014, which did not include broad economic sanctions against Russia, the EU’s response in 2022 was tougher and cost member states substantially more.

Which additional factors may have led the EU to a more rapid and determined response in the first four months following the invasion?

How the EU’s response to the war in 2014 influenced the EU’s response in 2022

Against this background, my article asks in what kind of changed context the EU’s 2022 decisions became meaningful and rational, allowing for agreement to emerge among the member states on a set of unprecedented measures. The article contends that, given the dramatic change in context following the 2022 Russian invasion, key understandings, rationalities and norms invoked by the EU in response to the 2014 war took on new or fundamentally different meanings in 2022, inter alia propelling key actors in the EU to admit to previous misjudgement with regards to justifying policy choices in 2014. In short, I argue that in order to fully understand the EU’s response in 2022, it is essential to look back at how the EU reacted to the Russian war against Ukraine which started back in 2014.

How the ‘rupture’ of the Russian invasion led to changed understandings, rationalities and norms forging consensus among EU member states

The article examines the main lines of argumentation used by key EU actors involved in decision-making on the EU’s responses to Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 respectively, drawing on 18 semi-structured interviews with high level diplomats from EU member states, the European Commission and the European External Action Service between January and September 2015, and between June and November 2022.

The empirical analysis shows how key understandings, rationalities and norms invoked by the EU in response to the 2014 war took on new or fundamentally different meanings in 2022. For example, in 2022, there was a recognition that 2014 marked the begin of a continuous Russian war against Ukraine, in contrast to the understanding in 2014 that the events presented ‘not a war as such’. The argumentation in 2014 included that any solution to the ‘conflict’ must avoid the risk of escalation by Putin while peace being ‘worth a try’. This argumentation also embedded a number of speech acts vis-à-vis Russia, such as threatening tougher sanctions or isolation in case of further escalation, committing the EU to some further course of action in the event that Putin would choose to further escalate the ‘conflict’ to a war or full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

On this basis, and recalling the need to stay credible in light of the EU’s previous warnings against further escalation by Russia, the European Commission in 2022 successfully generated agreement among member states in favour of tough sanctions. That agreement was inter alia facilitated because the a priori rationality underlying the dominant approach used in 2014, centred on ‘not provoking Putin’ and ‘giving diplomacy a try’, was invalidated by the 2022 invasion. In addition, an invocation of duties towards suffering fellow-Europeans in Ukraine, and the re-conceptualisation of the EU’s spatial identity to include Ukraine as ‘one of us’ (as opposed to the framing as ‘European neighbour’ used in 2014) enabled those actors arguing in favour of unprecedented measures to gain the ‘higher moral ground’ in discussions among the member states.

This is not to deny the clear limitations of the EU’s response in terms of military support or guaranteeing Ukraine’s eventual EU membership. However, considering the EU’s previous enlargement fatigue and that Ukraine is neither (yet) a member of the EU or NATO, the EU’s invocation of moral duties towards Ukraine does constitute a significant change compared to the EU’s previous approach.

Outlook: The gradual withering away of ‘lessons learnt’ and EU moral duties towards Ukraine?

Since June 2022, EU member states have shown increasing signs of disagreement and subsequent sanctions packages have been ‘softened’ by numerous derogations. The decision to open accession negotiations with Ukraine (and Moldova) in December 2023 demonstrated the EU’s continued commitment, but also exposed divisions between the member states, which have also delayed the promised €50 billion funding programme for Ukraine. It remains to be seen in how far the ‘lessons learnt’ in 2014 and the EU’s moral duties towards Ukraine as ‘one of us’ will still play a role in EU foreign policy-making as the ‘rupture effect’ of the Russian invasion gives way to ‘Ukraine fatigue’, amid declining support for Ukraine by European publics, and with the EU’s attention shifting to the Israel-Gaza war.

Giselle Bosse is Associate Professor and Jean Monnet Chair in EU External Relations at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University. Her research focuses on the EU’s Eastern Partnership, EU relations with Ukraine and Belarus, EU democracy promotion and the role of norms and values in EU international relations.

The post The EU’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine: Invoking norms and values appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Many think it couldn’t happen here, but please watch my video and then, think again.

A year before the EU referendum, I gave a speech at a media conference in Germany. The topic was how some newspapers and politicians in Britain are spreading hatred and lies about migrants and refugees.

I cited the ‘8 Steps to Genocide’ compiled by Genocide Watch and asked if Britain was on Step Three, defined as:

‘One group denies the humanity of the other group.’

I hoped to be wrong.

But today, Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, calls refugees “illegal”. As did all the previous Conservatives Prime Ministers of this millennium.

Conservative Home Secretaries refer to them as an invasion. Katie Hopkins referred to them as cockroaches.

British newspapers – not all, but many – have spent years demonising migrants, whether they’re so-called ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’, embedding a nasty culture of xenophobia into the DNA of the nation (which for sure led to Brexit).

The Daily Mail published a despicable MAC cartoon with an angel apologising to the recently deceased TV star, Cilla Black, for the long queue into heaven caused by ‘illegals.’

They are not ‘illegals’. No human is illegal. They are mostly desperate refugees fleeing from war, torture, and subjugation.

Of the estimated 117 million displaced people in the world today, only a relatively tiny number risk their lives, at huge cost, to get here in makeshift boats. Most often they have compelling and heartbreaking reasons, such as that they already have family here.

Instead of addressing a world-wide refugee crisis, our political leaders prefer to turn the other way and send those refugees away, to yet another unsafe country. But that solves nothing.

If the European Court of Human Rights once again rules against deporting refugees to Rwanda, the government has threatened to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, putting all our human rights at risk.

Claims that ‘legal’ migrants are taking British jobs and reducing wages are entirely unfounded. The truth is that Britain needs millions of migrants because we have millions more jobs than Britons to do them.

Today, I feel Britain is heading in the wrong direction. If we might have been on Step 3 in 2015, on what step is Britain now?

My post here does not in any way suggest that genocide is or will happen in the UK, only that the steps to genocide can be insidious and that, as stated in my video of 2015, the UK might already be on Step 3 of ‘The 8 Steps to Genocide’.  

This is primarily because of the way migrants and refugees are so degraded by the Press and the UK government. Of course, as I stated in my speech, I hoped to be wrong.

Step 3 of the 8 steps does not refer to genocide happening, only how the demeaning of one set of people could lead us in the wrong way. This is a warning from history that we must be careful.

Let’s remember that we may think genocide can only happen somewhere else. But if we not are diligent, it can happen here too.

• ‘The 8 Steps to Genocide’ – 13 minute video. 



After the Second World War, during which many millions were systematically, industrially, gruesomely murdered in the worst genocidal crime against humanity, the earnest, global, unison cry was, ‘Never again’.

Those two words summed up the sincere, solemn feeling and resolve of a world shocked, numbed and reeling from the discovery that so many had been so callously rounded up and brutally murdered in what we now call the Holocaust.

Not for anything they had done. But simply for who they were.

Mostly Jews, but also gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled…and others, many others.

Millions. Murdered. With the goal to wipe them out. Men, women, children, babies. Mass murdered. Destroyed. Deleted.

Never again. That was the response. Never again. Never again.

In acknowledgement of the most horrific war and genocide the planet had ever known, the world rallied to find a way forward so that such wicked crimes against humanity could never happen again.

The United Nations. The International Court of Justice. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The European Convention on Human Rights. The European Union.

All established in direct reply to the war, and all to achieve the same aim: peace.

This was the resolve of those who endured and survived the terrible atrocities of the fascist regimes that blighted the planet during the long years of war and madness.

Never again. Those were the words of our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents.
That was the intent of the planet’s leaders following the eventual crushing of the world’s barbarous enemies. Never again.

Fine words. But utterly meaningless unless enforced.

POST-WAR GENOCIDE

Since the end of the Second World War, the words ‘never again’ have been cast in stone and stamped on our memories. But the atrocities that the post-war generation so sincerely wanted to prevent happening again, have happened again. And again.

Churchill described the mass murders of the Nazi death camps as, ‘A crime without a name’. But it now has a name. It’s genocide.

And it’s a name that’s in frequent use because it’s a crime that’s too frequently committed.

• 8-minute video: ‘Why Britain joined the EU’



_______________________________________________________

Follow my journalism on:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• YouTube 

_______________________________________________________

The post The 8 Steps to Genocide appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

As the AI Act’s text is finally consolidate, we tried to put the landmark law in a broader perspective with Luciano Floridi, leading expert in AI ethics and Founding Director of Yale’s Digital Ethics Center.

Germany's support for a law requiring firms in the European Union to take action if they find their supply chains in violation of human rights was thrown into doubt after one of its ruling parties sided with business groups opposing the proposal.

Industrial pollution costs the equivalent of  2% of the European Union's economic output each year, though the impact has declined over the past decade, the bloc's environmental agency said Thursday (25 January).

Bipartisan US Senate talks on a border security deal that some have set as a condition for further Ukraine aid have hit a critical point, lawmakers said on Thursday (25 January), though the chamber's top Democrat said the negotiators would continue to push forward.

Donald Trump leads Democratic President Joe Biden by six percentage points in a Reuters/Ipsos poll that showed Americans are unhappy about an election rematch that came into sharper focus this week.

The EU and US slammed Belarus Thursday (25 January) for a series of political raids this week, as rights groups said more than 150 people were detained or interrogated by the KGB security service in a single day.

In today’s edition of the Capitals, find out more about French far-right leader Marine Le Pen questioning her alliance with German far-right party AfD, Poland's ruling parties divided on abortion law, and so much more.

Far-left Croatian MP Katarina Peović called for the reintroduction of quotas for third-country workers on Thursday as the number of immigrants working in low-paid jobs has risen sharply in recent years.

Internal discussions in the EU’s centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) – the largest political family in Europe – saw an “unsettling” exchange about the drafting process of its EU election manifesto, Euractiv has learnt.

Ukrainian grain has successfully transited through Romania since the country introduced export licences under its grain export plan to help protect farmers last autumn, Adrian Pintea, state secretary in the Agriculture Ministry, said on Thursday.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe voted Wednesday to elect Bulgaria’s former GERB justice minister and current ombudsman, Diana Kovatcheva, to a nine-year term as the next Bulgarian judge at the European Court of Human Rights.

Renew Europe MEPs have proposed the rapid creation of a mini-Schengen between Greece, Romania and Bulgaria, to be operational this summer, to ease the heavy tourist traffic between the three EU Balkan countries.

The European Investment Bank is open to financing defence industries but is still reluctant to go beyond dual-use technology, a top EIB official told Euractiv, warning also that the idea of using eurobonds to finance military industry must be carefully weighed as they may not attract investors.

Ukraine expects to start construction work on four new nuclear power reactors this summer or autumn, Energy Minister German Galushchenko told Reuters on Thursday (25 January), as the country seeks to compensate for lost energy capacity due to the war with Russia.

As nationwide farmers' protests continue, the German government wants to have the market power of supermarkets and the food industry scrutinised, blaming their price-setting power for the poor economic situation of many farms.