European Union

Former diplomat Sigrid Kaag, who heads the largest left-leaning party in the Netherlands, booked major gains at a national election after campaigning on a cosmopolitan pro-Europe platform that stands in contrast with Prime Minister Mark Rutte's euroscepticism.

I know my IR colleagues like nothing better than a strategic review document, since it gives them hours of enjoyment coding for stuff and generally feeling like there’s some interest in their field. And the arrival of the UK’s much-delayed Integrated Review this week has given me some sense of that, even as it almost instantaneously reminded me of why I so heartily dislike such documents. For the benefit of those with more sense than to be into such things, this was the culmination of a rather protracted process of trying to conceptualise the new foreign policy and security environment for the UK. A central part of the delay was the getting-out of the EU, so it’d be not unreasonable to think that EU relations might be an important part of the general picture. Plus, as I’ve endlessly argued, it might also give us some clues about what the broader context for those EU relations might be, given that a central problem has been that the UK doesn’t seem very clear about what it wants to be in the world. You’ll be possibly unsurprised to find that this document does not really provide the answers to such questions. I’ve covered references to the EU in this thread, so I’ll spare you the finer detail:

So how does #IntegratedReview see the EU?

Mainly as a problem that's been solved, and then as base from which to build wider international action by UK

Neither part of this looks that robust

1/https://t.co/S8pg4wKOHJ

— Simon Usherwood (@Usherwood) March 16, 2021 However, the core is worth restating here: the Review treats the EU as a firm ally and one with whom there is much scope to build further collaborations on points of mutual interest. What’s missing is any sense of a problematic relationship that will take – even in the most ludicrously positive scenario – many years to find a mutually-trusting stability. This matters both for itself and more generally. There’s much talk about the value of multilateralism, of regulatory power and of free trade, with no sign of how a closer relationship with the EU might advance those agendas. While it is perfectly understandable to consider that withdrawal is a done deal, and the Trade & Cooperation Agreement with it, that should not mean there has to be a rose-tinted view of how things stand. Instead, a strategic document like this needs to take a much more hard-nosed approach, to allow for the planning of responses to threats and opportunities. If nothing else, some plan to work towards rebuilding trust with EU partners might have been in order. All of which brings us back to the paradox of the EU in British politics. This might not be another example of the deliberate antagonism that seems to colour so much of Johnson’s actions, but it will be an important contributory factor to an unnecessarily fractious environment. As I’ve noted in another thread, the UK’s going to continue to struggle with its European policy as long as it fails to be seen as having credible alternatives:

Thinking again about the UK's European policy and why it doesn't work

tl;dr EU doesn't think UK has a credible alternative to making things work in long-run

1/

— Simon Usherwood (@Usherwood) March 15, 2021 That doesn’t have to mean a closer relationship to the EU, or any programme of working to rejoin the organisation, just a sense of some things being beyond the UK’s power to control or influence, which in turn require finding ways to get along. As the Integrated Review notes, there’s a lot going on out there, so we have to engage with, and work with, others if the international system is to persist. Working out some ideas on how to do that with our neighbours might be a good place to start.

The post Um. Hello? [waves] appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The new EU trade strategy unveiled by the European Commission contains much to be welcomed, but not much that is new, writes Isabelle Brachet.

"The US administration is not looking to take sides in this disagreement", a senior aide to US president Joe Biden said Wednesday, on the UK and EU's dispute on Northern Ireland customs law, Reuters reports. The "trade issue" was for Europe to solve by discussing "implementation of the agreement", the official said. Irish taoiseach Micheál Martin held virtual meetings with Biden and others in view of St. Patrick's Day Wednesday.

Irish authorities were obliged to put Irish as well as English on veterinary-medical labels, the EU Court of Justice ruled Wednesday. The victory came for Peadar MacFhlannchadha, an Irish-language campaigner, in the first-ever case heard in Irish in the EU tribunal. The ruling also came out on St Patrick's Day, but represented a largely moral victory, as a new EU law superseding the pro-Irish label one is on its way.

Poland's president, Andrzej Duda, has announced a tough new nationwide lockdown amid infections surging to the highest rate since November, The Guardian writes. The country's health minister Adam Niedzielski said shopping centres, theatres, cinemas and hotels will close from Saturday, while schools will have to switch to online learning. Niedzielski added that Poland could see more than 30,000 new daily coronavirus cases starting next week if the trend continues.

'Chasse à la glu' - a French tradition of catching birds by putting glue on sticks is against EU law, the European Court of Justice said Wednesday, in a victory for the League for the Protection of Birds, a French conservationist group. No EU country should allow hunting that caused serious harm to "by-catch" (unintended target-species), the court ruled. French hunters had defended it as being used for songbirds only.

Australia said it will ask the EU to release 1 million doses of a Covid-19 vaccine to help Papua New Guinea battle a dangerous outbreak that authorities fear could spread to other parts of the region, Reuters writes. "We've contracted them. We've paid for them and we want to see those vaccines come here so we can support our nearest neighbour," Australian PM Scott Morrison told reporters in Canberra.

The European Commission has presented a common approach to vaccine certificates to facilitate travel. All EU-wide approved vaccines will be accepted for this document, but member states can decide to accept other vaccines too.

EU governments' lack of coordination in the first and second wave of the pandemic has caused concerns around supply chains, long queues at borders, and practically froze the bloc's passport-free Schengen zone.

A Milan court acquitted energy companies Eni and Royal Dutch Shell, plus a series of past and present managers including Eni chief executive Claudio Descalzi, in the oil industry's biggest corruption scandal, Reuters reports. Prosecutors had called for Eni and Shell to be fined and for a number managers from both companies to be jailed.

Greece denies any illegal pushbacks at sea. The EU takes their version of events as face value, in a system unable and unwilling to shed doubt on Greek authorities - posing accountability questions on the EU's border guard agency Frontex.

Enrico Letta will need all his diplomatic skills to unify a party in a state of perpetual civil war, where former communists co-exist with former Christian Democrats, and which has had nine different secretaries since it was founded in 2007.

Studies show that accommodation of the radical-right by mainstream parties leads to increasing vote share - for the radical-right. This is precisely what Emmanuel Macron is doing - and Marine Le Pen is gaining in the polls.

Turkey's pro-Kurdish party was fighting for its political survival on Wednesday (17 March) after a prosecutor asked the country's top court to shut it down for alleged links to militants waging a deadly insurgency against the state.

Under the German Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Brussels tightened relations with ASEAN agreeing on a Strategic Partnership. Current trade agreements negotiations with several ASEAN countries and the EP push for a region-to-region FTA give a glimpse...

President Joe Biden expressed support for the Northern Ireland peace agreement in the face of Brexit-related tensions when he met Ireland's prime minister Micheal Martin for virtual Saint Patrick's Day celebrations Wednesday (17 March).

British foreign minister Dominic Raab accused the European Commission of brinkmanship over its threat to ban exports of COVID-19 vaccines, calling for Commission head Ursula von der Leyen to explain her comments.

Dutch centre-right prime minister Mark Rutte is poised to extend his 10-year rule after elections in which new liberal and far-right faces also gained.

Length of video : 55'

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP