European Union

A recent report published by Equal Measures 2030 revealed that the world is far from achieving gender equality as planned in the 2030 Agenda, despite recent momentum around the issue.

Indeed, in the past ten years, numerous efforts have marked progress in the advancement of gender and peacebuilding. In 2000 the UN adopted its UNSCR 1325 – the Women, Peace and Security Agenda – which was followed by eight other resolutions. Some Member states then adopted National Action Plans on Women, Peace and Security, and regional organisations developed their own Women, Peace and Security Agenda, such as the European Union, NATO and the African Union. Both the 2000 Millenium Development Goals and the 2015 Agenda for Sustainable Development included a goal to achieve gender equality and empower women and girls.

The EU remains highly engaged on the issue as exemplified by the speech of Federica Mogherini during the Academic Roundtable on Women, Peace and Security on June 25th. (Her speech was read by Ambassador Mari Marinaki because of the absence of the HR/VP due to an emergency.) In her speech she recognises the importance of including women in peace processes notably because “war is always man-made, but peace lasts longer when it is woman-made”. She also acknowledged the work done by the EU with the Gaziantep Women’s Platform in Syria or with policewomen in Afghanistan. She ended by saying that “making women’s voices heard is not enough. If our voices are heard but nothing changes then it does not make such a big difference. It only increases the frustration” – highlighting the importance of acting seriously on gender equality.

However, with the recent rise of populism and far-right political parties in Europe, gender objectives such as those defined in the 2030 Agenda seem ever more difficult to achieve. Far right and populist parties have a negative impact on women’s rights and therefore inhibit current gender efforts, but also erode the gains already made. These parties can have discourses which throw existing rights into question, or even blatantly anti-feminist positions. For instance in 2018, following the #metoo movement, the European Parliament rejected a proposition that all new MEPs follow a mandatory sexual harassment training. The plan was struck down following a far right campaign. Last February, global leaders such as Irina Bokova and Susanna Malcorra launched the Group of Women for Change and Inclusion, where they highlighted the fact that populist parties have contributed to harming women’s rights. One example was the potential negative impact of Brexit on women, as the European laws which protect women’s rights won’t be automatically applicable in the UK after its departure.

There is equally a risk that a certain fatigue may occur, both from women who feel that institutions and countries are not evolving fast enough in their gender work as well as from others who feel they have heard enough about the topic. There is a growing feeling that the work on gender equality is “done” and that gender is not an issue anymore. Despite a sense of urgency to advance gender work it seems that the opposite may happen. While gender rights have become more mainstream in law, there remains a big gap in practice: policies have been adopted, conferences have been organised about gender but it is crucial that we now move beyond the symbolic surface level.

This fatigue was at the core of the annual conference of the NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives, “Integrating Gender Perspective and Accountability, Top-Down versus Bottom-up Approach” (4-7 June 2019). During the conference, a lot of issues were tackled, from the importance of female role models and women in position of leadership, to the crucial role of education in changing attitudes and behaviours. It was very surprising to see women from the audience – including military representatives – who spoke about their feeling of impatience and fatigue concerning gender efforts and the need to move forward on the implementation of NATO policies on gender.

During the conference the book NATO, Gender and the Military: Women organising from within was launched. This book studies NATO’s engagement with gender issues and questions NATO as a hegemonic masculine institution. It highlights the fact that gender work is not new for NATO, and that the organisation has long been aware of the importance of including women and of the risks of ignoring them, but it takes quite a long time to see real action. The book reveals the hard work undertaken by women within NATO to advocate for change on gender, and the institutional resistance they encountered.

In order to prevent so-called fatigue from slowing the progress already made, creative initiatives need to take place. For instance, QCEA is currently launching a new project in partnership with the UACES-Gendering EU Studies Research Network. The global objective of this project is to address gender inclusiveness across peace and security institutions, looking in particular at leadership, strategies for overcoming institutional resistance and a lack of knowledge about the connections between gender and peacebuilding.

To that end, three short videos will be published, accompanied with concrete guidelines for people working in these institutions, on the ground as part of military operations and also those acting as gender advisors. The videos will explore three key topics:

• Why does gender matter?
• What does gender leadership look like in practice?
• Overcoming resistance to gender in an operational context

A dedicated webpage will also be created to showcase these resources and reach as many people as possible. This project is one of many initiatives trying to overcome “gender fatigue” and to advance the work of equality, in order to be the change we want to see in the world.

This post originally appeared on the Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) blog and is cross-posted with their kind permission.

Clémence Buchet–Couzy is QCEA’s new Peace Programme Assistant

The post The momentum around gender equality is both a risk and opportunity appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The Week Ahead 24 – 30 June 2019

Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

Brexit supporters have claimed that European courts are out of touch and impose their will on an unwilling British public. Michael F. Harsch, Vladislav Maksimov, and Chris Wheeler argue that European courts are more accountable than these critics contend: when these courts defy the wishes of governments, judgements tend to align with public opinion. 

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One of the central claims pushed by Brexit supporters for “taking back control” from the European Union has been that European courts are out of touch and impose their will on an unwilling British public.

Ahead of the 2016 Brexit referendum, then Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove decried “an unaccountable European Court in Luxembourg, which is extending its reach every week.” During her tenure, Prime Minister Theresa May repeatedly vowed to end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the U.K.

However, in a new paper, we argue that European courts are more accountable than Gove and other critics contend. When these courts do defy the wishes of governments, judgements tend to be strategically aligned with public opinion in leading member states, as judges seek to protect themselves from political backlash.

Entities like the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg or the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (which is not part of the E.U.) often seem distant and impenetrable to voters and legislators alike. Even scholars studying these courts have difficulty agreeing on whether governments can effectively control them, for instance by selecting deferential judges or threatening non-compliance and legislative overrides of decisions.

Yet a number of recent European court decisions indicate that judges are responsive to a long overlooked force—public opinion. At a time when international rulings increasingly affect the mass public, the President of the European Court of Justice, Koen Lenaerts has even taken the unusual step to highlight that “judges live in the real world, not on the moon.” European courts might thus become more similar to the U.S. Supreme Court whose responsiveness to public opinion is well-documented.

A powerful example of European courts’ alignment with public opinion is the case of Yassin Kadi—a Saudi multi-millionaire who the U.N. Security Council blacklisted as a terror suspect in late 2001, reportedly at the request of the U.S. government. The E.U. immediately implemented this decision and froze Kadi’s assets.

Kadi challenged the E.U. sanctions in court, claiming that the E.U.’s actions presented a violation of his right to be heard, right to judicial review, and respect for his property. While a lower E.U. court dismissed Kadi’s challenge in 2005—arguing that it had no jurisdiction to review the implementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions—the European Court of Justice overruled this decision in 2008, sending shockwaves through European capitals and the U.N. headquarters in New York. The judges stated that cases like Kadi’s deserve full judicial review, and that governments need to be more explicit in explaining the reasons for imposing sanctions.

In response, the European Commission sent Kadi a scant, one-page explanation of why the Security Council had placed him on the sanctions lists, but kept his assets frozen. After Kadi again challenged this outcome in 2010 and 2013, the E.U. courts set even higher transparency standards for blacklisting decisions, despite protests by member states and E.U. institutions. How did the court become less malleable to pressure from European governments?

The answer to this puzzle may lie not in the smoke-filled rooms of Europe’s capitals or the private deliberation chambers of the E.U. courts but out in the open: through seismic shifts in European public opinion.

In the wake of 9/11, the Madrid train and London 7/7 bombings, European publics were highly supportive of strong counterterrorism measures. When Kadi’s claim was initially dismissed by the European courts, one in seven EU citizens found terrorism to be among the two most important policy issues facing their countries.

However, public opinion dramatically changed as the “War on Terror” became associated with a wider erosion of civil liberties, and European publics began to favor protecting the rights of suspects over authorizing increasingly invasive executive powers. Net support in France, Germany and the U.K. for U.S. anti-terrorism efforts dropped from an average of nearly 50% in 2002 to a net opposition of 11% in 2007.

By 2013, European publics’ concern about terrorism hit a low point and only one in fifty respondents considered terrorism to be an important issue. Other rulings by European courts during this period indicate that public opinion enabled the judges to check executive power on the issues of counter-terrorism and fundamental rights.

Yet in the aftermath of the 2015–16 terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels, Nice, and Berlin, terrorism has resurfaced as an issue of serious concern for Europeans, and the Court of Justice has since granted governments wider discretion in this policy area.

European courts can thus be agents of legal change and advance human rights against governments’ resistance. But this role is conditional on the presence of public support.

The case of Yassin Kadi suggests that when politicians accuse international courts of being distant and unaccountable, it may not be the judges in Luxembourg or Strasbourg who are the ones out of touch with public opinion, but the governments themselves.

This piece draws on the article International Courts and Public Opinion: Explaining the CJEU’s Role in Protecting Terror Suspects’ Rights published in JCMS.

Please note that this article represents the views of the author(s) and not those of  Ideas on Europe, JCMS or UACES.

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Michael F.Harsch

Michael F. Harsch is a Visiting Assistant Professor of International Relations at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies.

 

 

Vladislav Maksimov

Vladislav Maksimov is a graduate student at Sciences Po’s Paris School of International Affairs.

 

 

Chris Weeler

Chris Wheeler is a recent graduate of New York University Abu Dhabi.

 

 

 

The post Critics Claim That Europe’s Courts Are Unaccountable. Recent Cases Suggest Otherwise. appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Foolishly, I always took Groundhog Day to be a work of fiction, rather than an instruction manual. Every morning we wake up to the same debates between the same people, who still haven’t listened to (or, more accurately, haven’t heard) those who point out obstacles in the path: we just have to become better, through force of character, and it’ll be fine.

This is rather tiresome, especially I appear to lack the virtues needed for such Nietzschean Will to Power.

Yesterday brought a classic of the genre, which I caught while preparing tea: The EU is being difficult over the negotiations because it wants to keep the UK in the organisation. The desire not to make a mess in the kitchen meant I was neither able to catch the name of the man making that statement, nor to response there and then on social media (not that it would have made much difference).

Instead, I’m going to work through it here. Because it’s still annoying and still completely illogical a view to hold.

The argument being advanced runs something like this. The EU was shocked that anyone would ever want to leave, and can’t understand that the UK actually wants to do that, so now wants to throw many obstructions in our path, to demonstrate that we can never leave, not that we should want to anyway. Sort of Stockholm Syndrome at a continental level.

This sounds plausible because it fits with a more general model about the dubious motives behind European integration and the shadowy cabal that actually runs things: Faceless eurocrats sought to co-opt our own elites with promises of power and influence, out of the public gaze, but when our establishment failed to get through the referendum, the system had to preserve itself by any means necessary.

Several basic problems with this narrative present themselves.

Firstly, if the EU is so determined to stop states leaving, why allow a provision in the treaty that provides for exactly that possibility? The Article 50 clause was introduced in the Lisbon treaty as part of a more general overhaul of the basic framework of the organisation, not least to underline that membership is voluntary and contingent upon the on-going willingness of states to participate. To use the local analogy, just because you chose in the past to join, it doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind.

There’s not even an limitation on how a state decides it’s changed its mind: it does whatever it considers is needed to satisfy local constitutional requirements and the EU can’t do anything about that decision.

And this is the second problem. Once Article 50 is triggered, there is absolutely nothing the EU can do to stop a state leaving. A clock is started and if at the end of the period there’s no agreement on terms, then that doesn’t stop the state’s departure. It’s a pretty rubbish cabal that puts in place rules that deprive it of any power to stymie the loss of a member, especially when you consider that it’s one of the few International Organisations to have a specific exit clause, so they’ve obviously thought about the matter.

The only ways that the UK’s exit can be delayed past the current date of 31 October are either an extension to Article 50 – which needs the UK’s approval – or a revocation of Article 50 – which only the UK can do. There’s no delaying mechanism that the EU control alone, and none that doesn’t give power to the UK.

Ah, comes the response. The EU might not control the timeline, but it’s trying to scare the UK with talk of the problems of no-deal.

Well, maybe, but only up to a point. Not only does the EU worry about the impact of a no-deal outcome, but the vast majority of independent analysis also suggests this would be the most damaging economic and political outcome, for both sides. It places the EU-UK relationship into a very uncertain position and with some very bad mood music too.

But, importantly, it’s bad for both sides. The EU will suffer like the UK, albeit to a lesser extent. Failure to secure a negotiated outcome to Article 50 will reflect badly on all involved. given the fine words spoken since 24 June 2016. But that’s very different from not wanting Brexit to occur at all.

Consider a scenario where the UK doesn’t leave the EU. Either that’s because a government has made that decision, or because a referendum has made it for them: again, the choice has to be internal. Now think about the British political debate around this. Is everyone going to be happy with that? Will everyone accept this new decision?

Almost certainly not.

At present there’s no good reason to believe that the divisions that the 2016 vote exposed and reinforced will weaken, let alone disappear. Moreover, it’s not as if the years since 2015 will be forgotten.

And that’s a problem for the EU, because its most important decisions remain ones taken by unanimity: finances, planning, enlargement. Even on those matters decided by majority voting, having an unhappy and disruptive UK at the table is not the path to a more functional organisation.

The EU lives through and because of its member states: if those states can’t accept the compromises and constraints that membership brings, then this poisons the entire functioning of the Union, because membership also brings power and consequence to those states. The value of having another member always has to be balanced against the costs that brings.

To return to the this trope of an overly-possessive EU, it simply doesn’t stand up to any inspection, either in letting this situation arise in the first place, nor in a basic analysis of how the EU works as a body.

Not that this is likely to stop it getting repeated soon.

The post The illogic of the EU trying to keep the UK from leaving appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

So desperate is Boris Johnson for the keys to number 10, that he has conceded all the demands of the far-right of his Tory party, who have said they will withdraw their support for him if he doesn’t do what they say.

The Guardian reported today, ‘Eurosceptics in the party were increasingly turning the screws on Johnson by warning they would withdraw support for his government if he fails to take the UK out of the EU by 31 October.’

Bojo the Prime Minister wannabe – or ‘mini Trump’ as they call him in the rest of the EU – has now made clear that that if he is in charge:

• The UK will leave the EU on 31 October 2019 “come what may; do or die”
• Theresa May’s Brexit deal will be torn up and a new deal negotiated. “We need a new withdrawal agreement,” said Mr Johnson, who added that Mrs May’s deal was “dead”.
• In the event of no deal, Mr Johnson said he would threaten not to pay the £39 billion debt that Theresa May’s government had already agreed was owed to the EU (whether we leave or remain).
• He could “ignore” any Parliamentary objection to a no-deal Brexit. (That’s according to the advice of former Brexit Secretary, Dominic Raab, who is backing Mr Johnson to be our next Prime Minister. Any motion from MPs against a no-deal Brexit would have “zero legal effect” and could be overridden, Mr Raab said today on the Radio 4 Today programme.)

It’s all nonsense of course. The UK is not ready for Brexit, let alone a no-deal Brexit, and let alone by 31 October.

Renegotiating the deal is simply a no-no. The EU27 are absolutely resolved: there will no renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement.

A spokesperson for the European Commission told reporters today:

“I can confirm, as has been repeated several times, we will not be renegotiating the withdrawal agreement, full stop”. 

Even if the EU was prepared to renegotiate Theresa May’s deal – which took almost two years to conclude – there is now no time to do it.

In real terms, there are only a few weeks left of Parliamentary time before 31 October.

Our Parliament will shortly be packing up shop for the summer. Then, our lawmakers will be trotting off to for the September party conference season.

By the time Parliamentarians return for “normal” business in October, leaving the EU – deal or no-deal – will be just a few weeks away.

No time for a new deal. Under Bojo, the only option would be no-deal.

So, here’s the bottom line:

• Under a Jeremy Hunt prime ministership, Brexit will be a longer, drawn out affair, as he has accepted the possible need for a further extension to allow for new negotiations. Under Hunt, Brexit delays will go on and on and…
• But under a Boris Johnson prime ministership, Brexit will be shocking and sharp, a sudden and sheer drop over the cliff edge at the stroke of midnight on Halloween, with the strongest, highest possibility of Britain leaving without any deal, which would be catastrophic.

So, Remainers, chins up for a Boris Johnson premiership.

Bojo’s Bonkers Brexit offers the best chance for a rapid and seismic end to the Brexit madness.

Any plan by Boris Johnson to leave the EU without a deal would result in Parliament passing a vote of no confidence in his government, with a high chance of success.

That would almost certainly precipitate a General Election, in which it’s hoped that a new mandate would be offered to ‘the people’, either to revoke Article 50, or to offer the nation a new referendum on Brexit.

Boris Johnson’s Brexit bungle could save the day for Remain. It could bring in a new Labour government, possibly sharing power with the LibDems, agreeing to offer the nation a way out of the never-ending Brexit impasse.

But only if Labour now seizes its moment and unequivocally becomes a Remain party, and does so without delay.

And only if the Remain side now urgently gets its act together, and presents the best, most powerful, persuasive, professional and compelling case for the nation to abandon Brexit and Remain in the EU.

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
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I have not commented on Turkish politics for a while now for I thought not much is changing in Turkey since 2013, except there has been a constant and continuous democratic backsliding and the reign of the Justice and Development Party for almost two decades.

What today’s Istanbul Mayoral election result represents is a critical juncture in Turkish politics, which will probably be followed by some significant changes, but I cannot predict yet what will be the nature of these changes. Only time will tell.

The newly elected Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who was the opposition’s candidate, adopted an inclusive, constructive and, if not too simplistic to say, a friendly and a kind approach during both election campaigns and his narrative was a true reflection of this style. The style that won him votes from every corner of Istanbul.

However let’s not forget when the President Tayyip Erdogan was first elected as the Mayor of Istanbul in 1994, he represented a new beginning for Turkey, thus garnered supports from different segments of the society, from Republicans and Nationalists to Kurds and Islamists.

The common denominator, which had brought people together behind Erdogan in mid 1990s, is also what brings people of different backgrounds together behind Ekremoglu: people’ desire to live in a country where democracy is the only game in town.

Whether Imamoglu, his team and his political party have the vision to take on Turkey as a project and work hard to heal it, I don’t know.

Whether they can deliver on such a big project, I cannot say.

And whether they will maintain their friendly politics style, we have to wait and see.

I think who or which political party wins the elections are not that important under the current circumstances in Turkey.

What is vital is whether these politicians and their political parties or the alliances they formed will keep their loyalty to the principles of liberal democracy.

Or whether once they gain more political power in the coming elections, their Kemalist origins would awaken and strengthen their nationalist demons.

The post New Beginnings in Turkey post-Istanbul Mayoral elections or Not appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

So today we find out who will be the final two candidates to become the new leader of the Conservative party.

It’s also the day that we find out whether the EU has made any progress on selecting individuals to fill the top jobs at the Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council.

Both sets of decisions will matter for Brexit, but neither will matter that much.

Individuals clearly have a role and a weight in politics: whether it’s their charismatic leadership, their technocratic expertise or their oligarchic connections, they can make a difference to a situation.

In this case, it’s possible that a new Prime Minister will be able to cajole fellow MPs to vote in support of a plan in a way that Theresa May wasn’t. If nothing else, none of the remaining candidates has a similar political decision-making style to May, of an exceptionally small circle of advisors, with whom choices are made and then stuck to with scant regard for others’ views.

If one assumes that part of the blockage on withdrawal from the EU was the failure of May to keep her party on-board with the evolving negotiations with the Commission, then here is an obvious opportunity.

Likewise, new leadership in the Commission and European Council might open up more scope to jiggle the EU27 along to make some accommodations on the other side of the table. That might be both because they have a less antagonist relationship with the new Prime Minister and because they are not beholden to previous discussions and commitments.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

But equally: maybe not, maybe not, maybe not.

Reading through those opening paragraphs looks like an exercise in wishful thinking, in many ways.

As the EU has made clear, the issue was never May per se, but the situation she was operating within. In particular, her inability to command a robust majority in Parliament raised concerns about her capacity to deliver on commitments made.

A new PM might well be more commanding of his own party, but that party still doesn’t have a majority by itself and even with its partner, the DUP, there is now only a working majority of about 4. Recall that figure includes a number of backbenchers who are profoundly unhappy with the prospect of (in some cases) a no-deal scenario or (in others) anything other than a no-deal, and the scene is set for the new occupier of Number 10 to discover that they are not the individual who counts in all this.

Importantly, none of the candidates is offering a fundamental shift from May’s decision to go down the party-political route: reaching across the aisle to build a wider coalition is neither likely to be offered, nor to be accepted by an opposition who feel ever more confident that an early election is in the offing.

Likewise, connective as Jean-Claude Juncker or Donald Tusk have been, they have still been just that: connective. Their authority and locus has been built on the high level of support from the member states, which itself has come from the robust defence of their interests in the central institutions of the EU. At its most prosaic, any new European Council President who sells out Irish interests to try and close the Withdrawal Agreement is likely to find their position deeply troubled. EU unity to this point has been built on deep recognition and respect of members’ interests, not on coercive leadership from above.

And this is even before we consider that the current EU leadership group has been very well-disposed to the UK, most obviously in helping to make adjustments to the Agreement to improve its chances of approval by the UK Parliament (or so they were told).

Taken together, the most substantial danger right now is buying into the view that we just need to shake things up with a new Prime Minister and we’ll be good to go: Theresa had a jolly good go at things, but now someone else needs to take the reins of power and bring them a good old tug. Tugging might make that person feel better, but it doesn’t necessarily address the underlying issue.

All of which is to take us to a situation where we are going to use more of the (limited) time available focusing on elements that do not resolve the Brexit blockage.

Even with a new Prime Minister in place during July, the EU side will take some time yet to get its house in order, even without factoring in the summer break. That means September is likely to be rather frantic in London, Brussels and various EU27 capitals, as everyone tries to take stock of what has (and hasn’t) changed.

Even force of character isn’t suddenly going to give a new Prime Minister a robust majority, so the question will become one of whether you have to go down the path of building such a position by the more conventional means of an election. As the British political vernacular would put it, that might be very courageous.

The post New faces, old problems appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This is a post on Spitzenkandidaten by Dr Katjana Gattermann. The text was originally published in the edited volume Euroflections. Leading academics on the European elections 2019, a free downloadable report with results, analyses and reflections on the election to the European Parliament 2019. More than 70 researchers from all over Europe participate in the project led by the editors Niklas Bolin, Kajsa Falasca, Marie Grusell and Lars Nord. Download the report and read more about the project here.

The Spitzenkandidaten

One distinct feature of the 2019 European Parliament elections were the campaigns of the pan-European lead candidates of several European party groups. These so-called “Spitzenkandidaten” were first introduced in the previous elections of 2014. Back then, it was hoped that – by personalizing the campaigns – European citizens would become more aware of the elections and ultimately more mobilized to take part in the polls. In 2014, there was no clear evidence that the Spitzenkandidaten indeed fulfilled this function. In fact, only few citizens could recognize any of the Spitzenkandidaten during the campaigns. Nonetheless, one of the past Spitzenkandidaten, namely Jean-Claude Juncker, was later nominated by the European Council and ultimately elected as Commission President by the Parliament.

That is why the European Parliament urged European party groups to again nominate pan-European Spitzenkandidaten for the 2019 elections. This time, there were seven Spitzenkandidaten: the European People’s Party nominated the German Manfred Weber, the Social Democrats Dutchman Frans Timmermans, the Conservatives the Czech Jan Zahradil, and the Greens and the Left each chose a duo of a male and a female candidate. The Liberals put forward a team of candidates, comprising among others Guy Verhofstadt from Belgium and Margrethe Vestager from Denmark.

The importance of media visibility

In order for European citizens to take note of the Spitzenkandidaten, there has to be sufficient media visibility. So, how visible were the candidates? Did the media pay more attention to them than in 2014? Seeing that the outcome of the Spitzenkandidaten procedure was still unknown during the 2014 election campaigns, but eventually led to the selection of Jean-Claude Juncker as Commission President, journalists may have taken the procedure more seriously in 2019 and hence may have more frequently reported about the Spitzenkandidaten.

Back in 2014, I conducted a content analysis of each two French, Dutch, German, Irish and Italian newspapers over a period of ten weeks prior to Election Day. I repeated this content analysis for the same newspapers and time-span for the 2019 elections. On the whole, news coverage of the Spitzenkandidaten was not significantly more comprehensive in 2019 compared to 2014. German newspapers paid most attention to all Spitzenkandidaten in 2019, followed by the Dutch press, which is not surprising because the candidates of the two biggest party groups are German and Dutch, respectively. French newspapers reported most extensively about the Spitzenkandidaten in 2014.

This year however, they devoted significantly less attention to the Spitzenkandidaten than before. In 2014, the German Spitzenkandidat Martin Schulz (Social Democrats) received most attention in all newspapers under study, while in 2019, the German Manfred Weber was most reported only in Germany, Italy and France. Margrethe Vestager was the most visible candidate in the Irish press; Frans Timmermans unsurprisingly received most attention at home. In short, the visibility of the Spitzenkandidaten varied across country and there was no significant increase in attention paid to them by European newspapers between 2014 and 2019.

 

Moreover, three pan-European television debates between the Spitzenkandidaten were held in both 2014 and 2019. Two of them were livestreamed on the internet; and only the debate organised by the European Broadcast Union (EBU) was also broadcasted via national television stations. According to the EBU, the 2019 debate was broadcasted live in 19 EU countries, but not in nine other EU countries (Austria, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia). However, one problem with pan-European debates is language: often, candidate statements have to be translated by an interpreter which hinders the audience to get a vivid impression of the candidates. Likewise, candidates may come across differently – for example, as less confident or less eloquent – if they debate in a language that is not their mother tongue. Still, these debates provide an important forum for citizens to learn about different candidates and their positions – if not directly, then at least through further media coverage about these debates (provided the media report about them, of course).

Does the visbility of Spitzenkandidaten improve turnout?

It is still too early to say whether the Spitzenkandidaten were able to mobilize European citizens this time round; we need to systematically analyse data for that. Indeed, turnout figures have gone up in many countries compared to the previous European elections. But there could be several reasons for this which are not necessarily linked to the Spitzenkandidaten. Then again, provisional election results of the Dutch Labour party of Frans Timmermans and the Bavarian Christian Democrats, for which Manfred Weber was standing, indicate that both parties have gained more seats in the European Parliament compared to last time. Even if these outcomes could be attributed to the Spitzenkandidaten, this impact remains limited to the country or region in which they had actually been listed on the ballot. Moreover, national parties tend not to campaign extensively with candidates from other countries, for example, on election campaign posters.

Overall, it is unlikely that the Spitzenkandidaten were the driving force behind voter turnout and votes for specific party groups across Europe. Given that media attention differed across country and there was not significantly more news coverage about the Spitzenkandidaten compared to 2014, it remains to be seen whether European citizens have actually become more aware of the candidates during the 2019 election campaigns.

The post The “Spitzenkandidaten” in the media: did they make a difference this time? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The European Parliament concluded the last plenary session of its 8th term on 18th April

Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

The next meeting of the AFET Committee will take place in July, more information will follow.
Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

Parliament's committees deal with EU legislative proposals by adopting reports, which then are referred to plenary for voting by all Members, and appoint negotiation teams to conduct talks with Council. They adopt non-legislative reports, organise hearings with experts and scrutinise other EU bodies and institutions. Parliament can set up sub-committees and special committees to deal with specific issues. Each committee elects a chair and up to four vice-chairs for a two and a half year mandate.
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Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

The Council today reached partial general approaches on three sectoral home affairs proposals in the context of the multiannual financial framework (MFF) for the period 2021-2027.

Weekly schedule of President Donald Tusk 10 - 14 June 2019

This position covers all aspects of the proposed revision apart from the provisions on the border procedure for returns.

Council conclusions on the future of a highly digitised Europe beyond 2020 will assist in the development of the EU's future digital policy.

Eastern Partnership will take forward transport cooperation to reinforce road safety and improve transport connections.

Council conclusions on the way forward on the retention of electronic communication data for the purpose of fighting crime.

The Council is tasking the Commission with negotiating agreements with the US and within the Council of Europe to facilitate access to e-evidence.

President Donald Tusk congratulated Antti Rinne on his appointment as Prime Minister of Finland.