European Union

The Subcommittee on Security and Defence will go over the prospects and challenges for the upcoming 2020 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference with UN Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Izumi Nakamitsu. The debate will take place on 27 January 2020, and will feed into the ongoing consideration of a Parliament Recommendation on the 2020 NPT Review conference, and a report on the future of the multilateral arms control and disarmament regimes.
Further information
SEDE meeting agenda and documents
EU Fact Sheets: Security and defence
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

By Romana Oliveira Pinhal |

In the United Kingdom terrorism is presented, by the British government, as one of the most serious and dangerous threats to national security and justified the introduction of legislative, political and operational measures aimed at combating the terrorist threat.

The British securitizing narrative states the country is facing “a serious terrorist threat” and “as the nature of the threat we face becomes more complex, more fragmented, more hidden, especially online, the strategy needs to keep up”. The presentation of the terrorist threat as exceptional and creating a state of emergency that at any moment a terrorist attack could occur, favours the development of a climate of insecurity, instability, fear and suspicion that facilitates the introduction of preventive measures.

One of the most important duties of a State is to protect its citizens from security threats, but its duty to protect, on the other hand, should not compromise the respect for fundamental human rights and freedoms.

While action by States is necessary to prevent and effectively sanction terrorist acts, not all means are justifiable. As surveillance powers increase, giving the British government access to various aspects of the daily lives of its citizens, serious restrictions to the full enjoyment of the right to privacy emerge.

In the context of the fight against terrorism, surveillance is presented as a necessary evil that becomes justifiable in the name of national security. The increasing use of technology demonstrates that societies, fuelled by a “culture of fear“, are progressively evolving into States of overprotection and, as a consequence, we are witnessing the “silent erosion of privacy“.

The growing focus on technology is based on a model that promotes a trade-off between privacy and security, according to which a certain degree of privacy intrusion is necessary and indispensable to achieve higher levels of security. British citizens expect their government to protect them from security threats as well as safeguard their right to privacy.

The dominant political discourse states that citizens should accept and support the introduction of new surveillance measures, even if it results in intrusions to their privacy. What also happens is that, when describing terrorism as a new threat we are led to believe that only new counter-terrorism measures are appropriate and efficient to deal with this “newness“. Consequently, even if there is a lack of certainty and a minimum probability of attack, the potential severity of the attacks is considered enough to trigger preventive action.

The British counter-terrorism policy has changed to favour pre-emptive measures, deployed in accordance with knowledge produced about terrorism ‘risk’. Nowadays new measures are introduced based on risk assessment; they consider the potential of the threat and the possibility of a future terrorist attack. This is enough to justify and legitimize the introduction of new measures. Policy is based on a potential situation that may never happen, on a risk that may never become real.

In the British case, the securitizing narrative and the surveillance practices seem to value prevention and protection at the expense of the respect for the right to privacy. There is a major risk that it can be used for other reasons or purposes than security, giving the State the power to access to several aspects of citizens’ private life.

New counter-terrorism measures are presented as essential tools, as the only way to keep the country and its citizens safe from major security threats. It is said that is very import to give the police and the security forces all the powers they need to counter the terrorist threat in an efficient way.

The former Prime Minister Theresa May stated that “enough is enough” and “things need to change” to justify new online counter-terrorism measures. The effect on the right to privacy was not even taken into consideration. The fight against terrorism was an important challenge during her tenure as a Prime Minister, but in her last speech as the head of the Government the fight against this security threat was not contemplated. The same happened with Boris Johnson’s first speech as Prime Minister where he announced extra police and more powers to stop and search in order to keep the country safe, without having mentioned in detail how he proposes to deal with the terrorist threat. By granting new powers to the police and security forces the State claims to be more efficient in fighting security threats but in the long run this can prove to be a greater threat to our security than the threat posed by terrorism, since the police can exercise these powers based only on suspicion.

Recently, the new Home Secretary, Priti Patel, hosted the Five Eyes security summit where the opportunities and risks that new technologies pose were debated. The meetings were held in private with no agenda being made public but it was said that firms should not develop their systems and services in ways that empower criminals or put vulnerable people at risk. One of the main topics under debate concerned the increasingly effective encryption provided by technology companies who want to make their services more secure after a range of security breaches. This development was not seen as a positive step in the fight against terrorism as a clear intention to change the way data is encrypted (the process of encoding digital information) so governments can have access to data in a readable and usable format was expressed. This move was highly criticized as it could be a serious challenge to the right to privacy of users.

In 2016 the Investigatory Powers Act introduced new surveillance powers that were harshly criticized by the Court of Justice of the European Union that stated it “(…) exceeds the limits of what is strictly necessary and cannot be considered to be justified within a democratic society (…)”. As a consequence amendments were made with the government stating that the restrictions in place, so important to guarantee our right to privacy, were “severely limiting our agencies’ ability to stop terrorist attacks and bring criminals to justice”. When he was Home Secretary, Sajid Javid admitted that MI5 had breached surveillance safeguards in the way it handles information obtained under interception warrants. As a consequence, an independent review was established to consider and report back on what lessons could be learned.

The British securitizing narrative focuses too much on the exceptionality of the threat and on promoting the introduction of new legislative measures as a fundamental tool to deal with the terrorist threat, ignoring the potential effect of the surveillance practices on the disrespect of the right to privacy. It is often overlooked that the antiterrorist measures can have a negative impact on British citizens that accept them because they believe it is the only way to guarantee their safety, not considering its real danger concerning the restriction of their right to privacy. However, the disrespect of this basic freedom by the British government, which claims to be a committed supporter of liberal values, can be more than a necessity and turn out as an attempt to have access to several aspects of the lives of its citizens.

 

 

Romana Oliveira Pinhal

Bio
Romana Pinhal is a PhD researcher in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Minho in Portugal. Her main research interests concern International Security Studies, Surveillance Studies and Human Rights.

Summary
In the UK the presentation of terrorism as one of the biggest threats to security justified the introduction of new antiterrorist measures. The government asserts that keeping the country and its citizens safe is one of its most important duties. While action by states is necessary to prevent further terrorist attacks not all means are justifiable and the state duty to protect should not compromise the respect for fundamental human rights and freedoms.

The post Terrorism in the United Kingdom: Securitizing Narrative, Surveillance Practices and the Right to Privacy appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Ministers are outlining the priorities of the Croatian Presidency of the Council of the EU to parliamentary committees, in a series of meetings.
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development
Committee on Budgets
Committee on Culture and Education
Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs
Committee on Employment and Social Affairs
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety
Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality
Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection
Committee on International Trade
Committee on Fisheries
Committee on Regional Development
Committee on Transport and Tourism

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Length of video : 206'
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Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

The European Commission needs to clarify how it plans to fund new policy proposals for the EU's budget for 2021-2027, said the budget committee.

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

MEPs want a strong set of rights to protect consumers in the context of artificial intelligence and automated decision-making.
Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

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Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Ending. Starting

Change is coming to Brexit.

At the end of next week, the UK will leave the European Union, having now completed the passage of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill through the Lords: EU ratification is a given.

But there is another, broader change coming too.

The constellation of politicians, commentators and journalists who were brought together by the 2016 vote is starting to break up.

That’s most obvious in the political sphere. The EU has new Presidents aplenty and the Johnson government seeks to present itself as somehow brand-new, despite being a party of power for the past decade.

We can see it elsewhere too: Peter Foster – one of the preeminent media analysts – is on the move to the FT; @BorderIrish is hanging up its boots on Friday (possibly having made a fortune with its excellent tome). And I notice plenty of others online who seem to be winding things down or looking to pastures new.

That’s logical. The act of withdrawing from the EU will be a fundamental change; one that is irreversible. From here on, there can be no pretence (or vain hope) that things can go back to how they were.

And in all this, we have to remember that Brexit is very much not ‘done’.

Brrrrr

Which prompts an odd (for me, at least) thought: maybe we might think of this in an analogous (if very imperfect) way to the Cold War.*

The convention is to bracket the Second World War into the 1939-45 period, already neglecting the conflicts either side that existed outside of Europe, but we can also place it into a much longer era of tensions, both explicit and implicit.

The war obviously connects to the First World War, with the narrative of betrayal being used to frame the changing power balance in the continent, a change that then runs (in a very different way) from the fall of Berlin to the fall of the Berlin Wall, four decades later.

And even then, it’s clear that balance continues to change to this day, with Russia’s (and America’s) uncertainty and the distant haze of a Chinese dawn.

History is a stream, into which we dip from time to time, and our efforts to contain and compartmentalise it are necessarily imperfect. Indeed, it is precisely such efforts that mark our present situation.

And so I come back to a representation of the Cold War that happens to serve a contemporary structure of politics.

In 1945, there were victors and losers. There were celebrations, but ones tempered by the cost of achieving dominance.

And even before that victory came, there were divisions and rivalries, as the victors found that having a common enemy didn’t mean having a common agenda. Indeed, some of the former enemies turned out to be the staunchest supporters of both the new rival camps.

The recontextualisation of politics, in the shadow of the Bomb and of the Holocaust, was profound and irreversible too.

Badoom

And this is the key point. Politics does not stop.

All of the issues and problems that have been raised in and around Brexit these past years are not now suddenly solved and put behind us. Instead, they are still present, still urgent, still (largely) unanswered.

As we move into this new – and much, much longer – phase of Brexit, we might do well to remember this. Practically, we might usefully try to gather the insight of those who have done their Brexit time, so that the numerous wheels do not have to be reinvented once again.

If this sounds downbeat, then it’s because I feel rather downbeat. Not for the decision to leave per se – although it’s not one I voted for – but for the manner of how it proceeds.

At the risk of sounding like a scratched record (kids, ask an old person), the singular failure to build a consensus around any positive national project that is made possible by Brexit ranks at the top of my list of “why this will not end well.”

So as we move towards another day in history when everything changes, and yet nothing changes, we might start to work on how we are going to deal with, and shape, this new world around us.

* – one very obvious way it’s imperfect is that there aren’t necessarily the same number or arrangement of actors; i.e. no one is a Nazi or a Communist (or an American or Brit for that matter) in this, before we all go silly.

The post The Brexit Cold War appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Length of video : 155'
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Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

On 21 January MEPs from the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET), Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE), and Delegation for relations with NATO Parliamentary Assembly (DNAT) discussed the security situation in Europe and the world with NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg. Mr Stoltenberg stressed the importance of NATO as an organisation bringing together the EU and the US and allowing them to address common security issues.
The debate concentrated around the importance of building global capacity, the EU's efforts towards strategic autonomy, transatlantic relations and relations with Russia.
Further information
Press release_ 21-01-2020
The recording of the meeting
Multimedia material
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

On 21 January, AFET debated external policy priorities with Gordan Grlić Radman, Croatia's Minister of Foreign and European Affairs. The Minister and MEPs discussed the upcoming challenges and possible solutions, as Croatia takes the lead of the Council in a very critical time for the European Union.
During this Presidency, the EU will strive to agree on its multiannual budget, to restore credibility to its enlargement policy and will continue to be actively engaged in both its East and South neighbourhood. Brexit, Africa and transatlantic relations will also be high on the foreign affairs agenda.
Further information
Croatian Presidency Priorities
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

On 21 January, the Committee on Foreign Affairs hold a public hearing on the future of the Eastern Partnership. The Members discussed with experts the achievements and shortcomings of the Eastern Partnership both at the regional and multilateral level. They also analysed possible evolution of the EU's relations with its six Eastern partners and a way forward for the Eastern Partnership in the next decade.
Further information
AFET Public Hearing - Draft Programme
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Opinion on the proposal for a Council decision on conclusion of the Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community
Committee on Foreign Affairs
David McAllister

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Generics (UK) and Others
Competition
Advocate General Kokott proposes that the Court should find that an agreement in settlement of a dispute between the holder of a pharmaceutical patent and a manufacturer of generic medicinal products may be contrary to EU competition law

PTC Therapeutics International v EMA
Law governing the institutions
The Court confirms the right of access to documents contained in the file of a marketing authorisation application for a medicinal product

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Length of video : 55'
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Length of video : 55'
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Length of video : 17'
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Length of video : 40'
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