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120/2017 : 14 November 2017 - Judgment of the Court of Justice in Case C-671/15

European Court of Justice (News) - Tue, 14/11/2017 - 10:11
APVE and Others
Competition
Concertation on price and quantities between several organisations of agricultural producers and associations of such organisations may constitute an agreement, decision or concerted practice for the purposes of competition law

Categories: European Union

119/2017 : 14 November 2017 - Opinion of the Advocate General in the case C-498/16

European Court of Justice (News) - Tue, 14/11/2017 - 10:10
Schrems
Area of Freedom, Security and Justice
According to Advocate General Bobek, Maximilian Schrems may be able to rely on his consumer status in order to sue Facebook Ireland before the Austrian Courts with respect to the private use of his own Facebook account

Categories: European Union

Video of a committee meeting - Monday, 13 November 2017 - 19:35 - Committee on Foreign Affairs

Length of video : 24'
You may manually download this video in WMV (274Mb) format

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, 2017 - EP
Categories: European Union

EU @ the ASEAN Summit

Council lTV - Tue, 14/11/2017 - 06:29
https://tvnewsroom.consilium.europa.eu/uploads/council-images/thumbs/uploads/council-images/remote/http_7e18a1c646f5450b9d6d-a75424f262e53e74f9539145894f4378.r8.cf3.rackcdn.com/asean2017_thumb_169_1510332049_1510332049_129_97shar_c1.jpg

The European Union participates for the first time in the 31st ASEAN Summit in Manila. The summit takes place on 13 and 14 November 2017 and marks the 50th anniversary of the foundation of ASEAN and coincides with the 40th anniversary of EU-ASEAN dialogue relations. The EU is represented by Donald Tusk, President of the European Council.

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Categories: European Union

Draft opinion - 2016 discharge: EU general budget - European External Action Service - PE 612.252v01-00 - Committee on Foreign Affairs

DRAFT OPINION on discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2016, Section X - European External Action Service
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Cristian Dan Preda

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP
Categories: European Union

Draft opinion - 2016 discharge: EU general budget - Commission - PE 612.251v01-00 - Committee on Foreign Affairs

DRAFT OPINION on discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2016, Section III - Commission and executive agencies
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Cristian Dan Preda

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP
Categories: European Union

Foreign Affairs Council (including Defence) - November 2017

Council lTV - Mon, 13/11/2017 - 15:14
https://tvnewsroom.consilium.europa.eu/uploads/council-images/thumbs/uploads/council-images/remote/http_7e18a1c646f5450b9d6d-a75424f262e53e74f9539145894f4378.r8.cf3.rackcdn.com/62cfd496-6d9f-11e5-92fb-bc764e08d9b2_226.05_thumb_169_1507718500_1507718500_129_97shar_c1.jpg

EU Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defence meet on 14 November 2017 in Brussels to discuss Africa-EU relations. Over lunch, foreign ministers are joined by defence ministers to discuss security and defence. Defence ministers are then discussing EU-NATO cooperation with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. The European Defence Agency's steering board meeting with the Defence ministers is taking place after the Foreign Affairs Council (defence). On the sidelines of the Council, those member states who intend to join the permanent structured cooperation (PESCO) are expected to jointly sign the notification letter addressed to the Council and the High Representative.

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Categories: European Union

Highlights - Workshop “The future of the European Defence Agency” - Subcommittee on Security and Defence

The European Defence Agency (EDA) was created in July 2004 in the context of the drafting of the first European Security Strategy. In recent years, developments have triggered talks on the future of the EDA. In the context of the most recent CSDP innovations (EU Global Strategy, EDF, PESCO, CARD) this workshop will discuss the possible role of the Agency in framing a common Union defence policy and in defining a European capabilities and armaments policy.
Further information
Draft programme
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Draft report - Recommendation to the Council, the Commission, and the EEAS on cutting the sources of income for Jihadists - targeting the financing of terrorism - PE 612.229v01-00 - Committee on Foreign Affairs

DRAFT REPORT on a European Parliament recommendation to the Council, the Commission and the EEAS on cutting the sources of income for Jihadists – targeting the financing of terrorism
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Javier Nart

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP
Categories: European Union

The EU was started for one purpose: peace

Ideas on Europe Blog - Sun, 12/11/2017 - 13:45

Remembrance Sunday is held in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth as a day “to commemorate the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars and later conflicts”.

Of course, we must never forget those who gave their lives in service to our country. We especially owe a great debt to all those who helped to save this country – and the rest of Europe – from the terrible onslaught of the Nazi regime in the Second World War.

But as well as remembering all those who fought so hard and valiantly during times of war and conflict, we should also remember all those who worked so hard and valiantly to help to avoid wars and conflicts.

The European Economic Community – later to be called the European Union – was started in the aftermath of the Second World War with one purpose and one purpose alone: to avoid wars on our continent ever happening again.

That was the passionate resolve of those who are regarded as the eleven founders of the European Union, including our own war leader, Winston Churchill.

After all, Europe had a long and bloody history of resolving its differences through war, and indeed, the planet’s two world wars originated right here, on our continent.

So the EU was never just an economic agreement between nations.

It was always also meant to be a social and political union of European nations to enable them to find ways not just to trade together, but to co-exist and co-operate in harmony and peace on many levels as a community of nations.

The goal, in the founding document of the European Union called the Treaty of Rome, was to achieve ‘ever closer union among the peoples of Europe’ (which is rather different to ‘ever closer union of nations’.)

Just one year after the Second World War, in 1946, Winston Churchill made his famous speech in Zurich, Switzerland in which he said:

“We must build a kind of United States of Europe. The structure of the United States of Europe, if well and truly built, will be such as to make the material strength of a single state less important.”

At the time Churchill did not envisage Britain joining the new Union of Europe, but he was later to change his mind.

In March 1957 the European Economic Community (EEC) was established by its six founding nations, France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg.

This was a remarkable achievement, considering that these countries only a few years previously had been fighting in a most terrible war, and four of the founding nations had been viciously subjugated by another of the founders, Germany, during their Nazi regime.

In a speech four months later in July 1957 at Westminster’s Central Hall, Churchill welcomed the formation of the EEC by the six, provided that “the whole of free Europe will have access”. Churchill added, ”we genuinely wish to join..”

But Churchill also warned:

“If, on the other hand, the European trade community were to be permanently restricted to the six nations, the results might be worse than if nothing were done at all – worse for them as well as for us. It would tend not to unite Europe but to divide it – and not only in the economic field.”

Maybe this is the point that many Brexiters simply don’t get.

Here in Britain we don’t seem to understand the founding purpose of the European Union – and on the rest of the continent, they don’t understand why we don’t understand.

The European Union isn’t just about economics and trade, and never was.

It’s about peace, and a community of nations of our continent working together for the benefit and protection of its citizens.

We are now rebuffing our allies in Europe, telling them by our actions and words that the precious, remarkable and successful post-war project to find peace and security on our continent isn’t as important to us as it is to them.

Will our friendship and relationship with the rest of our continent ever recover?

• Photo: central Rotterdam on 14 May 1940 after the bombardment by German war planes.  Around 900 people died and vast swathes of the city were destroyed in the bombing. Almost 80,000 people lost their homes when parts of the city became ‘a sea of fire’. Photo: German federal archives via Wikimedia Commons.

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Categories: European Union

‘I am a European’ by Winston Churchill

Ideas on Europe Blog - Sat, 11/11/2017 - 16:36

On 9 May 1948, Winston Churchill, Britain’s war-time Prime Minister, addressed the European rally held in Amsterdam, during which he said:

THIS IS THE EUROPE which we wish to see arise in so great a strength as to be safe from internal disruption or foreign inroads.

We hope to reach again a Europe united but purged of the slavery of ancient, classical times, a Europe in which men will be proud to say:

‘I am a European.’

We hope to see a Europe where men of every country will think as much of being a European as of belonging to their native land, and that without losing any of their love and loyalty of their birthplace.

We hope wherever they go in this wide domain, to which we set no limits in the European Continent, they will truly feel:

‘Here I am at home. I am a citizen of this country too.’

Let us meet together. Let us work together. Let us do our utmost – all that is in us – for the good of all.

How simple it would all be, how crowned with blessings for all of us if that could ever come, especially for the children and young men and women now growing up in this tortured world.

How proud we should all be if we had played any useful part in bringing that great day to come. And here I invoke the interest of the broad, proletarian masses. We see before our eyes scores of millions of humble homes in Europe and in lands outside which have been afflicted by war.

Are they never to have a chance to thrive and flourish? Is the honest, faithful, breadwinner never to be able to reap the fruits of his labour? Can he never bring up his children in health and joy and with the hopes of better days?

Can he never be free from the fear of foreign invasion, the crash of the bomb and the shell, the tramp of the hostile patrol, or what is even worse, the knock upon his door by the political police to take the loved one from the protection of law and justice, when all the time by one spontaneous effort of his will he could wake from all these nightmare horrors and stand forth in his manhood, free in the broad light of day?

But if we are to achieve, this supreme reward we must lay aside every impediment; we must conquer ourselves.

We must rise to a level higher than the grievous injuries we have suffered or the deep hatreds they have caused. Old feuds must die. Territorial ambitions must be set aside.

National rivalries must be confined to the question as to who can render the most distinguished service to the common cause.

Moreover, we must take all necessary steps and particular precautions to make sure that we have the power and the time to carry out this transformation of the western world.

Much of this of course belongs to the responsibilities of the chosen governments responsible in so many countries.

But we have gathered together at The Hague, to proclaim here and to all the world the mission, the aim and the design of a United Europe, whose moral conceptions will win the respect and gratitude of mankind and whose physical strength will be such that none will dare molest her tranquil sway.

• Link to Churchill’s full address in Amsterdam on 9 May 1948

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Categories: European Union

When it is impossible to help everyone

Ideas on Europe Blog - Fri, 10/11/2017 - 15:37

A recently published book: “Wir können nicht allen helfen” – of which the title translates into English as we cannot help everyone – is about the moral dilemma now facing Germany as a consequence of the refugee crisis. The book is an account by Boris Palmer – the mayor of Tübingen, a town in the state of Baden-Würtemburg in Germany – who was responsible for providing accommodation for refugees in the summer of 2015, when there was an influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees into Germany. In the book Palmer debates the limits of Germany’s resilience when it comes to integrating over 1.16 million asylum seekers, who arrived in Germany over a period from 2015 to 2016.

The book is interesting because it is written by a green politician, who comes from a political tradition of left wing politics: which has always put the rights of minorities and disadvantaged groups such as refugees fleeing persecution as well as environmental protection at the centre of its policies. Therefore Palmer can inform the reader of the challenges and problems of mass immigration without having an anti-immigrant agenda, which would not have been the case if he had been a member of the right wing AfD party.

In 2015 the town of Tübingen had a population of 85,000 people. By the autumn of that year according to estimates the influx of refugees entering Germany had reached around 800,000, which was set to rise to over one million people at the start of 2016. Palmer explains that as the refugees were distributed to locations across Germany, Tübingen was expected to receive a proportion of one thousandth of the refugee population. This meant the town had to accommodate around 1000 extra people within a period of 18 months, which was likely to rise to around 2000 within a period of 30 months, if the numbers of refugees entering Germany had continued at the same rate. Many of the refugees had fled from the war in Syria and northern Iraq, and had reached Austria and Germany via the Balkan route after first passing through Turkey and Greece.

The first challenge for many local communities in Germany was to find temporary accommodation for the new arrivals. In Tübingen emergency accommodation was provided for refugees in the regional sports hall. This meant that local people had to find other sports venues, which they accepted in a spirit of good faith and solidarity under the exceptional circumstances. In the autumn of 2015 the local authority made 400 spaces available in the sports hall which soon filled up.

It was not long before conditions in the sports hall started to become unpleasant: there were protests and fights amongst some of those who were sheltering there; in February 2016 complaints were made by refugees to a local newspaper that they had been living at the sports centre for months; they also made complaints about the food provided by the local authority there. Employees of the local authority reported to Palmer that they had found the toilets in the sports centre in a terrible condition, saying excrement had been smeared on the toilet walls. A contributing factor to the bad behaviour in the sports hall was the consumption of alcohol by some of the men staying there.

In the book Palmer does not want to put all the blame for the disorder in the sports hall on the newcomers staying there, recognizing that if 400 local Schwabens had been put in such accommodation, it would have ended up with people fighting each other. Part of the problem for all local authorities at that time – after such a large and sudden influx of people – was that resources were overstretched, and it was difficult to find enough social housing for the newcomers.

Palmer wrote of the difficulty of trying to integrate large numbers of people into German society who did not speak German. He was concerned that politicians in central government had not considered the problems of finding employment for people who came from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and several African countries, many of whom had arrived in Germany without formal qualifications or training. It was estimated that 80 percent of the refugees would not be considered qualified in the German employment market; and that the integration of these people into the country’s employment market once all the necessary education and training had been provided would take a decade.

One of the concerns that many people in Germany had, was the large proportion of young single men among the refugees. Many of these men arrived without being accompanied by any of their family members. German parents of girls – fearing for the safety of their daughters – were willing to accept refugee families in their neighbourhoods, but were unhappy about the single men being accommodated nearby.

At the time of writing this review the reviewer is not aware that “Wir können nicht allen helfen” has been translated into English for sale in the United Kingdom. He bought a copy of the book in its original German language at a bookshop in Cologne, Germany, and has read it and then written a review of it in English. This book is very important to understand the political situation in Germany and the rest of Europe.

In 2015 Angela Merkel made a massive political miscalculation, by opening Germany’s borders to such a large influx of people who were not EU citizens. Many people in Germany have felt that the needs of refugees have been put before those of local people. For many Germans – who are struggling to hold down three minimum wage part time jobs, or are unemployed on Hartz IV subsistence benefit – the newcomers are seen as invaders competing for jobs and housing as well as pushing down pay and conditions for German workers. As a consequence of this situation the AfD was able to win around 13 percent of the vote in the German election of September 2017.

©Jolyon Gumbrell 2017

Sources

Palmer, Boris (2017) Wir können nicht allen helfen, Siedler Verlag München, ISBN 978-3-8275-0107-3.

https://www.randomhouse.de/Buch/Wir-koennen-nicht-allen-helfen/Boris-Palmer/Siedler/e526754.rhd

The review entitled “When it is impossible to help everyone” was first published on Jolyon’s Review on 10th November 2017 at http://jolyonsreview.co.uk/bookreviews.htm

The post When it is impossible to help everyone appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Categories: European Union

EU-Central Asia

Council lTV - Fri, 10/11/2017 - 10:51
https://tvnewsroom.consilium.europa.eu/uploads/council-images/thumbs/uploads/council-images/remote/http_7e18a1c646f5450b9d6d-a75424f262e53e74f9539145894f4378.r8.cf3.rackcdn.com/719e10ce-c5f3-11e7-9e92-bc764e092fac_38.55_thumb_169_1510304005_1510304005_129_97shar_c1.jpg

The EU has strengthened its relationship with the Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) since the adoption of  "The EU and Central Asia: Strategy for a New Partnership ” in 2007.

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Categories: European Union

Agenda - The Week Ahead 13 – 19 November 2017

European Parliament - Fri, 10/11/2017 - 10:48
Plenary session and committee meetings in Strasbourg

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP
Categories: European Union

Universities and the production of elites

Ideas on Europe Blog - Fri, 10/11/2017 - 10:14

Roland Bloch and Alexander Mitterle

Universities have become central crossing points in modern society. They coproduce the narratives of our time, ranging from politics over neurogenetics to climate change. Universities educate students for diverse roles in society: nurses, musicians, lawyers, physicists, managers, neuroscientists, and philosophers have all been credentialized by higher education systems. In recent decades, there has been a consistent increase in the number of participants in higher education. The move from elite to mass education, has led to the emergence of an expansive, self-enforcing dynamic (Trow 2006).

 

Mass education implies that higher education has become crucial to securing access to labor markets, especially to positions with higher social status (Collins 1979). Over the decades, scholars have confirmed that educational credentials are door openers, which legitimate exclusive access to high-status professions and lead to occupational attainment (Abbott 2005). With the expansion of higher education, a growing differentiation, professionalization, and stratification within higher education systems can be perceived (Teichler 2008). Surprisingly, there has been less attention paid to how exactly the organization and (vertical) structure of higher education impacts on social structures and on occupational attainment. Beyond acknowledging the role of higher education in constructing elites, there has been a serious lack of research on the link between higher education and high-status positions.

 

Bringing the university back in

While acknowledging the important work that emphasizes the role of higher education in reproducing elites, our new book ‘Universities and the Production of Elites. Discourses, Policies, and Strategies of Excellence and Stratification in Higher Education’ (Bloch, Mitterle, Paradeise and Peter 2018) focusses on how universities as organizations produce elites.

 

As education provider and a research institution, the university “forms basic ideologies and creates academic degrees and expertise around these ideologies” (Baker 2014, p. 84). As a “sieve”, “incubator” or “hub” of society (Stevens et al. 2008), it both co-constructs and legitimizes “new classes of personnel with new types of authoritative knowledge” (Meyer 1977, p. 56). As an organization its forms of educational provision and its ties with the labour market are impacted by constant policy changes in the name of internationalization, excellence, New Public Management, quality improvement, efficiency and cost reduction (Paradeise and Thoenig 2015; Bloch and Mitterle 2017).

 

The aim of our book is to highlight the relationship between higher education institutions and the production of elites by focusing on how organizational change and increasing stratification in higher education impact on – or try to adjust to – the production of new elites for labor markets and academia. Its purpose is to provide new empirical and theoretical perspectives on this relationship and it focuses on the role of the university, rather than the labor market.

 

Discourses, policies, and strategies of excellence and stratification

The contributions originate from a small, intense workshop held at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in September 2015. The workshop brought together scholars from Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States to explore these issues. The endeavor is of course much greater than an edited book can handle. We see it as a starting point for a longer discussion. It thus provides relevant theoretical approaches that help to think the relationship anew, such as discourse analysis, new institutionalism, institutional habitus approaches, or visibility theory. The approaches are developed along concrete case studies in the respective countries on multiple levels along which this ordering takes place (such as programs, organizational units, universities, global business school fields, and nation states).

 

The book begins with addressing some of the discursive rationales that underlie recent policy changes toward increasing stratification in higher education and that emphasize individual actorhood, responsiveness, and competition. We then examine how governments take up these rationales – in response to massification and internationalization in higher education – when formulating policy changes. Examples from Finland, France, Germany, and Ireland describe how such policy changes impact on and reshape the structure of higher education systems. Policy devices that exemplify verticality in programs and institutions (such as rankings) are key to implementing and sustaining these changes in higher education. We show how policy devices – as objective status distributors – make hierarchies visible along specific indicators and how such devices impact on universities. Universities respond to these policy changes by adjusting to status demands. Common indicators play an important role in comparative positioning but local organizational arrangements are very heterogeneous. With regard to educational pathways, we draw on case studies from China, the United States, and Germany (business education and doctoral programs) to show how universities and their schools seek to employ international faculty, visualize elite architectures, or build privileged pathways to job positions. Finally, we discuss the role of specific logics of elite production. Examples from the United States and France each show that even if internationalization strategies are in place and although universities are global institutions, they still largely follow national production logics in the way that they educate and socialize their students.

 

Connecting the various empirical studies in this book opens up a new perspective for future research on the nexus between higher education and labor markets. The vertical differences and the way that they rebuild higher education matter, and they matter particularly for educational pathways leading to high-status positions.

 

Roland Bloch is a research associate at the Institute of Sociology and the Center for School and Educational Research at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. He received his PhD at University of Leipzig with a dissertation on the study reforms in the course of the Bologna process and has worked on the structure of academic work at German universities. His latest research concerns stratifications in higher education, especially doctoral education.

 

Alexander Mitterle is a research associate at the Institute for Sociology and the Center for School and Educational Research at Martin-Luther-University. His recent research focuses on the development of stratification in German higher education. He has worked and published on various aspects of higher education including internationalization, private higher education, teaching structure and time as well as real-socialist higher education.

 

References

Abbott, A. (2005). ‘Linked Ecologies: States and Universities as Environments for Professions‘. Sociological Theory, 23(3), pp. 245–274.

Baker, D.P. (2014). The Schooled Society: The Educational Transformation of Global Culture. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

Bloch, R. and Mitterle, A. (2017). On stratification in changing higher education: The ‘analysis of status’ revisited, Higher Education, 73(6), pp. 929–946. DOI: 10.1007/s10734-017-0113-5.

Bloch, R., Mitterle, A., Paradeise, C. and Peter, T. (eds.) (2018). Universities and the Production of Elites. Discourses, Policies, and Strategies of Excellence and Stratification in Higher Education. Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Collins, R. (1979). The credential society: an historical sociology of education and stratification. New York: Academic Press.

Meyer, J.W. (1977). The Effects of Education as an Institution. The American Journal of Sociology, 83(1), pp. 55–77.

Paradeise, C. and Thoenig, J.C. (2015). In search of academic quality. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Stevens, M.L., Armstrong, E.A. and Arum, R. (2008). Sieve, Incubator, Temple, Hub: Empirical and Theoretical Advances in the Sociology of Higher Education. Annual Review of Sociology, 34(1), pp. 127–151.

Teichler, U. (2008). Diversification? Trends and explanations of the shape and size of higher education, Higher Education, 56(3), pp. 349–379. DOI: 10.1007/s10734-008-9122-8.

Trow, Martin (2006). Reflections on the transition from elite to mass to universal access: forms and phases of higher education in modern societies since WWII. In: James J. F. Forest und Philip G. Altbach eds., International Handbook of Higher Education. Vol. 1. Global Themes and Contemporary Challenges. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 243-280.

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Categories: European Union

118/2017 : 10 November 2017 - Judgment of the General Court in case T-180/15

European Court of Justice (News) - Fri, 10/11/2017 - 09:53
Icap and Others v Commission
Competition
The EU General Court annuls in part the Commission’s decision against the Icap Group in the cartels relating to Yen interest rate derivatives

Categories: European Union

Foreign Affairs Council (Trade) - November 2017

Council lTV - Fri, 10/11/2017 - 09:00
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EU Ministers for Foreign Affairs and Trade meet on 10 November 2017 in Brussels to discuss the latest developments and prospects for the 11th WTO ministerial conference which will take place from 10 to 13 December in Buenos Aires. The agenda also includes the ongoing negotiations with Mexico and Mercosur as well as the state of play of preparations of the free trade agreement with Japan.

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Categories: European Union

Do we really understand the integration of Europe?

Ideas on Europe Blog - Thu, 09/11/2017 - 20:31

Twenty-eight years ago today, on 9 November 1989, the people of Berlin – east and west – joined together to dismantle the wall that had cruelly separated their city for twenty-eight years.

It was a momentous event that led to the downfall of the Soviet communist regime, followed eventually by applications to join the European Union by most of the former Iron Curtain countries, fully supported and encouraged by our UK government.

It’s an event worth remembering and celebrating.

But there is also another event that happened on this day in history that we should surely also not forget, but which we cannot celebrate.

On this day, on 9 November 1938, commenced 48-hours of ‘Kristallnacht’, also known as ‘The night of broken glass’.

Throughout Germany and Austria, Nazi Stormtroopers – ‘Brown shirts’ – together with non-Jewish civilians, commenced a co-ordinated series of vicious attacks against Jewish people and their properties.

The name Kristallnacht comes from the millions of fragments of shattered glass strewn across the streets after Jewish homes, shops, buildings, schools, hospitals and synagogues were ransacked and their windows mercilessly smashed with boots and sledge hammers.

Over 1,000 synagogues and 7,000 Jewish businesses were destroyed. At least 91 Jewish people were killed and 30,000 arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps. The two nights of terror were widely reported by the media and sent shock waves around the world.

Soon these events led to the Holocaust, which saw the horrific, industrial-scale murder of 11 million victims across most of Europe, including six million Jewish people.

It was arranged with meticulous calculated efficiency by the Nazi regime, which was only eventually defeated by the combined forces of Russia, USA, Britain and their Allies following a terrifying five-year world war.

But instead of celebrating liberation following the end of Nazism in 1945, half of Europe’s countries were then consumed by another totalitarian regime, Communism.

It was only 44 years later, as the Berlin wall began to crumble, that those countries could see freedom at last.

This was Europe’s gruelling arduous road to peace and liberation that we should surely reflect upon today.

When I visited Amsterdam in September, my Dutch friend said to me, “Why are you doing Brexit? Europe is integrated now!’

Maybe this is something we, as islanders, simply don’t understand as deeply as those who live on the mainland of our continent.

Europe has suffered profound pain on its path to find peace and ‘integration’. It was previously commonplace on our continent for differences between countries to be resolved through violence and war. Indeed, the planet’s two world wars originated right here on our continent.

For many, the Second World War only ended in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the half of our continent that was hidden from us behind an ‘Iron Curtain’ was liberated at last.

We saw the fall of the oppressive Soviet Union, and many of the countries that had been trapped in its sphere then re-joined our family of countries through the European Union.

Following our continent’s long and harrowing journey, we have found peace, and yes, integration at last.

And yet, in response, Britain is on the road to Brexit, snubbing our friends and neighbours on our own continent, and putting at risk Europe’s profound and remarkable accomplishments of recent decades.

Do we really know what we’re doing?

• Photo of Kristallnacht by Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1970-083-42 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5418870

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Categories: European Union

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