Ideas on Europe Blog

With the pound dramatically lower as a direct result of Brexit, many more Britons are now holidaying at Britain’s seaside resorts. And it’s thanks to the EU that 95% of our beaches are now clean enough to wade out into the sea.

It wasn’t always like that.

Back in the 1970s, we used to pump our untreated sewage straight into the sea. It’s only because of EU laws that the UK was forced to clean up its act.

As reported by Friends of the Earth, who campaigned during the referendum for the UK to stay in the EU for the sake of our environment:

“The EU’s 1976 Bathing Water Directive – and successful legal action by the European Commission – has made our beaches as clean, clear and swimmable as they are today.

“But it wasn’t easy going…The UK fought hard to maintain the right to continue polluting.

“Successive UK governments exploited whatever loophole they could find. They pumped untreated sewage into our ocean until 1998 – longer than any other European country.

“Now, water quality at beaches is better than at any time in living memory, according to the Environment Agency.

“Some of the UK’s most beautiful and loved beaches are protected in this way: Watergate Bay in Cornwall, Druridge Bay in Northumberland, Croyde Beach in Devon and hundreds more which have reached good and excellent water-rating standards.”

Added the environmental pressure group:

“Staying in the EU delivers a win-win scenario of cleaner beaches and economic gain for sea-side economies.”

But, warns Friends of the Earth, not all of Britain’s beaches reach the crystal-clear standards that we have now come to expect. Only around 60% of UK bathing waters meet the new “Excellent” standard of the revised 2006 EU Bathing Water Directive.

WILL OUR BEACHES AND WATERWAYS BE CLEAN AFTER BREXIT?

It does not look hopeful.

After Brexit, the UK will no longer be subject to the EU’s Bathing Water Directive and Water Framework Directive.

With Brexit now on the immediate horizon, standards are already seriously slipping.

According to a major investigation by The Times this weekend, the government in recent years has allowed 86% of our rivers to fall short of the EU’s strict ecological standards.

The Times reported that dangerous pollutants in England’s waterways have reached their highest levels since modern testing began. The newspaper revealed that, “no river in the country is now certified as safe for swimmers.”

Last month, Southern Water was fined a record £127 million for “shocking” breaches that allowed raw sewage to be released into rivers and on to beaches.

England’s rivers are now among the most polluted in Europe.

Under EU rules, the government is supposed to ensure that all rivers are of good ecological standard by 2027. But according to the World Wildlife Fund, ministers are “not remotely on course” to achieve this target.

And if Britain is not in the EU, what incentive or legal duty will the government have to keep our waterways and beaches clean, especially if their past record is anything to go by?

Commented Friends of the Earth:

“Without external EU pressure it seems likely that standards will slip.”

Leaked documents during Theresa May’s premiership suggested that the Conservative government planned to “scale down” climate and environmental protection laws to secure post-Brexit trade deals. Does anyone think that under Boris Johnson our protection laws will be safe?

The bottom line? Brexit is a filthy business. It’s not too late to stop it, if that’s now what Britain wants.

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In light of the current political tensions in the Persian Gulf, Tom Sauer asks whether the Europeans can save the Joint Common Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the 2015 nuclear deal. 

© Vlad / Adobe Stock

Political tensions are once again rising in the Persian Gulf. Iran has been accused of attacking six tankers over the last weeks. It has confiscated a British tanker (after the United Kingdom confiscated an Iranian ship), and shot down an American drone (after which the US shot down an Iranian one).  Iran’s policy of strategic patience with Trump’s maximum pressure approach is over. Worst of all, Iran has started violating the Joint Common Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the 2015 nuclear deal. The latter was initiated by the E3 (being France, the UK, and Germany) in 2003 and concluded by the EU3+3 (the EU3, plus the US, Russia and China). Today’s question is: can the Europeans save the JCPOA?

In May of this year, exactly one year after President Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear deal, President Rohani announced that Iran will start crossing some of the limitations (like the amount of low enriched uranium, the percentage of enrichment, and in the future probably also the number of gas centrifuges that are needed for enrichment, etc) agreed upon in the deal, be it in a limited and reversible way. Tehran claims that it cannot continue fulfilling its part of the obligations without seeing any of the (economic) benefits of the deal.

The diplomatic signal by Teheran to the rest of the world, and especially the Europeans, is twofold: first, “rescue the deal!”. If not, Iran is planning to cross other limitations every two months. As a result, the Iranian break-out time (which is the time needed for Iran to build atomic bombs in secret, which was significantly lengthened thanks to the deal) will start shortening again, which brings Iran closer to the Bomb. The latter may provoke another war by the US in the Middle East, something that the Europeans absolutely want to prevent as the wars in Iraq, Syria and Libya led to migration streams to Europe (not to the US) and a boost for nationalist and populist parties in all EU member states. A second reason for Iran to put up the pressure is to position itself better for potential new negotiations with the US.

Unfortunately, the EU seems either incapable or unwilling to save the deal. The problem is not only that the most important actor – the US – withdrew from the deal. President Trump made matters worse by announcing that also any non-American (e.g. European) firms that continue doing business with Iran (and the US) would be sanctioned by the US through the so-called extraterritorial sanctions. As a consequence, all major European firms (like Total, Siemens, Peugeot, Citroën) left Iran again after flocking back to Iran in 2015. The result is an Iranian economy in shatters with high inflation (40-60%) and the rise of the conservative faction and the Revolutionary Guards.

The EU4 – the EU3 plus Italy – announced immediately after the US withdrawal in 2018 that it would set up a Special Trading Vehicle Mechanism (called INSTEX) that would help European firms to circumvent the American sanctions. Again, the future of the nuclear deal depends on the extent that Iran can enjoy its economic benefits. Setting INSTEX up has taken approximately one year, and it is still not running and so not bringing a lot of foreign capital towards Iran. Why does it take so long? Is it because the Europeans have never set up such a mechanism, or is it due to lack of political will? Or both? According to some observers, lack of political will, certainly on the side of the UK (because its close ties to the US, especially in uncertain times of Brexit), is definitely part of the answer.

More fundamentally, the whole episode shows the weakness of the EU4. Just like the period before the Iran deal, ad hoc informal international organizations (IOs) – in this case the E3, EU3, EU3+3, EU4 – are helpful and may be necessary, but are certainly not sufficient to resolve intricate international problems. There are however also advantages to these ad hoc groupings. First, they encounter less bureaucratic obstacles for cooperation than formal IOs, including flexibility with respect to membership. Second, they can decide faster than formal IOs due to less veto-players (at least if the political will exists). Third, and finally, these ad hoc groups are able to buy time to bring in more important diplomatic actors (like formal IOs – such as the UN and the EU – and major powers like the US) into the game in order to resolve the conflict. That’s what the EU3 rather successfully did before the deal, and what the EU4 is trying to do now with INSTEX. At the same time, the major limitation of these ad hoc informal IOs is that they need other actors – in this case the UN and especially the US – to finalize a (new) deal.

The recent tensions in the Persian Gulf has made it clear that the Rohani government cannot wait until the next US presidential elections to resolve their issues with the US and the international community. Iran needs money now. If it won’t be able to sell oil in the coming months, it will gradually up the ante by contravening other parts of the deal. This will bring us closer to an Iranian atomic bomb, and in all likelihood followed by a nuclear arms race in the Middle East or a new war in the region.

If the EU wants to be perceived in the rest of the world of being a strategic actor, independent from the US, it should act now by making that INSTEX works and that the Iranian economy can substantially benefit from it, and at the same time put pressure on the US to either re-enter the previous nuclear deal or (if that is impossible) to negotiate a slightly better agreement, so that President Trump can show his base that he has negotiated a better deal than Obama. If the US sanctions are then lifted again, the Iranians and the rest of the world (except maybe Israel and Saudi Arabia) can certainly live with that.

This piece draws on the article ‘The Role of Informal International Organizations in Resolving the Iranian Nuclear Crisis (2003–15)’ published in the Journal of Common Market Studies (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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Tom Sauer is Associate Professor in International Politics at the Universiteit Antwerpen (Belgium). He has published six academic books, and numerous journal articles, mostly on nuclear proliferation and disarmament. He is a former BCSIA Fellow at Harvard University. Sauer is also an active member of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, and received the 2019 Rotary International Global Service Award.

 

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Martina Vukasovic

The fourth edition of the International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP) took place 26-28 June 2019, in Montreal (Canada), on the premises of the University of Concordia (following the 1st ICPP in Grenoble in 2013, the 2nd ICPP in Milan in 2015, and the 3rd ICPP in Singapore in 2017). The conference  included more than 150 thematic panels organized into 22 larger thematic groups, covering conceptual themes related to e.g. policy process theories, governance, comparative policy analysis, implementation, policy design etc., as well as sessions dedicated to specific policy domains (e.g. health and environment).

 

Apart from this, two roundtables and one keynote speech were organised. The opening roundtable focused on populism, right-wing parties and immigration policy in North America and Europe, while the topic of the closing one was governing in turbulent times, in particular in relation to how public policy can address the “climate disorder”. On the second day of the conference, Frank Baumgartner gave a keynote speech on the infrastructures necessary for comparative policy analysis, in particular highlighting the Comparative Agendas Project. The conference was preceded by a set of courses focusing on various theoretical and methodological approaches.

 

Higher education, research & innovation

When it comes to higher education, research and innovation, there were three interesting panels with active participation of members from the ECPR Standing Group Knowledge Politics and Policies. First, “Knowledge Policy Dynamics in the Global Context”, comprising two sessions, included papers on role of consultants in academia, politics of higher education in general and internationalization in particular, governance capacity of stakeholder organizations, pull and push factors of academic mobility, Bologna Process through international regimes lens, and institutionalization of applied research. Second, the “Bridging Science and Diplomacy in Global Policy Making” panel, comprising three sessions, focused on comparisons between EU, US, China and former USSR scientific diplomacy, discussions on differences and similarities between cultural and education diplomacy, use of science diplomacy on broader diplomatic efforts, and exploring tools of science diplomacy (including branding). Finally, the third panel focused on theorizing internationalization of higher education from a policy perspective.

The conference also included panels on educational policies, comparative policy analysis, interest groups, complexity in public policy, policy transfer, policy design, policy advise, expertise and evidence, accountability and legitimation, etc. 

At present, it is not yet clear where the fifth ICPP conference will take place in 2021. In the meantime, the International Public Policy Association (IPPA) will be organizing a number of events, including several public policy schools.

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Image: BBC

There’s much to consider from Boris Johnson’s first half-day in office, but let’s focus on a central question: what is his Brexit policy?

At one level, this is perfectly clear: the UK must leave the EU on 31 October, “no ifs, no buts”, ideally with a deal, but without one if necessary.

But this is not nearly as simple as it appears.

Dates

Let’s start with the deadline itself: 31 October.

Johnson advanced no particular logic for this date in his first speech at Number 10, noting only that: “…we are going to fulfil the repeated promises of parliament to the people and come out of the EU on October 31.”

But that date wasn’t a promise made by Parliament, since it’s the result of a government request to extend Article 50 to that date, to which the EU agreed.

Moreover, Parliament has repeated rejected the option of not leaving the EU, so it can’t be that either.

Presumably, Johnson means that this has all taken too long, “because the British people have had enough of waiting.”

Fair enough, but then still his approach doesn’t stand up.

Plan A

Johnson suggests that his Plan A is to secure a revised Withdrawal Agreement (WA) – “without that anti-democratic backstop” – by this deadline.

But as the Institute for Government has been pointing out, the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) that would be necessary to translate the provisions of the WA itself into British law would take at least 10 sitting days to pass Parliament. Factor in that this would not be an uncontentious piece of legislation – more Maastricht than Nice – and the government’s lack of majority in the Lords, and could easily find that all the remaining sitting days before 31 October would be needed.

And that’s even before whatever time is needed to renegotiate the WA’s contents, something that now looks set only to begin in September.

Since Johnson says that no-deal is not the desired outcome, then renegotiation is a serious intention, but in a situation where he secures a new text, there is no indication of how he would deal with finding himself half-way through WAB approval on 31 October. Does he ditch it because of the “no ifs, no buts” deadline, or does he push it back, because a deal is what he wants?

Plan B

So maybe the intention to renegotiate isn’t sincere. Certainly, there is still to be an suggestion of what an alternative WA model, without backstop, would involve, and it’s hard to imagine what that might be, given how picked-over this ground has been for the past 18 months.

In that case, maybe the time to 31 October is really about no-deal preparation.

But the government has long claimed it is ready for no-deal, so why delay until 31 October?

If people have had enough of waiting and there’s no realistic chance of renegotiation on the terms set out, why not just cut loose now and tell the EU it’s not going to happen: the sooner, the better for taking back control, no?

Two issues arise here.

The first is that the UK is evidently not ready for no-deal. Johnson himself promised a ramping-up of preparations thereon in his speech. The NAO still doesn’t report operational systems on critical border infrastructure.

The second is Parliament. As much as it’s not in favour of no Brexit, so it’s not in favour of no-deal Brexit.

Plan C?

And this is maybe the crux of the matter.

Packing the Cabinet with the Leave true-believers certainly sends a signal about determination, but it doesn’t change the Parliamentary arithmetic at all. Indeed, piling 17 rather annoyed ex-ministers onto the backbench at this time looks bold.

As it stands, Johnson doesn’t have a plan for Brexit renegotiations that will be acceptable to the EU. Thus the wheels move to a no-deal scenario, which in turn makes Parliament have to decide if it will let that pass.

This gets us either to Parliament forcing the government to seek an extension, or to a general election, be that through a vote of no confidence or through Johnson’s belief that he can flip voters during a campaign.

Of course, a general election gets us into the muddy waters of what happens should that election occur after 31 October (something that’d be the case with any election called after the start of October), given the effective absence of a Commons during that period.

Which brings us back to the initial question: what is the objective of Johnson’s policy?

Given that the nominal approach appears to have no chance of success, perhaps this is just the latest in a long line of efforts to avoid blame: we wanted to renegotiate, but they didn’t; we wanted to leave on 31 October, but they stopped us.

That makes some sense, when faced with a set of poor choices, but it doesn’t address the underlying issues.

It may well be that “No one in the last few centuries has succeeded in betting against the pluck and nerve and ambition of this country”, but those things do not solve problems by themselves.

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A sobering article in today’s Financial Times by Camilla Cavendish, who assertively claims that, ‘Remainers have lost and must now accept defeat’.

Her article opens:

‘Britain’s downhill slope towards leaving the EU is getting steeper; the slide into liberation-oblivion is coming closer.’

She claims, ‘A second referendum is vanishingly unlikely. Moderates who don’t want the UK to leave the EU are still going through the motions, but that battle has already been lost.

‘The only question now is what kind of Brexit we will get.’

She goes on:

‘A second referendum looks increasingly like fantasy, since neither main party leader wants it.’

She adds, ‘MPs who oppose a no-deal exit are running out of procedural devices. On Thursday, the Commons voted by a majority of 41 to prevent the next administration from suspending parliament for more than two weeks.

‘That guarantees slightly more time for the moderates to try to force the prime minister to request an extension. But it would still be a tall order.’

She says of Mr Johnson becoming Prime Minister next week, ‘In the honeymoon period, Tory rebels will come under extreme pressure not to be “turncoats” who vote with Labour. Few will be willing to trigger the ultimate sanction: bringing down their own government in a no-confidence vote.’

The key for Boris Johnson and his team would be to postpone any general election until after 1 November, by which time, Britain would have left the EU.

And she concludes:

‘The forces of political gravity mean there is no point in wishing away the referendum result.

‘The best we can hope for is that both sides will strike a better deal than no deal, and avoid leaving the country in limbo.

‘Tories who say they want to “finish the job” will soon find out that the real job will only start when we leave.

‘You can’t climb up a slippery slope — you can only go forward into the unknown.’

Is she right? Depressingly, quite possibly.

Where is the potent, effective, determined, professional counter attack by the Remain movement?

I can’t see it.

Where is the national, brilliant awareness campaign to explain to the nation how almost everything they’ve been told about the EU these past 40 years has been grotesquely wrong?

The intense drive to properly explain the positive benefits of EU membership; how the EU is democratically run by its members for the benefit of members?

I can’t see that either. We’ve never had such a campaign in the UK.

Labour is in disarray, with the worst polling ratings in its history. They still cannot say if they would support their version of Brexit, or Remain, in a new snap general election.

The LibDems don’t even have a leader yet, and precious little time for any new leader to be known, let alone loved, by the nation at large.

The Tories are about to confirm Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of the UK, with a promise by him that we will leave the EU ‘deal or no deal, come what may, do or die’ by 31 October.

Yes, there is an anti-Brexit march in London today – hopefully a huge march – with the message, ‘Say no to Boris and yes to Europe.’

The demand of the march is to call on Mr Johnson to ‘stop hurtling us towards the cliff edge’.

It’s an urgently vital message, and it needs to be heard. But it is not enough.

100 days until Brexit is due to happen, ‘do or die’, according to our next Prime Minister.

Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Petitions, protests, marches, motions – they have all been tried, and for sure, Brexit has been delayed, but now its looming large. It’s in our face.

We can now peer over the perilous cliff edge, feel giddy at the sight, with our knees weakening at all the ominous predictions of economic calamity, but even that has not been enough to stop Britain now hurtling towards its Brexit destination.

What can the Remain side do in 100 days to put a legitimate halt to Brexit? Something it’s never done before?

You tell me.

 

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The torpor of summer is crawling across Europe: the siren call of that holiday you’ve promised yourself all year grows ever louder, even as your workplace empties.

So what better time of year to be kicking off what prove to be a decisive stage in the Brexit process?

Next Tuesday, we’ll find out who has won the Tory leadership contest (Boris Johnson) and which of his plans is actually going to happen. Or perhaps we’ll see the springing of a Parliamentary revolt before his feet even get under the table at Number 10. Maybe the Queen will want proof he has a majority before accepting him as the new PM.

Or maybe we’ll just roll into summer, desperate for a break and eager for the hope that someone else will sort it out before September comes round.

This is only partly about summertime: it’s much more about the pain of politics at the moment.

As we’ve seen endlessly rehearsed, none of the options on the table are pleasant, happy ones, which would make everyone – or even, many – content. Instead, they all involve substantial costs; to economies, to politics, to reputations. The incentive here is to avoid those costs, to push them on to someone else to deal with, rather than to seek out consensual solutions.

This has been the theme of Brexit, ever since June 2016 and there’s no good reason to think that will change.

With that in mind, perhaps it’s useful to think about what other indicators there might be to the coming weeks/months, based on what we’ve seen so far in the UK.

The most obvious candidate so far has been the strong tendency to delay what cannot be easily addressed. All of the steps to date have been very much weighted to the back, from the protracted wait to get to Art.50 notification, through the backstop package, to the saga of UK ratification. There has not been a single point where the earliest possible opportunity was taken to tackle an issue.

As I tell my students in negotiation, delay is a valid tactic, but only if you have a constructive plan to make use of that time. The vague hope that something will pop up is not such a plan.

The second offering is the observation that the overall direction of travel has been consistent with the expected process: the UK votes to leave; it notifies its intention to leave; it negotiates a Withdrawal Agreement; it tries to ratify that. The calls to either stop that process or to exit it into a no-deal have failed to gain wide support, broadly speaking, with the implication that there is some weight behind continuing down this path.

For all the Johnson talk about no-deal, it’s more striking to me that there remains a presumption that a deal is preferable (and achievable), when it is self-evident that such a thing cannot happen in the terms being suggested. Since I never resort to the notion of stupidity to explain behaviour, either the rhetoric or the approach is wrong.

Which brings us to the final thought: actions have been a better indicator than words.

A lot of people have talked an awful lot about Brexit – yes, including me (BTW check out the podcast: it’s got some great interviews) – in such a contested political space, the capacity to separate the signal from the noise is limited. That’s especially true when so many political actors are trying to power-stance their way to the front of the debate.

Much more valuable has been looking at material actions taken, be that in organisation, or in negotiations or in votes.

As I’ve argued in this thread, that’s where we’ll learn more about Johnson’s next steps:

I've not tweeted much about #ConservativeLeadershipRace, mainly because I'm placing a high discount on their Brexit remarks prior to actually entering office.

However, it's useful to think about what we should look for in those opening days

1/

— Simon Usherwood (@Usherwood) July 8, 2019

All of which might just be a long way of saying that you might better use this weekend to do something else.

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Andrew Cottey argues that the existing literature on EU foreign, security and defence strategy has paid insufficient attention to two basic prior questions: what is strategy? And what constitutes good strategy? Answers to these questions help us to understand why the EU struggles with strategy.

The 2003 European Security Strategy and the 2016 EU Global Strategy are generally viewed as landmark documents in the development of EU foreign, security and defence policy and have triggered much debate on the character of EU external strategy. We should, however, be sceptical of official strategy documents. Strategy has become de rigueur. States, government departments, international organisations, businesses, non-governmental organisations and universities all adopt official strategy documents. Such strategy documents, however, are often long lists of aspirational goals and even longer lists of existing policies and activities – plus some new ones that, in reality, may or may not be implemented. Strategy risks becoming a synonym for policy or even for everything that an organisation does or aspires to do.

In assessing EU foreign policy strategy – and documents like the European Security Strategy and the EU Global Strategy – we should go back to basics and ask what is strategy and what defines good strategy? If one examines the writings of key military and business/management thinkers on strategy, there is a consensus that strategy is – or perhaps ought to be – about the integration of ends, ways and means. Strategy is thus about the identification of objectives or goals, the development of concrete policies or actions to achieve those goals and the allocation of the necessary resources. According to Echevarria, this ends-ways-means formula ‘is as recognizable to modern strategists as Einstein’s equation E=mc2 is to physicists.’

A second question is what constitutes good or successful strategy? According to Eliot Cohen strategy is a ‘theory of victory.’ Strategy is thus an approach – a choice amongst others that might be pursued – that makes a decisive impact, that enables one to achieve one’s objective or, at least, brings one closer to that goal. Critics such as Richard Rumelt argue that bad strategy is the inverse of this: it avoids choice and it incorporates long lists of objectives and actions, rather than identifying a small number of key objectives where one may hope to have a real impact and allocating political attention and resources accordingly.

How does the EU measure up against these definitions? The EU’s central problem is its character as polity. Notwithstanding the creation of institutions such as the foreign policy High Representative post and the European External Action Service (EEAS), EU foreign policy-making remains heavily inter-governmental. Consequently, EU foreign, security and defence policy still depends to a large degree on consensus amongst the member states. In terms of strategy, this pushes the EU and documents such as the European Security Strategy and the EU Global Strategy towards a lowest common denominator and shopping list approach. Rather than identifying a few core objectives where the EU might hope to have the greatest impact, the EU retains a long-list of global objectives. If one was being was being critical, for example, one could argue that the foreign policy goals identified in the European Security Strategy and the EU Global Strategy are the strategic equivalent of motherhood and apple pie: they are perfectly reasonable and (almost) no one could object to them, but they reflect an inability to prioritise.

The EU’s strategy problem is highlighted by the Union’s relations with the world’s three most important great powers, Russia, China and the United States. Many Eastern Europe EU members (especially Poland and the Baltic states) view Russia as a strategic threat that essentially needs to be contained; whereas Western and Southern European states view Russia either as partner to be engaged or a power driven by its own defensive insecurities (- although this has changed to a degree since the 2014 Ukraine conflict). At the same time, in recent years countries such as Italy, Hungary and Greece have pursued their own bilateral side-deals with Moscow. EU strategy towards Russia – to the extent that there can be said to be one – involves constantly balancing the competing perspectives of member states.

With China, the EU has for more than twenty years pursued a strategy of engagement and bilateral institution-building through what the two term their comprehensive strategic partnership. The aim has been to encourage China to play by the rules internationally, further reform its economy and liberalise politically. Since the 2010s, however, China has become more assertive internationally (for example, in its disputes with South East Asian states and Japan in the South and East China Seas), more repressive politically and has done little to open its economy foreign companies. In strategy terms, the EU has lacked the means – policies, leverage, concrete actions – to persuade China to moderate its behaviour. EU member states, again, are divided over how to respond to the new China. France and the UK are now joining the US and other Asian states in undertaking freedom of navigation operations in the South and East China Seas. Many other EU member states, however, would rather benefit from trade and investment ties with China and avoid contentious geo-political issues. The EU lacks the means to shape Chinese behaviour in the way it hopes, but is unable – or unwilling – to develop an alternative strategy.

With regard to the United States, the EU is torn between an Atlanticist strategy of maintaining the closest possible relations with the US and a Europeanist strategy of developing the EU as an actor more independent of the US. Amongst EU members, France leads the Europeanist wing, the UK (currently in the exit door) and Poland lead the Atlanticist wing, and Germany is in the middle. The EU Global Strategy included the objective of strategic autonomy, but there is no consensus about what this means – or even whether it is desirable.

Some observers believe – or hope – that US President Donald Trump’s ‘America first’ policy or Brexit may be the moments that forces the EU to get its act together strategically. Such hopes are likely to be disappointed. EU member states remain divided in their assessments of the external environment they face, the relative priority of different international challenges, the appropriate approaches for addressing these challenges and the extent to which they are willing to pool sovereignty in the interest of developing a common approach. Neither the Trump presidency, nor the removal of the British awkward partner are likely to alter these realities.

If one takes the perspective of emergent strategy, the EU can be viewed as in the process of developing a foreign and security policy strategy through learning and trial and error – but this process can only be viewed as painfully slow. So long as member states remain divided on key questions of strategy and foreign policy decision-making is primarily inter-governmental, the EU is likely to remain an astrategic actor: a Union that struggles to prioritise amongst competing foreign policy goals, to identify the situations where it may have a decisive impact and to focus attention and resources on those situations, that avoids difficult foreign policy choices and that is unable to fully translate its potential into impact.

This piece draws on the article ‘Astrategic Europe‘ published in the Journal of Common Market Studies (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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Andrew Cottey | @andrewcottey

Andrew Cottey is Senior Lecturer and Jean Monnet Chair in European Political Integration, Department of Government and Politics, University College Cork. His publications include Security in 21st Century Europe (Palgrave Macmillan), Reshaping Defence Diplomacy: New Roles for Military Cooperation and Assistance (with Anthony Forster, Oxford University Press/IISS).

 

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Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis meets with Ursula von der Leyen, Germany’s defence minister, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., Feb. 10, 2017. (DOD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jette Carr)

Yesterday saw the first public statements from Ursula von der Leyen since her nomination as Commission President.

She swept around Brussels, meeting and greeting various groups in the European Parliament, generally trying to help them accept a deal that appeared – mainly because it actually did – to pull the rug from the Spitzenkandidaten model.

If most of the Brussels bubble attention was on her credentials to take up the role, the UK press has focused more on her lines on Brexit (here and here). On this subject, she various said that she’d like the UK to remain a member, and that she didn’t want to reopen the Article 50 negotiations.

So far, so mundane, but this hasn’t stopped some wondering if new leadership on both sides of the Channel might be a moment to change things more radically, as if the presence of Anne Widdecombe in the new Parliament is going to tip it all over the edge.

To keep that in perspective, we should keep in mind a number of salient points, which Helene von Bismarck beat me to this morning.

Firstly, von der Leyen is not Commission President: she is only the nominee for the job.

We’re still unclear as to whether the European Parliament will give her the necessary support, with the Green group already saying she’s not strong enough on environmental commitments. The S&D effectively hold the balance of power on this one, since there’s no great desire to have to rely on the support of groups beyond the 4-way centrist coalition (EPP-S&D-RE-Green). If the centre-left doesn’t go along with the deal, then we’re back into very uncertain waters for any of the top jobs.

Secondly, even successful in her appointment, von der Leyen won’t take office until the start of November, i.e. just after the current extension.

The reason for this is that as well her own appointment, she also has to navigate member states and the European Parliament through the confirmation of the rest of the Commission, with hearings in October and then a final vote. On the basis of previous exercises, there will be some nominees who don’t pass muster, plus a pile of other considerations that have to be addressed. The current Commission, under Jean-Claude Juncker, remains in office – albeit in a more caretaker fashion – until the new team is set.

Thirdly, it’s not von der Leyen’s (or Juncker’s) job to set Brexit policy, but to enact the intentions of member states.

If you need a reminder of how this works, visit the Commission’s Brexit pages and check out the mandate. The Commission represents the EU and its member states in the negotiations, but it doesn’t make unilateral decisions therein. Instead, it agrees lines with member states, negotiates them and then recommends outcomes for member states’ approval.

At best, the Commission President can suggest a line of action to the member states, but is bound by their decisions – that’s what all those brief Article 50 versions of the European Council are for.

Put together, we might see how von der Leyen is not a central part of the Brexit process at this stage, even if her views will count for something as we move towards her installation in office.

Any new Prime Minister coming into Number 10 will need to keep that in mind this summer as they work out how to advance their cause.

The post Why von der Leyen isn’t the person to watch for Brexit policy (yet) appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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.

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. 

©Corgarashu/Adobe Stock

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.

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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.

I don’t usually read the Nation.Cymru newspaper, but their analysis of how the Remain side lost in the EU election is spot on.

Writing for the paper, described as, ‘A news service by the people of Wales, for the people of Wales’, Ifan Morgan Jones commented:

‘It was Remain that needed to use this election to signal that there had been a sea-change in public opinion, and that the people were turning their backs on Brexit.

‘That didn’t happen. This was a poor election campaign by Remain and raises real questions about whether they would actually win a second referendum if one was ever held.’

Ifan added:

‘After all the talk of lessons being learnt from the EU Referendum and the slick and well-organised campaigning for a People’s Vote, I had expected that the Remain electoral machine would be ready to go.

‘However, unlike Nigel Farage who had seen the election coming from a mile away, and had understood that it would be a de facto second referendum and set up a new Brexit Party, they were caught on the hop.

‘The most obvious first step would have been to set up a cross-party Remain coalition.

‘But not even Plaid Cymru and the Greens, who represent the same party in the EU Parliament, did so.

‘That’s madness (and another consequence, it seems, of a lack of planning for an election that was always likely to happen).

‘And there was no sign that Remain had learnt the lessons of why their message didn’t appeal in 2016, either – in fact, little or no effort was made to actually convince anyone who voted Brexit to change their minds at all.’

My thoughts exactly, and those here who have been following my work, will know I have been saying the same for years.

The EU election on 23 May was the one democratic event in which Remainers could have decisively demonstrated that the country doesn’t want Brexit.

Indeed, this may be the only democratic opportunity that Remainers have on Brexit before we actually leave the EU.

Remain blew it.

If polling is correct (and it looks more than likely) a very low turnout yesterday will have given Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party a landslide victory.

It seems to me that too many Remain supporters regard the anti-Brexit campaign as a spectator sport.

Brexiters want Brexit to happen more than Remainers don’t want Brexit to happen.

That might seem harsh, but the reality speaks louder than words: not enough Remain supporters voted in the 2016 referendum, just as not enough Remain supporters voted yesterday.

I have been campaigning against Brexit since the word was invented back in 2012. It’s been a lonely, debilitating and unrewarding task.

None of the main anti-Brexit groups and parties have been able to work together, let alone to properly embrace, encourage and use the many skills of grassroots Remain campaigners (including mine, as an investigative journalist, campaigner and film maker).

Everyone – People’s Vote, Best for Britain, the five anti-Brexit parties, even Gina Miller and Chuka Umunna, and many other prominent Remainers – all seem to want to go it alone, and not to unite the Remain movement as a powerful, cohesive, single force.

All my efforts to reach out to them to work together miserably failed.

There have been no effective or realistic efforts by the Remain side to raise awareness about the EU; all the efforts were put into getting another vote, rather than winning it.

Well, we had another vote. It was yesterday.

And if the polls were right, not enough Remainers bothered to take part.

(If the polls were wrong, and Remain parties rather than the Brexit Party won yesterday, then I will be happy on Sunday evening – when the results are revealed – to eat my words as well as humble pie. However, my commentary about the state of the Remain movement applies regardless of the results).

On LBC radio, LibDem MEP, Catherine Bearder, was asked to respond with one word what was the answer to resolving Brexit.

She answered, “Education”. That’s true.

But there has been no educational campaign in the UK about how the EU functions as a democracy, democratically run by its members for the benefit of its members.

Worse, millions across Britain believe the exact opposite.

The general level of ignorance about the EU in our country is breathtaking.

Yes, “education” could have fixed it – but that would have taken years, not just the months we have left before we are scheduled to leave the EU.

We had years. It’s been three years since the EU referendum. We also knew for some years before the referendum that there would likely be a referendum.

But there was no ‘education’; no national awareness campaign by the Remain side (and, again, those following my work, will know I have been calling for an EU awareness campaign for many years).

So, if the Brexit Party won the anticipated landslide in yesterday’s EU election, thereby sending a pack of unwanted, trouble-making, recalcitrant British MEPs to represent us in the European Parliament, the message from the UK to the rest of Europe and the world will be clear:

Britain wants Brexit; we deserve Brexit.

Of course, the reality isn’t true. Over 60 polls since the 2017 general election clearly demonstrate that Britain doesn’t want Brexit at all.

But unless Remainers are prepared to unequivocally show that in a democratic event – like the one we had yesterday – then it will make no difference.

Marches make no difference. Petitions make no difference. Only the ballot box makes a difference.

Votes count. Not voting doesn’t.

There seems little point continuing to campaign for the Remain side unless something very dramatic now happens.

Remain must get its act together.

All the Remain parties, politicians and groups should properly and formally unite; cleverly commandeer all the skills and passions between us, and vigorously and professionally campaign, with one lucid and convincing voice, to steer Britain towards a democratic reversal of Brexit.

To be frank, I’m not willing to carry on with my campaign work against Brexit unless this now happens.

Here’s the reality.

• Theresa May resigned today (good).
• Vince Cable resigned today (bad – he should have stayed on, just as his profile and likeability were on the rise across the country. There is no potential LibDem leader with the same gravitas and high profile).
• Boris Johnson is predicted to be the Tory’s new leader and our next Prime Minister. He will undoubtedly immediately call for a general election, because no party can effectively rule with no majority (as Theresa May discovered to her cost).
• There is a high chance that Johnson will win that general election, especially if he comes to an agreement with the Brexit Party.
• The EU has made clear that they will not make any changes to the Withdrawal Agreement. Johnson could not accept that deal, especially as May has just resigned because she couldn’t get that deal passed, and Johnson resigned last year as Foreign Secretary because he opposed that deal.
• Johnson has made clear that he is willing to take the country out of the EU without any deal. A new Parliament, with a different composition of MPs, might well agree with him.

This is an emergency. If this doesn’t now galvanise the country’s Remainers to put aside all egos and urgently re-organise, then our cause is lost.

If Remain cannot now unite in a way it’s never done before, then it may that (something I have never wanted to write), only a dose of Brexit will bring Britain back to its senses.

• Related video: Change UK MP, Chuka Umunna, calls for Remain unity

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
• Follow my Stop Brexit campaign on Facebook: Reasons2Remain

The post The EU election: Remain blew it appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This article is dedicated to Dave. He’s a good guy, but he told me this week that he doesn’t vote, he can’t see the point, he doesn’t think it makes any difference.

Dave – and all others who have the same view (and sadly, there are many of them) – need to be reminded of the wise and powerful maxim:

BAD POLITICIANS ARE ELECTED BY GOOD PEOPLE WHO DON’T VOTE

That couldn’t be more true than in today’s European Parliament election, in which it’s anticipated that Nigel Farage’s ‘Brexit Party’ will win by a landslide.

That’s not because most voters in Britain support the Brexit Party – whose only policy is for the UK to leave the EU without any deal, and whose leader, Nigel Farage, has for many years promoted a nasty hatred of foreigners.

No.

On the contrary, most people in Britain don’t want the UK to leave the EU, let alone to leave without any deal, that will cause harm and suffering, most of all to the country’s poorest and most vulnerable.

Proof?

→ Over 60 consecutive polls since the 2017 general election all say the same: most voters don’t want Brexit. (They never did – only a minority of voters voted for Brexit in the first place, just 37% of the electorate).

→ All the government’s economic assessments – and those of most economists – comprehensively conclude that all versions of Brexit will make us worse off, and that a no-deal Brexit will be catastrophic.

A low turnout in today’s European election will favour Nigel Farage’s party, just as it did in the last European election back in 2014.

In the UK’s 2014 EU election, Mr Farage’s previous party, UKIP, won 24 seats in the European Parliament – more than any other British party.

Yet less than 10% of the UK electorate voted for Mr Farage’s party in 2014, because only 34% of the electorate voted at all.

That’s the problem with low turn-outs in elections: the results are fair only for the minority who vote, but not necessarily reflective of the true feelings of the majority who don’t.

The smaller the turnout at elections, the less chance we get the governments and politicians that the majority want.

A small turnout will favour a greater win for Mr Farage.

It will be mostly those who don’t vote, rather than those who do, that today will give Mr Farage and his party power.

• Those who say that voting doesn’t make a difference are hiding their heads in the sand.

Remain would have won the 2016 referendum if those who could vote but didn’t had voted.

Around 13 million people registered to vote in the EU referendum didn’t vote. But polls indicate that most of them would have voted for Remain.

What’s more, about 7 million people entitled to register to vote didn’t do so.

That makes a total of around 20 million people who could vote but didn’t in the 2016 referendum, and about the same numbers that didn’t vote but could have done in the 2017 general election.

Those missing voters represent a huge dent in our democracy. If all those who don’t vote all voted for the same party, that party would win the biggest landslide in history.

The right to vote was hard won, and took many centuries.

• Those who don’t vote, but can, are lazily riding on the backs of those who fought hard for our right to vote, and to have a say in who governs us and the lives we will lead.

Despite our moans, in the United Kingdom – and across Europe – many of us enjoy among the best lives on the planet, with those on just an average wage belonging to the world’s top 1% of earners.

Just look at all the rights we’ve won through the power of voting:

• The right to a childhood;
• to universal education;
• to healthcare;
• to clean air and water;
• the right to free movement;
• to use the roads and pavements and parks;
• to leave and return to the country;
• to be protected at home, in the street and at work and in times of need;
• to call for help in an emergency;
• to go about and enjoy our lives in relative freedom.;
• to resolve disputes in courts, and even to take the government to court if they overreach their power.

Here we have a better life than most others on the planet because, and ONLY BECAUSE, of our right to vote.

Without the power to choose or discard politicians and governments, we would not have any of the freedoms and the better lives we have won through the ballot box.

• By not voting you diminish and weaken us all.

• You reduce and ridicule our power of emancipation.

• You are lessening by one vote, your discarded vote, all our powers of choice.

The fewer people who vote, the more politicians and governments know they have more control over us to do as they want and not as we want.

The message of the non-voter to politicians is: “We don’t care; do as you please; you choose how you want to run my life.”

When people don’t vote, who can vote – in local, national and European elections – governments and politicians know they have less eyes watching them.

They realise they can get away with passing laws that many voters will not protest or care about or even bother to find out about.

• Those who can vote but don’t are taking advantage of all of us who can vote and do.

Non-voters benefit from all the hard-won democratic rights of the people, but feel disdainfully above any obligation to help to win and retain those rights.

When things go wrong; when there’s a fight to make things better; they absent themselves from any need to become involved, even though the effort to enter a cross in a box on a piece of paper is miniscule.

• Those who can vote but don’t dishonour those who lost blood to give us the ballot. The power of persuasion, the participation in democracy, the right to vote, seem to mean little or nothing to them.

In countries where there is no vote, dictatorship governments can rule for decades and decades with no opportunity for the people to get rid of them.

Instead of the ballot, the peoples’ only chance is to resort to the bullet, at huge personal risk, with no guarantee of success, and mostly with the greatest chance that they will fail and be mercilessly crushed.

How much those people envy our right to hire or fire politicians with the simple, easy use of a vote.

Maybe our nation’s voluntary non-voters, would be convinced of the beauty and brilliance of the ballot if they lived in a country where people don’t vote because they can’t vote; where the brute force of unelected rulers control and subjugate them.

But then, it would be too late, wouldn’t it?

Please don’t reduce the power of democracy by not taking part in it.

Democracy is not perfect, but it’s the best form of governance that we know.

It gives the population the right to choose who rules.

Politicians need to know that we are their masters, and that can only come through the ballot.

And those who don’t yet have democracy need to know that we cherish it, that it’s worth fighting for, and that it’s a right we never, ever want to lose.

Dave, today, please vote.

 

Every Remain vote will count on this Thursday, 23 May, in the European Elections. It’s essential that Remain voters take this democratic opportunity to say that they want to #StopBrexit.

There are five anti-Brexit parties in the European elections.

Yes, it would have been better if they had agreed to collaborate, rather than compete against each other. But we are where we are, and a vote for an anti-Brexit party – any one of them – will count as a vote against Brexit.

Many Remain supporters will want to consider voting tactically, to ensure the greatest chance of Remain candidates winning in their region.

Please take a look at my 15-minute compilation video that sets out the case for each of the five anti-Brexit parties. These parties are:

Liberal Democrats
Green Party of England and Wales
Change UK – The Independent Group
Scottish National Party (SNP)
Plaid Cymru in Wales

Take your pick. But please, pick one. Make the pro-Remain, anti-Brexit vote count, with your vote.

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
• Follow my Stop Brexit campaign on Facebook: Reasons2Remain

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We at JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies are deeply saddened by the news of the untimely death of Professor John Peterson, a former editor of the Journal. John was a dedicated scholar, supervisor, mentor and friend to many in the academic community in the UK, across the Atlantic and beyond. John had a significant impact on the current JCMS editorial team who had the privilege to work alongside him.

John was one of the most insightful observers of the transatlantic relationship and engaged extensively with the media to explain the country of his birth to those in his adopted country and the European Union to those in America.  The range of his scholarship included important contributions to understanding the EU’s role as a global actor and, particularly, on decision-making in the European Union.

Beyond his own work, John was a generous mentor to his students, including one of our Lead Co-Editors, Toni Haastrup. John supervised Toni’s doctoral thesis on the EU’s relationship with the African Union (2007-2010). From John, Toni learned the importance of criticality in engaging with and analysis the EU’s foreign and security policy and practices. John also mentored other junior scholars he adopted along the way, including one of our Co-Editors, Alasdair Young.  When Alasdair got his first job at Glasgow, John demonstrated by example and through advice how to be an excellent academic professional.  After John moved to Edinburgh, he and Alasdair enjoyed a fruitful and enriching partnership as co-authors.

Our other Lead Co-Editor, Richard Whitman, as a UACES Trustee, had the opportunity to work with John during editorial tenure with JCMS as well as enjoying his research and writing. His passion for advancing the study of the EU and his determination the highest standards for scholarship in JCMS was inspirational. John’s clarity of insight was also ever-present in his writing and, as importantly, he maintained a strong commitment to collaboration and co-wrote and co-published with a large number of his colleagues.

John was also a consummate provider of public goods and served as Head of Politics and International Relations at Edinburgh (2007-10).  We remain grateful to John’s editorship of JCMS with Iain Begg, a period that established JCMS as the premier journal for European Integration studies and saw the publications of ground breaking work in this area. At the time of his death, John was still bitten by the editorial bug and was Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Politics and International Relations.

John will be greatly missed.

JCMS Editors

 

We’ve had very sad news about the death of our own Professor John Peterson at the weekend. John was a wonderful colleague, a very fine academic & a huge support to his students. Thoughts of all at the School are with his family, friends and colleagues. https://t.co/ecL1196x1n pic.twitter.com/G03DSW1xgh

— School of Social & Political Science Edinburgh (@uoessps) May 14, 2019

The post JCMS Editors’ Tribute to Professor John Peterson appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Fellow Euroblogger and friend EuroPasionaria started a blog chain to discuss what has happened in EU blogging and social media in the past decade, especially since the 2009 European Parliament elections until the 2019 European Parliament elections. After La Oreja de Europa has posted her views – in Spanish – here are my five cents in English.

If you ask me what has changed since 2009, I can clearly say that the European Parliament elections of 2009, 2014 and 2019 feel fundamentally different. And they are fundamentally different when it comes to my own use of social media, my interests and focus, and the way in which myself and others use blogs, Twitter or Youtube.

Here’s the short summary:

• In 2009, I was just a citizen blogger, following EU politics through the digital lens of my blog while living in Chisinau (Moldova) and in Potsdam (Germany). Everything was new about these elections, most of it was exciting (especially online), and some of it was disappointing. But blogging was at the heart of social media, and so I lived European politics through a medium that back then was the centre of digital discussions.

• In 2014, I was a professional activist with Transparency International in Brussels, following the pre-electoral process from a watchdog and advocacy perspective. I did so both online and offline, because I was in Brussels and could meet people, but I knew the strength of social media. I travelled through seven EU countries for a European project to discuss with students, voters and activists; I used Twitter, blogging (incl. on Tumblr), Facebook, Youtube and traditional media work to cover our work and get our message out “to Europe”. Social media was mainly work.

• And this year, in 2019, I’m an academic in Munich with a focus on the United Nations and on European Union politics. I’m following the EU elections process mainly via social media (mostly Twitter, some Facebook and some Youtube) and online media. I watch all this as a citizen and voter, and to some degree an academic. As an academic, I’m invited to speak at local events and media outlets about the EU. I share my expertise and my 10-year perspective and profit from watching all of this online for the past decade, but I’m far, far less involved than in the previous two elections.

Notably, however, we are also very far from where we were in 2009:

Earlier today, I sent a WhatsApp message to my grandmother to tell her to listen to a radio show tonight in which I discuss about Europe and the EU elections. I sent an email to the rest of my family with the podcast link. And I’m discussing with people on Facebook and Twitter about the show, before the recording and after. In 2009, this would have been unthinkable, both technologically but also when it comes to discussing with so many people about EU politics.

With this in mind, let me answer Europasionaria’s question about how the last 10 years have changed EU social media and how this has changed us:

Did (some of) our dreams for the EU online sphere come true? Did reality exceed expectations? Or are we old(er), bitter & disappointed?

Honestly speaking, I’m quite happy with where we are today in terms of social media and in terms of how I look at the EU.

I’m clearly not 25 anymore, but I’m definitely not bitter. Social media is light years from where it was in 2009, and only my EU enthusiasm has changed into a more realistic view of EU life and life in general. But knowing the past 10 years also makes me more optimistic about what I see (despite the multitude of crises).

Thanks – or due – to the Eurocrisis, thanks or due to the humanitarian crisis that made migration the most salient topic of the last years, and after three years of Brexit discussions, European topics are everywhere. They are online and offline, and we discuss them across borders on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube – and wherever else others are discussing them (like in WhatsApp groups, in the comments below news media articles…).

If you think back at 2009, this is way beyond what we tried to build as young – mostly idealistic – social-media savvy (or so we thought) online citizens.

Youtube videos that everyone had seen did not exist (outside the Youtuber bubble); Netflix shows that everyone would watch were not yet there, so there were no memes we could play around with; and the Eurosceptic trolls spent most of their time on EU-focused blogs in the UK, so life was mostly peaceful, but confined to a small euroblogger bubble.

At that time, we just started to become the very first truly transnational digital EU politics community. Some of us had already been around a few years (see reports by Nosemonkey, Jon Worth, A Fistful of Europe, Blogactiv/Mathew; or see Grahnlaw), some like myself had just started using blogs in the year before the 2009 EP elections. Twitter was gaining in traction in 2009, and so did the hashtags #eu09, #ep09 or #ue09, but this was not the large transnational community that it is now.

For myself, the road to the European Parliament elections 2009 was the main reason to start Euroblogging. My alter ego published 120 blog posts between July  2008 until June 2009 about the process leading up to the European Parliament elections, including a failed Spitzenkandidaten process that would only come to life in 2014 (and is rather unimportant this time around again).

It was the period in which I got to know many of my later fellow Bloggingportal.eu editors, most of them just online, but some like Jon Worth and Kosmopolit also offline. This was thanks to the Th!nk About It blogging competition organised by the European Journalism Centre, that brought together European bloggers from around the EU who blogged about the elections. I wasn’t in the competition, but I got invited and for the first time in my life did see what it meant when a community that had formed only online materialised in real life.

This online-goes-offline seems so normal today in a world where people communicate for months and years on Youtube or Twitter or Instagram before they might ever meet in real life. 10 years ago this was still a novelty (at least for me and for an EU-focused sphere), and I felt privileged to be part of this.

Thanks to us Eurobloggers speaking at re:publica 2010, I got in touch with the EU transparency and open data scene. (I would return to re:publica in 2012 to talk about the “Euroblogsphere”, which by then had already passed its peak.)

Thanks to these contacts, I became a volunteer activist with Transparency International in Brussels in mid-2010. I helped set up their blogging activities and I started their Twitter account. The account @TI_EU today has almost 19k followers – so my early experience in the digital EU sphere was useful in helping to spread the ideas of a more transparent and ethical EU.

What this means is that being part of this early community of EU bloggers was helpful beyond myself. I hope.

Thanks to my blogging, I became part of the group of people who started to bring European civil society online. From 2012 to 2014, I would do this professionally while working in the EU office of Transparency International.

This did not feel the same as blogging and tweeting in private about the EU, but it was nonetheless important and necessary. In a world where the EU institutions and politicians also started to become more professional online, they needed the counterbalance of an active civil society online! So while I still used social media “in private” (outside my professional activism) – as the hundreds of posts on this blog demonstrate – I started to see EU social media through professional glasses. But EU glasses nonetheless.

Fast forward to today: Social media is so much more for me than the EU bubble that I used to be part of between 2008-2014.

Today, I’m using social media to talk about my work as an academic (mainly on Twitter and this blog). I listen to what’s happening around the world (on Facebook, Youtube, Twitter). I communicate with UN and EU officials, I discuss with people here in Munich about what’s going on in Bavaria. I argue with others in Australia or Poland or Mexico about recent developments, in changing communities depending on the topic. Most of these people do neither care about the EU nor about the UN, so using social media today feels much less bubbly than I felt as a Euroblogger.

In this way I agree with La Oreja de Europa:

Nuestro resumen sobre lo que ha cambiado desde las elecciones de 2009 a 2019 es que quizás ya no hay ese sentimiento de orgullo que nos hacía escribir sobre la Unión Europea para poder mostrar a los ciudadanos europeos lo que está hacía por nosotros.

*machine translated* [this also did not exist 10 years ago!]

Like her, I don’t feel the urge anymore to write about EU issues just because nobody writes about them. Everything is written about today, EU-related or not, so mostly it’s enough to just share what others are writing (or vlogging), you don’t have to write about it just for the sake of it.

And despite all of this, I still do feel connected to the community of fellow EU bloggers that we were back in 2009.

Ten years after the first digital European elections – at a time when we were part of a small group of early social media users focused on EU affairs – I still appreciate what we did when EU social media was still comparatively small and nerdy.

Some of you fellow bloggers have become and stayed friends, even if we meet less frequently today. Some of us have died way too early, but are not forgotten!

So thank you, European Parliament elections 2019, as dull as you may be (in some ways like 2009, in others totally different), for bringing us together again, and do what nobody does anymore: a European blog chain!

The post has been slightly edited after the first version.

The post #EU09vs19 – What has changed in the EU social media sphere since 2009? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Nope

I spent most of the day yesterday hanging around* a big bunch of procurement managers: I was very well-behaved and even at the point of speaking to a trio of Chief Procurement Officers I didn’t make a Star Wars droid joke.

This was an annual world congress for such individuals and it was very instructive to get a different take on Brexit from them, while enjoying the superior catering afforded by corporate sponsorship.

The first big message was that Brexit has become ever more normalised into their practice. It was a shock, it required attention (very substantial in many cases), but now it’s just hanging there and there’s no much to be done.

Most obviously, the contingencies for no-deal were put in place for 29 March, so the big leg-work on that front has been done. There was a recognition that those plans would need on-going attention, especially as a short-term contracts for stockpiling come to an end, but the procedural side was taken as being more permanent.

The second message was that Brexit sits within a much wider context of change. Sustainability got a lot of discussion as a factor that would be shaping every aspect of the business cycle in profound ways, from production to packaging to consumption patterns. To listen to the CPO of a large brewer talk about moving from mega-breweries to micro-breweries where customers will bring their own glass to one around the corner was to be struck be a shift that is much more disruptive to practice than what happens to UK membership of the EU.

But the third message was that the ideal posture on all this was agility: being willing and able to jump into new modes and exploit the opportunities that come with change.

I’ll admit that this is where I part company with the procurement crowd, mainly because politics isn’t like business.

One of the great strengths of capitalism has been its willingness to turn over what there is and offer something new, be that a product or a process. If it produces outputs that are more attractive to consumers then it wins out, propagating out and pushing the old to the side, to atrophy and die.

But representative democracy offers a different approach. It allows (indeed, promotes) the competition of ideas, but within a closely-bounded market. Changing the rules of the game requires the buy-in of all involved, because the rules are there to protect everyone’s interests.

All of which explains better why business seems to have moved on when politics hasn’t on Brexit.

The former sees uncertainty and costs and seeks to minimise both: initially that meant generally being pro-Remain, but then switching post-referendum to the likely course of leaving, and more recently talking more about simply making a decision, so that the contingency plans can either be used or rolled up.

Politics also wants to minimise costs, but here the costs are multi-directional: it’s not simply (or even primarily) an economic calculation. The choice itself on whether to leave with a deal, leave without one or no leave at all was follow success in political decision-making: you can’t have all three and then see which is working out best.

If business (or these procurement managers, at least) talk of agility, I’d talk of resilience: how to make political decisions that permit the rules of the game to endure?

This isn’t to criticise business, but to note that it’s all too easy to draw across learning points that don’t really work in a new context.

That said, there is one commonality that informs both worlds: you have to work with what you have. It’s great to dream of a different world where the problems you face don’t exist, but that doesn’t make them go away.

Instead you have take things as they come and build from there. the best path to the world-as-we-want-it-to-be is from the world-as-it-is, not the world-as-we-hoped-it-would-be.

* – To be clear, they’d invited me.

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