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Après une courte pause estivale, c’est aussi la rentrée pour nos députés européens qui ont repris le chemin de Strasbourg cette semaine pour une nouvelle session plénière. Trois mois après le Brexit, le président de la Commission européenne a prononcé cette semaine son discours traditionnel annuel sur l’état de l’Union, abordant les priorités de l’Europe, une Europe qui a toujours du mal à faire face à la crise des réfugiés. Alors que s'ouvre le sommet de Bratislava, quel bilan peut-on tirer de l’action de l’Europe face à la crise migratoire ? L’accord entre l’UE et la Turquie est-il respecté ? Comment faire face en France à la situation des réfugiés à Calais ? Ce sont les sujets de ce nouveau numéro de Toute l'Europe en débat en présence de deux députés européens : Ana Gomes (S&D) et Cristian Dan Preda (PPE) pour un éclairage 100% européen.

L’équipe de France va recevoir la Côte d’Ivoire le 15 novembre 2016 à Lens au stade Bollaert-Delelis. Les deux sélections ne s’étaient plus rencontrées depuis le 17 août 2005.

The SAFAT Burkan guided stand-off bomb is already in service with the Sudanese Air Force, Ali Osman, the head of business development for Sudan's SAFAT Aviation Group, told IHS Jane's at the Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD) show held in South Africa on 14-18 September. SAFAT says the Burkan is a

Since 2010, the EU’s political institutions have often been slow to respond to the challenges of the sovereign debt crisis, banking crisis and economic recession in much of the EU. In this context, the European Central Bank (ECB) has attempted to compensate for the political inertia with the adoption of a range of new unconventional monetary policies. This approach has, however, generated problems of its own, notably by undermining the ECB’s legitimacy: it has resulted in the ECB stretching its mandate, has led to an increasing politicization of the ECB’s decisions, and has undermined the transparency of both the ECB’s monetary policy and national macroeconomic policies.

Elections are not the only source of legitimacy
In democratic systems, legitimacy can stem from (at least) three different sources: First, it can stem from the participation of citizens in the election of political elites or the formulation of policies (input democracy). Second, it can be derived from policies that serve the general good (output legitimacy). And third, throughput legitimacy can come from the ‘quality of EU policymaking processes, judged by their efficacy, accountability, transparency, and inclusiveness’. This third concept is particularly relevant for non-majoritarian technocratic institutions (like central banks), that by nature perform poorly in terms of input legitimacy.

But what are the conditions of legitimacy in the case of an institution like the ECB? In the case of delegation to non-majoritarian institutions like the ECB, the mandate and powers of the institution should be clearly and narrowly defined and its policy-making should be characterized by a high level of ‘expertise, procedural rationality, transparency and accountability by results’. Similarly, Moravcsik finds a high level of ‘insulation’ of EU policy-making acceptable provided that the policies are regulatory, economic and fairly depoliticized. Before the sovereign debt crisis, academics often felt that the ECB’s precise mandate and policy output generated sufficient legitimacy (Majone, Moravcsik, Tallberg). The ECB could be criticized for lacking operational transparency, as its accountability to European institutions and national governments had been limited to ensure its independence. However, it could compensate for this by creating more transparency in national macroeconomic policy-making through its low-inflation policy, which prevented governments from using inflation as a tool to hide economic problems.

In the course of the sovereign debt crisis, many of these conditions for legitimacy were eroded. Specifically, the unconventional monetary policies of the ECB led to three problems.

Mandate stretching
The ECB’s policies stretched its original mandate in two respects. First, the mandate of the ECB as set out in the Maastricht Treaty defines the pursuit of low inflation (price stability) as the bank’s primary goal. Second, the Maastricht Treaty prohibits the monetization of member state debt and the ‘bail-out’ of one member state through another member state.

The inflationary effects of the ECB’s unconventional monetary policies became the subject of intense disagreement. This concerned especially the impact of the ECB’s liquidity boosting measures (notably, the purchase of covered bank bonds) and the ECB’s Securities Markets Programme (SMP) — specifically the purchase of sovereign debt on secondary markets of those euro area member states most at risk of default and facing high bond yields. Prior to mid-2012 euro area inflation remained well above the 2 per cent target and the ECB was frequently unable to neutralize the inflationary impact of its sovereign debt purchases. In Germany, in particular, the perceived departure from the ‘low inflation’ focus exposed the ECB to widespread criticism.

Second, the ECB pursued a course that arguably contradicted the treaty prohibitions on the monetization of sovereign debt and government bailout. Four nonconventional policies have had significant fiscal implications: the SMP, the Long Term Repurchase Operations (LTRO), the announced but yet to be activated Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) Programme and, most recently, Quantitative Easing (QE). With the exception of the OMT Programme, these policies undermine both the transparency of national fiscal and macroeconomic policy and the strength of national structural reform efforts.

Under the SMP (2010-2012), the ECB bought sovereign bonds in an effort to bring down debt yields, thus enabling governments to fund themselves at lower rates. The SMP was widely criticized for breaking the ban on the monetary financing of debt and transforming the ECB into, de facto, a ‘lender of last resort’.

In early August 2011, the ECB extended bond purchases beyond the three ‘Programme countries’ — that is the euro area member states that were subject to macro-economic policy programmes monitored by the ‘troika’ of the European Commission, the ECB and the International Monetary Fund — to two countries (Spain and Italy) that were not subject to ‘troika’ monitoring. Thus, the ECB acted as de facto ‘lender of last resort’ without the quid pro quo of fiscal / macroeconomic policy constraint, despite ECB’s claims that the SMP was adopted to restore the effective transmission of its monetary policy throughout the euro area.

LTRO involved lending to commercial banks at a very attractive 1 per cent fixed rate with unlimited access to central bank liquidity subject to the provision of adequate collateral. Collateral requirements were in turn eased a number of times and the maturity of LTROs was lengthened. The principal impact of LTRO was that euro area banks — especially those in the periphery — borrowed funds to purchase sovereign debt with higher yields — notably that on the periphery. In addition to contributing very directly to the dangerous sovereign debt-bank doom loop, the ECB’s LTRO operations effectively helped to lower sovereign debt yields by increasing demand, thus allowing the cheaper financing of governments.

Third, the OMT Programme consists principally in a promise to conduct unlimited interventions in secondary sovereign debt markets to purchase the debt of a country on the condition that the member state government concerned accepts the conditions of a European Stability Mechanism (ESM) programme. In effect, OMT allowed the ECB to act potentially as a ‘lender of last resort’ in government bond markets.  It also amounted to a significant form of ‘slippage’ in terms of the potential fiscal policy powers that the ECB assigned itself — albeit via the ESM.

Finally, on 22 January 2015, the ECB launched its QE programme with the purchase of up to €1.1 trillion in mostly government bonds. Officially, the ECB sought to diminish the risk of euro area deflation and bring the inflation rate up closer to target (ECB 2015). In practice, the desired and real effect of ECB policy was to lower government bond yields — albeit this time throughout the euro area — although the impact on different government debt varied, with yields on bonds already at historic lows.

The politicization of ECB policy-making
With the stretching of the ECB’s mandate, its decisions became increasingly politicized, in the sense that they attracted vocal internal and external criticism. Politicization took three main forms. First, dissent within the Governing Council and the opposition of the German Bundesbank and other Northern European Governing Council members to the ECB’s decision to engage in emergency bond buying exposed deep divisions over policy approaches. Northern European members argued that nonconventional monetary policy reduced the pressure on euro periphery governments to introduce much needed reforms.

Second, the tendency of governments to question ECB policy intensified. Government criticism focused on the ECB’s role in the Troika, but its unconventional monetary policies also attracted vocal criticism from the German government and especially Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble.

Third, the public took a greater critical interest in ECB policy-making and national political debate intensified. Public awareness of the ECB rose from 71 per cent in the autumn of 2007 to 85 per cent in the spring of 2015. In the meantime, public trust in the ECB declined from a high of 53 per cent in the Spring of 2007 to a low of 31 per cent in the Spring of 2014. The European Parliament also expressed concerns (ECB Annual Reports 2011 and 2012) over the ability of the ECB’s unconventional monetary policies to achieve their goals as well as over the risk of unintended consequences.

Non transparent monetary policy
In the course of the crisis, the ECB undertook a number of measures to improve its process legitimacy as it realized the increasing salience of its policies. For example, it moved to improve transparency through the publication of summaries of its meetings from 2015 onwards. However, at the same time, unconventional monetary policy arguably had the effect of creating less transparency on the ground. ECB unconventional monetary policy — by lowering bond yields — has undermined structural reform efforts in member states, thus directly contradicting stated ECB preferences on structural reform and the explicit objective of the Maastricht Treaty of avoiding the possibility of ‘fiscal dominance’. Furthermore, ECB monetary policy has undermined the transparency-inducing effects of EMU at the national level that Erik Jones vaunted.

Conclusion
Over the course of the sovereign debt crisis, both the ECB’s policies and the public perception of these policies changed. As a result, many arguments that had been used to support the democratic legitimacy of the ECB’s policies became less obviously valid. For a start, EU monetary policy is no longer regarded as a purely technocratic matter with limited (re)distributive effects. The ECB’s unconventional monetary policies supported certain member states while creating difficulties for other member states — notably Germany, given the impact of low and then negative real interest rates upon the country’s savers, pensions and banking sector.

The European Central Bank is at a crossroads. Its original mandate was to be an independent technocratic institution, the legitimacy and credibility of which was set in terms of meeting its price stability mandate — output legitimacy. However, from the outbreak of the sovereign debt crisis, ECB unconventional monetary policies had a significant impact upon the direction of euro area member state macro-economic policies — and in a manner that contradicted the ECB’s terms of delegation as outlined in the Maastricht Treaty, thus also undermining its input legitimacy. In light of the political salience of these policies and their impact, it is questionable whether the independence of the ECB remains democratically viable. ECB policy-making has become problematically controversial and politicized. At the very least, the reinforcement of European parliamentary scrutiny over ECB policy making is more urgent than ever.

Based on A.L. Högenauer and D. Howarth. 2016. “Unconventional Monetary Policies and the European Central Bank’s Problematic Democratic Legitimacy,” Journal of Public Law/Zeitschrift für öffentliches Recht 71(2): 425–448.

The post Unconventional Monetary Policies and the ECB’s Problematic Democratic Legitimacy appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

De retour en France depuis quelques jours, le groupe militaire de haute montagne (GMHM), l'équipe d'experts montagne de l'armée de Terre, vient d'ouvrir deux nouvelles voies au Pérou dans la gigantesque cordillère Huayhuash. Au cœur de cette immensité rocheuse dont de nombreux massifs n’ont pas encore été explorés, les militaires ont réalisé une prouesse technique et sportive qui sera prochainement mise au profit de l’opérationnel. 

On 19 September 2016, the Council, by common accord with the President of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, appointed Julian King as the new commissioner for security union. The appointment applies for the remainder of the current term of office of the Commission which ends on 31 October 2019.

Julian King is a British national and has been UK ambassador to France since January 2016. He replaces Jonathan Hill who resigned on 25 June 2016.

Parents expressed concerns after the Sarajevo Canton prime minister announced that children will be taught about war crimes and other atrocities committed in the city during the 1990s conflict.

UN General Assembly, New York

Sunday 18 September 2016
(local time)
17.00 Meeting with UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon 

Monday 19 September 2016
(local time)
08.30 Opening ceremony of the High-Level Plenary Meeting on addressing large movements of refugees and migrants
09.30 Meeting with President of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
10.00 Meeting with Prime Minister of New Zealand John Key
+/- 13.50 Speech at the High-Level Plenary Meeting
14.30 Meeting with Prime Minister of Kosovo Isa Mustafa
15.00 Meeting with Prime Minister of Norway Erna Solberg
15.30 Meeting with the President of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia Gjorge Ivanov

Tuesday 20 September 2016
(local time)
09.00 Opening of the 71st UN General Assembly
12.00 Meeting with the Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Bakir Izetbegović
12.30 Meeting with Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull
13.15 Luncheon hosted by UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon
15.30 Leaders' summit on the global refugee crisis
ttbc Address at the Leaders' summit on the global refugee crisis
19.00 Reception at the EU delegation to the UN

Wednesday 21 September 2016
(local time)
+/- 12.15 Address at the 71st UN General Assembly debate
15.30 Meeting with Prime Minister of Iraq, Haider al-Abadi
16.00 Meeting with Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina
17.00 Meeting with Prime Minister of Republic of Moldova, Pavel Filip
17.30 Meeting with Prime Minister of Georgia Giorgi Kvirikashvili

Dans un rapport intitulé "Dirty Diesel", l'ONG Public Eye, basée à Lausanne, accusent des sociétés de négoce suisses d'exporter en Afrique des carburants à forte teneur en soufre et donc très toxiques.

En complément de la carte publiée dans l'édition de septembre, cette version interactive permet d'accéder à une série de données supplémentaires : spécialités médicales, démographie, origine des diplômes… Le manque de médecins dans de nombreuses communes françaises résulte d'un recrutement trop restreint et (...) / France, Démographie, Protection sociale, Santé, Travail, Ville, Médecine - Santé

Au Cameroun, le Groupement Inter­ patronal du Cameroun (GICAM) est désormais dirigé par un Français. Suite au décès début août de son président, le Camerounais André Fotso, l'organisation patronale a confié les rênes de la boutique à celui qui était alors son premier Vice-­pré­sident, pour qu'il assure l'intérim jusqu'en 2019. Un peu comme si notre MEDEF était dirigé par un des cadres nord-­américains de Monsanto, au moment même où le débat fait rage autour des traités transatlantiques de libre­-échange que (...) - 260 - septembre 2016 / Cameroun, Salves, APE

The latest European Defence Matters magazine is now available with a special focus on the new EU Global Strategy and “What’s next for Defence?”

When the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the Commission, Federica Mogherini, presented last June the EU’s new ‘Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy’ (EUGS), our choice for the cover story of this 11th issue of European Defence Matters became a no-brainer.

Indeed, as Prof. Dr. Sven Biscop, Director at the Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels and one of our guest writers in this magazine, accurately points out, “The EUGS is one of the most ambitious EU documents on defence to date”. Among the most ambitious EUGS statements, ideas and proposals, many are related to defence and military capabilities.

In this issue, we therefore propose an analysis of the defence aspects of the EUGS while also looking at the follow up, especially in view of the strategy’s concrete implementation.

We also spoke to Nexter CEO Stéphane Mayer about the recent merger with Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) and the creation of KNDS which, many say, could be the beginning of a consolidation process in the land defence systems sector in Europe.  

EU-NATO cooperation is another topic after the two organisations signed a Joint Declaration last July. We also spoke to NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg about this, the recent Warsaw NATO Summit and the EU Global Strategy.

We also looked at the growing importance of energy management in the defence as the impact of energy consumption on defence budgets and military effectiveness is growing drastically.

In our ‘Opinion’ section, Jyrki Katainen, European Commission Vice-President, shared his analysis about the importance of the ‘circular economy’ concept for the defence sector and how it can help to improve the European defence industry’s competitiveness.  We also have an exclusive interview with the chair of the EU military Committee (EUMC), General Mikhail Kostarakos.

Enjoy your reading!
 

More information:

• European Defence Matters 11

Jacques Berthelot, économiste, spécialiste des politiques agricoles européenne et africaine, revient sur les implications de la politique commerciale de l'Union européenne, qui impose aux forceps des accords de libre­échange. Rappel préalable Depuis 1975 et jusqu'à présent, en ver­ tu des accords de Lomé puis de Cotonou, les pays des zones Afrique Caraïbes Paci­fique (ACP) peuvent exporter sans droits de douane vers l'Union européenne (UE), tout en maintenant des taxes à l'importa­tion pour les (...) - 260 - septembre 2016 / Salves, Economie, Une, APE

Pour les pays africains, la conférence du protocole de Montréal, mi-octobre à Kigali, doit être l’occasion de trouver enfin un consensus.

Un peu plus de trois mois après la livraison du « Gamal Abdel Nasser », la marine égyptienne a pris possession, ce 16 septembre, de son deuxième Bâtiment de projection et de commandement (BPC), appelé « Anouar El Sadate » (ex-Sebastopol), lors d’une cérémonie organisée sur le site du chantier naval STX France, à Saint-Nazaire. Ce navire rejoindra Alexandrie, […]

Cet article Le second BPC initialement destiné à la Russie a été livré à la marine égyptienne est apparu en premier sur Zone Militaire.

L'opération « Oluja », treize ans après
Croatie : les vétérans de la « guerre patriotique » jouent le retour de la droite
Croatie : combien de cadavres sortiront-ils des placards de l'ère Tuđman ?
Croatie : les vétérans, causes d'un scandale sans précédent

/ Courrier des Balkans, Criminels de guerre, Bosnie-Herzégovine, Croatie, Défense, police et justice, Relations régionales

L'opération « Oluja », treize ans après
Croatie : les vétérans de la « guerre patriotique » jouent le retour de la droite
Croatie : combien de cadavres sortiront-ils des placards de l'ère Tuđman ?
Croatie : les vétérans, causes d'un scandale sans précédent

/ Courrier des Balkans, Criminels de guerre, Bosnie-Herzégovine, Croatie, Défense, police et justice, Relations régionales

L'opération « Oluja », treize ans après
Croatie : les vétérans de la « guerre patriotique » jouent le retour de la droite
Croatie : combien de cadavres sortiront-ils des placards de l'ère Tuđman ?
Croatie : les vétérans, causes d'un scandale sans précédent

/ Courrier des Balkans, Criminels de guerre, Bosnie-Herzégovine, Croatie, Défense, police et justice, Relations régionales

Comment Adama Traoré, un jeune décédé au cours de son arrestation, est-il mort ? Le récit d’un pompier, dont Le Monde a publié des extraits mercredi, vient contredire la version des gendarmes, alimentant les doutes de la famille sur une bavure.

The answer, of course, is a necklace.

But no, not just any necklace -- you can get them this necklace, available on Palestine-Shirts.com:


Obviously, this is a very special necklace, as the site itself points out:

One Palestinian mil, made on the year 1927, 1937, 1939, 1940, 1942 depends on what we have in the stock.
Now You can show your friends and tell them that we had a Palestinian currency for the state of Palestine, before the Israeli occupation 1948 to Palestine. Palestinian currency in your hands. Palestine 1-Mil Necklace.Palestinian currency?
Palestinian state?

Take a closer look:


Below the name "Palestine" in Arabic and in English, there is the word Palestine in...Hebrew, followed by the abbreviation in Hebrew for Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.

The fact of the matter is, the name "Palestine" before 1948 had no association with Palestinian Arabs, let alone with any kind of Arab state.

So when Time Magazine had an article in 1937 about The Palestine Symphony Orchestra -- its members were Jews:
As a full Palestine moon rode one evening last week over Tel Aviv, exclusively Jewish city, the Hebrew Sabbath ended and thousands of Jews began to move toward the Levant Fair Grounds. There they packed the Italian Pavilion to capacity to hear great Arturo Toscanini lead Palestine's first civic orchestra through its first performance. Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope, the British High Commissioner, brought with him a party of notables. Open-shirted German immigrants gathered in rowboats on the adjacent Yarkon River. A few Arab fishermen paddled quietly toward shore, listened respectfully outside the pavilion walls which are still pitted by Arab bullets.

...Huberman, a Polish Jew, was impressed by the attendance and enthusiasm of natives & exiles who came to hear his violin concerts. He determined to build for them an orchestra at Tel Aviv, their brave new cultural capital, and resigned his Vienna teaching post to do so. Already in Palestine, or easily available all over Europe, were scores of refugee Jewish musicians.

...The Palestine Symphony Orchestra now numbers 72. Germans make up about half the number, the rest are Poles and Russians. Six are natives of Palestine which has several competent music schools but welcomes the new orchestra as its only permanent symphony. So many first-desk musicians are playing in it that critics expect the Palestine Symphony to rank soon among the first four orchestras in the world. [emphasis added]Another example of the Jewish side of Palestine before 1948 is the soccer team they had -- a team that today's Palestinian Football Association still tries to take credit for as being Arab:
British Mandate of Palestine Official Games 1934-1948

Until the establishment of the state of Israel, on 14/5/1948, its national team played 5 international games under the name of British Mandate of Palestine. These games are recognized by IFA and FIFA as official games.
Note that also the (current) Palestinian FA recognizes these games as their 5 first internationals. However the national anthem that was played before the games was the Jewish one (later Israel national anthem) and all the players of British Mandate of Palestine in these games were Jewish, so this decision of the Palestinian FA looks little strange...Elder of Ziyon has a post that includes Jewish-Palestinian stamps, tourist posters, trade fairs and a Jewish-Palestine exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair in New York.

So what this necklace handily illustrates is that there was no Palestinian currency and no Palestinian state before 1948. Throughout history, the closest the Palestinian Arabs have ever gotten to either of these is today, with the control of the "West Bank" by the Palestinian Authority.


Hat tip: Seth Frantzman on Twitter
Hat tip: Elder of Ziyon

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