European Union

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The Informal meeting of EU Competitiveness Ministers takes place on 6 April 2017, in Valletta, Malta.

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According to Advocate General Wahl, agricultural producer organisations and their associations may be held liable for agreements, decisions or concerted practices contrary to EU law

Plenary sessions : An overwhelming majority of the house (516 votes in favour, 133 against, with 50 abstentions) adopted a resolution officially laying down the European Parliament’s key principles and conditions for its approval of the UK's withdrawal agreement. Any such agreement at the end of UK-EU negotiations will need to win the approval of the European Parliament.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : An overwhelming majority of the house (516 votes in favour, 133 against, with 50 abstentions) adopted a resolution officially laying down the European Parliament’s key principles and conditions for its approval of the UK's withdrawal agreement. Any such agreement at the end of UK-EU negotiations will need to win the approval of the European Parliament.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Is there ‘good’ and ‘bad’ populism? In the wake of last month’s general election in the Netherlands, Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde focussed on this theme, pointing to the juxtaposition of Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s ‘good populism’ and the ‘bad populism’ of Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration and anti-Islam Freedom Party.

The theme also applies to the French presidential election. It seems that every man and woman among the eleven candidates running to be head of state is positioning themselves as an ‘anti-system’ candidate, each brandishing their own virtuous populism.

Only five – possibly  six – stand a chance of winning more than five per cent of the vote. From Left to Right, these candidates are Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Benoît Hamon, Emmanuel Macron, François Fillon and Marine Le Pen. The sixth is Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, who has until recently has barely figured on the pollsters’ radar but who, in the face of Fillon’s decline, has advanced from around two per cent to five per cent in the polls at the time of writing.

The two with the most obviously populist messages are Le Pen, on the far right, and the ‘Left of the Left’ candidate, Mélenchon. This underlines the old truth that sometimes more binds extremes than separates them.

“Is there ‘good’ and ‘bad’ populism?”

Both deploy the language of ‘people’ and ‘nation’ at the heart of their projects, promising to refocus the energies of the state on saving the national economy. Mélenchon’s ‘Keynesianism in one country’ and proposals for renationalisation are not so far removed from Le Pen’s ‘intelligent, patriotic protectionism’. This is not surprising when we remember that the author of her project, Florian Philippot, is a defector from the Jacobin Left.

Both Mélenchon and Le Pen see globalisation as a false dogma and the root cause of France’s economic ills. Mélenchon, a forthright critic of the European constitution that was rejected by French voters in 2005, argues that the European Union has failed to protect workers from the effects of hypercapitalism, and has become a ‘market space’ instead of a social project. If elected, he would renegotiate the treaties before holding a referendum on continued membership. For her part, Le Pen has promised an autumn 2017 referendum on France’s EU membership. Le Pen’s rhetoric relies on her role as perennial outsider: the ‘victim’ of a system that has always manoeuvred to exclude her in the same way it did her father.

Mélenchon and Le Pen would also dismantle the Fifth Republic, France’s constitutional set-up since 1958. Mélenchon would do this by means of a constituent assembly, which he hopes would lead to the creation of a parliamentary republic (not unlike the Fourth Republic, but with extended recourse to referendums and the right of electors to ‘unelect’ Members of Parliament).

Le Pen, by contrast, has promised a series of constitutional reforms that would establish national priority and a plebiscitary dictatorship. What distinguish the two from each other are their positions over immigration and culture. Mélenchon envisages a more open France with better mechanisms for integrating migrants. He is unconcerned about the ‘death’ of the French culture that Le Pen ‒ and to some extent Fillon ‒ seeks to reverse.

Of Hamon, Macron and Fillon, the least expressly populist candidate is perhaps Hamon, the Socialist candidate, who is much more focussed on the challenges regarding the mechanisation of the French workplaces and environmental issues. For him, the EU is the key to France’s future, but it needs greater democratisation through the creation of a eurozone assembly comprising members of national parliaments. But even Hamon is proposing greater use of referendums, enshrining in the constitution what amounts to a popular power of veto over legislation.

“If France is to avoid a populist candidate winning in 2022, the ‘system’ must make the most of its last chance”

Macron and Fillon seem to be the least likely populists. Yet only a few days after the Dutch election Macron told Le Journal du Dimanche that he was happy to adopt the mantle of a populist on the grounds that he is a candidate who has not come through the party ranks or been involved in politics for many years: Fillon, for example, was first elected to parliament in 1981; Mélenchon became an MP in 1986; Le Pen inherited a party from her millionaire father.

But if one of the features of populism is to fill the air with big ideas but very little detail, Macron is quite the opposite. There is rhetoric, as one would expect from a candidate trying to bind together a diverse political centre, but it is often the sheer detail that leaves his listeners baffled. As a member of his audience put it after a campaign meeting, “Since he mentioned figures, here are mine: I understood about 30% of what he said”.

Fillon’s attacks on ‘the system’ focus on the public sector. The divide between ‘us and them’, public and private sector, is a deeply embedded cultural marker in France, and Fillon’s promise to cut 500,000 public service jobs is not just designed to deliver savings for the state, but would undermine an electorate that is not his. Generally, public sector workers vote Left or far right. But it is the rigidity of the state and over-regulation ‒ from Paris or Brussels ‒ that Fillon wants to render more flexible, hence the comparisons drawn between him and Margaret Thatcher.

The breakdown of the traditional Left-Right confrontation in France has contributed in no small way to the use of the ‘anti-système’ approach and the rise of the far right. Every voter feels that they are excluded from the system in some way, with more or less justification.

The two openly populist candidates, Mélenchon and Le Pen, are not likely to win the run-off election on 7 May. But if France is to avoid a populist candidate winning in 2022, the ‘system’ must make the most of its last chance.

IMAGE CREDIT: CC / Flickr – Blandine Le Cain

The post The French election is a battle of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ populism appeared first on Europe’s World.

Has there been, since the outbreak of the economic and financial crisis in 2008, one single op-ed piece in major international newspapers that did not, in one way or another, refer to Keynes, Keynesian theory and recipes, or Keynesianism as a kind of handbook or roadmap for political leaders dealing with failing banks, sluggish growth, national sovereign debt, or the imperfections of the European Monetary Union? If there were, I must have missed them.

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)

It has almost been a decade since the explosion of the subprime crisis and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and it has been a decade in which John Maynard Keynes’s major work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), has been enthusiastically rediscovered. It has been praised with the same zeal with which ‘neoliberalism’, identified as the theory underpinning the economic politics of Reagan and Thatcher, has been vilified as the ideology that had led to the crisis in the first place. Economic liberalism – in France almost systematically referred to as ‘ultralibéralisme’ – has not only been widely regarded as the underpinning of unlimited greed and corporate misbehaviour, but also blamed for the apparently cold-hearted, counter-productive austerity measures imposed on entire countries by supranational bodies like the IMF or the Eurozone.

Friedrich August Hayek (1899-1992)

One of the names that inevitable crop up in discussions about liberalist thought is Friedrich Hayek, whose major work The Road to Serfdom (1944) recently appeared in the same shortlist of ‘most influential academic books of the 20th century’ as Keynes’s General Theory (the latter being ranked first).

When commentators and editorialists, from national TV pundits to world-wide celebrities like Nobel Prize winners writing columns in American newspapers, start to throw the names of major economic theories at each other, it is no doubt a good moment to get back to the basics and try to obtain a better grasp on the original texts.

In his recent comparative essay Hayek vs. Keynes – A Battle of Ideas (Reaktion Books, London, 2017), Thomas Hoerber does exactly this. He takes two of the most important classics of economics from the shelf and opposes the thoughts and arguments they contain.

The fact that the author, director of the EU-Asia Institute at ESSCA School of Management, is not an economist himself, but an accomplished historian and political scientist with a focus on European Studies, turns out to be very helpful. Especially for readers who are – like the author of these lines – eager to get a better understanding of economic thought and theory, but hopelessly overwhelmed when confronted with the sub-discipline of applied mathematics that economics seem to have become. Here is an author who takes us by the hand, guiding us rather patiently through this battlefield of ideas, and constantly reminding us that economics can, and actually should, be a profoundly social science, providing insight into how society works and how economic measures can, and actually should, contribute to the common good.

It’s in defining the common good that Hayek and Keynes differ. Is it, in a grossly simplistic nutshell, the overarching objective of full employment, even if this means curtailing individual liberty through imposed state planning? Or is it first and foremost liberty itself, since substantial planning and intervention, even if well-intentioned, inevitably paves the road to … ‘serfdom’?

Replace ‘serfdom’, and its old-fashioned connotation to feudal society, with a more contemporary term like ‘illiberal democracy’, and the current relevance of the entire debate becomes painfully evident. While economists (with some degree of justification and credibility) celebrate counter-cyclical Keynesian planning policies as a means to break the circle of austerity and social inequality, such policies may also serve as blank check for authoritarian regimes based on the pseudo-legitimacy of the apparent will of the ‘people’ and displaying a striking disregard for civil liberties and the separation of power.

On the 130 pages of his compact and dense book divided in nine concise chapters, Hoerber manages to show that this is not an idle ivory tower debate between two schools of thought founded over 70 years ago, but a fundamental, unresolved, ideological dispute about how the economy ought to be organised and what a good society is. This is nicely illustrated with a chapter that applies the entire controversy to European Integration, a process of supranational market-building based on the principle of free and undistorted competition that neither Keynes nor Hayek could have dreamed of when they wrote their great works.

Thomas Hoerber’s essay thus spans the ‘battle of ideas’ from its inception to its contemporary impact. And the winner is …? The current consensus seems to be Keynes, who was recently qualified as ‘a stock value that is rising’ in a Le Monde supplement. But against the backdrop of the massive discursive cycle of rehabilitation of Keynesianism, the author finds himself, throughout his book, recurrently in defence of Hayek, whose work, despite being written in Britain, remains deeply impregnated by the scepticism that is so characteristic of his native Mitteleuropa and certainly deserves to be rediscovered.

Whatever the fluctuating penchants of the academic community or the volatile inclinations of an electorate that votes for policies implementing ideas and principles inspired by these great thinkers, the choices made will always depend on the context: time and space are crucial variables. The very currency of the debate illustrates just how much both the Zeitgeist of a specific moment and deeply-rooted cultural, often path-dependent, preferences shape the collective decisions about the society we want to live in.

For the French version of this book review, please click here.

The post Economics as a social science appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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Awareness-raising side event dedicated to the famine in the Horn of Africa on the sidelines of the Brussels Conference on 5 April 2017, in Brussels.

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Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : MEPs worry about the proliferation of hate speech and fake news, particularly in social media, they said in a debate on Wednesday. But they disagreed on how best to respond. Ideas aired included removing false and defamatory content, imposing fines to non-cooperative companies and fostering media literacy.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : MEPs worry about the proliferation of hate speech and fake news, particularly in social media, they said in a debate on Wednesday. But they disagreed on how best to respond. Ideas aired included removing false and defamatory content, imposing fines to non-cooperative companies and fostering media literacy.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : A visa-free regime for Ukrainians travelling to the EU is just the latest step in the European Parliament’s continued support of Ukraine. The Parliament has consistently shown solidarity by condemning Russia’s military involvement and illegal annexation of Crimea and promoting political and economic reforms.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : A visa-free regime for Ukrainians travelling to the EU is just the latest step in the European Parliament’s continued support of Ukraine. The Parliament has consistently shown solidarity by condemning Russia’s military involvement and illegal annexation of Crimea and promoting political and economic reforms.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary session and committee meetings in Strasbourg

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Dear Mr Tajani,

Over the last months and weeks we have had several correspondences about my participation in a plenary debate in the European Parliament on Greece. As amongst others indicated in my letters of March 30 and April 4 I am fully committed to continue the discussion on Greece with the European Parliament as I for example lastly did on March 21 in the ECON committee. Due to scheduling reasons it was impossible for me to attend the Plenary session of this week.

Our services have already been in contact about finding a suitable moment to participate in a plenary debate in the near future. Through this letter I would like to indicate my availability for the next plenary session at the end of April. On the 26th I am available as of the late afternoon. The 27th is a national holiday in the Netherlands but I can be available all day.

I would like to suggest that our services find a suitable moment together on one of the suggested dates.

Yours sincerely,

Jeroen Dijsselbloem

The Council has agreed to additional funding by the European Investment Bank for projects outside the EU that address migration issues.

Up to €3.7 billion would be earmarked for projects that address the root causes of migration and the needs of transit and host communities.

On 5 April 2017, EU ambassadors asked the presidency to start negotiations with the European Parliament. They approved a mandate for the negotiations, on behalf of the Council.

A first 'trilogue' meeting with the Parliament and the Commission is scheduled for 12 April 2017.

"I have no doubt that on this issue we can come to a swift agreement with the European Parliament”, said Edward Scicluna, minister for finance of Malta, which currently holds the Council presidency. “We both agree that the needs are great and urgent. We also hope we can do more through other EU programmes. This week's informal Ecofin in Malta will explore these possibilities."

Ambassadors agreed in principle to:

• release €3 billion approved conditionally as part of the EIB's €30 billion budget for 'external' operations for the 2014-2020 period;
  
  
• provide an additional €2.3 billion for that period.

The proposed decision and regulation are part of a mid-term review of the EIB's external lending mandate. In 2014 it was agreed that the €3 billion could only be activated following the review.

Projects outside the EU represent less than 10% of total EIB financing activities.

The proposals require a qualified majority within the Council, in agreement with the Parliament. (Legal basis: articles 209 and 212 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU.)

I strongly condemn the chemical attack against innocent people of Syria, which left more than 70 people dead and hundreds hospitalised in Idlib province yesterday, including women and children. It is clear that the Assad regime once again has crossed the red line and these actions constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity. The international community cannot once more show its weakness, and remain inactive in the face of such atrocities.
We all know the names of those who are politically responsible for this barbaric attack. International investigation of this heinous war crime is needed and all responsible for massive killing of people of Syria should be brought to justice, regardless of the position they held.
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : Multilateral measures are urgently needed to manage the unprecedented numbers of migrants on the move worldwide, and not least to halt migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, MEPs urge in a resolution voted on Wednesday.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : Multilateral measures are urgently needed to manage the unprecedented numbers of migrants on the move worldwide, and not least to halt migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, MEPs urge in a resolution voted on Wednesday.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : New rules to make money market funds (MMFs) more resistant to crises and market turbulence were approved on Wednesday. MFFs supply easily accessible liquid assets to business start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), but can be vulnerable to panic runs on their money.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : New rules to make money market funds (MMFs) more resistant to crises and market turbulence were approved on Wednesday. MFFs supply easily accessible liquid assets to business start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), but can be vulnerable to panic runs on their money.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP