European Union

Like a couple in a strained marriage, the EU’s 27* national leaders will in September head to Bratislava for a day by the Danube to get away from it all and try to remember why they are still together.

“Sometimes member states need to have intensive discussions among themselves,” said Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister who will play host/marriage counsellor. The reason for the city break? “Brussels tends to have a rather negative connotation these days,” says Mr Fico.

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The Monthly Highlights publication provides an overview, at a glance, of the on-going work of the policy departments, including a selection of the latest and forthcoming publications, and a list of future events.
Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

What have Brexit and England in the 2016 UEFA Euro Cup in common? Defeat for some, happiness for others. What have David Cameron and Roy Hodgson in common? A sad resignation for some, the beginning of a new era for others.

Having a crucial referendum and an important football match within just a few days can have massive impacts on their outcomes. The overall assumption, that if England got kicked out the Euro Cup before the UK’s EU referendum more people would have voted forleave,is thankfully not relevant as it was not the case. There are nevertheless some interesting parallels of the EU referendum and England’s performance in the Euro Cup.

The last couple of days have been very eventful, yet also tempestuous and chaotic. Towards the end of the campaigns around the UK’s EU referendum, which took place on 23 June 2016, tensions between the Remain camp and the Leave side heated up. The tone of campaigning on both sides became as ugly as the behaviour of supporters of the English national football team. Politicians and many others involved in the Brexit/Bremain campaigns made unattainable goals and promises, and triggered a high number of xenophobic comments around the country which have seen significant increase since the announcement of the win for the Brexit camp.

On the other hand, English football fans have done a great job in receiving more attention than their football team. Even before the kick-off, English football fans clashed with the counter-parts on the Russian sides on 11 June in Lille. With the elimination of the English team as well as others who had troubles with their supporters, hopes are high that the upcoming matches will focus rather on football than on clashes among hooligans.

Interestingly, both the EU referendum and England’s participation in the Euro Cup have resulted in what was against the odds, at least if you believe the Evening Standard, Politico and alike.

So, what has been happening since the outcome of the EU referendum and England’s elimination from the Euro Cup? The Prime Minister David Cameron has resigned, hence the UK is in need of a new Prime Minister, both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party have entered a state of internal fragmentation, and the country’s economy and society have stepped into a stage of uncertainty. Similarly, Roy Hodgson has also resigned as manager of the English football team and thus it is looking for a new manager to replace him, England has yet to wait for a victory in a major football competition since it became world champion in 1966, and English football has soon to deal with the consequences of Brexit, i.e., with the future of its numerous players from the European mainland.

A week after the UK’s EU referendum and just a few days after England’s departure from the 2016 Euro Cup, some lessons can be learned. First, being a partial England football supporter watching the Euros has not been much fun, especially thanks to the ‘humiliation’ about which the media is talking about. Now some are putting their hopes on Wales. Second, the contributions in the media about British politics has increasingly become monotonous — actually, this was already the case before the referendum was held. It is now time to focus the attention back to other issues, such as the current migration and refugee crisis, ongoing outbreaks of armed conflicts in Syria and Iraq, as well as the desperate need of people in South Sudan. Third, it is also time for the European Union to rethink its origins and its founding ideas. The UK is not the only country with fragmented perceptions and similar referendums might be expected in the future in any of the other 27 member states. Lastly, a final lesson learned is that referendums of such importance should not be held again during a major sports event — winning and loosing can have impacts on political elections and referendums.

 

By Nele Marianne Ewers-Peters, PhD Candidate, University of Kent, Canterbury

The post Brexit and the Football Euro Cup – Chaos in the Making? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The greatness of a country is not determined by its area, the greatness of a country is not determined by its population. Today we speak of Slovakian greatness not by measuring it in square kilometres, nor based on demographic statistics, but by evaluating the results of your work, your determination, patience and wisdom.

You have demonstrated these attributes since the beginning of your indeed challenging history. You have built your independence with patience and wisdom, and with equally great determination you have built your position in Europe. You have shown everyone what it means to be proud. You asked no alms of anyone. You didn't want anything for free. You demanded only respect and understanding for your ambitions. Great, but justified ambitions. And today you quite rightly enjoy the respect and recognition of all of Europe, all of the international community.

You have also proved that despite difficult historical and political circumstances you are able to build good relations with all your neighbours. I appreciate this ability of yours not only as the President of the European Council, but also as a Pole. In tough times for Europe, your responsibility, resourcefulness and common sense can set an example for others.

That is why I am happy that it is Slovakia that for the first time takes up the EU presidency. From this moment on, a great responsibility lies with you, both for the daily management of Europe for the next six months as well as for the process of revitalisation of our community. It is Bratislava that in September will host the 27 European leaders who will be debating the future of post-Brexit Europe.

Looking at how much you have achieved over the past years, and how you are coping in this critical moment for Europe, I have to say that the EU couldn't wish for a better presidency.

(The speech was delivered in Slovak.)

Written by Marcin Grajewski,

© mrallen / Fotolia

Challenges to security in Europe will take centre stage at the NATO summit in Warsaw on 8-9 July when its heads of state and government will discuss issues ranging from Russia’s conflict with Ukraine and its growing military assertiveness to turmoil across the Middle East and North Africa, and the future of the military alliance.

This note highlights a selection of commentaries, studies and reports by some of the major international think tanks and research institutes on European security and defence published in the run-up to the NATO summit. More reports on the subject can be found in a previous edition of ‘What Think Tanks are thinking’ from in November 2015.

NATO summit

NATO Summit 2016: From reassurance to deterrence. What’s really at stake?
Barcelona Centre for International Affairs, June 2016

The Warsaw summit and the return of Western nationalism
Danish Institute for International Studies, June 2016

Warsaw summit
Atlantic Council, June 2016

NATO Summit 2016: NATO must reaffirm its “open door” policy
Heritage Foundation, June 2016

National priorities for the NATO Warsaw summit
German Marshall Fund, May 2016

NATO defence planning between Wales and Warsaw: Politico-military challenges of a credible assurance against Russia
Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, January 2016

What NATO for what threats? Warsaw and beyond
Istituto Affari Internazionali, December 2015

Preparing for NATO’s Warsaw summit: The challenges of adapting to strategic change
Danish Institute of International Studies, December 2015

Other studies

Restoring the power and purpose of the NATO alliance
Atlantic Council, June 2016

Time to restore conventional deterrence-by-denial
Egmont, June 2016

A new strategy: Implications for CSDP
Clingendael, June 2016

All not quiet on NATO’s eastern front
Carnegie Europe, June 2016

A threat-based strategy for NATO’s southern flank
Carnegie Europe, June 2016

Security in the Baltic Sea Region: Activation of risk potential
Finnish Institute of International Affairs, June 2016

The future of Transatlantic security
Rand, June 2016

Evaluating future U.S. Army force posture in Europe
Centre for Strategic and International Studies, June 2016

NATO must stop crowding Russia
Cato Institute, June 2016

European defence: From strategy to delivery
Clingendael, May 2016

Embedding NATO into the European Union Global Strategy: The missing link?
European, May 2016

Closing NATO’s Baltic gap
International Centre for Defence Studies, May 2016

Russia: A test for Transatlantic unity
Transatlantic Academy, German Marshall Fund, May 2016

A historic reminder, an ever-present dilemma? Assessing Brexit’s potential consequences for European security
European Policy Centre, May 2016

Russian “countermeasures” to NATO are coming
Brookings Institution, May 2016

EUISS yearbook of European security 2016
European Union Institute for Security Studies, April 2016

Envisioning European defence: Five futures
European Union Institute for Security Studies, April 2016

For a “new realism” in European defense: The five key challenges an EU defense strategy should address
German Marshall Fund, April 2016

A new Helsinki needed? What security model for Europe?
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik, April 2016

The parliamentary dimension of defence cooperation
Clingendael, April 2016

European defence spending 2015: The force awakens
European Union Institute for Security Studies, April 2016

Do we need an EU army? Which way for the European security and defence cooperation
Mendel European Centre, March 2016

NATO’s guns point the wrong way
Friends of Europe, March 2016

NATO, the US and Baltic Sea security
Swedish Institute of International Affairs, February 2016

The annexation of Crimea: Lessons for European security
Fondation Robert Schuman, February 2016

Ensuring deterrence against Russia: The view from NATO’s front-line States
Heinrich Böll Stiftung, February 2016

Forces terrestres et réassurance: Quelles options pour l’Alliance?
Institut français des relations internationales, January 2016

The defence of Europe before European Defence: Returning to the Schuman method
Fondation Robert Schuman, January 2016

A stronger CSDP: Deepening defence cooperation
Clingendael, January 2016

Defence budgets and cooperation in Europe: Developments, trends and drivers
Istituto Affari Internazionali, Consortium of Think Tanks, January 2016

Reinforcing deterrence on NATO’s Eastern flank: Wargaming the defense of the Baltics
Rand, January 2016

NATO and European security: back to the roots?
Istituto Affari Internazionali, December 2015

The EU, Russia and the quest for a new European security bargain
Clingendael, December 2015

European strategy, European defence and the CSDP
Egmont, November 2015

L’Europe à la croisée des chemins: La politique de défense et de sécurité a besoin d’initiatives franco-allemandes
Institut français des relations internationales, November 2015

Filed under: International Relations, PUBLICATIONS Tagged: At a glance, CSDP, defence policy, EU army, European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), Marcin Grajewski, Nato, what think tanks are thinking

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Monday 4 July 2016
13.00 Meeting with President of Argentina Mauricio Macri (photo opportunity)

Tuesday 5 July 2016
Strasbourg
09.15 Report to the European Parliament on the European Council of 28 June and the informal meeting of 27 EU leaders on 29 June 2016

Friday 8 July 2016
Warsaw
EU-US leaders' meeting

EU-NATO cooperation event

NATO SUMMIT
14.30 Welcome by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and President of Poland Andrzej Duda
15.15 Family photo
20.30 Intervention at the North Atlantic Council working dinner hosted by President of Poland Andrzej Duda and chaired by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg

Saturday 9 July 2016
Warsaw
NATO SUMMIT
09.00 Intervention at the summit meeting on Afghanistan
12.00 North Atlantic Council meeting

 

The EU referendum was only a week ago, and already the false claims and promises of ‘Leave’ campaigners are painfully unravelling.

• THEY SAID that outside the EU, Britain could control migration. This would relieve on public services.
  - BUT NOW they’re saying that leaving the EU can’t radically reduce migration and that fears about immigration didn’t influence the way people voted.
• THEY SAID that we send £350m a week to the EU, which could be spent on the NHS instead.
  - BUT NOW they’re saying that the claim was a mistake. It was never promised. They’re not able to spend that much extra on the NHS.
• THEY SAID Britain doesn’t need preferential access to the EU Single Market.
  - BUT NOW they’re saying that we should have preferential access to the Single Market.
• THEY SAID there will be an end to ‘free movement of people’.
  - BUT NOW they’re talking about ‘free movement of labour’.
• THEY SAID Britain has a great future outside the EU; that we’d get out country back and ‘take control’.
  - BUT NOW they’re saying they don’t have a plan for Brexit. They never did. The government should have had a plan.

Now, it seems no one is in control. Welcome to getting your country back.

• Sources:
• BBC News​: ‘Reality Check’
• The Mirror​: What will happen to immigration into the UK after vote to leave the EU? 
• The Guardian​: ‘Leave campaign rows back on key immigration and NHS pledges’ 
• Metro​: ‘Operation Backtrack begins over THAT £350million NHS claim 
• New Statesman​: ‘Tory Brexiter Daniel Hannan: Leave campaign never promised “radical decline” in immigration’

• Click to read

_________________________________________________

Other stories by Jon Danzig:

• First 7 days after Referendum shock
• Blame the politicians, not the voters
• Leave campaign is relying on lying to win
• List of the latest articles by Jon Danzig

To follow my stories please like my Facebook page: Jon Danzig Writes

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• The Reasons2Remain Facebook Community continues to support the case for Britain’s membership of the EU, and now, the actual impact of the Brexit vote. Join us!

• Share on Facebook and Twitter:

The #Brexit bodge: what #Leave campaigners said then, and what they say now. Share my blog: https://t.co/m2547xjJzD pic.twitter.com/UlxBu9s81D

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) July 1, 2016

The post The Brexit Bodge: What they said appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

http://tvnewsroom.consilium.europa.eu/uploads/council-images/thumbs/uploads/council-images/remote/http_7e18a1c646f5450b9d6d-a75424f262e53e74f9539145894f4378.r8.cf3.rackcdn.com/Schermata_2016-07-01_alle_11.15.56_thumb_169_1467364820_1467364820_129_97shar_c1.png

The European Union signs an agreement with Tuvalu on the short-stay visa waiver.

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Meng-Hsuan Chou, Isaac Kamola & Tamson Pietsch

Across the world, higher education is rapidly changing. Universities are increasingly seen as key engines of a ‘knowledge economy’, producing the innovation and the workers crucial to new industries. Driven by rankings that claim to measure ‘world-class’ status, and by the incentives and liberalised regulations of national governments, many universities are promoting themselves as ‘global’ institutions and competing to attract renowned researchers, international students, and grant income. These changes are profound—they reshape the long-standing relationship between universities and the nation-state, and reconstitute opportunities for social mobility, and the way millions of individuals see, understand and navigate the world. They are changes that, put simply, are deeply political.

These shifts often go under the adopted narrative of the ‘globalisation of higher education’—a discourse which tends to treat this new terrain as largely a smooth space through which people, money, and knowledge travel seamlessly, a-politically, and for the mutual benefit of all involved. Such analyses, however, tend to under-estimate the competing interests involved in these changes, and the asymmetrical power relations and political contestation at local, national and regional levels that are configuring and reconfiguring contemporary higher education in ways that go well beyond the initial expectations and imaginations of the actors involved.

To understand the ways universities are engaged in these processes we need to think in terms of a transnational politics of higher education. Higher education institutions do pull (and push) people, money, and knowledge across borders, but they do so in highly uneven ways. National, regional, and local boundaries are not simply transcended by these connections, but continually work to condition the nature of movement, and to direct and shape it. Higher education institutions find themselves operating within a transnationally striated space marked as much by difference, competition, and particularity as by the convergence around a ‘global’ model or market.

While there are common pressures that force universities to act in similar ways, these pressures are not uniform, impersonal or universal. The transnational forces of neoliberalism, global ranking systems, American hegemony, and the functional exigencies of economic integration often play out differently in different locations. And they are, moreover, continually being made and re-made by actors with a variety of objectives. Within the worlds of higher education there exists significant variation across institutions—variation that, in some cases, seems to be growing rather than diminishing. It is not apparent that developments in Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America and North America are necessarily aiming to achieve the same ends, or even using the same methods.

Understanding the profound transformations we have seen in higher education during recent decades means attending to this variation, as well as to its causes and consequences. As argued in our recent book, it means attending to the transnational politics of higher education, and to three core attributes that help to fashion it.

 

The legacy of history

First, those interested in the politics of higher education in the present need to take seriously the history of the university and the ways in which its relationship with empire, nation and class is being refashioned in the era of market capitalism. It is no surprise that wealthier institutions are well placed to navigate the changing winds of local and ‘global’ imperatives. It is they who have taken the lead in offering online courses, leading big collaborative and high investment projects; they who tend to rank highly on research measures and have the ability to negotiate to their advantage with governments at home and abroad. European empires and the languages and religions that travelled with them, sit at the heart of these temporal legacies. They created deep cultural and economic infrastructures that continue to determine routes of travel and shape the global landscapes of knowledge and expertise.

 

Tensions in reform enactment

Second, we need to consider the way university reforms are enacted at national and institutional levels, leading to radically different outcomes in different contexts. For example, the wishes of international financial organisations or norms around academic freedom often find themselves in conflict with the wishes of national governments, local citizens or institutional administrations.

This was the case for post-apartheid higher education in South Africa where the language of the university as a site within a ‘global knowledge economy’ quickly replaced the arguments promoted by anti-apartheid activists who envisioned higher education as emphasising democratic citizenship, de-racialisation, and economic redistribution. This outcome stemmed from the interventions of international institutions, funding agencies, and philanthropic organisations, as well as domestic political actors, who favoured the language that conceptualised the university as strictly an institution of economic development. The ability of South Africans to produce their own, potentially fairly radical, understandings of higher education was thus foreclosed.

By contrast, while the so-called ‘American model’ of higher education has travelled to the Middle East in the form of branch campuses, these campuses have been required to incorporate the unique kefala system, which rigidly controls all foreign labour. As a consequence, the notion of ‘academic freedom’ supposedly embedded in the American model of higher education continually comes into conflict with very real frictions on the grounds. In these moments of tension we can begin to understand and identify the various national and international actors who have a stake in ‘globalisation’, and how they advance and protect their claims through and within it.

 

The rise of the regional dimension

Third, we need to develop a more careful consideration of the importance of geographic regions and the ways in which they are emerging as new players in the governance of tertiary education. As regional organisations become increasingly involved in the business of higher education, we see political processes driven by supranational forces that both work through and bypass national agencies. Yet even these regional processes are inflected by distinctive local and national pressures and ambitions.

Regional influences, for example, have been extremely powerful in ushering in reforms in Europe. Policymakers in newly emerging democracies such as Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia accepted that restructuring their national higher education system was part of the strategy to ‘return to Europe’ after the fall of Communism. University actors there also saw the opportunity provided by Europe’s Bologna Process as a way to reform university governance according to their visions of faculty independence vis-à-vis university administration, and university autonomy vis-à-vis state control. But the purposeful activation of constitutional and legal provisions, and the different national policy formulation procedures involved, has generated variations of higher education reforms in these three countries. EU efforts directed towards standardising the recruitment of researchers to higher education and research institutions have also proven to be incredibly challenging.

Similarly, governments in Asia have invested huge sums to upgrade their national flagship universities from teaching-oriented to research-intensive institution – a process that has involved alliances with foreign institutions, international staff recruitment, and attracting overseas students. But in practice the reports of scientists and scholars reveal there are still many on the ground implementation challenges especially in the realm of new ideas, critical questioning, transparent decision-making, academic independence and basic research. It is thus essential to attend to the various vested political and institutional interests during implementation to see how they translate external reforms for domestic and institutional purposes.

 

Navigating the contemporary higher education landscape

Universities and the individuals who work in them are both local and global actors. They are rooted in specific social, political and economic communities, yet their authority comes from their claim to be representatives of a culture and learning that is apparently ‘universal’ in that it is recognisable and even tradable beyond the boundaries of particular localities. To maintain their status and power, universities need to maintain their relevance on both fronts: they need to meet the political, economic and social needs of particular regional and national contexts, and they need to sustain their connection to changing culture and knowledge.

Far from converging around an imagined ‘American model’ or fragmenting as a consequence of ‘crisis’, across the world universities are operating as savvy political actors, working within complex, changing, and multi-scalar processes, and producing and reproducing the social world of higher education in highly heterodox ways. Seeing them in this way helps us understand the unequal geographies or ‘worlds’ that characterise contemporary ‘global higher education’, the parties who stand to lose and gain by its new alignments, and the transnational politics that helps to fashion them.

 

Meng-Hsuan Chou, Isaac Kamola and Tamson Pietsch and contributors, address these questions in The Transnational Politics of Higher Education: Contesting the Global / Transforming the Local (Routledge, 2016). You can read more at the book’s Website.

The post Towards a transnational politics of higher education appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Where to begin? First order treachery, the double Brutus, a “cuckoo nest plot” – this is a political assassination that will go into Conservative party lore alongside the defenestration of Margaret Thatcher. On a cold summer morning, Boris Johnson’s career was laid waste in a matter of hours by his campaign director and confidante Michael Gove, the Brexit-whisperer who convinced him to turn on Brussels. Politics in a democracy does not get more savage than this.

Was this betrayal plotted over months, days, hours? What role did the chancellor George Osborne play? Was Mr Johnson making his own overtures to step aside for Theresa May, the home secretary? The Westminster lobby have done a wonderful job of reconstructing the high-intrigue and low-skulduggery of Johnson’s undoing.

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