Ideas on Europe Blog

Original date of publication on the UACES Ideas on Europe platform: 15 October 2019

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Foreword

The outlined science diplomacy research project is presented with a full appreciation of Adler-Nissen’s concise observation that ‘over the last 50 years, European states have come to view their nations as anchored so deeply within the institutions of the EU that their diplomats merge the promotion of national interests with those of the Union and states begin to speak with one voice’. ‘Science diplomacy’ is a term coined approximately ten years ago in order to launch a more in-depth discussion on the relations between science and diplomacy in shaping international ties. European Union (EU) is no stranger to science diplomacy. However, the overall pool of scholarly examined case studies remains rather thin. There is room for more insight into how individuals in various professional circles practice science diplomacy. This article provides an outline of how an analysis dedicated to the EU science diplomacy in the Southern Neighbourhood with a particular focus on Morroco (MA) and Tunisia (TN) throughout the time frame of 2014 – 2017 would contribute to the overall examination of science diplomacy, as well as establish ties to other topical theoretical strands of EU studies.

 

Science Diplomacy as a Component of the EU’s Structural Diplomacy

Since science diplomacy is not a term which would be widely integrated into the EU documents, the practices of this form of diplomacy, including those that are sometimes described as ‘public diplomacy’ or ‘academic exchange’ become the logic subjects for further examination. The implicit science diplomacy is understood as policies and implementation measures which are not called ‘science diplomacy’ but correspond to the basic definition of one of the three taxonomies of science diplomacy. ‘Diplomacy for science’, meaning, diplomacy exerted to establish cooperation agreements either between governments or certain institutions allowing one or several of the parties involved to benefit from ‘foreign science and technology capacity in order to improve the national capacity’ (Šime, 2018, p. 4; Van Langenhove, 2017, p. 8), is worth exploring in the European Southern Neighbourhood Policy context throughout the selected time frame of 2014-2017.

The novelty of such a choice or research project is its endeavour to enrich both the academic and policy expert thinking on the evolving ‘diplomacy for science’ understanding in the EU setting and embed it in a wider theoretical framework of structural diplomacy. In order to acquire a more nuanced understanding how the institutional set-up influences the perspectives of EU-based actors towards cooperation with the peer institutions located in the selected countries the actor-centered institutionalism is chosen as another theoretical building block. It implies analysing activities of certain entities as the causal link between macro-level processes and the governance regulations (Marks, 1996, p. 23).

Structural diplomacy, being an instrument of structural foreign policy, is a process of dialogue and negotiation by which actors in a system seek to influence or shape sustainable structures in the various sectors in a specific geographical area (Keukeleire & Justaert, 2010, p. 3; Keukeleire, Keuleers, & Raube, 2016, p. 200). Structural diplomacy and structural foreign policy are worth employing, firstly, due to a full appreciation of the funding schemes managed by key institutions representing the EU (namely, the sectoral Directorates-General of the European Commission), which ensure practical implementation of its defined external relations, such as the multilateral or bilateral agreements, corresponding funding programmes (Keukeleire, 2003, pp. 31-32, 49-50).

Secondly, the choice of structural foreign policy is motivated also by the acknowledgement that it is implemented with milieu goals (Keukeleire, 2003, p. 46) or endogenous local contexts (Keukeleire & Delreux, 2014, p. 30; Keukeleire & Justaert, 2010, p. 8; Keukeleire et al., 2016, p. 204) in mind, associated with support for evolution of long-term structural changes with permanent results (Keukeleire & Delreux, 2014, p. 28; Keukeleire & Justaert, 2010, p. 3; 2012, p. 2). In the Southern Neighbourhood, as some of the key context-specific traits the efforts directed towards promoting stability (Börzel & Lebanidze, 2017, p. 23) and state-building (Börzel & van Hüllen, 2011, p. 6) should be mentioned.

The research project is not preoccupied with the earlier identified democratisation-stability dilemma (Börzel, Dandashly, & Risse, 2015, p. 7; Börzel & Lebanidze, 2017, p. 23; Börzel & van Hüllen, 2014, p. 1040). Instead it focuses on the stability-enhancing activities stemming from the ‘volatile dynamics of change’ (Bouris & Schumacher, 2017, p. 293), namely, the geopolitical developments which EU’s envisaged ‘ring of well governed countries’ (Barbé & Morillas, 2019, p. 5) or (later on rephrased as) ‘ring of friends’ (Börzel & van Hüllen, 2014, p. 1035) transformed into ‘the ring of fire’ (Blockmans, Kostanyan, Remizov, Slapakova, & Van der Loo, 2017, p. 136; Bouris & Schumacher, 2017, pp. 85-86; Gaub & Popescu, 2015, p. 5), leading to a full awareness about a policy problem and the overall acknowledged urgency to address such instability of the EU neighbourhood via dialogue on certain assistance measures. It is worth adding that the severity of the situation has been commented with even grimmer assessments that the EU’s choice of promoting ‘resilience’ was directed more towards stabilizing ‘itself’ (Barbé & Morillas, 2019, p. 8), thus shifting more towards the internal dimension of the ‘intermestic sphere’ (Bremberg, 2010, p. 170) characterising the Mediterranean space.

Furthermore, due to the continuous instability risks posed by the youth bulges (Gaub, 2019, p. 11), higher education and research sectors are selected from the whole panoply of ‘intermestic affairs’ (Barbé & Morillas, 2019, p. 13) in order to acquire a more nuanced insight into the practical developments supporting the above discussed policy goals.

 

Mare Nostrum’s Community of Practices

The proposed science diplomacy research project follows the whims of the ‘practice turn’ in EU studies (Adler-Nissen, 2016). It supports the arguments of Adler-Nissen and Didier Bigo (2011, p. 251) about Bourdieu’s relevance in exploring the individuals as ‘liaison agents’ who shape the characteristics of international ties by mediating and refracting elite policies (Adler-Nissen, 2016, p. 11). Thus, the aim is to look beyond the elite diplomatic circles in order to explore how the high-level discourses are echoed in the working-level routines of EU funded higher education and research cooperation.

The theoretical configuration taps into an earlier identified potential of new institutionalism to offer theoretical integration opportunities (Scharpf, 2000, p. 762). Due to the fact that both structural diplomacy and actor-centered institutionalism have several commonalities with most reflections on the future EU ‘diplomacy for science’, stronger ties to both schools of thought would allow accelerating the conceptual honing of this strand of the EU science diplomacy. In addition, adding a practice theory theoretical component to this constellation tallies well with the focus on implicit science diplomacy developments following the actor-centered institutionalism’s approach to ‘interaction-oriented policy research’, where ‘actors and their interacting choices, rather than institutions are assumed to be the proximate causes of policy responses’ (Scharpf, 2000, p. 764). The conscious or unconscious practitioner of science diplomacy is placed in the limelight.

Communities of practice are understood as ‘like-minded groups of practitioners who are informally as well as contextually bound by a shared interest in learning and applying a common practice’ (Bremberg, Sonnsjö, & Mobjörk, 2019, p. 626). Thus, the research project is founded on a theoretical assumption that EU funded project managers share certain common traits in their working habits which are aligned with the requirements defined by the EU funding schemes. The research project seeks to draw some generalisations what such a community of practice delivers vis-à-vis the overarching goals set in the key policy documents.

 

Scoping the Empirical Field

In Bourdieusian terms, the EU is considered as the transnational field which is characterised by certain permanent institutions (Bigo, 2011, p. 248) – Directorates-General of the European Commission and other services – which through the funding programmes (as the practical implementation means of the EU strategic frameworks) creates certain ad-hoc institutions – projects – aimed at accomplishing specific tasks by a defined set of consortium members within a limited time frame.

In order to render the empirical examination comprehensive, yet not too vague or overstretched, the roles of four EU institutions – European External Action Service (EEAS), Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD), Directorate-General for Education and Culture (DG EAC), Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR) – would be put under the magnifying glass in terms of exploring the projects funded by their overseen programmes. Those would be the EU-MA and EU-TN Annual Action Programmes overseen by DG NEAR (as integral parts of the European Neighbourhood Instrument 2014-2017), Erasmus+ of DG EAC and the Framework Programme administered by DG RTD. Projects’ coordinators are the selected community whose practices in terms of perspectives on and experience in cooperation with MA&TN-based institutions are worth exploring in order to get a better understanding what judgements and lessons learnt form certain basis of the EU ties with the EU Southern Neighbourhood in higher education and research sectors.

The outlined EU institutions would be analysed with an awareness of one policy area requiring the engagement of several Directorates-General (Glover & Müller, 2015, p. 33; Šime, 2018, pp. 10-11), which does not necessarily translate into frequent policy innovations and new policy constellations due to the overall policy inertia and a general preference of status quo characterising multi-actor policy systems (Scharpf, 2000, pp. 768-769). Since none of the four EU institutions has been tasked to pursue science diplomacy, let alone diplomacy for science, the chosen conceptual constellation allows elaborating on the EU’s multiple voices (da Conceição-Heldt & Meunier, 2014), namely, what role EU-based research and higher education institutions acting as Lead Partners or Coordinators of EU funded projects play in the overall EU implicit science diplomacy exerted in relations with MA&TN throughout 2014-2017.

 

Priorities of EU Institutions in Short

The DG NEAR’s European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI) 2014-2017 defines three priority sectors, none of which entail clear references to research, science or innovation. The EU puts emphasis on ‘socio-economic reforms for an inclusive growth, competitiveness and integration; strengthening fundamental elements of democracy; sustainable regional and local development’ (European Commission, 2018). The thematic focus of the EEAS on building the societal resilience in the European Southern Neighbourhood and DG NEAR pursued three priority sectors are not treated as the EU dialogue and practical cooperation with MA&TN lacking any component of science, research or innovation.

The leverage to such lack of domain-specific prominence is DG RTD and DG EAC continuous engagement of MA&TN in initiatives funded by the Framework Programmes and Erasmus+. It allows placing the ENI 2014-2017 initiatives and resources allocated to their implementation via EU-MA and EU-TN Annual Action Programmes as the benchmark to test whether research and higher education-related engagements funded by other EU programmes offer more opportunities. Those would be DG RTD’s Framework Programmes’ funded measures, such as BLUEMED and Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions, especially in view of the comparative difference between the chosen cases. Namely, TN is an associated country of Horizon 2020 but MA does not enjoy the same status.

In order to enhance the structural dimension of the empirical analysis, the acquired data on the EU funded projects, where MA&TN are involved would also explore their segmentation, whether certain sciences were benefiting more from the EU offered cooperation and learning of good practices than others, thus potentially contributing more to the capacity building in certain sectors of socioeconomic value to both countries.

Moreover, the depth of analysis would not stop only at the examination of the statistical landscape of project engagements. Through the exploration of Coordinators and Lead Partners’ assessments of the engagement of MA&TN institutions in specific projects, a more nuanced understanding would be obtained about MA&TN capacity of learning and strengthening their research and higher education institutions via project engagement. Therefore, the research project aims at exploring not only the scope and science domain-specific coverage of MA&TN engagement in the EU funded measures, but also to analyse whether the experiences obtained through the implemented projects have been judged by the EU-based managers responsible for the project implementation, namely, to bring tangible benefits in the capacity-building of MA&TN-based research and higher education institutions.

This line of enquiry into the perspectives widely shared among the selected community of practice follows the conceptual logic of diffusion, especially its dependence on recipients, which, along the lines of the bounded rationality, are presumed to follow the ‘instrumental rationality or logic of consequences’ (Börzel & Risse, 2012, p. 5), as active shapers of results (Börzel & Risse, 2012b, p. 204). Thereby, strengthening the research potential and building capacities of research and higher education sectors in the Southern Neighbourhood is not just a matter of the EU’s proactiveness, but also depends on the responsiveness of MA&TN institutions to use the whole set of cooperation opportunities and ensuring the sustainability of project results.

 

Keeping the Focus on the EU

According to the new institutionalist logic of a bounded rational actor (van Lieshout, 2008, pp. 8-9) pursued along with the established social norms and values (Maggi, 2016, p. 22), the research project would explore what role the EU engagement both in the bilateral and multilateral dialogue on science, cooperation with MA&TN in this domain, play in the overall EU’s attempt to enhance resilience in its southern neighbourhood.

In order to keep a healthy level of focus and nuance ‘the target country perspective’ (Keukeleire & Justaert, 2010, p. 19) and three conceptualisations of alignment (Keukeleire et al., 2016, p. 205) – the value brought by an engagement in the EU funded projects of MA&TN researchers and higher education staff as seen from their own perspective – are kept outside of the scope of this specific suggested analysis. Instead, the emphasis is kept on exploring the perspective of EU-based institutions on their ties with the peer institutions in two selected countries of Southern Neighbourhood.

 

Methodology

Besides the acquisition of earlier described statistical data on projects implemented throughout 2014-2017 with the financial support of three EU funding schemes, the semi-structured interviews will give a new impetus to the research on the recent rediscovery of the value of Jean Monnet method in Northern Europe in advancing the EU goals (Ekengren, 2018). The selected method of interviews follows, the logic elaborated by Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot: ‘Not only is language the conduit of meaning, which turns practices into the location and engine of social action, but it is itself an enactment of doing in the form of ‘discursive practices’’ (Adler & Pouliot, 2011, p. 6). The interviews serve as a way of exploring how project managers are walking the talk.

Self-censorship and self-legitimation (Adler-Nissen, 2016, p. 15) presented by the interviewed Coordinators and Lead Partners of EU funded projects and their narrated overall contextualisation (Adler-Nissen & Kropp, 2015, p. 164) of MA&TN engagement would be a good source of comparative insight between working-level deliverables and framework goals set in key EU policy documents and promoted among the EU’s high level representatives.

 

Ready to Look Beyond the ‘Golden Carrot’

To conclude, the outlined science diplomacy research project is crafted to take a fresh look at the earlier findings on the EU Southern Neighbourhood. It avoids the blind following of the assessment of Keukeleire and Justaert (Keukeleire & Justaert, 2012, p. 2), as well as Börzel and her colleagues arguing for the crucial role of the ‘golden carrot’ – EU membership (Börzel & Schimmelfennig, 2017, p. 278; Börzel & Hüllen, 2011, p. 7), namely, that the EU external action has less of an influence vis-à-vis those countries to which it cannot offer EU membership as the ultimate reward. A more nuanced insight into the stabilising efforts exerted via capacity building in higher education and research might offer some new food for thought, whether this assessment is still valid in the contemporary setting.

 

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Seven months after the advisory-only EU referendum, 114 brave MPs passionately spoke and voted AGAINST triggering Brexit.

Chris Bryant, Labour MP for the Rhondda, was one of them.

Along with 46 other Labour MPs, he defied the 3-line whip imposed by his then party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and voted AGAINST the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill.

From 31 January to 1 February 2017, MPs debated whether to support the Second Reading of the Bill to give the then Prime Minister, Theresa May, the go-ahead to notify the EU of the Article 50 notice-to-leave.

With the support of 182 whipped Labour MPs, the government overwhelmingly won, with a total of 498 MPs voting FOR the Bill, and 114 MPs voting AGAINST.

(The government didn’t need Labour’s support to win the vote, but Labour’s endorsement gave a boost to Theresa May’s Brexit – a Brexit which, at that stage, had no assessments, no details, no plan, and only the endorsement of a mere 37% of the electorate).

Most Parliamentarians before the referendum were against Brexit.

But the referendum result cowed most MPs into supporting Brexit, even though the referendum was supposed to be an advisory poll only.

The referendum itself was a deeply flawed exercise, not only because just 37% of the electorate supported Leave – a percentage which wouldn’t have been sufficient for Brexit to have gone ahead in many other democracies across the world.

But there were also other flaws in the democratic credentials of the referendum result – such as that half the countries of the UK, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, along with Gibraltar, voted strongly to remain in the EU.

In addition, many people directly affected by the outcome of the referendum were refused a vote.

They included around three million citizens from the rest of the EU who had settled in the UK, and over three million Britons living in other parts of the world who were promised a vote, but then the Tory government broke that pledge.

Not to mention that every reason given to leave the EU was based on misleading information, as many more voters now realise and agree.

Today, some seven years later, even some of those 114 MPs who voted against triggering the Article 50 notice-to-quit now accept and support Brexit.

But the public does not.

Polls consistently show that a majority of voters consider Brexit to be a mistake, and they would now vote to rejoin the EU.

Isn’t it time to put this back to the people?

 

• Watch 2-minute video of Chris Bryant’s anti-Brexit speech


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From 31 January to 1 February 2017, MPs debated the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill on whether to trigger Brexit – the Article 50 notice.

MPs overwhelmingly backed the bill, supported by the Labour leadership under Jeremy Corbyn, by 498 votes FOR, to 114 AGAINST.

Ken Clarke was one of the 114 MPs. He was the ONLY Tory MP to vote against triggering Brexit.

He felt that remaining in the EU was in the country’s best interests, and as an MP, he considered it was his duty to vote accordingly, and to defy his party’s 3-line whip.

He had never felt beholden to the referendum result and in his brilliant speech, delivered with hardly a glance at his notes, he lucidly and persuasively explained why.

Ken Clarke, former Chancellor and leadership contender, is a traditional Tory who – unlike contemporary Conservatives – strongly backed Britain being a member of the European Community.

For over 50 years, he said, his party – the Conservatives – was in favour of the European Union. That suddenly changed, however, on 23 June 2016 with the referendum vote.

But he had not changed in his conviction.

He concluded:

“I personally shall be voting with my conscience content in this vote.

“And when we see what unfolds hereafter as we leave the European Union, I hope the consciences of other Members of Parliament remain equally content.”

How could any MP who voted for Brexit remain content today, witnessing the enormous damage that is now unfolding as a result?

Ken Clarke is a pro-EU hero. He put his country above his party. For hundreds of years into the future, he will be judged as being on the right side of history.

• Watch 10-minute video, ‘The Anti-Brexit Hero’

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Dear Colleagues,

As you’ll know, the UACES office is going through some changes. I will be writing to you shortly to introduce our new Executive Director, but in the meantime I want to give our collective thanks to Melina Dieckgräber, our Digital Communications Manager.

Melina joined four years ago, when we were about to do some significant work on our online and communication presence. Of course, it  turned out we were also about to be spending a lot of time working from home, thanks to Covid. Melina not only adjusted with aplomb, but helped UACES to navigate the online world in ways that continue to enrich our work and (we hope) your experience. Add to that her excellent work in and around our events and it’s clear we’ve had a colleague who’s been a great part of the office and our community.

Melina will be taking up a new post as Communications Manager at Newcastle University, where we wish her the very best in the next stage of her career. She will be moving to the position in mid-February.

Stepping into a new role as Digital Communications and Marketing Officer, I’m delighted to welcome Katie Kilbourne, who many of you will get to meet at our conference in Trento or at the Graduate Forum Conference in Amsterdam in June. Katie’s got lots of experience from the charity sector, and as a European Studies graduate provides us with a handy example of all those transferable skills we teach our students!

And since we don’t do our office staffing changes by half, I can also welcome Sinclair Scotchmere as our new Finance Officer. Sinclair will be working remotely for the office, handling various financial functions, so you probably won’t get to meet him, but you may well see his name around our financial documents.

Ollie Pilkington isn’t left out in all this change, with a new title of Events & Membership Manager to reflect some growth in his responsibilities.

At which point I run out of people in the office. As always on these occasions I am reminded that UACES is exceptionally fortunate to have uniformly brilliant people working for us: I might get the glamour of writing a Chair’s message, but without the people managing and running all the things that you read about in this newsletter that would be meaningless. My deep thanks to the entire team, whether they are coming, going or staying.

Prof Simon Usherwood, UACES Chair

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by Giselle Bosse (Maastricht University)

The EU’s response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 has been unprecedented, displaying rare unity among its member states, especially during the first four months following the invasion. The EU agreed on far-reaching economic and financial sanctions, the most severe sanctions ever imposed by the EU on a third country. The EU also provided military support to Ukraine through the European Peace Facility for the first time in its history. In another unprecedented move, the EU has implemented the Temporary Protection Directive, granting Ukrainian nationals and permanent residents the temporary right to live and work in the EU. Moreover, Ukraine and Moldova have been offered EU candidacy status. The EU’s rapid and determined response was unexpected in many ways, given member states’ previously diverging interests vis-à-vis Russia and on security and defense, significant differences on migration, and their general reluctance to expand the Union, or even grant candidate status to applicant countries. In my recent article in JCMS, I examine how the EU’s forceful response on such high-salience and contentious issues can be explained.

What we do(n’t) know so far about the EU’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

The emerging scholarly debate recognises the unexpected and unprecedented rapid and determined response by the EU to the invasion, but few works examine the factors that facilitated agreement among member states. The main driver of the EU’s response is seen to be the sheer fact of a full-scale military invasion launched on the European continent, and the resulting threat to the fundamentals of European security. Yet, security considerations did not drive the EU’s responses during the first four months following the invasion. The EU’s most powerful member states Germany and France, whose role is considered essential to EU joint action by realist scholars, did not initially perceive the invasion as a direct threat to their national security and were later absorbed in domestic discussions on redefining their national foreign policy, which curtailed their ability to drive the EU’s response.

Approached from a different angle, the EU’s forceful response was possible because of a collective commitment to norms linked to international law and the principles of sovereignty and self-determination. Scholarship on the EU’s response to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea demonstrated that, back then, member states accepted the political and economic costs of sanctions against Russia due to such a collective commitment. These norms were clearly visible again in 2022, as the EU has emphasised Ukraine’s ‘territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence’. However, in contrast to the EU’s ‘soft’ response to Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2014, which did not include broad economic sanctions against Russia, the EU’s response in 2022 was tougher and cost member states substantially more.

Which additional factors may have led the EU to a more rapid and determined response in the first four months following the invasion?

How the EU’s response to the war in 2014 influenced the EU’s response in 2022

Against this background, my article asks in what kind of changed context the EU’s 2022 decisions became meaningful and rational, allowing for agreement to emerge among the member states on a set of unprecedented measures. The article contends that, given the dramatic change in context following the 2022 Russian invasion, key understandings, rationalities and norms invoked by the EU in response to the 2014 war took on new or fundamentally different meanings in 2022, inter alia propelling key actors in the EU to admit to previous misjudgement with regards to justifying policy choices in 2014. In short, I argue that in order to fully understand the EU’s response in 2022, it is essential to look back at how the EU reacted to the Russian war against Ukraine which started back in 2014.

How the ‘rupture’ of the Russian invasion led to changed understandings, rationalities and norms forging consensus among EU member states

The article examines the main lines of argumentation used by key EU actors involved in decision-making on the EU’s responses to Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 respectively, drawing on 18 semi-structured interviews with high level diplomats from EU member states, the European Commission and the European External Action Service between January and September 2015, and between June and November 2022.

The empirical analysis shows how key understandings, rationalities and norms invoked by the EU in response to the 2014 war took on new or fundamentally different meanings in 2022. For example, in 2022, there was a recognition that 2014 marked the begin of a continuous Russian war against Ukraine, in contrast to the understanding in 2014 that the events presented ‘not a war as such’. The argumentation in 2014 included that any solution to the ‘conflict’ must avoid the risk of escalation by Putin while peace being ‘worth a try’. This argumentation also embedded a number of speech acts vis-à-vis Russia, such as threatening tougher sanctions or isolation in case of further escalation, committing the EU to some further course of action in the event that Putin would choose to further escalate the ‘conflict’ to a war or full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

On this basis, and recalling the need to stay credible in light of the EU’s previous warnings against further escalation by Russia, the European Commission in 2022 successfully generated agreement among member states in favour of tough sanctions. That agreement was inter alia facilitated because the a priori rationality underlying the dominant approach used in 2014, centred on ‘not provoking Putin’ and ‘giving diplomacy a try’, was invalidated by the 2022 invasion. In addition, an invocation of duties towards suffering fellow-Europeans in Ukraine, and the re-conceptualisation of the EU’s spatial identity to include Ukraine as ‘one of us’ (as opposed to the framing as ‘European neighbour’ used in 2014) enabled those actors arguing in favour of unprecedented measures to gain the ‘higher moral ground’ in discussions among the member states.

This is not to deny the clear limitations of the EU’s response in terms of military support or guaranteeing Ukraine’s eventual EU membership. However, considering the EU’s previous enlargement fatigue and that Ukraine is neither (yet) a member of the EU or NATO, the EU’s invocation of moral duties towards Ukraine does constitute a significant change compared to the EU’s previous approach.

Outlook: The gradual withering away of ‘lessons learnt’ and EU moral duties towards Ukraine?

Since June 2022, EU member states have shown increasing signs of disagreement and subsequent sanctions packages have been ‘softened’ by numerous derogations. The decision to open accession negotiations with Ukraine (and Moldova) in December 2023 demonstrated the EU’s continued commitment, but also exposed divisions between the member states, which have also delayed the promised €50 billion funding programme for Ukraine. It remains to be seen in how far the ‘lessons learnt’ in 2014 and the EU’s moral duties towards Ukraine as ‘one of us’ will still play a role in EU foreign policy-making as the ‘rupture effect’ of the Russian invasion gives way to ‘Ukraine fatigue’, amid declining support for Ukraine by European publics, and with the EU’s attention shifting to the Israel-Gaza war.

Giselle Bosse is Associate Professor and Jean Monnet Chair in EU External Relations at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University. Her research focuses on the EU’s Eastern Partnership, EU relations with Ukraine and Belarus, EU democracy promotion and the role of norms and values in EU international relations.

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Many think it couldn’t happen here, but please watch my video and then, think again.

A year before the EU referendum, I gave a speech at a media conference in Germany. The topic was how some newspapers and politicians in Britain are spreading hatred and lies about migrants and refugees.

I cited the ‘8 Steps to Genocide’ compiled by Genocide Watch and asked if Britain was on Step Three, defined as:

‘One group denies the humanity of the other group.’

I hoped to be wrong.

But today, Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, calls refugees “illegal”. As did all the previous Conservatives Prime Ministers of this millennium.

Conservative Home Secretaries refer to them as an invasion. Katie Hopkins referred to them as cockroaches.

British newspapers – not all, but many – have spent years demonising migrants, whether they’re so-called ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’, embedding a nasty culture of xenophobia into the DNA of the nation (which for sure led to Brexit).

The Daily Mail published a despicable MAC cartoon with an angel apologising to the recently deceased TV star, Cilla Black, for the long queue into heaven caused by ‘illegals.’

They are not ‘illegals’. No human is illegal. They are mostly desperate refugees fleeing from war, torture, and subjugation.

Of the estimated 117 million displaced people in the world today, only a relatively tiny number risk their lives, at huge cost, to get here in makeshift boats. Most often they have compelling and heartbreaking reasons, such as that they already have family here.

Instead of addressing a world-wide refugee crisis, our political leaders prefer to turn the other way and send those refugees away, to yet another unsafe country. But that solves nothing.

If the European Court of Human Rights once again rules against deporting refugees to Rwanda, the government has threatened to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, putting all our human rights at risk.

Claims that ‘legal’ migrants are taking British jobs and reducing wages are entirely unfounded. The truth is that Britain needs millions of migrants because we have millions more jobs than Britons to do them.

Today, I feel Britain is heading in the wrong direction. If we might have been on Step 3 in 2015, on what step is Britain now?

My post here does not in any way suggest that genocide is or will happen in the UK, only that the steps to genocide can be insidious and that, as stated in my video of 2015, the UK might already be on Step 3 of ‘The 8 Steps to Genocide’.  

This is primarily because of the way migrants and refugees are so degraded by the Press and the UK government. Of course, as I stated in my speech, I hoped to be wrong.

Step 3 of the 8 steps does not refer to genocide happening, only how the demeaning of one set of people could lead us in the wrong way. This is a warning from history that we must be careful.

Let’s remember that we may think genocide can only happen somewhere else. But if we not are diligent, it can happen here too.

• ‘The 8 Steps to Genocide’ – 13 minute video. 



After the Second World War, during which many millions were systematically, industrially, gruesomely murdered in the worst genocidal crime against humanity, the earnest, global, unison cry was, ‘Never again’.

Those two words summed up the sincere, solemn feeling and resolve of a world shocked, numbed and reeling from the discovery that so many had been so callously rounded up and brutally murdered in what we now call the Holocaust.

Not for anything they had done. But simply for who they were.

Mostly Jews, but also gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled…and others, many others.

Millions. Murdered. With the goal to wipe them out. Men, women, children, babies. Mass murdered. Destroyed. Deleted.

Never again. That was the response. Never again. Never again.

In acknowledgement of the most horrific war and genocide the planet had ever known, the world rallied to find a way forward so that such wicked crimes against humanity could never happen again.

The United Nations. The International Court of Justice. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The European Convention on Human Rights. The European Union.

All established in direct reply to the war, and all to achieve the same aim: peace.

This was the resolve of those who endured and survived the terrible atrocities of the fascist regimes that blighted the planet during the long years of war and madness.

Never again. Those were the words of our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents.
That was the intent of the planet’s leaders following the eventual crushing of the world’s barbarous enemies. Never again.

Fine words. But utterly meaningless unless enforced.

POST-WAR GENOCIDE

Since the end of the Second World War, the words ‘never again’ have been cast in stone and stamped on our memories. But the atrocities that the post-war generation so sincerely wanted to prevent happening again, have happened again. And again.

Churchill described the mass murders of the Nazi death camps as, ‘A crime without a name’. But it now has a name. It’s genocide.

And it’s a name that’s in frequent use because it’s a crime that’s too frequently committed.

• 8-minute video: ‘Why Britain joined the EU’



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Nobody gave ‘informed consent’ for Brexit. That’s because, in the 2016 referendum, the electorate was not sufficiently informed.

On the contrary, we were grossly misinformed.

Legally, informed consent means that consent has been given with full knowledge of:

• the risks involved,
• the probable consequences,
• and the alternatives.

– During the referendum we were not fully aware of all the risks of Brexit, especially as ‘Leave’ did not define what kind of Brexit we’d get.

– During the referendum who really understood the “probable consequences” of Brexit? Would so many voters have opted for it had they fully realised that it would make us poorer, with increased costs of living, and so many barriers to trade with our nearest and most important neighbours?

– During the referendum we were not told about the different Brexit alternatives. Brexiters were only given the option of one meaningless, undefined word: ‘Leave’.

Because voters didn’t and couldn’t give their informed consent for the Brexit we got after the referendum, one day there will need to be a new democratic opportunity to reconsider the decision to leave the EU.

And when that happens, we need the people to be properly informed, so that next time they can truly give their INFORMED CONSENT.

Only those against democracy disagree.

• Who voted for Theresa May’s Brexit? 3-minute video

• £350m a week – the biggest Brexit lie. 2-minute video

• Newspaper lies and Brexit – 2-minute video

• If only David Cameron said this – 2-minute video

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During the Christmas break, the UK got rid of all its Retained EU Law (REUL). But not really.

The entry into force of the Retained EU Law Act at New Year’s Eve meant that all that “Retained EU Law” got relabelled as “assimilated law”.

As I discussed in my previous post, the Act also resulted in a proscribed list of acts being repealed. This moved things on, but far less than had been the original intent of the Act’s creators.

Now we have a further development, in the first Parliamentary Report on REUL, as mandated by the Act. This fun piece of surveying not only sets out progress, but also – for the first time – planned outcomes.

Before we get to any of this, it’s worth noting the updating of the REUL Dashboard, now in its third year of operation and still throwing up surprises.

Chief among these is the addition of over 1700 further pieces of REUL, taking the total up to 6757. For reference, the original dataset in June 2022 had 2417 items, or 36% of the current total.

The biggest additions in this latest update come at DESNZ, DEFRA, Treasury and DfT. Given this is the sixth occasion that totals have changed, it would be reasonable to assume it won’t be the last time.

However, the new figures show substantially more repeals than I’d anticipated last month (1369 actuals against 906), as well as more amendments (759 actuals against 647) and replacements (39 against 16). Only expirations was lower (62 against 75), which again makes little sense, given the Act shouldn’t have affected this: data errors are the probable cause here.

This means 67% of REUL is unchanged, with another 20% being repealed. As you can see in the two charts below, the Act’s passage is noticeable in the overall pattern of change, especially given the massive movement on overall volume.

We therefore have the somewhat ironic situation that while there has never been more change to REUL/assimilated law, we also have never had more identification of items of REUL/assimilated law, nor more listing of unchanged items (well over 4000).

This is precisely why there had been so much opposition to the Act during its creation: no one could be confident about what this mysterious category actually included, so to automatically sunset ‘everything’ would have undoubtedly produced massive unintended (and likely also not-immediately-noticed) consequences.

This point is a necessary function of the Report too.

Government has now stepped well back politically from trying to get rid of all REUL. One might argue this is just a reflection of technical realities, since it was always very likely that some part of REUL would remain obviously useful, but it is still only now that a more formal (if quietly spoken) statement has spelt that out.

The table below comes from the Report, setting out the end-point vision, wherein about 3000 items will be kept unchanged, another 1000 will be reformed, and over 2000 items revoked or removed.

The table is important for several reasons.

Firstly, it suggests that – barring a small handful of cases – there has been a more systematic evaluation across the piece of what to do. That has not obviously been the case previously when the nominal political objective was to get rid of everything. The test of whether this stands up will come in six months’ time, when the next report arrives: if we again find changes in volume or outcome, then we might be less confident that the datasheet on the Dashboard site holds up.

Secondly, it simultaneously points to continuing confusion. A glance at the categories used here will show that they don’t match those used in the Dashboard, which itself gained the classic “errrm” category of “TBC” this week. While one can argue ‘reforming’ isn’t so different from ‘amending’, ‘replacing’ seems to sit vaguely between ‘reforming’ and ‘removing’, and quite why tax legislation needs its own line is beyond me.

Trivial as this might sound, it does show there still isn’t a consistent language across Whitehall, which will make it that much harder to pursue any systematic agenda. Again, the next Report will tell us more.

All this said, we can now project out to the end of 2026, using the same charts we used earlier.

Again, we note that we end up with more pieces of unchanged (if assimilated) REUL at the end that we originally thought existed, plus the speed of chipping away at the pile will have been pretty consistent across the entire period, whatever the political messaging.

Of course, this all feeds into the question of progressive divergence from the EU, an issue that will become more relevant over time and especially as and when any new British government wants to rebuild ties with the Union.

But maybe we can leave that dilemma for another day.

Full data is, as ever, available here.

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There are no longer 17.4 million Leave supporters and haven’t been for years.

Today, according to numerous polls by different pollsters, Rejoiners outnumber Brexiters by a significant margin – certainly bigger than the small margin for Leave in the referendum.

So, why don’t the Tories or Labour want to offer us, ‘the people’, a new democratic opportunity to reconsider Brexit?

Isn’t it a key purpose of democracy to give voters opportunities to change their minds?

Brexiters say we must wait 40 years for a new vote on Brexit, but that doesn’t make sense.

After the first referendum in 1975 – in which ‘Remain’ won by a landslide – there was another democratic opportunity to vote the UK out of the European Community just eight years later.

It’s now eight years since the 2016 referendum.

Won’t it soon be time for a new vote on Brexit? What’s holding back the Tories and Labour?

• 4-minute video: Brexiters-R-Outnumbered



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My two-day field trip to the United Nations Library & Archives Geneva, funded through a UACES-JMCT Scholarship, had the added benefit of being the site of the long-deceased League of Nations and was truly a wonderful location for one to conduct archival research at.

The research I conducted in Geneva was focused on material from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). My research project is Scandinavia in Global Politics: Staffing International Organizations and Seeking Influence (1970-2020). Thus, the aim of my trip was to find out more about the Scandinavian states’ (in my thesis this is defined as Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) activities in the two UN sub-agencies stated above in the 1970s and early 1980s.

The archival evidence demonstrated that the Scandinavians, especially Sweden, were the funders of the first resort for ad hoc projects within UNCTAD. The archives also showed that UNCTAD staff were careful to add a gender component to their funding bids in an effort to placate and gain the financial support of the progressive Scandinavians. The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) were also involved in multiple projects to educate and train individuals from the Global South in areas such as Port Management and Industrial Planning and much more than any other Western aid agency within UNCTAD. This ties in with Sweden’s support for the Global South’s New International Economic Order (NIEO) agenda in the 1970s and early 1980s and the pivotal, albeit doomed, role that the Scandinavian states played in supporting the NIEO agenda in the West, especially within the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

In addition, the archives helped to trace the early efforts of the Scandinavian states to combat air pollution, which led to the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP). Altogether, the evidence found at the UN Archives in Geneva has proven vital for the development of my research project (forming the basis for two chapters) and as hugely complemented the several dozen semi-structured interviews I have done with both Scandinavian and non-Scandinavian practitioners.

More about the UACES scholarship: The scholarships are travel bursaries designed to provide mobility to existing postgraduate students so that they can undertake research in another country.

The post My Research at the Archives of The United Nations Office at Geneva – A Field Trip appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

From 31 January 2024, certain goods coming from the EU to Great Britain – particularly fresh foods – will be subject to full Brexit border controls and checks for the first time, meaning extra paperwork, delays, and costs.

The UK government had previously delayed the new Brexit controls five times, concerned about the impact on British businesses.

Since Brexit, the EU already has border controls and checks for imports from Great Britain.

But this doesn’t affect Northern Ireland. Why? Because uniquely Northern Ireland is still in the EU’s Single Market for goods.

Following the Northern Ireland Protocol, amended by the Windsor Framework which came into effect on 1 October 2023, Northern Ireland exclusively enjoys full market access to both GB and the EU.

Whilst England, Scotland and Wales must endure Brexit border controls for goods exported to, and imported from the EU, those controls don’t apply to Northern Ireland.

Last February, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak waxed lyrical about the benefits to Northern Ireland of being in the EU’s Single Market for goods.

Speaking at the Coca-Cola factory in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, Mr Sunak said his new post-Brexit deal put Northern Ireland in an “unbelievably special position”.

The Prime Minister said the new Windsor Framework meant creating “the world’s most exciting economic zone” with international companies “queuing up to invest” in the region.

Mr Sunak said the Windsor Framework means, “Northern Ireland is in the unbelievably special position – unique position in the entire world, European continent – in having privileged access, not just to the UK home market, which is enormous… but also the European Union Single Market.”

“Nobody else has that. No one,” said Mr Sunak. “Only you guys: only here, and that is the prize.”

So enthusiastic was Mr Sunak in his talk to workers in Northern Ireland about the benefits of the EU Single Market that anyone would think he’s an ardent Remainer.

But of all the post-referendum Tory Prime Ministers, Mr Sunak is the most Brexity.

After his effervescent Single Market promotional talk in Northern Ireland, Downing Street was at pains to point out that his comments should not be seen as endorsing EU Single Market benefits for the whole of the UK.

The PM’s spokesman said the British people had made their decision in the referendum in 2016, but Northern Ireland needed access to both the UK and EU markets because of the Good Friday Agreement and “to avoid a border on the island of Ireland, which nobody wants to see.”

Can you spot the flaw?

Mr Sunak wildly enthusing about Single Market benefits for Northern Ireland, but not endorsing those same benefits for the rest of the UK, which must suffer detrimental barriers to trade with the EU, our biggest export and import market in the world.

This all goes to show that Brexit really is bonkers.

• 1-minute video: Why Brexit is bonkers

• Related post:  New Brexit border controls

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The media, the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and the Home Secretary, James Cleverly, call them “illegal migrants.” They are not.

They are mostly desperate, destitute, often stateless men, women, and children fleeing from war, torture, oppression, and persecution.

Nobody risks their lives across the treacherous waters of the English Channel in unsuitable and unsafe boats unless they are deeply distressed and determined, with nothing left to lose.

Just a few want to get to the UK. Really, by comparison to the 110 million forcibly displaced people in the world, it’s a tiny number.

But the few who tenaciously want to make it to our shores against all odds often have compelling reasons.

Speaking English, having family already here, colonial links; all high on the list.

They take the dangerous “irregular route” because there’s NO safe route available. And under current rules, the ONLY way to claim asylum in the UK is to be IN the UK.

Mr Sunak says under his plan – the same plan as ALL Tory Prime Ministers since Brexit – they will be immediately sent back to their home country “if it is safe to do so” or, if not, deported to a “third country” such as Rwanda.

Isn’t there a BIG clue in Mr Sunak’s words?

The MAJORITY of those arriving here in flimsy boats can’t be sent back to their “home country” because their home country isn’t safe.

That’s why they had to escape their UNSAFE country to find a new home.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees strongly opposes Britain’s plan for sending people to Rwanda on the grounds that Rwanda is not a safe country.

But hey, if the Rwanda Bill is now passed, it will be deemed a safe country, by law, no matter the facts.

And once passed, anyone arriving here by that so-called “irregular route” will automatically forfeit ALL rights to claim asylum in the UK, FOREVER, or to make any legal appeals against that decision.

Instead, they will be immediately locked up in detention centres (call them prisons).

Then, as fast as possible, they will be flown out to Rwanda at huge expense (clue: because in most cases, it won’t be safe to send them back to their home country).

Any human rights claims will ONLY be heard AFTER the asylum seeker has been kicked out.

The irony.

Rather than desperate refugees being “illegal,” it’s Britain that’s acting illegally.

What the government plans to do will almost certainly breach international human rights legislation, and it will certainly be in breach of humanity.

And to think, once-upon-a-time, it was illegal Britons who travelled to other countries in boats, not to claim asylum or to befriend the locals, but to plunder those lands of their riches and to create the world’s biggest empire.

But that’s another story. Or is it?

•  The real illegals. 1-minute video.



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In the first half of 2023, asylum applications have increased all over the EU compared to last year, raising fears of a new ‘crisis’. Since 2015, the crisis has been the main frame of reference for migration at the EU level. This crisis narrative, focused on irregular migration rather than deaths at sea, has been widely discussed for legitimate reasons. In the past years, this narrative has been used to adopt policy orientations and working methods to address an emergency, which was largely created by oppressive policies with little chance of success, adopted at the EU and Member States’ level.

 

The reaction to the crisis and its management were largely read by scholars as a setback to intergovernmental dynamics, particularly because of the EU-Turkey deal, negotiated by the European Council, and in particular Germany. While there are some undeniable signs of intergovernmentalism, particularly in the legislative field, through my doctoral research I argue that since 2015, we have witnessed more EU integration in the migration and asylum policy area. The incapacity to progress on the legislative front pushed the Commission to act strategically through alternative policy frames, including the use of EU funds, and the deployment of Justice and Home Affairs agencies, thus expanding the administrative governance of the policy area, and leading to more integration, despite the intergovernmental façade.

 

Permanent crisis situation

The 2015 so-called “refugee crisis” was a breaking point for the EU on different levels. Parallel to the reception crisis in Europe due to the lack of sustainable reception and asylum policies, it also marked the beginning of a political crisis situation in the migration policy area over the mandatory relocation of asylum seekers, and the politicisation of the situation by populist governments, leading to the impossibility to reach consensus and find compromises over the reform of the EU asylum and migration acquis within the Council.

 

However recent developments put an end to this 10-year deadlock. In the past year, during the Swedish and Spanish presidencies of the Council of the EU, the Member States found a common position on every legislative proposal of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum package. Ministers agreed on overall more restrictive policies, severely undermining asylum law. They will now need to negotiate with the European Parliament to adopt the package before the 2024 European elections.

 

New Pact on Migration and Asylum and Intergovernmental Shadow

In this polarized political climate, to facilitate compromise, or to solve or prevent political crises in the policy area, the Commission, on several occasions, designed migration and asylum law reforms according to the Member States’ preferences, instead of conducting the usual evidence-based preparatory work and institutional procedures. This was particularly the case for the New Pact on Migration and Asylum presented in September 2020, for which Commissioner Johansson did a ‘tour of the capitals’ to consult national Ministries of the interiors. By accommodating the Member States’ political requests, the Commission feeds into a monolithic securitised narrative on migration driven by the Member States, focused on the fight against irregular migration. The New Pact on Migration and Asylum proposes a common approach to address irregular migration and asylum, which blurs the migration categories at the expense of the rights of migrants and undermines the right to asylum.

 

According to the Better Regulation Guidelines, Impact Assessment reports are required for every piece of legislation or policy that might have strong economic, social and environmental impacts, and shall include different policy options to assess their potential impacts. However, they can be bypassed in exceptional situations. Migration policies are among those that should be accompanied by an Impact Assessment Report, but the permanent crisis situation in the policy area inevitably leads to a crisis working mode and emergency preparatory work at the Commission’s level (crisification of policy-making), and the tight preparation deadlines leave little to no time for evidence-based policy-making which requires longer preparation timeframes. Since 2015, this supposed exceptionality in working methods has become a habit in migration policy-making, led by DG HOME. Despite those accommodations to the Member States, compromises on legislative reforms are still difficult to reach in the Council over migration and asylum policy.

 

Expansion of Administrative Tools to govern the EU Migration Area

Migration policy is nevertheless one of the most prolific policy areas when it comes to non-legislative acts and the expansion of administrative governance, particularly for the external dimension of migration and within the EU. The empowerment of Justice and Home Affairs agencies, such as Frontex and the European Union Agency for Asylum, and the increase of EU funds dedicated to migration, both for the internal (Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund) and external dimension (NDICI-Global Europe) provide new tools for the EU to govern the policy area and to provide efficient support to Member States.

 

The Commission has a central role in the implementation and administration of those instruments. Since 2015, most of the acts governing the migration and asylum policy area are administrative acts, which were adopted by the Commission in depoliticised contexts. They are discussed and negotiated with Member States in closed settings, such as the MOCADEM (Operational Coordination Mechanism for the External Dimension of Migration), which was inaugurated under the French Presidency. The lack of transparency and public debate over this governance mode due to the exclusion of the European Parliament makes it more immune to politicisation and instrumentalisation for political interests than legislative acts.

 

When it comes to the external dimension of migration, EU funds and EU agencies are used to support border management operations and irregular migration policies carried out by authorities in third countries. Such partnerships, with countries such as Libya, or Tunisia, which have been harmful to the human rights of migrants, rely entirely on EU funds.

 

Conclusion

Since 2015, the political crisis has reshuffled the governance modalities of the EU migration and asylum policy. Administrative tools are now an essential part of migration policy used by the EU to manage migration, while decision-making regularly departs from institutional procedures and exceptional ‘crisis’ working methods are becoming the norm. Administrative governance put the Commission in a central position of agenda-setter, for the management of the policy area.

 

However, this governance mode proves to be harmful to migrants. By accommodating the legislative requests of the Member States, the Commission is not only becoming a ‘service provider’ rather than the neutral agent it is supposed to be, but it is also perpetuating a unique securitised discourse on migration, which is not supported by research carried out by its staff, nor by academic scholarship. When it comes to administrative governance, the lack of safeguards and democratic scrutiny due to the side-lining of the European Parliament and other external stakeholders put migrants’ rights at risk due to the absence of public debates and transparency in addition to issues of liability in case of human rights violations. The Commission is in the position to start a proper debate over the orientation of the migration policy, however, it is unlikely that this will happen under von der Leyen’s mandate.

 

Thanks to a UACES microgrant, I could participate in the annual conference of the Italian Political Science Society (SISP) in Genoa from 14-16 September 2023. During the conference, I had the opportunity to present my PhD research to a broad audience, in a panel on European migration governance and its challenges, and to receive fruitful feedback for my thesis.

 

Since I started my PhD in 2020, I haven’t been able to work from my university in Palermo, firstly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, then because of fieldwork in Brussels and research visits abroad. This event was thus a great opportunity to get more involved in Italian academic life, particularly in Political Science. I am especially grateful to UACES. Without this microgrant, participation in this conference would have represented a financial burden, as is so often the case in early academic life. Remuneration and compensation for PhD candidates are not equal across Europe, and this represents an obstacle to occasions to connect, and grow as a researcher, so UACES grants are extremely valuable.

 

 

More about the Microgrant Scheme:

The UACES Microgrant scheme is aimed at supporting research for our Early-Career and Individual Members.

The microgrants scheme will provide grants of between £100 and £500 to UACES members to assist them to cover the costs of undertaking their research. The grants are designed to recognise the challenges facing researchers at this time.

 

 

The post Crisis and Migration Policy-Making: Normalization of Exceptionality appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Every Monday, a member of the international academic association ‘UACES’ will address a current topic linked to their research on euradio.

 

Listen to the podcast on euradio.

 

 

For our weekly editorial by UACES, the University Association for Contemporary European Studies, we have the pleasure to welcome Adrian Favero, from the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands. Adrian, you’re inviting us to take a look beyond the borders of the EU, at the forthcoming Swiss federal elections.

 

That’s right, on Sunday 22 October 2023, Swiss voters elect a new parliament. They will choose the 200 members of the National Council, the lower chamber of the Swiss Parliament, as well as 46 members of the upper chamber, called “the Council of States”. MPs will serve from 2023 to 2027.

 

Why is this election relevant for Switzerland’s European neighbours?

Because the 2023 elections will show whether the 2019 “green wave” can be sustained or whether we see a shift towards the right.

Four years ago, roughly 5.3 million voters in Switzerland were summoned to the polls. About 45% of them cast ballots, a turnout that was slightly lower than in previous years. As the polls had predicted, the major parties lost votes and the two green parties – the “Greens” (GPS) and the “Green Liberals” (GLP) – gained seats. The Greens almost doubled their votes, surging to a 13.2% share, and gaining 17 seats in the National Council. This was an unprecedented increase in representation for any single party. The Green Liberal Party also exceeded expected results, with a gain of 3.2% and nine more seats. Both parties benefited from their “competence issue ownership”.

 

What do you understand by this concept?

“Competence Issue Ownership” describes a situation in which some parties are perceived by the public as being clearly the most qualified or competent in a specific area. With more awareness and salient debates about climate change, this is what happened to the green parties in Switzerland.

In 2023, however, we see a different situation.

This year’s polls indicate that the tables may turn. Most current surveys and forecasts confirm that the right-wing populist “SVP” will win seats back from the Greens. Unlike in 2019, climate change does not dominate the political agenda anymore.

 

Have the Swiss citizens turned their back on the fight against climate change?

No, climate change is still a pressing issue for many citizens, but the people’s concerns for the environment do no longer necessarily translate into votes for the Green Parties.

On the one hand, other topics, such as healthcare costs, pensions, and immigration, are widely felt and more tangible. At present, the SVP seems to win back votes with their focus on these issues. This is where they are felt to have “competence issue ownership”, which is expected to give them a significant boost.

And on the other hand, climate activists who glue themselves to roads cause massive disruptions and are often seen as a nuisance, which does not help their cause. As such, climate change is of course not off the table of concerns but has been temporarily replaced by more immediate threats which call for instant solutions, and the SVP benefits from this shift.

 

What about the rest of the political spectrum?

The two parties in the centre are expected to attract roughly the same number of votes and seats as in 2019. And on the left, the Social Democrats are also predicted to win votes, although to a rather moderate extent. It’s really the two green parties that are expected to lose significantly.

Importantly, however, national forecasts usually predict only the results for the National Council, which is elected based on a system of proportional representation. The second chamber, the “Council of States”, which is elected by majority vote in most cantons, is also important in determining the political direction of parliament but remains a cantonal issue. Currently, the Centre Faction (14 seats) and the Radical-Liberal Faction (12 seats) are the dominant forces in this body.

 

What else should we watch out for?

It will also be interesting to see whether the parliament will maintain the number of female representatives. Currently, the National Council has 84 women, a share of 42% of the chamber. This puts Switzerland second in Europe, behind Sweden, in women’s representation in the legislature.

 

An interview conducted by Laurence Aubron.

 

The post Swiss Elections appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Unexpected finds are one of the joys of archival research. In September 2023 I set out to conduct research in the Historical Archives of the European Union in Florence thanks to a UACES Microgrant. My research explores the career of the US diplomat, economist, journalist and scholar Miriam Camps, née Camp. Camps is best known for having authored the book Britain and the European Communities, 1955-1963. Published in 1964, it is still one of the most detailed and best-informed books on Britain’s first attempt to become a member of the EEC. When writing the book, Camps made use of the insider contacts she had established while working for the US State Department in the 1940s and early 1950s. These individuals then happened to be in leading positions in the European institutions and the British foreign office during the accession negotiations.

At the archives, I was hoping to find traces of Camps in the personal papers of François Duchêne (or rather the collection of sources that formed the basis of his Jean Monnet biography) and the federalists John Pinder and Uwe Kitzinger with whom Camps had worked at Chatham House in the 1960s and 1970s. Camps, with Pinder, Kitzinger and a few others such as Richard Mayne and Roy Pryce, were also pioneers in establishing the discipline of European Studies (I have published on this issue elsewhere). Pinder and Kitzinger also happened to be among the founders of UACES. While Camps featured heavily in Duchêne’s papers, she was less present in Pinder and Kitzinger’s papers. This is probably because in the 1970s Camps turned her back on European integration and focused more on the reform of GATT and the international trading order, so was not prominent anymore among those shaping the scholarly agenda of European Studies.

Pinder, however, was – in his publications, as director of the think tank Political and Economic Planning, and as a federalist activist. He was also a frequent speaker at early UACES conferences. Amongst his papers was the programme of the 8th Annual Conference at the University of Warwick, which was dedicated to the topic ‘Origins of the European Community – Progress and Prospects?’. This conference programme suggests that early UACES conferences were much more historical in their focus, much smaller, much more British, and male-dominated. The Warwick conference was a two-and-a-half-day affair and there were no parallel sessions. Crucially, its’ speakers comprised of a mixture of academics, campaigners for European integration, and former and current civil servants involved in shaping European integration in the early years, with some speakers whose careers had spanned all of these roles. Roy Pryce, for instance, had started his career as an information officer at the ECSC High Authority in the 1950s, and had then worked for Jean Monnet’s Action Committee before he became founding director of the Centre for Contemporary European Studies at the University of Sussex. In 1973, Pryce went full circle and returned to the Eurocracy as a civil servant in the European Commission’s Directorate General for Information.

What does this suggest? Still in the 1970s, Europeanists were a small crowd, not necessarily confined to one (academic) role but switching between functions and, like Pinder, Kitzinger and Pryce, were activists as much as scholars of European integration. Miriam Camps, though more detached from Europe in that period, has to be counted among this group. Although multifaceted, she used each of her roles to promote European integration, transatlantic relations and more specific to her, a rules-based global trading order.

 

 

More about the Microgrant Scheme:

The UACES Microgrant scheme is aimed at supporting research for our Early-Career and Individual Members.

The microgrants scheme will provide grants of between £100 and £500 to UACES members to assist them to cover the costs of undertaking their research. The grants are designed to recognise the challenges facing researchers at this time.

 

 

The post Unexpected Finds: Stumbling Across the Early History of UACES appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

For our weekly editorial by UACES on euradio, the University Association for Contemporary European Studies, we have the pleasure to welcome Dr Cleo Davies, from the University of Warwick, in the United Kingdom. Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

 

 

Earlier this month, on 7 September, it was announced that the United Kingdom finally joined the European research programme “HORIZON” again.

That’s right. The UK becomes the seventeenth non-EU member state country to be associated to the EU’s flagship funding programme for research and innovation, alongside countries like Israel, Norway, Türkiye, Tunisia and Ukraine. With negotiations either finalised or ongoing with New Zealand, South Korea, Canada and Morocco amongst others, the UK’s research institutions and researchers are being plugged back into the world’s largest research programme.

 

So that puts an end to an uncertainty which lasted three years.

It’s because the UK’s continued association post-EU membership got entangled in the politics of Brexit.

Participation in Union Programmes was negotiated in 2020 as part of the future UK-EU relationship and included in the “TCA”, the “Trade and Cooperation Agreement”. It was not a sticking point during the negotiations. But whilst the terms of participation were agreed in the TCA, the details were not adopted because the EU only agreed in December 2020 on its Multiannual Financial Framework, and had not yet finalised the programme’s legal framework. Instead, two draft protocols were part of a Declaration attached to the TCA in which both parties stated their ‘ambition that UK entities would be able to participate from the beginning of the programmes’.

 

But that was not the case.

No. When in March 2021, the UK government announced the extension of grace periods under the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland, in a unilateral move and without first informing its European counterpart via the governance structures of the Withdrawal Agreement, levels of trust between the EU and the UK reached a new low point. The EU looked for ways to apply pressure. It took the decision to halt progress on finalising the provisions for association to Union programmes, in spite of its own interests. Indeed, not only were UK research institutions major partners for EU-based institutes, but fragmenting research capacity also goes against the very purpose and principles of Horizon Europe.

Nevertheless, to ensure continuity and avoid uncertainty, UK research institutions and researchers were able to apply to the first calls under Horizon Europe. Furthermore, the UK government launched the Horizon Europe Guarantee in November 2021 to plug the gap in funding for successful bids in the first wave of calls.

 

Did the famous Windsor Framework, signed earlier this year, have an impact on the situation?

It certainly broke the deadlock in EU-UK relations, also paving the way for a resolution on the UK’s association to Union Programmes. But it took another six months.

Once again, the politics of Brexit threatened to derail finalising the UK’s participation in Union programmes.

In April, just as discussions had resumed, the UK government published its provisions for an alternative to the UK’s association to Horizon Europe, the so-called Pioneer Prospectus. With the UK concerned to secure ‘value-for-money’, Brussels was getting weary over the UK’s perceived attempts to renegotiate terms agreed in the TCA. In July 2023, amid rumours that a deal with the EU had been agreed, Rishi Sunak delayed his decision further, weighing the pros and cons of the UK’s alternative. Had the Pioneer Prospectus been rolled out, it would have set the UK on a different path and made association to the EU programme less likely.

 

So what does this all mean concretely?

The UK joins Horizon Europe and the Copernicus Programme. It will have access to EU Space Surveillance and Tracking services. UK researchers will be able to access Horizon Europe funding from 2024 work programmes and onwards until 2027. They will be hoping that by then, UK-EU relations will have further normalised, avoiding any future prospect of a repeat of the delays and uncertainty of the past two and a half years.

 

Interview conducted Laurence Aubron

The post The UK’s Association to EU Programmes appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dr Kathryn Simpson, Associate Professor in Politics & Economics of the European Union, Keele University. Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

Together with Nick Startin, whom we know well at Euradio, you have recently published a piece of research on “how the tabloid press shaped the Brexit vote” back in 2016.

That’s right. There has been a wealth of academic research attempting to explain the Brexit vote, with a lot of different approaches. What we were interested in was to find out to what extent did the UK’s tabloid press shape public opinion during the referendum and whether this did influence the outcome.

In Britain ‘hard’ euroscepticism stemming from the tabloid press has long been widespread. Since the Maastricht era, tabloid newspapers such as The Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express have become renowned for portraying the EU in negative terms and as against the national interest. Some infamous headlines such as The Sun’s ‘Up Yours Delors’ front-page have become iconic reference points for British eurosceptics.

 

So how did you go about your research?

We analyse the final stages of the EU referendum campaign by focusing on the front pages of the five British daily tabloids – The Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Express and the Daily Star – looking at the four weeks prior to the referendum, which coincided with the so-called ‘purdah’ period during which no official information is released any more.

We found that the tabloid press progressively centred on the theme of immigration to shape its eurosceptic narrative and set the agenda in the final stages of the campaign. Which is in line with other research that found ‘coverage of immigration more than tripled over the course of the campaign, rising faster than any other political issue’.

In terms of support for Brexit by readership, The Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, with a combined readership of almost four million outnumbered the Remain supporting Daily Mirror by four to one. Scrutiny of the front pages of the five tabloids also illustrates how the three tabloids supporting Brexit devoted their front pages to Brexit far more frequently than either the Remain-supporting Daily Mirror or the neutral Daily Star.

 

So people were bombarded with Brexit-supporting front pages?

Yes, they were. The Daily Express and the Daily Mail devoted over three quarters of their front pages to the referendum. Overall, there were 48 pro-Brexit front pages, compared to the seven Remain or neutral front pages in the final stage before the referendum. And of these 48 front pages, 27 were directly (or indirectly) related to immigration. By contrast, the Remain-supporting Daily Mirror only started to illustrate its support for EU membership with front-page headlines in the final three days of the campaign.

Our analysis is reinforced by an IPSOS Mori opinion poll published on the day of the referendum which showed that ‘concern with immigration had risen by ten percentage points [to 48%] since May, when concern stood at 38%.’ Concern with immigration was particularly high – over 60% – ‘for Conservative supporters, those aged 65 and over and those from the socio-economic category C2, referring to qualified workers. All three of these demographics are core in terms of the readership of the British Tabloid Press.

 

But do people actually believe what they read in these newspapers?

It’s a long-standing debate, and we recognise this limitation of our conclusions. However, research in this area does reinforce our argument about the impact of the agenda-setting, anti-immigration, ‘bombardment approach’ on influencing tabloid readers. In a referendum, where one third of voters made up their mind which way to vote in the final stages of the campaign, such a highly polarized framing undoubtedly had an impact.

 

This post draws on the article ‘Tabloid Tales: how the British Press Shaped the Brexit Vote‘, co-authored with Dr Nick Startin, Associate Professor of International Relations, John Cabot University, Rome, and published in the Journal of Common Market Studies. A version of this blog was also published on the UK in a Changing Europe website.

 

Interview conducted Laurence Aubron

 

 

The post Tabloid Tales appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

By Patrick Bijsmans (Maastricht University)

In recent decades criticism on the European Union (EU) and even the complete dismissal of European integration – a range of positions generally grouped under the umbrella term ‘Euroscepticism’ – have gained ground. Euroscepticism has become mainstream, as “it has become increasingly more legitimate and salient (and in many ways less contested) across Europe as a whole” (Brack & Startin, 2015, p. 240). Events such as referendums and European Parliament (EP) elections provide a particularly good opportunity for Eurosceptic movements to mobilise (Usherwood, 2017).

In my recent Journal of Common Market Studies article, I look at the mainstreaming of Euroscepticism by studying the coverage of EP election debates in the Netherlands in 2009, 2014 and 2019. I examine mainstreaming through a two-part qualitative analysis that centres around a fourfold typology, which distinguishes between supportive, Euroalternative, soft Eurosceptic and hard Eurosceptic claims (Table 1). Here, I build on the concepts of soft and hard Euroscepticism developed by Taggart and Szczerbiak. Yet, by introducing ‘Euroalternativism’, I avoid soft Euroscepticism’s catch-all nature. Euroalternativism implies criticism towards (elements of) EU policies or its institutional design that is essentially supportive of the EU and European integration (FitzGibbon, 2013). I also add support for the existing nature of the EU and its policies to my categorisation, so as to take into account the “complex interaction among competing pro-integration narratives and counter-narratives to European union” (McMahon & Kaiser, 2022, p. 1). Finally, I further refine the categorisation by distinguishing between statements regarding (I) the EU polity (its political system and its institutions) and (II) EU policies.

Table 1: Possible positions on European integration

There has been relatively less attention for mass media in the study of Euroscepticism, which is surprising given their central role in contemporary European democracies (Caiani & Guerra, 2017). Furthermore, most existing research has taken a quantitative perspective, whereas scholars have argued that a qualitative approach focussing on discourses and narratives is more suitable for achieving an encompassing understanding of Euroscepticism’s changing meaning and importance (Leconte, 2015). Indeed, as Brown et al. illustrate what is and what is not mainstream in the public sphere is prone to change because ideas change through debates in that same public sphere.

The first part of my analysis consists of a manual coding of EU-related claims by actors in three newspapers – De Telegraaf, De Volkskrant and NRC Handelsblad – that play a central role in the Dutch mediated public sphere. The analysis of claims focusses on two essential elements of a claim, namely, ‘who’ (the claimant) and ‘what’ (the subject of the claim), plus on determining the assessment of EU affairs through a close reading of the wording (Koopmans & Statham, 2010). The second part of the analysis zooms out again to place the claims analysis in the context of the wider EP election debates in the Dutch public sphere. Hence, in contrast to the first part of the analysis that follows a pre-established categorisation, the second part looks at the overall story and the key themes as present in the material analysed.

In total I analysed 3148 claims. Figure 1 presents an overview of the way in which the EU and its policies were discussed in the Dutch-mediated debate on the EP elections. Despite some differences between the three mediated debates, it becomes clear that supportive claims are least prominent. Instead, criticism of and opposition to the EU has become widespread, whether essentially supportive or fundamentally Eurosceptic; because, while representing “pro-system opposition” (FitzGibbon, 2013), Euroalternative claims are still a form of criticism on the EU.

Figure 1: Distribution of claims*

* In solid fill the percentages of claims that concern the EU polity. In pattern fill the percentages of claims that concern EU policy.

As such, Figure 1 suggests that Euroscepticism has indeed become mainstream; that it is at the centre of the debates in the Dutch public sphere. Yet, it comes in different guises, namely, Euroalternative, soft Eurosceptic and hard Eurosceptic claims. Building on this, the second part of the analysis calls for an even more nuanced assessment and puts forward three key points.

First, during the three EP elections, Euroscepticism in its various guises was specifically mainstreamed in a debate that concerned the pros and cons of integration, with limited attention for policies. This illustrates that there is an interplay between pro-con narratives, as suggested by McMahon and Kaiser (2022).

Second, what is being mainstreamed still amounts to a vague notion of Euroscepticism. As such, we may ask what Euroscepticism was being mainstreamed? For instance, in an article in De Volkskrant on 5 June 2009, the ongoing campaign was said to be “governed by Euroscepticism”, while it simultaneously referred to a “Eurocritical wave” and the “anti-European camp”.

Third, at the same time, the place of Eurosceptics in the debate gradually changes, turning them from outsiders into insiders. Eurosceptics’ existence is no longer merely observed and noted, but they are increasingly treated as equal and legitimate actors in the EU debate. Brexit may have mattered here, as the hard edges of Euroscepticism have at least partly withered away (cf. de Vries, 2018).

In essence then, my article illustrates that the statement that Euroscepticism has become mainstream is partly a simplification of a development in which criticism of and opposition to the EU are prone to change. Even focussing on EP elections alone creates problems, as they skew debates toward issues of integration – in some of my other work, I find that day-to-day EU debates focus on policies and policy alternatives. It is therefore important that we continue to treat the term ‘Euroscepticism’ with caution. In fact, perhaps we need to even go one step further and, paraphrasing Ophir (2018), ought to ask ourselves ‘what kind of concept is Euroscepticism?’. In other words, shouldn’t researchers in the field of Euroscepticism consider re-launching the conceptual debate? Obviously, this is not an easy challenge. Yet, it exactly this conceptual puzzle that I am currently exploring with my colleague Luca Mancin and we are looking forward to sharing our thoughts at a conference near you soon!

Bio

Patrick Bijsmans is Associate Professor in Teaching and Learning European Studies and Associate Dean for Education at Maastricht University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. His research focusses on media and Euroscepticism, as well as curriculum development and learning in the international classroom. Find more about Patrick’s work on Twitter and his personal website.

 

 

The post What is Actually Being Mainstreamed in the Mainstreaming of Euroscepticism? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This week saw UK in a Changing Europe drop a report on public opinion and Brexit.

It’s notable partly because there’s less and less in-depth exploration of this question with the passage of time: even if Brexit isn’t actually ‘done’ in poli-sci terms, it increasingly is in social and party-political ones (as witnessed by the ‘Europe policy’ wasteland of the Labour conference this week).

But it’s also notable because it reminds us that even with something as momentous as Brexit – which was genuinely A Big Deal not so long ago – publics do not hold consistent views.

Consider this:

This is a classic chart of recent years: ‘everyone’ thinks Brexit’s a crock, regardless of voting behaviour or intention. It’s the heart of the Bregret-Rejoin narrative, wherein we realised we’ve done a terrible thing, to which the answer is to undo it all and go back to The Good Old Days.

You can look elsewhere for discussion of why this is a problematic narrative, but let’s leave it with the observation that it was precisely The Good Old Days that led to the 2016 referendum in the first place. Old? yes. Good? debatable.

Anyway, let’s look at the next chart:

For all that most people think Brexit’s been rubbish so far, that doesn’t translate into the longer-term. A clear majority of Leavers think it can all turn the corner in the end, enough that the overall population view is much more ambivalent than the previous data might suggest.

When I tweeted about this at the time, much of the response was one of either “these people are obviously misguided” or “it’s just a minority of the population, so ignore them”.

I can understand where both views come from: the onslaught of evidence about the costs of Brexit continues week after week, while the swing from the referendum result is significant and clear.

However, it all feels like it has fallen once more into the classic traps of this domain.

The leitmotif of British European policy has always been its use to beat opponents; there has consistently been more interest in scoring domestic party political points than in finding broad consensus about the purpose of dealings with European states.

The referendum was much more a device to overturn domestic power structures than it was a considered debate on the situation of the UK in the world. Just as the fights to control the narrative of What Brexit Meant weren’t that much about EU policy but instead about owning the next generation of political discourse.

That this was both wearying and unsuccessful should be clear enough to all involved and – you might hope – would point to trying a different way of going about things. Maybe by looking for ways to reach across divides, instead of trashing those who disagree.

Maybe not.

As the referendum campaign and fallout demonstrated, rationalist arguments about costs and benefits have significant limits. People hold inconsistent views that are often more shaped (and shapeable) by emotion than cold, hard facts. ‘Take back control’ and ‘get Brexit done’ are powerful messages, whatever you think of the politics behind them (which many people didn’t think about particularly).

So yes, most people think Brexit is a mess, and yes, most people don’t think it’s ever going to turn out well. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be looking for ways to build new narratives and approaches that reach out those who disagree. Otherwise, we will find that any new policy choice is neither equitable nor durable.

The post A note on public opinion and Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Within the rapidly-expanding area of competition law and healthcare, public hospitals and state aid may seem at first a mundane topic when contrasted with developments in connection with pharmaceutical policy and health technology. Nevertheless, the CJEU’s April 2023 Casa Regina Apostolorum judgment has reignited fundamental questions about the very applicability of EU competition policy which have implications far beyond the case’s focus on the interaction between private providers and public hospitals, and state support to the latter, in Italy.  

This post considers how the Casa Regina Apostolorum case fits within wider analysis of competition reforms in healthcare, and the tensions which now emerge between this judgment and the Commission’s Evaluation of the State Subsidy Rules for Health and Social Services of General Economic Interest which reported in December 2022. 

The four categories of European healthcare and competition reforms: 

The expansion of private sector delivery of public healthcare services might be considered at the heart of competition reforms in healthcare systems across Europe. This closer interaction between public and private healthcare has narrowed the gap where once the two may have appeared distinct. Such developments are found across the typologies of healthcare system in Europe, even though it is considered that insurance-based systems may be more amenable to competition reforms than taxation-funded systems.

Following discussion (by Guy and by Odudu) of competition reforms in English healthcare and the applicability of EU competition law, the interaction between public and private healthcare can be framed as “four categories of European healthcare” thus: 

 

Where once there may have existed a clear distinction between a public healthcare system (category 1) and a supplementary or complementary private healthcare market (category 4), the increasing interaction between public and private healthcare suggests a grey area which narrows this gap. Within this, category 2 represents the activity often underpinning competition law claims: a challenge by a private provider that, for example, state support favours public hospitals. Category 3 activity provides an example of arguments raised in such cases, including Casa Regina Apostolorum:  that public providers charging patients for certain services contributes to evidence that an entire healthcare system has shifted away from its solidarity basis to a competition basis. 

Such category 2 activity has been seen in various cases involving public hospitals across EU member states – notably the IRIS-H network in Brussels, but also in Germany, Czechia, and Estonia, as well as in Italy with Casa Regina Apostolorum. The latter is unusual for proceeding to appeal – these cases are typically handled under the Commission’s SGEI package for health and social services, which is intended to reduce the administrative burden on Member States in meeting compatibility criteria for granting support to SGEI. 

The two iterations of the SGEI package to date (from 2005 and 2012) have both specified hospitals as a candidate for this kind of assessment: this would seem to suggest a degree of intuition regarding the extent to which these particular healthcare institutions are amenable to competition reforms in general and being subject to the application of the Article 107(1) TFEU prohibition on state aid in particular. Here, three specific points are worth noting. 

Firstly, and most fundamentally to these assessments, the focus seems to “buffer” around the question of whether the recipient of the contested aid is an “undertaking”. A positive finding can simply lead to the conclusion of classification as SGEI, as in the aforementioned Brussels Hospitals case, thus an exception to applying the prohibition to other economic activities not so classified. A negative finding – as happened from the Commission, the General Court, and the CJEU in Casa Regina Apostolorum – means total exemption.  

Secondly, the requirement for the aid to give a “selective advantage” has required clarification. Here attention is typically paid to the functions of private providers in delivering healthcare services and where and how these may differ from the functions of public providers. The distinction apparently drawn here relates to questions of continuity and viability of service provision – in other words, where a private provider could exit, a public provider may be deemed broadly either “too big”, or certainly “too politically sensitive” to fail. Such considerations feature in the Brussels Hospitals case, but gave rise to an interesting categorisation of “genuine SGEI” in the aforementioned German hospital case.  

Finally, the apparent preference of patients not to travel for hospital treatment raises questions about the requirement for an effect on trade between Member States. Thus in this regard, contrasts emerge – for example between the aforementioned Brussels and Czechia hospitals cases between where a public hospital may deliver specialist services, or whether it may treat a significant or a negligible number of patients from neighbouring Member States in a border region. 

Taken together, it might be considered that if this diversity of considerations relate to a seemingly self-contained category such as hospitals, then the broader specification of “SGEI…meeting needs as regards health and long-term care” by the 2012 SGEI package could well generate further questions and hurdles. 

The legacy of Casa Regina Apostolorum 

As noted above, the Casa Regina Apostolorum case developed across a Commission assessment in connection with the 2012 SGEI package, and two appeals to the General Court and the CJEU, both of whom upheld the Commission’s finding that the state aid prohibition did not apply. This would seem to follow a range of relevant case law, so is not an unexpected finding. Indeed the absence of an Advocate General opinion would seem to highlight the lack of a new question of law for the CJEU to consider. Aside from the CEPPB approach of further disaggregating activities, it is currently hard to see how new questions of law might be developed in light of a tendency to “compare apples and oranges” with cases on diverse healthcare (and other) topics – notably the experience of the Slovak health insurance system in Dôvera with the situation in Casa Regina Apostolorum (as noted by the appellant in the latter). 

What is particularly notable also is the lack of attention paid by the courts to the relevance of Commission SGEI assessments. This is particularly striking in the case of the CJEU, whose judgment follows the Commission’s December 2022 review. In this, the Commission highlighted the lack of clarity about applying competition law and consequent legal uncertainty as a particular stumbling block. So with regard to state support to hospitals, we appear to be at something of an impasse which seems difficult to overcome. The lack of clarity regarding public hospitals is likely to pose questions about not only other healthcare institutions and practices, but also the effectiveness of the SGEI package more generally. 

For now, Casa Regina Apostolorum appears a niche case with broader implications which will emerge in time from a range of perspectives, not least competition and constitutionalism. 

 

This post is part of work being developed by Dr Mary Guy in the context of the “Public Health, Markets and Law” workshop hosted by Dr Mina Hosseini at University College Dublin in September 2023 and funded by the MSCA COMPHACRISIS project. 

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