Ideas on Europe Blog

- New Blog Post by Alexandros Kyriakidis: “Is the IMF necessary for the 3rd Greek Program?“

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Inga Ulnicane

‘Crisis should not be wasted’. Since the beginning of the global economic crisis in 2008, this idea has been repeated many times suggesting that crisis should rather be used as an opportunity for innovative solutions and necessary reforms. One of such potential changes emphasized by European institutions has been prioritization of research and innovation as sources of sustainable growth and a way to avoid similar crisis in future.  What actually happened to research and innovation policies in Europe during the times of crisis? Which measures have European institutions taken to facilitate research and innovation? Has the crisis been used as an opportunity to facilitate research and innovation? These are some of the questions I address in my recent article ‘Research and innovation as sources of renewed growth? EU policy responses to the crisis’ (Ulnicane 2016). The article is part of a special issue ‘EU policies in times of crisis’ comparing the impact of crisis on nine EU policies, e.g. energy, migration, and health.

The article primarily analyses EU research and innovation policy which during the recent decades has considerably expanded (see e.g. Chou and Gornitzka 2014; Chou and Ulnicane 2015; Metz 2015) and combines a number of funding and coordination instruments. However, as research and innovation policy is a shared competence between the EU and national level and most research and innovation funding is allocated nationally, it is also important to look at developments at national level.

 

Increasing expectations vs. decreasing or stagnating budgets

While expectations that research and innovation will help to solve major societal and economic challenges increased during the crisis, funding for research and innovation at the same time decreased or stagnated in a number of countries. Although according to Eurostat data overall share of research and development funding within the European Union increased from 1.85% of GDP in 2008 to 2.03% in 2014 (which nevertheless is still far from declared target of investing 3% of GDP in research and development by 2020), there are huge differences across European countries. The table below shows the data from the Public Funding Observatory 2015 (page 11) of the European University Association. According to these data, during the times of crisis from 2008-2014 public funding for universities continued to increase considerable in Norway, Sweden, and Germany, where it also was part of economic stimulus package. In some other countries like in Austria the increase in funding continued but at a slower pace than before the crisis. At the same time, in many countries in Southern and Eastern Europe public funding for universities has experienced smaller or larger cuts. This has led to growing concerns about increasing innovation divide in Europe among leading and catching-up countries. However, in recent months austerity measures have also affected universities in leading innovation countries – Finland and Denmark.

 

Evolution   of public funding for universities 2008-14 (adjusted for inflation) Countries   Between 20% and 40% increase Germany, Norway, Sweden Between 10% and 20% increase Austria, Belgium, Denmark,   Poland Between 5% increase and 5%   decrease France, Netherlands, Portugal Between 5% and 10% decrease Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia Between 10% and 20% decrease Czech Republic, Serbia, Spain,   Iceland, Italy Between 20% and 40% decrease Ireland, Lithuania, United   Kingdom More than 40% decrease Greece, Hungary, Latvia

 

At times when national public funding is cut, universities are increasingly looking for other sources of funding either from industry or from international programs such as EU Structural Funds or Horizon 2020. Although an overall EU budget for 2014-2020 was cut for the first time, funding for Horizon 2020 program increased for 30% in comparison to the previous Framework Program 7 and reached almost 80 billion euros (which is less than 10% of the overall EU budget). Since then some funding has been redirected to the European Fund for Strategic Investments. First predictions about the next post-2020 EU Framework Program do not foresee a big increase in budget.

Since World War II research and innovation funding and system has expanded tremendously in many European countries. Might the prolonged and predicted stagnation in many European countries and potentially also at EU level imply that in future expansion of research and innovation activities in Europe will slow down? Would expansion of knowledge-based activities move to other world regions like Asia?

 

Reinforced focus on fast and quantifiable impact

In times of austerity, idea of doing ‘more with less’ became more popular expecting research and innovation system to become more efficient and deliver more economic and societal impact with limited resources. Representatives of European research and innovation stakeholder organizations interviewed (Ulnicane 2016) recognize importance of impact but also pointed out challenges of quantifying it and choosing appropriate time horizons for evaluating it. While idea of research impact has been widespread also before the crisis, experts have experienced that during the times of crisis focus on impact increases. One of them explains: ‘Pressure to have to demonstrate that your research is going to produce that many euros in return, it comes and goes but during the times of crisis this is very strongly present.’ A leader of a stakeholder organization tells that research and innovation organizations increasingly have to prove their impact using quantitative indicators:

‘You have to prove your value even tougher in the environment where the budgets are lower. Am I paying for research which may bring something back in years or am I paying for health care? The national governments and politicians have to answer. If you are going to pay money which is long-term and not helping cohesion of society today, you need to prove your impact much more. So research organizations are even more scrutinized by the national governments with very strong knowledge indicators. And reporting on institutional funding they get is getting more and more detailed every year: How many patent applications? How many cooperations you developed with industry? How many contracts you get from industry? How many researchers go to the industry? [...] They have to give numbers. When I talk about impact, it is real economic impact. And how do you show that in research? It is tough. It is not an easy question. And they are asked to prove that more and more.’

Moreover, times of crisis, fast solutions are expected. An expert explains: ‘Science is expected to deliver next iPhone or innovation that creates jobs, that strengthens industry. Science can do all this but this is a long-term investment [...]. There would not be tangible results tomorrow. And in times of crisis this is a thinking that disappears completely, everyone wants a quick solution.’ Focus on impact and efficiency priotizes applied research and puts fundamental science under more pressure. There might be some good opportunities to increase effiency of existing research and innovation systems but at some point there might also be limits how much more can be done with less.

 

Old tension in Europe of Knowledge: excellence vs. cohesion

Crisis reinforced one of the long-standing tensions in the Europe of Knowledge, namely, between excellence and cohesion. Since the early EU Framework Programs in the 1980s and 1990s, major share of highly competitive and excellence oriented Framework Program funding has gone to the Northern countries, while catching-up countries (at that time Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal) mostly benefited from research and innovation support within the EU Structural Funds allocated to less developed regions. Similarly, in the EU budget 2014-2020 the Horizon 2020 provides competitive funding primarily based on excellence, while a considerable share – 83 billion Euros – of Structural Funds goes to research and innovation and small and medium size enterprises in less developed regions. When 12 more recent EU member states released a common position that Horizon 2020 should address the needs of all member states, a specific objective of ‘spreading excellence and widening participation’ was added to the Horizon 2020.

Taking into account that this division – the Framework Program funds go mainly to the northern countries (share of FP funds in national budgets can be higher in catching-up countries because their overall research budgets are lower), while the EU Structural Funds support research and innovation predominantly in catching-up countries – is some 20 or 30 years old, some questions can be asked: Is this a productive division, does it work, and what might be alternative approaches? Have the EU Structural Funds for research and innovation helped to build capacities in southern member states and are they now more successful participants in the competitive Framework Program?  Can there be any lessons drawn from the experience of southern members (e.g. under which conditions Structural Funds help to build research and innovation capacities) that can be applied to ‘new’ members? What are the first results of the EU Structural Funds for research and innovation in eastern member states which have been receiving them for twelve years since 2004? Do new features of the Structural Funds such as ex-ante conditionality of implementing country specific recommendations from the European Semester before receiving the Funds help to increase their role in reforming research and innovation systems in catching-up regions?

 

New paradigms or gradual change?

Although crises are seen as good moments to carry out radical transformations and paradigm changes, developments in EU research and innovation policy in times of crisis can be characterized as incremental and path-dependent. New priorities and funding and coordination instruments largely built on earlier Framework Programs and the Lisbon strategy. Does it mean that crisis has been wasted? Is there a need for radical changes and new paradigms in EU research and innovation policy or is gradual change a more productive way for improving it? What would these new paradigms be? – More considerable shifts of EU funding from agriculture to research and innovation or of competences from national to EU level? Are there any innovative ideas for solving excellence vs. cohesion tension? Will ongoing discussions on Open Science and the European Innovation Council lead to radical or incremental changes?

The study of EU research and innovation policy in times of crisis suggest a number of academic and policy-relevant questions for further investigation including new developments in multi-level governance (e.g. conditionality, European Semester) and their effects; the role and interests of and interactions among the main actors and institutions (European Commission, Parliament, national governments, and stakeholder organizations); and implementation of new and revised policy priorities and instruments. The special issue on EU policies in times of crisis demonstrates that comparison of changes across different policy fields is a powerful approach with a great potential for deepening understanding of recent developments in European integration. I am looking forward to engaging with others interested in these questions also in future and creating novel spaces and forums for addressing them.

 

Dr. Inga Ulnicane is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for European Integration Research, University of Vienna (Austria), where she undertakes research and teaching on European and international knowledge policies and governance. Her recent research on the role of ideas in European science, technology and innovation policy, European integration in research and innovation policy, and international research collaboration has appeared in Journal of European Integration, Journal of Contemporary European Research, and Science and Public Policy. She is one of conveners of the ECPR European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group ‘Politics of Higher Education, Research, and Innovation’ which at the moment has more than 200 members from around the world.

 

References:

Chou, M.-H. and A.Gornitzka (eds) 2014 Building the Knowledge Economy in Europe. New Constellations in European Research and Higher Education Governance  Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Chou, M.-H. and I.Ulnicane (eds) 2015 New Horizons in the Europe of Knowledge. Special issue.  Journal of Contemporary European Research 11(1): 1-152.

Metz, J. 2015 The European Commission, Expert groups, and the Policy Process. Demystifying Technocratic Governance Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ulnicane, I 2016 Research and innovation as sources of renewed growth? EU policy responses to the crisis Journal of European Integration 38(3): 327-41. doi: 10.1080/07036337.2016.1140155

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Tensions have been growing between Greece and the IMF, including a highly controversial Wikileaks leaked conversation between the IMF Mission Chief for Greece and the Head of IMF’s European Department that raised issues at the highest level, with letters being exchanged between IMF’s Managing Director Cristine Lagarde and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Amongst these concerns, the Greek Prime Minister has questioned both the demands of the IMF, but also, indirectly, whether its participation in the 3rd Greek program is necessary or even desirable.

A brief background: The Greek Prime Minister is the leader of the Party SYRIZA, which won the majority in the January 2015 Greek elections – the first left-based, anti-austerity Party to be elected into government across the EU since the beginning of the crisis. Its electoral mandate was to renegotiate the financial assistance (loan) agreements, to sharply reshape the austerity-based conditionality of this assistance (so-called Memorandums of Understanding or MoUs), and to not accept the supervision of the programs by the so-called Troika, i.e. the European Commission, the ECB and the IMF. There were long and arduous negotiations and a Greek referendum (6 July 2015) with an outcome against further austerity measures but of questionable outcome value. On the eve of the referendum (30 June 2015), the Greek PM requested a new, 3rd Greek financial assistance program and an accompanying MoU, officially initiated in August 2015, in a somewhat dramatic policy drift from the electoral mandate of this government. Despite such drift, SYRIZA obtained a majority again in the September 2015 snap elections following through with the 3rd program.

Why, all the fuss in relation to the IMF? As opposed to the previous two Greek programs, in which the IMF participated through corresponding funding, this 3rd one was agreed only with the Eurozone Member State-based, international assistance mechanism ESM, and did not involve the IMF (the last IMF program for Greece expired on January 2016). However, the IMF participated in the drafting of the MoU with a view of providing financial assistance in the future upon satisfaction of two conditions:  (1) a detailed fiscal package that provides a sustainable economic trajectory (focus on pension reform), and (2) the provision of “significant debt relief, well beyond what has been considered so far,” since “Greece’s debt has become unsustainable and that Greece cannot restore debt sustainability solely through actions on its own.”

It is clear that none of the two aforementioned conditions have been fully met. On the structural adjustment side, the Greek government is unwilling to implement even more austerity measures, especially in relation to a further reduction of pensions, after almost 6 years of consolidation. On the debt relief side, the Eurozone Member States, and particularly some such as Germany, essentially oppose any debt relief (which has been reiterated as a necessary action by the IMF), least of all any that would go further than what has already been considered (i.e. a mediocre extension of Greek debt maturities). In the meantime, the IMF considers the targets set by the Greek program as unachievable for the medium to long terms to achieve a sustainable fiscal position.

Is IMF participation then really necessary? It is worth noting on a theoretical level that IMF participation in the Eurozone in the beginning was considered unthinkable and amounting to a testament of the Eurozone’s failure, among others because of the Eurozone’s levels of growth (IMF interventions focused mostly on developing nations), as well as their antagonistic presence (in monetary/finance terms) to the USA /USA dollar. This, however, has long been abandoned as a taboo.

In the current situation, a Eurozone Member State seeking ESM assistance has to request IMF assistance too. Legally, there are two legislative instruments on the EU’s side that govern the request of financial assistance from a Eurozone Member State: the ESM Treaty, upon which the ESM is based, and the Two-Pack EU Regulation 472/2013, laying down the EU-based process relevant to a Eurozone Member State receiving financial assistance. The ESM Treaty, an international treaty concluded outside the EU legal framework, stipulates that not only is the ESM to cooperate with the IMF very closely, with the latter participating both at a financial and technical level, but also that “a euro area Member State requesting financial assistance from the ESM is expected to address, wherever possible, a similar request to the IMF” (Recital 8). Similar provisions are included in Article 13(2)(b) of the Treaty. In addition, the Troika, i.e. wherever possible the IMF as well, is formally tasked with drafting the policy conditionality outlined in the MoU and monitoring its implementation (ESM Treaty Article 13). Similar are the provisions of Regulation 472/2013, whereby a Eurozone Member State requesting financial assistance either from the ESM or the IMF is subject to Troika supervision (Recital 12, Article 7).

Pursuant to the above legal observations, there was also a clear political commitment in the Eurosummit of July 2015 (where the 3rd Greek program was agreed upon) that Greece would request a new IMF financial assistance, to run parallel to the ESM program, stipulating that “Greece will request continued IMF support (monitoring and financing) from March 2016” (emphasis added by author).

So is it necessary for the IMF to partake in the Greek program? For the IMF itself, certainly not. The legal provisions do not contain any type of reciprocity clause, and do not commit the IMF to accepting the request of the Eurozone Member State concerned; in this case Greece. However, on the EU’s side, it seems necessary for a Eurozone Member State that receives financial assistance through the ESM – such as Greece – to request similar assistance from the IMF. In either case, Greece already committed at the highest level (Eurosummit) to requesting IMF assistance and is, therefore, restrained in perceiving a request for IMF participation as optional, especially considering the importance that some Eurozone Member States, such as Germany, place on the IMF’s participation as a guarantor for the program’s efficiency and success. This is, after all, the reason for the close cooperation between the ESM and the IMF as outlined above. However, in the case that the IMF denies the provision of assistance, then there is no stipulation as to how the process unfolds, although it would seem logical that the ESM-based program would continue. What happens remains to be seen. However, clear legal limitations exist as to the options of the Greek government to reject or not apply for IMF participation.

First published on April 20, 2016 at EUI Constitutional Change Through Euro Crisis Law

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A straightforward comparison between Britain remaining in the EU and leaving isn’t possible.

That’s because we know what ‘Remain’ in the EU means – it’s the status quo and we’ve experienced it for four decades.

But Leave?

Nobody knows; nobody can say for sure. Even those campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union cannot agree with each other on their different visions of Brexit.

And even if the ‘Leave’ campaigners could agree with each other, none of them can promise to deliver.

They are not in power, and even if they were in power, their (different) dreams of Brexit would require the agreement of over 50 countries, which would take years to negotiate, with no guarantee of the outcome.

With the exception of Russia, no major country in the world backs Britain to leave the EU.

On his visit to Britain, USA President Obama said that the EU Single Market “brings extraordinary economic benefits to the United Kingdom.” He added that being in the EU “magnifies” British influence.

If Britain left the EU, however, the President warned that it could take up to ten years to negotiate a new trade agreement between the USA and  Britain.

These sentiments were echoed by US Presidential hopeful Hilary Clinton, whose spokesman told The Observer newspaper today that, “She has always valued a strong United Kingdom in a strong European Union. And she values a strong British voice in the EU.”

There are many lists showing the benefits of Britain remaining in the EU that are credible and evidence-based.  That’s because we’ve been a member of the EU (previously called the EEC) for 43 years. We know what we get in the EU. We already have it.

But any lists of the benefits of Brexit have to be entirely hypothetical. Nobody knows for sure. No member state has ever left the EU.

The only honest answer is that there would be years of disruption and uncertainty before we discovered for sure what would be the advantages, if any, of Britain outside of the EU.

And now that the official Vote Leave campaign has indicated that it also wants other countries to leave, how would Britain’s Brexit negotiations fare with the EU?  Our former European allies would know that Brexiters didn’t just want to close a deal with them, but to close the EU itself. (See my other article, ‘What they really want: End of the EU’)

The benefits of Britain in the EU are extensive. Here’s a summary of just some of them:

Free trade

Top of the list is that it’s only because of EU membership that Britain enjoys full free trading status with all the other member states – representing the world’s most lucrative market place, and by far our most important trading partner. As such, almost half of our exports go to the EU, and over half of our imports come from the EU.

The EU has an iron tariff wall against non-members; so would we really want to be on the wrong side of that wall as an ex-member? Even non-European countries that have negotiated ‘free trade’ agreements with the EU don’t enjoy full free trade access to Europe’s internal market, as Britain does now.

Could Britain continue to participate in full free trade if we left the EU?

We don’t know for sure, but it’s less likely.

Unless, like Norway, we were accepted as a member of EFTA/EEA. However, like Norway, we would still have to obey the rules of the EU single market (including free movement of people) and we would still have to pay an annual contribution to the EU.

And like Norway, we would have no say in those rules or the size of our annual contribution to the EU. Would there be any point to leave the EU for that?

A say in Europe

Next on the list is that as a leading member of the EU, we have a say – and votes – on the rules, laws and future direction of our continent, Europe.

Would we have that as a non-EU member?

No non-EU member has a say or vote in those rules, so it’s highly unlikely that an exception would be made for Britain. Otherwise, what would be the point of an exclusive club offering exclusive benefits for members?

Living in the EU

The right to live, work, study or retire across our continent is  a precious membership benefit that around two million Britons already enjoy.

Would that right continue if we left the EU? Nobody really knows, but it’s unlikely.

The residence and other rights of Britons already living across the rest of Europe, and citizens from the rest of Europe already living in Britain, would be thrown into doubt and confusion if ‘Leave’ wins the referendum vote.

Free health care whilst travelling on business or holiday in Europe is another cherished benefit of Britain’s EU membership – that would be unlikely to continue on Brexit.

EU protection

EU laws protecting the rights of workers, consumers and travellers across the continent are probably among the most important reasons for Britain to remain an EU member.

For example, 4-weeks paid holiday a year; the 48 hour working week; anti-discrimination law; guaranteed rights for agency workers; guaranteed worker consultation – all of these protections exist because of the EU.

Would we retain those rights if Britain left the EU?

We don’t know, but it’s unlikely.

If we took away the strong armour of EU employment law, workers’ rights would be at the mercy of a Conservative government. Anyone who believes they would then be in safe hands might be in for a rude shock upon Brexit.

Consumer and traveller protection laws are also arguably much stronger as a result of EU laws than we would have enjoyed under national legislation alone.

In any event, how can a national government assure safety and protection across a continent?

The simple fact is that it can’t – it needs the reach of a pan-European intergovernmental organisation to achieve that (albeit with the democratic consensus of member states).

For example, comprehensive passenger compensation when, say, an Icelandic volcano seriously disrupts air travel – such compensation is only possible because of EU law, not national law.

Abolishing exorbitant mobile-roaming charges across Europe was also only possible because of EU law – no nation state alone could have achieved that. Europe-wide consumer protections, such as when buying products online or by phone, came about because of EU law rather than national law.

Negotiating power

Because the EU is the world’s richest, biggest market-place, and the world’s biggest exporter and importer of manufactured goods and services, it can negotiate the best trade deals with other countries.

It’s often said that when negotiating, you get better deals if you’re the same size or bigger than your opposite number. The EU is the biggest economy – bigger than the USA, bigger than China, bigger than Japan. It has the muscle to negotiate extremely favourable trading terms with the world’s countries.

Could Britain, being considerably smaller and less important than the EU, achieve similarly good trade agreements with the world’s countries?

It’s unlikely, but in any event, it would take many years to find out after we had left the EU.

Collaborations

There are many collaborations that take place between scientists, doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc, between EU member states that are made much easier and more effective because we’re all in the same club.

Could that continue on the same level if Britain left the EU?

Who knows..?

And of course, because of agreements and directives agreed between member states, there is considerable Europe-wide sharing of intelligence, information and practical collaboration in the fields of policing, security, defence and the prevention and combat of crime.

On BBC’s Andrew Marr show today, Home Secretary Theresa May confirmed that Britain doesn’t have open borders, not even to EU citizens. She said:

“We check people at our borders, but what matters at our borders is that  you have the information about people that enables you to make that decision about whether somebody should be allowed into the UK or not.

“We are more likely to have that information if we’re inside the European Union.”

Could that co-operation continue with our EU allies if Britain left the EU? Again, nobody knows – it might, but at this stage, nobody can guarantee that it would.

Is the British electorate likely choose Brexit and all the uncertainties that option offers?

Anything is possible. However, in all the referendums so far in Britain, the electorate has never voted against the status quo.

What will be important is that everybody who can vote in the referendum does vote. That way, at least the decision about Britain’s future will be decisive. 

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Other stories by Jon Danzig:

• EU is the not the USSR
• What does Brexit look like? Nobody knows
• They want their country back, not yours
• List of the latest articles by Jon Danzig

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

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The mandate and budget of Frontex has consistently been enhanced since its inception in 2004. Since the Agency’s role under EU law has expanded, the capacity of Frontex to deal with possible violations of fundamental rights should be strengthened as well. In this regard, the European Ombudsman and the Parliament recommended that Frontex introduced an individual complaint mechanism to handle violations of fundamental rights alleged to have occurred in the course of its operations. Moreover, the European Commission’s proposal of 15 December 2015, designing a European Border and Coast Guard System, included such a complaint instrument. Consequently, this paper analyzes to what extent the individual complaint mechanism guarantees the protection of fundamental rights and ensures that potential incidents are effectively handled by Frontex. Particularly, the strategy and instruments designed by the Regulation nº 1168/2011 of Frontex to promote the protection of fundamental rights is firstly examined. While these instruments promote respect for fundamental rights in all activities of the Agency, they do not provide individuals with an effective remedy to file a complaint against Frontex should they believe their rights have been violated. Secondly, this paper analyzes the degree to which the creation of a complaint mechanism would strengthen control of Frontex operations, given the current limitations of immigrants and asylum seekers to seek judicial redress at the Court of Justice of the European Union. Lastly, the complaint mechanism introduced in the European Border and Coast Guard System is studied as well as the limitations it presents.

–

See, David Fernandez Rojo, “The Introduction of an Individual Complaint Mechanism within Frontex: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back”, Tijdschrift voor Bestuurswetenschappen en Publiekrecht, forthcoming. This paper will be presented in the doctoral conference named “Democratic legitimacy without Parliament: fact or fiction?” on May 20, 2016 in the University of Antwerp.For more information and the program, see website. For more information on the authors and TBP’s special edition, see www.legalworld.be

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So now the truth is out. The ‘Leave’ campaign don’t just want Brexit – they want to see the end of the European Union.

Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, said as much in his keynote speech this week for Vote Leave, the official campaign which he leads, fighting for Brexit in Britain’s EU referendum.

Mr Gove said:

“Britain voting to leave will be the beginning of something potentially even more exciting – the democratic liberation of a whole continent.”

He described Britain’s departure from the EU as “a contagion” that could spread across Europe.

Reporting on Mr Gove’s speech, the BBC stated:

“Leaving the EU could also encourage others to follow suit, said Mr Gove.”

Commenting after the speech, a senior aide for the Leave campaign indicated to the Herald Scotsman that Mr Gove would be, ‘happy if Britain’s in-out referendum sparked similar polls across Europe.’

The Herald Scotsman reporter asked if Brexit would lead to the break-up of the EU as we knew it and the aide replied, “Yes.” When asked if the Out campaign hoped that it would trigger “the end of the Brussels block” the aide replied, “Certainly.”

In his speech, Mr Gove suggested that far from being the exception if Britain left the EU, it would become the norm as most other EU member states would choose to govern themselves. It was membership of the EU that was the anomaly, argued Mr Gove.

The Guardian headline was:

‘Brexit could spark democratic liberation of continent, says Gove’

The Telegraph headline:

‘Michael Gove urges EU referendum voters to trigger ‘the democratic liberation of a whole continent’

The Express headline:

‘BREXIT WILL BREAK-UP EU: Leave vote to spark domino effect across bloc, says Gove’

The Bloomberg headline:

‘U.K. Brexit Vote Would Be End of EU as We Know It, Gove Says’

The Irish Times headline:

‘Michael Gove says other EU states may leave EU’

The right-wing of the Conservative Party, which makes up the biggest support for the Vote Leave campaign, is now in tune with UKIP’s long-held ambition to see the end of the European Union.

On Talk Radio in Spain three years ago, UKIP leader Nigel Farage said that he not only wanted Britain to leave the European Union, he also wanted to see “Europe out of the European Union” – in other words, the complete disintegration of the European Single Market.

This week, Mr Farage shared a Brexit rally platform with Conservative cabinet minister, Chris Grayling, who backed Mr Farage’s chant of, “We want our country back.”

The battle lines are now starkly clear. Britain’s EU referendum is not just about whether Britain should remain in the European Union. It’s now a referendum about whether the European Union itself should continue to exist.

This is no doubt going to wake up all pro-EU supporters across the continent. What happens in Britain on 23 June could result in Brexit and EU breakup.

Britain chose not to be one of the founding members on the Union back in 1957 but joined later, in 1973.

Now Britain might be the first member state to leave the Union, with the open aspiration of the ‘Leave’ campaigners that some or all of the other EU members will follow to the EU exit.

It now seems impossible for ‘Leave’ campaigners to continue with their rhetoric that Britain could negotiate a ‘good deal’ with the European Union if the referendum results in Brexit.

EU leaders will no doubt be in a state of heightened alarm that not only could Britain’s departure from the EU trigger the downfall of the EU, but that this is actually the stated aim of Brexit campaign leaders.

For all of us who cherish the European Union as one of the most successful post-war projects, this is now a battle to ensure that Britain’s EU referendum doesn’t result in either Brexit or the end of the EU.

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Other stories by Jon Danzig:

• EU is the not the USSR
• What does Brexit look like? Nobody knows
• Can’t vote or don’t vote?
• List of the latest articles by Jon Danzig

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

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Isn’t it strange how history sometimes seems to repeat itself? Not always in exactly the same way, but in ways to make it seem uncanny.

Take the remarkable resemblances between the referendum of 1975 and the one we’re having now, both regarding Britain’s future in Europe.

Back in 1974 Labour leader, Harold Wilson, won a general election with a very slim majority.

One year earlier Britain joined the European Economic Community (later to be called the European Union) under a Conservative government led by Edward Heath.

Prime Minister Wilson promised to re-negotiate the terms of Britain’s membership and then to hold a referendum on whether to remain in the EEC.

The Labour government was in favour of Britain’s continued membership. But the cabinet was split. So Mr Wilson suspended Cabinet collective responsibility. Cabinet members were allowed to publicly campaign against each other.

In total, seven of the twenty-three members of the Labour cabinet opposed EEC membership, mostly the left-wing stalwarts of the Labour Party, such as Michael Foot, Tony Benn and Barbara Castle.

In some ways, the 1975 referendum was a mirror image of today.

Unlike today, in 1975 the Labour Party and the TUC were against Britain’s membership of what was then nicknamed the Common Market. Indeed, the Labour Party conference voted 2-to-1 against continued membership.

Also unlike today, in 1975 all main British newspapers were in favour of Britain’s continued membership.

And unlike today, Conservative Party members in 1975 were mostly in favour of Britain’s membership. Indeed, the then leader of the Conservative Party and the Opposition, Margaret Thatcher, fervently campaigned for Britain to stay a member.

Some of the same language was used in the 1975 referendum as today. When Labour cabinet minister, Tony Benn, claimed that Britain had lost half-a-million jobs as a result of membership of the EEC, the Daily Mirror responded by calling him, “The Minister of fear.”

Although many Eurosceptics today claim that, in 1975, they were only told that the European Economic Community was to do with free trade, that wasn’t reflected in the campaign literature of the time. In the ‘No’ campaign brochure voters were warned about Common Market membership:

• To end a thousand years of British freedom and independent nationhood is an unheard of constitutional change.

• Do you want us to be a self-governing nation, or to be a province of Europe?

• Do we want self-government as a great independent nation, or do we want to be governed as a province of the EEC by Commissioners and a Council of Ministers, predominantly foreign, in Brussels?

• Do we want to lose the whole of our individual influence as a nation, which is still great, in order to enhance the status of Europe, which would then function largely outside our control?

David Cameron also only won the General Election in 2015 with a very slim majority.

Just as Prime Minister Harold Wilson had promised in 1974, Prime Minister David Cameron also promised in 2015 that he would renegotiate Britain’s membership of the European Union and then hold a referendum.

Just as detractors in 1975 described Mr Wilson’s reforms of Britain’s membership as ‘cosmetic’, so have Eurosceptics today similarly described Mr Cameron’s reforms.

Just as Harold Wilson’s Labour government was in favour of Britain’s continued membership, so is David Cameron’s Conservative government.

Just as the Labour Party membership was mostly against EEC membership in 1975, in 2016 most Conservative Party members are against Britain’s membership of the European Union.

And just as Harold Wilson allowed his Cabinet Ministers in 1975 to campaign against each other on the question of Britain’s future membership, so has David Cameron in 2016 allowed his Cabinet Ministers to campaign against each other.

Just as in Harold Wilson’s Labour government of 1975, a total of seven of David Cameron’s 22 Cabinet Ministers are campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union.

They are mostly the right-wing stalwarts of the Conservative Party including Michael Gove, Chris Grayling and Iain Duncan-Smith (who recently resigned as a Cabinet Minister).

In June 1975, the electorate voted overwhelmingly – two-to-one – in favour of Britain remaining a member of the European Economic Community.

However, the Labour Party was never the same again.

Nine months after the referendum, Prime Minister Harold Wilson resigned.

Four senior Labour Party members later split from the party and formed the Social Democrats in 1981, later to be merged with the Liberal Party.

The 1974 Labour victory wasn’t to be repeated again for 23 years, when Tony Blair won the General Election for Labour in 1997.

Of course, to what extent, if any, the 1975 referendum was responsible for the change in Labour’s fortunes is difficult to prove, and there were many other factors.

However, it’s interesting to compare the striking similarities between Britain’s referendum of 1975 and the one we are about to have in ten weeks time.

Britain’s second referendum campaign on the question of our membership of the European Community has now officially begun. The vote will take place on 23 June, and we will know the result on 24 June.

Will there be any other similarities to the 1975 referendum? We will have to wait and see..

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Other stories by Jon Danzig:

• EU is the not the USSR
• What does Brexit look like? Nobody knows
• Can’t vote or don’t vote?
• List of the latest articles by Jon Danzig

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The opening of the official campaign on the EU referendum hasn’t been all fireworks; instead, it’s been mostly more of the same. Each side trading consequences and perils, questioning the other side’s competence or intent. In particular, we’ve been lacking vision.

The vision thing is an easy one of trash: too many overtones of Tony Blair, too much of a hostage to fortune. But vision matters: when no one seems to agree about the state we’re in, speaking instead of the state we might achieve looks less problematic.

This is particularly true for Leave. Saying that the status quo isn’t good will only get you so far, whereas a vision of the brighter, better future might well draw in more people. As Sunder Katwala noted some time ago, without that positive construct, Leave lacks a focus to its energies. While that might be a painful process, the potential value of a pre-agreed plan to a Leave side that won the vote would be immense, not least in the Article 50 negotiations that followed.

Again, the problems here are legion. Leave covers a huge array of ideological and party political positions that barely agree on what’s wrong with the EU, let alone what’s to be done. Any attempt to push a plan is thus likely to meet with internal resistance, since it will implicitly favour one worldview or another. As such, it might push away as many as it attracts.

All of which makes Michael Gove’s speech this week all the more interesting.

Gove is one of the more thoughtful figures in the Leave camp, in the sense of working through the implications of different decisions and being grounded in the politics of the situation. However, on this occasion, that thoughtfulness seems to have led him to a strange destination (thanks to whoever on Twitter reminded me of this on the confusion of opinion and action).

Gove’s argument is that the UK will be able to move out of the EU’s control but still maintain full access to its markets. He talks of a free trade area stretching across the European continent, which the UK – by virtue of its size and importance – could almost not help be part of. Moreover, the sheer success of the UK in this new position would start a contagion of democracy and would presage the collapse of the EU itself.

This ‘Goveland‘  obviously suffers a number of problems, as commentators (and Remain) were all too happy to point out. Yes, the UK is a large market for the EU, but not nearly as large as the EU market is to the UK. Coupled to the lack of incentive for other member states to give a generous deal to the UK – which would only raise further demands from domestic eurosceptics – and this ‘Albanian model’ looks not only less appealing but also less likely. Finally, as Pawel Swidlicki rightly pointed out, how could the UK negotiate access to an EU that was falling apart?

If the mechanics of the proposal are dubious, then the politics is less so. This speech has been one of the few big moments so far in the debate, where someone has tried to move things on. The absence of a clear leader of Leave means that there is opportunity for Gove to take up the reins, which might serve him well in the future, whatever the outcome. In addition, Gove’s proposal is open enough/lacking enough detail that it could act as an umbrella for many Leavers, at least in the broadest terms.

Gove’s speech matters not for its plan, but for its projection of a strong, independent and confident Britain. It taps into many of the themes that Leave have pushed over recent months, about not doing down the UK and about holding up our heads. For many voters that might be enough to convince them that Leave is the ‘right thing to do’, and we’ll work out the details as we go.

However, this doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There has been something of a swing towards Remain in the past week or so, which might be down to the government leaflet, or to the numerous statements about economic uncertainty caused by the potential of Brexit. While Remain has even less of a vision of the future than Leave – essentially, they’re relying on “it’ll be like it is now” – that doesn’t hurt them in the same way. Thus it falls to Leave to make their case stick better in the coming weeks.

The post Leave’s painful choices appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Two years ago, the European Union had its first true electoral campaign held in public for the selection of the EU’s chief administrator, the President of the European Commission. Now, although within a different institutional context, we witness a similar process in the United Nations: the first open nomination procedure for the next chief administrator of the UN, its Secretary-General.

Is Helen Clark a UN Spitzenkandidat(in)? (Screenshot from the hearings live stream, 14 April 2016)

The so-called Spitzenkandidaten-process (‘Spitzenkandidat’ means ‘top candidate’ in German) in 2014 was basically a power-struggle between the European Parliament, especially the main European political parties represented therein, and the European Council, the representation of all 28 heads of state and government in the EU. I  blogged occasionally about this process here, and I followed the process professionally while working at Transparency International.

By now, there’s also ton of research discussing the Spitzenkandidaten-process and how to interpret it. Most arguing it was a win of the European Parliament, but others disagree. The question is whether there is any resemblance to the UN’s (s)election procedure for the next Secretary-General.

With this week’s public hearings of the (first) nine candidates for the post of UN Secretary-General, the UN is also entering a new period that will require a lot of interpretation once the process is over. At UNdispatch, where the hearings and the social media reactions have been nicely covered, Mark L. Goldberg and Richard Gowen have discussed the hearings and how to interpret them in a 30-minute podcast episode well worth listening to.

Interestingly, some elements of the UN Spitzenkandidaten-process are pretty similar to that of the EU’s:

1. Just like the EP asserted the power of de-facto nomination from the European Council, so did the UN General Assembly when proposing in April 2015 to have a more transparent nomination process and now imposing the hearings upon the Security Council.
2. Just like the United Kingdom (and some other European Council members) disagreed with the parliamentary (s)election process and has tried to stop it, Russia and China do not seem to be big fans of the open nomination process. As Goldberg and Gowen discussed in the podcast, Russia was the only permanent member of Security Council not asking questions to the candidates and China only was represented through the G77 representative.
3. Similar to the EU’s Spitzenkandidaten, the ones who have come forward so far include a former prime minister with extensive UN experience – i.e. Helen Clark, kind of the Jean-Claude Juncker of the UN process – or with previous experience as presidents of the UN’s General Assembly – making Vuk Jeremic and Srgjan Kerim the Martin Schulzes of the process.
4. The UN candidates are not just present and visible in the formal hearings, but they are actually campaigning publicly, by touring around the world and (some) use social media campaigns to be visible to a wider public (as did the EU Spitzenkandidaten), although the UN’s public are rather diplomats and political leaders around the world.

There are some other elements that are relevant in both arenas, such as geographical balance, in the UN a rotation between the different regional groups, in the EU a geographical and political balance between the various top posts (European Parliament and Commission presidents, High Representative and European Council president).

The big different is the institutional setting: first, the UN General Assembly is a member state body, whereas the European Parliament is a directly elected assembly. Thus, whereas the Spitzenkandidaten-process in the EU can be seen as a struggle between (supranational) parliamentary forces and (intergovernmental) executive forces, the transparency-process in the UN is rather a struggle between the “Big Five” and the 188 other countries, or, as suggested by the absence of Russia and China in the hearings, a geopolitical fight between public policy making of the “West” and the politics of backroom diplomacy in search of traditional stability by the “East”.

There is a second difference: in the European Council, the United Kingdom could be outvoted thanks to the voting procedures for the nomination of a candidate. In the UN Security Council, each of the Big Five has a veto. In his 2015 article “The Secretary-General We Deserve?” (Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations 21:4), Simon Chesterman suggests that this could lead to a situation in which there is an institutional deadlock:

If the favourite candidate(s) of the General Assembly emerging from the open hearings is (are) blocked by one of the five permanent members, a potential compromise candidate of the Security Council might be blocked by the General Assembly. A similar situation was considered possible after the 2014 European elections, when it was still unclear whether the European Council would ultimately nominate the candidate of the European People’s Party, Jean-Claude Juncker, or some other name.

The majority in the European Parliament pretty much threatened to refuse any other candidate, and in the end won this fight. However, different to the General Assembly, candidates were actually put forward by wider political groups which, in the end, could claim to be legitimised by a popular vote, no matter how invisible the Spitzenkandidaten-process had been in most countries. There is no such legitimising force in the UN General Assembly, and so it will be interesting to see how this plays out when the end of the year comes closer and the term of Ban Ki-Moon comes to an end.

In summary, whereas the two recent or ongoing (s)election procedures for the President of the European Commission and the Secretary-General of the European Council share some common dynamics and elements that make them look similar in some sense, the institutional setting and the geopolitical dimension of the (s)election of the UN Secretary-General makes this process a much different beast to the EU’s recent process. Nevertheless, it is still interesting to see whether the UN’s General Assembly manages to impose its transparent process onto the Security Council, just like the European Parliament did on the European Council.

The post (S)electing the next Secretary-General of the United Nation: similar to the EU’s Spitzenkandidaten-process? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

As the debate about Britain’s place in Europe intensifies ahead of June’s referendum on EU membership, the role of the press has come under close scrutiny. Alastair Campbell, who was director of communications to the former British prime minister, Tony Blair, recently attacked the majority of the UK press for having “totally given up on properly informing the public”.
Meanwhile, writing on the coverage of the referendum in March 2016, Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee said the referendum was “a battle of strength, a war to the death” between the government and press owners Paul Dacre and Rupert Murdoch about “who rules the country”.
While it is easy to exaggerate the short-term impact of newspaper coverage, it is true that a large proportion of British voters feels ill-equipped when asked to decide about continued membership of the EU. Research conducted in 2013 by the independent UK Electoral Commission to test different referendum questions found “low-levels of contextual understanding of the EU, with some participants having no knowledge of the European Union, or the status of UK membership of the EU, at all”.
More importantly, this research showed that participants themselves felt under-informed – and some told the survey staff they had changed their voting intentions as they “became more aware of their lack of knowledge, or thought more in depth about what being a member of the European Union means”.
It would be worrying for a thriving democracy if citizens’ knowledge of the EU remained so low come June 23 that they could not confidently connect their personal preference with the voting choice. It is also worrying because British citizens are the least well-informed in Europe, according to analysis of Eurobarometer survey data by the LSE’s Simon Hix.
The survey contained three simple questions with true-and-false answers such as whether Switzerland is member of the EU or not. Nearly a quarter of British respondents got this question wrong (only Greek Cypriots scored lower here) and only 28% could answer all three questions accurately (just above Latvia).
Sound and fury
So why is public knowledge so low? The electoral commission study considered the media a crucial source of individuals’ knowledge about the EU. Single issues gleaned from it, or from personal experiences, influenced initial voting intentions.
But not all media types are trusted equally. A representative European survey in September 2015 shows that 73% of people in the UK “do not tend to trust” the printed press – the highest figure among all EU member states and a staggering 23% higher than the EU average. The “do not tend to trust” figure for UK television, meanwhile, is 46% – in line with the EU average.
Yet the press is a major source of information about the EU and often sets the agenda for television, which is why many researchers worry about some of the longstanding traits of UK press coverage of the EU.
One very basic issue is accuracy of reporting about how decisions and laws are made in the EU. Press coverage frequently depicts the European Commission as if it had the same powers as a conventional government backed by a majority in parliament and able to have its proposals ratified and implemented. This is inaccurate as the overwhelming majority of legislation can be amended and potentially rejected by the European Parliament as well as by national ministers in the Council, who in turn are accountable to their own parliaments.
Getting it wrong
On the same day that The Sun published its controversial claim that the “Queen Backs Brexit”, the paper also acknowledged that it had confused an opinion by an advocate-general of the European Court of Justice with an actual ruling of the “euro judges”. It is a seemingly trivial example, but part of a broader picture of many press stories containing false alarms about alleged regulatory frenzy against larger condoms and prawn cocktail flavour crisps. Some of these stories are plain wrong, others result from unnecessary national “goldplating” of EU directives as Boris Johnson conceded when giving evidence before the Commons Treasury Select committee.
Another example of deficient press coverage were the 2014 European Parliament elections. Large parts of the press failed to explain to their readers and voters that a change in the Lisbon Treaty meant that one of the candidates nominated by the two large party groupings had a good chance of becoming Commission president. As Simon Hix shows, this resulted in large differences in British and German media coverage of Schulz and Juncker, which also partially explains why Britain ended up in a minority of two (against 26) when opposing the winner of the parliamentary elections as Commission president.
In turn, this misjudgement on the part of the press was partly the result of its overreliance on the government for interpretation of EU issues. In the past this has often translated into a rather one-sided picture of what actually happens behind closed doors at the Council and a failure to appreciate that genuine government victories are much rarer than compromises.
The ‘battle of Brussels’
However, as press attention on the EU has fluctuated strongly depending on the influence of eurosceptics on government majorities, readers can easily miss out on coverage of EU initiatives that are important in their own right and potentially far-reaching consequences, for better or worse. And the familiarity of UK journalists with Westminster’s confrontational culture leads many journalists to cover “Brussels” as a battle of national interests between member states, thus missing the equally important left-right conflict within the various groupings in the EU institutions.
Claims that media coverage of the EU is biased are naturally contested and are difficult to measure accurately. However, a representative survey conducted in November 2015 asked British respondents about how their country’s press presented the EU. British respondents were much more likely to identify negative bias against the EU (23%) than the EU average (11%). British television was seen as more objective (46%) in its EU coverage than the press (37%), but even here the perception of negative bias was ten percentage points higher than the EU average.
It is to be welcomed that some papers, prominent among them The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, have recognised the problem and try to provide their readers with essential and usually accurate information about the EU and what British membership means in practice, not just different opinions. However, as more newspapers enter campaigning mode, this switch may intensify some of the problems described, and further damage – rather than enhance – readers’ trust in the press.

Christoph Meyer is Professor of European and International Politics at King’s College London.

*this is a slightly longer revised version of a piece first published on The Conversation and the ESRC UK in a Changing Europe Initiative

The post Press coverage of the EU is failing readers and voters* appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

 

There’s not much that’s clear so far in the referendum, but one thing that looks pretty certain is that the campaign has yet to catch the public’s interest fully. Indeed, it might not be pushing things too far to say that most people don’t really care.

The reasons for this are many and various. Firstly, the EU has not been an issue of significant public interest for over a decade: as much as it’s motivated Tory MPs and Eurosceptic activists, the same hasn’t been true of the wider population. Secondly, and related to this, levels of knowledge about the EU remain low, which acts as a disincentive to engage with substantive points of debate. Finally, this is a very long campaign, having been set in train properly by Cameron’s general election success last May, with a couple of years before that of it being a possibility.

In short, people don’t care, don’t understand and don’t feel a sense of urgency.

Clearly, some of this is contingent: as we close in on 23 June, so more people will become interested and engaged. However, the question will be whether this is a big or a small effect.

Why does this matter?

There are two main arguments on this. The main one is the democratic need for participation in a mechanism that is precisely designed to let people have a voice. Whatever the outcome, if it results from a low turnout, then it robs that decision of much of its legitimacy. That holds notwithstanding the British political convention that non-participation is a valid political act: since politicians have decided that they cannot make the decision themselves, it falls to the citizenry to take that role.

The second argument is more self-serving for the Remain camp. Turnout looks more and more to be the crucial factor in this referendum: the polling strongly suggests that the higher that turnout, the more likely a Remain vote will be. This matters all the more, given the lack of obvious movement in polls in recent weeks, despite the European Council deal, Boris’ coming-out or any other event. Of course, the flip side of this is that if turnout can be raised, and Leave still win, then Leave’s mandate will be all the stronger.

How do you get lift-off?

Motivations to one side, the question then is one of how you get significant public engagement. As I’ve argued on these pages many times before, engagement would not only be good for democracy, but also for the consolidation of a clearer British policy towards the EU, which has long floundered on a lack of obvious objectives.

If we assume that there will not be a spontaneous engagement by most people, then something needs to happen to make engagement look attractive. Here it’s helpful to think about this in terms of positive and negative drivers.

On the positive side, we might have the arrival of a strong voice into the debate, who fuels a lot of public interest. However, even writing that sentence highlights the difficulty: we’ve shot our bolts on Boris, Blair, Obama, Clarkson and even the Queen, so it’s not going to be anyone you’ve heard of.

Likewise, the structural inability of the Leave campaign to settle on a single plan for post-membership and the indifference of Remain to strategise how they will continue to promote British interests within the EU mean that the scope of a positive agenda also looks slim.

Negative drivers look more likely. The reaction to external voices – essentially, “butt out of our debate” – illustrates this well, where debate is not valued per se, but only within a heavily gate-kept framework. The things that are more likely to cut through that are also more likely to be negative articulations of fears or risks.

Partly, that comes from the wider environment. An EU facing another summer of the migrant crisis, weak Eurozone economic performance, aggressive Russian posturing, awkward Turkish and TTIP negotiations and assorted populist challenges within member states looks a lot like a recipe for multiple negative headlines. Worse still, those potential points of weakness or failure would go straight to challenging what limited legitimacy the EU has, based on its outputs.

Making that even more difficult, both sides in the campaign might be tempted to push negative claims about each other. While Leave might have an embarrassment of riches in extrapolating from the EU’s failures, so too can Remain make hay from the contradictions that arise from the multiple alternative futures offered outside the EU. Whatever one thinks of “Project Fear” type agendas, shock stories do have some media value. It’s not hard to imagine pieces about either outcome will destroy the NHS, cripple the economy, mean the end of the British countryside as we know it, and the rest.

To some extent, all of these things are already out there: indeed, that rather proves the point that publics aren’t that engaged. Drivers can only got so far if they lack receptive audiences. The danger is that the only things that matter are those that occur in the final couple of weeks: given the extent of the ramifications of the decision, that looks rather careless, both on the part of politicians and on the part of citizens.

The post Achieving lift-off in the referendum appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Thee Queen has issued a formal complaint against The Sun newspaper’s claim that she supports Brexit.

Last week The Sun ran a front-page ‘exclusive’ claiming that, ‘the Queen has been hailed as a supporter of Brexit’.

According to the Sun’s version of events, ‘Her majesty let rip’ during a lunch at Windsor Castle with the then deputy prime minister and Lib-Dem leader, Nick Clegg.

It’s reported that the event took place in 2011 during the coalition government between the Conservatives and Lib-Dems.

The Sun’s report asserted:

‘The 89-year-old monarch firmly told passionate pro-European Mr Clegg that she believed the EU was heading in the wrong direction. Her stinging reprimand went on for “quite a while”, leaving other guests around the table stunned.’

And The Sun added,

‘Brexit-backing Tory MPs are already leaping on The Sun’s revelations as a strong sign the Queen is secretly on the side of Leave ahead of the landmark EU referendum on June 23.’

The newspaper also quoted Tory Eurosceptic MP, Jacob Rees Mogg as saying:

‘The reason we all sing God Save The Queen so heartily is because we always believe she is there to protect us from European encroachment.’

Former Lib-Dem leader, Nick Clegg, has  complained that he had no recollection of the conversation ever taking place.

Buckingham Palace officials confirmed that the Queen is neutral on matters of politics, and that she disputes The Sun’s version of events.

In modern times the Queen cannot throw the Editor of the Sun, Tony Gallagher, or indeed, The Sun’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, into the Tower of London, although maybe she’d like to.

So instead, The Queen  is making a complaint to IPSO, the ‘Independent Press Standards Organisation.’

Although, I would hardly call IPSO independent – it’s owned, and mostly run, by the press: the very people who would want to protect their industry, rather than uphold complaints against it.

The Queen is complaining to IPSO under clause 1 of their ethics code called, The Editors Code of Practice, which deals specifically with inaccurate stories in the newspapers. However, it should be noted that the chairman of the Editors Code of Practice is none other than Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail – who just attended the wedding of Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Sun.

The Sun says it stands by its story that the Queen supports Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, and that it has impeccable sources and will “defend this complaint vigorously”.

I don’t have confidence that the press watchdog – mostly run by the press – will adequately investigate or adjudicate on the Queen’s complaint.  Let’s see.. I would hope to be surprised and proved wrong, as for sure, we do need a proper press regulator. (See my video below: why I won’t use IPSO)

In the meantime, although we don’t know for sure what the Queen said in private, we do know what she said in public.  Last June, speaking in Germany, the Queen talked about Britain’s relationship with the rest of Europe.

(That’s four years after her disputed comments in private that the EU was ‘heading in the wrong direction’).

Speaking with her Greek husband by her side, the Queen at least hinted that she supports the UK’s continued membership of the European Union.  The Queen spoke in front of an audience of 700 dignitaries in Berlin, including British Prime Minister, David Cameron, and German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

She said:

“The United Kingdom has always been closely involved in its continent. Even when our main focus was elsewhere in the world, our people played a key part in Europe.”

And addressing German President, Joachim Gauck, the Queen continued:

“In our lives, Mr President, we have seen the worst but also the best of our continent. We have witnessed how quickly things can change for the better. But we know that we must work hard to maintain the benefits of the post-war world.

“We know that division in Europe is dangerous and that we must guard against it in the West as well as in the East of our continent. That remains a common endeavour.”

Observed The Guardian at the time:

‘As she spoke, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who sat at the Queen’s table in Berlin’s Schloss Bellevue along with her husband Joachim Sauer, nodded vigorously, a gesture that did not go unnoticed among observers.’

The Queen spoke of the advantages of Britons emigrating to the rest of Europe in the past, such as the Welsh engineer, John Hughes. He founded the mining town of Donetsk, now in Ukraine, in the Russian empire of the 19th century.

She also mentioned the 17th-century Scottish publican Richard Cant, who moved his family to Pomerania.

“His son moved further east to Memel and his grandson then moved south to Königsberg, where Richard’s great-grandson, Immanuel Kant, was born,” said the Queen.

The German media were very supportive of the Queen’s visit. The Bild mass daily described her as “the secret weapon of British diplomacy” on a visit to “remind everyone of how poor Europe would be without the UK”.

And the Handelsblatt business daily commented:

‘Every gesture, every word of the queen in the coming days has meaning, for Germany, Britain, Europe. It is the politics of the apolitical.’

But possibly it was Britain’s ‘Guardian’ newspaper headline that summed up both the mood and impression following the Queen’s historic speech:

‘The Queen hints at desire for Britain to remain in European Union.’

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Other stories by Jon Danzig:

• They want their country back, not yours
• Winston Churchill wrongly recruited for Brexit
• Never again? It’s happening again
• List of the latest articles by Jon Danzig

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• Why I won’t use IPSO

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Writing exclusively for the Daily Telegraph, London Mayor Boris Johnson said that if Britain left the EU, “we would have to recognise that most of our problems are not caused by Brussels”.

Mr Johnson made his remarks after Michael Gove and Philip Hammond became the first two Cabinet ministers openly to support leaving the EU unless there is significant reform.

But responding in his Telegraph article, titled ‘We must be ready to leave the EU if we don’t get what we want’, Mr Johnson claimed that, “the question of EU membership is no longer of key importance to the destiny of this country”.

In his article, Mr Johnson added that he supports an EU referendum – but warned that Britain’s problems will not be solved by simply leaving the EU as many of his Conservative colleagues apparently believe.

The mayor asserted:

“If we left the EU, we would end this sterile debate, and we would have to recognise that most of our problems are not caused by ‘Bwussels’, but by chronic British short-termism, inadequate management, sloth, low skills, a culture of easy gratification and underinvestment in both human and physical capital and infrastructure.”

He added:

“Why are we still, person for person, so much less productive than the Germans? That is now a question more than a century old, and the answer is nothing to do with the EU. In or out of the EU, we must have a clear vision of how we are going to be competitive in a global economy.”

Mr Johnson warned that there might be a risk that international companies could stop investing in Britain if we left the EU. He also cautioned that UK firms could be put at a “long-term disadvantage” if Britain was unable to “influence the standards and regulations in Brussels.”

There was also an argument, alerted Mr Johnson, that the EU, “is better placed to strike trade deals with the US, or China, than the UK on its own” – although this proposition hadn’t actually been tested.

Mr Johnson added that, “More generally, there is a risk that leaving the EU will be globally interpreted as a narrow, xenophobic, backward-looking thing to do.”

He wrote that there may be other good reasons for Britain to stay in the EU, “but I can’t think of them now.” On the other hand, if Britain left the EU, “we could save money… we get back our sovereignty.. we can no longer blame Brussels.”

But Mr Johnson’s article concluded that we “have to recognise that most of our problems are not caused by Bwussels..”

And in a nuanced comment on the EU referendum debate, the London Mayor urged, “we need a much more informed debate about the pluses and minuses of EU membership”.

It should be noted that Mr Johnson wrote his article for The Telegraph back in May 2013.

Now, Mr Johnson is campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union. Writing exclusively for the Daily Telegraph he stated, “There is only one way to get the change we want – vote to leave the EU.”

The influential economist, John Maynard Keynes, is often quoted as saying, “When the facts change, I change my mind.”

Have the facts about the EU fundamentally changed since 2013?

No.

So why has Mr Johnson now changed his mind and is campaigning for Britain to leave the EU to ‘solve our problems’?

Your guess is as good as mine..

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• Boris Johnson’s big blunder
  
• They want their country back, not yours
  
• Never again? It’s happening again
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The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. It is the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice, which was established under the League of Nations. Located in the Peace Palace in The Hague, the ICJ is composed of 15 judges, who are elected by the U.N. General Assembly to serve nine-year terms.

The ICJ is empowered to decide two types of cases. First, the ICJ can issue advisory opinions when requested to do so by the Security Council, the General Assembly or several other United Nations bodies authorized to request such opinions. Since its creation, the ICJ has issued twenty-one advisory opinions.

Second, the Court can exercise jurisdiction in a contentious case between two or more States with the consent of the parties. The ICJ does not have jurisdiction over individuals, except to the extent that a State espouses their claims. Since its creation, the ICJ has issued judgments in thirty-nine contentious cases. That amounts to the Court hearing an average of less than two cases each year. During the 1990s, however, the Court became increasingly active, and it currently has eight contentious cases, and two requests for advisory opinions on its docket.

Consent to jurisdiction over contentious cases can be given in three ways. First, States can agree to have their disputes decided by the ICJ on an ad hoc basis. Second, many treaties contain provisions giving the ICJ jurisdiction over any dispute between parties to the treaty as to its interpretation or application. Third, States may make a declaration under Article 36(2) of the ICJ statute, agreeing to the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court in relation to other States that have made a like declaration. As of 1997, fifty-nine States had accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ.

Declarations made under Article 36(2) may specifically exclude certain categories of disputes from the ICJ’s compulsory jurisdiction. Such declarations are subject to reciprocity, and a defendant state against which a proceeding is brought may invoke an exclusion not stipulated in its own declaration but included in the declaration of the plaintiff state.

The United States had agreed in 1946 to the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ with two principal exceptions. The first, known as the “Connelly reservation,” provided that the United States does not accept the jurisdiction of the ICJ over disputes with regard to matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the United States as determined by the United States. The second, known as the “Vandenberg reservation” exempted the United States from the ICJ’s compulsory jurisdiction with respect to any disputes arising under a multilateral treaty unless all parties to the treaty affected by the decision are also parties to the case before the Court. After the ICJ ruled that it had jurisdiction over Nicaragua’s suit against the United States concerning U.S. support of the Contras and mining of Nicaragua harbors, the United States terminated its acceptance of the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ.

The termination of the United States’ acceptance of the ICJ’s compulsory jurisdiction has not completely immunized the United States from the ICJ. The United States has subsequently been hailed before the ICJ on several occasions pursuant to clauses contained in multilateral treaties to which the United States is a party. It has become the recent practice of the United States to make a reservation opting out of the ICJ jurisdiction clause of multilateral treaties at the time of ratification, but the United States continues to be party to over one hundred treaties containing an ICJ jurisdiction clause.

Judgments of the ICJ are binding between the parties. Under Article 94(1) of the U.N. Charter, all members of the United Nations have undertaken to comply with a judgment of the ICJ in any case to which they are parties. If a party fails to comply with the judgment of the ICJ, any other party may call on the Security Council to enforce the judgment. ICJ decisions are widely recognized as important statements of existing international law, and they are often cited as authority to support fundamental principles of international legal development.

Contentious cases usually involve three phases. First, the parties often request that the ICJ “indicate” provisional measures in order to preserve their respective rights while a case is pending. Decisions on provisional measures are usually issued within a few weeks from the initial request. While provisional measures are somewhat analogous to a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order under U.S. domestic law, the court has never ruled whether an order indicating provisional measures is mandatory on the parties. The second phase involves challenges to the Court’s jurisdiction. The Court will entertain briefs and oral arguments on the matter before making a decision. Finally, the Court will entertain briefs and oral arguments on the merits of the case. From start to finish, the ICJ may take several years to rule on a dispute. The final decision of the ICJ is not subject to appeal.

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Britain belongs with the European Union, despite their differences.

The European Union is a crucial part of the fabrics that make up Great Britain. Although, it is nowadays one of the most important talking points in British politics, for a very long time, the European Union had not occupied the consciousness of many British people. As times keep changing the picture of British politics, factors such as the eurozone crisis happening in fellow European countries, has not managed to alter the perspective that if the British are faced with a sudden in-out referendum, then they are going to overwhelmingly steer clear from the thought of Britain exiting the European Union.

David Cameron started playing a risky game in politics the moment he decided to launch a referendum for Britain’s status within the European Union. His basket of thoughts on complex issues such as sovereignty and migration has called for an upheaval of the European Union simply to push in a limited set of reforms that could have been done without, like his avoidance of addressing his own instigated referendum, for a noticeable period of time. This pieced-together decision of numerous heads of governments is singularly suggestive of the referendum scheduled for June 23 to be an aimless, unclear, harmful, senseless and odd piece of political work.

People who are for a Brexit have no clue about what are the positives of leaving the European Union and the British are far too conservative to entertain the idea that their own sovereign state will ever be acting independently from the European Union. Great Britain had signed the Maastricht Treaty, with its fellow European countries in 1992 that had officially proclaimed the European Union into reality, so the public have never really been denied the chance to express their opinion with freedom about the Union. This legally binding referendum should, therefore be looked upon as an opportunity instead to let the British permanently become a part of the European Union with the help of international law. The deal should be more authoritative and not be subjected to the decisions of the heads of governments of all of the member states, at any point in time.

The Eurozone crisis is posing as a major problem for the British perspective on the European Union.

If there is any dissatisfaction involved with Britain’s position in the European Union, then it should be reserved for certain proposed amendments instead, which the 1969 Vienna convention already permits. Let’s not beat around the bush: Euroscepticism is a major driver of political ideologies for all British parties and they have very rarely been able to address concerns over European integration. Geographically, Britain is detached from Europe as an island country and has had a victorious record at the Second World War. The foundations of British thought were laid with those ideas in mind and factors, such as pride, a love for democracy, liberty and independence, made Britain what it is today: individualistic.

Britain never thought it necessary to cooperate with fellow European powers for the common good because it also had the Commonwealth (and a positive relationship with the United States) to ponder about. Furthermore, Britain still runs on the Anglo-Saxon model of less regulation and more capitalism inclusive of national social welfare, unlike European states who like to put their faith in state interference. Meanwhile, the eurozone crisis sounds alarming to Euroscepticism here because now whilst doing common good to Europe, states are also being asked to pitch in and support weaker states, through national wealth redistribution. This crisis is denting the idea of Europe for the British, coupled up with fluctuating levels of British interest in the EU, when you want to talk about the nation’s history. During the early eighties, most British people were not concerned with the thought of Europe and in the nineties, many members of the general public quizzed the European agenda for Britain.

The European Union influences policy in Great Britain but there is this likelihood that the British public will want different sets of opinions guiding all of that for the many different policy divisions, such as for foreign policy and social policy. But the European Union does not need to dictate British national policy if it doesn’t want to because subjects such as the labour market, education and employment can be led with a different British point of view, than the kind that would perhaps guide a more European policy framework. It is also important to note that since post-2011 (and specifically when the Masstricht Treaty was signed) the popularity index for Britain’s position inside of the European Union peaked. This means that despite the differences in attitudes and thinking over Europe, the British are still deeply interested in Britain remaining a part of the European Union.

The post The Brexit Debate appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

When the European Council finally drew to a close on February 19, 2016, the deal to help secure the UK’s continued membership in the European Union (called the ‘Anti-Brexit’ deal in continental newspapers) was finally agreed. After years of discussions and months of negotiations, there was a deal, publically available. This document provides insight into the issues highest on the UK renegotiation agenda, and how the UK and its EU partners were able to reach a compromise. Analysing it from an environmental perspective reveals a number of surprises.

Firstly, this document does mention the environment. Looking back to UK calls for EU reform over the last twenty years, this should not be surprising. Hence, in the wake of the Danish ‘no’ vote to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, the Major Government produced a ‘hit list’ of social and environmental legislation it wanted scrapped. In his 2013 Bloomberg Speech and in the discussions which ensued in the UK’s House of Commons afterwards, David Cameron identified environmental policies as an area in which the EU had gone too far. But when it came to the negotiation proper, the environment together with the Common Agricultural Policy — two usual suspects when it comes to UK-sponsored EU reform — were conspicuously absent.  Hence it is surprising in itself that the environment even gets not one, but four mentions in the text (although two of these refer to the “changing environment” – a reference to the economic, not the natural, environment).

Secondly, environment is mentioned in relation to competitiveness – as part of “Section B” on competitiveness of the UK-EU deal as well as in the annexed European Council declaration on competitiveness. This, in itself, is not surprising. Recent British efforts to increase EU action on ‘red tape’ decried the economic cost of environmental action (e.g. the 2013 Business Task Force report pushed for a reform of REACH, and opposed the proposed soil directive). Similarly, at EU level, talks of REFIT and an ever greater focus by Team Juncker on better regulation has been interpreted as pitting the environment against competitiveness (and favouring the latter) by European environmental NGOs in their highly successful #NatureAlert campaign. No, what is surprising is that the environment figures in a rather positive light in this document:

 UK-EU deal (p.15)

At the same time, the relevant EU institutions and the Member States will take concrete steps towards better regulation, which is a key driver to deliver the above-mentioned objectives. This means lowering administrative burdens and compliance costs on economic operators, especially small and medium enterprises, and repealing unnecessary legislation as foreseen in the Declaration of the Commission on a subsidiarity implementation mechanism and a burden reduction implementation mechanism, while continuing to ensure high standards of consumer, employee, health and environmental protection.

Competitiveness declaration (p. 30)

The European Council urges all EU institutions and Member States to strive for better regulation and to repeal unnecessary legislation in order to enhance EU competitiveness while having due regard to the need to maintain high standards of consumer, employee, health and environmental protection. This is a key driver to deliver economic growth, foster competitiveness and job creation.

So, what does this deal mean for the future of EU environmental policy? These EUCO conclusions confirm that, even when talking about environmental policy in a rather positive tone, EU governments are talking about its achievements in the past tense – it is about “continuing to ensure” and “maintain[ing]” “high standards”. It is not about raising standards and policy expansion. High environmental standards are caveats to the better regulation surge – not an alternative policy agenda. While this may alleviate concerns about the fate of the environmental acquis (i.e. the rules already in place) it does nothing to alleviate concerns about the EU’s capacity for increasing its ambition in the future. This is particularly problematic for areas in which the EU is already falling behind – with regard to biodiversity, where its current policies fall short of its objective to halt biodiversity loss by 2020, and with regard to climate change, where the surprisingly ambitious Paris COP21 deal means EU climate policies are not currently strong enough to deliver on the Paris pledge.

 

The post A surprising deal? Cameron’s ‘reformed EU’ & the environment appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Business minister, Anna Soubry, the most enthusiastic pro-EU member of the government’s cabinet, has sent a letter to UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, with three vital questions.

She posed the questions after Mr Farage made clear that he didn’t want Britain to remain in the Single Market of Europe if the referendum resulted in a ‘leave’ decision. Instead, said Mr Farage, he wanted Britain to be “a fully independent country” (although it’s not quite clear what that means).

Subsequently, Ms Soubry sent these three questions to Mr Farage:

1. Was he happy that his policy would increase the costs for business because the UK would face the EU’s common external tariff, which stands at 10% for cars and 15% for food?

2. How long would it take for the UK to renegotiate trade deals with more than 50 countries with whom the UK trades on the basis of EU deals?

3. Did Farage accept that the UK would have to accept many EU regulations, in order to trade with the EU, while having no say over how they were drawn up?

Ms Soubry also asked Mr Farage:

“I suspect you will claim that these consequences are avoidable by our negotiating a new ‘free trade deal’ with the EU. If so, can you set out precisely the terms you would expect and any evidence that they are credible and achievable? If not, your response will be taken as a sign that you want only to cover up the serious consequences of Britain leaving Europe.”

An answer is awaited from Mr Farage.

Footnote: What interests me is why any answers from Mr Farage should be taken seriously? He is not in power. He is not a Member of Parliament. He is not in government. His party only has one MP who most often disagrees with Mr Farage on Britain’s possible Brexit terms.

If Britain decides on 23 June to leave the EU, Mr Farage still won’t be in power. What difference will his answers make (assuming he can answer at all)?

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Other stories by Jon Danzig:

• UKIP’s fantasy island
  
• What does Brexit look like? Nobody knows
• Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Farage?
• List of the latest articles by Jon Danzig

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#EUReferendum 3 questions for @Nigel_Farage by #UKgov minister @Anna_Soubry See my Facebook: https://t.co/mL8IUSA513 pic.twitter.com/cFXwJ92wS2

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) February 24, 2016

 

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The UK’s renegotiation of its EU membership concluded on Friday at the European Council in Brussels. The text of the settlement is contained in the Council conclusions. We also now know that the EU referendum will take place on Thursday 23 June 2016. Some comments on the renegotiation and referendum:

David Cameron EU Statement – Feb 2016, Georgina Coupe (Crown Copyright), CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0

1. This is an historic agreement. It is the first time that a Member State has unilaterally sought (and achieved) a renegotiation of its own terms of EU membership. This process has been entirely centred on the UK. In practice, however, many elements of the deal will impact the other Member States and the EU more generally. More to the point, how long before the next country seeks its own deal? The future of European integration, which inherently depends upon a high degree of policy harmony and/or unity, could be put into question in the months and years ahead.

2. The deal combines symbols and substance. Stating that the EU is a ‘multi-currency Union’, opting the UK out of ‘ever closer union’ and reiterating that states are responsible for its own national security are highly symbolic. The new ‘red card’ on subsidiarity for national parliaments is interesting, but it is unlikely to be used often. Parliaments would need to work together to exercise this right and, for different reasons, they may well not be interested in doing so. The restrictions on the free movement of workers (ie access to in-work benefits) represent a fundamental change in how the EU has functioned. The measures are relatively modest and unlikely to reduce the movement of EU citizens into the UK, which is ostensibly their objective. However, the precedent that non-discrimination on the basis of nationality can be made flexible in this way is a significant concession on the part of the other Member States.

3. Its impact on the campaign will be mixed. The content of the deal may not exert substantial influence on (undecided) voters. Most of it is technical and legalistic. The principles which the agreement is meant to amend are also not particularly well known amongst the UK public. However, that is not to say that the deal is unimportant. The fact of simply having a deal (whatever it contains) plays into the narrative that the EU has been ‘reformed’ and is therefore now more acceptable. Instrumentalisation of the deal could sway voters one way or the other.

4. The referendum date has broader implications. The decision by the UK government on the June date raises questions about the impact on the devolved institutions and local government. Devolved elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and local elections in England and Wales are scheduled for Thursday 5 May 2016. That leaves just under seven weeks (48 days) between the elections and the referendum. It is possible that the campaigns will become conflated with each other. The emergence of ‘Europe’ as a central issue in the May elections could also alter the dynamics of the respective campaigns. More broadly, the four months between the announcement of the date and the referendum is not a particularly long time to campaign (compared for instance to the Scotland independence referendum), although low-level campaigning and preparation have been ongoing for some time.

5. The vote won’t settle the UK’s relationship with the EU. The referendum is only one step in a wider process. If the UK votes to stay in the EU, the status quo of membership will continue, as modified by the changes provided for in the settlement. Arguments around EU membership will continue and opponents are likely to seek a second referendum in the future. If the UK votes to leave the EU, years-long discussions will take place to determine the new arrangements for UK-EU relations. This new relationship will presumably need to be legitimised in some way, perhaps through a vote in Parliament or even another referendum. In any case, the debate will continue, at varying intensities, for the foreseeable future. The next four months are likely to be particularly intense indeed.

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How to cite this article:

Salamone, A (2016) ‘Five Comments on Britain’s EU Settlement’, Britain’s Europe (Ideas on Europe), 22 Feb 2016, britainseurope.uk/19

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The mayor of one of the world’s most pro EU capital cities has announced that he wants Britain to leave the European Union.

Boris Johnson, MP and London’s Mayor, made his announcement after apparently agonising over the decision for hours and following the pleas of Prime Minister, David Cameron, for him not to abandon the government’s position for Britain to remain in the EU.

Boris’s view is apparently clear: in the event of Britain leaving the EU, he will be in ‘pole position’ to see-off David Cameron and rival, Chancellor George Osborne, and grab his long coveted job of Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

From his comments today, it seems that his strategy on a ‘Leave’ victory in the referendum would then be to negotiate a new and ‘better’ deal with the European Union.

My view? It’s an enormous gamble by Mr Johnson and one he may live to regret for the rest of his life.

Over the next four months, Britain and Britons are going to be exposed for the first time to fuller facts about the European Union, and all the hype and misinformation that we’ve been fed for years will be robustly challenged and corrected.

The country will go from blissful ignorance about the functioning and benefits of the European Union, to becoming global experts.

We’ve seen from past referenda campaigns in other European countries that such increased knowledge usually results in the populace becoming much more in favour of EU membership.

The bookies currently foresee a referendum victory for Britain to ‘remain’ in the EU – and unlike pollsters, bookmakers are more usually accurate at predictions.

It seems Boris has backed the wrong side. No doubt he’ll be able to brush that off with his usual bluster and buffoonery when the referendum results are announced on 24 June that Britain has voted to ‘Remain’ in the EU.

But just say Britain votes to ‘Leave’ the EU, and Boris cycles over to 10 Downing Street to take up his new position as Prime Minister. If he then tries to negotiate a ‘new deal’ with the EU, he will almost certainly be sent back home with a severe haircut.

Contrary to the view of Brexiters, EU leaders are not so desperate to keep Britain in the European club, otherwise they would have given Mr Cameron everything he demanded. They didn’t.

The foundational principles of the EU are much more important than the vexatious demands of one recalcitrant EU member, let alone an ex-member.

And if Britain leaves the European Union, what will happen to our Union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

Almost certainly, Scotland would immediately demand a referendum to leave the United Kingdom and apply to join the European Union as an independent state. It’s quite possible that Wales and Northern Ireland, which are both much more pro-EU than England, could follow.

Then Boris would be Prime Minister only of Little England. Yes, he might ‘get his country back’, but it could be only one country out of four. He’d be ‘king’ of a much smaller castle; no longer an island state and leading EU member, but surrounded and sandwiched by EU member-states over which he’d have no say or influence.

So the referendum exercise – if ‘Leave’ wins as Boris Johnson hopes – could result in not ‘getting our country back’ but instead losing our United Kingdom of countries.

The European Union would still exist, without England, but possibly with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as EU members.

Such a scenario is not beyond the realms of possibility. Boris could become leader of a country – and a Tory party – literally cut in half.

Boris has blundered. He should have shown loyalty to his Prime Minister and backed the ‘Remain’ campaign, in the unselfish interests of his party, the countries of the United Kingdom, and the capital city which he represents as Mayor.

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Other stories by Jon Danzig:

• Proud to be British and European
• A reminder: What has the EU done for us?
• EU migrants are NOT ‘bleeding dry the NHS’
• List of the latest articles by Jon Danzig

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

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The @MayorofLondon @BorisJohnson has made a big mistake backing #LeaveEU. My blog explains: https://t.co/YVEAglDwqc pic.twitter.com/EqnnMeVcHy

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) February 22, 2016

 

#EUReferendum: Boris’s big blunder – does he wants #UK to #LeaveEU so he can lead UK? Blog: https://t.co/KyALcBqgXU pic.twitter.com/l9RFCs6y2k

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) February 22, 2016

The post Boris Johnson’s big blunder appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

• The new InFacts website, putting right incorrect ‘facts’ about the European Union

It’s often said that truth is the first casualty of war, and it seems that’s also the case with the way the EU referendum is going so far.

Facts, stats and data are flying about all over the place from all sides, and it’s not surprising that many people are confused.

This morning, for example, over a communal hotel breakfast, friends and colleagues claimed, “The EU isn’t democratic!” and “The EU accounts have never been signed-off!” and “EU migrants only come here for the benefits!”

All these statements are untrue, but when trying to challenge them, the incredulous reply is often, “I don’t believe you!”

Well, of course, as an independent journalist I have been trying my best to post factual articles to counter the mistruths about Britain’s membership of the EU. But with few resources and working on my own, there is a limit to what I can achieve.

Now, however, a new website has launched that I can highly recommend. It’s called InFacts.org and it’s doing a sterling service in combating some of the blatantly incorrect information being published and broadcast about the European Union.

It has, for example, a section called ‘Sin Bin’ where every day it takes to task statements proclaimed by newspapers and politicians that are provably wrong.

Hopefully this will be helpful to all those who, like me, support Britain’s continued membership of the EU, and need ready-facts at the breakfast or dinner table when discussing with friends and family whether Britain should stay in the EU.

And it seems that, in the lead-up to the EU referendum, such meal-time, pub-time and work-time discussions are going to become more and more prevalent and likely quite heated too.

• In the latest edition of Infact’s ‘Sin Bin’, The Independent is taken to task for falsely reporting that, since 2010, one-third of new jobs were taken by foreigners. 
• Tory MEP and ardent Eurosceptic, Daniel Hannan, is challenged for wrongly stating that the EU only has trade-deals with two Commonwealth countries. 
• Vote.Leave boss, Matthew Elliot, is pulled up for erroneously claiming that the UK sends almost £20 billion a year to the EU. 
• And Margaret Thatcher’s former Press Secretary, Bernard Ingham, is ‘sin binned’ for wrongly claiming that the EU accounts haven’t been signed off for ‘nigh on 20 years.’

For these and other ready-facts and challenges on why ‘Britain should stay in the EU’, take a look at the new ‘In Facts’ website at www.infacts.org

Does the fact that I am promoting ‘In Facts’ make me biased as a journalist? Yes, it does.

I am openly pro-EU and happy to declare that as ‘an interest’. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t also have a healthy respect for the truth. As I have often written, I accept the truth, and don’t argue with it, whether I like it or not.

After all, my reputation as a journalist of many years standing is based on being a truthful and honest reporter of facts.

So, if the Leave campaign do come up with better information and verifiable evidence that Britain should end its membership of the EU, then yes, my mind is open to change. So far, however, they haven’t managed to persuade me.

Sure, there is a lot wrong with the EU. However, my view is that the EU isn’t bad enough, and the alternatives aren’t good enough, for Britain to leave. So, consequently, I intend to vote for Britain to ‘Remain’ in the EU.

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Other stories by Jon Danzig:

• A reminder: What has the EU done for us?
• EU migrants are NOT ‘bleeding dry the NHS’
• What Nigel Farage told British expats in Spain
• List of the latest articles by Jon Danzig

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

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#Truth is 1st first casualty of #EUReferendum Good we have @InFactsOrg Read my intro: https://t.co/QQaxdVjtRc pic.twitter.com/gKQeQlZZc7

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) February 20, 2016

 

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