European Union

Well before the Brexit shock, the EU institutions in Brussels were being criticised for carrying on with ‘business as usual’ – for fiddling while Rome burned. But business as usual is nothing to be ashamed of. The strength of the EU is the wide range of business that it quietly and efficiently conducts whatever the headlines may be screaming about. Its weakness is that so much of that crucially important business goes unsung.

As the EU’s machinery gets back into high gear after the summer break, the focus of attention will be on looming catastrophes. The UK government’s Brexiteers will be causing political and economic uncertainty, and may be about to open the floodgates to ‘me too’ EU membership referendums elsewhere. Everyone knows the eurozone’s malaise is not cured, only in remission. Yet these difficulties need to be placed in perspective. Important though they are, they pale in comparison with the EU’s continuing achievements.

So Brussels must start to fight back. Faced with mounting Euroscepticism right around the EU, it needs to present the cold, hard facts about the benefits of Europeans working together. The European Commission contributed in no small way to the Brexit debacle by retreating behind the alibi of ‘not interfering in a member state’s domestic affairs’. It failed to arm the UK’s ‘Remain’ campaigners with independent statistics and examples to refute the nonsensical claims of the Brexiteers. It must not make that mistake again.

There’s a bland assumption within the Brussels ‘bubble’ that voters know about the contribution EU-level actions and agreements make to their own prosperity and security. That’s not remotely the case, of course. We all know that for national politicians, success is home-grown and failure is born in Brussels.

This sad fact of life is generally accepted by anyone whose work has a European dimension. But it hasn’t led the Commission to sing the EU’s own praises more forcefully. EU citizens may know about Brussels’ fight to ban mobile roaming charges (although even with this success story, the Commission has had a communications mis-step in recent days). But how many are aware of the EU’s contributions on issues ranging from, say, climate change to social protection to competition policy? You name it and the EU has done much to achieve it – yet now the EU is an endangered political experiment.

The Commission should draw the necessary conclusions from its silence during the UK’s Brexit debate. It must use its resources of manpower and money to prepare factsheets that Europhile politicians, journalists and corporate and NGO opinion-formers can use to counter-attack those seeking to exploit the EU’s growing credibility gap.

The ‘information’ churned out by Commission spokesmen and communications staff is largely incomprehensible to all but specialists. No one denies that these details are essential to the smooth running of the EU machinery, but they do little to regain popular support for Europe.

The European public needs the bigger picture. Information is a second-class activity within the Commission, often handled by junior officials. The painting of convincing ‘warts and all’ pictures of Europe’s response to its challenges is above their pay grade. That is because it demands frank and realistic assessments of member governments’ shortcomings and of the EU itself. The result is that the Commission’s communications material is at best bland, and at worst unreadable.

The answer is for the senior echelons of the Commission to wake up an uncomfortable truth: popular perceptions are political reality. The EU – for the first time – faces an existential threat.  So however pressing the policymaking priorities of commissioners and directors-general may be, explaining the EU’s more routine business is just as important, if not more so.

Giles Merritt is the Founder and Chairman of Friends of Europe. His book “Slippery Slope – Europe’s Troubled Future”(Oxford University Press, May 2016) is one of the three non-fiction essays shortlisted for this year’s European Book Prize.

IMAGE CREDIT: Bombaert Patrick/Bigstock.com

The post The EU must extol the virtues of ‘Business as Usual’ appeared first on Europe’s World.

DRAFT OPINION on the draft Council decision on the conclusion of a Protocol to the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement establishing a partnership between the European Communities and their Member States, of the one part, and the Republic of Uzbekistan, of the other part, amending the Agreement in order to extend the provisions of the Agreement to bilateral trade in textiles, taking account of the expiry of the bilateral textiles Agreement
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Ulrike Lunacek

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : Populism, unemployment and social injustice are among the key challenges for the EU, said Commission President Juncker in his annual State of the Union speech in the EP on Wednesday. The refugee crisis, Brexit and counter-terrorism were also debated with political groups’ leaders and other MEPs, who put forward their visions of how to address people’s deepest concerns about the future.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : Populism, unemployment and social injustice are among the key challenges for the EU, said Commission President Juncker in his annual State of the Union speech in the EP on Wednesday. The refugee crisis, Brexit and counter-terrorism were also debated with political groups’ leaders and other MEPs, who put forward their visions of how to address people’s deepest concerns about the future.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : Draft legislation designed to protect retail investors was rejected by MEPs on Wednesday as so “flawed and misleading” that it could actually lose them money. Unusually, it will be returned to the EU Commission for revision.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : Draft legislation designed to protect retail investors was rejected by MEPs on Wednesday as so “flawed and misleading” that it could actually lose them money. Unusually, it will be returned to the EU Commission for revision.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : MEPs urged the Polish government to solve the country’s constitutional crisis within the three-month deadline set by the Commission on 27 July. The solution should reflect a compromise between all parliamentary parties and be fully in line with the Venice Commission and the European Commission recommendations.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : MEPs urged the Polish government to solve the country’s constitutional crisis within the three-month deadline set by the Commission on 27 July. The solution should reflect a compromise between all parliamentary parties and be fully in line with the Venice Commission and the European Commission recommendations.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : The European Parliament approved an agreement granting duty-free access to the EU for products from Namibia, Mozambique, Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho, and improved market access for South Africa on Wednesday.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : The European Parliament approved an agreement granting duty-free access to the EU for products from Namibia, Mozambique, Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho, and improved market access for South Africa on Wednesday.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

In the Europe of 2016, an unlikely candidate for the most relevant political theorist is Lyndon B. Johnson. The late American President famously noted of a senior government official, J. Edgar Hoover, that “it is probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in”. The Johnson theorem largely explains why 27 government leaders went out of their way to compromise with David Cameron, and tried to keep the UK inside the EU.

The majority of them now have a different problem – and one that, alongside Brexit, they will have to confront at this Friday’s informal summit meeting in Bratislava. The Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, and the leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, Jarosław Kaczyński, are inside the tent, but keep pissing inwards, as they systematically break with European values and undermine EU cooperation and solidarity.

As Europe tries to come together after the British referendum, the four-country Visegrád group, and notably Orbán and Kaczyński, are in the vanguard of opposition to a deeper Europe. They are building their current populist campaign on an inverted interpretation of Brexit: it happened, they state, because Brussels ignored everyone – not just the British. They don’t want to exit the EU, but their desired form of integration would focus only on supporting the less-developed countries, not on common political norms and social standards.

“Orbán and Kaczyński are in the vanguard of opposition to a deeper Europe, building a populist campaign on an inverted interpretation of Brexit”

EU and NATO allies are worried. They have repeatedly warned the pair against turning their countries into illiberal rogue states. Orbán and Kaczyński, meanwhile, insist they are creating a model for others: ‘The European dream has moved East’, they say. But this is a nightmare rather than a dream.

You don’t need to be Jean Asselborn to realise that Hungary is ruled today without respect to European values. Orbán’s reforms have hollowed out democracy and the rule of law, and a Putin-esque war was launched against civil society. The abuse of EU funds has become a systemic problem.

Orbán’s inhuman treatment of refugees is particularly striking. It triggered an infringement procedure from the European Commission and a call from Viviane Reding, a leading light of the centre-right, to suspend or expel his Fidesz party from the European People’s Party.

But Orbán’s hatred of foreigners is not new. In Spring 2011, during the Hungarian presidency of the EU Council, he told a conference that he excludes only two solutions to the demographic crisis: immigration and cloning. He sells citizenship to rich immigrants who can buy government bonds wholesale but fights against poorer migrants and desperate refugees in a ruthless and unscrupulous manner.

For the time being, Kaczyński is a pale imitation of Orbán, who had a five-year head-start on launching his own country’s ‘counter-revolution’, having taken power in 2010. But he is catching up fast. If progressive and centre-right forces do not find ways to address popular concerns in the Eastern member states, and fail to organise against such tendencies of political degeneration, the integrity of the entire EU may be put in jeopardy.

“We are all responsible for Brexit… those who wanted to keep the UK in the EU, but chose the wrong tactics, are also culpable”

Addressing popular concerns requires learning the real lessons of Brexit.

We are all responsible for Brexit. The greater blame lies with those who campaigned for it, not only in the first half of 2016, but for about a quarter of a century. But those who wanted to keep the UK in the EU, but chose the wrong tactics, are also culpable.

Responsibility starts at the top. Conservative- and Labour-led governments were fairly successful in representing British interests in Brussels but collectively failed to ensure that all regions and social groups in the UK felt the benefit and the helping hand of the EU.

As a result, popular anger against Westminster was diverted and turned against Brussels, unencumbered by any real knowledge of how the EU functions. The tabloid press and the Boris Johnson school of EU reporting were their main sources of information, while the BBC favoured impartiality over objectivity.

On the continent, a post-referendum rise in support for the EU can be seen. However, this was certainly not proof of satisfaction with the status quo. It should be read an invitation for leaders, not least in the European Council, to improve the economic, social and security situation in all countries in the short term, as well as to improve the long-term resilience of the EU economy. Fail, and anti-EU parties will grow to a level at which they can paralyse the European Parliament post-2019.

“Indecision, inaction and hesitation, mixed with a confluence of crises, can destabilise the EU and push it towards disintegration”

Addressing popular concerns should have been the focus after the last European elections, which saw a surge of various populists and Eurosceptics. However, instead of focusing on better performance the institutions lightened the EU policy agenda, and especially legislation, believing that too much action at EU level irritates citizens and fuels disaffection. As Brexit and other developments show, this strategy does not impress people. Indecision, inaction and hesitation, mixed with a confluence of crises, can destabilise the EU and push it towards disintegration.

Addressing popular concerns means finding solutions to the key problems of today – which in today’s Europe is only possible through more cooperation. Germany cannot find a solution to the refugee crisis alone. France cannot enhance security in a national context. Italy cannot revive its economy purely through domestic reforms. With this symmetry of major problems, a grand bargain can emerge, and deepening of the EU can become a win-win game.

The EU’s post-referendum focus should be on the key reforms that are needed to reinforce the Union’s structures and improve their performance. This can succeed even if Orbán and Kaczyński remain inside the tent. In the longer run, however, the EU cannot remain credible if such pretenders are treated as respectable partners, whether they come from East or West.

IMAGE CREDIT: CC / FLICKR – European External Action Service

The post Beyond the Brexit blame game appeared first on Europe’s World.

SOPO
Recourse to successive fixed-term contracts to cover permanent needs in the healthcare sector is contrary to EU law

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When Jean-Claude Juncker gave his state of the union speech this time last year, he confessed: “Our European Union is not in a good state.”

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Plenary sessions : The State of the European Union is an annual speech and debate during which MEPs review what the European Commission has done over the past year as well as to assess its objectives for the year to come. Check out our Storify coverage above for an overview of what was said during the debate on 14 September.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : The State of the European Union is an annual speech and debate during which MEPs review what the European Commission has done over the past year as well as to assess its objectives for the year to come. Check out our Storify coverage above for an overview of what was said during the debate on 14 September.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : The EU Commission’s conclusion that Ireland granted Apple Inc. illegal tax benefits, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years will be debated in plenary session on Wednesday around 16:00.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : The EU Commission’s conclusion that Ireland granted Apple Inc. illegal tax benefits, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years will be debated in plenary session on Wednesday around 16:00.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : The State of the European Union, one of the year’s most important debates, kicks off on Wednesday 14 September at 9.00 CET. It’s an opportunity to find out what direction the EU will take in the coming year and what could have been done better. Find out the many ways to follow the debate online and how you can join the discussion on social media.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Plenary sessions : The State of the European Union, one of the year’s most important debates, kicks off on Wednesday 14 September at 9.00 CET. It’s an opportunity to find out what direction the EU will take in the coming year and what could have been done better. Find out the many ways to follow the debate online and how you can join the discussion on social media.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP