Ideas on Europe Blog

But whose country do they want back exactly? Your country? My country? Or really, just their country?

Before we leave the European Union and possibly change our country forever, we need to have an idea what country we’d leave behind, and what country we’d get instead, if we vote for Brexit on 23 June.

Look carefully at those Tories who are running the ‘Leave’ campaign and calling for Britain to completely change direction outside the EU.

What could be their real motive?

Those leading Tories – Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling, John Whittingdale, Priti Patel and others – have in this campaign viciously attacked their own government and Prime Minister.

It’s been a nasty and sustained ‘blue on blue’ offensive.

Do they know what they’re doing?

Probably yes. The referendum presents for them a possible once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to win power for their style of right-wing Conservatism.

• When they say, ‘Let’s take back control’, they really mean, ‘We want to take control’.
• When they say ‘Bring back power from Brussels’, they really mean, ‘We want that power’.
• When they say, ‘We want our country back’, they really mean ‘their’ country. The true-blue right-wing Tory Britain of the past that they sorely miss.

These Conservatives have taken a calculated but clever risk. They know that if the referendum results in Brexit, it will mean the end of David Cameron‘s premiership and those now in government who support his Remain campaign.

Then what?

There would be resignations and a new leader of the Conservative Party would be elected by the party’s membership.

According to YouGov, Boris Johnson would be front-runner by far to become Tory Leader.
On Brexit, we could have a new brand of Conservative government, with Boris Johnson as Prime Minister.

Another election would not legally be required until 2020.

The country we’d be ‘getting back’ on Brexit would be run by possibly the most right-wing Tory government anyone of us can remember.

Instead of our current alliances with Europe, we could be back to ‘Rule Britannia’ with orthodox Tory Eurosceptics as our new political masters. They could have uninterrupted power for almost four years.

Opposition? What opposition? Labour and Lib-Dems are in disarray.

If these Tory hopefuls get ‘their country back’ on Brexit, what could Britain become?

For an answer, take a close look at what these right-wing Tory Brexiteers stand for. Here are some brief examples:

• Iain Duncan-Smith: Long-term Eurosceptic and former Tory leader, he was until recently the Secretary of State for Works and Pensions. The social policies he proposed were described by the European Court of Justice as ‘unfit for a modern democracy’ and ‘verging on frighteningly authoritarian.’

• Michael Gove: He was last year appointed as Secretary of State for Justice, with a mandate to scrap the Human Rights Act – which might only be possible if Britain leaves the European Union. As Education Secretary, Mr Gove was widely criticised for his heavy-handed education reforms and described as having a “blinkered, almost messianic, self-belief.”

• Boris Johnson: He’s the ‘poster boy’ of the Leave campaign and the likely new Prime Minister if Britain backs Brexit. His buffoonery and gaffes delight some, but horrify others. He once joked that women only go to university to find a husband. He has often dithered on big issues, wavering last year on whether to return to the House of Commons whilst still London Mayor. Some have criticised him for allegedly joining ‘Leave’ only because of the possible opportunity to become Prime Minister.

• Priti Patel: She’s the Minister for Employment. In a pro-Brexit speech last month she said, “If we could just halve the burdens of the EU social and employment legislation we could deliver a £4.3 billion boost to our economy and 60,000 new jobs.” TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady responded, “Leave the EU and lose your rights at work – that’s the message that even Leave campaigners like Priti Patel are now giving.”

• Chris Grayling: He’s the Leader of the House of Commons and previously Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. He provoked the first strike by barristers and solicitors for his cuts to legal aid. He backed reforms to curb the power of the European Court of Human Rights. He caused outrage with his comments that Christian owners of bed and breakfasts should have the right to turn away gay couples (he later apologised).

And waiting in the wings is UKIP leader, Nigel Farage who said he puts victory in the referendum above loyalty to his party. Mr Farage said he would back Boris Johnson to be Prime Minister if Britain votes for Brexit – and could see himself working for Boris’s government.

Imagine our current Tory government morphing into a new government consisting only of right-wing Eurosceptic Tories. With the softer pro-EU Conservatives disbanded because they lost the referendum.

A new Conservative government that wouldn’t be subject to the progressive rules and safeguards of the European Union – such as on workers’ rights, free movement and protection of the environment.

Then imagine that we might not have an opportunity to vote-out such a new government until 2020.

If you’re one of those who say ‘we want our country back’ – have a think about what country you’d be getting back if we left the EU, and who’d then be in charge.

Is the EU so bad, and the alternative so good, that we’d want to risk exchanging what we’ve got, for what we’d get?

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This article has now been published by The Independent newspaper:

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• The problem with Brexit
• Leave campaign is relying on lying to win
• Michael Gove is wrong about 5 million more migrants
• List of the latest articles by Jon Danzig

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

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• Join Jon Danzig’s new Facebook community in support of Britain remaining a member of the European Union – Reasons2Remain
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Is the #EU bad enough and the alternative good enough to #Leave? Please share my blog: https://t.co/IAsaM0xwFv pic.twitter.com/lF82Os63EM

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) June 12, 2016

The post It’s their country they want back, not yours appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Eurosceptics often claim that they love Europe, but hate the European Union. They assert that Britain can still be part of Europe without having to be part of the European Union.

That, of course, is true to an extent, but it rather misses the point and purpose of the EU.

The European Economic Community – later to be called the European Union – was started in the aftermath of the Second World War, with the express intent of avoiding wars on our continent ever happening again.

That was the passionate resolve of those who are regarded as the eleven founders of the European Union, including our own war leader, Winston Churchill.

After all, Europe had a long and bloody history of resolving its differences through war, and indeed, the planet’s two world wars originated right here, on our continent.

So the EU was never just an economic agreement between nations.

It was always also meant to be a social and political union of European nations to enable them to find ways not just to trade together, but to co-exist and co-operate in harmony and peace on many levels as a community of nations.

The goal, in the founding document of the European Union called the Treaty of Rome, was to achieve ‘ever closer union among the peoples of Europe’ (which is rather different to ‘ever closer union of nations’.)

Just one year after the Second World War, in 1946, Winston Churchill made his famous speech in Zurich, Switzerland in which he said:

“We must build a kind of United States of Europe. The structure of the United States of Europe, if well and truly built, will be such as to make the material strength of a single state less important.”

At the time Churchill did not envisage Britain joining the new Union of Europe, but he was later to change his mind.

In March 1957 the European Economic Community (EEC) was established by its six founding nations, France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg.

This was a remarkable achievement, considering that these countries only a few years previously had been fighting in a most terrible war, and four of the founding nations had been viciously subjugated by another of the founders, Germany, during their Nazi regime.

In a speech four months later in July 1957 at Westminster’s Central Hall, Churchill welcomed the formation of the EEC by the six, provided that “the whole of free Europe will have access”. Churchill added, “we genuinely wish to join..”

But Churchill also warned:

“If, on the other hand, the European trade community were to be permanently restricted to the six nations, the results might be worse than if nothing were done at all – worse for them as well as for us. It would tend not to unite Europe but to divide it – and not only in the economic field.”

Maybe this is the point that many in the ‘Leave EU’ campaigns simply don’t get. Here in Britain we don’t seem to understand the founding purpose of the European Union – and on the rest of the continent, they don’t understand why we don’t understand.

The European Union isn’t just about economics and trade, and never was. It’s about peace, and a community of nations of our continent working together for the benefit and protection of its citizens.

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• Churchill: A founder of the European Union
• Churchill wrongly recruited for Brexit
• 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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• Join Jon Danzig’s new Facebook community in support of Britain remaining a member of the European Union – Reasons2Remain
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#EUReferendum: The #EU isn’t just about trade, and never was. Please share my latest blog: https://t.co/8kxbzutBh0 pic.twitter.com/7sKFkLiquk

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) June 10, 2016

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María del Carmen Calatrava

Interdisciplinarity has become a major topic in discussions of higher education structures, knowledge production and research funding. The demand for criteria and tools for its evaluation is subsequently increasing. Interdisciplinary research can be evaluated according to its many different aspects—including collaboration, integration of disciplines, generation of new areas of research or solutions to complex problems (Wagner, et al., 2011)—using both qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis.

Most quantitative measures of the output of interdisciplinary research rely on bibliometric methods. Such methods present two very important advantages: (1) they deliver an objective measure of interdisciplinarity, and (2) in combination with computational tools, large datasets can be analyzed in an effective manner. They are increasingly being used to inform policy in science and technology. A recent example is a review of interdisciplinary research conducted by Elsevier and commissioned by the UK higher education funding bodies and the Medical Research Council (Pan & Katrenko, 2015). In order to be accurately representative though, it is essential that interdisciplinary measurements are conducted with reliable indicators.

Citation analysis based on a taxonomy of disciplines

Since interdisciplinary research is often conceptualized as the integration of knowledge, one of the most common methods for its measurement is citation analysis, in which an exchange or integration among fields is captured via discipline-specific citations referring to other fields. In other words, a publication is considered interdisciplinary when it references the publications of more than one field. Such an approach requires a taxonomy of disciplines that classify publications into disciplinary fields (Leydesdorff, Carley, & Rafols, 2013; Porter & Rafols, 2009; Rafols, Leydesdorff, OHare, Nightingale, & Stirling, 2012). Although there is no consensus as to which is the best taxonomy (National Research Council, 2010; Rafols & Leydesdorff, 2009), the one utilized by Web of Science is the one most widely used (Bensman & Leydesdorff, 2009; Pudovkin & Garfield, 2002). The data for the analysis is gathered from Web of Science. This particularly convenient bibliographic resource provides three essential features: it indexes journals in different disciplines, it provides citation records for indexed publications, and it categorizes journals into disciplines within the taxonomy. Once the references of a publication are categorized into one or more disciplines of the taxonomy, its interdisciplinarity can be measured by calculating the number of referenced fields, their proportion, and their similarity, all of which are the basis of widely-used indicators of interdisciplinarity (Porter & Rafols, 2009).

Missing data affects the accuracy of interdisciplinarity measurements

While analytical indicators and tools to measure interdisciplinarity have been refined over time, their results should be understood only as a proxy. The accuracy of interdisciplinarity measurements is directly related to the quality of the underlying bibliographic data, which not only needs to be correct, but also complete. Unfortunately, gathering a correct and complete bibliographic dataset is almost impossible because the data, which is typically gathered from digital libraries, is rarely complete. Even though this problem can be mitigated by gathering publication data from different bibliographic sources, it will continue to exist due to the fact that there is no bibliographic source that indexes all existing scientific publications. For example, Web of Science and Scopus do not cover books, book chapters or many regional non-English journals. Even conference proceedings, which constitute publication venues in many applied fast-changing fields such as computer science, are often not indexed.

For our most recent bibliometric analysis, we gathered 1,746 publications from Web of Science and Scopus. Even after combining the data from both digital libraries, the extraction of references was possible for only 1,068 of them (Calatrava Moreno, Auzinger, & Werthner, 2016). Another source of inaccuracy is created when publications are incorrectly categorized or are not categorized at all into disciplines. The 1,746 publications of our dataset had a total of 12,243 references, of which only 5,310 were categorized into disciplines. This poses a serious obstacle when conducting citation analysis because each citation needs to be categorized into at least one discipline. If citations remain uncategorized, they will not be taken into account in the analysis. The more citations that remain uncategorized, the less accurate the measurement will be.

How much missing data should we allow in a bibliometric analysis?

In order to decrease the amount of unreliable data, previous literature has selected publications with a proportion of categorized references above a threshold value when computing an index of interdisciplinarity (Rafols, Leydesdorff, OHare, Nightingale, & Stirling, 2012). This approach, however, does not take into account that uncategorized references affect the measurement of disciplinary and interdisciplinary publications in different ways. While the uncategorized references of a disciplinary publication are likely to be from the same discipline, the references of an interdisciplinary publication will reference multiple disciplines. Therefore, missing data in highly interdisciplinary publications leads to an underestimation of the extent of their interdisciplinarity.

We have developed a method that addresses this problem. Given a publication and its references (both categorized and uncategorized), our method estimates the uncertainty caused by the uncategorized references. It acts as a confidence indicator that can be used to assess the reliability of bibliographic data and thereby discard unreliable publications from the bibliometric analysis.

Our contribution is a first approach to measure interdisciplinarity taking into account the incompleteness of bibliographic data.  Further work will be needed in order to tackle other problems that still affect the results of indicators of interdisciplinary research.

María del Carmen Calatrava is in the final year of her PhD at Vienna University of Technology, Austria. She has an interdisciplinary background in computer science, innovation and education science. She has two master’s degrees, one in computer science and one in innovation in computer science. Her main research interest is data analysis applied to the field of higher education. She is currently analyzing the production of interdisciplinary research within the context of new doctoral structures after the Bologna Process with both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her interest in technology has led her to contribute to the field of business informatics as well.

References

Bensman, S. J.,   & Leydesdorff, L. (2009). Definition and identification of journals as   bibliographic and subject entities: Librarianship versus ISI Journal Citation   Reports methods and their effect on citation measures. Journal of the   American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(6),   1097-1117.

Calatrava Moreno,   M. C., Auzinger, T., & Werthner, H. (2016). On the uncertainty of   interdisciplinarity measurements due to incomplete bibliographic data. Scientometrics,   107(1), 213-232.

Leydesdorff, L.,   Carley, S., & Rafols, I. (2013). Global maps of science based on the new   Web-of-Science categories. Scientometrics, 94(2), 589-593.

Moed, H., Burger,   W., Frankfort, J., & Van Raan, A. F. (1985). The application of   bibliometric indicators: Important field- and time-dependent factors to be   considered. Scientometrics, 8(3-4), 177-203.

National Research   Council. (2010). Data on federal research and development: A pathway to   modernization. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Pan, L., &   Katrenko, S. (2015). A review of the UK’s interdisciplinary research using   a citation-based approach. Report to the UK HE funding bodies and MRC by   Elsevier. Elsevier.

Porter, A. L.,   & Rafols, I. (2009). Is science becoming more interdisciplinary?   measuring and mapping six research fields over time. Scientometrics, 81(3),   719-745.

Pudovkin, A. I.,   & Garfield, E. (2002). Algorithmic procedure for finding semantically   related journals. Journal of the American Society for Information Science   and Technology, 53(13), 1113-1119.

Rafols, I., &   Leydesdorff, L. (2009). Content-based and algorithmic classifications of   journals: Perspectives on the dynamics of scientific communication and   indexer effects. Journal of the American Society for Information Science   and Technology, 60(9), 1823-1835.

Rafols, l.,   Leydesdorff, L., OHare, A., Nightingale, P., & Stirling, A. (2012). How   journal rankings can suppress interdisciplinary research: A comparison   between innovation studies and business & management. Research Policy,   41(7), 1262-1282.

Wagner, C. S.,   Roessner, J. D., Bobb, K., Klein, J. T., Boyack, K. W., Keyton, J., . . .   Börner, K. (2011). Approaches to understanding and measuring   interdisciplinary scientific research (IDR): A review of the literature. Journal   of Informetrics, 5(1), 14-26.

The post Quantifying Interdisciplinarity in the Face of Uncertainty appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Looking around in these final weeks before the 23 June vote, there hasn’t much reason to feel that the EU referendum has come to occupy a central place in the lives of the British public. While the papers and the news programmes have been full of stories and arguments, this hasn’t seemed to fully translate into a public debate.

Let’s take a couple of markers of this.

Firstly, for all their ambivalent headline findings, the opinion polls do seem to have been pretty consistent on the volume of don’t knows. As NumberCruncherPolitics’ helpful site shows, this has hovered around the 10-15% mark since September. last year While it has drifted down since March it hasn’t moved at a rate that suggests a deep penetration of either side’s arguments, particularly if we also consider the broad stability of the polls: people don’t appear to be changing their minds very much.

Secondly, my work on social media that I’ve been blogging about each Friday has also shown that online campaigns have yet to show any big pick-up, in either followers or sharing of content. While this needs to be contextualised by the broader social media debate, it does, once again, suggest that both camps have yet to make a strong connection with the electorate.

All of which makes this week’s developments the more interesting.

Tuesday’s technical failings on the electoral roll registration website, and yesterday’s decision to extend the deadline to midnight (Thursday), was in many ways a classic piece of political ex-temporisation (i.e. making it up as you go along) and a reflection on the extent to which we still have to deal with the unexpected.*

On the other hand, it does mark one of the first instances where the public appear to have got active (albeit a skewed cross-section, not tucked up in bed of a Tuesday night): the spike easily exceeded that for last May’s general election, although in part that was down to the much greater volume of calls to register by government, media and activists.

Whatever the reasons, this mobilisation will matter.

For one thing, it means a not-insignificant number of voters will be now more likely to vote, after the drama of registering: a paradox of making it harder/more uncertain that they could vote at all is likely to be that they will now vote, as it has more value to them.

In addition, this influx will benefit the Remain campaign more, given the strong age gradient in late registrations. If there is a close outcome in a fortnight, then expect some re-visiting of this episode.

Finally, it matters because it’s given both sides a way into broader issues about the democratic life of the country. Tellingly, while Leave might have suffered from more young (more pro-EU) voters getting registered, they have been generally happy to extend the deadline. Of course, when a key part of your argument is that ‘we, the people’ need to take back control, it’s hard to then say ‘no, not you people’. Even the more wild and conspiratorial fringes have been quite constrained in their cries of a plot, at least so far.

The big challenge though is to now keep that interest and mobilisation. the TV debates might help, but if they follow the pattern established by the two to date (on Sky and ITV), then they will be more a case of not messsing up, rather than making the case. As I’ve observed elsewhere, good TV isn’t the same as good public debate and if the public doesn’t feel it’s got a voice or a role in the clash of politicians, then it’s likely to switch off, both literally and metaphorically.

Right now we stand on the cusp of matters. Which way we go from here is open. But if we want to find a more lasting settlement, then we all need to try and make the most of this time.

* Although as one academic who works a lot with online data collection told me yesterday, anyone who can’t cope with 500,000 queries, especially after having trailed the looming deadline so much, needs to take a long, hard look at themselves and their processes.

The post Registering your interest? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The Jean Monnet Center of Excellence and the UNESCO Chair at the University of Macedonia (Thessaloniki – Greece), headed by Assistant Professor Dr. Despoina Anagnostopoulou (EU Institutions & Policies – Univ. Macedonia) offer two excellent opportunities for International Summer Schools conducted in English, during July 2016, at the beautiful Pelion in Greece – APPLY NOW:

08-11 July 2016 (Application deadline 5 July 2016), International Summer School in the EU Area of Freedom, Security & Justice, organized by the Jean Monnet Center of Excellence. The School aims at advancing “understanding of the law, policies, challenges and dynamics in the integration process of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (ASFJ).” It has 5 Cycles:

• Cycle 1: Structure/institutional evolution of AFSJ
• Cycle 2: EU Citizenship, Schengen/Free movement,
• Cycle 3: EU Migration/Asylum Policy,
• Cycle 4: EU Internal-External Security,
• Cycle 5: EU Civil/Criminal Justice,

Faculty teaching:

• Assistant Prof. Despoina Anangnostopoulou (Univ. Macedonia)
• Associate Prof. Michalis Chrysomallis (Democritus Univ. Thrace)
• Assistant Prof. Ioannis Papageorgiou (Aritstotle Univ. Thessaloniki)
• Assistant Prof. Foteini Bellou (Univ. Macedonia)
• Prof. Miguel G. Santiago (Autonomous Univ. Barcelona)
• PhD cand./Research Assist. Niovi Vavoula (Queen Mary Univ. London).

14-19 July 2016 (Application Deadline: 10 July 2016), 1st International Summer School in European Studies and Human Rights Law: Protection of Human Rights in Europe, organized by the UNESCO Chair. The School aims at advancing “understanding of the significance of human rights protection at the international and the European level.” It has 5 Cycles:

• Cycle 1: Universal/Regional Mechanisms for Protection of Human Rights
• Cycle 2: ECHR,
• Cycle 3: EU Fundamental Rights & Personal Data Protection,
• Cycle 4: Non-discrimination (emphasis on LGBT),
• Cycle 5: Refugees, Minorities, Cultural Rights,

Faculty teaching:

• Assistant Prof. Despoina Anangnostopoulou (Univ. Macedonia)
• Associate Prof. Lina Papadopoulou (Aristotle Univ. Thessaloniki)
• Prof. Eugenia Alexandropoulou-Egyptiadou (Univ. Macedonia)
• Associate Prof. Alina Tryfonidou (Univ. Reading)
• Assistant Prof. Ioannis Papadopoulos (Univ. Macedonia)
• Former Prof. Paroula Naskou Perraki (Univ. Macedonia)
• Assistant Prof. Ioanna Papavasiliou-Alexiou (Univ. Macedonia)
• Dr. Nikos Gaitenidis, Head of the Constitutional Values of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence (Univ. Macedonia)
• Ms. Dagmara Rajska, Council of Europe expert

For both Summer Schools, certificates of attendance to all, and graduation certificates after passing a multiple choice exam, will be awarded.

Visit the Jean Monnet University website

For more information email: danag@uom.gr or call: +30 2310891 442 or +30 6979 348008.

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Dear Mr Field

On BBC Question Time last night (2 June) you told the audience:

‘I can’t remember the last time your money was accounted properly in Europe and was signed-off by the auditors. They actually cannot justify how they’re spending your money.’

This is wrong. The EU accounts are signed-off every year by the independent European Court of Auditors. Every penny of our money sent to the EU is accounted for and justified. See my full report at: www.Audit.Reasons2Remain.eu

As a leading Labour MP supporting Brexit, isn’t it important that facts are accurately presented to the electorate?

Can I please ask you to issue a correction to your comment on Question Time, or at least to give an undertaking not to repeat your inaccurate statement that the EU accounts aren’t signed-off?

Yours sincerely

Jon Danzig
For Reasons2Remain

__________________________________________________

• The EU accounts ARE signed off
• 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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• Join Jon Danzig’s new Facebook community in support of Britain remaining a member of the European Union – Reasons2Remain
• Share on Twitter and Facebook:

#EUReferendum: #FrankField MP gets it wrong about #EU accounts on #BBCQT Share open letter: https://t.co/QsBOW57xhl pic.twitter.com/E8CJGJYwPq

— Reasons2Remain (@Reasons2Remain) 3 June 2016

The post Frank Field, MP, gets it wrong on Question Time appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The Eurovision Song Contest can be a useful and fun allegorical tool for explaining the dynamics of the EU, writes Anna Wambach. She argues that, although comparisons between the two can create strong cognitive associations over time, if taken too seriously such links can lead to misunderstandings about how the EU works in practice.

As we’ve moved into the last stretch of the referendum, we’ve seen the emergence of a new dynamic: the referendum-as-general-election.

In setting out more clearly what a post-Brexit future would look like, the key figures in the Leave campaign – Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Chris Grayling and Priti Patel – have also been sketching what a post-Cameron government would look like, presumably with them in positions of power and influence.

This trend has been really come through with yesterday’s announcements on immigration – extending the non-EU points system to EU nationals – but was also arguably visible in the various pronouncements on reasserting sovereignty, via a constitutional court or a British bill of rights or a sovereignty act.

At a tactical level, there is something to this approach. Given the difficulty of keeping public engagement with the EU issue turning the referendum back into something that looks more like a general election looks potentially productive: focus on people’s unhappiness with ‘the government’ and David Cameron and kick them/him out.

Of course, this assumes people overlook that you’d be replacing one Tory government with another, but one might argue that this model is part of the explanation for why Jeremy Corbyn isn’t fighting too hard to save Cameron’s political skin: maybe the turnover of power splits the Tories and gives him more of a chance in 2020. It certainly rubs the same way as Corbyn’s general ambivalence about the EU.

There is a certain circularity in that view, since it has been precisely Corbyn’s ambivalence that created the space for Johnson and co to make this push: it’s not coincidental that the biggest figures in Leave have come from the Tories, given the depth of feeling on the EU issue and the additional prize of the party leadership.

This dominance has become self-reinforcing, as they have been able to set Leave’s agenda more and more. UKIP and Nigel Farage have been active, but marginal at the strategic level, unable to make this kind of government-in-waiting play. This suits the Leave Tories, who not only re-direct UKIP’s populist challenge, but also get Farage campaigning for them. In the long run that might cause ‘the establishment’ a problem, but not just yet.

To see the referendum as a power-play within the Conservative party is a cynical position, and I wouldn’t pretend it’s anything like the whole story, but it feels like it’s going to be the most consequential one in the short- to medium-term. Either EU membership is secured and pushed hard off the agenda by Cameron and his successor, or it’s a few years of trying to find a model that works: not there’s no rupture, no breakpoint where everything changes.

However, there is a certain irony here. As my economist colleagues like to note, there’s never a free lunch. The price that Leave Tories look like paying comes from the choices they’re making now.

Their choice of immigration control is simple and clear, but it necessarily precludes an EEA-style post-Brexit agreement, since it’s incompatible with free movement: the EU has no good incentive to break the habit of its lifetime and offer full market access without free movement of workers. That in turn closes down the option that would offer the smoothest transition out of the EU for the UK and raises the costs of building a more arm’s-length relationship, not mention the likely economic costs that most analysts suggest will be incurred.

Likewise, the legal options being laid out sound lovely – who doesn’t want have control of our decisions – but are in practice terribly complex. Having spent a day in a room with legal experts this week, I’m happy to take their opinion that the proposals are either meaningless or would imply restrictions on politicians’ power that they are going to have be incredibly selfless to accept. Making no judgment on any future government, the fact that such selflessness hasn’t been shown by any previous administration suggests that we might be sceptical about the chances of change. Moreover, even if they do happen, then they imply a change in the British constitutional order much more wide-reaching than even EU membership has wrought.

Whether the village will let itself be destroyed to save it is very much an open question.

The post Destroying the village to save it appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

My five years as a PhD student, first in Oxford (Brookes) and then as a post-doc at LSE, have told me that the smart people from the UK, especially those working in the City, see the Euro project thus:

Cartoon by Schrank (The Economist)

European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is like a ship that has been built badly from the start. The Brits have warned the Continental Europeans about this structural flaw even before the ship left harbour (think of Thatcher), but the latter wouldn’t listen. They left port anyway, while the Brits stayed ashore convinced that this was a journey doomed to fail.

History has proven the smart people from Oxbridge and the City right. In 2010, confronted with the first big storm (the Global Financial Crisis), the European ship showed its deficiencies and water started to break into the vessel. The Brits screamed: “we told you so”, and enjoyed their Schadenfreude.

However, the ship hasn’t sunk yet. The Continentals are trying hard to fix it while at high sea. They have patched over the leaks for now, although the enterprise is hampered by the divisions in the crew (too many nationalities) and by a lack of leadership. The French and German officers do not agree on the end solution, and the only one keeping the vessel afloat is the Chief Engineer called Mario Draghi.

These troubles make the Brits, and especially the English, feel even more self-righteous about their decision to not join EMU. They are pretty convinced the ship will eventually sink. Nonetheless, they don’t want to be overconfident. They know deep down in their soles that it would be a mistake to underestimate German engineering and French keenness for grandeur so they have a speed boat ready to join at high see in case the ship is eventually fixed. Because one thing is certain. If the ship sails on, the Brits need to have a say in the direction it should take.

This metaphor sums up the view of the City of London in regards to the Brexit debate. In general the Brits have looked at the European Union project from a purely transactional perspective: “What can I get from this arrangement?” This is very different in the Continent, where emotional elements such as angst from your past (Germany), obsession to be bigger than you are (France), desire to belong to a rich club (Italy and Spain and almost everyone else) and fear from your neighbour (the CEE countries) are much more pronounced.

If there is a sentimental bias to be detected among the English (less so among the other Brits) towards the EU it works usually against further integration. The main reason is the British Empire. The Brits have not been invaded since William the Conqueror in the 11th Century and this counts. As a German official told me once: “For the Brits democracy means Westminster. They cannot envision it beyond”. This explains the British obsession to consider the European Parliament as an illegitimate body.

Both the very rational (and so far dominant) approach towards the EU but also the Empire-clinging sentimental rejection against it are very present in the City of London. As a matter of fact, these two perspectives are on opposite sides in the Brexit debate. The former is represented by the big American investment and the European universal banks. They want to stay in the EU because doing so allows them to have access to the biggest and richest market on earth. The latter is usually embodied by the smaller wealth management firms, hedge funds and stockbrokers. They think Brussels curtails the good old English tradition of laissez-faire.

This division is centuries old. The Square Mile of the City is actually the best example of a Global Village. Since London after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 overtook Amsterdam as the world’s most important financial centre, two tribes have co-existed in the City. The “Nativists” (mostly English) who have seen the success of the City intrinsically related to the British Empire. And the “cosmopolitans” (the smartest and more adventurous from the rest of the world) whose functionalist approach has always been the following: “To be as far from politics as possible to make business at ease (the off-shore component of the City being always attractive), but as close to power as necessary in order to influence it”. Thus, London was, and remains, the place to be due to its close connections to Washington and its influence in Brussels.

Of course, if the Brexit camp wins the forthcoming referendum this ideal configuration would change. The City would be further away from politics, and perhaps enjoy less regulation (although that is not assured), but at the same time it would be further away from power (both in Brussels and in Washington) and perhaps even more importantly it would give up completely on joining the EMU ship.

But what happens if eventually the ship gets fixed? Will the smart money of the City of London let it sail away? Unlikely. The ECB is already more powerful than the Old Lady. It will be even more so if EMU survives. This is why Goldman Sachs and the rest of big American and European banks have funded the “Bremain” campaign. They feel the “Nativist” camp led by Boris Johnson is stuck in an imperial illusion which won’t come back. And while they do so, they are thinking: “perhaps we should consider getting closer to Frankfurt. Not only because EMU might get fixed, but also because Westminster is becoming too insular”. And insularity is something you certainly don’t want as a banker.

EU-Asia Institute at ESSCA Ecole de Management, Angers
www.essca.fr/EU-Asia / @Essca-Eu-Asia

The post Brexit and the City appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Insert metaphor about how toasters can kill if you’re not careful, apply to referendums

One of the most interesting aspects of the EU referendum campaign so far has been the extent to which things haven’t changed.

Six weeks into the official period, we still have polling that gives no clear advantage to either side, nor even an indication that attitudes have changed at all: the don’t knows still make a solid 10-15% and have done for months. As we’ve been reporting on our social media monitoring, there’s no big explosion of public interest that can be detected.

All the lines of attack taken by either side have been ones that were long apparent and all have been countered (broadly speaking) almost immediately.

There’s been no big shock (unless you though Boris Johnson was actually doing the donuts himself), either within the UK or outside.

In short, things looks very much like they did: close.

Which makes this week’s sounds from the Remain camp all the more perplexing.

To read the Telegraph, following a poll that showed a big lead for Remain, was to read a worldview that said ‘job done’: the swing had come in, the messages had got through and now it was time to just cross ‘t’s and dot ‘i’s.

Regardless of what politics might be going on behind this, this looks at best irresponsible and at worse, damaging.

If last year’s General Election taught us anything, it’s that polling has a problem and for all the remedial work done by the industry since, they still have a problem, as evidenced by the continued divergence of telephone and online polling results. If even if they didn’t have a problem, then to take one of two polls as hard and fast evidence for a swing is bad practice (as Tuesday’s ICM poll neatly demonstrated).

If that’s irresponsible, then it’s equally important to stress the scope for damage to Remain’s case.

One of the more robust findings we have to date is the ‘enthusiasm gap‘ (Leavers are noticeably more committed to their cause than Remainers, as so more likely to turn out). Remain’s big challenge has always been to convince people that they need to get excited enough about the (roughly) status quo option to go and vote. As one Remain campaigner put it to me last week, “what do we want? the same” isn’t a great rallying cry.

In such a situation, one way to get the vote out is precisely to focus on the closeness of the campaign: Austria’s Presidential elections has provided a nice demonstration that one’s vote does actually count for a lot. But if Remain try to play up a swing (whether or not it exists), then the urgency and importance of voting drops, to Leave’s benefit. With all modelling suggesting that turnout is the crucial factor, any message that plays down the importance of mobilisation is going to hurt Remain.

To be clear, there’s no suggestion that the Telegraph (or any of the other outlets that ran with the story) are trying to work to engineer a Leave vote. Instead the issue is one that has been endemic in other referendums on European issues.

Where governments have lost such votes, in every case one of the key factors has been complacency. In the case of treaty ratifications, that has been driven by the weight of other member states’ ratifications and by the impression that the government’s hard bargaining on the text will be enough to carry the day. In the case of joining policy areas, the difficulty of the government reaching agreement to get to a vote in the first place does the same.

Here we have something a bit different. The government clearly didn’t expect to be holding this vote and it has recognised that the ‘new settlement’ agreed by Cameron in March isn’t enough to make the case, so it hasn’t gone in with its eyes shut. However, the capacity to bring many big guns to bear – international leaders, all but one party leader, most economists – and the subsequent command of the rational agenda has lent the impression that things must come right. Tony Blair is the purest expression of this sentiment to date.

This is very much to miss the dynamics of what is happening. As Janan Ganesh wrote yesterday, the EU ‘debate’ looks and feels a lot like the elite talking with itself, rather than actually engaging the wider public. With old notions of deference long gone and the lure of populism hanging nearby, it seems all too possible to envisage a situation where the referendum is determined more by the alienation of the public from the political sphere than by any substantive issue.

I’ve framed this mainly as an issue for Remain – which it is – but it’s also something that Leave have to address too: if they win, then some of them will be stepping into the corridors of power very soon and they will have to make good on their promises if they are not to generate another cycle of disillusionment and disengagement.

The fight for this referendum is still very much on, but so too is the ability of politicians and other elites to speak for the people: ultimately, that matters more than any outcome on 23 June. And that’s why we have to recognise that this matters not just in-of-itself, but also as a marker of our democratic lives.

The post Complacency is a killer appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

“Taking back control” from an anti-democratic EU is a central theme of the “leave campaign”. Even some of those advocating “stay” concede the EU needed to “reform” to become more democratic and accountable.

This response is puzzling given the existing opportunities to influence EU as well as critics’ vagueness and disagreement about how a more democratic EU should look like. The focus on allegedly undemocratic Brussels institutions misses that most of the problems as well as solutions to democracy can be found closer to home.

The most obvious way in which citizens can influence the EU is through the election of the Westminster parliament. Any transfer or sharing of new competences with the EU had to be agreed by national parliaments and the House of Commons has ratified each Treaty change since 1973 with solid majorities. Supranational law and its interpretation to the European Court of Justice only takes effect because this is what the people’s elected representatives legislated for.

Major changes to the EU such as Enlargement have been strongly advocated by successive British governments, whilst they have also blocked in the past more wide-ranging proposals for direct democracy fearing that more legitimacy for EU bodies will give them also greater power. National ministers appointed through general elections wield significant power over day-to-day legislation in the Council of Ministers and, for strategic direction, the European Council.

The UK retains exclusive competence in the areas most sensitive to UK citizens such as taxation, pensions, health, policing and remains exempt from legislation associated with the Schengen free-border or the Eurozone. The UK has consolidated its status as Eurozone outsider with guarantees that it will not be discriminated against, does not need to contribute to any bailouts and can keep its own financial supervision.

The previous government’s extensive audit of EU’s competences involving business and civil society was broadly supportive of the current distribution. It is true that the UK does not always have its way, but as my LSE colleagues have shown, British governments have voted in 97 percent of cases with the majority in the period 2004-2009 and 87 percent in 2009-2015 in the Council.

Hence, it is somewhat meaningless to measure which proportion of UK laws emanate from the EU. The widely cited study of the House of Common’s library arrived at figures of 6.8% for primary legislation and 14.1% for secondary legislation. Even these figures overestimate EU influence as the ‘degree of involvement varied from passing reference to explicit implementation’.

The second democratic channels are the elections to the European Parliament (EP). Not only has the EP acquired real power to block or change legislation in most policy areas, for instance, its rejection of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

The EP has also increasing powers over the European Commission as a hybrid body combining the powers of a regulator with more political functions of proposing new legislation. The first function relies on having appropriate expertise and is typically-shielded from undue political influence in most countries. The second function no doubt requires political accountability and democratic responsiveness and the primary body to do this is the European Parliament.

In 1999, the EP brought about the resignation of the Santer-Commission after a transnational network of investigative journalists exposed cases of corruption and wrong-doing. This case also illustrated vividly that national-based media can hold supranational institutions to account and that pan-European debates are possible.

At the 2014 elections, the major European party groupings, Socialists and Democrats and the European People’s Party (EPP) campaigned with lead candidates for Commission president after a change in the Lisbon Treaty allowed for this personalisation. When the EPP emerged as the winner on a decent turnout of 42.6 percent, its candidate Jean-Claude Juncker became President against the opposition of the UK and Hungary.

The reason why this outcome appeared as a surprise to British voters in contrast to those of other countries was because Labour and Conservatives had pretended that the Treaty change was meaningless and most British media uncritically bought this line and thus gave the candidates hardly any publicity in contrast to, for instance, Germany as the LSE’s Simon Hix showed. Given this precedent, it is likely that next time more citizens will vote in European elections according to the candidates and policies on offer, not the popularity of the domestic government.

The last avenue of influence is the Citizens Initiative which obliges the European Commission to consider new legislation on a particular issue as long as it is backed by at least one million EU citizens, coming from at least 7 out of the 28 member states. Even though if it does not force the Commission to actually legislate, it is a powerful tool to put issues on the agenda.

Given the diversity of national systems and cultures, there is no ready-made blue-print available for democracy above the nation-state. The greatest potential lies not in protracted constitutional reforms involving governments with little interests to cede power, but in changing everyday democratic practice within and across member states.

There needs to be greater scrutiny of ministers’ actions in Brussels by the media to prevent them getting away with ‘saying one thing in Brussels, and another thing to the domestic audience’ (Boris Johnson). It has been argued that the House of Common’s scrutiny of European affairs has been weak and many MPs have lacked the motivation to invest time in this role as they feel this was not going be sufficiently visible in the media and appreciated by constituencies.

The media should also report more extensively and accurately about who takes what decisions with which consequences in the EU. And civil society organisations and citizens could use more fully the existing opportunities to influence the direction of the EU and campaign for the changes they want, both at home, and with citizens in other countries. A more democratic EU starts at home, but cannot stop there.

Christoph Meyer is Professor of European & International Politics, King’s College London

The post A More Democratic EU Starts at Home appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Ahead of the University of Edinburgh’s free online course Towards Brexit? The UK’s EU Referendum and one month before the referendum, here are five things you need to know about the Brexit debate:

The EU debate is a minefield, with half-truths and whole-lies coming from both camps. The reason for this, as I understand it, is twofold. Firstly, it is impossible to know what will happen in the event that the UK leaves the EU, or indeed what will happen in five, ten or fifty years’ time if we vote to stay on 23 June. Ergo, objective fact is largely off the table from the get-go. Secondly, the notion of ‘truth’ is tricky in ideological discussions. I recently saw Peter Hitchins make a brief intervention on the EU debate and was struck by his point that the signatories of the Irish Proclamation did not stand on the steps of the General Post Office with a detailed cost-benefit analysis of the impact on the economic forecasts and trade balance of the country. They held an ideological belief and made an impassioned political decision. By the same measure, the reason that ‘facts’ aren’t working as well in this referendum debate as some (myself included) might like, is because it is not a decision that can be based solely on fact. Moreover, in most cases, there genuinely are (at least) two answers to the question at hand. Untangling the accumulation of myths, misnomers and soundbites which permeate the referendum narrative is a job for someone more intelligent (not to mention more patient) than myself. However, in the spirit of ‘have blog, will air musings’, I draw attention here to one incident which has stuck in my mind (and which I noted down at the time) as emblematic of the problem with the EU referendum campaign.

On 3 March, BBC Radio 4’s Today programme conducted an interview with Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin, a member of the board of the Vote Leave campaign. Today presenter Mishal Husain put to Mr Jenkin that Sir Peter Ricketts, a recently-retired former ambassador, has raised concerns that if Britain were to leave the EU, France might cease to conduct border checks on those seeking entrance to the UK. Unusually for an MP on the Today programme, Mr Jenkin went on to directly address Sir Ricketts’ point with an equally valid counter-argument, but before he did, he made the following remarks:

‘Find me a diplomat that’s anti-EU…one of the reasons we’re in the mess we’re in is because we have diplomats who have religiously and slavishly pursued the European integration policy…they all have a certain view…it’s interesting, as soon as they retire they turn out to have this very pro-European view. I’m afraid I think it rather discredits the idea that we’ve got an impartial diplomatic service.’

In the interest of brevity, I will side-step the wealth of nonsense which Mr Jenkin managed to pack around his perfectly reasonable point that the French government is a rational and responsible body and is unlikely to severe all agreements with the UK overnight should we vote to leave. I will also by-pass the irony that I agreed with this central point, and yet he managed to present it and its contribution to his broader position in a way that was so infuriatingly exaggerated, misleading and childish that, in the end, it served only to convince me that I don’t want to be on any team that he is a part of. Instead, I draw attention to Mr Jenkin’s utterly bizarre string of logic which led him to conclude that, since British diplomats are commonly pro-EU, they must have been harbouring this dirty secret for many years and are somehow damaging British interests with their partiality.

I don’t have much difficulty accepting the premise of Mr Jenkin’s concern – it seems quite likely that many British diplomats (and, I imagine, diplomats from most other member states too) are pro-EU. What I find confusing is why he thinks that this is an innate characteristic, a preference which exists and pre-existed in British diplomats independent of their professional or personal experience, as if he suspects that they all went to a secret boarding school where they were drilled in the values of ‘ever closer union’ and prepared for infiltration into the UK’s diplomatic corps, only revealing their true, traitorous identities upon retirement. To my mind, the trend that Mr Jenkin identifies can best, if not only, be interpreted as follows: British diplomats (to accept Mr Jenkin’s premise that they all hold the same view as Sir Ricketts), having spent many years living in and working with the EU, have reached the conclusion that it is a project worthy of our support and participation. Possessing what is probably the most direct experience and expertise in the matter that it is possible to have, British diplomats consider the UK’s membership of the EU to be highly valuable and have chosen to voice this view in the context of the referendum campaign. Essentially, an expert group has presented its arguments for why the UK should vote ‘remain’.

This is an example of precisely the kind of rational contribution which should be being made in the referendum campaign. The view of Sir Ricketts and his colleagues, in light of their experience and expertise, carries value and voters should be exposed to it. This is not to say that it is wholly objective, of course it is not. British diplomats have particular experiences and, to that extent, their position is unavoidably biased. Furthermore, it would be impossible for me to say that I am certain that the argument they put forward is nothing but the unequivocal truth. These things are, incidentally, also true of any view aired by Mr Jenkin and his colleagues in the Vote Leave campaign, by those in the ‘remain’ camp, or by anyone else. However, by making his background known and ‘presenting his credentials’ to the British public, Sir Ricketts has made a valuable contribution which they can scrutinise and evaluate in the forming of their own judgements. Perhaps, rather than it being pro-EU campaigners who ‘lack confidence in this country’, as Mr Jenkin asserted later in his interview, it is those (on both sides of the issue) who exploit the inherently ideological nature of the referendum debate by framing informed opinion as inherent bias who lack confidence in British voters to decide for themselves.

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Having finally submitted my thesis and in light of the impending referendum, I digress in this post from health governance – please excuse the misleading platform.

The post Fact, ideology and logic in the EU referendum campaign appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The UK’s referendum on EU membership is now firmly on the horizon. Referendum Day – 23 June – could well be remembered as a landmark in the UK’s relations with the rest of the world, as well as for its own constitutional settlement.

The approaching referendum on the UK’s EU membership is set to be historic, whatever its outcome. It will either be only the second time in European history that the people of a Member State has specifically endorsed continued membership (the first also being the UK with the 1975 Common Market Referendum), or the first time such a people has explicitly opted to end membership.

Have you ever noticed how you never see Cameron and Flynn in the same place at the same time?

After what feels like a lifetime, we move into the final weeks of this EU referendum campaign. A quick peek at the calendar only gives us five weeks until the vote and all the talk of long campaigns and attention deficits feels pushed to one side, as we flip into rushes for the line, tales of thousands of miles covered and last minute surprises.

I exaggerate. But only a bit.

So far, the real mark of the referendum has been how predictable it has been. Neither side has produced a killer argument, neither side has given any hostages to fortune that weren’t already out there. Even this week’s excursus into “EU as fourth Reich” by Boris was notable more for having taken so long to come out than for its content: I recall Nigel Lawson saying something similar back in February and no-one really noticed/cared.

It’s not that no one’s tiring to make the debate come to life. Remain, in particular, have thrown a lot at the debate, from Obama to the IMF, with a cavalcade of foreign leaders and experts bringing their gravitas and research to present a pretty robust economic case.

However, like the famous Crimean engagement, it’s magnificent, but it’s not effective, or at least as far as the polling goes. Admittedly, there’s obviously some issue around polling, which effectively places everyone in a state of profound uncertainty about who’s where. Given that uncertainty, fighting as if you still had everything to play for makes sense.

Leave appear to be taking the path of keeping back on the big guns, assuming they have them to produce. If public opinion is hard to measure because few people are really engaged, then it makes sense to wait until it’s more pressing and engaging. Of course, this might be as good as it gets, in which case the last-mover advantage is weaker. Our work on social media campaigning suggests that if there is an uptick of interest it has been small so far.

If there is a dog that has yet to bark very loudly, then it’s immigration. Vote Leave, in particular, has not been willing to go too far down that route, but there is both opportunity and incentive, given the persistently high levels of public interest in the issue. Seen in this light, Turkey might find itself been encouraged not to pull the plug on the refugee deal just yet.

Whether things will change gear in these last weeks remains unclear. Part of the problem is that the arguments are all very well-rehearsed, so finding lines that cut through and engage is very difficult. Even Cameron’s ‘security’ framing has fallen to the wayside somewhat, despite the potential it displayed.

In addition, the scope for external events to play in the debate looks to be limited. Should the Turkey deal fall apart, it will still take some time for volume of refugees and migrants crossing to Greece to reach last summer’s levels. The postponing of any major EU policy initiative, and of most of the British government’s work, also takes some of the potential for heat. The apparent resolution of the doctors’ strike is a symptom of this wind-down, and part of the reason others are looking to make advantage in the next month.

However, while this might play to Remain’s advantage, there is a sting in the tail. Turnout looks to be a crucial factor, as Leavers are much more enthused about the referendum. If the government and Remain draw too much of the life from the debate – to avoid annoying people – then they might find they still lose. Moreover, Leave have every incentive to help them make this happen. Difficult choices all round.

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Τον Μάρτιο του 2016 η Κύπρος έγινε το τέταρτο από τα πέντε Κράτη-Μέλη της Ευρωζώνης που έλαβαν οικονομική βοήθεια από την Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση (ΕΕ) και το Διεθνές Νομισματικό Ταμείο (ΔΝΤ). Ολοκλήρωσε το πρόγραμμα του με το ΔΝΤ την 7η Μαρτίου και με τον Ευρωπαϊκό Μηχανισμό Στήριξης (ΕΜΣ) την 31η Μαρτίου. Αυτό παρουσιάζεται συχνά ως ‘έξοδος από τα Μνημόνια’. Είναι όμως πραγματικά έτσι; Τι σημαίνει η ολοκλήρωση ενός προγράμματος οικονομικής βοήθειας με την ΕΕ και το ΔΝΤ, και πότε επέρχεται η πραγματική έξοδος από το Μνημόνιο;

Τα προγράμματα οικονομικής βοήθειας ΕΕ-ΔΝΤ αποτελούνται από δύο μέρη: (1) την δανειακή σύμβαση ή σύμβαση διευκόλυνσης, και (2) τις διαρθρωτικές μεταρρυθμίσεις υπό τον όρο ικανοποίησης των οποίων απελευθερώνονται οι δόσεις της οικονομικής βοήθειας. Οι μεταρρυθμίσεις αυτές περιλαμβάνονται στα διαβόητα πλέον Μνημόνια (Memorandums of Understanding – MoUs), τα οποία συνάπτονται μεταξύ του Κράτους-Μέλους που επωφελείται της οικονομικής βοήθειας, του ΔΝΤ και της Ευρωπαϊκής Επιτροπής (εκπροσωπώντας τον ΕΜΣ, μέλη του οποίου είναι τα Κράτη-Μέλη της Ευρωζώνης). Η αξιολόγηση τήρησης των όρων του  Μνημονίου διεξάγεται από την λεγόμενη ‘Τρόικα’: Ευρωπαϊκή Επιτροπή, Ευρωπαϊκή Κεντρική Τράπεζα (ΕΚΤ) και ΔΝΤ.

Η εκτενής δυνατότητα της Τρόικα να επηρεάζει σχεδόν άμεσα ένα μεγάλο εύρος πολιτικών των Κρατών-Μελών υπό οικονομική βοήθεια, πολλές από τις οποίες θεωρούνται καίριες για ένα κράτος (π.χ. προϋπολογισμός, φορολογία, κλπ), όπως και η σημαντικά μειωμένη συμμετοχή αντιπροσωπευτικών θεσμών (π.χ. εθνικό Κοινοβούλιο),  έχουν εγείρει  ανησυχίες σχετικά με την επίπτωση της διαδικασίας αυτής στις αρχές και σωστή λειτουργία της δημοκρατίας. Η ολοκλήρωση του προγράμματος οικονομικής βοήθειας παρουσιάζεται συχνά ως η πολύ-αναμενόμενη λύση των ανωτέρω προβλημάτων και η επαναφορά της κανονικότητας και ορθής λειτουργίας των δημοκρατικών διαδικασιών. Στην πραγματικότητα, όμως, η ολοκλήρωση του προγράμματος δεν συνεπάγεται και έξοδο από τα Μνημόνια.

Όσον αφορά στο ΔΝΤ, μετά την λήξη του προγράμματος και εάν το επωφελούμενο κράτος χρωστάει περισσότερο από το ποσό βοήθειας που αντιστοιχεί στο 100% της ποσόστωσης του στο ΔΝΤ (ή εάν κριθεί αναγκαίο από το ΔΝΤ ανεξαρτήτως του οφειλόμενου ποσού), άρχεται η διαδικασία παρακολούθησης μετά το πρόγραμμα – το λεγόμενο Post-Programme Monitoring (PPM). Η διαδικασία περιλαμβάνει την παρακολούθηση των πολιτικών του επωφελούμενου κράτους, ώστε να  εντοπιστούν αυτές που θα έθεταν σε κίνδυνο την οικονομική βιωσιμότητα και πρόοδο του κράτους και, κατ’ επέκταση, την αποπληρωμή του ΔΝΤ. Το PPM διεξάγεται δύο φορές το χρόνο.

Όσον αφορά στην ΕΕ, έχει δημιουργηθεί μία παρόμοια διαδικασία παρακολούθησης, με την ονομασία Post-Programme Surveillance (PPS), σύμφωνα με το άρθρο 14 του Κανονισμού 472/2013. Η διαδικασία εφαρμόζεται μετά την ολοκλήρωση του προγράμματος οικονομικής βοήθειας ενός Κράτους-Μέλους της Ευρωζώνης και έως ότου εξοφληθεί το 75% της χρηματοδοτικής βοήθειας που έχει ληφθεί (είτε από τον τωρινό και μόνιμο ΕΜΣ, είτε από προηγούμενους μηχανισμούς οικονομικής βοήθειας που είχαν συσταθεί παλαιότερα). Σύμφωνα με την διαδικασία του PPS, η Ευρωπαϊκή Επιτροπή και η ΕΚΤ διενεργούν τακτικές αποστολές και επιθεωρήσεις στο Κράτος-Μέλος, για να εκτιμήσουν την οικονομική κατάσταση του. Σε περίπτωση διαπίστωσης πολιτικών που θέτουν σε κίνδυνο την οικονομική βιωσιμότητα, και συνεπώς την δυνατότητα αποπληρωμής της βοήθειας που έχει χορηγηθεί, η Ευρωπαϊκή Επιτροπή και η ΕΚΤ συντάσσουν έκθεση σχετικά με τα διορθωτικά μέτρα που το Συμβούλιο των Υπουργών της ΕΕ έχει τη δυνατότητα να ζητήσει να θεσπιστούν απο το Κράτος-Μέλος προς διόρθωση των αποκλίσεων. Αξίζει να σημειωθεί ότι η διαδικασία ψηφοφορίας της ανωτέρω έκθεσης στο Συμβούλιο των Υπουργών είναι η αντίστροφη ειδική πλειοψηφία ή Reverse Qualified Majority Voting (RQMV). Αυτό σημαίνει ότι η έκθεση της Επιτροπής θεωρείται ότι έχει εγκριθεί, εκτός εάν σχηματιστεί πλειοψηφία καταψήφισης της – δηλαδή είναι εύκολο η έκθεση να υιοθετεί και πιο δύσκολο να απορριφθεί.

Στην ουσία λοιπόν, η ολοκλήρωση του προγράμματος, η οποία παρουσιάζεται συχνά και ως το τέλος των Μνημονίων, αφορά ουσιαστικά μόνο στην ικανότητα του επωφελούμενου Κράτους-Μέλους να δανειστεί από τις αγορές. Το μέρος του προγράμματος που αφορά στην παρακολούθηση πολιτικών του Κράτους-Μέλους παραμένει για ένα σημαντικό χρονικό διάστημα μετά τη λήξη της οικονομικής βοήθειας. Το ίδιο παραμένει και η επιτήρηση της Τρόικα.

Ως εκ τούτου, είναι πολύ σαφές ότι η Κύπρος είναι μακριά από την πραγματική έξοδο της από το πρόγραμμα οικονομικής βοήθειας ΕΕ-ΔΝΤ, όπως και τα υπόλοιπα κράτη μέλη της Ευρωζώνης που έλαβαν σχετική βοήθεια. Η Κύπρος είναι σε θέση να εξασφαλίσει οικονομικούς πόρους από τις αγορές και δεν λαμβάνει πλέον οικονομική βοήθεια. Παρά ταύτα, η επιτήρηση και αξιολόγηση των πολιτικών, ήτοι, επί της ουσίας το Μνημόνιο, θα παραμείνουν τουλάχιστον μέχρι το 2029 για την ΕΕ, δηλαδή 13 χρόνια μετά την λήξη της οικονομικής βοήθειας και, για το ΔΝΤ, έως ότου εξοφλήσει περισσότερα από €820 εκατομμύρια.

Οι δημοκρατικές επιπτώσεις των ανωτέρω είναι σημαντικές. Μέσω της διαδικασίας οικονομικής βοήθειας ΕΕ-ΔΝΤ, η Κύπρος θα είναι υπό στενή παρακολούθηση των πολιτικών της επί τη ουσίας για σχεδόν 20 έτη. Και αυτό, δεδομένης της περιορισμένης οικονομικής βοήθειας που έλαβε η Κύπρος σε σύγκριση με άλλα Κράτη-Μέλη της Ευρωζώνης, όπως π.χ. η Ελλάδα. Για τα κράτη αυτά, η περίοδος επιτήρησης των πολιτικών, ήτοι του Μνημονίου, θα είναι πολύ μεγαλύτερη.

The post Πότε μία χώρα “βγαίνει από το Μνημόνιο” ΕΕ-ΔΝΤ? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Political myths are a particular kind of narrative used to shape the legitimacy of a political system, writes Jeremy F. G. Moulton. He argues that, despite the difference between the academic and common usages of ‘myth’, political myth theory can generate important insights for political authority, and that it may prove useful in understanding questions around the EU’s legitimacy.

On March 2016, Cyprus became the fourth out of the five Eurozone Member States under European Union (EU) – International Monetary Fund (IMF) financial assistance to end its program – a so called ‘exit’ (IMF on the 7th). Despite appearances and terminology, however, this is actually not a whole-out, true program exit. What does it really mean to end an EU-IMF program, and is it really an ‘exit’?

Cyprus requested financial assistance on 25th of June 2012.  The request came amid growing problems within the Cypriot banking sector, primarily due to its exposure to Greek debt and Private Sector Involvement (PSI) Greek bond ‘haircut’ process. However, the program was entered into almost a year after (29th of April 2013), on account of differences that arose during the negotiations between the Troika and the Cypriot government. Because of the prolonged negotiating period and the consequent increasing flight of capital from Cypriot banks, a bank holiday was imposed for almost two weeks and ensuing capital controls continued for two years until April 2015. Cyprus borrowed a total of up to €10 bln from the EU-IMF financial assistance: €9 bln from ESM and €1 bln from IMF (equal to 563 per cent of Cyprus’ IMF quota).

What of the process of EU-IMF financial assistance? The financial assistance program consists of two parts: (1) the financial assistance or loan agreement, and (2) the policy adjustment that this assistance is conditional upon, outlined in the now infamous Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs). This policy conditionality is monitored by the so-called Troika: The European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the IMF. The MoUs, as well as the intrusive monitoring capacity that the Troika has in the Member States under this policy conditionality framework that cover an extensive amount of policies that are key to a State (e.g. budget or taxation), have raised concerns in terms of the democratic process. The end of the program is often portrayed as the long awaited remedy and redemption of democratic process. But is this really the case?

The process of ending a financial assistance program is similar for the EU and the IMF. For the IMF, after the program concludes, and provided that the State concerned owes more than the amount of the assistance equivalent to 100 per cent of its IMF quota (or should it be deemed necessary by the IMF regardless of the amount owed), the process of Post-Program Monitoring (PPM) is initiated. The process was introduced in 2000 and is provisioned under the IMF’s operating principles. PPM aims at ensuring that the State concerned returns the amount owed to the IMF regularly and on time, by monitoring policies and circumstances of that State in order to identify and address risks that could jeopardize its progress to external viability and thus impair repayment of the IMF.  PPM is conducted normally twice a year.

For the EU, there has been a similar process instituted, termed Post-Program Surveillance (PPS), under Article 14 of Regulation 472/2013. PPS applies as long as the Eurozone Member State concerned has repaid less than 75% of the financial assistance under the ESM (or the previous EFSM and EFSF SA). Under PPS, the EC and ECB conduct regular review missions to the State concerned to assess its economic situation and, where applicable, report on corrective measures, which the Council can then request be adopted by that State. It is also worth noting that the voting procedure in the Council is reverse qualified majority (RQMV), i.e. the Commission’s report is deemed adopted unless a blocking majority is formed, making it easier to adopt the report and harder to reject it.

In essence, then, the ending of the program only refers to the ability of the State concerned to procure capital through the markets on its own. The policy monitoring and conditionality aspects remain very much in place for a substantial amount of time after financial assistance has ended, as does the Troika monitoring and supervision.

As such, it is clear that Cyprus is a long way from actually exiting its EU-IMF program, as are the rest of the Eurozone Member States that received assistance. While Cyprus is able to procure financial resources on its own, policy conditionality and monitoring is still in place, and will be for a substantial amount of time. The EU’s PPS will last at least until 2029, i.e. 13 years from now, while the IMF’s PPM will last until Cyprus has repaid more than €820 mln to the IMF.

The democratic repercussions of this in the political realm are considerable. Through the EU-IMF financial assistance process, Cyprus will have been under close policy monitoring and conditionality effectively for close to 20 years! And this is considering Cyprus’ limited financial assistance; consider, for example, the rest of the Eurozone Member States which have received considerably more assistance (e.g. Greece through the EU).

The post When does a Eurozone Member State actually exit its EU-IMF bailout? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The Guardian reported that Mr Johnson’s intervention would help the prime minister, David Cameron.

Mr Johnson told BBC Radio Five Live, “Whether you have an in/out referendum now, I can’t quite see why it would be necessary.”

He added that the prospect of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU would not “appeal”.

Mr Johnson asked, “Suppose Britain voted tomorrow to come out: what would actually happen?”

He continued:

“We’d still have huge numbers of staff trying to monitor what was going on in the community, only we wouldn’t be able to sit in the council of ministers, we wouldn’t have any vote at all. Now I don’t think that’s a prospect that’s likely to appeal.”

It should be noted that this report was from 25 November 2012.

On February 21 this year, Mr Johnson stunned Prime Minister, David Cameron, by announcing he was joining the referendum campaign for Britain to leave the European Union.

Winston Churchill’s grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames, immediately Tweeted:

“Whatever my great friend Boris decides to do I know that he is NOT an outer.”

Just two weeks previously, Mr Johnson had written in his Telegraph column:

“It is also true that the single market is of considerable value to many UK companies and consumers, and that leaving would cause at least some business uncertainty, while embroiling the Government for several years in a fiddly process of negotiating new arrangements, so diverting energy from the real problems of this country – low skills, low social mobility, low investment etc – that have nothing to do with Europe.”

A spokesman for the ‘Remain’ campaign commented, “Everybody in Westminster knows that Boris doesn’t really believe in Out. He’s putting his personal ambition before the national interest.”

Yesterday (11 May 2016) Mr Johnson was quizzed by BBC Radio 4 ‘Today’ presenter, John Humphrys, on whether he had been close to backing Britain to remain in the EU.

Asked Mr Humphrys, “Did you, as the rumour goes, have two columns written, for the Telegraph that is, one for either side of the argument?

“Only at the last minute did you decide to run with the column that said actually, I’m in favour of Brexit, not on staying in. Is that true or is that not true?”

Replied Mr Johnson, “I’ve written all sorts of things”.

Mr Humphrys interjected, “Is that true what I just said?”

Mr Johnson didn’t deny the rumour about two columns, but said instead, “It is perfectly true to say I have thought long and hard about this decision.”

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• Boris Johnson’s big bluder
• The EU accounts ARE signed off
• What does Brexit look like? Nobody knows
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