Ideas on Europe Blog

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Justinas Lingevicius

The emerging AI policy of the European Union (EU), new financial instruments and institutional entities dedicated to boosting emerging technologies including AI, suggest that the EU approaches technological developments strategically and aims to play a role in their international development and regulation. However, the EU position on military AI – the wide-ranging issue of future security with multiple potential effects and forms of application – appears diluted in the emerging EU AI policy due to different institutional priorities. This mixed position thus raises the question of what the discussion on military AI suggests about EU actorness.

I analyse this question in my new article ‘Military Artificial Intelligence as Power: Consideration for the European Union’s Actorness’ (Lingevicius, 2023) released in the special issue ‘Responsible AI of Military Applications’ of the Ethics and Information Technology journal.

 

Military Power Europe and Military AI

Discussion of EU actorness focuses heavily on the ‘Europe as a power’ debate and the different definitions proposed: what are the leading characteristics of the EU and its external positioning and action. Despite a number of variations, my article puts forward three definitions: Normative Power Europe, Market Power Europe, and Military Power Europe. Interestingly, the overview of these definitions in the context of the ‘Europe as a power’ debate reveals that Military Power Europe, seemingly associated with standing armies and coercive interference, is not specifically introduced but rather mentioned in contrast to the others. Therefore, my article introduces the definition of Military Power Europe based on discussions of military AI in the EU. To do that, four categories are formulated as being at the core of the definition: ways of action, self-definition, preferred international engagement, and the role of the military.

The combination of discursive elements within these categories shows that the definition of Military Power Europe involves a normative model of governance, preferred multilateral international engagement, and the perceived EU role of norm-promoter. At the same time, military AI is associated with future power referring to advanced defence capabilities, readiness, and preparedness to address security challenges, including the possibility of the battlefield. The article therefore argues that, alongside normative proposals, there are evident desires for militarisation and a considerable role for the military in the EU. In this way, despite its initial exclusion from the emerging AI policy and diverging institutional positions, military AI is a part of the discussion and thus a part of the EU’s emerging AI policy.

 

Normative and military EU actorness

Over and above the ‘Europe as a power’ debate with its conceptual considerations, the introduced Military Power Europe definition also provides additional insights into (re)discussing EU actorness itself. For example, what is the relationship between technology, security, power and different policies or even political concepts such as digital autonomy? What is the security environment, what actions does it require and what new trends does it set?

The article shows that the discussion on military AI brings different characteristics to EU actorness: normativity in terms of governance and the desire for international influence as well as competition and military advancement as a response to perceived security concerns. In other words, the EU has been positioned as a military power concerned about its capabilities and readiness for the future effects of military AI. Therefore, the article joins those (for example, Hoijtink, Muehlenhoff, 2020) challenging the understanding of EU actorness based merely on civil/normative definitions. This dive into the EU’s inter-institutional discussion on military AI suggests that the military appears to be not only a matter of security (for example, the Common Security and Defence Policy) but also part of the EU’s ambitious digital agenda. Having clarified this complexity, both the Military Power Europe definition and EU actorness in the context of military AI could be further elaborated and investigated through other digital policy initiatives (data, cybersecurity, robotics), and their relation to the military or security, particularly in the light of the EU’s ambitions on autonomy and sovereignty.

Finally, the analysis focused on military AI reveals a sense of urgency where the mix of long-term future scenarios and currently existing challenges such as cyber-attacks are interlinked. For interpretative research, this brings additional characteristics to the way the discussion is constructed – searching to define itself in the context of technological uncertainty and (re)producing inter-institutional disagreements on how the EU is expected to perform and respond to emerging global challenges.

 

Justinas Lingevicius is a PhD candidate at Vilnius University, Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Lithuania. This article is the result of a one-year fellowship at the Charlemagne Prize Academy (Aachen, Germany), mentored by Dr. Inga Ulnicane (De Montfort University, UK).

 

References:

Lingevicius, J. (2023). Military artificial intelligence as power: consideration for European Union actorness. Ethics and Information Technology, 25(19). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-023-09684-z

Hoijtink, M., Muehlenhof, H. L. (2020). The European Union as a masculine military power: European Union security and defence policy in ‘Times of Crisis´. Political Studies Review, 18(3), 362-377. https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929919884876

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For our weekly ‘Ideas on Europe’ editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we have the pleasure to welcome again Carmen Pérez González, from the University Carlos Tercero, in Madrid. Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

You are the holder of an UNESCO Chair for ‘Education Linkage through International Sports’ and an expert on Sport Diplomacy. As a sports lawyer, how do you analyse the current debate about Russian athletes at the Paris Olympics?

It is true that the IOC – the International Olympic Committee, which was created in Paris by the way – is facing criticism over its intention of exploring the possibilities for allowing Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete at the Paris Olympics. The voices against welcoming them, even if they participate under a white neutral flag or in refugee teams, multiply.

Recently, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has clarified her opposition to the participation of these athletes as long as the war in Ukraine continues. In addition, up to 35 countries seem willing to call for Russian and Belarusian athletes to be banned from the Olympics. The United States, Germany, Australia, the UK and Japan are among them.

 

These are very important sporting nations!

And it will be no easy debate.

Their position is understandable: it can be argued that there is a profound contradiction between the Olympic values and the participation in mega sporting events of athletes and teams from a country that is so seriously violating international law.

On the other hand, a boycott could be seen as discriminatory. Recently, two UN Human Rights Council Rapporteurs have expressed concerns in this regard, asking the IOC to ensure non-discrimination of any athlete based on their nationality, emphasizing that no athlete should be required to take sides in the conflict.

 

And what exactly does the IOC say themselves?

The arguments used by the IOC are well-known. In a letter sent at the end of January to the Ukrainian Olympic Committee, IOC president Thomas Bach criticized Ukraine’s threat to boycott the Games, saying it would violate the Olympic charter. No athlete, he added in his letter, should be prevented from competing just because of his/her passport. As I said, these are not new arguments. In fact, the sport movement has always strongly advocated for political neutrality as a fundamental ethical principle.

In reality, what was really surprising, and to some extent contradictory to this position, was that almost immediately after the invasion of Ukraine was launched, the IOC and a growing number of sports associations took measures aimed not only at preventing the organization of international sports competitions in Russian or Belarusian territories but also affecting the participation of athletes of both countries in sporting competitions held worldwide. In the same vein, the Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed in July 2022 Russian appeals against being banned from FIFA and UEFA competitions.

 

How can public international law help us solve this issue?

We can start by saying that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seriously violates ‘peremptory international law obligations’. These are rules that protect the most essential interests of the international community as a whole. This is by no means a minor violation of international law. It therefore seems legitimate to call for a reaction from such powerful international actors as the IOC. Let me remind you that in 1985, under the auspices of the United Nations, an international convention against apartheid in sports was adopted, effectively banning South Africa.

 

So it’s not a new debate.

No, there are precedents. For instance, German and Japanese athletes were banned from the Olympics in 1948 due to their nations’ acts during the 2nd World War. At the same time, on many other occasions the IOC has stayed out of situations involving serious human rights violations by invoking the hackneyed argument of the political neutrality of sport.

In my opinion, the 21st century seems to call for a more decisive response from all actors, public and private, against the most serious violations of international legality. Without underestimating the approach of non-discrimination against athletes, it seems innocent not to take into account that their participation in the Paris Olympics will be exploited by Russia in terms of propaganda. Maybe the time has come to stop playing Putin’s games.

 

Thank you very much for sharing your analysis with us. I recall you are the UNESCO Chair for Education Linkage through International Sports at the University Carlos Tercero, in Madrid.

 

Interview by Laurence Aubron.

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When conducting empirical research in EU law and governance, researchers might often feel like they’re taking on the role of a detective or an investigative journalist. It all starts with an idea that becomes a workable puzzle, you gather data and compose it to tell a story, with the overall aim to uncover information and create knowledge about something. Oftentimes, unexpected information reveals itself along the way that might challenge the initial assumptions of the research. Some odd times, one starts from a surprising observation or a snippet of knowledge that hints towards a larger issue. Other times, the researcher will discover a new source of data while conducting an analysis. In studying the EU, a ‘creature’ that is already complex and sometimes unpredictable in its own ways, these twists-and-turns of the research process can unearth new insights that were often not part of the plan. How can we use these unforeseen developments along the research process to enrich our approach?

One potential answer to this question is quite straightforward: embrace them. Generally, research designs in this field, particularly stemming from the discipline of political science, follow a deductive approach – i.e., begin with a concept or theory that is used as a guiding point to investigate a given phenomenon. Embracing the unexpected in research, or even depending on it, calls for somewhat of a different approach. Specifically, this post proposes the introduction of investigative methods, in the methodological toolbox of studying political and legal (dis)integration in the Union.

Investigative methods, generally speaking, belong to the family of exploratory research methods and carry a number of unique characteristics. These mainly revolve around the presence of flexibility and adaptability at different stages of the research process. For instance, this approach proposes a structured starting point for the research process which, though informed by previous research, remains malleable and open to adaptation based on new ideas or new data. In practice, this can look like finding a ‘clue’ about the phenomenon at hand and using it as an ‘opening move’ or impetus for research.

For instance, in my own research on the process of creating EU soft law by the European Commission, a first clue was the fact that nobody seems to know how these instruments are made. Now this initial observation kicks off a myriad of other questions: why is that the case? Can this be attributed to the informal character of the instruments? Is it because it is difficult to find out? Is this a sign of fragmentation in the Commission’s internal procedures? This can then be used as separate avenues of investigation, all of which can inform our initial observation. Certainly, some will be more informative than others, but  that cannot be known in advance.

One of the more central aspects of this approach relates to its unique strategy of data collection. When using investigative methods, sources of data – data sets, data samples, interviewee lists, etc. – are not fixed for the duration of a given project. Instead, the researcher starts with the most promising avenue of data collection and acts as a detective; changing the composition and ordering of their data in accordance to new evidence or analytical ideas. This allows the researcher to ‘follow the trail’ and find answers to the central puzzle by exploring new angles, employing different perspectives from different disciplines or fields of study, and adapting their research strategy without being constrained by rigid conceptual frameworks and without forfeiting methodological rigour.

This is not entirely unfamiliar in the EU studies field. Elements of this approach are often used in empirical data collection, usually taking the form of ‘snowballing’ relating to, for example, the recruitment of interview participants or survey respondents. Still, the incorporation of investigative methods in the study of EU law goes much further and deeper, and primarily speaks to the overall design and epistemological approach of the research. It is the unique modelling and mapping of processes – e.g. administrative or policy processes – that investigative methods propose that enable us to gain a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of processes which would otherwise be inaccessible. That being said, so far investigative methods are primarily used in disciplines as psychology or sociology and have not been utilised in the study of the EU as a holistic approach.

Still, for legal scholars who work with empirical research, this approach and this process might sound familiar. It is very often the case that, when embarking on empirical legal research in EU matters, researchers find themselves in front of a sea of information with a simple question: where do I even start? This question is often followed up with trying to identify what is and isn’t there – are there relevant cases to my research problem? Have the concerned institutions made any statements about it? Is there someone I can talk to to find out more? This very exploration of what is and what is not available is part of the research and can be a finding within itself. Most importantly, this initial process of ‘figuring out’ potential avenues of data collection and inquiry sets the ‘investigation’ in motion. The flip side of this accidental familiarity of empirical legal scholars with investigative methods is that, by and large, legal studies are considered to be – sometimes unfairly – lacking in methodological rigour, primarily because it does not follow the stricter political science models of ‘theory-testing’ deductive models. Are these models the be-all and end-all of credible EU studies research? That is a discussion far more nuanced than the scope of this blog post. Still, I argue that there is significant merit in stepping away from predefined models and opening up the process of creating knowledge through research.

The point of this reflection is to propose investigative methods as an exceptionally useful tool in studying administrative and policy processes in the Union, both from disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. Such an approach is particularly useful in areas of regulation that are characterised by high informality, high techno-scientific complexity, or are generally high-paced – which are notoriously difficult to study due, partly, to the large quantity of data sources and research avenues, or research blind-spots. In this sense, this methodological approach, when applied in the study of EU law and governance can help empirical scholarship ‘keep up’ with legal and administrative developments or uncover complex formal or informal mechanisms that make EU law work in practice.

Still, with all that in mind, there is an important point to be made here regarding the limitations to creativity and exploration in research imposed by the very structures of academia – surely, tight deadlines, funding, and output expectations do hinder the process. This is the reality of the field in broader EU studies and every other discipline. Perhaps, this is an issue for further reflection.

In short, by placing a specific emphasis on exploration, description, adaptation, and explanation, investigative methods can open up an avenue of understanding the more ‘nitty-gritty’ aspects of EU law and governance in a way that other research methods cannot. This post offers a methodological reflection on how investigative methods can enhance the methodological toolbox of studying EU law and help us better understand the ever-changing nature of law in the Union. The point here is simple: embrace creativity in research and embrace the unforeseen.

An example of the application of this method can be found in Petropoulou Ionescu, D., & Eliantonio, M. (2022). Soft Law Behind the Scenes: Transparency, Participation and the European Union’s Soft Law Making Process in the Field of Climate Change. European Journal of Risk Regulation, 1-21. doi:10.1017/err.2022.31 available here.

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Nilde Iotti

For our weekly ‘Ideas on Europe’ editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we have the pleasure to welcome again Dr Simona Guerra, from the University of Surrey, in the UK. Bonjour, Simona! Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

Every once in a while, you tell us the untold story of ‘the early women of European integration’. And today, you are back with another fascinating profile, after the portrait of Käte Strobel you gave us last November.

Glad to be back! And guess what: I have recently won a research grant, named CAROLINE, which stands for ‘Creating A netwoRk On femaLe pIoNEers’ of European integration.

 

Congratulations!

Thank you! For my second profile, I am choosing Nilde Iotti. Nilde is actually short for ’Leonilde’. She is a well-known political figure in Italian political history and she left an imprint on Europe, too.

She’s impressive! She lost her father as a young woman but won a scholarship and graduated in philosophy when she was just 23. Two years later, in 1945, she was appointed regional secretary of the Union of Italian Women, after having joined this labour movement since she was 18.

When women gained the right to vote, in 1946, she was elected municipal councilor, and was appointed member of the Italian Communist Party assembly. In the same year, still only 26 years old, she entered the Italian Parliament among 21 women deputies, who presented themselves holding each other’s hands. It is in 1969 that she joined the still very young European Parliament.

 

Tell us about the initiatives she engaged in.

She was a member of the Working Group on European Parliament Direct Elections, but also of the Conference of Presidents, where she promoted the creation of an annual Conference of Parliamentary Commissions, dealing with European affairs, now recognized as the COSAC by the European Treaties.

Research tends to stress the role of women on promoting EU’s women policies. But the case of Nilde Iotti shows the active political agency of those ‘early women’ for European democracy. As Mechthild Roos has explained – I think you know her well – it is in the everyday policymaking and in the formal and informal procedures that we can better understand the work of individual deputies, emerging party groups, committees, and the European Parliament as a whole.

 

Where do you find all your historical data?

The European Parliament Research Archive offers online access to about 850,000 documents. I have consulted the ones relevant to my research, 43,516 documents, with a focus on the 1950s and 1960s, published in French, and the documents of the committee meetings allowed me to appreciate in detail the role of Nilde Iotti, who worked hard for the Parliament to gain influence, representation, and transparency.

In October 1969, she considered ‘absurd’ that the Parliament was not devoting any debate ‘on the proposed conference on security in Europe.’ To her, it was necessary to bridge ‘the gap which divides today’s Europe and prepare one of the essential acts of a policy of coexistence in Europe and worldwide.’ She wanted the Parliament to leave its ‘spectator’ dimension. Let me quote her again:

‘Do we want to accept forever that Europe is divided into two opposing opposed military blocks, and that, within these two, we see the persisting fatal consequences of the implacable logic of the bloc regime?’

And she added:

‘Dear Colleagues, if we want to be Europeans, we must take part in the events of history and European culture, we cannot continue to be absent; the place we occupy and the authority we are exercising are as strong as the measure of our participation in the major European political debates.’

That’s very pro-European for a woman from the radical left!

That’s right. Nilde Iotti pursued an idea of a Europe that was more international, and coherent with her idea of democracy. She was supporting integration beyond the economic solidarity and cooperation, towards civic and social integration.

In 1971, at a meeting of her party, she presented a work on ‘National sovereignty and European institutions’, explaining how to develop cultural, institutional, and political integration. In her 1979 inaugural speech as President of the Lower House in Italy, she stressed the ‘exceptional’ qualitative advancement of democracy at the European level with the first direct elections of the Parliament. And throughout her career, in Brussels and in Rome, she promoted a special Committee on European policies and democracy, until she left politics in 1992, after a political career of fifty years.

 

What a life! And I am sure you could not even cover everything. Thank you so much, Simona, for sharing your findings with us. I recall you are Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey, in England. A slightly extended version of the text was simultaneously published on the LSE blog: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2023/03/08/nilde-iotti-and-european-democracy/ Interview by Rune Mahieu.

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By Elena Zacharenko

 

In April 2022, the European Commission (EC) declared that it plans to attract more labour migrants to the European Union (EU). This is a response to the challenges posed by the demographic ageing of the EU, as people are living longer and having fewer children. Those who had traditionally taken care of the elderly – their female relatives – are increasingly unable to do so due to employment obligations. Labour migration is thus seen as a solution to address the care needs of the growing numbers of elderly people – one which is already heavily relied upon by several Western European states. Countries such as Germany, Austria and Italy are popular destinations for female migrant care workers, benefitting from migrants’ willingness to work in this demanding and often underpaid sector due to the relative weakness of the economy in their countries of origin (usually to the East and South of the EU or outside of it). While the European Care Strategy, launched in September 2022, makes high level declarations on the importance of care, dedicated and adequate funding for its greater provision and the decent remuneration of care workers is still missing. As such, the solution proposed by the EC risks deepening existing patterns of care drain from poorer to richer countries in the EU and in its neighbourhood.

 

From personal issue to policy concern

In September 2022, the European Commission released the European Care Strategy, which for the first time contains direct policy provisions on long-term care, the type of care required by many elderly or disabled individuals. Until then, the most explicit mentions to the right to receive and provide care were made under the 2017 European Pillar of Social Rights and the 2019 Work-Life Balance Directive. The adoption of the European Care Strategy and the prominence of long-term care within it is the result of a rapidly rising awareness among EU policy makers on the policy implications of the aging of European societies, the shrinking of the workforce, and the rising numbers of individuals in need of care. The demographic ageing of the EU’s population, coupled with the deepening crisis of care as more women are joining the labour market and unable to look after their elderly relatives as they once had, have become impossible to ignore in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ageing and demographic change emerged on the EU policy agenda as a standalone topic in 1999, when the European Commission published a Communication ‘Towards a Europe for all ages’. At that point, providing care to the elderly was seen as the responsibility of families, with the state expected to step in only as a last resort. With the introduction of the Social Investment Package (2013) came the recognition that care provision, including that which is unpaid or performed by family members, comes at a cost to state budgets in the shape of lost tax revenue and social security payments. EU policy began to call on states to support individuals in taking up caring obligations and waged work simultaneously. Finally, the Covid-19 pandemic prompted the release of the European Care Strategy which presents care as important to the economy and urges states to make it available to all who need it. However, this increased attention has not translated into binding policy or financial commitments.

 

Women responsibility, migrants’ work?

The increased attention to demographic ageing on the EU policy agenda does not unequivocally resolve one of the central challenges related to the socially necessary labour of care: who should provide it? As mentioned above, initially, this was not considered an issue for debate by EU policy makers but rather a personal or family decision. In practice, this meant that the responsibility for care of elderly family members usually fell to women. However, as EU employment policy increasingly encouraged women to enter the labour market, their care responsibilities began to be seen as an obstacle to labour market participation. To on the one hand ‘liberate’ women from care and domestic tasks and thus facilitate their take up of waged work, and on the other, to provide employment to low-skilled women and other under-employed groups, EU policy began to promote the development of a personal and household services sector.

This policy promoted the commercialisation of care provision. As women were expected to take up waged work, often moving away from their elderly relatives to do so, and as state services were curtailed as a result of austerity measures, markets became increasingly relied upon for elder care. The resulting competition in the field led to demands for cost reduction which in turn drove up a demand for migrant care workers. Many of these labour migrants came from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and became indispensable to the operations of elder care systems in Western Europe. This was possible due to the CEE region’s geographic proximity, the lower wages, worse working and living conditions present within it as well as its inclusion into the EU’s single market, with its central principle of the freedom of movement. While migrant care labour plugs the gap in care present in wealthier countries, with cheap labour effectively subsidising underfunded social systems, it creates a care, youth and brain drain in the migrants’ countries of origin and can amount to social dumping.

Awareness of a growing dependence on the labour of CEE and other migrants existed in policy-making circles in Brussels thanks to the work of trade unions and activists. This resulted in a debate within EU policy-making circles in the 2000s and 2010s. Initially, the European Commission portrayed using migrant care labour to meet the growing demand for long-term care as a cost-efficient way to address care needs, while the European Parliament stressed the inherent inequalities in wealth between origin and destination countries and highlighted the risks of social dumping. As time went on, however, and the gap between the needs of care recipients and availability of care grew wider, the European Parliament aligned its position with that of the Commission. This has led to the current utilitarian approach to migrant care labour in EU policy, which presents labour migration as simply one of a repertoire of measures to boost the EU’s elder care workforce. Indeed, the European Commission’s 2022 communication on migration, ‘Attracting skills and talent to the EU’ states that increasing labour migration from outside of the EU will be crucial to meeting labour demands within the long-term care sector. Effectively, the discussion on the negative consequences of relying on migrant care labour has been silenced in EU policy.

 

What does the future hold for elder care in the EU?

Concerns over demographic ageing and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic have turned EU policy makers’ attention towards the growing demand for long-term care. However, overarching concerns focusing on productivity and GDP growth continue to prevail. In view of demographic ageing, increasing elder care needs, the continuing push for women to enter the formal labour market, as well as the forward-looking nature of both the European Care Strategy and the communication on migration, it seems likely that the reliance on migrant care labour in the EU will steadily increase. The outcome of this utilitarian approach to migrant care labour is likely to be the displacement of the Western European care deficit to poorer EU member states, as well as beyond the bloc’s borders.

 

 

Elena Zacharenko is a doctoral researcher at the Department of Gender Studies of Tampere University, Finland. Her research focuses on the framing of care and social reproduction in EU economic, social and gender equality policy, and how this shapes the political economy of and core-periphery relations within the EU.

Twitter: Author @elenazzzz; Department of Gender Studies, Tampere University @UTAGender; Tampere University @TampereUni

Academic profile.

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LONDON, MARCH 2019: Hundreds of thousands marched in favour of EU membership.

For all the UK’s five decades in the EU, most Britons were happy for us to stay in. They didn’t want us to leave.

The issue was settled in the 1975 referendum when, by a massive 2-to-1 landslide, the electorate voted to remain in the European Community.

In the years that followed, calls to leave were on the far side lines of politics.

Yes, Brexiters will argue that the 2016 referendum settled the issue for Brexit. But it didn’t really.

Unlike in the 1975 referendum, when all the four countries of the UK positively voted to stay in the European Community, in 2016 half of them didn’t.

And whilst the margin win for Remain in the 1975 referendum was a stonking 35%, in 2016, the margin win for Leave was an abysmal 4%.

A mere 37% of the UK electorate gave their support for Brexit in 2016. A minority, which did not reflect the true feelings of most of the country, and certainly not all the countries of the UK.

Today, poll after poll show that a significant majority of British voters think Brexit is a mistake, and they would now vote to rejoin.

If the 2016 referendum had been held just a year or two earlier, polls indicate that Remain would have won by a landslide, just like in 1975.

Two years before the referendum, in 2014,  Ipsos UK polling showed that Britain’s support for wanting to remain in the EU was the highest it had been in 23 years – 56% in favour of remain, just 36% for leave.

This, despite the apparent rise of UKIP, that the Tories and Labour seemed so scared about.

One year before the referendum, in 2015, the Ipsos poll showed that support for continued EU membership was even higher – a staggering 61% in support of remaining, with just 27% supporting leave.

The 2016 referendum now looks like an aberration, a statistical quirk that didn’t, and now certainly doesn’t, represent the nation’s feelings as a whole.

Every year since the EU referendum, hundreds of thousands of pro-EU supporters have marched in London and other cities.

In March 2019, it’s estimated that the People’s Vote march in London attracted over a million marchers demanding a new vote on Brexit.

Brexiters, be honest: your side never could, and never did, attract such numbers for a pro-Brexit demonstration; not even a small fraction of such numbers.

Why? Because Brexit only ever had minority support, and today, that support has collapsed.

Of course, Britain now needs a new vote on Brexit.

In a democracy, no decision is permanent, and any decision can be changed if that has the support of the electorate.

Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer: Are you interested to know today’s ‘will of the people’? Then ask us.

• Video: Every British Prime Minister from 1957 to 2016 wanted the UK in the European Community.

• We miss EU – short video



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The unveiling of the Windsor Framework this week was important in many ways.

Not only did it provide a set of solutions to the most pushing and tricky problems facing the Northern Ireland Protocol, but it also marked a return to more conventional modes of British diplomacy towards the EU.

To watch Rishi Sunak and Ursula von der Leyen at their press conference on Monday speaking in not only warm tones but also in very coordinated language, as they sought to generate (successfully) buy-in for a package of measures that had been put together under close secrecy.

As someone observed in my presence this week, no more of the leaking and briefing of the Johnson period, when everyone had an agenda and was just using the issue to get ahead.

Even if we still await a final confirmation of acceptance from both Tory backbenchers and the DUP, the signs are that this is the only game in town: evolving the Protocol into the Framework and (hopefully) letting everyone focus on further refinements to its operation and on other points of UK-EU cooperation.

So it matters.

But it’s also fair to say that the drafters of the Framework have decided to go for the ‘let’s make life not easy for the casual reader” approach.

Partly that’s because of the necessary mix of political statements and legal work, but it also conveniently makes it much harder for critics to point to obviously unacceptable language.

With that in mind, I’ve been working on trying to get a clearer picture of what’s going on.

My first graphic today organises the 21 documents by their status and effects: as you’ll see, much of this is about political clarifications and unilateral actions to resolve points.

There is one Joint Committee Decision that is crucial, and we’ll come back to that in coming weeks, not least to explore the new mechanisms of the Stormont Brake and the question of whether the CJEU’s role has actually changed at all (spoiler: not obviously).

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic117

Secondly, I took a quick go at the most significant obstacle to the Framework’s successful agreement and implementation: DUP approval for it.

Note that even if the DUP accepts the Framework, that does not necessarily mean it will either return to the Assembly or form an Executive under a Sinn Fein First Minister, even if the Stormont Brake is designed to get them to do exactly that.

Given that a functioning Executive is at least as important to Downing Street as making the Protocol work, the DUP’s decision matters.

Their seven tests from 2021 are still their baseline and as you’ll see while the Framework has indeed made progress on all points, none of them are unambiguously resolved to narrow readings of the DUP’s demands.

So still things to be played for and debates to be had.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic116

If you have some aspect of the Framework you’ll like me to work on, just drop me a line and I’ll be happy to give it a go.

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For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dr Daniele Saracino, from the Department of Government at the University of Essex, in Britain. Bonjour, Daniele!

 

Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

Your research focuses on the concept of solidarity, one of these ideas or principles that we use every day, but that deserve to be questioned on their meaning.

Solidarity is everywhere in our lives. Solidarity among workers or social movements; solidarity among family and friends; solidarity with your football club or political party; solidarity with a whistle-blower or with refugees; solidarity between states or peoples; solidarity as a core principle of the welfare state or solidarity as the social glue that holds societies together.

This is the vast, multidimensional semantic field in which solidarity meanders as a colorful, but blurry, and seemingly ubiquitous concept. While it seems to maintain a positive connotation throughout, making it so appealing in the political sphere, at the same time it comes across as arbitrary and watered-down. From an analytical research perspective, the fact that there does not seem the slightest agreement on what solidarity actually means is problematic. Even more so on the level of the European Union, where solidarity has been a key concept since the very beginnings of the European project. Just listen:

« L’Europe ne se fera pas d’un coup, ni dans une construction d’ensemble : elle se fera par des réalisations concrètes, créant d’abord une solidarité de fait. »

 

Ah, that’s the voice of Robert Schuman delivering his famous speech of what is commonly considered the founding act of European integration!

That’s right! He called for true, effective solidarity to build a peaceful and unified post-war Europe. Ever since, solidarity has incrementally gained significance over the course of European integration, cumulating in the Lisbon Treaty where it has been settled as one of the central precepts of the EU. It is constantly invoked on the EU level, especially in times of crisis. Nonetheless, there is no agreement in the European legal or political sphere on what the concept entails. It can therefore be assumed that there is an underlying understanding of solidarity in the EU that is embedded in the specific historical context of the concept.

 

So where does it actually come from?

Counterintuitively, the concept of solidarity does not originate in the labour movement or in the classics of political or philosophical thinking. It has its roots in Roman law. The principle obligatio in solidum meant the debt or obligation that every debtor had vis-à-vis the joint community of debtors they are part of. This created a joint liability in which the debtors vouch for a common debt. This principle has survived in several legal systems that are strongly influenced by the Roman law tradition, like France, where solidarity, for the first time, gains further layers of meaning, specifically during the French Revolution where it develops in contrast to and as the political discharge of fraternity.

To cut the conceptual history short, it turns out that the concept of solidarity contains overlapping elements from legal, sociological, political, philosophical, theological, economical, and linguistic spheres.

 

That’s a very complex etymology. How can we use your studies for the European Union today?

Applying these findings to the setup and functioning of the European Union, we find that solidarity is non-universal. It is limited to particular groups wherein actors commit themselves voluntarily to a bond and develop interdependencies to achieve common objectives.

The European Union is such a reference group, and solidarity is the means to achieve its commonly agreed political objectives. Solidarity creates a mutual connectedness between the involved actors who vouch for each other in terms of the common objectives. Ultimately, solidarity creates a reciprocal commitment and mutual responsibility that is expressed by the expectation and discharge of support and assistance.

This is how common goals can be pursued and achieved. Since the common political will of the involved actors in the European Union is cast into law, so is solidarity. Consequently, the European Court of Justice has repeatedly confirmed the fundamental significance of the solidarity principle for the European Union. There are procedural duties that regulate the support and assistance demanded by the solidarity principle.

In short, the readiness to act in solidarity and to honour the outcomes of EU policymaking are necessary conditions for the EU to function effectively. States join the European Union on their own will and accept its precepts and objectives upon accession. If the rule of law to safeguard the outcomes of the political process is not adhered to anymore, the EU loses its purpose. In short: without solidarity, the European Union just wouldn’t make sense. This is why European integration as a whole is shaken to its core when member states decide to stop honouring the rule of law, renouncing European solidarity. And this is why the Union must find ways to remind them of their commitment to solidarity.

 

Many thanks, for this semantic exploration of one of Europe’s key concepts. I recall you work at the Department of Government at the University of Essex, in Britain.

The post Without Solidarity, the EU Would not Make Sense appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dario Mazzola, from the University of Bergen, in Norway. Bonjour, Dario! Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

 

In the year since the Russian aggression of Ukraine, many Ukrainians have found refuge in European countries. Dario, you have written your PhD about the border crisis of 2015, before analysing, as a post-doc researcher in the PROTECT project, contemporary crises in the provision of refuge.

When I started my postdoc in 2020, many researchers thought that refuge and migration would no longer be high on the agenda, not least because of the COVID crisis. I argued for the opposite, for a number of long-term reasons, and unfortunately, Ukraine proved I was right.

Seen from the humanitarian prospect of displacement, Ukraine is among the largest crises of all times, and its geographical proximity and political implication with the European Union make it particularly salient for us. We speak of 8 million refugees and asylum seekers, mostly women and children, but actual figures could be higher.

If I had to single out one feature of my research, I would say it consists in putting migration and refuge in context. Even with the exceptionality of the situation of Ukraine, there is a clear pattern: the background of the critically inadequate response by the European Union and other countries to previous waves of refugees, and the systemic degradation of the international community, from economic crises to COVID to the breakdown of international relations in a system of block confrontation reminiscent of the Cold War.

 

So how does Ukraine stand out when compared to previous crises?

There are both continuities and differences. The sudden peak in inflow is not dissimilar from the Syrian refugee crisis. We can also notice that some of the conflicting actors are the same.

And yet the reaction has been very different. Both between and within European countries, controversies over solidarity with refugees from Ukraine have been low or non-existent: unprecedented mechanisms such as the Temporary Protection Directive have been swiftly activated. If we were to look for analogues, we should perhaps look at Kosovo in the 1990s, but comparison has its limits.

 

What are the major differences between the two situations?

To start with, Ukraine is 20 times more populous than Kosovo. And times have changed since then!

At the moment of the Kosovo crisis, European countries were undergoing a period of economic growth and greater historical optimism, both in terms of the European integration process and of the pacification of global relations. Today, economic resources have been strained between the economic crisis of 2008 and the COVID pandemic. Even more important, neither Kosovo nor Syria involved a relevant military effort with an uncertain outcome, contrary to what we have in Ukraine. Finally, I would stress once again that Syria is further away, and Kosovo is much smaller: we should not think about politics and humanitarianism in the abstract, but in concrete numerical and geographical terms.

 

And how do these differences impact the response to refugees?

The implications of these differences are that while we see a commitment to solidarity that reminds us of Kosovo, the magnitude of the crisis recalls Syria. I hope European politicians are doing their math in planning responses for the short and, potentially, for the long term.

 

You sound like you fear this is not the case.

In 2015, the Italian researcher Giandomenico Majone denounced the collapse of the EU’s culture of ‘total optimism’, and his Swiss colleague Sandra Lavenex has aptly applied this concept to the failure that has been the response to the 2015 border crisis.

Wishful thinking is devastating in politics. When we plan and execute solidarity with refugees from Ukraine, which is our duty, we should have all scenarios in mind: a Ukrainian victory, a Russian victory, a stalemate. Refugees may return or may not. Between humanitarian and military support and the cost of sanctions, EU countries are sacrificing 1, 2% of their GDP, or more. Also, solidarity may be tested if fatigue is perceived in the public. When we pledge to support refugees, we do so amidst all these factors.

Europe needs to work on systematizing its Union-level response to refugees, and on developing a united and consistent foreign and global policy stance, with a strategic vision and not merely in response to crises. The EU can no longer afford to be self-centred or short-sighted: it has to articulate a doctrine and adhere to it consistently. But perhaps here I’m trespassing my programmatic realism into utopian thinking.

 

Maybe a bit more of utopian thinking is what we need. Many thanks, Dario, for sharing your research with us. I recall you work at University of Bergen, in Norway.

The post At Europe’s Heart appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The content of this post was presented at the launch workshop of the EUFutures Research Network held at City, University of London on 4 November 2022. This is an amended version of a post originally commissioned by City, University of London, published here.

When the UK went to the polls on 23 June 2016 and voted to leave the European Union, the millions of EU citizens who were resident in the UK but unable to take part in the referendum were suddenly faced with a life-changing loss of rights. The end of freedom of movement threatened their livelihoods and their very status as UK residents in the post-Brexit world.

After several years of uncertainty, many of those EU citizens and their family members were able to secure their UK immigration status following the launch in March 2019 of the Government’s EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS), which sought to protect the rights that EU citizens and their families had previously enjoyed in the UK. By the time the scheme closed in 2021, some 5.75 million individuals had submitted applications and 5.3 million grants of status had been issued – either settled or pre-settled status. The Government lauded the high numbers, describing the process as “hugely successful.”

Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of people still managed to fall through the legal cracks and failed in their applications, raising questions about whether certain types of applicants were more disadvantaged by the EUSS process than others.

The research that I carried out focused on immigrant women in this process, and I concluded that they were disproportionately represented in the group of unsuccessful applicants and that women who were the most vulnerable fell outside the legal protection that the EUSS was meant to provide. This was my first publication that went beyond just the traditional doctrinal analysis of the law, and instead adopted a critical socio-legal approach.

I applied a theoretical intersectional feminist lens to the plight of two groups of vulnerable immigrant women who were required to apply through the EUSS to remain in the UK after withdrawal – those at risk of or experiencing violence against women and girls (VAWG) and those who were a non-EU family member (NEFM) of an EU citizen. This was to highlight their unique experiences of the law under the EUSS, noting that it was their identities as immigrant women in a post-Brexit Britain which brought about greater vulnerabilities, attributed to the way the law itself applied to them.

The EUSS operated as a fully digital system to make the application process as smooth as possible for those who fulfilled the three main criteria – proof of identity (ID and biometrics), eligibility (residency in the UK) and suitability (proof of good character).

In certain exceptional circumstances, paper-based applications were required – for example, if the applicant did not have digital access, did not have an ID document or whose rights were based on a dependency on an EU citizen (as in NEFMs). By noticing that vulnerabilities arose out of the intersection between one’s immigrant status and gender in this context, I argued that the criteria discriminated against vulnerable women from the VAWG and NEFM groups because they were more likely to have to apply on paper.

I argued that simply extending the criteria under the EUSS did not necessarily achieve the desired take-up of applications because many women would not have understood or even known about the new criteria applicable to them in light of Brexit. By adopting a critical approach that takes into account the fact that vulnerable women are being made more vulnerable by the very reason of their identities, this brought to the fore how intersectional qualities had not been considered by the Government in their design and implementation of the EUSS.

One of the key methodological challenges in analysing the outcomes of applications by women was the absence of any gender breakdown in the quarterly EUSS statistics, while paper applications were not included in the data until more than a year after the EUSS launch, without detailing the success of paper versus online applications. Whilst a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by Professor Catherine Barnard and Fiona Costello revealed that paper applications were significantly less likely to be successful than the online route, my central thesis that vulnerable immigrant women were disadvantaged by the EUSS process was also reinforced through critically assessing how the criteria would apply to the two groups in question. Highlighting their intersectional identities and the vulnerabilities associated with them was a primary part of the central thesis.

I also faced challenges in deciding where to publish this paper, given my decision to adopt a non-doctrinal approach to an area where law and its technical doctrine dominated, and to an extent, still dominates. The area of EU law is largely saturated by scholars engaging in technically precise doctrinal work, and sometimes to the absence of situating the law in its societal context. This is also notable by the dominance of journals privileging doctrinal approaches to matters of EU law, something that proved a challenge in publishing this paper. This led me to a non-EU specialist journal, and instead to a top journal in socio-legal approach to law – Social & Legal Studies.

The area of free movement and associated field of EU citizenship can be more critically analysed with the adoption of methodologies beyond just those which dominate the field of EU law. My paper contributes to uncovering the gendered aspects of free movement, in the context of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU and its associated governance and policies. Given the human aspect of Brexit in regards to its visceral and very real effects on the lives of EU citizens in the UK, I felt it was necessary and important to adopt a critical approach, particularly one looking at intersectionality to highlight the difficulties of the most vulnerable and often overlooked.

To read Dr Yong’s published journal article entitled ‘A Gendered EUSS: Intersectional Oppression of Immigrant Women in a Post-Brexit Britain’ in Social & Legal Studies, please see here.

 

The post Critical socio-legal theories in EU citizenship: explicating the gendered elements of free movement appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The following piece is written by Ambassador Erwan Fouéré – Associate Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy

The flags of the European Union and North Macedonia. Credit: Влада на Република Северна Македонија, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Over the past months, Ireland has been marking the centenary of landmark events in the nation’s struggle for independence and the turbulence surrounding the civil war. It has been suggested by some commentators that not enough has been done to acknowledge the wrongs committed during that period. The Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in his acceptance speech in the Dáil last month referred to the “need to acknowledge and atone for the wrongs that were done on all sides, so we can finally heal the wounds and scars from that time”. The presence of both the leaders of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael at the ceremony marking one hundred years since the assassination of Michael Collins has shown that, even if differences over historical narratives remain, the commemorations can be an occasion for unity and reconciliation rather than division.

To use the words of President Michael D. Higgins, the emphasis should be on the need both to “remember ethically”, and to “respect a pluralism of narratives of shared events”.

History according to President Putin

In the Central and Eastern parts of Europe however, a “pluralism of narratives” when referring to historical events is singularly absent, and often replaced by a re-writing of history to suit mostly nationalist political agendas. Probably the worst offender in this respect is President Putin. His distorted vision of Russia’s imperial past and his almost messianic mission to restore the Russian empire to justify his brutal invasion of Ukraine has had lethal and devastating consequences for the neighbouring country. By invoking the memory of Peter the Great and defining the threats facing Russia as a civilisational struggle, he has sought to rally the Russian people in support of his policy of denying the existence of Ukraine as a nation in its own right and obliterating its culture, history and identity.

Re-writing history in the Western Balkans

This weaponising of history is unfortunately not confined to Russia. In the Western Balkans there are many examples of attempts by political leaders to re-interpret historical events to justify and pursue ethno-nationalist and populist agendas. Whether it is glorifying war criminals convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, or denying massacres that took place during the early and mid 1990s following the break-up of Yugoslavia, or even re-interpreting events before and after the Second World War, they underline the terrible weight of history and the deep divisions within and between the countries of the region.

These trends highlight the enormous work required to promote reconciliation and overcome the prejudices still prevalent throughout the Western Balkans. One would have hoped that since all the countries of the region are destined for accession to the EU at some point in the future, the EU would put forward its own experience of European integration in overcoming the legacy of war and creating a process based on the rule of law. The recent stand off between Bulgaria and North Macedonia does not inspire confidence in this respect. The behaviour of Bulgaria towards its neighbour has shown that it has learned nothing from its fifteen year membership of the EU, and has only deepened the animosity and bitterness between both countries.

Background to the Bulgarian veto against North Macedonia

In March of 2020, the European Council gave the green light for the opening of accession negotiations with both Albania and North Macedonia. To get to this point, North Macedonia already had to overcome many hurdles not least that of reaching an agreement with neighbouring Greece over its constitutional name which Greece objected to. A protracted decades long dispute was finally resolved by the so-called Prespa Agreement of 2018, whereby the Republic of Macedonia would become the Republic of North Macedonia, to distinguish it from the provinces of Macedonia in the northern part of Greece. The agreement was supposed to signal the opening of accession negotiations with the EU. But France put a spanner in the works by insisting on a new methodology for the accession process before the EU’s enlargement agenda could proceed. This was duly put forward by the European Commission and agreed in March 2020.

However, no doubt taking a leaf out of the Greek and French playbooks, Bulgaria decided to impose its own veto by insisting that North Macedonia would have to accept a list of demands relating to the history, identity and language of the country before accession negotiations could start, ignoring the fact that such issues have never been part of the criteria for membership of the EU.

These demands included an insistence that North Macedonia accept that its language has Bulgarian roots and that a ‘Macedonian language’ or ethnicity did not exist before 1944. There was also an insistence that it endorse a Bulgarian version of the region’s past history, despite the fact that both countries had negotiated a Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighbourliness, and Cooperation in 2017 which established a Joint Multidisciplinary Expert Commission for Historical and Education Issues.

By agreeing to this Treaty, the Macedonian government had hoped it would create a framework for building trust between both countries and help to overcome lingering bilateral disputes. It did not bargain for the hardline attitude adopted by Bulgaria in the work of this Commission which has now dominated the Treaty’s implementation.

By insisting on its own version of the turbulent events during and after the two World Wars in the Western Balkan region, and demanding that Macedonian history textbooks remove any reference to Bulgaria as the ‘fascist occupier’ during the Second World War, the Bulgarian negotiators are reflecting a reluctance by the political establishment in Bulgaria to confront its own troubled history, in particular its role during the Second World War. ( Bulgaria supported the Axis powers and conquered Macedonia it had lost during the First World War. During its occupation, it deported all 7,000 Jews living there and handed them over to the Nazi regime, where they virtually all perished in the Treblinka concentration camp. At the same time however, most of the Jews living in Bulgaria itself were spared such a fate. In October 1944, Bulgaria switched sides and declared war on Germany. It was forced to withdraw from Macedonia following the end of the war ).

Other demands imposed by Bulgaria included North Macedonia renouncing any claim to the existence of a Macedonian minority in Bulgaria, despite the repeated judgements by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg calling on Bulgaria to recognise the existence of Macedonian minority groups in Bulgaria, which the country has studiously ignored.( The number of ethnic Macedonians living in Bulgaria is a matter of controversy with, according to the Minority Rights Group International, evidence of these citizens being subject to harassment and intimidation. The 1992 census showed there were over 10,000; from the latest census in 2021, that figure has gone down to just over 1,000 ).

The so-called ‘French Proposal’

During the final days of the French Presidency of the European Council in June 2022, President Macron put forward a proposal for the negotiating framework which would lift the Bulgarian veto and guide the accession process with North Macedonia. The proposal basically endorsed all of Bulgaria’s demands, which caused fury among the Macedonian citizens who saw it as another insult to their nationhood and a betrayal of the EU’s repeated promises to the country.

As part of the proposal, North Macedonia would have to amend its constitution so as to include a reference to the existence of a Bulgarian community in the country. There was no mention of any reciprocity. The judgements of the European Court of Human Rights on the existence of a Macedonian community in Bulgaria were completely ignored.

This left the Macedonian government with a terrible choice – ‘damned if we do, damned if we don’t’. In the end, the proposal, endorsed by the EU, was accepted, and Bulgaria lifted its veto. The first Intergovernmental Conference marking the formal opening of accession negotiations with both Albania ( blocked since 2020 because of the Bulgarian veto against North Macedonia ) and North Macedonia took place in July 2022. However the actual negotiations with North Macedonia can only start once the amendment to its constitution has been adopted by the Macedonian Parliament. For the moment there is no majority in the Parliament to support this.

Furthermore, because of the unanimity rule over enlargement issues within the EU, Bulgaria will be able to exercise its veto power at any time to block any advance in the negotiations if it feels that the bilateral issues under the Friendship Treaty are not dealt with to its satisfaction by North Macedonia. The Bulgarian Government got a taste of its own medicine when Austria recently vetoed the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to Schengen, which caused Bulgaria to complain of Austrian obstruction. The fact that it was at the same time obstructing North Macedonia’s prospects of EU accession did not seem to register.

As if to underline it is the stronger party in these disputes by virtue of its EU membership, the Bulgarian government proceeded to openly support the setting-up of so-called cultural clubs in North Macedonia named after controversial figures from the Second World War who supported the Nazi regime. Three have already been established during 2022. Some of the Bulgarian MPs present at these events have used language similar to that used by President Putin against Ukraine, thus fuelling the deep insult and animosity felt by Macedonian citizens. While the EU has remained largely silent, nationalist elements on both sides have used the controversy to whip up ethno-populist sentiments with the burning of flags and frequent incidents of hate speech. True to form, there is evidence that Russia’s malign influence is never far behind these events, with supporters of Russia within the current Bulgarian government itself.

This outcome has set a dangerous precedent which will certainly come back to haunt the EU in the pursuit of its enlargement agenda with the Western Balkans, a region replete with similar bilateral disputes. It has shown once again the the EU’s lack of understanding of the sensitivity linked to minority issues and its underestimation of the dark shadow of history over a region where the past is ever present

The EU needs to change its approach

The EU will need to radically change its approach to the Western Balkans to take account of these deep rooted societal issues. Failure to do so will allow the many fault lines within and between the countries of the region become more entrenched with any hope of reconciliation being lost. By taking sides in the Bulgaria/North Macedonia dispute, the EU has already forsaken many hearts and minds in the region.

Greater focus on supporting reconciliation projects such as people to people contacts and history teaching could help to avoid the distortions and revisionism promoted by nationalist agendas. The Thessaloniki Centre for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe had achieved significant success in this respect with the development of joint history teaching programmes, but had to close down due to lack of funding. There are, however, a number of other mechanisms that could be used, such as the History Observatory for Peace in Europe, established by the Council of Europe ( of which North Macedonia, Ireland and other EU countries are members, but Bulgaria is not ), and the European Association of History Educators ( EUROClio ) established in 1992.

The experience of the EU’s Peace Fund for Northern Ireland, established by Commission President Jacques Delors in 1995 to support the peace process offers valuable inspiration for the Western Balkans, in particular projects on shared education and fostering a greater role for civil society in post conflict nation building and reconciliation. The EU funded Cross Border Cooperation Programmes within the Western Balkan region could also ensure greater focus on joint history teaching projects and more programmes promoting reconciliation.

Above all what is required is to convince countries in the region, in particular EU member states such as Bulgaria, that debates over centuries of history between neighbouring countries, cannot be resolved over one or two years or even decades or by imposing artificial deadlines to reach agreement. As with the EU, divergent views of past events and differences will remain, but they should not block the accession prospects of Western Balkan countries from advancing.

It is only by pursuing a “pluralism of narratives” that reconciliation can begin in a region that it has often been said has produced more history than it can absorb.

Ambassador Erwan Fouéré is Associate Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS). Prior to joining CEPS in 2013, he was Special Representative for the Transdniestrian settlement process during the Irish 2012 Chairmanship of the OSCE. During his 38 year career with the European institutions, he was the first to assume joint responsibilities of EU Special Representative and Head of Delegation in the EU External Service when he was appointed in this double capacity in North Macedonia ( 2005-2011 ), the first Head of Delegation in South Africa ( 1994-1998 ) and the first Head of Delegation in Mexico and Cuba ( 1989-1992 ). He was awarded the Order of Good Hope, Grand Officer, by President Nelson Mandela in 1998.

The post Weaponising history for domestic political agendas – The case of the Western Balkans appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

I am participating in the University of Tartu Course “Digitaalse sisuloome alused” (Foundations of digital content creation) from 2 January to 26 February 2023. The participating students received the task to post a link to a website with their uploaded content.

I was thinking of posting the link to my blog on Ideas of Europe because my content is research-based. I also thought that maybe someone could find it useful to see how the European human rights protection systems were introduced to the students of the University of Tartu from 2004 to 2011.

The task was creating or revising a study material – a video, a presentation, a study guide, a test, a simulation, a textbook, an assessment model, a syllabus, a draft project, etc., and uploading it.

I picked the syllabus of the course that I had worked out and was reading at the Faculty of Law of the University of Tartu from 2004 to 2011 “Protection of Human Rights under EU Law”.

The course based on my M.A. Dissertation “Põhiõiguste ja -vabaduste areng ning kohtulik kaitse Euroopa Liidus” (Development of fundamental rights and their judicial protection in the European Union) that I defended in the University of Tartu in the year of 2004.

I read the course for the last time in spring semester 2011. When I revised my old syllabus, I interestingly found out that although I have not read the course since 2011, all the topics discussed then are still actual. Therefore, I have shared the syllabus with the other ESIL members at the ESIL Teaching Corner at https://esil-sedi.eu/teaching-corner/ 

I think that the structure of the course could remain the same. I should only add some recent articles and remove some of the compulsory articles (to the optional literature).Protection of Human Rights under EU Law

The post Revising the Syllabus of the Course “Protection of Human Rights under EU Law” appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Last week’s third anniversary of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU also means it’s the third anniversary of the Trade & Cooperation Agreement (TCA).

The TCA is the oddly overlooked counterpart of the Withdrawal Agreement (with its troublesome Protocol), oddly because it is the much more substantial treaty, structuring the full breadth of current relations and containing space to include pretty much all the future relations too.

Of course, such a significant text comes with a degree of complexity, which we’ve looked at before on the OUatEU blog (here and here, for example).

One part of that complexity comes from the changing situation over time: we still have a number of transitional arrangements in place (both by mutual agreement and by unilateral proclamation) and a raft of reviews and sunset clauses to come in the next years.

The graphics below set out all of this, together with references to relevant information. Sadly, there’s nowhere that has a definitive resource for TCA matters (unlike Queen’s excellent Protocol tracker); both the EU and UK have rather dispersed bits and no simple way to pick up all the non-hard law decisions. Maybe if there’s a clamour from you, the readers, I might get to making such a thing myself.

In the meantime, take in the notion that we already know some things that will be happening in 2035.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic77

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic65

This post was brought to you via a request from someone who uses these for teaching: I’m always happy to take requests like this, so just pop me a line or put a comment below and I’ll see what I can do.

The post Tracking the TCA implementation and enforcement appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

EUHealthGov started 2023 with its seventh quarterly seminar on 25th January – a roundtable on EU pharmaceutical activity which encompassed challenges from the much-awaited revisions to the EU pharmaceutical strategy and beyond. We were delighted to be joined by a range of experts to consider different aspects, notably solidarity and vulnerability in access to pharmaceuticals; how the EU regards pharmaceuticals through the lens of competition policy; and global access to medicines through EU action. 

Dr Mary Guy (LJMU) introduced the discussions with an overview of the development of EU activity regarding the pharmaceutical sector – from responding to the Thalidomide crisis in the mid-1960s to the revision of the EU pharmaceutical strategy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast to health and healthcare more generally, the pharmaceutical sector has highlighted specific tensions, being located between public health and the internal market.  

Dr Éloïse Gennet (Aix-Marseille) and Dr Aurélie Mahalatchimy (Aix-Marseille) discussed their experience of working with the European Association for Health Law and the European Health Policy Platform (DGSANTE) to establish a 2021 Thematic Network (now permanent) on an inclusive and equitable pharmaceutical strategy. This network produced webinars and a Joint Statement against the backdrop of pre-existing health inequalities highlighted since COVID-19, and unprecedented EU solidarity and renewed efforts to promote equitable access to medical supplies and vaccines. The main recommendations of the Joint Statement include targeting unmet medical needs by identifying vulnerability situations, increasing institutional dialogue and cooperation beyond emergency situations, and promoting affordability throughout the pharmaceutical lifecycle. 

Professor Wolf Sauter (VU Amsterdam) outlined how competition works in the pharmaceutical sector across four stages: monopoly, oligopoly, generic/biosimilar competition and multi-source competition. This set the scene for a review of EU competition policy in pharma, from DGCOMP’s 2008/9 sector inquiry and the 2012 AstraZeneca case, via pay-for-delay cases at EU level, to more recent interactions between the Commission and national competition authorities. What emerges is a particular focus on excessive pricing, which has seen an evolving approach in cases from United Brands to AKKA/LAA, with cases at both EU and national levels, leading to the identification of trends of price hikes, consumer lock-ins and an emphasis on niche generics (and one orphan drug). Overall there is scope for both competition and non-competition remedies which may be explored beyond wider considerations of EU competition law and pharmaceuticals. 

Dr Katrina Perehudoff (University of Amsterdam) focused on the EU Pharmaceutical Strategy to draw attention to challenges ahead for the EU’s role in global health. These challenges fall into three categories. Firstly, the conceptual challenge of why the EU should have a strong voice globally, which can relate, inter alia, to investment (in the EU), as well as health security and social justice (for EU citizens). The second challenge is theoretical, framed around the question of how the EU will achieve its aims globally. This sees the identification of three pathways of EU influence: unilateral EU action influencing third countries; bilateral trade, accession and aid agendas, and multilateral influence. A final challenge is empirical: what will the EU do? Here considerations encompass regulatory standard-setting and technology transfer.  

We look forward to developing this discussion in the future! 

A recording of the event is available here.

The post Summary: EU Pharmaceutical Activity Webinar January 2023 appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Vanja Smokvina, Jean Monnet Chair for EU Sports Law, Policy & Diplomacy at the Faculty of Law of the University of Rijeka, in Croatia. Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

 

Six weeks after the final, the dust has settled on the football world cup in Qatar. That’s a good moment to take stock of what will remain from this event.

Yes, I agree. During the World Cup itself, the focus was on lots of things going on before or even during the tournament. The feeling is that it was definitely one of the most unusual World Cups, if only for the calendar. From the beginning, the event certainly raised a lot of discussions, and it ended with Argentina’s captain Lionel Messi lifting the trophy in a black bisht.

 

As a researcher in sport diplomacy, would you say this World Cup was a diplomatic success?

Well, that’s the million-dollar question! I would say it was a great opportunity for FIFA and the Arab world. Has that opportunity been taken? Probably yes, but not fully.

For instance, if we take the example of Budweiser, the beer company, one of the main long-standing partners of FIFA. Denying Budweiser the right to sell their products in areas that were previously contractually agreed is a bad message. I am not saying that the policy should be to sell alcoholic drinks at sports venues, but if it was planned to be like that, you cannot simply change it during the tournament. The impression is that such an outcome would not have been possible in other countries. In this sense, it is evidence for the ‘diplomatic power’ of Qatar.

The same goes for the iconic and highly symbolic picture of Messi in a bisht. It’s a picture that will remain. FIFA here made an extreme exception for the host country, which probably would not have been allowed anywhere else.

 

It sounds like Qatar got everything they wanted out of this World Cup. Did they really?

The truth is we do not know with absolute certainty what they wanted from the event. What is sure is that it is impossible that such a small country, which does not even have an important sporting footprint, will organise such an important event in the future again. I mean, together with the Olympics, it’s the most important sports mega event on this planet, which means a lot to many people, and the message was: if you are rich enough, you can buy it. I am not sure this is a good message, neither for FIFA nor for Qatar. It was just a demonstration of diplomatic muscle, based on economic power.

 

Do you think FIFA will have learnt something from the event?

I think they would be well advised at FIFA to press the ‘restart button’ and I really hope that we will not have to focus anymore on the breach of human rights, on wrongdoings and criminal offences of sports governing bodies top officials, and disregard for players health etc. We can only hope everybody learnt a lesson.

 

How powerful, as a transnational diplomatic player, is FIFA actually?

FIFA is a sports governing body with important ‘diplomatic’ and organizational powers. And it should be more active in promoting basic human rights and fundamental freedoms.

We must never forget that FIFA and also UEFA are more powerful than some countries, sometimes more influential than the United Nations. When FIFA suspends a member – one national football federation due to the breach of some rules – the politicians of that country are keener to settle the problem than if they received a ‘slap on the wrist’ by the UN, the International Labour Organization or whatever other international organization. This is the tremendous power of FIFA.

But we must also acknowledge FIFA or UEFA for imposing positive developments. Only because of the football power’s system, we have seen women attending football matches in Iran and campaigns against ‘hate speech, xenophobia and racial insults’ at football matches! Sports governing bodies are extremely powerful, and they know that. All we can do is hope they will continue to use their powers for the development of their sports but also of the good of humanity.

 

Many thanks, for sharing your thoughts on the fallout of this event. I recall you are the holder of a Jean Monnet Chair at the University of Rijeka, in Croatia. And you are about to publish the very first issue of a new scientific journal, the Sports Law, Policy and Diplomacy Journal, in collaboration with the already long-standing Association for the Study of Sport and the European Union.

 

 

Entretien réalisé par Rune Mahiee.

 

 

 

The post The Qatar World Cup and its Diplomatic Outcomes appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Alicja Próchniak, from Loughborough University, in London. Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

 

 

Your PhD research deals with the role and function of political myths and their impact on foreign policy. That sounds very theoretical. Can you tell us more about it?

The concept of political myth is understudied in academic research, and the existing scope of literature is scattered across several scientific disciplines. An important author, considered to be a pioneer of this concept, is Roland Barthes, with his well-known book Mythologies, published in 1957. He was building upon the original sign analysis, often referred to as ‘semiology’, developed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.

 

How do myths work? Can you give us a concrete example?

Sure. Let’s start with Sisyphus, the character from Greek mythology, condemned to repeat the same task of rolling a large stone up a hill for eternity. In English, we have the expression ‘Sisyphean work’. Normally, ‘work’ means an activity or task that involves the use of mental or physical effort to achieve a specific objective. However, the expression ‘Sisyphean work’ means an endless and futile task. This is exactly the nature of myth as described by Barthes. The meaning goes beyond what is actually said.

 

How does this fit into politics? After all, you are writing a PhD at an ‘Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance’!

Myths are everywhere in political discourse. According to Christopher Flood, a political myth is ‘an ideologically marked narrative’ which claims to give, I quote: ‘a true account of past, present, or predicted political events and which is accepted as valid in its essentials by a social group’.

Other researchers have explained that myths go beyond narratives or ideology, as they contribute to a ‘sacralisation’ of politics. They frame discourse in quasi-religious terms, and they contain sacred elements that elevate the power of narrative to the range of religious authority.

 

Can you provide an illustration of such mechanisms of sacralization?

A good example is American exceptionalism, which is not a religious phenomenon in itself, but has very important religious roots and connotations. Joanne Esch, a researcher from Colorado, has identified three main ideas of the American myth of exceptionalism:

First, America as ‘God’s chosen nation’. This myth provides meaning to the country’s political and historical experience and the general direction of its politics.

Second, the United States as a ‘nation with a calling’. This refers to America as a special mission in the world, given by God, the creation of a global order of democracy and freedom. The use of such a myth in official political rhetoric helps to legitimize policies that do not always comply with international law, like for instance the ‘War on Terror’ launched by George W. Bush.

And third, America represents the forces of good against evil. The myth of ‘God’s chosen nation’ leads to stipulating that the country represents the ‘forces of Good’ against ‘the forces of Evil’. It’s the myths that create the quasi-religious underpinning of the country’s image of itself and its place in the world.

 

The United States are perhaps a quite extreme example in their permanent reference to religious myths?

All countries have their political myths. Just think of France as ‘the country of Human Rights’. Or the way in which the European Union refers to its mission as ‘peace-builder’ on the continent. The difference between them is the extent to which these myths are critically discussed.

Given the important domestic and international implications of myths, the topic of political myths has received surprisingly little attention in the studies of International Relations. We are now starting to understand that they are especially influential in shaping security and foreign policy. And that’s what I am working on in my PhD research.

 

Thank you very much, for sharing your original research with us. Keep us posted on the progress of your work! I recall you are based on the London campus of Loughborough University.

 

Entretien réalisé par Rune Mahiee.

 

 

The post Why Political Myths Matter appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

I will freely admit that I have shied away from getting into the whole question of Retained EU Law, primarily because it’s much more about law in the UK than it is about EU law per se. I know enough to know that I don’t know much.

However, the question is one that cannot be ignored.

Firstly, the extent of Retained EU Law is such that how it is dealt with will have significant consequences for British legal systems, UK businesses and politics. The Retained EU Law (Revocation & Reform) Bill gives huge powers to the government to make changes to rules within effective Parliamentary oversight, for example.

Secondly, the headlong rush to sunset rules by the end of 2023 contains significant implications for the UK’s compliance with its obligations under the Withdrawal Agreement and (especially) the Trade & Cooperation Agreement, the latter with its Level Playing Field requirements. Given that the UK government is still unclear as to quite what falls into the Retained EU Law classification, even their intentions are to comply, the danger of accidental divergence is evident.

And finally, the entire shift on the matter speaks to the continuing uncertainty about what relationship with the EU the UK might want.

Almost from the off after the referendum, there was a recognition that something would have to be done about all of the internalised and semi-internalised legislation (and practice) that came from the EU. Not just the regulations and the directives, but also the principles of supremacy and direct effect and the extensive case law of the CJEU.

Given the unclear boundaries of all of this, the only viable option at the time of the Withdrawal Agreement negotiations was the one taken by the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2018, which just rolled over the membership-era system created by the European Communities Act 1972 and let the government take its time over resolving matters.

As I’ve been showing in my REUL Tracker (last discussion here and data files here), there has been some work to review and adapt to life after membership, but at a rather slow pace. Perhaps as a mark of that slow pace, the fancy visualisation tool first published in September last year has just undergone a big reworking, making it now very hard to keep track of what’s happened [one for next week I think].

However, the EU(WA) Act approach clearly caused issues for some in government, hence the flip over to the new Bill.

This drops methodically working through the pile to saying that anything not explicitly addressed by the end of 2023 will be sunsetted (sunsat?), even as any general principle of EU law is also removed from the practice of law in the UK.

The issues with this approach are both multiple and major, as set out in the graphic below.  Even if liberal use of the ‘exceptional’ extension to 23 June 2026 (not an insignificant date) would still likely result in a large percentage of Retained EU Law being dropped without the level of scrutiny one might hope for (assuming that the civil servants and MPs involved might also have other things that need their attention).

The Bill’s approach speaks to a desire to divest the UK of any vestige of having been an EU member, regardless of whether any part of it might have intrinsic value: a measure’s EU origin is enough to make the presumption that it must be removed.

This is of course a worldview that resonates with the notion of ‘taking back control’ and of British otherness; only we can know what is right for us, only we can make decisions for us. As political sells go, it’s not the hardest banner to run on, at least in a campaigning mode.

But politics is also about governing: our shiny ideas quickly tarnish in the glare of day as we start to use them.

And so it is here. The Bill might make good headlines, but it doesn’t obviously make things better for citizens, for traders or for relations with the European Union that (annoyingly) continues to sit on the UK’s doorstep. As I touched upon the other week, we don’t get to make unilateral decisions about our relationships, however much we’d like that.

At a moment when the government seems (maybe, perhaps) to be working towards some kind of deal with the EU on Northern Ireland, it would be ironic if it simultaneously opened up a new point of tension over an issue that only it seems to think is an issue.

PDF version: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic114

PDF version: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic115

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Inga Ulnicane

New technologies are usually developed with the best intentions in mind. However, as history shows this does not prevent from afterwards using them in problematic ways. For example, internet was initially associated with hopes that it will foster openness and democracy around the world but later became used as a tool of surveillance and discrimination. How to facilitate development of technologies for social benefit and minimize potential to use them for problematic purposes? One of the approaches that has gained popularity in Europe over the past decade is the so-called Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) (Stahl 2021) that aims to align research and innovation with societal interests, needs and values. An important element of the RRI approach is boundary spanning collaborations involving researchers not only from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines, but also from social science and humanities (Aicardi 2020). Such collaborations also involve a broad range of stakeholders from civil society and private sectors.

 

The RRI approach aims to go beyond just legal compliance and getting ethics approvals for research. It recognizes that rather than a priori establishing a list of potential concerns, uncertainty and complexity of emerging technologies require an ongoing dialogue among diverse stakeholders, as technology develops (Stahl 2019). Emerging and unpredictable concerns can be better captured by an open and flexible dialogue rather than by some pre-set checklists and box-ticking exercises. An important feature that differentiates RRI from earlier approaches to ethical and societal aspects of research and innovation is that responsibility is not seen as an individual responsibility of scientists but rather as a feature of research governance. Thus, it is not just up to scientists to make the right choices but responsible research and innovation should also be encouraged and facilitated by a research policy, funding and reward system. Moreover, it should not be just an afterthought or an add-on but needs to be considered upfront when designing new research programmes and initiatives.

 

Among the issues that needs to be considered when developing technologies for good, dual use of concern and misuse are of particular importance. All powerful technologies like artificial intelligence, neurotechnology or nanotechnology can be used for socially beneficial as well as harmful purposes. Dual use is a relatively little known and contested concept. Traditionally, dual use has been understood as civil-military dichotomy when technologies developed for civilian purposes are also used for military applications and vice versa (Ulnicane 2020). Recently this term is understood more broadly considering a range of potentially problematic uses in political, security, intelligence, military and other domains (Ulnicane et al 2022). To identify and address such a broad range of concerns, it is important to have an ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue that provides a safe space and allows for experimentation, dialogue and learning. Of particular importance is raising awareness about these issues and including training on societal aspects of technologies in STEM education.

 

Dr. Inga Ulnicane is Senior Research Fellow at De Montfort University, UK. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on governance, politics and policy of science, technology and innovation. She has published on topics such as Artificial Intelligence, dual use, Grand societal challenges and European integration in research and innovation.

 

References:

Aicardi, C., S.Akintoye, B.T.Fothergill, M.Guerrero, G.Klinker, W.Knight, L.Klüver, Y.Morel, F.O.Morin, B.C.Stahl and I.Ulnicane (2020) Ethical and Social Aspects of Neurorobotics. Science and Engineering Ethics 26(5): 2533–2546 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-020-00248-8

 

Stahl, B.C., S.Akintoye, B.T.Fothergill, M.Guerrero, W.Knight and I.Ulnicane (2019) Beyond Research Ethics: Dialogues in Neuro-ICT Research. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 13, 105 https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00105

 

Stahl, B.C., S.Akintoye, L.Bitsch, D.Eke, M.Farisco, K.Grasenick, M.Guerrero, W.Knight, T.Leach, S.Nyholm, G.Ogoh, A.Rosemann, A.Salles, J.Trattnig and I.Ulnicane (2021) ‘From RRI to Responsibility by Design’, Journal of Responsible Innovation 8(2): 175-198 https://doi.org/10.1080/23299460.2021.1955613

 

Ulnicane, I. (2020) The Governance of dual-use research in the EU: The case of neuroscience, in A.Calcara, R.Csernatoni and C.Lavallée (eds) Emerging Security Technologies and EU Governance. Actors, Practices and Processes. Routledge, pp.177-191. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429351846-12

 

Ulnicane, I., T. Mahfoud and A. Salles (2022) Experimentation, learning, and dialogue: an RRI-inspired approach to dual-use of concern. Journal of Responsible Innovation. https://doi.org/10.1080/23299460.2022.2094071

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To respond to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, we at UACES wanted to bring our community together. And we went the same way everyone is going right now: online.

The second virtual coffee meeting encouraged our community to talk about their mental health and how to look after it while working from home. Different perspectives were shared but we could also observe, a few struggles are the same for everyone.

Photo: ©Jakob Lawitzki – Balance, via Flickr

What has changed

Academics are often well equipped to work from home and student life often means to study either in the library or at home, writing on an essay or paper. Now, everyone is forced to work from home and that is a different context. Finding a good balance is not that easy as possibilities as well as equipment might suddenly be limited.

The pandemic demands a constant adjustment and no one has certainty on how long the pandemic will last. What has been decided yesterday might not count next week anymore. Deadlines for a paper or an essay is in constant change; and universities, students and professors are caught in between. You might end up spending a lot of time working on something for a deadline, a class or and event and all you do is preparing for something that might get cancelled or postponed. Keeping the motivation high is hard. The pandemic demands a lot of flexibility from everyone.

Many started to bake and cook loads, but even there is a real struggle: finding basic ingredients, like flour or eggs. This makes everyone a little nervous. It probably doesn’t mean that everyone bakes every day, but flour is that thing, that everyone usually has in their shelves. This phenomenon probably embodies security and signals, I could make something if I had to…
Others became motivated runners or endless dog-walkers. A restriction can also motivate in a different way. We often want, what we can’t have and we are observing this around us now.

Fear became more present and simple life administrations harder. People with a second house are facing difficulties in taking care of the other place where they not currently at. Letter correspondence is limited. How can I even send a letter to authorities? What if you are waiting for an important document but it’s being addressed to the other place? Journeys to the hair dresser, the garden centre or even the dentist might seem unimportant at first, until you feel a bit of pain in your teeth.

Whilst it all concerns this one topic: COVID-19. How can we escape all the questions that we have about this virus and its impact? It occupies our minds and affects our work, our everyday life so drastically that it is really hard to switch off. Depending on the individual situation everyone is in, the effect might be distinct in different ways. But we also observe that many do experience the same changes even if we are separated and in different countries or continents.

 

At least we can all stay connected. Or can we?

This might be more of an effort than you would believe. Just think about: How often do you interact with others throughout a normal day? It probably comes down to less than half of that number now. It is more of an effort to stay in touch. Simple interactions in between, like a coffee break and a 10-minute chat, are rare or non-existing.
Additionally, in an international environment, people travelled home to be with their families and might be in a different time zone now. Some haven’t spoken to colleagues in a little while.

Others checked on their colleagues and friends to make sure they are ok, because this gives oneself a good feeling and maybe even the certainty that everything will be ok, too. It might also be the need to exchange experience and hear what stage another country is in. Then, again, COVID dominates the conversation and our minds and our thoughts are lost in that one topic. We end up talking about worries and fears and it might feel that everything else to talk about has just disappeared.

In a family environment, how can we keep, date nights alive? This might not be so easy, but with a little imagination we might find ways. Like a dad experienced who pretended to serve dinner to his children. He and his wife planned a Saturday date night but the kids wanted to take part in this spectacular. Instead of letting his children serve them (which might have resulted in a kitchen disaster), he served his kids in a little role play for the evening.

 

There is also this thing about ‘time’…

Most people do not feel they have the time to start a new hobby, learn a new skill or do more reading, as so many suggest. Use the time to slow down, some say. If you work full-time from home you might find yourself continuing to work longer hours or even on the weekend. Many have experienced this already. A reason this happens is because work gives your day structure and avoids that we are losing the sense of time.
However, it could also mean, we haven’t finished our workload for the day. Many feel unfocused, are checking the media more often, and are caught up in calls with family and friends. And then, as mentioned, conversations are mostly about the COVID-19 pandemic. How can we avoid this?

Many suggest setting goals during self-isolation helps with your mental health. And if time is an issue, building up little challenges could make a little goal, like, how many steps am I doing a day at home? Can I walk 24 miles in my garden? Or like the artist Max Siedentopf suggests: get creative. ‘There are so many opportunities to create new and exciting work and turn this into something positive’. Every day, he challenges people via social media to do little tasks and to photograph and share their results. So, maybe trying to do small little things is a better idea than starting a new hobby to distract us from the realities that the pandemic confronts us with every day.

 

So, how can we look after ourselves?

Keeping a routine and structure is important for most people. It helps with motivation and productivity. Have you tried to break down your day? Something like the following might help to tick the tasks you set for your own day and which might make you feel better (because these are the things you can accomplish):

Breakfast – long walk – lunch – baby naps – 4 pm video chat with family – dinner

or

Spend the morning working on research – afternoon set aside for reading or lighter admin jobs – go for a run and/or do some kind of craft activity – Listen to podcasts (ideally not news-related)

Walks are helpful for almost everyone. Fresh air, the change of space, clearing the mind… The lucky ones are those who live in the countryside or close to the sea. In the city, a walk might still be a bit stressful. More people are around you and you are constantly trying to get around them while keeping 2 metres distance. But maybe, it is just based on finding the perfect time, the perfect walkway, the quiet part of the park.

 

And on maternity leave?

For colleagues on maternity leave (or about to embark upon it) one piece of advice is not to check your emails. There is an inordinate amount of emails being sent by university departments at the moment and they can be very stress-inducing; and even not relevant anymore once you return to work. However, if you think that you will be away from the university for a significant amount of time it may be better not to look at them or worry unduly about them since they will very likely not apply to you once you return.

 

And have you tried:

• to read the News only once a day?
• getting back into your research topic by talking about it to others? Maybe there are virtual meet-ups that can offer that? If not, why not start one in your network?
• relax with the tools you relax best. Don’t pressure yourself that you have to do a certain thing that all the others on social media are doing. Just because you see all your friends baking doesn’t mean you have to bake if it doesn’t give you joy.
• avoid social media for a bit. Plan calls to stay up to date with friends and family. Maybe start with deleting notifications or even apps from your phone.
• make a ‘Coronafree’-zone. Set a time or a location in your house which is exclusively for non-Corona topics. Involve your household in this, too and talk about books, movies or your current research instead. There are more things to talk about than the pandemic.
• to re-read a book? If you find it hard to concentrate, maybe try your favourite book that you have read before. It doesn’t need your full attention but might help to distract you or calm you by remembering the full story of the book.
• cooking shows? Get inspired about what you can cook in the evenings. There are plenty of shows on Netflix.
• puzzles, sudoku, crosswords?
• using the current situation for your research? Select those bits that are interesting for your professional career, maybe collect articles that you find interesting and can maybe use later for a research topic, a class or a debate.

 

The next #MidweekMeetup will address the work-life balance more deeply.
Register here to join the conversation – as usual at 11 am or 2 pm (BST).

 

 

The post UACES #MidweekMeetup – How to look after your mental health while working from home appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Neil spots an answer. Possibly

As you might have noticed, I have recently become a Senior Fellow of the ESRC-funded UK in a Changing Europe initiative, working on UK-EU relations. For present purposes, it mainly means I carry on doing this work, but now with more access to resources, and with a plan.

That plan is basically to try and make sense of relations, which feels like a bit more of a challenge now I’m actually getting into it. As such, it’s forced me to think more systematically about how to tackle this.

A key part of that is trying to unpack the various things we talk about when looking at this subject. So consider this a first stab.

Objectives

Long-time readers of this (and other) blogs will know that I have always placed a lot of attention on the question of objectives in the relationship.

In the simplest terms, what are we trying to do here?

Simple and obvious as that might sound, it’s very rare to hear this voiced by participants in the debate, beyond some boilerplate stuff about wanting ‘good’ or ‘constructive’ relations. Those things are nice, but hardly a well-developed conceptualisation of anything.

What do you need those good and constructive relations for? How do they fit into your wider foreign relations? How do they fit with your idea of what you want to achieve domestically?

These are the big questions that need to asked to get towards a better sense of any of the rest of what follows.

Processes

More common is discussion of how we build and run a relationship.

This starts by focusing on the types of instruments being used – UK-EU treaties; UK bilateral treaties with member states; MOUs; informal venues, etc. – each of which has its own range of options and flexibilities.

There’s also a process issue relating to who decides about the relationship. How much do you involve different political and social actors in this? Are you consulting widely, or trying to keep things tight?

These things all matter, both because of the future implications they carry (on flexibility, on the extent and nature of obligations) and because of the contemporary political values they contain (on legitimacy, on the seriousness of intent).

Content

This is the one we almost always discuss: what’s in the deal?

As I’ve already suggested, this kind of thing should really be driven by higher-order considerations about objectives, but in practice a lot comes down to specifics. Especially if you have a thing you think is important.

Scope clearly is consequential, also because a wider scope also tends to mean more people are affected/involved, which also has process implications.

Principles and Norms

This last category is slightly different in that it captures a number of ideas that inform the rest of the elements discussed here. Three examples might make this a bit clearer.

First up is the notion of good faith. Yes, it’s a principle of international treaty law, but it’s also good politics to be seen as (and actually to be) straight up, doing what you say you will. This speaks to trust, albeit in a more focused and applied manner.

Second we have the value placed on resilience and durability of agreements. As much as we have seen plenty of expediency in post-referendum British policy, there has also been an underlying effort to build some that will last. If nothing else, it hopefully means not having to spend so much time on things down the line.

And thirdly there is a notion that precedent-setting is important. This is more on the EU side, who don’t want to open the door to other third states popping up to demand the same treatment as the UK, but you also find in London, where particularities in dealings with the EU aren’t simple either (part of why CJEU powers are contentious).

Each of these suffuse the rest, even as they matter in their own right and deserve our attention.

Putting that together again

As I say, this is a first effort to systematise my thinking on this, but the main takeaway for now is that if we want to reach any equilibrium – high or low – in UK-EU relations, then we are going to have to make sure that we take proper account of all four parts of this, or risk falling another cycle making-it-up-as-we-go.

Which would be nice.

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