Ideas on Europe Blog

The publication of the UK’s draft EU settlement marks another milestone in the refashioning of its relationship with the EU. The proposals – which remain to be agreed in the European Council and thus could change – are noteworthy for their comprehensive and exacting nature. They represent a new mode of engagement between a Member State and the EU.

As I have written previously, this is the first time a Member State has unilaterally sought a renegotiation of its own terms of membership. This draft deal is not a means of accommodating a country trying to ratify an EU treaty (like Denmark with Maastricht or Ireland with Lisbon). Nor is it inherently in response to a particular policy change at European level. It is the product of national politics and the implementation of a manifesto pledge.

The ramifications for the EU of this unilateral approach remain unclear. How long before the novelty wears off and other countries seek their own individual settlements? Some will suggest that such a prospect is unlikely and that the UK is a special case. However, other Member States have opt-outs, protocols and reservations in their favour – having opt-outs does not in itself make a Member State unique.

It is true that the likelihood of another state (particularly a less influential one) succeeding in winning its own EU settlement is marginal. Nevertheless, the argument could be made, and refusal to accept it might damage the EU’s legitimacy. More to the point, how could Britain seriously stand in the way of another country following in its footsteps?

The draft deal would make a number of substantive changes to the EU’s architecture. If agreed, the potential qualifications of the free movement of workers would be ground-breaking. Over time, the implications of such a move could certainly be wider than the drafters ever intended.

Other measures are important but less radical, such ‘taking account’ of opposition by national parliaments to EU legislative proposals on grounds of subsidiarity. Agreement to eventually attach a protocol to the EU treaties clarifying that ‘ever closer union’ does not equate to obligatory political integration for the UK is less substantive.

Regardless of the meaning of creating ‘an ever closer union of the peoples of Europe’, the UK would have always had a say in any treaty change, and if it did not want to take part a significant new EU initiative, it would surely have received an opt-out, as it has always had before.

More importantly, the eventual settlement will carry a strong symbolic value. It attempts to codify the UK’s EU membership, listing all the opt-outs it already holds, such as on Economic and Monetary Union, the Schengen acquis and parts of police and judicial cooperation. It singles out specific elements of one country’s relationship with the EU – a sort of bespoke terms and conditions of membership. This kind of agreement runs counter to how the EU has always worked before.

Moreover, such differentiation would set the UK apart from the other Member States. The UK will not help Eurozone countries in financial crisis (who presumably will not be lining up to help the UK if it ever needed it). It will not treat EU workers equally under certain circumstances. In short, it will not participate in much of what the EU is meant to be about.

This arrangement would likely sap much of the goodwill from the UK’s EU membership. It is understood, and accepted, that the UK will not partake in particular elements of European integration. However, coldly stating the fact, codifying it and adding on to it are unlikely to endear Britain to the rest of the EU. It moves in the direction of reducing the UK’s membership to a transactional relationship between it and the other EU Member States.

The EU has always been about more than transactions, even for countries largely averse to political integration. Presuming the deal is agreed, it will have broader implications for the UK’s place in the EU. It has the potential to generate sizeable ill-will from the other Member States, which will have compromised much for the UK. It could also damage the UK’s long-term influence in the EU. If countries perceive the UK as semi-detached from the Union, they may not take it and its views as seriously as they would have otherwise.

All of this is of course predicated on the settlement being agreed and the UK subsequently voting to remain in the EU. Should Britain instead vote to leave, it will perhaps not be off to the best start in the withdrawal negotiations, having just wasted the other Member States’ time in reaching a now void settlement that concedes much of what is important to them about the EU.

This article was originally published (under a different title) on the LSE BrexitVote Blog.

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Shortened link: britainseurope.uk

How to cite this article:

Salamone, A (2016) ‘Britain’s New Settlement Could Remove the Goodwill from its EU Membership’, Britain’s Europe (Ideas on Europe), 17 Feb 2016, britainseurope.uk

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According to an article published in the Rheinische Post on 2nd January 2016, the motor manufacturer Daimler reported that it had built 180,000 Sprinter vans in 2015 – 5000 more vehicles built than in the previous year – at the company’s manufacturing plant at Derendorf in Düsseldorf. The boom in sales of Daimler’s Sprinter van is the result of an increasing demand for parcel and package delivery services, driven by the expanding market of online retailers such as Amazon and Zalando.

However, this increase in productivity and sales has not led to greater job security for the workers at the Düsseldorf factory. The management of Daimler has decided to build a new Sprinter factory at Charlestown, South Carolina in the USA, which will produce Sprinter vans for the United States, Canadian, and Mexican markets. Up until now the company’s factory in Germany has been manufacturing vans which have been exported to North America. The result of the Daimler’s new manufacturing plant in the United States will be the redundancy of 650 workers out of a workfore of 6500 at the factory in Düsseldorf.

Daimler seems to have been distracted by the short term boom in logistics services both in Europe and North America, without considering the long term sustainability of its business model. Once a delivery company buys a new van, it has that van for use for perhaps five or more years. So demand will suddenly drop once the market is saturated. A thriving logistics industry could also be threatened by another recession. At the moment Germany’s economy appears to be in a strong position, but that could change if more jobs are lost in traditional industries. The online retail industry depends upon the wages of customers, who work in companies like Daimler, to buy the products that are delivered to the customers’ homes.

The price of crude oil may be very low at the moment, but as more consumers in the world feel the effects of climate change, then there will be grater demand for vehicles driven by cleaner fuels. Daimler is already committed to the transition from fossil fuels to other fuels such as hydrogen produced from renewable forms of energy. The company is a partner in the Hydrogen Mobility Europe (H2ME) project, which aims to expand the network of hydrogen refuelling stations across Europe, and at the same time increase hydrogen-fuelled transport. In five years time, when the Sprinter vans with diesel engines made during the boom year of 2015 come to be replaced, then all of the vans manufactured by Daimler at the Düsseldorf factory should be hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Instead of making 650 workers redundant at the factory in Germany, Daimler should retrain and redeploy these workers along with the rest of the workforce at the factory to build the new vans with hydrogen fuel cells.

Sources

Breitkopf, Thorsten (02.01.2016) ‘Daimler meldet 180.000 Sprinter gebaut’, Rheinische Post.

http://www.itm-power.com/news-item/hydrogen-mobility-europe-launched-with-e32m-funding

©Jolyon Gumbrell 2016

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“There will never be a good a solid constitution unless the law reigns over the hearts of the citizens; as long as the power of legislation is insufficient to accomplish this, laws will always be evaded“  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1772).

You can have the best political institutions in the world but if the people who live within them do not want to use them properly, then those institutions will not work.  The challenge is to make people want to use common institutions properly and to agree on what constitutes proper use.  This is the challenge that Jean-Jacques Rousseau tackled in his “considerations on the government of Poland and on its proposed reformation.”  It is the same challenge advanced industrial democracies face today — at all levels of government.  Moreover, better institutions or ‘structural reforms’ were not the answer for Rousseau and they are not the answer now: “Although it is easy, if you wish, to make better laws, it is impossible to make them such that the passions of men will not abuse them as they abused the laws that preceded them.”

When I listen to politicians like Wolfgang Schäuble or Jeroen Dijsselbloem talk about ‘moral hazard’ and the need for everyone to ‘follow the rules,’ I can see immediately that they have not understood the problem that people have to believe in the rules first.  And when I hear about politicians like the late Helmut Schmidt deriding the need for ‘vision’ saying things like “people who have visions should see a doctor,” then I know we are in trouble.  People have to want to follow rules or they will find a way around them.  People only want to follow rules if they believe those rules are fair and just; they also have to believe that following the rules is useful.  Moreover, ‘following the rules’ restricts freedom and requires discipline. This means that people have to have some justification for collective action and common sacrifice.

When you add this all up – fairness, justice, effectiveness, purpose – you come up with a pretty complicated set of ideas that people need to receive and accept if they are to make institutions function.  Maybe ‘vision’ is not the most appropriate metaphor to describe this requirement to explain why politics works the way it does, particularly in a democratic system.  ‘Ideology’ is probably even more uncomfortable in the modern vernacular.  But whatever we call it, we need to come up with some way to get people to believe they are all part of a bigger project.  Democracy without solidarity does not work.

The examples of democracy suffering from a lack of solidarity are all around us.  As someone who spent a long time studying Belgian politics, my first instinct is to point to the 550 days that the New Flemish Alliance complicated efforts by the country’s elites to form a government.  That crisis only ended when the pressure in government bond markets was intense enough to focus attention on the very bad things that would happen if events spiralled out of control.  The debate that took place in the United States Congress over the debt ceiling during the summer of 2011 is another illustration.  But as we look more deeply into the functioning of the two Houses of Congress over the past few years, it is easy to see that the debt ceiling debate is just the tip of the iceberg. As Thomas Mann and Norman Orenstein describe it, the U.S. political system is “even worse than it looks.”

The Belgian and U.S. examples show two aspects of the pattern.  One is the argument about legitimacy.  This is where politicians or protestors claim that the current arrangement is unfair, unjust, ineffective, or headed in the wrong direction.  Here you can think of just about any stump speech by Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, or Beppe Grillo.  Clearly these speeches resonate with some part of the electorate.  Depending upon the country, you can usually mobilize between 15 and 25 percent of the vote around the general message of disenchantment; in some cases the appeal is even broader.

The second aspect is how the message translates into action. This is the part I try to capture with ‘solidarity’ (and its absence).  When solidarity weakens or diminishes, people start breaking rules or reinterpreting them in ways that exaggerate the worst features of any institutional  arrangement.  They begin using exclusive (or offensive) speech patterns which they justify as a break from the confines of ‘political correctness.’  They start dividing the world into ‘us’ and ‘them’.  And they find ways to hold the functioning of institutions hostage until their specific concerns are addressed.  Such actions are standard practice for Beppe Grillo’s ‘Five Star Movement’ but they are also what brought Ted Cruz such notoriety when he entered the U.S. Senate (following Nigel Farage’s playbook from the European Parliament).

Unfortunately, democratic institutions are not very good at channelling or constraining this kind of disruptive behaviour.  On contrary, democracy thrives in a context where speech is free and institutions operate under ‘checks and balances’.  This is the perfect environment for a loss of solidarity to spark a crisis of governance and yet we risk losing the essence of democracy whenever we try to use new rules to proscribe such unruly behaviour.  It is a delicate and difficult balance — as you can see by looking at countries like Hungary, Poland and Turkey.

The balance is even harder to find when you look at federal countries or multinational arrangements.  It is no accident that the two easiest examples of the problem we face (Belgium and the United States) are both federal countries.  But the implications for the European Union are even more dramatic.  In the end, I do not see a scenario where the United States collapses into a collection of smaller political units.  Even Belgium is showing significant resilience and the New Flemish Alliance is participating in the federal government without demanding further devolution of power to Flanders (for now).

By contrast, the European Union is facing an existential crisis.  The knee-jerk European response is always more rules, better enforcement, and structural reform.  These are good responses in many situations.  Unfortunately, this is not one of them.  Too many Europeans do not believe that the rules are just or fair, they do not understand the need for collective sacrifice (or that the sacrifice is truly ‘collective’), and they do not think the solutions being offered are going to be effective.  You can see this in debates about macroeconomic policy, financial regulation, migration, and the single market.  You can see this in the language that is being used to divide Europe into north and south, east and West, creditor and debtor.  And you can see that both protest groups (including anti-European parties) and national governments are starting to use the institutions of Europe to jam up the process of governance until they get what they want for themselves.

Europe as a whole is not a democracy but it shares many democratic strengths and weaknesses.  Free speech, freedom of assembly, and institutional checks and balances are at the top of both lists.  The collapse of solidarity in Europe is threatening to break the union into pieces.  If Europe’s politicians don’t start focusing their attention on coming up with an argument to explain how Europeans are all in this together, why they need to work with one-another, and where this great project is going, then they will have to live with the consequences of their inaction.  This is what David Cameron promised when he raised the whole prospect of a national debate on Europe in his Bloomberg speech.  Unfortunately, that conversation has deteriorated into a debate about details rather than focusing on the big picture.  National politicians need to tell the big story about Europe if they are to capture ‘the hearts of the citizens,’ in Rousseau’s turn of phrase.  Whether we call that a ‘vision’, an ‘ideal’, or an ‘ideology’ is less important than winning the argument about Europe’s importance.  The same is true for democracy itself.

First published on February 13, 2016 at Prof. Erik Jones’ Personal Webpage.

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• Fairy-tales about Britain leaving the EU?

On last week’s BBC Question Time UKIP’s deputy leader, Paul Nuttall, presented a fantasy vision of Britain outside the European Union.

It was supposed to be his leader, Nigel Farage, to appear once again on the weekly discussion show, but apparently he got stuck in traffic (no doubt he’ll blame that on foreigners, or foreign cars, or an EU directive, or something).

So, last week it was his deputy, Paul Nuttall, who appeared on Question Time instead.

(But last night, UKIP leader Nigel Farage was on Question Time – that means that UKIP’s leader and deputy leader have been on the programme two weeks in a row. Doesn’t that seem disproportionate?)

I want to pick up on four comments Mr Nuttall, a Member of the European Parliament, said in answers to questions from the audience last week.

When someone asked him, “What will happen to the EU migrants already living in Britain if we leave the EU?” he replied:

“People who are already here will not be asked to leave. We have a heart!”

Well, UKIP may have a heart, but the thing is, they’re not in charge.

Pre or post Brexit, they will still only have one Member of Parliament. Hardly enough to form a government, let alone to dictate what will happen if Britain leaves the EU.

The former attorney general, Dominic Grieve, commented last year that if Britain leaves the EU, around two million Britons living in the rest of Europe would become “illegal immigrants overnight”.

And in today’s Telegraph, Alex Taylor, a Briton living in France, wrote that, “If Britain does withdraw from the EU, two million of us will be stranded and no longer have equal rights as the citizens of the countries we live in – overnight” (See: Expats are being frozen out on Europe)

The fact is that nobody can really say, let alone promise, what will happen with the EU migrants living in Britain, and the British migrants living in the rest of the EU, if Brexit should happen.

No EU member state has ever before left the EU, so it would be uncharted territory.

On ‘Question Time’ Mr Nuttall spoke as if his party would have a say in Britain’s Brexit terms if the referendum resulted in Britain’s departure from the European Union.

But actually, he is in no position to promise anything.

Mr Nuttall also told the Question Time audience in Bradford:

“Peace was kept by NATO, not the European Union.”

For sure NATO has helped to keep the peace from external threats. But peace among and between European nations came about primarily because of the European Union.

Above all economic considerations, no countries during their membership of the European Union have warred with one another; we’ve found peace. That’s quite an achievement, I believe, when one considers that the planet’s only, and hopefully last, two world wars originated right here, in Europe.

Winston Churchill, who is recognised as one of the founders of the European Union, passionately promoted the idea of a Union of the states of Europe as the antidote to war.

Furthermore, not all EU member states are even members of NATO.

Commented EU law expert, Professor Steve Peers, “The founders of the EU, when they signed the original Coal and Steel Community Treaty, said explicitly that their aim was to develop the EU in order to avoid wars between them.

“The USA has always supported the EU from the outset, as a parallel body to NATO, realising that both organisations contributed to securing peace between EU nations.”

Mr Nuttall also claimed:

“The simple fact of the matter is you don’t have to be a member of the EU to have access to the Single Market…”

Well, of course, countries throughout the world trade with the European Union. The EU is the world’s biggest exporter, and the world’s biggest importer, of manufactured goods and services.

But having full and complete free access to the lucrative internal market of the European Union – the world’s richest, biggest, most successful trading block – that’s a rather different matter.

The EU is Britain’s single most important export market – that’s unlikely to change if Britain exits the EU. However, as a member of the EU, we have free access to the single internal market of Europe. That, according to many economists, is worth considerably more than our annual EU membership fee.

It’s true that non-EU member, Norway (often referred to as ‘the Norway model’), has free access to the internal market of the EU, but in exchange, they have to make an annual contribution to the EU, and they have to accept all the rules of the Single Market.

And yet they have no voting rights and very little say in those rules.

Commented Professor Steve Peers this evening, “The EU has indeed been willing to let non-EU States sign up to the internal market, but in the form of the EEA treaty, which includes obligations to contribute to EU programmes, to apply many EU laws without having a say, and to accept the free movement of people, which UKIP dislikes.

“But UKIP’s manifesto says that they oppose the EEA – so how exactly do they think the EU will agree to internal market access without those conditions?”

Finally, Mr Nuttall claimed:

“We can have a bespoke UK deal with the European Union, we have a huge trading deficit, they need us more than we need them.”

It’s a rather arrogant stance. After all, why would the other 27 members of the EU allow Britain to enjoy membership benefits without having to pay the EU annual membership fee, or agreeing to the rules of the Single Market?

If that was to be permitted, the European Union may as well close shop tomorrow – and we all know that’s not going to happen.

I have membership to a local gym, but I think it’s highly unlikely that they would let me continue attending if I stopped paying the monthly fee. Why should it be any different with the EU?

Of the 28 EU members, only Britain is considering leaving. The other members obviously consider that the cost of EU membership is modest compared to the huge advantages. In other words, the benefits far outweigh the costs.

Also, if the other members of the European Union were so keen to keep us onside, why are they not agreeing to all of UK Prime Minister, David Cameron’s, reform agenda?

Commented Professor Peers, “Critics of the EU say that it has offered us a poor renegotiation deal. If the EU were so desperate to retain trade with Britain, why wouldn’t it have offered us a fantastic deal to stay in the EU, and retain all that trade the easy way?

“The Leave side assumes that the EU will be mean to us as long as we’re members, but nice to us as soon as we leave. That’s just not plausible.”

He added, “The EU might well be willing to do a bespoke deal with the UK in the interests of trade, but it’s unrealistic to imagine that it will be anything like the fantasy deal which UKIP imagines: with full internal market access, no financial contribution, veto of all relevant EU legislation, and no free movement of people.

“The UK will likely have to give up on at least one and probably more of those objectives. And the obvious questions are: why would the EU agree to a deal so generous that it would encourage other countries to leave?”

In summary, UKIP seems to have a fantasy, fairy-tale vision of the deal that might be available to Britain if we vote to leave the European Union. But the most important point is that, whatever UKIP might wish or hope for, they don’t have any power to deliver.

In my view, leaving the EU would be a walk into the dark. The ‘Leavers’ can’t agree on what deal might be available if we left. Even if they could agree, they can promise anything they like, but they can’t implement.

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Other stories by Jon Danzig:

• What does Brexit look like? Nobody knows
• Wrong answers on Question Time
• What Nigel Farage told British expats in Spain
• List of the latest articles by Jon Danzig

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— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) February 12, 2016

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• The question they can’t answer: What does ‘leave’ mean?

Here’s a question for you. Would you move home without knowing what your next home looks like? No, me neither.

But that’s what those campaigning for Britain to leave the EU are expecting you to do – vote to end our membership of the EU without knowing what we’d have instead.

The problem LEAVERS have is that they simply don’t know, and for sure they can’t agree.

As a result, two rival, irreconcilable ‘leave’ campaigns have been launched. UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, supports one (Leave.EU) and UKIP’s only MP, Douglas Carswell, supports the other (Vote Leave).

(*Update: and now there is yet another ‘Leave’ campaign called Grass Roots Out – more proof that the ‘Leavers’ cannot agree on their vision(s) of Britain after Brexit)

And as confirmed by the Financial Times, the ‘leave’ campaigns are in disarray.

On the one hand, Mr Farage wants to curtail immigration and stop EU migrants coming to Britain. On the other, Mr Carswell wants to promote a Singapore-style model for Britain, open to capital and migration.

Instead of Britain leaving the EU, these two prominent members of UKIP seem to be putting the case for leaving each other.

Or as the Financial Times put it this weekend;

“It is not just a matter of discordant personalities. Out campaigners have struggled to unite around a single vision of what Britain’s post-Brexit trading arrangements would look like.”

And this is the core problem for the LEAVERS – their Achilles heel. Explained the FT:

“They have also failed to provide a convincing explanation of how leaving the EU would give the British greater control over their destiny and improved economic prospects. This is not surprising because none of the models that is mooted for a future outside the EU is convincing.”

Some Eurosceptics are proposing the same model for Britain as Norway – but to participate in the EU internal market, Norway has to agree to EU rules, without any say in them.

Another option favoured by some Eurosceptics is for Britain to strike trade deals on a country-by-country basis. But, as the FT points out, that would mean British businesses having to pay higher tariffs to trade internationally.

As the Financial Times asserted:

“When it comes to these models – and others – the problem is that Britain moves from being a rule-maker to rule-taker.”

If Eurosceptics can’t even agree among themselves what it would mean for Britain to leave the European Union, it seems a bit rich to expect that voters will know. They don’t know, because the LEAVERS don’t know.

On this basis, I can’t recommend anyone to vote to leave. Our membership of the EU is not that bad; and the options for leaving (whichever one you might choose) are not that good.

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Other stories by Jon Danzig:

• My vote for Europe
  
• The end of free movement to and from Europe?
• Wrong answers on Question Time
• List of the latest articles by Jon Danzig

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This post was first published in NBXMain in October 2015

Genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity are international crimes and, since 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) can investigate individuals accused of having committed acts of that nature. From 2017, under certain circumstances the ICC will also have jurisdiction in relation to the crime of aggression. These are the four international crimes recognised in the Statute of the ICC. There was a time, however, when scholars, international bodies and even some government officials spoke about a possible fifth international crime: Ecocide.

Ecocide was a crazy idea promoted by a bunch of visionary/loony academics of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Aware of the fact that human action was causing irreparable damage to the ecosystem, they argued that humanity as a whole could be considered to be the victim of premeditated forms of aggression against the environment.

The idea could have remained an exercise of academic engineering had it not resonated, even if mildly, in international political discourse. Most famously, the then Prime Minister of Sweden, Olaf Palme, said in his opening address of the 1972 Stockholm Conference on Environment:

”The immense destruction brought about by indiscriminate bombing, by large scale use of bulldozers and herbicides is an outrage sometimes described as ecocide, which requires urgent international attention.” 

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the 1970s, the environment became part of the ongoing conversations held at the International Law Commission (ILC) in relation to the Code of Crimes Against Peace and Security of Mankind. Yet, mysteriously ecocide was dropped from the agenda in the mid-1990s (find out more details here).

It cannot be by chance that this happened precisely when deliberations on the Statute of the ICC were coming to an end (they were completed in 1998). States were only willing to let the ILC play with the notion of ecocide to the extent that enforceability remained weak. Governments were not ready to eliminate safe havens and to let independent bodies judge individuals for the commission of crimes against the environment.

As it stands now, international law sanctions the intentional damage of the environment in wartime situations, and trans-boundary ecological damage can be a source of state responsibility. However, partly due to its blurry definition but especially because of the lack of support from key international actors (mostly Western European states), ecocide never got to the point of development of the prohibition of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Ecocide disappeared from the policy and legal agenda nearly two decades ago. For now, it still is the international crime that could have been but never quite was.

In recent years, there have been attempts to resuscitate ecocide under new frames, connected to indigenous struggles and climate change. Time will tell if, as a normative project, ecocide performs better in this second life. However, considering the failure of the first attempt, and the growing mistrust on the ICC and international justice in general, one must remain cautious. Unless sudden changes revolutionise international politics, the Earth will remain unprotected in international criminal law in the foreseeable future.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Koldo Casla

@koldo_casla

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In the three years since its foundation, the Green Investment Bank (GIB) has made waves in the green investment scene in the United Kingdom (UK). But rather than resting on its laurels the UK government needs to realise the work of GIB has not gone far enough, that the level of green investment in the UK is still woefully low, and that the state still needs to play a role in green finance.  

In August 2014 I wrote a piece for this blog on the GIB. Established and owned by the UK government, GIB was then the fresh-faced poster child of environmental finance in Britain. The Bank was a bold experiment, set-up to demonstrate the financial viability of green investment.

Already GIB has become an established, successful feature of the green finance scene in the UK. Because of the Bank’s success, a month after the May 2015 election, the new Conservative government announced its decision to sell a majority stake of GIB. For the Conservatives this sale is a natural continuation of the Bank’s commercial model; as the GIB has been shown to work as a model for green investment it now has to go a stage further and prove that it can operate “free from the shackles of state ownership”, to quote Savid Javid, the Minister who announced the sale.

The decision to privatise part of GIB has caused a furore in political and environmental circles (though fears about the future of GIB seem overstated, it is likely to continue to play a solely environmental role). However, with government funding commitments to GIB due to expire in March, the sale seems imminent and unavoidable. Rather than fighting over the ownership of one bank, it is better to focus on the attitudinal influence that the Bank has had. Has GIB really had the ‘demonstration effect’ impact that it was intended to? Have other investors looked to the example set by GIB in the last few years and moved into the field of green investment? Will the UK reach its £200bn green investment target by 2020 (the low end of the £220 – 330 billion needed for a green transition over this decade)? The answers to these questions are important to understanding what should follow the inevitable sale of GIB.

Undoubtedly, GIB has done great work in the brief period since its launch. Through committing £2.1bn in its capital it has contributed to 62 UK green economy projects worth £10.1bn. At a near 1:5 ratio of leveraging private capital and with a 10% projected return on investments, GIB has shown it’s ability to act effectively and demonstrated the potential for green investment.

When I wrote on GIB previously, the Bank was the most active investor in the UK green economy. Upon the publication of their latest financial report this was a position that they still held. Yet GIB alone is not doing enough to reach the investment levels thought necessary to build the green economy. Even under private ownership, GIB’s long-term strategy is to have an investment run-rate of £800m to £1bn a year. Therefore, there will be no astronomical boom in GIB investment levels after privatisation.

GIB recognises that ‘Investment levels in the UK’s green economy remain well below what’s required’. With waves of government green subsidy cuts it seems that little is being done to help promote any increase in those investment levels. Tellingly, the Director General of the Confederation of British Industry spoke out against the government’s record in September of last year saying, “Today’s investors are more uncertain about the UK’s low-carbon future. From the roll-back of renewables to the mixed messages on energy efficiency these changes send a worrying signal about the UK as a place for low-carbon investment”.

That there isn’t another institution rising to threaten the supremacy of GIB shows that to-date the rewards of the bank’s demonstrative mission have yet to be reaped. Other UK investors in the same field don’t have anywhere near the level of capital needed to get the UK closer to the £200bn target. Organisations like the Foresight Group and Oxford Capital Partners, to give just two examples, manage investment portfolios that run into the low hundreds of millions. These are hardly competitors for GIB with its annual running-rate of near £1bn.

The tone of Ministers’ public statements on GIB has been of a ‘good-job, well-done’ nature. There is no recognition that while GIB has in itself been a success it is has barely raised 5% of the 2020 green investment target. Currently, even the conservative £200bn green finance target appears near astronomical. Much more needs to be being done to promote green investment in the UK. Current debates over the sale of one bank seem to be little more than a distraction.

A solution to the current lacklustre situation may well be right before us, albeit one that is unlikely to appeal to more ideological Conservatives. Javid stated in his GIB sale speech that the Bank was a model for “a government successfully involving itself in the markets”. Perhaps the government should follow on from this success, after the sale of GIB, with the creation of second bank for green investment – GIB 2.0. This could introduce a healthy dose of competition for GIB, further demonstrate the sustainability of green investments, and bring the UK that bit closer to its £200bn goal by 2020. Meanwhile the original GIB, privately managed and owned, would continue to demonstrate the viability of green investment.

There is much that can be learnt from the UK government’s first venture into green investment banking. There are notable market gaps at present (though it would unfair to put the blame for these solely on the shoulders of GIB) that a GIB 2.0 could help correct. The unfortunate demise of the Green Deal leading to a serious lack of national energy efficiency efforts is one such case. There are also plenty of other examples of state-supported green finance that lessons can be learnt from. Germany’s state-owned KfW bank, which partly funds sustainability projects through the sale of green bonds, could offer one model under which GIB 2.0 could operate (capital sourcing is an issue which has hindered the GIB since its inception).

Unfortunately, this is an idea that is unlikely to see the light of serious consideration. Fears of the “shackles of state ownership” and of raising the deficit could easily trump green investment shortcomings. Whatever comes next though, the UK government needs to recognise that after the sale of GIB it can’t wash its hands of green investment. Like it or not, the state still has an important role to play in the abatement of climate change and the financing that is needed to achieve this goal.

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Threatening to leave a club is often a balancing act. Push the other members too hard and you may face a brick wall; push too little and the exercise becomes useless. What’s more, to have any degree of success you need ambitious goals and a realistic strategy to achieve them. This is more or less the situation David Cameron is in, as he wields his threat of pulling Britain out of the European Union. Alas, his goals are weak and his strategy is creaking.

The British Prime Minister outlined his conditions for staying in the EU in November 2015. Eagerly awaited both in and outside Britain, the shopping list proved disappointing when unveiled.

Michael D Beckwith / Flickr Creative Commons

Cutting benefits for EU migrants coming to Britain and a symbolic request for exemption from the idea of ‘ever closer union’ were among the conditions laid down. But they are hardly the big issues that affect people’s daily lives. Threatening to pull the country out of a union which underpins the world’s largest economic market, unless these sorts of conditions are met, betrays some worrying thinking.

Of course, Mr Cameron doesn’t intend to exit the EU. The chances are he cares little about any damage to his reputation among other EU leaders. His real priority is stopping the haemorrhage of Tory Party members to the United Kingdom Independence Party, a right-wing party whose raison d’être is to get Britain to quit the EU.

What better way to outflank UKIP than to defeat it in a popular vote on its favourite territory: Europe.

But here too David Cameron is revealing some disturbingly poor strategy. He, like many in his party, is averse to the institutions in Brussels . He has spent his political career criticising the EU. When he eventually does start campaigning, voters will find it hard to believe him when he says Britain should stay in the EU. His messaging will certainly have a whiff of Jekyll and Hyde about it.

The situation on the ground is worrying, though not yet desperate. Polls today show a victory for those who want to leave the European Union. Much of the mainstream media supports a British withdrawal. Hysterical, partisan headlines like ‘Millions of jobless Bosnians could be headed for Britain as country applies to join EU’ are all too common [1]. The main political parties are still too divided. Labour and the Conservatives will not be backing one side or the other, instead allowing every Member of Parliament to campaign how he wishes.

Weakness plagues the other side too of course. Those campaigning for a ‘Brexit’, or British exit of the EU, are currently divided into two bickering groups (Vote Leave and Leave EU). But they are likely to merge sooner or later in outrage at Mr Cameron’s weak demands in his renegotiation of Britain’s EU membership. The Brexit campaign has so far been far more effective at rousing its supporters with emotional arguments.

The one sector that has been vocal is big business. They have most to lose from quitting the EU as their cheerleader, the UK government, would no longer be able to frustrate rules governing the single market. But messaging about falling turnovers and weaker job creation is hardly the stuff of campaign victories. We need stories about people.

This means Mr Cameron has to change course quickly if he wants to avoid hitting the iceberg.

He has little time in which to do this. This means he of all people needs to start campaigning passionately about the benefits of Britain in the EU. That also means getting those in his party to start being vocal. It means
ministers should be travelling up and down the country to spread a positive message.

It’s time to start using the things that Europe has given us, like the ERASMUS programme, cross-border travel or strong consumer rights. And to start using the things it can do for us, like more cooperation on research, migration or foreign policy. Where are the celebrities campaigning for Britain to stay in the EU? Another good starting point would be to inject some life into the online platform for the Stay In campaign.

The referendum is likely to take place in mid-2016. The British people deserve a real debate on what being part of the EU is about, not hear the usual stories about bureaucrats and bendy bananas. The EU isn’t perfect, but then nor is Westminster. Both Britain and the EU have too much to lose if they divorce. If Mr Cameron doesn’t start moving soon, the UK is at risk of sleepwalking towards Brexit.

[1] Daily Express, 27 January 2016.

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When talking about Yemen, one of the most common phrases amongst analysts is that “it’s complicated.” True, to a very large extent. Tribal politics, new movements being infiltrated by old power political structures and when looking at the political actors involved, it becomes less clear how the conflict falls under the ‘Sunni-Shia’ divide that seems to be a top theme when discussing MENA politics. Yet the fact that Yemen is “complicated” does not mean there is no clear power political dynamic.

In a nutshell, if former president Ali Abdullah Saleh did not form an alliance with the Houthis, a group who he has fought six wars with since 2004, including one in 2009 where he requested Saudi support via area bombardment, they would not have been able to stage a coup on Sana’a in September 2014. Before Saleh stepped down, he warned that if he let go of power, Yemen “would turn into another Somalia,” indicating his vengeful intentions. By looking at Yemen today, not only is it clear that Saleh has taken his revenge on his own people for revolting against him, but also against the city that has suffered the most as a result of the Saleh/Houthi tactical alliance: Taiz – the birthplace of the 2011 revolution.

Taiz city, whose province is directly on the old North-South border is currently under a siege imposed by Saleh and Houthis forces. All roads that lead outside the city are blocked. Food prices have soared dramatically as it has become scarce due to the Houthis blocking aid and hospital have run out of medical supplies, including oxygen. The largest public hospital in Taiz, Al Thawra has been forced to close multiple times over the past year and it is only able to function if medical supplies are smuggled through the mountains. Those who do attempt to smuggle basic living needs into the city are usually caught by Houthi and Saleh forces and shot or kidnapped.

When looking at the logistics supporting anti-Houthi forces in Taiz, it is clear that power politics have to a large extent influenced the assistance of the resistance movement. Taiz is well known for being an Islahi (Muslim Brotherhood) stronghold, which despite being the perceived lesser evil in Yemen’s context still has unstable relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This has politicised the resistance movement because of a fear of what may come after the Houthis leave Taiz and how local successors would serve the security of their Arab allies. In some ways it looks as though the Arab coalition has learnt its lesson from its experience in Aden. After Aden province was liberated a security vacuum emerged, which gave enabled sporadic ISIS and Al Qaeda attacks. To ensure this mistake is not repeated in Taiz, there needs to be a guaranteed form of security for a post Houthi order. The main problem with this is that the more days go by, the more lives are lost as a result of daily shelling and the deadly siege. Moreover, there is some evidence for an alternative view that the lack of assistance to anti-Houthi forces in Taiz is because the UAE does not want to extend its military assistance to allies of the Muslim Brotherhood, however much the Saudis under King Salman are willing to ally with anyone against Iran.

Saleh needs to be beaten at all fronts

In light of these tensions within the Saudi-led coalition, what external powers need to do beyond defeating Saleh and Houthi militias militarily is to undermine them diplomatically and financially. While no party in the anti-Houthi movement recognises Saleh’s legitimacy, there are still ways to corner him. One of Saleh’s sons, Ahmed, is still living luxuriously in the UAE. Last April Riyadh even expressed suspicion towards Abu Dhabi’s intentions in Yemen, though this is unlikely to extend past the discontent of political officials in the foreseeable future because both are still in a formal military alliance. Saleh needs to be beaten at all fronts, not just militarily, because it is becoming clearer that as long as Saleh has the capability to destroy he will not surrender under any circumstances regardless of whether chaos will lead him to regaining power or not.

If a solution is not found, Europe will potentially face an influx of Yemeni refugees. Russia’s involvement has also become increasingly apparent, with Houthi and Saleh officials meeting with Russian ambassadors in Sana’a. As a consequence Yemen risks becoming another Middle Eastern political quagmire for EU policy. The policy mistake made in Syria must not be made in Yemen. With the growth of AQAP, terrorism remains a threat and EU policy should not look towards beating it through collusion with a former dictator who has perpetuated terrorism. A policy that aims for stability in Yemen should work in conjunction towards democracy and self-determination to ensure leaders who refuse to give up power do not have the tools to destroy all around them.

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Remember the spy novels of Cold War times? Where pretty much everybody was suspected of being a ‘mole’? The master storyteller of brilliant double agents was John Le Carré, and one of his very best novels was Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,  published in the spring of 1974, incidentally one month after Willy Brandt had resigned because he had an East German spy among his closest collaborators.

The more the Brexit referendum debate unravels, the more it reminds me of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the title of which refers to the code names given to some of the suspects and borrowed from an old nursery rhyme (not that this is of any importance for this post). The parallel between the Cold War spy novels and the Brexit referendum campaign is the haunting question whether there is a double agent, seemingly pursuing a publicly proclaimed preferred outcome, but secretly aiming at provoking the exact opposite.

If the Brexit referendum was a TV series like Borgen or Deutschland 83, the best possible cast for the double agent would undoubtedly be David Cameron. He would actually be too good to be true. The most brilliant and efficient ‘moles’ always have the appearance of bland people, underestimated by everybody. They are unspectacular, not really stupid but not particularly bright either, sometimes clumsy, but almost touching in their awkwardness. They have cover stories that have been built over years, so patiently that they have become entirely credible, so convincing, so obvious. If I had to write the scenario of this TV fiction I would therefore lay great emphasis on the perfect fake identity for my double agent.

The cover story would go like this:

Here is a rather average politician who has been put by circumstance in the position to lead the country. From the beginning it has been ‘evident’ that he was not madly in love with the European Union, but had come to the pragmatic conviction that EU membership was on the whole a better option for Britain than splendid isolation.

Then, the scenario would unfold like this:

Unfortunately, to his sincere regret, he has to put up with a bunch of obnoxious backbenchers and an aggressive, populist alliance of Eurosceptics and xenophobes that forces him – against his will! – to commit to holding a referendum about EU membership. There’s no danger, though, the polls predict a stable majority for remaining. Relief!

In the meantime he is bravely trying to limit the damage, by cleverly turning things into a win-win situation. He engages in a renegotiation of the terms of membership with his European partners, the positive outcome of which should strengthen his position and enable him not only to keep Britain in Europe but actually be perceived as an energetic reformer. Of course, he goes about it in somewhat clumsy manner, almost jeopardising his chances of success. And he also seems to handle all other details – the wording of the question, the fixing of the date, the issue of party discipline etc. – in his own hesitant, awkward way.

Some cliffhangers later the dénouement would be written in the future past, why not narrated in emotional flashbacks. He will have dauntlessly fought and argued in favour of membership, and once it’s all over and the leavers pop their (probably EU-produced) champagne, he remembers the day when he warned all stakeholders that his personal commitment and charisma may not be sufficient to counter-balance the momentum of nationalism spurred by a hateful press.

Looking back, the spectators will recognise that there will have been something inevitable about Brexit from the beginning; it’s just they were tricked by the scenario and the main protagonist into not noticing it. And with relations between the UK and Europe being what they are, the end of the story would be somewhat open, leaving the possibility to shoot a second season soon.

If this sounds all too silly, it’s probably just that I read too many Cold War spy novels in my Cold War youth. Apologies for letting my imagination run wild. At the same time, you will have to admit: if ever there was a soviet master spy like John le Carré’s mysteriously named ‘Karla’, driven by the long-term objective to dislocate the European Union, he could not possibly have recruited a better double agent than David Cameron, could he?

 Albrecht Sonntag, EU-Asia Institute
at ESSCA School of Management.
Follow us on Twitter: @Essca_Eu_Asia

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Meng-Hsuan Chou and Pauline Ravinet

Higher education is undeniably global. But this did not prevent interested policy actors, meeting on the occasion of the 650th anniversary of the University of Vienna in 2015, to emphasise the significance of the global and international dimension, as their colleagues have done at the 800th anniversary of the University of Paris nearly 20 years ago. As academics, we know that higher education has a deep relationship with globalisation: from rankings to mobility of students, faculty, and staff; from quality assurance to student-centred learning outcomes; from university governance to the digitalisation of teaching and research collaboration. It is nearly impossible to separate the two. Yet we are still lacking a clear and shared definition of ‘global’ and ‘globalisation’ among higher education practitioners, scholars, and observers—the very people who have been struck by their intensifying relationship since the very beginning, whenever that was. Our handbook chapter develops a set of conceptual tools and lenses to understand the global transformation of the higher education sector by focussing on a particular pattern of this phenomenon we call higher education regionalism (Chou and Ravinet 2015).

 

Scanning the globe, we see regional initiatives in the higher education sector. For instance, in Europe, we have the Bologna Process towards a European Higher Education Area, familiar to the readers of this blog. But there are many more. Indeed, there have been consistent efforts in building common areas in Africa: the African Union’s harmonisation strategy, sub-regional initiatives of the Southern African Development Community, and activities of the African and Malagasy Council for Higher Education. Similarly, in Latin America, there is the ENLACES initiative, the MERCOSUR mechanisms for programme accreditation (MEXA) and mobility scheme (MARCA). Looking East to Asia, there are the many initiatives from the AUN and the very exciting SHARE programme. These are manifestations of higher education regionalism, which we define as referring to:

 

[A] political project of region creation involving at least some state authority (national, supranational, international), who in turn designates and delineates the world’s geographical region to which such activities extend, in the higher education policy sector (Chou and Ravinet 2015: 368).

 

We derived this definition after a review of what has been written on higher education regionalism in political science and in higher education studies—two distinct sets of literature that have much to say about this phenomenon, but rarely engage each other in a fruitful conversation on the subject. From political science, we learned from scholars who examined regions, ‘new regionalism’, and European integration (Caporaso and Choi 2002; Fawcett and Gandois 2010; Hettne 2005; Hettne and Söderbaum 2000; Mattli 2012; Warleigh-Lack 2014; Warleigh-Lack and Van Langenhove 2010). From higher education studies, we obtained insights from scholars who are serious about the impact that the re-composition of space, scales, and power have on past, current, and the future state of higher education (Gomes, Robertson and Dale 2012; Jayasuriya and Robertson 2010; Knight 2012, 2013).

 

The lessons from our review led us to these three positions concerning the study of higher education regionalism:

• It must be comparative. Studying higher education regionalism means comparing varieties of higher education regionalisms to consider the sector’s apparent isomorphism.
• It must be sector-based. Studying higher education regionalism is to take serious the particular dynamics of higher education and how they interact with the wider multi-purpose regional organisation (EU, ASEAN, AU, etc.) and national needs.
• It must be differentiated. Studying higher education regionalism means to distinguish between intra-regional initiatives (within one geographical region) and inter-regional initiatives (between at least two geographical regions).

 

With these points of departure, we proposed a heuristic framework to study higher education regionalism along these three dimensions:

1. Constellation of actors central and active in these processes: this means identifying the individual and collective actors involved and mapping their interaction patterns.
2. Institutional arrangements adopted, abandoned, and debated: this refers to identifying the institutional form and rules and the instruments considered and accepted.
3. Ideas and principles embedded and operationalised: this points to identifying the paradigms, policy ideas, and programmatic ideas guiding the instances of higher education regionalisms.

 

These three dimensions require intensive fieldwork with the key actors involved, which we are currently undertaking in the Southeast Asia region. But we invite researchers - especially those examining less studied regions such as Africa and Latin America – to get in touch so that together we can contribute to the conversation about higher education and globalisation from the regional perspective.

 

Meng-Hsuan Chou is Nanyang Assistant Professor of public policy and global affairs at NTU Singapore and Pauline Ravinet is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Lille 2. They both acknowledge the generous support from Singapore’s Ministry of Education AcRF Tier 1 and Institut Français de Singapour (IFS) and NTU Singapore’s Merlion grant for this research.

 

References

Caporaso, J. A. and Y. J. Choi (2002) ‘Comparative regional integration’, in W. Carlsnaes, T. Risse and B. A. Simmons (eds) Handbook of International Relations (pp. 480–500) (London: Sage).

Chou, M.-H. and P. Ravinet (2015) ‘The Rise of “higher education regionalism”: An Agenda for Higher Education Research’ in J. Huisman, H. de Boer, D.D. Dill and M. Souto-Otero (eds) Handbook of Higher Education Policy and Governance (pp. 361-378) (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan).

Fawcett, L. and H. Gandois (2010) ‘Regionalism in Africa and the Middle East: Implications for EU studies’, Journal of European Integration, 32(6), 617–636.

Gomes, A. M., Robertson, S. L. and R. Dale (2012) ‘The social condition of higher education: Globalisation and (beyond) regionalisation in Latin America’, Globalisation, Societies and Education, 10(2), 221–246.

Hettne, B. (2005) ‘Beyond the “New” regionalism’, New Political Economy, 10(4), 543–571.

Hettne, B. and F. Söderbaum (2000) ‘Theorising the rise of regionness’, New Political Economy, 5(3), 457–472.

Jayasuriya, K. and S. L. Robertson (2010) ‘Regulatory regionalism and the governance of higher education’, Globalisation, Societies and Education, 8(1), 1–6.

Knight, J. (2012) ‘A conceptual framework for the regionalization of higher education: application to Asia’, in J. N. Hawkins, K. H. Mok and D. E. Neubauer (eds) Higher Education Regionalization in Asia Pacific (pp. 17–36) (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).

Knight, J. (2013) ‘Towards African higher education regionalization and Harmonization: functional, organizational and political approaches’, International Perspectives on Education and Society, 21, 347–373.

Mattli, W. (2012) ‘Comparative regional integration: Theoretical developments’, in E. Jones, A. Menon and S. Weatherill (eds) The Oxford Handbook of the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Warleigh-Lack, A. (2014) ‘EU studies and the new Regionalism’, in K. Lynggaard, K. Löfgren and I. Manners (eds) Research Methods in European Union Studies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

Warleigh-Lack, A. and L. Van Langenhove (2010) ‘Rethinking EU Studies: The Contribution of Comparative Regionalism’, Journal of European Integration, 32(6), 541–562.

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The grandness of the EU Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy lies in its potential to render the existing conundrum of various EU strategies into a more orderly set of strands with a clear vision regarding their mutually complementary role.

Strategies are in-built in EU’s genome. These policy documents define EU’s aims, approaches in tackling challenges and addressing common issues.  EU Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy (hereafter – EUGSFSP) is being designed with an aim to “enable the Union to identify a clear set of objectives and priorities for now and the future. On this basis the European Union can align its tools and instruments to ensure that they have the greatest possible impact”. The EUGSFSP refers to other existing initiatives, which should be streamlined according to the needs of this particular strategy. This short overview of several EU’s strategies is aimed at providing a broader context on how the EU Global Strategy of Foreign and Security Policy fits in the existing conundrum of EU strategies. Consequently, it provides few suggestions for consideration in the context of the EUGSFSP drafting and implementation process.

EU strategies are designed, coordinated and their implementation is overseen by Directorates General of the European Commission, as well as European External Action Service. It is a common practice that prior to the drafting process a public consultation takes place. Then, during the drafting process of a strategy states come together to identify areas of mutual interest, where they see the added value of a joint action. It could be termed as the “business as usual” practice.

Broadly speaking, these policy documents are being discussed on two levels. The European level encompasses inter-service consultations and public consultations, as well as the European Council and its working groups. The national level is characterised by working groups which gather all national (and in certain cases subnational) entities involved in the implementation of the relevant strategy.

Overall, EU strategies vary in structure, level of details in terms of implementation process, approach on measuring achievements, as well as vagueness or concreteness of goals. For example, DG MARE coordinates the EU Maritime Security Strategy (hereafter – EUMSS) which excels in its detailed approach towards actions to be pursued. One of DG REGIO’s facilitated strategies is the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (hereafter – EUSBSR), which, as its name suggests, has a regional focus and is characterised by broad descriptions of policy areas, getting closer to implementation once the flagship projects are explained. The European External Action Service is leading the EU Central Asia Strategy, which since 2007 defines a tailored approach to each of the five countries involved. These are just three examples of a much wider pool of EU strategies dedicated to regional matters or a specific policy area.

The reason why EU strategies are described as a conundrum is that they are far from being unique in terms of issues they are addressing and geographic areas they are aiming at covering. Here are few examples of overlapping responsibilities. Both the EUMSS and the EUSBSR aim at strengthening the cross-sectoral cooperation and synergies between information, capabilities and systems of various authorities in domains of maritime surveillance, preparedness for emergency situations and marine pollution. Moreover, the EUMSS has its own external dimension (called “Workstrand 1”), which defines actions to be undertaken in cooperation with the third parties. Similarly, EUSBSR encompass cooperation with non-EU countries. In addition, the Strategic Review “The European Union in a changing global environment: A more connected, contested and complex world” covers regions which have already their specific EU strategies in place, such as the previously mentioned EU Central Asia Strategy.

Why it is worth pointing out these commonalities? The success of EU tools and instruments lies in their complementary nature. When it comes to the EUGSFSP, it would be advisable to go beyond the “business as usual” practice outlined above and render the existing EU strategic conundrum in a more orderly jigsaw. Namely, the EUGSFSP would explain the role of other relevant EU strategies and clarify their unique contribution to attaining the EUGSFSP goals. Such an approach would also help to pool the existing expertise for more coordinated actions and streamline initiatives taken under various EU frameworks, as well as avoid duplication of activities.

However, such an endeavour demands additional coordination of input and effort both from European and national levels. On the European level, it requires brainstorming regarding the future inter-service coordination of various strategies in order to increase the overall awareness on various EU strategies among different divisions of EU institutions. On the national level, it requires extended consultations. These discussions should not be limited to the so-called “usual suspects”, such as authorities dealing with foreign affairs, defence and military matters. It should incorporate inputs from other governmental bodies involved in national steering of different EU strategies. All in all, if the EUGSFSP really is aimed at being grand, these suggestions might help to render the EUGSFSP impressive and overarching not only in words but also enshrine it in its nature and scope.

 

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Aristotle suggested that every political system should be tested as to whether there is any contradiction between its founding principles and the implementation of its governance. The Eurozone crisis seems to have generated precisely such a contradiction between the democratic principles of the European Union and its new modus operandi.

The EU’s democratic principles are fundamental to its purpose, and yet it has long been argued that it suffers from an inherent democratic deficit in its operation, given that its added level of supranational decision-making has always lacked the necessary corresponding citizen input.

Of late, in order to tackle the unprecedented situation created by the Eurozone crisis, a number of institutional modifications have been implemented, including most notably the provision of financial assistance to member-states conditional upon structural adjustment. A core initial problem in terms of democratic process was the fact that the ideological basis of the approach adopted seemed to offer no alternatives. From the side of both creditor and borrower states – a division that in itself has been contended to be democratically problematic in terms of the purported equality of EU member-states – fiscal austerity has been presented as the only way forward. In fact, it has been suggested that Germany’s heavy promotion of ordo-liberalism has reached the point of ideational hegemony. What is more, as revealed by multiple demonstrations across the Eurozone, and especially in member-states receiving conditional financial assistance, the European electorate seems increasingly to oppose this ideological direction.

The institutional framework adopted during this period also gives rise to democratically problematic issues. Many of the measures introduced, such as the permanent financial stability mechanism, further enhanced and specified the concept of policy conditionality, linking it directly with core national policies, such as budget-setting, tax levels and even healthcare policies. Moreover, delegation from the national to the supranational level for such intricate and salient national policy-making arenas has not been restricted to member-states in need of financial assistance. Within the Eurozone, the Eurogroup now has the right to review national member-states’ budgets and to request revisions of them. However, neither the Eurogroup, nor indeed the European Commission, are elected, representative bodies and certainly do not enjoy the benefit of adequate safeguards in terms of accountability to the European electorate. The growing influence of supranational technocratic actors in setting not only budgetary policy but also the overall budgetary framework has become manifest with the Fiscal Compact, which stipulates that Eurozone member-states are obliged to introduce a legally-permanent, and potentially constitutionally-founded, deficit ceiling.

Furthermore, as has been very publicly seen, the so-called Troika – the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund – has assumed a strong role within the Eurozone, despite the fact that it is an ad hoc cooperation that lacks a clear institutional framework or set of democratic safeguards of any kind. In fact, as argued by the European Parliament, the roles of the EU institutions within the Troika, and more generally across the crisis, appear to suffer from a conflict of interest with their prescribed institutional mandates, from an expansion of their decision-making authority beyond those mandates, and from questionable democratic standards.

For example, the European Central Bank, which is a solely monetary-policy actor, has appeared to acquire increased influence over fiscal policy measures through its participation in the Troika. In addition, across the Six-pack – secondary legislation aimed at tighter fiscal and macroeconomic surveillance – the European Commission has assumed a strengthened position in the areas of setting fines and conducting in-depth surveillance of EU member-states, especially considering the newly adopted voting system in which the Commission’s decision is immediately enforceable unless a blocking majority of Eurozone member-states is assembled.

Across all of the above measures, citizen input remains almost unchanged and is thus effectively reduced, given the increase in decision-making authority attained by these other EU actors. The European Parliament seems to be minimally, if at all, involved within this new EU-Eurozone decision-making framework, with its role restricted in most cases to an informational or advisory capacity that is unable to influence policy. In sum, the only purely representative body within the EU plays a miniscule role in the EU’s new modus operandi.

So, where do we all stand in terms of democracy in relation to what might be called the ‘new’ EU established during the Eurozone crisis? It has become clear that the rigid, ideological foundations of the measures adopted during the crisis have met strong opposition from the European and, more intensely, the Eurozone electorate. This was amply demonstrated in the outcome of the 2014 EU elections, the first to be conducted since the beginning of the crisis. Approximately 30% of MEPs belonged to either far-right or far-left anti-EU parties, with extreme anti-EU sentiments, across several major EU member-states. Even more remarkably perhaps, in the January 2015 Greek elections a left Party, running on an anti-austerity platform, assumed power or the first time in the country’s modern political history, whilst polls show that a similar result might occur in the upcoming end-2015 Spanish election.

Overall, a contradiction between the founding democratic principles of the EU and its new operational structure during the crisis has left the quality of the EU’s democratic order adversely affected. In the spirit of Aristotle’s criterion, then, the EU’s political system of governance does not any longer seem to adhere to the organisation’s principles. The ramifications of such a divergence are truly far-reaching. In particular, EU democracy has been weakened, damaging at the same time the whole moral stance of the EU and the advocacy and promotion of democracy that is at the heart of its foreign policy.

First published on April 22, 2015 at speri.comment

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Explainer: why everyone is giving Poland a hard time

Kamil Zwolski, University of Southampton

Since coming into power at the end of October 2015, Poland’s new, right-wing government has caused a stir at home and drawn international criticism.

Hardly a day passes at the moment without EU officials or European leaders questioning decisions made by the government.

In its analysis, Der Spiegel warns against Poland’s “creeping autocracy”. Some observers have even compared the situation in Poland to Putin’s Russia. While such comparisons are exaggerated, there are serious questions to ask about the Polish government’s commitment to the principles of liberal democracy.

Poland has been praised for years for its successful transition from communist state to liberal democracy. Now, it is the subject of criticism, worry and disappointment. What happened?

After eight years in power, the centre-right, pro-EU and relatively moderate Civic Platform government lost the 2015 presidential and parliamentary elections. In its place came the nationalistic, conservative and EU-sceptic Law and Justice (PiS) party, led by Jarosław Kaczyński, the twin brother of former president Lech Kaczyński, who died in a plane crash in 2010.

Changing the rules overnight

Things quickly changed after the election. Kaczyński appointed Beata Szydło as prime minister but it is clear that he pulls all the strings. For his part, president Andrzej Duda appears to be limited in his role to formally approving whatever the parliament (i.e. Kaczyński) throws his way.

Under the auspices of this peculiar administrative set up, the parliament has set about making drastic reforms at breakneck speed. Laws are changed overnight and without consultation. Critical voices are summarily ignored.

Szydlo and Kaczynski. One of them is Prime Minister, but no one can remember which.
Reuters/Kacper Pempel

So far, the parliament has significantly curtailed the powers of the national constitutional tribunal, which is supposed to impose judicial checks on the government. Another law seeks to curtail the freedom of the press by allowing the government to appoint the heads of media organisations.

Next on the list is foreign policy. The government is still in the process of developing plans on this front but it is already facing a predicament. On one side, the new government dislikes Russia, and on the other, it is increasingly fed up with the EU. The two positions are not particularly compatible.

The bear or the overbearing?

Poland has traditionally been sceptical of Russian foreign policy. While Western European countries, notably Germany, have been forging political and economic links with post-Soviet Russia, Poland has been working hard to join NATO, the EU, and to nurse the independence of the post-Soviet republics.

The wars in Georgia and Ukraine have proved to Poland’s elites that their concern was justified. Under Putin, Russia’s neighbours would have to watch their borders.

However, Poland is strongest as part of a team. It relies on its more powerful EU partners on the international stage and would struggle alone. When introducing the proposal for the EU’s Eastern Partnership programme, Poland worked together with Sweden. In the Ukrainian conflict, Poland accepted the leadership role of Germany.

It is unclear whether the new government appreciates this. On one hand, the anti-Russian sentiment seems to run deeper than ever. This government seems to be more emotional and less pragmatic about the relationship than its predecessors. This is fuelled by the widespread belief among PiS politicians and supporters that the 2010 crash that killed president Kaczyński was Russian sabotage, rather than a tragic accident.

On the other hand, Poland’s new government is deeply eurosceptic. It is particularly suspicious of Brussels and Berlin. The liberal EU arguably presents a threat to Catholic, conservative, Polish values.

There are longstanding tensions between Poland and Germany stemming from their difficult history but there is now resentment over Germany’s desire for Poland to remain a pro-EU, liberal democracy.

And grumbles about Brussels’ alleged interfering on issues such as gay rights have grown to alarm as the migration crisis has worsened. Pressure to take in refugees from Syria has not gone down well and Kaczyński is more often to be found siding up with Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s notoriously anti-immigrant prime minister, than Poland’s western EU partners.

While EU sanctions against Poland are unlikely, there are informal ways in which Brussels and EU leaders can seek to influence Poland. They might, for example, apply pressure to the EU funding channelled to Poland. And of course, they could remind Poland of its desire for European solidarity in support of Ukraine.

This is the dilemma for the Polish government. How can it be anti-Russian and anti-EU at the same time? Where will it seek allies? Kaczyński has always been fond of Orbán and the sympathy seems mutual, confirmed by their recent meeting.

But Orbán is famous for his pro-Putin policy. PIS is uncomfortable when confronted with this fact. Washington is only interested in supporting Poland as a pinnacle of liberal democracy in the region and a committed EU member. What are the options then? Either way, the current policy is bound to crash.

Kamil Zwolski, Lecturer in Global Politics and Policy, University of Southampton

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post Poland’s inevitable foreign policy crash appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Most of the current discussions on the possible ‘Brexit’ — the United Kingdom leaving the European Union — are concerned with issues of the Eurozone and its economic implications, the ongoing migration and refugee crisis, and the potential economic, political and social consequences for the UK in case of leaving the EU. What has been missing from the heated debates though, is the question about the implications of the Brexit for the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) as well as the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). During the Cold War, European states relied on the security community in the form of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. With the fall of the iron curtain and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and thus the downfall of the biggest threat to Western states, the EU slowly developed its own security and defence structures. In 2003, the Union declared its full operability and launched two of its exemplary military operations, Operation Concordia in the FYRO Macedonia and Operation Althea in Bosnia Herzegovina. So far, the EU has launched 22 civilian missions and 9 military operations. In several of these operations, the United Kingdom played a significant role in terms of operational planning and contributing military capabilities. What would therefore happen to the EU’s security and defence structures as well as its military capabilities if the UK were to exit? How will it cope without the contributions of the UK in future operations?

 

The UK’s Position in the EU’s Security and Defence Structures

In most of the EU’s military operations, the UK has played a key role. The Union’s operational headquarters are situated in Northwood, just north of London. The UK maintains a great share of the overall defence budget of the 28 member states. Even though it has often hampered the process of developing the EU’s security and defence structures further, it remains as one of the most important contributors to operations under CSDP. The EU’s overall military expenditure amounts to €192.5 million and with €43.7million, UK’s military expenditure represents more than a fifth (22.7%) of the EU’s expenditure. Also, it possesses the second biggest troop contingent and has currently deployed a great quantity of its personnel in current military operations as well as civilian missions, such as in Bosnia Herzegovina under Operation Althea which was taken over from NATO under British command. And in the case of Operation Concordia, the UK was even among the key actors in brokering the peace deal between the conflicting groups. By signing the Franco-British Joint Declaration in St. Malo in 1998, the UK has committed itself for a defence policy on the EU level and thus paved the way for further developments. This demonstrates the country’s importance to the Union’s operability and effectiveness as a military actor.

 

Brexit’s Implications for CSDP

Without the United Kingdom, the European Union might not be able to make such contributions to future military operations. Numerous questions concerning the relationship between the UK and the EU would need to be raised especially in security terms. What would happen to operational planning of future CSDP operations? How would the EU deal with a decreased military budget and less military personnel? And since the UK is the most important linkage between Europe and North America, what implications would a European Union without the UK have for future EU-NATO relations?

Regarding all of these questions, the EU and especially its security and defence policy would not make such a good image. This would then have negative effects on Europe’s role on the global stage. The EU would lack a great amount of important personnel, strategic planning capabilities as well as potentially loose its operational headquarters. Unless the UK would become a strategic partner of the EU and would still participate in operations under CSDP, the Union would not be able to develop its security and defence structures any further and the desire to become a global player would once again be at stake. As far as EU-NATO relations are concerned, the gap might become even wider. This special relationship already suffers from deeply rooted issues between its member states. Having another European member state without EU membership would complicate relations, especially in terms of collecting and exchanging intelligence as well as sharing military capabilities and assets.

Brexit would thus have severe implications for the EU as a security and defence actor not only in Europe but also beyond its borders. It is therefore essential, from the European security perspective, for the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union.

The post Why the EU needs the UK – A Security Perspective, by Nele Marianne Ewers-Peters appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

One of my biggest frustrations on watching BBC TV’s ‘Question Time’ is that when UKIP representatives make incorrect statements about the EU, there’s usually nobody on the panel or in the audience to correct them.

Take last Thursday’s broadcast of Question Time. Among those appearing on the panel was UKIP MEP, Patrick O’Flynn, who made a number of statements about the European Union that were wrong.

As I discovered, shouting at the telly made not a blind bit of difference. He carried on regardless, without anyone in the studio able or willing to put him right.

So instead, I’ll share with you here on my ‘EU ROPE’ blog three examples of Mr O’Flynn’s misleading statements on Question Time and explain how they were wrong.

Mr O’Flynn said:

“On the flooding it turns out that there are regulations from the EU that stop us dredging the rivers that have arguably made the flooding worse.”

UKIP has been trying to blame the EU for Britain’s flood disaster. This is completely without foundation.

The anti-EU party, along with some of the media, have claimed that the EU Water Framework Directive ‘bans dredging’. But that’s not true; the directive doesn’t ban dredging.

Whether or not to dredge is a decision of each member state, not the EU, and based on the local situation. The UK Environment Agency recently announced that it had spent £21m on dredging in the past two years, so clearly, dredging hasn’t been banned at all.

It’s also been claimed that the EU directive prevents dredged sediment being spread elsewhere. Again, this isn’t correct, unless the sediment contains toxic substances, in which case dredging could poison land and rivers endangering the health of humans and wildlife.

Experts have commented that dredging can sometimes be an effective measure against flooding, but sometimes it can make matters worse. It’s up to our UK government agencies to decide whether to dredge, and not the EU.

Furthermore, the EU has emergency funding of about £125 million to help Britain’s flooded areas. So far, the British government has turned down this fund, with the Prime Minister, David Cameron, claiming that Britain can afford to deal with the flooding from ‘our own resources’.

Mr O’Flynn also asserted:

“You can’t sack the European Commission. It’s unelected. We’re not a democracy.”

This is also incorrect.

The laws and regulations of the European Union are debated and democratically agreed (or rejected) by the elected Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), in collaboration with the European Commission.

We elect MEPs to represent Britain in the European Parliament; it’s nonsense to claim this is not democratic.

The European Commission comprises 28 Commissioners, one from each EU member state, appointed every five years.

The President of the Commission is decided by a majority vote of the democratically elected heads of each EU member state, which of course includes the UK.

However, the choice of Commission President has to be agreed by a vote of the European Parliament, which can reject the candidate for President.

Once Parliament has democratically approved the appointment of the EU Commission President, the President-elect selects the 27 other EU Commissioners, on the basis of suggestions made by each EU member state, including of course the UK.

However, EU Parliamentary committees assess the suitability of each proposed Commissioner.

Then, the Commission as a whole requires the democratic consent of the European Parliament, to whom the Commission is ultimately responsible.

In fact, the European Parliament has the democratic power to sack the entire Commission of the European Union at any time during its 5-year tenure. This is the same as national governments that can be booted out of office by national Parliaments if they lose a vote of confidence.

The European Parliament is one of the world’s largest democratic assemblies, representing over 500 million citizens.

The Parliament has elected representatives from all the main political parties in Europe – conservatives, socialists, liberals, greens, variants of the extreme left and extreme right, as well as anti-EU parties, such as UKIP.

I have visited both Parliaments of the EU, in Brussels and Strasbourg, and witnessed democracy at work by hard-working elected MEPs. It’s an insult to them, and to all of us who voted in the European elections, to suggest that the EU is not democratic.

The EU is not quite the same as our democratic system in the UK, but the European Union is still a democracy none-the-less. It’s not perfect, but there is no perfect democracy in the world.

In the UK, we don’t get to vote for who sits in the Cabinet or holds ministerial positions. We don’t directly elect our Prime Minister. We don’t elect our Civil Service. We have an unelected second chamber, and an unelected ‘head of state’.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “Democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the others.”

Over the past few decades, however, much more democratic power has devolved to the European Parliament, and I hope this ongoing process of democratisation will continue in the years and decades to come.

Only one-third of the British electorate actually vote in the European Parliament elections. Maybe that’s why so many might wrongly believe Mr O’Flynn’s claim that the EU is not democratic.

Mr O’Flynn also stated on Question Time:

“The Governor of the Bank of England is admitting that untrammelled freedom of movement for working class jobs has caused massive wage compression over ten and fifteen years for working people in this country.”

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney (himself a foreign worker) didn’t say anything of the sort.

Let me be frank about this: Mr Carney did not say migrant workers bring down the salaries of existing British workers. In fact, Mr Carney has strongly praised ‘free movement of people’ as being good for Britain and Britons.

Mr Carney actually asserted that foreign workers are helping to increase the UK’s productivity. On the BBC Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme, presenter John Humphrys asked Mr Carney if “cheap foreign labour” was actually stopping productivity increasing.

But Mr Carney replied, “I would really dampen down that explanation.”

He explained that most of the increase in labour supply has been down to British workers taking more hours, and older workers staying in employment. Over the last two years, increases in those factors have been 10 times as important as migration, Mr Carney asserted.

Contrary to the implications made by Mr O’Flynn on Question Time, the Bank of England Governor has consistently supported Britain’s continued membership of the EU.

In a lecture last October, Mr Carney said Britain’s membership of the EU since 1973 had improved the dynamism of the economy and increased the prosperity of all people in Britain.

Mr Carney added that “the UK is the leading beneficiary” of the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour enshrined in European treaties.  

Furthermore, Mr O’Flynn’s description of ‘free movement of people’ across Europe as “untrammelled” is also misleading.

There is not “untrammelled” free movement of people. Yes, as EU citizens we have a right to live, work, study or retire in any other EU/EEA countries. But under EU rules, we cannot just move to another EU country unless we have the means to look after ourselves.

It’s a myth to suggest that it’s possible for EU migrants to come here, or for British migrants to go to another EU country, and immediately start claiming benefits. It’s only free movement if you can afford to move.

*Read response from Bank of England Press Office to the comments by Mr O’Flynn: BBC Question Time: Response from Bank of England

* Join the discussion about this article on Facebook.

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Other stories by Jon Danzig:

• EU referendum: It’s going to get nasty
• What Nigel Farage told British expats in Spain
• UKIP’s Hall of Shame

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

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I managed to get through to the James O’Brien phone-in show on LBC radio. James asked me, “Jon, have you changed your view as a result of this sparkling re-negotiation presided over by our wonderful Prime Minister, David Cameron?’ (4 minutes)

Click here to view the embedded video.

 

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#UKIP MEP @oflynnmep gives the wrong answers on #bbcqt about the #EU. Please share my blog: https://t.co/2DAG3TZnLb pic.twitter.com/vAfte5zXgO

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) January 17, 2016

Wrong answers on #bbcq by UKIP MEP @oflynnmep Join the discussion on my #Facebook page: https://t.co/0XZ5lyEa7n pic.twitter.com/crttc6lyV8

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) January 17, 2016

Multiple wrong answers on #bbcqt by #UKIP MEP @oflynnmep Please share my blog: https://t.co/ASKwmoy7fa pic.twitter.com/awXaJnPd2V

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) January 18, 2016

Response from @BankofEngland regarding comments by #UKIP MEP @oflynnmep on @BBCQuestionTime about #migrant #labour https://t.co/rDB9CqUgcA

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) January 18, 2016

 

The post Wrong answers on BBC Question Time appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

In his Chatham House speech setting out the UK’s demands for a renegotiated relationship, David Cameron argued Britain’s EU membership is not merely a question of jobs and trade but of national security. Eurosceptics argue Britain’s leaders have too often allowed such foreign policy concerns to be put before domestic priorities, especially economic and democratic needs. Recent events in Paris and Brussels have raised questions about the vulnerability of EU member states, not least over the practicality of Schengen. As the UK’s new Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) made clear, traditional state-based threats and renewed challenges posed by terrorist organisations do not recognise national borders. Britain’s security is – and has long been – shaped by EU membership, whether by enhancing the UK’s international power, allowing the UK to shape European geopolitics and transatlantic relations, or by holding the UK together. As a result, as Ian Bond of the Centre for European Reform recently argued, ‘The British government’s obsession with the details of its relationship with the EU has led it to lose sight of the big strategic picture and of the EU’s role in managing the national security threats identified in the SDSR.’

European integration has long had a security side to it whether as Franco-German reconciliation or integrating former Communist states in Eastern Europe. To what extent the EU has itself been able to keep the peace is open to debate. Nevertheless, for post-war prime ministers such as Harold Macmillan, Britain’s ability to shape the world around it was declining as rapidly as its economic base. Joining the then European Economic Community was, in part, a step forward for the security and stability of a country that had recently ended its retreat from empire and was struggling internally and externally to find a place in the world. Support for membership amongst Conservative MPs in the 1970s was driven by hopes that EEC membership would lock Britain into a capitalist, free market club allowing the country to shed its ‘sick man of Europe’ label, a reason some on the left resisted membership. Membership would also enhance Western European unity in the face of a still formidable Communist world, Saigon having fallen to North Vietnam only a month before the 1975 referendum.

Today, EU membership still means a lot to Britain’s national security. As the UK’s Strategic Defence and Security Review showed, Britain’s own economic and military capabilities remain substantial, but being able to draw on the EU as a force multiplier has become increasingly central as they have been stretched to their limits. For David Hannay, the EU allows Britain to better manage challenges as diverse as a newly assertive Russia through to climate change and instability in the Middle East. Working through the EU is not without its flaws, but other options for Britain to pursue its interests such as by rebuilding the Commonwealth, developing the ‘Anglosphere’, joining NAFTA, or becoming a ‘Switzerland with nukes’, are either limited or overplayed. Leaders from around Europe and the world have regularly cast doubts on whether a Brexit will boost Britain’s international standing and security. Eurosceptics will argue that Britain is weak in the EU, frequently outvoted and sidelined. Such an approach views the EU through the prism of Westminster’s majoritarian politics: a zero-sum game where you either win or lose. Through such an outlook every EU member state struggles to win. The one thing that does set you up for failure is isolating yourself, an approach the UK has in recent years adoptedmore than ever before.

Close relations with the USA remain, despite all the arguments, the cornerstone of UK and European security. Brexit is not going to end such arrangements as ‘Five Eyes’ or cooperation on Special Forces. But wider relations with the USA would be tested. Only a few on the fringe of the US political right think a Brexit would be a sound idea for the UK, USA, EU and transatlantic relations. As Condoleezza Rice, former Bush Administration Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, recently told Chatham House: ‘It is a very different Europe if it is a continental one’. The US has been a long-standing supporter of European integration and Britain’s part in it. A Britain that challenges both of these could find it damages relations with the USA and the USA’s commitment to Europe at a time of heightened US exasperation at Europe’s inability to think about geostrategic concerns – whether they be Russia, China or ISIS – and invest in the necessary defence commitments.

In his Chatham House speech David Cameron argued that the prosperity and security of the rest of Europe are vital for Britain. In doing so he came close to the often overlooked question of what Brexit would mean for Europe. A Brexit could change the European geopolitical and geoeconomic landscape in ways that would not be in Britain’s interests. It would see the departure of the EU’s largest and keenest supporter of Atlanticism and outward looking economic liberalism. The EU could become more inward looking and protectionist. The idea that Brexit could lead to the EU and Eurozone’s disintegration is not to be casually overlooked given the likely costs for the UK and Europe. As HM the Queen warned in June 2015 during a state visit to Germany, Europe’s division is in nobody’s interests. While a British exit is not going to lead to war, it would add to strains on an organisation which however imperfect remains with NATO one of the two pillars on which European politics and security have been built since 1945 and 1989.

At the same time, is the unification of Europe in Britain’s interests? For Eurosceptics, ‘ever closer union’ threatens Britain’s sovereignty, democracy and allows immigration to pressure its social unity, meaning Britain’s security and stability would be better preserved by leaving. But Britain’s departure could allow the EU to further unite. One of Britain’s longest standing international aims has been to prevent any single power dominating Europe. The EU would be a benign power compared to previous attempts, but such an outcome warrants careful consideration.

Finally, if the first concern of any state is its own survival then the referendum could tear the UK apart. The immediate concern is Scotland:  a vote by the rest of the UK to leave the EU while the Scots vote to stay could trigger another independence referendum. This would lead to an avalanche of political, economic and social costs to say nothing of the costs for UK defence and national security, most notably over Trident. Northern Ireland might seem peaceful from the perspective of the UK mainland, but the peace process is under constant pressure and a Brexit could test it to breaking point. A descent into violence in the province should not be overlooked. Brexit could also add to tensions within England. In focusing on Scotland we have overlooked that the part of the UK that is increasingly different is London. An international metropolis that doubles as the UK and England’s capital, London has thrived from immigration, Europe and globalisation, much to the chagrin of some elsewhere in England and Britain who feel they have been left behind.

For scholars of international relations and the EU, Brexit confronts us with the need to theorise European disintegration. Theories are tools that allow us to focus on certain aspects of developments in the world around us, highlighting – and testing – their importance over others. In a simplified way, a constructivist approach would point to the role of ideas as paramount in shaping how a Brexit is handled in international relations. For example, will Brexit push to the fore ideas of European disintegration or lead the rest of the EU to push forward with ideas of unification? For realists it will be economic and security interests, especially ones shaped by international pressures, that will define how the UK and EU handle a Brexit. Institutionalists will point to the role existing institutions and networks – the multiple links that are part of or defined by the EU, EFTA, EEA, NATO – will play in defining what happens to the UK and EU (or might not define it if Brexit exposed any weaknesses in them). Liberal intergovernmentalists will point to a mix of interests, institutions and ideas to show that Britain and the EU (especially Germany, France and other big states) are so caught up in a deeply enmeshed set of interdependencies that Britain (and the EU) suffer from the Hotel California dilemma: you can check-out anytime you like, but you can never leave.

Note: this piece first appeared on the blog of the LSE’s International Security Society. 

The post Britain and the EU: a Question of International Relations appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Much is being made of the potential for Big Data to improve governance in Europe. But all data sets require context. Unless this is available, the contents is less than useful.

Summer 2015 saw the EU Publications Office, through the Open Data Portal website, begin making a selection of  public procurement data available, drawn from the Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) website. This site is the main route for publication of the Official Journal Supplementary series and contains all contract advertisements and awards made by public bodies (that exceed a financial threshold). Prior to this point, the data was only available to either the Commission, or paid subscribers to the TED database.

The scope of the data is incredible, with every advertised procurement project detailed from 2009 to 2015 across thousands of Contracting Authorities. Garnering meaning from such a rich resource is however difficult for all but the initiated few. While this may well be ‘open’, without a glossary, or guide to the data, one is left floundering.

To help remedy this information deficit, and provide some much needed context, the Commission assembled just such a guide to the data table headings. This should help anyone looking through the databases to ascertain the areas that they will find most interesting or applicable for their research.

The data guide is available here: http://open-data.europa.eu/repository/ec/dg-grow/mapps/TED(csv)_data_information_v1.doc

A link to the main data set (2009 onwards) is available here: https://open-data.europa.eu/en/data/dataset/ted-1

A CSV (comma separated value) version available here: https://open-data.europa.eu/en/data/dataset/ted-csv

By way of example, one may draw upon columns CPV and CAE_NAME to ascertain relationships between the Contract Authority type (local council, centralised procurement office etc) and the type of goods or services they contract (facilities management, uniforms, infrastructure etc). This may throw light on the organisation of a State’s policy implementation. While case study research may give a more granular level of detail in such matters, there is something to be said about looking across the whole Union’s economy and seeing the patterns emerge from within.

The post The Meaning of ‘Open’ Procurement Data appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

According to Prime Minister, David Cameron, Britain doesn’t need EU funds to help areas devastated by floods because ‘it’s quicker and better’ to use the country’s own money.

So it seems that Britain is so flush with cash that it can turn down around £125 million in EU emergency help for areas of the country devastated by record levels of rain. Really?

• If that’s the case, then why does the government need to impose £12 billion of austerity measures that will mostly hit the poor and needy?
• If that’s the case, then why did the government scrap flood defence plans that could have saved hundreds of homes and businesses from ruination?
• If that’s the case, then why does the country have a shortage of homes, hospitals and schools?
• If that’s the case, why are patients being denied life-saving drugs on the grounds of cost?
• If that’s the case, then why isn’t there more help for the hundreds of thousands of people who have to use charitable food-banks because they can’t afford a proper meal?

Labour MP for Bury South, Ivan Lewis, asked David Cameron in Parliament, “When are the Government going to apply for the European solidarity fund money?”  (Hansard, Column 41)

Mr Lewis explained, “Hundreds of my constituents in Radcliffe have had a terrible Christmas due to the flooding that has devastated so many people’s homes and businesses in Greater Manchester and across the north of England. Bury and other councils have to pick up the infrastructure costs.

“The European solidarity fund exists to help in such circumstances. It would be unforgivable to put Tory party management and posturing on Europe ahead of the national interest.”

Mr Cameron responded, “First of all, I send the hon. Gentleman’s constituents my sympathy for the flooding that they suffered”

But he made clear, “I think it is quicker and better to give people the help they need from our own resources.”

Mr Cameron explained, “I have looked very carefully at the question of EU funding; we looked at it previously in 2013. It takes a very long time to get hold of any money and it is very uncertain whether you get it. Indeed, you end up paying for it in many ways as well.”

He added, “Let me say that we will do everything we can, including through the Bellwin scheme, to make sure that his council is fully reimbursed for all the emergency measures that it had to take. We will also make sure that we put in place the flood prevention measures and investment that are coming down the track.”

As I reported here last week, EU member states are entitled to apply for money from the EU Solidarity Fund when a natural disaster causes substantial damage, calculated as a percentage of Gross National Income.

According to calculations by accountants, KPMG, the floods have already caused over £5 billion of damage, meaning that the UK is entitled to apply for emergency EU help.

Catherine Bearder, Liberal Democrat MEP for south-east England, said that EU officials told her that the UK government could apply for £125m in grants for flood victims, 10% of which could be available within six weeks.

Although some of the grants would be clawed back from our EU rebate, the European Commission explained to me today that this would only affect a proportion of the funds, and overall Britain would gain a net benefit from the receipt of the emergency money.

I asked Defra, the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether the Prime Minister’s reply definitely meant that the UK would not be applying for EU funds to help with our floods disaster.

Defra emailed me a reply from ‘a government spokesperson’ that I could use as a quote for my story:

“We are committed to supporting communities hit by the recent flooding. We have opened the Bellwin scheme for local authorities, with 100% of eligible costs to be met by the Government, and our investment in recovery from Storm Eva and Storm Desmond now stands at nearly £200m.

“This will help people directly affected by the floods, support homeowners protect their properties and ensure flood affected businesses that have had their trading disrupted can get back on their feet.”

I immediately complained to the Defra Press Office:

“Thank you, but the quote doesn’t even mention the EU Solidarity Fund, which seems somewhat odd. Is the government going to apply for the fund or not? Is it the case that the country is rich enough not to need the EU emergency help?”

I will report back here if I receive a reply.

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Other stories by Jon Danzig:

• Britain rejects EU help for food and flood victims
• Does the Prime Minister know what he’s doing?
• Benefit tourism: why ‘fix’ a non-existent problem?

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

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According to @David_Cameron UK doesn’t need EU funds for floods. My Facebook report: https://t.co/IAPuIcXx3vpic.twitter.com/fAHnKsFv6k

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) January 8, 2016

The post Britain doesn’t need EU help for floods, says PM appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

20 years ago, when television broke the news around midday that François Mitterrand had died aged 79, the collective emotion in France was almost disproportionate. A surprising number of Parisians simply stopped what they were doing, went to their flower shop, bought one red rose and deposited it on the doorsteps of the former president’s apartment. The rose as symbol for the French socialist party was of course also a reminder of the manner in which Mitterrand had orchestrated his victory in 1981, with the famous televised staging of his tribute to the great men of the left in the crypt of the Pantheon.

I know quite a few people who 35 years later consider that 10 May 1981 was one of the finest days of their entire lives. Seeing the left win the presidential elections was something they never had dared hope for. It was the promise of ‘another tomorrow’ as Barbara sang, the ‘Yes, we can’ moment in contemporary French history. It is probably the memory of that moment that brought so many people to tears on 8 January 1996.

A lucid regard on François Mitterrand’s heritage, however, will reveal a more ambivalent picture, to say the least. Yes, there were the sweeping reforms of 1981/82, with the highly symbolic abolition of the death penalty and the refreshing liberation of the media, the long-awaited social anti-austerity measures, and of course the 5th week of paid holidays for everybody. But these were very quickly followed by the so-called ‘rigour turn’ in early 1983, apparently imposed by the European Monetary System – an economic U-turn which may ring a bell with Alexis Tsipras forced to embrace European austerity policies he had just held and won a referendum against.

Other politicians in other democracies would have kicked out in no time after having turned their back on their promises in less than two years of office. Mitterrand stayed on in the Elysée for another 12 years (!). And that’s exactly where his heritage becomes so poisonous for the France of the 21st century. An extraordinarily gifted power politician endowed with an overdose of Weberian charismatic domination and Machiavellian leadership qualities, Mitterrand has left a series of open wounds to French society and politics that are far from healed 20 years after his death. Three of them are particularly serious.

First, in publishing The Permanent Coup d’Etat in 1964, the trained lawyer Mitterrand had clearly shown that he had fully understood the pitfalls of the Fifth Republic with its constitution and presidential regime tailor-made for de Gaulle. He certainly would have had the political clout to reform things, shorten the 7-year mandate, redefine and clarify the respective roles of the president and the government, push for an effective decentralisation rather than a half-hearted creation of fake regions, perhaps even abolish the presidential elections, this curse of French political life. Instead he clang to power over more than a decade (despite a cancer he concealed from the public), cultivated the ‘presidential monarchy’ he had pretended to despise, and seemed to take delight in humiliating right-wing prime ministers during the two periods of ‘cohabitation’ he imposed on the French public in 1986-88 and 1993-95 respectively. Mitterrand could have changed a system that inevitably leads to massive and dangerous frustration, and he did not. That’s even worse than being a lame duck.

The second poison he injected into French politics is the Front National. He obviously only had contempt for a vulgar racist like Jean-Marie Le Pen and took pleasure in his immense intellectual superiority, but he understood very quickly in the early 1980s that this fringe party was about to benefit from the widespread disenchantment with unemployment and growing unease with immigration. For Mitterrand, the emergence of the Front National actually came quite handy. Instead of employing his tremendous authority against it, he instrumentalised the FN for his own power purposes, in order to weaken his Gaullist or Centrists opponents. In 1986, he softened the Socialists’ defeat in the legislative elections by introducing representation and thus allowing the FN to take away 35 seats from the moderate right-wing parties (and gain political legitimacy on the way). Moreover, it does not seem exaggerated to claim that Mitterrand’s manner of clinging to his presidential power, his cunning manipulation of the media and public opinion, as well as the numerous grey zones in his biography contributed to pave the way for the general disillusionment with politics and the renaissance of ugly populism.

The third poison is not entirely of his own making, but it has a lasting impact beyond the borders of France. When in 1990 German reunification threatened to become a reality out of the blue, Mitterrand all of a sudden forgot the Franco-German birthday speeches and his presumed ‘friendship’ with Helmut Kohl, and revealed himself obsessed with German ‘power’ and French ‘rank’. In a series of desperate diplomatic travels he tried to hinder or slow down the process. And when this did not work, he pushed Kohl into publicly sacrificing the D-Mark on the altar of a precipitated common currency, as a token of German commitment to European integration. He was not alone in doing so, and he was already gone when the final details of monetary union were negotiated. But he bears his part of responsibility for the incomplete and immature aspects of the Eurozone that are now causing so many troubles.

The anniversary of the death of a remarkable statesman is always an occasion for nostalgia, especially when his name is linked to days where some things still seemed possible. But it is also an opportunity to look behind the myth-making and story-telling, of which François Mitterrand was an accomplished master.

Albrecht Sonntag, EU-Asia Institute
at ESSCA School of Management.
Follow us on Twitter: @Essca_Eu_Asia

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