Ideas on Europe Blog

Let’s now turn to some efforts to, and ways to categorize or describe a taxonomy of organizations. One way is to look at their geographic scope. Some organizations are global in scope. Of course, the United Nations is global in scope. How many member states do we have in the United Nations today? If you said 193, you would be correct. From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe there are presently 193 member states of the United Nations. Of course, other organizations are global in scope. The specialized agencies, like the World Health Organization, or the Food and Agriculture Organization, or the World Food Program, or the World Trade Organization. International organizations like International Committee for the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, are also global in scope.

Other organizations are regional. We think of ASEAN, or the European Union or the African Union, for example. There are even subregional international organizations. Such as ECOWAS, the political subregional organization covering west and parts of central Africa. Or the Mekong Group, or the Southern African Development Community. The annual yearbook of international organizations lists more than 200 international organizations, ranging in size from three, like the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, to organizations with hundreds of members.

What then do we consider to be a definition of international organization? You may wish to develop a view of your own on what you think is an appropriate view, because it’s not black and white, and there are options for interpretation. In fact, there as many definitions of international organizations, almost, as there are such organizations. The OECD, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, itself an international organization, puts forth really, a very narrow definition of international organizations. And I quote, international organizations are entities established by formal political agreements between their members, that have the status of international treaties. Their existence is recognized by the law in their member countries and they are not treated as resident, institutional units of the countries in which they are located, end quote. Let’s look at another definition, one that considers international organizations to be those whose members have at least three states, that have activities in several states, and whose members are held together by a formal intergovernmental agreement. Many commentators consider such an inter-governmental agreement to be an essential quality, an essential characteristic of an international organization. A sine qua non, if you will, of being in the category of international organizations.

International organizations are recognized subjects of international law, and have a separate legal standing from their member states or other members. Why do I say member states or other members? Because, over time, international organizations have evolved and some have become more inclusive.

So, the governance of international organizations has evolved over time and we’ll look at that in a little bit. A simple, broader, more inclusive definition of international organization would be something like an organization with an international membership, an international scope, or an international presence. And we can think of two main types or categories of international organization.

The first, inter-governmental organizations. Most closely associated with the term international organization, and these are those that are made up primarily of sovereign states. And examples, as I said, include the United Nations, the specialized agencies of the United Nations, the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe, the European Union, as I mentioned earlier, the African Union, other regional bodies.

The second major type of international organization is, of course, international non governmental organizations. Those that are usually non-profit. And examples include so many around the world and here in Geneva. The International Scouting Movement, the International Committee of the Red Cross.  We should note also, that intergovernmental organizations are usually considered public in nature. While NGOs fall into the category of private organizations. We of course, are not today addressing or including in our discussion, other kinds of entities that have an international presence. Coca Cola, Toyota, other multinational corporations are certainly present in villages, towns and cities all around the world, in more than what we think of as international organizations.Let me also note that a number of governments codify the definition of international organizations in their own domestic law, in their own domestic statutes. But let’s turn back again to the methodologies for thinking about or classifying international organizations.

We spoke already about geographic scope. Another basis for classifying, in our taxonomy of international organizations, is the purpose of the organization. Is the purpose general, like the United Nations or the Organization of American States? Is it specific, like specialized agencies of the United Nations? The founders of the UN envisaged that functional agencies would play key roles and carry out key activities, for example, in economic and social development. Indeed, the Charter, Articles 57 and 63 call for affiliations of the UN, with various organizations that are established by separate international agreements to deal with particular issues. Such as health, the World Health Organization. Or food, the World Food Program. Or science, education and culture, UNESCO. Or refugees, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Or economic and social development, such as the UN Development Program, or the World Bank, or the International Monetary Fund. It’s very interesting how the purposes of these organizations have evolved over time since their creation.

What are the functions of international organizations? Informational, gathering, analyzing, disseminating data. Providing a forum for exchange of views and decision making. Normative functions, defining standards of conduct or of service. Rule creating, such as drafting legally binding treaties. Operational functions, allocating resources, providing technical assistance and relief, deploying forces. And dispute resolution, settling criminal or civil claims. Of course, some organizations can have many, or all of these functions.

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Beverly Barrett

Last week we convened in Montreal, Canada for the 9th general conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), which took place from 26-29 August at University of Montreal.  This was the first general conference of the ECPR to take place outside of Europe, and the francophone region of Quebec welcomed participants from around the world. The conference program included 59 sections, 372 panels and 1430 papers.

Panel on Ideas in the Global Governance of Knowledge (Photo credit: Mari Elken)

The Global Governance of Knowledge Policies: Europe of Knowledge in Context was the title of the Section 54. This section was organized by the UACES’s European Research Area – Collaborative Research Network (ERA-CRN) and co-chaired by Meng-Hsuan Chou (Nanyang Technological University in Singapore) and Mitchell Young (Charles University in Prague) who facilitated the nine panels among research and higher education policy scholars.

Mitchel Young and Meng-Hsuan Chou (Photo credit: Mari Elken)

An overview of some of the panel topics includes Regionalism and multi-level governance of higher education and research.  This panel made comparisons between the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) of the Bologna Process and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) higher education policies on degree compatibility, quality assurance, and recognition of degrees.  Global collaboration and competition in science, technology and innovation addressed international initiatives for research policy across countries in Europe and beyond.

The panel Researching the governance of knowledge policies: methodological and conceptual challenges made further comparisons among countries engaging in research innovation and explored ways to avoid methodological nationalism.  The panel Trade agreements and the supranational shaping of knowledge policies discussed the progress of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations while explaining the relationship to the services sector of higher education. Themes on higher education governance, international cooperation in education, and research policies were dominant throughout the session over three days. All panels were well-attended and led to lively, high-quality discussions.

ERA CRN lunch meeting (Photo credit: Mari Elken)

Next year the 10th general conference of the ECPR will take place in Prague, Czech Republic at Charles University from September 7 to 10, 2016.  We welcome scholars at various stages in their careers to participate in the ECPR and the ERA-CRN workshops and activities in the future. At the moment the network is preparing an application for the ECPR Standing Group ‘Politics of Higher Education, Research, and Innovation’; if you would like to join, please sign up here.

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So what’s the big deal here?

Not all those born abroad can be described as ‘foreigners’, contrary to the alarmist reports splashed in newspapers such as The Express, The Telegraph and the Daily Mail.

For example, London Mayor and Conservative MP, Boris Johnson, was born in the USA. Ashes winning cricketer, Ben Stokes, was born in New Zealand.

Actress Emma Watson was born in France. Mo Farrah, Olympic gold medallist for Britain, was born in Somalia. Actress Joanna Lumley was born in India. And the Queen’s husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, was born in Greece… to mention just a few.

In any case, why does it matter? Where we live is surely more important than where we’ve come from.

We have all arrived from a long ancestral journey that spanned the planet for tens of thousands of years. We are, actually, all descended from migrants.

But it’s not only the record number of foreign-born residents in Britain that has been targeted as ‘bad news’ by much of the media and many politicians this week. The word ‘migration’ now seems to have become toxic. So also presented as ‘bad news’ this week was the report that net migration to the country reached a new record high in the year to March 2014, with 330,000 more migrants coming to the UK than left.

This was reported as presenting a big headache for UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, because he had promised to bring down ‘net migration’ to tens of thousands from the current level of hundreds of thousands.

But why is migration here considered such a terrible thing? Instead, the record numbers of people wanting to come to Britain could be celebrated as a huge success story.

The fact is that most migrants come to Britain to work or study – and that’s primarily what they do. Most migrants who come to work in Britain are in gainful employment, making significant net contributions to our treasury and helping the British economy to thrive.

And those migrants coming here to study are contributing billions to the running costs of our colleges and universities – foreign revenue which those educational establishments very much need, and which the wider community also benefits from through extra spending by foreign students.

The reason so many migrants are currently coming here to work is because the British economy is doing so well compared to other European countries – resulting in many new vacancies being created which cannot simply be filled by those unfortunate to be registered as unemployed.

Benefit tourism? Where’s the evidence for that? The proportion of migrants claiming benefits is considerably lower than for British citizens. Three times the European Commission asked the British government for evidence of so-called ‘benefit tourism’ by EU migrants coming to work in the UK. Three times the British government failed to provide any.

And migration is not a one-way trip. Many British people also migrate to other countries mostly for the exact same reason that migrants mostly come here: to work. Britain is the biggest exporter of people to the rest of Europe, and the world’s third biggest exporter of people across the planet.

Isn’t it a bit odd that people in Britain should consider migration here to be such a bad thing, when British people make fuller use of ‘free movement of people’ across Europe than any other EU nationality?

And another thing: many migrants quoted as coming to Britain were actually British people returning home from living abroad. How many newspapers reported that?

The British government has pledged to reduce net migration to less than 100,000. Why? I cannot find any economic reasons for such a policy. And in the absence of an economic reason, what other reason could there be to want to reduce migration to the country? Could it simply be that the government has been responding to an irrational fear and dislike of foreigners?

Has anyone actually considered that reducing net migration to Britain to less than 100,000 might make the country – and all of us – poorer? Do we really want to deter workers and students coming to the UK who are making such a significant contribution to our economy?

Rather than continually trying and failing to stem the flow of natural and legal migration here in pursuit of jobs and studies, wouldn’t it be more cost effective for the government to invest considerably more in our infrastructure, such as homes, schools and hospitals? In that way, the residents of Great Britain – of whatever nationality – could be properly accommodated, allowing them to get on with what most of us want to do: work or study.

Other articles by Jon Danzig:

• Eurosceptic plan to stop Brits retiring to Spain
• Fact: Most migrants come to work or study
• The free movement of people: it works both ways

_________________________________________________________

When I ask racists if they believe the descendants of immigrants should ‘go home’, they invariably reply, ‘Yes’. Watch the video to hear my withering response. (1 minute):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Media in panic because 8 million foreign-born live in Britain. So what? See my Facebook post: http://t.co/QfDdquebx5pic.twitter.com/suEOToSbFN

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) August 28, 2015

Click here to view the embedded video.

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The European Union very often likes to remind us that it is a community of values – solidarity, non-discrimination, human rights, and so on. This is all very well but, as Khrushchev once reminded Marxist enthusiasts in the Politburo, you cannot simply put theory into your soup. The question therefore is, what do these values mean in practice?

European citizenship is perhaps an area that raises eyebrows on all sides: it confuses eurocrats, while EU citizens merely understand its meaning beyond having the same coloured passport, or the right to vote in the European Elections, including in Member States they might be residing that are other than their own. Consular assistance to EU citizens is, however, one area that clearly deserves more publicity than it is given. Why? Well, numbers speak for themselves: according to the Commission, 90 million EU citizens travel annually outside the EU, of which 7 million travel or work in third countries where their Member State has no consulate or an embassy. Now, with a new Council Directive in place, this under-estimated but extremely important (and, it is safe to say, sensitive) area of European cooperation deserves a few words from an analyst who has been following its development now for a number of years.

Although consular cooperation in one form or another has been in existence since the Single European Act (1986), it was the Maastricht Treaty that explicitly stipulated that ‘every citizen of the Union shall, in the territory of a third country in which the Member State of which he or she is a national is not represented, be entitled to protection by the diplomatic or consular authorities of any Member State, on the same conditions as the nationals of that Member State’.

In 1995 the Council agreed on a Directive (95/553/EC) which included basic provisions on issues such as stolen passports, detention, victims of crime and repatriation. The Directive, however, was not ratified by Member States’ legislatures until after the September 11 Attacks in the US brought the security of EU citizens abroad high on the agenda.

The post-9/11 debate opened two big questions. Firstly, string of man-made and natural disasters (Asian Tsunami, Bali bombings, Mumbai bombings or the 2006 war in Lebanon) shifted a focus on cooperation to post-disaster response, such as immediate humanitarian relief and repatriation away from the disaster area.

With lack of coordination between Member States (for example, planes carrying aid South East Asia in the wake of the 2004 tsunami have been accused of flying back to the EU empty), the Civil Protection Mechanism within the European Commission’s Directorate General for Humanitarian Aid & Civil Protection (DG ECHO) was re-organised to provide support in case of consular emergencies. This included a monitoring centre, and the possible dispatching of EU-funded transport and medevac planes.

Secondly, from 2006 and, in particular, from the coming into effect of the Treaty of Lisbon, further debate emerged on the possibilities of shared or even EU consulates in EU delegations. When the European External Action Service (EEAS) was created, a Consular Crisis Unit was put together in order to create a monitoring centre and work on possible EU-level synergies.

True, EU delegations (also backed up by the EEAS’ inherited Consular Online communication system) have provided armoured buses to evacuate 100 EU citizens from Gaza in 2009, and in March 2011 the EU Delegation in Tripoli provided important assistance on the ground to Member States’ evacuation efforts, as well as the Civil Protection Mechanism’s sponsored flight.

However, the possibility of the EEAS and its Delegations abroad to receive any formals role in consular assistance remained wishful thinking. The fact of the matter was that (except for obvious legal challenges) the EEAS continuous to have neither the funding nor the expertise to provide such service. Delegations abroad continue to be the reflection of their former past in DG RELEX, and their staff work on technical projects, rather than being representatives as in the case of national embassies or consulates. Quite frankly, the setting up of fore-mentioned monitoring centre within the EEAS was a useless duplication that Catherine Ashton sought to unsuccessfully address through a merger with DG ECO structures.

Further, while Member States continue to wrestle with falling foreign ministry budgets, very few have been prepared to give up sovereignty over an area where the foreign ministries have direct access with the public. Nevertheless, through the period, and as was reflected in the lengthy negotiations over the new Directive, financing remained a big issue.

Bigger Member States, in particular, became increasingly afraid that they will bear much of the burden of ‘open access’ consular assistance. Some Member States, including the United Kingdom, refused to formally accept consular assistance as a ‘right’ of EU citizens (despite it being enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU), but merely an ‘entitlement’, stipulating neither the minimum nor maximum level of protection a Member State consulate is obliged to provide.

Not surprisingly, the new Directive reflects this pain-staking development. Firstly, the consultation was launched by the Commission in 2006 and a proposal to the Council and the European Parliament was only published in November 2011. The Directive was eventually concluded in April of 2015, and a long road of ratification in Member States is expected.

At the same time, the Directive sees a shift from the debates of the previous decade; speculations about the role of the EEAS and its network of Delegations have been put to rest. Enthusiasts of a truly European diplomatic and consular service (including the former French foreign minister and EU Commissioner Michel Barnier) will be disappointed to find a mere supporting role of the EEAS, including provisions for providing relevant information on their rights to EU citizens, and organising local consular cooperation.

The Civil Protection Mechanism has clearly been highlighted as an important tool to be used in crisis situations. However the Mechanism’s most important input is the financial reimbursement mechanism, which the Hungarian Presidency used in March 2011 to dispatch a plane to Tripoli. In practice, however, dispatching and coordination of transport or consular teams remains more practical on the Member State level, where a designated Lead State is responsible in particular third country, without the necessity to community back and forth with Brussels.

Finally, financing was solved two-fold. Firstly, an EU citizen cannot be charged for assistance by a consulate more than the citizens of the Member State assisting them. Secondly, if costs cannot be paid immediately, the Member State of his or her nationality will pay the costs incurred, but only once the citizen signs an undertaking to repay such costs to his or her Member State upon safe return.

The question then remains, was this low-profile Council Directive part of a long-term strategy or a vision, or did it symbolise a loss of interest in cooperation? In short, there is no loss of interest, but grand ideas are missing. Michel Barnier will clearly not see his vision of EU consulates fulfilled any time soon, nor will we necessarily see EU-hatted rescue teams appearing too often.

The Directive is, however, an important step in clearing up a technical mine field. The 95/553/EC Directive was vague and opened more questioned than it helped to answer. That the new Directive has 14 detailed pages, in comparison to 4, is a testament to this. They are not 14 pages of delightful bed-time reading that will stand proudly on one’s book shelf, but they are 14 pages of important details that help to pave a way towards a better organised cooperation in the next decade.

Grand visions might be buried for now, but a more practical framework has been created instead. Writing this piece in a day dominated by terrorist attacks in France, Tunisia, Kuwait and conflicts across the globe, providing better protection to EU citizens has never been more important. That this new Directive has not been given a fanfare is more a testament to the EU’s awful ability to communicate with the citizens, than its capacity to provide a better managed system to save and protect well-beings of those travelling further and farther.

It is a welcomed decision that deserves a better recognition but, nevertheless, a telling reflection of our ability to create a Europe serving its citizens and, perhaps, making people proud of their burgundy-coloured passports. Overall, a positive conclusion for a debut article!

Igor Merheim-Eyre

This piece was originally published in the Vocal International (July 7, 2015)

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I have been crossing the river Rhine north of Strasbourg between Iffezheim (Germany) and Roppenheim (France) for as long as my driving licence can remember. In the late 70s and early 80s, passport control and the usual question whether there was anything to declare were part of the ritual (although in a much more relaxed manner than on the checkpoints on the border to Eastern Germany…).

Some years later the border guards were still there but they did not control anybody any more, except some suspect lorries. There were no barriers any more either. What remained, though, was the habit, on the way back, to get rid of your last French Francs in small shops in unlikely places like Soufflenheim, Roeschwoog or Bischwiller. It was only logical that at the beginning of the 1990s, when the guards had left, their post was temporarily turned into a small money exchange house.

Former border post near Roppenheim, August 2015.

Obviously, once the Euro had come, even the exchange house had no reason of being any more. Since then, the building has been waiting, shutters down, in a kind of wasteland nearby a roundabout where mother nature has taken over.

For more than a decade it did not seem to have a future. But who knows? Now that daily news from the refugee drama that is taking place between Lampedusa and Calais are putting the border issue centre stage again, it has become fashionable among politicians across Europe to put the Schengen agreement into question again and ask for tougher border controls. Clearly the tide has turned since the 1980s when the abolition of borders was celebrated as a civilizational progress and a logical step in the process of European integration.

This is not surprising. The control of territorial borders is a central component of the legitimacy of the classical nation-state. Losing this control – even if on a voluntary basis – is by definition a wound to sovereignty, a phantom pain that fear mongers of all political colours may reactivate any time. It is most likely that in the current circumstances speaking out publicly against Schengen will become (of it has not already) a compulsory rhetorical figure in electoral campaigns in many member states.

While unlikely for the time being, it cannot be totally ruled out that in my driving licence’s lifetime systematic border controls may be reintroduced along the Rhine. If Schengen was to be dismantled, why should Roppenheim be different from Calais?

‘The Style Outlets’ Roppenheim: clearly ‘designed to provide you with a unique and unforgettable shopping experience’. Postal address: 1, route de l’Europe.

A nightmare vision for many, especially for all the commuters and travellers between Iffezheim and Roppenheim. If they have recently started to slow down again on the border, it is not (yet) in order to show their passports, but rather their credit cards in the posh factory outlet village that was built right next to the abandoned border post (where ‘more than 100 must-have brands offer you a minimum of -30% off’).

Might as well benefit from the single market as long as it lasts.

Albrecht Sonntag, EU-Asia Institute, ESSCA School of Management.
A French version of this blog can be found here.

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Meng-Hsuan Chou

In July 2015, UACES’s (The Academic association for contemporary European studies) European Research Area collaborative research network (CRN) held its second workshop at the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) in Cambridge. Knowledge policies continue to be at the forefront of contemporary global politics. There is an accepted belief among policymakers that knowledge is the foundation on which societies coalesce and economies thrive. Indeed, the competition for knowledge can be said to be driving the global race for talent. Building on the theme of the CRN’s first workshop, which explored the diverse roles of the ‘four I’s’ – ideas, interests, instruments and institutions in the ‘knowledge area building exercise’, this workshop invited contributions to examine the politics of knowledge policies in Europe and beyond.

ERA CRN workshop participants (From left: Hannes Hansen-Magnusson, Julie Smith, Inga Ulnicane, Mari Elken, Luis Sanz-Menendez, Laura Cruz-Castro, Pauline Ravinet, Peter Erdelyi, Hannah Moscovitz; Seated: Meng-Hsuan Chou and Mitchell Young) (Photo credit: Mari Elken)

Opening the session on ‘International policies, norms and knowledge policies’, Hannes Hansen-Magnusson (University of Hamburg) proposed a way to account for knowledge in practices of responsibility. In this co-authored paper (with Antje Wiener and Antje Vetterlein), he argued that researchers should uncover meso-level norms in order to ‘increase long-term sustainable normativity under conditions of globalisation’.

Is education policy an ‘internal consolidator or foreign policy vehicle? Amelia Hadfield (Canterbury Christ Church University) and Robert Summerby-Murray (Saint Mary’s University) asked. Using the EU and Canada as their examples, they highlighted how education policy has been co-opted to serve multiple purposes—as the modus operandi for cultivating notions of statehood and belonging, and as an extension to others of prevailing national cultural norms and understanding.

Turning to the session on ‘Regions and the re-configuration of knowledge policy areas: Examples from Canada, Europe and South East Asia’, Hannah Moscovitz (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) compared how Quebec and Wallonia used higher education as a tool for identity promotion. She found that their approaches were distinct: whereas Quebec used knowledge policies to consolidate and foster its distinct identity, Wallonia used higher education policies as a promotional tool (the image of ‘Wallonia-Brussels’) to place itself on the global higher education map.

Pauline Ravinet (Photo credit: Mari Elken)

Offering another comparative perspective, Meng-Hsuan Chou (NTU Singapore) and Pauline Ravinet (Université Lille 2) discussed the rise of what they called ‘higher education regionalisms’ around the world. They showed how the supranational and national policy actors in Europe and South East Asia articulated their ambitions to establish common higher education areas in similar ways, but ultimately they adopt very different institutional arrangements for achieving their goals. Chou and Ravinet argued that there are varieties of ‘higher education regionalisms’ around the world and encouraged researchers to examine them empirically.

In the session ‘Studying Europe’s open labour market for researchers’, Inga Ulnicane (University of Vienna) presented the research design for a study for on the European Research Area. Her study will combine academic research and published studies to identify the shortcomings and gaps in priority areas of the ERA such as effective national research systems and transnational cooperation and competition.

Peter Erdelyi (Photo credit: Mari Elken)

In the penultimate session—‘Knowledge policy instrumentation: from failure to reform?’—Péter Erdélyi (Bournemouth University) discussed the rise and fall of UK’s Business Link, a policy instrument the government adopted for furthering its knowledge economy. In this co-authored paper (with Edgar Whitley), he showed the implementation challenges associated with Business Link the UK government faced in its attempts to address market failures impeding the growth of SMEs.

Examining the relationship between ideas and instruments, Mitchell Young (Charles University in Prague) argued that policy instruments embed politics. Using the cases of the new Swedish and Czech performance-based funding tools, along with EU’s framework programmes, he showed how studying policy instruments reveal the ideas and narratives steering politics.

Is there standardisation in higher education? Mari Elken (NIFU and University of Oslo) asked. Taking the case of the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) and its subsequent translation through National Qualifications Framework (NQF), she showed how the EQF has generated standardisation pressures across Europe. The most surprising element, Elken revealed, has been the voluntary nature of the instrument.

Closing the workshop with the session ‘The institutional design and implementation for excellence’, Thomas König (Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna) presented three aspects concerning peer reviewing: (1) how it is defined; (2) when it entered the world of research funding; and (3) how the notion is applied in academia and research funding. He showed that peer review plays a very different role in research funding than in academia. In research funding, peer review is used to legitimise funding decisions and is greatly valued for its procedural flexibility.

Finally, in a co-authored paper (with Alberto Benitez-Amado), Luis Sanz-Menendez and Laura Cruz-Castro (both CSIC Institute of Public Goods and Policies) analysed the participation of Spanish universities in the European Research Council (ERC) funding calls. Studying a representative sample of eighteen universities across Spain, they found that Spanish higher education institutions did not respond to the calls in the same way. Put simply, there is no homogeneity in how Spanish universities approach ERC funding calls.

The European Research Area CRN would like to thank UACES and POLIS (University of Cambridge) for their generous support in the hosting of this workshop.

For further information: http://eracrn.wordpress.com

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Carb-loading for the autumn ahead

In these dog days of summer, there’s not much happening in the world of EU politics. Except the on-going debates on the third Greek bailout, arguments about managing asylum applicants and immigrants and the simmering British renegotiation. And the third of these is very much the least, certainly in Continental terms.

To date, the renegotiation has been very low-key: a round of visits to capitals by David Cameron, the briefest of discussions at a European Council and now more substantive talks about nuts and bolts. With most of the British principals on holiday, fighting leadership contests or generally keeping a low profile, it’s an opportunity to see some of the underlying currents more clearly.

This week’s mini-revelation was an article in the Times, claiming that former health secretary, Andrew Lansley, had told a private meeting that the government’s plan is to have a confected ‘row’ with the French, which would be ‘won’ by the British, about the time that the renegotiation was coming to a head, so that the British public could be presented with a stronger-looking package on which to vote (in September 2016, according to Lansley).

Cue much comment from those on the ‘no’ side, decrying the cynicism and the brazenness of the claims.

On the face of it, this is an odd state of affairs. Lansley is one of the more pro-EU figures in the party,  and not obviously a fool, but it’s hard to see how he couldn’t have foreseen his comments being used by others against him. Perhaps he intended his words to be comfort to his audience, in that there would be something to show for the government’s efforts, but one has to wonder.

However, whatever his intentions, the leaking of Lansley’s comments are indicative of the way this renegotiation and referendum campaign have been going.

To date, the main thrust of debate has been procedural, rather than substantive. Cameron has kept his list of objectives deliberately vague, leading to the odd situation where his actual words bear little difference to the rhetoric of reform found in other capitals or in Brussels. Consequently, different groups produce their own wishlists of reforms, but without producing any public debate, beyond that linked to specific issues in the news (most obviously immigration).

Instead, the talk has been about how things are being organised: what’s the wording of the question? what’s the franchise? what limits on campaigning will there be? what about purdah?

The reason for this is two-fold. The first, already mentioned, is that there’s little of substance to discuss. The second is the neither side has any great trust in the other. Certainly, the ‘no’ side seem to hold a genuine fear that each and every opportunity that the government and the ‘yes’ side can take to win some advantage, they will do just that.

Now, one could argue that this is all just part of the way that referenda work, especially when they are within the gift of the government. As the old (political) truism goes, you only hold a referendum when you know what the result is going to be. In this case, Cameron’s hand was forced somewhat, but that doesn’t change the basic calculation, namely that he needs to win this vote and he will do what he can to achieve that. Put like that, one could imagine a sceptical government in this position entertaining similar ideas about generating some helpful outrage as a prelude to a vote on leaving the EU. That doesn’t make it right – certainly in the eyes of voters who are already pretty disillusioned with politicians – but it does make it more understandable.

Of course, by printing Lansley’s comments, the Times has done something more cunning. It has closed down much of the benefit of the potential opportunities to create a positive story around the renegotiations. Imagine that the government does genuinely have a spat (journalese alert) with another member state, which it genuinely resolves to its advantage: even if everyone says it wasn’t contrived, it will be easy for the ‘no’ camp to point to this week’s story and say “I told you so.” In short, this is a lovely bit of political jujitsu, turning a ‘yes’ gain into a loss.

The upshot of this is that no-one is talking about the referendum as a point of resolution, but as a staging post to the next round of the debate. Short of a very substantial majority on a high turnout, the losing side will be able to claim that the vote wasn’t ‘fair’ and that they must fight on – and both sides are willing to do that.

As noted before on this blog, if that meant that there was a national debate about what the UK’s role in the world should be, then that might be alright, but so far this referendum smells of party politics and opportunism. All might well be fair in love, war and referenda, but it doesn’t address the long-term problems confronting the country or the state of democracy.

The post Playing dirty in the EU Referendum appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

A popular saying goes that ‘all politics is local’. While public debate on climate change often focuses on international summits and the political drama of negotiations, the real steps to address climate change will be have to be implemented at a much more local scale. Ultimately, the way we lead our lives – how we use energy, design our communities, how and how far we travel, to name but a few examples – drives our personal climate impact and that of our communities. But although scientific insights indicate that climate change impacts are much closer than one may think, many of us still envision it as a far-away problem that will affect other parts of the world in the future. [1] Unfortunately, we don’t care much about problems that will happen later and mainly to others. But we need to care. Scientists, journalists and communicators have thus turned to highlighting the local consequences of climate change – such as extreme weather events, sea level rise and the like – with the assumption that doing so will persuade people, and their policy-makers, to act. For example, in 2003, Rajendra Pachauri—then the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—stressed that “I am aware that there is an opportunity for much political debate when you start to predict the impact of climate change on specific regions. But if you want action you must provide this information”.[2] In a recent study, we tested this assumption about the effect of local climate information empirically. Our research[3] suggests that simply highlighting local climate impacts may not be enough stimulate action and could in some cases even backfire.

In an experiment, we asked people, who live in the U.S. state of Vermont, to what extent they care about other communities/people (self-transcendent values), or their own status and power (self-enhancing values). Prior research suggests that people with self-transcendent values tend to be more concerned about environmental issues and act on them compared with their self-enhancing peers. After assessing value orientations, our study participants received information about climate change. One group[4] received information on local climate impacts (in the Vermont region), while another group received information on global climate impacts (focusing on other regions in the world – i.e., not in Vermont). A control group received no climate information. Following this stage, we asked participants how important they thought climate change was, the extent to which they were willing to make changes in their lives to reduce their personal contribution to climate change (e.g., driving less), and their support for climate policy measures. As we expected, regardless of the kind of information (global or local), participants who held a strong, versus weak, self-transcendent values were more concerned about climate change, more willing to engage in pro-environmental behaviour (such as switching to public transportation), and more supportive of climate policy. However, the focus of the climate information – local or global – greatly mattered for individuals with strong self-enhancing values. For these individuals, hearing about likely local impacts of climate change was demotivating. Instead of spurring action, hearing the local projections about increased flooding and other likely local outcomes made self-enhancing people care less than their similar self-transcendent value oriented peers who read about global outcomes.

We had expected that giving self-enhancing people information about local climate impacts that could affect their personal status (e.g., through reduced incomes in the Vermont skiing industry) would highlight the importance of climate change and thus lead to increased action. But perhaps those high in a need for status, enhancement, and power, feel particularly threatened by reading about the local impacts of climate change.  This is a reminder that any connections among caring, values, and proximity are complicated and that there is not one message that will work for everyone. However, recent research hints at approaches that could prevent this backlash. Researchers from Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions  found that simply asking people to consider their legacy can increase environmental concern[5].  Perhaps if we had simultaneously grounded our self-enhancing individuals in local outcomes while asking them to consider their personal legacy, our findings would have been different. Future research should further explore the effects we identified, particularly in other regions of the world. But until we have better knowledge, we would caution against simply assuming that local information frames will increase concern and action, because doing so may prove ineffective or even counter-productive with some people.

Please note: this article has also been published on Talking Climate and the Tyndall Centre‘s website.

[1] E.g., Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Roser-Renouf, C., Smith, N. (2011). Global warming’s six Americas. Yale University and George Mason University.

[2] Schiermeier, Q. (2003). Climate panel to seize political hot potatoes. Nature, 421(6926), 879-879.

[3] Schoenefeld, J. J., & McCauley, M. R. (2015). Local is not always better: the impact of climate information on values, behavior and policy support. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 1-9.

[4] Group assignment was random.

[5] Zaval, L., Markowitz, E.M., & Weber, E. U. (2015). How will I be remembered? Conserving the environment for the sake of one’s legacy. Psychological Science, 26, 231-236.

The post Does Local Climate Information Stimulate Action? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The car is important for our personal mobility; it gives you freedom and independence. In rural areas and small towns a car is necessary to be able to get around, whereas people living in cities often do not own a car as their mobility is orientated towards walking, biking or public transport within the urban environment. The following blog post explores how our choice of place to live influences our personal mobility, especially the difference between car owners and users of public transport, and our orientation towards the urban or rural.  Many of the observations are based on my personal experience as a non-car owner, which are linked to my research interests in mobility and politics of sustainable mobility.

Currently, new students across Europe are moving away from home and looking for accommodation near their universities. Roskilde University (RUC) is located 24 min by train from Copenhagen central station, although there are halls of residence available next to RUC most students prefer to live in Copenhagen because the capital offers lots of opportunities e.g. cafes, bars and shops. Some students even think the train journey from Copenhagen to RUC is too long or too expensive instead their personal mobility is orientated towards their local neighbourhood instead of their place of education.  (Please note most RUC students do come to university, my comments refer to a small minority). After graduation, some RUC students move to Roskilde[i] to live with their families because the town gives them a better quality of life compared to central Copenhagen. Throughout our lives we have different life style preferences, different use of infrastructure changes together with these stages and the choices we make about which life style we want.

Living in Roskilde; I have always seen myself as having a broad mobility horizon, yet not owning a car does limit my mobility.  I often take the train to Copenhagen to use cultural opportunities available in the capital and to visit friends. Crucially the public infrastructure mainly feed traffic between the capital and surrounding towns instead of connecting urban and rural areas. Consequently, I have neglected exploring the rural area west of Roskilde[ii], partly because it is not well connected by public transport – typical 1 bus per hour or 1 bus every 2 hour. Interestingly, when I was living in Leeds (the UK) I would often take the bus to Ilkley and go hiking in the Ilkley moors[iii], something I have missed whilst living in Roskilde for the past 3 years.  Thus I have certain mobility biases, which are shaped by my interests, social network and lack of car-ownership!

This spring a friend invited me to a fruit wine festival in Falster, which is a 2 hour drive from Roskilde. The farm can only be reached by car. In Australia, the USA or Germany people travel for several hours to watch a football match or visit friends/family. The size of Denmark makes it possible to reach most corners within a 5 hour drive, but in most countries non-car owners are restricted by availability of public transport, which mainly connects the territorial core and urban areas because it is not economic sustainable to run public transport is rural areas. Hence, due to my non-car ownership I had missed out tasting some amazing apple ciders!

It can be challenging to visit a friend if you do not have a car, unless the friend lives in an urban area with good access to public transport. It takes 24 min by car from Roskilde to visit a friend, who lives 26 km away in a small town in the rural area of Zealand (the same distance to Copenhagen city centre) yet by public transport it takes either 45 min or 1h 14 min depending on which route you take, just as there is only one connection an hour and only during the day.  It can take just as long to reach friends living in suburbs near Copenhagen, yet there are more connections, which makes it more accessible. Interestingly, the main climbing wall in Copenhagen is located on Refshaleøen, which is an island in central Copenhagen, yet there is limited public transport after 6pm. By comparison the climbing club in Hvalsø, south west of Roskilde, is accessible by hourly train from Roskilde. Thus, urban areas have pockets which are inaccessible by public transport.

The above three examples tie into the ongoing Danish political debate about rural versus urban (udkantsdanmark), which essentially is about the economic core versus economic periphery. The debate has mainly focused on housing market and investment in transport infrastructure. Our choice of living is structured by our work place, income, social network, children’s day care facilities and accessible infrastructure. Yet we have agency to choose where we live, our preference for a rural, village, town, suburban or city life style influence our choice of place to call home. Importantly, an urban/city dweller can still enjoy nature and a rural dweller still enjoys the cultural attractions of the city. Life is not static, as a student you have different preferences compared to a family, a single person or a pensioner, so it is natural to move between city, suburban and rural living. Indeed I know several people who have made the transition between city and rural lives successfully. Each type of life style and stage in your life require access to infrastructure, and our patterns of mobility will be affected by our choice of place to live. Here the question of car ownership and availability of public transport is important for us as individuals, yet our personal mobility is also influenced by political priorities in relation to investment in road infrastructure versus public transport.

(I would like to thank fellow kayaking enthusiast E.B. for inspiration and challenging my urban non-car ownership life style)

[i] http://www.visitroskilde.dk/roskilde-lejre/turist and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roskilde

[ii] Skjoldungelandet (Sagnlandet, Boserup skov og Bognæs), several local microbreweries

[iii] http://www.ilkleymoor.org/

The post Personal mobility – life without a car appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The failure of the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference marked a shift in international climate governance. As the system of agreeing international emissions reductions targets and then negotiating individual country contribution towards that target proved increasingly unworkable, there has been a drive towards a much more bottom-up form of climate governance. In preparation for the Paris summit later this year, countries are submitting Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to the international community, hoping that together, these contributions will add up to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius. These national pledges are—at least in part—backed up by a range of decentralized activities by countries, regions, cities, as well as businesses, civil society and others, who have been taking their own initiatives to address climate change. But what do we know about this bottom-up approach to climate governance and can it work?

In a recent article published in Nature Climate Change[1], we seek to shed some light on the distribution, the origins and the consequences of these bottom-up approaches to addressing climate change. Past research highlights a proliferating number of initiatives at various levels and in various places. For example, studies have documented a great number of international initiatives, transnational approaches[2], as well as a significant growth in national legislation to address climate change with 500 laws and policies addressing climate change in 66 countries in 2013, up from only 40 in 1997. We also know that there is a range of motivations for politicians, business leaders and others to engage in mitigation of climate change – some financial, some non-financial incentives. However, while this body of knowledge has accumulated, we know comparatively little about the consequences, or effects, of these bottom-up approaches. A key question is does bottom-up climate governance add up to something significant? And does it deliver? And by which criteria should it be evaluated?

Evaluating the performance of these bottom-up forms of governance raises a range of technical and political challenges. The international climate regime has struggled to consistently evaluate performance, such that much depends on self-reporting by states and other actors. In these compliance exercises, the focus has often been on whole countries and sometimes whether certain country characteristics, such as institutions or democratic governance drive performance, but often not individual policies. For instance, while we know that the European Union has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions, much less is known about the causal factors behind this – was it simply a renewal of old industries (e.g., after German reunification or the switch from coal to gas in the UK), the economic crisis, carbon leakage to countries not bound by emission reductions or policies that created incentives for renewable energy, legislation for energy efficiency, emissions trading, or a combination of all these factors? The ever-increasing number of bottom-up approaches, with some reaching beyond national borders, exacerbates these evaluation challenges.

There is very little comparative data on individual climate policies and initiatives, particularly on a range of intended or unintended (and often important) side effects beyond greenhouse gas emission reductions. In particular, while the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) focuses on ex-ante predictions of actual policy effects, there is currently a dearth of information on ex-post (i.e., retrospective) evaluations of policy effects. Technical difficulties and low resources may partly explain this lack of knowledge. But policy-makers may lack incentives to provide such information, because it could potentially highlight the ineffectiveness of ‘their’ policies.[3]

We know even less about the effects of transnational approaches, where an energetic debate is underway regarding the criteria to use for evaluation. Evaluation research has taught us that complex activities need to be evaluated using multiple criteria.[4] ‘Hard outcomes’ such as greenhouse gas emission reductions are the ultimate proof, but they may not materialize immediately, and ‘soft’ outcomes such as building trust and learning may be necessary to create conditions for significant reductions of emissions. But to learn more we need to investigate effects from multiple perspectives and with multiple tools, including an examination of some very simple features, for example whether new initiatives incorporate monitoring and evaluation that support learning from all the new efforts. Another important question to ask is whether these approaches last long enough to have enduring effects.

Taken together, we conclude that much remains to be learned on the effectiveness of bottom-up climate governance. The jury is still out on whether it can fill the gaps left by the Kyoto-based international climate regime. To make robust conclusions possible we need a concerted research effort on the merits of these new approaches to climate governance. Policy-makers would be well advised to support new approaches, but not to abandon the more traditional international negotiation processes before we know more about what actually can be achieved through bottom-up climate governance.

[1] Jordan, A.J.; Huitema, D.; Hildén, M.; van Asselt,H.; Rayner, T.J.; Schoenefeld, J.J.; Tosun, J.; Forster, J.;  Boasson, E.L. Emergence of polycentric climate governance and its future prospects Nature Climate Change. Available at http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2725.html

[2] Bulkeley, H. (2014). Transnational climate change governance. New York: Cambridge University Press.

[3] Hildén, M., Jordan, A., & Rayner, T. (2014). Climate policy innovation: developing an evaluation perspective. Environmental Politics, 23(5), 884-905.

[4] Mickwitz, P. (2013). Policy evaluation. In A. Jordan, & C. Adelle (Eds.), Environmental policy in the EU: Actors, institutions and processes (pp. 267-286). London; New York: Routledge.

The post How Well Does Bottom-Up Climate Governance Work? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

• Inaccurate and misleading: The Daily Mail’s reporting of Calais asylum seekers

Setting the tone for the week, the ‘Mail on Sunday’ in their front-page report expressed outrage that hundreds of ‘illegal’ migrants arriving in Britain from Calais are being put up in hotels at tax payers’ expense. The problem?  There were not ‘hundreds’ but at most one-hundred being temporarily accommodated in hotels, and these people were not ‘illegal migrants’ but asylum seekers fleeing war and terror.

The next day the Mail continued its onslaught against the Calais refugees with another front page claiming that, ’70% of the thousands of migrants massing at Calais are making it to Britain.’  The problem?  The Mail had misquoted the Chief Constable of Kent’s evidence to Parliament.  He said that 70% of the migrants in Calais leave within four months but it wasn’t known how many of them go elsewhere in France or reach Britain.

As the independent fact checking organisation, Full Fact, pointed out:

‘There’s no evidence that 7 in 10 Calais migrants are entering the UK’.

This the Mail did report in their story, but much lower down on the inside pages, when they accurately quoted Kent’s Chief Constable, Alan Pughsley, as telling Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee that it could not be ascertained, ‘whether these migrants leave to go elsewhere in France, or whether they enter the UK.’

But this little half-hidden full-truth in the story didn’t stop the Mail calculating all their statistics on the false premise that Mr Pughsley had instead said, as their opening story claimed, that 70% do make it to Britain (even though Mr Pughsley never said that).

On that basis then, since there are estimated to be 5,000 migrants now ‘amassed’ in Calais, according to The Mail statistics department it must mean that around 3,500 (i.e. 70% of 5,000) were making it to Britain.  Oh and that of course must surely mean that 900 of these ‘illegal’ migrants are arriving from Calais to Britain every month.

It’s nonsense of course, but this is the world as The Mail sees it; or rather as they want their readers to see it, because this misinformation (rather than the truth) reinforces their readers prejudices against asylum seekers.  And that, of course, is how the Mail sells their newspapers to their ‘market’.

Having reported the mistruth as an established fact, with the unwitting source being the Chief Constable of Kent (without his knowledge or consent), the Mail could then refer to this as a ‘fact’ in future stories and editorials.  So, last Friday, in their leading editorial comment, the Daily Mail felt confident to repeat their ‘fact’ and pontificate:

‘As we learned this week, 70 per cent of those who reach Calais eventually make it to England.’

Voila, the Mail’s mistruth was now an established truth: 70% of Calais migrants were making it to Britain.  The Mail could now unashamedly quote this as a fact, without even bothering to refer to their maligned original source (after all, why would the Mail want to alert the Chief Constable of Kent that what he had told a prominent Parliamentary Committee was being grievously misquoted by the newspaper?)

Since this was now being repeatedly circulated by The Mail as the truth, other media and politicians could quote from it, reinforcing that yes, the Mail must be right, others are saying it too. If anyone asked the Mail where this so-called ‘fact’ came from, the Mail could vaguely answer oh, it was the Chief Constable of Kent who said this, and he must surely know!

The same technique was employed in the ‘Mail on Sunday’ story claiming that ‘hundreds’ of migrants illegally arriving from Calais were being put-up in hotels at tax payers’ expense. That’s at least what the story reported on the front page and first paragraphs.

Lower down the story on the inside pages, however, the Mail added, as an aside to the main thrust of their article, that only 100 were being accommodated in hotels by Serco, the private firm contracted by the government. Did the Mail hope that readers wouldn’t spot the difference between ‘hundreds’ and ‘one hundred’?

And only lower down the story did The Mail stop referring to ‘illegal’ migrants and instead correctly describe them as ‘asylum seekers’.

So when I complained to the Managing Editor of the Mail on Sunday, Mr John Wellington, that the Mail’s story had incorrectly reported that ‘hundreds’ of asylum seekers were being temporarily accommodated in hotels, whereas in fact there were just one hundred, he was able to respond to me, “The figure was clearly presented as an estimate and explained lower down in the story when we said that Serco admitted 100 recent arrivals were staying in hotels.”

It seems that at the Mail’s highest management not an eyebrow is raised nor a forehead furrowed when it’s pointed out that so-called ‘facts’ presented in the opening headlines and paragraphs of an article don’t match what’s presented “lower down in the story”.

Those who have studied the Daily Mail method of  journalism might agree with me that this is a well known technique.

In my view, these two Daily Mail stories misreported the truth to enable a sensational front page headline and opening paragraphs, which were then ‘balanced’ by more accurate information albeit subtly hidden ‘lower down’ the story.  That way the Mail, if challenged (as indeed I have challenged them) can respond that that their story, after all, was accurate, because look, there it is ‘lower down’ in the story.  (Even though the front page headline and opening sentences didn’t match what was presented ‘lower down’).

This is surely too clever by far to be considered a mistake? Could this be a purposeful technique employed by the Mail to enable them to fashion their headlines and stories to match a view of the world which they know will appeal and therefore sell to their market (readership)?

I wonder how many Mail readers actually spotted that the headlines and opening paragraphs in these two stories bore little resemblance to the more accurate but less noticeable reporting that inconspicuously took place ‘lower down’?  In fact, how many readers just glanced at the front page headlines and never actually read the rest of the story on page 5 or 10 or wherever?

Some might consider that presenting seemingly incorrect or misleading information in the headline of a story and then subtly balancing it with more accurate information ‘lower down’ to be the work of geniuses, worthy of a post-graduate thesis on effective propaganda techniques.

But I consider this to be the lowest form of journalism, that does not serve the interests of this country or its citizens well, or that of refugees who are fleeing horrible wars and terror.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Related stories by Jon Danzig:

• Daily Express business model: selling prejudice and bigotry?
• Mail outrage: Asylum seekers are given food and board
• Daily Mail and Calais: Making it up as they go along?
• Calais: Questions the Mail must answer
• Calais: Mail inaccuracies not significant, says Editor

• New Facebook page:  Jon Danzig Writes. On Facebook, click the ‘Like’ button to get updates

#DailyMail coverage of #Calais #refugees crisis is a disgrace. Read and share my latest blog: http://t.co/mnXOT3rCNd pic.twitter.com/EcoGOch8Ps

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) August 10, 2015

I report #DailyMail’s #Calais misquote to @kent_police and @UKParliament Read latest update http://t.co/j93Lrrrx1R pic.twitter.com/7GhCdFZ5TR

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) August 10, 2015

8 Steps Towards #Genocide – and how the #DailyMail portrays #immigrants and #refugees See: http://t.co/ohg4Z83TTh pic.twitter.com/r8VuI6Ibrm

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) August 16, 2015

There are 8 steps to #Genocide says @genocide_watch. Is the #DailyMail stepping closer? Read http://t.co/oO2t3hoaL0 pic.twitter.com/otvydSUucH

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) August 17, 2015

The post How The Mail degrades journalism and refugees appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

In a press release of 1st July 2015, the German electrolyser plant construction company ETOGAS, reported how it delivered an electrolyser system to a site used by the Austrian energy company RAG Rohöl Aufsuchungs Aktiengeselleschaft in the town of Unterpilsbach in Austria. According to the press release, the equipment consisted of a 40 foot electrolysis container and a 20 foot transformer/ rectifier container.

The statement went on to say: “It will supply hydrogen for the flagship project ‘Underground Sun Storage’, which is managed by RAG. This project is the first to explore the option of storing wind and solar energy in a former natural gas reservoir.”

Electrolyser manufacturers such as ETOGAS and ITM Power, are showing energy companies how solar and wind power generation can become more efficient with the help of energy storage. The key to this process is the electrolyser, which uses the electricity generated from renewable energy sources of solar and wind power to produce hydrogen gas. The gas can either be injected directly into the gas supply network – as is happening at the Thüga Group’s power-to-gas plant at Frankfurt-am-Main, which uses ITM Power’s PEM electrolyser to produce hydrogen – or in the case with RAG’s Underground Sun Storage project, the gas can be stored in an underground storage facility until it is needed at times of peak demand.

These recent developments show how gas from sustainable sources may one day supersede the supply of natural gas and oil from fossil sources. The old argument that wind turbines and solar panels are unreliable as they only produce electricity when it is windy or when the sun is shining has become outdated, because with the conversion and storage of electrical energy as gas, the gas can be turned back into electricity at other times such as on a still day or at night or when there is greater consumer demand. In doing so it will help to cut greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.

Sources

http://www.etogas.com/news/aktuelles-news/

http://www.underground-sun-storage.at

©Jolyon Gumbrell 2015

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Early this morning, the President of the EU Council has announced that a deal had been reached. After one referendum and a collection of ultimatums, Grexit is out of the question, for now. The details of the agreement remain unspecified as I write these lines. The Guardian reports that, this last intense weekend, the German Government proposed measures such as Greece leaving the Euro temporarily if it refused a new bailout or, Greece setting aside €50 billion worth of assets as collateral for an eventual privatisation (hopefully, the Acropolis wasn’t in the list of assets). The paper says that the proposals “did not enjoy a consensus among eurozone leaders”, which is a slight relief.

At this point, the exact lyrics of the song have not been made public, but the stage where they have to be performed is well known. In 2013, the UN Independent Expert on Foreign Debt and Human Rights warned that “the prospects of a significant number of Greeks securing an adequate standard of living in line with international human rights standards have been compromised by bailout conditions imposed by Greece’s international lenders”. After visiting the country, he denounced that more than 10% of the population lived in extreme poverty. National economy has shrunk by a quarter since the beginning of the implementation of extreme cuts in 2010, with rocketing unemployment (nearly 30%), especially among youngsters (twice that percentage). In late 2014, the FIDH and the Hellenic League for Human Rights reported a similarly bleak picture, with radical cuts in minimum wages since 2012 (22-32%) and rising inequality.

164 countries from all over the world, including all EU Member States, have ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), which demands from Governments the adoption of all necessary measures to achieve progressively the full satisfaction of the rights to work, housing, health and education, among others. All EU Member States have also ratified the European Social Charter, either the original (1961) or the revised one (1996). Economic, social and cultural rights are also included in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (2000), “which shall have the same legal value as the Treaties” (Article 6.1 of the Treaty of the European Union, since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009). State Parties ratified these international treaties freely and in exercise of their national sovereignty. They are required to abide by their clauses, which in many cases are considered to be part of domestic law. Most countries have even proclaimed one or more socioeconomic rights in their national constitutions.

A number of commentators have written that European countries are genuine believers in human rights, and particularly, of economic and social rights (Whelan, 2010). For some, rights would belong to their “cosmopolitan creed” (Brysk, 2009). For others, countries would promote human rights norms “for reasons that relate to their identities as members of the international society” (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998). It has also been said that “human rights have become a central factor in the interests of democratic nations because they increasingly define social identities”, and “it would be very difficult for a European state to consistently abuse human rights and still be deemed to belong to contemporary ‘Europe’” (Adler, 1997).

I believe the Greek tragedy proves them wrong. Economic and social rights have played absolutely no role in the discussion of the austerity pack imposed on Greece. Arguably, not even economics mattered that much, on the basis of the failure of austerity to lift any significant indicator.

European countries have ratified most major human rights treaties, including those related to economic and social rights. However, if Europeans truly believed in economic and social rights, the austerity imposed via bailout would have had to respect those very rights. But the story went differently, as Greeks know too well.

European countries ratify and promote international human rights norms, but they do not do so as a matter of justice. They must have other reasons to endorse the international human rights regime.

Koldo Casla

@koldo_casla

The post The Greek tragedy proves that Europe does not believe in economic and social rights as a matter of justice appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Of the four main European Institutions,[1] the European Parliament (EP) has most struggled to be heard on the recent crises affecting Europe (monetary, economic, social, environmental…).[2] At a time when the European project is at great risk, and when European leaders struggle to define a common European interest, it is perhaps time to turn to the EP, and to give more powers to the only directly elected institution at EU level. After all, the EP is conventionally presented[3] as less bound by national interests, and in certain policy areas such as environmental policy, social justice or civil liberties, as being more ambitious than the Council of Ministers. Hence empowering the European Parliament could be a way of determining a common European interest and alternative solutions to the European crises than those currently supported by the European Commission and the European Council.

But all of these speculations rest on one key assumption: that we know how a stronger European Parliament would behave. More precisely, that it would rise above national interests and deliver a greener EU that is more socially-inclusive and respectful of civil liberties. But would the European Parliament necessarily behave like that? In this blog post, I argue that before granting yet more power to the European Parliament, we need to analyse what impact new powers have had on the EP in the past.  I argue that we cannot always expect the European Parliament to be more liberal and greener than the rest of the institutions. But even though the EP is not green by default, including the EP in policy discussions yields interesting outcomes, opening the way for an alternative take on the different crises to be aired at EU level. I build this argument based on a paper I presented at the 16th UACES Student Forum conference held at Queen’s University Belfast last week, as well as on the other papers on our panel on the EP as an actor, by Martin Wirtz and Ching-Yi Chen.

There is a growing literature which investigates whether greater power means the EP’s more radical policy positions (greener, more attentive to civil liberties etc.) gain greater clout at EU level, or whether the EP changes positions once granted further powers, becoming a tame team player. Work by Burns & Carter on the environment or by Ripoll Servent on civil liberties and trade [4] tend to stress that the EP is losing its unique voice as it gets more powerful. To a certain extent, our discussions in Belfast confirmed this finding. Thus,  by looking at the recent 2013 CAP reform, Martin Wirtz showed in his paper that MEPs are not necessarily impervious to national interests — when distributed costs among member states are clear, national voting patterns can emerge. This raises doubts as to whether the EP could be better at coming up with a common solution than the European Council or the Council of Ministers, if it is also bound by national interests in situations with clearly distributed costs. Not only is it doubtful that the EP would propose a more “European” solution, it is also doubtful that it would propose a greener one. Hence in my paper on greening in the latest CAP reform I explain how the European Parliament, working together with the Council of Ministers, hollowed out the Commission’s flagship greening initiative, the Green Payment.

These two cases offer a clear warning to people keen to pin their hopes on the European Parliament. But we should not take these cases to mean that we can expect nothing new or different from the Parliament compared to what the other institutions would produce. For example, our discussions in Belfast shed light on two key characteristics of the EP’s actions: the EP can be unpredictable and it can be increasingly independent. First, Ching-Yi Chen’s paper on ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is a perfect example of the EP’s unpredictability. As directly elected politicians, MEPs can be more easily swayed by citizens’ mobilisation than the rest of Brussels. In the case of ACTA, civil protest in Central and Eastern Member States served to shed light on the negative impacts ACTA would have on the rights of internet users. This helped foster opposition to ACTA among left wing parties in the EP, as well as to split the main right wing group, leading the EP to reject ACTA. The shadow of ACTA’s rejection still hangs over the current discussion within the EP about TTIP – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, currently discussed with the US government – which contrary to ACTA could have strong environmental consequences – making other EU actors as well as the EP leadership very wary of how a vote on TTIP would go. Second, my paper on the CAP reform puts forward the argument that the EP did not simply weaken the Commission’s green agenda, it proposed and fostered an alternative path to greening the CAP – through stronger voluntary payments – a clear sign of the EP following its own independent path.

To conclude, looking back at the effects of recent changes to the EP power, it is far from certain that  further empowering the European Parliament would give way to a more “European” and greener response to the different crises shaking the EU. The EP is not always impervious to national interests, nor is it necessarily greener. But empowering the EP nevertheless shakes up discussions in Brussels, giving voice to an unpredictable and increasingly independent actor.

[1] The European Parliament, European Commission, Council of the European Union (ex. Council of Ministers) and the European Council.

[2] As illustrated by Angelos Loukakis’s paper on discussions on the Greek crisis and the EP’s failure to reply to the European Commission’s 2015 Work Programme, even though the programme contained some highly contested measures regarding environmental policy.

[3] Indeed a previous post on this blog presents a short overview of the academic debate on the question.

[4] See for example Neil Carter & Charlotte Burns’ project “Is the European Parliament an Environmental Champion?” and, on trade and civil liberties, the work of Ariadna Ripoll Servent.

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Little over a month ago, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was still claiming that his party’s electoral victory last January had put an end to bailout programmes. A few days ago, he told the Greek people that a ‘No’ vote in the Greek referendum would lead to a deal with Greece’s creditors within 48 hours. More than 48 hours after the ‘No’ vote, there is no deal and his government has formally requested a third bailout programme.

This request coupled with Mr. Tsipras’ decision to replace controversial Finance Minister Yannis Varoufakis might produce the impression that the Greek government’s position has shifted closer to that of its creditors and that an agreement has become more likely. Sadly, this is not the case. Since the Greek government decided to abandon negotiations with its creditors to hold a referendum, the distance between the Greek government’s position and that of its creditors has grown greater.

The Greek people rejected the last offer that Greece was made before their government abandoned negotiations with its creditors. Additionally, the Greek government’s request for a third bailout programme has raised the issue of debt relief yet again. Greece’s creditors, however, have indicated that a third bailout programme will require Greece to accept stricter conditions than those included in the offer that the Greek people rejected. As far as debt relief is concerned, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was perfectly clear: ‘There can be no question of a haircut’.

Given that the distance between the Greek government and its creditors has increased, an agreement seems unlikely. Even if the Greek government agrees to stricter conditions than those that the Greek people have rejected, ratification of such an agreement by the Greek parliament cannot be guaranteed. In fact, the large margin by which the Greek people rejected the last offer of Greece’s creditors and the fact that their offer was rejected in every single constituency suggest that the seats of those MPs who might vote against stricter conditions are safe.

An agreement without stricter conditions might be possible, if Greece’s EU partners decided that ensuring the irreversibility of Eurozone integration is more important than enforcing compliance with Eurozone rules. Ratification of such an agreement by national parliaments cannot be guaranteed either. Opposition to additional financial assistance to Greece runs at about 70% amongst the German public. The seats of those MPs who might approve such financial assistance would not be safe.

Several months ago, then SYRIZA MEP Manolis Glezos had the integrity to apologise to the Greek people for his role in creating the ‘illusion’ that SYRIZA’s electoral victory would put an end to bailout programmes. Mr. Tsipras should follow his example. Not only has his government requested yet another bailout programme for Greece, but it also seems to have placed itself in a position, from which an agreement on a third programme seems unlikely.

Kyriakos Moumoutzis is a Lecturer in European and International Politics at King’s College London.

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What I want to offer you, is a simple definition of globalization. I said, a simple definition. But what I mean by that is, in fact, two things. Globalization is two things. It’s the extension, intensification, and acceleration of consequential worldwide interconnections. And at the same time, it’s a big buzzword. A big buzzword of political speech that’s used by business leaders, by political leaders, by protestors, in different ways but nevertheless, used as a buzzword to make politically charged arguments about how the world is shaping up and where it should be headed.

Now, to understand globalization we have to understand both these definitions at the same time and look carefully at how they interact with one another. So let’s look first at globalization in the first sense. Globalization as the extension, intensification and acceleration of consequential worldwide interconnections. What are those interconnections? Well, all together they form ties, global ties, or interdependencies as some social scientists call them. These include global trade ties, the global ties of workers and consumers, the ties of global finance and money flows, the ties of global law-making through trade agreements and human rights law-making, the ties of governments to one another, but also the ties that markets increasingly have around and through government action, including the ties markets have on our governance of our personal relation, the ties also of our spaces, between spaces, between territories, and ties that therefore also change the meaning of territory and the ties of global health.

These are all some of the key interdependencies that we’ll be looking at in the upcoming articles. But as we do so, I want to emphasize that it’s very important that we keep the second definition of globalization in our minds at the same time. This is  globalization with a capital G or big G globalization, as I refer to it in some of the upcoming articles.

Now, looking at globalization with a capital G means paying close attention to how it does discursive work, how it makes political arguments in a simple sound bite. The protestors in Seattle, back in 1999, who were protesting the World Trade Organization often carried banners that said, no globalization without representation. And they, in a sense, were using globalization as a, a political politically charged term of discourse when they were doing so. Of course, they were harkening back to the old  arguments of the American revolutionaries of no taxation without representation. But they were doing so to make an argument that global market ties were creating a kind of market like globalization that came without any kind of political representation for ordinary people. So they were contesting a certain standardized vision of globalization, a packaged market vision of globalization. And so they were using the term in the big G kind of way. But as they did so, I think they did another thing, whether they meant to or not.

They basically said with that slogan no globalization without representation, that globalization is always an act, when it’s used as a term, it’s always an act of representation. It involves representational politics. And this is something I want to address both today and in the upcoming lectures.

So why the need to distinguish between little g globalization, the term for global interdependency, and big G globalization, the term for the buzzword in political speak? I think there are at least three good reasons for doing this. First of all, I want to avoid gesture or tendency that’s found in a lot of other introductions to globalization. Introductions by other academics who offer great studies of the interdependencies, but who often think that we can put the politically charged arguments to one side.

When they do this, they go through what I like to call the Globalization 3 Step. They say first of all, that there’s too much exaggeration by what they call hyper-globalists. The hyper-globalists who exaggerate globalization, who make too much a big deal out of big G globalization, and confuse everybody by making exaggerations and making politically charged arguments. They don’t want to be like that. But secondly, the second move of their 3 step, they also don’t want to be like, what they call the skeptic. The skeptics who are so serious, they think everything is just continuing the way it always has done historically. You know, nothing much has changed, the governments of the world still run their countries, borders still exist. Globalization is all hog wash and too much exaggeration, say the skeptics.

Well, the advocates of the middle way between hyper-globalism and skepticism think that the skeptics have got it wrong too. That things have changed, that the interdependencies are consequential and they have really changed the world. They’ve changed our everyday lives. They think, therefore, that we can chart a sober and unbiased analytical middle way between hyper-globalism and skepticism. And in some respects, I want to follow them in, in, that middle way myself. But, I don’t want to put big G Globalization to one side. I actually am interested in why some people want to be skeptics and why other people want to be hyper-globalists.

I want to look at what arguments those people are making and what they want to achieve politically by making them. So introducing this term, big G Globalization, allows us to do that. It allows us to look at the impact of the discourse on the reorganization of
society around the world. And there are a number of scholars to have done this. Manfred Steger, for example, in his book Globalisms is an example of someone who’s interested in how discourses about globalization make a difference in the world.

So introducing this doubled up definition of globalization not only allows us to look at how big G discourses of globalization have shaped the world, but it also allows up to look at how the world and global dynamics, global interdependencies shape discourses
about globalization.

The relationships go both ways and this in turn helps us understand how academic approaches to globalization have themselves been shaped by the history of global development. The modern social sciences and the humanities the fields of study that give us the, the richest picture of globalization, at least in the way it’s going to be discussed in my upcoming lectures, are all disciplines that have emerged out of a particular kind of global history.

This has enabled them to see the world in particular ways, but it’s also limited what they can see, particularly in our own contemporary moment of globalization. And that’s because many of them were founded in the 19th century and the 20th century, when the nation state was the major object of focus of study, the major analytically counting center for all kinds of statistics. The word statistics goes back to the nation-state, state-istics.

I want to explain why it’s important by turning to the old, very globally traveled fable of the elephant and the blind villagers. Now in the traditional telling of this story, the villagers can’t work out what the elephant is. They feel the side and thinks it’s a wall. They feel the tusk and thinks it’s a spear. They feel the tail and they feel, they think it’s a rope. That’s the traditional idea.

In some religious retellings of this story, it’s as if the elephant is a God that ordinary mortals cannot understand. And to some extent, that’s a good metaphor for big G Globalization, because it’s often invoked as a kind of God about which we cannot fully understand, that has all these grand effects that we can’t fully come to terms with, but that’s not my main point here. I’m interested more in, in how the social sciences are a little bit like the the blind villagers and that they all need to go beyond the limitations of their own particular perspectives by fashioning an interdisciplinary perspective on globalization, the elephant as a whole. To make my point a little bit clearer, let’s think about some social sciences. Economics, for example, sees something of a tusk or a spear of globalization in following the money flows of global finance and of global economic integration. But it doesn’t always put those money flows and economic data into a political context. Political science does focus on the political context but because of its foundation in the modern 20th century tends to look at nation states as the most important political context and doesn’t always look at the transnational state making that has arisen because of economic ties across borders. Geographers my own discipline, tend to focus on what globalization looks like on the ground and the way it’s changed the ground, but in ways that don’t always fully examine the history of globalization. Historians, and, and scholars of English literature, or other world literatures, tend to focus on national history or national culture in ways that don’t fully examine the interconnections of culture and history globally.

Now in all these disciplines you can find examples of scholars, many examples, in fact, of scholars who reach beyond the national template and try to fashion an interdisciplinary perspective on globalization.

The post Defining Globalization. appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Photo credits: Wikimedia Commons

Dovilė Rimkutė

As Majone (1999) has observed, the approval of EU authority – as a predominantly regulatory political system – is based on the perception that supranational regulation corrects market failures by relying on a technical exercise and scientific knowledge managed by independent regulators, e.g. the European Commission and European independent agencies. Experts and scientific knowledge has played a key role in EU politics and its significance is increasing as well as takes on new shapes (Gornitzka and Holst, 2015). However, against this backdrop, an increasing body of literature has observed that scientific experts’ involvement in regulatory processes is rather contested (Gornitzka and Holst, 2015; Schrefler, 2010; Radaelli, 2009; Boswell, 2008). Scholars argue that even though regulatory duties are deemed to be a highly scientific pursuit predominantly focused on the technical-instrumental use of scientific knowledge, expertise can actually have many functions in policy/decision-making. That is, alongside the technical-instrumental (or problem-solving) use of knowledge, European regulators can also employ strategic or symbolic uses of scientific expertise.

To that end, the recent publications of Rimkutė and Haverland (2015) and Rimkutė (2015) contribute to this scholarship focusing on the role and functions of scientific knowledge by empirically examining how expertise is used by European regulators and by providing theoretical explanations regarding the variance in scientific knowledge use by supranational regulators.

How do scientists perceive their role in EU policy-making?

The article entitled “How does the European Commission use scientific expertise? Results from a survey of scientific members of the Commission’s expert committees” builds on the recent scholarship introducing a typology of knowledge use (Schrefler, 2010; Radaelli, 2009; Boswell, 2008) and suggests further improvements in its conceptualisation and operationalization, however, in particular it aims at empirical contribution. The article informs the debates on the role of scientific expertise in European Union policy-making, a query that is particularly relevant in the case of the Commission’s exclusive responsibility and duty to initiate proposals. In this article, we sought to go beyond the existing case studies by systematically tapping into the use of scientific knowledge across various policy issues and Directorates General (DG) of the Commission. We contribute to the literature with a large-N study in which we surveyed more than a 100 scientists who had participated in the Commission expert groups. In particular, we focused on how scientists’ advice was used by the Commission, and asked: what attitudes do scientists providing scientific advice to the European Commission hold regarding their contribution to policies shaped and adapted at the EU level? How do scientists perceive their role in EU policy-making?

When and under what conditions different uses of scientific expertise prevail

The article “Explaining Differences in Scientific Expertise Use: The Politics of Pesticides” further explores how European regulator – European regulatory agencies – actually contend with their core tasks of providing scientific advice to EU institutions. In this contribution, I go one step further and contribute to the theoretical explanation of when and under what conditions different uses of scientific knowledge prevail. I draw upon the theoretical insights of sociological institutionalism and resource dependence theory. The core argument of the article is that whether the regulatory policy process can yield efficient and credible problem-solving solutions is contingent upon both (1) the external environment in which a certain scientific output production process takes place, i.e. the level of formal and informal pressure and (2) the internal agency’s capacity to produce science-based outputs (Rimkutė, 2015: 116).

Risk assessments by the European Food Safety Authority

In empirical analysis, I focus on one type of knowledge use – strategic substantiating – that refers to those practices in which an agency seeks to promote and justify its own or external actors’ predetermined preferences, which are based on certain values, political or economic interests. The strategic substantiating use of scientific knowledge is expected to occur under the conditions of high external pressure and high scientific capacity.  To test this theoretical expectation, the case of the neonicotinoid pesticides risk assessment for bees has been selected. The risk assessment has been produced by the key European risk assessor in food safety regulation – European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). The empirical analysis combines a variety of data sources including official documents, press releases, scientific outputs, and 10 semi-structured interviews with the academic and industry experts involved in the process.

Specifically, the case of neonicotinoid pesticides has been selected as EFSA in this particular case possessed a high capacity to produce scientific expertise because it successfully mobilised internal human resources: the largest EFSA’s unit—the Pesticides Unit— was in charge of drafting scientific outputs. In addition, EFSA had much sound external research evidence at its disposal when drafting scientific conclusions: extensive sources of expertise, data, knowledge, and understanding of honeybees and the neonicotinoid pesticides. However, the organisational field in which EFSA had to deliver its scientific opinion consisted of defined opposing positions (laboratory research vs. field research) and the conflicting configurations of inter-organisational structures competing with each other (industry vs. beekeeping associations and NGOs). The biggest chemical manufacturers in Europe, Bayer CropScience, Syngenta AG, have been actively involved in the process and in due course have filed legal actions challenging the Commission’s restrictions and accused the Commission of not relying on the entire scientific evidence available and, in so doing, they challenged the EU pesticide regulation.

The article empirically illustrated that such conditions paved the way for the strategic substantiating use of expertise. It concludes that the interaction between high external pressure and high internal capacity leads to the strategic substantiating use of expertise, in which scientific evidence is used to promote the inclinations of actors upon which the agency depends most.

This study develops starting points for further research as it introduced a general theory explaining the differences in scientific expertise use, which have been tested only partly and in one particular context, i.e. one issue within one EU regulatory agency. However, the theoretical argument of the article could be said to be relevant to all expertise bodies acting on the basis of scientific knowledge, including the Commission, comitology committees, national agencies, international organisations, or other executive, regulatory or information bodies whose expertise feeds into various policy-making stages. To that end, I suggest that testing the theoretical explanations outlined in the article in different contexts would clearly be a requisite for further research.

Dovilė Rimkutė has been a PhD candidate in Political Science at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München, Germany since March 2014. Before joining LMU she held a Marie Curie scholarship for Early Stage Researchers and worked as a Research Associate at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research. Her research interests cover a range of European Union policy/decision-making topics, however, risk regulation and evidence-based governance in EU regulatory processes and factors affecting it take a central role. In her PhD research, Dovilė examines regulatory science practices employed by EU (quasi-) risk regulators – European regulatory agencies – by drawing upon the theoretical insights of sociological institutionalism and resource dependence theory. Contact: Dovile.rimke@gmail.com

References:

Boswell, C. (2008). The political functions of expert knowledge: Knowledge and legitimation in European Union immigration policy. Journal of European Public Policy, 15(4), 471-488.

Gornitzka, Å. and Holst, C. (2015). The Expert-Executive Nexus in the EU: An Introduction. Politics and Governance, 3 (1): 1-21

Majone, G. (1999). ‘The regulatory state and its legitimacy problems’, West European Politics, 22 (1): 1-13.

Radaelli, C.M. (2009). Measuring policy learning across Europe: regulatory impact assessment in comparative perspective, Journal of European Public Policy, 16 (8): 1145–1164.

Rimkute, D. (2015). Explaining differences in scientific expertise use: The politics of pesticides. Politics and Governance, 3 (1): 114-127.

Rimkute, D. and Haverland, M. (2015). How does the European Commission use scientific expertise? Results from a survey of scientific members of the Commission’s expert committees. Comparative European Politics, 13 (4): 430–449.

Schrefler, L. (2010). The usage of scientific knowledge by independent regulatory agencies. Governance, 23(2): 309-330.

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When Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras decided to unilaterally abandon negotiations over Greece’s so-called ‘bailout programme’ and to propose a referendum on the latest offer that Greece had been made, he employed a tactic that is common in negotiations in the European Union (EU): using difficulties with domestic ratification of EU agreements to extract concessions. Paradoxically, no agreement was reached in this particular case, but Mr. Tsipras believes that once the Greek people have rejected the latest offer of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the three ‘institutions’ will have to make them a better one. As he put it: ‘The day following the democratic choice, and a proud “No” to subjugation and to indignity, our country will have a much stronger negotiating position, and it will be the moment of truth for the creditors. They will finally understand that Greece is not going to surrender, that Greece is not a game that is over’.

Prior to Mr. Tsipras’ announcement regarding the referendum, the ratification difficulties that he has tried to use were real. The constituency in favour of the policies that Greece’s two bailout programmes included was never particularly large. The (partial) implementation of the two programmes reduced its size further. Many of those whom the two programmes have left worse off and supporting Mr. Tsipras’ Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) used to feel that they have nothing left to lose and that anything would be better than the continuation of austerity. As one of them put it: ‘[A choice] between more austerity or chaos? Chaos’.

The irony for Mr. Tsipras is that as soon as he made his announcement regarding the referendum, ratification of any agreement on any offer that the three ‘institutions’ might make Greece became less difficult. Ratification difficulties diminished as the Greek people caught a glimpse of the alternative to non-agreement/non-ratification. Queues outside banks, in supermarkets and at petrol stations and living in fear of banks running out of money and of shortages of food and fuel. ‘Chaos’, it seems, is no longer preferable to austerity. Opinion polls showing the ‘Yes’ vote ahead have already been reported. Mr. Tsipras has hinted that he will resign if the Greek people vote ‘Yes’. Rightly so. A ‘Yes’ vote will mean either that Mr. Tsipras has failed to implement the mandate that he has been given or that the Greek people have rescinded their mandate. If this proves to be the case, the announcement regarding the Greek referendum will have been the beginning of the end for Mr. Tsipras.

Kyriakos Moumoutzis is a Lecturer in European and International Politics at King’s College London.

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There is much to give concern in the world of European politics these days. From Greece to the UK, the Mediterranean to Finland (even Austria), you don’t have to look far to find examples of ‘how it’s all going belly up’ (to quote one of my colleagues).

It would be simple to take the counsel of despair, throw our hands up and reject it all. Surely everything tells us that Nigel is right and we should just put ourselves out of our own misery now. What possible value can there be in a system that tramples on Greek democracy, demonstrates scant respect for those who have risked their lives to reach our countries and apparently couldn’t organise an economic recovery worth the name, when everyone else did it some years ago?

Eurosceptics have long made much of how the EU holds back states, either economically or politically (or both), but never have such arguments had such resonance: my Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of people decrying it all and wondering it’s worth it any more.

I have a degree of sympathy with such views: certainly the Greek crisis has been a masterclass in how to make things worse, with all sides making unreasonable assumptions and not accepting that they have to make some concession. The realisation of the profound interdependence between all the actors is there, but only partial – each knows that it has the other over the proverbial barrel, but hasn’t yet worked out that they are in the same situation too.

And yet.

All of these things highlight that we do live in an interconnected system, where the actions of one affect the lives of others. Contrast this to the dark days of 2008/9 as the great recession broke. Then the reflex was to national action, supported by global coordination: the European level of governance felt (and was) largely irrelevant. For all that people talk of being ‘ruled by Brussels’, Brussels mostly sat on its hands or followed the lead of the G20 or of member states: anyone who thinks the 6-pack resolved the situation needs to go and look again.

But now the European level is central once more. This is partly because of the issues involved: Greece’s economic situation is directly linked to its membership of the Euro, the migrant crisis is linked to the Dublin Convention and Schengen, the British Tories seem to focus on little else. But it’s also because the EU is a relevant political arena and the way in which European states treat with each other is very different from how it used to be.

And here’s the rub. as Rafael Behr rightly pointed out in a great piece yesterday, the EU isn’t here to crush democracy. I wrote something similar last autumn:

The EU is not a hegemonising monster, intent on steam-rolling everyone and everything into uniform submission, but a mechanism for accommodating differences.

That might feel somewhat unsatisfactory, but Behr asks us to consider the alternatives.

A collapse of the Union would certainly come with transition costs, whatever the ultimate outcome, particularly for states like Greece. The removal of a system of institutionalised interaction might offer succor to those who would take a more autarkic and/or nationalistic view of the world, if only because goodwill might be in short supply.

If this sounds like ‘Project Fear‘ again, then maybe reflect on this last point. Perhaps the only reason people feel they can confidently talk about stepping away from the EU model is precisely that model has made a more stable and non-conflictual way of working with each other possible. The big question then has to be whether attitudes have changed fundamentally or remain contingent.

The post Who’s in charge here? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

From the beginning, the European Union has been polarising in Britain. The past four decades of membership have been marked by sustained debate on the extent and shape of British participation in the European project. Some have always rejected the notion that Britain can and should integrate with the rest of Europe. Others have supported Britain’s involvement in parts of the EU, particularly in the economic sphere. Few have wholeheartedly embraced European integration to the levels historically seen in the ‘core’ of Europe.

European Council 7-8.2.2013, European Council, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In this respect, British reluctance to sign up to different aspects of the EU has been a function of internal prevarication on setting a foreign policy that reflects Britain’s place in the world. The question of ‘Europe’ has divided parties from within and without. Consequently, the UK’s ongoing renegotiation and eventual referendum on EU membership need to be filtered through the lens of national context. Both are the result of electoral politics in Britain rather than momentous change in the EU’s design.

The Prime Minister’s renegotiation will naturally derive its objectives from domestic political considerations. The outcome of the renegotiation, however, will depend greatly on the willingness of Britain’s European partners to work with the suggestions placed before them. This external dimension – the politics at European level – is fundamental to any deal which may be agreed.

By definition, a negotiation necessitates negotiating partners. In this case, the UK government’s main interlocutors are the governments of the other EU Member States (with a role for the EU institutions as well). These governments do not all share the same interests nor have they presented a united front against Britain in its desire to change how the EU works – far from it. A number of EU countries support some of the options for reform emanating from London. At the same time, three main points on which they broadly agree might make the renegotiation more challenging than hoped.

First, they have other pressing issues on the European agenda. The sovereign debt difficulties facing Greece, garnering great attention is recent weeks, is only one of a number of serious questions preoccupying European leaders. These pressing issues may take priority over discussing the details of the UK government’s demands to amend EU rules. Considering the tight timetable the Prime Minister has set himself, the postponing of solving the ‘British question’ to a later date could make securing a deal even more complicated.

Second, Europe’s leaders are generally happy with the EU’s architectural framework and not predisposed to making dramatic alterations. Desire to weaken the integrity of the internal market by altering the rules of the free movement of persons, for example, is minimal. Nor are other EU countries keen to see the multiplication of opt-outs or special rules just for Britain. While the will exists to work with the UK government to address its concerns, any EU changes agreed are likely to be relatively modest.

Third, the countries which share the single currency may well amend the governance of the Eurozone without changing the EU treaties. It seems unlikely, therefore, that Britain can simply tack on its demands to treaty reform certain to happen. The EU treaties could eventually be updated to incorporate the Fiscal Compact and related measures, but this prospect seems years down the line. In any case, securing treaty change in time for a referendum by 2017 would be a Herculean feat.

The obstacles to securing a substantive renegotiation within the set timetable are numerous. However, the actual renegotiation is but one part of the equation in (re)shaping Britain’s relationship with the EU. How the deal is presented at home and the arguments made in the campaign are likely to be much more influential to the referendum result. The external dimension may well determine the substance of the renegotiation, but the national context, as ever, will determine the outcome of the referendum.

This article was originally published on European Futures.

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Shortened link: britainseurope.uk/20150626

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Salamone, A (2015) ‘The External Dimension to Britain’s EU Membership’, Britain’s Europe (Ideas on Europe), 26 Jun 2015, britainseurope.uk/20150626

The post The External Dimension to Britain’s EU Renegotiation appeared first on Ideas on Europe.