Ideas on Europe Blog

This summer’s press was once again abuzz with headlines and images of the exodus of thousands of migrants, knocking at Europe’s door. The scenario of a massive number of vessels overflowing with people fleeing from their countries towards southern European shores is no news to Europe. Although the state of alarm has long been declared, the escalation of this summer’s dramatic occurrences forced Brussels and the Member States to raise their level of attention towards the Mediterranean Sea.

New measures were drafted and the on-going debate regarding their implementation is one of the hot topics jeopardizing the stability of the European Union to the core. The States more decidedly issuing for a direct intervention were those located on the southern shore, held responsible for the rescue of the migrants in their territorial waters. Italy declared the costs of “Mare Nostrum” operations unsustainable and thus disconfirmed their renewal for 2015, entrusting the management of the migrants’ emergency to the new EU-flag operation, “Triton”. The state of emergency was declared both from a humanitarian and a logistical perspective, and the key-role of Italy in the happenings is well known. Nonetheless, there is a chapter of the story that has not yet found its representation in the media. Everybody knows about those rescued, but has anyone ever wondered about the rescuers?

One expects the navy and the coastguard ships to be the main rescuers of migrant vessels but data tell a different story. Of the 982 units employed in rescue operations in 2014, less than a half belonged to the military navy. The merchant navy ranks second for the number of rescue missions, actually outnumbering the coastguard. So far, 1,300 merchant ships were diverted to provide first aid to 42,000 people in 2014 and over 15,200 in 2015[1]. If we focus on the meaning of these numbers, we will not fail to realize that about 254 cargo ships, contract bound to delivery dates and crewed by men untrained for these kind of operations, were first in line to face the humanitarian emergencies.

This constitutes the biggest rescue work ever accomplished in the history of the merchant navy. Providing first aid to these people is certainly a duty for all seafarers in the fulfillment of the long established maritime tradition of recruiting those in danger, as well as under the obligations determined by the United Nations Convention on Law at Sea (UNCLAS) and the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR). Still, these obligations refer to ordinary circumstances in which rescue at sea is considered an exceptional event for civil vessels. However, in the past few years, the extraordinary has become ordinary and the involvement of merchant ships in rescuing migrant vessels has become systematic.

What’s wrong with that?

Consider a ship with dangerous cargo, for example inflammable goods (oil, petrol, gas), rescuing immigrants drowning from a sinking vessel and having to board 500 to 1,000 people who cannot speak English or Italian. How are 10 to 15 crew members supposed to handle such a crowd of men, women and children, all the while trying to prevent any accidents that such a situation may implicate? Additionally, restrooms and emergency kits on cargo ships are stocked in proportion to the crew and cannot sustain a massive load of passengers, which makes it difficult to provide help to the rescued in need of immediate medical assistance, such as women who are pregnant or in labor (as per reported circumstances). In 2014, even supply vessels deputed to the emergency escape service of the staff on oil platforms were employed in rescue missions. One of this vessels received no less than 62 calls for rescue missions during 2014 and 26 in 2015, boarding up to 1200 people in a single operation with a crew of 10 people[2].

From a strictly economical perspective the costs of rescue operations, sometimes requesting up to 2 additional days of travel, rest on the ship-owners and on the ports, frequently in Sicily or Calabria, where migrants are disembarked. This issue was emphasized by the Italian merchant navy, Italy being the country responsible for the broadest Search and Rescue zone in the Mediterranean. In this regard, the implementation of the operation, “Triton” partially mitigated the pressure on the merchant navy (around 160 interventions in 2015 against 254 in 2014), but the numbers are still high and the integration of the SAR operations with the commercial activities is unsustainable to the ship-owners.

To all seafarers, there is an unbreakable law, which constitutes a seaman’s code of honor since the beginning of times: when a ship is sinking, it has to be rescued, no matter the cost. The merchant navy has not missed a call and will keep rushing to help as long as someone will call.

But to preserve the safety of their crew and operability of their ships, merchant vessels cannot be viewed as vehicles for humanitarian rescue in large-scale operations.

In March 2015 the European Community Shipowner’s Association (ECSA) and the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), together with other labor organizations, issued a call for help, in order to better face what seems to be a migratory flux which is not going to decrease in the short run. In such conditions, the employment of UN vehicles for humanitarian assistance at sea, with UN designated ships and aircrafts to monitor and coordinate the SAR regional centers and the rescue operation could be an important contribution.

Another issue to be faced in the context of one of the biggest humanitarian crisis of the last decades.

[1]Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Rome – MRCC

[2]Report Confitarma 2015

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Filipa M.Ribeiro

What do subjects like personalized learning, curriculum reforms, research agendas and institutional frames have in common? Interdisciplinarity. Whether we discuss the duality of vocational versus general education or the impact of ideologies on research, interdisciplinarity is an in-between topic. Interestingly enough, it is often overlooked even if interdisciplinarity is one of the most hotly debated topics among academics and has spun a complex web of development strategies and theorizing. However, its lack of standardization continues to be an issue, namely in universities that have traditionally hermetic departments and a lack of communication embedded in the academic culture. The various definitions of  interdisciplinarity converge into two main axis: 1) powerfull insights found by applying intellectual resources of different disciplines to particular problems; or 2) rhetorical mechanisms that reinforce the discourses on productivity and competitiveness which, in turn, produce an ideological system that serves the economic regulation at universities, encouraging an overemphasis on research projects and courses (e.g., the proliferation of summer schools).

Favoring or disregarding interdisciplinarity?  

Interdisciplinarity is also at stake with regard to the practices put in place by the management bodies of research institutions, university departments or governing bodies to assist, seduce or repel the individual researchers. These practices include institutional restructuring, reorganisation of curricula, the implementation of information, communication technology, changing patterns in knowledge production, the changed role of education in societies, and new modes to manage and assess higher education and research. This is often explicitly phrased in prescriptive documents (e.g. strategic plans of universities and official documents that try to outline the  criteria and “good practices”, whose very title already implies a simplistic outreach to interdisciplinarity) that aim to assume a given role in civil society at large. Thus, the paradox arises: there is a conventional discourse in favor of interdisciplinary research and, at the same time, much indifference or even disregard for such research (Sperber, 2003).

Interdisciplinarity demands constant proactiveness, responsiveness and the ability to adapt to changing situations. As Sperber (2003) notes, often disciplinary boundaries and routines stand in the way of optimal research and that is why a common solution is to go ahead with new research programmes, which requires hasty institutional reshaping. In addition, research shows that constraints to interdisciplinarity are posed both in scientific terms (e.g.: Collinet et al.,2013) but also in institutional terms (e.g.: Su, 2014), especially concerning governance modes (Cooper and Farooq, 2013). As a matter of fact, the idea that interdisciplinarity in higher education is related to the framework of institutions, departments and courses is not new (e.g.: Carpenter, 1995; Pirrie et al, 1999; Becher, 2001; Wall and Shankar, 2008; Dykes et al., 2009). A less debated dimension of interdisciplinarity concerns the individual and social epistemology of knowledge and science. How and why interdisciplinarity emerges at the individual level? Andersen and Wagenknecht (2013) remind that interdisciplinarity involves epistemic dependence between researchers with different areas of expertise, the combination of complementary contributions from different researchers through shared mental models and conceptual structures, and shared cooperative activity with interlocking intentions, meshing sub-plans and mutual responsiveness.

Does belonging to a department increase interdisciplinarity?

My recent article “Interdisciplinarity in ferment: The role of knowledge networks and department affiliation”, published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change, posits that social networks shape interdisciplinarity because universities are formed by networked actors whose relations are not only centred on place-based affiliation (though highly shaped by them), but also on niche knowledge and skills affiliations. However, we lack enough empirical data on the knowledge networks of researchers to better understand how these networks shape the influence between faculty structures and knowledge creation in terms of interdisciplinarity and what the optimal structure for interdisciplinarity is. In other words, the paper addresses interdisciplinarity forwards rather than backwards, exploring the relation between the present and the future through the conditions from which interdisciplinarity arises. The focus is not the processes of network structure emergence and tie formation, but rather how those networks and ties affect interdisciplinarity. Based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the personal knowledge networks of academics of higher education institutions from Catalonia (Spain), the study used a mixed methods approach combining the delineation of personal networks with the analysis of the ties’ content, proposing a conceptual model specifically developed for this study.

Findings suggest a strong correlation between the network members nominated in the influence generator and interdisciplinarity. In fact, a quite surprising finding is that collaborators are not the ones who most influence either interdisciplinarity or individual knowledge creation. On the other hand, stronger ties (the ones with whom respondents have more affinity, more time of interaction and higher frequency of contact) seem to be more conducive of interdisciplinary research than weaker ties (if those strong ties do not belong to the same department of the respondent). Belonging to a faculty department may increase tie strength but reduces interdisciplinarity.

This study shows that the concept of interdisciplinarity itself is changing on the emergence of new modes of knowledge creation, especially the rise of peer production, which presents a stark challenge to conventional thinking about interdisciplinarity. Indeed, interdisciplinarity should not be understood only as the traditional concatenation of different disciplines. This study offers corroboration for the claim that interdisciplinarity is more about epistemological commitments and exchanges rather than disciplinary training. It is important to see these phenomena not as exceptions or ephemeral fads, but as indications of a fundamental fact about transactional knowledge forms and their relationship to the institutional conditions of knowledge creation.

Therefore, this new way of looking on interdisciplinarity reinforces a third form of transaction in higher education institutions: social sharing and exchange. On the other hand, we produce and exchange knowledge, but we do not count this exchange in our institutional design. This, in turn, may be the reason why social knowledge creation and interdisciplinarity have been shunted to the peripheries of academic organization landscape.

Filipa M. Ribeiro is in the final year of her PhD at the University of Porto. She has a diverse background in science and medical journalism, digital media, innovation, project management  and science communication. She graduated in Communication Sciences and has a master degree on Sociology of Science. She has been doing research on Higher Education since 2009 and was  a member of the Portuguese team in the ESF funded project TRUE (Transforming universities in Europe). She is also one of the co-founders and executive members of ECHER – Early Career Higher Education researchers’ network. Her current research involves topics on ubiquitous knowledge, sociology of science, social networks, interdiciplinarity and diversity in higher education.

References

Andersen, H., Wagenknecht, S. (2013) Epistemic dependence in interdisciplinary groups.Synthese, 190: 1881–1898. Springer.

Becher, B. (1987). Disciplinary discourse. Studies in Higher Education, 12: 261-274.

Carpenter, J. (1995) Interprofessional education for medical and nursing students: Evaluation of a programme. Medical Education ,29: 265–72.

Collinet, C., P. Terral, P. Trabal (2013) Forms and Modes of Apprehending Interdisciplinarity: a Socio-Computer Analysis of Sports Sciences. Bulletin of Sociological Methodology, 119(1): 61-78.

Cooper, A. F. and Farooq, A. B. (2013), BRICS and the Privileging of Informality in Global Governance. Global Policy, 4: 428–433.  doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12077

Dykes, T., Rodgers, P., Smyth, M., (2009).  Towards a new disciplinary framework for contemporary creative design practice. CoDesign, 5 (2) 99-116.

Pirrie, A., S. Hamilton, V. Wilson (1999) Multidisciplinary education: Some issues and concerns. Educational Research 41(3): 301–314.

Ribeiro, Filipa M. (2015) Interdisciplinarity in ferment: The role of knowledge networks and department affiliation. Technological Forecasting and Social Change. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2015.07.021

Sperber, D. (2003) “Why rethink interdisciplinarity?”. In Heintz, C. (ed.), Rethinking interdisciplinarity. Paris: C.N.R.S. and Institut Nicod.

Su, X. (2014) Academic scientists’ affiliation with university research centres: Selection dynamics. Research Policy 43: 382-390.

Wall, S., Shankar, I., (2008). Adventures in transdisciplinary learning. Studies in Higher Education, 33 (5): 551–65.

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In the course of my research on budgeting in international organizations, I just stumbled over this quote from 1947 article in the journal “International Organization” titled “The Refugee: A Problem for International Organization” which seems quite timely again today:

“Even the governments which are most concerned over the welfare of individuals and the economic and social and political stability of Europe devote few of their resources of personnel and finance to refugee thought and action. Despite occasional prolonged periods of highly-publicized wrangling over general principles, they do not make up their minds on practical policies until the very last minute. The stubborn facts are that there are too many other problems of greater size and urgency, and that the refugee problem discourages attention because it is disproportionately tangled and expensive.“ (Malin 1947: 445, my highlights)

The article’s introduction speaks of 25 million displaced persons in China, 10 million Soviet citizens, and 8 million Germans, with 2 million European refugees being those “with whom a general international organization for uprooted people must deal” and who were “bristling with political complications”, providing more details on the many different groups and the respective challenges later on.

When it comes to the topic of repatriation and whether refugees will stay, the conclusion also seems almost like today:

“The advance of industrialization, even where it is far from complete, has produced vested interests among workers already established in those countries, and a pervasive community fear of unemployment. National societies think of their racial, religious and political pattern as fixed, and dread the importation of Europe’s feuds. (Unofficial anti-Semitism is rising almost everywhere.) Hence, though reception countries are beginning to realize that the refugees are not typically a mass of miserable and demoralized human beings, but a reservoir of sturdy and independent-minded workers of many crafts, the emphasis is sure to be kept on careful individual selection by the reception countries‘ own representatives.” (Malin 1947: 457)

Just in case you wondered how much has changed in the last 70 years when it comes to refugees, refugee policies, and the public perception of those who are refugees…

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How might the EU respond to the unprecedented event of a Brexit? Its response will be defined by 5 I’s: ideas, interests, institutions, the international, and individuals. Looking at these 5 I’s also sheds light on various theoretical approaches to understanding Brexit.

How would the rest of the EU respond to a British vote to leave? Would the EU’s approach to a withdrawal be defined by institutional links, opinions of key leaders, economic and security interests, international pressures, or ideas about integration or disintegration? Will it be a mix of these, in which case, which will be the most influential? What should the British government and public look to in order to understand what to expect from the EU? How should academics theorise a Brexit?

We can understand how the EU might respond to a British withdrawal by looking at five I’s: ideas, interests, institutions, the international, and individuals. No one ‘I’ will dominate, and identifying which will dominate more than others will be a key challenge in understanding and applying theoretical approaches to a Brexit.

Ideas

A vote to depart completely from the idea of an ‘ever closer union’ would challenge the very idea in an unprecedented way. Will the idea of European disintegration then take hold across the EU as somedomino effect sees other governments and their citizens give up on the EU? Or will other EU member states respond in much the same way as they have to many other crises by trying to integrate further? If so, then any new deal with the UK would prioritise EU unity, blocking any UK-EU deal that allows Britain a privileged alternative relationship that could weaken the Union.

Individual member states will assert their own ideas of what Brexit means for them. For example, the Irish Government has made clear it will not be caught in the slipstream of British decisions. Independence and links to the EU are viewed as equal to or of greater importance than relations with Britain. For statesranging from Greece and the Baltic states through to France and Germany, the UK and the Brexit debate are already something of a distraction from various ideas of how European integration can better ensure the security and stability of Europe.

Interests

With Britain as one of the world’s largest economies, some Eurosceptics argue the EU needs the UK more than the UK needs the EU. Britain does run a trade deficit with the EU (£61.6 billion in 2014), meaning the rest of the EU has an economic incentive to find a solution. However, from the perspective of the rest of the EU it is the UK that is vulnerable. Britain represents somewhere around 16% of total EU trade (admittedly excluding services) while the EU represents 44.6% of the UK’s exports of good and services in 2014.

Nevertheless, economic, social and security interests can play a powerful role. To take one example, fear amongst German car manufacturers at a bad UK-EU exit deal could force the German government to push for a relationship that avoids any disruption to trading links. The potential costs for Ireland (including violence in Northern Ireland) could force it to reconsider its ideas of resisting British decisions. The large EU population in the UK and UK population elsewhere in the EU mean a mutually beneficial deal will need to be hammered out.

The argument works against Britain as some states will seek to gain economically by seeking to attract investment that would have gone to Britain.  Some countries might also use a Brexit to push a more social and protectionist EU, limiting any UK efforts to use a Brexit as a means to undercut the EU economically.

If the potential economic interests are not strong enough, then the same cannot be said for Britain in European foreign and defence cooperation. Common areas of concern such as Iran, Russia or migration mean the UK and EU could continue to need one another. At the same time, the UK has been one of the blocks to cooperation in this area, with its exit potentially paving the way for further such efforts.

Institutions

Several processes and institutions will shape a Brexit. Article 50, the EU treaty’s withdrawal clause, provides a degree of structure for both sides, albeit one that is untested and which contains a range of flaws. The legal and administrative issues alone make Article 50 a Pandora’s Box that both sides will face with a sense of trepidation. Agreeing a new UK-EU relationship will require the consent of every member state, the European Parliament, and potentially may draw in the European Court of Justice. None of these can be relied on to grant a quick agreement that meets UK demands.

The UK and EU would also be constrained by existing wider European and international structures. If no new relationship was reached then the EU would still have to work within the limits of World Trade Organisation rules, although Britain is highly unlikely to benefit much from a WTO defined relationship. The European Free Trade Area and the European Economic Area have existing agreements that Britain would have to fit into with the agreement of members such as Norway or Switzerland.

International

International pressures on the UK and the EU could define how they manage an exit. The negotiation of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) reflects a desire by the USA and the EU to use their interdependent economic relationship to shape global economics and politics. While the UK could be locked out of the main processes by which TTIP will be setup and launched, its long-term exclusion would run counter to the aims of TTIP to extend beyond the EU and USA. The agreement will also frame how the UK attempts its own trade deals with countries such as China or Brazil.

International events may also drive UK-EU cooperation. Terrorist attacks, aggressive behaviour by Russia (perhaps creating an ‘other’ against which common UK and EU resolve is formed), common concerns about environmental or migration crises could mean international events push the UK and EU into a harmonious new relationship. British ideas about restructuring the EU and freedom of movement have gained some traction thanks to developments connected to Syria. That said, international events could cause divisions and animosity between the UK and parts of the EU, such as happened over the Iraq War.

Individuals

If there is one place where animosity could be a particular problem it is in the relations between leaders. David Cameron is likely to resign should he lose a referendum where he backed the UK staying in. A victorious Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative party would then deliver a Conservative British Prime Minister unlikely to be in a position to compromise in negotiations over a new UK-EU deal.

EU leaders could also be in a mood to concede much, particularly if the British people had rejected a renegotiated relationship the rest of the EU made the effort to craft at a time when they would rather have been focusing on issues such as the Eurozone, Russia or migration. Angela Merkel, in particular, could find herself in a difficult position. With German elections scheduled in 2017 she may be in no position – or personally inclined – to offer much. Without German support, Britain will face a much bigger struggle in securing the agreement of every other EU state and its leadership.

Theorising Brexit

The study of the EU is filled with theories of European integration. Brexit confronts us with the need totheorise European disintegration. Theories are tools that allow us to focus on certain aspects of developments in the world around us, highlighting – and testing – their importance over others. These 5 I’s above touch on some of the various theoretical approaches we can use to try and understand where a Brexit could take the EU and UK. In a simplified way, constructivism points to the role of ideas as paramount in shaping how a Brexit is handled. In realism it is the interests and international pressures that will be decisive. Institutionalist or neofunctionalist theories throw light on the powerful limits existing institutions and networks will play (or might not play if Brexit exposed any weaknesses in them). Liberal intergovernmentalism draws in a mix of interests, institutions and ideas to highlight that Britain and the EU (especially Germany, France and other big states) are caught up in a deeply enmeshed set of interdependencies from which there is no easy escape whatever their leaders may want.

This article first appeared on the LSE’s Brexit Vote blog.

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Colombia is in the middle of negotiating a peace deal with FARC rebels and the number of discussion points between the two groups range from the implementation of justice for crimes committed to the finer nuisances of the deal that could save many lives. Armed conflict in Colombia has resulted in numerous bloody battles, and the loss of many lives because of fighting inbetween paramilitary groups and guerrilla forces. But what President Juan Manuel Santos has done is, he has gone ahead and agreed to pardoning people responsibile for these atrocities in exchange for swifter national peace.

Santos believes that the more lives that peace can solve faster the better it will all be for economic growth, which is true but the nature of the feuds cannot be simplified so much. Most of the people involved in the fightings have been civilians and this has also both raised the profile for criminal violence in the country and thrown some six million Colombians from their homes right into the countryside. Pardoning so many wrongs in the name of peace and a stronger Colombia seems to ask people to forget all of their bruises.

The FARC rebels are known to not really stick to plans of disarming, which result in blood-fueled battles and too much of violence can mean negotiations breaking down once more and that cannot be a positive outcome for either of the two parties involved. Public support for the negotiations often waiver, while the government and the rebels both try to extert their point of views over the agreement. The last fifteen years has seen a reduction in national violence in Colombia but economic growth has gone the opposite way, fuelled by a heightening of incomes and a drop in oil price.

Colombia is individualistic in South America: it does not really have too much of military dictatorship written in it’s history, considers itself as the oldest democratic country in the region, has wet areas and portions of the Amazon rainforest, counts the rich as people who love political responsibility, there is land ownership that breeds inequality, violence with seeds in politics and and guerrilla fighting. A peaceful national climate can aid with getting back those lands grabbed by guerrillas and reducing the victimisation of Colombians on a daily basis.

The FARC has contributed to many ills of Colombian society, from drugs trafficking to extortion, and sometimes they have even fed into troubled land owners. Coming back from the brinks of societal failure, is not an easy task because once upon a time Colombia used to be a land filled with frequent reportings of kidnappings and murders. Villages would be invaded and child soldiers would be recruited into rebel groups. The economy was in a pitiful state of recession then as mass unemployment and growth of banks failure become commonplace.

The problem is trusting the FARC will not go back on their words because on previous accounts of striking a peace deal, the guerrillas only used those opportunities to grow their forces, both in paramilitary terms and politically, or simply kill idealists. FARC has stated that they are no longer interested in power-grabbing because military growth is happening nationally and the country is improving but it is not too much of an assurance when there is income inequality, and Venezuela is persistant with it’s support of the FARC rebels, spelling political trouble in its shores for it.

Education rates for children are mending, but universal healthcare seems to be asking too much because only a fraction of the population can contribute to it, whilst the government pays for the other half. No one political figure in the country has been able to solve this crisis, and whenever any had gone far, it would later be revealed that innocent civilians were murdered and passed off as guerrilla fighters. Perhaps this time it will be different and that “much awaited” peace deal will bring home national reforms, from rural areas to the provincial countrysides.

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cui Bono?
(I am available for after-dinner speeches, at modest rates)

Probably the single most frustrating aspect of the EU referendum is the lack of a clear timeline. It’s frustrating for voters, who’d like to know when this is all coming to a head; it’s frustrating for the media, who’d like some notice of when to ramp up coverage; it’s frustrating for other EU member states, who’ve got other things to deal with and really don’t need any more surprises; it’s frustrating for academics, who’ve got much less flexibility in planning research projects than you’d imagine; and it’s even frustrating for the government, who’ve also got other things they’d like to tackle.

In short, everyone seems to suffer from the uncertainty about the dates. With the possible exception of David Cameron. And, unfortunately for the rest of us, he’s the one person who actually gets to decide these things.

For Cameron, uncertainty is his friend. It allows him an adaptable timetable within which to improve his position – both externally with EU partners and internally with his party – and to keep those who would oppose him on the back foot. No one wants to peak too soon, in case it’s a long run campaign, so everyone has to hold fire. In a context where the Leavers seem to have a financially strong position, better to nullify that by forcing them to delay much of their spending to the official campaign period, when spending limits apply.

But this is only one aspect of the timing issue. The other is the matter of when to hold the vote.

Now at this point, I’d be linking to articles about timing, but there are so many, with such contradictory views, that it’s actually not very helpful so to do. Instead, let’s flesh out the main options.

First option is the ‘early dash’. In it’s purest form that has now passed: a rapid renegotiation and vote by the end of the summer would have built on the surprise win of May and used the opposition’s disarray to minimise resistance. However, the shock of winning seems precisely to have disorientated Number 10, who clearly lacked any developed plan to press their advantage: making it up as you go along sounds simple, but in practice it often slows things down.

In its current form, the ‘early dash’ means wrapping up the main points of renegotiation around this month’s European Council, then moving towards a June 2016 vote. This would avoid foot-dragging and provide some focus to the renegotiation, which has had to compete with other major issues all through this year.

The slower option is the ‘late summer glow’, extending things out to a September vote. This gives more time to negotiate on more contentious issues (i.e. welfare) and to build up a Remain campaign that knows better what works. This is probably as late as one would want to leave matters for a 2016 vote, assuming the ‘wintry’ half of the year isn’t the best environment for getting out a largely unenthusiastic Remain vote.

However, there is also the opposite view, the ‘why do today what you can put off to tomorrow?’ option, that says 2017 is the right time to vote. To expand on the ideas already mentioned, it gives most time to negotiate more substantial concessions (partly because everyone will be sick and tired of it by then; even more than now) and to arrange the pieces to best effect.

But this also comes with great costs. 2017 is littered with electoral perils: most obviously, French and German elections that won’t lend themselves to the making of concessions. It also moves the UK a lot closer to the 2020 general election, which – you’ll remember – Cameron isn’t going to contest as party leader, so the Tory leadership election becomes ever more pressing. And, as 2015 has shown, events do get very much in the way: it’s hard to see how a repetition of this year’s migrant/refugee crisis can be avoided next summer, for example. And finally, everyone knows that the end of 2017 is a hard deadline for Cameron, so he has to hold his vote by then, so leaving it until much closer to then invites other parties to fail to concede ground, because he’ll probably have to take what’s on the table.

In short, 2017 looks like a rubbish option, even among the other not-good alternatives. so why does it keep on coming up?

The first thought is that this is partly a negotiation tactic. Cameron can occasionally float the notion of delay to scare/bore partners into trying to get a move on: no-one seems to like this sitting on the table, as Tusk’s letter this week highlighted. However, it’s a tactic that will only have diminishing returns, especially as the patience of others runs out (as this nice piece demonstrates).

The second thought is that this is some nefarious plan by sceptics, to run the whole process into the mud, where it can flounder (yes, I know that’s a mixed metaphor, but you know what I mean). Polly Toynbee suggested this version of events this week, although it did read as a rather paranoid view of events and one that required such a concerted effort on the part of the sceptics as to inspire some disbelief.

Which leaves a final possibility. If there’s no intentionality behind it, perhaps it’s just a reflection of the lack of strategic planning by Cameron, whose attitude to date has been one of making a silk purse from a sow’s ear. This explanation most closely matches what has already been seen so far; there’s scant evidence of a grand plan, only tactical responses to events. More personally, it also reflects my preference for what I now discover I should term Hanlon’s razor. How far Cameron can go with trying to make the best of a bad situation (of his own making) remains to be seen. Maybe until 2017.

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For most people observing – including myself - the existence of two major groupings on the Leave side of the referendum wasn’t really an issue. Arron Banks’ Leave.EU hasn’t looked nearly as serious a proposition as Vote Leave, either in terms of ideological breadth or of general respectability (however you’d like to define that). Vote Leave has been sober, serious and generally had the feel of an official campaigning group. A bit dull, but worthy of communicating that side of the discussion.

Obviously, someone’s had a meeting at some point in recent weeks and decided that being a bit dull wasn’t the right play.

Hence, Students for Britain’s heckling at David Cameron’s CBI speech earlier this week. The stunt got some coverage, but was actually more noteworthy for Vote Leave’s support in the organising it: as Robert Oxley, Vote Leave’s media head, said:

“We will be working together closely during the campaign to do more of these protests – particularly at the AGMs of big companies who try to scare the British people into voting to remain”

This is not unreasonable as a strategy, and certainly the CBI looks rather less able to push a strong pro-EU line after this week’s events, so the logic is not that tenuous.

However, it has had the unexpected side-effect of moving Eric Pickles to complain to the Electoral Commission that Vote Leave’s stated intention to campaign ‘nasty’ should disbar them from becoming the official group. Pickles is broadly sympathetic to Cameron’s approach, enough that Vote Leave chose to portray the complaint as a sign that Cameron’s team was rattled and trying to deflect attention from the general indifference to his letter to Donald Tusk, which spelled out the broad areas for negotiation.

Obviously, in all of this, there’s a lot of spinning going on, but a number of things look pretty clear.

The first is that Vote Leave are very confident about becoming the official grouping. In practice, the CBI heckle wasn’t the most intrusive of actions and one that can’t easily be replicated at AGMs, so the intention to ‘do more of these’ remains just that, an intention. Students for Britain might find that until the Electoral Commission makes its decision, there will be more planning than action.

The second is that Leave.EU continues to suffer from a comparative lack of media  and popular interest. Recall that bad publicity is better than no publicity at all (VW might disagree on this one), especially if it allows Vote Leave to communicate the impression that Cameron is actually concerned enough to try using a third party to halt them.

The third is that the Leave side will always enjoy benefits from its position as the change option. As much as the status quo carries great weight, being the challenger allows for such opportunistic approaches that speak to images of pluck and verve. The Remain campaign will never have a similar opportunity to the CBI heckling, precisely because none of the major meetings of economic or social actors have taken a sceptical stance to EU membership.However, ‘meeting agrees something’ isn’t nearly as good a headline as ‘hecklers disrupt meeting’.

All of this comes with a warning, however. While it is good to mix things up, Vote Leave will have to balance that with the risk that others paint them as being less than serious. The heckling might has raised the profile of those involved and the issues around the CBI’s stance, but that’s still a considerable distance from changing peoples’ minds about how to vote. And neither side have cracked that one yet.

The post The curious path of Vote Leave appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The point is that if I go and work in France, as an EU citizen I can expect the same rights as French workers there. If I go and work in Germany, I can expect the same working rights as Germans. If I live in Spain, I’ll have the same rights as Spanish workers. That’s the EU principle, and I believe it’s a good one.

And this affects many Britons; more than two million have moved to live in the rest of the EU. Not all of them for work, of course; but most of them.

The concept of ‘free movement of people’ would fall down if workers moving from one EU country to another were discriminated against and didn’t have equal working rights with the workers of the host country.

I don’t think it’s a difficult concept to grasp. But it seems to me that the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, simply didn’t understand this principle, until now.

One of the key reforms that Mr Cameron hoped to win from the European Union was to allow workers moving to the UK from the rest of the EU to have less rights than British workers.

If this was to be permitted, it would in my view undo the entire raison d’être of free movement of people. The domino effect of such a policy could mean the end of EU workers willingly and easily moving from one EU country to another.

If Britain could discriminate against Germans working in Britain, then of course it could mean British workers in Germany having less rights than German workers; and British workers in France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Belgium and so on being similarly discriminated against.

And what would be the point? I can’t find any.

Mr Cameron’s great reform idea was to discriminate against workers from the rest of EU by barring them from claiming any benefits for the first four years of their residency in the UK. That would be inequitable because British workers don’t have the same restrictions on claiming benefits.

Is there a real problem of EU workers claiming benefits? Not according to economist Jonathan Portes in his excellent blog yesterday for the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

As Mr Portes points out, EU migrants come to Britain primarily to work, and their employment rates are considerably higher than that of the native population or non-EU migrants.

Only 2.2% of welfare claimants in Britain are EU migrants – just 114,000 out of a total of just over 5 million benefit claimants.

The situation is somewhat different regarding tax credits – or ‘in work’ benefits for migrants, that Mr Cameron has described as the main problem. EU migrants make up around 7% of those claiming tax credits, so about proportionate to the numbers of EU migrants working here.

But is this actually a problem? Not really, states Mr Portes.

“People who are in work, even in low-paid jobs, are after all contributing to the economy in a variety of ways; most analysis suggests that EU migrants, overall, improve the fiscal position, both in the short and (more importantly) in the long run.”

Mr Cameron often argues that it’s unfair for EU migrants to arrive in the UK, start a job, and immediately begin to receive public funds in the form of tax credits, having made absolutely no prior contributions. But the situation is exactly the same for British citizens, who can start a job for the first time and immediately claim in-work benefits. .

It’s the same for all insurance-based systems. You could insure your home today, paying just the first month’s premium, and if your home burnt down tomorrow, you’d still get a pay-out, even though you hardly made any contributions.

Child benefit is also often cited by Mr Cameron as a problem because EU migrants here can claim benefits for children not even living in the UK. That, of course, was never the intention of the child benefit system.

However, as Mr Portes points out, “the parent(s) are working and paying tax here (by no means true of all UK parents) and the children are certainly overall less of a cost to UK taxpayers than if they were actually living here!”

Mr Cameron has stated that he wants to reduce EU migrants coming to Britain (I can’t imagine why, since most of them are in gainful employment and making a significant net contribution to the Treasury and Britain’s wealth).

But is our benefits system really a ‘pull factor’ for EU migrants coming to Britain in the first place? The evidence is that welfare systems don’t generally drive immigration, according to Mr Portes. Nobody from Eastern or Central Europe comes to Britain to claim benefits; they come here for employment.

When the European Commission asked the British government for evidence of so-called ‘benefit tourism’, three times the government failed to provide any.

According to Mr Cameron, however, “40% of all recent European Economic Area migrants are supported by the UK benefits system.” But the data to back up the Prime Minister’s claim has never been published; almost certainly a violation of the Code of Practice on official government statistics.

The fact checking organisation, FullFact, has already submitted a formal complaint to the UK Statistics Authority.

The government’s numbers “look very odd” according to Mr Portes. According to published research, only a very small number of EU migrants would be affected by Mr Cameron’s 4-year-ban-on-benefits, because most EU migrants claiming the benefit have already lived in the UK for more than four years.

The four-year-ban, since it would affect such a small number of EU migrants, would be unlikely to make any difference to the numbers of migrants coming here.

So why did Mr Cameron want to risk Britain leaving the EU for a problem that doesn’t exist, and a solution that would make no difference?

Yesterday’s front page of the Evening Standard stated, “Cameron ‘retreat’ over EU migrant benefits”. It appears that the Prime Minister has now acknowledged that he cannot, after all, secure a four-year ban on welfare benefits to EU citizens exercising their right to work in Britain.”

Mr Cameron was quoted as saying, “Now I understand how difficult some of these welfare issues are for other member states.”

Isn’t it a bit late for Mr Cameron to “understand”? Shouldn’t he “understand” the issues first, and how important or otherwise they are, before risking the country’s future membership of the EU on demands that he should have known are incompatible with the principles and function of the European Union?

I am not confident that our Prime Minister knows what he is doing. It could be his, and the country’s, undoing. 

*Join the discussion about this article on Facebook.

_______________________________________________

Related stories by Jon Danzig:

• Why is Britain so against migration?
• Fiddling whilst the rest of the world burns?
• The end of free movement to and from Europe?

_________________________________________________

• Comments are welcome – but please read ‘The rules of engagement’ 

Does @David_Cameron know what he’s doing on #EU reforms? Read and share my latest blog: https://t.co/YXdOONYd7C pic.twitter.com/qtzDT6WTvd

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) November 11, 2015

The post Does the Prime Minister know what he’s doing? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

‘Mein Europa’ – ‘My Europe’ – the book published by Helmut Schmidt only two years ago, was not a new monograph, but a collection of different publications and speeches on European integration. It spans a lifetime – from his very first article about cooperation in a not yet existing community dating from June 1948 to his editorials about the crisis-ridden Union of the 21st century published in Die Zeit.

‘His Europe’ was not a love affair. With the pragmatic realism that the Germans automatically identify with his beloved city Hamburg and therefore refer to as ‘hanseatic’, he often pointed out that there was no need to be a ‘European idealist’. For him it was perfectly sufficient to see just how much it has always been and still is in the ‘strategic interest’ of the Federal Republic of Germany to remain a staunch defender of European integration. He had a deep intellectual and personal admiration for Jean Monnet, and he shared the Frenchman’s belief in the ‘essential rationality of people’. Asked for a wish at the occasion of his 95th anniversary last year, he said ‘My wish is that the Germans understand that the European Union must be completed – rather than putting ourselves above it’.

He also never forgot what the young Federal Republic owed to Europe’s founding fathers: ‘In 1950, the Schuman Plan appeared to me as an undeserved stroke of luck for Germany’, he wrote in his 2008 memoirs entitled ‘Off duty’. While he had, as an anglophile from Northern Germany, much greater cultural affinity with Britain and the English language than with his French neighbours, he never tired of reminding his successors to keep in mind that they should do ‘nothing without France!’ And he cultivated, over almost half a century, a somewhat surprising friendship with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing based on mutual esteem and trust, despite their obvious differences in temper and upbringing.

Like his friend, with whom he institutionalised the European Council and introduced the European Monetary System, he was always tempted to criticise the lack of leadership in today’s EU. But he recognised of course that an EEC of nine member states, which had already been sufficiently difficult to manage, was a piece of cake compared to today’s Union of 28. With the freedom of thought of the elder statesman he repeatedly called for a ‘Putsch’ of the European Parliament in order to shake up an institutional framework he considered no longer appropriate.

Helmut Schmidt was the first German chancellor I voted for in 1980. Some of the convictions he represented at that time have been a guidance ever since. The firm belief that the greatest accomplishment of post-war Europe is the welfare state, for instance. Or the will not to put his sharp intelligence in the service of an ideology or party line, but to find strong ethical foundations in a few non-negotiable, fundamental values: ‘freedom’, ‘justice’ and ‘solidarity’, as he summed them up in his own lexical update of the French revolution’s legacy.

It is a sad coincidence that Helmut Schmidt, a lifelong friend of Britain and promotor of the UK’s role in the European Union, passed away on the same day when the British prime minister defiantly throws his four-point letter on the table. At the same time there is also some ironical comfort in the fact that Cameron’s letter and speech were entirely eclipsed in the German news by the memories of a great statesman. It’s a good lesson: the ones you remember fondly are those who stand up and defend their beliefs in adversity, those who contribute to daring undertakings rather than sulk in their corner. One of my favourites quotes in class when I speak about the creation of the European Union is the one from Shakespeare’s Julius Cesar with which Helmut Schmidt concluded his elegant speech at the Labour conference of November 1974 in Brighton:

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full tide are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

His Europe was one that took the current when it served, rather than losing its ventures.

Albrecht Sonntag, EU-Asia Institute,
ESSCA School of Management.
@Essca_Eu_Asia

The post His Europe appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

In a taste of what’s to come, two Eurosceptic students interrupted a speech by Prime Minister, David Cameron, at a CBI conference yesterday, yelling, “CBI! Voice of Brussels”.

The Daily Telegraph reported that the ‘Vote Leave’ campaign is “now gearing up for 12 months of protest, including disrupting the meetings of pro-EU companies and organisations.”

Their campaign director, Dominic Cummings, was reported to say:

“You think it’s nasty – you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

He promised a “guerrilla-style war” against pro-EU bodies and companies and said, “These guys have failed the country, they are going to be under the magnifying glass. Tough s**t.”

The two students who disrupted the Prime Minister’s speech obtained passes to the conference by setting up a fake company and website, reported The Telegraph.

The CBI has repeatedly been a target of Eurosceptics because they undertake paid research for the European Union.

In a Parliamentary debate earlier this year, Eurosceptic Tory MP, Bernard Jenkin, claimed that the CBI received funds from the European Union, “presumably to promote the EU.”

Added Eurosceptic Tory MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg: “We know that the CBI is in part funded by Europe. It is therefore under an obligation either to return that money or to support the objectives of the European Union.”

But the CBI robustly rejected the allegations.

Their Director of Campaigns, Andy Bagnall, told me, “We strongly refute these misleading claims. The EU debate has a long way to go and both sides must base their arguments on the facts if they are to have any value at all.”

Rain Newton-Smith, the CBI’s Director of Economics, added that the organisation competitively tenders to provide the EU with economic data and that this represented just 0.6% of the CBI’s total annual income.

She told me, “The CBI is under no obligation to promote the EU. We speak on behalf of our 190,000 members who employ nearly 7 million people and while the majority wish to remain within a reformed EU, we do not shy away from criticising aspects of European legislation where necessary.

And Ken Clarke, former Justice Secretary and a co-President of British Influence, wrote to say:

“It is really absurd for hard-line Eurosceptics to argue that the CBI is being bribed by Brussels to support British membership of the EU. Anyone who knows any number of senior businessmen knows that the vast majority strongly believe in the benefits of membership.”

According to the latest opinion polls, Britain is split right down the middle on whether the country should remain a member of the European Union or leave. A poll by Survation for the Daily Mail this autumn revealed that the electorate was 51/49 against Britain’s continued membership of the EU.

The poll revealed a stark difference to a poll by Ipso Mori at the beginning of the summer, which claimed that 75% of British people were in favour of Britain’s continued membership of the EU, with only 25% wanting to leave.

That’s all now changed, according to some commentators, because of Europe’s mishandling of the refugee crisis.

The new poll revealed that if the “current migration crisis gets worse”, 22% of those wanting Britain to ‘Remain’ in the EU might switch to the ‘Leave’ campaign.

So there is everything to play for by both sides of the campaign. If the new poll is right, neither side currently has enough support for a decisive win, so both sides will have to work harder. No wonder things are getting desperate.

But is ‘getting nasty’ the way to win hearts and minds, and most importantly, votes? Wouldn’t a more calm, considered and edifying debate, where both sides listen carefully and politely to both sides of the argument, be in the best interests of the country?

After all, whether Britain remains in the EU or leaves, we’ll all still have to live with each other after the referendum result is announced.

So wouldn’t it be better for the referendum campaign to be civil, rather than to become a civil war?

*Join the discussion about this article on Facebook.

_______________________________________________

Related stories by Jon Danzig:

• Many most affected by the EU referendum will have no vote
• The rich who want Britain out of Europe
• There must be 50 ways to leave your party

_________________________________________________

• Comments are welcome – but please read ‘The rules of engagement’ 

The post EU Referendum: ‘It’s going to get nasty’ appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

From 21 to 25 September 2015 the bi-annual Congress of the German Association for Political Science (DVPW) took place at the University of Duisburg in Western Germany. More than 800 participants attended the event. As one of these participants, three observations seemed to be of particular interest to me.

First, in comparison to the previous congress in Tübingen, in 2013, the proportion of international papers and paper-givers had hugely increased and gave the conference a much more international atmosphere than before.

Second, while grass-roots democracy is very much alive in this association, it is not always to the advantage of its membership! The elections of the new Chair and Committee of Governors was one such example where meddling behind the scenes and public anger about it clashed in the general assembly. It took six hours to get to the elections only to find two hours later that the newly elected Chair, Michael Zürn, had already resigned! Highly divisive, in this assembly the good and great of German political science dismantled each other to a degree that the new Committee of Governors, which remained in place after the resignation of the chair, decided only to stay for one year, rather than the normal three years, and use that time mainly to revise electoral procedures in the DVPW. They will surely consider online voting, such as in other big academic organisations such as the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES), but one way or another it will be a lost year for making the DVPW more relevant through more internationalisation, for example.

Thirdly, during the 5 days of the congress, there was a wide thematic variety of panels, from political economy to international politics and environmental policies. Most of these panels touched in their contents on the most important political phenomenon of our time, the European Union, but hardly any mentioned it by name or saw the importance of European Union aspects in their particular analyses.There was only one silver lining on the horizon, the Working Group for (European) Integration, but with about 10 people in the audience this remained a side-line panel. Quite curious for a political science association…

The question arises whether German political science is so inward-looking now that it doesn’t even notice European integration any more. In other words: does it mean that the famous ‘re-nationalisation’ of politics in Europe is not only conducted by governments but also by researchers? It is perhaps a sign of our time in which the EU seems to drift more and more into oblivion while at the same time it is becoming increasingly needed for key policies, such as the refugee crisis.

Thomas Hoerber, EU-Asia Institute,
ESSCA School of Management

The post Don’t mention the EU! appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Political progress needs to happen faster in Palestine. At the moment, the greatest concern in the country is the Gaza crisis, and the only source of hope has been economic development. But how far can economic development really drive the peace process in Gaza, and a solution that is long-lasting and beneficial to both Israel and Palestine? With a more democratic nation, Palestinians can be in charge of their own land’s development, can contribute to the economy self-sufficiently, and this shift in perspectives in the country can drive the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) closer to home for the EU because it has acted as an important reason for the EU supporting Palestine and it’s agendas, it’s demands for a very long time now.

More support from the EU can only be expected if Palestine manages to tidy up its democratic roots nationally, can assure security and stability in the region and in the country, as well as implement regular good governance. Humanitarian assistance and government-expenditure support is not inclusive to political mishaps that have become the norm in the country, but is that really a good outlook for Palestine for the long run? Political instability and a burden on security issues because of faltering dogmatic concepts, is crating a lot of hardship in the country. The EU over the last ten years has been looked unfavorably in the Middle East, so if this policy shift takes place it can be looked as a two-way street: it is going to benefit both Palestine and the EU, if the latter engages in fair dialogue, with the former and this is inclusive of more other important matters in the region.

One of the key issues that needs to be looked into is that Palestine needs to earn more of an international presence than it does so presently. Israel and Palestine share an unequal global status, and this is happening as there is no deadline in sight for a two-state solution. Palestine is almost always at the receiving end of a faltering economy, so there is always a good amount of skepticism thrown in attitudes towards external powers interested in the peace process. The economy is faltering because of Israel’s restrictive measures on Palestine in the name of greater regional security. What should be viewed as political intervention that breeds financial collapse for the country, is merely looked upon as a leeway to commercialization of standards inside Palestine.

There is not much infrastructure, and the condition of public services is constantly deteriorating, unemployment levels, especially in the Gaza Strip has reached a 41percent and poverty has hit a 39percent, according to 2014 estimates. Public consumption is dependent on what Israel allows into Palestine, and this is not just for resources; there is a restriction on free movement for Palestinians in the West Bank because Israel does not seem interested in it. Where resources are concerned there has been a lack of construction raw materials, a fluctuating manufacturing trade sector and a light industry that does not do much.

Financial support to poverty-stricken people and public sector salaries is what helps Palestinians pay for basic amenities in a country that is only fully-functional as a state. But there needs to be progress from that level of basic consumption for the general public because right now aid from EU is the only thing that is keeping Palestine from sinking. The private sector in the Gaza Strip is not really working all too well for Palestine and this is really nothing more than an untapped area of national resources: agriculture and investment in projects, are multiple capitals that can really drive home greater income tax generation and revenues.

The post Palestine: Where To Go From A Regular Diplomacy? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The country has a chronic skills shortage and without migrants helping to fill that gap, Britain – and Britons – would be poorer.

Britain now has more people at work than ever before. We also have a record number of job openings – around 750,000 vacancies in August alone. It’s no wonder that in line with that, immigration from the rest of Europe is also at a record high.

Why? Because migrants mostly come to Britain for jobs, and if there were not so many jobs, there would be little reason to come here, and therefore, not so many migrants.

Of course, none of this is any consolation to the 1.77 million people currently unemployed. But unfortunately, many of the unemployed do not have the skills now needed by employers. Britain, of course, should be spending billions in upskilling our workers, and especially the unemployed.

Similarly, we shouldn’t blame migrants that parts of the country lack sufficient schools, hospitals, homes, or that many are struggling on zero-hour contracts. For that, we should blame our political masters.

It’s too easy for the government to scapegoat migrants for our problems, when the fact is that without migrants, the country would be poorer. If all migrants went home, we wouldn’t have more schools, hospitals and homes. We would simply have a bigger shortage of teachers, doctors, nurses and builders.

In the meantime, British businesses are hungry for more skilled workers. Without them, our economy would stagnate and die. That, actually, is one way to stem the flow of migration to Britain – to trash our economy. But who would seriously advocate such a policy?

The fact that Britain now has record numbers at work, record numbers of vacancies, and unemployment at a 7-year-low of 5.4%, is a sure sign that the country is steadily climbing out of its economic downturn. And helping to propel that recovery are migrants, most of whom are in gainful employment, working hard, paying taxes and spending most of their earnings here, in Britain.

And yet, Britain still doesn’t have enough workers to fill the profound skills gap the country is facing.

Yes, of course, we should be training more people.

But in the meantime, the government has compiled a long list of skills the country needs – now, urgently. It’s called the UK Shortage Occupation List. We need, for example:

Scientists, such as geologists; nuclear medicine experts; mechanical engineers, such as for the oil and gas industries; electronic engineers for the motoring industry; software developers for 2D/3D animation; contaminated land specialists; medical practitioners, such as psychiatrists, anaesthetics and radiographers; specialist intensive care nurses; maths and science teachers; social workers; contemporary dancers; orchestral musicians; overhead lines workers; skilled chefs..

..And the list goes on and on. Skilled workers that the country needs now.

In addition, many farms, catering establishments, hotels, care homes and builders categorically state that they simply could not survive, let alone thrive, without EU migrants. Not because they are cheaper (can you really find a cheap Polish plumber these days?). No. It’s because these establishments have more vacancies to fill than British people either can or want to fill.

Eurosceptics say they are not against migration, but want the country to have fewer migrants, and to be able to choose who can come here, based on the skills needed. And they don’t want EU migrants to come here unless they have a job in advance.

But that just creates another bureaucratic barrier to EU migrants coming here at all. And in any event, the country already does choose which migrants to employ – the decision is made by British businesses, who want the right to choose their workforce from across our continent.

If an EU migrant can’t come here without having a job first, then chances are they will go to another country, and help their economy instead. That will be our loss.

EU regulations state that any EU citizen can move to another EU country to seek a job, so long as they have the means to look after themselves and don’t become a burden to the state. And what’s wrong with that? If they come here and don’t find a job, they usually go back home.

It’s a Daily Mail myth that migrants can simply come here and immediately start claiming benefits. It simply isn’t true.

The fact is that most migrants here have jobs; jobs that British businesses desperately need them to do. Britons shouldn’t complain – especially since more Britons are now in work than ever before. Migrants are not taking the jobs our unemployed could do. Migrants are coming here mostly to do the jobs that Britons can’t all do.

*Join the discussion about this article on Facebook.

_______________________________________________

Related stories by Jon Danzig:

• Why is Britain so against migration?
• Fact: Most migrants come to work or study
• The free movement of people: it works both ways

_________________________________________________

#Britain needs #migrants because of a chronic skills shortage. Read and share my blog today: https://t.co/Yfiz0ZThBw pic.twitter.com/kcBykzUgTi

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) November 8, 2015

• Comments are welcome – but please read ‘The rules of engagement’ 

The post Why Britain needs migrants appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

All aboard the two-level train to a Federal Superstate. Or not.

One of the staples of academic understanding of the EU is the notion of the two-level game. The idea – first articulated by Robert Putnam - is simply that there are situations where you can only understand an actor’s intentions and actions in one game/interaction if you also accept that these intentions and actions are shaped by their involvement in other games. Putnam was interested in the entanglement of international and national political arenas, so it’s not so surprising that EU scholars have taken to using the approach, since the tensions we find in European-level negotiations are often only understandable if we know the domestic pressures that national representatives are facing.

Central to this model are those representatives, since they connect the two level. Thus they function as conduits, as well as gatekeepers, since the relevant pressures at both levels might not be public knowledge. Most importantly, they work as arbitrators, trying to find acceptable compromises to trade off the array of interests and pressures. As an aside, we might note that this has the practical implication of strengthening national executives, as they are usually the representatives, and so can use European-level negotiations to out-manouver legislative and civil society elements.

It’s helpful to look at the UK’s renegotiation-n-referendum exercise in the light of this model, because it doesn’t yet fit very neatly.

Undoubtedly, the key driver is domestic politics: as I’ve long argued, David Cameron’s European policy is no more than a function of internal party management, framing by a broad desire to pursue the path of least resistance. The referendum commitment itself still looks like a misguided effort to put his backbenchers back into their box, at a time when a Tory victory in May 2015 looked less than likely.

This isn’t inconsistent with Putnam’s model, but where there is an issue is in the nature of the European level.

George Osborne’s speech to the German BDI this week was a case in point. While the BBC and other British media providers tagged along and provided copious amounts of coverage, the lack of German media interest was palpable: beyond some wire reports, none of the major German providers ran with the story.

This might be partly explained by the continuing failure of Osborne/the UK to provide any real detail of the renegotiation objectives – the least possibly alluring Dance of the Seven Veils – but it also reflects the general indifference in other member states – and, by extension, in much of the EU – to what Cameron is trying to do.

As we roll around to the end of the first six months of this government, the persistent impression from other member states has been that this is a British problem, that the British government has to sort out. The most telling comment around Osborne’s came from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg: “German govt source ‘Osborne must have his crusade… We are happy to play along’”

Evidently, the inability of the government to provide any detail on its demands only reinforces this dynamic, since it conveys the impression that the key issue is whether the Tory party leadership can ‘sell’ the renegotiation package to their backbench and to the public, rather than any particular matter of principle.

The challenge to the UK then is this: do national representatives still maintain their gatekeeping function?

At a functionally level, they still do, but the increased awareness of what’s happening in the other arena of negotiation makes it ever harder for them to play an arbitration role. All of the key British negotiation team are being closely watched at home for any sign of weakness or duplicity – even in the most tenuous of ways - with the very presence of the referendum given them cause to be concerned about displeasing too many people. Likewise, the very public nature of the British debate – again, causing in part by a government that won’t set a clear agenda – means that other member states have a good fix on what Cameron’s bottom-line will be.

In short, the space for the British government to build space between the two levels is getting smaller, rather than larger. Even the broad construction of the four key areas is under constant challenge, as both British and European voices try to close down particular interpretations or approaches.

Strikingly, the situation looks to be rather asymmetric, in that British visibility of the domestic constraints in European counterparts looks to be much weaker than vice-versa. This manifests itself in a number of ways, but again Osborne’s speech gives us an insight into the problems.

Osborne knows enough that his speech needed to be framed in more positive language than that of simple demands. To read the text is to see an approach that stresses collective benefits of both EU membership and reform for Germany and the UK. This message – that British intentions are actually good for the whole EU – make clear sense in building alliances of support, but they only get made outside of the UK: Domestically, the rhetoric is about fighting for British interests (whatever that might mean). And, unsurprisingly, that domestic rhetoric is heard outside of the UK.

In essence, the British renegotiation looks more and more like a single-level exercise for the UK. Unless and until the government can come to a public statement of its intentions from the exercise, the only people it’s really negotiating with are themselves.

The post Can the UK still play a two-level game in the EU? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The literature on European environmental policy has rapidly expanded over the last ten years. Between 2010 and 2015, there were over seven hundred articles about the European Union and environmental policy, compared to only two hundred and fifty articles between 2000 and 2005.[1] Ironically, given its focus, much of this literature is written outside of the major European studies journals.[2]  However, it is important to study the topics and approaches that environmental policy scholars use when publishing in European studies journals because of the key role these journals play in the field.[3] Therefore, in this post I explore environmental policy articles in two of these journals: the Journal of European Public Policy (JEPP) and the Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS).[4] JEPP and JCMS were chosen because they “play an integrating function by holding the various subfields of EU studies together”.[5]

To keep the analysis manageable, I examined environmental policy articles in JEPP and JCMS that were published between January 2010 and October 2015. I searched article titles and keywords for environmental topics, which led to a total of thirty-six articles in both journals (eleven in JCMS and twenty five in JEPP). This amounts to approximately 4% of the articles published in these two journals during this time.[6] I then categorized the articles along two dimensions: the environmental issue studied (“climate change” or “other environmental issues”[7]) and whether the article dealt with internal EU/European policy or the EU’s external policy in international negotiations.

The results of this analysis are shown below (the full list of articles is available here). Eleven articles focus on EU/European internal climate change policy (including the EU Emissions Trading System and the Biofuels Directive). Nine focus on the EU’s role in international climate negotiations, six on external EU environmental policy more generally , and ten on internal non-climate policy.

Environmental policy articles in JEPP and JCMS (2010-2015), categorized according to environmental issue and internal/external focus

What this matrix does not show is the relationship between these thirty-six articles. Here I focus on one aspect: the references that the articles cite in common. The articles being studied here cited a total of 1,702 references. Of these, 127 (~7%) were cited by more than one article.[8] I used this data to analyze when two articles cited the same source, and created a network visualization from the results.

JEPP/JCMS environmental policy articles, connected by the number of shared references

I followed this with a “network density” analysis, which looks at the percentage of articles that are connected to each other. The highest possible network density is 100%, if every article shared at least one reference with every other article. A network density of 0%, on the other hand, would mean that none of the articles shared any references in common.

The overall density of the thirty-six article network is 25%. When the analysis focuses only on climate change articles, the density is slightly higher (28%), while environmental and internal policy articles are lower than average (19% and 23% respectively). The real outlier is the external policy category, which has a much higher density, at 51% (see figure below).

JEPP/JCMS article categories, percentage of articles in each category which share at least one reference

The higher density of the external policy articles can also be shown by visualizing the network again and color coding the articles according to the internal/external dimension:

JEPP/JCMS environmental policy articles, connected by the number of shared references. Categorized into internal policy (blue) and external policy (red)

What explains the difference? One important factor seems to be that there are more central, influential references in the external policy category. For example, the internal EU policy category has eighteen sources tied for top citations, all with three articles citing each. In contrast, scholars working on external policy are more likely to cite the same articles. Especially influential is Ian Manners’ 2002 article on the EU’s international position as a “normative power” in international negotiations.[9]

Concluding thoughts

The articles I have analyzed make up a small percentage of those on European environmental policy, and an equally small percentage of the articles published in JEPP and JCMS. Therefore it isn’t clear whether the patterns identified here are representative of the entire literature on European environmental policy, or are only a feature of JEPP and JCMS articles.

Regardless, a few key points should be highlighted. This group of articles has a strong focus on climate change and the EU’s role as a negotiator in international institutions. What drives the focus on these topics? It could be a product of scholars’ interest, or alternatively due to choices made by the journals’ editors to accept certain types of research.

The network analysis suggests that the scholars publishing articles on the EU external environmental policy are more likely to cite from similar sources than scholars working on EU internal policy. There are a number of possibilities to explain this. One is that as a more recent field of inquiry, external policy-focused scholars are more likely to cite more references in common.

Finally, focusing on the big picture, this analysis has made me realize the sheer extent and variety of the literature on European environmental policy. As the field grows, this suggests that scholars working on these issues could reflect once again on this diversity and work to find connections between their work.

[1] Based on a search carried out in the Scopus database for documents with “environmental policy” and “European Union” in the title, abstract, or keywords, carried out on October 29, 2015 for the 2010-2015 time period (742 results), and on October 31 for the 2000-2005 time period (251 results).

[2] The top five journals were Energy Policy, Science of the Total Environment, Climate Policy, Land Use Policy, and Environmental Policy and Governance.

[3] Jensen, M.D., Kristensen, P.M., 2013. The elephant in the room: mapping the latent communication pattern in European Union studies. Journal of European Public Policy.

[4] Other European studies journals include European Union Politics, West European Politics, the Journal of European Integration, and the Journal of Contemporary European Studies.

[5] Jensen, M.D., Kristensen, P.M., 2013. The elephant in the room: mapping the latent communication pattern in European Union studies. Journal of European Public Policy, pg. 1. doi:10.1080/13501763.2012.699656

[6] 36 environmental policy articles out of a total of 940 articles (as of October 29, 2015).

[7] “Other environmental issues” included articles that focused on a non-climate topic (such as fisheries management) as well as those that looked at a broad range of issues (including climate change).

[8] This figure is an estimate based on the references available on Scopus. It should be considered an underestimate, due to the fact that some types of documents (e.g., European Commission communications) are relatively likely to be counted as distinct sources by the database.

[9] Manners, I., 2002. Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms? JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 40, 235–258. doi:10.1111/1468-5965.00353

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A guest contribution by Başak Alpan,
from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara.

Here’s one of the few good things about being a political science professor in Turkey: elections are never only boring econometrical calculations that no one is interested in, but each election gives you an ample amount of shock, perplexity, and challenge to cope with.

The parliamentary elections of 1st November are no exception to this rule. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), as a surprise to even its own cadres, increased its vote from 40 % to 49% compared to the previous elections on 7 June, which had been repeated due to the stalemate in coalition negotiations. For the opponents of the government, it was one more occasion of shock, perplexity and challenge.

Some 70 000 of them – mainly middle-class, educated, urban political activists – had decided to be more than just voters and bystanders. They had volunteered for the civic oversight of elections under the umbrella of the civic movement named ‘Vote and Beyond’.

‘Vote and beyond’ – the civic movement’s emblem.

‘Vote and Beyond’, which started as a movement in Istanbul in December 2013 (in the aftermath of Gezi Protests) became an association in April 2014. They have since become organised in half of the 81 provinces and were active in observing ballot boxes in the March 2014 local elections, August 2014 presidential elections and June 2015 parliamentary elections, aiming to make sure that the elections are realised impartially and without any rig.

The variety of volunteers that make up this movement gives evidence to the ‘shock-perplexity-challenge’ theorem mentioned above: there are social democrats, unwavering seculars sick of the conservative regime, anti-capitalist Muslims, liberals who have more recently been disenchanted with the AKP, socialists who struggle for peace and democracy, and more. According to a widely shared, self-ironical tweet, the political context in Turkey has become so surreal that it even turned previously poststructuralist anarchists into staunch guardians of elections.

As a member of this movement, I was an election observer in Ulubey yesterday, one of the relatively poor districts in Ankara. As I was travelling there along the misty hills of Ankara, I was aware of the fact that I would be meeting with a pre-dominantly conservative AKP electorate. The polling commission welcomed me, and during the nine hours I spent in the primary school classroom used as a polling station, we chatted, laughed, argued and exchanged views.

The inhabitants of Ulubey, however, had a different life agenda: they were concerned with the recent urban regeneration projects that would have a direct impact on their dwellings, and very upset about the influx of Syrian refugees to the district due to affordable rents and living conditions. ‘We were not even locking our doors here before the migrants arrived’, one of the voters said. Note that all these highly political issues were however extremely personalised and bore no immediate connection to any political party or governmental policy. It simply was about their lives and their neighbourhood.

Still, at the end of the day, it became apparent that 68 per cent of the electorate of our classroom had voted for the AKP. The Guardian was right when it claimed after the Ankara bombings and their 102 victims on 10 October that even pain cannot bridge the current polarisation in Turkish society between conservatives and progressives. But that does not change the fact that any political dissident living in Turkey today has to pass that bridge every single day. Before wrapping yourself up into your daily self-induced, anti-government, dissident utopia, you buy your bread from a pro-AKP bakery, you take a cab with a pro-Erdoğan radio channel blasting; you live your life surrounded by them. They are normal people with normal lives, dreams, desires, feelings and experiences. It is just that they have different priorities and abstraction levels.

This is what we need to theorise and address if we really want to claim that another world is possible for Turkey.

Başak Alpan is Assistant Professor
in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration
at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara.

The French version of this post can be found in the ‘Mails from Europe’ series,
on the homepage of the EU-Asia Institute at ESSCA School of Management.

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For decades, the global human rights community has seen human rights as a matter of law, mostly international law. Economic, social and cultural rights, however, are meant to be progressively realized making use of all available resources. The violations approach and the work on their justiciability do not address the structural factors that constrain the enjoyment of these rights. Human rights are about policy and politics as much as about law. There is room for human rights advocacy outside and beyond the limits of the law.

Abstract of a chapter by Koldo Casla in Can human rights bring social justice?, book edited by Amnesty International Netherlands in the Changing Perspectives on Human Rights collection.

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The summer holiday season is over and everyone are back at work. Many people have taken a plane to somewhere nice, sunny and warm or driven to a faraway destination or been on a road trip. Yet this leisure travel, which we take for granted has a negative impact the environment. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t go on holiday, but how many stop up and consider the environmental impact of our leisure travel! Although, airlines will ask us if we want to offset our carbon emission, it does not prevent us from flying, indeed paying a few euros to offset our emission has the same feel good effect as buying dark organic fair trade chocolate. This clearly begs the question of how to adopt more sustainable transport behavior.

From a sustainable mobility perspective it is important to make a distinction between transport needs and wants. Basic transport needs are defined as transport to work, education, health facilities and food shopping[i], by comparison transport wants are defined as leisure travel, which include going to the gym/sport, socialising and visiting family. Crucially holidays and weekend breaks, where people might choose to fly, are clearly a transport want not a transport need. The distinction between transport needs and wants is tied into the principle of free movement, which most of us take for granted, and which is central to any democratic state. Indeed free movement (goods, persons, services and capital) is integral to the EU.

Our daily transport pattern is determined by the distance between home and work/education, our working hours, the opening hours and location of children’s daycare/school and availability of public transport or road network. Here the structure of our lives influence our mobility patterns, as such we have limited agency over our daily mobility compared to our leisure travel, where we have more agency to choice how we would like to spend our time. The choices we make in terms of our leisure travel, i.e. transport wants, is just as important as our choice of how to meet our transport needs as leisure travel contribute negatively towards the environment.

During the summer, there are queues on the German autobahn and on the motorways in France as people choose their car as the main mode of transport for their summer holiday, this not only puts pressure on the infrastructure but also impact the environment negatively. During the summer charter flights take people to their holiday destinations although, some people choose a staycation to explore their own country.

Crucially, we decide how we want to spend our leisure time this agency is not available in our daily lives. Yet how many make decisions about where to go on holiday based on how much their holiday will impact the environment? Most holiday decisions are made based on affordability and personal interests e.g. beach versus active, city versus country versus sea holidays.

In August I took the train to Munich from Roskilde (town near Copenhagen). My decision to take the train for this leisure travel was influenced by three factors. Firstly, it was a question of which transport mode pollutes the least here the train had clear benefits[ii] (see figure below). Second it was a question of avoiding taking 2 days off work for travelling, although the train journey is 11 hours compared to 1 hour and 40 minutes by plane, there is no security checks and waste time in the airport instead you get on the train in the morning and start working. I chose comfort over speed. Third, the economic cost of travelling by train and plane were the same.  The option of driving was not part of my decision-making, and as the figure shows cars, and road vehicles in general, are the most polluting modes of transport. Significantly, road transport account for around 83 percent of all passenger transport in EU28. Thus, how can we change our travel behaviour and what are the politicians doing to encourage more environmental conscious transport behaviour?

One idea would be to introduce an individual carbon footprint, similar to the existing EU Emission Trading System. Whilst the introduction of individual carbon footprint would be an effective method to help people quantify their emission[iii], it is not an idea supported at the political level on the contrary restricting personal mobility contradicts the EU principles of free movements. Significantly, the past 30 years of liberalization of transport modes have encouraged more travel, especially cheap air travel, which has increased our personal agency in terms of leisure travel. Several EU member states are currently planning to invest in new high speed railways and new road networks to facilitate the increased demand for travel. Importantly, new infrastructure investment will give us more choice and encourage more travel. Yes, some national policies attempts to regulate transport behaviour through pricing, e.g. making public transport cheap. The theme for the annual EU mobility week (18-22 September 2015) is multimodality, which encourages people to think about their patterns of mobility and explore new means of travelling but does not integrate the environmental dimension.

Overall, policies seem to encourage and support increased level of mobility due to demand, these policies do not solve the environmental crisis. Thus, there is a need for alternative ideas about a future more sustainable transport paradigm to emerge and challenge the current paradigm, here personal agency is important not only for changing transport behaviour but also for making sure alternative ideas are put to the fore of the political debate.

[i] Holden, E., K. Linnderud and D. Banister (2013) ”Sustainable Passenger Transport: Back to Brundtland” Transportation Research Part A  volume 54, pp. 67-77

[ii] http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?application=ECOLOGYINFO&start=1&dbkanal_007=L01_S01_D001_KIN0001_qf-umwelt_LZ003&S=M%FCnchen+Hbf&REQ0JourneyStopsSID=&Z=Hoeje+Taastrup+st&REQ0JourneyStopsZID=A%3D1%40O%3DHoeje+Taastrup+st%40X%3D12268801%40Y%3D55648621%40U%3D80%40L%3D008601031%40B%3D1%40p%3D1438767591%40&date=Mo%2C+10.08.15&time=09%3A00&timesel=depart&returnTimesel=depart&qf.mobil.button.umweltmobilcheck=1

[iii] For a discussion of individualisation of carbon offsetting see Paterson, M & j. Stripple (2010) “My Space: governing individuals’ carbon emissions” Environmental & Planning D: Society and Space vol 28, no 2 pp 341-362

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According to information provided by the Polish development aid programme Polish Aid, Moldova is the country with a low level of GDP growth and of the other development indicators. “It is one of the most impoverished countries in Europe, largely dependent on foreign aid. Despite good reforms, the economy is based on monoculture, which makes it prone to economic fluctuations and export limitations. A serious problem for the Moldovan economy is its dependence on Russian supplies of raw materials and the existence of the internationally unrecognized Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic/Transnistria[1].” Nevertheless, despite economic problems, Moldova has built its position among the Eastern Partnership (the EaP) countries as the country, which wants to follow EU’s good governance objectives and applies reforms within the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy. However, situation in Moldova within its government and corruption scandal, where, according to the national Central Bank, three Moldovan financial institutions granted unknown loans for a total of around €1 billion, just before the parliamentary elections in November 2014, significantly have undermined the EU relation with Moldova.

The importance of Moldova’s current situation cannot be neglected by the EU because of several reasons, which do not only include economic and security issues, but point the stability and success of the Eastern Partnership policy. EU’s activity in Eastern region has been undermined in almost all countries belonging to the EaP and consequently, make this region a crucial area of its foreign policy. Whereas conducting policy coordination in Ukraine is strongly determined by the current political situation with Russia, in Armenia and Azerbaijan the situation mainly derived from their current political attitude. Armenia actively demonstrated willingness to cooperate with Brussels until September 2013 when President Serzh Sargsyan announced that closer ties with the EU was no longer on his agenda. In October 2014, Armenia became a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, thereby joining Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Azerbaijan negotiated an Association Agreement with the EU but then resigned from the idea and proposed an alternative strategic modernisation partnership[2]. In Belarus, almost no EU’s technical assistance projects are provided (except of TAIEX) due to the political situation of the country and a little desire in developing democracy rules. Thus, only Georgia remains still the partner country which cooperates with the EU without any major disruptions and follows to implement bilateral institution-building programmes designed to improve supporting internal institutional and economic reforms.

Moldova still is, along with Georgia and Ukraine, the country which integrates most of EU’s technical assistance programmes provided within the EaP policy, although it has proved that once established pro-EU approach may not last forever. After last parliamentary elections in November 2014, the most pro-European parties, the Democratic Party and the Liberal Democratic Party, established a minority government, which surprisingly supported the pro-Russia Communist Party. In return, the Democrats limited their reform plans. Clearly, no one wants to deny democratically selected representatives, but the new political landscape somehow has indicates changes which in the long-term perspective may be significant in terms of Moldovan society’s approach towards the EU. Elections constitute the most visible opinion about a political shape of state and should be treated as a relevant reflection of future possible social-political scenarios. Thus, despite the still existing majority of pro-European parties in the government, the strongest party in the parliament after last elections in 2014 became the pro-Russian Socialist Party (PSRM), which increased support among voters demonstrates some important shift in citizens’ thinking- rapprochement to the Eurasian Economic Union instead of the EU. This has to be a signal for EU officials to upgrade and reform its attitude towards Moldova and in particular, to its society. While the government’s pro-EU support is definitely a crucial thing to implement desired internal reforms, it is even more important first to express those interests to people and make them aware of common norms and values promoted through the EaP bilateral and multilateral cooperation.

Refreshed two-sided approach towards Moldova, namely towards its high government officials and citizens should have the same high priority within the EU agenda as other initiatives within the framework of the Eastern Partnership policy. Although, the financial aspect constitutes a difficult part to re-negotiate in any of agreed EU policies, the additional activities within the society should be strongly encouraged in Moldovan government by the EU. “For many in Moldova, the Russian civilizational model is the only one they are accustomed to; relatively few appreciate and take advantage of visa-free travel to Europe. The EU needs to address its failure in communicating with populations in the Eastern neighborhood, and more effectively promote its intentions and values[3]”. Thus, as Moldova still represents pro-EU attitude in its parliament, the joint cooperation should first of all improves country’s bottom-up approach. Every single technical assistance project promoted by the EU in Eastern countries has its crucial implementation phase at the subordinate levels, which includes individuals responsible for managing accepted reforms and requires their active role in applying new norms and rules. Their attitude may prevail over the policy outcome.

According to Aline Robert (2015), “the official differentiation between the two groups (Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus) is a logical step in the evolution of relations since the Vilnius summit. During this period, the EU has provided massive financial support to Ukraine, and to a lesser extent to Moldova and Georgia. The three other countries do not have access to the same levels of financial aid, which is mainly used to support the education and judicial systems, as well as for economic development”[4]. Thus, the alternative solution proposed by Russia in the form of the Eurasian Union, established in January 2015, should be seen as a sign for the EU to strengthen its relations with Eastern partners through more individualistic approach which responds to the actual political position of each country. Although, Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia have been offered by the Eurasian Economic Union a membership, all three countries opted for the European Union[5]. Hopefully, this will remain Moldova’s the most important goal in its foreign policy.

Some parts of this post come from my master thesis on: “Technical Assistance” in EU foreign policy: to support good governance in the European Neighbourhood Policy. Polish aid in the preparation and implementation of the EU’s Eastern Partnership policy.

[1] https://www.polskapomoc.gov.pl/Moldova,187.html

[2] Azerbaijan is not a member of Eurasian Custom Union, but it is possible that it may happen despite the cooperation with the EU, which currently is rather limited. The economic situation of this partner country to the EU situates its position between those two integration organisations.

[3] Inayeh, A. and Panainte, S. 2015. “The EU and Moldova: How to Liberate a Captured State”, http://www.gmfus.org/blog/2015/06/16/eu-and-moldova-how-liberate-captured-state#sthash.X2z4LGjQ.dpuf

[4] Robert, A. 2015. “Two tier Eastern Partnership on the table at Riga summit.” EurActiv.com, http://www.euractiv.com/sections/europes-east/two-tier-eastern-partnership-table-riga-summit-314726

[5] However, break-away regions, so-called “frozen conflicts” with Russia, of Moldova (Transnistria), Ukraine (Donetsk and Lugansk) and Georgia (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) have expressed a desire to join the Eurasian Customs Union and integrate into the Eurasian Economic Union.

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The real European Games have only just begun: Finding the right approach on Azerbaijani prisoners of conscience. By Eske van Gils

Last June, Baku hosted the first European Games with much grandeur. Azerbaijan spent great amounts on the Games (dubbed by locals as ‘the Games for Europeans’) and wanted to put the country positively on the map. Yet, it seems that the real European Games have only just begun. On 11 September the European Parliament submitted a motion for a resolution condemning the deterioration of the human rights situation in Azerbaijan. The motion has already caused much uproar in bilateral relations, with Azerbaijan threatening to re-consider its participation in the Eastern Partnership; and once again brings the EU’s value promotion policy into the spotlights. However, Brussels and Baku appear to be playing different games. While the EU believes they are involved in a round of disciplinary hide and seek, Baku smiles and runs away in a game of catch me if you can.

The motion was submitted following a number of new convictions of journalists and activists who were critical of the Azerbaijani government; many more preceded them. The resolution calls on the Azerbaijani government to respect human rights (regarding a range of issues), and on other EU institutions to take a more active stance on the matter, including imposing sanctions on the regime. The vote on the motion has not yet been scheduled at the time of writing. At this point, I would like to join the debate. The EU seems to find itself caught between a rock and a hard place, and I hope to shed some light on the context of the issue.

Tax evasion, heroin and treason

The recent convictions should be seen in light of the urge of the Azerbaijani government to maintain stability in the country. Azerbaijan is a state in the South Caucasus that gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. President Ilham Aliyev succeeded his father, the late Heydar Aliyev, in 2003, after the latter had been president of Azerbaijan for ten years. In the past two decades, the country has undergone a major economic transformation – although poverty is still widespread and the country’s oil wealth is distributed very unevenly. It is exactly the concentration of wealth at the top, along with the regime’s corruption, which one of the convicted journalists, Khadija Ismayilova, tried to expose. This, naturally, would pose a threat to the regime.

Commentators as well as international organisations have assessed that the state of democracy and human rights has worsened under Ilham Aliyev’s rule. Currently, there are approximately 100 political prisoners in jail in the country. What is important to note is that these journalists and activists have not been persecuted on grounds of their actual critical activities. Instead, people have been arrested on accusations of among others tax evasion, drug possession, or cooperation with the enemy (working in civil society projects in cooperation with Armenia). According to several international organisations these charges have been trumped up.

The regime’s reasons for concealing its real motives are probably firstly Baku’s desire for a positive recognition by the international community. Baku has invested heavily in its diplomatic capacity as well as PR. Also grand events such as the Eurovision Song Festival in 2012, and the European Games in the spring of 2015, can be seen in this light. Perhaps ironically, and definitely fruitlessly, the regime tries to keep up a discourse of democratisation and the government even denies the existence of any prisoners of conscience, with the argument that the definition of ‘political prisoner’ is still contested within the Council of Europe.

A second probable reason for covering up the nature of the convictions is that the government wants to prevent domestic unrest, to secure its internal legitimacy – which at the same time is the very reason for these prosecutions in the first place. Moreover, by basing the persecutions on ‘legitimate’ grounds, the idea can be upheld that the justice system has operated fairly and merely according to the law.

Criticism on the EU: Oil versus values (but is this really so?)

Back to the current situation: the motion for a resolution by the EP. This is quite a big step by the Parliament, considering that the EU’s overall policy towards Azerbaijan is generally not that outspoken regarding issues of human rights. The EU therefore often receives criticism: it would not be doing enough to address the worrisome situation in Azerbaijan, and would even hold double standards compared to other countries, such as Belarus, where the situation is also concerning but (however wrong this may sound) still better in some regards than in Azerbaijan. It’s often suggested that the EU’s moderate stance is because of its reliance on Azerbaijani oil and gas.

It is very likely that the EU indeed limits its criticism on the Azerbaijani regime because of the trade deals between these two actors (note, however, that this concerns mostly individual EU member states, rather than ‘the EU’ as such). But it would be too simplistic to state that the EU doesn’t do a thing because they need the oil. Firstly, energy does not take up such a dominant position as is sometimes suggested: bilateral relations do consist of much more than that. Secondly, the EU does voice criticism, and does make considerable efforts to promote its norms on democracy and human rights in Azerbaijan, despite the fact that this does lead to frictions with the regime.

The European Parliament has always been relatively vocal and critical of the situation in Azerbaijan; Embassies of several member states were present at the trials of the people convicted; and the EU Delegation in Baku closely follows the situation, and is in almost daily contact with the Azerbaijani government on these issues. As soon as the motion was submitted, the Head of the Delegation was summoned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The fact that these actions are taken nonetheless, show that the EU is not afraid to confront Aliyev’s government. Even though, indeed, the damage to relations remained limited so far; and while, indeed, the EU could potentially do more.

Sharpening the knives for a gunfight?

The problem of all this, however, is that open and public criticism does not seem to work in the case of Azerbaijan. Experts on the ground have argued that it even works counter-productive. Despite – or possibly even in reaction to – the motion for a resolution, several new arrests of journalists have taken place in the past week since the motion was submitted.

Exactly because Azerbaijan is so much concerned with its image in the international community, it will not accept such accusations and any criticism coming from international political actors or media is consistently followed by counter-moves from the government and defensive public statements in the media. Despite many years of EU democracy and human rights promotion in Azerbaijan, there are more prisoners of conscience now than ever before.

It seems that the ‘silent approach’, which is simultaneously applied by the EU and EU member states, may be more effective in reaching the goals of norm-promotion in Azerbaijan. This approach consists of consultations and discussions behind closed doors, as well as (less visible) support to civil society organisations in the country. Such approach fits much better with the notion of ‘Othering’, the process of acknowledging one another’s national interests, problems, and priorities in bilateral relations. Othering would be a necessary step if the EU wants to achieve a genuine partnership with Azerbaijan, because the current approach of bluntly promoting its own norms and values in another state is not only in conflict with the whole idea of partnership; but it also has not lead to any results. And it probably never will be effective, because Azerbaijan is becoming an increasingly strong actor in international politics who demands a more equal position in the relations.

Between the devil and the Caspian Sea

As a consequence, it seems that the EU currently finds itself in between two problematic options and that it will need to choose the lesser of two evils. Either it can hold on to its model of being a value promotor in the world, thereby risking relations with Baku but also the chance to end up with a deadlock. In that case it cannot have any positive effect on the situation in Azerbaijan anyway, since the government will respond to any EU condemnations only more fiercely.

The second option would be to follow a pragmatic course whereby the two actors build on the principles of partnership and find a compromise, e.g. implementing democracy and human rights promotion but only behind closed doors using the ‘silent approach’. This could potentially be more effective in terms of outcome in the long run, but the EU will appear to be giving up one of its core principles and let down those who are in prison – is remaining silent also being guilty of the crime?

This is a question I don’t know the answer to. One the one hand, the only possibility I see for the release of Khadija Ismayilova, Leila and Arif Yunus, Rasul Jafarov, Intigam Aliyev, Anar Mammadli, and many others who are sitting in a cell while you are reading this, is through pressure coming from the international community, notably the EU.  Naturally, the EU cannot let this go unnoticed. The question is however how public this pressure should be, as it risks working counterproductively, no matter how well we mean.

At the same time, I believe that partnership would be the only way in the long run. The current situation, in which the EU unilaterally keeps pushing for its own norms in Azerbaijan – and Azerbaijan not being very impressed by this at all – has so far only led to a deadlock with no results. Perhaps it is therefore time that Brussels and Baku start playing the same game, and search for common rules and shared norms.

Eske van Gils is a doctoral student at the University of Kent.

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