Ideas on Europe Blog

Introduction

Supposing that most member states of the current European Union have found a way forward to a political union on the right ideological basis as described previously (see Enlightened Europism), the last act of reformation remaining is to redefine Europe’s role in the world. The Republic of the United Europe (or RUE) must realise the direct as well as the indirect challenges that threatens Europeans and non-Europeans alike, and rise to the task of shaping a new scheme of international co-operation; leading by example as the beacon of reason in the world. Once the global challenges are comprehended and conclusions are drawn, the RUE needs to establish itself as a real global power in order to preserve and pro-actively promote its enlightened ideas.

 

Crisis Era

As every period in history had its own unique challenges, our era has also plenty of difficult tasks waiting to be solved. In order to tackle them successfully, the leaders of the united Europe must understand the times we live in. Different eras, such as the Imperial Era (dominated by the colonial empires of Britain and France), the Versailles Era (defined by the consequences of the highly controversial Versailles Treaty), the Cold War Era (termed by the global rivalry of the Soviet Union and the US), and the Western Era (ruled by the Anglo-Saxon Five Eyes and West Europe), preceded our era, which I call the Crisis Era.

Characterised by numerous global crises, our era has seen a financial crisis, an economic crisis, an immigration crisis, and a health care crisis; not to mention the underlying ideological and social crises ticking towards explosion – all of them are still ongoing in Europe. Perhaps, the most vicious of all crises is the global climate crisis, which threatens not only human well-being and prosperity, but the very survival of our natural habitat (including mankind). Scientists forecast a massive extinction of plant and animal species – collapsing ecosystems –, which is going to hit the human population directly and severely. Uncontrollable global economic recession, mass migration, amplifying and escalating geopolitical conflicts, and new diseases are all the future’s certainties, unless the nations and civilisations of our world commit to an unprecedented and legitimate co-operation.

Regrettably, some powerful figures of national leadership and private entrepreneurs are either ignorant or uninterested, sacrificing the long-term wellness of humanity for temporary political and financial gains. It is shameful and infuriating to remember the enormous funds raised by wealthy individuals in a matter of days for the reconstruction of Paris’s Notre-Dame, whilst the demolition and desolation of the Amazon Rainforest, New South Wales, and Siberia attracted far less attraction from the rich in comparison. The Paris Accords and the European Green Deal are far less ambitious than what would be necessary and actually doable to prevent irreversible destruction. Science and technology could already bring a radical change in our means of production, but the lack of political will blocks scientists to invent the best methods of utilising the Earth’s resources, and re-engineering our industrial production, creating and maintaining a comfortable and safe life for all.

 

Major theatres of international conflicts

Another crisis potentially unfolding before our eyes is the overheating of international affairs, which – in worst case – could result in a Third World War. Even though many symptoms are already visible, climate crisis is rather considered to be a long-term threat, whereas the outbreak of a large scale war in a world that is more populated and spends more on armament than ever before in history is very much a risk on short-term. The two theatres of extreme tension are the South China Sea and the Middle East, where various regional actors backed by global superpowers are challenging each other in a competition for more resources, security, and political influence.

The origin of the South China Sea conflict is to be found in China’s transformation into a global superpower, which wants to break out of a potential encirclement of hostile powers (e.g. South Korea, Japan, and India backed by the US) and expand its influence in Asia Pacific. China has border disputes (both on land and sea) with almost all of its neighbours, which Beijing would like to settle in its favour. The range of claims is scaling from serious to less serious (e.g. Bhutan, Nepal) or even to informal (e.g. Laos, North Korea). The main disputes are involving India, the Japanese islands of Okinawa and Senkaku, Myanmar, Russia (Vladivostok), and Tajikistan. Beijing considers the entirety of Mongolia and Taiwan to be his. However, the strongest claim of Beijing (and other actors in the region) is related to the South China Sea.

The South China Sea is the hotspot of disputes and potentially escalating conflicts in Asia Pacific. The reason of contest is not only the rich hydrocarbon resources and fishing grounds beneath, but also the fact that third of the world’s maritime trade is passing through this area. It does not strike as a surprise that Brunei, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam all have claims against each other. The grandest claim is China’s, which demands control over the entire South China Sea based on China’s Nine-dash line. That is the reason why China is building artificial islands (areas of Paracel, Scarborough, Spratly), which act as aircraft carriers and thus have military use and purposes in the region. Despite opposition from the US, China is slowly achieving its goals. As 40% of China’s trade and most of its imports pass through the South China Sea, the giant of Asia is going to remain determined to push through its claims – one way or another.

Other sources of conflict are the dispute regarding Taiwan’s status and the unpredictability of the Korean Peninsula, where Beijing and Washington could directly back a large-scale armed conflict to preserve their interests in the region.

In the other theatre, the permanent battles for seizing control over oil production, the inextricable web of religious, ethnic, and historical conflicts, and the competition of various global and regional powers are creating a very insecure atmosphere. The face of the Middle East is formed by the relationship between the Arab countries, the Arab countries and Israel, the Arab countries and Iran, and Israel and Iran. Turkey, which is under Erdogan’s change of political course speeding towards Islamisation – deliberately erasing the traditions of Atatürk –, is also the part of this liquid medium. These countries and their web of diplomatic connections, including the support of global powers behind them (the US and Russia), are the defining factors of the Middle East’s tangled politics.

The Middle East’s power constellation is shaped either along religious affiliation or by the production and reserves of oil – namely wealth. The Arab countries, Iran, and Turkey are Muslim, whilst Israel is mainly Jewish. There is a Shia majority living in Iran, Bahrain, Iraq, and Lebanon, whilst there is a significant minority to be found in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. The number of Sunnis in Saudi Arabia is the double of Shias, but the latter live mainly in the territories known for their high oil production. There is a Sunni majority living in Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, Kuwait, Syria (however, the Assad regime is Shia), Yemen, Saudi-Arabia, UAE, and Qatar, whilst there is a significant Sunni minority to be found in Iraq, Lebanon, and Bahrain.

The Sunni countries seem to be the stronger of the two poles, due to their superiority in population, wealth, and military strength. This fact is underlined by Turkey’s NATO membership and by the pro-Sunni policy of the US and Israel. The leader of the Sunni world is Saudi Arabia (tied to the US), whereas the leader of the Shia pole is Iran (tied to Russia).

Besides the permanent Shia-Sunni (Iran-Saudi Arabia) battle, there is another dimension in the conflicts of the Middle East, namely the Arab-Israeli hostility. From the Zionist movement, through the violent seizure of lands, to the occupations of territories in the various Arab-Israeli wars, there are numerous events, which provoke the Arab countries. It is not my place to judge, which one of these was Israeli provocation, self-defence or Arab provocation. However, it is a fact that both parties are equally responsible for the current situation, beginning with the aggressive resettlement of the Jews in Palestine – supported by the Zionist movement – and continuing through a series of atrocities from both the Israeli state and the Arab countries (e.g. misplacement of Palestinians, wars, terror attacks). Even though symbolic steps were made towards normalisation (e.g. Camp David Accords, Wadi Araba Treaty, Abraham Accords), stability is still far out of reach. The instability of the Middle East could not be solidified until today – and will not be in the foreseeable future –, because the countries involved cannot and do not want to find a compromise in the most important issues (e.g. distribution of water, status of Jerusalem, situation of Palestinian refugees, borders of a legitimate Palestinian state).

The insecurity and unpredictability of the Middle East poses a direct threat to European security. Failed Arab countries, such as Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, and Syria are a hotbed for extreme Islamist terrorism and a source of mass illegal immigration. The collapse of Jordan and a not unlikely war between Algeria and Morocco could add to the flames of troubles of the Middle East and North Africa – not to mention the worrying moves in Tunisia and Turkey.

 

Conclusion

Therefore, the Republic of the United Europe must comprehend the era we live in and rise to act. Today, the member states of the European Union are watching the disintegration of Ukraine (and possibly eventually of Belarus), Erdogan’s aggression, the British government’s arrogance, and the collapse of the Middle East helplessly. Tomorrow, we may have to face a growing instability on the Balkans as well, where the ethnic and religious characteristics could redraw the borders through potentially violent conflicts. The result could be the disintegration of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the rise of Greater Albania (formed by Albania, Kosovo, and the north-western parts of North Macedonia), Greater Croatia, and Greater Serbia. The disintegration of Ukraine, the de facto annexation of Belarus by Russia, the Islamisation of Turkey, and the creation of Greater Albania are posing potential threats to European security in the backyard of Europe.

The reformed and united Europe must pro-actively preserve and protect its enlightened values, stabilise its neighbourhood, and enforce global agreements that guarantee sustainable development, climate protection, nuclear disarmament, and peace. We can achieve these goals only, if we pursue our own regional and global interests on our own terms, maintaining a good relationship with all of the global powers, without picking a side and sticking to it inflexibly – as we do it now. European decision-makers should no longer be chess figures on the global powers’ grand chessboard. In order to succeed in this quest, the radical change of our diplomatic mindset in accordance with the realities of our era is inevitable.

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As we’ve noted previously in this blog, Brexit is a process, not an event. With the drawing in of the year, we might usefully revisit this notion, since there’s more of the process heading our way.

You’ll recall that one side-effect of the very speedy conclusion of the Trade & Cooperation Agreement (TCA) was that the UK decided it would have a progressive introduction of the controls required, given the need for infrastructure and personnel to make it all happen.

The original plans for this were rather swift, with the intention being to have everything up and running by mid-2021. That this was somewhat ambitious was highlighted by two subsequent announcements of further delays, some to 1 January 2021 and others to the middle of next year.

These deferrals of controls stand apart from those relating to the Northern Ireland Protocol, which required joint agreement with the EU and which are currently on a rolling extension due to the talks that have trundled on in the past weeks. Precisely because they have implications for the operation of the EU’s single market (via Northern Ireland’s alignment to it) these cannot be solely in the hands of London.

But the TCA deals with the general EU-UK relationship, and the reintroduction of controls is a function of the weakening of ties between the two parties, which means the UK is bound to enact measures to satisfy other legal instruments, of which the World Trade Organisation is predominant.

Technically, the UK is in breach of its WTO commitments with these deferrals, but in practice no-one seems minded to challenge that. The UK is on a path towards enforcement, it has lacked the means to enforce until now, plus the EU doesn’t need another point of contention to add to the pile, plus WTO arbitration takes a very long time. So it’s been alright to slide back the timeline.

However, this still matters.

The National Audit Office has been producing very useful reports for the past three years on UK readiness, including on these systems. The most recent came out last month and is worth a read as a balanced view of where things are at.

On these elements, the picture has gradually improved, with much of the work now in place to make 2022 enforcement a viable option. At the same time, the NAO rightly points up the considerable uncertainty about demand management and the impact on trade flows, plus the wider impact of the changing nature of the UK border.

While Northern Ireland has (rightly) been more visible, it will be cross-Channel business that will have a bigger economic impact in the long run. Until the UK has settled its systems and procedures for this, it will be hard to know more properly how Brexit is reshaping the economies on both sides of those waters.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic77

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Although the new Norwegian government appears more willing to discuss EU-related issues than previous ones, the question of Norway’s EU policy remains ambiguous, argues John Erik Fossum in this blog post. 

Gag rule on the EU affiliation: The new Norwegian government reiterates the ‘gag rules’ that each government has instituted to maintain the status quo of Norway’s EU affiliation pretty much since the EEA agreement entered into force in 1994, writes John Erik Fossum. 
(Photo: Mission of Norway to the EU, CC BY 2.0)

On September 13, 2021 Norway held its parliamentary elections. In Norway, parliamentary elections take place at fixed dates, at a four-year interval. The total number of eligible voters was 3,876,200 persons, and the election turnout was 77.2 percent.

The election result represents a certain turn to the left, as the ruling minority centre-right coalition went down from 61 seats in 2017 to 47 seats in 2021, out of a total of 169 parliamentary seats. The right-wing populist Progress Party (FrP) also lost 6 seats, down from 27 seats in the 2017 parliamentary election. Thus, whereas the centre-right had a majority of seats in the outgoing parliament (88 out of 169), they now have only 68 seats.

If we look at the overall pattern of change for the party system, the most obvious conclusion is that the main result was political fragmentation.

The main election winner was the centrist Center Party (SP) which increased its number of seats from 19 to 28. A similar gain was had to the far left Red (Rødt) (a former Marxist-Leninist party), which increased its number of seats from 1 to 8 in the present parliament. These effects are related to the nature of the election system which provides compensatory seats to those parties that pass the 4 percent threshold.

If we look at the overall pattern of change for the party system (see table 1), the most obvious conclusion is that the main result was political fragmentation. Both of the two largest parties lost seats. Labour (AP) lost 1 seat, whereas the Conservatives (Høyre) lost 9 seats.

The revolt of the periphery

The main issues that marked the election campaign were domestic, and there was very little focus on foreign policy. There were glimpses of attention to Norway’s relationship to the EU, the main issue being whether the expected change in government would lead to changes in Norway’s EU affiliation, given that the Centre Party is a deeply Eurosceptic party. The early stages of the election campaign were marked by a ‘revolt of the periphery’, which was not only directed against Oslo the capital but also other cities and gave a major boost in support to the Centre Party as a rurally based agrarian party. The Centre Party could draw on popular opposition to a regional reform which had amalgamated regions and created the region Viken (which geographically speaking is a very awkward construct, stretching way Northwards from the Southern Eastern border with Sweden). A similar upset was seen in the North, where the two Northernmost regions had been amalgamated against the majority’s will in Finnmark (there was a popular referendum in Finnmark where the no side won by a clear margin). There was also opposition to the closure of local police stations and hospitals.

With the revolt of the periphery as a major impetus, in early January 2021 it looked like the Centre Party could overtake Labour in the polls, and the Centre Party leader Trygve Slagsvold Vedum declared himself as a Prime Minister candidate. Thus, there were three Prime Minister candidates going into the final stages of the election campaign: Erna Solberg (incumbent, Conservative); Jonas Gahr Støre (Labour); and Trygve Slagsvold Vedum (Centre Party). As the election campaign unfolded, the centre-periphery and urban-rural conflict subsided somewhat whilst inequality and green transition entered centre stage. All parties to the left spoke against the rising socio-economic inequality, and the Centre Party linked that to a claim to rural-urban inequality. There are thus competing accounts as to the forms of inequality that should be addressed among the centre-left parties, and Labour is torn between socio-economic inequality in terms of class and socio-economic inequality in terms of regional location. The green transition issue gave the Greens (MDG) a boost in the polls, but in the election, it fell just short of the four percent threshold and therefore only obtained 3 seats. The other main environmental advocates, the Liberal Party (Venstre, which was part of the governing coalition) managed to hold onto its 8 seats. The Socialist Left Party (SV), which both spoke up against socio-economic inequality and the need for a green transition gained 2 seats and ended up with 13 seats. Labour is somewhat divided on how committed to the green transition it should be, and the Centre Party for a while even prevaricated over whether it thought that Norway should be committed to the Paris Agreement, although it came down in support of it eventually. Conversely the Progress Party has long been a Petro-Populist Party and is a staunch supporter of the oil industry.

It is difficult to attribute the result – the government’s loss of seats – to the COVID-19 pandemic. Norway’s fatality numbers during the COVID-19 period were lower than in a regular influenza year, and the Norwegian government has launched a range of policy programs to buffer people from the pandemic. The negative effects have been far from equally distributed, but it is difficult to attribute the responsibility squarely to the coalition government which as a minority government has depended on parliamentary support from the opposition parties that at times have dictated government policy.

Status quo of Norway’s EU affiliation

The election result paved the way for a change in government. Labour as the largest party held talks with the incoming Prime Minister Støre’s preferred coalition partners, the Centre Party, and the Socialist Left Party. The Socialist Left Party pulled out of the talks before the serious negotiations started. Thus, the new government has ended up as a minority coalition between Labour and the Centre Party, with a total of 76 seats (out of 169). Had they managed to persuade the Socialist Left they would have had a total of 89 seats and a majority in the Storting, the Norwegian parliament. The two governing parties signed a governing agreement. This 86-page declaration lists the government’s objectives, in considerable detail.

In the following, I will only focus on what the government declaration says about Norway’s EU affiliation. The declaration explicitly states that

‘(t)he government will develop and deepen Nordic cooperation in a wide range of areas. Nordic and European countries are Norway’s most important political and economic partners. The government will stand up clearly for the value of an open and cooperative Europe at a time when authoritarian forces, nationalism and xenophobia are on the rise. The EEA Agreement will form the basis for Norway’s relationship to Europe. The government will work more actively to promote Norwegian interests within the framework of the agreement, and the wiggle-room in the agreement will be used with particular emphasis on ensuring national control in such areas as labour relations, energy and rail traffic.’ (Hurdalsplattformen 2021, author’s translation)

This statement is an amalgam of the two coalition parties’ statements on Europe. The Centre Party underlines the Nordic dimension, whereas Labour places more direct emphasis on Europe. The sentence to the effect that ‘(t)he government will stand up …’ is taken verbatim from the Labour Party’s program for the period 2021-2025.

With regard to Norway’s relations with the EU, the new government thus reiterates the ‘gag rules’ that each government has instituted to maintain the status quo of Norway’s EU affiliation pretty much since the EEA agreement entered into force in 1994. The gag rules are meant to keep a lid on the EU membership issue. The governing coalition thus binds itself to govern on the basis of the present EEA affiliation. It is then also stated in the coalition government declaration that ‘the EEA Agreement shall form the basis for Norway’s relationship to Europe'(Author’s translation). The tacit understanding is that if one party actively starts working towards changing the status quo the coalition will unravel. The present governing configuration therefore falls into an established pattern of governing coalitions ‘freezing’ the status quo. The new coalition government consists of one broadly speaking pro-EU party, Labour, that sees itself as a guarantor of the EEA Agreement (while declaring in its party program that it is internally divided on the issue of EU membership) and one very Eurosceptic party, the Centre Party, that is against the EEA Agreement. In its party program it states that it wants to examine alternatives to the EEA Agreement that strengthen Norwegian sovereignty and ensure access to the EU’s internal market for Norwegian exports.

The political arithmetic explains why despite a new election and a change in government, there is likely to be no change in Norway’s EU affiliation:  the continued presence of gag rules prevents a change in the status quo. In today’s Storting, the parties that support the status quo would have 98 out of 169 seats (down from 111 in the previous Storting). Some parties are divided in both directions, so how firm this specific number is can be questioned. The main point however is that the Eurosceptic parties do not have a basis for renegotiating Norway’s current EU affiliation. Some minor concessions have been granted to the Eurosceptics in that there is a commitment to ‘carry out an assessment of the experiences of the EEA cooperation during the last 10 years. In that connection the experiences that proximate countries outside the EU have with regard to their EU agreements will be examined’ (Hurdalsplattformen 2021, author’s translation). The Centre Party wants Norway to reject the EU’s fourth railway package. The government platform states that it will ‘as soon as possible enter into a dialogue with the EU with the goal of ensuring Norway exceptions from portions of the EU’s fourth railway package.’

The political arithmetic explains why despite a new election and a change in government, there is likely to be no change in Norway’s EU affiliation:  the continued presence of gag rules prevents a change in the status quo.

Incidentally, this focus on specific issues or policy measures is entirely in line with the logic of gag rules which ensures that specific concerns can be dislocated from the constitutionally salient EU membership issue. I have argued elsewhere that the gag rules facilitate further integration by taking attention away from the question of Norway’s EU affiliation and instead focusing on specific issues such as the EU’s third postal directive, which generated a lot of controversy. Whether the railway initiative falls into that pattern is too early to tell. The statement in the government declaration is fairly open: It could mean that the government wants to initiate a process where Norway gets some sort of opt-out, in which case it will be interesting to see if the EU is willing to grant any such concessions to a non-member. Or the statement could mean that the government approaches the EU and finds that there is no real leverage to alter the regulations. What then will be done is not clear from the new government’s platform.

The new minority coalition government has pledged to cooperate with the parties to the left. This illustrates the squeeze that Labour finds itself in: between a strengthened Centre Party to its right side and a strengthened left flank with the Left Socialists and Red. This can be quite a precarious position, with the prospect of hemorrhaging voters either to the right or to the left, depending where it sets its foot. The Labour party has clearly ended in a spot which requires a fine-tuned balancing of issues and concerns. To what extent European issues will be entered into such a process of balancing is not entirely clear. This government appears more willing to discuss EU-related issues than the previous one. Nevertheless, the government platform would seem to indicate that the overarching question of Norway’s EU affiliation appears to be locked in.

Table 1: Party seats, 2021 election Name Number U Change Arbeiderpartiet 48 0 -1 Høyre 36 1 -9 Senterpartiet 28 0 +9 Fremskrittspartiet 21 4 -6 Sosialistisk Venstreparti 13 5 +2 Rødt 8 4 +7 Venstre 8 5 0 Kristelig Folkeparti 3 0 -5 Miljøpartiet De Grønne 3 0 +2 Pasientfokus 1 0 +1 Total 169 19 0

1. Party has gotten a compensatory seat (Valgresultat.no)

This blog post was originally published on DCU Brexit Institute Blog on 29 October 2021 and has been republished here with permission.

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Learning to blah, blah, blah (Source)

A while back I wrote about the UK’s approach to the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) and Trade & Cooperation Agreement (TCA), arguing that this was driven by a lack of strategic intent, resulting in constant efforts to keep things up in the air.

In so doing, the UK aims to avoid falling into any settled pattern of interaction with the EU that would – by the simple facts of its existence and stability – provide a template for future relations.

Put simply, the UK doesn’t seem to want to find itself stuck in a rut, with all the path dependency and sunk cost issues that come with that.

At the time, the way the UK was pursuing this objective of intentional instability was through a high-stress holding model.

This involved an active campaign of raising problems with the treaties (both on what they contain and what they don’t contain) plus non-implementation (or at least very slow implementation).

Hence the seemingly endless list of problems that could be drawn upon, from the role of the CJEU to VAT rules. The spring’s challenges of chilled meats in Northern Ireland might have been met by the Commission’s proposals this autumn, but the UK had already run on ahead to the next thing.

This coupled up with very strong language about using provisions such as Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol, to attempt to create an image of being ready to walk away from it all, for the noble intent of protecting peace.

A review of this model suggests that while it might have nudged the Commission to offer more than it might have on the Protocol implementation problems, it has largely not worked and has little prospect of working.

At the root of this failure has been a lack of conviction on the EU’s part that the UK would make good on its promises/threats. Yes, the WA/TCA combo has its problems, but these are as nothing to the costs of pursuing any other route. The UK can’t unilaterally change the terms of the treaties, and the economic and political damage of collapsing them both (and the EU has been very clear that they are a linked pair) should be evident to even the most die-hard Brexiteer.

If the UK doesn’t have a credible alternative (and also doesn’t have a hard consensus that it thinks it has one), then the threats look empty and the main effect is simply to weaken trust. Which is a problem if you’re aiming to get buy-in to any new system you might propose.

Hence the apparent shift in the past couple of weeks to what we might term a low-stress model.

Instead of the active antagonism, there is instead engagement in negotiations, covered by a rhetorical frame of trying to solve problems together.

However, given the very slow pace of those discussions, it looks more like a move to kick things into the very long grass of endless debate.

Yes, there’s interaction, but it also allows for a ‘temporary’ suspension of punitive measures and of full implementation of treaty provisions. In short, it creates its own version of the stable situation trap: the UK gets to say in 6 months that obviously these temporary arrangements work.

Of course, the EU is well aware of this, and is looking to move negotiations to some conclusion in short order. But the ability to combat this low-stress approach is rather less. The Commission might have its spectrum of responses in place for an Article 16 notification, but it’s much harder to avoid looking ungenerous when faced with a counterparty that wants to talk.

But it’s not impossible, and at some point it becomes difficult to mask that you’re stringing out talks for their own sake. Even if that means a less fraught outcome than a collapse of the high-stress model, it still leaves the UK having to make a decision about what it wants. And there’s still no sign that it has any sense of achieving that under this government.

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Brexit used to sit on the far side lines of politics.

Indeed, the word ‘Brexit’ was only invented in 2012, and until the referendum, most people didn’t know what it meant.

(Now it’s in the Oxford English dictionary.)

Prior to 2011, tabloids such as the Daily Mail and Daily Express were more fixated on false claims about benefit cheats than false claims about immigrants.

But that all changed.

An in-depth study by the Migration Observatory showed that:

The volume of press coverage mentioning ‘immigration’ or ‘migration’ declined from 2006 to 2011 before rising each year from 2011 to mid-2015

Furthermore, when the press explicitly described immigrants and migrants during 2006-2015, 3 out of 10 times it was with the word ‘illegal’.

In 2004, when the Labour government permitted migrants to come here from new EU member states (formerly hidden behind the ‘Iron Curtain’) they were welcome.

The British economy was doing well, and businesses were desperate for more workers. EU migrants coming here filled a chronic labour and skills gap.

It wasn’t until after the Tories won the 2010 general election, and severe austerity measures were imposed, that some tabloid newspapers, and some politicians, started to heavily scapegoat migrants as the cause.

But even then, Britain’s membership of the EU was not a majority interest subject.

Some on the fringes of the Conservative and Labour Parties thought Britain should leave the EU, but they were small in number.

• Most MPs and members of the House of Lords strongly supported Britain’s membership of the EU (and indeed, most of them voted for Britain to Remain in the European Union.)
• Most people in Britain also didn’t want Britain to leave the EU.

We’d been members for around 40 years, and it was not a big deal.

Polling consistently showed that most people in the UK supported our continued membership, even in the year before the referendum.

Yes, 17 million voters voted for Brexit. But 17 million votes out of 46.5 million registered voters did not represent majority support.

Since 2016, however, Brexit is on the news every day. The word has become mainstream, not just in Britain, but across the world.

How did it happen?

It started when leading politicians, who should have known better, got scared of a little Eurosceptic party called UKIP, which promoted a fear and dislike of migrants, and blamed the EU.

UKIP was considered a threat to the mainstream of politics and so everybody started talking their language of fear.

Slowly and surely, the new language allowed migrants and foreigners to be blamed for our problems, with leaving the EU presented as the solution.

It was the start of the rot. It led us directly to Brexit.

There was no rational reason to fear migrants. But senior politicians in both the Conservative and Labour Parties began to be fearful of UKIP.

Instead of bucking the UKIP trend, they fell for it; they unwisely helped to promote and prolong it, along with most British newspapers, also guilty of inciting UKIP’s message of xenophobia.

So, when in 2014 the then Shadow Home Secretary, Labour’s Yvette Cooper, said in a speech in London:

“It isn’t racist to be worried about immigration or to call for immigration reform.”

What I think she really meant was:

“We’re not really worried about immigration; we’re worried about UKIP.”

When also in 2014, Rachel Reeves, Labour’s then shadow works and pensions secretary, wrote in an article for the Daily Mail:

“We have to listen to the real concerns that people have about how immigration is being managed.”

What I think she really meant was:

“We’re not really listening to people’s real concerns; we’re listening to UKIP.”

When Kelly Tolhurst, the Conservative MP, who won the 2014 by-election in the Rochester and Strood, wrote in her campaign literature:

“I wanted to bring the Prime Minister to this constituency to show him that uncontrolled immigration has hurt this area.”

What I think she really meant was:

“I want to show the Prime Minister that although there isn’t a problem of uncontrolled immigration in this area, uncontrolled UKIP could hurt us.”

(Because how could there be a problem of ‘uncontrolled migration’ in Rochester and Strood? It has a lower-than-average immigrant population than the national, and even regional, level. Its population is 87 per cent white British.)

The then Prime Minister, David Cameron (remember him?) also followed the same line. He said to the electorate:

“I know you are worried about immigration.”

What I think he really meant was:

“You know I am worried about UKIP.”

So worried, that he called for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU that he didn’t have to call.

It was all because of an irrational fear of UKIP and their irrational language of fear.

Reported the BBC on the rise of UKIP in 2014:

‘David Cameron’s historic pledge to hold an in/out referendum on UK membership of the EU if the Conservatives won the next election was interpreted by some as an attempt to halt the rise of UKIP, which senior Tories feared could prevent them from winning an overall majority in 2015.’

(Repeat: Previously hardly anyone in Britain was concerned about Britain’s EU membership – it was a minority issue on the far fringes of politics.)

In the same year, Nigel Farage, the then leader of UKIP, told The Telegraph:

“Parts of the country have been taken over by foreigners and mass immigration has left Britain as unrecognisable.”

It was nonsense of course.

Britons didn’t have a serious problem of migration before the likes of Nigel Farage told them they did.

If you look at a 2014 map of where UKIP had the highest support, it was mostly in the areas of Britain with the least migration.

And conversely, in the areas with lots of migrants, UKIP mostly had the least support.

The foreign-born of Britain only represent around 12% of the population – that’s a normal proportion for most modern, thriving western democracies.

Even among those 12% of foreign-born are many considered to be British, such as Boris Johnson, born in New York, and Joanna Lumley, born in India.

And citizens from the rest of the EU living in the UK represented only 5% of the population – that’s small and hardly ‘mass migration.’

A few weeks after the 2016 referendum result, the then Tory MP, Oliver Letwin, said that British politicians “made a terrible mistake” in failing to take on the argument about immigration, the argument spread by UKIP.

He told The Times:

“We all, the Labour party and the Conservative Party alike … made a terrible mistake, which was not to take on the argument about migration.”

He added that UKIP exploited the failure of mainstream politicians to “put the counter-argument” that “migration enriches the country in every way.”

Gandhi got it right when he said:

‘The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is really fear.’

Our main political parties and national newspapers could have saved us from an irrational fear of migrants that led directly to Brexit.

Instead, they pandered to UKIP and promoted the fear.

And now the fear has won, and it is still being encouraged by politicians and papers.

But:

• Migrants are a boon, not a burden for Britain.
• EU membership has helped our country and did not hinder it.

Somehow, facts need to win over fear. And until that happens, Britain is on a dangerous and debilitating path.

DAILY EXPRESS HEADLINES: The 2011 headline that millions of families were benefit cheats was entirely incorrect. See Full Fact report. And the 2015 headline that illegal immigrants were pouring into Britain was also false. See Full Fact response.

• Watch my 1-minute video about so-called ‘illegal’ migrants.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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As part of this blog’s ongoing monitoring of the two treaties, we regularly produce a tracker of meetings of the various bodies that they have set up.

These trackers are useful at a number of levels.

Firstly, the level of overall activity provides an indication of the vibrancy of the treaty and the extent to which the parties see it as the appropriate forum for handling issues: witness the volume of activity in the Withdrawal Agreement committees in the wake of its entry into force, to try to iron out the numerous implementation issues, most obviously on the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Secondly, the speed of setting up specific bodies points to relative priorities within the treaty framework. Thus the Trade & Cooperation Agreement – with its numerous organisational structures – has only one body that’s meet more than once: fisheries.

Finally, over time, it helps us to see how the pattern of moving from initial implementation issues to more regular operation works in practice. If the WA appears to have started to move towards the latter phase, with minimal activity this autumn, then the TCA is still very early on in its life-cycle, with much still to come into operation.

In the context of the wider EU-UK relationship, this matters, especially given the on-going uncertainty about the Protocol – and thus the entire WA/TCA architecture. If the UK were to unravel the Protocol with an Art.16 notification then the two treaties lack deep institutional roots that might help to contain the ensuing crisis. Even the WA hangs somewhat in the balance given the integral nature of the Protocol.

Of course, Art.16 would make these trackers a trailing indicator for the period of the crisis, but if the treaties were to stand, then they might also eventually come to be leading indicators of a rebuilding of relations.

Something to keep in mind in the coming months.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic78

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic85

The post WA/TCA Committee Tracker, November 2021 appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

As we reach the end of the COP26 hiatus on Brexit the signs are not good. Reports from the talks on the Protocol are that progress isn’t occurring, even with the Commission’s striking opening offer.

This is all less than unexpected: the UK’s ask on ending the role of the CJEU in the Protocol never looking remotely viable and there has been no interest in using the Commission’s proposals to climb down from the flashpoint either.

COP26 might well have given a bit of breathing space, but only to something that looks heavily timetabled.

With that in mind, the moves on the EU side have mostly been about signalling intent to hit back hard should the UK follow through on Art.16. As Rahman has suggested, that might include both short- and long-term elements.

We’ve covered Art.16 itself enough for the issues to be relatively clear. As Howse points out in his new commentary on the provision, there’s rather more constraint than might first be apparent, but this also limits the direct response too.

As a result, it serves the EU to keep things broad-based, to make the matter less contained and to be less dependent upon the single provision.

There is plenty of flexibility about the implementation practice for both treaties, as the French had already identified in the Jersey impasse (also still not resolved, it should be noted), but the TCA also allows for some additional actions.

The graphic below sets out the suspension and general termination clauses for that treaty.

As you’ll see, suspension is more complex and requires a rather tough case to be made for justifying its use, based on a failure by the UK to apply rule of law. Art.772 doesn’t simply need some evidence of this – e.g. should the UK try to effectively remove the CJEU from the NIP – but also needs this to be a ‘serious and substantial failure’. That the CJEU hasn’t been used at all so far in the NIP’s operation becomes here a problem for the EU, as impairment of rule of law becomes that much harder to demonstrate.

Even if you can overcome these thresholds, there’s still a problem of proportionality requirements, which stop the EU from going wild with their response.

By contrast, Art.779 termination is a doddle: just put in your letter of notice and that’s that. There are even options to just terminate Goods or Judicial Cooperation, so there’s a bit more flexibility.

The process in this case would be entirely political, with the option to end the termination by joint consent.

I’ll admit to a degree of discomfort about all this. If the UK play chicken on this, then we end up with at least a partial non-application of the WA/TCA framework, which will make it harder to defend what remains. Trust will be even thinner on the ground than it has been, and the willingness to even start to consider new options will be vanishingly small.

Which makes the key question next week one of whether the UK really wants to go down this road. It will be one that offers minimal prospects of the EU moving off its lines on the Protocol, while definitely bringing a pile of economic and political pain. Yes, that pain will hit both sides, but much more on the UK.

Is the domestic political gain that might accrue really worth it?

Ironically, the continuing absence of a UK plan makes it seem more likely so: if you don’t have an end-point to defend, then you can wallow in the pain that much more easier.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic95

The post Crisis measures appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

They want to see the end of the EU altogether. That’s been the aim of prominent Brexiters from the start.

And it’s certainly the aim of the guy who started Brexit: former UKIP leader and MEP, and now President of the Reform Party, previously the Brexit Party, Nigel Farage.

In September 2017, Mr Farage received a standing ovation at a far-right rally in Berlin when he addressed Germany’s anti-EU party, Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Mr Farage was applauded after urging the AfD to fight for German independence from the EU.

This is nothing new. On the morning after the EU referendum, on 24 June 2016, with his and his party’s dreams realised, Mr Farage made clear that there was unfinished business with the EU.

He said in his 4am victory speech:

“I hope this victory brings down this failed project … let’s get rid of the flag, the anthem, Brussels, and all that has gone wrong.”

On Talk Radio in Spain in 2014, Mr Farage said that he not only wanted Britain to leave the European Union, he also wanted to see “Europe out of the European Union” – in other words, the complete disintegration of the European Single Market.

Some ardent Tory Brexiters also share Mr Farage’s goal to see the end of the European Union altogether.

 STEVE BAKER

Conservative Steve Baker MP, Wycombe, a prominent member of the hard-Brexit Tory ERG group and a former Brexit negotiator, said in 2010 that he wanted to see the European Union “wholly torn down.”

In a speech to a right-wing think-tank he branded the EU as an “obstacle” to world peace and “incompatible” with a free society.

In his 2010 speech Mr Baker also told the cheering audience:

“I think UKIP and the ‘Better Off Out’ campaign lack ambition. I think the European Union needs to be wholly torn down.”

 MICHAEL GOVE

In a keynote speech for Vote Leave during the referendum campaign in 2016, Michael Gove, MP, then Justice Secretary and now ‘Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’, made similar comments about bringing down the EU.

Mr Gove said:

“Britain voting to leave will be the beginning of something potentially even more exciting – the democratic liberation of a whole continent.”

He described Britain’s departure from the EU as “a contagion” that could spread across Europe.

Reporting on Mr Gove’s speech, the BBC stated:

“Leaving the EU could also encourage others to follow suit, said Mr Gove.”

Commenting after the speech, a senior aide for the Leave campaign indicated to HeraldScotland that Mr Gove would be, “happy if Britain’s in-out referendum sparked similar polls across Europe.”

The Herald Scotland reporter asked if Brexit would lead to the break-up of the EU as we knew it and the aide replied, “Yes.”

When asked if the Out campaign hoped that it would trigger “the end of the Brussels block” the aide replied, “Certainly.”

In his speech, Mr Gove suggested that far from being the exception if Britain left the EU, it would become the norm as most other EU member states would choose to govern themselves. It was membership of the EU that was the anomaly, argued Mr Gove.

• The Guardian headline was:

‘Brexit could spark democratic liberation of continent, says Gove’

• The Telegraph headline:

‘Michael Gove urges EU referendum voters to trigger ‘the democratic liberation of a whole continent’

• The Express headline:

‘BREXIT WILL BREAK-UP EU: Leave vote to spark domino effect across bloc, says Gove’

• The Bloomberg headline:

‘U.K. Brexit Vote Would Be End of EU as We Know It, Gove Says’

• The Irish Times headline:

‘Michael Gove says other EU states may leave EU’

Britain’s EU referendum was not just about whether Britain should remain in the European Union. For some leading Brexit campaigners, it was a referendum about whether the European Union itself should continue to exist.

Leading Brexit supporters hope that what happened in Britain on 23 June 2016 could result in the end of the EU. This is no doubt a wake-up call for pro-EU supporters across the continent.

Britain chose not to be one of the founding members of the Union back in 1957 but joined later, in 1973.

Now Britain is the bloc’s only member ever to leave the Union, with the open aspiration of at least some ‘Leave’ campaigners that other EU members will also follow Britain in exiting the EU.

As Denis MacShane a former Labour Minister of Europe, wrote in The Independent yesterday:

‘The English right assumed that, after Brexit, the EU would be fatally weakened and there would be a rise of Brexit-type politics across Europe.

‘They were delighted when Marine Le Pen hailed Brexit and put the union flag on her social media accounts in June 2016.’

English right = Tory Party/hard Brexiters.

However, it didn’t turn out as British Brexiters hoped. The opposite happened.
Explained Mr MacShane:

‘Emmanuel Macron comprehensively beat Le Pen in 2017.

‘Since then, to the disappointment of the Boris Johnson camp in England, she has given up calling for a referendum on “Frexit” or even leaving the Euro.

‘The same has happened in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands where anti-European, anti-immigrant populists like Matteo Salvini and Geert Wilders have faded and lost votes to pro-European politicians from the centre, liberals, greens and social democrats.’

But let’s not lose our guard. Don’t underestimate that leading Brexiters are the enemies of the European Union and want to see its end.

There is no love from Boris Johnson and the Tories in power towards the EU. There is no goodwill.

They hate the EU. Its collapse would prove that Brexit was the right decision.

After all, the government is currently engineering an entirely unnecessary trade war with the EU, which would result in a no-deal Brexit for real.

Constant conflicts with the EU are how the Tories hope to stay in power.

For all of us who cherish the European Union as one of the most successful post-war projects, this has never been a battle just about Brexit.

This needs to be a Europe-wide movement to ensure that Brexit politicians and their allies don’t succeed in inflicting grievous damage to the EU, with their stated aim to destroy the European Union entirely.

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by Eva Saeva, Newcastle Law School This article is based on research presented at the UACES Graduate Forum Research Conference 2021 (17-18 June, online)

 

Cybersecurity has become the backbone of a global digital society, a key element for a variety of issues ranging from national security, data protection, the trustworthiness of AI and 5G technologies, digital sovereignty, to, last but not least, responsible state behaviour in cyberspace. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the many benefits of digitalisation, but also exposed its vulnerabilities. During the (ongoing) health crisis, and especially the first few months, there was a sharp rise in cyberattacks against various critical infrastructure (CI) sectors, particularly the health sector, which was heavily targeted in certain EU Member States. More specifically, a series of serious attacks in the spring of 2020 were directed against the Czech Republic. In September 2020, a woman died in a German hospital, which at the time was suffering a ransomware attack. In addition, in late 2020, even the European Medicines Agency was attacked and vaccine data was accessed.

Against this background, this blog will investigate the new EU Cybersecurity Strategy adopted in December 2020, by discussing the new legislative proposals, with a particular focus on the new measures under development within the cyber diplomacy area. The blog’s objective is to examine whether COVID-19 was a key factor in the Strategy’s development.

The 2020 EU Cybersecurity Strategy for the Digital Decade put forward two legislative proposals. Both these proposals were built on existing legislation: the review of the NIS Directive and the resilience of critical entities. From a legal standpoint, it did not bring forward anything new – the focus remained on cyber resilience and risk management, in line with the 2013 Strategy. In other words, the 2020 Strategy efforts were directed towards securing critical infrastructure from possible attacks rather than dealing with the attackers themselves.

The increased number of cyberattacks against the health sector during the pandemic does not seem to have been a crucial element in the development of these proposals. However, these attacks further demonstrated the extreme vulnerability of CI sectors and the consequences of not having implemented properly prior legislative measures, such as the NIS Directive 2016. The attacks on the Czech Republic clearly illustrate this.

The Strategy also focused on the development of the EU diplomatic approach to malicious state-sponsored cyber operations. The Cyber Diplomacy toolbox, the legal framework regulating the EU’s actions in the field of cyber diplomacy, was used twice in 2020, in July and October respectively. However, sanctions fell short from attributing attacks to state-actors, even for already attributed attacks such as the WannaCry ransomware and NotPetya malware in 2017 (conducted by North Korea and Russia respectively). In the meantime, attacks such as the ones against the health sector in the Czech Republic, were not publicly and explicitly attributed or even addressed.

The newly elaborated strategic approach to cyber diplomacy seems too vague and underdeveloped. With undecided applicability of the Solidarity and Mutual defence clauses (“the EU should reflect upon the interaction between the cyber diplomacy toolbox and the possible use of Article 42.7 TEU and Article 222 TFEU”), the Strategy not only fails to build upon previous legislative efforts; it actually contradicts the 2013 Strategy, according to which “[a] particularly serious incident or attack could constitute sufficient ground for a Member State to invoke the EU Solidarity Clause”. While this could simply be a change of strategy, the applicability of the two clauses should have been further explored and reinforced as a strategic approach. The 2020 document also does not set a timeline for when the EU “will present a proposal” to “further define its cyber deterrence posture” contributing to responsible state behaviour. It therefore appears that diplomacy in cyberspace at EU level is still a challenging topic to address. COVID’s exposure of the EU’s hesitant steps in the area has not served as a lesson learned. As Helena Carrapico and Benjamin Farrand have argued, COVID “does not appear to have served in itself as a critical juncture in the EU’s understanding of cybersecurity”.

The EU’s diplomatic approach in cyberspace also affects its attribution capacities, which so far have remained a “sovereign political decision” belonging to the Member States. The EU’s Strategy does not reflect the changing international (political and technological) environment, where attribution is no longer as challenging as before. The US – a like-minded and allied state – is accelerating in its position as a leader in setting norms on state accountability, having officially attributed various cyberattacks to different nation-states. The most recent example was the SolarWinds breach, discovered in December 2020 and attributed to the Russian Federation, leading the latter to be sanctioned in April 2021. Even though 6 out of 14 EU institutions, agencies and bodies which use the SolarWinds product also fell victim of the attack, the EU remained silent on possible attribution. The EU only issued a press release “expressing solidarity” with the US and stating that the “United States assesses” that the operation “has been conducted by the Russian Federation”. The EU is therefore lagging behind in a field where it could have taken the lead. Annegret Bendiek and Matthias Kettemann have evidenced both the importance of the “strategic capacity to act” and of the EU’s ability to assert its views on security internationally, concepts which were a missed target in the 2020 Strategy.

Covid-19 is not only a health crisis. It is also a cybersecurity one. Based on existing evidence, it appears that the impact of COVID-19 on the development of the EU strategic approach to cybersecurity was little to inexistent. Rather, because of its impact on cybersecurity, the pandemic should have been a driving factor in the drafting of the 2020 EU Cybersecurity Strategy. The legislative proposals put forward are indeed a step towards more resilient CI sectors, but they do not fill the existent gaps in terms of attribution and state accountability. The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on cybersecurity – a key element for both international and national security – was therefore a missed opportunity for the EU to claim its role as a global leader in developing cybersecurity legislation. If the EU wants to lead the discussions on responsible state behaviour, it should be more assertive, have a unified voice, and act collectively when attributing attacks to state-actors. Moreover, all these concepts should be clearly spelled out and included in a legal framework.

 

 

Eva Saeva is a postgraduate researcher at Newcastle Law School where she researches the EU’s legal approach to cybersecurity. Her thesis examines the UK, Italy, Bulgaria and the US’ national approaches, providing for internal and external factors in the development of the EU’s cybersecurity legal framework.

The post The new EU Cybersecurity Strategy 2020: was COVID-19 a key factor? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Only the Tories can now save Britain from the Tories.

That may seem a strange thing to say, but even Tories know when things have gone too far.

The Conservatives have dominated the 19th, 20th and, so far, the 21st centuries.

Since the 1830s, the Conservatives have been in the business of winning. They are the world’s most successful political party.

The Tories are Teflon coated. They instinctively know how to cling onto power regardless of scandalous, corrupt, and sleazy behaviour that has blighted so many of their administrations.

And for sure, scandalous, corrupt, and sleazy behaviour is blighting their current reign in office under Boris Johnson.

Tories, however, instinctively know when enough is enough. And right now, the party knows that the country has had enough.

Even the Daily Mail has had enough. The paper, under the editorship of Paul Dacre, was strongly pro-Boris. He could do no wrong.

But Dacre has left the building, and the Mail is changing colours.

In December 2019 the paper ‘rejoiced’ at the landslide win of Mr Johnson. Today, the Daily Mail reports that the nation is ‘aghast at Boris’s misjudgement’.

Their front page yesterday referred to Tory ‘sleaze’. The paper today reports the Tory poll lead has plunged ‘FIVE POINTS in the wake of Owen Paterson shambles’.

The Mail points out in large print:

‘Senior Conservatives are saying the episode raised serious questions about the Prime Minister’s judgment.’

A Tory grandee is quoted in the paper commenting on Johnson’s governing style:

‘It’s a bit like his marital infidelity – it’s in the price. A lack of attention to detail is expected.

‘But I tell you this latest shambles is one of the worst.

‘If and when Boris’s popularity in the country goes – and it might – a few more episodes like this and he will be out.’

Of course, there will be more episodes like this. Boris Johnson is prone to them. Government by chaos, contempt and cronyism are his modus operandi.

But what follows Johnson?

Yes, more Tory rule, at least until the next general election, which is likely to be almost three years away and yes, likely to result in yet more Tory rule.

Even if The Labour Party gets their act together (and right now it hasn’t) it would be difficult (although not impossible) for an opposition to win against a government with an 80-seat majority.

A lot now depends on public reaction. And maybe more pertinently, the reaction of papers such as the Daily Mail.

If – and it is a big if – the public and press reaction more loudly recognises Brexit for the disaster that it is, maybe the Tories of today might start to remember the Tories of yesterday.

What do they have to remember? This:

• It’s because of the Conservatives that the UK applied to join the European Community in the first place.
• It’s because of the Conservatives that the UK eventually joined the European Community.
• It’s because of the Conservatives that support for Britain’s continued membership of the European Community was won by a landslide in the first referendum in 1975.
• It’s because of the Conservatives, under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, that the Single Market of Europe came into existence.
• It was the Conservative government in the 2016 referendum that officially supported the UK’s continued membership of the European Union.
• Most Conservative MPs voted for Remain in the referendum.
• Since the European Community was founded in 1957, with just two exceptions, the passionate resolve of ALL past Conservative Prime Ministers was that Britain should join the European Community and remain in it.

Yes, the party’s over for the Tories. Now, watch another bout of blue-on-blue battles as the party tries to sort itself out.

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Today sees a meeting between British and French ministers to discuss the vexed question of fishing licences for Jersey waters. This event is important for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it’s the pathway that got opened up earlier in the week by the French decision not to move to unilateral sanctions over the issue, so that’s a positive development for talking through problems rather than laying down more harsh rhetoric (as both countries have been doing of late).

Secondly, it’s a reflection of the outsized importance that this issue has acquired over the past weeks, compared to its economic (or even its symbolic) value. This is a reflection of the wider low-trust environment that the UK operates in with both France and the EU.

But finally, it’s also the first time that the UK will have secured a bilateral meeting with an EU member state to discuss provisions of the Trade & Cooperation Agreement (TCA). The rigour of keeping to the Commission as the interlocutor on such matters has been exceptional and even the very particular nature of the matter might give others some pause for thought, not least Ireland.

In this context, Jersey might turn out to be an important demonstrator of things to come, even if the practicalities involved are somewhat mundane. Given that this is all a sideshow to the looming return of Article 16 – which is a very much bigger problem – we might loose sight of this rather quickly, especially if a deal can be worked out.

However the entire episode has also underlined a number of issues with the TCA that are likely to be repeated down the line.

Most obviously, the situation seems to have stemmed from different interpretations of Art.502(1), which requires that historical access to Jersey waters ‘can be demonstrated’. The necessary level of proof is not specified and this appears not to be a practice that can draw on any significant international law: littoral states that break-up and that divide their waters between successors tend not to offer on-going access at all.

The UK government took a rather firm line on all this, asking for GSM traces and the like, something that smaller French boats couldn’t provide because they don’t carry that kind of equipment. As have been pointed out elsewhere, this was a technical issue that was allowed to escape into chancelleries, with all the additional costs that’s incurred.

The vagueness of the provision is only underlined by Art.502(4) which allows for the entire arrangement to be changed without a full ratification process, suggesting this was at best a stop-gap. Perhaps this also explains the noticeably more constrained and proportional range of remedial measures that can be applied in the event of alleged non-compliance (Art. 506(2)) which means that even if the French had been able to convince the Commission to start on this – already a very big uncertainty – then remedies wouldn’t have stacked up to much.

Again, given the more general reading of the TCA – with its multiple dispute settlement mechanisms, regular reviews and termination clauses – this argues that this set of provisions wasn’t fully nailed down, so minimising contagion made more sense.

We can rehearse the reasons for the hurried nature of the TCA’s negotiation, formulation and ratification and who’s at fault for what, but ultimately none of this changes the situation as the parties find it now.

Indeed, it is this aspect that more forcefully comes back to Northern Ireland and the Protocol.

The UK narrative of late has been one of negotiating the TCA during a period of ‘extreme weakness‘, a bold claim given that ratification only came after the landslide of the December 2019 general election. That aside, the Jersey issue has risked playing into that narrative framing, even if it is within the current text and very much smaller. France does have a presidential election on the way, but it also doesn’t want to be the one to crash the already-beleaguered relationship. Hence the Commission’s refusal to accede to French demands to launch measures under Art.506.

If there is a silver lining, then it was the British protestation that French actions would result in the UK bringing proceedings under the TCA’s dispute settlement mechanism. The rhetoric of the need to stick to the provisions of the treaty raised some hollow laughs elsewhere, after the Internal Market Bill and the suggested use of Art.16 to remove the CJEU from the Protocol, but it does show that there is a logic available to working with what you have.

Unfortunately, it has also underlined very clearly that there is a very long road to travel before relations across the Channel can get back to the level they more usually enjoy.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic94

 

The post What the Jersey fish tale tells us about the TCA appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Former Conservative MEP, Daniel Hannan, has penned an article for The Telegraph with the headline: ‘Poland is learning, as Britain did, that the  EU will never let its members be sovereign’

What nonsense. The EU is not a foreign power lording over the members. The EU IS the members.

All EU laws and treaties are democratically decided. The EU Commission is not the master of the EU; it’s the servant of the EU, fulfilling the laws agreed by the members.

Daniel Hannan is more recently known as Baron Hannan of Kingsclere, after he was appointed last year to the House of Lords by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

He is also an advisor to the Board of Trade. Elected to the position? Don’t be silly. He’s an unelected bureaucrat.

He was one of the founder members of Vote Leave and described by The Guardian as

“the man who brought you Brexit”

In his Telegraph column, Mr, sorry Lord Hannan, claims that:

‘It was always about sovereignty. Who gives orders and who takes them. In Lenin’s pithy formulation, “who, whom?”’

And he makes clear that he supports Poland ‘calmly and politely’ repudiating EU sovereignty. He writes:

‘Its highest court, the Constitutional Tribunal, determined that, on Polish territory, national law had precedence over rulings by EU institutions.’

He explains:

‘What makes the EU’s treaties different from every other international accord is that they do not just apply to their signatories as states; rather, they create a new legal order that is directly binding on citizens with or without implementing legislation at national level.

‘If there is a conflict, decisions by EU institutions override national statutes and even national constitutions. The EU is, in the exact sense, sovereign over its member countries.’

Why did EU member states agree ‘to this surrender’ asks Lord Hannan.

He claims they didn’t, at least not until recently. The problem has come about because the final arbiter of EU law is the European Court of Justice.

Lord Hannan asserts:

‘The primacy of EU law is not to be found anywhere in the Treaty of Rome.’

But in the same article, Lord Hannan reminds readers that in 1999, in a declaration attached to the Lisbon Treaty, EU member governments acknowledged the supremacy of EU law “in accordance with well settled case law of the ECJ”.

So, supremacy of EU law (in certain areas*) was agreed by EU members. The Lisbon Treaty had the unanimous endorsement of every EU member state. It was not forced on any country.

Furthermore, Lord Hannan’s opinion piece refers to Articles 2 and 3 of the European Communities Bill 1972.

Those Articles, acknowledges Lord Hannan, ‘declared EU rules to be supreme over parliamentary statutes.’

The UK House of Commons voted 301–284 in favour of the Bill, and it was endorsed by the UK House of Lords.

So, any devolvement of sovereignty to the EU by the UK was democratically agreed by our Parliament as part of our membership terms.

As the Institute of Government has pointed out:

‘The European Communities Act [1972] gives EU law supremacy over UK national law.

‘Where the interpretation of EU law is in doubt, the Act requires UK courts to refer judgment to the European Court of Justice.’

So, supremacy of EU law over certain areas* of a member state’s laws is voluntary, democratic, and can come to an end when a member state leaves the EU – as all members are free to do, and the UK has now done.

It should be remembered that every EEC/EU treaty – upon which all EU laws must be compatible – was fully debated and democratically passed by our Parliament in Westminster.

Not once were changes to our membership imposed on us, and neither could they be, as the EU is a democracy, run by its members for the benefit of members.

Brexiters such as Lord Hannan claim that outside the EU the UK has gained sovereignty.

But with Brexit, we’ve lost a say, votes and vetoes on the running and future direction of our continent.

That in my mind does not represent a gain, but a loss of sovereignty.

* Legal note: EU does not have supremacy over every national law; ONLY areas for which the EU is responsible. See Full Fact’s excellent report about this. 

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Just a short post this week, since I already wrote about this in a Twitter thread earlier in the week:

Some thoughts on the UK's approach to the NI Protocol and what that might mean

Short version: UK wants to hold it in unstable situation, to avoid wearing costs of Brexit domestically, but this isn't a long-term strategy

1/

— Simon Usherwood (@Usherwood) October 18, 2021

The thread was an attempt to make sense of what the UK is doing and whether it might work. As you’ll see, I’m not that confident that it will. Conversations with people on both sides this week haven’t changed my mind on that either.

Part of that is the low trust environment that exists. The number and quality of connections that the EU has with the UK are both relatively low, which means there are fewer opportunities for the kind of frank discussions that might find a way through the current impasse.

As a result, the weight of rhetoric (on both sides) increases in the calculation.

To take an obvious example, the unwillingness of the UK to publish its replacement text for the Protocol makes it impossible to work out a more dispassionate understanding of its needs, so we have to fall back on the words of Lord Frost or Boris Johnson, with all the additional complexities that brings.

Even if the Commission proposals last week do leave various points to be precised and elaborated, at least they work more transparently towards a new set of agreements (or implementations of existing agreements, to be more exact).

This shouldn’t be that surprising – I noted in evidence back at the start of the year, for example – but that doesn’t change the situation as we find it.

Rebuilding contacts and conversations is going to have to be a priority if things are to start to improve between the EU and UK, and it’s probably the UK that has to start that.

I’d not hold your breath right now.

The post Making sense of the UK’s approach to the Protocol appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

On last week’s BBC Question Time (7 October) host Fiona Bruce announced:

“The majority of you voted FOR Brexit in this audience.”

She explained:

“We select this audience very carefully to be representative”.

Her response came after a comment from a member of the audience who said:

“We’ve got a lack of foreign workers which is why we’ve got these shortages.”

Assuming him to be a Remainer, Ms Bruce responded in a rather alarmed way. She tried to say that she wanted to hear from members of the audience who had voted for Brexit.

She then turned to the audience member to say:

“I’m assuming you didn’t vote for Brexit.”

Came the reply:

“I did actually.” 

Oh dear. Fiona could have fallen off her chair.

She exclaimed:

“You did!

“OK. And you’re still saying that? OK.”

It seemed an odd response. She didn’t even ask the Leave voter why he had apparently changed his mind.

You can watch and read about what happened by clicking a link:

• On this EU ROPE blog
• On Facebook 
• On LinkedIn 
• On YouTube 

I sent an email to BBC Question Time to query how they select their audiences “very carefully to be representative”.

I asked:

‘Can you please provide me with information on how the audience is selected insofar as the referendum result was concerned?

‘Does the audience selection vary according to the town being visited, or is it based on national statistics?’ 

I sent the BBC three questions specifically about audience selection insofar as it relates to Brexit.

1. A majority of the entire electorate in the UK did NOT vote for Brexit. So how come the majority in your audience are Brexiters? How can you say your audience is “representative”?
2. If your audience is supposed to be representative of the 2016 EU referendum, your audience members should comprise around a third Remain voters, just over a third Leave voters, and just under a third non-voters. Do you agree?
3. The referendum was over five years ago. Shouldn’t your audience be representative of the situation as it is today? Polls consistently show that a majority in Britain consider the Brexit decision to be wrong.

The BBC promised to send me their reply by my deadline, on Wednesday 13 October. When nothing came, I chased them.

Yesterday morning I got this reply from a ‘BBC spokesperson’:

“Question Time always selects its audiences to reflect recent voting trends and the current political picture of the nation it is broadcasting from.

“Those trends differ across the UK and we aim to reflect those differences.”

I immediately wrote back:

‘The quote does not answer the three specific questions I have asked or provide any detail as to how the BBC selects its audiences.

‘Can you offer a more detailed quote, or is that it?

‘I don’t think my readers will be impressed by such a short response to my detailed questions.’

But answer came there none.

They may be called BBC Question Time, but they don’t like to answer questions.

Even though, as licence payers, we do deserve answers, don’t you think?

If you are in a Question Time audience one day, maybe you can ask my questions for me.

But be sure to record what happens on your mobile phone, because the chances are that your questions would be edited out of programme.

• Watch the extract from BBC Question Time of 7 October 2021:

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
• My campaign page on Facebook: Reasons2Rejoin
• And LinkedIn

________________________________________________________

• Join the discussion about this article on Facebook:

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On 7 October 2021, EUHealthGov held its second quarterly seminar. We were delighted to be joined by Professor Meri Koivusalo from Tampere University (Finland) for a discussion on how EU trade negotiations can impact health services. She highlighted a persistent discrepancy between the EU’s aspirations and the reality of health services safeguarding when so-called ‘new generation’ trade agreements are negotiated. Meri Koivusalo’s presentation was based on her recently published article co-authored with Drs Noora Heinonen and Liina-Kaisa Tynkkynen at Tampere University.

A key point of discussion was how new generation trade agreements, such as CETA and TTIP, are becoming increasingly comprehensive, which can have long-lasting implications on the regulatory landscape. We looked at how they can affect health in a variety of ways, including via the trade flows of unhealthy commodities; constraints put on national policy space, and the protection of corporate benefits (through intellectual property rights and investment protection among other mechanisms). Such trade agreements can shape ‘the new normal’ in a way that institutionalises liberalisation as the default path forward. Meanwhile, assurances like commitments to the right to regulate tend to be made outside of the legally binding negotiation text, thus bearing little concrete weight. 

Another angle explored was the multi-level governance aspect of EU trade agreement negotiations, and the extent to which Member States share a common position on how health services should be treated in the negotiations. 

Finally, we discussed the promising emergence of a ‘positive trade agenda’: can a positive trade agenda comply with other priorities like human rights, gender equality, and sustainability, or would it entrench the prioritisation of commercial policy?

A recording of the event is available here

The post Summary: In Conversation with Professor Meri Koivusalo – Trade and Health: When Actions do not match Aspirations appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The signing
ceremony of a science agreement between the US and the UK in 2017. Photo credits: The State Department

Nicolas Rüffin

In a recent paper, Simon Marginson (2021) analyzes four competing narratives commonly used to explain the growth of global science. He concludes that each of the predominant narratives—growth of networks, international arms races, global markets, and centre-periphery models—falls short from fully explaining all facets of the phenomenon of global science. Consequently, Marginson calls for research that is more concerned with the connections between the semi-autonomous scientific system and political and economic actors and interventions.

 

Science and technology agreements – a measure of science diplomacy?

One phenomenon in which precisely these connections emerge very visibly is the field of science diplomacy at the intersection of foreign affairs and (international) science policy. Within this field, bilateral science and technology agreements (STA) are often cited as exemplary instruments of international science policy strategies. STA are bilateral umbrella agreements at the governmental level in which measures for scientific and technological cooperation such as the exchange of students and researchers or the handling of intellectual property rights are described and agreed upon. Although such agreements are situated directly at the intersection of foreign affairs and research policy, there are few studies that address them (Dolan, 2012; Fikkers & Horvart, 2014; Rüffin & Schreiterer, 2017; Sabzalieva et al., 2021). One reason for this lack of academic research might be that data on STA has been scattered across many places. In contrast to multilateral and bilateral treaties on economic issues or security that are available via repositories of the World Bank or the UN, STA have lacked any centralized record. On the contrary: each country provides—if at all—its own information on STA. In consequence, the scope, quality, and availability of these data are subject to strong fluctuations.

The new and freely available dataset B-STA-R (Rüffin, 2021) is meant to counter this argument of missing data and cumbersome data collection. In this dataset, information on 1138 original bilateral agreements as well as on a number of subsequent agreements was collected from sources of almost all G20 and OECD countries. The dataset covers the period between 1937 and 2020. It contains information on the date of conclusion, the entry into force, the originally agreed duration, and the reliability of the data entry. The dataset also includes information on the existence of individual contract documents and in many cases also references to the respective national data source. This means that full texts of over 850 STA can be found and analyzed using B-STA-R. Detailed descriptions of the individual variables are available in a separate codebook.

 

Patterns in the conclusion of STA

A first glimpse into the data already offers some interesting insights on trends in science diplomacy both over time and with regard to individual countries. Even without in-depth analysis, the dataset illustrates that the number of agreements concluded between 1950 and 1990 corresponds roughly to the different phases of Détente and rising Cold War tensions. For instance, Western countries and states of the Eastern bloc showed a higher number of bilateral agreements in the 1970s, corresponding with initiatives like the German “new Ostpolitik” and the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe. After 1990, we see another rise of STA between formerly Soviet-dominated, newly independent countries and states from the Western bloc.

Apart from these general trends, a glance at the STA of individual countries also reveals some interesting patterns. For instance, we can see that the pattern of STA concluded by the People’s Republic of China corresponds with the geopolitical orientation of the Communist leadership. While early agreements were concluded with allies in the communist bloc, the Sino-Soviet split and the thaw in relations between Western countries and China in the 1970s are quite directly represented in the data. South Africa is another example of the seemingly strategic use of bilateral agreements. Here we can find a surge of new international agreements after 1995 very much in parallel to the end of the Apartheid-era and the election of the first ANC government. Moreover, South Africa conducts very extensive intra-African science diplomacy via STA since the transformations of the 1990s.

 

Towards a better understanding of international science policy

These glimpses are just a few examples to illustrate that the dataset can be put to good use by interested scholars. In light of the points raised by Marginson, a whole series of questions can be addressed with the help of the dataset, in particular if combined with other sources and statistics, e.g.  from UNESCO or World Bank databases. Potential questions could be:

Do such agreements have any effects at all on the scientific networks between the participating countries? Do they, for instance, result in increased contacts between researchers from both countries and thus support the emergence of global science networks? Or are STA primarily determined by foreign policy strategies? Is there an interplay between scientific and political rationales? Are there unintended consequences of STA? Moreover: Is there some kind of global or regional diffusion of STA? And last but not least: Has the role and importance of STA shifted in line with changing conditions in the geopolitics of science and technology?

Of course, it is up to interested users to use the data for useful purposes. To maximize the usability of the new dataset, it is freely accessible under a CC BY 4.0 license. It is planned to expand the dataset in the future to cover more countries, to further increase the reliability of data, and to integrate additional information on the existing entries. Thus, feedback from users of the dataset is highly appreciated to further improve future editions of B-STA-R. In any event, the hope is that the data will be used to provide new answers to important and pressing research questions on global science, science diplomacy, and international science policymaking.

 

Nicolas Rüffin is Visiting Researcher of the President’s Research Group at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and is currently working on his PhD thesis on patterns in the politics of big science organizations at the University of Kassel, Germany. He joined the WZB in 2016, after receiving a master’s degree in science studies from the Humboldt-University of Berlin, and a bachelor’s degree in business psychology from the University of Bochum. His research mainly focuses on issues of international science policy, the politics of intergovernmental big science projects, and science diplomacy.

 

The dataset

Rüffin, N. (2021). B-STA-R: A repository for bilateral science and technology agreements. Version 1.0.0. WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.7802/2310

 

References

Dolan, B. M. (2012). Science and Technology Agreements as Tools for Science Diplomacy: A U.S. Case Study. Science & Diplomacy 1(4), http://www.sciencediplomacy.org/article/2012/science-and-technology-agreements-tools-for-science-diplomacy.

Fikkers, D. J. & Horvart, M. (2014). Basic Principles for Effective STI Agreements – Main Report. Publications Office of the European Union.

Marginson, S. (2021). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2021.1942822

Rüffin, N. & Schreiterer, U. (2017). Science and Technology Agreements in the Toolbox of Science Diplomacy. Effective Instruments or Insignificant Add-ons? (EL-CSID Working Paper, Nr. 6). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.891198

Sabzalieva, E., Sá, C. M., Martinez, M., & Kachynska, N. (2021). Science Diplomacy Policy Processes in Comparative Perspective: The Use of Scientific Cooperation Agreements in Canada, India, Norway, and the UK. Minerva, 1–24.

The post B-STA-R: A new dataset to study science diplomacy and global science appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This week has seen the full return of the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol to political agendas, after a lull during the UK’s party political conference season.

Last night saw the publication of the Commission’s extensive proposals on enabling the implementation of the Protocol, following much consultation both within the EU member states and with Northern Irish stakeholders.

That had been somewhat pre-empted by the Lord Frost’s speech on Tuesday, which were taken as a rejection in principle of those proposals, given the more fundamental problems around the Protocol’s operation.

In particular, Frost spoke of the collapse of Unionist support and of the need to remove the EU’s Court of Justice (CJEU) as the ‘ultimate polic[er]’ of the treaty.

As explained in the graphic below, the CJEU is incorporated into the Withdrawal Agreement in two ways. Temporarily, it discharges all outstanding cases before it, including those brought during transition, and offers a time-limited route for handling Citizens’ Rights cases. Permanently, it has a role to provide definitive rulings on matters of EU law that arise from disputes and from the operation of the Protocol in Northern Ireland (the sovereign bases in Cyprus too, not that this seems to be a live issue).

That permanent role is a function of the basic model of the Protocol itself: Northern Ireland is effectively an extension of the EU’s single market and customs union, and each of those is made up of rules set by the EU. Therefore, to ensure uniform interpretation of those rules (needed to make either element meaningful), you need to have a single ultimate court to decide what’s what.

In short, as David Allen Green rightly notes, if you want to remove the CJEU, then you want to stop Northern Ireland being inside the single market and customs union, which is a fundamentally situation for the region, and one that isn’t compatible with the Good Friday Agreement.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic93

However, the UK seems bent on pushing this point, and Frost once again reminded the EU that it considers it has grounds to invoke Art.16 of the Protocol. I’ll refer you back to previous posts (and podcast) about why this isn’t likely to solve anything.

The second graphic (which you can read in conjunction with this one) works through a related issue, namely how use of Art.16 might lead to other responses.

Route one will be within the Article itself, since the other party is given the right to make appropriate rebalancing measures: these would be not only a prompt response, but would also limit escalation.

But the Article sits under the WA’s dispute settlement mechanism, and there’s a link through to the Trade & Cooperation Agreement, should the matter not be resolved and remedies of the arbitration panel not be applied.

Admittedly, this is a set of very big steps, and slow ones at that, but it’s useful to remember that legally, as well as politically, the Protocol has the potential to rewind the entire system of EU-UK relations. That might serve the agendas of some in London, but it’s hard to see how anything on better terms for the UK might then ensue.

This is then the bigger point from this week’s exercise: things might not be working well, but sitting down and trying to find a collaborative solution might be the least worse option for all involved. Whether the UK climbs down the Commission’s ladder is still unclear, but we should expect much contagion of the relationship if they don’t.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic92

The post Reworking the Protocol, or just trying to make it work? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

by Cláudia Araújo This article is based on research presented at the UACES Graduate Forum Research Conference 2021 (17-18 June, online)

 

Writing a blog post about November 14th 2012 may seem like a delayed reaction after almost 9 years, but this day was central in my choice of a theme for a doctoral dissertation. This is why I am putting it under the spotlight again. I look at the day´s events using the theoretical framework of securitisation created by the Copenhagen Security School (Buzan et al. 1998).

On November 14th 2012, the European Union lived through a day of transnational protest, convened by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). This day was marked by demonstrations in several European cities, the largest taking place in several Spanish and Italian cities, the Portuguese capital and Athens, Greece. Marches also took place in about 100 French cities, as did sectorial national strikes across Europe (i.e. railway workers in Belgium and airport workers across Europe) and protesters also demonstrated in Brussels. In contrast, in northern European countries (Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark), that were less affected by the Great Depression, demonstrations were smaller and mostly motivated to show solidarity with Southern Europe. Those demonstrations were part of one of the largest coordinated protests at EU level, constituting a rare occasion of transnational, concerted mobilisation, gathering the attention of politicians, businesses, the media and social movements across the continent.

Despite the peaceful nature of most demonstrations, some events were marked by violence, both on the part of the protesters (police cars burned in Barcelona; electricity cuts in Madrid; objects thrown at banks and multinational companies, destruction of private property, attacks on security forces and roadblocks in Italy and Spain; objects thrown at policemen in Lisbon) and of the security forces, with the media, some political parties and politicians, civil society organizations and NGOs denouncing excessive use of force, which resulted in a significant number of injuries (50 in Lisbon, 70 in Madrid) and arrests (140 in Madrid, 60 in Rome).

I single out this protest event not only due to its explicit European nature, but also as it was the object of two completely different narratives. While the European Trade Union Confederation and some media refer to it in a celebratory manner as the “European Day of Action and Solidarity”, the same event is named “Day of the Rage” in other media. This second The “Day of the Rage” is a threat that needs to be tackled with a sense of emergency, both nationally and at European level, justifying securitising moves by different securitising actors (police forces, the judiciary, politicians, the media), both during and after the protest event.

During the protest, such actions included the deployment of special police units and riot police adopting urban combat tactics, such as charges, rubber bullets, tear gas, sound and water cannons, as well as crowd control tactics including kettling, mass arrests and dispersion by armoured vehicles. In Spain, military helicopters flew over the demonstrations.

After the protest, the reactions of governments, transnational institutions and multinationals to this day of protest are exemplified in those of the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso and of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. They recognized the duress of the sacrifices imposed on Southern Europeans, but continued to argue that austerity measures were the only solution to the financial crisis. These statements erased the possibility of the protest event resulting in any change in policy, thereby Further, the economic, financial and social costs of dissent were prioritised (politicians and business interests alike denounced losses of billions of Euros associated with the event), as was the fact that dissent would weigh negatively in countries´ ability to attract foreign investment, perpetuating the conditions that justified austerity to begin with, the responsibility of which was, this time around, attributed to the protesters themselves. In the media, protesters were described as violent thugs, as inconsiderate youths engaging in destruction for the sake of it, discursive constructions that devoid them of political identities and their actions of political meaning.

I posit, then, that this protest is paramount of the tendency for the securitisation of dissent in the EU. My analysis highlights the different dimensions of the securitising move, particularly noticeable during the event itself, but also visible in the discursive structures adopted by those in power. Securitising actors included politicians and political institutions, the police, the judiciary, private business interests and a part of the media, who, collectively posited the protest event as violent, dangerous, abnormal, and, finally, useless.

But I also uncovered some reactions resisting that move: desecuritising actors included European and national social movements, other politicians, and another part of the media, who described the protest as an example of European solidarity, a core value of the European Union, and who posited resistance to policies deemed unfair as a collective right of Europeans, both nationally and transnationally.

In my doctoral project, I am exploring the link between securitising protest and democratic erosion using Spain and Portugal as case studies. Although I am still at an early stage of my research, it is clear that the securitising tendencies I found by analysing this event are not the exception. If democratization happens bottom-up (Della Porta 2015), led by activist citizens making claims to justice (Isin 2011; 2012), limits to street politics, by effectively reducing the political space available to demonstrate dissent (Fominaya 2016), can put democracy at risk, so this is not an issue I take lightly. I hope to further understand exactly how these dynamics are at play as I continue my work.

 

REFERENCES

Buzan, Barry, Ole Waever, and Wilde, Jasper. 1998. Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Boulder & London. Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Della Porta, Donatella. 2015. Social Movements in Times of Austerity. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Fominaya, Cristina Flesher. 2016. “European anti-austerity and pro-democracy protests in the wake of the global financial crisis”, Social Movement Studies, 16-1:1-20, DOI: 10.1080/14742837.2016.1256193.

Fox. B. 2012. “Europe’s cities hit by anti-austerity protests”. EUobserver [online]. Available at https://euobserver.com/political/118203 (15-11-2017).

Isin, Engin F. 2011. Citizenship in flux: The figure of the activist citizen. Subjectivity, 29, pp. 367–388.

Isin, Engin F. 2012. Citizens Without Frontiers. London: Bloomsbury.

Kington, T., Smith H., Willsher K. and Roberts, M. 2012. “Europe unites in austerity protests against cuts and job losses”. The Guardian [online]. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/nov/14/europe-unite-austerity-protests (15-11-2017).

Levitin, M. 2012. “Europe Faces a Multi-National General Strike Against Austerity”. Time [online]. Available at http://world.time.com/2012/11/13/europe-faces-a-multi-national-general-strike-against-austerity (15-11-2017).

Nadeau. B. 2012. “Europe´s Day of Austerity Rage”. The Daily Beast [online]. Available at https://www.thedailybeast.com/europes-day-of-austerity-rage (15-11-2017).

2012. “Anti-austerity protests across Europe turn violent”. CBC [online]. Available at http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/anti-austerity-protests-across-europe-turn-violent-1.1265542 (15-11-2017).

2012. “Anti-Austerity protest sparks violence.” Der Spiegel [online]. Available at http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/anti-austerity-protests-spark-violence-in-european-countries-a-867316.html (15-11-2017).

2012. “Belgium, Spain, Greece protest austerity measures on eve of the European Union economic summit”. The Middletown Press [online]. Available at http://www.middletownpress.com/news/article/Belgium-Spain-Greece-protest-austerity-measures-11831925.php (15-11-2017).

2012. “Thousands protest against European Union austerity cuts”. BBC News [online]. Available at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17210178 (15-11-2017).

 

 

Cláudia Araújo

About the author:

Cláudia Araújo is a PhD candidate on Citizenship and Human Rights at the University of Barcelona, where she is researching the linkages between the securitisation of protest and democratic erosion. She is also a researcher at the Centre for Social Sciences at the University of Coimbra.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The member of the audience at the very back of the studio took presenter Fiona Bruce by surprise on BBC Brexit, sorry, Question Time.

Said the jacketed, bespectacled gentleman:

“A lot of people voted for Brexit because they didn’t want foreign workers taking our jobs,” 

“And now, that’s exactly the situation that we’ve got. We’ve got a lack of foreign workers which is why we’ve got these shortages.”

Oh dear. Obviously a Remainer. How on earth did HE get into the audience?

“Can I just hear from someone…”

Befuddled Ms Bruce couldn’t finish her sentence. She wanted to say:

“Can I just hear from someone who voted FOR Brexit, for goodness sake?”

For clarity, she added:

“Because the majority of you voted FOR Brexit in this audience.”

The flummoxed Ms Bruce could barely finish her words. This isn’t supposed to be happening!

“We select this audience very carefully to be representative.”

She said, trying to offer an excuse for a Remain opinion filtering through on HER show.

“Can I just hear from someone who did vote for …”

She wanted to say Brexit.

She needs to hear from audience members who voted for Brexit, dammit, because Brexit won, didn’t it? Most people voted for Brexit and that’s why most people in this audience are Brexiters. Duh!

Oh, hold on, better check.

“I’m assuming you didn’t vote for Brexit.”

She said, pointing her pen at the clever-looking bloke at the back who’s obviously a sneaky Remainer who somehow managed to get into the audience.

Came the reply:

“I did actually.”

Oh dear. Fiona could have fallen off her chair.

“You did!”

She exclaimed.

“OK. And you’re still saying that? OK.”

But it’s not OK at all.

Call yourself a Brexiter when you spout anti-Brexit views like that on MY show?

You ticked the ‘I voted Leave’ box on the #BBCQT questionnaire.

We don’t have a box for, ‘I voted Leave but now I can see it’s a bloody stupid idea.’

………………………….

So, here are three questions I’ve sent to BBC Question Time:

1. A majority of the entire electorate in the UK did NOT vote for Brexit. So how come the majority in your audience are Brexiters? How can you say your audience is “representative”?
2. If your audience is supposed to be representative of the 2016 EU referendum, your audience members should comprise around a third Remain voters, just over a third Leave voters, and just under a third non-voters. Do you agree?
3.  The referendum was over five years ago. Shouldn’t your audience be representative of the situation as it is today? Polls consistently show that a majority in Britain consider the Brexit decision to be wrong.

• Watch the extract from BBC Question Time of 7 October 2021:

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
• My campaign page on Facebook: Reasons2Rejoin
• And LinkedIn

________________________________________________________

• Join the discussion about this article on Facebook:

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This post originally appear on Encompass Europe.

This is a good moment to reflect on one of the many paradoxes of Brexit: for something that has occurred under so much time pressure, there has always still been a summer break.

That was true in 2017 and 2018 during the Article 50 negotiations and even last year, when Covid and a British government unwilling to add to the transition period might have been cause to break the pause.

So this summer’s hiatus – whether paddleboarding in Cyprus or not – has not been much of a shock, especially with the conclusion of active negotiations on the basic treaties of the EU-UK relationship.

But this is to miss the bigger picture, namely the continuing instability of that relationship.

Brexit was always going to be a long-term process, for a number of reasons. Most importantly, the depth of the entwining of British political, economic and social structures with those of the EU and its member states over the previous half-century was not something that could be unpicked in anything less than a generation.

The depth of that entanglement was long a bugbear of the eurosceptic movement in the UK, particularly those who wanted nothing more than a ‘common market’, but it is only now that the full extent of it has become apparent to most people.

That some of that was actually generally well-thought-of – such as the enrichment of the typical British supermarket shelf with European produce, or no-cost roaming for mobile phones – is neither here nor there, even if it does explain some of the cries of ‘that’s not the Brexit I voted for’.

However, disentanglement is one thing. Much more problematic is the question of what comes in its place.

As has always been the case in post-WWII British European policy, the purpose of the relationship with the rest of the continent has been less than settled. The historic model of a balance of power seemed less than relevant in the wake of the end of the Cold War, even as the tropes of the ‘special relationship’ and ‘global Britain’ have pulled successive generations of politicians towards visions of a much grander role. Europe, and by extension the EU, has been a problem to be managed, rather than an opportunity to be grasped.

Brexit has simply put this issue in a much more prominent position. Yes, the UK wants to move apart from the EU, but without deciding on why it wants to do, or how.

As much as the twin treaties of the Withdrawal Agreement and the Trade & Cooperation Agreement have set up some parameters, it is striking how much they leave to be decided down the line.

The former’s Irish Protocol remains in a very uncertain place in a period of fluid Northern Irish politics, while the latter’s framework for future cooperation is more hung up on the ever-lengthening transitional and grace periods being applied. As I’ve noted elsewhere, the TCA is more about potential than reality.

Crucially, neither treaty is unambiguously accepted as the definitive basis for relations. This goes beyond the continual (and unjustified) rhetoric of the British government about signing under a degree of duress, to the multiple active elements of the TCA that both sides agreed could be pushed down the line.

This is partly a function of the hurried nature of the negotiations, but more fundamentally it is a result of the negative-sum nature of the withdrawal: no model of leaving the EU would fail to generate costs, so the process has been one of allocation. The only real questions have been how honest everyone would be about those costs and how publics would react when they found out.

Sadly, the answers are respectively “not particularly” and “not very happy at all”. Rhetoric is one thing; empty shelves are another.

All of which suggests that rather than representing the new baseline for EU-UK relations, the current situation is more likely to be a staging post towards further deterioration.

This autumn will see a number of tests of this. While the introduction of UK customs controls has been pushed back once more, the Irish Protocol issues are set to kick back in, along with potential legal challenges by the EU. The cross-cutting impact of Covid on labour and goods supply will also increase pressure.

Even where there are solid reasons to renegotiate parts of the treaties, this is now bound up in the bigger problem of neither side wanting to reopen that they do have in legal terms, both for fear of what else might get reworked and from a strong desire not to repeat the psychodramas of 2016-20.

What is unclear right now is what it will take to stop things worsening even further. Perhaps some joint sense of mission through COP26 this winter, perhaps a new government in London, but the message right now is that this is going to get worse before it gets better.

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