European Union

SEDE organises a public hearing on 'Security in the Eastern Partnership area: the impact of Russian military doctrine, force posture and capability development ' on Wednesday, 27 October 2021 from 13.45 to 15.00hrs in room ANTALL 4Q1 and remotely, with external experts.

Please find below the draft programme and the poster.
Draft programme
Poster
Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

SEDE organises a public hearing on 'Security in the Eastern Partnership area: the impact of Russian military doctrine, force posture and capability development ' on Wednesday, 27 October 2021 from 13.45 to 15.00hrs in room ANTALL 4Q1 and remotely, with external experts.
Location : Brussels - room ANTALL 4Q1
Programme
Poster
Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

SEDE organised a public hearing on 'The security situation in the Sahel: the African view and experience' on Wednesday, 14 April 2021 from 10.00 to 12.00hrs in room SPINELLI 3E2 and remotely, with external experts.
Draft programme
Poster
EPRS study: Peace and security in 2020: Evaluating the EU approach to tackling the Sahel conflicts - 16 September 2020
EPRS briefing: Understanding the EU Strategy for the Sahel - 7 September 2020
EPRS briefing: The G5 Sahel and the European Union: The challenges of security cooperation with a regional grouping - 6 September 2020
Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

Length of video : 87'

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

AMENDMENTS 1 - 239 - Draft report Human rights and democracy in the world and the European Union’s policy on the matter - annual report 2021
Committee on Foreign Affairs
María Soraya Rodríguez Ramos

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

AMENDMENTS 240 - 407 - Draft report Human rights and democracy in the world and the European Union’s policy on the matter - annual report 2021
Committee on Foreign Affairs
María Soraya Rodríguez Ramos

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

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

________________________________________________________

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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.

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

Length of video : 103'

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

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.

MEPs call for a comprehensive set of measures and a coherent IT policy, as well as improved military cyber defence coordination, to strengthen EU cyber resilience.
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on Security and Defence

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

Election of the Presidents of the Chambers of three Judges of the Court of Justice

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post November 14th 2012: “European Day of Action and Solidarity” or “Day of Rage”? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Election of a President of a Chamber of the General Court of the European Union

Élection d’un président de chambre du Tribunal de l’Union européenne

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:

The post Welcome to BBC Brexit Time appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Mr Maciej Szpunar is elected First Advocate General of the Court of Justice