European Union

Commission v Spain (Détérioration de l’espace naturel de Doñana)
Environment and consumers
L’Espagne aurait dû prendre en compte le captage d’eau illégal et le captage d’eau destiné à l’approvisionnement urbain lors de l’estimation du captage des eaux souterraines de la région de Doñana

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

For me, it was the morning after that I remember most vividly.

An early train to London left me wandering into Parliament Square at too-early-o’clock to hunt down the Radio5Live tent on College Green, to sit with Adrian Chiles for a few hours while he interviewed some of the many passing politicians about the result of the referendum.

I remember it a bit because Adrian was very generous in sharing his biscuits, but much more because of what I saw unfolding around me.

Almost to a person, everyone looked as if there had been an explosion and they were now staggering through the dust, trying to work out what had happened. Leavers as much as Remainers carried a look of those who weren’t entirely sure what whether this was real or not, a figment of their fevered imaginations.

And more than this.

There was a vague sense in the air that if this was so, then what else might be possible? For a while, everything seemed uncertain, nothing was fixed. As a good Gen Xer, I was put in mind of Ice Magic: the hard shell of our political institutions being lifted off to reveal a rapidly-melting polity.

No, I hadn’t slept much.

Throughout the 24th, I kept coming back to this strange place, simultaneously fearing that no-one else knew what came next and hoping that no-one did, that they might come up with something calamitous.

But no one did. Just a trail of resignations, of sheepish press conferences, of hours, then days, of drift. Very soon it became clear that no one had really, truly, properly prepared for this.

And this has been the leitmotif of the past five years: an aftermath, a picking up of the pieces, with no sense of whether to whip out the superglue or to stick the mess in the bin.

Ultimately, the referendum was a decision without a rationale or a reason. That’s not wrong – unlike some, I’m not here to call out the quality of the debate beforehand – but it is problematic.

Whatever relationship the UK wants with the EU, it will not be secured in the way that it has been pursued since 2016. The British approach has been driven by what is not wanted, rather than by any coherent sense of what should be, and why it should be so.

My hope in 2013 had been that Cameron’s offer of an in-out referendum might trigger a careful national discussion about such things, although I’ll profess to being dubious it would happen until that offer came good.

My hope in 2015, after the general election, was that now would be the time.

My hope in 2016, after the referendum, was that this was now essential, ahead of any negotiations.

And my hope now, after all my previous hopes have been dashed, is that one positive consequence of the tortured process we’ve undergone is that the case of trying to build an inclusive project for the UK is now easier to make.

Maybe I’m too optimistic on that front, but I do know that I’ll keep on trying to help people make sense of the issues and the options, so that we can work towards a new, stable and resilient relationship with the EU.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic84

The post Five years of (some of) Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The Subcommittee on Security and Defence will hold a meeting with Nobuo Kishi, Minister of Defence of Japan, on 17 June. The aim is to go over the progress in the implementation of the EU-Japan Strategic Partnership Agreement in the area of security and defence. The debate will also look into translating commitments taken at the last EU-Japan Summit into joint actions to tackle global and regional challenges amidst rapidly intensifying geopolitical competition in the Indo-Pacific.

The recently adopted EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, and prospects for further enhancing synergies with Japan as one of the EU's main strategic regional partners in the framework of the Strategy, will also be addressed.

Meeting agenda and documents
Live streaming
Summary: Debate with Nobuo Kishi, Japanese Minister of Defence
Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

Analyses of EU transparency traditionally focus on its legal development with little attention to informality. In such accounts, the Council of the EU is routinely understood as an obstructionist force blocking the expansion of transparency, only to be strong-armed into concessions by external pressure. However, in the Environment Council, a formation of the Council of the EU, transparency policy developed quite differently. Here, the Council actively promoted the expansion of rule-based transparency, while NGOs hardly made use of these legal transparency rights. A close analysis suggests that informality –often dismissed as anomalous or overlooked outright–  takes a central place in explaining this peculiar development.

EU transparency, when conceived as a formal policy, consists of a framework of rules and their implementation. Among the rules, Regulation 1049/2001 on access to the institutions’ documents counts as the central piece of legislation. In the area of environmental policy, the Environment Council went further, with the EU signing up to the UN-sponsored Aarhus Convention, which eventually led to Regulation 1367/2006. This lex specialis, which created a more expansive EU environmental information regime, was adopted without noticeable member state resistance. Most observers, both inside the Council and outside of it, agree that the Environment Council implements these rules faithfully and without undue restrictions, especially when compared to other Council formations. Yet while environmental NGOs (ENGOs) lobbied hard to expand formal transparency rights, they themselves made limited use of them.

 

Too good to be true?

Based on what we know of the Council’s transparency-sceptical attitude in other policy contexts, as well as ENGOs’ emphasis on transparency, the ‘dormancy’ of a highly developed Environment Council transparency policy is counterintuitive. My recent article argues that the explanation lies in informal norms which the Environment Council and its members mobilise to ‘repair’ elements in the formal transparency framework that they consider either too restrictive or too lenient from the perspective of transparency. As Helmke and Levitsky argue in a seminal publication, to properly understand formal policy frameworks, they must be regarded in light of their interplay with informal solutions. By filling remaining gaps, compensating shortcomings, buffering impacts, or purely contradicting, informal norms can take a structural character that fundamentally alters –or even brackets– the functioning of formal rules. Studying transparency policies without considering the informal norms’ bearing on them will render such policy incomprehensible or provide a grossly distorted picture.

Informality thus serves as a response to certain aspects of transparency rules. In the context of the Environment Council, chiefly three scenarios are imaginable in this respect. First, the Environment Council could perceive a need to balance formal transparency requirements against efficiency needs. This would primarily undermine transparency rules, to the benefit of confidentiality. Second, the Council could subordinate formal transparency duties to functional requirements, tailoring information sharing to its needs at every stage of the decision-making process. This would not result in outright information suppression, but in the strategic timing of disclosure. Third, informal norms could be volatile, as different member states seek to institutionalise informal norms to varying, changing ends. This would translate into informal norm conflict and, for ENGOs, information venue shopping.

 

Playing beyond the rules

A close analysis shows that informal norms indeed have a major impact on the way in which the Environment Council approaches its formal transparency obligations. Informality does not always limit access to information. For instance, several environmental affairs ministries maintain close contacts with their nationally based ENGOs about ongoing Council legislation, while at the European level, a representative has traditionally been invited to participate on behalf of the ENGO community in the half-yearly informal Environment Council meeting. Some member states even go as far as to engage in the unauthorised sharing of documents with stakeholders, or leaking them to the press. All these activities serve to expand access to information beyond, or even against, what the rules allow, although mostly for privileged groups of outsiders, and often for politically strategic, rather than transparency-promoting ends.

At the same time, various informal norms also limit access to Environment Council information. One of these is the so-called ‘limite’ label, an informal document classification which prevents (legislative) documents from being directly disclosed or shared with outsiders, as well as the internal agreement to withholding the identity of member states suggesting amendments when disclosing documents concerning ongoing legislative negotiations. After this latter practice was struck down by the Court of Justice, the Council decided to leave references to member states out of the document altogether. A different situation occurred with respect to so-called trilogue negotiations, which were originally conceived to create an informal legislative negotiating space between the Council and the Parliament beyond the reach of the transparency rules. Ever since the Court of Justice struck also this legal interpretation down, both institutions have de facto been breaking the rules by continuing this secretive practice.

 

Governing informally: a volatile affair

Searching for patterns in the above-described informal norms for regulating access to information in the Environment Council, it soon becomes clear that they do not fully match with the first two of the above-described scenarios. Some balancing informality occurs, but remains relatively rare due to member states’ wide divergence on the question how much informal transparency suppression is acceptable. Informal transparency norms also follow to some extent functional patterns, with different norms applying to different stages of the decision-making process. In this regard however, it is unclear why ENGOs should be involved in Environment Council meetings. Both scenarios moreover fail to explain the very preponderant practice of document leaking. It would seem that document leaks serve as a ‘release valve’ from the information control created by the formal transparency rules and informal norms.

The empirical picture shows most congruence with the volatility scenario. This scenario places the emphasis on change and incoherence in the Environment Council’s informal handling of the transparency question. Developments such as the 2004 EU enlargement, and two transparency court cases that rendered previously ambiguous norms explicitly illegal, did indeed alter interactions within the Environment Council and between member states and ENGOs, leading to revisions in informal responses. Conflicting but simultaneously operating norms such as transparency suppression through the ‘limite’ label and document sharing through member states moreover highlight that such revised norms were underpinned by clashing motives between different actors in the Environment Council.

In sum, the informal aspect of Environment Council transparency policy clearly paints the formal legal access regime in a different light. Various informal norms allow the Environment Council to ‘repair’ transparency rules where the member states consider them difficult to cope with. This helps to explain why the Environment Council has not proved very reluctant to expand formal transparency rights over time. Informal limits on formal transparency rights also explain ENGOs’ limited reliance on these rights: for the purpose of advocacy, they offer too little, too late. Instead, ENGOs walk informal roads in search of useful policy information related to Environment Council decision making. The fact that they often find insiders willing to informally provide them with such information illustrates that contesting notions of ‘repairing the rules’ are prevalent in the Environment Council.

 

This blog post draws on the JCMS article “Access to Environmental Information in the EU: A Great Policy No-One Needs?”

Maarten Hillebrandt is postdoctoral researcher at the Eric Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, University of Helsinki (@intlaw_eci). His research interests include government transparency policy and governance of the Council of the EU. Maarten is a member of the Standing Committee of Experts on International, Refugee and Criminal Law (@ComMeijers).

Twitter: @mzhill

 

The post The Council ‘repairs’ EU transparency rules informally appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

In current international climate governance many eyes are on the EU and China as two of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. Since the Trump administration announced the US’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement their relationship in the climate realm has changed considerably. But how do they view their own roles as ‘partners for the planet’? Julia Gurol and Anna Starkmann analyze this question from a role theoretical perspective. They argue that EU-China relations bear a lot of potential for closer collaboration on climate issues.

With the global pandemic ravaging economies worldwide, questions of climate change and how to address it, have slightly got out of focus. Yet, with the upcoming Conference of the Parties (COP) in the UK, the adverse effects of the deteriorating climate are brought back to the table of international negotiations and discussions. In that context, all eyes are on China. As one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, a rising power yet also a still developing economy, the People’s Republic plays a crucial role that might determine the failure or success of many international climate measures. Ever since the Trump administration announced the withdrawal of the US from the 2015 Paris Agreement (PA), China’s role in international climate governance has been brought to the fore. Together with the EU, China had been eager to fill the resulting leadership vacuum left by the US in 2017. The two major emitters reaffirmed their commitment to the PA and intensified their cooperation on climate change. Despite prevailing tensions in other policy fields, EU-China climate cooperation has evolved over time from rather technical to high-level political cooperation. In our article, we discuss the complex relationship between the EU and China in international climate governance and seek to answer the question of how they view their own roles and responsibilities to combat climate change. In a nutshell, we argue that none of the two can tackle this issue unilaterally and that therefore, they have become new ‘partners for the planet’ – albeit with a complicated relationship.

 

Role-theory as a useful approach to climate cooperation between the EU and China

Applying role-theory to the analysis of this relationship helps us to identify three things. First, we can shed light on how the EU and China regard themselves as actors in international climate governance. This is called ‘self-conception’. Second, we can identify the external expectations of other actors concerning how the EU and China should navigate in international climate governance. And last but not least, role-theory helps to uncover the changes of these self-conceptions and expectations over time and therefore also to explain the changing relationship between the EU and China. In short: by using this approach, we seek to take into account both external factors as well as the actors’ positions and thoughts.

 

The roles of the EU and China from Copenhagen to the US withdrawal from the PA

EU-China climate relations are heavily influenced by critical events in global climate politics.  Specifically, we identify three events that contributed to the recent increase in climate cooperation and a development from technical towards political cooperation, despite the overall political constraints in EU-China relations: the 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen, the PA in 2015, and the US’ announced withdrawal from the PA in 2017.

How did these events shape the roles of the EU and China in climate governance? The EU has considered itself a leader since the beginning of international climate cooperation. It has asserted its normative power status by a strategy of “leading by example” and advocating for strong international rules and binding agreements. However, the 2009 COP in Copenhagen revealed a discrepancy between the EU’s self-conception as unilateral leader and external role expectations and recognitions. At this conference parties failed to agree on a follow-up agreement for the Kyoto Protocol, and the EU was sidelined in the negotiations. Consequently, the EU had to adapt its role performance. It became a “leadiator”, a combination of a leader and a mediator, actively building bridges between other actors.

China, on the other hand, has long understood its own role as that of a developing country, with the right to economic growth and development, and hence claimed a “right to emit”. Consequently, it placed the responsibility to mitigate climate change and curb emissions exclusively on the historical culprits for climate change, i.e. the US, Europe, and other highly industrialized nations. While China still makes strategic use of this weak power face, China has since the run-up to the PA undergone a tremendous role change, towards a more proactive policy creator, willing to accept responsibility and peak its emissions. This role change was affected by ambiguous internal role conceptions between developing country role and great power aspirations as well as clashing external expectations to play an active role as the world’s largest emitter of CO2 emissions since 2006.

Consequently, the first critical juncture was the 2009 COP, which led to a to a role adaption of the EU role towards a bridge-builder supplementing its leadership claims in international climate governance. The second critical event was the PA, which became possible due to the of role change of China from a policy-taker or even policy-negator towards a policy-maker in climate change. The third critical juncture was the US’s withdrawal from the PA, which created a leadership vacuum, opening a window of opportunity for the EU and China to readjust their positions in the international climate governance system and fostered EU-China cooperation.

 

Conclusion and Outlook

In short, we argue that internal role conceptions influence the behaviour of the EU and China in international negotiations and bilateral cooperation. Also, conflicts between different self-perceptions of actors (the conflict between China’s developing country and major power role) or between internal conceptions and external expectations (the EU’s international leader role conception, which turned out not to be widely shared in Copenhagen and external expectations on China as major emitter that stood in contrast to China’s self-conception as developing country) led to a change in role performance.

Thereby, the roles of the EU and China have become more compatible which led to increased cooperation efforts in the realm of climate change. However, this does not mean there are no disagreements between the two actors. While the 2019 EU Strategic Outlook on China underlines the need for cooperation between the EU and China because the “partnership is essential for the success of global climate action”, there is also criticism of China’s investments in coal energy and a clear call to swiftly peak its emissions. This implies that the EU is unsure whether China lives up to its role as a leader.

What can we expect from EU-China relations in the realm of climate policy looking forward? With the European Green Deal, the EU firmly reaffirmed its role conception as a global leader. The communication also expressed the EU’s ambition to reinforce bilateral cooperation and explicitly pointed to opportunities for strengthening the partnership with China. Thus, much hints at deepening ties in the future despite existing disagreements. Accordingly, the EU and China could indeed be new partners for the planet when it comes to mitigating the adverse effects of climate change. The future will show whether the US under the new Biden administration, who has already announced to re-enter the agreement, will join this partnership or alter the EU-China relationship on climate issues.

 

This blog post draws on JCMS article, “New Partners for the Planet? The European Union and China in International Climate Governance from a Role-Theoretical Perspective.”

Dr Julia Gurol is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Chair for International Relations at Freiburg University. Her research focuses on global governance in the Global South, EU-China (security relations), Chinese foreign policy and transregional authoritarian practices.

Twitter: @JuliaGurol

 

Anna Starkmann’s research focuses on international climate and environmental governance, EU external climate policy, regional organizations and comparative regionalism.

Twitter: @anna_starkm

 

 

The post New Partners? The EU and China in international climate governance appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Venezuela v Council
External relations
Venezuela has standing to bring proceedings against a regulation which introduces restrictive measures against it

Staatssecretaris van Justitie en Veiligheid
Citizenship of the Union
A Union citizen who has been the subject of an expulsion decision cannot enjoy a new right of residence in the territory of the host Member State until he or she has genuinely and effectively terminated his or her residence there.

Ordre des barreaux francophones and germanophone and Others
Citizenship of the Union
Measures to enforce a decision to expel a Union citizen and family members on grounds of public policy or public security constitute restrictions on the right to movement and residence, which may be justified if they are based exclusively on the personal conduct of the individual concerned and comply with the principle of proportionality

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

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

Length of video : 21'

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

Length of video : 145'

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

Length of video : 68'

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

Length of video : 52'

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

The EU issued a declaration on the deteriorating political situation in Nicaragua firmly condemning the actions of the Nicaraguan authorities against opposition parties, media, journalists and civil society, including the systematic detention and arrest of presidential candidates and opposition leaders.

At the press conference ahead of the G7 summit, under the UK presidency, European Council President Charles Michel expressed the wish that the G7 is capable of addressing today's biggest challenges: defeating COVID-19, ensuring a strong economic recovery, fighting climate change.

The Council today approved conclusions endorsing a new EU strategy on climate adaptation.