European Union

The State of the European Union debate on 16 September focused on new EU plans to tackle climate change, racism, health threats and migration.

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

MEPs outline how the EU can contribute to tackling worldwide deforestation and call for domestic policies to be revised to protect European forests.
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

EP TODAY 16 September

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Telenor Magyarország
Freedom of establishment
The Court interprets, for the first time, the EU regulation enshrining ‘internet neutrality’

AMENDMENTS 1 - 388 - Draft report Proposal for a Recommendation to the Council, the Commission and the Vice-President of the Commission/High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy on relations with Belarus
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Petras Auštrevičius

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Armenia is conducting a policy of illegal settlement across Azerbaijan’s occupied territories and recently launched a policy of resettlement of Armenians from Lebanon there. Yesterday news of a family from Lebanon resettled in the city of Shusha – a destination of utmost historical and moral significance for Azerbaijan has been posted on social media. As the world countries, including Azerbaijan, are dealing with the issue of elimination of tragedy’s consequences that befell Lebanon and offering humanitarian assistance, Armenia is exploiting this tragedy and people’s hardship, pushing their sordid agenda. Thereby, Armenia has once again demonstrated that it recognizes no moral values
I wish to emphasize that the population resettled in our occupied territories has become victim of Armenia’s reckless and adventurist policy. It must be said that the policy of illegal settlement across Azerbaijan’s occupied territories has no validity, and Azerbaijan rejects its outcome categorically.
Armenia is also using the people from Lebanon and Syria resettled in the occupied territories as mercenaries.
Armenia aims to alter the demographic situation across Azerbaijan’s occupied territories by pursuing the illegal settlement policy. The same policy is a flagrant violation of the international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Convention of 1949. According to the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, the occupying power cannot transfer its civilian population into the territory it occupies.
During the 1946 Nuremberg International Military Tribunal for the Trial of Major War Criminals, two of the defendants were convicted for changing the ethnic composition of the occupied territories.
According to international law, the pursuit of illegal settlement policy by the occupying power in the occupied territories should be classified as a military crime. In this regard, Armenia’s illegal settlement policy across Azerbaijan’s occupied territories is a military crime.
Ironically, such actions are considered a crime under Armenia’s own legislation. In Article 390 of Armenia’s Criminal Code, the occupying power’s deportation of the local population and transfer of its people to the occupied territories is a grave violation of international humanitarian law, punishable by 8-12 years of imprisonment.
Armenia’s act of aggression perpetrated in the direction of Tovuz district, along the state border between the two countries this July and an attempt to carry out a subversion operation across the Line of Contact reveal that Armenia is preparing for yet another provocation and military adventurism.
Moreover, in recent days, Armenia has once again begun to declare explicitly; through the puppet regime, it installed in our occupied territories its intention to occupy Azerbaijan’s other areas and threatened to launch a missile strike on the city of Ganja.
Inflammatory rhetoric by Armenia’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister and their actions and other steps of such nature, once again confirm that the goal of the brazen Armenian leadership is to dismantle the negotiation process and secure the annexation of Azerbaijan’s occupied territories.
The responsibility for perpetrating provocations and escalating the situation lies with Armenia’s political and military leadership.
Armenia must withdraw its troops from Azerbaijan’s occupied territories to achieve progress in the resolution of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. The conflict must be resolved only and solely in line with Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and inviolability of its internationally recognized borders.

Hikmat Hajiyev
Source: azertag.az/en/xeber/1582895

The post Forcible Change of Demography in Illegally Occupied Territories Amount to War Crimes appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Since the lockdown was introduce in the UK in March 2020, some of the best scholars at the UK Universities and learned organisations like the Political Studies Association (PSA) and the academic association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) had organised several conferences and talks, mainly on different aspects of online teaching in the light of COVID-19 pandemic.

I gladly participated to the large part of these talks over the Summer and found them extremely useful on from ‘How are you going to get through this?’ and ‘What campus universities can learn from online/distance ones‘ to ‘Replacement or supplement: asynchronous teaching, accessibility, and methods‘ and ‘What makes a good online lecture?’

Yes, I learned substantially from these talks about:

• How academics could help each other about online teaching during a Global Pandemic,
• What forms of teaching-asynchronous or synchronous- is better suited for different learning processes- lecture or seminar/tutorial,
• How the new technology used to transfer the knowledge from an instructor to a learner,
• What software is best for online teaching; Zoom, Canvas or Panopto,
• What should be a priority in organising online-teaching; the software in hand or teaching objectives,
• What new ways could be adapted to increase students’ participation and contribution to online learning via discussion boards or forums like Vanilla, GoogleDoc and WordPress,
• How often students’ feedback should be collected.

While this is all well and good, I had a problem: during these talks is that I never turned on the camera and except on few occasions I did not use the chat boxes too, not mentioning the lack of microphone use. Therefore, when I heard from Andy O’Cain and Dave Lewis, of Open University, ‘Running an Online Seminar/Tutorial in Politics and IR’, that generally students turn their backs on microphones and cameras during virtual classes, I was able to empathise with them.

There may be plenty of reasons for why people do not turn the cameras on or use the microphones: camera-shy, lazy or multi-tasking. I believe the main issue is that the virtual environment is not a natural part of the human habitat for communication, as well as not being a conventionally accepted learning and teaching environment. Therefore, for some people, it takes longer to accommodate. It is best to be understanding each other. Nevertheless, it is one area we can all challenge ourselves to fit in and adapt our ways of learning, teaching and conferencing to the requirements of these extraordinary times.

While learning about being patient with each other, turning on the cameras from very the beginning and keep it on until the end of that session could be significantly advantageous. Think of it as going first to a meeting or a lecture and leaving last. Ultimately it develops to be about being present and making others feel your presence. Additionally, it provides an opportunity for you to feel part of the community which organised that event or the talk.

Some may argue that they could multitask if the camera is off. Reading a newspaper article or writing an email is not the right thing to do when you are listening to a complicated academic argument. If your attention is divided, it is highly likely that you are missing the opportunity to learn something new and meet new people with similar interests. Ultimately, seeing others on the laptop screen and having your face on the screens for others creates opportunities for eye contact between you and them. In this way, online learning and teaching could be as effective as face-to-face teaching and learning.

I decided to write this blog as I was getting ready for my two Virtual Conference presentations. Over the years, I have presented my research on countless times at the face-to-face Academic Conferences, but presenting at a virtual one was new territory.

For ‘Brexit and European integration: political, policy and legitimacy challenges’, organised by NEXTEUK, I was expected to pre-record my presentation of 10 minutes and share it with them before the Conference and speak for 3 three minutes on the Conference day. For the UACES’s 1st Virtual Conference, European Studies Conference, I was expected to have my presentation on PowerPoint and speak to it for a maximum of 15 minutes on the Conference day.

Recording my presentation was not easy. So that the end product is of an acceptable level, it is advisable to have most the relevant and advanced tech gadgets and software, and I was aware of that.

First of all, it is necessary to choose the best software that could do voice record and screencast; I found Camtasia very useful to do a pre-recorded presentation. However, when the Conference’s setup did not support it, I had to do it all over again on PowerPoint and recorded a slide show. The sound quality was much better with Camtasia than Powerpoint, and ultimately it was a learning process, and it is useful to know this now.

Secondly, before recording my presentation, there were a number of actions I had to take in the order of below:

1. Write up your speech
2. Read it out loud
3. Read it out loud until you are fully satisfied with it
4. Make the necessary additions or removals
5. Highlight and extract the essential bits you want to have on your PowerPoint slides
6. Copy and paste the highlighted parts to your PowerPoint slides
7. Go through them
8. Record your written up presentation or lecture or speech
9. Finally, depending on the recording software you use, edit and record again

Thirdly, the NEXTEUK Conference was held on Hopin, while the UACES took place on ZOOM. Hopin is an online events platform where engaging virtual events take place; the Conference was streamed live and recorded, will be available on the Conference’s Website soon. Whereas the UACES’s Conference was not recorded, but it allowed everyone, including presenters and the participants to be on the same screen if and when the cameras were on. However, with Hopin, there was a limited number of people you could have on-screen at a given time. Chatbox was popular with Hopin, while Conference participants with the UACES chose to engage through using their microphones and cameras. Softwares for events like these have varying degrees of advantages, and you can never say one is better than the other, except that you should be sufficiently versed enough about them to make an informed choice between the software which may serve your purpose best.

Through these Conference presentations, I accepted the challenge to adapt to this new virtual academic and research world that is triggered by the COVID-19;  and did and will do my part to contribute to its evolution. Of course, face-to-face teaching and learning should be the future.

 

The post Online-Teaching and Learning, and Virtual Conferences in the light of a Global Pandemic appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

EU researchers have been rather silent about rhetorical action in recent years. The current Brexit and Corona reconstruction negotiations show why they shouldn’t be, Dirk Leuffen and Pascal Mounchid argue.

Chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier in London this month, for a new round of Brexit negotiations. (Photo: Ben Cawthra/Sipa USA/NTB Scanpix)

In the early 2000s, rhetorical action – the “strategic use of norm-based arguments” – was a powerfully used concept in academic debates on European integration. For instance, it was applied to explain the EU’s and NATO’s Eastern enlargement, as well as EU constitutionalization.

More recently, however, the concept of rhetorical action has largely vanished from the scene. We believe, wrongly so. The mechanism still exists, as the examples of the Brexit negotiations and the Corona recovery measures highlight.

The Helsinki effect

When properly applied, strategic norm-based arguments may rhetorically entrap opponents. In a “community environment”, actors can refer to the community’s constitutive values and norms and thereby put “social and moral pressure” on those actors who, arguably, deviate from these norms. Public shaming and blaming raise the costs for defecting actors by imposing reputation costs on them. This, in turn, enhances the probability of compliance – even against short-term interests.

If the norms are accepted in the first place, actors can be “entrapped”. Daniel C. Thomas’ (2001) study of the “Helsinki effect”, named after the 1975 CSCE Helsinki Final Act, highlights that “rhetorical entrapment” can actually make a difference. In his study, Thomas shows that dissidents used the Helsinki Final Act as a normative reference point to criticize their socialist governments’ poor human rights records. The critique did work because these governments had previously publicly committed themselves to honouring the norms codified in Helsinki.

Pacta sunt servanda – also during Brexit

The negotiations on EU-UK future relations are a telling example of applied rhetorical action. In early June 2020, in response to London’s unceasing thinning out of the negotiating dossiers, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier publicly argued:

We must stick to our commitments if we want to move forward! We engaged in this negotiation on the basis of a joint Political Declaration that clearly sets out the terms of our future partnership. This document is available in all languages, including English. It is a good read, if I may say so. This declaration was negotiated with and approved by Prime Minister Johnson. It was approved by the leaders of the 27 Member States at the European Council in October 2019. It has the backing of the European Parliament. It is – and it will remain for us – the only valid reference, the only relevant precedent in this negotiation, as it was agreed by both sides.

When accusing the UK to continuously “backtrack on the commitments it has undertaken in the Political Declaration,” Barnier points out deviations from a commonly approved normative reference point. In this particular case, the norms had even been laid out in written form. The fact that Boris Johnson himself approved the declaration puts additional normative pressure on him. Barnier thus uses a strategy of shaming to promote his negotiation agenda.

While rhetorical action could hardly be more explicit, we still do not know whether the UK will feel rhetorically entrapped and therefore succumb to the argumentative strategy. In general, however, meeting rooms can be left more easily than commonly constructed identities and value schemes.

From austerity water to Keynesian wine

The exogenous shock of the Corona pandemic severely affected not just all EU member states’ health systems, but also their economies. At the same time, the impact was asymmetrical: a great variation emerged at both the medical and the financial playing fields, revealing growing inequalities between EU member states.

An interesting fact is that Germany – before the crisis amongst the EU’s strictest defenders of austerity – turned to Keynesianism back at home. Although less affected by the medical crisis, Germany – according to estimates by Bruegel – plans to spend more than 1,600 billion euros to boost its national economic recovery, thereby largely extending other member states’ ambitions.

Germany’s shift in domestic economic policy preceded its shift in European policy. The Franco-German proposal of May 18th 2020 to establish a European recovery fund containing 500 billion Euro of grants, leaves the austerity measures of the Eurozone crisis behind, possibly heralding a new conciliation of procedural and distributive justice in the EU.

One way to explain the notable policy shift consists in pointing out that in a community environment double standards are likely to undermine legitimacy. Drinking Keynesian wine back at home, while preaching austerity water in Europe, reduces credibility, as Christian Breunig and one of the authors argued in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Reputation costs, in fact, proved to be on the rise in polls documenting growing anti-German resentments after the first weeks of the Corona crisis.

Frugal failure

With Brexit, the frugal states in Europe’s North had lost the most outspoken supporter of an economically liberal EU. Germany’s position shift towards higher intra-EU transfers constituted another major blowback. Losing Germany made the position of the frugal four or five (Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland) weaker – both in power terms as well as on normative grounds.

Preceding the Corona crisis, Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz in a Financial Times editorial (February 16th 2020), published with Mark Rutte, prime minister of the Netherlands, Mette Frederiksen, prime minister of Denmark, and Stefan Löfven, prime minister of Sweden, , had defended their frugal approach with reference to their commitment to the EU. For Kurz et al. “[s]tanding up for common values does not have a price tag, and the single market, a considerable driver of European competitiveness, is not a costly endeavour.”

However, as we know after the European summit of July 17th to 21st 2020, the Corona crisis ended up being a game changer. Described by Belgian Finance Minister Alexander De Croo as an “existential battle for Europe”, the negotiations on the recovery fund highlighted that the Single Market, in fact, was at stake. According to BBC,  President Macron reportedly “banged his fists” on the table, telling the frugal states that he thought they “were putting the European project in danger”. Likewise, Italy’s Giuseppe Conte not just referred to community and solidarity norms, but also criticized the frugal four for threatening the existence of the Common Market. The community environment was stressed by Spain’s Foreign Ministre Arancha González Laya comparing the EU to a “family’s relationship”.

The negotiation strategy of the recovery funds supporters was thus twofold: references to a community ethos were larded with undisguised warning about the future of the commonly supported Single Market. At the end even the reluctant Northern member states agreed to a Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for 2021 to 2027 and the recovery fund – Next Generation EU – together totalling over €1.8 trillion and including issuing common debt at the EU level.

Rhetorical action and the battle for norms

Whether the reference to the EU’s community norms, or rather the insight that the Single Market really was at danger, finally led to concessions, is up to speculation or historical analysis, once the archives are open. Notwithstanding, references to norms again played an important role during the recovery fund negotiations.

It should be noted, however, that during the negotiations of the recovery programme, the ‘frugal states’ repeatedly also referred to the treaty basis to back their argument that uncontrolled spending would violate EU norms.

That highlights an important point: can we say ex ante, which norms dominate, or is the proof in the pudding? While this remains a challenge for rhetorical action, it should not stop us to revitalize the concept, but make us more curious about the mechanisms of how norms and justificatory strategies shape EU politics today.

The post Bringing Rhetorical Action Back In. Brexit and the Corona crisis show the strength of norm-based arguments appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

On 10 September, the Committee on Foreign Affairs will hold an exchange of views with Miltiadis Varvitsiotis, Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs for European Affairs of Greece and Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey on the current tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean. Members will also welcome Avdullah Hoti, the Prime Minister of Kosovo for a debate on the situation in the country and the EU-facilitated dialogue with Serbia.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

The Monthly Highlights publication provides an overview, at a glance, of the on-going work of the policy departments, including a selection of the latest and forthcoming publications, and a list of future events.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Length of video : 137'

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, 2020 - EP

Entry into office of a new Advocate General at the Court of Justice

Length of video : 69'

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, 2020 - EP

Centraal Israëlitisch Consistorie van België and Others
Agriculture and fisheries
AG Hogan proposes that the Flemish Law prohibiting slaughter of animals without stunning including those subject to particular methods of slaughter prescribed by religious rites is not permitted under EU law

VG Bild-Kunst
Freedom of establishment
According to Advocate General Szpunar, the embedding in a webpage of works from other websites by means of automatic links (inline linking) requires the authorisation of the holder of the rights in those works

MEPs and representatives of institutions, governments and NGOs will gather on 14-17 September to debate the challenges the pandemic poses to democratic systems.
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

As I’ve sat down to write this, I’ve just reminded myself that I said only a short time ago that a leading indicator of heading to an agreement on the Future Relationship would be a de-escalation of the rhetoric. Make of that what you will, both in regard to Brexit and to me. This past week has been an absolute bloodbath for diplomatic niceties and for any rational modelling of the negotiations. The rolling breaking news on the language of the Internal Market Bill – which turned out to be even worse than expected – was joined by the non-announcement of a UK state aid policy to produce something that looks very like a de facto statement of non-engagement with the Future Relationship talks by the UK. As I noted on Monday, there are vanishingly small upsides to the IM Bill move, as summarised here: PDF version: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic37 It’s not only bad for the negotiations, but also for the UK reputation in current and future negotiations with other parties, which runs against any plans for ‘Global Britain’. I’m hardly the only one to note all this, but it does then raise the question of why do it? As with the extension debate, asking why people aren’t acting in their own apparent best interests is important, mainly because it suggests you’ve not understood their perception of their interests. In this case, there really only three options available to explain this diplomatic equivalent of taking a leak on the head of the other side: rupture; bigifying; and ignorance. The Rupture view is simply that this is the end of the Future Relationship and of pretty much any preferential relationship with the EU. The UK is setting its own course, and burning the one bridge it has left in place, the Northern Ireland Protocol. Consequences be damned, it’s off. This counts on a degree of no-one else minding too much, possibly because of the excellent trading opportunities that would be on offer with the UK (seventh-largest, etc, etc) and possibly because this move might make the EU throw a complete strop, so allowing the UK to foist the blame on to them for not engaging. Stuff of Telegraph editorials this might be, but it also doesn’t stack up. Most obviously, if you don’t care about any of this, then why only serve up a very precise dis-application of the protocol? As the ERG note, the IM Bill doesn’t go far enough in that regard. More generally, the UK isn’t notifying formally that it’s stopping negotiations and is accepting the emergency meeting of the Joint Committee today; hardly moves to bolster a ‘we’re off’ approach. Even the softer version of this – make it so the EU throw in the towel – doesn’t really stand up, given the technical progress that’s been reported up to very recently on both protocol implementation and the FR negotiations. So perhaps it’s bigifying: kicking up some dust to show how tough the UK government is? This has two elements: domestically, it reaffirms Number 10’s credentials as delivering a proper Brexit to backbenchers, while in negotiations it shows the UK is serious about walking away if it doesn’t get what it wants. The general consensus has been that the EU arm of this is a busted flush: the EU long ago calculated that the costs of non-agreement would fall very much more heavily on the UK than themselves, so while everyone would lose from failed to reach a deal, that would be much more London’s problem. Walking away from a negotiation is only credible and effective if the other side think you’ve got a better alternative and/or if they themselves have no viable alternative but to keep you in. Neither applies here. But the domestic aspect does have legs. Remember these backbenchers might well have to ratify a Future Relationship deal in short-order this autumn, so maybe flashing your teeth and then claiming to have beaten the EU down to a world-beating deal might be worth it. This I have more time for, not least since it’s what Johnson did last autumn with the same Withdrawal Agreement his spokesman is now claiming he negotiated too quickly. Add in the self-denying decision not to extend transition and you have a recipe for needing to make sure you don’t lose control of your party at all. Of course, as the ERG move shows, the problem with teeth-flashing is that it makes people hungry, especially if you then claim you have extracted something with it: why not do more? Ratification is going to be very awkward for all involved. Johnson needs his own party to comply, because opposition parties are likely to take the view that since even the intended Future Relationship is going to come with disruption, they won’t want to get it over the line, because Johnson will then blame them for it. So Tory rebels might only need to deprive the government of its majority to stymie the ratification Bill, and with so little time even a small delay might be enough to crash the bus for 31 December. So the possible gain of this week on this front is already in doubt. Which leaves ignorance. Again, as a general rule, I dislike this as an explanation, since everyone’s got enough sense to know what’s what. The protocol’s effects on state aid were clear during negotiation and the entire time since, and the Johnson government was always clear about disconnecting state aid during the current talks, so if we might channel our inner Theresa Mays: nothing has changed. Yes, there might be a feel that all this reads like someone finally joining the dots, but even then it’s a remarkable antagonistic way of resolving it, as evidenced by the departure of Jonathan Jones showed. Which brings us back to bigifying and all the issues which that comes with.

The post Bus-crashing as a negotiation technique appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Star Taxi App
Approximation of laws
According to Advocate General Szpunar, a service that puts taxi passengers directly in touch, via an electronic application, with taxi drivers constitutes an Information Society service

Slovenia v Commission
Agriculture and fisheries
The General Court dismisses Slovenia’s action for annulment of the delegated regulation pursuant to which the designation ‘Teran’ may be used on the labels of Croatian wines

Length of video : 130'

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, 2020 - EP