Ideas on Europe Blog

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.

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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

 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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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Boris Johnson’s keynote speech at the Conservatives annual conference was most remarkable and shocking for what he didn’t mention.

No mention of drivers having to queue up for petrol, necessitating the army to help.

But he did say, “Isn’t it amazing to be here in person?”

No mention that the cost of heating is about to soar, leaving many vulnerable people cold this winter.

But he did say, “We finally sent the corduroyed communist cosmonaut into orbit where he belongs”. (He was referring to Jeremy Corbyn.)

No mention that with food prices rising and supermarket shelves increasingly empty, many people will struggle to feed themselves.

But he did say, “In Islington – I kid you not I have seen it with my own eyes – they like kids to run races where nobody actually wins.”

No mention that shortage of workers, caused directly by Brexit and compounded by Covid, means many businesses can’t function and shopping for Christmas won’t be early this year; it might not happen at all.

But he did say that Keir Starmer looked like, “a seriously rattled bus conductor pushed this way and that by a Corbynista mob of Sellotape-spectacled sans-culottes.”

No mention that because of Brexit, British farmers are having to destroy huge amounts of unpicked fruit and veg and cull tens of thousands of pigs because EU workers can’t easily come here anymore.

But he did say, “I know that there has been a certain raucus squaukus from the anti-aukus caucus.”

No mention that on the island of Ireland, there is dire concern that the UK government is poised to suspend parts of the Northern Ireland protocol that prevents tensions between the north and south.

But he did say, “If Columbus had listened to captain hindsight he’d be famous for having discovered Tenerife.”

No mention of the dramatic fall in UK exports to the EU, or the customs barriers about to be erected for imports coming to the UK, all because of Brexit.

But he did say, “Build back burger I say.”

Mr Johnson promised his Tory faithful – and the country at large – that Britain would become a:

“high-wage, high-skill, high productivity, and yes, thereby low tax economy.”

That will be achieved, he said, with low migration.

No mention that Britain needs migrants because the country has more jobs than Britons to do them – primarily because we have a low birth rate and a rapidly growing older population.

No mention of how businesses and organisations such as the NHS will find enough workers without more migrant labour.

No mention of how Britain will transform itself into a high-skilled, high-wage country without huge investment in training of the British workforce.

No mention of what’s going to happen to the low-skilled, low-paid workers in Britain. Are they just supposed to disappear in the new Britain of high-skilled, high-paid workers?

No mention of how Tory plans to increase the tax burden of the least well-off fits in with a “low tax economy.” Or is it just low tax for the rich?

No mention that a low birth rate, and low migration, will unavoidably result in the country having a smaller population. Is that the goal – population control?

Mr Johnson and his Tories are living in their delusional bubble, insulated from the problems the rest of us have to cope with; problems which the government helped to create.

 

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‘I want no misunderstanding. We will not shirk our duty.
We are not withdrawing. We are staying here.’

Unfortunately for many Afghans, this quote by an American secretary of state is 75 years old. It stems from a speech given in Stuttgart, on 6 September 1946, which is hardly remembered, but definitely worth remembering as a milestone in what turned out to be the most successful attempt ever in nation-building by occupation, democratic re-education, and economic support.

The nation thus built is currently – in an eerie coincidence with the American withdrawal from Afghanistan – ‘snoozing toward its federal election’, enjoying a campaign led by ‘boring’ candidates, and in which ‘a premium is put on being dull’.

Boring – an adjective that is, when applied to nation-states and their political systems, probably the ultimate blessing.

A post-war tipping point

In 1946 Germany was, alas, anything but boring.

Stuttgart, 1946.

The humanitarian situation was more than dire in every respect and source of much concern, especially within the American administration. And the fault lines in the so-called ‘Allied Control Council’, already visible at the 1945 Potsdam Conference, were deepening – mainly due to the thorny issues of reparations, the uncertainty around the future of the Ruhr, and the increasing difficulty of finding a solution (= peace treaty) that would avoid a permanent territorial division of the country (and by consequence the formation of two or more different states).

There were also quite contradictory viewpoints within American diplomacy.

While Lucius D. Clay, the military governor on site (who later went on to become a hero of Berlin as the organiser of the famous ‘air lift’ in 1948/49), advocated a policy of economic support with the objective to help the Germans help themselves (which sounded already pretty much like a blueprint for the Marshall Plan), the so-called ‘Morgenthau Plan’ of 1944, named after the US finance minister and which promoted a complete de-industrialisation of Germany, was still considered an option by some. (In 1945, Morgenthau had developed and pushed his ideas further in a book publication with the very appropriate title Germany Is Our Problem.)

In February 1946, George Kennan stepped in with his so-called ‘long telegram’ from Russia, providing explanations for Soviet intransigence and, consequently, calling for a new strategy towards the Soviet Union (full text here or here).

Kennan’s 5,000-word memorandum is said to have had a strong influence on decision-making in Washington. What is certain is that Secretary of State James F. Byrnes came to similar conclusions on returning, in late April, quite disillusioned from the Council of Foreign Ministers in Paris (an institution set up in Potsdam). Byrnes had been poised towards a pan-German solution, considering that a fragmented Germany would constitute a factor of instability in Central Europe for decades to come.

But it became increasingly clear that there were only two alternatives left: either unifying the zones under Soviet influence or accepting permanent division and turning the three Western zones in a kind of blueprint for Western Europe. And the Truman administration settled for the second option.

On 5 June already, Byrnes came forward with a proposal for the merger of the American and British occupation zone, the so-called ‘bizone’ (which became the ‘trizone’ in 1948, when the French joined, too, prompting a German carnival singer to land a massive hit with an ironic song about the ‘indigenous tribe of Trizonesia’, – German humour! -, but that’s another story altogether).

The speech, from which our initial quote was taken, was finally nothing else than an official statement to clarify policy positions. Which is probably why it carried the sober and unequivocal title ‘Restatement of Policy on Germany’. In no time, it became known as the ‘Speech of Hope’.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hope in times of great uncertainty

James F. Byrnes, who was Secretary of State for only roughly eighteen months between mid-1945 and January 1947, was a rather ambiguous character. Involved in the Manhattan Project, he did not have any second thoughts about dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And he was a keen supporter of segregationist education in his time as governor of South Carolina.

Byrnes is not half as well-known as his successor, George Marshall, but parts of the ‘Speech of Hope’ sound like a first draft for the famous Harvard speech ten months later. True, it has a distinct focus on Germany, but it already embraced the European dimension:

‘Germany is part of Europe. And recovery in Europe, and particularly in the states adjoining Germany, will be slow indeed if Germany with her great resources of iron and coal is turned into a poorhouse.’ Jean Monnet couldn’t have written it better.

In his souvenirs, Lucius Clay claimed ownership of this perspective: ‘I had written him a letter about my own views of the situation, and it was that letter which he used as the basis for this speech. He visited me in Berlin, and we went over it together. (…) I began to realize that we couldn’t develop Germany faster than Western Europe. On the other hand, if we left an economic vacuum in Germany, Western Europe could never come back.’

The ‘hope’ with which the speech was identified by the carefully listening Germans, was spread in a few, crucial announcements:

• the phasing out of ‘zonal boundaries’ and ‘barriers’ with the perspective of ‘maximum possible unification’ in case ‘complete unification cannot be achieved’
• the promise to put an end to ‘needless aggravation of economic distress’ with the help of ‘a common financial policy’ and other ‘central administrative departments’
• the perspective of obtaining ‘the right to manage their own internal affairs as soon as they were able to so in a democratic way’
• but most of all the firm commitment to stay and accompany this long process, as expressed in the opening quote of this post.

In colloquial understanding, the Speech of Hope was interpreted by the locals as ‘we will be punished, but not forever’, ‘we will be given another chance, work hard and improve our lot’, ‘we will be protected from Soviet rule’. Had the material situation not been as utterly distressful as it was in 1946, it could have been called the ‘Speech of Relief’.

Many years later

Three quarters of a century have passed. Everything that seemed a faint glimpse of hope to my parents – my mother was 18 when James Byrne spoke in her hometown – has come true for my generation. The nation-building carried out by the United States with significant help by the United Kingdom and the French Republic is nothing short of a miracle.

I know that historians can enumerate many good reasons why it worked out so well in Germany and failed elsewhere. I also realise just how much Germany and Western Europe owe to Stalin’s and Molotov’s ideological unyieldingness and inflexibility.

Some consider that it is high time Germany itself shows more of the same commitment and generosity in the different contexts of today. They are not entirely wrong. In a 2015 article, Yanis Varoufakis even referred explicitly to the Speech of Hope as a source of historic responsibility. At the same time, as the negotiation of the EU recovery plan has shown, it would also be wrong to deny German leaders all sense of solidarity for their partners in the Union.

While everybody is free to apply their own terms of assessment for Germany’s role in Europe today, it is difficult not to be in awe of (and, as a European citizen, grateful for) what has been achieved by the Allies in post-war Germany.

Byrnes closed his speech, which was very straightforward in recalling all the horrors and crimes of the recent past, with a very clear vision:

‘The American people want to help the German people to win their way back to an honourable place among the free and peace-loving nations of the world.’

He did not say ‘boring’. But 75 years later, the boring, dull, risk-averse and often over-cautious nature of German democracy, in its functioning and in its choice of leading human resources, is no doubt one of the greatest vindications of the vision outlined in the Speech of Hope.

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The entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty in 1999 reshaped cooperation in justice and home affairs (JHA) thus marking a new phase in EU asylum and migration policymaking. A primary goal of the Treaty was to progressively establish an area of freedom, security and justice (AFSJ). Consequently, issues related to asylum, migration and external border controls were transferred from the third pillar, which required unanimity in an intergovernmental setting, to the first pillar, falling under the shared responsibility of both EU member states and institutions. In addition, the Treaty formally incorporated the 1985 Schengen Agreement and 1990 Implementing Convention into the EU legal framework as the Schengen acquis.

At the same time, however, decision-making in the Council required unanimity and the European Parliament (EP) did not gain co-decision powers, meaning that the Treaty did not lead to full implementation of the ordinary legislative procedure. Furthermore, Denmark, Ireland and the UK secured the right to ‘opt out’ of the treaty’s provisions as regards JHA, allowing them not to take part in the adoption of measures relating to the AFSJ and hence not to be bound by measures adopted by the other member states. Nevertheless, Amsterdam represented a significant step forward in the development of common asylum and migration policies, reflecting the political commitment to enforce European integration in this sovereignty-sensitive policy domain. Most notably, Article 63 laid down a 5-year programme to develop the necessary measures on asylum and migration and set out objectives for the first stage of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS).

With the ground set for Community decision-making, the 1999 European Council in Tampere was dedicated to the creation of an AFSJ. Under this initiative and the ensuing Tampere Programme, which provided ‘the political mandate and the overall policy agenda for initial action towards establishing the AFSJ’, negotiations started on the creation of a CEAS comprising a set of legislative instruments (Buono 2009, p. 333).

In keeping with the aim to establish a CEAS, the need arose to replace the Dublin Convention with a Community instrument. The Dublin II Regulation, which replaced the largely identical 1990 Convention, entered into force in 2003 prior to the then-approaching ‘big bang’ enlargement (prospected in May 2004 with the joining of 10 new members). The negotiations leading up to the ratification of the Dublin System (comprising the Dublin Regulation and the Eurodac Regulation, which went into operation in 2003 and established a biometric database for comparing fingerprints of irregular migrants) were, however, characterised by political deadlock for years.

Also adopted in 2003, the Reception Conditions Directive (RCD) laid down minimum standards for the reception of asylum seekers while their claim is being examined. The Directive has been heavily criticised for the wide discretion left to member states, which undermines the creation of a ‘level playing field’. In this regard, the southern states have most notably been in the limelight. Greece failed to provide reception conditions for asylum seekers on a par with the requirements of the directive, as stated in the ECtHR’s 2011 landmark judgment in M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece.

Italy and Malta have also been accused of failing to provide adequate reception conditions for asylum seekers, in violation of the minimum requirements of the directive (Langford, 2013).

It is important to point out that the aim pursued in the first phase of the CEAS (1999-2004) involved harmonising national asylum systems through the adoption of Directives and Regulations on the basis of ‘common minimum standards’ (Wagner et al. 2019). The approach of adopting minimum standards (instead of genuinely common ones) was dictated by its political feasibility, yet it included the objective of harmonising legislation. In practice, the adoption of minimum standards set in motion a ‘race to the bottom’ across EU member states with regard to harmonisation of such policies, exacerbated by the introduction, in most member states, of restrictive migration policies to prevent irregular migration.

This harmonisation ‘ad minima’ was further reinforced by the influence of the Council on the drafting of the CEAS instruments. While the Commission proposed rather ambitious drafts in order to draw the layout of the CEAS in conformity with the Tampere Conclusions, the Council negotiations compromised the substance of such instruments (Chetail, 2016). The reforms achieved in Amsterdam in the context of EU asylum and migration policymaking thus did not go as far as intended. Given the number of institutional issues left unresolved, a solution became more pressing in view of the upcoming ‘big bang’ enlargement of 2004. This led to new negotiations, in 2000, over the future of the EU, culminating in a new agreement amending the Treaty of Maastricht and the Treaty of Rome.

 

References

Buono, L. (2009) From Tampere to The Hague and beyond: towards the Stockholm Programme in the area of freedom, security and justice, ERA Forum, 10 (3), pp. 333-342.

Chetail, V. (2016) The Common European Asylum System: Bric-à-brac or System? In: Chetail, V. et al. (eds.) Reforming the Common European Asylum System: The New European Refugee Law. Boston: Brill Nijhoff, pp. 3-38.

Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement. The Schengen acquis – Agreement between the Governments of the States of the Benelux Economic Union, the Federal Republic of Germany and the French Republic on the gradual abolition of checks at their common borders, 14 June 1985 [OJ L 239, 22.9.2000]

Council Directive 2003/9/EC of 27 January 2003 laying down minimum standards for the reception of asylum seekers [OJ L 31, 6.2.2003] (‘Reception Conditions Directive’).

Council Regulation (EC) No 343/2003 of 18 February 2003 establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an asylum application lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national [OJ L 50, 25.2.2003] (‘Dublin II’).

Langford, L. M. (2013) The Other Euro Crisis: Rights Violations Under the Common European Asylum System and the Unraveling of EU Solidarity, Harvard Human Rights Journal, 26, pp. 217-264.

M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece, European Court of Human Rights, Application No. 30696/09, 21 January 2011.

Presidency Conclusions, Tampere European Council, 15-16 October 1999.

Wagner, M., Baumgartner, P. and Mouzourakis, M. (2019) Harmonising asylum systems in Europe – a means or an end per se? CEASEVAL research on the CEAS, no. 25, April. Available from: http://ceaseval.eu/publications/25_WP2_HarmonisationWP.pdf

The post The Treaty of Amsterdam: first steps towards a Common European Asylum System appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Photo of the University of Melbourne by Kon Karampelas on Unsplash [https://unsplash.com/photos/tqixYTzO_Ug]

Alexander Mitterle

Working in academia comes with adapting to different timeframes: some universities use semesters, others quarters or terms. A course at a German university can be timed in semester weekly hours (SWS) or in credit points. In both cases they differ – with a usual time-span of 45 minutes – from the U.S. equivalent: the credit hour, which lasts 60 minutes. As academics we rarely ponder over the question why a timeframe here is different from elsewhere. We accept different academic timeframes as idiosyncratically institutionalized.

We do this in an institution that in the last decades has been increasingly attributed with organizational agency (Meier and Krücken 2006; Ramirez 2006): universities define goals, aspirations and missions, and plot their way to student numbers, third party funding, re-accreditations, or even world class. As Philipp Altbach (2003) put it, the two basic credentials to successful university building are time and money.

The strategic, linear idea of time in such managerial perspectives sets aside the university as an institution and treats it as a projectable body. A body that flourishes precisely because it sets aside the heterogenic forms of time within and outside the university. Time is a proxy for ceteris paribus: given sufficient money, and no invading French revolutionary troops (University of Cologne), or a Soviet protectorate (The University of Prussian Enlightment, Koenigsberg), universities can become great in time.

After all it is not only the organization that strategizes time: modern higher education is itself first and foremost a time project. Academic timeframes induce social values, professional norms, and symbolic meaning, and they rationalize merit-based inequality (Becker 1964; Luhmann 1998; Meyer 1977). Educational timeframes are the building block for career success, and the way they are structured is recursively formed through their environment. Universities as institutions have their own time(s).

What I try to trace in “Time, the university, and stratification” (Mitterle 2021) is thus where these various institutionalized timeframes come from and how they correspond with distinct strategies of educational or/and organizational progression and positioning practices. I understand time not as a detached and neutral form of measurement but as a specific duration associated with a specific place and regulation (cf Latour 1987; Massey 1999). I am thus interested in the history and politics of academic time.

Starting in the middle ages, the paper traces how semesters, terms, and later quarters became institutionalized, how they corresponded with church, government, or market policies, and how they became more and more fine-grained as productive strategic resources in the organization of the university. Covering Germany, the U.S., and the UK, the study overextends what can be done in a chapter. And as research on the institutionalization of academic timeframes is scarce and scattered, the study is explorative in nature. Yet, it is possible to carve out five phases in the institutionalization and strategizing of academic time that correspond with changes in the social role of universities: the Sequencing (1), Habitualizing (2), Disciplining (3), Organizing (4), and Optimizing (5) academic time.

 Sequencing time traces the medieval roots of terms and semesters, how religious and scholarly rhythms and practices structured the academic year in medieval universities. Next to feast days, the reading of a canon of books and the accommodation of extra canonical works structured the studium generale. In reaction to enrollment peaks that corresponded with harvesting and sowing periods, and the office periods of deans and rectors, partitions became habitualized as semesters and terms. On the European continent, and especially in the German-speaking territories, they were increasingly enforced for advertising the university as part of territorial states in course catalogues. In light of a mercantilist state competition and an over-regulation and observation of the Policey-state the often over-expansive individual timeframes of academic lectures were aligned to semester-time periods. Later nation states disciplined academic timeframes to allow for synchronized mobility between universities at defined times during the academic year.

With the growing importance of the research University for Professional Careers during the 19th century the need to structure and organize higher education increased. In the late 19th century the University of Chicago invented the quarter. It was used to re-organize the learning pace of students in order to improve their abilities but also to achieve competitive advantages compared to established U.S. universities. Such university-led organizing endeavors were matched by a wider development that aimed at organizing higher education as a layered system and which established comparable time categories of progression. While in Europe a stronger bureaucratization of degree programs was initiated by the states, in the U.S. the prospect of Carnegie financed pension funds established a hierarchy between high schools and colleges that also led to a stronger standardization of academic time. What in Germany was called semester weekly hours to describe recurring time frames, the U.S. introduced as (semester/quarterly) credit hours. The broad timescales of semester, quarter, and term became dissected into smaller time units that allowed to accommodate the growing differentiation among degree programs, anticipate student/teacher workload as well as academic progression and mobility. It thereby improved management efficiency.

In the 1980s European higher education institutions were increasingly framed as acting entities. What had been the case for U.S. Universities since the late 18th century and what manifested the co-existence of a wide range of timescales in the U.S., now increasingly took hold of European universities. The discourse shifted from improving higher education systems as a whole to fostering differentiation and the competitiveness of individual institutions. Management reforms first allowed and later forced universities to implement modular credit point systems. These provided more leeway regarding the timescales universities used. While the old timescales and -frames predominantly organized time within the university, credit points homogenized and totalized all student workload. Rather than just visualizing student progression it now could be optimized: courses could be accelerated, or shortened and content intensified. In favor of optimizing in-program student progression, the paces of universities diverged and de-synchronized. While in Germany this differentiation took place along private/public lines, U.K. universities diverged in their starting dates, timeframes and –scales (See Fig 1).  The possibility to move between timeframes during an academic year decreased.

Figure 1 Mitterle 2021: 224

Ironically, at the same time in which the fine-grained timescales and time-paces diverged, time-frames became more similar. The global diffusion of modular credit point systems was accompanied by the semester as the operating time container of these new time systems.

 

Conclusion

Academic institutional time “effectively compel[s] us to live in multiple periods at once” (Levine 2015: 60). There are only few institutions in the world that have built and maintained their own timescales throughout centuries. We encounter an array of timeframes in universities today. These have been established, structured, and strategized very differently across the centuries – from within and outside the university. The various phases overlap and start again but they seem to follow a teleological progression that increasingly makes it possible to use ever more granular time-frames as strategic resources. While the German universities very early and rigidly adhered to the semester timeframe, U.S. universities were the first to strategize different timeframes for competitive reasons, and U.K. universities then were the first among the three to implement totalizing modular time systems that induced wide differentiation among degree programs. A de-politicized time-projection indeed allows to frame strategy as if the university (and its goals) was immutable within time, but a close look shows that the university evolves strategically through academic time. Multiple timeframes co-exist and organize everyday academic life. These are increasingly part of political and strategic progression.

 

Alexander Mitterle is research associate at the Center for School and Educational Research and the Institute for Sociology at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (Germany). His research explores the way in which (institutional) stratification unfolds in higher education in light of declining state regulation. This includes the historical formation of distinct organizational arrangements and their vertical effects, the interaction of sizing devices, the borderlands of admissions, intensifications of time and the idiosyncrasies of disciplines. He is currently working on a research project on the academization of work funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). His most recent paper (together with Manfred Stock) “higher education expansion in Germany: between civil rights, state-organized entitlement system and academization” has just been published in the European Journal of Higher Education.

 

This blog post is based on the paper that won the 2020 Award for Excellent Paper from an Emerging Scholar from the ECPR Standing Group ‘Knowledge Politics and Policies’. The award is celebrated during the 2021 ECPR General Conference. This was the fifth time this prize was awarded. Previous winners are Justyna Bandola-Gill, Emma Sabzalieva, Olivier Provini and Que Anh Dang.

 

References:

Altbach, P. (2003). The Costs and Benefits of World-Class Universities. International Higher Education (33), 5–8. https://doi.org/10.6017/ihe.2003.33.7381

Becker, G. S. (1964). Human capital: A theoretical and empirical analysis, with special reference to education. Midway reprint. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Latour, Bruno (1988). A Relativistic Account of Einstein’s Relativity. Social Studies of Science 18(1), 3-44. DOI: 10.1177/030631288018001001.

Levine, C. (2015) Forms. Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Luhmann, N. (2002). Das Erziehungssystem der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Massey, D. (1999). Power-geometries and the politics of space-time: University of Heidelberg Hettner-Lecture (Vol. 2). Heidelberg: Franz-Steiner-Verlag.

Mitterle, A. (2021) Time, the University, and Stratification: The Historical Making of Institutional Time as a Strategic Resource In Vostal, F. (ed.) Inquiring into Academic Timescapes. Bingley: Emerald Publishing, pp. 213-231.

Meyer, J.W. (1977). The Effects of Education as an Institution. The American Journal of Sociology, 83(1), 55-77.

Ramirez, F. O. (2006). The rationalization of universities. In M.-L. Djelic & K. Sahlin-Andersson (Eds.), Transnational Governance: Institutional Dynamics of Regulation (pp. 225-244). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

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The eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis proved to be one of the most challenging tasks European policy makers had to face. Political-ideological, democratic, institutional and other constraints prevented the euro area governments from putting an abrupt end to it simply by increasing integration into the fiscal area. Instead, policy makers decided to “borrow” a crisis management strategy from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and created an additional regional financial firepower – the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). This strategy could be called a “Crisis Management Mechanism” and was based on loans for recipient euro area countries under strict conditionality. The functioning of this Mechanism was underpinned by roles taken by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

Independent institutions of the EU assumed different roles during the sovereign debt crisis, but how to determine them? Were the ECJ and the ECB proactive leaders, or just agents of the eurozone governments? Or maybe the ECB and the ECJ merely rubber-stamped the strategy decided by the governments or acted under the business-as-usual mode? The two most important independent variables, which determined the strategic decisions taken by independent institutions, were the pressure in the sovereign debt markets via contagion effects and the pressure from the Crisis Management Mechanism developed by the governments of the member states.

There is a general consensus that the ECB was an indispensable player during the crisis. These explanations cover only part of the whole story and there are still ample unanswered questions, e.g.: if we think of the ECB as being the most important player, why did it hesitate to start a sovereign bond buying programme (QE) at the early stages of the crisis, or why were stricter ECB’s Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) collateral requirements applied to programme countries?

The enhancements of the eurozone’s financial architecture during the sovereign debt crisis was put under the ECJ’s scrutiny. According to Wilkinson, or Scicluna the creation of the ESM and the ECB’s Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) programme was not legal under EU treaties. Other authors argued that the positive ECJ’s rulings transformed, or even created a new European Economic Constitutional constellation. However, it is difficult to agree that market discipline was replaced by bureaucratic discipline in the eurozone. By introducing the Crisis Management Mechanism, the European policy makers have not enacted, but evaded the real transformation of the European Economic Constitution. The main economic policy principles enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty and the role of the market discipline were largely preserved without deeper integration into the fiscal area. Political and market pressures surely played a role, albeit implicitly, as regards the ECJ and the ECB during the sovereign debt crisis.

Accounts based on the two classical integration theories: liberal intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism, could well explain some events and decisions taken during the sovereign debt crisis, but no one can provide a unified framework that could be used in explaining the roles taken by the independent institutions. According to the new intergovernmentalism, these institutions acted as de novo bodies (ECB) with relatively simple and issue-specific mandates. These claims could be true in some episodes but fails to explain why the ECB took the lead when its President M. Draghi pledged to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro. This intervention was the turning point in the crisis management, even though it was later significantly diluted by additional conditionality in line with the Crisis Management Mechanism. Therefore, we should be careful about exaggerating the role of independent institutions. In most cases during the sovereign debt crisis, the independent institutions hesitated to act and waited for implicit guidance from the governments. A unified approach could provide a better framework for evaluating decisions taken by the ECB and the ECJ during the sovereign debt crisis.

Based on the suggested approach (Table 1), the ECB initially assumed a pro-active leadership role, so called “whatever it takes” moment. On the other hand, later, the ECB become the agent of the principal, constrained by the decisions taken at the political level. The agent of the principal role was also evident, when the ECJ took a decision on the legality of the ESM. Furthermore, the ECB assumed the role of rubber-stamper when it decided not to object to emergency liquidity provision to the Greek banks, and the ECJ, paradoxically, acted under the business as usual mode when it decided on the legality of the OMT.

 

1. Roles assumed by independent institutions during the sovereign debt crisis and main determinants

 

This new approach could prove to be very useful in analyzing the European response to the COVID-19 crisis. Due to the significantly higher costs in the current episode, the Crisis Management Mechanism might be recalibrated, putting even more pressure on the independent institutions to act. This broad framework, with some adaptations could also be used for the analysis of crisis management implemented by the IMF and the roles assumed by independent institutions in other regions with potential spillover effects. In addition, the questions on how and why the Crisis Management Mechanism was developed could be a subject for further research with a view to better understanding its functioning and its effects on independent institutions moving ahead.

 

This blog post draws on JCMS article, “Independence of the ECB and the ECJ during the Sovereign Debt Crisis: From Active Leadership to Rubber-Stamping?”

 

 

Marijus Bernatavicius, PhD Candidate and Teaching Assistant from 2016, at Vilnius University, Institute of International Relations and Political Science. His research interests are in the areas of political economy and European integration.

Academic profile: http://www.tspmi.vu.lt/en/zmogus/marijus-bernatavicius/

Twitter: @TSPMI

 

 

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The negotiations and implementation of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the European Union (EU) and the 79 countries forming the Organisation of the African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) – a group of developing countries largely sharing a colonial past with EU members – were conflict-ridden from the beginning. Transforming a decades-long system of unilateral tariff preferences into quasi-reciprocal trade agreements, at the heart of controversies are the potentially adverse effects of the EPAs inflicted on African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. In our recently published article we explore this allegation by providing an early ex-post assessment of the EPAs’ effects on two-way trade flows between the European Union and the ACP countries. An empirical assessment is key to inform the heated discussions on EPAs and EU-ACP trade relations and to also shed new light on the debate on the European Union as a potentially normative trade power which uses its economic strength to advance non-trade objectives such as sustainable development.

The European Union and the ACP countries agreed to negotiate several EPAs in the context of reforming their trade relations under the 2000 Cotonou Partnership Agreement. Conserving the existing tariff-free access of ACP exports to the EU market, EPAs entail tariff concessions on around 80 percent of trade from ACP countries in order to make bilateral trading conditions compliant with the rules of the World Trade Organization. To date, seven EPAs are under provisional application between the European Union and 32 ACP partner countries.

Needs time, takes time

The EPAs differ not only by regional scope and year of entry, but also by the depth and speed of their liberalisation processes. The EU-CARIFORUM agreement, for instance, was concluded several years ahead of the other EPAs in 2008, and partial fulfilment of tariff commitments has been underway since 2010. By contrast, neither Ghana nor Côte d’Ivoire have started liberalising their import markets in the course of their respective interim EPAs. Despite these differences, a common feature across EPAs is that ACP countries are granted long implementation periods (up to 25 years) for their tariff reductions, to smooth the liberalisation process and allow for the development of domestic industries. As mechanisms to provide ACP countries with the policy space to support industrialisation processes, they are also allowed to temporarily exclude certain products from liberalisation, protect infant industries and use export subsidies.

The EPAs aim at promoting trade while also fostering sustainable development and regional integration, all of which are supported by accompanying Aid for Trade. Yet, the overall objective of the EPAs as “trade and development” agreements is under substantial discussion. In particular, the relationship between trade and development remains controversial. Not all ACP states concur with the European Commission’s perspective on EPAs as promising instruments to promote development. One recurring concern is that (premature) trade liberalisation endangers domestic industries and, more generally, industrialisation efforts through unregulated exposure to more advanced European competitors.

What is more, with the Lomé Conventions coming to an end, former ACP beneficiaries were given the choice to either conclude EPAs or to be integrated into the European Union’s Generalized System of Preferences or the Everything But Arms initiative, depending on their status of economic development. While both the Lomé Conventions and Everything But Arms preferences guarantee duty-free and quota-free access to EU markets, the Generalized System of Preferences stipulates the removal of duties on only two thirds of tariff lines.

Because EPA negotiations are divided by geographical rather than developmental aspects, discord prevails over concord in most African EPA regions. In West Africa, for instance, Nigeria has been blocking region-wide EPA negotiations because the country sees a reciprocal trade agreement with the European Union as being cross with its own industrialisation strategy. On the other hand, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, fearing a significant degradation in access to EU markets under the Generalized System of Preferences scheme, therefore urged to conclude individual (interim) EPAs. Fragmentation is present also in Central Africa where Cameroon rushed ahead with an individual EPA with the same motive, since the majority of fellow members are not keen on engaging in (near) reciprocity with the European Union as they qualify for unrestricted EU market access under the Everything But Arms scheme.

Early warning or too early to say?

The trade effects of EPAs have previously been estimated in a number of studies using ex-ante methods to simulate likely future patterns. Overall and as expected, these studies have in common that they predict larger increases of exports from the European Union to EPA partner countries than vice versa. Given their short lifetime to date, the scope for using ex-post empirical methods to analyse EPAs’ actual effects on trade has until now been very limited and constrained by a relatively short treatment period.

Our article provides early ex-post empirical evidence on the trade effects of the provisionally applied EPAs, thereby generating some important initial insights to the effect that some of the developmental concerns regarding EPAs may be justified. While we do not find any general EPA effect, our findings suggest that specific agreements do affect trade flows. While the EU-CARIFORUM agreement, if anything, decreased imports from the European Union, the agreements with African partners tended to raise respective imports. More specifically, our findings suggest an increase in overall EU exports to the members of the Southern African Development Community EPA. For the EU’s agricultural exports, we find statistically significant increases to the partner countries in the Southern African Development Community, and those in Eastern and Southern Africa and the Pacific region. In the area of manufactures trade, we find a reduction of exports from partner countries in Eastern and Southern Africa and the Southern African Development Community to the EU.

Trade and development – ‘win-win’ or not?

Our findings do not support claims about development-friendly EPAs in the sense of expanding ACP exports to the European Union and thereby generating ‘win-win’ options in former colonies.  At the same time, this does not necessarily imply that EPAs are detrimental to development in partner countries. More precisely, on the import side, increased quantities at cheaper prices may not only pose a threat to domestic industries but also generate welfare gains in ACP countries. This is true in particular with regard to agricultural imports when considering a temporary shortage in domestic (food) supply. Furthermore, increased imports of intermediary products may help export-oriented companies to increase their competitiveness in regional and global value chains. These potential upsides have, however, to be carefully evaluated against the disruptive effects on domestic markets and industrialisation prospects that our findings imply, especially in the agricultural sector in Africa.

Overall, our findings suggest that positive developmental impacts of the EPAs are unlikely to come with unleashing market forces, but instead require continuous EU support to prepare ACP markets for new export and import conditions. Similarly, our empirical findings suggest that the trade effects arising from a potential future bi-continental free trade area encompassing whole Africa and the European Union could, at least in the short-run, be unequally distributed.

Our early assessment of the EPA effects merits attention in light of the importance of monitoring future implications of these agreements. At the same time, it is still too early for any final verdict on the EPAs’ effects. Future research is needed to investigate the mid- and long-term consequences of these agreements.

 

This blog post draws on the JCMS article “The trade effects of the Economic Partnership Agreements between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States: Early empirical insights from panel data”.

 

Clara Brandi is Head of Research Programme at the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) in Bonn, Germany, and a lecturer at the University of Duisburg-Essen. She works on global economic governance and sustainable development, with a focus on international trade.

Twitter: @ClaraBrandi.

 

 

Axel Berger is a Senior Researcher at the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) in  Bonn, Germany. He works on the design, effects and diffusion patterns of international trade and investment agreements, with a focus on emerging markets and developing countries.

Twitter: @ax_berger.

 

 

Jakob Schwab is an associate researcher at the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) in  Bonn, Germany. He researches on various aspects of North-South globalization, among them foreign direct investment, trade and the environment, tax cooperation and distributional issues.

 

 

 

Frederik Stender is a post-doctoral researcher at the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) in Bonn, Germany. His research focusses on international trade policy, including trade agreements and non-tariff measures.

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Brexiters claim that the EU is run by unelected bureaucrats. It’s a laughable claim because it’s untrue.

The EU is a democracy, run by elected politicians.

By comparison, the UK seems more like a quasi-democracy, with unelected decision-makers and undemocratic practises that would be considered despotic compared to EU standards.

Take our Parliament. It consists of 1,431 members (in the Commons and the Lords). Just 650 of them were elected, but the other 781* were appointed, and not elected.

Since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in July 2019, 83 new unelected members of the Lords have been appointed, including his brother, Jo Johnson, and Brexit negotiator, David Frost, enabling him to be in the Cabinet.

On the other hand, the European Parliament has 705 members, ALL elected.

Just look at other aspects of so-called British ‘democracy’ that would be considered alien in the EU:

• We have a legislative system whereby most laws are made by Statutory Instruments, drafted by the Civil Service, which cannot be amended by Parliament and most of which become law automatically, without a Parliamentary vote.
• We have governments that can bypass Parliament with the use – and abuse – of arcane and ancient Royal Prerogatives and Henry VIII clauses.
• We have an old-fashioned voting system of first-past-the-post resulting in governments that most people didn’t vote for. (In European Parliament elections, voting is by proportional representation).
• We have a Prime Minister who could (until it was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court) close down Parliament for an extended period at his will and without Parliamentary approval.
• We had a Prime Minister who attempted to initiate Brexit without Parliamentary authority and spent considerable sums of public money in litigation defending her “right” to do so.
• We have a government that has given lucrative contracts to their friends, bypassing usual procurement procedures and public accountability.
• We had a referendum in which two out of the four members of the United Kingdom voted against Brexit, but we still went ahead with it anyway.
• We have an unelected head of state (although she has no real power to intervene on important issues).

None of these undemocratic situations would be acceptable in the EU.

But how many people truly know that the EU is a democracy?

For years, Brexit politicians and papers have been selling us the blatant lie that the EU is undemocratic, even a “dictatorship” and run by unelected bureaucrats.

Let me take this opportunity to explain why that is not the case.

 EU MEMBERSHIP REQUIREMENTS In the EU, democratic governance is the number one requirement of European Union membership.

In 1962, the year after Britain first applied to join the EEC, Spain also applied.

The country was then governed by authoritarian dictator, Francisco Franco. Spain’s membership application was flatly and unanimously rejected by all members of the European Community.

The reason? Because Spain wasn’t a democracy.

Indeed, if the UK was applying to join the EU now, recent events could present questions over the validity of our application and whether our democratic governance is currently robust enough.

Remember, the Tories have committed to scrapping our Human Rights Act and they oppose the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. In the recent past, the Tory government has also threatened to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

That would likely bar us from joining the EU, where a commitment to human rights is also a strict membership requirement.

Before becoming a member of the EU, an applicant country must demonstrate that it has a stable government guaranteeing:

• Democracy
• The rule of law
• Human rights
• Respect for and protection of minorities
• The existence of a functioning market economy
• The capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union

Most countries that applied to join the EU did not meet these strict membership requirements and so they needed many years to prepare for the process before their application could be accepted.

NOTE: The UK’s unelected House of Lords may be a barrier to the UK being accepted as an EU member if we apply to re-join. We may have got away with having an unelected second chamber when we first joined in 1973, but there is a question mark over whether our application would be successful again without deep constitutional reforms in the UK. 

 EU MEMBERS Contrary to what many people in Britain understand, the EU is a democracy, democratically run by its members.

These comprise the democratically elected governments and Parliaments of EU member states, alongside the directly elected European Parliament.

All the treaties of the EU, upon which all EU laws must be compatible, and any new countries applying to join the EU, must be unanimously and democratically agreed by all the national parliaments of every EU member state, however large or small.

In some EU countries, according to their national constitutions, agreement must also be obtained by regional parliaments and national referendums.

All the EEC/EU treaties since Britain joined the European Community in 1973 years ago were fully debated and democratically passed by our Parliament in Westminster.

Not once were any changes to our EU membership imposed upon us, and neither could they be, as the EU is a democracy.

In addition, every EU country has a veto on any treaty changes or any new country joining.

(Compare that to our referendum of 2016, when a majority of citizens in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted against Brexit, but it made no difference.)

 THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT The European Parliament is the EU’s law-making body, alongside the EU Council, which comprises the departmental ministers of democratically elected governments of every EU country.

The Parliament is directly elected every five years by citizens in all EU countries. The latest European elections were held in May 2019.

There are 705 MEPs (we used to have 73 MEPs from the UK representing us in Europe; alas, no more).

Each European country is proportionally represented in the Parliament according to their size of population.

EU laws can only be passed by the European Parliament in concert with the EU Council (also called the Council of Ministers).

The Council of Ministers shares law making and budgetary powers with the European Parliament. When voting on proposed EU laws, its meetings must be public.

Alongside the Council, the European Parliament has the democratic power to accept, amend or reject proposed laws and regulations.

According to extensive research by VoteWatch Europe, over 97% of adopted EU laws in the 12 years to 2016 were supported by the UK.

There are proposals to give the European Parliament new powers to directly initiate legislation.

 THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION The European Commission is the servant of the EU, and not its master. Ultimately, the Commission is beholden to the European Parliament, and not the other way around.

The Commission President must be elected by an absolute majority of all MEPs (i.e. over 50% of them).

Indeed, Ursula von der Leyen could only become Commission President with the democratic backing of over half of ALL MEPs.

Each Commissioner must also be democratically approved by the European Parliament in a strict vetting process. The Parliament has the democratic power to reject candidate Commissioners – as it did in 2019.

The Parliament also has the democratic power to sack the entire Commission at any time during its five-year tenure.

The Commission is responsible for implementing the democratic decisions of the EU, upholding and enforcing democratically passed EU laws and treaties, and managing the day-to-day business of the EU.

The Commission also proposes new laws, but they only do this in close collaboration with the European Parliament and Council of Ministers, as only the Parliament and Council can pass laws.

The Commission has zero power to pass any laws.

Before the Commission proposes new laws, it prepares ‘Impact Assessments’ which set out the advantages and disadvantages of possible policy options.

The Commission then consults interested parties such as non-governmental organisations, local authorities and representatives of industry and civil society. Groups of experts also give advice on technical issues.

In this way, the Commission ensures that legislative proposals correspond to the needs of those most concerned and avoids unnecessary red tape.

Citizens, businesses and organisations also participate in the consultation procedure. National parliaments can also formally express their reservations if they feel that it would be better to deal with an issue at national rather than EU level.

 THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL The European Council consists of the democratically elected leaders of each EU country – their Prime Ministers and Presidents. It is the EU’s supreme political authority.

The Council does not negotiate or adopt EU laws, but it does democratically set the political goals and priorities of the European Union, including the policy agenda of the Commission.

The Council also democratically chooses candidates for the post of Commission President, which the European Parliament must then elect with an absolute majority of MEPs.

The Council President reports to the European Parliament.

 UK MEMBERSHIP OF THE EU During our membership, Britain democratically helped to run and rule the EU, and not the other way around. Whatever the EU is and has become, Britain helped to create it.

Indeed, the EU can become whatever all its members unanimously agree it can become. But of course, that only applies to EU members, and not to ex-members.

Outside of the EU, Britain can only watch as democratic decisions about the running and future direction of our continent are decided without us, even though those decisions will affect us just as much, whether we are a member or not.

Leaving the EU has meant a loss of sovereignty. We no longer have a say, votes and vetoes on the running and future direction of our continent.

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* Confirmed by the House of Lords Press Office on 8 June 2021:

“There are currently 781 members of the House of Lords. There are a further 40 who cannot currently attend the House of Lords or take part in its proceedings because they are on leave of absence or are disqualified from participating.

“26 Church of England Archbishops and Bishops sit in the House of Lords on an ex officio basis. When one retires, they are replaced by another based on their seniority in the Church.

“83 peerages have been announced since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister.”

It seems that, unlike the Commons, membership of the House of Lords is in a constant state of flux, and the numbers have to be checked on an almost monthly basis.

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