Agrégateur de flux

The European Union is clearly the most successful regional organisation in human history. It represents the gold standard for regional co-operation, yet it is not perfect. It still suffers from structural flaws that will need to be remedied if the EU wants to go from Version 1.0 to Version 2.0.

One great paradox surrounding the EU is how on the world stage it can be both an economic giant and a political dwarf. Its economic might, despite the recent challenges to the euro, is indisputable. Indeed, its capacity to overcome the eurozone crisis shows its economic resilience. By contrast, when it comes to major geopolitical challenges like the rise of China or the challenge of ISIL, EU remains a marginal player.

Is there a structural cause for this political marginalisation of the EU? Is there something about its decision-making structures that leads to this? The answer is probably yes. But it is a complex yes; complex because in theory the EU has a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and new institutional structures to deliver its CFSP. The EU is represented in international negotiations by its High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, currently Federica Mogherini.

“To make matters worse, the EU allowed the U.S. to set the agenda for the EU’s relations with its Islamic neighbours”

That’s the theory. In practice, the voice of Europe in international negotiations is relatively weak because the EU has to spend most of its time negotiating internally to arrive at a common point of view. And it is not easy to arrive at a shared viewpoint because even Europe’s three key global actors – Germany, the UK and France – have different interests. To protect their anachronistic interests as permanent members of the UN Security Council, the UK and France refuse to have their hands tied by a common EU policy. Germany, on the other hand, has a greater vested interest in a common position. And even when these three key actors agree, the EU then has to work hard to bring on board its remaining 25 members. The result tends to be an EU position that represents the lowest common denominator.

With this kind of decision-making structure, it is virtually impossible for the EU to come out with bold visionary proposals that take into consideration the EU’s common interest in dealing with a long-term challenge. There are many obvious long-term challenges coming down the road towards the EU. They include the rise of China, Asia’s renaissance, the resurgence of the Islamic world, the need to re-engage Russia and dealing with Africa’s demographic explosion.

It doesn’t take a strategic genius to anticipate the long-term geopolitical challenges that face the EU. But it will take a strategic genius to figure out solutions that will enable the EU to think and act long-term. Although there is no easy “silver bullet” solution, it may be useful to consider the creation of a high-powered strategic planning unit (SPU) whose mandate is to study, anticipate and formulate responses to all these long-term challenges.

Such a SPU should be given a clear mandate to ignore contemporary challenges, whether they be in Ukraine or ISIL, and instead to focus only on the long term. Its task should be to suggest appropriate EU strategies to deal with these challenges, and a few examples might help to illustrate this process.

Let’s take the case of the EU-U.S. relationship. The result of the years of the Cold War is a historical legacy of EU subservience to American strategic interests. During the Cold War there was a strategic rationale for this subservience, but in the post-post-Cold War era the question is whether there will always be a convergence of interests between the EU and the U.S.

“It may be useful to consider the creation of a high-powered strategic planning unit whose mandate is to study, anticipate and formulate responses to all these long-term challenges”

This is the kind of audit that the SPU should do, clearly and objectively. If the audit shows a continuing convergence of interests, the EU should move to a certain set of geopolitical impulses. If it shows a growing divergence of interests, the EU will need to fashion different impulses. To the best of my knowledge, no EU institution has tried to do such an audit. Why not? It has become an article of faith in the EU that the transatlantic alliance must remain an eternal feature of the geopolitical landscape.

Maybe it should. In the economic arena, when the EU negotiates with the U.S. over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), it strongly and shrewdly defends its economic interests. However, when it comes to geopolitical interests, Europe’s natural tendency is to be subservient to the U.S., even though their interests could diverge significantly.

The biggest problem that the U.S. faces along its southern border is Mexico. Migration flows from Mexico have always been seen to be a challenge, and the U.S. has wisely tried to manage this by negotiating and implementing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to export jobs to Mexico lessen the migratory pressure of Mexicans seeking jobs in the U.S.

The EU’s biggest problem on its southern border is North Africa. Migration flows from North Africa could be anticipated 20 years ago. In a 1993 article in The National Interest, entitled “The West and the Rest”, I myself wrote: “If the belief and expectation of economic development can be planted in the minds of billions of people, massive migrations may be averted. Those western Europeans who are already fearful of such migrations from North Africa should do some fundamental strategic re-thinking and begin viewing the challenge from East Asia in a different light. What is a short-term challenge could bring long-term strategic redemption.” In short, western Europe should 22 years ago have encouraged the countries of North African to learn from the successful economic development of Muslim states like Malaysia and Indonesia.

“The EU can never walk away from North Africa’s problems, and should have been careful and pragmatic in dealing with them instead of allowing the ideological interests of the U.S. to trump its own pragmatic interests”

Europe’s current migration crisis, like the Mexican migration problem, could have been anticipated. The EU should have signed a North African Free Trade Area (NAFTA) to match the American NAFTA. Yet none was proposed or even considered. Why not? The simple answer is that the U.S. has intelligence and security agencies that focus on long-term challenges, and they anticipated the Mexican challenge. The EU has had none, and failed to identify the looming migratory pressures.

To make matters worse, the EU allowed the U.S. to set the agenda for the EU’s relations with its Islamic neighbours. When the Arab spring began in Tunisia in December 2010, the EU allowed the U.S. to take the driver’s seat in dealing with the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. The U.S. was able to take ideological positions because, separated by the Atlantic Ocean, it could walk away from these problems.

The EU can never walk away from North Africa’s problems, and should have been careful and pragmatic in dealing with them instead of allowing the ideological interests of the U.S. to trump its own pragmatic interests.

North Africa is only one example of diverging interests between the EU and the U.S., and over the long term there may well be other divergences. This is why, should the EU even set up an SPU, its mandate must not be to pass political judgements. Its sole role should be to objectively identify common challenges that EU countries will almost certainly face. Such an agency could help the EU to develop a capacity for strategic foresight. By 2035, the EU could become both an economic and a political giant on the world stage.

The post Here’s how the EU should start to think long-term appeared first on Europe’s World.

The Kremlin will respond to Turkey's aggression against Russia, albeit not militarily. Russia's retaliation will manifest itself in tightening economic cooperation with Turkey. In addition, Russia may expose the information about Turkey's cooperation with Islamist terrorist groups. Russia will restrict imports of a variety of goods from Turkey

The European Commission released its latest review of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) on 18 November 2015. The revised ENP is more focused than earlier versions, which were heavily premised on the idea that neighbouring countries should transform themselves into liberal democracies in the EU’s image. The EU has retreated from proposing models for its neighbours, instead concentrating on cooperation in areas where there are concrete interests on both sides. The result is that European interests, especially regional stability, security and controlled migration, are outlined much more explicitly than before. Mutual interests in trade, investment and energy cooperation are also highly prominent, as they have been since the beginning of the ENP.

The review raises new expectations for EU engagement in the Middle East and North Africa. Disappointment with the results of the last review, which was conducted shortly before the 2011 Arab Spring, was a major factor in prompting the new European Commission of president Jean Claude Juncker, High Representative Federica Mogherini, and Neighbourhood Commissioner Johannes Hahn, to ask fundamental questions about the policy framework, its objectives and the instruments the EU uses in its relations with neighbouring countries. The publication of the 2015 review follows an extensive consultation process. The Commission received more than 250 written submissions and it canvassed both government and non-governmental stakeholders behind the scenes.
EU officials say that neighbouring countries wanted the ENP to be more focused, more flexible, less bureaucratic, and more ‘political.’ The Commission says that it has listened to what is has been told: that the EU should stop telling neighbouring countries what to do, that there should be one policy framework which combines the EU’s foreign and security policy, development aid, migration policy and justice and home affairs, and that there needs to be more money on the table.

The ENP review is certainly presented in a less hectoring tone than its predecessors. The ENP’s main problem is that it was based on the EU’s enlargement model, which successfully transformed eight former communist Eastern European countries before the EU’s ‘big bang’ enlargement in 2004. The original ENP was designed by the same officials who worked on enlargement policy and it was unsurprisingly similar in terms of its language, emphasis on values, and attempted use of conditionality and socialisation to incentivise the reforms the EU considered desirable. That EU membership was never on the table was not considered an issue, because most southern neighbours were not interested anyway and the EU’s political and economic model was in any case considered something which all countries should aspire to intrinsically.

However, the ENP was never backed by sufficient financial support or other incentives, such as Schengen visas, to have any leverage with southern neighbouring governments. This has not changed. The ENP is backed by the €15.4 billion European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI), which has not been increased despite the region’s crises. Some longer-term bilateral ENI programmes have been cut and the funds reallocated to short-term initiatives such as the new Madad Trust Fund for responding to the Syria crisis. European Commission officials are reportedly hoping that a mid-term review of the EU budget in 2016 will result in funds being shifted from the EU’s domestic budget lines, such as the common agricultural policy and structural funds, to the ENI.

Whether the review is really more ‘political’ is not as clear. In keeping with the spirit of pragmatism, the EU’s positions on the most politically sensitive issues, such as conditionality, cooperation with authoritarian regimes, and the access of neighbouring country citizens to the EU labour market, are not clear and unambiguous. Close cooperation with neighbours on policing, border security and counter-terrorism, which has been going on for years, has been intensified and is discussed more openly than in the past.

The review’s explicit focus on interests does not mean that the EU has abandoned its values entirely. References to democracy, good governance and human rights remain prominent, and there is specific focus on programmes that support the judiciary, accountable public administration and civil society, which are all areas where the EU has extensive expertise. Nevertheless, the most political idea at the heart of the ENP – the transformational power of Europe – has all but disappeared amid all the realism. This has not happened because of conviction, but because of the EU’s weakness in the face of repeated crises. This reality casts a big question mark over whether the EU is strong enough to stand up for its values when the time comes, for example if the military were to overthrow a democratically elected government in a neighbouring country like in Egypt in 2013.

The timing of the 2015 review naturally raises the question of whether the ENP is able to offer solutions to urgent crises such as terrorist attacks in Europe, the plight of Syrian refugees or the civil war in Libya. The ENP is, however, not a crisis response mechanism. The EU has developed other crisis frameworks for the Syria/Iraq and Libya crises in parallel to the ENP review, reportedly with little coordination or exchange. Indeed, the ENP is the tortoise rather than the hare: it is an overarching framework for working with partners on longer term ‘root causes’ of crises, like weak governance, economic stagnation and conflict. Since 2011, the ENP has been largely irrelevant to the epoch-defining upheavals in the MENA region. Whether the 2015 review can change this depends on how it will be supported and implemented by the EU, its member states and the neighbouring country partners.

On 29 September 2015, thirty experts from Ministries of Defence, European Commission, NATO staff, industry and academia participated in an European Defence Agency (EDA) seminar to address the future impact of metamaterials technologies on defence capabilities. The seminar was co-organised by the Capability Technology groups (CapTechs) on Materials & Structures, Technologies for Components and Modules, Radiofrequency Sensors Technologies, and Electro-Optical Sensors Technologies.

Metamaterials are engineered structured materials used principally to control and manipulate electromagnetic fields and acoustic waves. Their properties come both from those of the materials they are made of, as well as from their geometrical arrangements. 

High level experts on metamaterials and defence technologies gathered to discuss on the potentials of metamaterials for different defence applications and related future challenges. In order to raise the awareness for these technologies, background information was provided on current work regarding metamaterials at EU level, on relevant activities in various CapTechs, on defence capability needs and on areas were further research is needed. The discussion focused on metamaterials defence applications, such as metamaterials to enhance the performance of radar antennas, their use as radar absorbers and cloaking, both regarding acoustics and microwave signals. Also the challenges and the way ahead regarding measurements, fabrication or modelling were addressed during the meeting.

The main outcome of the seminar is the identification of radar antennas and absorbers as the most promising defence applications. On the other hand, wide-band tunable surfaces are the most wanted applications of metamaterials, although they are far to be achieved. However, with a view to developing different applications, SMEs and academia need military requirements to better align their research to defence needs. Moreover, industry requires understanding of manufacturing tolerances and their performance in real conditions. These issues, together with the fact that metamaterials technologies are mainly civil driven, make the identification of the right area and right moment to start investing in a major challenge for defence actors. 

For further information, please contact CapTech.Materials@eda.europa.eu 

More information: 

• Project page on METamaterials for Active ELEctronically Scanned Arrays (METALESA)
• News "EDA project shows how metamaterials can boost the performance of antennas (MIMICRA)" (15 September 2014)

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Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

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Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2015 - EP

A RESEO 2016 januárjában szimpóziumot szervez Részvételen alapuló projektek címmel.

Die Beschulung von berufsschulpflichtigen Asylbewerbern und Flüchtlingen stellt eine äußerst anspruchsvolle und zugleich neue Herausforderung dar. Wir haben einen überarbeiteten Tagungsbericht von unserer Veranstaltung mit dem Kultusministerium im Februar 2015 und Zusatzmaterial zum Thema zusammengestellt.

Jeudi 26 novembre 2015, à Paris, le sergent-chef Alexis Guarato, membre du commando parachutiste de l’air n°10 (CPA 10) d’Orléans, est décédé des suites de ses blessures.

On 30 November The Subcommittee on Security and Defence and the Committee on Development will hold a public hearing to discuss the intertwined challenges of development and security and how to address them in a joined-up approach.
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Programme
Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Depuis  les  attentats  du  vendredi  13  novembre,  c’est  toute  l’armée  de  Terre  qui s’est  rapidement mobilisée sur le territoire national pour protéger les Français. Aujourd’hui,  10 000 militaires sont déployés sur l’opération SENTINELLE, qui repose à 98% sur les  forces  de  l’armée  de Terre.  Plus  de  70  unités  ont  ainsi  été  mises  à  contribution  pour  participer à cet effort, à l’image de la brigade de renseignement (BRENS) déployée ces  derniers jours en région parisienne. 

On 1 December the Subcommittee on Security and Defence will exchange views with Pedro Serrano, Deputy Secretary General for CSDP and crisis response, EEAS, on the outcome of the Foreign Affairs Council in Defence Ministers configuration, and in particular on the activation of Art. 42.7 TEU.
Further information
draft agenda and meeting documents
Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

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Spanien / Kommission
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Spain v Commission
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