Ideas on Europe Blog

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Alicja Próchniak, from Loughborough University, in London. Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

 

 

Your PhD research deals with the role and function of political myths and their impact on foreign policy. That sounds very theoretical. Can you tell us more about it?

The concept of political myth is understudied in academic research, and the existing scope of literature is scattered across several scientific disciplines. An important author, considered to be a pioneer of this concept, is Roland Barthes, with his well-known book Mythologies, published in 1957. He was building upon the original sign analysis, often referred to as ‘semiology’, developed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.

 

How do myths work? Can you give us a concrete example?

Sure. Let’s start with Sisyphus, the character from Greek mythology, condemned to repeat the same task of rolling a large stone up a hill for eternity. In English, we have the expression ‘Sisyphean work’. Normally, ‘work’ means an activity or task that involves the use of mental or physical effort to achieve a specific objective. However, the expression ‘Sisyphean work’ means an endless and futile task. This is exactly the nature of myth as described by Barthes. The meaning goes beyond what is actually said.

 

How does this fit into politics? After all, you are writing a PhD at an ‘Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance’!

Myths are everywhere in political discourse. According to Christopher Flood, a political myth is ‘an ideologically marked narrative’ which claims to give, I quote: ‘a true account of past, present, or predicted political events and which is accepted as valid in its essentials by a social group’.

Other researchers have explained that myths go beyond narratives or ideology, as they contribute to a ‘sacralisation’ of politics. They frame discourse in quasi-religious terms, and they contain sacred elements that elevate the power of narrative to the range of religious authority.

 

Can you provide an illustration of such mechanisms of sacralization?

A good example is American exceptionalism, which is not a religious phenomenon in itself, but has very important religious roots and connotations. Joanne Esch, a researcher from Colorado, has identified three main ideas of the American myth of exceptionalism:

First, America as ‘God’s chosen nation’. This myth provides meaning to the country’s political and historical experience and the general direction of its politics.

Second, the United States as a ‘nation with a calling’. This refers to America as a special mission in the world, given by God, the creation of a global order of democracy and freedom. The use of such a myth in official political rhetoric helps to legitimize policies that do not always comply with international law, like for instance the ‘War on Terror’ launched by George W. Bush.

And third, America represents the forces of good against evil. The myth of ‘God’s chosen nation’ leads to stipulating that the country represents the ‘forces of Good’ against ‘the forces of Evil’. It’s the myths that create the quasi-religious underpinning of the country’s image of itself and its place in the world.

 

The United States are perhaps a quite extreme example in their permanent reference to religious myths?

All countries have their political myths. Just think of France as ‘the country of Human Rights’. Or the way in which the European Union refers to its mission as ‘peace-builder’ on the continent. The difference between them is the extent to which these myths are critically discussed.

Given the important domestic and international implications of myths, the topic of political myths has received surprisingly little attention in the studies of International Relations. We are now starting to understand that they are especially influential in shaping security and foreign policy. And that’s what I am working on in my PhD research.

 

Thank you very much, for sharing your original research with us. Keep us posted on the progress of your work! I recall you are based on the London campus of Loughborough University.

 

Entretien réalisé par Rune Mahiee.

 

 

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I will freely admit that I have shied away from getting into the whole question of Retained EU Law, primarily because it’s much more about law in the UK than it is about EU law per se. I know enough to know that I don’t know much.

However, the question is one that cannot be ignored.

Firstly, the extent of Retained EU Law is such that how it is dealt with will have significant consequences for British legal systems, UK businesses and politics. The Retained EU Law (Revocation & Reform) Bill gives huge powers to the government to make changes to rules within effective Parliamentary oversight, for example.

Secondly, the headlong rush to sunset rules by the end of 2023 contains significant implications for the UK’s compliance with its obligations under the Withdrawal Agreement and (especially) the Trade & Cooperation Agreement, the latter with its Level Playing Field requirements. Given that the UK government is still unclear as to quite what falls into the Retained EU Law classification, even their intentions are to comply, the danger of accidental divergence is evident.

And finally, the entire shift on the matter speaks to the continuing uncertainty about what relationship with the EU the UK might want.

Almost from the off after the referendum, there was a recognition that something would have to be done about all of the internalised and semi-internalised legislation (and practice) that came from the EU. Not just the regulations and the directives, but also the principles of supremacy and direct effect and the extensive case law of the CJEU.

Given the unclear boundaries of all of this, the only viable option at the time of the Withdrawal Agreement negotiations was the one taken by the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2018, which just rolled over the membership-era system created by the European Communities Act 1972 and let the government take its time over resolving matters.

As I’ve been showing in my REUL Tracker (last discussion here and data files here), there has been some work to review and adapt to life after membership, but at a rather slow pace. Perhaps as a mark of that slow pace, the fancy visualisation tool first published in September last year has just undergone a big reworking, making it now very hard to keep track of what’s happened [one for next week I think].

However, the EU(WA) Act approach clearly caused issues for some in government, hence the flip over to the new Bill.

This drops methodically working through the pile to saying that anything not explicitly addressed by the end of 2023 will be sunsetted (sunsat?), even as any general principle of EU law is also removed from the practice of law in the UK.

The issues with this approach are both multiple and major, as set out in the graphic below.  Even if liberal use of the ‘exceptional’ extension to 23 June 2026 (not an insignificant date) would still likely result in a large percentage of Retained EU Law being dropped without the level of scrutiny one might hope for (assuming that the civil servants and MPs involved might also have other things that need their attention).

The Bill’s approach speaks to a desire to divest the UK of any vestige of having been an EU member, regardless of whether any part of it might have intrinsic value: a measure’s EU origin is enough to make the presumption that it must be removed.

This is of course a worldview that resonates with the notion of ‘taking back control’ and of British otherness; only we can know what is right for us, only we can make decisions for us. As political sells go, it’s not the hardest banner to run on, at least in a campaigning mode.

But politics is also about governing: our shiny ideas quickly tarnish in the glare of day as we start to use them.

And so it is here. The Bill might make good headlines, but it doesn’t obviously make things better for citizens, for traders or for relations with the European Union that (annoyingly) continues to sit on the UK’s doorstep. As I touched upon the other week, we don’t get to make unilateral decisions about our relationships, however much we’d like that.

At a moment when the government seems (maybe, perhaps) to be working towards some kind of deal with the EU on Northern Ireland, it would be ironic if it simultaneously opened up a new point of tension over an issue that only it seems to think is an issue.

PDF version: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic114

PDF version: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic115

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Inga Ulnicane

New technologies are usually developed with the best intentions in mind. However, as history shows this does not prevent from afterwards using them in problematic ways. For example, internet was initially associated with hopes that it will foster openness and democracy around the world but later became used as a tool of surveillance and discrimination. How to facilitate development of technologies for social benefit and minimize potential to use them for problematic purposes? One of the approaches that has gained popularity in Europe over the past decade is the so-called Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) (Stahl 2021) that aims to align research and innovation with societal interests, needs and values. An important element of the RRI approach is boundary spanning collaborations involving researchers not only from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines, but also from social science and humanities (Aicardi 2020). Such collaborations also involve a broad range of stakeholders from civil society and private sectors.

 

The RRI approach aims to go beyond just legal compliance and getting ethics approvals for research. It recognizes that rather than a priori establishing a list of potential concerns, uncertainty and complexity of emerging technologies require an ongoing dialogue among diverse stakeholders, as technology develops (Stahl 2019). Emerging and unpredictable concerns can be better captured by an open and flexible dialogue rather than by some pre-set checklists and box-ticking exercises. An important feature that differentiates RRI from earlier approaches to ethical and societal aspects of research and innovation is that responsibility is not seen as an individual responsibility of scientists but rather as a feature of research governance. Thus, it is not just up to scientists to make the right choices but responsible research and innovation should also be encouraged and facilitated by a research policy, funding and reward system. Moreover, it should not be just an afterthought or an add-on but needs to be considered upfront when designing new research programmes and initiatives.

 

Among the issues that needs to be considered when developing technologies for good, dual use of concern and misuse are of particular importance. All powerful technologies like artificial intelligence, neurotechnology or nanotechnology can be used for socially beneficial as well as harmful purposes. Dual use is a relatively little known and contested concept. Traditionally, dual use has been understood as civil-military dichotomy when technologies developed for civilian purposes are also used for military applications and vice versa (Ulnicane 2020). Recently this term is understood more broadly considering a range of potentially problematic uses in political, security, intelligence, military and other domains (Ulnicane et al 2022). To identify and address such a broad range of concerns, it is important to have an ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue that provides a safe space and allows for experimentation, dialogue and learning. Of particular importance is raising awareness about these issues and including training on societal aspects of technologies in STEM education.

 

Dr. Inga Ulnicane is Senior Research Fellow at De Montfort University, UK. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on governance, politics and policy of science, technology and innovation. She has published on topics such as Artificial Intelligence, dual use, Grand societal challenges and European integration in research and innovation.

 

References:

Aicardi, C., S.Akintoye, B.T.Fothergill, M.Guerrero, G.Klinker, W.Knight, L.Klüver, Y.Morel, F.O.Morin, B.C.Stahl and I.Ulnicane (2020) Ethical and Social Aspects of Neurorobotics. Science and Engineering Ethics 26(5): 2533–2546 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-020-00248-8

 

Stahl, B.C., S.Akintoye, B.T.Fothergill, M.Guerrero, W.Knight and I.Ulnicane (2019) Beyond Research Ethics: Dialogues in Neuro-ICT Research. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 13, 105 https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00105

 

Stahl, B.C., S.Akintoye, L.Bitsch, D.Eke, M.Farisco, K.Grasenick, M.Guerrero, W.Knight, T.Leach, S.Nyholm, G.Ogoh, A.Rosemann, A.Salles, J.Trattnig and I.Ulnicane (2021) ‘From RRI to Responsibility by Design’, Journal of Responsible Innovation 8(2): 175-198 https://doi.org/10.1080/23299460.2021.1955613

 

Ulnicane, I. (2020) The Governance of dual-use research in the EU: The case of neuroscience, in A.Calcara, R.Csernatoni and C.Lavallée (eds) Emerging Security Technologies and EU Governance. Actors, Practices and Processes. Routledge, pp.177-191. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429351846-12

 

Ulnicane, I., T. Mahfoud and A. Salles (2022) Experimentation, learning, and dialogue: an RRI-inspired approach to dual-use of concern. Journal of Responsible Innovation. https://doi.org/10.1080/23299460.2022.2094071

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To respond to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, we at UACES wanted to bring our community together. And we went the same way everyone is going right now: online.

The second virtual coffee meeting encouraged our community to talk about their mental health and how to look after it while working from home. Different perspectives were shared but we could also observe, a few struggles are the same for everyone.

Photo: ©Jakob Lawitzki – Balance, via Flickr

What has changed

Academics are often well equipped to work from home and student life often means to study either in the library or at home, writing on an essay or paper. Now, everyone is forced to work from home and that is a different context. Finding a good balance is not that easy as possibilities as well as equipment might suddenly be limited.

The pandemic demands a constant adjustment and no one has certainty on how long the pandemic will last. What has been decided yesterday might not count next week anymore. Deadlines for a paper or an essay is in constant change; and universities, students and professors are caught in between. You might end up spending a lot of time working on something for a deadline, a class or and event and all you do is preparing for something that might get cancelled or postponed. Keeping the motivation high is hard. The pandemic demands a lot of flexibility from everyone.

Many started to bake and cook loads, but even there is a real struggle: finding basic ingredients, like flour or eggs. This makes everyone a little nervous. It probably doesn’t mean that everyone bakes every day, but flour is that thing, that everyone usually has in their shelves. This phenomenon probably embodies security and signals, I could make something if I had to…
Others became motivated runners or endless dog-walkers. A restriction can also motivate in a different way. We often want, what we can’t have and we are observing this around us now.

Fear became more present and simple life administrations harder. People with a second house are facing difficulties in taking care of the other place where they not currently at. Letter correspondence is limited. How can I even send a letter to authorities? What if you are waiting for an important document but it’s being addressed to the other place? Journeys to the hair dresser, the garden centre or even the dentist might seem unimportant at first, until you feel a bit of pain in your teeth.

Whilst it all concerns this one topic: COVID-19. How can we escape all the questions that we have about this virus and its impact? It occupies our minds and affects our work, our everyday life so drastically that it is really hard to switch off. Depending on the individual situation everyone is in, the effect might be distinct in different ways. But we also observe that many do experience the same changes even if we are separated and in different countries or continents.

 

At least we can all stay connected. Or can we?

This might be more of an effort than you would believe. Just think about: How often do you interact with others throughout a normal day? It probably comes down to less than half of that number now. It is more of an effort to stay in touch. Simple interactions in between, like a coffee break and a 10-minute chat, are rare or non-existing.
Additionally, in an international environment, people travelled home to be with their families and might be in a different time zone now. Some haven’t spoken to colleagues in a little while.

Others checked on their colleagues and friends to make sure they are ok, because this gives oneself a good feeling and maybe even the certainty that everything will be ok, too. It might also be the need to exchange experience and hear what stage another country is in. Then, again, COVID dominates the conversation and our minds and our thoughts are lost in that one topic. We end up talking about worries and fears and it might feel that everything else to talk about has just disappeared.

In a family environment, how can we keep, date nights alive? This might not be so easy, but with a little imagination we might find ways. Like a dad experienced who pretended to serve dinner to his children. He and his wife planned a Saturday date night but the kids wanted to take part in this spectacular. Instead of letting his children serve them (which might have resulted in a kitchen disaster), he served his kids in a little role play for the evening.

 

There is also this thing about ‘time’…

Most people do not feel they have the time to start a new hobby, learn a new skill or do more reading, as so many suggest. Use the time to slow down, some say. If you work full-time from home you might find yourself continuing to work longer hours or even on the weekend. Many have experienced this already. A reason this happens is because work gives your day structure and avoids that we are losing the sense of time.
However, it could also mean, we haven’t finished our workload for the day. Many feel unfocused, are checking the media more often, and are caught up in calls with family and friends. And then, as mentioned, conversations are mostly about the COVID-19 pandemic. How can we avoid this?

Many suggest setting goals during self-isolation helps with your mental health. And if time is an issue, building up little challenges could make a little goal, like, how many steps am I doing a day at home? Can I walk 24 miles in my garden? Or like the artist Max Siedentopf suggests: get creative. ‘There are so many opportunities to create new and exciting work and turn this into something positive’. Every day, he challenges people via social media to do little tasks and to photograph and share their results. So, maybe trying to do small little things is a better idea than starting a new hobby to distract us from the realities that the pandemic confronts us with every day.

 

So, how can we look after ourselves?

Keeping a routine and structure is important for most people. It helps with motivation and productivity. Have you tried to break down your day? Something like the following might help to tick the tasks you set for your own day and which might make you feel better (because these are the things you can accomplish):

Breakfast – long walk – lunch – baby naps – 4 pm video chat with family – dinner

or

Spend the morning working on research – afternoon set aside for reading or lighter admin jobs – go for a run and/or do some kind of craft activity – Listen to podcasts (ideally not news-related)

Walks are helpful for almost everyone. Fresh air, the change of space, clearing the mind… The lucky ones are those who live in the countryside or close to the sea. In the city, a walk might still be a bit stressful. More people are around you and you are constantly trying to get around them while keeping 2 metres distance. But maybe, it is just based on finding the perfect time, the perfect walkway, the quiet part of the park.

 

And on maternity leave?

For colleagues on maternity leave (or about to embark upon it) one piece of advice is not to check your emails. There is an inordinate amount of emails being sent by university departments at the moment and they can be very stress-inducing; and even not relevant anymore once you return to work. However, if you think that you will be away from the university for a significant amount of time it may be better not to look at them or worry unduly about them since they will very likely not apply to you once you return.

 

And have you tried:

• to read the News only once a day?
• getting back into your research topic by talking about it to others? Maybe there are virtual meet-ups that can offer that? If not, why not start one in your network?
• relax with the tools you relax best. Don’t pressure yourself that you have to do a certain thing that all the others on social media are doing. Just because you see all your friends baking doesn’t mean you have to bake if it doesn’t give you joy.
• avoid social media for a bit. Plan calls to stay up to date with friends and family. Maybe start with deleting notifications or even apps from your phone.
• make a ‘Coronafree’-zone. Set a time or a location in your house which is exclusively for non-Corona topics. Involve your household in this, too and talk about books, movies or your current research instead. There are more things to talk about than the pandemic.
• to re-read a book? If you find it hard to concentrate, maybe try your favourite book that you have read before. It doesn’t need your full attention but might help to distract you or calm you by remembering the full story of the book.
• cooking shows? Get inspired about what you can cook in the evenings. There are plenty of shows on Netflix.
• puzzles, sudoku, crosswords?
• using the current situation for your research? Select those bits that are interesting for your professional career, maybe collect articles that you find interesting and can maybe use later for a research topic, a class or a debate.

 

The next #MidweekMeetup will address the work-life balance more deeply.
Register here to join the conversation – as usual at 11 am or 2 pm (BST).

 

 

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Neil spots an answer. Possibly

As you might have noticed, I have recently become a Senior Fellow of the ESRC-funded UK in a Changing Europe initiative, working on UK-EU relations. For present purposes, it mainly means I carry on doing this work, but now with more access to resources, and with a plan.

That plan is basically to try and make sense of relations, which feels like a bit more of a challenge now I’m actually getting into it. As such, it’s forced me to think more systematically about how to tackle this.

A key part of that is trying to unpack the various things we talk about when looking at this subject. So consider this a first stab.

Objectives

Long-time readers of this (and other) blogs will know that I have always placed a lot of attention on the question of objectives in the relationship.

In the simplest terms, what are we trying to do here?

Simple and obvious as that might sound, it’s very rare to hear this voiced by participants in the debate, beyond some boilerplate stuff about wanting ‘good’ or ‘constructive’ relations. Those things are nice, but hardly a well-developed conceptualisation of anything.

What do you need those good and constructive relations for? How do they fit into your wider foreign relations? How do they fit with your idea of what you want to achieve domestically?

These are the big questions that need to asked to get towards a better sense of any of the rest of what follows.

Processes

More common is discussion of how we build and run a relationship.

This starts by focusing on the types of instruments being used – UK-EU treaties; UK bilateral treaties with member states; MOUs; informal venues, etc. – each of which has its own range of options and flexibilities.

There’s also a process issue relating to who decides about the relationship. How much do you involve different political and social actors in this? Are you consulting widely, or trying to keep things tight?

These things all matter, both because of the future implications they carry (on flexibility, on the extent and nature of obligations) and because of the contemporary political values they contain (on legitimacy, on the seriousness of intent).

Content

This is the one we almost always discuss: what’s in the deal?

As I’ve already suggested, this kind of thing should really be driven by higher-order considerations about objectives, but in practice a lot comes down to specifics. Especially if you have a thing you think is important.

Scope clearly is consequential, also because a wider scope also tends to mean more people are affected/involved, which also has process implications.

Principles and Norms

This last category is slightly different in that it captures a number of ideas that inform the rest of the elements discussed here. Three examples might make this a bit clearer.

First up is the notion of good faith. Yes, it’s a principle of international treaty law, but it’s also good politics to be seen as (and actually to be) straight up, doing what you say you will. This speaks to trust, albeit in a more focused and applied manner.

Second we have the value placed on resilience and durability of agreements. As much as we have seen plenty of expediency in post-referendum British policy, there has also been an underlying effort to build some that will last. If nothing else, it hopefully means not having to spend so much time on things down the line.

And thirdly there is a notion that precedent-setting is important. This is more on the EU side, who don’t want to open the door to other third states popping up to demand the same treatment as the UK, but you also find in London, where particularities in dealings with the EU aren’t simple either (part of why CJEU powers are contentious).

Each of these suffuse the rest, even as they matter in their own right and deserve our attention.

Putting that together again

As I say, this is a first effort to systematise my thinking on this, but the main takeaway for now is that if we want to reach any equilibrium – high or low – in UK-EU relations, then we are going to have to make sure that we take proper account of all four parts of this, or risk falling another cycle making-it-up-as-we-go.

Which would be nice.

The post What do we talk about when we talk about negotiating a UK-EU relationship? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

For our weekly ‘Ideas on Europe’ editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Prof Georgiana Ciceo, from Babeș-Bolyai University, in Romania. Bonjour, Georgiana! Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

30 years ago, the Maastricht Treaty anchored the principle of subsidiarity in the functioning of the European Union. Difficult to pronounce, and also difficult to understand for many citizens. Can you remind us of its origins and meaning?

You may be surprised, but the principle of subsidiarity actually received a first consecration from the Catholic Church in 1891, then again in 1931, in the Encyclical ‘Quadragesimo Anno’, entitled ‘On the Reconstruction of the Social Order’.

Established as a principle governing the distribution of competences between a ‘higher association’ and ‘lesser and subordinate organizations’, the principle of subsidiarity attempts to address the question of what lawyers call ‘the appropriate locus of political and legal authority’ in a multi-layered system of governance.

 

And when did the EU pick it up, and for what purpose?

The first expression of subsidiarity in the EU treaties surfaced in the Single European Act of 1986, in relation to environmental policy.

It was seen as a response to the centralizing tendencies that emerged in the context of the Maastricht Treaty negotiations. On the one hand, Member States were concerned about the seemingly endless growth of the Union’s powers. And on the other hand, regions became alarmed that centralist backsliding could lead to a diminution of their own powers.

As a result, the principle of subsidiarity was codified in Article 3b of the Maastricht Treaty, accompanied by the principle of conferred powers and the principle of proportionality, which were supposed to establish not just common principles for action, but also rules for less intrusive EU governance.

 

But is it actually a solution to a problem?

In some well-known federalist systems, as in Germany or Switzerland, it is expressly stated in the constitutions, as a safeguard against centralizing tendencies.

In the EU, it has become associated with the concept of ‘doing less more efficiently’ or ‘being big on big things and small on small things.’ Expressed along these lines, it eventually took the form of an alternative scenario in the debate over Europe’s future.

 

You’re speaking of the five scenarios drawn up by the former Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker?

Absoutely. The ones from the White Paper on the Future of Europe in early 2017, only six years ago. Juncker was concerned that for many Europeans, the Union was, I quote, ‘either too distant or too interfering in their day-to-day lives’.

But there are other interest groups who refer to the same idea. Remember ‘the Frugal Four’? This informal grouping of fiscally conservative Member States was opposed to higher budget contributions and to the idea of taking mutualized debts within the EU.

And there is the ‘Visegrad Group’, composed of four Central European countries – Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic – who share common concerns about migration and sovereignty.

In each case, there is always a certain ambiguity about where the equilibrium is to be found between ‘doing less’ in more policy areas and doing ‘more efficiently in fewer: ‘doing less’ suggests we have to reckon with an increased role assumed by the Member States, and ‘more effectively in fewer areas’ brings us to consider increased action by the Union.

 

What are the chances that the principle of subsidiarity will remain relevant in discussions on the future of Europe?

Since 2019, the principle lost important supporters, like Jean-Claude Juncker, or the former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. Moreover, there seems to be a preference for the alternative scenario of ‘Those who want more do more.’ In the European Parliament, only the ‘Conservative and Reformist’ group gives ’Doing less, but better’ as its motto.

In the current context of states turning to subsidies, export controls and economic self-sufficiency in an attempt to reduce dependencies in strategic industries, the principle of subsidiarity may become attractive again, in the sense of ‘better tackling certain priorities together’, by doing more ‘in a reduced number of areas’, rather than ‘doing less.’

The principle will remain central in the debate. But how it is interpreted also depends on the solutions that need to be found in the responses to each new crisis the Union faces.

 

Many thanks, for reminding and enlightening us on this concept. I recall you are professor at Babeș-Bolyai University, in Romania.

 

 

The post The Principle of Subsidiarity, 30 Years Later appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

by Johannes Jarlebring

The EU is currently mobilising its market power through a range of new policy tools. Examples include the Climate Border Adjustment Mechanisms (CBAM), the International Procurement Instrument and the Anti-Coercion Instrument. The general aim, as explained in the EU’s trade policy review and the recent industrial strategy, is to make the EU stronger, more assertive and more geopolitically relevant.

However, the actual implications of this mobilisation are largely unknown. Can the latent powers vested in the internal market really be transformed into effective, market-powered external action? There is an urgent need to understand how the EU machinery actually works when it comes to the use of market power. Which factors drive, constrain and condition the EU’s actions, thereby determining how, why and when the EU actively projects its market powers externally?

My recent article in the Journal of Common Market Studies addresses these questions by studying the EU’s use of blacklisting. Blacklisting is a coercive technique by which the EU threatens to restrict access to the internal market by assessing third countries’ regulatory regimes in specific sectors.

Three blacklisting schemes are currently in operation making it a relatively rare practice. However, blacklisting belongs to the broader family of trade-based sanctions – a prominent foreign policy tool. Moreover, it is an example of a coercive variant of so-called regime vetting, a technique frequently used by the EU to influence regulatory regimes in third countries.

Based on an examination of blacklisting in two policy areas, fisheries and taxation, the article finds that two main factors can explain why and when the EU uses blacklisting. When combined, these factors generate external action that is strikingly inconsistent.

 

Why and when blacklist?

EU elite actors act to promote the rule of law internationally, which explains why blacklisting schemes emerge. In both fisheries and taxation, EU external action was initiated by EU elite actors who undertook to develop international law with the purpose to define criteria for regulatory good governance. In fisheries, the responsible DG of the European Commission took action internationally to shape the first legally binding international convention on Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fisheries. In taxation, senior European officials engaged in the OECD to anchor EU criteria regarding ‘unfair’ corporate taxation. When blacklisting schemes were eventually introduced in EU law, they were explicitly linked to the same international law that EU elites had contributed to developing.

Domestic stakeholder interests also heavily condition and constrain the EU’s use of blacklisting, which largely explains when this technique is used. To begin with, the EU set up blacklisting schemes only when domestic stakeholders had clear commercial motives to support these schemes. In both fisheries and taxation, blacklisting was introduced as part of regulatory packages that included stringent internal market rules. These rules threatened to have a negative impact on EU producers as third countries could engage in regulatory arbitrage or rule deviation. Secondly, when it comes to the actual exercise of the blacklisting schemes to third countries, the EU almost exclusively blacklists very small third countries, while avoiding blacklisting large countries that blatantly violate EU criteria.

 

The EU as an inconsistent power

The general lesson from these finding is that the EU is institutionally predisposed to actively promote norms internationally and to break the norms it sets out to defend.

EU integration has generated dense networks of EU elites, often centred around the European Commission. These networks are central to the policy-entrepreneurship that drive EU external action in various sectors, be it climate change, labour rights or – as in the case of blacklisting – fisheries and taxation. A key insight is that their aims are not shaped by aggregated domestic interests or EU level capabilities, but rather follow from the interests and ideas represented by the networks. As their main tools and opportunity structure is constituted by supranational law, the networks of policy entrepreneurs will act to promote the development of such law.

EU integration has also generated an effective machinery for national control, mainly centred on the EU Council. When it comes to economic and regulatory issues, this machinery is activated when initiatives risk generating cost, in particular asymmetric costs. Only when the benefits, in terms of reduced negative externalities from abroad, outweigh the costs, does the national control machinery allow the EU to act.

This shapes not only the EU’s use of blacklisting, but its use of market power more generally, for instance when it comes to sanctioning violations of human rights or sustainable development clauses in its trade agreements. In cases like these, EU sanctions norm infringements almost exclusively in relation to very small countries and avoid moving against large countries.

This means that the EU is neither a ‘normative power’ promoting international law, nor a ‘superpower’ pursuing domestic interests, nor a ‘regulatory power’ engaged in functionalist extension of internal policies. Rather, the EU can be considered a ‘liberal power’, whose external action is driven and constrained by factors that are tightly associated with its identity as a union of liberal states.

 

Ill-suited to play geopolitics?

The findings indicate that the EU is not institutionally wired to use its market powers to play advanced geopolitical games with other large powers, through so called economic statecraft or ‘weaponised’ interdependence. Not only is such cross-sectoral action beyond the perspective of the networks of policy-entrepreneurs generated by EU integration, but it is also costly and therefore difficult to push through the national control machinery.

This institutional wiring is further illustrated by the ongoing development of the new wave of market-powered instruments. In fact, few of them concern outright foreign policy, geopolitics or geoeconomics, and most are tightly associated with specific aspects of the EU’s growth agenda; this is currently centred on the twin transition to climate neutral and digital societies. Rather than demonstrating a shift towards a ‘realist stance’, there is evidence of a liberal Europe assertively externalising its regulatory policies and progressively learning to calibrate power projection in ways that fit its complex, composite nature.

For instance, the recently agreed Deforestation Regulation illustrates how the EU fine-tunes its regime vetting schemes to avoid overly impacting (legitimate) trade. The new regulation sets tough requirements on timber exporting third countries, but rather than blacklisting poor performers, the Commission is empowered to flexibly impose gradually strengthened due diligence requirements on firms that import from countries with poor regulatory regimes.

Other examples illustrate how learning can allow the EU to play a geopolitical role. For instance, the Commission struggled to declare the U.S.’s data rules adequate under the GDPR, as its decisions were invalidated by the European Court of Justice. Staying clear of such troubles, the EU’s new Artificial Intelligence Act includes no adequacy clause but lays the basis for mutually recognizing third country regimes. This has allowed the EU to engage in intense and highly geopolitical discussions with the US on a global AI regime. The CBAM may offer similar opportunities, potentially allowing the EU to engage with third countries to set criteria for the governance of climate intensive industries.

Provided that this type of calibration can reduce costs sufficiently to avoid triggering national control mechanisms, the EU may be set to significantly strengthen its role as a global regulator, including in sectors of major geopolitical interest.

 

 

Author:

Johannes Jarlebring is a PhD candidate at Uppsala University. He has previously served many years as a civil servant and consultant specializing in EU matters. Twitter handle: @jjarlebring

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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French-German commemorations are a reassuring routine, especially on the governmental level. They are the occasion of some shoulder-tapping, large smiles that are not even unsincere, welcome obligations to bask in the sunshine of what has been achieved over all these years rather than in the shadow of the challenges that lie ahead. And contrary to the endless cycle of war-related anniversaries – terrifying battles and atrocious crimes, aggressive invasions and humilitating occupations – commemorating 60 years of a friendship Treaty comes as a relief, a rather enjoyable occasion to socialise.

Over the decades, celebrating the Elysée Treaty has become a ritual of both taking stock and expressing concerns over worrying trends of divergence between French and German politics, especially with regard to their role and influence in the European integration process. The latter has been described as declining for as long as I can remember. With always the same metaphors: it’s either the ‘engine’ that stutters, or the ‘couple‘ heading for divorce.

Europe, and geopolitics, being complicated, there are of course always challenges that strain the French-German relationships. How could they not? This is a permanent clash of two very different, historically path-dependent political cultures, governance structures, and philosophical heritages. Doing things together, finding common ground on existential questions, requires considerable effort from both of them. And some moments in time are more stressful, more demanding than others.

Thirty years ago: a critical moment

In January 1993 – at half-time of the currently celebrated 60 years of partnership – the moment was particularly rough. It was the first really big bilateral post-reunification event, and it had been preceded by some nasty developments. Germany had rediscovered economic frailty and a surge of xenophobic crimes that revealed the existence of a worrying extremist fringe. And over most of 1992 France had gone through a referendum campaign for the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty that had been marked by some very shrill Anti-German overtones in the speeches of leading politicians.

No wonder the media were much concerned. Le Monde covered the event to a large extent, mobilizing its finest experts, like Henri de Bresson or Daniel Vernet. The latter saw simultaneously ‘a battered French-German couple’ and an ‘island of stability’ in an increasingly destabilized environment, marked by both the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the resurgence of ethno-nationalism in its wake. Anyway, he concluded, there was ‘no alternative to French-German cooperation’.

Le Figaro, which at the time was a serious newspaper, diagnosed the need for the ‘restart of an exhausted engine’ that had lost a lot of steam during the painful negotiations on the future monetary union. The different researchers mobilized by the paper were more sanguine, demonstrating trust in the inertia of institutional bonds: sure, French-German relations were entering ‘a period of doubt’ but were also marked by ‘advanced interdependence’, which would continue to produce pragmatic initiatives.

In Germany, there was recognition that over the thirty years since de Gaulle and Adenauer, the political leadership in both countries had been up to the historical task. But, as Jürgen Wahl wrote for Die Zeit, there were also regular signs of ‘marital crisis’.

At this critical moment of uncertainty, public opinion, just like in the post-war years preceding the Elysée Treaty, already seemed one step further than the professional observers:  according to an IFOP survey on mutual perceptions, only 11% of the French were left with a ‘bad opinion’ about Germany, while two thirds of the Germans declared having a ‘good opinion’ about their French neighbours (with another third, including most likely many East Germans, opting for ‘neither good nor bad’). Reconciliation was considered ‘irreversible’ or at least ‘solid’ by 60% and 71% respectively. Over half of the respondents in both countries declared the other to be their ‘most reliable ally’, significantly above the US or the UK. And 89%, in both countries, esteemed ‘necessary to further strengthen cooperation’ between the two countries. I have doubts Adenauer and de Gaulle would have expected such an overwhelmingly positive trend in their wildest dreams (not that they were known to be dreamers anyway).

Football metaphors

Luckily, life is not exclusively made up of grave and far-reaching historical milestones. Even in January 1993, people had other preoccupations, among which, obviously, football.

Always prone to indulge in a nice pun, the Monday morning headline of L‘Equipe – the number one selling daily newspaper in France, way above Le Monde or Le Figaro – on 11 January read « Les Deutsch marquent ». Playing with the homophony of the verb marquer (in football: ‘to score’) in its conjugated form and the German currency, the title referred to the total of seven goals scored over the weekend by the two German world champion strikers Rudi Völler et Jürgen Klinsmann, playing for Olympique Marseille and AS Monaco respectively.

What a lovely way to take the hot air out of the hysterical debate about the Bundesbank’s alleged tyranny! And a tongue-in-cheek reference to the introduction of the single market ten days earlier, with its promise of free movement of people. Only two years before Jean-Marc Bosman took European football to court and launched a revolution.

Three decades later, the Euro is already over twenty years old. My current students have never known the big bad Deutsche Mark. Would they still get the point of the L’Equipe headline?

The 60th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty, despite all the current dark clouds hanging over Europe, could be a good moment to innovate in terms of metaphor. Rather than take the eternal ‘engine’ or ‘couple’ out of the drawer, it’s an opportunity to turn to football, one of the best providers of metaphors and allegories I can recommend to journalists. Why not compare France and Germany as two particularly indispensable players, without whom there’s no chance of winning, but who in turn would be nothing without the team? Feel free to develop the semantic field further, from the obvious allusions to ‘defence’ and ‘attack’ to more sophisticated skills like ‘counter-pressing’ and ‘give-and-go passing’.

The post Half-time talk appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

On 22 January 2023, France and Germany celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty, rightly praised as a milestone in Europe’s post-war history. But the Treaty only institutionalised on governmental level a process towards reconciliation that civil society had already initiated without waiting for politics. This is the third post of a series of four personal musings about a remarkable achievement.

A German road sign in Western France.

Is there a better illustration of the bottom-up dynamic of post-war French-German reconciliation than the story of the town twinnings?

As I write, 2317 French cities, towns and villages are twinned with a German municipality of similar size. That’s a total of 4634 places big and small with friends across the border. Unimaginable? Unbelievable? Mind-boggling? Feel free to choose your adjective.

Of course, not all of these ‘partnerships’ as they are called by the Germans are filled with the same intensity. In smaller municipalities, much depends on tireless individuals, as well as demography. And language skills, which have declined over recent decades in both countries outside the border regions. Still, the number of the twins has never decreased. It actually keeps growing, albeit, obviously, at a very moderate pace nowadays.

Once again, like we already observed in the two previous posts (here and here), civil society preceded or paved the way for political institutionalisation. At the same time civil society initiative was also facilitated and legitimised by major political acts like the Schuman Declaration or the Elysée Treaty.

Knowing that 130 French municipalities were already engaged in friendly exchange with German counterparts necessarily was a reassuring piece of intelligence for Charles de Gaulle, when he scheduled his first state visit to Germany in September 1962, following the solemn ceremony in Reims Cathedral with Chancellor Adenauer in July. The triumphant welcome he received in the German cities he visited revealed both the public’s gratitude for these symbolic acts and a longing for further bilateral steps of reconciliation, in addition to and beyond the economic cooperation embodied in the Treaties of Rome.

Before taking off in France, the post-war twinnings were an English idea at first. As early as 1947, Bonn and Oxford, Düsseldorf and Reading, Hanover and Bristol engaged in official contacts.

The French were in need of just a bit more time, and a good mediator. The latter was found in a group of Swiss intellectuals, namely the writers’ association of Berne. In 1948 they invited some French and German mayors to what today would no doubt be called a ‘kick-off meeting’ at Mount Pèlerin on Lake Geneva. As leading historian Corine Defrance points out, French civil society was nudged ‘from abroad (Switzerland) and from above (intellectuals)’.

The third such meeting was the breakthrough. In June 1950 – note: right after the Schuman Declaration – Stuttgart welcomed thirty mayors from each country, many of whom were former resistance fighters, possessing a high level of legitimacy.

Lucien Tharradin

The main driver of the twinning idea was Lucien Tharradin, a former prisoner of war, deported to Buchenwald, now mayor of Montbéliard, in Eastern France. He persuaded his counterpart from Ludwigsburg (Baden-Württemberg) to launch an informal partnership, based on the pretext of historical affinities dating back several centuries.

Tharradin was well aware of the remaining difficulties to obtain the backing of a majority of citizens. In a report on the Stuttgart meeting, he conceded that ‘naturally, the wounds of this horrible war are not healed yet. Too many bad memories remain in our hearts. The road is long and steep.’ But this did not stop his confidence in the initiative. ‘The Germans I met (…) ask us to help them consolidate their democracy. I am absolutely convinced of their goodwill.’

Montbéliard and Ludwigsburg were the first ones in what has become a very long list. But they were not massively imitated right away. Many French mayors preferred to wait prudently before asking their municipal council for the permission to engage contacts in view of a twinning. It is only in the years 1957 to 1963 – between the Treaties of Rome and the Elysée – that the idea really took off. And the creation of the Franco-German Youth Office in the summer of ‘63 provided additional drive, grafting an increasing number of school exchanges on existing twinnings or helping to create them where no twin town was available yet.

It’s a remarkable success story, the secret of which is very fortunate timing, and the presence of a critical number of French actors stubborn enough to convince their fellow citizens that a humanist, confident approach towards their neighbours was worth while trying out. The Germans contributed their part. As so often in post-war history, the citizens of the young Federal Republic were offered an unexpected (some would say: undeserved) opportunity and managed to seize it for their benefit.

Sound bilateral relations on an intergovernmental level are a good thing. But the underpinning of French-German cooperation in Europe by a dense, lively network of people, keeping a general atmosphere of good neighbourhood alive and tangible, is more than that: it’s one of Europe’s jewels, precious and unique.

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On 22 January 2023, France and Germany celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty, rightly praised as a milestone in Europe’s post-war history. But the Treaty only institutionalised on governmental level a process towards reconciliation that civil society had already initiated without waiting for politics. This is the second post of a series of four personal musings about a remarkable achievement.

La Cambe is a small village on the coastline of Lower Normandy, with 546 inhabitants. Alive, that is. They cohabitate with over 21,000 German soldiers buried in the war cemetery that covers seven hectares of their land. They are part of the 155,000 killed between the landing of the Allied troops on 6 June 1944 and the end of the fighting in Normandy roughly three months later. The story of this place is an interesting case study that helps understanding why French-German reconciliation worked out the way it did.

When the department of Calvados extended the National Road 13 between Caen and Cherbourg in the mid-1990s to a four-lane highway, they needed to deviate it in some places. As a result, the war cemetery in La Cambe found itself separated from the main road by a 100-meter patch of land filled with a spoil heap from the road works.

The authorities offered these extra square metres to the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, a long-standing charity organisation tending war graves and identifying the buried all across the continent. The idea was floated to create a small information and documentation centre and a ‘Peace Garden’ made of trees sponsored by individuals or organisations, with the aim of both nicely landscaping the heap and generating revenues to be put to use in the cemeteries of Eastern Europe, which had all of a sudden become easily accessible at the beginning of the nineties.

Sponsorship for a tree was tentatively fixed at 500 D-Mark (250 Euros). Each tree would have a little green sign attached, with the date and name of the sponsor, and two lines of text. One of my second-year students from the business school in Le Havre was perfectly happy to do a summer internship on site carrying out a ‘market study’ : with her little questionnaire she simply tested the idea and the price range with the visitors. The echo was overwhelmingly positive, a lot of people wanted to be shortlisted right away. Consquently, the idea was implemented.

On 21 September 1996 the first 21 maple trees were planted during the inauguration of the peace garden. Space was available for a total of 235 trees. As of November, the garden was already completely overbooked, prompting the French authorities to grant the use of another heap hill at the new highway ramp, and while they were at it, they also offered a whole alley of trees along the small cul-de-sac road between the ramp and the cemetery. By early 1998, the garden was full with 1,127 trees. Today, the cemetery draws around 100,000 visitors each year, and since 2019 the exhibition in the small information centre has been remarkably well renewed and updated.

In the 21st century, the easygoing exchange between a German charity and French authorities does not come as a big surprise. What is more surprising is the calm toleration of all these enemy bodies in the French soil in the immediate aftermath of the war and during the post-war years. According to the archives, no incident of protest, let alone vandalism, has been noted, ever. Although there would have been some good reasons, since the cemetery not only contains the remains of kids aged 17 and 18, sent to the front in order to give their lives to the Führer, but also several hundreds of ‘Waffen-SS’ members, and a handful of truly evil war criminals, among whom the officer who had ordered the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre, an emblematic landmark of cruelty.

Obviously, the Volksbund made sure to keep a low profile, while brainstorming about how to deal with this necropolis, one of five in Normandy. In an internal memo of 1949, the future design of the cemetery was discussed. ‘Thousands of crosses’, as for instance in the well-known American graveyard in Saint Laurent/Colleville – the one made famous by Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan – located 15 km to the east of La Cambe, were considered an ‘unsatisfactory solution’ with a ‘massifying’ effect and definitely to be avoided. The best option was esteemed to be groups of five symbolic crosses above the countless, but discreet flat stones in the ground bearing the names of the buried.

The creation of the Federal Republic allowed for intergovernmental talks on the issue of war cemeteries. A convention was signed by Chancellor Adenauer and Prime Minister Pierre Mendès France in 1954, jointly expressing the wish to make these cemeteries ‘permanent’ and ‘ensure the dignity of the graves’. The French authorities would support the civil society organisation designated by the German government. La Cambe, like many other sites, was handed over to the Volksbund.

As early as 1957 – six years before the Elysée Treaty was signed – it was thus possible to launch the redesign of the cemetery in carrying busloads of volunteers to the first International Youth Camp organised on site. The archives report that many local French kids dropped by for curiosity’s sake, then came back the next day with their own shovel and helped for a week or two.

‘Reconciliation over the graves.’

The risk of an emotional backlash against such a German monument could never be fully excluded, though. The minutes of an exchange between the Volksbund and the French Ministry of Veterans and War Victims prior to an official inauguration ceremony of the fully completed landscaped cemetery in 1961 shows how the latter insists on the purely religious, low-key character of the event in order to avoid any embarrassing incident. Which did not exclude a political bilateral ceremony within the halls of the Préfecture de Caen, including representatives of civil society from both sides. And it was insisted that the good understanding between the officials should by all means be underpinned by contacts between the visitors and the local population.

‘Reconciliation over the graves’ became the motto of the Volksbund and entered the mainstream vocabulary through countless speeches and editorials. When I discussed with the Volksbund officials during the work on the La Cambe peace garden in 1995-96 how to explain that a place like this had never been the object of negative attitudes, we came up with the ‘profoundly human and universal character’ of an activity that consists of caring for graves, the low profile of the German cemeteries far from any heroic discourse, and the unwavering positivity of the ‘peace narrative’.

But La Cambe is also a relevant case study for the conditions under which such a reconciliation is possible in the first place. It is enabled by an unambiguous recognition of wrongdoing on one side and a willingness to believe in its sincerity on the other side. It is facilitated by an overwhelming tiredness and a shared understanding that the ‘never again!’ principle needs concrete realisations to be meaningful. And it is greatly helped by the consistency between bottom-up field work and governmental orientation. There is a link between the Schuman Declaration and the acceptance of soldiers buried in Norman soil.

This being said, as one of my American students wrote in an essay after a day trip to the Normandy beaches, French-German reconciliation, even before the Elysée Treaty of 1963, ‘is nothing short of a miracle’. Needless to say, she got an excellent grade.

The post Living with the graveyard appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

For our weekly ‘Ideas on Europe’ editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Malin Stegmann McCallion again, from Karlstad University, in Sweden. Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

On the 1st of January, Sweden has taken over the EU Council Presidency. What does it sound like?

Last week the Presidency released its playlist on Spotify. There is a tradition that the member state holding the presidency also compile a playlist that represents the country. Immediately there was a discussion about why some genres are not represented, and some songs have already been replaced.

All presidencies are complex balancing acts, but for the current Swedish government the coming six months could be unusually complex given the national and international contexts.

 

And this complexity is reflected in the playlist?

It is! Parts of the discussion and comments around the playlist bring forward mixed messages about our own self-image.

Music, and the creative sector in general, is a big export industry for a small country like Sweden, and of course we are proud that we can punch above our weight internationally, just like we do in sport.

But – there’s always a ‘but’ – one criticism of the playlist is that it is showcasing Swedish commercial success. That’s what I mean by ‘mixed messages’ about the Swedish self-image. Have you heard about the ‘Law of Jante’?

 

No, what is it?

The Law of Jante is a kind of rulebook for social behaviour in Nordic countries, drawn from a novel of the 1930s. Basically, it’s about not standing out from an egalitarian social group, a warning not to break the accepted social code of ‘not wanting to be better than others’.

A good part of the Swedish culture of consensus and conflict avoidance can be traced to the Law of Jante. And this trait or behaviour pattern can become very useful this time around during the Council Presidency, as the main task of a Presidency is to carry the common agenda forward. There are some tricky issues on the agenda where all the consensus building know-how and the conflict transformation skills will need to be put to good use.

 

What issues are you referring to in particular?

We have for example the Inflation Reduction Act passed by the US government, and here the Swedish Presidency will have to negotiate the relationship with the US on behalf of the EU. We have to take into consideration the various opinions within the member states and EU institutions in finding ways of not escalating a possible trade conflict with the EU’s biggest trade partner. A potentially tough balancing act.

Closer to us we have the question on how the EU should continue with its support to Ukraine. How can Sweden keep the ‘unwavering support’ to Ukraine at continued high level within the EU?

I don’t think the EU’s support for Ukraine is in immediate danger. However, in the long-term – and broken down into specific policy areas such as economic aid in relation to a ‘Ukraine Marshall Plan’ – we will see real differences emerging between the member states, especially bearing in mind energy supplies and past relationships with (or dependencies on) Russia. Our willingness to provide aid may decrease if the costs at home continue to be at a high level.

Then of course we have the social costs of war and unfortunately here too we see differences between member states on how the EU can help both where it is directly needed but also with the people fleeing atrocities. This is a further tough balancing act for the Swedish EU Presidency.

 

And what about consensus within the complicated Swedish government coalition?

Traditionally, when a member state holds the Presidency, there is a truce domestically and the country speaks with a single voice to outside listeners. This time around, internal political differences are more openly discussed and aired. The Swedish general public is today more positive and supportive of EU membership, but the current government is relying on the support of a Eurosceptic party and many wonder how this may influence the Swedish Presidency, meaning the government has also domestically an unusually complex balancing act to pull off.

All this ‘balancing’ brings me back to the ‘Songs of Sweden’ and if we talk again in the summer summarising the Swedish EU Presidency in retrospect, I will be able to say whether we have executed all our dance moves well.

 

We’ll be more than happy to have your assessment in June, and hopefully, you’ll sing us a positive tune rather than a sad ballad. Many thanks for sharing your outlook with us. I recall you are Associate Professor at Karlstad University.

 

Interview by Cécile Dauguet.

 

 

The post Will We Dance Well to the Songs from Sweden? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

UACES Chair, Prof Simon Usherwood

Dear Colleagues,

January is, of course, the worst month to start a year, but before you know it we’ll be back to brightening evenings and talk of exam boards, so we can all look forward to those.

Only the corniest of people would write a message about new year being a time of new beginnings, so I’m extremely happy to tell you about UACES’ new journal, Contemporary European Politics. Working with our excellent colleagues at Wiley, the journal is intended to offer a new space for discussions on EU and European politics, especially drawing in perspectives from across the social sciences and from around the world. Our inaugural editors – Chris Huggins, Natasza Stycznska, and Dr Bruno Theodoro Luciano – reflect the ambition of the journal to reach out to colleagues that haven’t been part of the debate, notably early career researchers. With a mix of full- and short-length research articles, commentaries and opinions we hope that CEP will be an enriching space for discussion and dialogue, reflecting UACES’ ambitions and values. I know that the editors are all very keen to set the journal off on the right foot, so please do talk with them about how you can be part of that.

If we start with something new, then we follow with something (a little bit) older. Sunday 22 January is the deadline for proposals for our 53rd Annual Conference in Belfast this coming September. We’ve already had a great response to our new approach of themed tracks, as well as lots of calls for papers for panels circulating via our JISCMail list. There’s still time to come forward with your own ideas: our open track is just as it says, open, and we are also very happy to consider sessions that aren’t the usual format. You’ll be hearing more about things as the academic programme is confirmed, but I know we already have several excellent plenaries in place. The numerous delights of Belfast itself are something that I know from personal experience will make a wonderful impression on you and I look forward to seeing lots of you at the conference.

You’re now wondering if I’ve gone off the whole ‘new year, new thing’ theme, but I can tell you now that I am not. Tuesday 31 January is the deadline for nominations for our vacant officer and committee member positions. This year we have the bumper crop of appointing a new Secretary, a new Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Officer, and two Committee Members. All of these roles are really important to UACES’ work and I’d strongly encourage you to consider standing if you have not already done so. While the workload is not so big as to stop you from doing other things, each role represents an opportunity for us to benefit from your insights and ideas and for you to shape the Association. I’m always very happy to discuss what’s involved, and both Dr Kathryn Simpson (Secretary) and Prof Roberta Guerrina (EDI) can tell you much more about what their roles entail too, so please feel very free to buttonhole us or drop us a line.

Of course, it’s not just the committee that changes and evolves over time. I’m very happy to welcome Dr Simona Guerra and Dr Dario Čepo as the new JCMS book editors and to thank Prof Gaby Umbach and Prof Ruby Gropas for their work in this role.

And as if this wasn’t enough newness to handle, we can also add in a couple of events for your delight and edification.

In Brussels on 9 February, we’ll be hosting a discussion with Dr Stefaan de Rynck – former senior aide to Michel Barnier during the UK’s withdrawal negotiations – about his new book “Inside the deal”. Stefaan will be joined by journalist Katrin Pribyl, new President of the European Policy Centre (and UACES patron) Prof Brigid Laffan and former UACES Chair Dr Nick Startin, all of whom bring lots to the table for what promises to be an enthralling discussion.

And we are also bring you the closing conference of our very successful DIMES project. DIMES (Diversity, Inclusion and Multidiscipinarity in European Studies) has brought together a really wide range of historically under-represented people and approaches over the past three years, to great effect. The conference, 16-17 February in Pretoria, will showcase that richness of content and offer participants an opportunity to debate with academics and practitioners drawn from many parts of the world. If your diary doesn’t allow for a trip to South Africa, then you’ll also be able to read more of their work in a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary European Research later this year.

There you have it: lots of new things to do and lots of opportunities for you to be an active part of UACES. As always, we rely on your input to make the Association work as well as it does (which is very), so thank you for all you’ve done and for all I’m sure you’re going to do in 2023.

 

Prof Simon Usherwood, UACES Chair

 

 

The post UACES Chair’s Message — January 2023 appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Prof Piers Ludlow, from the London School of Economics. Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

 

50 years ago, together with Denmark and Ireland, the UK joined the European Economic Community, as it was called then. But unlike the two others, Britain has no anniversary to celebrate.

That’s right: its membership came to an end on the 31st of January 31, 2020, 47 years and one month after it had joined.

Through its decision to leave, Britain confirmed a profound discomfort with the integration process that had been there since the very start.  But it is also worth acknowledging that it was profoundly altered by its membership, and that it did much to influence Europe’s own evolution.  Britain was a problematic member from the outset, but it was also an important one – a country that was both transformed and transforming while being a European member state.

 

Why did the UK only join in 1973 and not earlier?

Post-war Britain had other priorities and was dismissive of the early integration plans.  By the 1960s, however, Britain’s political elite began to regret this choice.  The UK’s economic progress outside of the EEC was much less impressive than that of the six founder members.  And Britain’s global position seemed to be fading fast as its empire disappeared.  It was thus for both economic and geopolitical reasons that the UK changed its mind. In 1973 the Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath, took Britain into the EEC.

 

But public opinion was already divided at that time, wasn’t it?

Yes, the turn to Europe was always contested.  The crucial Parliamentary votes in 1971-2 were only narrowly won.  And in 1975, a new Labour government held a first in/out referendum.  This seemed to produce a clear-cut result with 2/3 of the British population voting to stay within the EEC.  But the wider argument continued, with Labour fighting the 1983 general election on a platform of withdrawing from the Community.  And while Labour would subsequently move towards a pro-European position during the later 1980s and 1990s, this was counterbalanced by the slide of the Conservative Party into ever-stronger Euroscepticism.

In Brussels, successive British governments were meanwhile earning a reputation as awkward partners, often complaining about the club that they had joined.  In the 1970s their anger tended to be focused on the Common Agricultural Policy.  By the early 1980s they instead centred on the amount that the UK paid into the Community budget.  On this the British had a case.  But the aggressive manner in which Mrs Thatcher fought ‘to get her money back’ alienated her partners and established a pattern of battling with the rest of the EU that virtually all of her successors have felt obliged to imitate.  From the 1990s furthermore the British began to opt out of various major common policies – most notably the Single Currency.  Brexit could therefore be presented as just the inevitable divorce at the end of a difficult and stormy marriage.

 

But there has been more to this marriage than just disagreements and disputes!

I agree. Alongside the undeniable difficulties of British membership, there was also a pattern of mutual beneficial influence that would transform both the UK and the EU.

In Britain change stretched beyond the increase of trade between the UK and the EU, to also transform what we ate, where we spent our holidays, how we greeted one another, even how we played football.  The lives of many Britons were thus ‘Europeanised’ often without them really being aware of it.

Meanwhile, British policy preferences and priorities had a profound impact on the whole EU system.  Both the establishment of the Single Market and the enlargement of EU membership, to take just two examples, were profoundly affected by UK advocacy and pressure.

This pattern of mutual influence helps explain why Brexit proved so politically divisive within the UK and why the departure of the British has and will continue to have important effects within the EU.  The story of the four and a half decades of British membership is not thus just a tale of arguments and tension.  They were also years that left their mark on British life, society and economics, and on the EU’s own development.  And the evolution of both the UK and the EU in the years ahead is likely to continue to be shaped by this reality

 

Many thanks, Piers, for sharing your thoughts about this strange anniversary. I recall you are Professor at the London School of Economics.

 

Interview by Laurence Aubron.

 

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On 22 January 2023, France and Germany celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty, rightly praised as a milestone in Europe’s post-war history. But the Treaty only institutionalised on governmental level a process towards reconciliation that civil society had already initiated without waiting for politics. This is the first post of a series of four personal musings about a remarkable achievement.

When I take a run around where I live, I have quite a few nice options. I can follow the little ‘Chemin de la Libération’ down to the bridge across the river Maine, just before it flows into the Loire. The bridge, quite coherently, is called ‘Pont de la Libération’. For anyone who might ask ‘liberation from what?’, several memorial plaques and monuments refresh the memory, recalling how resistance fighter Louis Bordier guided General Patton’s troops in August 1944 towards the liberation of the city of Angers, and how 108 American soldiers lost their lives in this assault.

But I can also opt for a 6 mile-loop around the lovely Saint Nicolas Lake close to ESSCA’s main campus. Which will require me to cross Avenue Patton, passing the historical milestone of ‘Liberty Road’, and the Beaussier quarter, where everything, from the main Boulevard and the brand new tram station to the brasserie, the health centre and the supermarket, is named after Victor Beaussier, executed by the Nazis in October 1942 at the age of 31, for having distributed resistance pamphlets and sabotaged vehicles and telephone lines.

The Monument aux Fusillés, Angers.

And following the lakeshore, I will necessarily pass by the ‘Monument aux Fusillés’, commemorating the shooting of a total of 46 resistance fighters between 1942 and 1946.

I could go on like this for quite some time, mentioning the postal address of the Angers City Hall on ‘Boulevard de la Résistance et de la Déportation’, or the plaque at Angers train station, reminding me, whenever I pick up a visitor, that 824 Jewish men, women and children left for Auschwitz from here on 20 July 1942.

For anyone living in a French town, it is impossible to escape the presence of memory in everyday life. And for someone whose father occupied a French town in 1940 in a uniform he had been forced into right after leaving school, the fact that the French managed to hold out a hand to the Germans in the immediate post-war years remains a mystery.

How did you do it?

How did you do it? How did you live with all the cemeteries the Germans left on your soil and still overcome the grief and resentment? How did you reach a mindset in which, without forgetting the unforgettable and without needing to forgive the unforgivable, you were ready to give the permission to civil society actors and political entrepreneurs to imagine a common future in a different Europe? How did you collectively decide it was time to break a seemingly unbreakable vicious circle?

Were you simply exhausted, so tired of repetitive war, mutual hatred, and mandatory revanchism that the old patterns of thinking simply did not make sense anymore?

Was your perception of the Germans mitigated by your own bad conscience for having collaborated with the occupier across vast swathes of the population, and for having felt how vulnerable to fascism you had been yourself?

Or were you just lucky to have the right people in charge? Lucky to have not only Charles de Gaulle, who rather than cultivating cheap Germanophobia gave priority to saving your honour and to rebuilding a destroyed country before slamming the door, disgusted with the nitty gritty politics of post-war recovery. But lucky also to have the lesser known caretakers of the Fourth Republic, who were considerably more efficient than their commonplace reputation of ‘governmental instability’ suggests.

The October 1945 issue of Esprit.

It’s true you had some visionary intellectuals, like Joseph Rovan, who in October 1945, only a few months after having been liberated from the Dachau concentration camp, wrote a courageous article in the influential monthly Esprit, in which he explained why in the short and medium term, France would have ‘The Germany We Deserve’.

You had some good friends abroad, like Winston Churchill, who famously declared, in his Zurich speech in September 1946, ‘a partnership between France and Germany’ a prerequisite for a future of the ‘European family’. In 1946! Or George Marshall, whose recovery plan was to be implemented by the newly created Organisation for European Economic Co-operation obliged you as of 1948 to sit at the same table as the West Germans, who did not even have their Republic yet.

And you had some pretty pragmatist promotors of peace like Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet. For the latter, the question of how to build trust between the French and German despite an emotionally polluted past, was a central guiding line for political action, as shown throughout Klaus Schwabe’s biography of 2016, the first one in German. The Monnet memorandum dated 3 May 1950 states the need to ‘undertake a dynamic action which will transform the German situation and lift up German spirits’. That’s how you speak about an ally, not an enemy. And the Schuman Declaration, six days later, announces that ‘France accomplishes the first decisive act of building Europe, in association with Germany’.

When Schuman and Monnet held out their hand to Germany, less than six years had gone by since the liberation of the little bridge a few steps from where I live now. If this is not a historical achievement, what is?

Would it have been possible if the public mood had remained grief-stricken, bitter, resentful? I doubt it. Of course, there was no outright, massive enthusiasm about new ties with Germany. But there was a kind of tacit willingness to be taken along by the voices mentioned above. Unlike the chronology proposed by Churchill – reconciliation first, as building block for a future Europe – research suggests that French-German rapprochement and the first steps towards European integration took each other along. May 1950 appears almost like a tipping point in terms of engagement, a can opener for civil society actors only waiting for a ‘bold act’, to quote Schuman again.

The following two posts will try to explore this post-war turn further in two different case studies: first, the history of the German war cemetery in La Cambe, located on the D-Day beaches in Normandy. Then, the birth of the town twinnings, thanks to the courage of a handful of mayors.

 

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For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dr Mary C. Murphy, from the University College Cork, in Ireland. Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

Fifty years ago, Ireland joined the European Community, together with Denmark and the UK. But you are actually celebrating a double anniversary!

 

That’s right: just over 100 years ago, on 6 December 1922, the Irish state was founded. On that date, Ireland assumed independence from British authority. And fifty years later, on 10 May 1972, the citizens of the young Irish state voted decisively to share Ireland’s hard won national sovereignty by supporting accession to the then European Economic Community (EEC, as it was called then).

This decision to join the EEC – which formally happened on 1 January 1973 – is commonly regarded as one of Ireland’s most momentous foreign policy decisions. The achievement, and subsequent experience of EU membership is widely considered a critical moment in supporting Irish independence, state consolidation and economic transformation.

 

What did EU membership offer to Ireland?

In broad terms, it offered both political and economic opportunities, which Ireland was largely adept at embracing. In a period of just 50 years, the Irish economy encountered substantial change and marked significant improvement. Today, Ireland is among the most prosperous of all EU member states!

Membership of the single European market, access to EU agricultural supports, and generous structural funding receipts helped to underpin a gradual economic transformation from comparatively poor member state to one of the EU’s economic success stories. Central to that success is a trade profile which is far more diverse and considerably redirected towards Europe and the US, and away from the UK.

 

And in political terms?

Politically, the pooling of sovereignty which EU membership entails is viewed positively by the Irish state and by Irish citizens. The idea that shared sovereignty enhances national sovereignty and facilitates greater decision-making autonomy is embedded in the Irish political system and across society. This is especially evident in terms of the relative absence of a Eurosceptic narrative in Irish political discourse and the lack of political representation for the tiny minority who oppose Ireland’s EU membership.

However, for all the good fortune associated with membership of the EU, Ireland has encountered periods of immense challenge and difficulty, including treaty revisions, the global financial crisis, and of course Brexit.

 

Yes, we remember the rejections of two treaties by national referendums!

It happened on two occasions: the Nice Treaty was rejected in 2001 and the Lisbon Treaty in 2008. Critically, however, these two “no” votes did not permanently damage the Irish relationship with the EU. That is because the decisions were later overturned by strong majority support following second referendums which included some institutional and policy guarantees and concessions responsive to Irish concerns.

Public support for the EU was also undermined during the 2008 global financial crisis which hit Ireland particularly hard. For a period, the management of the Irish economy was largely taken over by the ‘troika’ of the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The troika oversaw a €65 billion bailout and harsh austerity measures. But like the earlier referendums, this period only temporarily challenged high levels of public support for the EU in Ireland.

 

And then came Brexit!

The Brexit crisis had a decidedly different impact on public and political sentiment in Ireland. Rather than weakening support for the EU, Brexit reinforced Ireland’s positive predisposition towards the European Union. In fact, notwithstanding the potential damage which Brexit entails for Ireland, the crisis underlined how Irish interests are best served by being closely anchored to the EU.

Ireland’s steadfast commitment to the EU, against the backdrop of the Brexit crisis, is all the more remarkable when set against the factors which motivated Irish membership ambitions in 1973. That original decision to seek EU accession was strongly influenced by a heavy Irish trade reliance on the UK. EU membership, however, helped to reorientate Irish trade relations away from the UK and to boost Ireland’s political and diplomatic clout, meaning Ireland was better positioned to withstand the UK exit from the EU in 2016.

 

Overall, this really sounds like a success story!

There is no doubt that Ireland’s experience of EU membership has encountered twists and turns, and ups and downs. On balance, however, Ireland’s post-independence journey has been boosted and enriched by the country’s decision to become part of the EU. Membership helped not just to consolidate and strengthen the young Irish state after 1973, it also facilitated economic growth, supported social progress, and reinforced Ireland’s international standing.

For a small, newly sovereign state on the western periphery of Europe, the effect has been truly transformative.

 

Many thanks, Mary, for sharing your thoughts about this Irish journey over half a century. I recall you are Jean Monnet Professor at University College Cork. Ideas on Europe will be back, and we have one more of these anniversaries to commemorate. Interview by Laurence Aubron.

The post 50 Years of Irish EU Membership appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Ingvild Reymert

Two newly published papers investigate variation in professorial recruitment both across countries and disciplines but also within these processes which must be understood as sequential decision-making processes.

Academic recruitments are crucial decision-making processes for universities where those hired are responsible for carrying out the universities’ two key missions: teaching and research. Academic recruitments are also highly important for academics as these processes represent critical junctures for their career. Hence, it is no surprise that academic recruitment often is a hot topic among academics, however the research on academic recruitment is scarcer.

In our newly published paper, we argue that academic recruitment varies across countries and disciplines where disciplines encounter different hindrances for attracting the best researchers. In a second newly published paper I also show that academic recruitment includes internal variations as these processes must be understood as sequential decision-making processes comprising of a series of judgment processes.

 

Variation across disciplines and countries: Disciplines encounter different hindrances for attracting the best researchers

Academic recruitment differs across disciplines where disciplines have their own evaluating cultures and apply specific criteria when assessing candidates. For instance, when evaluating candidates for academic positions economists more strongly emphasize the number of publications in highly ranked journals than their colleges in disciplines like physics, cardiology, sociology and informatics.

In our newly published paper “Barriers to attracting the best researchers: perceptions of academics in economics and physics in three European Countries” (Reymert, Vabø, Borlaug and Jungblut 2022), we surveyed researchers in economics and physics in the Netherlands, Norway and the UK and found that different disciplines and countries also encountered different barriers. When asked what they perceived as the most pressing barriers to attracting the best researcher to their institutions economists emphasized salary level and institutional prestige as the main barriers to attracting the best researchers, while physics underlined competition from non-academic actors and career opportunities in their recruitments. We further found differences between countries. In Norway, limited institutional prestige was a key barrier to attracting the best researchers, while researchers in the UK highlighted salary level. Respondents at Dutch universities claimed that they experience multiple, equally important barriers.

 

Variation within recruitment between different stages of the process

Professorial recruitment does not only vary across countries and disciplines, but there is also much variation within the process itself, as recruitment must be understood as sequential decision-making process consisting of a series of judgment processes. In my recently published paper “Handling Multiple Institutional Logics in Professorial Recruitment” (Reymert, 2022) drawing on interviews and semi-confidential reports from recruitment process in Norway I showed that these recruitments are five-stage processes: designing an announcement text, screening applicants by their CV and bibliometrics, a more profound evaluation of selected candidates by peers, interviews with the highest ranked candidate and approval of the final candidate ranking at department or/and faculty level. These phases of the process were assigned different tasks and overseen by different actors who evaluated the candidates using different criteria.

In the paper I relied on the institutional logics framework and showed that these phases were influenced by different institutional logics. While an organizational logic concerned with organizational strategic needs dominate the crafting of the announcement text and the interview process, an academic logic still dominated the peer review process with peers more concerned about which candidate displayed best research quality according to disciplinary standards and not who satisfied organizational needs. The sequential nature of the recruitment process with alternating institutional logic separated the logics avoiding potential clashes between them. A theoretical contribution of the paper is thus how sequential problem-solving can decrease tension between conflicting logics, which represents a type of compartmentalization strategy described by Kraatz and Block (2008).

In relation to the discussion of whether universities are becoming more organized, managerial and rationalized, the paper showed that even though the academic logic still remains the most dominated logic in academic recruitment, these processes are becoming more organized with a stronger reliance on an organizational logic. This could partly be due to how universities are confronted with increased complexity when recruiting professors. Internationalization has both increased the number of candidates and made the pool of candidates more heterogeneous. At the same time professors are increasingly expected to satisfy multiple skills. The desirable professors must no longer only possess excellent research skills but increasingly satisfy multiple qualifications such as excellent teaching skills, ability to receive grants, administrative skills, superior social skill, be able to engage in dissemination activities and so on. In this more complex landscape university must act more strategically to attract the best scholars. Academic recruitment today thus requires stronger organizational capability and stronger organizational actorhood.

Ingvild Reymert is Head of Section and Associate Professor at OsloMet, Norway.

 

References:

Reymert, I., Vabø, A., Borlaug, S.B., Jungblut, J. (2022) Barriers to attracting the best researchers: perceptions of academics in economics and physics in three European countries. Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00967-w

Reymert, I. (2022) Handling Multiple Institutional Logics in Professorial Recruitment. High Educ Policy. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-022-00294-w

Kraatz, M. S., and E. S. Block. (2008) Organizational implications of institutional pluralism. The Sage handbook of organizational institutionalism. 243-275.

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In his speech to the second African Union (AU) and European Union (EU) Joint Ministerial Meeting, Josep Borrell addressed the AU arguing that “The EU is your number one partner on peace and security issues. No other partner matches the level of our support – without any kind of hidden agenda. No other partner. At all levels thanks to our political, financial and technical support” (AU, 2021, p.1). Capacity-building is at the forefront of the EU engagement in the African continent. Supporting African countries in building capacities is seen as a way to promote security and development in the world.

My PhD dissertation uses norm diffusion theories to understand how capacity-building unfolds in non-Western contexts. The project aims to spotlight the processes over the constitution of the meaning of norms in the security field and the complex processes and mechanisms of their translation and localisation. Two international peacekeeping training centers serve as case studies: the Center of Excellence for Stability Police Units based in Vicenza (Italy) and the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center (KAIPTC) based in Accra (Ghana).

With support from the UACES Microgrant, I was able to disseminate my preliminary findings by organizing presentations and by sharing reports in both institutions. In Ghana, I shared my findings at the Faculty of Academic Affairs and Research (FAAR) at KAIPTC in August 2022. In Italy, I organized a public presentation at the Research Office at the CoESPU in December 2022. The UACES Microgrant enabled me to develop a brief video capturing the main findings of my research and then I shared them in front of a group of military and police officers who conduct capacity-building activities in Africa. The participants provided critical feedback and additional insights that will feed into a scientific article as well as into further work on my PhD project.

The post Dissemination of Findings – A UACES Microgrant Report appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dr Helene Dyrhauge, from Roskilde University, in Denmark. Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

In January 1973, almost fifty years ago, Denmark became a member of the European Economic Community, as it was called at the time. It was the Community’s very first enlargement! How does the country think about this anniversary?

Denmark has always had a rational view of the EU, focusing on the benefits of the memberships – mainly the benefits of the single Market. The political dimension and ideational discussions about the future of the EU have never been important for the EU debate in Denmark.

As a matter of fact, Denmark joined the EU because of the UK and it’s a standing joke that Denmark mainly wanted to protect its export of bacon and therefore follow the UK into the EU. Clearly, there was an economic rationale for joining.

However, is was not the same the other way round, though: there were no major public discussions of a possible Danish exit following the Brexit referendum. Some of the right-wing parties did try to drum up support for an all-in-or-out referendum, but the public and the major parties continue to value the economic benefits of being part of the EU.

This economic understanding of the EU and the integration process became problematic during the flurry of treaty changes and political integration steps over the 1980s and 1990s.

 

Yes, we remember the Danes rejecting the Maastricht Treaty and obtaining some “opt-outs”. Can you quickly recall how that worked out?

Yes, it was a close referendum in 1992: 50,7% said no and 49,3 said yes. The result sent shockwaves through all member states.

The political parties started looking at ways for Denmark to remain in the EU. They came up with the “national compromise”, which identified 4 problematic policies, and the Danish government asked the other member states for an opt-out of the treaty. This resulted in the so-called Edinburgh Agreement where Denmark obtained its 4 opt-outs: The Euro, the Union citizenship, Justice and Home Affairs, and Defence.

Oddly, there has almost always been a substantial support for overall EU membership: opinion polls even show an increase in support overtime, but this public support vanishes once you start to discuss the different policy fields.

 

And what has happened to the opt-outs over the years?

The Union citizenship was removed in the Amsterdam Treaty, so it is no longer relevant. For the others, all Danish governments since 1992 have wanted to remove them. Although the political parties all have a central policy towards EU membership, many of the parties have internal disagreements about their support for the EU. This was evident in the Euro referendum in 2000, and the Justice and Home Affairs referendum in 2015. The electorate said “no” to removing the opt-outs on both occasions.

As a result, politicians and governments seem to have accepted the electorate’s decisions and there are currently no more discussions about joining the Euro.

 

And what about the defence issue?

Like others, Denmark has mainly focused on NATO instead of EU defence corporation. Well, at least until the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which led to a discussion about national security and Danish defence cooperation. Many Danes were concerned about security, especially in the Baltic Sea, and the government held a referendum about the defence opt-out, where 66,9% voted yes to remove the opt-out. Which is a big support and clearly reflects the concerns about national security following the war in Ukraine.

 

Ukraine asked for EU membership. What was the Danish position on central and eastern European countries joining the EU?

Denmark was a big supporter of the democratisation process in Central and Eastern Europe. At the time, the foreign minister Uffe Ellemann Jensen, championed the Baltic countries’ membership of both NATO and the EU. He was one of the first foreign government representatives to visit the newly sovereign states.

In 1993, Denmark held the rotating council presidency, when the member states decided to accept the application from the 10 Central and Eastern European countries and adopted the three Copenhagen criteria, which are now written into the Lisbon Treaty. The first criterium about democracy, rule of law and protection of minorities, has become even more important in the meantime, especially in terms of the internal discussion of democratic backsliding in certain member states.

 

How do you see the future of Denmark’s EU membership?

In general, I think Denmark will continue its pragmatic approach, focusing on the economic benefits of its membership.

But the energy transition is also very important for Denmark. It sees itself as a climate leader and has a strong green energy technology, which is pushing the energy transition at home. So, Denmark is likely to continue to push the green transition agenda at the EU level.

 

Ideas on Europe will be back next week, and we will look at another of these anniversaries. Interview by Laurence Aubron.

 

 

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It’s often helpful to try and tackle familiar problems from unfamiliar angles: it makes you think again about what’s what and maybe it opens up some new ideas.

And so I present my t-shirt.

[yes, that is a finely-tuned physique it contains, but let’s leave that for another time]

A night’s sleep disturbed by the seeming lack of understanding about the basic choices the UK faces when it comes to economic relations with the EU had got me to some wild thoughts about another graphic. Possibly involving graceful curves. Which isn’t me.

Then I pulled out this top and a much simpler way of trying to work through the issue presented itself.

The t-shirt is – of course – not just a t-shirt. It’s an example of how modern economies work.

Beyond its material existence as a piece of clothing, it also comes out of a system of production that has to comply with numerous bits of regulation: standards on health and safety; approvals for the chemicals used in dyes; intellectual property rights for designers; obligations on truthful marketing; rules-of-origin for raw materials; and much more.

It’s also (and this was the clincher) a fine piece of British manufacturing. Lovely people, Restrap: totally recommend all their kit.

Like UK-EU relations how?

Using the t-shirt we can start to make perhaps more sense of options than would be the case with dry economic theory.

Let’s start with a baseline case: someone in another country that the UK doesn’t have any trade deals with hears about this t-shirt and wants to buy one.

Apart from having to sort out payment and shipping, the customer in our imagined country might encounter a number of additional barriers before they can pull it on.

The most basic of these would be either a limit on the number of t-shirts that can be imported each year from the UK (a quota) or a charge applied to each t-shirt being imported from the UK (a tariff). These are both classic ways of protecting domestic producers.

You can deal with these kinds of barriers with a free-trade agreement (FTA). Usually these involve reducing quotas and/or tariffs, but in the case of the FTA that the UK signed with the EU – the Trade & Cooperation Agreement – they went for zero quotas and zero tariffs, largely because these didn’t exist beforehand to be removed.

Great stuff, but not actually ‘free trade’.

Remember all those rules I mentioned beforehand? Well those are still in place, so our customer in country X might find the importer who’s bringing in the t-shirt has to satisfy national authorities of compliance with those various regulations and standards.

One big thing you can address is the question of where something comes from.

In our case, country X authorities might be concerned that even if the UK rules on producing t-shirts mean they’re not a competitive threat to domestic producers, maybe a UK firm is just acting as a conduit for much cheaper producers elsewhere, taking advantage of the UK’s low tariffs with them.

Similar, the t-shirt might be made in Yorkshire, but the raw materials will come from elsewhere, cotton not being a big crop in God’s Own Country. But because enough work has been done on those materials inside the UK, per UK rules (which reflect international norms), it’s now a UK-made product. More complicated items, like bicycles, are more complicated, but the same idea applies.

You can start to solve both these kinds of problems with a customs union.

All parties in such a union agree to have the same tariffs in place with third countries, so that you don’t get the direct problem of diverting trade through the low-tariff state or the indirect one of bypassing tariffs by doing work on things to make them ‘locally made’. Now, wherever goods enter the customs union, they get the same treatment, which means it’s no longer something that needs to be checked at internal borders. Indeed, you don’t need internal tariffs at all.

All good stuff, but there’s still a lot left on that original list. What if country X requires all text on items to be provided in the local language? Then the producer now has to either make a new version or supply some translation: neither’s a big deal in this case, but it’s still extra cost to do and if it needs to be signed off, that’s still paperwork.

So the big step to address these barriers is to have a common or single market.

As the name suggests, you’re trying to make something that’s more like the conditions you’d expect to find within a country. I hadn’t have any additional checks or controls when I bought this Yorkshire item from Surrey, so why do the same with country X?

In principle, you can do this – it’s more or less what you have in the EU, for example. But it’s very much bigger thing than an FTA or a customs union.

That’s because it can involve an awfully large number of things.

Importantly, it’s not simply about removing differences in rules on producing and moving goods (which itself includes manufacturing, transportation protocols, workers’ rights, environmental protection and more).

It’s also about removing differences on offering services (e.g. accessing the help service should I need guidance on, um, making my t-shirt work), moving capital (e.g. being able to have transaction-cost free purchase options in other countries) and allowing workers to move too (e.g. to make it possible to hire the finest t-shirt makers from across the area without restrictions).

Suddenly, the simple idea turns out to be really quite involved, especially because you can’t just do these things for t-shirts: you do them for the entire economy.

And there we go

This last point is the key one.

A lot of what we talk about when we look at UK-EU relations is specific cases: visas for musicians, rules on fish, proper cheese from France.

But in many – maybe most – cases, the principles involved are ones that tend to imply much bigger and more generalised processes.

Certainly, in each of these situations – no specific deal, an FTA, customs union, a single market – there is a degree of wiggle room. The EU’s single market has various gaps in it, for example, just as the UK has mixed in a very high level of integration with the EU for Northern Ireland alongside its otherwise very minimal FTA.

However, wiggle room is not the same as the fundamental differences that come with each basic option.

The more you work together to remove barriers to trade, the more you limit yourself in what you can do with third countries and what you can do domestically.

A customs union is not just an agreement on common external tariffs; it’s also an obligation to negotiate as part of that union in tariff discussions with other states.

A single market is not just a means to get full and free access to your partners’ markets; it’s also a permanent negotiation about addressing emerging barriers and a significant intrusion of your partners into making decisions about what happens in your country.

The t-shirt dilemma

Which brings us back to the t-shirt.

Economic integration is also political integration. None of the steps to ‘improve trade’ outlined above comes without some political implication domestically.

That’s always been the case, both in the abstract and in the particular case of the UK and the EU. And it would be foolish to pretend otherwise.

Too often, we have seen either a framing that is solely economic or solely political, without really trying to put them together. It’s not that ‘X% hit to GDP’ or ‘taking back control’ is wrong, just that neither is the full picture.

And so it is with our t-shirt, which by this point is starting to wonder if some other piece of clothing might not have been pulled out of the chest of drawers.

The t-shirt is both an item of clothing, to be traded as a product, and a representation of UK domestic producers, generating local value and competing in a globalised market.

The more we can recognise those different aspects and the need to take a considered view of how they might best be balanced, the better we will be able to make the big choices about what basic model of economic relations with the EU best serves our collective needs.

The post The t-shirt guide to UK-EU relations appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dr Natasza Styczynska again, from the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland.

 

Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

You are currently part of a pioneering higher education initiative. Tell us more about it.

Almost 25 years ago the Bologna Process was launched and in 2010 the European Higher Education Area started to function. The main idea behind the process was to create compatible and coherent higher education systems in Europe. The idea was received with scepticism by some, but also with a lot of enthusiasm, and since then many double and joint programmes have been created on the master level, as well as international training programmes.

What seemed much more difficult to set up were joint programmes on the Bachelor, or “BA” level, which were desirable but hard to achieve due to legal constraints.

But where most people only see the problem, we in our university see the challenge, and now I am talking to you right in the middle of the first semester of the first ever Joint BA in European Studies.

More than 250 students from 35 countries started their studies in the Una Europa Joint Bachelor of Arts in European Studies – in short “BAES” – on the 1st of October and are about to prepare for their first exams. As a team of academics from eight universities working on preparing the programme over almost 3 years, we are now excited to see it function.

 

To what extent is this programme unique?

It’s both the concept and the scope. The eight universities that make up the Una Europa university alliance have combined their expertise to create a unique multidisciplinary and multilingual curriculum based on high-quality teaching and exceptional student mobility opportunities.

During the course of their studies, students can choose among several specialisations and travel between 8 European universities in eight attractive cities – Krakow, Leuven, Madrid, Bologna, Helsinki, Berlin, Paris and Edinburgh.

This joint programme is the first realisation of the vision of a common European university announced by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2017 and supported by the European Union institutions and member states.

 

And what do the students say?

The programme has met with an enthusiastic response from students. Henrik Arhold, the first student to register for the programme told us that he chose BAES because of the interdisciplinary approach and the mobility dimension. In his words, “having the flexibility of choosing your specialisations and the opportunity of studying in up to three different countries lays an excellent academic foundation for a students’ future professional and political lives in Europe and beyond.”

At EU!radio, you are well placed to know what it’s like to give multinational cohorts of students a European perspective. If I am well informed, you are currently recruiting your 33rd intake, right?

 

That’s true, but I’m relieved I don’t have 250 of them each time! Tell us about the contents of the study programme.

Over the three years, BAES students will study fundamental aspects and values of the European Union and European states and societies. They will learn to critically analyse Europe’s role in the world. Some of the courses have a common curriculum and are taught in a hybrid format at all degree-awarding universities.

Mobility is supposed to allow students to master European languages and immerse themselves in other cultures and feel all around Europe at home. In 2025 the first cohort will obtain their degree and be ready to start professional careers as public servants, experts in European affairs, civil society organisations or international institutions. Some of them will choose to continue their studies or obtain further practical skills – we are confident the BAES will provide a solid ground for both options.

 

“Ideas on Europe” will be back next week, and we’ll move from Poland to Ireland, with Mary C. Murphy, from the University College in Cork. Interview by Laurence Aubron.

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