Ideas on Europe Blog

EU regional policy spending accounts for about a third of the EU’s total budget. It is the EU’s main mechanism for financial redistribution. In addition to supporting jobs, economic growth, sustainable development and so on, one of its key stated aims is to underpin European solidarity. In this way it is a key part of the European integration project. This is why the Commission places a lot of emphasis on how its regional spending is communicated to citizens, and it’s why they are particularly concerned with how spending is perceived and making sure it is well publicized. For this reason, recipients of EU funds are required to acknowledge the EU’s contribution on public signage and in literature.

A Huggins family day out funded by EU regional policy…

Despite these efforts, communication of EU regional policy is far from perfect and awareness of EU spending varies significantly across the EU. To get a feel for how it is doing on this front, the European Commission sporadically looks at public opinion about EU regional policy through the Eurobarometer survey. The results of the latest survey were published last month. There are some interesting findings when looking at the UK.

In June 2015, just 9% of UK respondents said they had “heard about any EU co-financed projects to improve the area where you live”. This was the lowest level of awareness among any EU member state (the EU average was 34%, Poland had the top spot at 76%). In March 2017, however, this had doubled to 18%. This is still very low (though no longer the lowest), but on a percentage point basis this represents the joint highest increase (with Ireland) in the EU.

Large increases are found in other measures in the survey too. 35% had heard of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in March 2017 (EU28 average 28%), compared to 29% in June 2015. Again this 6 percentage point difference was the highest increase across the EU28.

27% said they were aware that EU funding fosters cross-border co-operation between regions (EU28 average 22%), up 13 percentage points from June 2015 and again the joint highest increase across the EU28.

Of the respondents who had heard of either the ERDF or Cohesion Fund, 22% felt they had benefited from an EU funded project (EU28 average 24%), up 12 percentage points from June 2015 and the second highest increase across the EU28.

What accounts for the increased awareness of EU regional policy in the UK between 2015 and 2017? The survey itself does not answer this question, but one obvious possibility is the EU referendum and Brexit. EU investment in UK regions was a feature of the referendum campaign, and was frequently linked to wider debates about the overall costs and benefits of the UK’s membership.  In this way Brexit may have given EU regional policy an unintended publicity boost.

The potential impact of this shouldn’t be over stated, though. At 18%, the overall level of awareness is still low and behind the EU average of 35%. Indeed, this overall lack of awareness might be part of the reason why areas which received relatively large amounts of EU investment (Wales, Cornwall, the north-east) nevertheless voted to leave. It is also entirely possible that increased awareness of EU funding may have had a negative impact on support for EU membership. There were, after all, many more respondents stating they had not benefited from an EU-funded project (65%) compared to those that said they had (22%). Nevertheless it may indicate that part of the solution to raising EU citizens’ awareness of EU regional spending may be to incorporate it into national discourses.

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Janja Komljenovic and Susan L. Robertson

How are education markets constructed? What is the global education industry? How is education becoming part of global trade in services?  Who are the actors involved? What are the consequences and outcomes for the sector and for society at large? These are some of the key questions addressed in a recent special issue ‘Making global education markets and trade’ published in the Globalisation, Societies and Education journal.

This special issue had its genesis in two panels that we have organised at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) Annual Conference in Vancouver in 2016. It aimed to generate theoretical, methodological and empirical insights into the very complex and new ecology of education systems that are being rapidly unbundled as largely state regulated sectors to functioning as a market. The authors identify a number of market devices and analyse how they work to set up and lubricate the ongoing workings of particular markets. They also analyse space and time as marketizing strategies to reveal complex modalities of power at play. And finally, they reveal networks of market-making actors who together work and invest to expand education markets as well as (re)structure national, regional and global political institutions.

Education market devices

A number of papers in the special issue focus on market devices and particularly elaborate (i) standards and standardisation, (ii) technology and infrastructure and (iii) data and metrics.

It is not surprising that standards are ‘normal’ elements of markets as they lubricate their smooth operation by increasing efficiency, reducing cost and enhancing trust. The papers analyse how education market-making actors intensively work to create industry standards, often without charging for this service. This is, however, also unsurprising as standardisation not only lubricates market operations, but also provides market opportunities for innovation and new products. In other words, standardisation in itself enables the creation of new commodities and markets.

Digital technologies and infrastructures are a second key group of market devices that are used both for and in countless particular devices and the same act as devices in their own right. Finally, data and metrics act as devices in that they convince buyers of education products of the trustworthiness of markets and their different products, acting, as one of the contributors to the issue describes it, as ‘epistemic objects’. Moreover, numbers give illusion of objectivity and are tools of the ‘governing by numbers’.

Spatial and temporal strategies for education market-making

Authors reveal the use of space and time as strategies for market-making; a set of processes that are often overlooked in the scholarly work on markets in education. Regarding spatial dynamics, particularly the use of space, scale, place, the nature of their social relations, and strength or weakness of their boundaries, are discussed. Regarding temporal dynamics, particularly the shift in temporal order towards the future is analysed to show how efforts to lock in a particular kind of future that privileges the interests of the investors, in turn helping to reproduce markets in education.

Networks and investors involved in education market-making

A number of papers also analyse those actors who are active in marketizing the education sector and the networks they form. They scrutinise the investment capital that seeks returns-on-profit, but also philanthropic donations that have particular connections to specific companies and the actors behind them.

Future research

Contributions to this special issue all in their own way engage with different sites and social processes as the basis for studying market-making and trade. An important endeavour of the authors was to theoretically and conceptually move beyond current approaches to studying market-making and trading in education services. As editors we endorse this endeavour and see that the complex processes are revealed in a novel way. As the editors, we wish to thank all of the authors for their outstanding contributions and look forward to wider ongoing conversations and future engagements with work on markets in education.

Janja Komljenovic and Susan L. Robertson are guest editors of the special issue ‘Making global education markets and trade’. Dr Janja Komljenovic is Senior Research Associate at the Lancaster University, UK. Professor Susan L. Robertson is Professor of Sociology of Educaton at the University of Cambridge, UK.

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[This post was originally published in the Atlantic Community.]

Saturday, July 8th, 2017 marked the first anniversary of the Joint Declaration by the President of the European Council, the President of the European Commission, and the Secretary General of NATO. The signing of this joint declaration between the EU and the Atlantic Alliance called for a new era of their relationship. But is the Joint Declaration really such a milestone that everybody in Brussels talks about? Or, is it just another act of nothing?

Even in the area of security and defense, cooperation has become an unavoidable issue in the last twenty-five years. States in Europe have not only recognized the need for closer collaboration, but have also come to realize that there is no alternative. Recent events, such as the Ukraine crisis and the renewed disputes with Russia, the refugee crisis, and the emergence of hybrid warfare as well as terrorist attacks in European capitals, have illustrated that one security organization alone is not able to solve such issues. The changing international order and the developments along Europe’s borders call for more cooperative approaches to peace and security.

With the EU-NATO Joint Declaration, another stone was laid to build a basis for cooperation. One year has passed since the signing. The main questions are now:

1. What is the Joint Declaration comprised of?
2. What has been implemented so far?
3. What is the outlook for the future of EU-NATO relationship?

The EU-NATO Joint Declaration and the subsequent Implementation Plan are based on seven areas of cooperation: hybrid threats, operational cooperation, cyber security and defense, defense capabilities, defense industry and research, exercises, and defense and security capacity-building. The 42 articles within these areas of cooperation further propose actions and approaches to foster cooperation.

Yet, while these proposals sound promising and let one think that the EU-NATO cooperation has moved from “desirable” to “possible,” one important question remains: What has been achieved so far? Of course, their cooperation cannot be expected to have become the goody-goody among inter-organizational relations in security and defense only one year after signing this declaration. But the current “European defense momentum” should be used effectively and wisely, and should be translated into closer cooperation over the Atlantic. Fruitful grounds for doing so are hybrid warfare and cyber security. These fairly new security threats can trigger cooperation through using each organization’s own strength – for example, cooperation in hybrid warfare , in which each can make use of their strength and expertise, could become a good point of departure and a potential for a spill-over effect to other areas of cooperation, such as cyber security and defense capabilities.

Still, one has to be realistic and down to earth in terms of EU-NATO cooperation in general. Since signing the Joint Declaration, one major concern remains: Both organizations could take the easy way out and rest on their laurels. As pointed out by a NATO official, both organizations have to deliver now. Concrete and substantive deliverables are urgently needed. Just ticking the boxes of carrying out meetings and seminars is not enough. The “joint” is still missing from their actions and both have to work towards a sense of togetherness on both the operational and strategic levels in order to find solutions to current security threats on Europe’s eastern and southern borders.

Overall, the atmosphere between the two organizations and their staff has improved over the last months and weeks. Exchanges have become more regular, and issues of EU-NATO cooperation more frequently find their way on the organizations’ agendas. The future for their relationship looks promising, albeit full of obstacles and challenges, and a lot of work still needs to be done. The EU and NATO find themselves in the “friend zone” and should work towards more strategic partners with a sense of togetherness.

Areas of cooperation that seem to be most fruitful for joint actions are cyber security and hybrid warfare, as well as counter-terrorism and maritime security. Efforts in the Gulf of Aden and in Mediterranean Sea have illustrated that cooperation on the operational level is possible. Now it is time to translate the will to cooperate to other theatres. Crises in the Ukraine and Libya demand joint action because of the complex nature of these enduring conflicts. Neither organization is fully equipped to deal with these issues. However, questions still remain. Who will make the first move? Who dares to actually start cooperating on both the operational and strategic level? The implementation of the Joint Declaration and the 42 proposals remains to be seen.

Nele Marianne Ewers-Peters is a PhD Candidate and Teaching Assistant at the University of Kent.

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Governments around the world are trying to strike a balance between climate policy and energy policy. This is difficult due to tension between the oil sector and the renewable energy sector, which has created a dualism between climate commitment and energy policies because national energy policies accommodate both fossil fuels and renewable energies. The tension within the different energy sectors is evident in Denmark, and it has implications for Danish climate targets especially in terms of its 2030 targets of 50 percent renewable energies and the long-term goal of low-carbon economy by 2050.

Denmark has traditionally been highlighted as an environmental forerunner[i], especially in green technology and wind-power, yet the current government’s policies are not enabling this transition from fossil fuel to renewable energies. The government’s climate and energy policies are inconsistent, simultaneously promoting the green technology sector through an export strategy whilst supporting the national oil industry through a new investment strategy.

Denmark is on course to achieve its 2020 EU climate and energy target for renewable energies, which is 30 percent and according to the 2017 national energy forecast[ii] Denmark will go beyond the target reaching 40 percent in 2020. The 2017 Energy Forecast is doubtful about reaching the targeted 50 percent for renewable energies for electricity in 2030. Importantly the European Environmental Agency has published a similar forecast for the whole of the EU, which only demonstrates the difficulties in implementing climate targets and changing energy production. The 2017 Energy Forecast argues this is partly due to lack of investment in renewable energies, i.e. wind-power, and conversion of existing power-plants. A further factor is predicted increase in energy consumption due to Apple and Facebook datacentres, which will lead to increased demand for mainly coal because of stagnated investment in renewable energies[iii].

According to DR news, the initial two datacentres (Facebook and Apple) will increase demand for electricity by 10 percent[iv] (the news report came before Apple announced it is building a second datacentre). Without investment in renewable energies, this increase in demand for energy will be supplied by fossil fuels, thereby negating Danish climate change commitments. However, Apple will invest in wind-power to produce electricity for its two datacentres[v]. A decision which is welcomed by the Danish government. According to Greenpeace Denmark, Apple’s investment in wind-power might not have negative effect on Danish renewable energies and climate target as the company apparently will rely on its own energy production[vi]. Thus, the problems with increased energy demand highlighted by the 2017 Energy Forecast might not be so big, but it is still unclear if Facebook will use the national energy grid or like Apple build its own power supply.

This year the government has shown a renewed commitment to fossil fuel. In January, the government signed a new deal with Danish Underground Consortium (DUC) represented by A.P. Møller-Mærsk to continue to obtain oil from the North Sea, including rebuilding the Thyra area. In the beginning of July, the government published its new strategy for investment in North Sea oil and gas[vii]. Denmark has been an oil producer for the past 40 years, and has been independent of imports, which has provided the country with high level of energy security. The government aims to continue to extract oil and gas from the North Sea thereby protecting energy security, tax revenue (despite a rebate for the DUC) and local jobs[viii].  A press release from Lars Christian Lilleholt, Minister for Energy, Utilities and Climate, stated that “in the future Denmark must have a strong and competitive energy sector with competences in both oil/gas and renewable energies”.[ix] Indeed the minister does not see a contradiction in the North Sea strategy and the 2050 goal of becoming a zero-carbon economy[x].

The dualism in energy investment, which favours both fossil fuels and renewable energies, does not enable green energy transition. It is important to remember that Denmark is not only a successful wind-power energy producer, it is also an oil producing country and the tension between these two energy sectors will increase as part of the green transition. This tension is not unique to Denmark indeed it is present in the overall climate debate. Importantly, Denmark is often mentioned as a forerunner in wind-power[xi], and the Danish fossil fuel story is frequently ignored. Yet the fossil fuel sector continues to play an important role for the national energy policy, which cast doubt on whether Denmark will reach its 2030 climate targets and eventually become a zero-carbon economy by 2050.

[i] Dyrhauge, H. (2017). “Denmark: a wind powered forerunner” in A Guide to EU Renewable Energy Policy: Comparing Europeanization and Domestic Policy Change in EU Member States. Edited by Israel Solorio, and Helge Jörgens, Edward Elgar publishing.

[ii] https://ens.dk/sites/ens.dk/files/widgets/multi_campaign/files/bf2017_hovedpublikation_13_mar_final_0.pdf

[iii] Ibid page 9

[iv] http://www.dr.dk/nyheder/penge/klimaraadet-datacentre-tvinger-danmark-til-investere-mere-i-sol-og-vind

[v] http://www.dr.dk/nyheder/viden/naturvidenskab/4-grunde-til-apple-bygger-endnu-et-datacenter-i-danmark

[vi] http://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/greenpeace-facebook-og-google-boer-foelge-apples-groenne-planer

[vii] https://ens.dk/sites/ens.dk/files/OlieGas/nordsoestrategi.pdf

[viii] Ibid page 3

[ix] http://efkm.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/nyheder-2017/juli-2017/ny-strategi-for-olie-og-gas-i-nordsoeen/

[x] http://www.dr.dk/nyheder/penge/minister-danmark-skal-vaere-et-foerende-olie-og-gasland

[xi] Dyrhauge, H. (2017). “Denmark: a wind powered forerunner” in A Guide to EU Renewable Energy Policy: Comparing Europeanization and Domestic Policy Change in EU Member States. Edited by Israel Solorio, and Helge Jörgens, Edward Elgar publishing.

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Today, UK in a Changing Europe publishes its report on “The Cost of No Deal“, to which I’ve contributed. Here I consider some of the wider ramifications.

There is one than one way that the Article 50 process might fail to reach an agreement and it is useful to consider each of these in turn, since they each carry quite varied political and reputational costs and benefits.

The most obvious path is that by late 2018 it becomes clear that there has not been much progress on substantive negotiations under Article 50 and that no amount of extension to the two-year period that ends in March 2019 will unblock this. By mutual agreement, both sides let the clock run out and the UK leaves at the end of the period.

Much will turn here on who did what and who blocked what. For both the UK and the EU, there will be considerable political and popular fall-out – all the more given that the start of the negotiations in summer 2017 appears to be relatively constructive – so there will be a strong desire to paint the other side as the spanner in the works.

The UK is unlikely to come out of such a battle of framing well: on the experience to date, it has been much less clear about its desired outcomes or its detailed positions, so the EU will be able to point to its much more public and visible approach as one of being transparent from the start. If the UK had problems with any of these points, then it had two years to make that clear.

Even if provisional agreement is reached on some issues – citizens’ rights, for example – everything is more than likely to lapse in the absence of an overall agreement, so those who thought they might miss the chaos of a ‘no deal’ outcome would also be sucked back in, raising questions about whether either side will make unilateral commitments.

More importantly, the absence of an agreed set of terms for withdrawal will leave the UK with a long list of uncertainties (discussed elsewhere) that will consume the very large majority of governmental and parliamentary business for some years to come, potentially enlivened with cases brought before international courts for compensation.

The failure to secure an agreement will also complicate international trade deals with third parties, who will be uncertain not only about the UK’s legal position, but also about whether it is a desirable negotiating partner: again the shadow of Article 50 will be long and will condition much thinking by others about how much British negotiators can be moved in their preferences.

However, the mutual impasse scenario is one that still leaves a fig-leaf of decency for the UK, since it requires the EU also to become implicated in the decision to run out the clock. It is not hard to imagine the political and media debate in such a situation, where ‘Brussels’ is to blame in large part: only if there has been a substantial organisation of soft- and anti-Brexiteers politically and a swing in public opinion in a similar direction will that translate into further problems for the government of the day. This is not to suggest it will be an easy option, but rather one that is highly fraught and uncertain, with no one response holding the upper hand.

By contrast, if Article 50 ends without agreement because of a unilateral British decision to remove itself from negotiations – maybe even to declare a unilateral and immediate withdrawal from the EU – then all of the costs and problems outlined above will be very much stronger.

In this situation, the uncertainties of the UK’s legal position would be much magnified, raising internal political debate about what might happen next. Of course, for this to come about, there would have to have been some governmental and parliamentary debate, and possibly a vote on the course of action, but given the current make-up of the House of Commons it is hard to see how any majority might operate with any stability or durability. In any case, the pressure from all sectors of business, citizens and others would consume the government to provide some clarity about the status of law and regulation. In addition, third parties might consider that a UK which up-ended its membership of the EU in such a manner might not be one with which to conclude any new treaty commitment.

This is perhaps the key point to take from any consideration of the political and reputational aspects: Brexit is not just about the EU. How the UK acts now and through the rest of the process, whatever the outcome, matters.

This breaks down into three basic elements.

Firstly, the British political system has already been thrown about by Brexit, which is likely to be the defining political event of this period. The choices made by the Conservative party, and Theresa May in particular, have put the country on a track that requires a satisfactory conclusion (i.e. a deal). Without it, there will be further profound dislocations in the party political system and more widespread discontent with the failure of the establishment. Since the UK would be in a position of being outside the EU, the current oppositional views to the government – softening or aborting Brexit all together – would no longer be viable, leaving all sides in a policy cul-de-sac.

Secondly, the EU would still be there. This basic truism is often forgotten in the British debate, but in the absence of a deal, it is inconceivable that there would be no dealings between the UK and the EU. If nothing else, the British Prime Minister and ministers will regularly bump EU counterparts at NATO, UN, G7, WTO and many other meetings: the EU has always been part of a bigger framework. As such, while it might be tempting to blame each other for a failure to agree a deal, this might in turn poison other relationships.

Finally, failure to agree will also compromise what little debate there is about the future path of the UK. The EU referendum did nothing more than conclude that the UK didn’t want to be a member of the EU; it did not set out a clear alternative path. If Article 50 does not produce that path, then the country is likely to find itself in an extended period of dislocation, short on friends, lacking in credibility as an international partner, and generally low on options.

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An art exhibition in Germany illustrated the tragic price of the migration crisis that is now effecting Europe. The theme of an art installation called Lampedusa 361 was about refugees who have drowned in the Mediterranean, while trying to make the sea crossing from Africa to Europe. The installation which has been exhibited in Dresden and Düsseldorf is not just a piece of artwork, but also acts as a memorial to those who have died and a warning to all of us.

The exhibition consisted of posters which were laid out rather like beach mats or towels on the ground in an open space. The posters were of photographs of the graves of refugees who died off the coast of southern Italy. Candles were placed on the ground beside the mats, which created the impression of actually being in a cemetery where the refugees had been buried. In the year 2016 over 5000 men, women, and children died while trying to cross the Mediterranean often in old leaky overloaded fishing boats. These events pose the question of why are these people going to such desperate measures to reach Europe?

Throughout history refugees have fled the terror of persecution and wars, which continues to the present day: at the time of writing there are wars going in South Sudan, Nigeria, Yemen, Iraq and Syria. These conflicts have created millions of refugees who have lost everything, but added to this is the phenomenon of climate change. Both of these problems of climate change and wars are global, and could be described as the force that is pushing the mass migration from the south to the north.

The mass migration is a symptom of a dying planet, where large areas of the planet are becoming uninhabitable. The human species is killing the planet and itself at the same time. Europe can no longer cope with mass immigration, but mass immigration is not the fault of the immigrants, everybody will do what they have to do to survive. If EU member states – including the UK irrespective of Brexit – are selling armaments to Saudi Arabia and other oil and gas producing states in the Middle East, then Europe is helping to make the problem of mass immigration worse.

Sources
http://lampedusa361.de/

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/09/saudi-arabia-becomes-worlds-biggest-arms-importer

http://www.thenational.scot/news/eu-to-probe-saudi-arms-trade.13087

©Jolyon Gumbrell 2017

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Brexit is both a boon and a bane to the teaching and study of British and European politics. In this piece written with Alex Boyle, a politics student at the University of Liverpool, we set out the five ways in which Brexit is central to the study and teaching of both. 

As a student learning the politics of Europe and the UK and as a teacher trying to keep his lecture notes up to date while writing and editing two books on Brexit, Brexit poses for both of us a mix of difficulties and opportunities in our work. With it set to be the defining issue for Britain and one of the most unique challenges to ever face the EU, understanding Brexit is not something any student or teacher of politics can easily hide from.

Granted, by its very nature the study and teaching of politics is about crises and a topic in a perpetual state of flux. As we all know, politics textbooks have a short shelf life. The often slow process of publishing journal articles means many articles reflect the world and knowledge from a few years before publication. Lecture notes can be adapted, sometimes in response to events on the day. Changing reading lists and course structures, however, require time and sometimes higher approval.

Successfully combining Brexit into the study or teaching of British and European politics depends on keeping five things in mind.

Brexit Means Britain

Whether you’re studying or teaching British politics in the UK or on the other side of the world, understanding Brexit means understanding the contemporary UK. As both Eurosceptics and pro-Europeans agree, the issue of Europe is a defining issue for Britain because it reaches into almost every corner of the country’s political life. As Andrew Gamble argued back i03:

The reason why the issue of Europe has been so persistent and so divisive is that there is a lot at stake. For the future of British politics, there is no more important issue, involving as it does a reassessment of British identity, security and political economy, and a judgement about the relative priority to be given to Europe as opposed to other relationships, particularly those with America. Such choices occur rather rarely but when they do they often trigger political realignments which can constitute major turning points in the life of parties and states.

Learning and teaching the origins of a referendum whose result will have such profound implications and the longer history of the UK’s relationship with Europe is, therefore, a solid foundation for understanding not only Brexit but also the development of the modern British political system. As we discuss further below, Brexit opens up an extensive range of topics in UK politics.

The breadth of Brexit as a topic, therefore, offers students of British and European politics a chance to find that elusive ingredient to scoring a high mark: teaching their teacher something new. Synthesising the many different topics and approaches to Brexit allows both students and teachers a chance to escape the silos that too often structure academia. For the teacher, this is a topic where students can do some of the legwork of drawing in new ideas. Many might think of PhD students as the key here. The inevitable flood of PhD students working on Brexit will indeed fill in many of the gaps. But undergraduates, and not least those from elsewhere in the EU and the wider world, can offer much-needed ideas and reports on what Brexit means elsewhere and in other fields.

The Case Study of Brexit Britain

Brexit adds to Britain’s place as one of the best and most fascinating national case studies for social sciences. Britain’s politics have often made it a go-to place for many teachers and students on a wealth of topics. For pollsters and psephologists the UK’s multiple electoral systems have turned it into an electoral laboratory. Britain’s ongoing constitutional reforms and the resilience of its Westminster majoritarian model fuel endless debates amongst constitutional and legal scholars and those engaged in comparative politics. For those studying political economy the UK’s pursuit of Thatcherism, neoliberalism more broadly and austerity have left it a key case study. Historians and scholars of war and international relations find a country that has gone from being the world’s superpower to one that still delivers (or at least tries to) a military kick and leads the world in soft-power. How Britain has confronted (or not) its religious, racial and security tensions and histories fascinates those in countries around the world who face similar challenges. The very unity and identity of the United Kingdom makes it a must for any student of nationalism. The list is a long one.

Granted, other states have faced many of the same challenges as the UK, and it always pays to be wary of the biases that can arise from the study of the UK. Students and teachers should always ask how comparable the UK’s experiences are to those in the rest of Europe or the world. For example, was Trump’s election ‘Brexit plus, plus, plus’ as he predicted it would be? Was it a reflection of wider trends in European, Western and international politics? Or was it a reflection of a combination factors peculiar to the UK? Nevertheless, the UK still offers a wealth of easily accessible literature, data and examples backed up by a long history of studies that can be drawn on as a starting point. Brexit itself is fast turning into one of the most researched and data rich topics available.

Europe’s Brexit

It would now be unwise to teach or study Brexit or the EU without also trying to understand the other. Brexit already tells us something important about the nature of the EU. It has changed the politics of the continent to which Britain is forever bound and which shapes Britain more than any other part of the world.

That might all sound trite. Yet too often debates in Britain about Brexit are myopic ones based on an assumption that Brexit is about Britain. Some elsewhere in the remaining EU might like to try and ignore the unsettling fact that one of the largest and leading European states voted democratically to quit Europe’s predominant organisation for politics, economics, society and non-traditional security.

What Brexit means for Europe and what a changed EU means for the UK are fast becoming central issues to studying Brexit, the UK and European politics. For those in the UK studying and teaching British and European politics, studying the EU remains a central plank to understanding not just how the rest of the EU works and is responding to and debating Brexit, but how Britain will continue to live with a continent and political union that it is forever closely connected to. For students from elsewhere in Europe Brexit allows them the chance to examine their national debates about Britain as part of debates about a changing EU.

Theorising Brexit

Brexit is testing many of the theories and models we teach and learn in British politics, European studies and many other courses. We can use Brexit to apply such theories as those of structure versus agency or more nuanced theories of international relations such as constructivism versus neoclassical realism. Economists are wrestling with what Brexit means for their theories of how trade works. It has certainly tested models used by pollsters and psephologists to understand how the British people – and voters further afield – vote.

Too often ‘theory’ is a word that bores or scares many students and even some teachers. It can seem abstract, distant or an irrelevant addition thrown in at the start of an essay or journal article in the hope of ticking a box required for a decent mark or publication. This ignores how theoretical approaches can help make sense of the uncertainty and information overload that surrounds Brexit.

It’s very easy as teachers or students to be drawn into the daily and hourly developments of Brexit. Reading and following so many fast-changing developments can leave us feeling weary and without a sense of the bigger picture into which to fit developments. One thing theory can do is help narrow down the focus for our studies. For example, we could use theories of bureaucratic politics to understand how institutions will shape Brexit or constructivism to analyse the ideas that underpin it. We then have the opportunity to assess these theories, models and other new ideas in real-time as Brexit unfolds.

Generation Brexit 

Another example of a theoretically grounded attempt to analyse Brexit is to see this political and social split within British society as a generational phenomenon, as argued by Jackson-Preece and Dunin-Wąsowicz. This generational divide manifested itself again in the 2017 General Election, which proved that young people are an important political constituency and that older generations, including most politicians, have ignored them since the Brexit vote.

The LSE’s recently launched Generation Brexit social media and research project, which explores Brexit from a sociological perspective, can aid the study or teaching of British and European politics in the shadow of Brexit. This trailblazing project is currently crowdsourcing a millennial cohort vision for the future of UK – EU relations. It invites those aged under 35 from across the UK and Europe to debate, decide and draft a policy proposal that will be sent both the United Kingdom and the European Union Parliaments, and the respective negotiating teams.

Generation Brexit translates research findings into impactful and policy-relevant arguments that can be utilised to the study and teaching of Brexit. Unlike other Brexit-related engagement campaigns, this initiative targets millennials in the UK and in Europe alike. The pan-European dimension captures the reality of the Brexit negotiations, their contingency on both UK and EU27 politics. It also underscores the necessity of establishing a mutually beneficial relationship for the future, built on shared ideas from the millennial cohort of current voters, many of whom are teachers students of UK and EU politics.

Crystal Ball Gazing

All teachers and students of British and European politics will have faced questions from friends, family and strangers as to why Brexit happened and what might happen next. Speculation on a topic such as this is to be expected, not least when Brexit could turn out to be what historians term a critical juncture for the UK and the rest of Europe.

Academics are often told to be wary of crystal ball gazing. That can be left to think tanks and the media. It does mean, however, that unexpected developments or ones we wish to avoid can catch us out. Until the Brexit vote happened, contemplating Brexit or the withdrawal of any member state from the EU was something of a taboo topic for many in the field of European politics. It means there has been a scramble to understand and analyse such topics as European disintegration.

That leaves us with a lack of relevant and rigorously research literature. A lot of literature, including some of the journal articles, rushed out in response, will be conjecture. Due to the polarising nature of Brexit, for both students and teachers the task of being able to critically think and analyse this literature will be an important challenge for avoiding the inherent bias in many people’s work.

And what of the future? Is Brexit a here today and gone tomorrow topic? If it turns out to be a critical juncture then generations of students and teachers of British and European politics will examine the topic, to say nothing of living with its consequences. But even if Brexit is reversed, the experience will have been a significant one in the politics of the UK and the EU, and one that will have cast a light on so much of British and European politics.

This post first appeared on the LSE’s Brexit blog.

Dr Tim Oliver is an Associate at LSE IDEAS, a Teaching Fellow at UCL and Director of Research at Brexit Analytics.

Alex Booth is a history and politics graduate, University of Liverpool.

The post Brexit is a fascinating case study for students and teachers of UK and EU politics appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

It might not have been immediately obvious, but we are now into the meat of Article 50.  Even with a first cycle of meetings now done, it has taken a press conference from Michel Barnier to make any impression on the British media, and even then only to comparing notes on whistling.

All of which prompts some reflection on how it’s all going and, in particular, why the EU seems to be bossing it so far.

To be a bit less loose in my language, I’m pointing here to the way in which the Union has managed to get its views on all key decisions to date be accepted by the UK. This includes the use of Article 50, the sequencing and structure of negotiations and the content within that structure. By contrast, there is literally nothing that the UK has clearly shaped.

So why is this?

The simple answer is that the EU has followed good negotiating practice from the start, while the UK appears not to have done so.

This breaks down into a number of basic points.

Most importantly, the EU knows what it wants. This boils down to ensuring that the integrity of the treaties is maintained and that membership is a better deal than non-membership.

From that very simple starting point, it has been able to build up everything that follows, by virtue of having these underlying interests in place. Interests are not the same as positions, which are specific and usually rigidly defined, and are really useful because they leave open options, rather than closing them down.

This matters especially in Article 50, because the UK does not have a similar set of interests: wanting ‘the best possible deal’ is not an interest, but a statement of hope, so long as the notion of ‘best’ is not unpacked. In the face of the UK’s uncertainty, the EU is able to adapt and work around what it finds, as the UK finds it. If you spend some time with the negotiating mandate for the Commission, you’ll see that there’s not actually any particular result that it required, only a set of observations about the consequences of anything the UK might desire. Thus, the mandate notes that the four freedoms of the single market belong together, so it’s all in or all out, but the UK can decide which for itself.

Secondly, the EU has largely separated the people from the problem. It has been very largely indifferent to who sits in the negotiating chair, or in Number 10, or how big anyone’s mandate might be, because instead it has been focused on the specifics of resolving the Article 50 to a satisfactory conclusion for all involved. In this it has been helped by its relatively dominant position, and by not having to work its (multiple) domestic audiences, but the difference in tone is very evident, as underlined by this week’s contributions from Barnier and Johnson.

Rather than loosing time and effort to managing personality clashes (and more on that in a bit), the Commission has been able to gather and manage a lot of detailed discussion, generate options and identify preferred outcomes. Consider here how quickly it came to an evaluation of the UK’s proposal on citizens’ right and how this was presented in terms of the proposal, rather than of the people presenting the proposal.

And this is the third point: the EU has done lots and lots of preparation. From the morning after the referendum, work was begun to build teams, gather information, find consensus positions with member states and the European Parliament, so that it was more than ready to go by the time the UK got to submitting notification in March. Think on how the Commission has now issued 9 position papers, while the UK has only one. Sure, the Commission hasn’t produced one on the Irish border question, but the overall impression is of directed and focused problem-solving at work. In all this, it has been helped by having enough resource to pursue this work, without having to set up extensive new structures. While Theresa May spent the autumn touring European capitals finding out what might be possible, the EU was building up a head of steam.

This preparation has then fed into owning the agenda. The ideas contained in the very first response to the referendum have been reinforced and elaborated consistently and firmly since, presenting the Article 50 path, and its sequencing, as the only viable and acceptable path to follow. Even the issuing of multiple position papers is a reflection of how it keeps the UK on the back foot, constantly having to respond to the latest output rather than advancing its own ideas first. In the court of public opinion, the UK ends up looking like it’s playing catch-up or being curlish about what’s suggested.

The EU has made the most of this advantage by constructing positions that deal with process before results. The financial liabilities paper is a central exhibit here, as it tries to suggest a way of agreeing a sum, rather than suggesting a sum directly. It might seem obvious, but if everyone can agree on a fair way to do something, then they are much more likely to agree that the outcome is fair, and seen to be fair by others. In this particular case, this matters, because it contains a simple way of drawing out some of the inevitable sting from British reactions, especially from the ‘whistling’ end of the spectrum, for whom any sum is too large. Consider a bit of negotiating ju-jitsu by the Commission to appeal to British fair play: alternatively, think of it as top trolling, after all the fuss David Cameron made about fairness during his renegotiation.

Finally, the Commission has one more card up its sleeve, namely that it is structurally inflexible. You might call this its Uruguay aspect, after its move back in 1992 at the conclusion of a long round on talks for the then GATT, where the Commission claimed (largely sincerely) that it couldn’t give any more ground to the US on agriculture because the French wouldn’t let it.

For GATT, so for Brexit. The mandate might have been largely consensual in its formation, but different member states have different interests in the outcome, so the mandate is something of a balancing act. Both the process of its agreement and its content have already hardened what the Commission might give ground on in the talks. Expect a trip back to Blair House at some point.

But there’s another question underlying all of this: if this is all so obvious, why haven’t the British done the same?

Partly, they have. There is much work in DExEU and other units to build up capacity, plans and positions, most of which has yet to see the light of day.

And that’s because of the first point that I discussed, namely the question of purpose. Reading neither the Lancaster House speech or the White Paper produces any understanding of what the UK wants.

This is a theme I have returned to on several occasions, but the point bears repetition: the referendum campaigns were a pursuit of winning the vote, not having a discussion about the future direction of the country. Unless there is a general understanding of that, then the purpose of being out of the EU is unclear and most necessarily remain so.

Until then the Commission will be able to continue to advance its agenda and preferences, knowing that the UK will struggle to engage or push back, because it simply doesn’t know what it wants or what it needs.

PS – If you want a manual for all this, try this one.

The post Why you should read the negotiating manual appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

What is needed to make the Paris Agreement a success? This blog post focuses on one of the most central but underappreciated elements – the periodic reviews of progress.  States must of course make ambitious and credible contributions in the first place.  But if there is no system to ensure that they are monitored and evaluated, the agreement will have very shaky legs.

Article 13 of the Agreement states that the Transparency Mechanism should “provide a clear understanding of climate change action… including clarity and tracking of progress towards achieving Parties’ individual nationally determined contributions… including good practices, priorities, needs and gaps” (p. 27).

Almost all countries have already put forward lists of policies to fulfil their commitments. But how will we know whether all of this will add up to limiting global warming to ‘well below’ two degrees Celsius? Doing this will require concerted efforts in monitoring and evaluating climate action – but how may we best organize these activities across the globe?

Our brand-new paper, published in Evaluation, addresses this very question on how to organize monitoring and evaluation. This issue matters because the European Union and others are already investing significant amounts of resources in climate policy monitoring and evaluation activities, and many different kinds of actors, such as the European Environment Agency, the European Commission, the Court of Auditors and others have become actively involved. Earlier research has already highlighted important shortcomings in climate policy monitoring and evaluation activities. Our paper argues that the organization of these activities is another area that has received far too little attention.

In the paper we argue that there are, in principle, two different axes to think about governing or organizing monitoring and evaluation activities. The first is a distinction between formal, government-driven or funded evaluation and informal, society-driven evaluation. Earlier evaluation scholars have argued that evaluation driven, funded or even conducted by governments may benefit from more detailed knowledge of the policy process, potentially higher levels of resources to conduct evaluations, and perhaps also greater uptake of the findings.

By the same token, governmental actors may be under pressure to ‘look good’ and thus shy away from critically evaluating one’s own policies, particularly the ones that may not be working as envisaged. Thus, more informal, societal actors (such as NGOs, foundations, trade unions and others) may be able to step in and provide a more critical eye, provided that they have the interest and resources to do so.

The second way to view the governance of evaluation runs along centralized and de-centralized approaches. On one hand, evaluation may be organized in a centralized way with clear standards that evaluators use everywhere, and where essentially one evaluation actor (governmental or non-governmental) organizes and potentially funds/conducts evaluation. In other words, resources are pooled in order to conduct evaluation tasks.

An advantage of this approach may be higher levels of comparability given more uniform evaluation standards and potentially higher level of resources. On the other hand, scholars from the polycentric governance tradition[1] would argue that such centralized evaluation systems may be prone to failures (what if one picks the wrong or incomplete standards?) and is often insensitive to the vital contextual factors from which policies emerge and contribute significantly to success or failure. Thus, another way of organizing evaluation may be in a much more de-centralized way with many different kinds of actors involved in evaluation.

Taking these two axes, we created a new typology in our paper that considers them both at the same time in Figure 1. Doing so opens up new combinations and thus ways to think about governing evaluation. We then drew on existing evidence from climate policy monitoring and evaluation in the European Union to assess to what extent we can detect empirical patterns that chime with our typology.

Figure 1 – Source: Schoenefeld & Jordan, 2017.

The European Union has been a long-standing leader in efforts to monitor and evaluate climate policies, and there are indeed many ongoing efforts, and certainly challenges, in monitoring climate policies. Looking at these activities from the perspective of our typology shows that we can indeed detect patterns that relate to the four quadrants in the typology in the context of the European Union. The new typology is thus a useful way to comprehend evaluation activities, and we hope that it will open up ways of governing them.

For example, the Monitoring Mechanism for climate policies and measures operated by the European Environment Agency, contains negotiated standards and methods, but once these are set, operates in a fairly hierarchical way. Both the European Commission (formal) and more informal evaluation organizations have endeavoured to create evaluation standards, which could be extended to the climate domain. Last, a meta-analysis[2] of climate policy evaluation in the EU has revealed a vast number of studies that used a range of different standards and methods (à la carte). As states are currently hammering out the details of transparency in the Paris Agreement, they should keep these different options and trade-offs in mind.

What then is necessary in order to implement the Paris Agreement? We argue that part of the answer to this question lies in considering how to build successful and enduring systems to monitor and evaluate ongoing climate policy efforts, and that it crucially matters how to organize these activities. Our paper reveals that there are range of organizational choices and options in the climate policy monitoring and evaluation domain and that different options have implications for the practice and results of evaluation. It is worth thinking carefully about how and who organizes the review processes, in order to generate systems that capture the full extent of knowledge and understanding on our climate policies.

This post has also been published on the INOGOV Blog.

[1] Ostrom, E. (2010). Polycentric systems for coping with collective action and global environmental change. Global Environmental Change, 20(4), 550-557.

[2] Huitema, D., Jordan, A., Massey, E., Rayner, T., Van Asselt, H., Haug, C., … & Stripple, J. (2011). The evaluation of climate policy: theory and emerging practice in Europe. Policy Sciences, 44(2), 179-198.

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On the eve of Donald Trump’s arrival in Paris,

Mike Ungersma recalls the first visit by an American President

His achievements were many –

• The first President to visit Europe while in office
• The first President with an earned doctorate degree
• The first President to hold press regular conferences
• The first President to win the Nobel Peace Prize

We cannot be certain of how President Trump will be received in the French capital on Friday July 14 – Bastille Day – but we know exactly how Woodrow Wilson was greeted.  From the moment in December of 1918 his party arrived in Brest aboard the former German passenger ship renamed SS George Washington, to his arrival in Paris for the talks at Versailles among the victorious Allies, Wilson had become an international hero.

When the President disembarked at Brest on December 13, he met sunny streets lined with flags and laurel wreaths, listened to the warm drone of Breton bagpipes filling the air, and heard shouts of “Vive Amerique! Vive Wilson!” echoing above the crowd.  Huge numbers of people, many resplendent in their traditional Breton costumes, covered every inch of pavement, every roof, every tree.  Even the lampposts were taken.

Margaret MacMillan, Six Months That Changed the World

The ‘Six Months’ historian Professor Margaret MacMillan refers to represents a time today’s ‘jet age’ politicians would find extraordinary.  After appointing himself and three other members of his Administration official delegates to the Paris gathering, Wilson said he wanted to focus on ‘Big Picture’ ideals at the meeting, and not get bogged down in details.  But bogged down he became, so much so that apart from a brief return to the States from mid-February to mid-March, Wilson stayed in Paris for an amazing six months.

Perhaps no other American President before or since has enjoyed such international popularity.  It arose because of Wilson’s appealing if scholarly idealism and the eloquent and visionary promises he made as he reluctantly led the United States into a war that was to – in his words – “make the world safe for Democracy”.  The hopes and aspirations of literally millions rested on Wilson.  His reticence to become involved was summed up in his insistence that the U.S. was not an ‘ally’ of the British and French in the conflict; it was an ‘associate’.  But once committed, Wilson became an uncompromising and determined statesman who, while regarded dismissively as naive by many European leaders, was seen as a saviour to those who had suffered the ravages of the world’s first global war.

It is worth remembering what had taken place in those awful four years leading up to the peace conference.  Professor MacMillan, whose new book, The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914, is published in August, told a Canadian interviewer:

. . . we still don’t know what to make of it. We’re still horrified by the loss, by the sense that it may have all been a mistake, by the sheer waste, and by what happened afterward. Nothing much was settled, it helped to brutalize European society, to breed ideologies like fascism and Bolshevism, to prepare the way for the horrors that came in the 1920s and 1930s and the Second World War. It’s also a war that created the modern world. It had its greatest impact on Europe, of course, but it shaped Canada and Australia, helped to speed the rise of the United States to superpower status, and redrew the map of much of the world. It was a watershed that remains one of the greatest historical puzzles.

Donald Trump, invited by President Emmanuel Macron to watch as American soldiers parade with their French counterparts down the Champs-Elysées, will in a sense become a ‘bookend’ to his respected predecessor.  One hundred years will have passed by then, commemorating the entry of the U.S. into what Professor MacMillan and many other historians regard as Europe’s first ‘civil war’.  It was an occasion poignantly marked by General John J Pershing’s declaration before the tomb of Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis of LaFayette: “LaFayette, nous sommes ici” –  “LaFayette, we are here”.  Pershing, made commander in chief of the American Expeditionary Force by Wilson, was acknowledging an old debt about to be repaid to the French soldier and statesman who had hugely assisted America in its War of Independence against the British.

If, as some argue, President Trump is ill-prepared for the vagaries and intricacies of international diplomacy, none of these shortcomings applied to Wilson.  Well into his second term, Wilson had the mind and manner of an academic and an intellectual.  The author of four scholarly books on American history and government, he already had one war ‘under his belt’ before he faced the consequences of the European conflagration.

Ironically, given President Trump’s insistence on building a “big, beautiful wall” along America’s lengthy border with Mexico, a century earlier Wilson had taken a far more aggressive approach to the United States’ southern neighbour.  He assumed office during the Mexican Revolution, and didn’t like the outcome – the victory of Victoriano Huerta.  Demanding democratic elections to replace what he rather indelicately called a “government of butchers,” Wilson showed no hesitation in interfering with the affairs of Mexico and other regimes in Latin America.  Indeed, when Huerta arrested a handful of U.S. sailors in the port of Tampico, Wilson sent the navy to occupy Veracruz.  War was averted, but there was more to come.

A new threat had arisen from ‘South of the Border’ –  Pancho Villa.  In the turmoil, Huerta had fled the country, and a new leader – Venustiano Carrranza – had taken control.  It was a signal to his subordinate, Villa, to act.  He raided a town in New Mexico, now part of the U.S., killing several Americans.  Wilson reacted with fury, ordering General Pershing – then virtually unknown – to cross the border with 4,000 troops.  It was the beginning of a campaign that would hugely boost Pershing’s profile, lead to more violence, and ultimately to negotiations between the two countries.  As the war in Europe entered its second year, threatening to suck in the U.S., Wilson moved to end the Mexican adventure, recognized Carranza’s government, and turned his attention east, across the Atlantic.[i]  He was about to abandon his policy of neutrality for a crusade.

Pershing’s arrival in Europe turned the tide.  Although he came with only 14,000 troops, their numbers would soon swell to a million, and with them incalculable amounts of American military hardware.  While late to participate in the conflict, the American presence was critical.  Military historian Edward M Coffman:

. . .beginning September 12, 1918, Pershing commanded the U.S. First Army, comprising seven divisions and more than 500,000 men, in the largest offensive operation ever undertaken by United States armed forces. This successful offensive was followed by the Meuse-Argonne offensive, lasting from September 26 to November 11, 1918, during which Pershing commanded more than one million American and French combatants. In these two military operations, Allied forces recovered more than 200 sq mi (488 km2) of French territory from the German army. By the time the Armistice had suspended all combat on November 11, 1918, the American Expeditionary Forces had evolved into a modern, combat-tested army.

Edward M Coffman, The War to End All Wars: American  Military Experience in WWI (1998)

Whatever Wilson brought to the table in Paris, less than a month after the war had ended, it was not a lack of experience.   While President Trump has had his challenge in the form of Vladimir Putin, Wilson faced two wily and well-rehearsed politicians – Britain’s Lloyd George and the French Premier Georges Clemenceau.  Neither were adverse to ‘backroom’ deals.  Moreover, Wilson confronted a staggering array of representatives from virtually every national group in Europe and beyond – and there were dozens.  All expected a hearing from the author of the new doctrine of ‘Self Determination’ – what they saw as a sacred text.  From Arab chieftains to Balkans revolutionaries, and even the man who was to later become Ho Chi Minh – the lobbies of the Versailles Palace were crowded.  All had huge expectations of Wilson. It would not end well.

Wilson had already expressed some doubts – privately.  He realized what awaited him in Paris while still on board the George Washington, steaming toward Brest.  He told George Creel, America’s first propaganda chief, “whether you have not unconsciously spun a net for me from which there is no escape . . .what I seem to see – with all my heart I hope that I am wrong – is a tragedy of disappointment.”  It was to be a prescient remark. Nothing was to go to plan in the talks that followed.

Wilson finally left Paris in the summer of 1918, ill and profoundly disappointed at his own failure. The French and the British had carved up the Middle East, imposed crippling sanctions on a defeated enemy, presented Germany with reparations the country could not meet, retained and strengthened their colonial possessions, all of which set the stage for the tragic drama that was to playout for virtually the remainder of the century.  Few of those who had lobbied the conference achieved anything – leaders of the Arab revolt in the desert, Polish nationalists in Warsaw, rebels in the Greek islands, Koreans trying to shake off Japan’s control – all failed.  And they blamed Wilson.

In his only break from the deliberations in France – his brief return to Washington in February – Wilson knew he was grappling with the flames he himself had ignited.  He told Congress:

Well-defined national aspirations should be satisfied without introducing new or perpetuating old elements of discord and antagonism that would likely in time to break the peace of Europe, and consequently of the world.

In contrast to the present occupant of the White House, Wilson had no hesitancy in admitting to his own ignorance and failings.  The next year he told Congress: “When I gave utterance to those words – all nations had the right to self-determination, I said them without the knowledge that nationalities existed, which are coming to us day after day.”  In fairness, Wilson cannot be held responsible for the surge of European nationalism – Marx had railed against it more than a half-century before, and, correctly predicted its eventual outcome.  Nor can he be be blamed for the behind-the-scene machinations of the British and the French.  Wilson had unwittingly become the focus of the aspirations of millions.  He – in his idealistic innocence – had given it voice.

And the League of Nations, the other major strand of Woodrow Wilson’s dream?  The League was to be a new and pioneering way of managing the affairs of the world’s nations.  He believed the balance of power did not work.  Nor should there be a vindictive settlement to the war – no retribution, unjust claims, indemnities and fines.  Ironically, there would be all of this but no League of Nations with American participation, Congress saw to that.  Wilson’s fault? He certainly had not brought Congress along, especially his Republican opponents whom he had intentionally slighted even though many supported his goals in Paris.  Meanwhile, his illness worsened – some thought he had suffered a stroke while in Paris – leaving his vision lacking its author and chief supporter.  His wife, Edith, became virtually the de facto President during his long absences as he lay isolated in his sick bed.

Today, in contemplating the legacy of Wilson, the list of the President’s critics is long, some savage in their condemnation.  Sigmund Freud: “. . . the impression of the method of Christian Science applied to politics.”  Or this scathing comment by economist Maynard Keynes, a British adviser at Versailles:

He (Wilson) could not, all in a minute, take in what the rest were saying, size up the situation with a glance, frame a reply, and meet the case by a slight change of ground; and he was liable, therefore, to defeat by the mere swiftness, apprehension, and agility of a Lloyd George. There can seldom have been a statesman of the first rank more incompetent than the President in the agilities of the council chamber.

John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of Peace (1919)

Thursday night, before the annual celebrations to mark France’s most important national holiday, Emmanuel Macron will treat Donald Trump to dinner in what some regard as the finest restaurant in the French capital, the Jules Verne on the second floor of the Eiffel Tower.  As they gaze out from a facility that allows probably the best views of the ‘City of Light’, one wonders if the ‘War to End All Wars’ will even be mentioned.  Certainly the Wilson legacy is unlikely to be a topic.

Let the last word be his, this dreamer, this romantic who became President:

We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter’s evening. Some of us let these dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.

[i] This skirmish with Mexico had more than one bizarre result.  Not only did it provide the U.S. Cavalry with one of its last chances for a mounted charge, it also produced the notorious Zimmermann Telegram.  In January of 1917, British cryptographers deciphered a telegram from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German Minister to Mexico, von Eckhardt, offering United States territory to Mexico in return for joining the German cause. This message helped draw the United States into the war and thus changed the course of history. The telegram had such an impact on American opinion that, according to David Kahn, author of The Codebreakers, “No other single cryptanalysis has had such enormous consequences.” (U.S. National Archives)

The post An American in Paris appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

An exclusive look into the details of the Approval In Principle proceedure of the IMF, and its application on the 3rd Greek Financial Assistance Program: “…the options remain limited. Either the IMF will be satisfied with later, more detailed delineation of the debt relief measures and provide financing, or the Eurogroup will be pressured to consider actual implementation of the measures before the end of the program“

The Greek case of the Eurozone crisis from 2010 onwards has, by now, turned into a mutli-series drama. Another installment came in the June 2017 Eurogroup on the second review of the third Greek financial assistance Program. The review has limped on for more than a year since the conclusion of the first one on May 2016 (e.g. intermediate Eurogroup meetings in December 2016, February 2017), primarily because  of the unwillingness of the IMF to provide financing (so far its input in the Program has been only on policy)  unless the following measures were adopted: (1) additional structural adjustment policies with emphasis on tax and pension reform by Greece, and (2) relief for Greek debt (179% GDP in 2016) by the Eurozone member states to make it sustainable.

The bulk of the additional structural adjustment measures were adopted by Greece under Law 4472/2017, and are to be implemented from 2019. In relation to debt relief, while measures had been delineated in the May 2016 Eurogroup meeting, the IMF deemed them largely insufficient. A standoff was  created between the Eurozone and the IMF similar to an Alphonse and Gaston Routine: the IMF would not provided financing unless additional debt relief measures were assumed (or these were further specified), while Eurozone member states, considering the IMF’s participation necessary,  were unwilling to conclude the second review and implement or, at least, further specify the debt relief measures without IMF financing.

The solution reached was the IMF’s Approval-In-Principle (AIP) procedure. AIP was first implemented during the 1980s debt crisis of Latin American countries, when considerable external financing was required (either direct or indirect, e.g. debt relief, etc.) to complement that of the IMF. However, the banking sector refused to provide it until there was an official Program. In turn, the IMF requested that external financing was in place before it agreed on a Program. AIP offered a way to reassure the banks that there would be a Program so that they could provide the necessary external financing, without committing the IMF until this financing was in place. Thos process was first used for Sudan in 1983 and a total 19 times since through the 1980s[1]. While AIP proved a convenient instrument, there were fears of indiscriminate usage raised, which led to the adoption of a set of AIP arrangements by the IMF in 1984:

1. AIP would be limited to Stand-By Arrangements (a relatively short lending arrangement of the IMF) that would become “effective on the date on which the Fund finds that satisfactory arrangements have been made for the financing of the uncovered gap” in a country’s Balance of Payments.

2. A country seeking AIP would not be treated more favorably than a country seeking outright approval of an assistance Program: any prior actions should be completed before AIP approval.

3. AIP should be used “where substantial uncertainties on the financing of a program remain but management is of the view that… (AIP) would assist  the member in reaching an agreement with is creditors.”

4.  AIP would be used in cases where the IMF’s role would be “to give confidence to other creditors…that members concerned are making serious adjustment efforts”

5.  To avoid delays between AIP and the evntual Program a deadline of 30 days for reaching a deal was set. The Executive Board agreed to the 30-day limit as a guideline, but with flexibility around this on a case-by-case basis.

It is clear that, although these guidelines were created under considerably different global conditions and for countries substantially different from Greece, they were retained in the Greek case. The Greek AIP will be followed by a proposal for a precautionary Stand-By Arrangement of a modest amount (reported close to €2 billion). Moreover, AIP was not agreed until Greece had already implemented the structural adjustment measures requested by the IMF, thus avoiding preferential treatment. AIP was also employed to resolve a standoff on external financing between the Eurogroup and the IMF (similar to the deadlock between the banking sector and the IMF during the 1980s), in this way providing assurances that the structural adjustment undertaken by Greece is sufficient. Finally, the IMF, while examining the implementation of a deadline between the AIP and Greek Program financing, remained flexible on how long this would be.

The question is whether AIP really helped in Greece, Eurozone and IMF reaching an agreement? Here, it seems that it has postponed rather than resolved the problem. Greece has warned that without an agreement on debt relief, the additional structural adjustment measures will not be implemented from 2019. However, the adoption of specific debt relief measures by the Eurogroup requires IMF financing and, in turn, the IMF requires further elaboration of these measures in order to provide this financing. The key element here is the deadline between AIP and eventual IMF financing.

The important point here is the duration between the AIP and IMF financing through the Program. During the 1980s, the 30-day limit was set because of considerable deficiencies in AIP implementation. Since all of the 1980s AIP guidelines were maintained in the case of Greece, it is very likely that a deadline will also be set. However, 30 days seems unlikely, since debt relief for Greece is a politically sensitive issue for Eurozone member states, and especially for Germany with federal elections coming up this September. Concordantly, the Eurogroup in this meeting  also stated that most debt relief measures will be considered after the end of the Greek Program in August 2018.

Taking the above under consideration, if the IMF holds out until then to finance the Greek Program, this would mean duration of one year after AIP, something which that could clearly jeopardize the entire process similarly to the early 1980s. As such, the options remain limited. Either the IMF will be satisfied with later, more detailed delineation of the debt relief measures and provide financing, or the Eurogroup will be pressured to consider actual implementation of the measures before the end of the program. One thing is certain: Even after AIP, this drama series is far from over.

First published in Social Europe on 03.07.2017.

[1] AIP was also used for: Sudan (again) Ecuador, Zaire (twice), Madagascar, Jamaica, Zambia, Côte d’Ivoire (twice), Kenya, Somalia, Chile, Republic of Congo, Mexico, Nigeria, Argentina, Yugoslavia, and Brazil.

The post IMF’s Approval-In-Principle and Greece’s 3rd Program appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Last week, I snuck in an extra posting, as part of my reflections on a workshop I attended at Sussex on Brexit and euroscepticism. As I mentioned in passing, there were other ideas that floated around my head that day, including this one.

One of the more persistent ideas that I have tried to communicate to people – both academic and non-academic – is that it doesn’t make sense to talk of ‘euroscepticism’: it implies a coherence that simply doesn’t exist, given the vast array of ideologies, motivations and manifestations that are contained therein.

My usual summary of this point is something like: there’s no euroscepticism, only euroscepticisms.

Well, suffice to say that this point is not currently enjoying wide usage, so maybe it’s me and how I express myself.

I had another bash at this last week, when I dipped my toe into popular culture – ok, the popular culture of the late 1960s, but still – to try and reframe the point. I also tried this point on Twitter earlier this week, so I’m now going to have a go and a more fulsome attempt.

The Beatles as the EU

I’m going to assume you’ve heard of The Beatles, so we can avoid an early end to this post. I’ll also assume you have a view on their work and impact.

Now think of the Beatles like the EU. Both represent the emergence and mainstreaming of a new form – of music and political organisation – in the post-war period, both building on elements that existed elsewhere, but never in such a substantial and consequential kind of way. In fusing various traditions and practices, both produce something innovative, albeit with much less screaming and protestations of love in the EU’s case.

To do this is not to attribute affect to either at this stage: like them or not, they matter.

But of course, affect does get applied to both and this is where we encounter diverging paths.

On one path, you can argue that both mark out the future: their invention and creation fundamentally change the nature of what is possible and irresistibly draw in all who follow. Sure, there are people who don’t like them, but no one can ignore them and ultimately everyone will be shaped and conditioned by them.

On the other, you might feel that they’re alright, but they are not all that: they represent just one or the many possible ways of doing things. Maybe they do influence things, but there are other traditions, other practices, that do not lend themselves to musical or political assimilation. In some cases that’s a matter of choice, but in others it’s more a matter of nature, because the basic assumptions underpinned those alternatives start in a radically different place.

The basic difference in positions is thus how one sees others: in the former, any expression of difference is largely one of the squeak of adjustment to the new reality; in the latter, it’s the legitimate expression of another world-view.

So who’s the eurosceptic in the Beatles then?

The thing about seeing the Beatles (or the EU) as the best thing since sliced bread is that one tends to become rather protective: anyone or anything that gets in the way or disrupts them is A Bad Thing.

At which point we say hello to Yoko Ono.

In the Beatles-as-the-future option, Yoko is a wrecker, a destroyer of harmony (on both senses). She comes in, distracts and then removes John from the mix and generally takes the band away from their core mission. One sometimes has the impression that some fans would prefer that the Fab Four had been locked in a room, so they could produce their work, unhindered, for the rest of their days, away from distraction.

But in the Beatles-as-one-possible-path model, Yoko is simply one more influence on a band that has always thrived on meeting and incorporating influences: think of their encounters with mysticism, drugs and their changing personal situations, all of which threw up new classics (and Yellow Submarine).

Moreover, Yoko is not simply a function of John, but a person and an artist in her own right: the Beatles did not call her into existence, but rather found her drawn into their orbit, where she changed them, just they changed her.

And I’d argue that euroscepticism is a bit like Yoko, in this second model.

The large majority of eurosceptics were previously politically active prior to their adoption of euroscepticism, and all eurosceptics have world views that extend beyond the question of European integration. But their interaction with the EU gives a focus and a direction to their political activity. And – just like Yoko – once they step away from the European issue – as is happening in the UK - they still have ideas and interests that they want to pursue.

The problem comes from those who treat eurosceptics like Yoko-the-wrecker: an annoyance, that should just go away or be ignored.

That approach has not worked and will not work, for the simple reason that eurosceptics are invested in their work, just as Yoko was invested in John. The key difference is that Yoko never tried to make the band into graphic artists.

But it does point towards a strategy for the EU, namely seeking to bring eurosceptics back into the debate, to demonstrate good faith in discussing and debating their ideas and seeing what common ground exists. I appreciate this is moving away from the Beatles/Yoko thing, but that’s always the problem of the over-extended metaphor.

So there we go, a different way of thinking about eurosceptics.

If you want to make a case for Ringo-as-eurosceptic, please feel free to write your own post on that one.

The post The ballad of Jean-Claude and Yoko: understanding euroscepticism appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

ICPP 2017. Photo credits: Meng-Hsuan Chou

Martina Vukasovic

The third edition of the International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP) took place 28-30 June 2017, in Singapore, on the premises of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (following the 1st ICPP in Grenoble in 2013 and the 2nd ICPP in Milan in 2015). The conference  included almost 150 thematic panels organized into 18 larger thematic groups, covering conceptual themes related to e.g. policy process theories, governance, comparative policy analysis, implementation, policy design etc., as well as sessions dedicated to specific policy domains (e.g. health and environment).

Apart from this, two roundtables and one keynote speech was organised. The opening roundtable focused on policy-making and state capacity in a globalised world, while the topic of the closing one was policy advisory systems. On the second day of the conference, Christopher Hood gave a keynote speech on austerity and the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration in understanding contemporary policy-making dynamics. The conference was preceded by a set of courses focusing on theoretical approaches and workshops in which PhD students and young scholars could get feedback on their research projects.

When it comes to higher education, research and innovation, two panels were organized. First, “Analysing knowledge policy coordination for the 21st century” panel included papers on multi-level/multi-actor/multi-issue governance arrangements, transnational higher education in Germany, performance funding in Australia, role of vice-presidents for research in Canada, global excellence/local relevance of higher education, regional policy coordination and convergence and good governance. Second, the “Transnational circulation and multilevel governance reforms” panel focused on comparisons between European (Bologna Process) and Asian (ASEAN) regional integration in higher education, policy transfer and policy dialogues.

The conference also included panels on educational policies, comparative policy analysis, interest groups, complexity in public policy, policy transfer, policy design, policy advise, expertise and evidence, accountability and legitimation, science diplomacy, S&T policy and evaluation, etc. as well as a roundtable on public policy education.

The next ICPP conference will take place in 2019 in Montreal.

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Muslim communities in the UK face integration issues

In the United Kingdom, Muslims should have equal access to opportunities in the labour market and this would greatly contribute to an integrated social atmosphere in the country. The top professions, more often than not, don’t have diversity present and the chances of ethnic minorities, with a Chinese or an Indian background, are far greater in rising to the top than those with a Muslim background, such as for Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.

The reasons behind this disparity is attributed to poverty and insufficient economic mobility. Integration issues happen because ethnic minorities can be looked upon as a socially excluded diaspora, which experiences issues of poverty, discrimination, culture as well as issues with language in the country. The top jobs, such as those in the media and politics, have a mere 16percent of representation by British Muslims, who are more than sixteen years of age, which is a worrying contrast to the 30percent demonstrated by the British population. British Indians naturally outperform British Whites at the top jobs – the social segregation issues faced by Muslims in Britain, such as poverty because of a no open approach to allowing Muslim practices, whilst employed, makes it a diaspora, with greater integration problems than the British Indian population.

The issues of cultural barriers faced by the Muslim community in the United Kingdom is further getting worse because the media often speaks about British Muslims largely within the topic of extremism. These cultural barriers, such as Muslim women associating motherhood with caring for children, instead of doing that plus earning an income through a job, aside from producing low economic outputs, also exacerbates the social exclusivity problem. In the United Kingdom, gender equality is considered a norm – it’s visible in all areas of life, from getting a job to individuals’ idea of dress codes, so when a culture like that collides with another relatively primitive culture, there will be hard-to-overcome differences.

Furthermore, there is also grave concerns that Sharia Courts (in the United kingdom) are upholding extremist values and permitting wife-beating. Part of this problem lies with the atypical problem with Muslim communities and their observance of patriarchy, which in itself, apart from being an incredibly primitive thing to do, is also the most wrong thing to do because it’s very much in the nature of patriarchy to pluck out societal rights of women.

Muslim communities (in the United Kingdom) should be looked upon as contributors to British culture. There is definitely no pressure over religion, because a majority of the British population are Christians, and both Christianity and Islam have roots in the Middle East. It’s more of a cultural problem, and Muslim communities need to advance from primitive outlooks, to ones which are more beneficial to their circumstances, whilst at the same time, preserving a diversified British culture.

The post The Muslim Question appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

I’ve spent the day down at Sussex, talking euroscepticism and Brexit with a highly-informed group of colleagues. As our debate ranged over a wide terrain (see my live-ish tweeting here), several questions kept recurring, first and foremost of which was whether the UK was a special case, or a potential model of Eurosceptic activists to follow.

As you might expect in an academic setting, opinions differed, although partly this came down to definitions (again, academics).

Unusually, I found myself at one end of that range, arguing that there was a high degree of transferability inherent in Brexit, while others took the view that there was so much that was specific about the case that it rendered any mimicry both theoretically unlikely and practically impossible.

The argument here is that the use of a referendum to secure withdrawal from the EU is simply not an option in other member states, be that due to constitutional constraints or the use of referendums within a polity. Clive Church rightly pointed to Switzerland as an example of how all the advantages that Leave were able to gain in the UK would not apply, from the absence of designated lead groups to the lack of purdah and the citizens’ initiative pathway to holding a vote.

Others pointed to the structure of party politics, the additional complication of Euro-membership, the absence of a strong and critical media, or the framing of European debate within a country as reason to doubt that the success of Leave could be replicated. Indeed, listening to Matthew Elliott speak, almost of the critical junctures that he saw were ones that spoke to the particularities of the British system: Boris Johnson’s role as a spokesman to the middle ground, the Sun’s endorsement, and George Osborne’s punishment budget, to pick just three.

As Nick Startin noted, while last summer saw a massive proliferation of neologisms – Frexit, Dexit, Swexit, etc. – none has caught, because none has triggered a comparable groundswell of action comparable to that found in the UK.

All of this I accept and agree with, but also suggest is beside the point.

Ultimately, we can view Brexit as a relatively empty signifier: it means pretty much what you want it to mean.

However, where it is not empty is in establishing a new potentiality for political action: the potential – indeed, the reality – of leaving the European Union.

I’ve been using the metaphor of an ice-breaker when I talk about this: the UK has broken a new path that was not there previously, which others can chose to follow to. It broke that path with a particular set of tools and circumstances, but others do not have to use those same tools.

Indeed, the key point is precisely that each national situation will be different and will change over time. It will depend on constitutional, institutional, political, social and economic factors, not to mention the role of key individuals (this isn’t meant to be exhaustive, but rather to illustrate the profound variability involved).

However, one goes about it, the existence of the UK as an example of a country that has gone through to the same destination provides a validation. In fact, I’d go further and argue that through its example the UK will show both how to and how not to go about leaving: as Article 50 unwinds, so costs and trade-offs will become clearer to observers, suggesting ways to mitigate. No longer will leaving be a theoretical noodling, but a concrete reality.

Of course, in all this there is another question, namely whether any other Eurosceptic movement in the EU wants to leave. Fittingly, with both Aleks Szczerbiak and Paul Taggart in the room, there was reflection on the balance of hard and soft euroscepticism. If the UK hard element had managed to reach deep into the mainstream – to use Paul’s idea – then it is important to remember that the hard element is not always present elsewhere.

This matters, because even if exit is now possible, it does not mean that others want to do it. Indeed, the hallmark of euroscepticism elsewhere has been that it seeks reform, rather than rejection.

On this, I am less certain, but I would suggest that one possible effect of Brexit will be to make harder positions more attractive than they have been to date. As we move into a medium-term perspective on Brexit, so the chances that the UK looks successful enough for someone to claim leaving was A Good Thing will increase.

Similarly, if the EU looks to be unable to accommodate reform – in either a usual, mainstream, way or a more radical direction – then the soft option will look less credible. In short, the balance of the perceived chance of success of hard and soft positions might move in the former’s favour.

Of course, this is in the future and, as also came out today, there is more volatility in politics than for quite some time. As such, we should be hesitant about what we think might come.

With that in mind, we really only wait and see whether the Brexit baton is picked up by anyone else.

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Next week I embark on my new research project examining the impact of Brexit on UK local government. This is obviously quite broad but I’m essentially interested in three things:

• Why was the local dimension largely overlooked in the EU referendum campaign?
• What challenges and opportunities do local authorities believe Brexit presents them with?
• How are local authorities preparing for Brexit (if at all), and how are they trying to influence the process of Brexit and its potential outcomes?

For the moment, the focus is engaging in a pilot study to help refine these broad objectives. But at this stage it helps to explain why this research agenda is worth pursuing.

A lot of academic interest on the subnational dimensions to Brexit has focused on its impact on the devolved administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales (see this special interest section in the Journal of Contemporary European Research for a flavour). This is for good reason, given the various constitutional and political implications present here, such as debates about Scottish independence, or the role of the border in Northern Ireland. However, for a variety of reasons, the impact of Brexit on the local level has been unfairly overlooked.

The EU has a significant impact on local authorities. The Local Government Association estimates they are directly responsible for the implementation of around 70% of EU legislation and policy. EU rules, such as on procurement and state aid, affect the way they deliver services and operate on a daily basis. Local authorities are the main beneficiary of the EU’s Structural and Investment Funds, from which the UK stood to benefit from £5.3billion between 2014 and 2020. Local authorities are formally recognized in the EU’s institutional structure in the Committee of the Regions. The EU also provides opportunities to engage beyond local territorial limits. Local authorities have taken advantage of these, setting up offices in Brussels to lobby EU institutions (such as Birmingham’s or Cornwall’s), and engaging in transnational networks with other local authorities (such as Eurocities or the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions), providing platforms to access EU funding, influence EU policy and share policy innovation and best practices with European partners.

All of this arguably gives local government the status as the most ‘Europeanized’ part of the British state. And yet we heard relatively little about the local dimension to Brexit during the EU referendum campaign. Over a year since the referendum result, we’re still largely in the dark on what Brexit means for local government. The government’s white paper on the UK’s withdrawal and new partnership with the EU managed only 28 words on the subject, and this is vague at best:

We will also continue to champion devolution to local government and are committed to devolving greater powers to local government where there is economic rationale to do so.

On the ground, local authorities are already trying to get to grips with Brexit and its implications. This includes collectively through organizations such as the Local Government Association, but also several local authorities have taken the initiative to explore the impact of Brexit, its challenges and its opportunities with their local communities. Examples include the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Futures Group, or Bristol’s Brexit Response Group. But a wider lack of attention given to the local level impact of Brexit leaves important questions about the future of local governance in the UK left unanswered. How will local authorities continue to deliver projects which have so far relied on EU funding? Will EU funding to the local level be replaced after the UK leaves the EU. Will local authorities be able to make their voice heard and influence the process or outcome of Brexit? Will powers repatriated from Brussels be devolved to local government, or simply be re-centralized in Whitehall? And how will this affect the communities local authorities serve?

The EU’s impact on local authorities means Brexit matters to them, and Brexit’s wider impact on the UK will inevitably have local level consequences. Investigating the local level impact of Brexit therefore not only tells us how local authorities are adapting, but also sheds light on the ever fraught relationship between local and national politics.

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About a year ago, I attended a meeting in Cambridge, to discuss the aftermath of the EU referendum.

Alongside all the rage and fury of those who felt they had been cheated, one woman asked me specifically about how to mitigate the impact of Brexit on her area of expertise, namely the conservation of rare natural habitats.

About which – specifically – I know nothing.

How I was able to give some advice to her, and it’s the same advice I will give now to all those who feel they have a stake in Brexit and who want their voice to be heard.

Some context here might be useful.

Brexit is huge. It covers and shapes everything right now. Every bit of public policy is affected by, and affects, Brexit. As can been seen in the legislative agenda for the current, long Parliament, there really isn’t anything else of note happening in the UK right now. Even on the EU side, while there is some more bandwidth available, it’s still a very involved and involving process.

Which means several things are happening.

Firstly, very few people have an overview of the entire process. In the UK, they sit in Number 10 and DExEU; in the EU, it’s Task Force 50 and some national chancelleries. Those individuals are exceptionally pressed by demands on their time, because they are the first point for arbitrating between the myriad different pressures for influence.

Secondly, most of the other people involved in the UK are not specialists in the EU, but rather in their area of specialisation.

Finally, as the opening phase of negotiations has shown, positions on either side are not reversibly set.

All of this leads to some logical points of pressure for those seeking to advance their agenda.

For those with issues that are very policy-specific, the most productive way forward is to provide ideas to those involved that marry up the policy-specific aspects with a framework that fits into broad Article 50 objectives. To take the opening case, it might be assumed that nature conservation is not on the radars of the key protagonists in London and Brussels, and that then local officials are caught up with bigger environmental regulation matters. By producing a set of policy recommendations that show those local officials how they can handle the specific issue as part of what they have already said about their plans, the activist might well be able to upload her preferences to that group, who might in turn be trying to upload this to the national negotiating team, who might in turn put it on the table as part of a bigger package.

In short, in a world with a huge pile of issues and specifics, any idea about how to advance is likely to have a good deal of traction.

But it’s possible to go further than this. Most obviously, building links with counterparts in other EU states opens up the possibility of advancing ideas and preferences that already have the buy-in of all local policy communities. Just as the EU makes decisions by working from the technical to the political, so too will Article 50 proceed.

Of course, this does not really work for more cross-cutting agendas, since the people to influence – the main negotiating teams – are under both extreme time pressure and close political scrutiny.

Here the approach might be better described as side-stepping. A head-on assault is unlikely to work, unless one can count on a very strong groundswell of public support, something that has been noticeably absent to date.

Instead, it would be more productive to try to feed the issue in via specific policy areas, in the manner already described.

To take one illustration, rather than pushing for a general, full preservation of citizens’ rights, as some have done, it might be more useful to focus on securing certain key provisions that then force movement in other areas. Thus the UK’s suggestion that five years’ residence will be needed to secure settled status might be a focus, since removing that requirement might also keep more freedom of movement than otherwise might be possible.

And this suggests a final option: the block-buster.

Within Brexit negotiations, there are several highly-problematic issues; ones that have no immediately obvious solution. The Irish border is the most significant one right now.

If one could find a credible solution to this, then potentially that could leverage change in other areas of policy. In the Irish case, that might include moving preferences on free movement, customs checks, identity cards, trade barriers and more. The negotiating parties might be willing to bend on these if they saw it as a price worth paying for the resolution of the other issue.

Of course, the very fact that no-one has come up with such a plan suggests that this is not easily done.

However, the basic strategy for anyone remains simply one of making yourself useful and constructive.

The post How to get what you want from Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Could Europe’s struggle against Islamic terrorists become a guerrilla war?

Mike Ungersma looks for signs.

It must have a friendly population, not actively friendly, but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy. Rebellions can be made by 2% active in a striking force, and 98% passively sympathetic.

T E Lawrence,  ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ on guerrilla warfare [1]

In Syria, ISIS appears on the edge of defeat.  Cornered into a warren of narrow streets of Raqqa and Mosul, a few hundred determined fighters carry on, facing certain death.  But in the eyes of tens of thousands of fellow Muslims, it will be a heroic end bringing martyrdom and the promise of eternal life.  Where once thousands fought against the coalition, only a handful remain.  Observers on the ground tell us most have fled.  While no one is sure where, the fear is those who came from Europe may have returned there, battle-hardened and very experienced in the skills of irregular warfare.[2]

They will be going home to communities scattered across Europe and be seen, not as conquerors returning from a war to establish the 21st century’s first caliphate, but as sons and fathers (and a handful of daughters) who answered a particularly powerful and persuasive call – Jihad.  What will be their attitude as they recall their brutal exposure to war, toward their involvement in what many Muslims regard as an ultimate duty: participation in a holy war against infidels.  And crucially, how will they be greeted by their families and friends?

They will find the neighbourhoods they left have grown in size and purpose – almost nations ‘within nations’, especially in Britain, France, Germany and the Benelux countries.  There, despite the efforts of governments and charities to integrate Muslims, despite the countless initiatives to prevent Islamic extremists from spreading their messages, the ‘Islamification’ of dozens of European cities continues a pace.[3]

Sociologists[4] tell us these societies are increasingly unified, territorial and isolated, walled off from outside influence by language, religion and culture.  Subjected to what they regard as discrimination and prejudice, their populations are growing at a rate outstripping their non-Muslim hosts.  Worryingly, they show signs of become almost sovereign entities with their own schools, churches, and even a legal system, Sharia law.  They are as impenetrable from the outside, alien and hostile to European traditions and European history.

With these Jihadi now back on their streets, back in their mosques answering questions and relating their exploits to the admiring young and naive, the question that must be high on the agenda of Europe’s counter-terrorism experts is: Do they pose a new and more dangerous threat? Unthinkable as it may seem, might these emerging Muslim ‘nations’ soon gain a new attribute: a dedicated, determined and experienced army of Jihadi to protect them from us?  Will they become Islam’s promised ‘soldiers of the God’ to protect their mothers and sisters from insults and derision, shield their fathers and elders from taunts and threats by ultra-right extremists, and guard their mosques and holy places from further attack?  In short, are these former ISIS fighters a vanguard of a larger, more organised and trained guerrilla force that could carry terrorism to a frightening new level in Europe?

The situation is unprecedented, though anticipated two decades ago by the American historian Samuel P. Huntington in his controversial The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order:

Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.[5]

Nor is the future – given increasing Muslim settlement in Europe – much brighter. French politicians and intellectual, Pierre Lallouche:

History, proximity and poverty insure that France and Europe are destined to be over-whelmed by people from the failed societies of the south.  Europe’s past was white and Judeo-Christian.  The future is not.[6]

Huntington and Lallouche were writing as the 20th century drew to a close.  Since then, the situation has clearly worsened.  Should the terrorism Europe has already suffered become even more intense and more frequent – that is, show signs of being organised and directed – the response could be ugly.  Periodic vigilante attacks aimed at Muslims and mosques, could escalate to a systematic effort by the state to bring both sides under control.  Armed troops now routinely deployed in France and Belgium, could become an everyday sight in every European country, including Britain. Is the imposition of martial law, cloaked in the disguise of ‘aiding the police’ next?

Something has to give it seems.  Robert Verkaik, author of The Making of a Terrorist, wrote recently in the London Guardian, that Scotland Yard and MI5 share a database of 23,000 jihadist “subjects of interest”.  Of these, 3,000 are seen as posing a serious threat, and another 500 are given “the highest priority.”  In addition, there have been 8,000 referrals to the ‘Prevent’ anti-extremism programme.  He concludes: The security services are “drowning” in the sheer volume of intelligence and suspects.[7]

Furthermore, the jihadis know how to play the game – with cynicism.  To waste the time of the police and counter-terrorism authorities, they behave provocatively, “knowing that they’ll come under surveillance, but remain just on the right side of the law so as to ‘suck up’ resources”.[8]

Already the calls for action are becoming increasingly shrill: In his opening line to The Strange Death of Europe, Douglas Murray,  associate director of the Henry Jackson Society and associate editor of The Spectator, writes: “Europe is committing suicide, decadent and godless, and rendered helpless by our relativism, we have become easy prey for a resurgent Islam.”  As the few remaining committed Christians stare at the ‘bare, ruined choirs’, that have become bingo halls or social centres, Islam flourishes in every European country.

And, many argue, from the million Syrians accepted in Germany to the unstoppable flow of ‘refugees’ across the Mediterranean, we have brought this on ourselves. Rod Little, reviewing Murray’s book in the Sunday Times notes that opponents of mass immigration have always been dismissed as racist.  “But the Strange Death of Europe, he writes,  mordantly exposes many of the familiar canards that we have been fed on the subject – such as the claim that immigration brings great economic benefits, or that Britain has always been a nation of immigrants.

One of those presumptions was undermined last year when Dame Louise Casey published her controversial study into social integration of immigrants, and found “high levels of social and economic isolation in some places, and cultural and religious practices in communities that are not only holding some of our citizens back, but run contrary to British values and sometimes our laws.” The report, commissioned by former Prime Minister David Cameron, also found that “by faith, the Muslim population has the highest number and proportion of people aged 16 and over who cannot speak English well or at all.[9]

Or take the recent words of Sara Khan, a British Muslim and CEO of Inspire, an independent non-governmental organisation working to counter extremism and gender inequality.  Writing in the London Evening Standard, she says

The response after every Islamist attack is the same: politicians claim the perpetrators don’t represent the Muslim community – as if such a unified body even exists.  The reality is that the terrorists do represent a certain group of Muslims in the UK – one that promotes a supremacist, intolerant, anti-Western Islam on campuses, at community events and on line.[10]

In the event of a drastic escalation in violence – terrorism and an inevitable state-sponsored response – the result would be an asymmetric war terrorists could be certain of losing – the odds are too great, overwhelming even.  But the price all would pay, Muslims and everyone else, would be very high indeed.  At that level, repression of the terrorist threat would mean historic restrictions and unprecedented sacrifices of freedoms Europeans have taken for granted for decades.

Make no mistake, ISIS veterans are returning to our streets and neighbourhoods, and they are unlikely to respond to initiatives such as Britain’s ‘Prevent’ and other such initiatives. Young  Muslims may be beyond persuading.  Instead and predictably, the returning ‘warriors’ and those they can convince, will feel there is a score to be settled.  Defeated in Syria, their dreams of a new world-dominating caliphate in shatters, the life-changing experience of seeing death of friends and comrades up-close, in a word – ignominy. Everywhere and at every opportunity – they will want to get even.  ‘Post Traumatic Stress’ takes on a fearful meaning for these young men and women who were willing to give their lives for their beliefs.  Are they still willing to make this sacrifice?

Perhaps this is the real tragedy surrounding the awful, shocking, heart-rendering events of Paris, Nice, Berlin, Brussels, Manchester, and on and on.  The distorted and grotesquely displaced idealism of young Muslims.  A dilemma made more profound because there seems to be no answer, no solution.  There is an inevitability about it that haunts everyone.

Roger Kimball, editor of The New Criterion, has characterised the response of Western elites to the terrorist outrages as a combination of sentimentality and apology, what he calls a “Kumbaya sentimentality”. Now, however, he senses a new feeling:

We have certainly heard a reprise of that tired song in the immediate aftermath of the Manchester massacre.  But we have also heard some refreshingly discordant, refreshingly adult notes.  There is anger in that descant, justified anger.  There is also the burgeoning awareness that the culture under threat, whatever its faults, is very much worth preserving.  That dual reality – a newfound awareness fired by anger – may yet rescue us from our more hapless selves.

[1] T. E. Lawrence, On guerrilla warfare, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th edition (1929) Accessed on-line

[2] “ISIS: Up to 5,000 jihadists could be in Europe after returning from terror training camps abroad.” independent.co.uk, February 20, 2016

[3] “5 facts about the Muslim population in Europe”, The Pew Research Center, July 19, 2016 Accessed on-line

[4] Can mostly Christian countries integrate Muslims? This new book shows what must be done.” The Washington Post, December 1, 2015

[5] The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel P. Huntington, 1996

[6] Quoted in Strangers at the Gate, Judith Miller, New York Times Magazine, September 15, 1991

[7] Robert Verkaik, quoted in The Week, London, 17 June 2017, p 23

[8] Ibid, from an article by Dipesh Gadher in the Sunday Times

[9] “Segregation at ‘worrying levels’ in parts of Britain”, Dame Louise Casey warns, BBC, 5 December 2016

[10] London Evening Standard, Tuesday 6 June 2017.

The post Ultimate Jihad? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

18 June: finally, the last visit to the polling station.

Ever since I started to talk to the French about their political system and listened to their perceptions of what was going wrong in the Fifth Republic – a little more than three decades now – I had this impression, unbacked by any robust statistical evidence, of a quite large majority at the centre of the political spectrum that found no adequate representation in the institutions.

Of course, I also bumped into people from the extremes: heavily leftist teachers for whom communism had never been discredited and who explained to me that the GDR was the better Germany; or football fans who esteemed that the ‘Black-Blanc-Beur’ World Champions of 1998 were ‘not really French’.

But there also was this longing, shared across a wide range of middle-class people of different sensitivities and levels of education, for a national assembly, in which ‘common sense’ and ‘collective purpose’ would overcome an entrenched left-right divide that was felt to be overblown by both artificial rhetoric tradition and the electoral system. The one single most-hated feature of political life, beyond the ritual disgust with the priviledges and the famous disconnectedness of the political elite, was ‘systematic opposition’, leading to fake indignation at each and every measure of the government and obstructionism by principle. If only the ‘reasonable’ people of the left and right could get their act together and form a coalition of those willing to serve the nation rather than their own career! Alas, French political culture would never allow for a compromise-seeking ‘grosse Koalition’ of German inspiration.

And then, the miracle happened.

Last Sunday’s 2nd round of the legislative elections has virtually flooded the French Parliament with ‘reasonable’, ‘common sense’ people, eager to follow Emmanuel Macron in his historical demolition of the sterile rhetoric postures and ready to introduce a new manner of bridging existing ideological divides for the sake of the common interest of all.  If this is a minority, as Mélenchon and Le Pen were quick to assert – both because of the high abstention rate and their respective claim to be the only true representative of ‘the people’ – it’s a very impressive one. In its diversity of profiles, it’s a ‘très grande coalition’ in its own right. They might as well spell it with a ‘K’.

And it is a first step on the way to fulfil the presidential promise of achieving a ‘renewal in faces and practices’ that was so often repeated over these long campaigns. Two thirds of the 577 faces in the Parliament are totally new, at the same time pushing the feminisation of the Assemblée to an unprecedented level of 38%.

As for the ‘new practices’,we will have to wait and see. For the time being, the government seems decided to practice what they preach: within a few days only no less than four ministers of Edouard Philippe’s first cabinet have been nudged out for affairs that smelt too much of these ‘old habits’ that citizens are simply no longer willing to tolerate.

At the moment of writing, the astonishing coherence between what is clearly turning into a ‘strong and stable leadership’ in the best sense of the word and the endearing enthusiasm of these fresh French politicians of a totally new type is nurturing a kind of hope and confidence that seemed totally out of reach in the kingdom of ‘declinism’. How long will it last? Not everybody is in love with Macronia: opposition, both in the streets and at the edges of the Assemblée’s hemicycle, is likely to be loud, virulent, and nasty. The forthcoming battle for labour law reform will see a fair share of fear-mongering and class-struggle, which may make the Russian hacker attack of April seem like the ‘good old days’.

Anonymous – probably a French voter in June 2017.

So let’s enjoy the moment while it lasts. We, the people, are too exhausted anyway by this long and incredibly tense election marathon. Being a citizen is a rather hard job in this country. If it was only about walking to the polling station on four election Sundays (plus several primaries)! All these endless TV debates you have to watch, all the articles and interviews you have to digest. All the nerve-wracking cliffhangers, twists and rebounds of this fascinating drama – it’s just too much. Whatever bad losers may be tempted to say, the record low turnout of 45% last Sunday, compared with the very high interest for politics that was sustained over all these months, is simply due to election fatigue. Especially as the first round had provided the certitude that the die was cast, the majority for Macron was sure, and the citizenship job had been done to the satisfaction of her Majesty the Fifth Republic.

So where does that leave us at the end of the 25th and last post of this blog’s election marathon? More puzzled than ever about the Fifth Republic. The past months has confirmed every grudge I held against her. The hyper-personalisation of the presidential regime is not good for French democracy. The constitution remains both contradictory and vague in parts. The sequence of the different elections is far from ideal. The electoral system is not fair.

But without all these flaws and shortcomings, would the encouraging outcome of the marathon have been possible at all? In the very first post of the series, dated 1st November 2016, I prepared for a rather sad journey, ‘with no providential saviour in store and hardly any light at the end of the democratic tunnel’.

Ever since I have been living in this country, I was never more pleased to have been told wrong in such a flagrant manner.

This is the last post of the French 2017 election marathon.
All twenty-five posts can be found here.
This blog should be back after the summer break,
enlarging the perspective again to European integration issues.
Thanks for having accompanied me on the journey!

The post France 2017: La grande coalition appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

I know that I should be writing about the fall-out of the General Election and the impact on Article 50 talks, but until we get a bit further down the line on this – specifically to a Conservative-DUP agreement – it doesn’t seem to be worth the effort. It’s like last year, and the year before, where every day throws up a new surprise and twist, rendering previous comment/analysis wrong. Let’s take this as me agreeing with Jonathan Dean’s fine piece.

If you really want some thoughts, then check out my Twitter feed (here, here and here) or the new Diet of Brussels episodes (here and here). And consider if agreeing with Jonathan is the same as changing my behaviour.

Instead, I’m going to focus on one of those hardy perennials of Brussels, mobile phone roaming.

Today marks the end of charges on roaming across the EEA: your data/minutes allowance is good in your home country and all the other countries involved, with no additional cost for their use (although you still pay extra for international calls).

It’s the classic good-news story and one that the EU has been able to wheel out for many, many years. Doing useful things for people and standing up to big business.

But it also exposes the limitations of the EU, both politically and organisationally, and offers an insight into how things work in practice.

There is a long and convoluted background to today’s change: for the bare bones you can read the Wikipedia page, or for a bit more juice you can look at Ryan Heath’s insider look in Politico. In essence, this has been over a decade of the Commission – or rather, bits of the Commission – pushing to trim back roaming charges in the face of stiff opposition from mobile phone companies, some member states and even the public (most memorably with the farcical press release (and U-turn) last summer on limits).

As with so many areas of policy, the Commission is limited in how fast it can move legislative elements through the system: primarily this is because of the need to work with member states and the European Parliament, but it also comes from the internal divisions within the organisation, all the while floating in a sea of lobbyists. In this case, the approach was to start on the most egregious cases of over-charging, before slowly tightening the noose on roaming charges.

This is the same kind of pattern seen with eurozone governance reform, or CAP payments, or environmental standards: gradual policy moves, over long periods, often not achieving much more than a vague approximation of single and unified rules.

You can see this in many ways, but thinking of our current situation there are three perspectives that stand out.

The first sees this as a bad thing, because it slows us down. Barriers between member states, differences in regulation, additional costs to citizens: all these are detrimental to ‘making Europe work’, freeing it up to achieve its full potential, economically and socially and politically. If only the EU could push things through more quickly – compress the delay in getting to where we are obviously heading – then we’d be the better for it, as we spend less time transitioning and more time in the new situation.

The second sees this as a bad thing, because it’s inexorable. Yes, the EU takes ages to do things, but it does them in the end, rolling over the hard-fought opposition of other interests. The Commission can afford to be patient, because it knows member state governments come and go and market situations change, but ultimately it will have its way, right or wrong. Maybe its intentions are sincerely-held, but that almost doesn’t matter, as it acts more like a dog with a bone, rather than a knight on a white charger.

The third sees this as a good thing, because it marks a democraticisation of the EU. The checks and balances between institutions and member states, the input of civil society and economic interests, the gradualism: all these mark a maturing democratic system, where no one part of the system has unlimited power.

No one of these three views is intrinsically right, but when we look at the EU, we might do well to consider that all three have popular currency in different parts of the Union. If you’re only hearing one of these, then maybe you need to move outside of your bubble. And today’s as good as any to check this.

The post Roaming wild: A parable for the EU today appeared first on Ideas on Europe.