European Union

DRAFT REPORT containing a motion for a non-legislative resolution on the draft Council decision on the conclusion of a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and its Member States, of the one part, and the Republic of Iraq, of the other part
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Tokia Saïfi

Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

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EU Foreign Affairs ministers meet on 16 April 2018 in Luxembourg to discuss Russia, the Western Balkans, Iran (including the Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA) and the future of external financing instruments. The Council is expected to adopt a number of decisions and conclusions without debate, including Council conclusions on Syria, ahead of the second Brussels conference on Supporting the future of Syria and the region (24-25 April 2018).

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EU Ministers of Agriculture and Fisheries meet on 16 and 17 April 2018 in Luxembourg to discuss ways to reduce food waste in the EU and a new plan for the management of fish stocks in the Western Waters. They are also hearing a presentation on a draft directive to fight unfair trading practices in the food supply chain.

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The EU is supportive of all efforts aimed at the prevention of the use of chemical weapons.

Main agenda items, approximate timing, public sessions and press opportunities.

Weekly schedule of President Donald Tusk 16 - 22 April 2018

Main agenda items, approximate timing, public sessions and press opportunities.

President Tusk received the letters of credentials from four new ambassadors to the European Union.

The Council today adopted an amended regulation which will provide for continuing financing of the European Union Youth Orchestra.

The Council approved €45 million in macro-financial assistance to Georgia, supporting its agenda for economic stabilisation and reform.

A targeted revision of the EU's rules on professional drivers' training will facilitate drivers' mobility.

The EU is making cross-border parcel delivery tariffs more transparent.

On 12 April 2018, the Council prolonged restrictive measures for grave human rights violations in Iran.

The Council adopted conclusions on the delivery and implementation of cohesion policy after 2020.

The reality of Brexit is now sinking in fast. It can’t be delivered. That’s why we need another vote.

Government ministers promised that Brexit will give us “the exact same benefits” as we have today.

That’s impossible. That’s why we need another vote.

Last year Brexit Secretary, David Davis, promised a trade and customs agreement with the EU “that will deliver the exact same benefits as we have.”

Prime Minister, Theresa May, also said that Brexit can have “the same benefits” as we have now for free trade with the EU.

Also promised by the government:

no hard border on the island of Ireland or across the UK;

an agreement with the EU that’s fully negotiated by March next year;

no payment for access to the EU market;

a complete end to EU rules and regulations;

converting around 40 EU trade agreements with 65 countries into UK bespoke deals “one second after midnight” on 30 March 2019.

Promises, promises, promises.

And the truth? These promises cannot be delivered.

In a business, if a company reneges on its promises, the customer can cancel the deal and claim compensation.

In a democracy, when a government reneges on its promises, the people – us – should be able to give its verdict. In a vote.

The people’s vote.

Because the promises of Brexit can’t be delivered.

The government knows this. They are desperate for the UK to continue to enjoy EU membership benefits of frictionless trade after Brexit, because they know that our economy’s survival depends on it.

But the government is pretending to us that we can continue to enjoy these membership benefits as an ex-member:

without being part of the EU Single Market or customs union;

without agreeing to the rules of the EU and its market;

without being subject to the European Court of Justice to oversee those rules;

and without paying anything to the EU for access.

It’s not going to happen. Mrs May knows this.

Before the referendum, she prominently stated:

“It is not clear why other EU member states would give Britain a better deal than they themselves enjoy.”

Yet that’s exactly what Mrs May now wants. She says she aims to achieve a new agreement with the European Union that’s unique to us, that no other country in the world has ever achieved.

Of course, it’s not going to happen.

What’s the point of a club if you are going to allow non-members to enjoy the same or better benefits as members? What club allows that?

So, here’s the bottom line:

Britain needs frictionless trade with the EU.

We need free movement of goods, services, capital and people for our country not just to survive, but to thrive.

We need to continue with the status quo: the arrangement we have now.

Has this sunk in yet?

We’re leaving all the benefits of the EU, only for our government to desperately try and get back as many of those benefits as we can after we’ve left, but on considerably inferior terms.

This is complete and utter madness. The government cannot offer us anything better than we have now; only something worse.

That being the case, it will be wiser to keep the current arrangement: to stay in the EU. It will be cheaper, and we will all be better off.

That’s why we need another vote.

As an EU member:

we have a say and votes in the running, rules and future direction of our continent;

we have full and free access to the world’s largest free marketplace;

we enjoy the right to live, work, study or retire across a huge expanse of our continent;

we enjoy state healthcare and education when living and working in any other EU country;

we enjoy free or low-cost health care when visiting any EU nation;

we are protected by continent-wide rights that protect us at work, when shopping and travelling;

we benefit from laws that protect our environment (and have, for example, directly resulted in Britain’s beaches being cleaned up);

we enjoy excellent EU trade agreements with around 60 countries, with more on the way, on advantageous terms that Britain is unlikely ever to replicate.

And what are we gaining from Brexit? Surely something?

No. All the reasons given to leave in the referendum were based on false promises that cannot be delivered.

More sovereignty? Nonsense. We’ll get less.

In the EU, we gain a share of sovereignty of our continent. Outside the EU, we’ll still live on a planet and have to obey thousands of international laws and treaties.

We share sovereignty with NATO, for example. Is that a reason to leave it?

Outside the EU, we will only be able to look on as decisions about Europe are made without us, even though those decisions will affect us just as much, whether we’re a member or not.

 Fewer migrants? Really? Just think about it.

Most EU migrants in Britain are in gainful employment, doing jobs that we simply don’t have enough Britons to do. So if they all left, we’d have to replace them with about the same numbers of migrants as we have now to get all those jobs done. What’s the point of that?

More houses, schools and hospitals? Think again.

Without EU migrants we’ll have fewer builders, teachers, doctors and nurses. Migrants are not the cause of our problems. Blaming them just excuses successive UK governments from investing sufficiently in our country.

Get our country back? We never lost it.

If being in the EU means losing your country, why aren’t the 27 other EU member states complaining?

With Brexit, we won’t be getting our country back. But we will be losing a leading place and role on our continent.

Our own laws? The vast majority of laws in the UK are our laws and passed by our Parliament in Westminster.

But in the EU, we benefit from laws for our continent that no single European country alone could ever achieve. Could our UK government have got mobile phone companies to scrap mobile roaming charges across the entire EU? Of course not.

It took the might of 28 EU countries working together to achieve that, and so much more.

 More trade for the UK as an ex-member? Another false promise.

The EU is the world’s largest free trade area. As a member, we receive huge benefits worth billions more to Britain than the net annual membership fee of £7.1 billion a year.

As a member, we enjoy free, frictionless trade with our biggest trading partner by far, right on our doorstep, where almost 50% of our exports go to and over 50% of our imports come from.

Nowhere else in the world comes close to that. Nowhere in the world can replace that.
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The bottom line? Brexit cannot be delivered as promised. The Brexit people voted for on 23 June 2016 was a mirage. It does not exist. It cannot happen.

That’s why we need another vote. To give our new verdict, not on the fake Brexit that was sold to the nation in the referendum, but on the real and entirely different Brexit that the government now wants to impose on us.

The ‘people’s vote’ on the final Brexit deal? Bring it on.

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The post Why we need another vote on Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

A couple of weeks ago my article ‘Subnational transnational networking and the continuing process of local-level Europeanization’ was formally published in the latest issue of European Urban and Regional Studies (an open access version can be found here).

The article explores how local government transnational networking has developed since the 1990s. ‘Transnational networking’ essentially involves local authorities in one country linking up and co-operating with local authorities in other countries. This can be broken down into three categories:

• Bilateral networking: involving two local authorities in different countries.
• Multilateral networking: involving three of more local authorities, often facilitated through an organisational structure.
• Transnational projects: involving co-operation between at least two local authorities which is time-limited and focusing on delivering a specific project.

This activity goes beyond the more traditional civic / cultural town-twinning links, with local authorities co-operating on substantive policy areas.

To see how much this activity developed since the 1990s I looked at the European networking activities of local authorities in South East England and Northern France. These regions were chosen because they were the focus of a lot of attention in the 1990s, and this research (such as this) provided a nice baseline to assess more contemporary networking activities.

Over a ten year period (2001-2011) I found that 14 local authorities were involved in 302 transnational links with other local authorities in Europe, either directly or through multilateral networks or transnational projects. A lot of these transnational links overlap and this leads to a picture of complexity:

Overall, there’s been a substantial increase on what was going on in the 1990s. This is partly explained by developments in European integration. EU enlargement to central and eastern Europe in 2004 provided many more partners to co-operate with. A gradual increase in the EU’s policy competences also provided more areas for local authorities to co-operate on. In this way, an increase in opportunities to co-operate has led to a natural increase in co-operation itself.

The nature of this co-operation has also changed. While much activity in the 1990s was about developing bilateral partnerships, the focus now has shifted to multilateral networking, where local authorities participate in EU level networking organisations, such as Eurocities, the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions and the Assembly of European Regions, reflecting changes in how the EU policy process has evolved and become increasingly receptive to interest representation. The number of transnational projects has also increased, as eligibility for EU-funded programmes such as Interreg have expended.

So, local authority engagement in transnational networking has increased. But not all councils follow the same pattern. Some (like Kent and Nord-Pas de Calais) were quite heavily involved. Others (like Portsmouth and Picardie) only had limited engagement. Brittany and Hampshire seemed to prefer taking part in multilateral networks over bilateral partnerships, while East Sussex preferred striking direct partnerships through bilateral networks. Medway, Kent and Nord-Pas de Calais were involved in a large number of transnational projects, partly reflecting their geographical locations and eligibility for various funding programmes.

A lot of this variation is down to local level factors such as the strategic objectives of individual councils and the importance they give to transnational networking. Local political leadership is also important here. Councils with dedicated political portfolios for external engagement were generally more involved. Previous experience of transnational networking also seems to be a factor. For example, Kent and Nord-Pas de Calais led the way with transnational networking in the 1990s and continued to do so during the 2000s.

So the overall picture is one where local authorities have become increasingly linked with their counterparts in other European countries and become more ‘Europeanised’. But it’s important to remember transnational networking remains a voluntary activity. It only takes place where opportunities to take part are present and often depends on a range of local level factors. This speaks to wider research on Europeanisation at the national level, which also finds a range of national factors mediate the overall impact of Europe.

Given the context of Brexit, this obviously has implications for local government in the UK. Will councils continue to co-operate with their European counterparts once the UK leaves the EU? On the one hand, Brexit by definition will lead to a reduction in opportunities for local authorities to engage at the EU level. However, the UK government has also suggested it wants to continue participating in programmes such as Interreg which has facilitated much of this co-operation. And EU membership isn’t a prerequisite for participating in transnational networking. Many Swiss and Norwegian localities have a presence at the European level, and many transnational networks (such as the C40 cities and nrg4SD) operate on a global scale. The future of UK local authorities networking with their counterparts in Europe will ultimately depend on the opportunities available to them. Until the outcomes of Brexit become clearer, much of this won’t be known.

The post The development and future of local government transnational networking appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

AMENDMENTS 1 - 360 - Draft report EU-NATO relations
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

In the wake of Trump's threat to attack in Syria, the US government is apparently divided and has yet to reach a clear decision on military intervention. Voices in Europe now ask what stance the US's allies should take. Commentators focus particularly on France, Germany and the UK.