European Union

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EU leaders meet informally in Brussels on 23 February 2018 to discuss institutional issues, including the European Parliament's composition after the 2019 elections and possible transnational lists, and how the EU appoints top positions, including the so called 'Spitzenkandidaten'. The heads of state or government also debate on the political priorities of the multiannual financial framework (MFF) after 2020.  The meeting takes place under the Leader's Agenda. As the discussions are future-oriented, the meeting is held in an EU27 format.

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The International High Level Conference on the Sahel takes place on 23 February 2018 in Brussels.

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Tens of thousands of EU citizens have decided to leave Britain since the referendum. The latest figures reveal the highest outflow of EU migrants for a decade, and a huge reduction in the number of EU migrants moving to the UK.

130,000 citizens from the EU decided to leave Britain in the year to September 2017. And around 47,000 fewer migrants from other EU countries moved here compared to the previous year.

The latest figures also show that more British people are emigrating than Britons returning to live here.

It means that net EU migration – the difference between arrivals and departures – was only 90,000, the lowest for five years.

Commented the BBC home affairs correspondent, Danny Shaw:

‘What explanation could there be for the decline in EU migration other than Brexit?’

He added:

‘Whether it’s a feeling that EU citizens aren’t wanted in the UK, uncertainty about their future or the growing relative strength of other EU economies, there has been a notable shift away from Britain’s shores.’

The NHS as a result is at crisis point. NHS England has nearly 100,000 unfilled jobs, a situation described as “dangerously” understaffed. That’s one in 11 posts unfilled, according to the latest figures.

Most EU doctors working for the NHS have indicated that they plan to leave, according to a survey by the British Medical Journal.

Record numbers of nurses from the EU have left the NHS since the Brexit vote, according to the Royal College of Nursing.

Around 10,000 EU health workers have left since the referendum, according to the National Health Executive.

And the number of nurses from the EU registering to work in the UK has dropped by 96% since the EU referendum, according to statistics by the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

We’ve made them feel unwelcome, so who can blame them for leaving us? But believe me, we’ll miss them when they’ve gone.

Who will give us medical treatment in hospital? Who will take care of our parents and grandparents in care homes? Who will do the millions of jobs that we simply don’t have enough Britons to do?

There’s a host of reasons to want citizens here from the rest of the EU to stay, and to want to stay. But the opposite is happening since the Brexit vote.

EU citizens living here are not stupid (far from it; on average, they’re more educated than most of us, and their command of English puts some of us to shame.)

They know that one of the main reasons, if not the number one reason, that people opted for Brexit in the referendum is because they perceived that we have too many EU migrants.

Too many? Oh, heaven help us. If anything, we don’t have enough. We’ll soon see.

Britain has far more vacancies than Britons to fill them. Around 750,000 job vacancies last month alone. We don’t have enough Britons to do the jobs that EU citizens are (or were) happy to do for us.

They’re mostly young, fit, healthy and clever; they took the initiative to come here and they came here for one primary reason. Not to sponge off our welfare system. Not to cause havoc. Not to undermine our democracy or our culture. They came to work.

And that is mostly what they do. Work.

Very few indeed are taking benefits; indeed, they pay far more into the Treasury than they take out. And if there is no work, they mostly either don’t come here, or mostly don’t stay.

Our loss. There are 27 other EU countries willing to not just accept, but to embrace, the concept of free movement of people across our continent, so that their countries can be enriched by mostly young migrants willing to work, pay taxes, and contribute.

Our loss, in more ways than one. Because this isn’t just about Brexit, is it?

This is about what kind of country Britain is going to be.

Are we to become an insular, isolated, xenophobic country that doesn’t like migrants; that makes them feel unwelcome, so that they don’t want to be here anymore?

The governent’s own economic analyses (that they didn’t want us to see) predict that every Brexit scenario will leave the UK economically worse off than it would be if we stayed in the EU.

EU citizens leaving the UK will not solve or help this. (On the contrary).

But now, many are leaving.

Sure, Brexiters will say, they can come back, if we need them.

But the thing is, they got the message; they know we need them. The problem is, they no longer feel we want them.

Is it too late to say, ‘Please don’t go’?

Only if we can stop Brexit. That’s what we have to do.

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The post EU citizens: we’ll miss them appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

In this press kit you will find a selection of press releases from the European Parliament that show MEP’s priorities and what they have been pushing for in relation to the topics on the summit agenda, as well as contact details of the MEPs involved. All documents and resolutions printed in the press kit, plus additional information, can be found on the European Parliament’s website.

Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

In this press kit you will find a selection of press releases from the European Parliament that show MEP’s priorities and what they have been pushing for in relation to the topics on the summit agenda, as well as contact details of the MEPs involved. All documents and resolutions printed in the press kit, plus additional information, can be found on the European Parliament’s website.

Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

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Over the years, the EU has forged constructive political dialogue with members of the Cooperation Council for Arab States of the Gulf (GCC). These countries are Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the UAE. The Cooperation Agreement, which was concluded in 1988, forms the basis for the relationship that aims at strengthening the stability in the strategically important region, facilitating the political and economic relations, broadening economic and technical cooperation, and further broadening cooperation on energy, industry, trade and services, agriculture, fisheries, investment, science, technology and environment.

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Recommendation to the Council, the Commission, and the EEAS on cutting the sources of income for Jihadists - targeting the financing of terrorism
Recommendation to the Council, the Commission, and the EEAS on cutting the sources of income for Jihadists - targeting the financing of terrorism, Amendment 32
Recommendation to the Council, the Commission, and the EEAS on cutting the sources of income for Jihadists - targeting the financing of terrorism
Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

Length of video : 127'
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Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

Commission v Grèce
Environment and consumers
Greece is ordered to pay a lump sum of €5 million and a sliding-scale periodic penalty payment of €3.28 million for each six-month period of delay for having delayed the implementation of EU law on urban waste water treatment,

Commission v Poland
Environment and consumers
The Court of Justice finds that Poland has infringed EU law on ambient air quality

Dyson
Energy
Advocate General Saugmandsgaard Øe proposes that the Court holds that suppliers and dealers of vacuum cleaners may not use supplementary labels which reproduce or clarify the information contained in the energy label provided for in an EU regulation

The Scotch Whisky Association
Agriculture and fisheries
Advocate General Saugmandsgaard Øe issues his opinion on the interpretation of EU law provisions relating to geographical indications for spirit drinks in the context of a dispute concerning a German whisky named ‘Glen Buchenbach’

Porras Guisado
SOPO
Pregnant workers may be dismissed on grounds of a collective redundancy

Problem-oriented project learning is integral to Roskilde University pedagogical philosophy, which requires students to become researchers already from their first day at the university. Every semester, the students have to come up a new research idea and find fellow students to work with to carry out a project. The project is worth half their ETCS points and it is the only grade, they get in their first year of study. Thus, it is imperative for students to not only find an interesting topic, but also students they can work with.

The semester starts with project group formation, a 3-day process, which begins with brainstorming research ideas and ends with formation of research groups working on specific topics. The aim of the process is to facilitate an inclusive space where all students can exchange ideas and discuss potential research topics. However, the process can be a brutal example of social exclusion and alienation, where weaker students struggle to find groups. Thus, it is crucial to make sure the process is open and inclusive. All research ideas are written on a whiteboard and posters, enabling everyone, including the lecturers, to see which ideas are active (see photo at the end of the text). Moreover, groups are open for new students to join until 1 hour before the deadline.

This semester, a colleague and I facilitated the project group formation for second semester students studying international social sciences. The first day is all about generating ideas, which the students explore in more detail on the second day and the final day is about agreeing on a research topic.

The first day, I introduced the requirements for the project. Afterwards, lecturers presented their research interests, which aimed to inform the students of the supervision topics available. Then students volunteered to give ‘fire-speeches’, i.e. promote their research ideas and convince other to join them. My colleague wrote the research ideas on posters, which we placed across the room, so students interested in an idea could, write their brainstorming down and, if they left, new students could follow the discussion. At the end of the first day, the students had to pick two themes this reduced the number of themes.

The second day, the students had to explore these two ideas further. Supervisors are present during the whole group formation, and they talk to students about their research ideas. This semester, one group wanted to go undercover in a cult, which led to discussions with several supervisors about ethics of undercover research. In the end, the students joined other research topics. At the end of day two, the students had to choose one research theme they wanted to explore in more details the final day.

During the final day, the students developed research topics and wrote short statements, which enabled me to allocate appropriate supervisor to the projects. A few students, who had not been present the previous days, were able to join existing discussions. There were several big groups, which had to find a way of separating into smaller groups (the maximum numbers of students in a group is six). My colleague and I helped these groups to find different perspectives on the same research topic, which enabled them to separate into smaller project groups.

The process often generate clusters of research topics. This semester three groups write about public spaces and borders; two groups write about asylum centres, another two groups about social media and business whilst there are two groups looking at Fiji coups, one group from a domestic and political perspective and the other group from an IR perspective.

Overall, the 111 students have formed 22 project groups with 2 till 6 students in each group. It is now time for the students to formulate their research design, agree on how to collaborate, and make an appointment to see their new supervisor.  Thus, the group work has only just started.

Over the coming semester, I will discuss some of the benefits and challenges of problem-oriented project work, including giving and receiving peer feedback, workshops focusing on how the students can manage their project and group work, and the role of the supervisor.

 

The post Group formation: from research ideas to project groups appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Length of video : 111'
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Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

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EU Finance Ministers meet on 20 February 2018 in Brussels to discuss sustainable finance, issues related to the EU budget and the role of public procurement in investment and innovation.

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Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

AMENDMENTS 1 - 280 - Draft report Implementation of the EU external financing instruments: mid-term review 2017 and the future post-2020 architecture
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

A good rule of thumb is that when you’re in a hole, you stop digging. Unless, of course, you’re in the tunnelling business.

The British government is very much not in that line of work – such things being outsourced – so the rule would seem to apply in spades.

And yet is spades that the Cabinet appear to be holding in their hands, as the series of speeches on Brexit continues this week.

So what’s going on?

The first observation is that none of the speeches to date – Johnson’s, May’s, Davis’, Gove’s – have really said anything new. They promise bright futures and underline common interests with European friends, but they lack substantive detail on how to get to these sunlit uplands. Read in soundbites, one can find evidence of whatever one likes, as well as whatever one doesn’t.

Given that this cycle of speeches was pitched as a moment of revelation and clarification, the lack of a road map will continue to concern those involved in the Article 50 negotiations, especially as we move towards next month’s European Council, where progress will have to have been achieved on a number of points.

The mutual inconsistency of the speeches – e.g. on state aid, or on deregulation – points to the on-going lack of consensus in Cabinet, which tomorrow’s Chequers meeting is unlikely to resolve.

All of which brings us back to the opening observation on holes.

Prudent politics would suggest that at times of uncertainty, the default option should be to avoid making rash decisions. Better instead to find a holding position and wait for things to change – as they always do – and hopefully become less fraught.

(Clearly, there’s also the maverick school of thought, which pushes for radical action in periods of uncertainty, but this has to be grounded in profound self-confidence, some kind of justifiable pay-off, plus a sense that holding isn’t possible. Neither the first nor the last of these would appear to hold in this case.)

The effect – if not the object – of Cabinet’s indecision has been to create a holding pattern, visible in several places.

Most obviously, the lack of push-back on a stand-still/’full monty’ transition is a particularly pure expression of this. Take the UK out of the EU, but keep everything else in place. Even the mooted intervention from Davis today on a mechanism to indicate displeasure with new regulation during this period is a minor point in comparison to the rest of the package, with the UK becoming a rule-taker.

But it’s also to be seen in the shifting rhetoric of various Cabinet ministers. There is much more talk now of gaining the power to diverge from EU regulation, rather than actually diverging. In this world of alignment, there is a growing assumption that the UK will remain aligned unless it chooses to de-align, rather than implementing a new framework from the get-go. Even the obvious exception to this, agriculture, is set up to stick to CAP rules until the end of 2020, and is a relatively self-contained area of regulation: moving to a UK agricultural policy will not necessarily require similar shifts in other parts of policy.

Again, as I’ve argued before, it might be that for immediate political purposes in the UK, it will suffice that the country leaves the EU in March 2019, and then a new period will begin in which government can work out a long-term plan for its EU policy without quite the same pressure.

Indeed, by pumping out the contradictory messages contained in the speeches of late, it can hold off different factions until there is simply no time to plot another course.

The danger in all this is that it is not a given that present confusion and uncertainty will be replaced by future clarity and security. Rather, trying to keep things the same represents a rather precarious path.

That precarious nature is not so much intrinsic to the EU side – in broad terms, having the UK as a (literally) silent partner looks pretty good – as it is to the UK side. Paying into the budget, taking all the rules, obeying all the ECJ judgements, continuing free movement: each one is a red rag to eurosceptics, who would not struggle to find sympathetic media outlets to spread their message.

Since any agreement on ‘not digging’ is likely to have clauses about the ability of either party to withdraw from that agreement, a new contest risks springing up in the UK about making use of those clauses: most obviously, it would become a key cleavage in the 2022 general election, especially if transition has been extended.

Not making a decision is an often-overlooked option within negotiations. But leaving a decision for now should not be the same as ignoring it for good: there is always a reckoning to be had. To think otherwise is foolish at best, fatally damaging at worst.

The post Nothing has changed appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP