Ideas on Europe Blog

By Adina Maricut-Akbik, Hertie School, Berlin

Since the euro crisis, the European Central Bank (ECB) has expanded its powers from monetary policy to banking supervision in the Eurozone. In the framework of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), established in 2013, the ECB became responsible for the direct supervision of the largest banks of Eurozone countries. The goal was to rebuild trust in the European banking system by ensuring consistent supervision and thus increasing the resilience of banks. Smaller banks remained within the purview of national supervisors, under the indirect supervision of the ECB. The expansion of ECB powers in banking supervision was accompanied by the institutionalization of new accountability obligations vis-à-vis the European Parliament (EP), separate from monetary policy. The purpose of the article was to assess the functioning of the new accountability relationship between the ECB and the EP in banking supervision based on the practice of parliamentary questions and answers exchanged between the two institutions in the first years since the establishment of the SSM (2013-18).

 

The idea that parliaments can and should hold central banks accountable is part of the general principles of legislative oversight in democratic settings. This type of political accountability is seen as the counterpart to delegation: if a specialized task (such as banking supervision) needs to be carried out in a specific setting (like the Eurozone), the task is delegated to an actor with the expertise and policy credibility to do so (in this case the ECB). From a democratic perspective, the act of delegation needs to be countered by accountability mechanisms that seek to check whether the actor performs its tasks as intended at the moment of delegation. In the SSM, the EP does not have at its disposal the full toolbox of accountability mechanisms available to national parliaments overseeing specialized agencies. For example, the EP cannot sanction the ECB by changing its legal framework in banking supervision – a competence that belongs to national governments in the Council. However, the EP can use the tool of parliamentary questions to call the ECB to account for its supervisory decisions. Such questions can either be addressed orally in regular public hearings with the ECB’s Chair of the Supervisory Board, or in writing through letters – to which the ECB is obliged to respond within five weeks (SSM Regulation, Article 20).

 

The article shows how an interactionist approach to accountability helps to investigate the exchange of questions and answers between Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and the ECB. The interactionist approach is premised on the idea that in practice, accountability interactions presuppose a back-and-forth exchange between two parties: the first, known as the forum (here the EP), is legitimized to ask questions and contest the activity of the second (the actor, here the ECB), which in turn is required to engage with the contestation of the forum and justify its conduct. Accordingly, accountability interactions are envisaged in three steps, where: (I) the forum contests the decisions of the actor, (II) the actor silences, rejects or engages with said contestation and (III) the forum follows up on the issue (or not), thus continuing or ending contestation on the matter. Contestation can be weaker, when forums merely request information or justification of decisions from an actor, or stronger, when forums request changes of decision or sanctions to be applied to the actor. The interactionist approach proposes to keep an inventory of the type of questions posed by forums and the type of answers provided by actors in order to evaluate the extent of a forum’s contestation and the degree of an actor’s responsiveness within a given accountability relationship. The dataset behind the article includes 337 written questions and 369 oral questions (and as many corresponding answers) identified during the period November 2013-April 2018.

 

In the case of the EP and the ECB in banking supervision, the analysis identified a frequently-used infrastructure for political accountability that is however limited in ensuring a stronger contestation of ECB supervisory decisions. The vast majority of questions were categorised as ‘weak’ according to the interactionist approach, for various reasons: some were mere requests for policy views about legislative initiatives in the field of banking supervision, others were outside the scope of ECB competence in the SSM, and many more were demanding transparency regarding the situation at specific banks supervised by the ECB. In respect to the latter, the problem comes from the tight confidentiality rules in the SSM, which allow the ECB not to disclose information about supervisory decisions concerning individual banks. And yet these are the questions that feature most often when MEPs contest something about ECB supervisory conduct. Notwithstanding the confidentiality requirements, the ECB is generally open to engage with questions from MEPs – especially when it comes to the internal organization of the SSM or the decision-making process thereof. Moreover, in the few cases where MEPs demanded a change of conduct, the ECB demonstrated willingness to address their requests and subsequently made the required adjustments. So far, it seems that the EP can exercise more accountability when it has evidence – provided by internal parliamentary services – that the ECB acted outside the limits of its mandate in the SSM, as was the case of the 2017 Addendum to the ECB Guidance on non-performing loans.

 

Under the circumstances, the question is what can be done to improve the record of accountability interactions in the SSM. In line with the interactionist approach, what is needed is for MEPs to contest relevant issues regarding ECB conduct in banking supervision and, in turn, for the ECB to engage with contestation and change its decisions under specific circumstances. These two conditions require minimising the asymmetry of information between the two institutions, which is not an easy task. One possible solution is for MEPs to develop in‐house expertise on banking supervision in order to ensure that their questions are addressed to the relevant institution while substantively contesting [something about] the ECB conduct in the SSM. Another avenue of reform is to revise the SSM confidentiality rules by identifying specific conditions under which supervisory decisions can be disclosed, for example after a sufficient period of time has passed or after a bank was declared failing or likely to fail. The idea to completely reform professional secrecy standards applicable in the SSM is not novel, although its feasibility under the current circumstances remains low. Such a reform would require a review of the SSM legal framework, but more importantly a change of approach from the ECB leadership. The political feasibility of this reform will be decided in the years to come.

 

This blog post draws on the JCMS article,  Contesting the European Central Bank in Banking Supervision: Accountability in Practice at the European Parliament

 

 

Adina Maricut-Akbik is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Hertie School in Berlin. Her current research focuses on political accountability in EU economic governance and EU integration theory. Her interests also include informal politics in the European Council and the Council and inter-institutional decision-making in justice and home affairs.

@MaricutAkbik @thehertieschool

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There are lessons to be learned from the EU’s responses to the Covid-19 crisis. The pandemic reveals the absolute need for further cooperation in the EU if the member states are to manage these types of health crises effectively. Importantly, the crisis has shown that the social and economic costs of not being able to react – or reacting too late – can be enormous for the EU and its member states.

 

What is clear is that Covid-19 is unlikely to be the last of this type of health challenge to EU countries and its citizens. Antimicrobial resistance – AMR – is increasingly seen a problem that will become one of the biggest challenges for global and European public health during the next twenty to thirty years.  Like Covid-19, AMR, knows no borders. Resistant bacteria move across countries along with people, animals and goods.

 

It is estimated that AMR causes around 33,000 deaths per year in the EU, and global AMR deaths are estimated to reach 10 million deaths per year by 2050. More people are expected to die due to AMR in 2050 than due to cancer.

 

In humans, antimicrobials – like antibiotics – are being used to combat various types of bacterial infections (e.g., pneumonia) and for prophylactic purposes in connection with surgery (e.g., heart transplants or hip replacement surgery). In the veterinary sector, antimicrobials are used to combat or prevent bacterial infections among livestock animals (pigs, cattle, chickens, etc.), and even among our pets. Use of antimicrobials is an integral part of modern human medicine and modern livestock production.

 

Approximately one-third of the consumption of antimicrobials in the EU is used within the human sector, while two-thirds is used in the veterinarian sector. However, every time antimicrobials are used to combat bacterial infections, the bacteria tends to become more resistant. Today, most bacterial infections can still be treated with antimicrobials, but in the near future, there is good reason to believe that we will be facing ‘superbugs’ for which antimicrobials will have no effect.

 

Over the past decade, the EU has taken a number of steps to combat AMR at the global and European level. In many ways, the EU is taking the lead in this effort, collaborating with UN organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO). The European Commission has launched two actions plans to combat antimicrobial resistance within the EU countries. The first Action Plan was launched in 2011, and the second in 2017. Both action plans contain a number of initiatives that can help ameliorate the AMR threat.

 

The basic aim of these initiatives has been to reduce overall consumption of antimicrobials in the EU. These include a proposal to increase testing of patients before they are given antimicrobials, increased antimicrobials stewardship systems at hospitals, and limiting the use of antimicrobials in livestock production. There is a close correlation between the level of antimicrobial use and the level of AMR. Countries with high levels of antimicrobial use, such as Italy, have high levels of AMR, while countries with low levels of use of antimicrobials, such as Denmark, also have low levels of AMR. Reducing overuse of antimicrobials is therefore a central goal in the EU Commission’s action plans.

 

A major challenge to the development of a common EU AMR policy is that health policy is primarily an area of national competence. The national control over health policy is explicitly stated in the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (Art. 168 No. 7 TFEU). This national competence has also been the case for EU policies aimed at reducing the risk of developing AMR.

 

Consequently, the Commission is prevented from initiating regulation on antimicrobial use unless there is clear support from the member states. The Commission has thus based a number of their initiatives in the AMR action plans on ‘soft law’. Hence,  instead of laws and directives, they use ‘recommendations’ and ‘methods of open coordination’ as the regulatory instrument for reducing overuse of antimicrobials among, for example, physicians or  pig farmers. Binding legislation such as EU ‘regulations’ or ‘directives’ are seldom used in the AMR context, unless these can be directly related to the single market. From the Commission’s perspective, the use of soft law within the field of AMR can be seen as a strategic way of dealing with the lack of EU competence in this policy field in situations where there is a clear need for transnational initiatives.

 

The action plans to combat AMR launched by the Commission have definitely increased focus on AMR problems among the EU member states. Most member states have developed their own plans for how to reduce the use (and overuse) of antimicrobials at national level.

 

Yet, the overall consumption of antimicrobials in the EU remains high. One explanation for continued overuse of antimicrobials is probably that the EU actions plans are rather new, and that a number of member states until now have not been so active in the combat against AMR. Another reason could be that the use of soft law reduces the effects of the EU initiatives. Member states might feel a normative pressure to act in line with the Commission’s recommendations, but at the end of the day, they decide for themselves whether they wish to follow the recommendations. In that respect, pressure is on the member states as they have the main responsibility for reducing the consumption of antimicrobials.

 

The Covid-19 crisis has laid bare the interdependence of the EU member states when it comes to vulnerability to different types of transnational health challenges. Both Covid-19 and in the long term the risk of AMR have put pressure on the member states in order to accept a higher degree of EU policy development in relation to health policy.

 

This blog post draws on Carsten Strøby Jensen, ‘While We Are Waiting for the Superbug: Constitutional Asymmetry and EU Governmental Policies to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance,’ published in JCMS.

 

 

 Carsten Strøby Jensen is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen. His work has mainly focused on political sociology, labour market and processes of EU integration. Recently he has increasing worked with different societal aspect of the consequences of antimicrobial resistance.

 

 

 

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In a celebratory Tweet, Home Secretary Priti Patel has announced the end of ‘free movement’.

She wrote:

‘We’re ending free movement to open Britain up to the world. It will ensure people can come to our country based on what they have to offer, not where they come from.’

Her Tweet is an insult to all EU citizens who came to Britain specifically to work and who offer so much to our country.

And that represents most of them.

Because most EU citizens in this country are in gainful employment, doing jobs that we simply don’t have enough Britons to do, and who make a massive NET contribution to our Treasury and our economy.

Your Tweet, Ms Patel, demeans and diminishes them.

Those EU citizens came here because of what they could offer, and they offer so many skills that our country needs.

And yes, it was easier for them to come here because of where they are from. Because it makes sense – economically, environmentally and geographically – to have free movement between neighbouring countries.

Does ending free movement with Europe really ‘open Britain up to the world’?

No.

You are not opening up Britain ‘to the world’. You are simply applying the same rules to EU citizens that have always applied to non-EU citizens.

You are putting up new barriers to Europe, whilst keeping the same old barriers to all other continents.

With your crass Tweet, you are saying to EU citizens:

‘We don’t like where you’re from, and we don’t appreciate what you offer.’

What a slap in the face to the hard-working EU citizens offering so much to hospitals and care homes in service to the country and our citizens, especially at this time, in the middle of a pandemic.

Without EU citizens working in all sectors, trades, professions and industries right across the UK, our country would be poorer and not nearly so enriched.

Do you really know what you are doing to Britain? Or understand the divisiveness of your words and actions?

 

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‘Visit Europe from 1 January 2021’ is the title of the UK government website which ironically tells you how much more difficult visiting ‘Europe’ will be from next year.

Yes, we’re getting our country back (really?) but instead, we’re losing our continent, or at least, easy access to it.

Among some of the key points for travel throughout the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein from 1 January 2021:

 You may be refused entry if your passport only has 6 months left

 The guarantee of free mobile phone roaming ends

 Your EHIC health card is only valid until 31 December 2020

 Use separate lanes from EU/EEA arrivals when queuing

 Visa requirements for long stays, business travel, work or study

 Your pet passport will no longer be valid

 Extra documents to drive

 Customs declarations for business goods

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. More restrictions are likely, especially – as anticipated – we don’t get a deal this year covering our new relationship with the EU.

Brexit means ending free movement between us and our continent.

 Oh, how the people of the former Communist countries would have cherished ‘free movement’ instead of being trapped behind their Iron Curtain.  Oh, how Winston Churchill would have been amazed – shocked – that the people of Britain would volunteer to end easy access to the European mainland.

It was he who wrote to his foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, on 21 October 1942, after the first British victory of the Second World War at El Alamein:

‘Hard as it is to say now.. I look forward to a United States of Europe, in which the barriers between the nations will be greatly minimised and unrestricted travel will be possible.’

And it was he who said in his famous speech on 5 March 1946 at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri:

“The safety of the world requires a new unity in Europe, from which no nation should be permanently outcast.”

 And yet, it’s Britain that is maximising the barriers between European nations and restricting travel.  And yet, it’s Britain that is shunning unity in Europe by making ourselves a permanent outcast. What have we done?

 

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A no-deal Brexit now looks almost certain, with the latest round of talks between the UK and the EU ending in stalemate, and the negotiations by all accounts turning acrimonious.

It’s almost as if the British government wants a no-deal, even though the non-binding ‘political statement’ of the Withdrawal Agreement, approved by the UK Parliament, called on both sides to achieve:

“a free trade area…underpinned by a level playing field”

Both sides are far away from achieving a ‘level playing field’ – with Britain insisting on retaining some EU benefits, with the EU saying you can’t pick and choose, or enjoy EU benefits without agreeing to our rules.

 Yes, the country voted for Brexit – albeit by the slimmest of margins, and with only a minority of the electorate voting for Leave

(Just 37% of the UK electorate voted for Leave – in all other mature democracies across the world that hold referendums on key issues, that would not have been enough for Leave to have won. A super majority endorsement of at least 50% of the entire electorate, and often at least 60%, would have been required before a big change could go ahead.)

 Yes, Leave was on the ballot paper, and Leave won.

But when did Britain vote for a No-Deal Brexit?

We’ve never been given any say on what type of Brexit we’ll get – and still we don’t know what Brexit we might get.

That’s like saying to the estate agent,

‘We agree to sell the house. But we’ll leave it up to you what our next home will be.’

The current transition period runs until 31 December 2020, during which time the UK continues to follow EU rules.

After that? We don’t know.

The government responded bluntly last month to an online petition requesting a Brexit transition extension:

“The transition period ends on 31 December 2020, as enshrined in UK law. The Prime Minister has made clear he has no intention of changing this. We remain fully committed to negotiations with the EU.”

As reported by The Week magazine:

‘The EU wants the UK to agree to follow its rules on fair and open competition so British companies given tariff-free access to the EU market can’t undercut their European competition.

‘The EU has warned that the UK won’t be allowed a “high-quality” market unless it signs up to EU social and environmental standards.’

If a deal can’t be agreed with the EU, then the UK will default to World Trade Organization (WTO) terms from 1 January 2021.

Every WTO member has a list of tariffs and quotas that they apply to other countries.

As The Week outlined in stark terms:

‘That means the UK would be hit by big taxes when it tried to sell products to the EU market. The bloc’s average WTO tariffs are 11.1% for agricultural goods, 15.7% for animal products and 35.4% for dairy. ‘British car makers would be hit with a 10% tariff on exports to the bloc, which could amount to €5.7bn per year. That would increase the average price of a British car sold in the EU by €3,000. ‘Currently, trade between the UK and EU is tariff-free. But the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) predicts that no-deal would mean that 90% of the UK’s goods exports to the EU would be subjected to tariffs. ‘WTO “most favoured nation” (MFN) rules mean that the UK couldn’t lower its tariffs for any specific country or bloc, such as the EU, without agreeing a trade deal.’

The EU is the UK’s biggest export and import market by far – almost half of ALL our exports go to the EU and just over half of ALL our imports come from the EU.

Even the UK government, in it’s ‘secret’ but leaked Yellowhammer report last year, detailed how a no-deal Brexit would be catastrophic for the UK, including delays at ports and food and medicine shortages.

And that’s before the government knew anything about the Covid-19 pandemic, which is sending the UK into recession, with unemployment predicted to spiral.

Back in the day, before the referendum campaign, when the Conservative government was pro-Remain, they presented the three main Brexit alternatives – all of which, said the government then, would cause damage to Britain.

① THE NORWAY OPTION – means Britain would leave the EU but still have free and frictionless access to the EU Single Market, by far Britain’s most important and lucrative export and import market. But this option would mean Britain continuing to pay the EU and obey its rules – including free movement of people – without any say in them.

② THE CANADA OPTION means Britain would have tariff free trade with the EU, but not the highly cherished and valuable frictionless trade. And there would only be limited access for our services sector, which makes up almost 80% of our economy.

③ THE WTO OPTION (often referred to as ‘no-deal’) means relying on World Trade Organisation rules. But that would mean new tariffs and complicated, costly procedures on UK trade with the EU, hurting British consumers, businesses and employment. It would also suddenly and catastrophically end all EU membership benefits, affecting all our daily lives.

None of these options were presented as choices in the referendum that voters could opt for. The only option was for Remain, or an undefined Leave.

Before the referendum, Jacob Rees-Mogg proposed a second referendum if Leave won. He said in 2011, when he was campaigning for a new referendum on Brexit:

‘We could have two referendums. As it happens, it might make more sense to have the second referendum after the renegotiation is completed.’

It makes sense now to give people a vote on the type of Brexit we want. Of course, the Tories won’t give us that.

But do remember that when, early next year, the country is likely to be in the middle of two catastrophes: Covid-19, and a no-deal Brexit.

One on top of the other will cause us deep pain.

Given a choice, wouldn’t you vote to avoid the second pain, since unlike Covid-19, it is entirely avoidable?

 

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The EU’s support for R2P

The EU’s engagement with the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) – a principle agreed by UN members in 2005 to prevent and respond to atrocities – reflects a surprisingly mixed record in some respects. The slow pace and, at times, ambivalence with which the EU has explicitly embraced R2P, in spite of the support of key individual members, reflects political disagreements about R2P in national capitals and bureaucratic reluctance in Brussels.

However, in recent years the EU appears to have finally shifted its substantial resources behind R2P. In 2013 the European Parliament launched a major initiative to consolidate and operationalize the EU’s support for R2P and to formulate a ‘European consensus’ on the issue. In 2016 the EU appointed an R2P Focal Point to coordinate its activities in this area – the first regional organization to do so. The European External Action Service officially launched its ‘Toolkit for Atrocity Prevention’ in January 2019, designed to coordinate European responses to atrocities in a proactive and coherent manner. EU members also represent an active group of national R2P Focal Points.

The EU has actively contributed to UN General Assembly Interactive Dialogues, and EU members have also provided input into the Annual Reports of the UN Secretary-General on the topic. Furthermore, the EU Delegation to the UN has actively participated in the activities and meetings of the ‘Group of Friends of R2P’ in New York, a group of state supporters of R2P, whose co-chair has always been a European country. All this has helped to promote the R2P label in diplomatic circles and strengthen its normative traction.

 

R2P and the EU’s global role

Photo credit: The Hague Institute for Global Justice, 3 October 2016

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These initiatives have taken place in parallel with broader efforts to project a more active global role for the EU in conflict resolution, security, and normative leadership. As the EU High Representative stated in December 2018, ‘The Responsibility to Protect is a principle that the EU has integrated in its policies and we are closely working together with international partners, in particular with the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, and civil society organisations, to end impunity…and to establish effective prevention schemes’.

 

Remaining constraints on the EU’s international normative role

However, doubts have lingered about the EU’s capacity and willingness to internalise R2P. Despite the European Parliament’s call in 2013 for consensus and coordination across the EU on R2P, a significant EU attempt to implement R2P in this sense has been slow to materialize. The EU’s recent activism – at least in terms of its internal bureaucratic organisation and declarations – therefore raises a number of questions. Can the EU be a global leader in championing R2P, at a time when the EU’s normative authority is arguably in decline, and when international order is apparently shifting against liberal norms? How will the EU’s commitment to R2P weigh against its geopolitical and economic interests?

 

The EU’s normative leadership in a changing global order

These questions are linked to the transitional international order. Rising powers have increasingly resisted key aspects of the liberal international order and openly contest norms such as R2P. This reflects a normative tension, and in particular a resurgence of conservative interpretations of state sovereignty, and also the perception amongst some states that norms related to civilian protection are a pretext for Western attempts to maintain hegemony.

While non-Western contestation has increased, international cooperation around liberal values and norms has been problematized by an apparent rise in nationalism and populism within the traditional sponsors of international order. The Western allies, formerly close partners in supporting liberal institutions and multilateralism generally, are fragmenting as a cohesive bloc.

The President of the European Commission portrayed the EU as being ‘in an existential crisis’ in 2016, and the latest EU Global Strategy similarly observed in the same year that ‘We live in times of existential crisis, within and beyond the European Union. Our Union is under threat.’ This raises questions about the EU’s capacity to provide normative leadership in support of R2P on the global stage, and points to a more instrumentalist, strategic approach to tackling global challenges, rather than one driven by liberal normative commitments.

 

Internal European contestation

In addition to the global normative contestation in relation to R2P – which problematizes the EU’s engagement with the principle – there is also evidence of normative contestation within Europe. Divisions remain across and within EU members regarding the scope and operationalization of R2P, in particular regarding the role of military force in preventing or stopping egregious human rights violations.

The EU has also been slow to internalize R2P into external action machinery. In addition, the EU’s credibility in terms of its leadership in promoting humanitarian values can be questioned in relation to ‘internal’ standards and practices. Minority rights, attitudes towards hate crimes and incitement, and policies towards people fleeing human rights abuse have all raised questions about Europe’s commitment to humanitarianism, or even accusations of double standards. As a result, Europe’s standing as a credible normative actor in relation to R2P is potentially in tension with – or even undermined by – the policies or standards of justice within some European countries.

 

The EU’s vital work in support of R2P

Nevertheless, the EU’s operational role in engaging with R2P is vital to keeping the principle alive as a policy framework. The EU has enormous capacity in atrocity prevention when it aligns its considerable resources and policy programmes in support of R2P. In supporting programmes aimed at strengthening responsible governance, human rights, the rule of law, and conflict prevention, the EU has the potential for real impact in preventing the conditions which may result in egregious human rights abuses.

Its Atrocity Prevention Toolkit also demonstrates the EU’s concrete commitment to strengthening early warning methodologies which have the potential to be world-leading. The steps that it has taken to engage with R2P demonstrate a commitment to coordinate EU activities around a shared set of goals in support of atrocity prevention. Further progress in this regard depends upon R2P being embraced not only by EU officials, but also by political leaders in member states. In addition, further progress in terms of policy coherence across the broad range of programmes and activities of the EU is important if the EU is to be fully integrated into the R2P agenda.

 

Can the EU save R2P?

However, irrespective of this internal progress, the promotion of the R2P framework as a norm remains problematic in global perspective. And so, while the R2P norm needs renewed leadership to survive, it is doubtful that this will come from the EU. Even if the problem of political will in Europe could be overcome in support of a more decisive approach to atrocity prevention, it is unlikely that this would gain greater traction internationally as long as the international political climate remains inhospitable to emerging human rights norms.

If the EU’s engagement with R2P is a test of its normative leadership – its ability to shape international politics as a result of its constitutive values – then the prognosis is not encouraging, in the context of both internal and external political challenges to its authority. This points to constraints on the norm, while also contributing to the ongoing critique of the ‘Normative Power Europe’ concept both in theory and in practice. The prioritization of hard economic and security interests, and the desire to avoid political conflict with strategic partners, allies and adversaries, mean that norms such as the R2P have become something of a luxury, especially for national actors if not for EU officials. And from the external perspective, the persuasiveness of the EU as a normative actor is in doubt within this transitional international order in which liberal internationalism is in retreat.

This blog post draws on Edward Newman and Cristina G. Stefan, ‘Normative Power Europe? The EU’s Embrace of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ in a Transitional International Order’, published in JCMS

 

 

Edward Newman is a Professor of International Security in the School of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the University of Leeds.

 

 

Cristina G. Stefan is an Associate Professor of International Relations in POLIS, University of Leeds, and the Co-Director of the European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (ECR2P).’

 

 

 

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Ten years ago this week, in May 2010, I moved to Brussels for the first time. I went there to do research for my doctoral thesis, because I wanted to understand how EU interest groups got access to information. I wanted to be in Brussels to go beyond what was accessible on EU websites at the time, which was improving but still relatively limited. But a lot has happened in a decade.

Today, the availability of information and data is much better, and I explain in a new series of videos how to find information on EU lobbying and interest group access on EU websites.

I have produced these videos because I’m teaching an M.A. seminar on EU lobbying this summer term. This week, there is a class on “How to measure access?“, which ranges  from looking at available official websites and datasets (i.e. what’s in the videos) to Camilla  Nothhaft’s 2017 PhD-thesis that employs ethnographic methods to study lobbying.

In doing the video recordings and going through EU websites again, I realized how much has changed between the time when I arrived in Brussels in 2010 and now.

Having worked with and for the Transparency International EU Office in various capacities between 2010-14, I was actually part of the group of civil society activists who fought for the availability of such information and data. And yet, it’s still amazing to see what type of research you can do today that was not possible in 2010.

Take the 2019 JCMS article “Organizing Transmission Belts: The Effect of Organizational Design on Interest Group Access to EU Policy‐making” (open access) by Adrià Albareda and Caelesta Braun and this single paragraph (p.475):

Those of you who have been reading my blog for the past decade will remember my 2011 blog post on why having a downloadable database of EU expert groups would be great for research. (I’m just kidding, you probably don’t remember that but I do.) The network visualization that I did for this blog post mirrors network visualizations I would later do in my doctoral thesis with data from EU fisheries policy expert groups and regional advisory councils.

So when Albareda & Braun write that they “downloaded” the European Commission expert group register—which you can do here—back in January of 2015, this would not have been possible in 2010 or 2011 when I was looking at EU expert groups for my own research.

As an activist with Transparency International in Brussels, I then had my first meeting with an EU Commission official working on the expert group register in May 2011. So that was quite exactly nine years ago. Back then, I tried to convince them to make the database downloadable, which technically was not possible at the time, so nothing happened at first.

Then, in January 2012, I received a first database version of the expert group register through a freedom of information request. Here is the spreadsheet with the expert group register database as of 30 January 2012 that I got access to back then.

After some more convincing and advocacy, the downloadable expert group database that you can find online today finally became available in April 2013. At that time, I was working on the final first draft of my PhD thesis with no time for additional research, so had to hope that others would make use of the data—and that is exactly in the way Albareda & Braun did in their article.

The second type information on EU interest group access used by Albareda & Braun—meetings of EU Commissioners and their cabinets with EU interest groups—also was not available when I started my PhD research. And it only became available after I had left Brussels six years ago.

During my activism time, which was during the Barroso II Commission, any attempt to get to a point where these EU Commission meetings would be published was impossible. But the 2014 review of the EU Transparency Register (TR) opened the door for such data availability.

For years, but in particular during the TR review process of 2013-14, many NGOs and interest groups participating in the consultation process—including TI-EU where I was working at the time—had tried to convinced EU Commission and EU Parliament to introduce the possibility to create “incentives” for lobby registration. We asked for incentives that would make the EU’s lobby register “quasi-mandatory” because lobby organization would only get access to EU policy makers in exchange for registration.

With the results of the review of the Transparency Register, transparency now became part of the gatekeeping possibilities of the EU institutions: no transparency, no access.

And when the Juncker Commission came into office in November 2014, meetings with high-level Commission officials had not just to be made public but those interest groups wanting to have meetings also had to be on the Transparency Register. The same became true for membership on EU Commission expert groups (I don’t remember when this was introduced, though). As a result, registration in the register increased massively at the time, and so our knowledge of the EU interest group population also grew.

Because of the advocacy of many activists, EU lobbying researchers today have much better access to information and data on EU interest group access, especially to the European Commission.

And because of the open data and linked data advocacy that came with some of us realizing 9-10 years ago how useful data was, the Transparency Register and the Expert Group register are both downloadable.

More than that:

When you go to the Transparency Register today (e.g. to the BEUC entry), you can find linked information there on EU lobbying access of the respective interest group (e.g. BEUC) to variety of arenas an policy makers. Meetings with the Commission are downloadable as PDF right there on the Transparency Register, and the list of expert groups in which an interest group is a member is also there:

So if you are a student interest in studying EU lobbying today, you have many ways of finding and downloading information and data, and in the series of videos I have produced I explain how to actually find some of these.

What is great to see, ten years after I moved to Brussels for the first time and six years after I left for the last time, is that research on EU interest group access is possible today that wasn’t possible a decade ago. Seeing and teaching articles like the one by Albareda & Braun (2019) feels even more meaningful when you can appreciate the progress it represents and that civil society activism has turned into scientific advances in our understanding of EU lobbying and interest groups.

The post Measuring interest group access to EU policy makers: what a difference a decade makes appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

These days is the 10-th anniversary of the anti-European coup d’état in Ukraine´s political course, caused by the election of Victor Yanukovych as a new president. The new course symbolized “close to Russia – away from Europe” regime strategy, which ended in ousting of Yanukovych out to where he was leading the country – to Russia.

 

Yanukovych introduced his revisionist, almost revolutionary reforms in cultural and educational spheres by the appointment of Dmytro Tabachnyk as a minister of education. As a response, wide-scale public and student protests ensued across Ukraine. This new political context lead to the emergence of the civic campaign against the new ruler, and it had huge influence over further developments.  Massive voter dissatisfaction with new cultural and educational policies sensibilized the voters and contributed much to the protest potential. It put in motion certain waves of collective action and subsequent fall of the Yanukovych regime in early 2014. Tabachnyk´s persistence with destruction of existing educational system brought to streets even those who were not prone to active action. The undemocratic regime thus significantly contributed to its own demise and brought about most indispensable requirements for “colour revolutions”, which are not only the security forces sympathetic with protesters, but also a weak and unpopular state incumbent, largely divided elite, a meaningful opposition and active civil society.

 

Yanukovych was rather successful in monopolizing power, first, by going much further then did Leonid Kuchma (1994-2004) by not only returning to the 1996 version of the Constitution but also by taking control of the legislature, the judiciary, power ministries, etc. But in the end Yanukovych´s authoritarianism turned out to be quite fragile due to its particular radical anti-Ukrainian features, and the existence of formal electoral cycles – the hurdles to be periodically mastered, as well as the electorate´s specificities, such as identity, ideational preferences, etc., which undermined Yanukovych´s zero-sum power monopolization.

 

The positive changes enacted after the Orange Revolution, when Kuchma and Yanukovych lost to Yushchenko in 2004, were not properly institutionalized. Thus, most of Ukraine´s media remained privately owned by oligarchs and public broadcasting was not created. Yanukovych used his ultimate election, backed up by Putin and mobilized by the Russophone vote against Yushchenko in 2010 as an opportunity to alter the previous course of de-sovietisation and to take revenge on the “nationalists” – i.e. Ukrainian speakers and the nation state building policies as such. E.g., Yanukovych dissolved the National Commission for Freedom of Speech and Media Development, the National Commission for Strengthening Democracy and the Rule of Law and other institutions, “reformed” the Institute of National Memory to be headed by a convinced Communist, signed a decree cancelling the celebration of the anniversary of the Orange Revolution, obliged state radio and TV to broadcast the Moscow´s parades in Ukraine.

 

For its support Kremlin urged Yanukovych to appoint as minister of education Dmytro Tabachnyk, a convinced Homo Sovieticus, who previously headed Kuchma’s 1994 election campaign, subsequently became chief of staff of Kuchma’s presidential administration and after this new appointment became infamous for pejorative statements regarding Ukrainian intelligentsia, nation state, numerous corruption scandals, and re-writing of school textbooks to suit Putin. Furthermore, he cancelled the state exam in the Ukrainian language in universities, downplayed the 1933 Holodomor as a Ukrainian genocide or artificial famine, removed quotas on using the Ukrainian language in cultural spheres, revisited the role of the Ukrainian national liberation movement during World War II in Ukrainian textbooks, thus returning to negative Soviet interpretations, sought to reorganize The National Research Institute of Ukrainian Studies into “the institute of world history”, ignored the law on student self-government rights and independent student unions, tried to adopt the law for rigid centralization of education and to reduce the number of universities by 10 times…

 

Tabachnik has polarized the country in the cultural sphere. His and Yanukovych´s actions incited an opposition movement and widespread protests across Ukraine under the slogan “Down with Tabachnyk”, attracting thousands of demonstrators across the country. Some further factors which triggered the protests were the emancipated, post-independence born young population organized through civil society initiatives, the very nature of regime and elites, the existing political institutions, as well as national identity and modes of pressure on both sides.

 

by Alexander Svyetlov

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Maybe it’s the coronavirus, maybe it’s the floods, maybe it’s the excitement around the Prime Minister’s engagement/child-to-be, but we seem to have largely given up talking about Brexit any more.

Sure, there’s debate if you want it, tucked away in the Westminster/Brussels bubble and deep in the inside sections of the paper, but it’s a small fraction of what it was before.

Partly this is about the churn of people that I’ve written about before, but equally it’s about the other stuff that clamours for our attention. Stockpiling for a virus is newer/more engaging than boring old stockpiling for a no-deal.

Rather than ascribe this to some masterplan on the part of Number 10 (or anyone else), largely it comes down to the concatenation of events that followed the December general election. Parliament faded to irrelevance, Labour disappeared to sort itself out, the cliff-edge was averted, the impossible was done.

So, sure it’s tough again, but nothing like before and we get out of that tight corner, so how about we focus on the bloke on the bus with the sniffle?

Importantly though, as much as this is the product of circumstance, it doesn’t mean no-one cares.

David Gauke wrote a thread about this at the weekend, which I responded to:

Have been turning this over all day. It makes sense, but only if you neglect where it leaves you.

1/ https://t.co/c5qTvmgKMZ

— Simon Usherwood (@Usherwood) February 29, 2020

Rather than type out again both views, I’d note that as much as the government might see a no-deal outcome from the current round as not that bad, they still have to demonstrate that through their actions.

Critically, as several tweeps responded to me, prepping for no-deal is actually not so different from prepping for the deal the UK is seeking. Most obviously, Northern Ireland needs an operational system in any case, because of the commitments in the Withdrawal Agreement.

Failure to secure infrastructure, personnel and procedures in time for any part of this coming arrangement merely heightens the costs to the UK and generates more pressure for subsequent action to resolve it.

Even if you can blame the EU for that, it doesn’t change the necessity of the EU’s role as a necessary counterparty to those talks on sorting out the mess.

The argument might be made that the EU would be so embarrassed by the failure of the process that it makes significant concessions to get out of the hole. Quite part from being hugely optimistic, it also neglects the legal constraints that the organisation operates under: the kind of concessions that you hear British politicians talk about are just the kind of concessions the EU is bound not to make. Rules play a much more fundamental part of the EU’s nature than they do in the UK, precisely because the former isn’t underpinned by an affective community that can weather such challenges.

But this is to get ahead of ourselves.

Today sees the end of the first round of formal negotiation talks between the two sides. There is a process in place for helping the two to try to find a mutual-acceptable outcome. Breakfast food choices aside, there has been no public spat at this stage.

Strikingly, compared with the Article 50 process, the level of public scrutiny is much less. No photos and analysis of How Many Notebooks Did You Bring To The First Meeting, no prominent briefing to friendly journalists.

That makes life somewhat easier for those involved: not having to provide a running commentary means both more time to talk with counterparts and less need to play to the gallery.

Whether that’s enough to move this through to a stable and productive conclusion remains to be seen.

The post Fade to meh appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

On 20-21 February 2020, European Union heads of state met for a special European Council, dedicated to the EU long-term budget for 2021-2027.  It ended without a political agreement; soon, another summit will take place for further negotiations. Today I will not write about what why the EU’s long-term budget (2021-2027) did not go through; although how the cost of the budget should be shared among the net contributors, and whether the net payers can claim a rebate were the primary sources of the fallout.

 

Reuters/Pool

Next time around when the heads of the Member States meet, the proposal to linking EU funds with the Rule of Law may strike another friction between the MSs. For example, when Viktor Orban, Hungarian Prime Minister, was asked if the proposal for tying community funds to the rule of law in recipient countries were agenda in the EU budget discussions, he said: “{T}his issue might emerge in the final phase of negotiations”.⁠

In this descriptive piece, I will provide an outline of how and why the EU proposes to link sound financial management of the long-term budget with respect for the rule of law. Also, I will highlight on the mechanism and measures, proposed to address generalised deficiencies with the rule of law in the EU. I will heavily draw on the European Commission’s Proposal of May 2018 on the protection of the Union’s budget in case of generalised deficiencies as regards the rule of law in the MS. Finally; I will speculate on the effectiveness of the new mechanisms in dealing with lack of respect for the rule of law.

I like to begin with defining what is meant by (i) the rule of law and (ii) generalised deficiency.

The rule of law refers to the Union value enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union, which includes the below-listed principles:

• legality, implying a transparent, accountable, democratic and pluralistic process for enacting laws,
• legal certainty,
• prohibition of arbitrariness of the executive powers,
• adequate judicial protection by independent courts, including of fundamental rights and,
• separation of powers and equality before the law.

Generalised  deficiency as regards the rule of law means a widespread or recurrent practice or omission, or measure by public authorities, which affects the rule of law.  Examples of what may be considered as generalised deficiencies as regards the rule of law:

• endangering the independence of the judiciary,
• failing to prevent, correct and sanction arbitrary or unlawful decisions by public authorities and,
• limiting the availability and effectiveness of legal remedies.

Why the EU wants to connect the rule of law with the EU budget?

The Commission considers that there is a close link between the respect for the rule of law and mutual trust and financial solidarity amongst the MSs. Thus it is believed that sufficient respect for the rule of law is a prerequisite for confidence that EU spending in M is sufficiently protected.  While it is expected that the different constitutions and judicial systems of the EU MS are in principle well designed to ensure the rule of law and equipped with in-built safeguards to protect citizens against any threat to the rule of law.  It is suggested that several recent events, for instance in Hungary and Poland, have demonstrated generalised weaknesses in national checks and balances and have shown how a lack of respect for the rule of law can become a matter of severe and common concern within the EU. Following which the European Parliament and the public in large have requested from the EU to take actions to protect the rule of law. Thus it has been proposed that existing obligations to ensure effective control systems should be supplemented by new measures to ensure respect of the rule of law.

What mechanisms will identify generalised deficiency?

The new proposal proposes that the identification of a generalised deficiency require a qualitative assessment by the Commission. That assessment could be based on the information from all available sources and recognized institutions, including judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union, reports of the Court of Auditors, and conclusions and recommendations of relevant international organisations and networks, such as the bodies of the Council of Europe and the European networks of supreme courts and councils for the judiciary.

When however the Commission considers that the generalised deficiency as regards the rule of law is established, it shall submit a proposal for an implementing act on the appropriate measures to the Council. Then the decision shall be deemed to have been adopted by the Council, unless it decides, by a qualified majority, to reject the Commission proposal. Nevertheless, the Council, acting by a qualified majority, may amend the Commission’s proposal and adopt the amended text as a Council decision.

Carl Court/Getty Images

What are the proposed sanctions?

If the Commission found generalised deficiencies in one of the MSs as regards the rule of law, it could:

• suspend payments or the implementation of the legal commitment or terminate the legal commitment; issue a prohibition on entering into new legal commitments,
• suspend the approval of one or more programmes or amend such programmes,
• suspend commitments; reduce commitments, including through financial corrections or transfers to other spending programmes,
• reduce pre-financing,
• interrupt payment deadlines and,
•  suspend payments.

These sanctions could be invoked when a generalised deficiency as regards the rule of law in an MS endangers:

• The proper functioning of the authorities implementing the Union budget,
• the proper functioning of investigation and
• public prosecution of fraud or corruption relating to the budget
• the effective judicial review by independent courts,
• the prevention and sanctioning of fraud, corruption or other breaches of EU law relating to the budget, or
• the effective and timely cooperation with the European Anti-Fraud Office and with the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.

How and when sanctions will be lifted?

The MS, which is under scrutiny, could at any time submit to the European Commission evidence to show that the generalised deficiency as regards the rule of law has been remedied or has ceased to exist. Following that, the Commission shall assess the situation in the MS once it is concluded that generalised deficiencies as regards the rule of law cease to exist in full or in part, the Commission could submit to the Council a proposal for a decision lifting those measures in full or in part.

Next,

The legal basis of the proposal (a Regulation) is Article 322 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, through which financial management rules are set. This means that the proposal is adopted jointly by the European Parliament and the Council, the latter acting with a qualified majority.  While the above proposal puts forward the European Commission’s aspirations in dealing with the non-compliant MSs from a budgetary perspective. The Rule of Law mechanism is an essential part of the overall set of proposals on the long-term budget 2021- 2027. The instrument and its final shape are currently negotiated between the institutions.  In September 2019, the EP expressed its support for plans to link EU funds to the rule of law. However, the EP is demanding equal footing in this process.

While I cannot predict if a formal agreement will be achieved in the next Summit not just on the long-term budget of the EU, but also on the proposal to link the sound management of the EU budget with the rule of law. I suspect that the subject matter will spark heated negotiations among the heads of the MSs. We know that many Western EU governments are keen to introduce new safeguards to protect EU funds in case of the rule of law deficiencies impacting the bloc’s financial interest. In contrast, countries like Hungary and Poland, with poor rule of law records do not find it fair that there is a plan to link budgetary funds to the rule of law.

Ultimately, the question is how effectively the EU will enforce the new mechanisms against those MSs, who do not comply with the rule of law standards of the EU. Since the approval of the sanctions, as outlined above, do require qualified majority from the European Council, I am not convinced if the necessary support for activation of the sanctions will ever be reached. The aspiration of the European Commission to link EU funds with respect for rule of law can be another nuclear option like the Article 7 procedure, which is available for the EU to use when needed, but it remains untouched.

Then you have every right to ask: why the fuss?

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Jon Danzig next to a cut-out of Winston Churchill at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, which has an entire building named after the great war leader in recognition of him being one of the founders of the EU.

Britain’s greatest war leader, Sir Winston Churchill, was one of the first to call for the creation of a ‘United States of Europe’. He is recognised as one of the 11 founders of today’s European Union.

In the immediate years following the Second World War, Churchill was convinced that only a ‘united Europe’ could guarantee peace. His passionate aim was to eliminate the European ills of nationalism and warmongering once and for all.

Even before the war, back in 1930, in an article for America’s ‘Saturday Evening Post’, Churchill concluded that:

‘The concept of a United States of Europe is right.’

In that prescient article, which today reads like an early blueprint for the European Union, Churchill imagined:

A Europe without internal barriers or tariffs, or passports, or multiple currencies, which would enable ‘the free interchange of goods and services’ and ‘the free travel of people’ across the continent.

The idea of ‘European unity’ was not new, he asserted. Reminding his American readers of the Roman Empire, Churchill wrote:

‘Europe has known the days when Rumanians lived on the Tyne and Spaniards on the Danube as equal citizens of a single state.’

He added:

‘Everywhere, in every age, in every area however wide, our every grouping of peoples however diverse, unity has made for strength and prosperity for all within its circle.

‘Why should Europe fear unity?’

It was clear from this article, however, that at that time Churchill did not envisage Britain – which then headed a huge Empire and Commonwealth straddling the world – needing or wanting to be part of a ‘United States of Europe’.

He wrote:

‘We are bound to further every honest and practical step to which the nations of Europe may make to reduce barriers which divide them and to nourish their common interests and their common welfare.

‘We rejoice at every diminution of the internal tariffs and the martial armaments of Europe. We see nothing but good and hope in a richer, freer, more contented European commonality.

‘But we have our own dream and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed.’

However, Churchill’s view in 1930 would be bound to change after 1945, by which time Europe had suffered two world wars and was desperate to avoid another.

Churchill was never a ‘little Englander’. He supported an ambitious union of governments, and even called for a “world super-government” without which, he said, the prospects for peace and human progress were “dark and doubtful.”

During the Second World War, it was Prime Minister Churchill who announced in June 1940 the ‘Declaration of Union’ between Great Britain and France.

With the full backing of his Cabinet, Churchill stated:

‘The two governments declare that France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British Union…

‘Every citizen of France will enjoy immediately citizenship of Great Britain; every British subject will become a citizen of France.’

An Anglo-French stamp was even designed to commemorate the proposed Anglo-Franco union, but the Nazi invasion of France scuppered those plans.

The proposals did demonstrate, however, that Churchill was in favour of political union between European countries.

After the first British victory of the Second World War at El Alamein, Churchill wrote to his foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, on 21 October 1942:

‘Hard as it is to say now.. I look forward to a United States of Europe, in which the barriers between the nations will be greatly minimised and unrestricted travel will be possible.’

In a lecture about this in December 2011, Oxford Professor of Government, Vernon Bogdanor, described Churchill’s letter as, “remarkably prescient” adding that he thought the comment, “would get him expelled from the Conservative Party today”.

After the Second World War, Churchill strongly believed that a united Europe was the only way to avoid future conflicts and wars on our continent.

In his famous Zurich speech of 1946, Churchill said:

“We must build a kind of United States of Europe..

“The structure of the United States of Europe, if well and truly built, will be such as to make the material strength of a single state less important..

“If at first all the states of Europe are not willing or able to join the union, we must nevertheless proceed to assemble and combine those who will and those who can.”

In May 1948 Churchill said in the opening speech to the Congress of Europe in Holland, that the drive towards a United Europe, “should be a movement of the people, not parties”.

Churchill, who also proposed a European ‘Charter’ and ‘Court’ of Human Rights, continued:

“We aim at the eventual participation of all the peoples throughout the continent whose society and way of life are in accord with the Charter of Human Rights.”

During this momentous speech, Churchill proclaimed:

“We cannot aim at anything less than the union of Europe as a whole, and we look forward with confidence to the day when that union will be achieved.”

And Churchill went much further than the idea of the immediate and urgent creation of a United States of Europe. Looking boldly to the future he stated,

“We must endeavour by patience and faithful service to prepare for the day when there will be an effective world government resting on the main groupings of mankind.”

In August 1949, at the first meeting of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, Churchill delivered his speech in French, and said:

“There is no reason for us not to succeed in achieving our goal and laying the foundation of a United Europe.

“A Europe whose moral design will win the respect and acknowledgement of all humanity, and whose physical strength will be such that no person will dare to disturb it as it marches peacefully towards the future.”

The following year, in 1950, Churchill called for the creation of a European Army ‘..under a unified command, and in which we should all bear a worthy and honourable part.’ (France objected to this plan).

In an article for The Independent newspaper in 1996 by former UK prime minister, Edward Heath – who I interviewed when I was a teenager – he wrote:

‘I knew Winston Churchill, I worked with him, I stayed with him at his home, and I have read his speeches many times. I can assure you that Winston Churchill was no Eurosceptic.’

On Churchill’s call in 1946 for a ‘United States of Europe’, Edward Heath clarified:

‘I readily accept that at that time Churchill did not envisage Britain being a full member of this united Europe, but in gleefully seizing upon this point, Eurosceptics have misunderstood or misrepresented the nature of Churchill’s attitude to full British participation in Europe.

‘This reluctance was based on circumstance; it was not opposition based on principle. And the circumstances have changed in such a way that I am sure Churchill would now favour a policy that enabled Britain to be at the heart of the European Union.’

He added:

‘Churchill would be the first to realise that in the world today, where an isolated Britain would be dwarfed by five great powers, the United States, Russia, China, Japan and the European Union, Britain’s full participation in the European Union is vital, both for Britain and the rest of the world.’

 MY OPINION? When read fully and in context, my view is that Churchill not only enthusiastically believed in the ever-closer union of Europe, in which the UK would play a leading role, but also eventually a world government.

He was, at the least, a confederalist, but I would also argue, even ‘a kind of’ federalist too. He had great vision for a political ‘union of nations’ which it seems few today fully recognise or acknowledge.

And although it seems that Churchill didn’t at first envisage Britain being a full member of ‘a kind of’ United States of Europe, it’s clear that Churchill’s views later changed, as the British Empire and Commonwealth diminished, and Britain’s world influence shifted.

(Churchill was renowned for changing his views according to circumstances: he started his political life as a Conservative MP; then resigned to become a Liberal MP; then resigned from the Liberals to become a Conservative MP again).

Churchill made his last speech about Europe at London’s Central Hall, Westminster in July 1957, some four months after six founding nations – France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – established the European Economic Community by signing the Treaty of Rome.

Churchill welcomed the formation of a ‘common market’ by the six, provided that ‘the whole of free Europe will have access’. Churchill added:

“We genuinely wish to join a European free trade area.”

But Churchill also warned:

“If, on the other hand, the European trade community were to be permanently restricted to the six nations, the results might be worse than if nothing were done at all – worse for them as well as for us.

“It would tend not to unite Europe but to divide it – and not only in the economic field.”

 (Source: Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches Vol. 8 page 8681)

During the 1960s Churchill’s health rapidly declined, but his support for a united Europe didn’t. According to Churchill’s last Private Secretary, Sir Anthony Montague Brown, in August 1961, Churchill wrote to his constituency Chairman:

‘I think that the Government are right to apply to join the European Economic Community..’

In this letter, Churchill supported the ‘welding’ of West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg into ‘an organic whole’, which he described as a ‘happy outcome’ of the European Economic Community.

Churchill added:

‘We might well play a great part in these developments to the profit of not only ourselves, but of our European friends also.’

Sir Anthony also confirmed that in 1963, just two years before Churchill died, he wrote in a private letter:

‘The future of Europe if Britain were to be excluded is black indeed.’

• Watch my video, ‘Why the EU was started and why Britain joined’:

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes

________________________________________________________

• Join and share the discussion about this article on Facebook and Twitter:

During #WorldWar2 #Churchill wrote, 'Hard as it is to say now.. I look forward to a United States of Europe, in which the barriers between the nations will be greatly minimised and unrestricted travel will be possible.’ Churchill wasn't a #Brexiter! Share: https://t.co/zcLvOmoSIv

— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) March 1, 2020

 

The post ‘We must build a kind of United States of Europe’ said Churchill appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Philipp Lutz, David Kaufmann & Anna Stünzi

Following a surge of refugee arrivals in Europe in 2015, the numbers of new arrivals have significantly declined and the issue of asylum has ceased to dominate the political agenda. Nevertheless, the European Union remains deeply divided on how to establish responsibility-sharing among its member states and how to reform the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). Despite intense political debates, no effective cooperation among European states for the common provision of humanitarian protection has been established. The existing academic literature explains this cooperation failure mainly by examining the willingness and capacities of European countries to engage in an effective cooperation in the protection of refugees. We, however, argue that the understanding of responsibility-sharing in the provision of humanitarian protection requires going beyond the state-centric view, and to take account of the strategic role of refugees, too. Policy-makers and academics should perceive refugees as actors with own rational strategies, motivations and aspirations to improve their life prospects. In our article, we bring together public good theory with public policy literature and formal modelling to develop a more comprehensive model on the provision of humanitarian protection.

©Ajdin Kamber, Adobe Stock

Refugee protection is an obligation under international law but it leaves open which states should bear what share of that responsibility. Following the logic of public good theory when some countries do not admit refugees, they increase the responsibility for the other countries to protect refugees. The admission of refugees, on the other hand, provides benefits to all countries such as a stable political order, public safety and the securing of human rights. Due to these public good characteristics, countries have incentives to free-ride on the protection efforts of other states. Accordingly, the provision of humanitarian protection is a common European public good: protecting refugees contributes to the normative power of the EU as a stronghold of human rights and liberal democracy and it ensures the functional requirements for the free movement of people and the border-free travel area,, as main institutional pillars of the EU.

The common perspective is that the provision of international public goods could be achieved if there was effective responsibility-sharing between states. Thus, the provision of humanitarian protection depends solely on the willingness of states to contribute. How refugees behave is largely absent from the analysis. Following the public policy literature, we argue that policies can only achieve their objectives if the relevant target groups comply with those policies or behave in ways that are consistent with the enunciated objectives of the policy. Empirical research shows that refugees have rational preferences about the country where they want to seek protection and that they are willing to accept substantial risks and costs to submit an asylum request in their preferred destination country. Only in exceptional cases do refugees want to stay in the country of first entry, as assigned by the existing Dublin Regulation. Thus, the current asylum system sets disincentives to comply for their main target group and is therefore designed to fail: refugees are people with credible motivations to comply or not comply with European asylum policies. The persistent non-compliance by refugees is a result of strategic behaviour of individuals maximizing their life prospects. It is therefore not sufficient when states establish cooperation in order to provide humanitarian protection. Only mutual compliance between states and refugees results in the provision of the public good.

Our findings have important implications for policymaking in the European Union. The very idea that refugees should be able to exert any choice is a central blind spot in the current political and policy debates. Our research suggests that the agency and preferences of refugees should be incorporated into the analysis and design of international asylum regimes. We demonstrate that efforts to increase the enforcement of state compliance (i.e. through sanctions) or the enforcement of refugee compliance (i.e. through securitisation) are unlikely to overcome the current problems of the CEAS. As long as the responsibility allocation opposes the fundamental interests of the refugees seeking protection, the perspectives for an effective provision of humanitarian protection remain bleak.

This piece draws on the article Humanitarian Protection as a European Public Good: The Strategic Role of States and Refugees published in the Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS).

Philipp Lutz

Philipp Lutz is a  post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Political Science and International Relations of the University of Geneva (Switzerland) and a Fellow of the Swiss national science program nccr on the move. He obtained his PhD in Political Science from University of Bern in 2019. His main research interest is in understanding the political consequences of international migration and covers comparative politics as well as international governance.

@LutzPhilipp

 

David Kaufmann

 David Kaufmann is Assistant Professor of Spatial Development and Urban Policy at ETH Zürich. He is a policy scholar with an interest in urban studies, planning and migration studies.

@kaufmada

 

 

 

 

 

Anna Stünzi

Anna Stünzi is a doctoral candidate at ETH Zurich at the Center for Economic Research. She studied psychology and economics at the universities of Zurich and Copenhagen. Anna Stünzi’s thesis covers different topics of climate change mitigation policy, mainly focusing on the empirical analysis of feedback effects from policy announcements. Besides academic research, Anna Stünzi is president of foraus, a Swiss think tank on foreign politics.

 

The post Why European asylum policies should account for refugees’ preferences appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

By constraining the powers of executives and developing a political culture of accountability, national parliaments play a key role in the fight against corruption. However, their normative powers may be marginalized in the process of democratic consolidation. Based on original research from three European states, Emilija Tudzarovska-Gjorgjievska argues that weak parliaments contribute to the vicious cycle of corruption when they give a pretence of legitimation but do not act as democratic institutions proper.

Illustration: colourbox.com

Liberal democracy, which rests on democratic institutions as well as citizens sharing democratic values, is under stress. In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), democracy has deteriorated, the quality of democracy is backsliding and weak law enforcement fails to deliver effective rule of law. This weak point in the systems of checks and balances is not conducive to regime change towards full functional democracy. When European states fall short of delivering democratic standards and principles, the EU’s democratic legitimacy is also threatened. Why is this the case?

The problem of weak law enforcement in corrupt systems

Weak law enforcement is not only an indicator of ineffective rule of law. It is also an important indicator of ineffective control of corruption and a major obstacle for the successful implementation of anti-corruption strategies. Moreover, corrupt systems and weak rule of law stimulate social traps whereby citizens choose either to resist the corrupt system, or to comply with the system, leading to clientelism, patronage or other informal practices.

Both types of social traps are informally institutionalized when the rule of law is biased and the exercise of power is manipulated for private interest. On both occasions, weak law enforcement rests on citizens’ mistrust in the system’s legality and equality, or in its ability to offer equal access to justice. What is more, when actors fail to offer justifications for the exercise of power as part of a legitimation process involving public scrutiny and public forums, the citizens’ trust in the ability of the political system to solve problems is further undermined. This jeopardizes democratic legitimacy both on national and supranational levels.

The role of national parliaments

My research confirms that national parliaments, which are public forums for scrutiny and key to securing democratic legitimacy, have a key role to play in breaking the patterns of social traps and the vicious cycle of corruption. My findings also indicate that the weak role of national parliaments in constraining the powers of executives has provided a breeding ground for law manipulation, and elites’ influence on the ‘rules of the game’. As a result, parliaments, which are supposed to hold governments to account, have acted as façades of legitimation, rather than as democratic institutions proper serving the citizens. The latter become detached from the systemic chain of account-giving when parliaments fail to engage them and develop a political culture of accountability. Under these conditions, taking control of corruption becomes a very difficult task – in some cases even an impossible task.

In my PhD project, I look into the cases of Slovenia, Croatia and North Macedonia, as all three states have experienced challenges in law enforcement and in providing equal access to justice. This has made it difficult to root out corruption from their political systems. Based on a qualitative comparative data analysis, drawn from interviews, legal documents and other secondary literature, I find that the marginalization of the oversight role of national parliaments in the process of democratic consolidation has created a pretence of legitimation, through a technical exercise of democratic accountability and deviations of norms. Moreover, the detachment of citizens from their elected representatives creates a political culture where parliaments are ‘accountable to no one’, adding to the vicious cycle of corruption and creating situations of social traps.

Shortcomings in the democratic consolidation

Yet, the EU’s acknowledgment of this risk to democratic legitimacy remains incremental and partial. On the one hand, the process of Europeanization as an instrument of democratization in CEE countries introduced new weight on the legal and institutional aspects of their political systems. On the other, this instrument proves to be necessary for exercising soft power pressure for countries to pursue political and economic reforms in line with the EU’s democratic values. Yet, even after becoming EU members CEE countries share similar challenges of law enforcement and difficulties in consolidating democracies.

Indeed, the post-communist political systems have been unfamiliar with the concept of democratic oversight or public scrutiny over processes and results. The process of democratic consolidation should have addressed these institutional gaps and shortcomings in democratic accountability. However, on the one hand, the EU has taken a top-down, technical approach in addressing corruption. On the other, the characteristics of the institutional matrix at national level and its ability to prevent corruptive practices have not been sufficiently acknowledged. As a result, citizens remain entrapped in a broken chain of democratic accountability between electoral cycles.

New EU strategy needed

Against these risks, the EU’s approach to address the problems of corruption remains inadequate, and it fails to take a decisive role. The European Commission’s first EU Anti-Corruption report in 2014 offered an overview of the corruptive risks in all EU member states. However, in 2017, the European Commission took a much-disputed decision to drop this instrument. The process of monitoring corruption was transferred to the European Semester, which is an economic governance tool. As such, it is not designed to address key, country-specific challenges nor to address shortcomings in law delivery. The EU also lacks a strategy for repairing the citizens’ detachment from supposedly democratic institutions.

The direct link between the quality of democracy at nation-state level and the citizens’ trust in that political order requires us to revisit the EU’s legitimacy. Corrupt political systems and ineffective rule of law present imminent risks for representative democracies. Abuse of power occurs for real and the EU and its member states rely on each other in addressing these challenges. Acknowledging a joint responsibility will be the first step towards a new approach, where safeguarding the interests of the citizens and repairing the frailty of democratic legitimacy must take centre stage.

This research is forthcoming in a volume which collects case studies from the PLATO project, edited by Dirk de Bièvre, Peter Bursens, Chris Lord and Ramses Wessel.

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The Truman Doctrine Redux:

21st Century American Foreign Policy and Eastern Mediterranean Sea

and the Middle East

By

 Vassilios Damiras, Ph.D.

International Relations Expert

 

The Genesis of the Doctrine

The geostrategic role of the Truman Doctrine in helping prevent the fall of the then Greek kingdom to communism during the late 1940s created a great design for American diplomatic and strategic planners that they then utilized throughout the Cold War. Its critical precepts continue in the current war against global terror under the Bush administration. This article analyzes the geostrategic and geopolitical significance of the Truman Doctrine and its 21st-century application to ongoing American involvement in the Middle East. Moreover, since this specific policy combined the theoretical principals of realism and idealism, it is argued that Harry S. Truman created the foundations of American liberal imperialism in his readiness to fight Soviet/Slavic communism as an ideological menace in the Balkans and Greece’s immediate geographic vicinity. Parallels will be drawn between the Truman Doctrine’s resistance toward communism of the late 1940s, and the present Bush administration’s focus on counter-terrorism.

Finally, the implementation and execution of strategies founded on the Truman Doctrine established a robust military presence in the southeastern Mediterranean area and the Middle East, which appearance, with its strategic implications, prevails today. In a “Truman Doctrine redux,” the Trumanesque Bush foreign policy strategy has expanded the American presence in the Middle Eastern region in the war on terror.

President Truman, influenced by his classical education, believed that in protecting Greece from communism, American military advisers defended the cradle of Western civilization, indeed of their American culture. Furthermore, Greece founded the glorious Byzantine Empire and the Greek Eastern Orthodox Christian faith. Without a doubt, Truman recognized that the modern Greek socio-political system was not as pure in democratic and cultural values as during the ancient times; nevertheless, the United States, in Truman’s interpretation, had an obligation to assist the country that provided the tenets of the American democracy. Also, he realized that through Greece, American military power would significantly shape the region.

The Truman Doctrine opened a new page in American foreign policy. President Truman’s reaction to the Korean military crisis in 1950 relied on his firm conviction that “this is the Greece of the Far East. If we are tough enough now,” he declaimed, “there won’t be another step.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower perceived the ongoing military crises in Indochina and the Middle East through the geopolitical/geostrategic lessons of the Greek Civil War (1947-1949), warning that if these strategic regions fell to Soviet communist influence, Europe and other areas could likewise collapse under Soviet totalitarian pressures. In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson argued forcibly that the Greek case provided an example for American military action in Vietnam.

Moreover, Walt Rostow, chair of the U.S. State Department’s policy planning council, assured U.S. Secretary Dean Rusk that “there is no reason we cannot win as clear a victory in South Vietnam as in Greece, Malaysia, and the Philippines.” Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., who had strongly supported the Truman doctrine in its infancy, declared in a 1964 speech that “We, of the Free World, won in Greece…. And we can win in Vietnam.” In 1965, immediately after the first U.S. combat troops were dispatched to South Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson alluded to the Truman Doctrine in reassuring the American public that the U.S. armed forces would win the war against communist aggression in the Southeast Asian region as they had won in Greece in the 1940s. The following year, Rusk quoted Truman’s 1947 address to U.S. Congress in justifying American military involvement in South Vietnam.

In the current war on terror, George W. Bush has used the basic foundations of the Truman Doctrine to combat Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. The Bush Doctrine uses liberal imperialism to both fight terrorism and promote American democratic values globally, particularly in the Middle East. The Truman Doctrine indelibly influenced both past and present American foreign and defense policies.

An Analysis of the Truman Doctrine in a Historical-Political Perspective

There have been disparate interpretations of the Truman Doctrine since its inception and implementation. The Doctrine has been the focus of serious debate since its promulgation. Critics have called it the “first shot of the Cold War”; an American global license for liberal imperialism; an exaggerated response to an imagined communist threat that led to the monster of McCarthyism; a reactionary foreign policy placing the American government on the side opposite freedom, political and social reform; strong proof of an “arrogance of power” that continuously forced United States into other countries’ domestic political quarrels.

Defenders of the Truman Doctrine argue that this specific policy illustrated American determination and ingenuity in the fight against communism. The Doctrine was representative of the American commitment to free world ideals and beliefs. When the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan were combined, magnanimous financial aid assisted first Greece and Turkey and later, other nation-states threatened by communism. Yet, in focusing on these important issues, historians have failed to credit the Truman administration with creating a foreign policy designed to protect freedom by helping embattled countries help themselves.

The tenets of the Truman Doctrine left their imprint on the seminal stages of an American foreign policy that was adaptable, restrained, and not necessarily based on military power. Later, when President Kennedy introduced “flexible response,” Truman and his advisers (some advisers later joining Kennedy) adopted a foreign policy intended to fight the ever-growing political and strategic challenges to democracy with a broad-ranging arsenal of responses corresponding to the socio-political danger at hand.

Moreover, President Truman’s Doctrine arguably anticipated to the Nixon Doctrine of the 1970s, which called for partnerships based on the nation at risk sharing the burden of safeguarding itself by essentially providing the bulk of the manpower needed for its security. The Truman administration’s approach to the Greek problem proved idealistic in purpose, but realistic in application. Its composite thrust was political, economic, and military, allowing for adjustments and fine-tuning as the nature of the threat changed. The political facet included creation of a stable democracy in Greece; economic emphasis supported viable economic opportunities in the Greek population.  The military focus was upon capable defense of Greek national interests by modern Greek armed forces, assisted by their American counterparts. The policy constituted a viable response to multifaceted threats against which real victory lay in convincing democracy’s enemies that they could not win.

Although various historians have long debated the political and strategic reasons for the Greek government’s victory, one observation has been especially stressed: American military aid was solely responsible. The Greek communists could have gone on indefinitely if they had not switched from guerrilla tactics to conventional warfare, and if they had continued to receive refuge and outside military assistance. Tito’s defection from the Soviet bloc broke the guerrillas’ resistance was considered crucial, enabling American firepower to forge a victory. Although these ingredients surely proved vital to the final outcome of the Greek civil war, the full explanation does not lie either in the Balkans or in American military assistance.

The Truman administration achieved its objectives in Greece because of a flexible American foreign policy that was global in theory but constrained by reality. White House advisers at that time had defined the nation’s interests in Greece in relation to the rest of the world, developed a strategy with manageable goals, and operationalized it within the limitations of America’s capacity to influence events and people. Most significantly, they cultivated a Greek populace rich in democratic values and traditions, staunchly nationalistic, who opposed communism and welcomed U.S. aid. America’s foreign policymakers kept the struggle within the technical confines of a civil war, repeatedly refusing to permit the conflict to grow into larger war. After achieving the financial aid bill’s passage, the administration toned down its rhetoric to avoid military confrontation with the communists, quietly persuaded the British to remain in Greece as part of a bilateral security effort, and thus gained time for the American strategy to reach fruition.

The Truman Doctrine provided the rationale for a global strategy that rested on equivalent and limited responses to carefully defined and continually changing levels of danger. During the Greek involvement, the Truman administration considered every option from outright withdrawal to direct military intervention. In 1947, the communist emergency in Greece necessitated strong military aid and operational advice; once that specific threat subsided in late 1949, the American focus shifted to long-range economic rehabilitation. Decisions resulted from recommendations and proposals presented not only by specialists in Greek and Turkish affairs, and others.

Vital information came from British and Greek analysts, the U.S. State and Defense departments, U.S. National Security Council, Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and other intelligence organizations, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency and U.S. Army Intelligence. The new foreign and defense policies emerged from serious considerations regarding their impact on Greece and neighboring nation-states, on America’s allies and the nonaligned countries, and on Americans at home. Averting a unilateral and more dangerous involvement was crucial; the possibility of graceful de-escalation or even total withdrawal was debated, as were the effects of events in Greece on global strategy. During all this time, the Truman White House sustained continual assessments of the Greek dispute to keep the American commitment flexible and under control.

On the economic level, United States did the following:

• assisted in the creation, for the time in Greek history, of a national electric power system, designed by American engineers, modeled on the TVA, with a quasi-independent, public corporate entity interlinking new hydroelectric generating stations at various sites, with Athens Piraeus Electric Company (APECO) and a new thermal generating station based on the mining of lignite at Aliveri;
• supported the expansion and modernization of Greece’s traditional industries (cement, textiles, fertilizers) while promoting new ones;
• helped re-open and re-equip the chromite, bauxite and pyrite mines, and to clear and re-equip the nation’s ports and harbors, and the Corinth Canal;
• re-equipped the fishing fleet and agricultural processing and storage plants;
• helped develop village potable water supplies, completing an anti-malarial program;
• contributed to modernization of hospitals and clinics;
• provided for re-building and improving of highway and railway networks from Kalamata to Alexandroupolis;
• facilitated building and repair of museums, archeological sites and hotels to support the goals of future tourism.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture provided the following financial support:

• to create and train a Greek force roughly equivalent to America’s county agents for Greek villages, including instruction in fertilizer and pesticide use, general land management and animal husbandry;
• to undertake large-scale land reclamation works;
• to supply the government’s mechanical cultivation service and its well-drilling service with heavy equipment
• to construct farm-to-market roads and to link formerly isolated villages with trunk and highway systems and to market towns.

In military affairs, the American government created special programs to arm and train the Greek armed forces. Eventually, Greece and Turkey joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan helped create a self-sustaining and self-reliant Greek nation-state, ready to negotiate future military, political, or economic threats. The United States became a guardian of Greek democracy; without American military aid, it was likely, or at least plausible, that Greece would have succumbed to the Soviet communist expansion. If the Soviets had managed to control the Greek countryside, the survival of the free world would have been at risk.

Control of the Bosporus Passage and the Dardanelles Straits was the raison d’etre underlying the American posture and strategic actions within the region, due to ongoing Soviet aspirations and intentions for direct access to the Aegean. In 1945, during the Potsdam Summit meeting, Stalin openly claimed the right to create military bases in the Thessaloniki or Alexandoupolis harbors as alternatives to bypass the Turkish Straits. Simultaneously, the Soviet regime exerted acute political pressure on the Turkish government to revise the Montreaux Convention to gain joint control of the Straits with the Turkish Republic (Proposals of June 22, 1946).

The Truman precepts buttressed the policy of containment and organized resistance against Soviet communist expansionism, and were the foundation of a long-lasting American foreign policy with global dimensions and implications. NATO, the American Joint Task Forces in the Mediterranean, and Atlantic and Pacific communication/surveillance installations and facility/military bases became and remain pillars of American global policy promulgated in the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan.

The American engagement in World War II (1939-1945) incurred a total loss of $341 billion with 460,000 personnel casualties. It was the greatest investment in peace and military security any American administration had ever made. It demanded an everlasting guarantee. Containment doctrine was the appropriate answer to those concerns at that time, in locations distant from the American continent. Greece’s and Turkey’s military roles in the Marshall Plan and later in NATO would be key factors in the balance of power in the geostrategic system, along with other European nation-states strengthened by the American military presence on the Continent.

A full network of military bases and related facilities in Greece and Turkey was organized within the framework of various bilateral accords with the American government to support integrated security functions in the Eastern Mediterranean. (The current Bush administration has used these facilities to pursue the war in Iraq.) The Aegean islands area and the island of Crete are crucial to the necessary strategic breadth and depth to defend the straits and thereby, access to the Mediterranean Sea, and are under Greek operational responsibility as part of NATO’s command structure. Greece also committed to American such as the critical Suda Bay naval base for the U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet. Currently, the U.S. Defense Department is in the process of upgrading the Suda Bay naval base in order to accommodate more naval and Special Forces assets in the fight against Al Qaeda and another terrorist/insurgent operatives.

The Truman Doctrine positioned the United States as the protector of Greece and its respective regions and continues to play a vital role even in the current global situation. During the twentieth century, Greece offered much and lost many in the battles for freedom and democratic values. In no other period of its long history has Hellenism suffered such great upheaval and destruction. For years, the Truman Doctrine tenets have safeguarded the Greek culture and nation from a variety of exogenous threats.

The Contemporary Implications of the Truman Doctrine

The Truman Doctrine was born out of the American geostrategic and geopolitical perception of Greece as a key nation-state regarding security in the Middle East, crucial to the protection of American national interests in the Mediterranean region. Greek and Turkish territory is a unified strategic area in the American view, with both of the countries operating as supplementary security elements. The consequence of this strategic outlook was the contemporaneous entry and integration of both nation-states into the NATO civil-military alliance.

During the Greek civil strife, the Truman Doctrine put into realistic practice what Alexander the Great said in the town of Opi in 324 B.C., “For me any good foreigner is a Greek, any bad Greek is worse than a barbarian.” In 1947, the “good foreigners” were the Americans. The “bad” Greeks were the Greek communists who attempted to destroy the values of the Greek culture. The implementation of Truman’s doctrinal concepts aborted this process.

Although history indicates that the most convincing argument in international relations is inextricably tied to power, the greatest achievement of political human beings is the building of universal peace based on mutual confidence and the consolidation of human rights and liberties. In recognition of the value of universal peace, the wall of bipolarity was demolished, and the world set on the road to peace. It is not only national and military power that has made the United States a global hegemon; it is rooted in the trust of people and human expectations for freedom and political and economic prosperity. The Truman Doctrine incorporated these realistic and idealistic norms and values.

Moreover, the Bush administration continues to deal with current geopolitical challenges based on the complex formulations so well developed by Truman. Present security threats include instability in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East, due to local independence and irredentist conflicts, nationalism, terrorism, and Islamic fundamentalism. In addition, the illicit proliferation of nuclear weapons and guided missile systems are serious dangers to U.S.-European, not to mention global, security.

Furthermore, the expansion of NATO and its inclusion of operational areas outside its traditional borders are important innovations emerging from the Truman Doctrine in support of the pursuit of freedom around the globe. Today’s NATO comprises a unique, organized multinational force, largely responsible for pan-European security. NATO continues to evolve in its capabilities relevant to the new geostrategic challenges of the 21st century.

The military execution of the Truman doctrine was based on realistic perceptions of how to apply hegemonic military power in times of crisis (much as Bush has done presently). Protecting democracy was based on the idealism of expanding and promoting democracy across the globe. The Truman principles coherently fused realism and idealism; this is the main rationale for their continued applicability in today’s increasingly complex geopolitical and geostrategic environment. Truman based his foreign policy on ideas from his classical education and precepts of classical liberalism. This eclectic and sophisticated educational/philosophical background assisted him in creating a cogent and cohesive foreign policy with an enduring effect on American decision-making processes, policies, and outcomes. The Bush administration follows the tenets of classical liberalism regarding post 9/11 American foreign and defense policies. Finally, the Bush Doctrine, similar to the Truman Doctrine, has introduced a political, economic, and military evolution to Afghanistan and Iraq, for the purpose of stabilizing and establishing democratic values and beliefs. In the current war on terror and in the promotion of democracy, the Bush Doctrine clearly parallels the Trumanesque concepts for global security and democratic development.

President Barack Obama’s foreign policy was a two-part process in two parts: first, his goals and decision-making mechanism and, second, his plans and implementation. His foreign policy-making team, which centered on the White House, is headed by the President, who relies on Vice President Joe Biden and his National Security Adviser General James Jones. His National Security Council is over 200 people in stuff is almost four times large that NSC staff of Presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush and nearly ten times as large a President John F. Kennedy. Also, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton play an essential role in the President’s foreign policy decision. Moreover, Rahm Emmanuel, his chief of staff, and David Axelrod, his senior adviser, are part of the foreign policy decision-making machine. Finally, the President relies on various special foreign policy envoys such as Richard Holbrooke regarding Afghanistan and Pakistan. Of course, President Obama himself is the primary source of strategic direction. The new U.S. strategic direction indicates a very vague and idealistic approach to U.S. national security interests.

President Donald Trump has developed a transactional/realist approach to foreign policy. Lately, he focuses on enlarging the American presence in Greece and Cyprus to protect the American national interest in the region and to monitor and stop the Russian expansion in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea region and the anti-NATO behavior of Turkey. Moreover, to collaborate with Italy, France, Greece, Cyprus, and Israel to explore the natural gas resources. Also, the Souda bay U.S. naval base in Crete has been used for the various attacks against Syria and to fight jihadist terrorism in the Middle East. Greece is the fourth large recipient of U.S. military assistance. The current American administration wants to turn Greece as the bastion of the American national interest in the region. Both countries have a common enemy radical jihad. Last but not least, currently in the northern city of Alexandroupolis, the American military installed a state of the art radar to operate jointly by American and Greek personnel. This radar can monitor the region as far as the Black Sea. President Trump vividly tries to recreate parts of the Truman Doctrine.

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Criticisms directed at the European Union (EU) and its institutions over the past decade have often been interpreted as a sign of fundamental weakness. However, using the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) as an example, Claire Godet argues that contestation should not be seen as a sign of failure, but rather as an opportunity for justification.

The case of the EU ETS

In the last decade, the European Union (EU) has faced many backlashes and criticisms. This turmoil has led some scholars to declare the EU’s legitimacy crisis. It is popular to assume that if citizens are dissatisfied, the EU must be facing legitimacy challenges that could eventually lead to the withdrawal of support, and therefore systemic troubles. However, negative claims and critiques might not be as threatening as these studies imply. Critiques also provide a valuable opportunity for the EU to justify itself, and can test, rather than threaten the system, which can wither or thrive according to its reaction.

Analysing the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is particularly enlightening on the matter. The ETS is the policy that establishes an ’emissions market’ to limit polluting emissions and encourage climate friendly economy. European industries receive allocations that define how much polluting emissions they are allowed to produce. If they exceed their quota, they must buy more allocations. If they reduce their emissions, they can sell their surplus of allocations.

The ETS is quite recent (it was designed in the early 2000s), and has suffered many objections from all sides since its creation. Green activists denounced the commodification of climate protection; energy-intensive industry complained about the burden on their competitiveness; think tanks decry the Commission’s overly optimistic projections.

From its very first days, the ETS has been questioned; and since then, criticisms have reappeared with each round of reforms. Despite the challenges, the ETS has survived and developed; and the next phase, starting in 2021, will integrate the emissions market further than ever before.

The ETS and its critics

How is it that the ETS has continued to grow – in leaps and bounds – while stakeholders continue to disparage it? The answer is that the Commission has managed to transform complaints into opportunities to justify the system.

When establishing the ETS, the Commission justified it by affirming that a market-based instrument was the most cost-effective solution to mitigate climate change. This has defined the EU’s climate policy for the following 20 years: it focuses primarily on emission reductions (rather than, for example, changing the mode of production); and it is constructed around market mechanisms (rather than imposing environmental standards, for instance).

Critiques of the ETS usually fall into two categories: on one hand, actors can criticise the technical aspects of the ETS, i.e. they believe that the ETS is the best solution, but still suggest measures to make its realisation more efficient. On the other hand, actors can argue that the ETS is based on fundamentally flawed premises and that market mechanisms are not the best option available.

The first type of critiques does not represent a threat for a system’s legitimacy since it does not attack the system’s normative justifications. The actors who point out technical shortcomings do not ask for better or new moral grounds; they simply attempt to make the system work better (whether this means having greater climate ambitions or lowering the burden on industries). The Commission has taken advantages of these criticisms to foster the development of the ETS and the emissions market integration. Cleverly, the Commission does not deny any of the shortcomings of the ETS: it acknowledges its deficiencies and recommends deeper integration to achieve both steeper emissions reduction and fewer market distortions.

However, the second type of critiques does jeopardise the system, as it asserts that the system cannot be legitimised while its justifications rest on biased assumptions. These critiques attempt to delegitimise the system in order to replace it. They do not believe that market mechanisms and/or emissions reduction should be the guiding principles of EU’s climate policy: according to them, market-based instruments are not the best solution to mitigate climate change. These ‘anti-system’ critiques are harder to convey because the actors involved in the current system, even when unhappy, fear changes that could, in the end, be more detrimental to them.

Critique as an opportunity for legitimation

The Commission has managed to deflect these critiques. For instance, NGOs who advocate for the scrapping of the ETS are castigated, on one hand, by industries that dread an ecotax, and on the other hand, by green actors who apprehend a return to zero. Nevertheless, by urging for controversial changes, these NGOs have given a valuable opportunity to the Commission to reassert its justification that the ETS is the most cost-effective solution to provide both climate mitigation and economic development.

Criticisms do not necessarily represent a threat to a system’s legitimacy. Firstly, not all negative claims target the system’s justifications. They might intent to better the system rather than challenging its normative grounds. Secondly, criticisms that question a system’s legitimation are merely a test that the system can overcome by reaffirming its normative justifications.

This does not mean, however, that criticisms are inconsequential in political systems: negative claims, as any discourse, can affect a system in many ways depending on their intensity, popularity, etc. Nevertheless, the relation between critique and legitimacy is more complex than expected and should be explored carefully before making any assumptions about a legitimacy crisis.

The EU is currently facing criticisms from all parties: rather than seeing this as a challenge, this could be a valuable opportunity for the EU to justify itself to its citizens. By criticising the EU, citizens also express what they want and expect from the Union. It is now time for the EU to listen.

This article was originally published on the UACES Graduate Forum blog, ‘Crossroads Europe’.

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In the wake of the financial crisis, EU governments spent taxpayers’ money to rescue European banks. That displaced a financial crisis into political systems by straining public finances and social protections in all EU member states. Some states were brought to the point of insolvency, and the survival of the EU’s single currency, perhaps even of the EU itself, was threatened. But is the EU experiencing a legitimacy crisis?

Three types of legitimacy crisis

Legitimacy is at the core of ‘good government’. It means the justified or rightful exercise of political power. Since a right to exercise political power implies that people have an obligation to comply also with laws they do not like, legitimate political orders are more likely to enjoy the unforced compliance of citizens. Political systems that can concentrate on satisfying the needs and values of citizens, rather than coercing them, are more likely to deliver high levels of economic performance and to score well on indicators of human development.

Whilst the EU has experienced serial crises since the financial crisis, spanning from geopolitics and Brexit to dealing with refugee flows, it remains to be investigated whether it has experienced a legitimacy crisis. We lack the knowledge, concepts, theories and methods needed to investigate scientifically just how far, if at all, the Union’s ability to make legitimate use of political power corresponds to what it needs to do in crises.

We might say that legitimacy crises occur where a political order is unable to satisfy all necessary conditions for the justification of its powers. That is an intentionally abstract and generic definition, designed to avoid assuming any one form of political order; any one set of necessary conditions for legitimacy; any one set of standards of justification; and any one form of crisis. If we want to understand if a particular political order is subject to a legitimacy crisis, we must ‘fill in’ the generic definition by specifying standards and necessary conditions for the justification of powers specific to that order. Against this background, I argue that the European Union may experience three types of legitimacy crisis.

Failed direct legitimacy

The first type of legitimacy crisis occurs where the EU cannot satisfy all conditions to be directly democratically legitimate with citizens. The Union defines rights, makes law and allocates values. However, in democracies, citizens must be able to control as equals their own rights, laws and allocations of values.  Consider, though, the conditions that are needed for democratic institutions and politics. These include freedoms and rights, political competition that offers voters relevant choices, a civil society in which all groups have equal opportunity for organised influence, a public sphere in which all have equal access to public debate, and a defined people, a demos, or at least agreement on who should have votes and voice in the making of decisions that are binding on all.

Achieving all those conditions simultaneously may be hard for the EU, given that it is a multi-state, non-state political system that operates from beyond the state. The capacity of the state to concentrate power, resources and legal enforcement has historically been useful in ensuring that the decisions of democratic majorities are carried out; in providing universal and equal systems of representation; in guaranteeing rights needed for democracy; in drawing the boundaries of defined political communities; and in motivating voters and elites to participate in democratic political competition for the control of an entity which manifestly affects their needs and values.

Failed indirect legitimacy

So, what of the alternative where the EU somehow derives or borrows democratic legitimacy from that of its member state democracies? That might be more than a second-best where it is difficult for the European Union to develop its own democratic politics and institutions in full. There may also be important justifications for a form of European Union in which individuals are citizens of national democratic political communities of states that are member states of a Union that is itself an association of both national democracies and their citizens.

However, member state democracies could make contradictory demands on the Union’s legitimacy. Attempts to legitimate the EU via its member state democracies could produce democracy-on-democracy domination. Either suggests a second form of legitimacy crisis where the EU cannot be indirectly legitimated by all its member states simultaneously.

Failed input, output or throughput legitimacy

However, cutting across any need to be directly or indirectly legitimated by publics, the EU may also need to be input, output and throughput legitimate. Imagine a political system that was procedurally perfect in its voting and deliberations. Yet it had no outputs. Would we consider it legitimate? Perhaps not, if we think that political power is justified only where it has outcomes important to securing rights, justice and the most basic of public goods needed for personal security and economic and social welfare. So democratic legitimacy needs inputs from votes and voices, outcomes that are valued by citizens and throughputs, or procedures, that convert inputs from votes and voices into outcomes that deliver value, rights and public goods. A political system may also need to be able to make legitimate trade-offs between optimal outcomes and ideal procedures.

Hence, in a third form of legitimacy crisis, the Union might struggle to provide essential inputs, outputs and throughputs simultaneously. As a Union of democracies, a high level of agreement between member states may be a procedural condition for input and throughput legitimacy. However, multiple veto points may make it harder to secure the outputs that are thought to justify collective action at the European level.

The research project Post-crisis Democracy in the European Union (PLATO) explores these tensions. It aims to build new theory through multiple, connected PhD projects that investigate different actors with whom the EU needs to be legitimate, and different standards of democratic legitimacy. I invite you to explore findings from the individual studies on this blog and to engage in conversations on the EU’s struggle for legitimacy.

The post From financial crisis to legitimacy crisis? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Ceriana by Roberto Martini

The weeks and months following Brexit are taking those of us who would have preferred the UK to stay in the EU into strange new territory. While politicians and technocrats get on with working out the practicalities, the question for us ordinary Europhiles is: how to remain European?

On this new terrain is the underlying stuff, the issues that (from the Remainer point of view) the referendum was really about – relationships with other countries, curiosity about different cultures and participation in other ways of life. They’re expressed in various ways, through learning languages, taking trips or spending periods abroad: most Europhiles have one continental country they’re particularly attached to. Eyes lighting up at the thought of French cuisine, the Italian language, a Spanish village or a German city – all these are signs and elements of a European identity and set of affinities that will endure regardless of what happens at the institutional and multilateral level.

But, as with all relationships, Britain’s connections with its continental neighbours will need care and cultivation if they are to thrive – more so than ever, since the UK’s political decision to leave the EU has left many in Europe with a sense of hurt and bemusement.

Crucially, strong connections require a mood beyond the anger that characterised much of the Remain campaign, a constructive and creative set of emotions and attitudes that foster an outward focus rather than the tendency to stay locked into an insular battle with the ‘other side’.

So here, in no particular order, are some ideas about How To Be A New Remainer.

Be Consciously Continental

Cultivate continental habits and interests. As a practising glutton, I’ve long brought back favourite foods from places I’ve spent time in and integrated them into my everyday life, with the result that I consume Arabic coffee, drink tea like a Palestinian and put chorizo in everything. Having a periodic ‘Table for Europe’ – one of the ideas for marking the day of the UK’s departure from the EU – in which you share a continental meal with at least one fellow Europhile, is a simple but powerful way of giving an ordinary act cultural and political significance.

In a consumer society, we all have a degree of economic power which we can use to make our preferences matter. As K L McGhee points out on Facebook, another easy act of post-Brexit activism is Euro-consumerism, supporting cafes, delis and other continental businesses wherever possible.

But, as my Austrian great-aunt never actually said, there’s more to life than eating. There’s a vast pool of European culture to dip into, diverse enough to suit all tastes and deep enough to last a lifetime (or several). Jonny Watson, also on Facebook, suggests reading 27 books, each one written by an author from a different member of the EU: ‘Balzac for France, Cervantes for Spain, Goethe for Germany,’ he suggests, adding, ‘not sure what to suggest for Slovakia.’ Or confine yourself to one country and set yourself the task of reading some of its greatest classics, picking the sauciest one for your book group.

Following European news is a way of countering both the declining levels of foreign news coverage in the British media and the national self-absorption that has taken hold since the referendum. Learning Spanish in the run-up to Brexit, I found solace and a sense of perspective in El Pais, often discussing the latest developments with my incredulous Spanish conversation exchange partner. Many of the major outlets in European countries publish in English, such as the German public broadcaster Deutschewelle and the pan-European news channel Euronews.

Forge Partnerships and Connections

This article from The Spectator is a timely reminder of the lost innocence of the 1970s, when all things continental held a certain glamour. Back then, a ‘continental breakfast’ was a rare treat rather than just a couple of croissants that leave you hungry, and a continental quilt was an exotic feature of only the most sophisticated bedrooms.

New Remainers, of course, don’t believe in pointless nostalgia. But perhaps there’s a useful truth in this backward glance, one that has to do with recovering the romance and excitement of discovering how differently others organise their lives. In recent decades, this sense of discovery has largely been an individual, pleasure-seeking affair, pursued through regular holidays to the continent. But the post-Brexit world creates the need – and opportunity – to promote more formal links for cultural exchange.

Some potential partnerships will flow naturally out of the gaps left by a pro-Brexit government, generating the need to create and maintain pan-European links in academia, for example. Lobbying for the continuation of the Erasmus scheme is vital for future generations of Europe, as Timothy Garton Ash argues in this wide-ranging piece. In short, a kind of continental third sector could emerge out of the mess to provide a counterweight to the anti-Europeanism at the top.

Meanwhile there’s scope for developing connections at the municipal and local level with a revival of the twin town movement. This article, published before the EU referendum was even a twinkle in David Cameron’s eye, shows that there is untapped potential for links between towns within the framework already in place. Some councils are already seeing the potential. In a display of solidarity after the referendum, the mayor of Bromley visited the borough’s twin town in Germany. Neuwied’s mayor Jan Einig responded in kind: ‘We can look forward resolutely together despite Brexit, because what connects us is our friendship and our friendship cannot be destroyed by Brexit.’

Travel to the Continent

When it comes to understanding the Other, even in the digital age nothing can replace the in-body, analogue experience of travelling to another country.

Marcel Proust had it in this more nuanced formulations of the adage ‘travel broadens the mind’: ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.’ And since the evidence suggests that twenty-first century humans still have a problem with difference, Mark Twain’s claim that ‘travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts’ remains apposite.

The benefits of continental travel have been recognised in British society since the Grand Tour became an essential part of a gentleman’s education, a civilising post-study tour which survives in the democratised form of inter railing. In these climate-anxious days, such trips can circumvent the objections to flying because the continent to which the UK still belongs, having physically detached from mainland Europe a mere eight thousand years ago, is accessible by boat and train.

There are signs that long-haul train travel is becoming increasingly popular. The Austrian state railway has recently relaunched part of its overnight train service, while the Independent’s Europe correspondent Jon Stone has been sharing his experiences of a train journey from Brussels to Prague on Twitter, highlighting fares to rival those of budget airlines.

All of which calls to mind another adage-in-the-making: true remainers never leave, they just find new ways of staying European.

Alex Klaushofer is writing a book about the state of Europe by way of three lesser-known continental cities.

 

The post The New Remainers: How To Stay European After Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

“Islam or a certain kind of Islam,” might show resistance to the idea of democracy. While surveying the texts of Islamic political thought specifically of thinkers like Al Farabi and Ibn Ruchd, Derrida found a certain pattern. He saw that although these two thinkers incorporated the Greek philosophy of Philosopher King from Plato’s Republic and Nicomachean Ethics in their oeuvre of Islamic political thought, they entirely skipped the ideals of democracy.

He also added that a reference to democracy in a Muslim State never comes without bringing a certain amount of turmoil.

Although Derrida stated this possible incoherence in Islam and democracy, he believed otherwise. Democracy and Islam are perceived to be in opposition with each other, for Derrida a dialogue can be ensued to use Islam for betterment of a democracy to come.

He assigned a political duty to anyone who wants to see democracy flourish to help people of the Islamic world who are trying to bring a secular in the political for the re-emergence of laic subjectivity. And especially help to bring forth and re-establish the “democratic virtualities” inherent in Quran.

But the relationship of Islam and Democracy is a difficult one, to make a point; Derrida mentioned the elections of 1992 Algeria.

As happened in Algeria in 1992 the elected party leader (Islamic Front) had to step down by intervention of army because army wanted a better democratic process and their victory was deemed hazardous for democracy by army. Earlier President Chadli of Algeria had started democratic processes and through 1989 constitution enabled a free press, power to constitute political parties and education of masses for a democratic pole. In this consequence the Front Islamique Salut party won in the first round of elections in 1991 “taking 47.54% of 59% turnout.” This was also a precursor that Algeria might get rid of the ruling elite which were the Army and Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) party. These two had the authority soon after Algeria’s Independence from France. But Army overthrew Chadli’s government and put a state of emergency for a better development of democracy. Although that was all in the name of democracy what was to follow in Algeria was extreme fear, abductions, abuse and crackdown not only on the Islamists but common people.

Derrida opined that democracy suffered through the slogan of better democracy. The authority sabotages the electoral system in the name of democracy itself. This according to Derrida is the auto-destructive quality democracy is inherent with.

The example of Algerian elections shows this confrontation of Islam against democracy but also show how democratic powers are adamant of anything Islamic. It signals to the aporia related to democracy itself, it is when non-democratic forces suspend the democratic process in the name of democracy. Secondly it is the supposed tension between Islam and democracy, commonly perceived that that each entity is bad for another.

The dilemma of the elections of Algeria was that although the electoral process was fair but as the result an Islamic party gained majority, and that faction that took away their authority claimed that the Islamists might eliminate the very democratic system they came from. But the result of taking away Islamists electoral right came as a tumultuous blow on the people of Algeria.

Derrida mentioned that some of the people he was in contact with in Algeria were of the opinion that Army takeover was the right choice as democratically elected Islamic government might have been bad for democracy. Here is the example of biased Derrida, that certain people think that Islamist might have been bad for democracy. And this is also a negative point we can attribute to Derrida because despite of his claims of alterity and knowing that by clear democratic process FIS would have won he acknowledged some of his friend’s opinion that ousting of Islamic government was right.

But Derrida compensated his bias by asking for a dialogue between Islam and democracy. He emphasized that if we plainly assume Islamist will be bad for democracy, it will obscure the picture of the other side. If Islam is resistant to certain kind democracy on the outset, it also shows that westernized sections claiming to be democratic are adamant to assimilate Muslims in democracy.

Jacques Derrida also highlighted that it is not that simple matter of right and wrong and the two parties in Algeria simply do not stand against one concrete opponent. The westernized sections are afraid or against a certain kind of Islamists and Islamists only loathe democracy because they know a certain version of it. These two have to be receptive to the diversity of the other side.

The events of January 1992 Algeria show a suicidal quality of democracy; that it can democratically throw democracy out of itself, or it is not hospitable to other even though other was elected democratically. On one hand Derrida mentioned that a certain kind of Islam is hostile to democracy and on the other hand he demanded openness from the part of democracy to other kinds of Islam. Deconstruction should be able to extend democracy to the horizon of unfamiliar.

Here we have to see that Algeria had been in the influence of FLN and Army which was seen as the extension of westernization while as Algeria has been a Muslim country the FIS marketed itself as the Islamic alternative. So both of these viewpoints of FIS as Islamic revival and Army/FLN as savior of democracy/westernization were merely political tools and creating binaries of Islam/democracy, Arab world/Europe or East/West would be a naïve step.

The case of Egypt is completely similar to what happened in Algeria, in the relation between Islam and Democracy. The revolution of Tahrir Square ousted Hosni Mubarak and later electoral system was established to elect a ruling party democratically. Muslim Brotherhood won the elections of 2011 with a clear margin and its leader became the country’s premiere. But soon the Algerian history was repeated on Egyptian soil; army took over for the sake of democracy, crackdown on all the elected leaders and executed most of them. The persecution and torture and abductions of civilians, journalists and anyone not considered their own is still going on. Here again democracy was done badly in the name of democracy with the help of western powers.

For these matters, Derrida’s project for a dialogue with Islam is important. Although Derrida showed a little bias that Algeria was better off without that democratically elected Islamist party, he nevertheless emphasized that Democracy should be open to other religions. Derrida encouraged a dialogue with Islam and within Islam.

It is noteworthy to point out here that there are scores of Muslim thinkers who have worked on an Islamic reasoning of the concept of democracy. The same Muslims Derrida urged the philosophers of time to assist.  Syed Abul’ala Maudodi, an Islamic thinker of the South Asia believed that democracy is not in any contradiction from Islamic rule only if we accept that religion and worldly affairs should go hand in hand. He dubbed such rule as Theo-democracy but adds that only Muslims should be able to elect a ruler, have a say in legislature and consultation in government matters. He emphasized on consultation and authority should be in hands of ordinary Muslims which is indeed democratic.

Fetuhullah Gulen, an influential figure of Turkey and Central Asia, believed very much like Derrida that democracy has been going through changes and it will evolve and improve in the future. But to attain its perfection Islam is the political system that can help it. He stressed that Quran assigns similar duties to its citizen as has been entrusted by modern democratic entities.

Sadek Jawad Suleiman, thought democracy and Islamic Shura to be similar in essence. Ali Abdul Raziq, an Egyptian scholar, emphasized that democracy in relation to Caliphate “can not only be conciliated with Islam but is the one most according to its dogma.”

Derrida as mentioned earlier urged the scholars of the West to help those in the Islamic world who are trying to unmask the virtualities of Quran that has been shadowed by layers of traditions and interpretations. And there are scores of such Muslim thinkers who have been working on such a level. Derrida’s project for democracy can be beneficial for both democracy’s revival and political Islam’s survival.

On Derrida’s proposed idea of cohesion of Islam and democracy; Alex Thomson said that if Islam according to Derrida has political importance for future democracy and their collision can result in something different, then we should acknowledge these facts seriously.

On the course democracy might take, it might not be identifiable as democracy. The marriage of Islam and democracy might lead to something new and different.

On the discussion of openness towards Islam, Slavoj Zizek also converges with Derrida, although his theoretical and political aspirations are very much different from Derrida. Zizek said that despite seeing Islam resilient towards modernization and lamenting about it we should see Islam as an undecidable, open for a socialist project. The reason on focus of Islam is that although it retains the most severe possibility to turn into fascist project it also can be the site for the best. Islam is unlike other religions it has more powerful social linkages, it can counter any possibility to be assimilated into the world capitalism, so Zizek outlined the duty to use the equivocal qualities of Islam politically.

Derrida, aware of the importance Islam and its followers might be able to assert, wanted to use it for democracy’s own good. Scholars like Zizek also took Islam as a site for betterment and development.

Europe needs to peacefully engage in a dialogue with Islam and Muslims. With the ongoing terrorist situations engulfing Europe it might seem as a strategic mistake to not to react and keep negotiating a possibility for common ground between the other (Islam particularly) and democracy (the European ideal); but it may be perhaps a good option for Europe’s future.

Derrida did not simply wanted democracy taken as it is present and neither wanted Islam to be taken as is. What he envisioned will be a new horizon for both democracy and political Islam. For such unison, Derrida’s persistence for overcoming patriarchy that is found both in western democracy and Islamic political system will be of great help.

The post Derrida, Democracy and Islam appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

So, Brexit got done. The UK is no longer a member of the European Union. What happens in the next 11 months will dictate the UK’s economic landscape for decades to come, explains Maria Demertzis, Deputy Director of Bruegel.

Pro-Brexit protesters demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament in London, Britain, October 28, 2019. REUTERS/Hannah McKay

Now negotiators must move on to harder things. To quote a famous British Europhile, ‘…this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps, the end of the beginning.’

The UK has lost all its representation in EU institutions but, at least till the end of December 2020, it must comply with all EU regulations. For a little while then, everything continues as is, except the UK has no say, including in what decisions the EU takes between 1 February and the end of the year. Compromises hammered out in the next 11 months, by both British and European negotiators, will dictate the UK’s economic landscape for decades to come.

The UK would, understandably, want to limit this period as a pure rule-taker. But this depends on whether there will be an agreed relationship by the end of this year.

The UK has lost all its representation in EU institutions but, at least till the end of December 2020, it must comply with all EU regulations.

Can it be done? If this deal refers to just trade issues then any agreement made will have to be ratified by the Council and European Parliament only. And yet, if it is more than just a bare-bones trade deal, but refers to any other issues, national parliaments will in all likelihood need to be consulted. This is a much more complicated and time-consuming process.

So, what can the UK achieve in what is arguably a tight schedule?

The UK will be driven in its demands by the Brexit rationale for regulatory divergence. Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank England, argues in these terms for financial services. As one of the world’s major financial centres, the argument goes, the City of London should aim to go its own way. Given that the UK is leaving the EU, it should aim to maintain and expand the relative advantage it has in the financial sector, the way it sees fit.

But why should the EU agree to this? The City has served as the financial centre of the EU and the euro. Even if Brexit itself diminishes the City’s allure, there is no obvious substitute in continental Europe. This is true for banking services but is more so for access to capital markets. For as long as capital markets union is not a reality, London can still provide access to capital markets the European economy needs.

So, perhaps an agreement on financial services is within the realm of what is possible.

But what about trade? The UK will be looking to stay as close to the EU’s single market as it possibly can. The EU will want to accommodate that provided the UK accepts its rules. Here incentives are not as aligned however. The EU is unlikely to budge as it has the upper hand in the negotiations. By leaving the EU, the UK risks losing 27 markets. This reflects about half of its trade. The EU just risks losing one market, has less to lose and is not prepared to risk the integrity of the single market.  Can then the UK accept regulatory alignment in return for seamless trade?

By leaving the EU, the UK risks losing 27 markets. This reflects about half of its trade.

The chances are that it won’t. But nor can it afford to have no deal by the end of the year that would require prolonging its rule-taker status. That would mean that the only way forward is aiming to have a narrow deal on very specific sectors within the year, but then pursue regulatory divergence for the rest.

The only way forward is aiming to have a narrow deal on very specific sectors within the year, but then pursue regulatory divergence for the rest.

Together with some agreement on financial services this might suffice to declare a political victory. But it will be economically poor as it will not have avoided trade disruptions. This will have consequences for British industries and eventually the economy. But also, it could exacerbate the divergence between London, that will have been allowed to continue to thrive, and the rest of the country that will lose the benefits of frictionless trade. Ironically, this was one of the arguments that fed the Brexit cause to begin with.

The post The realpolitik of the day after Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

If Boris Johnson can negotiate agreements that are better than the EU system, it would be a serious challenge for the 27. 

Boris Johnson ‘got Brexit done’. The United Kingdom will, however, remain subject to EU rules until the end of the year (Photo: UK Parliament/Jessica Taylor)

He was believed to be an entertainer, he turned out to be a political strategist. Thanks to a crushing victory last December, where he managed to remove the Labour party from its working-class strongholds, Boris Johnson ‘got Brexit done’. The United Kingdom will, however, remain subject to EU rules until the end of the year. On 1st January 2021, its privileged access to the EU internal market will end in the absence of a new partnership agreement which is yet to be negotiated or an extension of the transition period (which Johnson does not even want to hear the word of).

For the past three years, the various options available to London have repeatedly been assessed, notably the so-called Canadian option (a free trade agreement for goods, a partial opening of service markets) and the Norwegian option (a full participation in the European market, in exchange for regulatory alignment and a contribution to the budget). But Sajid Javid, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has recently put it bluntly: the UK will have its own trade and regulatory policies. It will not be a follower.

A new conflict with the 27 is thus around the corner. On January 8, in London, Ursula von der Leyen warned that the condition for a free trade agreement without tariffs or quotas is broad regulatory alignment. The more the UK diverges from the EU, the more its market access will be restricted.

The British position is unsurprising: it would be paradoxical, after having decided to ‘take back control’, as the Brexiteers proclaimed, not to make use of this freedom. But Johnson faces a triple contradiction.

The more the UK diverges from the EU, the more its market access will be restricted.

The first is geopolitical. If London could have hoped to negotiate a host of free trade agreements in the pre-2016 multilateral world, it will be much more difficult in the new Trumpian transactional world. Today, the most important thing is strength. A market of 66 million inhabitants (against 450 for the 27 EU countries) does not translate to much muscle.

The second contradiction is economic. The British economy’s best asset is not the production of goods, for which the UK records a heavy deficit vis-à-vis the Union, but services, for which it posts a surplus. The exchange of services requires a harmonised regulatory framework. A combination of free trade in goods and segmentation of the service markets would cost to British consulting or financial engineering firms far more than to German machine tool builders.

The third contradiction is social. By raising the minimum wage 6% and by declaring a preference for skills, Johnson rejected deregulation of the labour market. To do otherwise would be to compromise his political victories. And it is hard to imagine the UK undercutting the EU’s environmental or health standards, for which the preferences of British consumers are very close to those of their continental neighbours.

London’s room for manoeuvre is narrow. Johnson can bet on regulatory competition in finance, artificial intelligence or biotech, and rely on subsidies to reach his industrial policy goals. But this will not be without cost. The greater the divergence with the 27, the longer and more difficult it will be to negotiate an agreement and the more restrictive the EU will be in terms of access to its market.

This does not necessarily put Johnson in a corner. The weakness of the EU lies in its cumbersome procedures and the inertia of its legislation, which results from multiple compromises between competing interests. Take the EU budget, it has priorities that have little to do with those of the EU, which gets perpetuated from one cycle to the next because everyone is fighting to preserve its cherished spending items. Or consider the inability of the European Commission to present a financing plan commensurate to its climate ambitions. Both examples illustrate a sad logic of entitlement.

So where can Johnson go now? Certainly not ‘Singapore on Thames’, the illusion of a free-market paradise for which there is no political basis. He can, however, build an agile regulatory system able to foster innovation and steer it more efficiently than his counterparts in Brussels. Johnson could create a system that, far from contradicting that of the EU, is actually ahead of it.

The bet is far from won. Both on the British and on the EU side, Brexit will end up as just another chapter in the story of Europe’s decline.

If he succeeds, it would present a serious challenge for the 27. But it will also ultimately be beneficial because what the EU needs is not a Britain that drifts away, or isolates itself and fails. The EU needs a partner whose competition wakes up the continent. It’s a challenge that forces the EU to tackle the problem of differentiated integration head-on, instead of cementing a sometimes artificial unity built around the defence of the status quo.

The bet is far from won. Both on the British and on the EU side, Brexit will end up as just another chapter in the story of Europe’s decline. But let’s not stop dreaming. Since the EU and the UK are now condemned to cohabit, let’s try to do it productively. An intelligent partner and competitor is the best thing that can happen to the continent.

This opinion piece was originally published in Le Monde.

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