Ideas on Europe Blog

When Martin Schulz resigned as president of the European Parliament to return to German politics, many British saw that as removing an opponent of Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s goal of the UK having its cake and eating it too, that is, gaining generous special terms when it leaves the European Union. The bad news is that Schulz is not leaving European politics. On Sunday he was named leader of the German Socialist Party (SPD) and will be the chief challenger of the current Chancellor, Angela Merkel, at the German election in September.

Even if Angela Merkel succeeds in maintaining her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) as the largest group in the German Bundestag, she will need to form a coalition in order to retain office as Chancellor because the country’s proportional representation system prevents any party from gaining an absolute majority.

As the second largest party in the German Bundestag, the SPD is the only coalition partner available to the CDU. Both parties are almost certain to lose seats in the Bundestag to the anti-immigration Alternative for Deutschland, but remain large enough to form another coalition government. In that case Schulz will be in line to receive the post of German Foreign Minister, normally reserved for the second partner in a coalition. This will make him a major voice in Parliament and in discussions with Angela Merkel about how the German government responds to British demands for EU concessions.

If Schulz becomes Germany’s new foreign minister, he will meet his British opposite number at regular meetings of the EU’s foreign secretaries. He can offer Boris Johnson a piece of Black Forest cake and ask BoJo to demonstrate his trick of eating the cake and still having it on the plate. If he can’t work his magic, then Schulz can eat the cake himself and leave BoJo with nothing but an empty plate to show for his too clever by half comment.

Of course, Schulz may not become foreign minister: he may end up as the head of a left wing German coalition government. This could happen if a combination of SPD, Green and Left parties MPs gain a majority of seats. The SPD would then have a choice of remaining a junior partner of Angela Merkel or taking control of government. Choosing to form a left-wing coalition government would satisfy many SPD members who have felt the loss of power and votes as a junior partner in Merkel’s CDU-led government.

If Schulz became Chancellor then BoJo would be saved an embarrassing encounter demonstrating that his magic only applies to words, not real objects. As Chancellor, Schulz would then be Theresa May’s opposite number. Moreover, his presence would be the biggest presence in meetings of the European Council, where 27 heads of EU member states will decide what terms, if any, the EU will offer for Britain’s post-Brexit relations with Europe.

How likely is it that Schulz could replace Angela Merkel?  Opinion polls currently show the total vote of three left parties averaging at the same level as the combined vote of the CDU/CSU plus Free Democrats. The complexities involved in awarding seats in a German electoral system, plus the complexities of arriving at a coalition pact needed to form a government, make it impossible to forecast the outcome. It’s too early to tell. At the moment, Schulz has less of a chance of becoming Chancellor than Merkel has of remaining Chancellor. On the other hand, his chance appears better than that of Donald Trump a year ago.

Downing Street has been working on the assumption that Theresa May will be dealing with Angela Merkel throughout the Brexit process. It is possible that this could produce a ‘pig’ of a Brexit compromise that would satisfy both sides. British negotiators could bring home enough bacon to satisfy meat-eating Tories while leaving lots of Black Forest ham on the table to satisfy hefty German appetites.

It is easy to deal with any Downing Street spokespersons claiming with certainty that Angela Merkel will remain the friendly face backing Britain in EU deliberations next winter. Just ask them: How is Theresa May getting on with President Hilary Clinton?

Bon Appétit.

By Professor Richard Rose, author of Representing Europeans: a Pragmatic Approach and a commissioning fund awardee of The UK in a Changing Europe. It updates a blog he posted on this website on 29 November captioned:  “Another Nail in the Coffin of a Soft Brexit?”

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This week’s revelations in the Canard Enchaîné.

Not a good week for French democracy. It started with the communication of false figures from the first round of the Socialist primary, followed by the verdict sending Sarkozy’s former minister Claude Guéant to jail for his ‘automatic cash teller’ practices while in office. It ended up overshadowed by what is now known as #penelopegate, the scandal around the ‘fake jobs’ of François Fillon’s wife Penelope.

A week that looked almost like it was ordered on amazon by Marine Le Pen. Plenty of evidence for the oh, so tempting ‘Tous pourris!’ theory about an establishment that is not only disconnected, but corrupt to the bones. The Front National did not even have to make particular efforts to send the message home: indignation was running high even without them fanning the flames, and they were not too keen on reviving the story of their own MEP assistants paid for working in France for the party…

What is almost touching about the French political class is the stubbornness with which they simply don’t get the point. They seem to live forever in the golden age of the early Fifth Republic, when uninterrupted growth gave them the feeling they were entitled to help themselves to their piece of the cake. Or two. Or three.

Today, especially for candidates who promote strict austerity and collective effort in difficult economic times, all this is no longer acceptable. But like kids caught with both hands in the candy bag, they don’t understand what’s wrong. Listening to the way they defend themselves – from ‘but this is perfectly legal!’ and ‘they mix up gross and net salaries’ (Fillon) to ‘things have always been like this!’ (Guéant) – is a travel back in time. To an epoch when France was entirely impregnated by Catholicism, a place in which sinners were sure to be forgiven and where the accumulation of little benefits and pleasures was considered petty stuff to be dealt with tongue-in-cheek.

This place is no more. Research on consumer behaviour has shown that over the last fifteen years there has been a slow, but continuous change in French consumer’s attitudes which may be linked to an increasing sensitivity to ‘protestant values’ in French society. While it is always risky to stick such labels on movements of social change, there is no doubt that increasing interdependence with a global environment dominated by Anglo-American values has produced some observable shifts.

There was indeed a new sensitivity was not only reflected in increased interest of consumers for environmental issues, organic products, fair trade, but which has also had significant repercussions on the country’s political culture. Traditional cultural auto-stereotypes – a good dose of machismo, disrespect of the law, understanding for petty corruption – were increasingly put into question. There were new laws for gender parity in politics; civil society pressed for tackling the problem of the obscene yearly death toll on the roads; anti-corruption judges adopted a zero-tolerance attitude, including against tax evasion.

True, there is still a large lenience when it comes to extra-marital affairs, but these are rather considered an amusing relic of Versailles court life. François Hollande did not risk an impeachment for having a secret affair with an actor. But he did lose a lot of esteem for spending all this time getting rid of his mistress while buying the breakfast croissants for another, while the middle-class was told to wait patiently for the end of the tunnel.

Those were the days. The Fillon family poses for Paris Match in front of their home near Sablé-sur-Sarthe (2013).

Today, after being told for decades the country was in an economic crisis, the French are fed up with the lack of transparency, accountability, and integrity. The generous self-serving practices of the past – hiring one’s wife with an indecent salary for unclear tasks (Fillon) or taking one’s sons in the government jet to watch a Champions League final in Berlin (Valls) are simply no longer acceptable. As the excellent radio columnist Thomas Legrand pointed out this week, the ‘voracious’ manner in which Mitterrand and Chirac benefitted from the privileges that come with life at the top of the state would today be ‘assimilated to kleptocracy’. Public opinion has moved, while politicians, as if they wanted to provide evidence for just how disconnected they are in their Paris power bubble, have not moved an inch. Many of them even refuse to implement the law prohibiting the age-old practice of serving several mandates concurrently (the famous cumul des mandats’)!

Fillon, and all the others, will have to learn it the hard way. It is difficult to imagine that the strategy mix of self-victimisation and conspiracy theory will work over a three-month campaign. Perhaps with some die-hard party followers. But not with the mainstream French middle class he was courting so desperately with his image of ‘probity’ and ‘rectitude’.

The harm is already done, as two recent polls attest: a SOFRES poll for Le Figaro had Fillon down to only 22% of intentions for the first round of the presidential elections and, worse, credited him with a mere 60-40 win in a potential face-off with Marine Le Pen. And according to an Odoxa poll for France Info, Fillon’s approval rate has gone down from 54% to only 38% since last November. Even in his own party, only 48% consider him ‘honest’…

Not a good week for French democracy. Unless, of course, the events and their consequences finally sound like a wake-up call to the French political class, ideally with tangible effects beyond the election deadlines. In which case, it would have been a good week after all.

Albrecht Sonntag
@albrechtsonntag

This is post # 10 on the French 2017 election marathon.
All previous posts can be found here.

The post France 2017: Protestant protests appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Λαμβάνοντας υπ’ όψιν το προεκτεθέν ισχύον νομικό-θεσμικό αλλά και πολιτικό πλαίσιο του Προγράμματος, η συμμετοχή του ΔΝΤ, όπως έχει ήδη επισημανθεί από τον Μάιο του 2016, φαίνεται αναπόφευκτη. Αυτό που θα πρέπει, όμως, να επιτευχθεί είναι τουλάχιστον η ορθή κρίση από το ΔΝΤ των μέτρων που προτείνουν οι εντός-Ευρώπης δανειστές για το Ελληνικό χρέος, ώστε να διασφαλιστεί η επί της ουσίας η βιωσιμότητα του.

Τις τελευταίες ημέρες υπάρχει έντονη κινητικότητα σχετικά με την ολοκλήρωση της δεύτερης αξιολόγησης του 3ου (2015-2018) Ελληνικού Προγράμματος Οικονομικής Βοήθειας (‘Πρόγραμμα’). Υπήρξαν ελπίδες ότι η ολοκλήρωση θα πραγματοποιούνταν εντός Ιανουαρίου, ήτοι ότι θα υπήρχε συμφωνία στο Eurogroup στις 26.01.2017. Αυτό όμως δεν κατέστει εφικτό, εφόσον το κύριο θέμα που ακόμη εκκρεμεί είναι η συμμετοχή του Διεθνούς Νομισματικού Ταμείου (ΔΝΤ) στο Πρόγραμμα. Για να επιτευχθεί η συμμετοχή αυτή, το ΔΝΤ απαίτησε την προκαταβολική νομοθέτηση επιπλέον μέτρων το 2017 με εφαρμογή τους από το 2019, μετά το τέλος του Προγράμματος (2018). Σημαντικότερα, όμως, το ΔΝΤ εγείρει επίσης σοβαρά θέματα σχετικά με την βιωσιμότητα του Ελληνικού χρέους.

Το ΔΝΤ συμμετέχει έως τώρα στο Πρόγραμμα μόνον ως τεχνικό σύμβουλος (κυρίως συνεισφέρει στην κατάρτιση του σχετικού Μνημονίου). Για την συμμετοχή του και με την παροχή οικονομικής βοήθειας, το ΔΝΤ έθεσε τους παρακάτω δύο όρους: ένα πακέτο δημοσιονομικών μέτρων, με έμφαση στην συνταξιοδοτική μεταρρύθμιση, και σημαντική ελάφρυνση του Ελληνικού χρέους, το οποίο και το ΔΝΤ θεωρεί ότι πλέον έχει καταστεί μη βιώσιμο.

Κατ’ αρχάς, γιατί είναι απαραίτητη η συμμετοχή (είτε τεχνική είτε οικονομική) του ΔΝΤ στο Πρόγραμμα. Όσον αφορά στο νομικό-θεσμικό πλαίσιο, η συμμετοχή του ΔΝΤ σε Πρόγραμμα Οικονομικής Βοήθειας Κράτους-Μέλους της Ευρωζώνης με τεχνική και οικονομική υποστήριξη προβλέπεται στην Συνθήκη για τον Ευρωπαϊκό Μηχανισμό Σταθερότητας (ΕΜΣ – είναι ένας διεθνής οργανισμός με μέλη τα Κράτη-Μέλη της Ευρωζώνης, ο οποίος είναι επίσης ο άμεσος δανειστής της Ελλάδας στο Πρόγραμμα) αλλά και στον Κανονισμό 472/2013 της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης. Όσον αφορά στο πλαίσιο της πολιτικής, η Ελλάδα δεσμεύθηκε να αιτηθεί τεχνική αλλά και οικονομική βοήθεια από το ΔΝΤ στην Σύνοδο των αρχηγών των Κρατών-Μελών της Ευρωζώνης τον Ιούλιο του 2015. Επίσης, και μεγάλο μέρος των υπόλοιπων Κρατών-Μελών της Ευρωζώνης, ήτοι των δανειστών μας, και κυρίως της Γερμανίας, αντιμετωπίζει, ήδη από την αρχή του Προγράμματος αλλά και μέχρι σήμερα, την συμμετοχή του ΔΝΤ στο Πρόγραμμα ως απαραίτητη προϋπόθεση για την συνέχιση παροχής οικονομικής βοήθειας.

Εν ολίγοις, η συμμετοχή του ΔΝΤ φαίνεται αναπόφευκτη, τουλάχιστον από την πλευρά των δανειστών και της Ελλάδας. Δύναται, όμως, το ΔΝΤ να συμμετέχει, δεδομένων των επιφυλάξεων που διατηρεί, και, ιδιαιτέρως, αυτή του μη βιώσιμου χρέους; Εδώ είναι χρήσιμη μια σύντομη ιστορική αναδρομή στο 1ο Πρόγραμμα της Ελλάδας και το 2010. Το ΔΝΤ, κατά την διάρκεια των διαβουλεύσεων για το 1ο Πρόγραμμα, δεν μπορούσε, όπως και τώρα, να επιβεβαιώσει την βιωσιμότητα του Ελληνικού χρέους. Όμως, οι κανονισμοί όριζαν αυτό ήταν απαραίτητη για παροχή τόσο μεγάλου ποσού όσο αυτό που απαιτούνταν για την Ελλάδα. Έτσι, το ΔΝΤ, προς αποφυγή συνεπειών «ντόμινο» (spillover) στην Ευρωζώνη και στην παγκόσμια οικονομία από πιθανή οικονομική κατάρρευση της Ελλάδας, τροποποίησε την συγκεκριμένη προϋπόθεση, καθιστώντας δυνατή την παροχή βοήθειας ακόμη και στην περίπτωση που δεν μπορεί να επιβεβαιωθεί η βιωσιμότητα του χρέους της αιτούσας χώρας, υπό τον όρο ότι κινδυνεύει η παγκόσμια οικονομία από συνέπειες «ντόμινο». Ο συγκεκριμένος κανονισμός τροποποιήθηκε ξανά τον Ιανουάριο του 2016. Το κριτήριο του κινδύνου για «ντόμινο» στην παγκόσμια οικονομία αντικαταστάθηκε με την την απαραίτητη προϋπόθεση παροχής χρηματοδότησης στην αιτούσα χώρα από πηγές εκτός του ΔΝΤ, ώστε να καταστεί το χρέος της βιώσιμο.

Συνεπώς, ακόμη και εάν το ΔΝΤ δεν δύναται να επιβεβαιώσει την βιωσιμότητα του Ελληνικού χρέους, οι κανονισμοί επιτρέπουν την οικονομική συμμετοχή του, δεδομένων των βραχυπρόθεσμων και, των προσεχώς μεσοπρόθεσμων, μέτρων για το Ελληνικό χρέος, τα οποία συμφωνήθηκαν από το Eurogroup. Αυτό, όμως, τελεί υπό την προϋπόθεση ότι το ΔΝΤ θα θεωρήσει τα μέτρα αυτά ως επαρκή προς αποκατάσταση της βιωσιμότητας του Ελληνικού χρέους. Κάτι τέτοιο όμως δεν φαίνεται να ισχύει επί του παρόντος, με το ΔΝΤ να υπογραμμίζει την ανάγκη συμφωνίας περαιτέρω μέτρων ελάφρυνσης του χρέους.

Είναι πρακτικά δυνατή και επιθυμητή η συνέχιση του Προγράμματος μόνον με τον ΕΜΣ; Σαφέστατα, δεδομένης της μορφής και πλέον αυξημένης τεχνογνωσίας του, αλλά και του de facto εξωθεσμικού ρόλου του ΔΝΤ σε σχέση με το Ευρωπαϊκό modus operandi. Παρά ταύτα, αυτό δεν φαίνεται να είναι εφικτό στην παρούσα φάση της διαπραγμάτευσης. Σε κάθε περίπτωση, λαμβάνοντας υπ’ όψιν το προεκτεθέν ισχύον νομικό-θεσμικό αλλά και πολιτικό πλαίσιο του Προγράμματος, η συμμετοχή του ΔΝΤ, όπως έχει ήδη επισημανθεί από τον Μάιο του 2016, φαίνεται αναπόφευκτη. Αυτό που θα πρέπει, όμως, να επιτευχθεί είναι τουλάχιστον η ορθή κρίση από το ΔΝΤ των μέτρων που προτείνουν οι εντός-Ευρώπης δανειστές για το Ελληνικό χρέος, ώστε να διασφαλιστεί η επί της ουσίας η βιωσιμότητα του.

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As one previous post on this blog detailed, the current political turmoil in Northern Ireland was sparked by a subsidy for renewable energy production.  Though it is tempting to blame political carelessness, the ongoing RHI scandal prompts a broader reflection about renewable energy policy instruments. Incentives akin to the RHI are relatively common in renewable energy policies across Europe and it is not the first time that they create difficulties. From the abrupt halt to support to photovoltaics in Spain in 2009 to issues with the territorial planning of incentivised wind power in France and Germany (or near Donald Trump’s golf course…) renewable energy policy can prove hard to manage, even (or especially?) when it relies on apparently simple market-based instruments.

Looking back on the French photovoltaic crisis

The history of solar photovoltaics in France is a good illustration, as I retrace in a recent paper in Environmental Politics. The uptake of photovoltaics in France was driven by a feed-in tariff scheme set up in 2006. These feed-in tariffs offered a fixed payment over 20 years for each unit of electricity generated by photovoltaic appliances and fed to the grid. Their introduction in France was directly inspired by the German FIT-based renewable energy policy. However, while the 2006 feed-in tariff scheme imported its basic template from Germany, it did not copy the features designed to control implementation and uptake. For example, tariffs were not set to decrease every year to follow cost evolutions, as they do in Germany. In addition, the policy did not create institutional or political arrangements to monitor implementation, and very limited manpower was devoted to its management within ministries. Photovoltaics, one of the least mature renewable energy sources, was clearly not intended to contribute significantly to a French electricity mix dominated by nuclear power; the incentive was expected to have only marginal effects, as is explicitly stated in the document planning investment in the electricity sector for 2005-2015 (p. 48).

 Figure 1: Evolution of grid-connected solar photovoltaics in France: installed capacity in megawatt-peak. (data: SOeS)

However, by 2009 the policy began to have significant impacts as sharp decreases in the costs of photovoltaic equipment combined with a surge in political enthusiasm for renewables. With feed-in tariffs guaranteeing record financial returns, the number of photovoltaic installations rocketed and it became very difficult to evaluate the share of serious projects v. speculative ones. Despite alerts in early 2009,  public authorities did not react before January 2010. When they eventually did, the lag between announcement and implementation of tariff cuts only accelerated the rush to register solar projects before cuts were imposed. They also did not have the information channels and the institutional resources to react efficiently. This resulted in high political instability: the policy was reformed again eight months later and no less than twelve regulatory documents about it where published over the year.

The scheme was funded by a levy on electricity use, so this translated in an increase in France’s electricity price for 20 years, the duration of the feed-in contracts. In 2015, feed-in tariffs for photovoltaics represented 35% of the taxes on electricity funding public services, and amounted to € 2,2bn, despite the fact that photovoltaics only accounted for 1% of electricity production in France (Ministry for Ecology, 2016 p. 26).

Unable to contain the policy, the government abruptly froze the scheme in December 2010 – without any warnings. This triggered a violent political crisis which culminated during an extremely tense consultation with stakeholders – though not nearly so tense so as to provoke resignations among the government (this video of a protest before a meeting during the consultation gives an idea of the climate). It ended with a revised version of feed-in tariffs that drastically restricted their ambition and scope to prevent any future crisis, and left the emerging French solar industry decimated. The emerging enthusiasm for photovoltaics plummeted. This is a good example of an ill-managed policy: an instrument was set up in 2006 as a mainly symbolic gesture, with little care for its potential impacts; it turned unexpectedly attractive and the government was unable to monitor its effects and contain its costs. The policy was managed haphazardly for a year, and it ended with an abrupt u-turn that virtually cancelled out the growth of a sector that had just been significantly invested in, when a successful policy should have been able to  both contain and sustain growth.

What can we learn from the French & Northern Irish cases?

What do these two stories tell us about renewable energy policies? First, it is not a matter of policy learning: the risk for such instruments to create windfall effects is well identified and the design and use of safeguard mechanisms is documented. These mechanisms may not always work as well as expected, but they were not even tried in both the French and Northern Irish cases. Careless design and limited resources for policy steering can account for the defects of these instruments, and they are likely to stem from unrealistically low expectations.

This suggests that there might be something specific about renewable energy subsidies, an issue that we are exploring as part of a research project on Energy transitions in-the-making. They aim to accelerate and sustain innovation and the widespread deployment of new technology, and ultimately work towards reconfigurations of the energy landscape. They are thus designed to spark novelty and make the unexpected happen (to an extent at least), but should do so in a controlled way. Precisely because of this objective, their calibration is a delicate business, even when conducted carefully. The subtleties of policy design then take on a major role: minor flaws can have major consequences given the potentially exponential effects of incentives.

This is evidenced by one striking common feature of the French and Northern Irish cases: the dramatic political effects triggered by relatively simple and widespread policy instruments. In both cases, the malfunctioning of instruments did not generate bounded, sectoral difficulties; instead, it degenerated into significant political crises that challenged established legitimacies –  especially so in Northern Ireland. This is a welcome reminder that market-based instruments are not politics-proof, and that the social and technological dynamics behind their workings cannot be eluded.

The post The politics of (bad) policy design: French solar panels and Northern Irish boilers appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The British Supreme Court ruling of January 24 was a mixed result for the Prime Minister Theresa May’s government (PDF).

On the one hand, they saw their earlier defeat in the High Court defeat confirmed, committing them to passing legislation through parliament before they can start the formal process of leaving the European Union under Article 50.

On the other hand, the court unanimously agreed that the Scottish and Northern Irish assemblies did not need to be consulted, closing down what might have been a very awkward development, given the majorities to remain in the EU in both nations.

Perhaps most importantly, the case highlights the extent to which the government has failed to develop a coherent plan of how to manage and pursue Brexit, albeit having decided what substantive outcomes it seeks.

Having made a very strong commitment to starting negotiations by the end of March, May now finds herself having to squeeze a bill through parliament, something that could have been done much more leisurely if there had not been an appeal to the original ruling in November.

What’s next?

To be clear, there is no real chance that parliament will not pass this bill. Despite a majority of MPs and Lords being in favour of remaining in the EU, there is broad acceptance that the June 2016 referendum was legitimate and its result is to be respected. With a Labour Party leadership stating that they will push for support of the bill, there are insufficient rebels on either side of the House to overturn May’s majority.

What is much less clear is the price that parliament will extract for its support. Most obviously, there is very strong support for a White Paper, which would outline the government’s plans in a more formal way, before voting on such a bill, as well as many voices asking that parliament should have oversight and scrutiny of the Article 50 negotiations.

Until now, the government has only grudgingly conceded that parliament will have a vote on the final deal, but without the opportunity to shape that deal this means little.

As such we are about to see a frenzy of activity in parliament once the draft bill is published. The government will be able to avoid the more radical amendments, but is likely to find itself pushed to accept more oversight, especially if Labour can find and keep some discipline on the issue.

Once again, Jeremy Corbyn cuts an ambivalent figure here – torn between a general dislike of the EU and its works and a worry about the erosion of workers’ rights caused by the Brexit. While Tory rebels have started to build links with counterparts across the House, it remains to be seen whether they can outmanoeuvre the government.

What of the other nations in the UK?

There is an added complication to all of this, caused – ironically – by the Supreme Court judgment. The closing-down of any role for Scotland and Northern Ireland in Brexit negotiations might have side-stepped matters now, but it is clear that it hands the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) a very strong stick with which to beat the drum for a second independence referendum.

While the SNP had been one of the very few parties to be prepared for a Leave vote in the referendum, they have been hamstrung by opinion polls that suggest the Scottish public are not particularly eager to leave the UK.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon moved quickly after the Supreme Court ruling to present the decision as a marker of how little control Scotland has over its own future. With a commitment to bring a motion to the Scottish Parliament shortly on the triggering of Article 50, Sturgeon is clearly working on using this as a way of getting voters behind her, as and when she decides to hold another referendum.

Regardless of the result, Theresa May will find that such a referendum will require time and effort that she can ill-spare from Article 50 negotiations.

If Scotland holds the potential for a break-up of the UK, then Northern Ireland holds the potential for the further undermining of the peace process. While the collapse of the Executive last week was not due directly to Brexit, the widespread concerns about the re-imposition of a hard border with the Republic of Ireland and about the disentanglement of the EU from the Good Friday agreements have left many on edge.

The Supreme Court’s marginalisation of the Northern Ireland Assembly is a further blow, albeit one whose effect remains to be seen as new elections get under way.

Discovering the full extent of Brexit

Taken together, the overall effect of the Supreme Court has been to change the manner of Brexit, rather than the destination. The bold political reality of the referendum remains as before, but we are now seeing the emergence of different political takes on how to handle it.

The suspicion that many voters have voiced about “the establishment” trying to overturn the referendum remains unfounded, but the lack of a clearly defined plan makes it easy for politicians and commentators across the spectrum to point to actions that look dubious.

In reality, the British political system is still trying to discover the full extent of what Brexit might involve, as well as what might be done within that. Except a lot more debate about what the options might be in the coming months and years, long after this legal complication has been dealt with.

 

This piece originally appeared on AlJazeera.com

 

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How could we save Europe, help refugees and fight climate change at the same time? It would be hard to deny that the refugee crisis – caused by wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan – has put a terrible strain on Europe, as millions of people from these war torn regions have sought refuge within the member states of the European Union.

If populist politicians have exploited the refugee crisis – by using fear of mass immigration and terrorism to gain support – then it should be recognised that the refugee crisis is also being used to divide Europe. Images of crowdes of refugees were used by those campaigning for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union in June 2016. Perhaps the vote for Brexit would not have happened if the refugee crisis had not occured.

It is very probable that Angela Merkel will pay the price at the ballot box in 2017 for allowing over one million refugees into Germany in 2015. Likewise the refugee crisis will be used by Marine Le Pen, as an excuse to close France’s borders and pull France out of the EU if she wins the french presidential election this year. The refugee crisis is the excuse for nationalist politicians to gain power, recreate borders and put up new fences across the Schengen area.

Europe has been unable to show a united response to the refugee crisis which is both humanitarian and practical. The best way to stop the flow of refugees into Europe would be to stop the wars in the Middle East and Africa, but there are no simple ways to achieve peace in these regions. If a safe place could be found to resettle refugees until peace is restored, then the numbers of people seeking asylum in Europe could be reduced, thus easing the presure on member states of the European Union.

There is no shortage of space in a North African country such as Libya, but the problem is that Libya itself has been disrupted by war and most of the land of the country is uninhabitable desert. If new technology could bring water, agriculture, and renewable energy to new settlements in the desert then the refugees themselves could maintain these communities.

An example of cooperation between different communities to bring water to a dry region can be seen at Auja in the West Bank of the Jordan near to the Dead Sea. On 20th May 2016 an article published in the New York Times International entitled “Muslims and Jews Cooperate on Solar Project”, describes how a solar array was providing electricity to pump water to 45 Palestinian farms around Auja.

If the Sahara desert were to become fertile and habitable then solar energy could be used to provide power for desalination plants on the North African coast, and water could be brought inland by pipes to the new communities that were reclaiming the desert. First of all a pilot project of a few towns and villages could be seen as helping Libya’s economic development and providing employment for local people as well as providing acommodation and employment for refugees. The first industry of these communities would be water, the second industry would be agriculture, and the third industry would be solar energy. The pilot projects would all have to start in a small way and would need military protection against attack from terrorist groups such as Isis.

The German development bank KFW has invested in one of the world’s largest solar energy power generation projects in Morocco. In Febuary 2016 Noor I, the first of four power power plants was connected to the grid, which has the capacity to generate 160 megawatts providing electricity for 350,000 people. This is part of a plan to install four power plants close to the town of Ouarzazate in southern Morocco with an overall capacity of 580 megawatts, which according to KFW’s website will supply “power for around 1.3 million people”.

Similar schemes could be set up for building solar power plants in Libya, which would provide the electricity to power the desalination plants and pump the water to the new communities on the edge of the desert. Any scheme to resettle people would not work unless the infrastructure to support human life was put in place before people arrived. Therefore the first priority before any settlement could be built, would be water supply to the site of a planned settlement. Likewise the irrigation of agricultural land would be a priority.

Another problem would be dealing with the extreme heat of the Sahara desert, people cannot work outside during the day under these conditions. Tent like structures would be needed to protect workers from the sun and working hours would have to be reduced, to help those involved cope with the difficult and dangerous conditions. Progress would be slow but bringing water to the desert could be a sustainable way of fighting climate change, increasing agricultural yields for a growing world population, and dealing with the consequences of war. These projects would require the cooperation of many individuals from different countries including scientists and engineers from Europes’ universities and technical colleges.

Sources

James Glanz and Rami Nazzal, (20th May 2016) ‘Muslims and Jews Cooperate on Solar Project’, The New York Times International Weekly.

https://www.kfw-entwicklungsbank.de/International-financing/KfW-Development-Bank/News/News-Details_338561.html

©Jolyon Gumbrell 2017

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Theresa May’s speech confirms that Brexit means being all out of the EU rather than half-way out. However, the British government is less than half way down the road to that destination, because it has not yet started to specify how it will apply the Prime Minister’s principles. Once the government gives formal notice of withdrawal the agenda shifts from stating principles in the abstract to applying them. This is the purpose of the negotiations with Brussels that are scheduled to start in April. But what these principles mean in practice is already the object of internal debate within the Cabinet.

Two major examples of unsettled business are:

First, whether Brexit will happen by transition or in one go. The referendum question left the timetable for exit open. The default position under EU law is that by 1 April 2019 the UK should be a non-member state in all respects. To have everything ready will place an almost impossible burden on the UK. A transition agreement of two years would more than double the time available to prepare for implementing non-member status. To make it palatable to Conservatives who want Brexit in one go, Downing Street would have to make clear that transition was part of an irreversible process, rather than a back door way of keeping a few toes or even a foot still inside the EU.

Second, what taking back control of immigration means in practice. Since most immigrants come from non-EU countries, to implement this goal would require having policies in place that covered new Commonwealth citizens who now have special claims on moving to the UK. It would also require having special policies in place to deal with old Commonwealth citizens from Australia, Canada and the United States. Any control of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic would be soft and porous because difficult to enforce.

Avoiding placing any numerical target on immigration saves the government from the fate of its predecessors, which fell hundreds of thousands short of hitting their target. However, it also falls far short of the expectations of Brexiteers who believe that the whole point of taking back control is to achieve a large and visible reduction in the annual rate of immigration from all parts of the world and not just from the EU.

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While most of the current Brexit discussions concern whether British Prime Minister Theresa May and her government will opt for a hard or soft exit, it is relevant to think a step further. Since Theresa May’s announcement to go with the so-called hard Brexit, both the British government and the European Union will need to reconsider relations with international organisations. The United Kingdom plays a vital part in the EU’s interorganisational relations, most importantly in foreign, security and defence issues.

Despite its ongoing aversions to further EU integration in the realm of security and defence policy, the UK has played an important role as a driver with signing the bilateral Franco-British agreement in St. Malo in 1998. Also, thanks to its long-lasting partnership with the United States, it has often served as a bridge over the Atlantic. It also maintains close trade relations with Asian countries, especially with Commonwealth countries such as India and Malaysia, but also with China, because of the regions’ increasing economic importance.

 

The gains and losses of Brexit for both the EU and the UK

Prior to the UK’s EU referendum and the subsequent decision to leave the Union, the British government has strengthened its bilateral relations with international organisations such as ASEAN and WTO. However, with Brexit not only will the UK’s relations with international organisations change, but also the EU’s international agreements. While the UK government will have to re-negotiate economic agreements with the EU’s Free Trade Partners (e.g. Canada and EFTA countries), it will also have to re-negotiate its status within WTO. Being outside the EU, the UK will no longer benefit from the special rules for trading blocs under WTO regulations.[1]

On the other hand, there is no need to re-negotiate international agreements and Brexit will not affect negatively in this sense. Yet, the EU will have to miss out on a significant security partner and the most important defence capabilities. As a member state, the UK has contributed vitally to military operations under the framework of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy. With Brexit the Franco-British driver and motor will be lost[2], since the capabilities of both member states account for 40%.

On a positive note, the EU will also loose a veto player with Brexit. This might enable the EU to finalise its security and defence project. In the weeks after the referendum outcome, renewed ideas of an EU army emerged. Brexit might open new avenues and opportunities for the EU, such as stronger EU defence as proposed by Germany and France[3].

 

Implications for the EU-NATO relationship

Yet, the implications of Brexit for the EU’s interorganisational relations with crucial partners, such as NATO, will not be this positive. As outlined by former Secretary General of NATO, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer[4], Brexit was sad news for both security actors, and will hurt the EU-NATO relationship. As a bridge and advocate of EU-NATO cooperation, this relationship needs to be re-considered. The UK is amongst a few states that have achieved a 2% defence spending. Additionally, it possesses nuclear assets, a large military force and, above all, the motivation to conduct military crisis management operations.

The future EU-UK relationship will be important for shaping EU-NATO cooperation. Whether the UK will be an integrated, associated or detached partner[5] will affect interorganisational relations. It is suggested that Brexit can lead to three possible scenarios for the EU-NATO relationship: (1) The UK continues to contribute to CSDP operations through a special agreement that would allow to further strengthen the EU-NATO relationship. In this case, the UK would also need a special status with the EU, i.e. a EU+1 partnership which would enable the UK to participate in CSDP operations. (2) The UK withdraws completely and the EU lacks financial contributions to CSDP and becomes more reliant on NATO through Berlin Plus. Accordingly, the UK would be more autonomous, but the EU-NATO relationship would suffer more asymmetry. (3) The UK withdraws completely and EU member states are able to compensate for the financial loss and establish stronger capabilities including EU OHQ. This would contribute to the EU’s autonomisation as well as to a more equal and symmetric EU-NATO relationship.

 

Implications for the EU’s interorganisational relations

While Brexit would have a detrimental effect on the EU-NATO relationship, this will not be the case as such with the EU’s interorganisational relations with organisations such as WTO and the UN. In the case of WTO, the EU will still be considered a trading bloc, and thus benefit from WTO’s specific regulations as regards tariffs for international trade. In the case of the UN, some member states, e.g. Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland, would favour a permanent EU seat in the Security Council. In addition, due to the Franco-British Lancaster House Agreement, the UK government will continue to cooperate with at least France in matters of security and defence, which can then be related back to the EU and its interorganisational interaction with the UN.

 

The extent of Brexit’s implications for the EU-UK relationship and for the EU’s interorganisational relations with international organisations such as NATO, will hopefully be determined in the upcoming months. The decision by Theresa May and her government to opt for a hard Brexit have important effects on the future of the EU’s interorganisational relations and the strength (or weakness) of European security. With a strong British engagement, the EU might be better off due to the UK’s capabilities, but without a close relationship, new avenues might be open for the EU to finally strengthen and expand its security and defence policy.

 

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

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/07/wto-chief-brexit-trade-talks-start-scratch-eu-referendum

[2] https://www.ceps.eu/publications/implications-brexit-eu’s-common-security-and-defence-policy

[3] https://www.euractiv.com/section/security/news/germany-and-france-seek-stronger-eu-defence-after-brexit/

[4] http://www.friendsofeurope.org/security-europe/brexit-britain-nato-and-the-eu-will-now-be-diminished-on-the-global-stage/

[5] http://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/The-UK-and-EU-foreign-security-and-defense-policy-after-Brexit.pdf

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Since December, Northern Ireland has been bogged down in a major scandal on an apparently simple policy instrument – the renewable heat incentive scheme. The scheme, closed in early 2016, was set up in 2012 to encourage renewable heat uptake. Since then, it has generated a massive overspend (more than £1bn UK public money, £600 million coming from the Treasury and £490 million over the next 20 years) and precipitated the fall of the Northern Irish government (Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness stepped down on 9 January). New elections for the Northern Irish assembly are expected to be called for March, with this ‘cash for ash’ scandal and its handling by both civil service and politicians (is it corruption? Is it incompetence?) casting a long shadow over the vote.

The instrument that started it all

The Renewable Heat Incentive scheme was a policy instrument set up to increase uptake in a variety of renewable heat technologies – from biomass boilers to solar thermals, biogas, heat pumps – for use by businesses from 2012 and in homes from 2014. Such a scheme was set up to help contribute toward the UK-wide target to achieve 15% renewable heat by 2020, as part of the UK’s EU commitments to increase its share of renewable energy. The scandal centres on the business part of the scheme, which worked with different tariffs in the form of pence per kilowatt per hour (for different size and type of technologies): “cash for ash”.

Around this apparently simple scheme, a set of issues arose, amongst which three stand out: policy design, ex-post evaluation and compliance, and political reactivity.

Faulty policy design

Issues of policy design made the scheme easy to abuse. As the BBC Stephen Nolan, put it ‘the more you burned, the more you earned’. Two cost-control elements of the RHI scheme in Great Britain were not carried over to the NI scheme. First, tiering of payments – that is, a lower level of payment would apply after the equipment had been in use for some time. Second, degression, a reduced rate of tariff paid in response to high take up.

Comparison between RHI NI and RHI GB schemes, showing much higher returns in Northern Ireland, ( Northern Irish Audit Office)

Tiering of payments was not suggested when the scheme was first proposed as, according to the Northern Irish Audit Office, “the proposed rate was less than the cost of wood pellets and therefore there was no incentive to excessively use the boilers just to claim the subsidy.” – but the subsidy rate was increased above the cost of wood pellets ahead of the scheme’s launch, creating a strong incentive to burn more wood pellets with the sole aim of receiving RHI funds. Tiering was only added in November 2015. Degression was also only introduced in November 2015 – when it was introduced in GB in 2013 there had been a very low uptake in the NI scheme and thus no grounds to introduce degression. Considering this lack of two major safeguards, the Northern Irish Audit Office argued in July 2016 that the scheme had “serious systemic weaknesses from the start”, was not adapted promptly when problems arose, leaving it “potentially vulnerable to abuse”.

Faulty governance

Problems with the scheme could have been revealed early-on – but this was prevented by problematic administration. While the level of subsidy was decided by the NI Executive, administration and implementation were not really devolved to Northern Ireland. Instead, Ofgem, which was administrating the GB scheme as well, was in charge, and was to liaise with the NI Executive. Concerns have been raised about how the two entities worked together – no minutes were taken at meetings until 2015 making it difficult to apportion blame, there was a very high rate of acceptance (98%), very small rate of inspections (0.86% in 2015-2016, far below the agreed 3%) and little was done in situations of non-compliance (Ofgem hearing at NI Assembly).

A political scandal

The RHI scandal truly turned ‘political’, and even constitutional, when it came to closing down the scheme. It took more than two years between a first whistle-blower letter (in late 2013) to Arlene Foster MLA (then minister in charge of the scheme, afterwards promoted to First Minister of Northern Ireland) and the closure of the scheme to new applicants in early 2016. In the meantime, applications had spiked, severely increasing costs for taxpayers. The reasons (and responsibilities) for the delay may eventually be determined by a public inquiry (is it due to civil service malfunction? To political interference within one party? To the way the NI assembly functions?). However, the shape and format of such an inquiry is still intensely debated.

A canary in the Brexit coalmine

The RHI scandal raises profound questions about administrative and political capacity in Northern Ireland in general, and about its preparedness for Brexit in particular. Brexit is likely to impact Northern Ireland the most out of the whole UK because of issues such as the border with Ireland and integrated supply chains across the island. However, NI politicians are focusing on RHI instead of debating Brexit. The NI Executive has no clear Brexit plan, and in that respect, stands in sharp contrast with Scotland (which published a 60-page plan in December, as the RHI scandal unravelled). While Brexit dominates recent elections in Great Britain, this is not expected to be the case for the forthcoming NI elections, which will be fought on the traditional ethno-national divide between Unionist and Republican parties. While politicians are needed to feed-in to the Brexit negotiations, the civil service will need to deliver it. And here as well, the RHI scandal raises alarm. How can a system which struggled so much around a single instrument rise to the challenge of delivering new policies on, amongst others, environment, agriculture and fisheries; all of which are devolved matters expected to be led by the NI Executive after Brexit?

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Identity crisis. The Socialist rose as seen by Plantu in spring 2005.

On a study trip to Brussels about fifteen years ago, a major French socialist MEP gave a good lesson in French political semantics to my student group. In a nutshell, she explained that she and her group were perfectly at ease working with all the Social-Democrats from Germany or Sweden and elsewhere, as well as with colleagues from Labour in Britain or the Netherlands etc. As a matter of fact, she said, the French MEPs from her group actually were‘ social-democrats’ in all but name. And the she concluded, with a sigh: ‘But if we said so at home in France, we’d get lapidated in no time’.

In January 2017 the French Socialist Party is probably in its worst state ever since I’ve been actively following French politics (and that’s a worryingly long time already). Over recent weeks I have not met with anybody who does NOT think the primaries organised by the socialist party are close to irrelevant. The question is even no longer whether the winner of the primaries might have a chance or not to make it to the second round, but whether he (and it’s revealing there’s not even a credible ‘she’ in the line-up) will finish a humiliating fourth or fifth in the first round, distanced not only by Fillon and Le Pen, but also by two men who left their socialist past behind.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon was an active member of the Socialist Party in 1976 to 2008, before demonstratively leaving a party he considered no longer in line with leftist convictions. Whatever one may think of his demagogic temptations, sour aggressiveness, and paranoid Germanophobia, one must recognise he is coherent. And credible over time. (And a brilliant public speaker, too, by the way). Now that he more or less managed to incorporate what is left of the Communist Party into his movement La France insoumise (‘Unsubmissive France’), he will be a serious contender and make sure his voice will be heard throughout the campaign.

Emmanuel Macron, never was a member of the party, but owes to the years he spent in Hollande’s Socialist government much of the limelight he is currently enjoying. Like Mélenchon (but without saying it out loud) he considers French Socialism as has-been, whose leaders have been unable to decide what they actually stand for and who as a result neither have Mélenchon’s guts and ideological coherence nor pragmatic solutions for the challenges of a world that no longer fits into their traditional patterns.

Mélenchon and Macron are the proverbial ‘rock’ and ‘hard place’ between which the Socialist Party finds itself in early 2017. In other words: they are flaring red warning signs of implosion.

In 2005 the referendum on the EU institutions revealed the sheer depth of the dividing line along European integration and globalisation that runs through the party. I was dumbstruck to see just how much many of my friends, colleagues and neighbours with leftist sympathies virtually despised ‘what Europe had become’ and violently condemned the German term ‘social market economy’ as an essentially dishonest oxymoron.

In the opposition years up to 2012, the Socialist party wasted the chance to make up its mind about Europe and globalisation and opt for a coherent doctrine. Instead the party preferred to stick to its perfectly contradictory obsessions with both national sovereignty and the usual lip service to European integration. Timid tentative discussions about a possible change of name – from ‘Socialist’ to ‘Social-Democrat’ – were quickly dismissed as secondary or premature by some, and as high treason or blasphemy by others.

There was a fixation on keeping truly antagonistic positions under one roof. The ‘pluralist left’ (‘la gauche plurielle’) of Lionel Jospin – punished by many socialist voters in 2002 for ‘not having been leftist enough’ (‘pas assez de gauche!’) as I was told many times – has in the meantime turned into what Manuel Valls recently called ‘the irreconcilable factions of the left’ (‘les gauches irréconciliables’). In his years at the helm of the party, François Holland even took pride in calling himself ‘the man of the synthesis’, as if fifty shades of rose could coexist forever without any clarification what the base colour was.

There is a price to pay for always refusing to reconsider basic assumptions and binding doctrines. For not having a Bad Godesberg moment like the German Social-Democrats, who in 1959 got rid of hypocrisy and absolute truths of Marxist obedience. (True enough, this was easier for them with the East German scarecrow in sight).

The French Socialist Party will not disappear overnight, and observers will be well advised not to underestimate the legitimacy a big party with a great tradition can endow a candidate with, nor the loyalty it is able to command in a national election with high stakes. But chances are 2017 will be seen as the moment when the PS started its slow slide into irrelevance.

Is the French party system then moving towards a ‘quadripolarisation’, as Thomas Guénolé recently put it in a quality interview with the Figaro? In Spain, this is what seems to be happening – and the loser is: the Socialist Party! In France, it could be even worse: a four-party system with two extremes and two moderate visions of society, one of which would be of Gaullist and Christian-Democratic obedience, and the other of Liberal inspiration in both economic and societal preferences.

The challenge for the PS is now threefold: a) survive the presidential election without ridicule; b) limit the damage in the legislative elections and form a relevant and respected opposition in the parliament; c) sit down and define who you are and who you want to be.

The Belle-Alliance (sketched by Tardieu in June 1815).

They don’t seem too optimistic about it themselves. In an attempt to sound inclusive and brighten up the primaries, they named them ‘Les primaires citoyennes de la Belle Alliance Populaire’. Spontaneously, ‘Belle Alliance’ reminded me of the name of a modest country inn which had the misfortune to be located on the battlefield of … Waterloo. A subliminal premonition?

Albrecht Sonntag
@albrechtsonntag

This is post # 10 on the French 2017 election marathon.
All previous posts can be found here.

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Ten years after its establishment, the European Research Council is largely seen as a success story. In his new book The European Research Council political scientist and former scientific advisor to the president of the European Research Council Thomas König provides a detailed account of often very complex history on how this success story of the ERC came into being (for excerpts, see here and here).

 

Q1: Why a book on the European Research Council?

I have been working at the premises of the ERC for almost four years, and when I first came there, I observed a great amount of tension. Thus far, I had only seen the outside, where the ERC constantly heralded itself as a success story. Eventually, I found out that the ERC Scientific Council – a group of scientists appointed to devise the strategy, basically – and the ERC Executive Agency management had just been going through a difficult phase. And all through my time there (2010-2013), I was exposed to different stories referring to the early days. But the stories often did not match up. So I became curious if I could manage to create the “real” story – you know, a more coherent, convincing story of what happened, of why the ERC was founded and why it has had these difficulties and still managed to thrive. This was one motivation. Then, another was that, after three years, I realized that I was speaking ERC-speech. You know, “excellence only”, and “gold standard”, and so on. I felt indoctrinated. Since my time with the ERC was running out, I thought I could as well embark on a project writing a book on the ERC. I hoped that this would also be intellectually, for me, a good exercise – distancing myself, not in a negative way, but making sense of what I was a part of for a couple of years. And it did! Finally, I must admit, there was also a pragmatic reason: I thought that a book on the ERC, written with insider knowledge but based on a repertoire of social scientific concepts would make an interesting book – and a book that may sell.

 

Q2: You are a political scientist but you have also been a practitioner advising the President of the European Research Council. How easy or difficult is it to combine the roles of social scientist and practitioner?

In a way, I have done the same before, even though on much smaller scale. So I am used to it. And I like it. It is very rewarding, for it offers me the opportunity to do things, and to learn things, and then also to thoroughly reflect upon what I have been doing and what I have witnessed. If there is a difficulty, it is that it takes so much time to intellectually process the practical side. With this book, it probably took me two years to get the ERC speech out of my head and to really understand the context within which the ERC was operating. So there is always a phase when I am more practical, and then a time when I am processing. At least, that’s how it was so far, because, obviously, being in two worlds means that there is no real “career” pattern to follow.

 

Q3: The ERC and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) were established at the same time. 10 years later the ERC is seen as a big success of EU research policy, while the EIT is facing many challenges. How would you explain very different success of these two institutions?

That’s a great question. Actually, there is a deep relationship between the two institutions, and one that I have left largely unexplored in the book. But let’s start with the difference: The ERC was initiated on a broad campaign. It was supported by many scientists. And because of this visibility, it was always perceived as something belonging innately to the scientific community, whatever that may be. While the EIT, I think it is safe to say, it was born out of the idea of one man, Commission President Barroso. So the collective leap of faith was a huge benefit for the ERC, while the EIT was observed very warily by most scientists. When we look at the actual establishment of the two institutions – you know, it took place around the same time, in 2005 to 2007 – there is already a first and unexpected connection between the two. The EIT was established as an independent structure, based on article 171 in the Amsterdam Treaty. The ERC, on the other hand, was firmly kept under the wings of the European Commission. It is worth noting the irony of this. Because the ERC advocates had always preferred for the ERC to be institutionally independent, and they thought – well, the majority of them thought, that this could only be achieved through article 171. So they opposed very much the plan by the Commission to establish the ERC as an Executive Agency. In a way, they were right, because the ERC was – and still is – bound by sometimes awkward regulations prescribed by the Framework Programme legislation. So an independent institution would have offered more freedom in setting up the ERC’s programme.

Yet, as it turned out institutional independence was not a good solution, because the EIT was exposed to all kinds of political meddling from member states, and I believe it received only lukewarm backing from the Commission. I personally remember that there was often talk about the EIT leadership being exchanged regularly, and that there were all sorts of “scandals” because the management of the EIT was not aware of the strict EU financial regulations. The ERC leadership, and by this I mean, the Scientific Council, was often frustrated by the Commission observing those regulations, but in a way, this saved them from similar experiences as the EIT leadership went through. Without having explored this further, I would expect that the fact that the EIT leadership did not have the same kind of guidance as the ERC had from Commission personnel was a reason why it had such a rocky start. For the ERC Scientific Council and all ERC advocates, the bitter lesson of the EIT example was that, despite the downsides of the Executive Agency model, it was still better than what the EIT had to go through.

 

Q4: You write in the book that the ERC has been modelled after the US National Science Foundation. Why the NSF – rather than German Research Foundation DFG or UK research councils – was chosen as a suitable model for the ERC?

Actually, the ERC advocates wished very much for an implementation of the ERC similar to the NSF. As I indicated before, it turned out to be quite different – not institutionally independent, but under the protective albeit firm wings of the European Commission. But if your question is, why did the advocates not prefer a different template, I think the answer is twofold. One is based on a very pragmatic calculation by the advocates: they did not want to create discord among themselves. If you have high-minded people from Germany, UK, France coming together, they obviously did not want to start a discussion which of their respective way of funding academic research is better or worse. So they took a template from outside.

Also, I suspect that many early advocates were actually critical of their national systems as well. One thing that was certainly lacking in the German DFG, for example, was commitment to international expertise. So for some advocates, at least, an ERC was also an attractive option to foster reform on various existing national funding systems. The NSF in many respects could be called the first public funding agency in the world – even though, historically, there would be contesters. So it was easy to settle on this template and not bring disturbance within their own campaign.

The other reason is a political calculation: a core message of the ERC campaign message was that Europe is doing worse in innovation than the US because it lacks the same strong, potent, independent funding agency. It is only logical then to call for a similar organization on European soil. But, as I said, the ERC is quite the opposite to an institutionally independent, stand-alone funding agency. For me, the interesting question, then, was: how did the ERC still manage to be considered a sound success?

 

Q5: In your book you mention that during negotiations preceding the establishment of the ERC ‘policy-makers and representatives of the scientific community hoped to use the ERC for reform of their domestic research policies’ (p. 52). How far this expectation has been fulfilled? Can you mention any examples of the ERC facilitating domestic reforms?

This is very difficult to answer, since the entire field is under enormous pressure by many stakeholders to reform – almost constantly, I would say. What we see is that, rhetorically at least, national champions refer to the ERC as a template. And that there are several national funding agencies supposedly designed after the ERC – which is certainly not true for their institutional setup, but probably for their funding schemes and their decision-making procedure. I think at the end of the day, the ERC is less of a template that nationals would want to copy, but rather a European-wide platform to reward the most promising researchers in their fields with substantial funding and accolades that, very often, can also be transferred into boosting careers. Many of the countries with a research-intensive science base actually use simple statistics – that is, the amount of ERC grants awarded to their research institutions – to measure how well they fare. I think providing this simple yet effective measure is what makes the ERC relevant for research policy in most countries.

 

Q6: After the Brexit some national officials have suggested that the ERC should become an intergovernmental organization like the CERN or the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (for a news item, see here). In the book you briefly mention that already during the pre-history of the ERC such a scenario to establish an ERC as a multi-national effort was doomed (p. 134). Might it be seriously reconsidered after the Brexit? 

There is a lot of wild-guessing about the ERC’s organisational structure, and whether it is positive, or dragging the ERC down, or the only realistic approach. Also, I do not want to repeat here what others have been thinking on this. Let’s do a thought experiment instead. The core question is, what would it need really to change the organisational structure of the ERC. This is primarily a political question. And I think three ingredients would be required.

First, it would require a trigger. I do not think that something like the United Kingdom leaving the EU would be enough for the ERC to make it into another organizational mode. Quite the contrary. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that, even after the United Kingdom has left the European Union, the country will have some kind of special contract that allows for participating in the overall research funding programme, the Framework Programme  – like Switzerland, Turkey, Israel, Norway, Iceland, and 11 other countries already do. What could be a trigger event? Something where the reputation of the ERC would be substantially shattered. There was a time in the history of the ERC – in late 2008 – when this was almost the case. And the reason was that the compromise on which the ERC compound is based upon today was not yet found. So let’s assume that the credibility of the ERC would be seriously hampered because of something going wrong inside the compound. I do not think that those involved will ever let things grow so badly again. But it could happen.

But even then, the European Commission would be very reluctant to let the ERC go. It fits perfectly into the overall structure of the Framework Programme. It gains so much from it. Why should they let it go? They would certainly try amend the structure within their own reach. So you would need a second ingredient: a very determined European Council. The European Parliament simply does not have the power to get this done. Only the Council could really force the Commission to let go of the ERC. But is it likely, in the face of a European integration project that is scrambling with all sorts of economic and political fall-outs, that time and energy will be spent on such an issue? In other words: is it likely that twenty-plus heads of government come together in order to discuss and find a common ground and, against the opposition of the Commission, eventually decide to establish this funding body in a different way? Think of all the negotiations that have to be done. Probably, one country has to take the lead. It has to dedicate serious resources for lobbying other countries, for carving out the legal provisions, and, most difficult, to ensure that the ERC will maintain its funding level, to say the least. That is not to speak of the intricacies of transferring the current ERC into a new institutional template. And now think of all the obstacles on the way. Why should the Bulgarian head of government agree to do it? Why the Italian? Why the Greek? All they gain from the ERC now is a constant reminder that their respective academic culture is “underperforming” – that’s the nice word for, that academic institutions in these countries do not reap in enough ERC grants. For now, this is merely a symbolic issue, not a monetary one, because, in the overall picture, these countries receive additional funding through other EU sources; most significantly, the structural funds. But once to disentangle the ERC from this complex web of funding, you make the symbolic problem a real one. For the head of state of, say, Bulgaria, the performance of his country is an embarrassment. Either you buy his consent with other promises, or you offer him a certain share of ERC grants. I do not have to tell you what the latter would mean.

If you have these two ingredients, it is still unresolved how to set up the new ERC. As I said before, the institutional setup of the ERC has been an issue almost from the very beginning. Theoretically, there would be several other options. One alternative would be to re-found it as an intergovernmental organization. Or it could be set up along the same institutional framework that has been used for the EIT. As I said before, the latter has been explored and I think it is clear that it is not a good option. All this indicates, to me at least, if you really want to make the ERC a solid, independent institution, if you want to disentangle it from the Commission, you will at least have to make sure that the ERC is not going to have the same problems that the EIT has witnessed. I am not a jurist, but I think that this will probably require to amend the Treaty.

So I think the odds for the ERC becoming an independent institution are not very high. Much more likely, in my opinion, is to push for the ERC to be made further autonomous under the Framework Programme, that is, to keep it under the Commission wings but to free it from most of the regulatory procedures that the Commission has set in place. Still, the very history of the ERC tells us that one should expect the unexpected. For no one really expected the ERC to become a reality, and yet, here it is. But I think two things are safe to say: Brexit will not be the trigger, and the initiative to make the ERC an independent institution will not be taken before the current Framework Programme, Horizon 2020, will end.

 

Q7: What are the main lessons from your book for policy-makers?

Thinking of my answer to the previous question: That crazy ideas may not be so crazy after all. (Laughs)

 

Q8: In your book you explain in a great detail the history of the ERC. How do you see the future of the ERC?

I think the ERC is in a comfortable, yet difficult position. It is well-respected and has found its niche. It is really a great instrument. But it has this heritage of being the alternative to the often-criticized Framework Programme; instead, it has become the Framework Programme’s posterchild. This was not necessarily what its early advocates had hoped for. But more importantly, because it is a niche programme and because it is a posterchild, it has little room to invent new funding streams. Today it seems determined to fund only individual researchers. I am glad that the ERC Scientific Council recently decided to re-establish the Synergy Grant. This is a step aside from the general expectations. It could also be a step to make the ERC’s funding portfolio more diverse and exciting.

 

Dr. Thomas König is senior researcher and strategic adviser at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna (IHS), and is a member of the ECPR Standing Group Politics of Higher Education, Research, and Innovation.

The post Ten years of the European Research Council: Taking stock and looking forward appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Already two years since the Charlie Hebdo shootings, which in hindsight look like a prelude to a series the end of which does not seem to be in sight.

Is Europe still Charlie? Many Europeans, the large majority of whom had never heard of this magazine before, still claim they are, and there is no reason to question their sincerity in defending freedom of speech. What is striking, however, is the extent to which Charlie Hebdo was, and is, an utterly French interpretation of this apparently universal freedom.

Thirty years ago I was myself hopelessly lost in French satire. To start with, I was overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of satirical weeklies and monthlies that were on sale. Okay, I knew the Canard Enchaîné (which just turned a hundred years old – congratulations!) from school and was aware that France owed the ‘duck’ the uncovering of countless scandals and the invention of sarcastic puns by the dozen each Wednesday. No ads, no colours, old-fashioned layout, and always up to the beak in the spheres of power.

But there was more: a whole load of magazines that seemed to be rooted in a very particular comic-strip tradition, such as Fluide glacial, L’Echo des Savanes, and of course Charlie Hebdo. On television there was the Bébête-Show, followed by the hilarious Guignols de l’Info, brilliant in their first ten or fifteen years and so much funnier than Spitting Image (let alone their hopelessly boring German counterparts).

The greatest cultural shock, however, was the tone of it all: violently impertinent, furiously leftist, ruthlessly acid, and unbelievably tasteless. And this anger behind the humour! Charlie Hebdo was permanently outraged. Against racism and antisemitism, violations of human rights and militarism, pollution and bull-fighting, capitalism, and, of course, its most despicable opium: football. They hit out at the powerful, but also revealed, like Molière had done before, our own egoism and spineless laziness.

Sometimes their zeal in attacking dogma of all sorts turned against them and made them utterly dogmatic themselves. But the sheer radicalism with which the non-negotiable principle of ‘liberté d’expression’ was defended still forced respect. And in their best moments, their mix of bitter, black humour and stupid joking on teenager-level was refreshing.

If they had limited their anger to football, capitalism in general and French politics in particular, the murdered cartoonists would no doubt still be happily drawing caricatures in their office. But they were also the heirs of an aggressive, impudent and radical anti-clericalism, dealing sweeping blows against all kinds of religion, without any taboo whatsoever. Their coarseness made me wonder years ago to what extent this was transferable into other cultural areas.

In France, it functioned. Even Sarkozy, when he was still minister of the interior, defended them, declaring ‘I prefer an excess of caricature to an excess of censorship’. Such preferences, however, are directly linked to the normative, path-dependent and foundations of a given society. They have been negotiated and consolidated over long periods of time, within the legal and linguistic framework of the nation-state.

Three epochs of French history have been of particular impact with regard to satire, caricature, and the freedom of speech.

Concerning religion, the French enlightenment movement of the 18th century was significantly more radical than in other countries. For Voltaire and Diderot the fight against obscurantism and religious dogma in all its forms was no doubt the major challenge of the century and they could see no reason why religious susceptibilities should be subject to a special treatment. As early as 1791 the French Revolution abolished ‘blasphemy’ as an offence. In Germany it still exists today.

The second key epoch is the fight for the strict separation between the State and the Church at the beginning of the 20th century. The French type of secularism, always referred to with the untranslatable term ‘laïcité’, is a complex and demanding concept. Understanding and implementing it requires a minimum of intellectual effort by the citizen. In theory it is probably the best possible way harmonious coexistence of all confessions, including agnostics and atheists. In practice friction with the claim to absoluteness inherent to several religions is inevitable and painful. Only a few days before the Charlie Hebdo shooting there was a vivid public debate about the question whether state buildings like a Préfecture should be allowed to set up a nativity scene for Christmas in their hall. Would this just be some cultural heritage (to be tolerated) or a religious symbol (to be banned)? The discussion went on forever. Last summer, there was the ‘burkini’ drama. Swimsuit or religious symbol? The next headscarf scandal is already programmed.

The third key epoch for understanding French satire is the revolt of May 1968. One of the issues the French youth revolted against was the state censorship still practiced under de Gaulle and his ‘information minister’. The explosion of total freedom of expression in the early seventies wiped away all taboos. This is the time when all these ruthless satirical magazines were created and found a public eager to transgress the old red lines. It is not surprising that three of the great cartoonists killed in the January 2015 shootings were already in their seventies (even though their humour was sometimes more of the adolescent type…)

Three periods that are very specific to France and that have provided a wealth of codes and references that are only understandable within the French context. Which explains why behind the countless ‘Je suis Charlie’ signs of two years ago there were many non-French voices who expressed, to say the least, a certain bewilderedness after having taken a closer look on the magazine. Are there no limits to satire? Had these cartoonists not ‘gone too far’?

They need not worry. In 2017 Charlie Hebdo is not exactly toothless, but it has inevitably become much more selective in its anti-clericalism, preferring to hit out at religions, like the Catholic Church, who have grown accustomed to the existence of aggressive satire…

Some weeks ago, Charlie Hebdo has started publishing a German edition, based on the assumption that the massive solidarity and empathy shown by the German public two years ago suggests there is a demand for the Charlie kind of satire. I think they are wrong. My guess is that the German edition will be short-lived, and even if it survives its first year, it will hardly reach the target of 200,000 copies sold. Simply too French.

Albrecht Sonntag
@albrechtsonntag

This is post # 9 on the French 2017 election marathon.
Post #8 can be found here. Post # 7 here.
Post # 6 here. Post # 5 here. Post # 4 here.
Post # 3 here. Post # 2 here. Post # 1 here.

The post Two years on, how Charlie can you be? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

In a Google search you put in what you are looking for and get thousands of results, with just what you want near the top of the list. Even if there is no exact match, you will get a number of suggestions that meet most of your requirements.

Like a blank Google search prompt, the EU’s negotiators will respond to whatever the British government puts in about what it would like the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with Europe to be. A variety of public statements and private leaks show there is no agreement on what it is searching for. If you do a search on Brexit hard soft, Google produces more than 5 million results.

The underlying assumption in Westminster is that whatever the British government states as its demands when negotiations start after it triggers Article 50 will return positive EU responses. Among these will be options that Britain can use to craft an agreement that it can confidently put to Parliament for approval at the end of the negotiation process. The ideal is a settlement that allows Britain to have its cake and eat it too, that is, continuing to enjoy benefits of freely trading with a single market of 450 million people while refusing to swallow the obligations that go with EU membership.

Unlike Google, EU negotiators have made clear that there are a number of terms that cannot be accepted on their own or in combination. For example, combining single market access and no controls on migration will not be possible. If British terms for negotiations ignore Europe’s red lines, then the search for agreement will produce no results because of the lack of an exact match between what Britain wants and what the EU is willing to offer.

The fuzzy logic of the Amazon search engine offers broader opportunities to search for a settlement.  Even if a fuzzy logic search does not come up with an exact match for what you want at a price you are willing to pay, it will offer a range of choices that more or less match what you are looking for. If this is the Brussels response to the British government’s initial demands, the Prime Minister will then have to explore whether her colleagues are prepared to modify their demands to match what is on offer or end negotiations without any settlement.

In a sense, the search for a settlement suited to British tastes is like examining the choice offered by the menus available at the several restaurants in a French holiday village. The range of choice will be limited and set by prix fixe menus. If none of the combinations that they offer are appetising, British politicians can open a tin of baked beans brought with them in their caravan and dream of taking their next holiday in a country offering a more agreeable menu, such as Canada.

What UK negotiators want is an à la carte settlement. This may be achieved at a price. For example, British universities could receive EU research grants if the British government is prepared to make an annual contribution to the research fund that is dished out under the control of Brussels. However, leading EU policymakers and politicians such as the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, have made clear that there are British tastes that they will not cater for on any terms.

As a mature politician, Theresa May knows that Santa Claus will not bring her an agreement that will satisfy the wishes of all her Cabinet colleagues. Her best hope is that the Lenten resolution of her colleagues will be to stop acting as if EU negotiators are ready to deliver the bagful of benefits that they would like. The best they can hope to get by Christmas 2018, the last before withdrawal happens, is some of the things on their wish list. To achieve this much, they must become Marxists, in the spirit of Groucho not Karl, and search for a friendly Sanity Clause.

The post The Brexit negotiation is not a google search appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

A new year, but the same old problems. Not only do we not know what Brexit will look like, we’re not even sure of the dimensions of what it could look like.

This is a real issue – both academically and politically – because any post-membership relationship will have to find positions for those involved on a number of matters of practical concerns.  Unfortunately, we don’t seem to know what all those issues are, let alone what they might be.

Overshadowing this is the rhetorical battle to define Brexit. As I’ve observed before, all political actors are currently trying to claim that definition, in pursuit of whatever political agenda they might wish to pursue. The only (partial) exception is Theresa May, who is trying to keep any definition vague, until such time as she finds a practical plan of action to follow.

So how do we get out of this? Three main thoughts occur at this stage.

Firstly, We should accept that everyone has an agenda in this. That might be for professional or personal reasons, or simply as a function of being a member of the polity. the whole point of democratic governance is that there is a competition of ideas and a protection of interests in a system that allows for controls on power and scope for changes in policy through agreed procedures.

In short, the system frustrates to protect. As the whole Ivan Rogers affair neatly exposes, it’s one thing to dislike an individual diplomat, but another to question the entire nature of diplomacy. You and I disagree on points of policy, we should agree on points of procedure on resolving those disagreements, certainly in the bigger scheme of things.

Secondly, as Richard North so delicately puts it, it might be helpful to recognise that no-one’s an expert on Brexit. Instead, people are experts in various other fields, that link to Brexit. Thus, no-one should have a monopoly of determining what happens in Brexit, or indeed what Brexit ‘means’. Any claim beyond saying that the referendum results means anything more than the UK has decided to leave the EU is a politically-contentious one.

Of course, even to get to that point requires a noticably minority of Remain voters to accept that they have lost their battle and that the result stands: that has broadly happened, but there is scant willingness to state that publically, which in turn casts long shadows over whatever work they now pursue. Thus the Supreme Court case – which returns to your frontpages in the coming weeks – is tainted by the suspicion that this is a front for non-notification of Article 50. Again, Ivan Rogers offers an alternative model: namely, that if you really don’t like what’s happening, then step away.

The final point is then a logical extension of the first two.

By talking with each other, we might start to find common ground on how to proceed. A quick glance around suggests some basic points of agreement:

• The need for a reliable framework for the process, both in terms of an end-point (i.e. the UK leaving the EU) and a timeline for decisions to be made (inside, alongside and around Article 50);
• The maximisation of benefits from leaving the EU, both economically and politically;
• The minimisation of costs from leaving.

Put like that, it seems rather anodyne, given that our preceptions of costs and benefits will differ radically. However, it still gives us something to work on, discussing and debating what these might be.

More importantly, it gives us the shared interest in the framework. We all want (and need) a structure to get us through this period and much of that is independent of whatever anciliary goals we might have.

So here’s my idea – a New Year’s resolution, if you like: let’s try and build that framework together.

During the coming weeks, I’m going to set up a website with wiki functionality and I’m going to start trying to write a text of an Article 50 agreement between the UK and the EU27: you get to join in too.

I’ll work on the basis that the UK is going to leave the EU and that this needs then clarification of a small number of basic points (see page 8 of the UKICE/PSA report that I contributed to back in November). Other that that, it’s open to debate what else goes into the text. I’ve suggested a plan for a transitional arrangement before, but we’ll see if that works in practice.

By writing something together, maybe we can help move debate on, even if only to point out the key problems.

Let’s see.

The post The substance of Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Η επιστολή του Υπουργού Οικονομικών δεν περιλαμβάνει νέες δεσμεύσεις, δεν ανακαλεί τα μέτρα που ανακοινώθηκαν από τον Πρωθυπουργό, ούτε και έρχεται σε αντίθεση με την υλοποίηση των μέτρων στην Ελληνική έννομη τάξη. Τα μέτρα που λήφθηκαν δεν φαίνεται να εμπίπτουν στο πλαίσιο της δέσμευσης αποφυγής μονομερών ενεργειών

Εισαγωγή

Στις 5 Δεκεμβρίου 2016, συνεδρίασε το Eurogroup σχετικά με την 2η αξιολόγηση του 3ου Ελληνικού Προγράμματος Οικονομικής Βοήθειας με τον Ευρωπαϊκό Μηχανισμό Στήριξης (ΕΜΣ).  Στην Δήλωση του Eurogroup, διατυπώθηκε η πρόοδος στις διαπραγματεύσεις και η συμφωνία για τον προϋπολογισμό του 2017 (1.75% ΑΕΠ πλεόνασμα). Έγινε επίσης αναφορά στον Αυτόματο Μηχανισμό Δημοσιονομικής Προσαρμογής Προϋπολογισμού Γενικής Κυβέρνησης, το αναφερόμενο και ως ‘κόφτη’ (Ν. 4389/2016), αλλά και στην πιθανή συμμετοχή του Διεθνούς Νομισματικού Ταμείου (ΔΝΤ) έπειτα της ολοκλήρωσης της αξιολόγησης (σχετικά με συμμετοχή του ΔΝΤ στο Is the IMF necessary for the 3rd Greek Program?).

Σημαντικότερα όμως, διατυπώθηκε, για πρώτη φορά στην διάρκεια των 3 Προγραμμάτων Οικονομικής Βοήθειας της Ελλάδας από το 2010, η υιοθέτηση συγκεκριμένων βραχυπροθέσμων μέτρων για την βελτίωση της βιωσιμότητας του Ελληνικού χρέους (οι δανειστές κατέχουν περίπου το 50%). Η γενικότερη δέσμευση για την υιοθέτηση μέτρων υπήρχε ήδη από το 2012, και συγκεκριμενοποιήθηκε περαιτέρω στα Eurogroup 9 και 25 Μαΐου 2016.

Η εφαρμογή των μέτρων τελούσε πάντα υπό την προϋπόθεση επίτευξης πρωτογενούς πλεονάσματος από την πλευρά της Ελλάδας. Ο στόχος που ετέθη το 2012 από τους δανειστές για πρωτογενές πλεόνασμα 4.5% ΑΕΠ το 2016 (το οποίο ήταν ήδη μετάθεση του στόχου για το 2014), μειώθηκε σε 0.5% ΑΕΠ. Αυτό υπήρξε ένα σημαντικό βήμα προς την βιωσιμότητα της Ελληνικής οικονομίας. Επιπρόσθετη επιτυχία για την κυβέρνηση αποτελεί το γεγονός ότι το πλεόνασμα του 2016 υπολογίζεται να ανέλθει από 1.1% έως 2% ΑΕΠ, ήτοι να υπάρξει τουλάχιστον διπλάσια υπεραπόδοση σε σχέση με τον στόχο.

Με τα δεδομένα αυτά, το Eurogroup ενέκρινε στις 5 Δεκεμβρίου την ενεργοποίηση για πρώτη φορά συγκεκριμένων βραχυπρόθεσμων μέτρων για την βιωσιμότητα του Ελληνικού χρέους, απομειώνοντας το κατά περίπου 22% με πιθανό όφελος € 45 δισεκατομμύρια. Να σημειωθεί ότι έχει επίσης προβλεφθεί η εφαρμογή μεσοπρόθεσμων αλλά και μακροπρόθεσμων συναφών μέτρων για την περίοδο μετά το 2018.

Δεδομένης της ανωτέρω υπεραπόδοσης, ο Πρωθυπουργός, στο διάγγελμα του στις 8 Δεκεμβρίου 2016, αποφάσισε την αναδιανομή των πλεοναζόντων εσόδων για την προστασία των οικονομικά ευαίσθητων στρωμάτων της κοινωνίας, χορηγώντας επίδομα σε χαμηλοσυνταξιούχους ενόψει εορτών, ήτοι επαναφέροντας μερικώς την 13ης σύνταξη για πρώτη φορά μετά από 4 χρόνια (είχε αρχικά μειωθεί το 2010 με τον Ν. 3847/2010 και έπειτα καταργήθηκε το 2012 με τον Ν. 4093/2012), και αναστέλλοντας της αύξηση του Φόρου Προστιθέμενης Αξίας (ΦΠΑ), η οποία προβλέπεται με τον Ν. 4389/2016, για τα νησιά τα οποία έχουν σηκώσει το βάρος της προσφυγικής κρίσης (Βόρειο & Ανατολικό Αιγαίο).

Όμως, μέλη του Eurogroup επιχειρηματολόγησαν ότι η κίνηση αυτή συνιστά μονομερή ενέργεια από την πλευρά της Ελληνικής κυβέρνησης και υπήρξε ένα άτυπο ‘πάγωμα’ των μέτρων που αποφασίστηκαν για το Ελληνικό χρέος μετά την ανακοίνωση των ανωτέρω. Σε συνέχεια αυτού, εστάλη μια επιστολή από τον Υπουργό Οικονομικών (ΥΠΟΙΚ) στις 23 Δεκεμβρίου 2016. Η επιστολή αυτή χαρακτηρίστηκε ως «κατάπτυστη» από την Αξιωματική Αντιπολίτευση, και ως «δέσμευση αποφυγής εκλογών», ως περιλαμβάνουσα «αυτογκόλ» και νέες δεσμεύσεις από πλευράς της Κυβέρνησης, κλπ., από ένα μεγάλο μέρος των Μέσων Μαζικής Ενημέρωσης. Ανταποκρίνονται αυτά όμως στο περιεχόμενο της επιστολής? Και είναι τα μέτρα που ανακοινώθηκαν μονομερής ενέργεια?

1. Σχετικά με τον εφάπαξ χαρακτήρα των μέτρων.

Τα μέτρα ήταν εξ’ αρχής εφάπαξ εφαρμοζόμενα, κάτι το οποίο ήταν δημόσια γνωστό. Όσον αφορά στις συντάξεις, αυτό είναι εμφανές από το Σχέδιο Νόμου που εισηγήθηκε η Επιτροπή Κοινωνικών Υποθέσεων στην Ολομέλεια του Κοινοβουλίου για ψήφιση ήδη από τις 13 Δεκεμβρίου, ήτοι 10 ημέρες πριν την επιστολή του ΥΠΟΙΚ. Ακόμη και ο τίτλος του σχετικού άρθρου είναι «Εφάπαξ οικονομική ενίσχυση…». Όσον αφορά στον μειωμένο συντελεστή ΦΠΑ στα νησιά του Βόρειου και Ανατολικού Αιγαίου που επιφορτίζονται με τις συνέπειες τις μεταναστευτικής κρίσης, η σχετική τροπολογία κατατέθηκε στις 19 Δεκεμβρίου, ήτοι 3 ημέρες πριν την επιστολή του ΥΠΟΙΚ, και σε αυτήν αναφέρεται ότι η μείωση ισχύει για ένα έτος μέχρι 31.12.2017.

Τα ανωτέρω συνάδουν και με το προαναφερθέν σχετικό διάγγελμα του Πρωθυπουργού, στο οποίο αναφέρεται ότι το επίδομα σύνταξης χορηγείται «ενόψει εορτών» και η μείωση συντελεστή ΦΠΑ για τα ανωτέρω νησιά προβλέπεται «για όσο μαίνεται η προσφυγική κρίση», δηλαδή περιθώριο ενός έτους, δεδομένου ότι, όπως αναφέρει ο Πρωθυπουργός παρακάτω «… η Κομισιόν ανακοίνωσε ότι χάρη στην Ελλάδα θα αποκατασταθεί από το Μάρτη η κανονικότητα και θα ξαναμπεί σε εφαρμογή η Συμφωνία του Δουβλίνου». Συνεπώς, δεν υπήρξε καμία έκπληξη ή ανακρίβεια σε σχέση με τα αναφερόμενα στην επιστολή του ΥΠΟΙΚ. Όπως συναφώς αναφέρει ο ΥΠΟΙΚ στην επιστολή του «Αναφορικά με το μέτρο για τις συντάξεις, αξίζει να σημειωθεί ότι τόσο ο πρωθυπουργός όσο και εγώ έχουμε ξεκαθαρίσει δημόσια…, ότι αυτή είναι μια εφάπαξ πληρωμή […]. Αναφορικά με την προσωρινή αναστολή του ΦΠΑ…, το μέτρο περιορίζεται μόνο στο 2017».

2.Σχετικά με τον μηχανισμό περικοπής δαπανών.

Τρείς παρόμοιοι σχετικοί μηχανισμοί έχουν θεσμοθετηθεί με τους Ν. 4270/2013, Ν. 4334/2015 (καταργήθηκε με τον Ν. 4336/2015), και Ν. 4389/2016. Ο ΥΠΟΙΚ αναφέρεται στον τελευταίο, σύμφωνα με τον οποίο γίνονται αυτόματες (ήτοι χωρίς συμμετοχή του Κοινοβουλίου και μόνον με Προεδρικό Διάταγμα ή/και Έκθεση του ΥΠΟΙΚ) περικοπές δαπανών σε περίπτωση υστέρησης εσόδων έναντι των στόχων του Προγράμματος. Στον μηχανισμό αυτό όμως, υπάρχει η δυνατότητα αντικατάστασης οικονομικών με διαρθρωτικά μέτρα, μετά από κοινή συνεννόηση με την Τρόικα (Ευρωπαϊκής Κεντρική Τράπεζα, Ευρωπαϊκή Επιτροπή και ΔΝΤ) και τον ΕΜΣ. Επιπροσθέτως, ο ΥΠΟΙΚ στην επιστολή του δεσμεύεται ενεργοποίηση του μηχανισμού όσον αφορά σε πιθανή απόκλιση από τον στόχο των εσόδων μόνον του 2016 και όχι για το 2017 ή 2018. Δεδομένης της προαναφερθείσας πορείας των εσόδων, με τουλάχιστον διπλή υπεραπόδοση σε σχέση με τον στόχο, η ενεργοποίηση του μηχανισμού για το 2016 έχει ελάχιστες πιθανότητες.

 3. Σχετικά με την δέσμευση για συμφωνία Τρόικας/ΕΜΣ (θεσμοί) στα μέτρα.

Η επιστολή του ΥΠΟΙΚ αναγνωρίζει ότι οποιαδήποτε μέτρα με δημοσιονομικές επιπτώσεις στο Πρόγραμμα πρέπει να εγκρίνονται και από τους θεσμούς. Ενώ αυτή η δέσμευση παρουσιάστηκε ως νέα, παρά ταύτα από το 2010 και μετά κάθε κυβέρνηση έχει αναλάβει την ίδια δέσμευση στα Μνημόνια των σχετικών Προγραμμάτων.  Στα κείμενα των σχετικών Μνημονίων και επικαιροποιήσεων αναφέρεται ότι «Οι αρχές θα παραμείνουν σε πολύ στενή επαφή και θα συμβουλεύονται… (την Τρόικα) για την υιοθέτηση μέτρων που περιλαμβάνονται… (στο Μνημόνιο)», και ότι «Οι αρχές δεσμεύονται να συμβουλεύονται την… (Τρόικα) για την υιοθέτηση πολιτικών που δεν είναι συμβατές με το παρόν μνημόνιο/που εμπίπτουν στο πλαίσιο του παρόντος μνημονίου», ή παρόμοια κείμενα παραλλαγές αυτών (π.χ. ενδεικτικά Μάιος 2010: σελ. 26 και 47, Αύγουστος 2010: σελ. 20-1 και 31, Μάρτιος 2012: σελ. 50-1, Δεκέμβριος 2012: σελ. 64-6, Αύγουστος 2015: σελ. 4, Ιούνιος 2016: σελ. 1). Συνεπώς, η επιστολή του ΥΠΟΙΚ επιβεβαίωσε την δέσμευση, η οποία υπήρξε πανομοιότυπη για όλες της Ελληνικές κυβερνήσεις από το 2010 και έπειτα.

Συναφώς, φαίνεται στην επιστολή μια προσπάθεια του ΥΠΟΙΚ να εδραιώσει εμμέσως τομείς στους οποίους θα μπορούσε να χρησιμοποιηθεί οποιοδήποτε μελλοντικό πλεόνασμα, όπως στην ελάφρυνση φορολογικών βαρών, κλπ., προωθώντας έτσι μια περισσότερο κοινωνική πολιτική. Σχετικώς, αναφέρει στην επιστολή «αναγνωρίζουμε ότι ο διαθέσιμος δημοσιονομικός χώρος μπορεί να χρησιμοποιηθεί σε στοχευμένα μέτρα για την ενδυνάμωση της κοινωνικής προστασίας (ειδικά στο Πρόγραμμα για το Κοινωνικό Εισόδημα Αλληλεγγύης) και/ή για τη μείωση των φορολογικών βαρών που προκύπτουν από τις μνημονιακές δεσμεύσεις».

4. Σχετικά με το εάν τα μέτρα αυτά αποτελούν μονομερή ενέργεια της Ελλάδας.

Από τις προαναφερθείσες δεσμεύσεις, στην ισχύουσα δέσμευση για το 3ο Πρόγραμμα προβλέπει προβλέπεται η κυβέρνηση να συμβουλεύεται και να συμφωνεί με την Τρόικα για «όλες τις ενέργειες που είναι σχετικές με την επίτευξη των στόχων… (του Μνημονίου) πριν αυτές οριστικοποιηθούν και υιοθετηθούν νομικά». Εφόσον, λοιπόν, η κυβέρνηση έπραξε όλες τις απαραίτητες ενέργειες σε συνεργασία με την Τρόικα, για την επίτευξη του στόχου του 0.5% ΑΕΠ πλεονάσματος, δύναται να επιχειρηματολογηθεί ότι οποιαδήποτε ενέργεια για διάθεση πλεοναζόντων εσόδων μετά την ικανοποίηση του στόχου αυτού δεν εμπίπτει στην συγκεκριμένη δέσμευση, πάντα και με την προϋπόθεση ότι δεν αναστρέφονται μεταρρυθμίσεις οι οποίες έχουν εφαρμοστεί έως τώρα (συναφώς και με την δέσμευση της κυβέρνησης στην Σύνοδο Κορυφής της Ευρωζώνης στις 12 Ιουλίου 2015).

Συμπέρασμα

Σύμφωνα με τα προεκτεθέντα, οι χαρακτηρισμοί που χρησιμοποιήθηκαν για την επιστολή του ΥΠΟΙΚ δεν επιβεβαιώνονται, εφόσον αυτή δεν περιλαμβάνει νέες δεσμεύσεις, δεν ανακαλεί τα μέτρα που ανακοινώθηκαν από τον Πρωθυπουργό, ούτε και έρχεται σε αντίθεση με την υλοποίηση των μέτρων στην Ελληνική έννομη τάξη. Τα μέτρα που λήφθηκαν δεν φαίνεται να εμπίπτουν στο πλαίσιο της δέσμευσης αποφυγής μονομερών ενεργειών. Σε κάθε περίπτωση, τα μέτρα αυτά έχουν ως στόχο την μερική ενίσχυση, έστω και προσωρινά, των οικονομικά ασθενέστερων στρωμάτων της κοινωνίας, συμβάλλοντας στην ενδυνάμωση του εξασθενημένου κοινωνικού κράτους της Ελλάδας.

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The Prime Minister, Theresa May, seems to be in a desperate hurry. She wants to break-away from the EU within two years of triggering Article 50, and to have a new EU trade deal in place at the same time.

That’s something top EU lawyer, Jean-Claude Piris, said will be ‘totally impossible.’

Next, Mrs May has announced, she wants Britain to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, if she’s elected back to power in the 2020 General Election.

The Prime Minister is intent on undoing the progressive achievements of her predecessors.

Former Tory leader, Margaret Thatcher, urged Britain to remain the European Community in the first referendum of 1975.

In a keynote speech at the time she said:

“It is not surprising that I, as Leader of the Conservative Party, should wish to give my wholehearted support to this campaign, for the Conservative Party has been pursuing the European vision almost as long as we have existed as a Party.”

Mrs Thatcher also pushed for, and made possible, the Single Market of Europe.

It was one of the Tory party’s greatest leaders, Winston Churchill, who passionately promoted the ‘Union of Europe as a whole’ and is recognised as one of the 11 founders of the European Union.

Churchill also proposed a European ‘Charter’ and ‘Court’ of Human Rights that became the European Convention on Human Rights. He said in 1948:

“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.”

It was Tory Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan who applied for Britain to join the European Community in 1961.

He explained to the British people:

“By joining this vigorous and expanding community and becoming one of its leading members, as I am convinced we would, this country would not only gain a new stature in Europe, but also increase its standing and influence in the councils of the world.”

It was Tory Prime Minister, Edward Heath, who joined Britain to the European Community in 1973, with the backing of Parliament.

And it was former Tory Prime Minister, John Major, who negotiated and won Parliament’s backing to sign the Maastricht Treaty, that among other benefits gave us EU citizenship rights allowing us to live, work, study or retire across a huge expanse of our continent.

Theresa May is throwing away the glorious legacy of past Tory leaders. Why? Because she is not a true Tory.

Her policies are not true Tory goals. Her vision of Britain outside of the European Community, and of Britain leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, do not represent true Tory values.

Mrs May was not even elected as their leader by the Tory Party. It’s time the Tories seriously considered removing Mrs May from office, to save their party’s heritage, and more importantly, to save Britain.

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Other stories by Jon Danzig:

• Brexit Secretary, David Davis, gets 5 stars for double standards
• 10 ways to stop Brexit
• The best EU trade deal? We already have it
• List of the latest articles by Jon Danzig

To follow my stories please like my Facebook page: Jon Danzig Writes

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The left finds itself in a difficult position.  Its role is needed more than ever in the post-WWII period.  However, its internal divisions limit its impact on developments.  This state of limbo must be overcome, if the left is to be able to push forward and work towards putting an end to the crisis in favour of society at large.

Do the two cases of EU exit, BREXIT and GREXIT, whether actual or speculative, constitute critical junctures in the evolution of the EU?  if so, with what implications?  What is the role of the left in these circumstances? In order to provide some answers to these questions, a look is needed into BREXIT and the implications for a potential GREXIT – the modalities involved and the issues raised.

According to Art. 50 TEU, the process for a Member State exiting the EU is initiated with the state submitting a notification to withdraw.  A maximum duration of two years is then allowed, during which the EU negotiates and concludes an agreement with the departing state, setting out the arrangements for the withdrawal and taking account of the framework for the future relationship between the two.  The final agreement is approved by the European Council, acting by a qualified majority.  It must also have the consent of the European Parliament and, under certain circumstances (if it cuts across policy areas that lie within the competence of Member States), be ratified by the national parliaments of the 27 member states.   The issues raised by the negotiated withdrawal of a member state are numerous and complex.

In the case of BREXIT, the result of the British referendum was followed by a government crisis and the emergence of a more anti-EU, conservative administration.  Furthermore, political debate shifted to the right and far right, influencing government actions. It is generally believed that EU leaders wish to complete the negotiation process before the European Parliament elections in the summer of 2019 and the appointment of a new European Commission.   As the economy comes under increased pressure due to the uncertainty created by BREXIT, the effects will be felt by society at large, adding to the general upheaval.

On the European side, the withdrawal of the UK will disrupt the Union’s internal equilibrium, as the economic and political weight of non-eurozone countries in EU will be reduced considerably.  For example, in 2015 the share of non-eurozone countries in EU GDP was equal to 29%, of which 17.5% derived from the UK and the remaining 11.5% from eight countries (Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Croatia).  This may well be expected to strengthen the political and economic supremacy of Germany. The Eurozone member states of Southern Europe will also be affected, as they come under intensified pressure by the financial markets.   In addition, populist insurgents of the right will be inspired by BREXIT and try to shape the political debate as their influence rises.

Overall, BREXIT opens the way to a long process of negotiation, the outcome of which is at best uncertain and at worst damaging, especially for Britain, as it will need to disentangle itself from 40 years of economic and regulatory integration with the EU.

What appears to be complex and uncertain in the case of BREXIT would in all probability be essentially chaotic in the case of GREXIT.  Assuming a euro-exit were legally possible under the EU treaties, the issues raised are many and considerably intricate.  Capital Economics, a London based think-tank, which in 2012 won the Wolfson Prize for the best proposal to ‘safely dismantle the Eurozone,’ concluded that a country contemplating leaving the euro would have to keep its plans secret until the last minute, introduce capital controls, start printing a new currency only after formal exit, seek a large depreciation, default on its debts, recapitalize bust banks and seek close co-operation with remaining Eurozone members.

This is a long list of requirements, which suggests that introducing a new currency is complex when done in a planned way.  If done suddenly and under duress, it is a disruptive process with multiple unintended consequences that cannot all be anticipated either on the domestic or the European levels.

So, if BREXIT is a long and complex process, while GREXIT is an intricate, if not chaotic one, what is the position of the left?  Should it be for or against EU exit?  What alternative route would it propose?  In what way should it participate in the political debate?

Both BREXIT and GREXIT will constitute turning points in the history of the EU.  EU Membership is rejected in the first case and threatened in the second one.  Business as usual is no longer possible. A new era has begun.

Since the inception of the EU, the left has argued against the EU’s three main deficits, viz. the democratic, social and ecological one, which cannot be overcome without peace and solidarity as overarching principles.  At each juncture in the history of the EU, a primarily economic project, which however did boost European-ness in the aftermath of World War II, the left has tried to intervene, making proposals for an alternative way of functioning of European institutions so as to better serve the public interest.  As the power of finance increased, the left fought against any antinomies and neoliberal policies that went with it.  The crisis has acted as a catalyst in terms of political developments.  Although many on the left could see it coming, the left as a whole was slow in responding.  The left’s structural weaknesses and its lack of political intermediation limited its role as a political actor.

The rise of SYRIZA in Greece was an exception, caused partly by the depth of the crisis, the evidently failed policies of the Troika and of the established major political parties, and the coming together of various factions within the Greek left.  The European left rallied around SYRIZA providing valuable support.  However, when SYRIZA was elected to government, and after a long period of negotiations that lasted 6 months (as a result of which SYRIZA agreed to many of the demands of the country’s creditors, choosing not to let Greece go bankrupt), the left both in Greece and in the EU was divided.  Should the SYRIZA government have taken Greece out of the euro and thereby default on its obligations?  The mandate of the January 2015 elections was not for default, rather for a new agreement with the country’s creditors which would be mutually beneficial.  This met with the creditors’ intransigence. Thus SYRIZA asked for a new mandate from the Greek electorate in the September 2015 elections, which was granted, forming the second coalition government SYRIZA-ANEL in 2015.  The hypothetical question however remains.  Only history will show whether the route followed by SYRIZA was the right one.

Lexit, i.e. the propagating exit from the EU by the left, came up in the 2016 British referendum.  The argument of Lexiters is that the current treaties and structures of the EU need to be dismantled and replaced by others within the framework of a new union, on the basis of a fundamental reconsideration of the foundations of the EU and its practices, as those stand.  This is a laudable ambition and political objective.  What is lacking, however, is a roadmap towards the goal to be achieved.  In view of the internal weaknesses of the left and its lack of political intermediation in the decision-making process, it is hard to see how these goals can be achieved.  Neither does the historical precedence of the 20th century offer many useful insights.

Overall, the left finds itself in a difficult position.  Its role is needed more than ever in the post-WWII period.  However, its internal divisions limit its impact on developments.  This state of limbo must be overcome, if the left is to be able to push forward and work towards putting an end to the crisis in favour of society at large.  In this respect, the SYRIZA experience can offer valuable insights.

Based on a paper presented at the ROSA LUXEMBURG FOUNDATION workshop on BREXIT in Berlin, 9-20 October 2016.

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Come January, social pressure runs higher than ever in France. If you do not wish a smashing ‘Bonne année!’ to absolutely anybody you may come across during the entire month, you’re a social outcast.

The Elysée is of course not exempt from this pressure: one of the most bizarre rituals of the French Republican Monarchy is the month-long litany of New Year’s wishes which the President addresses in the most solemn manner, at official receptions all over January, to a large variety of very specific groups and corporations: from the corps diplomatique to religious authorities and trade unions, and, most importantly, the Boulangers-Pâtissiers (no joke). A perfectly redundant series of top-down appearances in pompous settings, disguised as important state-of-the-union moments. As usual in French Republican culture, such traditions are half-ridiculous, half-endearing.

In 2017 the President’s most official wishes for a happy new year may be more pertinent than ever, since pessimism, this old ‘endemic disease of our country’ as historian Michel Winock put it already in 1995 in his book Parlez-moi de la France, is rife in all parts of society (including the Boulangers-Pâtissiers). A recent report with the title ‘Fault Lines’ issued by France Stratégie (which in the glorious times when Jean Monnet headed it was called the Commissariat Général du Plan) reveals just how much a pessimistic view of the country’s present state and prospects is ingrained in the French mindset.

According to the main author, Jean Pisani-Ferry (the former director of the Brussels-based Bruegel think-tank), the report provides a portrait of ‘a worried, distrustful, and split society’ in urgent need of ‘reunification’. As he concludes, rather stunned, from the survey data, ‘the French cast on themselves and excessively dark gaze, and they are exceptionally pessimistic for the future’. This is all the more paradoxical as the French perception is often in contrast with the objective figures, especially in comparison with other European states. This is the case on issues like poverty or social mobility, for instance, but also on integration: while 72% of the French consider that the integration of immigrants ‘functions poorly’ (twice as many as ten years ago), 89% of the children born from two migrant parents declare they ‘feel French’.

The French collective gloom is corroborated by other surveys, like the recent YouGov Poll on perceptions of globalisation in 20 different countries, where the French very clearly stood out with declarations like ‘Globalisation is a force for bad in the world’ (no. 1 with 37% of respondents), ‘immigrants have a negative effect on the country’ (no. 1 with 45%), ‘the world has gone worse in the past 12 months’ (no. 1 with 74%). The only answer on which they rated lowest was ‘my country is the best country in the world’ (5%).

The same can be said about the recent survey published by the Bertelsmann foundation, where only the Austrians are as negative as the French about the cultural ‘threat’ that globalisation represents (55% and 54% respectively), while no other European country matches the economic globalisation anxiety of France (51%).

There have been a lot of hypotheses about the deep causes of this pessimism, which feeds of course the oft-quoted ‘declinism’, but should not be confused with it. Some claim the French feel deeply nostalgic for the loss of their empire and/or their cultural hegemony, but after a quarter century in this country, this sounds absurd to me and might well be an English extrapolation of own feelings on others. Some simply say, not entirely without reason, that the French have more quality of life to lose than others, which explains their conviction that things can only go down the train (‘tout fout le camp!’). Others blame, also with some justification, the French school system, which seems designed to make people unhappy for life, or a deep-rooted cultural tradition of being ‘glad to be unhappy’.

But French collective pessimism probably runs deeper than just nostalgia or anticipated regret for what is too good to last. Claudia Senik, author of a (very good) book on the economics of happiness, considers it is due to a set of basic values acquired relatively early in the socialisation process. I agree with her: to me French pessimism seems deeply anchored in an unusually high collective sensitivity to the unbearable discrepancy between the normative ideals of their republican democracy and what society and politics deliver in real life. Maybe the French have simply preserved the capacity to be unhappy with how global capitalism triumphant interprets Liberté, laughs at Egalité, and strangulates Fraternité. Unhappy with how their own country proves, year after year, its helplessness when it comes to counterbalance these trends.

This is not nostalgia, but a profound distress about the way things are, with modernity’s false promises, with the fundamental unfairness of ‘la condition humaine’. France is to the world what Ken Loach has been to Britain over the last fifty years: a reminder that you have the right to believe in a fairer, gentler society.

Clearly, pragmatism is not the French people’s most striking characteristic. But if being pragmatic means you arrange your worldview and deeply held convictions with what real life has to offer, I cannot help but find a certain appeal in the hopelessly naïve, stubbornly critical, way the French find the world wanting. If that’s all there is, they seem to say, we could have spared the effort to spread our revolutionary ideals in the first place.

This being said, hope, as we know, springs of course eternal. Maybe that’s why the French are so obsessed with wishing a ‘Bonne Année!’ to absolutely everyone they meet.

Albrecht Sonntag
@albrechtsonntag

This is post # 8 on the French 2017 election marathon. Post # 7 can be found here.
Post # 6 here. Post # 5 here. Post # 4 here.
Post # 3 here. Post # 2 here. Post # 1 here.

The post France 2017: Happy New Year? You must be joking! appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

It was the moment the UN General Assembly changed the face of international human rights law. Fifty years ago, on December 16 1966, the assembly passed a single resolution containing two new treaties: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), covering rights to housing, social security and adequate standards of living, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), regarding rights to a fair trial, freedom of expression and physical integrity.

Together, these two treaties constitute the core of the international system that protects human rights. Both treaties entered into force a decade later in 1976, only a few weeks apart. And both of them have received approximately the same number of ratifications to this day: 168 for the ICCPR and 164 for the ICESCR. Like all other European countries, the UK is a party to both of them.

Degrees of separation

But there are significant differences between these two treaties. The intention of those who drafted them was to flesh out the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights by making the protection of rights legally binding for states. But considering that the 1948 Universal Declaration contained civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights in a single text, by creating two separate documents it was clear that the drafters wanted to introduce differences between these rights.

While all this happened during the political context of the Cold War, this was not the main reason why different types of human rights were treated differently. Rather, the decision had to do with states’ general preference for a weaker duty to protect their citizens’ economic, social and cultural rights. Countries were willing to proclaim these rights as long as this proclamation did not entail strong accountability mechanisms.

The second difference between the two treaties refers to the clarity and burden of words. Article 2(1) of the ICCPR talks about states’ obligations “to respect and to ensure [civil and political rights] without distinction of any kind”. Yet the same article in the ICESCR uses much more cryptic language about how the compliance of states to the treaty on economic, social and cultural rights will be monitored. It states:

Each state party to the present covenant undertakes to take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation, especially economic and technical, to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realisation of the rights recognised in the present covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures.

It’s difficult to assess compliance if rights are meant to be “achieved progressively”, or to decide the “appropriateness” of the “means” authorities are making use of. And can we blame governments if they promise “to take steps”, but not just yet?

There are also differences in the ways states who violate these two sets of rights are held to account. When the ICCPR was adopted, it brought with it an independent monitoring body known as the Human Rights Committee.

This had three responsibilities: examining states’ abidance by the treaty approximately every five years; dealing with interstate complaints (although to date this has never been used); and receiving complaints from individuals who consider themselves to be victims of a violation of any of the political and civil rights contained in the ICCPR. A complaint can lead to detailed recommendations on the specific case which countries are expected to implement. To date, 115 countries have let their citizens complain to the UN like this, but the UK is not one of them.

But when it came to economic, social and cultural rights, the ICESCR did not contain anything similar, and this was only partly corrected in 1985 when the UN created a body to periodically assess the general level of enjoyment of these rights in those countries which have ratified the treaty.

All this means that there are three degrees of separation between the two sets of rights: different treaties that states could pick and choose from, different legal wording, and different accountability mechanisms.

An unfortunate hierarchy

Something similar happened in the European context. In 1950, the European Convention on Human Rights was set up with a relatively resourceful European Court of Human Rights devoted essentially to civil and political rights. Then, in 1961, the European Social Charter was established (and then revised in 1996). This is monitored by the much weaker European Committee of Social Rights.

The impact of this hierarchy in which civil and political rights are given more weight than economic, social and cultural rights is visible at the domestic level, too. In the UK, for example, the very important Human Rights Act 1998 gives judges the means to apply the European Convention on Human Rights, but not the European Social Charter or the ICESCR, although the UK has ratified both treaties.

Not to pick and choose from.
StepanPopov/shutterstock.com

Half a century since the adoption of the two landmark human rights treaties, it is time to close the gap between human rights.

Independent human rights bodies, scholars and a growing number of practitioners have worked to define the meaning of economic, social and cultural rights and the contours of states’ obligations to uphold them.

Since 2013, individuals in 22 countries, ranging from Argentina to France and Mongolia, can also complain directly to the UN if their economic, social and cultural rights have been violated. This only applies to countries that have ratified the 2008 Optional Protocol to the ICESCR. Unfortunately, the UK is not one of them.

Yet, even in the UK, a minority of the judges in the Supreme Court has accepted that given their nature, some human rights treaties (although not the ICESCR for now) should be “directly enforceable in UK domestic law”, even without an act of parliament.

Half a century ago, human rights were internationalised with some degrees of separation. Luckily, we now have some tools that we lacked at that time – but we need to tell the government to make use of them.

Koldo Casla, PhD candidate: human rights, international politics and law, King’s College London

 

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