Ideas on Europe Blog

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dr Theofanis Exadaktylos from the University of Surrey, in England. Bonjour, Theofanis!

 

 

 

 

euradio · Covid-19 policies : how does political trust make a difference in responding to a common crisis ?

 

 

Theofanis, you are associate professor of European politics, and together with three colleagues you are about to publish a book on “Policy Styles and Trust in the Age of Pandemics”. Can you let us know more about it?

As we all know, since 2020, there has been a wide variety of policy responses by national governments. Some governments immediately and proactively took measures to stop the virus spread, some waited for clarity to decide their course of action and others downplayed the severity of the threat, continuing life as if nothing had happened.

 

So what how does your research explain these differences?

It’s explained by national ‘policy styles’. And in responding to crises, this policy styles are correlated with the political trust expressed by citizens.

Crises are moments of flux and extreme uncertainty. They expose vulnerabilities and frequently prompt political leaders to think outside the box to reassure citizens they are still in control. But the degree of freedom also depends on the administrative capacity their countries have, and the way problems and solutions are conceived in the national context. Effectively, policy makers inherit commitments, institutional arrangements, ways of doing things and norms that form a country’s policy style.

 

How does “trust” play into this?

Compliance to any public policy is linked to the levels of political trust within a country and, policy makers need to have a good estimation of how high or low that trust is. When governments are faced with new challenges they turn to “institutional memory”. Some governments are better in anticipating problems while others only react; in some countries consensus is required in decision-making whereas in others a top-down approach is the norm.

Citizens’ expectations are important. Pandemics require a public that makes conscious choices to comply to measures issued by a government. Lack of voluntary compliance will lead to more stringent measures, including fines and strict lockdowns. Compliance to measures also depends on whether they are perceived as ‘imposed’ or ‘organically developed’, especially in the context of democratic societies.

Countries like Denmark or Sweden have a more legitimate and efficient public administration system, and citizens tend to trust the bureaucracy of their country, compared to Greece or Italy for example. If trustworthiness and legitimacy are low, the capacity of a government to do its job is decreased, and implementing any measure is quite hard.

Legitimacy and political trust are even more important in the context of a pandemic when non-elected officials expand their decision-making roles. In Britain, Hungary and Poland, for example, experts have been at the receiving end of targeted blame.

 

How does it work in countries that have a high level of trust in their government?

In systems with more inclusive processes, like in Sweden, high trust magnifies the capacity of a government to act, leading to decentralised responses.

Conversely, in systems with lower policy capacity and lower inclusiveness, citizens lack faith in the system and expect central authority to take over. Greece is a good example for that. Lack of trust weakens the capacity of a government to act and the capacity of citizens to behave in a way they see fit.

 

These are the extremes. What happens in countries that are ‘in between’?

When high capacity coincides with low trust, the tendency is not to trust policymakers but put faith in the capacity of the state, for example, in the health system, to handle the crises. Hence policymakers will pursue more centrifugal responses to avoid taking the blame. This was the case in Britain, where policy makers tried to diffuse responsibility away from the central government in London.

When on the other hand, there is high trust but lower policy capacity (for geographic or demographic reasons), policymakers and citizens know that the health system may not cope if left without strong political direction. In this case, policymakers may choose a centripetal response because it allows more control over outcomes. This is the example of Norway where the government managed to acquire emergency powers to react, contrary to its inclusive policy style.

 

So what’s your conclusion after two years?

There is a vast variety of policy response across Europe , not only for the effectiveness of measures in containing spread, casualties and economic impact, but also in the timings and ways that measures were eased, dropped or re-introduced.

And we are not out of the woods yet. The pandemic is still evolving today with unknown outcomes. Therefore, whatever the national policy styles and levels of political trust, we should hope that national governments and citizens not only learn from past experiences but also from each other.

 

Thank you very much, Theofanis, for sharing your research with us. We’ll put a link to your book on the website. “Ideas on Europe” will be back next week. We will welcome Joanna Ciesielska-Klikowska, from the University of Lodz, in Poland.

 

First published on eu!radio.

 

 

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Boris Johnson is “not a complete clown”, his new communications director, Guto Harri, said this month adding, “he’s a very likeable character.”

Really?

I would say instead that Boris Johnson is a completely dangerous clown, and nothing he’s done for the country is at all likeable.

Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, questioned the seriousness of Mr Johnson and his new chief of communications. She said:

“Did I mention that there are no serious people left to serve? They think it’s all just one big joke, don’t they?” 

Was Boris Johnson ever Prime Minister material?

For sure, he likes to have – or more accurately, to get – a laugh.

But how appropriate is that when the country is reeling from the devastating consequences of Brexit, the impact of Covid, the danger of Climate Change, and on the imminent horizon, the possibility of war between Russia and Ukraine?

They say we get the politicians we deserve. But do we really deserve a Prime Minister like Boris Johnson, who tries to make fun of everything?

He and his party are having a good laugh at our expense.

People say that Boris Johnson reminds them of Benny Hill. He looks the part – especially when he can’t be bothered to dress properly.

But this is serious.

Our country is being commanded by a clown. Britain is now the laughing-stock of the world.

Behind the jokes, the laughter, the faux joie de vivre, however, is something truly sinister.

Britain is being led to ruin.

Brexit isn’t working. Trade with our neighbouring countries – our most important export and import market in the world – is severely disrupted.

The situation in Northern Ireland as a result of Brexit is close to collapse, with the Good Friday Agreement in danger of falling apart.

Sleaze and corruption abound.

Does Mr Johnson care?

For sure, business is suffering from both Brexit and Covid. “F*** business,” retorted the minstrel Prime Minister.

Beware. The jokes hide the lies and the real game.

The fiddlers – our political masters – are steeped in sleazy, corrupt, and nefarious activities.

Whilst the front man elicits guffaws from the electorate, those behind the scenes are furtively dismantling what was once Great Britain, taking what they can, increasing their power, reducing our democracy.

• We didn’t get our country back. We threw it it away.
• We didn’t take control. We lost it.

This year, we must up our fight to get back our country, to get back our continent, and to Get Brexit Undone.

Agreed?

• Watch this 2-minute video demonstrating that Boris Johnson is a clown

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
• My campaign page on Facebook: Reasons2Rejoin
• And LinkedIn

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The EU referendum was entirely flawed according to criteria set by former Brexit Secretary and ardent Brexiter, David Davis, on how referendums should be “done properly”.

In July 2016, Tory MP, Mr Davis, accepted the result of the EU referendum and the dual-role of Brexit Secretary and Chief Brexit Negotiator in Theresa May’s new government.

But back in 2002, when the Tories were in Opposition to the Labour government, Mr Davis spelt out what he considered to be the gold standard for good referendums.

On the basis of that speech, the 2016 EU referendum failed on every point.

Mr Davis was opposing Labour’s plans to hold referendums on regional assemblies, because he considered that the structure of the proposed referendums would be undemocratic.

In summary, Mr Davis said that:

“In a democracy, voters have to know what they’re voting for”

But in the EU referendum, voters couldn’t know what they were voting for. The Leave option was not defined.

(This was also a point made by Philip Hammond, then Foreign Secretary, six months before the referendum. Mr Hammond was sitting next to Mr Davis when he made his speech in 2002).

“The proposition has to come first, and the vote afterwards”

But that’s not what happened in the EU referendum. There was no clear proposition before the referendum on how the UK would leave the EU and on what terms.

“Referendums should be held when the electorate are in the best possible position to make a judgement”

But in the EU referendum, the electorate was not in any position, let alone the “best possible position”, to judge whether the UK should leave the EU, and nobody knew then what the terms of leaving would be.

Referendums should be held when the arguments, for and against, “have been rigorously tested”.

But in the EU referendum, the Leave arguments had not been tested, let alone “rigorously tested”.

Claims and promises made by the Leave side had not been debated or agreed in Parliament before the referendum took place.

“Referendums should be held when people know exactly what they’re getting”

But no one who voted for Leave knew what they were getting, let alone “exactly what they’re getting”.

“This means that legislation should be debated by Members of Parliament on the floor of the House of Commons and then put to the electorate for the voters to judge afterwards.”

But the legislation to leave the EU was debated after the referendum and not before.

“It does not mean that we ask people to vote on a blank piece of paper and tell them to trust us to fill in the details afterwards.”

But that’s exactly what happened with the EU referendum.

The Leave choice represented an entirely blank sheet of people with government filling in the details much later and without a second, confirmatory referendum on whether ‘the people’ supported those details.

A referendum should be “treated as an addition to the parliamentary process, not as a substitute for it.”

But the EU referendum WAS treated as a substitute for Parliamentary decision-making.

According to Mr Davis as Brexit Secretary, the final decision to leave the EU had been made by the referendum and was therefore a “point of no return”, even though the referendum was supposed to be an advisory poll only.

Parliament was denied any opportunity to specifically debate and vote on WHETHER the UK should leave the EU. The referendum was treated as a replacement for, and superior to, Parliamentary decision making.

Indeed, when Parliament debated the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill, Mr Davis as the Brexit Secretary told Parliament in January 2017:

“It is not a Bill about whether the UK should leave the European Union or, indeed, about how it should do so; it is simply about Parliament empowering the Government to implement a decision already made—a point of no return already passed. 

“We asked the people of the UK whether they wanted to leave the European Union, and they decided they did.”

“It’s important that referenda are not used simply as a snapshot of volatile changes of opinion, perhaps as a result of pressure of government propaganda”

But the referendum ONLY represented a snapshot of “volatile changes of opinion” and certainly as a result of propaganda, much of which transpired to be untrue or incorrect or undeliverable.

“It’s because referenda are supposed to reflect the settled will of the people that we need to have thresholds below which they do not carry the day.”

But leaving the EU hardly reflected “the settled will of the people” let alone a stable or consistent will.

For most of the UK’s four decades as a member of the EU, most polls consistently showed that a majority supported membership.

Furthermore, the marginally close referendum result of 52%-48% could not reflect that “the settled will of the people” was to leave the EU.

As for a “need to have thresholds” for referendums, no threshold was set for the EU referendum, and only a minority of the electorate supported Leave, with the majority of registered voters either voting for Remain or not voting.

Although Mr Davis expressed varying views on what a threshold might be for a referendum, the EU referendum failed to have ANY threshold.

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I have written to Mr Davis to ask him why, in view of the criteria he set in 2002 on how a referendum should be “done properly”, he could ever have considered the 2016 EU referendum and Brexit win to be fair and democratic?

• Watch: 2-minute video of speech by David Davis in 2002:

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Watch: 40-second video of Philip Hammond, in 2016, confirming that the EU referendum was flawed

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
• My campaign page on Facebook: Reasons2Rejoin
• And LinkedIn

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• Join the discussion about this article on Facebook

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For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Prof Ben Tonra from University College Dublin, in Ireland.

 

 

 

 

 

euradio · The EU foreign policy paradox – Ideas on Europe

 

 

Foreign policy challenges are high on the EU’s agenda, but the member states are still having trouble working in common in this field.

True. Whether we are talking about addressing China’s human rights violations, Russian threats towards Ukraine or indeed one of Europe’s signature successes, the agreement on Iranian nuclear weapons, too often we are witness to individual capitals going their own way and in some cases, even vetoing restatement of well-established EU policy as in the case of the Middle East peace process.

 

But, Ben, didn’t the Lisbon Treaty promise us the final chapter on the Europeanization of national foreign policies?

In truth, the Treaty of Lisbon delivered a lot: the creation of a strengthened post of High Representative for foreign and security policy, the establishment of the European External Action Service and – in recent years – a huge acceleration in the development of defence policy, including the creation of the new European Defence Fund, the establishment of DG DEFIS in the Commission and now 60 individual projects to strengthen European military cooperation through PESCO.

At the same time, we must acknowledge that the EU’s international capacity is almost entirely a function of what its member states will allow it to do. And each of the 27 comes to the common EU foreign policy table with its own national perspectives, geographies and histories – a whole national baggage that shapes its response to foreign policy events, threats and opportunities.

 

So how can that be overcome?

The Member States know what the problem is – indeed they are collectively at the root of the problem.

They are trapped in a paradox: most of them ardently desire that the Union would speak strongly on the major foreign policy challenges of our times and deploy the Union’s significant resources towards those ends.

At the same time, they are reluctant – deeply reluctant – to cede power to the EU institutions in such a way as would make that possible. Whether it is hubris, fear or ego – each national capital is determined to hold on to the reigns of its own power.

As a result, the member states continue to struggle to carve agreed positions from their multiple perspectives and to design processes – such as the new Strategic Compass – to guide member states along a path which will build upon shared foundations. The problem of course is that the rest of the world is not going to wait for the Union to get its act together. Moreover, for some actors – such as Russia – the EU’s weaknesses and its incoherence – actually represent an opportunity to exploit.

 

So, what is to be recommended?

It is difficult to tell.

Certainly, it is unwise for the Union to overpromise and underdeliver. Statements such as ‘the Union must learn to speak the language of power’ or to commit to providing a ‘geopolitical Commission’ are off the mark. Frankly, ‘power’ – in the sense of traditional military power – is a foreign language to the European Union – and will likely continue to be so for some time to come.

Furthermore, considering the nature of threats coming from some member states within the Union towards its values and principles, the Union cannot rely on unanimity to deliver a strong, coherent foreign policy. The member states may need to get creative and exploit the opportunities for differentiated action. This of course also opens Europe to the danger of fragmentation – so one has to choose such a course carefully and with maximum support.

 

Differentiated action – would that not the opposite of a common policy?

I don’t think so. It would acknowledge that a European foreign policy which was not anchored in European values is not worth the name – and it would free those participating from the dead weight of the laggards and the subversives. It would, potentially, build a European foreign, security and defence policy that was seen to work.

 

Thank you very much, Ben, for this insight. All hope is not lost! “Ideas on Europe” will be back next week, and we will welcome Theofanis Exadaktylos, from the University of Surrey, in England.

 

First published on eu!radio.

 

 

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Many studies on the politicization of the EU see the main dividing line running between transnational EU elites on one side and nationalist leaders whipping up anti-EU sentiments on the other. But the politicization of Europe is not a one-way street, as transnational democratic counter-movements have also emerged in response to recent EU integration pressures. As we show in our new JCMS article, which compares European Citizens’ Initiatives (ECIs) of European trade union federations, popular counter-movements are not necessarily constrained by national silos and nationalist outlooks. But under what conditions are labour alliances succeeding or failing in politicizing EU policymaking across borders?

Pairing two campaigns that were organized by similar actors allowed us to focus on key differences that explain the different outcomes of the campaigns. Our comparison reveals that actor-centred factors matter, namely unions’ ability to create broad social movement coalitions. Successful transnational labour campaigns, however, also depend on structural conditions, namely the prevailing mode of EU integration pressures faced by unions at a given time. Whereas the successful Right2Water ECI of the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), pre-emptively countered commodification attempts by the European Commission in water services, the unsuccessful Fair Transport ECI of the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) attempted to ensure fair working conditions after most of the transport sector had already been liberalized. Vertical integration attempts by EU executives that aim to commodify public services are thus more likely to generate successful counter-movements than the horizontal market integration pressures on wages and working conditions that followed earlier successful EU liberalization drives.

 

Strong union-social movement alliances: EPSU and ETF share similar structures of small secretariats with little authority over national affiliates, as well as similar methods of influencing Brussels policymaking. In other respects, EPSU was even in a weaker position compared to the ETF. Being the first to launch an ECI, EPSU could not learn from earlier campaigns, also its Right2Water campaign had a much smaller budget. EPSU succeeded against these odds as it could rely on union-social movement alliances that spanned from the local-community to the global level. Trade union officials were working together with grassroots activists, as more than half of the organizations assisting the collection of signatures belonged to grassroot movements, including the global justice and environmental movements. Such a wide-spanning web of alliances was not present in the ETF campaign and consequently it had difficulties reaching a broader audience.

The two campaigns had different goals and framed them in different ways to the public. EPSU’s ECI combined its anti-privatization message with an agenda of human rights that was broad enough to unite actors with diverging views on the details of water sector management. By focusing on the threat of privatization, EPSU also identified precise targets of discontent: the European Commission and the two large water multinationals, Veolia and Suez, which had benefited most from water services privatization in the past. The other goal of the Right2Water campaign, to make water services a human right connected a set of positive goals, such as good drinking water and wastewater facilities. The framing of the Fair Transport initiative was built around the idea of fair competition between all transport operators. These demands side-lined the point that, no matter how fair competition is, it still creates inequalities and tensions. This alienated the ETF campaign from more radical unions who were against competition tout court and it had little currency among workers in the EU’s East and South. ETF also framed its Fair Transport ECI exclusively in industrial relations terms which made it difficult to find non-union allies. Social movement-union coalitions and framing around well-defined goals are actor-centred factors that can explain the different outcomes of the campaigns. At a deeper level, however, actors’ choices in the two cases were structured by the different modes of EU integration.

 

Horizontal vs. vertical EU integration. We distinguish between two modes of EU integration pressures: vertical integration advances through direct interventions by a ‘supranational political, legal or corporate authority’; horizontal integration refers to the increasing exposure to transnational market pressures. Horizontal integration reinforces the opacity of power relations and provides few tangible targets for mobilization, while vertical interventions are easier to politicize, albeit within a limited timeframe, as the impact of vertical intervention increases horizontal competition in the medium term.

After the earlier vertical EU laws liberalizing one transport modality after another, horizontal market pressures are prevalent in the transport sector. This hinders transnational action, as horizontal integration puts workers in competition with each other across different transport type (public versus private) modality (rail against road) and geographical areas. By contrast, the Commission’s more recent vertical liberalization attempts in the water sector, that started with the proposal of the Services in the Internal Market (Bolkestein) directive, provided crystallization points for successful transnational collective action.

Similarly, the more service providers are subject to horizontal market integration pressures, the more difficult it becomes to find a common platform with service users. Whereas vertical EU laws motivated unions, consumer groups, environmental NGOs, and even municipal water companies to support the Right2Water ECI, horizontal competitive pressures across modalities go a long way towards explaining the absence of such alliances in the Fair Transport case. Had the Fair Transport ECI focused on public rail transport, it would have been easier to attract support from environmental groups. This idea did not prevail however, given ETF’s aim to also represent workers from other modalities competing with rail.

Our findings have several implications for EU integration scholars and union activists alike. For activists we send the optimistic message that the lack of day-to-day cross-border contacts between workers (a characteristic of non-traded public services including water provision) does not have to be a hindrance on transnational action. Public service unions can create effective transnational links not only with unions in other countries, but also with social movements. For the theory of EU integration, we highlight the importance of interest politics at the meso-level, and show how vertical and horizontal integration pressures shape social actors’ ability to politicize the EU across borders, which is a precondition for its democratization.

The blog draws on the JCMS article Why Do some Labour Alliances Succeed in Politicizing Europe across Borders? A Comparison of the Right2Water and Fair Transport European Citizens’ Initiatives

 

 

Imre G. Szabo and Darragh Golden are postdoctoral research fellows in the ERC project Labour Politics and the EU’s New Economic Governance Regime at University College Dublin.

 

 

 

Roland Erne is professor of European integration and employment relations at University College Dublin and principal investigator of the ERC project Labour Politics and the EU’s New Economic Governance Regime.

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EUHealthGov started 2022 with its third quarterly seminar on 12th January – a roundtable on EU competition policy in healthcare which aimed to identify future directions in light of the 2020 CJEU Dôvera judgment regarding private and state health insurance in Slovakia, and the Casa Regina Apostolorum case (currently on appeal to the CJEU) concerning state subsidy of certain Italian hospitals. We were delighted to be joined by a range of experts from across Europe to consider how these challenges to the state aid rules may give the EU courts scope to clarify or reaffirm earlier approaches as private sector delivery of healthcare becomes more widespread in European healthcare systems.

Dr Mary Guy (Lancaster) introduced the discussions by setting out the approaches taken in previous cases and how the EU competition law framework in healthcare cases indicates a distinction between healthcare purchasing and providing activities. Conceptions of competition and solidarity have also characterised case law to date with distinctions which may prove less sustainable as more Member States experiment with expanding private sector delivery of healthcare. While responses to the Covid-19 pandemic have affected the application particularly of the state aid rules, the wider competition law framework in healthcare cases continues to develop along established lines.

Professor Johan van de Gronden (Radboud University Nijmegen) discussed the Commission and General Court’s findings in Casa Regina Apostolorum to outline distinctions between social insurance-based and taxation-funded healthcare systems. These seem to indicate that the latter has more room for manoeuvre under EU competition policy than the former, prompting the question of whether the trigger of an economic activity can be reconceptualised to be neutral to the design of Member State healthcare systems, or to refocus attention on the extent of public financing of healthcare.

Dr Bruno Nikolić (Ljubljana University) considered how Casa Regina Apostolorum fit with analyses in earlier case law, highlighting the inconsistency of referencing social health insurance cases when assessing the nature of health service providers under EU competition policy. This seems to prompt ongoing questions about the dividing line between economic and non-economic activities in health, and why we would (in general) exclude health services provided in public healthcare systems from EU competition policy.

Dr Marc Wiggers (Loyens Loeff Amsterdam) compared and contrasted approaches taken by the EU institutions Dôvera with the Dutch state aid case which accompanied the 2006 competition reforms in Dutch healthcare with the move from state sickness funds to private health insurance. By setting out an examination framework comprising social objectives, solidarity, the scope for profit-making and state supervision, it is possible to see how distinctions between profit and solidarity may emerge between the EU and national levels.

We look forward to developing this conversation in the future!

A recording of the event is available here.

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With the new ‘traffic light’ government in Germany, one could have expected a game changer in Germany’s approach to fiscal integration. Instead, the coalition agreement is a compromise between maintaining the old fiscal regulatory framework and showing some moderate opening towards new European spending powers.

The so-called ‘traffic light’ coalition in Germany is made up by the the Social Democrats (SDP), the Greens and the Free Democrats (FDP) (Photo: Francisco Welter-Schultes, CC0 1.0)

The coalition agreement of the new German government led by Olaf Scholz does not advocate for providing the EU with stronger spending powers after the pandemic – something often discussed and considered necessary for a better functioning of the EU. As a result, the agreement mirrors much more the position of the Liberals (FDP, in favour of the ‘old’ EU fiscal rules) rather than the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens (in favour of new spending powers). The approach to EU fiscal integration of the Scholz cabinet will thus probably be marked by much more continuity to the previous Merkel governments than expected.

SDP, Greens and FDP: different preferences on EU fiscal integration

Such continuity is surprising considering the party manifestos of SPD and Greens. SPD and Greens want to permanently provide the EU with a more autonomous spending capacity through new European taxes. Next Generation EU should become a permanent fund for investments, thus opening the doors to a fiscal union. The Stability and Growth Pact should be reformed to make it more flexible. Institutionally, both parties support more powers of the Commission and the European Parliament on EU fiscal policy. On the contrary, the FDP is against more spending powers for the EU. The party aims at strengthening the existing fiscal rules. For FDP, Next Generation EU and its ‘debt-oriented’ approach are to be temporary limited and one-off and should not lead to a debt union (Schuldenunion, a word much used by the Merkel governments).

Hence, whereas SPD and Greens wish to institutionalize a new EU fiscal capacity after the pandemic, the Liberals want as soon as possible to re-institutionalize the fiscal rules of the Stability and Growth Pact (currently suspended due to the pandemic). Against these divergences, what is the fiscal synthesis included in the ‘traffic light’ coalition agreement between the SPD (red), the Greens (green) and the FDP (yellow)?

The coalition agreement and EU fiscal integration: (almost) no big surprise

Given that SPD (25.7 %) and Greens (14.8 %) together obtained 40.5 % of the votes against the Liberal’s 11.5 %, we would have expected a game changer in Germany’s approach to fiscal integration. Instead, the coalition agreement is a light compromise on keeping in place the old fiscal regulatory framework and showing some moderate opening towards new European spending powers. As a matter of fact, the coalition agreement aims to strengthen and deepen Economic and Monetary Union but does not specify how to do so. The three parties want to secure growth, to preserve the sustainability of debt and to provide sustainable and climate-friendly investments. However, they plan to do so without substantially amending the Stability and Growth Pact. Crucially, Next Generation EU is defined as an instrument limited in time and amount whose conditionality must be effectively enforced. SPD, Greens and FDP commit to the agreement on the recovery fund and on the new own resources of the Multiannual Financial Framework, but the coalition agreement adds that ‘related proposals will be examined accordingly’. Germany should remain an anchor of stability (Stabilitätsanker) in Europe. The coalition agreement identifies solidity of public finances as tenet of the budgetary and finance policy of the new coalition – both at national and at European level.

We would have expected a game changer in Germany’s approach to fiscal integration. Instead, the coalition agreement is a light compromise on keeping in place the old fiscal regulatory framework and showing some moderate opening towards new European spending powers.

The future of EU fiscal integration after the COVID-19 pandemic: no paradigm change envisaged

In an article published in 1993, Peter A. Hall distinguished three types of policy change: the goals, the instruments and the settings. If a policy faces a re-definition of its goals and instruments, it will experience a radical, i.e. a paradigmatic change. On the contrary, if change affects the instruments and their settings only, change will be moderate, i.e. incremental: it adds new elements to the existing policy without subverting its core functioning. If we read the three party manifestos through the lenses of paradigmatic policy change, we see that SPD and Greens argue for the need of a paradigmatic change to EU fiscal integration, whereas the FDP would support some form of incremental change – making the pre-pandemic regulatory framework stricter.

Surprisingly enough, the fiscal synthesis of two parties in favour of paradigmatic change and one party supporting an incremental change results in a much less ambitious text than expected. There is no mention of increasing the EU’s spending capacity nor any other concrete measure on how to complete the Economic and Monetary Union. On the contrary, the Stability and Growth Pact should be more effectively enforced. No priority is granted to the introduction of new resources to the EU budget.

By stressing member states’ exclusive responsibility for their fiscal policy as a tenet of fiscal integration, the text closes the door on establishing a fiscal union. The need for increasing investments at EU level and in Germany has been recognized, but the preservative approach in favour of the status quo remains there. As a result, a significant deepening of integration after the pandemic will be difficult without having Germany on board. This seems true considering that the presidency of Emmanuel Macron – who had repeatedly advocated paradigmatic change to EU fiscal integration – is about to finish. Recent polls suggest he is the favourite for re-election but it is too early to predict the outcome of the French election of 10 April 2022. In Italy, the fate of the Draghi government depends on whether Draghi himself remains prime ministers or becomes president of the Republic. The lack of ‘propulsive force’ on the side of the new German government might result in losing the critical juncture of the COVID-19 pandemic to significantly advance on the road towards closer EU fiscal integration.

A traffic light strongly blinking yellow: the finance ministry led by the FDP

Crucially, the FDP seems to have influenced the fiscal policy of the new government more than its proportional weight in the coalition would have suggested – both at European and at national level. The leader of the FDP, Christian Lindner, has become the new German finance minister. This ministry is given a particular importance in Germany. According to §26 of the procedural motion of the German government, if on a matter regarding public finances the government decides without or against the vote of the finance minister, the latter can veto such decision. The veto can only be overcome through unanimity among the ministers, otherwise the decision needs to be stopped. In addition to that, the finance minister clearly plays a key role on EU fiscal policy through his vote in the ECOFIN Council – which impacts both on issues pertaining to the enforcement of EU fiscal rules as part of the Stability and Growth Pact and also on decisions regarding new resources to the EU budget.

The FDP seems to have influenced the fiscal policy of the new government more than its proportional weight in the coalition would have suggested

The new German government will have to be judged based on what it concretely does. So far, we only have political plans on paper. What will then be possible in practice is another issue. However, on EU fiscal integration the new coalition agreement seems to blink more yellow than red or green. A traffic light blinking yellow might on some occasion be the moment immediately before proceeding forward. On some others, it might be the sign for stopping.

The post The German ‘traffic light’ coalition: no commitment to stronger spending powers for the EU appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The arrival of 2022 has brought both continuity and change to the UK’s relationship with the EU.

The resignation of Lord Frost in December has precipitated a major reorganisation (possibly still on-going) of the government’s management of EU and Brexit affairs, but the new point on the relationship – Foreign Secretary Liz Truss – has very much stuck to the same talking notes on the Northern Ireland Protocol as her predecessor.

The reorganisation starts to break up the significant collection of roles that Frost had built up in the past couple of years, probably more because of his proximity to Boris Johnson than through any conscious project of coordinating the multiple aspects of the work.

The move of the bilateral relationship out to the FCDO fits with a more natural model of diplomacy, and normalises EU relations as just part of the furniture, but it comes with a number of real challenges for Truss and her junior minister, man of letters Chris Heaton-Harris (who is presumably going to be even more delayed with that book).

Firstly, WA and TCA implementation covers a wide range of departments’ activities, so lots of coordination will be needed. Secondly, Johnson will retain a big interest in the portfolio, so handling the FCDO-No.10 connection will also need much attention.

The work on borders and on ‘Brexit opportunities’ is still up in the air; as Jill Rutter well argues, each could be well snaffled up by other departments, either as an on-going whole or in parts. That this remains unaddressed in the near-month since the FCDO move suggests stasis is the more likely option, given the limited shelf life of each project.

The graphic below summarises the changes and we’ll come back to it as anything happens.

On the continuity front, the switch from Frost to Truss has also seen the continuing ambiguity about how hard the UK wants to push to close the Protocol negotiations with the Commission. The initial contacts with the latter seem to have been couched – again – in terms of getting things sorted ‘as soon as possible’, rather than to any fixed timeline.

One question that lingers is that of whether the continued threat of using Article 16 carries either any weight in Brussels or even any seriousness in London: certainly, it has the air of being ritualistically waved about, rather than being ready to go.

I’ve discussed this question in the newest episode of A Diet of Brussels, and didn’t really come to a clear conclusion, mainly because the increasingly wounded Johnson might still go either way on this. Invoking Article 16 might be a way to rally the party to his cause once more, but it also risks making the ‘doneness’ of Brexit even more open to question.

So all still to be settled then.

Just like last year. And the ones before that.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic97

The post A new year of Brexiting appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

How fitting: this spring, ARTE, the brainy French-German TV channel, will broadcast a second season of ‘En thérapie’, the French version of ‘In Treatment’ (itself based on the Israeli TV hit “Be Tipul”). 35 new episodes of people on the psychiatrist’s couch, composing what Le Monde called ‘an immobile travel across French society in the wake of the 2015 terror attacks.’ The first season, broadcast in early 2021, had been a totally unexpected success, more than doubling the channel’s average audience.

The exact broadcasting slot is not yet communicated, but end of April would no doubt be the best timing. The election campaign France is likely to have over the next months will leave the entire nation ripe for an in-depth collective therapy, worn out by endlessly quoted hysterical tweets, tired of its own paradoxes, and no wiser than before in its painful post-election hangover.

The first days of the new year have given a taste of what is to come. The polemic around the European flag under the Arc de Triomphe – meant to announce the French Presidency of the European Council, but threatening to ‘erase French identity’ according to the supposedly moderate conservative candidate Valérie Pécresse – has been a good teaser for the manner in which the presidential campaign will unfold. Ridiculous in its fake indignation and yet worrying in its real obsession with polarising at all costs.

Not to mention Emmanuel Macron’s carefully calculated “piss off”-interview with Le Parisien – which not only resulted in yet another predictable bashing of the President’s presumed contempt for ordinary people, while causing serious translation headaches for news correspondents across the continent, but also in over 230,000 new first jabs in one week, bringing the French vaccination rate to 92.2% of eligible individuals.

Two inflamed polemics in less than a week, and that’s while the President has not even declared his own candidacy yet. The Fifth Republic’s implacable logic of full confrontation and permanent rhetorical overbidding has set in and will continue to take speed over the next weeks, fuelled by a very peculiar media landscape.

French election campaigns are a painful experience for any observer who follows them with a minimum of empathy for this country. De Gaulle’s introduction of the direct election of the President, through a referendum in 1962 following the dissolution of a parliament refusing to be bulldozed, has held the Fifth Republic in a terrible stranglehold. What I wrote at the outset of the campaign five years ago is just as valid today: rather than refer to ‘path-dependency’, we should speak of ‘path imprisonment’.

France has always been a highly complicated society that is extremely difficult to understand from outside. Even the most scrupulous, well-intended observers rely on a good dose of stereotypical knowledge and seemingly revealing key words. But the relative stability of political behaviour patterns at the surface of the Republic cannot conceal the dramatic changes French society has undergone over the last decades. After having spent the past thirty years in this idiosyncratic sociocultural, linguistic and political environment, I wonder if it has not become increasingly difficult to decipher.

One more reason to accompany the weeks and months ahead with a modest attempt at addressing some of the issues that will dominate the unfolding election campaign. A lot of different topics deserve to be scrutinised,

• starting with the deep soul-searching across the entire political spectrum of what still holds the country together,
• but also more technical aspects, like the planned and unintended consequences of primaries held (or painstakingly avoided) and the disturbing uncertainty surrounding the legislative elections in June,
• the seemingly unstoppable decline of the left and the strange phenomenon of the huge gap between the national and local/regional level of politics, dominated by two totally different ideological forces and fault lines,
• ongoing attempts at historical revisionism and forthcoming challenges to collective memory,
• and even the good old proverbial French pessimism deserves a second look in the light of recent surveys.

Without any pretension to be able to explain everything, it’s a good moment to invite French politics to lie down on the couch again.

The post France 2022: Back on the couch appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The next steps in the EU’s constitutional development must involve greater care for the wider Europe, Andrew Duff argues. He proposes the introduction of a new category of EU affiliate membership, allowing the EU’s western and eastern neighbours alike to become stable and reliable partners.

Enlargement must only proceed if it enhances the EU’s own security and that of the applicants. (Illustration: Dati Bendo/European Union)

One of the more diverting exercises in literary criticism during 2022 will be the simultaneous publication of NATO’s Strategic Concept and the EU’s Strategic Compass. Why do we need two documents to define the security interests of the West? The answer, like most things, lies in history. France feared that NATO would serve to expand American influence in Europe while Britain opposed the development of a security policy under EU auspices. Brexit has helpfully removed the British blockage on Europe’s common foreign and security policy. President Macron, meanwhile, advocates European sovereign autonomy not as a substitute for US engagement but as a supplement to it. The provocations of President Putin, not least in Ukraine, stimulate the coming together of the EU and NATO.

Security architecture

In my recent book Britain and the Puzzle of European Union (forthcoming 2022) I propose a reform of security architecture to underpin the new alignment. A European Security Council, chaired by an EU defence minister, would combine the efforts of the two Brussels based organisations — keeping the Americans alongside while encouraging Germany to upgrade its contribution to Europe’s defence against Russia. The purpose of the Security Council is to help NATO think strategically while enabling the EU to act militarily.

An early benefit of such a new configuration would be a common policy on enlargement. NATO’s open-door policy led to the glib promise in 2008 of NATO membership to Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova as well as to the haphazard admission of Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia — none of which has added to Europe’s security (indeed, rather the contrary). In a similar and uncoordinated spasm, the European Union in 2003 offered the prospect of enlargement to all six countries of the Western Balkans. The EU also allowed its 2014 association agreements with Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova to be portrayed as being preparatory to candidacy for membership. This lax approach was, of course, encouraged by the UK which saw eastern enlargement as a way to blunt the federal tendency in Brussels.

Subsequent events suggest that those of us who expressed disquiet at these facile promises were correct. (Indeed, one may chastise oneself for not being more outspoken against them at the time.) As I have written recently in a European Policy Centre paper Dealing with the Neighbours, there is still a basic dishonesty at the heart of the EU’s enlargement policy. All potential candidate states suffer to a greater or lesser extent from an excess of nationalism, antisemitism, ethnic and religious tension, and unstable rule by corrupt judges and politicians. Most are quarrelling with their neighbours.

The prospect of further enlargement is viewed with alarm by most of the current member states. Although the Commission has introduced stricter verification of the accession process, Emmanuel Macron makes it clear that the Union will no longer continue to amiably ignore the Copenhagen enlargement criteria. Even were the technical accession requirements to be met, the EU’s rule of rigid unanimity (involving 27 national parliaments or referendums) poses an insuperable obstacle to actual enlargement (Art. 49 Treaty on European Union, TEU).

The problem, however, goes deeper. It is not only the case that the potential candidates are ineligible for membership, but also that the government of the EU itself is so muddled and inept that it cannot possibly shoulder the burden of running the Western Balkans or face Kremlin aggression with a united front. Failure to proceed with political reform of the Union since 2005 has rendered it incapable of enlarging. The time is over when the Union could pretend to welcome applicants when they pretended to be ready.

Affiliate membership?

I have proposed that at the next revision of the EU treaties a new category of affiliate membership is created (Art. 49a TEU). This would allow those European states which commit to the values of the EU and fall within its regulatory orbit but which do not espouse the goal of political, economic and monetary union to become stable and reliable partners.

For the EU’s western neighbours — Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and the UK — affiliate membership would imply an upgrading of their present, different, unsatisfactory association or free trade agreements. Partial official engagement of the affiliate states with the political, administrative and judicial institutions of the Union would enable the partnership to develop in a stable, legitimate and democratic fashion. Some attributes of EU citizenship could be shared with affiliates in a spirit of good neighbourliness (Art. 8 TEU). Full participation in EU spending programmes could be envisaged. Affiliate status should be regarded as a durable settlement rather than a springboard for full membership.

For the EU’s eastern neighbours, affiliate membership would encourage economic and political convergence on EU norms without the challenge of leaping improbable hurdles involving the ultimate sacrifice of national sovereignty. It should encourage regional collaboration between, for example, Albania and Serbia. It would allow for closer political cooperation with Brussels and the systematic joint management of EU funding. Affiliate EU membership underpinned by the European Security Council would provide eastern Europe with an unprecedented level of stability and security.

Affiliate membership would also offer, should it be needed, a parking place for any current EU member state that sought to dissociate itself from an EU on the path towards federal union. Relegation to affiliate status would avoid the humiliation of secession (Art. 50 TEU).

Intermediate accession?

Working on the same assumption that the EU’s present enlargement policy is bust, the Centre for European Policy Studies has published a comparable but alternative proposal to mine. Michael Emerson, Milena Lazarevic, Steven Blockmans and Strahinja Subotic suggest that the candidate states should be admitted in stages to full membership of the Union. They propose an ingenious template for gradual accession in phases, involving partial participation in EU institutions. In the final pre-accession phase, after meeting various tests, the ‘new member states’ would be admitted to the EU Council but deprived of their right of unilateral veto. It is hoped that their participation only in decisions of the Council taken by qualified majority vote (QMV) would act avant la lettre as an example for all member states to emulate. Emerson and his colleagues are more optimistic than me.

Our two papers agree on many things, however, including the necessity of treaty revision, the extension of QMV and the need for a smaller Commission. We insist that the EU should reflect more deeply than it has done on the implications of Brexit for the constitutional evolution of the Union. Enlargement is not an academic exercise: it must only proceed if it enhances the EU’s own security and that of the applicants. It can hardly be in Serbia’s interest to join a Union which is not working well.

The next steps in the Union’s constitutional development must involve greater care for the wider Europe. It’s surely time to experiment. Maybe the Conference on the Future of Europe can help. Addressing the problem of the EU’s neighbourhood — east and west — has to involve the neighbours directly in constitutional discussions. Differentiated integration does not stop at the borders of the EU 27. A European Union more confident about its own region will be in a better position to project its values and protect its interests worldwide.

The post The Wider Europe: a time for experiments appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The corona recovery fund, now formally known as Next Generation EU, has been the European Union’s (EU) most important response to the economic and social damages caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Unprecedently, the 27 member states entrusted the European Commission to borrow €750 billion and to allocate the money – in large parts in the form of grants – to the European countries hardest hit. Given member states’ opposing attitudes towards common debt and their different immediate reactions to the pandemic, the establishment of the Union’s corona recovery fund was remarkable. What explains the creation, timing, and scope of the recovery fund? Why was the Union able to agree on such comprehensive measures in a very short time?

Our article stresses the decisiveness of France and Germany – the Union’s “big two” – their tight bilateral political cooperation, and their crucial role in EU politics. We show why and how France and Germany, starting from different poles, came together and established joint positions on the corona crisis, paving the way for an overall European agreement. Applying and further advancing the “embedded bilateralism” approach, we find instances of crucial Franco-German leadership including agenda-setting, comprise-building, and coalition-building.

 

Franco-German leadership in the corona crisis

Agenda-setting: When the new coronavirus started spreading rapidly across Europe from late February 2020, member states, including France and Germany, initially took national measures for its containment. Deep divisions on the adequate European measures crystallized when France joined a group of other countries calling for the introduction of “corona bonds” while Germany advocated the use of existing instruments and credits only. In light of a dramatic downturn of the European economy, the pandemic would soon pose a major threat to the stability and cohesion of the EU.

French and German civil servants and policymakers – at first largely behind the scenes – started intensifying their bilateral consultations, seeking to overcome differences and find common ground. On 18 May 2020, President Macron and Chancellor Merkel proposed an EU recovery fund totalling €500billion, financed through common debt. The interviews we conducted for this research revealed that only a small number of people were involved in the preparations, with Macron and Merkel having had at least two direct exchanges per week since early April. France and Germany thus gave important political spin and weight to the upcoming “official” Commission proposal on a recovery instrument, released only nine days later.

Compromise-building: The Franco-German initiative most of all was a bilateral compromise in that both countries had developed joint positions and had deviated from previously held national positions. Germany, for its part, accepted the notion of common EU debt and direct financial transfers between member states. France, in turn, backed away from corona bonds and joint liability and agreed on tying the recovery fund to the EU’s regular budget with the respective political and economic conditions attached.

Beyond that, France and Germany represented larger camps of member states, taking their concerns and “red lines” into account. While France pushed for a rapid crisis response targeted at the particularly hit Southern countries, Germany – in line with other Northern countries – insisted the recovery fund to be a one-off instrument. When national leaders at their European Council meeting in mid-July signed off the recovery package proposed by the Commission, individual camps of member states – due to the unanimity required – obtained some concessions. The “Frugals” secured rebates on their contributions to the EU budget, while the Visegráds watered down provisions on a rule-of-law clause. Yet, the overall size and financing of the recovery package, as France and Germany had jointly advocated, remained.

Coalition-building: When Hungary and Poland in December 2020 still threatened to veto the package due to the planned conditionality clause, France-Germany signalled that they were willing, if needed, to move ahead with only 25 member states and establish the recovery fund on an intergovernmental basis. This threat of exclusion during political gridlock has had a prominent precedent from the time of the Eurozone crisis: When the British government vetoed the French-German proposal for new debt rules and a fiscal compact, the latter two moved ahead with a coalition of like-minded member states outside the EU’s regular framework.

 

Advancing European integration theory

France and Germany during the corona pandemic thus provided important leadership services. They gave guidance and orientation for an EU in deep crisis and enabled swift and collective action. Scrutinizing the two countries’ leadership role, our article advances the theoretical debate, especially about EU crisis politics. Scholars seeking to explain how the EU managed to find answers to pressing challenges or, by contrast, struggled to overcome joint-decision problems, usually invoke the grand theories of European integration: Supranationalists hold that Community institutions like the Commission enjoy great autonomy and, independently from member states, pursue policies leading to more integration. Intergovernmentalists, by contrast, claim that deliberation and consensus-seeking among all member states best address common problems.

However, these accounts often cannot explain why certain positions are established and how exactly moments of crisis can be overcome. The missing variable, we contend, is political leadership. Stressing the political dynamics between the national and European levels, the embedded bilateralism approach holds that France and Germany play a particularly important role in EU politics. As founding and the Union’s largest member states, they share a special responsibility for the European project. Embedded bilateralism shows why and how France and Germany, beyond their respective national preferences, at times develop common or even joint preferences, themselves being the result of their unique bilateral political relationship and role in Europe. Moreover, due to their overall size and joint resources – not least in economic and financial terms – these two countries can lay the groundwork for larger European compromises.

Other more recent EU crises show how difficult common solutions are if France and Germany themselves do not find together. The ongoing crisis in the EU’s migration and asylum system, for example, to date has led to little Franco-German leadership. Instead, we have seen instances of unilateral German action and half-hearted French support for a revision of the Schengen regime. Other than during the corona crisis, the two pivotal countries in the case of migration and asylum so far could not agree on joint political objectives and the adequate means to achieve them. As the corona crisis reminds us once again, without a prior Franco-German agreement the pre-structuring and shaping of larger European bargains and outcomes are difficult or unlikely.

 

This blog post draws on JCMS article, “Embedded Bilateralism, Integration Theory, and European Crisis Politics: France, Germany, and the Birth of the EU Corona Recovery Fund.”

 

 

 

Ulrich Krotz is Alfred Grosser Professor at the Center for International Studies (CERI) at Sciences Po Paris. He is the author of, among others, “Shaping Europe: France, Germany, and Embedded Bilateralism from the Elysée Treaty to Twenty-First Century Politics” (2013, with Joachim Schild), “History and Foreign Policy in France and Germany” (2015), and contributing co-editor of “Europe’s Cold War Relations: the EC Towards a Global Role (2020, with Kiran Klaus Patel and Federico Romero).

 

Lucas Schramm is a PhD Researcher at the European University Institute. In his dissertation, he analyses past and more recent political crises in the process of European integration, seeking to explain the variation in crisis outcomes. His recent publication includes the co-authored article “An Old Couple in a New Setting: Franco-German Leadership in the Post-Brexit EU” in Politics and Governance.

The post How France and Germany created the EU corona recovery fund appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Who sets the European Union’s policy agenda? The complex nature of the EU’s legislative process, combined with the lack of a clear hierarchy among the core EU institutions, means that it is hard to disentangle the policy contributions of different institutions and determine which one is ultimately responsible for the legislative priorities of the Union.

The ever-increasing criticism of the “Euro-bureaucrats” and the democratic deficit in the EU, along with the policy influence wielded by the European Council during recent crises, complicated this picture even further, leading to competition between the EU institutions and their Presidents. This inter-institutional power struggle recently culminated in the infamous “Sofagate” incident in Turkey, exposing the tensions between Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel on the world stage.

 

Which institution sets the European Union’s policy agenda?

Even though the European Commission has the right of initiative, whether this ‘power of the pen’ gives the Commission a monopoly over the agenda-setting process has long been debated. This is because the Commission, despite its formal status, has often found itself competing with other actors and institutions to determine the legislative priorities of the European Union. In the meantime, the changes introduced in successive treaty revisions between the Maastricht Treaty (1993) and the Treaty of Lisbon (2009) have fundamentally altered institutional dynamics and inter-institutional relationships. While the Commission has retained its formal powers to introduce legislation, it has increasingly lacked the ability to shape the proposal once the process began. On the other hand, both the European Parliament (EP) and the European Council (EUCO) have gained new powers, in addition to the informal opportunities for agenda influence that they already enjoyed. While the EP works with the Council of the European Union (Council) to delay, amend, veto, or adopt legislation as the EU’s only directly elected body, EUCO identifies broad interests and sets general guidelines for the entire Union without any initiative from the Commission or any involvement by the Parliament.

The Commission’s resources, technical expertise, and status as an honest broker in European affairs still enhance its agenda-setting powers, making it possible for the Commission to correctly identify the policy preferences of the EP and the Council and strategically devise policy initiatives that both reflect its own priorities and have a high probability of success. This, however, creates an interesting puzzle: if the Commission must tailor its policy proposals to fit the preference configurations of the other core EU institutions to be successful, can we still talk about the Commission’s autonomous policy influence? Or should we interpret this strategic move as a sign that its independent influence is in decline? If the latter, should the Commission be seen more as a technical agenda-setter than a political one?

Indeed,  recent research suggests that the legislative priorities of the Commission are more and more frequently failing to be translated into EU polices by the other legislative actors, and this is especially when these priorities do not reflect the publicly announced priorities of the other core institutions. In fact, the likelihood of Commission priority initiatives being successful drops by more than 30 percent when it acts on its own. This decline is even steeper when the Commission attempts to propose initiatives aimed at introducing new policy arenas into the EU legal sphere, highlighting its strength as a provider of technical expertise, rather than its political agenda-setting capacity.

 

How much agenda-setting power does the Commission have?

This is not to say that the Commission is entirely dependent on other core EU institutions, however. Nearly sixty percent of the initiatives highlighted in the Commission’s Annual Work Programmes were translated into legislative outcomes between the years 2000 and 2014, which is substantial, though well below that of most EU member state executives to which the Commission is sometimes compared. Perhaps more importantly, almost forty percent of these lacked explicit congruence with the legislative priorities of the other core institutions.  Moreover, despite the clear impact of the changes wrought by the Lisbon treaty’s increase in the policy roles of the European Parliament and European Council, the relationship between the Commission and the Council remains the most critical one.

Having substantially more access to policy expertise than the other institutions, the Commission continues to hold a unique position within the EU institutional structure that’s helps it to chart the tumultuous political waters of inter-institutional policymaking within the Union. Nevertheless, because it lacks a direct role in the decision-making aspects of the policy process, is often unable to ensure its priority legislation is adopted.

Together these trends suggest that interpretations of the EU political system that ascribe the role of political executive to the Commission fundamentally misunderstand the Commission’s current role. The combination of an increasingly powerful and independent EP, and the formalization of the European Council, have combined to reduce the need for the unelected, often technocratic Commission to serve this function. While those who hope for a clear parliamentary-style EU with the Commission at its head may find this result dispiriting, perhaps the fact that the Commission is most successful in pursuing its policy objectives when these reflect the public priorities of the democratically elected EU institutions may reassure others hoping for a more democratic and electorally linked political executive.

 

This blog draws on the JCMS article “Power or Luck? The Limitations of the European Commission’s Agenda Setting Power and Autonomous Policy Influence”

 

 

Buket Oztas an Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Furman University. Her research focuses on the changing institutional dynamics in predominantly Muslim countries, with particular interest in post-Islamism and transnational identities, and includes an ongoing research initiative on the agenda-setting powers of the European Commission.

 

 

Amie Kreppel is a Jean Monnet Chair (ad personam), Director of the Center for European Studies and a Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida. She has served as President of the EUSA and has been both a Braudel Fellow at EUI and a Fulbright-Schuman Chair at the College of Europe.

Twitter handle: @akreppel

The post European Commission’s Agenda-setting Influence appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Theresa May and the shaping of the Brexit process

With the provisional entry into force of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), the dust is far from settled on the Brexit process. And yet the culmination of the formal stages of talks on the terms of withdrawal and the future relationship – however ‘thin’ and contested – offers an opportunity to reflect on the key moments that shaped the negotiations over the years.

While Boris Johnson’s bombastic approach and set-piece parliamentary stunts have attracted more attention recently, it was under his predecessor, Theresa May, that the contours of the Brexit process were decisively shaped.

May’s interpretation of the Brexit mandate as binding, her resolve to keep the Conservatives united and her corresponding failure to reach out to the opposition, her secretive and centralised decision-making style, and her push for a ‘bespoke’ deal through a ‘hard bargaining’ strategy – all of these left indelible marks on the Brexit process.

In the end, May’s catastrophic defeat in the UK Parliament, on three separate occasions in 2019 (15 January, 12 and 29 March) not only highlighted the difficulties of Brexit, but also exposed to many the flaws in May’s negotiating strategy and the pitfalls in her closeted and uncommunicative approach to the mammoth task of EU withdrawal. The prime minister’s defeat also set the stage for Johnson’s usurpation of her role, and the ensuing efforts to drive and harder bargain and ensure greater autonomy from EU rules after withdrawal.

May’s failure to pass the Withdrawal Agreement in early 2019 did not surprise some – least of all her critics – but it is puzzling that a prime minister would undertake to secure an agreement without the requisite support at home. ‘Involuntary defection’, as the literature on negotiations terms such occasions, happens rarely, precisely because leaders have little incentive to sign up to terms which their domestic support base might reject.

 

Explaining the fate of the Withdrawal Agreement

The conventional wisdom has it that May’s early approach to the Brexit negotiations – her unsuccessful hard bargaining, her failure to reach out to the opposition, and her numerous strategic errors – cost her the support of Parliament.

But this view makes a number of assumptions which – with no desire to exonerate May – we might find questionable.

It assumes a “better” deal might have been available, which is at odds with the EU’s clear and unchanging offer of the terms of withdrawal and with the imbalance of power between both sides. It assumes soft bargaining might have worked better than hard bargaining, when it is more likely a conciliatory approach would have landed May in a similar situation, not least vis-à-vis her Conservative compatriots.

It also assumes that MPs were voting on the basis of a deal they wanted to see, when in reality there was very little chance the UK could negotiate a deal that would fully satisfy the outlandish aims of the hard Brexiteers or the bespoke goals of softer Brexit supporters, let alone those who wished for the UK to remain in the EU. The reality is that MPs would always be voting for a least-worst outcome, and that they had their eyes on the alternatives to an agreement as much as the agreement itself.

 

Take-it-or-leave-it

Acknowledging this, I argue in a recent article, provides the key to understanding the failure of May’s Withdrawal Agreement: It would always have to have been passed under some form of duress, given the inequalities in the EU-UK relationship and the divergence between domestic and external ‘win-sets’ – that is, between Brussels and the Tories.

And the requisite pressure could be easily supplied by a combination of the Article 50 process and the executive’s traditional dominance under the UK constitution.

Article 50 established that a damaging ‘no deal’ cliff-edge would become the default outcome in the event both sides failed to negotiate an agreement within two years, and locked this commitment in through the unanimity requirement for the granting of any extension.

The UK constitution, meanwhile, afforded the government considerable leeway in determining the timing and the nature of any vote on the terms of withdrawal, effectively allowing the government to run the clock down with impunity until a final vote, which the government indicated might be offered after the UK had left the EU.

Combined with fortuitous political circumstances – namely, the extremely low proportion of pro-Brexit MPs and a widely held belief that the mainstay of opposition would come from Remain supporters, for whom a ‘no deal’ scenario was unconscionable – these factors, when taken together, offered the prospect of presenting the negotiated agreement to parliamentarians with no effective choice of an alternative.

Under conditions so propitious to passing any agreement better than ‘no deal’, it is perhaps no wonder May took liberties with her demands and decided against any overtures to the political opposition.

 

The changing circumstances of the vote

But the circumstances of the final Brexit vote – and indeed the government’s advantageous position – was greatly altered by the political and constitutional upheavals wrought about as the negotiations got underway.

Support for ‘no deal’ Brexit increased precipitously within the Conservative party, as political entrepreneurs sought to highlight the deficiencies in the deal May was negotiating. While not all Conservative no deal supporters were likely to support going over the cliff, the shift in position made them less vulnerable, on the face of it, to May’s threatened outcome were they not to support her deal.

Not only did Conservative support for no deal shift the parliamentary calculus, it also influenced the government’s signalling strategy, making it far more complex. Instead of claiming that ‘no deal was better than a bad deal’, May changed tack, and by late 2018 was offering a more confusing choice between ‘no deal’, her deal, and ‘no Brexit’.

Although the ‘no Brexit’ threat was aimed at pro-Brexit Conservatives, its emergence proved a game-changer for Remain supporters, giving them more reason to reject May’s deal. The possibility of Brexit not happening at all was reinforced, in

Most important, perhaps, the circumstances of the vote itself shifted, as parliamentary activists – mainly Conservatives but with cross-party support and the tacit backing of Commons Speaker John Bercow – sought to take advantage of May’s non-existent majority to wring concessions out of the government on the circumstances of the vote.

Parliamentarians succeeded in obtaining a commitment to a ‘meaningful vote’ from the government in late 2017 by holding hostage the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, thereby ensuring the government would not leave the vote until the last minute. As the vote approached, in January 2019, they also tied the government into presenting new proposals to Parliament in the event the deal was rejected, and over the subsequent weeks Conservative rebels – acting in unison with the Labour opposition – would succeed in committing Parliament against ‘no deal’.

Taken together, what these developments amounted to, over the course of 2017-2019, was to remove the beneficial combination of political, constitutional, and discursive factors that enabled the government to present its naturally unpopular Withdrawal Agreement to legislators as the only palatable option against the damaging (and inevitable) no deal backdrop.

 

Why it matters?

Re-assessing the reasons for May’s dramatic defeat in early 2019 are important, not least because of the consequences it came to have for the Brexit process, and thus the subsequent direction of the UK also. Accounting for the change in the vote’s circumstances not only helps us understand the reasons why May was unsuccessful in her efforts to deliver Brexit, but also why she made key decisions which – coupled with these altered circumstances – would seal her fate as prime minister, and that of her preferred Brexit outcome.

And there are good theoretical reasons to play closer attention to this period, not least given the relative obscurity of examples of involuntary defection. May’s experience with the Withdrawal Agreement helps us to understand how the ‘rules of the game’ – so often treated as exogenously defined by existing theories – can change during the course of negotiations. Moreover, it shows that change can come from below, not just from above, as domestic actors in weakened circumstances find innovative legal and political ways to shift the balance of fortunes in their favour.

 

This blog post draws on JCMS article, “Deal or No Deal: Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement and the Politics of (Non-)Ratification”

 

 

Benjamin Martill is Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh, where he conducts teaching and research on Brexit, European security, and the politics of foreign policy. Benjamin is co-editor (with Uta Staiger) of Brexit and Beyond: Rethinking the Futures of Europe (UCL Press).

 

Twitter: @EdinburghPIR

The post Deal or No Deal: Revisiting Theresa May’s Brexit Defeat appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

After several systemic crises in a decade, emergency politics has taken hold in Europe. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and later the Covid-19 pandemic, governments have responded with exceptional measures. Along the way, they have accumulated extraordinary powers. We might be tempted to think that this form of politics is the natural consequence of crisis-fighting. Yet the rise of exceptionalism is only a symptom of a more enduring crisis of party democracy. Simply put, partisan politics has become more difficult to deliver in contemporary democracies. As a result, less conventional forms of politics are gaining ground.

In the wake of several systemic crises, emergency politics has become a common feature in European politics.

The world is short of many things these days, from cars and petrol to microchips and building materials. But it has had no shortage of crises lately. In 2008, the global financial crisis shook the world economy with catastrophic consequences in terms of economic damage and job destruction. Barely a decade later, the Covid-19 pandemic has brought entire countries to a standstill. Its devastating effects are still being felt across the globe and threaten a new wave of infections.

In Europe and elsewhere, governments have responded to these crises with exceptional measures, thanks in part to the extraordinary powers they have claimed for themselves. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, for example, governments bailed out ailing banks and implemented massive austerity policies amid popular protests. Recently, national executives have adopted other extraordinary measures to fight the pandemic, from paying workers’ wages to rolling out mass vaccination programs at short notice.

Exceptional measures for exceptional times?

These “exceptional measures for exceptional times”, as former European Commission President Barroso once put it, have had a lasting effect on contemporary democratic politics. Actions departing from conventional practice are presented as necessary responses to exceptional threats. Sovereign rescue packages and constitutional reforms have been rushed through parliaments and justified on survival grounds. Unprecedented policy measures are being passed by executive order. Emergency politics has become a persistent feature of European politics.

As part of my doctoral research, I have studied some relevant implications of this exceptionalism. This form of politics has both institutional and discursive manifestations. Institutionally, exceptionalism expresses itself in the abuse of extraordinary executive powers. Often, governments use these powers to pass far-reaching measures through emergency procedures, circumventing debate and negotiations in parliaments. As a political discourse, exceptionalism relies on hyperbolic and alarmist language. It appeals to emergencies and exceptions to justify political action. It presents urgent decisions that go beyond the usual as inevitable. Typically, exceptionalism takes the form of “decide now, act immediately, explain quickly, and validate later”, as scholar Julia Black expresses it.

Investigating the governments’ responses to the Great Recession, I found that governing parties extensively appealed to exceptionalism to justify many of their economic responses. In the United Kingdom, for instance, the Labour government relied on exceptionalist appeals to justify the nationalisation of four banks. Similarly, the Conservative-led Coalition invoked a fiscal emergency and a Greek-style scenario to pass the 2010 ‘Emergency Budget’, which sanctioned the most ambitious fiscal austerity programme of the G7.

In Spain, another country that had left- and right-wing governments during the crisis, emergency politics also gained momentum. From the abrupt turn to austerity by the social democratic government (PSOE) in May 2010 to the bank nationalisation carried out by the conservative cabinet (PP) in 2012, both governments justified controversial choices on exceptionalist grounds. But the Spanish case is particularly revealing in another respect. The extensive use of decree laws to pass far-reaching measures has become a major institutional manifestation of exceptionalism. Originally conceived in the Spanish Constitution as an exceptional instrument for extraordinary situations, the decree law has become a common legislative tool in recent years.

Between 2008 and 2014, the two Spanish governments passed 121 decree laws, 60 per cent of which were directly related to their economic crisis responses. Figure 1 shows the relative percentage of decree laws over the total number of laws in each legislature, a good indicator of ruling parties’ reliance on this legislative tool. The two legislatures with the highest relative use of decree laws coincide with the crisis period (the two rightmost bars in the graph): approximately one third of all legislation was passed using this extraordinary mechanism.

Ruling by decree: Relative use of decree-laws by Spanish governments (1979-2015). Source: author’s own elaboration from data compiled in Martín Rebollo (2015). Note: The indicator measures the relative percentage of decree laws for each parliamentary term since Spain’s transition to democracy. The bars are arranged in ascending order, starting with the legislature displaying the lowest relative use of decree laws and ending with the legislature with the highest relative percentage. Colour shows details about the party in government.

The endurance of emergency politics

But was this exceptionalism an exception? Fast forward a few years, and identical outcomes have been observed in the UK, Spain and elsewhere during the Covid crisis. Thus, following the initial outbreak of infections in March 2020, the British government announced an “unprecedented [economic intervention] in the history of the British state”. These were “unprecedented measures, for unprecedented times”, as the Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak insisted during the public announcement. Quite unprecedented, too, is the number of decrees that the Spanish coalition government has approved during the pandemic. By the end of 2020, the coalition between the centre-left PSOE and the far-left Unidas Podemos had approved all kinds of measures by decree, breaking every historical record.

This exceptionalist rhetoric and the over-production of decrees have gone hand in hand with the accumulation of extraordinary powers. In Spain, several states of alarm have been declared and later challenged by the Spanish Constitutional Court. In the UK, the government has used the pre-existing Public Health (Control of Disease Act) 1984 and new fast-tracked legislation, the Coronavirus Act 2020, to claim sweeping emergency powers to manage the pandemic. The Spanish and British governments could not be more ideologically opposed, yet they have ended up governing the pandemic alike.

In a way, this is unsurprising. In the face of an unprecedented crisis, unprecedented measures follow, regardless of which party is in office. And living through several crises in a decade might explain the persistence of politics in the emergency register. Yet this form of politics has had lasting consequences on the quality of democracy and on the identity of political parties.

The outlasting effects of exceptionalism

In countries such as Spain, legislative constraints on the executive have weakened and government accountability has suffered as a result, as shown by the Varieties of Democracies (V-Dem) indicators. Across Europe, many exceptional measures have outlived the emergency that initially justified them. From the way banks are supervised to fiscal constraints, these reforms have reshaped entire regulatory systems with little public scrutiny.

More significantly, many of these measures are at odds with the political identity of the parties that adopted them. In the last decade alone, we have seen conservative parties nationalising private banks with public funds and paying workers’ wages; liberal parties, once committed to “tax-cuts-always-work”, raising taxes across the board and creating new ones; and social democratic parties slashing public spending and cutting public pensions.

Understandably, parties’ choices are no longer self-evident to their supporters and voters. As exceptionalism takes hold, government action ceases to reflect distinctive ideological commitments. For in the emergency register, different parties act and sound increasingly alike.

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What is resilience and how do different disciplines and fields approach it? What does resilience mean in different sectors? And what does resilience involve in times of global pandemic? These are some of the questions addressed in a new open access book Towards resilient organizations and societies. A cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary perspective, edited by Rómulo Pinheiro, Maria Laura Frigotto and Mitchell Young. In this Q&A, they tell about origins of the book as well as their findings and lessons for future research and practice.

 

Q1: What have been the rationales and origins of this book?

The book originates from a 2018 EGOS (European Group for Organizational Studies) panel on the topic. It became apparent in the discussions that there is a need to connect different streams of research alongside multiple theoretical and methodological traditions to both take stock of developments in the field as well as move forward in the context of a more integrative research agenda. This aim has become even more apparent following the COVID-19 health pandemic, where considerable policy attention has been paid to resilience at multiple levels; individuals, communities, territories, nations, world regions, organizations, and institutions, including political and economic ones. The book represents a first step in the rather ambitious effort to further develop and integrate novel conceptual as well as empirical insights on the complex and multifaceted phenomenon of resilience.

 

Q2: What is resilience and what does your book contribute to the studies of resilience?

Simply stated, resilience is the ability of an individual, entity or system to adapt to emerging circumstances whilst retaining both function and identity. In the introductory chapter for the volume, and after having systematically reviewed the existing literature and perspectives on the topic, we, the editors, refer to three basic principles at the heart of resilience as a property, process, and/or outcome.

First, the interplay between stability and change, with resilience being located at the intersection between the two.  Second, the relationship between resilience antecedents or triggers, what we term ‘adversity’, versus the degrees of change or ‘novelty’ that result from the adaptation to such internal or external adversities. In this context, we refer to three types of resilience per the degree of novelty, namely: absorptive (low novelty/a return to the old normal); adaptive (medium novelty/change within limits or threshold); and transformative (high novelty/renewal, including the delineation of new limits or threshold). Third, temporality, taking into account process-related aspects that occur before (foresight), during (mechanism) and following (outcome) a disruptive event or adversity. Finally, we note that resilience not only is a multifaceted phenomenon but also a multi-scaled one (macro-meso-micro levels), and thus there is a need to unpack how these levels co-evolve and influence one another over time.

As for the book’s unique contribution, it: a) advances a new conceptual framework (as described above), b) sheds light on a set of empirical cases from various sectors and levels, and (c) sketches out, in the conclusive section, a novel methodological framework for future inquiries involving scholars from various social science traditions and perspectives.

 

Q3: Your book looks at resilience across a number of sectors from a fire brigade and shipyard to universities. What commonalities and differences do you find across the sectors?

The empirical cases provide new evidence of the challenges facing individuals, organizations and systems while attempting to adapt to changing, often disruptive circumstances. They go about this process in very different ways depending on contextual circumstances, both local and global, of which historical path-dependencies, resource-dependencies as well as formal and informal rules were found to play a critical role. Whether an organization is either public or private seems to be less significant for resilience when compared to the extent to which their operations/functions are affected by the confluence of political constraints and economic events, what Barry Bozeman famously termed ‘publicness’. High levels of publicness, as is the case of transportation providers, universities, or the military, to name a few, result in growing complexity in processes of adaptation due to the multiple, often contradictory demands posed by stakeholders such as governmental agencies, funders and surrounding communities. Similarly, internal diversity – in terms of technology, values (sub-cultures) and functions – results in increasing complexity as regards adaptation to external events. Following systems theory, we found that ‘pre-requisite diversity’ is a necessary condition for adaptation under situations of considerable environmental complexity and turbulence. Likewise, in many instances leaders, both formal and informal, as well as the social capital (trust) they help nurture throughout the organization (and beyond) were also found to play an important role.

Turning back to our typology, most of the empirical cases in the book (6 out of 10) were characterized as pertaining to high levels of change or novelty, with the remaining four cases evenly distributed across the minor and medium novelty dimensions. As far as procedural aspects are concerned, 6 out of the 10 cases encompass more than one temporal dimension, with 4 cases illustrating resilience at all the three stages: from foresight to mechanisms to outcomes. What is more, in several situations, the authors provide critical evidence of the interplay between levels of analysis or resilience scales. Each cluster (total of 4), comprising different types of organizations (for a visualization, see Fig. 12.1, p. 316), is discussed in detail in the last section of the book, which is freely available as open access.

 

Q4: What is a post-entrepreneurial university?

We coined the phrase ‘post-entrepreneurial university’ as a way of expressing a university model that encompasses elements of the entrepreneurial university but in a way that supersedes the strong inflections of New Public Management (NPM). This is similar to how public policy has in many sectors (though less so in higher education) moved to a post-NPM discourse.  In order to do this, we trace the entrepreneurial university discourse back to its roots in the works of two major scholars – Burton Clark and Henry Etzkowitz and their respective schools of thought over the concept – one sociologically and the other economically based. We show how the alignment with NPM co-opted and overrode many of Burton Clark’s original ideas, but contend that applying a post NPM understanding to the concept would resolve some of the inherent tensions (we identify three related to actorhood, efficiency, and diversity) to its implementation that have arisen largely due to the economic interpretation of the concept.

In short, we suggest embracing a resilient actor model of the university (as opposed to a strategic actor one), as we had originally proposed in a 2017 chapter (Pinheiro and Mitchell 2017) in Theory and Method in Higher Education Research, could re-engage and energize the entrepreneurial university concept by allowing it to embrace a more biological systems oriented strategy and positioning model; one in which slack, requisite variety, and loose coupling are engaged in an attempt to create a university that ‘thrives’ rather than ‘wins’.

 

Q5: Your book takes a multidisciplinary approach to resilience. Which scientific disciplines contributed to the book? What did each of them bring to the studies of resilience? Did you also see any tensions in how different disciplines approach resilience?

Resilience is a multidisciplinary concept in nature: first raised within the physical sciences, it has been subsequently adopted across a wide range of disciplinary fields and their respective epistemological, methodological and theoretical traditions. This has led to challenges when it comes to definitions and approaches, most notably as regards comparisons across disciplinary domains. Overall, resilience might appear as a concept that is in danger of concept stretching: as a buzzword that is not clearly analytically defined and poorly empirically studied. Even considering only resilience as a social phenomenon, each subfield has contributed to a progressive blurring of the definition, especially by relating resilience to different complementary concepts such as adaptation, fragility, flexibility, resistance, inertia, etc. Thus, while resilience has become specialized in each subfield, it has evolved within disciplinary boundaries along parallel paths with little cross-fertilization.

The chapters composing the bulk of this volume attest to this eclecticism: there are 11 different fields and sub-fields (organization studies, emergency management, high reliability organizations, sociology of professions, public management, human resource management, complex systems, higher education studies, organizational culture, performing arts management, regional studies) approaching resilience from perspectives of management, sociology, political science, economics and decision making. In the last chapter, we identified the limited overlap of references among the empirical chapters, signaling the low cross-fertilization of resilience studies across research areas, as well as a high specialization of studies in their respective fields: only 9 of the 114 references on resilience are shared between more than one chapter. This supports the claim that a stronger interdisciplinary approach to resilience is needed, beginning with the recognition of a common problem at the intersection of disciplines. Then, building on MacMynowski (2007), what is needed for a truly interdisciplinarity approach is to transcend the tendency to approach research questions from the standpoint of a single analytical framework associated with a specific disciplinary tradition, and rather to develop an integrative approach that takes into consideration synergies across the various traditions in a co-production and co-creation exercise. This did begin to happen at the meetings among the authors of this volume in the different stages of writing and preparation.

 

Q6: What are the main lessons from your book for practitioners and policy-makers?

The endorsement at the front of the book from Enrico Giovannini, currently Italian Minister of Sustainable Infrastructure and Mobility, captures very well the usefulness of this book for a practitioner audience, which is that it provides a framework and examples for designing policies, organizations, and systems that enable resilience. Even before the Covid-19 crisis, but especially now, resilience has become something of a buzzword, and we need to be careful about what we mean by it. Hopefully, we don’t want to simply go back to exactly how things were in 2019, but rather, to learn and change, while retaining the essence of living in a world where we could meet and move about freely without concern that our health was at stake. The European Union has referred to this as ‘bouncing forward’. The society we will live in post-Covid-19 has the potential to be safer, healthier and more sustainable than before, but we must understand in that case that resilience involves both stability and change.

The book provides a model for understanding resilience that can be applied practically by considering the three elements of resilience – time, adversity, and essence— when setting forth policy and organizational changes. Readers can refer to the chart in Chapter 12 to help guide them to chapters that address the types of organizations or systems and other key dimensions of resilience that they are interested in. The chapter further analyzes lessons learned from the other chapters, grouping them according to the dimensions of novelty and temporality. As practitioners attempt to build resilience into their own areas of responsibility, clarifying these dimensions should be helpful. The dimension of novelty refers to the question of knowledge and the extent to which the adversity or the triggers for resilience are known or unknown. The dimension of temporality asks about when and how we can build for and recognize resilience: resilience foresight attempts to address resilience before the adversity, mechanisms are about how it works in the midst of the adversity, while outcomes refer to the state of things after the adversity has passed. Finally, the book shows the value of working across boundaries, and the importance of a partnership between outsiders (researchers from multiple disciplines) and insiders (practitioners). Many of the chapters reveal that resilience is perhaps most effectively designed for in co-creation environments.

 

Q7: What would be interesting avenues for future research?

We argue that the most interesting and challenging avenue for future research is in the elaboration of an interdisciplinary perspective on resilience. This requires great openness towards different perspectives, approaches and traditions that might easily clash especially under typical publish-or-perish time constraints. Our experience working on this book for more than two years, shows that the process of discussing openly about the epistemological premises of our fields and our chapter contributions built awareness and co-operation for each-other’s work, and enabled us as editors to highlight the holistic understanding of resilience that emerges from the various chapters in the book. It is an eclectic representation, but not an inconsistent one.

Additionally, we proposed four possible directions for future studies. First, where collective actors are concerned, this volume focused on those characterized as having a high degree of publicness, and future studies encompassing a broader range of organizational types (public, private, hybrid, etc.) and degrees of novelty (low, medium and high levels) could shed light on the extent to which resilience antecedents and mechanisms affect and play out differently across a broader population. Second, the volume’s empirical findings lend support to the claim that resilient organizations are, in essence, learning entities—even if they resort to different strategies to learn about themselves and/or their surrounding environments. Future inquiries could, for example, shed light on the key actors, structures and processes associated with different types of learning (and their interactions) at different temporal scales—before, during and after the unfolding of major events triggering resilience behaviours. Third, following systems thinking, there is a need to continue to open the black box associated with nestedness between the micro (agents), meso (organizations) and macro (society) levels of analysis, both within organizations and across organizational fields. Most notably, it is imperative to understand how these levels emerge, coevolve and interact with one another in non-linear ways. Finally, methodologically speaking, future studies should seriously consider adopting both mixed methods and longitudinal design approaches as a means of capturing the complex and dynamic essence of resilience as a property, process and outcome.

 

Information about the book editors:

Rómulo Pinheiro is a Professor of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Agder (UiA), Norway, where he is also Deputy Head of Department of Political Science and Management and member of the Centre for Digital Transformation (CeDiT) and for Advanced Studies in Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) based at UiA. Rómulo’s research interests are located at the intersection of public policy and administration, organizational theory, economic geography, innovation and higher education studies.

Maria Laura Frigotto is an Associate Professor in Organization Theory and Management at the University of Trento (Italy) where she is a member of the Department of Economics and Management, of the Institute for Safety and Security (ISSTN) of the School of Innovation and of the Ph.D. Program in Economics and Management. Her research focuses on novelty, especially in its unexpected and emergent form, in relation to resilience and innovation. She has studied emergency management organizations such as civil protection agencies and paradigmatic events such as the 911 terrorist attack in New York, but also very different contexts such as the operatic sector.

Mitchell Young is an Assistant Professor in the Department of European Studies at Charles University, Czech Republic. His research focuses on knowledge governance and science policy in the EU and Member States both internally through science diplomacy as a tool in foreign policy. He is chair of the ECPR Standing Group on Knowledge Politics and Policies. He teaches courses on EU policies, comparative political economy and European economic integration.

 

References:

MacMynowski, D. P. (2007). Pausing at the brink of interdisciplinarity: Power and knowledge at the meeting of social and biophysical science. Ecology and Society, 12(1), 1–14.

Pinheiro, R. and Young, M. (2017). The University as an Adaptive Resilient Organization: A Complex Systems Perspective, J. Huisman and M. Tight (eds.) Theory and Method in Higher Education Research, Volume 3, Emerald Publishing, pp. 119-136

 

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Introduction

Supposing that most member states of the current European Union have found a way forward to a political union on the right ideological basis as described previously (see Enlightened Europism), the last act of reformation remaining is to redefine Europe’s role in the world. The Republic of the United Europe (or RUE) must realise the direct as well as the indirect challenges that threatens Europeans and non-Europeans alike, and rise to the task of shaping a new scheme of international co-operation; leading by example as the beacon of reason in the world. Once the global challenges are comprehended and conclusions are drawn, the RUE needs to establish itself as a real global power in order to preserve and pro-actively promote its enlightened ideas.

 

Crisis Era

As every period in history had its own unique challenges, our era has also plenty of difficult tasks waiting to be solved. In order to tackle them successfully, the leaders of the united Europe must understand the times we live in. Different eras, such as the Imperial Era (dominated by the colonial empires of Britain and France), the Versailles Era (defined by the consequences of the highly controversial Versailles Treaty), the Cold War Era (termed by the global rivalry of the Soviet Union and the US), and the Western Era (ruled by the Anglo-Saxon Five Eyes and West Europe), preceded our era, which I call the Crisis Era.

Characterised by numerous global crises, our era has seen a financial crisis, an economic crisis, an immigration crisis, and a health care crisis; not to mention the underlying ideological and social crises ticking towards explosion – all of them are still ongoing in Europe. Perhaps, the most vicious of all crises is the global climate crisis, which threatens not only human well-being and prosperity, but the very survival of our natural habitat (including mankind). Scientists forecast a massive extinction of plant and animal species – collapsing ecosystems –, which is going to hit the human population directly and severely. Uncontrollable global economic recession, mass migration, amplifying and escalating geopolitical conflicts, and new diseases are all the future’s certainties, unless the nations and civilisations of our world commit to an unprecedented and legitimate co-operation.

Regrettably, some powerful figures of national leadership and private entrepreneurs are either ignorant or uninterested, sacrificing the long-term wellness of humanity for temporary political and financial gains. It is shameful and infuriating to remember the enormous funds raised by wealthy individuals in a matter of days for the reconstruction of Paris’s Notre-Dame, whilst the demolition and desolation of the Amazon Rainforest, New South Wales, and Siberia attracted far less attraction from the rich in comparison. The Paris Accords and the European Green Deal are far less ambitious than what would be necessary and actually doable to prevent irreversible destruction. Science and technology could already bring a radical change in our means of production, but the lack of political will blocks scientists to invent the best methods of utilising the Earth’s resources, and re-engineering our industrial production, creating and maintaining a comfortable and safe life for all.

 

Major theatres of international conflicts

Another crisis potentially unfolding before our eyes is the overheating of international affairs, which – in worst case – could result in a Third World War. Even though many symptoms are already visible, climate crisis is rather considered to be a long-term threat, whereas the outbreak of a large scale war in a world that is more populated and spends more on armament than ever before in history is very much a risk on short-term. The two theatres of extreme tension are the South China Sea and the Middle East, where various regional actors backed by global superpowers are challenging each other in a competition for more resources, security, and political influence.

The origin of the South China Sea conflict is to be found in China’s transformation into a global superpower, which wants to break out of a potential encirclement of hostile powers (e.g. South Korea, Japan, and India backed by the US) and expand its influence in Asia Pacific. China has border disputes (both on land and sea) with almost all of its neighbours, which Beijing would like to settle in its favour. The range of claims is scaling from serious to less serious (e.g. Bhutan, Nepal) or even to informal (e.g. Laos, North Korea). The main disputes are involving India, the Japanese islands of Okinawa and Senkaku, Myanmar, Russia (Vladivostok), and Tajikistan. Beijing considers the entirety of Mongolia and Taiwan to be his. However, the strongest claim of Beijing (and other actors in the region) is related to the South China Sea.

The South China Sea is the hotspot of disputes and potentially escalating conflicts in Asia Pacific. The reason of contest is not only the rich hydrocarbon resources and fishing grounds beneath, but also the fact that third of the world’s maritime trade is passing through this area. It does not strike as a surprise that Brunei, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam all have claims against each other. The grandest claim is China’s, which demands control over the entire South China Sea based on China’s Nine-dash line. That is the reason why China is building artificial islands (areas of Paracel, Scarborough, Spratly), which act as aircraft carriers and thus have military use and purposes in the region. Despite opposition from the US, China is slowly achieving its goals. As 40% of China’s trade and most of its imports pass through the South China Sea, the giant of Asia is going to remain determined to push through its claims – one way or another.

Other sources of conflict are the dispute regarding Taiwan’s status and the unpredictability of the Korean Peninsula, where Beijing and Washington could directly back a large-scale armed conflict to preserve their interests in the region.

In the other theatre, the permanent battles for seizing control over oil production, the inextricable web of religious, ethnic, and historical conflicts, and the competition of various global and regional powers are creating a very insecure atmosphere. The face of the Middle East is formed by the relationship between the Arab countries, the Arab countries and Israel, the Arab countries and Iran, and Israel and Iran. Turkey, which is under Erdogan’s change of political course speeding towards Islamisation – deliberately erasing the traditions of Atatürk –, is also the part of this liquid medium. These countries and their web of diplomatic connections, including the support of global powers behind them (the US and Russia), are the defining factors of the Middle East’s tangled politics.

The Middle East’s power constellation is shaped either along religious affiliation or by the production and reserves of oil – namely wealth. The Arab countries, Iran, and Turkey are Muslim, whilst Israel is mainly Jewish. There is a Shia majority living in Iran, Bahrain, Iraq, and Lebanon, whilst there is a significant minority to be found in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. The number of Sunnis in Saudi Arabia is the double of Shias, but the latter live mainly in the territories known for their high oil production. There is a Sunni majority living in Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, Kuwait, Syria (however, the Assad regime is Shia), Yemen, Saudi-Arabia, UAE, and Qatar, whilst there is a significant Sunni minority to be found in Iraq, Lebanon, and Bahrain.

The Sunni countries seem to be the stronger of the two poles, due to their superiority in population, wealth, and military strength. This fact is underlined by Turkey’s NATO membership and by the pro-Sunni policy of the US and Israel. The leader of the Sunni world is Saudi Arabia (tied to the US), whereas the leader of the Shia pole is Iran (tied to Russia).

Besides the permanent Shia-Sunni (Iran-Saudi Arabia) battle, there is another dimension in the conflicts of the Middle East, namely the Arab-Israeli hostility. From the Zionist movement, through the violent seizure of lands, to the occupations of territories in the various Arab-Israeli wars, there are numerous events, which provoke the Arab countries. It is not my place to judge, which one of these was Israeli provocation, self-defence or Arab provocation. However, it is a fact that both parties are equally responsible for the current situation, beginning with the aggressive resettlement of the Jews in Palestine – supported by the Zionist movement – and continuing through a series of atrocities from both the Israeli state and the Arab countries (e.g. misplacement of Palestinians, wars, terror attacks). Even though symbolic steps were made towards normalisation (e.g. Camp David Accords, Wadi Araba Treaty, Abraham Accords), stability is still far out of reach. The instability of the Middle East could not be solidified until today – and will not be in the foreseeable future –, because the countries involved cannot and do not want to find a compromise in the most important issues (e.g. distribution of water, status of Jerusalem, situation of Palestinian refugees, borders of a legitimate Palestinian state).

The insecurity and unpredictability of the Middle East poses a direct threat to European security. Failed Arab countries, such as Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, and Syria are a hotbed for extreme Islamist terrorism and a source of mass illegal immigration. The collapse of Jordan and a not unlikely war between Algeria and Morocco could add to the flames of troubles of the Middle East and North Africa – not to mention the worrying moves in Tunisia and Turkey.

 

Conclusion

Therefore, the Republic of the United Europe must comprehend the era we live in and rise to act. Today, the member states of the European Union are watching the disintegration of Ukraine (and possibly eventually of Belarus), Erdogan’s aggression, the British government’s arrogance, and the collapse of the Middle East helplessly. Tomorrow, we may have to face a growing instability on the Balkans as well, where the ethnic and religious characteristics could redraw the borders through potentially violent conflicts. The result could be the disintegration of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the rise of Greater Albania (formed by Albania, Kosovo, and the north-western parts of North Macedonia), Greater Croatia, and Greater Serbia. The disintegration of Ukraine, the de facto annexation of Belarus by Russia, the Islamisation of Turkey, and the creation of Greater Albania are posing potential threats to European security in the backyard of Europe.

The reformed and united Europe must pro-actively preserve and protect its enlightened values, stabilise its neighbourhood, and enforce global agreements that guarantee sustainable development, climate protection, nuclear disarmament, and peace. We can achieve these goals only, if we pursue our own regional and global interests on our own terms, maintaining a good relationship with all of the global powers, without picking a side and sticking to it inflexibly – as we do it now. European decision-makers should no longer be chess figures on the global powers’ grand chessboard. In order to succeed in this quest, the radical change of our diplomatic mindset in accordance with the realities of our era is inevitable.

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As we’ve noted previously in this blog, Brexit is a process, not an event. With the drawing in of the year, we might usefully revisit this notion, since there’s more of the process heading our way.

You’ll recall that one side-effect of the very speedy conclusion of the Trade & Cooperation Agreement (TCA) was that the UK decided it would have a progressive introduction of the controls required, given the need for infrastructure and personnel to make it all happen.

The original plans for this were rather swift, with the intention being to have everything up and running by mid-2021. That this was somewhat ambitious was highlighted by two subsequent announcements of further delays, some to 1 January 2021 and others to the middle of next year.

These deferrals of controls stand apart from those relating to the Northern Ireland Protocol, which required joint agreement with the EU and which are currently on a rolling extension due to the talks that have trundled on in the past weeks. Precisely because they have implications for the operation of the EU’s single market (via Northern Ireland’s alignment to it) these cannot be solely in the hands of London.

But the TCA deals with the general EU-UK relationship, and the reintroduction of controls is a function of the weakening of ties between the two parties, which means the UK is bound to enact measures to satisfy other legal instruments, of which the World Trade Organisation is predominant.

Technically, the UK is in breach of its WTO commitments with these deferrals, but in practice no-one seems minded to challenge that. The UK is on a path towards enforcement, it has lacked the means to enforce until now, plus the EU doesn’t need another point of contention to add to the pile, plus WTO arbitration takes a very long time. So it’s been alright to slide back the timeline.

However, this still matters.

The National Audit Office has been producing very useful reports for the past three years on UK readiness, including on these systems. The most recent came out last month and is worth a read as a balanced view of where things are at.

On these elements, the picture has gradually improved, with much of the work now in place to make 2022 enforcement a viable option. At the same time, the NAO rightly points up the considerable uncertainty about demand management and the impact on trade flows, plus the wider impact of the changing nature of the UK border.

While Northern Ireland has (rightly) been more visible, it will be cross-Channel business that will have a bigger economic impact in the long run. Until the UK has settled its systems and procedures for this, it will be hard to know more properly how Brexit is reshaping the economies on both sides of those waters.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic77

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Although the new Norwegian government appears more willing to discuss EU-related issues than previous ones, the question of Norway’s EU policy remains ambiguous, argues John Erik Fossum in this blog post. 

Gag rule on the EU affiliation: The new Norwegian government reiterates the ‘gag rules’ that each government has instituted to maintain the status quo of Norway’s EU affiliation pretty much since the EEA agreement entered into force in 1994, writes John Erik Fossum. 
(Photo: Mission of Norway to the EU, CC BY 2.0)

On September 13, 2021 Norway held its parliamentary elections. In Norway, parliamentary elections take place at fixed dates, at a four-year interval. The total number of eligible voters was 3,876,200 persons, and the election turnout was 77.2 percent.

The election result represents a certain turn to the left, as the ruling minority centre-right coalition went down from 61 seats in 2017 to 47 seats in 2021, out of a total of 169 parliamentary seats. The right-wing populist Progress Party (FrP) also lost 6 seats, down from 27 seats in the 2017 parliamentary election. Thus, whereas the centre-right had a majority of seats in the outgoing parliament (88 out of 169), they now have only 68 seats.

If we look at the overall pattern of change for the party system, the most obvious conclusion is that the main result was political fragmentation.

The main election winner was the centrist Center Party (SP) which increased its number of seats from 19 to 28. A similar gain was had to the far left Red (Rødt) (a former Marxist-Leninist party), which increased its number of seats from 1 to 8 in the present parliament. These effects are related to the nature of the election system which provides compensatory seats to those parties that pass the 4 percent threshold.

If we look at the overall pattern of change for the party system (see table 1), the most obvious conclusion is that the main result was political fragmentation. Both of the two largest parties lost seats. Labour (AP) lost 1 seat, whereas the Conservatives (Høyre) lost 9 seats.

The revolt of the periphery

The main issues that marked the election campaign were domestic, and there was very little focus on foreign policy. There were glimpses of attention to Norway’s relationship to the EU, the main issue being whether the expected change in government would lead to changes in Norway’s EU affiliation, given that the Centre Party is a deeply Eurosceptic party. The early stages of the election campaign were marked by a ‘revolt of the periphery’, which was not only directed against Oslo the capital but also other cities and gave a major boost in support to the Centre Party as a rurally based agrarian party. The Centre Party could draw on popular opposition to a regional reform which had amalgamated regions and created the region Viken (which geographically speaking is a very awkward construct, stretching way Northwards from the Southern Eastern border with Sweden). A similar upset was seen in the North, where the two Northernmost regions had been amalgamated against the majority’s will in Finnmark (there was a popular referendum in Finnmark where the no side won by a clear margin). There was also opposition to the closure of local police stations and hospitals.

With the revolt of the periphery as a major impetus, in early January 2021 it looked like the Centre Party could overtake Labour in the polls, and the Centre Party leader Trygve Slagsvold Vedum declared himself as a Prime Minister candidate. Thus, there were three Prime Minister candidates going into the final stages of the election campaign: Erna Solberg (incumbent, Conservative); Jonas Gahr Støre (Labour); and Trygve Slagsvold Vedum (Centre Party). As the election campaign unfolded, the centre-periphery and urban-rural conflict subsided somewhat whilst inequality and green transition entered centre stage. All parties to the left spoke against the rising socio-economic inequality, and the Centre Party linked that to a claim to rural-urban inequality. There are thus competing accounts as to the forms of inequality that should be addressed among the centre-left parties, and Labour is torn between socio-economic inequality in terms of class and socio-economic inequality in terms of regional location. The green transition issue gave the Greens (MDG) a boost in the polls, but in the election, it fell just short of the four percent threshold and therefore only obtained 3 seats. The other main environmental advocates, the Liberal Party (Venstre, which was part of the governing coalition) managed to hold onto its 8 seats. The Socialist Left Party (SV), which both spoke up against socio-economic inequality and the need for a green transition gained 2 seats and ended up with 13 seats. Labour is somewhat divided on how committed to the green transition it should be, and the Centre Party for a while even prevaricated over whether it thought that Norway should be committed to the Paris Agreement, although it came down in support of it eventually. Conversely the Progress Party has long been a Petro-Populist Party and is a staunch supporter of the oil industry.

It is difficult to attribute the result – the government’s loss of seats – to the COVID-19 pandemic. Norway’s fatality numbers during the COVID-19 period were lower than in a regular influenza year, and the Norwegian government has launched a range of policy programs to buffer people from the pandemic. The negative effects have been far from equally distributed, but it is difficult to attribute the responsibility squarely to the coalition government which as a minority government has depended on parliamentary support from the opposition parties that at times have dictated government policy.

Status quo of Norway’s EU affiliation

The election result paved the way for a change in government. Labour as the largest party held talks with the incoming Prime Minister Støre’s preferred coalition partners, the Centre Party, and the Socialist Left Party. The Socialist Left Party pulled out of the talks before the serious negotiations started. Thus, the new government has ended up as a minority coalition between Labour and the Centre Party, with a total of 76 seats (out of 169). Had they managed to persuade the Socialist Left they would have had a total of 89 seats and a majority in the Storting, the Norwegian parliament. The two governing parties signed a governing agreement. This 86-page declaration lists the government’s objectives, in considerable detail.

In the following, I will only focus on what the government declaration says about Norway’s EU affiliation. The declaration explicitly states that

‘(t)he government will develop and deepen Nordic cooperation in a wide range of areas. Nordic and European countries are Norway’s most important political and economic partners. The government will stand up clearly for the value of an open and cooperative Europe at a time when authoritarian forces, nationalism and xenophobia are on the rise. The EEA Agreement will form the basis for Norway’s relationship to Europe. The government will work more actively to promote Norwegian interests within the framework of the agreement, and the wiggle-room in the agreement will be used with particular emphasis on ensuring national control in such areas as labour relations, energy and rail traffic.’ (Hurdalsplattformen 2021, author’s translation)

This statement is an amalgam of the two coalition parties’ statements on Europe. The Centre Party underlines the Nordic dimension, whereas Labour places more direct emphasis on Europe. The sentence to the effect that ‘(t)he government will stand up …’ is taken verbatim from the Labour Party’s program for the period 2021-2025.

With regard to Norway’s relations with the EU, the new government thus reiterates the ‘gag rules’ that each government has instituted to maintain the status quo of Norway’s EU affiliation pretty much since the EEA agreement entered into force in 1994. The gag rules are meant to keep a lid on the EU membership issue. The governing coalition thus binds itself to govern on the basis of the present EEA affiliation. It is then also stated in the coalition government declaration that ‘the EEA Agreement shall form the basis for Norway’s relationship to Europe'(Author’s translation). The tacit understanding is that if one party actively starts working towards changing the status quo the coalition will unravel. The present governing configuration therefore falls into an established pattern of governing coalitions ‘freezing’ the status quo. The new coalition government consists of one broadly speaking pro-EU party, Labour, that sees itself as a guarantor of the EEA Agreement (while declaring in its party program that it is internally divided on the issue of EU membership) and one very Eurosceptic party, the Centre Party, that is against the EEA Agreement. In its party program it states that it wants to examine alternatives to the EEA Agreement that strengthen Norwegian sovereignty and ensure access to the EU’s internal market for Norwegian exports.

The political arithmetic explains why despite a new election and a change in government, there is likely to be no change in Norway’s EU affiliation:  the continued presence of gag rules prevents a change in the status quo. In today’s Storting, the parties that support the status quo would have 98 out of 169 seats (down from 111 in the previous Storting). Some parties are divided in both directions, so how firm this specific number is can be questioned. The main point however is that the Eurosceptic parties do not have a basis for renegotiating Norway’s current EU affiliation. Some minor concessions have been granted to the Eurosceptics in that there is a commitment to ‘carry out an assessment of the experiences of the EEA cooperation during the last 10 years. In that connection the experiences that proximate countries outside the EU have with regard to their EU agreements will be examined’ (Hurdalsplattformen 2021, author’s translation). The Centre Party wants Norway to reject the EU’s fourth railway package. The government platform states that it will ‘as soon as possible enter into a dialogue with the EU with the goal of ensuring Norway exceptions from portions of the EU’s fourth railway package.’

The political arithmetic explains why despite a new election and a change in government, there is likely to be no change in Norway’s EU affiliation:  the continued presence of gag rules prevents a change in the status quo.

Incidentally, this focus on specific issues or policy measures is entirely in line with the logic of gag rules which ensures that specific concerns can be dislocated from the constitutionally salient EU membership issue. I have argued elsewhere that the gag rules facilitate further integration by taking attention away from the question of Norway’s EU affiliation and instead focusing on specific issues such as the EU’s third postal directive, which generated a lot of controversy. Whether the railway initiative falls into that pattern is too early to tell. The statement in the government declaration is fairly open: It could mean that the government wants to initiate a process where Norway gets some sort of opt-out, in which case it will be interesting to see if the EU is willing to grant any such concessions to a non-member. Or the statement could mean that the government approaches the EU and finds that there is no real leverage to alter the regulations. What then will be done is not clear from the new government’s platform.

The new minority coalition government has pledged to cooperate with the parties to the left. This illustrates the squeeze that Labour finds itself in: between a strengthened Centre Party to its right side and a strengthened left flank with the Left Socialists and Red. This can be quite a precarious position, with the prospect of hemorrhaging voters either to the right or to the left, depending where it sets its foot. The Labour party has clearly ended in a spot which requires a fine-tuned balancing of issues and concerns. To what extent European issues will be entered into such a process of balancing is not entirely clear. This government appears more willing to discuss EU-related issues than the previous one. Nevertheless, the government platform would seem to indicate that the overarching question of Norway’s EU affiliation appears to be locked in.

Table 1: Party seats, 2021 election Name Number U Change Arbeiderpartiet 48 0 -1 Høyre 36 1 -9 Senterpartiet 28 0 +9 Fremskrittspartiet 21 4 -6 Sosialistisk Venstreparti 13 5 +2 Rødt 8 4 +7 Venstre 8 5 0 Kristelig Folkeparti 3 0 -5 Miljøpartiet De Grønne 3 0 +2 Pasientfokus 1 0 +1 Total 169 19 0

1. Party has gotten a compensatory seat (Valgresultat.no)

This blog post was originally published on DCU Brexit Institute Blog on 29 October 2021 and has been republished here with permission.

The post Why a change in government won’t change Norway’s ambiguous EU policy appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Learning to blah, blah, blah (Source)

A while back I wrote about the UK’s approach to the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) and Trade & Cooperation Agreement (TCA), arguing that this was driven by a lack of strategic intent, resulting in constant efforts to keep things up in the air.

In so doing, the UK aims to avoid falling into any settled pattern of interaction with the EU that would – by the simple facts of its existence and stability – provide a template for future relations.

Put simply, the UK doesn’t seem to want to find itself stuck in a rut, with all the path dependency and sunk cost issues that come with that.

At the time, the way the UK was pursuing this objective of intentional instability was through a high-stress holding model.

This involved an active campaign of raising problems with the treaties (both on what they contain and what they don’t contain) plus non-implementation (or at least very slow implementation).

Hence the seemingly endless list of problems that could be drawn upon, from the role of the CJEU to VAT rules. The spring’s challenges of chilled meats in Northern Ireland might have been met by the Commission’s proposals this autumn, but the UK had already run on ahead to the next thing.

This coupled up with very strong language about using provisions such as Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol, to attempt to create an image of being ready to walk away from it all, for the noble intent of protecting peace.

A review of this model suggests that while it might have nudged the Commission to offer more than it might have on the Protocol implementation problems, it has largely not worked and has little prospect of working.

At the root of this failure has been a lack of conviction on the EU’s part that the UK would make good on its promises/threats. Yes, the WA/TCA combo has its problems, but these are as nothing to the costs of pursuing any other route. The UK can’t unilaterally change the terms of the treaties, and the economic and political damage of collapsing them both (and the EU has been very clear that they are a linked pair) should be evident to even the most die-hard Brexiteer.

If the UK doesn’t have a credible alternative (and also doesn’t have a hard consensus that it thinks it has one), then the threats look empty and the main effect is simply to weaken trust. Which is a problem if you’re aiming to get buy-in to any new system you might propose.

Hence the apparent shift in the past couple of weeks to what we might term a low-stress model.

Instead of the active antagonism, there is instead engagement in negotiations, covered by a rhetorical frame of trying to solve problems together.

However, given the very slow pace of those discussions, it looks more like a move to kick things into the very long grass of endless debate.

Yes, there’s interaction, but it also allows for a ‘temporary’ suspension of punitive measures and of full implementation of treaty provisions. In short, it creates its own version of the stable situation trap: the UK gets to say in 6 months that obviously these temporary arrangements work.

Of course, the EU is well aware of this, and is looking to move negotiations to some conclusion in short order. But the ability to combat this low-stress approach is rather less. The Commission might have its spectrum of responses in place for an Article 16 notification, but it’s much harder to avoid looking ungenerous when faced with a counterparty that wants to talk.

But it’s not impossible, and at some point it becomes difficult to mask that you’re stringing out talks for their own sake. Even if that means a less fraught outcome than a collapse of the high-stress model, it still leaves the UK having to make a decision about what it wants. And there’s still no sign that it has any sense of achieving that under this government.

The post High- and low-stress holding models appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Brexit used to sit on the far side lines of politics.

Indeed, the word ‘Brexit’ was only invented in 2012, and until the referendum, most people didn’t know what it meant.

(Now it’s in the Oxford English dictionary.)

Prior to 2011, tabloids such as the Daily Mail and Daily Express were more fixated on false claims about benefit cheats than false claims about immigrants.

But that all changed.

An in-depth study by the Migration Observatory showed that:

The volume of press coverage mentioning ‘immigration’ or ‘migration’ declined from 2006 to 2011 before rising each year from 2011 to mid-2015

Furthermore, when the press explicitly described immigrants and migrants during 2006-2015, 3 out of 10 times it was with the word ‘illegal’.

In 2004, when the Labour government permitted migrants to come here from new EU member states (formerly hidden behind the ‘Iron Curtain’) they were welcome.

The British economy was doing well, and businesses were desperate for more workers. EU migrants coming here filled a chronic labour and skills gap.

It wasn’t until after the Tories won the 2010 general election, and severe austerity measures were imposed, that some tabloid newspapers, and some politicians, started to heavily scapegoat migrants as the cause.

But even then, Britain’s membership of the EU was not a majority interest subject.

Some on the fringes of the Conservative and Labour Parties thought Britain should leave the EU, but they were small in number.

• Most MPs and members of the House of Lords strongly supported Britain’s membership of the EU (and indeed, most of them voted for Britain to Remain in the European Union.)
• Most people in Britain also didn’t want Britain to leave the EU.

We’d been members for around 40 years, and it was not a big deal.

Polling consistently showed that most people in the UK supported our continued membership, even in the year before the referendum.

Yes, 17 million voters voted for Brexit. But 17 million votes out of 46.5 million registered voters did not represent majority support.

Since 2016, however, Brexit is on the news every day. The word has become mainstream, not just in Britain, but across the world.

How did it happen?

It started when leading politicians, who should have known better, got scared of a little Eurosceptic party called UKIP, which promoted a fear and dislike of migrants, and blamed the EU.

UKIP was considered a threat to the mainstream of politics and so everybody started talking their language of fear.

Slowly and surely, the new language allowed migrants and foreigners to be blamed for our problems, with leaving the EU presented as the solution.

It was the start of the rot. It led us directly to Brexit.

There was no rational reason to fear migrants. But senior politicians in both the Conservative and Labour Parties began to be fearful of UKIP.

Instead of bucking the UKIP trend, they fell for it; they unwisely helped to promote and prolong it, along with most British newspapers, also guilty of inciting UKIP’s message of xenophobia.

So, when in 2014 the then Shadow Home Secretary, Labour’s Yvette Cooper, said in a speech in London:

“It isn’t racist to be worried about immigration or to call for immigration reform.”

What I think she really meant was:

“We’re not really worried about immigration; we’re worried about UKIP.”

When also in 2014, Rachel Reeves, Labour’s then shadow works and pensions secretary, wrote in an article for the Daily Mail:

“We have to listen to the real concerns that people have about how immigration is being managed.”

What I think she really meant was:

“We’re not really listening to people’s real concerns; we’re listening to UKIP.”

When Kelly Tolhurst, the Conservative MP, who won the 2014 by-election in the Rochester and Strood, wrote in her campaign literature:

“I wanted to bring the Prime Minister to this constituency to show him that uncontrolled immigration has hurt this area.”

What I think she really meant was:

“I want to show the Prime Minister that although there isn’t a problem of uncontrolled immigration in this area, uncontrolled UKIP could hurt us.”

(Because how could there be a problem of ‘uncontrolled migration’ in Rochester and Strood? It has a lower-than-average immigrant population than the national, and even regional, level. Its population is 87 per cent white British.)

The then Prime Minister, David Cameron (remember him?) also followed the same line. He said to the electorate:

“I know you are worried about immigration.”

What I think he really meant was:

“You know I am worried about UKIP.”

So worried, that he called for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU that he didn’t have to call.

It was all because of an irrational fear of UKIP and their irrational language of fear.

Reported the BBC on the rise of UKIP in 2014:

‘David Cameron’s historic pledge to hold an in/out referendum on UK membership of the EU if the Conservatives won the next election was interpreted by some as an attempt to halt the rise of UKIP, which senior Tories feared could prevent them from winning an overall majority in 2015.’

(Repeat: Previously hardly anyone in Britain was concerned about Britain’s EU membership – it was a minority issue on the far fringes of politics.)

In the same year, Nigel Farage, the then leader of UKIP, told The Telegraph:

“Parts of the country have been taken over by foreigners and mass immigration has left Britain as unrecognisable.”

It was nonsense of course.

Britons didn’t have a serious problem of migration before the likes of Nigel Farage told them they did.

If you look at a 2014 map of where UKIP had the highest support, it was mostly in the areas of Britain with the least migration.

And conversely, in the areas with lots of migrants, UKIP mostly had the least support.

The foreign-born of Britain only represent around 12% of the population – that’s a normal proportion for most modern, thriving western democracies.

Even among those 12% of foreign-born are many considered to be British, such as Boris Johnson, born in New York, and Joanna Lumley, born in India.

And citizens from the rest of the EU living in the UK represented only 5% of the population – that’s small and hardly ‘mass migration.’

A few weeks after the 2016 referendum result, the then Tory MP, Oliver Letwin, said that British politicians “made a terrible mistake” in failing to take on the argument about immigration, the argument spread by UKIP.

He told The Times:

“We all, the Labour party and the Conservative Party alike … made a terrible mistake, which was not to take on the argument about migration.”

He added that UKIP exploited the failure of mainstream politicians to “put the counter-argument” that “migration enriches the country in every way.”

Gandhi got it right when he said:

‘The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is really fear.’

Our main political parties and national newspapers could have saved us from an irrational fear of migrants that led directly to Brexit.

Instead, they pandered to UKIP and promoted the fear.

And now the fear has won, and it is still being encouraged by politicians and papers.

But:

• Migrants are a boon, not a burden for Britain.
• EU membership has helped our country and did not hinder it.

Somehow, facts need to win over fear. And until that happens, Britain is on a dangerous and debilitating path.

DAILY EXPRESS HEADLINES: The 2011 headline that millions of families were benefit cheats was entirely incorrect. See Full Fact report. And the 2015 headline that illegal immigrants were pouring into Britain was also false. See Full Fact response.

• Watch my 1-minute video about so-called ‘illegal’ migrants.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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• My campaign page on Facebook: Reasons2Rejoin
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