Diplomacy & Defense Think Tank News

ARI 48/2016 - 14/6/2016
Miguel Otero Iglesias
Un análisis de cómo se posicionan las diferentes “tribus” de la City frente a la posibilidad de la salida del Reino Unido de la Unión Europea.

You can read here the article on Greece and the European normalisation, which was written by Professor Emeritus and Member of the Board of Trustees of ELIAMEP Theodore Couloumbis. This commentary was published on 12 June 2016 in the Sunday edition of Kathimerini. It is available in Greek.

Bonn, 14 June 2016. Surprisingly, reports and even opinion pieces on the first high-level meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) – the main forum for debates on development cooperation – in Mexico City in 2014 ignored one basic fact: Main stakeholders of the partnership did not show up (China and India) or were present just as an observer (Brazil). Some others (like South Africa) joined the meeting but seemed to have clear reservations as well. Against this background, the Mexico meeting was only partly successful since an inclusive and more legitimate basis of the Global Partnership was the main rationale to transform the former aid effectiveness platform organized by the respective working group of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) into a quite new format which is jointly driven by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the OECD. We are now approaching the second high-level meeting of the platform, which will take place from 28 November to 1 December 2016 in Nairobi, Kenya. So, how did the context change since the Mexico meeting? What is on the agenda for Nairobi? Are we going to see all ‘big elephants’ in the conference hall? Changing context In basic terms, two aspects need to be highlighted. Firstly, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is now providing an important narrative on global development. The potential of this narrative goes well beyond the Millennium Development Goals and their traditional focus on developing regions: All main stakeholders accept the universal nature of the 2030 Agenda, which provides a strong legitimacy. The 2030 Agenda is at the core of major efforts including development cooperation platforms like the GPEDC, the United Nations Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) and activities under the umbrella of the OECD. From a development cooperation perspective, the 2030 Agenda has advantages and disadvantages at the same time: ‘Development’ is not any longer a challenge just for ‘developing regions’ but for all countries of the world. This leads to more vagueness in terms of responsibilities. Thus, development cooperation actors are struggling with the question: How to adjust to the new agenda? Who is in charge for the follow-up and the monitoring? Secondly, important rising powers are still pushing for a concept for South-South-Cooperation (SSC) which is distinctive from the OECD aid approach. This, for example, became tangible during the second global conference on SSC hosted by India in March 2016. However, contours and criteria are evolving but remain quite vague. Individual countries like China will use the 2030 Agenda to guide their SSC. Harmonisation on SSC still to needs be pushed for. The different approaches of rising powers to the GPEDC point to this challenge as well. Why to care about GPEDC? Is the changing context leading to different views of rising powers on the GPEDC? Our assumption is that a partial membership to the Global Partnership high-level meeting remains likely. Participation in this forum seems to still not be a high priority for all rising powers and different perceptions on the legitimacy of the platform might continue to exist. Against this backdrop we propose to reflect on three aspects: First, all stakeholders – rising powers, OECD countries, recipients of SSC and development cooperation – should reflect on a truly ‘global’ cost-benefit analysis of participation and non-participation in the GPEDC. Second, rising powers should be more explicit about requirements for such a global platform. What is needed and how can we use or further develop an existing mechanism? Third, Kenya as the upcoming host country for the High Level Meeting of the GPEDC and other steering committee members should come up with new initiatives and brainstorm with rising power government and non-governmental representatives about a restart of the ‘global spirit’ of the GPEDC. In our view the international community is in need of a well functioning platform which should cover all aspects of development cooperation and SSC. We do not assume that all countries can agree on standards and norms in all areas. However, the need for a joint dialogue platform is striking. Stephan Klingebiel is Head of the Department Bi- and Multilateral Development Cooperation at the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut for Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), a regular Visiting Professor at Stanford University and a Senior Lecturer at the Philipps University Marburg. Li Xiaoyun is a professor and former dean of China Agricultural University’s College of Humanities and Development, president of the China International Development Research Network (CIDRN) and chairman of the Network of Southern Think-Tanks (NeST).

The new book of Loukas Tsoukalis: In Defense of Europe. Can the European project be saved? is published by Oxford University Press. Europe has not been so weak and divided for a long time. Buffeted by a succession of crises, it has shown a strong collective survival instinct but a poor capacity to deliver. Loukas Tsoukalis is critical of the way Europe has handled its multiple crises in recent years. He addresses the key issues and difficult choices facing Europe today.

In particular:

- Can Europe hold together? Under what terms? And for what purpose?

- A look at the key choices facing Europe today, by a leading political economist and former special adviser to the President of the European Commission

- Explains how the international financial crisis has become an existential crisis of European integration

- Asks whether Europe can ovecome the basic contradiction of a currency without a state

- Looks at how the European Union can accommodate greater internal diversity – and thereby hope to avoid a Brexit or a Grexit

- Examines whether there is an irreconcilable contradiction between Europe’s yearning for soft power and the hard realities of the world outside

Book Reviews

‘An inexorable analysis. An eye opener, a heart cry from a true European’ - Herman van Rompuy, former President of the European Council

‘A deeply insightful book that illuminates how only a combination of skill and passion can save Europe’ – Enrico Letta, former Prime Minister of Italy

‘The European project has traditionally been driven by the region’s political, business and technocratic elites, with ordinary people indifferent and often hostile to it, even as benficiaries. This clear-sighted, non-idelogical book shows how this has to change for the project to survive. Tsoukalis argues Europe needs a wide range of reforms that deepens integration in some areas, while allowing for greater differentiation and democratic decision-making in others. He eschews simple solutions and magic pills. It is the book’s great virtue that is clarifies both the scale of the problem and some of the ways forward’ – Dani Rodrik,  Harvard Kennedy School

‘This is an important and enlightening book in which one of the most knowledgeable scholars of European integration takes a hard look at what has has gone wrong over the last quarter century. Though deeply committed to the success of the European project, the author’s account of present European crises is characterized not only by an unflinching realism but also by the masterly integration of economic and political analyses – and by the perceptive reconstruction of the conflicting interests and (mis-) perceptions that explain German, British and Greek contributions to present policy failures. Remarkably, nevertheless, the book ends neither in a counsel of despair nor in idealistic precepts but in a series of pragmatic proposals whose usefulness is not obviously in conflict with political feasibility’ – Fritz W. Scharpf, Max Planck Institute

‘As ever thoughtful and thought-provoking, Loukas Tsoukalis prompts us to re-examine the fundamentals of contemporary European integration. His deep analysis is timely, nuanced and challenging’ - Dame Helen Wallace FBA, British Academy

You can find here more information on the book.

In the eyes of Greeks the meaning of Social Europe has changed over time, spanning the range from funds to promote social cohesion to externally enforced welfare state reforms in an austerity context. To the extent Greeks became familiar with Social Europe, they never took it to heart but would admit that they have periodically benefited from Social Europe’s tangible outlays, such as the European Structural Funds. Nowadays the Greek experience of a protracted economic crisis and a sudden refugee crisis can contribute towards rethinking Social Europe.

Welcome and unwelcome aspects of Social Europe

In pre-crisis Greece, Social Europe used to mean a welcome invitation to make Greece’s living standards converge with those of the rest of the EU. It also meant a less welcome push to introduce into Greece labour market and pension reforms, which would alter a patronage-based divide between insiders and outsiders.

European social policies, including active labor market policies and flexicurity, were alien in Greek society. Social Europe was not received well in a society in which many thought that they were entitled to a stable job and welfare benefits, dispensed by the state, by virtue of belonging to a group treated differently from other groups.

Examples of insider groups included civil servants, bank employees, journalists and the liberal professions. The majority of the rest were outsiders. An insider-outsider division has been the result of a particular historical legacy of state-society relations.

Social equity Greek style

Greeks hold complicated views on social equity. On the one hand they entertain egalitarian ideas as, in contrast to other European societies, there has never been an influential landed aristocracy in the Greece, while heavy industrialization was mostly absent from the country’s path to development.

On the other hand, Greeks often show more social solidarity with the narrow occupational group to which they belong rather than with the weaker social strata in general. While most Greeks reject any kind of social privilege, they simultaneously adhere to tailor-made, occupation-based privileges, such as rights to early retirement available to selected groups or preferential access to public sector jobs through political party patronage.

Social Europe after the crisis: from entitlement to austerity

After the crisis struck, the EU-imposed fiscal consolidation of the Greek economy led to the expansion of poverty, soaring unemployment and a deeper insider-outsider division between Greeks who have been relatively untouched by the crisis and their co-patriots who have been economically destroyed by it.

The economic crisis was very quickly transformed into a social crisis. Social Europe was flushed out of Greece along with the bathwater of relatively generous pensions, incommensurate to past insurance contributions, and wages standing higher than productivity levels.

Meanwhile, successive Greek governments fought to support their political clienteles by preventing substantive reforms in the aforementioned highly discriminatory welfare system, which pits insiders against outsiders. This is a fight that continues to this day. Thus, in crisis-ridden Greece, Social Europe has been associated, not so much with the rationalization of the welfare state, as with deep social spending cuts.

Rethinking Social Europe

However, as soon as the refugee crisis broke out in 2015 and hundreds of thousands of desperate people landed on Greek islands, Greeks rushed to offer help. Noticing the glaring absence of central state authorities, Greeks started pouring clothes, shoes, food and medicines on to incoming waves of refugees. Suddenly for Greeks, who during the crisis had taken Social Europe to mean indiscriminate austerity measures, being a European now meant sharing one’s own reduced resources with non-Europeans emerging from the sea.

Seeing a real humanitarian crisis from close by, Greeks have started putting Greek and European politics in perspective. In 2015 populist promises that other Europeans would rally around an anti-austerity Greek and South European vision to reshape Social Europe have evaporated. Pre-electoral claims that all that was necessary for Greeks to enjoy pre-crisis living conditions was to banish the EU-imposed austerity packages have contributed to the government turnover of 2015, but have soon proven futile. Almost every Greek has realized that a patronage-based system of welfare is normatively indefensible and financially unsustainable.

Distrust and dissatisfaction with the EU

But the fact that unfettered and one-size-fits-all austerity can rapidly lead an once relatively prosperous EU Member-State, such as Greece, to acute social crisis, has indicated how fragile Social Europe has become as well.

On this issue, the governing coalition of Syriza party with the right-wing Independent Greeks party, which has been in power since January 2015, believes that in the past Social Europe spelled the undermining, rather than the protection, of workers’ rights, for example, through introducing unacceptable flexibility in labour relations.

Finally, the coalition of Syriza would like to see more flexibility in the Stability and Growth Pact’s rules and the abandonment of Fiscal Compact, so as to allow national governments in Member States to follow expansionist economic policies. Simultaneously the radical left/right coalition distrusts the strengthening of decision-making powers of EU’core, including a stronger EU budget. Yet Syriza does call for an EU-wide increase in public investment.

Source: Clingendael

Author: Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos

Die Briten entscheiden sich nicht nur für oder gegen einen Verbleib in der Europäischen Union. Dahinter steckt auch ein Machtkampf in der konservativen Partei.

In den 25 Jahren seit Unterzeichnung des deutsch-polnischen Nachbarschaftsvertrages hat sich das Verhältnis beider Länder gut entwickelt. Doch es gibt Störfaktoren: In EU-Fragen sind sich Deutsche und Polen uneins, vor allem in Deutschland schwindet das Vertrauen in den Nachbarn. Dies ergibt unsere aktuelle Umfrage, die in Zusammenarbeit mit der Bertelsmann-Stiftung und dem Warschauer Institut für Öffentliche Angelegenheiten entstanden ist.

Am 8. und 9. Juli treffen sich die Staats- und Regierungschefs der NATO-Staaten in Warschau. Es ist der erste Gipfel des Bündnisses in Polen und seit dem Höhepunkt der Flüchtlingskrise. Im Zentrum wird daher die Weiterentwicklung der NATO-Strategie gegenüber Russland einerseits und die Rolle des Bündnisses im Grenzschutz und der Fluchtursachenbekämpfung andererseits stehen. Diese Handreichung verschafft Orientierung über die wichtigsten Themen des Gipfels, offene Streitpunkte und die Agenda der Bundesregierung.

On Thursday, June 16th at 1:15pm EST, IPI is hosting a Global Leaders Series presentation featuring H.E. Dr. Srgjan Kerim, candidate for the position of United Nations secretary-general.

IPI Live Event Feed

At the event, Dr. Kerim will discuss his experience and how it informs his vision of the future of global politics and the United Nations. He will address questions including how he would shape the job of UN secretary-general and define his priorities in office.

In December 2015, the government of the Republic of Macedonia formally nominated Dr. Kerim as a candidate for the position of UN secretary-general. Dr. Kerim is Foreign Affairs Adviser to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Macedonia and a member of the Council of Presidents of the UN General Assembly.

Dr. Kerim has more than 30 years of international political experience, as Foreign Minister, Ambassador of the Republic of Macedonia, and President of the 62nd Session of the UN General Assembly in New York.

HSF, Hanns Seidel Foundation, HSS, Hanns Seidel Stiftung, IPPR, Institute for Public Policy Research, ACC, Anti-Corruption Commission, Graham Hopwood, Paulus Noa, Nicole Bogott

ELIAMEP Working Paper 75/2016 written by Georgios Kolyvas analyses the future of the eurozone. In particular, it argues that more integration is feasible  on the basis of the experience gained in previous years. In addition, it is proposed for Greece to set up its own growth plan which will help the country to proceed towards its recovery beyond the third bailout programme.

Working Paper 75/2016: The eurozone on the way of more integration (in French).

Author: Georgios Kolyvas

Briefing Note 44/2016 of ELIAMEP’s South East Europe Programme analyses the key parameters of  the EU decision to abolish the visa regime for Kosovars travelling to EU countries. This development can be seen as an important step in Kosovo’s efforts to come closer and eventually integrate in the EU.

You can read here the article on reactions within the Greek society, which was written by Professor George Pagoulatos. The commentary was published on 12 June 2016  in the Sunday edition of Kathimerini and is available in Greek.