Ideas on Europe Blog

We’re still outside the Single Market, with lost rights, new barriers, and no real plan to go back in.

That said, the new agreement this week between the UK and EU is a welcome sign of thawing relations – a shift away from the confrontational politics of the past decade.

For that, the Labour government deserves some credit. The deal removes some Brexit barriers – including student exchanges, pet travel, food exports, security cooperation, and a proposed Youth Mobility Scheme for young people.

These are practical changes that will make life easier for businesses, students, and travellers alike. It also signals an intention to rebuild trust with our European neighbours.

Yes, this is a fresh attempt to improve UK–EU relations after years of damage and division. But we should be clear: this is still Brexit.

• The UK remains outside the EU Single Market and Customs Union.
• British citizens have lost freedom of movement.
• UK companies still face costly trade frictions.
• Musicians still struggle with touring.
• Brits still need extra paperwork to live, work, study or retire in the EU.
• And EU nationals here remain subject to the Hostile Environment – from renting a flat to crossing the border.

For sure, this new agreement is better than what came before. But it’s nowhere near as good as what we once had.

We left Erasmus+ – only now to seek partial re-entry.

Freedom of movement is gone – and the new “Youth Mobility Scheme” may only allow limited, temporary stays for young people. Even if finalised, it cannot replicate the full rights we lost.

And while this new deal softens the blow for some sectors, it does not undo the deep economic harm caused by Brexit.

According to the OBR, the UK economy is now forecast to be 4% smaller than it would have been had we remained in the EU – a lasting hit to wages, growth, and tax revenues.

Rejoining the Single Market would bring far greater benefits.

Full EU membership would go further still: giving us back a seat at the table, a voice in decisions, and rights we once took for granted.

The new deal shows that rebuilding our relationship with Europe is possible. But it also highlights the absurdity of what we threw away – and how hard it is to claw back even fragments of what we had.

Call it a reset if you like – but the only real reset is rejoining the EU.

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One of the joys of listening to Radio 4 is that while having my regular daily walk yesterday I heard a lovely discussion about the 50th anniversary of Jaws, the film that created the summer blockbuster and gave us some top meme-worthy comment.

It feels apposite to mention this because one of my main takeaways from this week’s UK-EU reset summit was the realisation that we are now entering a semi-permanent state of negotiations between the two, which in turn means more work for me and further vindication of my decision to stick with studying UK-EU relations. Truly one of the last jobs for life that people used to have.

Since I’ve been busy having such thoughts, I come late in the day to the business of analysing the various documents produced on Monday: the Joint Statement, the Common Understanding and the one actually-concluded document, the Security and Defence Partnership (SDP; half of which is cribbed from the EU-Japan piece, as Anton Spisak notes) . You’ll also want to read the Commission’s Q&A, since it’s less ambiguous about what’s what.

If you want run-throughs, then I recommend Anton’s piece, as well as David Henig‘s and Steve Peers‘, the last of which is worth quoting at a bit of length for its conclusions, with which I fully concur:

Finally, it’s notable how many Rubicons have been crossed with this reset deal. As noted already, the UK now accepts the market access/integration trade-off. But the EU now accepts agreeing this trade-off with the UK in limited fields: the UK can have one foot several steps up the Barnier escalator, but the other one firmly on the ground. The EU has also accepted a Swiss-like complex legal relationship with the UK, having opposed it in principle for years. (In fact, the EU already conceded this point when agreeing the TCA; but that treaty hid its legal complexity better than the reset deal does). The UK has accepted an agreement with the EU as regards movement of (some) EU citizens; although it might claim this arrangement will simply resemble its youth mobility treaties with many other countries, the extent of that similarity will be dependent upon the details of the final deal. Above all, the EU, having accepted freer movement of some goods and demanded the freer movement of some people, can no longer lecture the UK on cherry-picking or cake-eating – what with all the crumbs and cherry juice smeared across the EU’s own mouth.

Rather than rehashing all these colleagues’ fine efforts, I’ll stick to adding some further thoughts.

Substantively, the package here is both more extensive than most had anticipated and less developed. Rather than sticking the Nick Thomas-Symond’s three-basket model we have a Common Understanding with five main headings, plus the bits that don’t fit in within them, like fisheries and the very idea of regular UK-EU summits.

At times, this all reads like someone has asked ministries/DGs to throw in anything they’d like to see discussed, which might not be a million miles from how the process went in the UK, but it sets a wide open terrain for negotiation.

And it is negotiation. Barring the SDP, there is not a single final decision. Even the fisheries access that generated much interest in the British press is only a political agreement, with a legal text at least a month away. As I note in my summary graphic below, there are a handful of commitments to negotiate, plus more vague intentions to do more together or to ‘explore possibilities’.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic140

Moreover, there’s not a single date for any of this to happen, even the topics that both sides agree will be negotiated. Therefore an early marker of how much effort is being put into this will be the speed with which the Commission produces and agrees mandates for SPS, Emissions trading, Energy market integration and youth mobility/experience.  The speedy release of the competition cooperation text on Tuesday might be a good sign, but equally the fact it wasn’t ready to go with this package suggests that none of this will be easy.

On that point, it’s clear that this is not an era of unbridled euphoria and working together, but regular international relations, with each side pushing its interests hard. The French squeezed on fisheries over the weekend, just as the British evidently got youth mobility/experience parked to avoid more “it’s not freedom of movement” arguments that would just further link that scheme to freedom of movement in people’s minds (as more than one person has commented to me this week).

Indeed, it is the practice of the UK government in all this that raises the most concerns.

Across public policy there appears to be a profound aversion to open policy-making, instead keeping things in-house and driven by focus-group polling. It’s not necessarily wrong, but it does raise the risk of generating policy that lands badly. In this case, the harrumphs from devolved bodies, scrutiny bodies, sectoral interests and others with interest in the matter speak to the consequences.

A case in point is eGates. This was something that has been under negotiation for quite some time, held up by the EU’s delays in implementing the Entry/Exit System and some member states’ quibbles over legal barriers. The government decision to present this as an immediate benefit very quickly fell over in the face of, well, facts and took away from what was still a story that would have been a positive selling point.

If we are now entering a permanent negotiation then the government will need to work more on its narrative around this process. To return to Steve’s quote earlier, this isn’t an escalator back to membership, but equally it’s not clear what the underlying logic is. Put differently, everyone knows the government’s red lines, but it’s not clear why those are red lines.

As more and more cooperation occurs, that will mean more and more instances of the UK becoming a rule-taker: SPS, ETS and energy markets are all explicitly framed this way in the Common Understanding. That creates a discursive tension with the control that has been taken back, which requires some vision of why this works to be articulated.

Therefore, my second big indicator will be the extent to which the government is both able to articulate that vision and the effort it puts into so doing. The three-basket model was evidently a placeholder, but the public statements from Starmer this week don’t offer a replacement beyond the UK ‘being back’.

This will matter when the various negotiations start to come home to roost. While there is no explicit cross-linkage, undoubtedly that will occur at points when it suits one or more of the parties involved: remember too that all of this is happening on top of the previously-described reviews and negotiations within the TCA itself.

Youth mobility/experience is perhaps the most likely flashpoint. The wording on Monday was a classic piece of “we have agreed absolutely no principles or even whether it will happen at all”: as I’ve written for The Conversation, the problems are almost all domestically British ones, even as the EU genuinely struggles to see the issue. But now it’s a totemically-important item for some member states, there will have to be some kind of reckoning.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic127

So, early days on all this.

What matters is partly about political will on both sides, but also about capacity. The lack of interest in European media was palpable, reflecting the low salience of building more ambitious relations with a country with whom the EU already has a serviceable relationship. There has been no public discussion about whether the British machinery of government has the capacity or skills to run multiple, permanent negotiations of a kind that it hasn’t tried before.

Monday was full of good vibes and warm words, but it’s not those moments that will define how the relationship works in practice.

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Manfred Stock, Alexander Mitterle and David P. Baker

A common trope in public discourse today is that the university serves as an ideological hub: a place that infuses the minds of the new generations with ideas that threaten contemporary worldviews. In such discussions, the sweeping impact higher education has on society is narrowed towards questions of gender, race, inequality, colonialism, global hegemony, and capital. The critique takes a staunch Hobbesian view of the university: who controls the university “programm[s]” what people think.

Only vaguely do such accounts discuss the educational impact of the university on the transformation of work. Without the cognitive and specific skills acquired in physics, law, engineering, or political science a vast number of jobs could not be performed adequately. Surprisingly, the professional function of advanced education is often perceived as just responding to the demands of the economy: Technological change and market forces create new occupations, and then universities simply respond with new degrees and curricula aimed at training future workers with specific new skills – often over-educating the demand.

Advancing earlier Parsonian and new institutionalist ideas on higher education, we emphasize an underappreciated yet growing concurrent alternative process: universities, with their global growth in numbers and enrolments, in concert with expanding research capacity, create and privilege knowledge and skills, legitimate new degrees that then become monetized and even required in private and public sectors of economies. A process we refer to as the academization of occupations and develop in our recent book, How Universities Transform Occupations and Work in the 21st Century: The Academization of German and American Economies (Stock, Mitterle, & Baker, 2024).

Such a process has tremendous implications for understanding the transformation of capitalism, new dimensions of social inequality, and resulting stratification among occupations, but it also emphasizes the non-linear relation between higher education and employment. If the university is productive in its own rights the knowledge and skills acquired in the university may create very different pathways into employment than envisioned by those instituting new degrees. In the following we briefly outline the argument for academization and then provide examples from seven case studies across two most-different OECD countries regarding education-to-work-pathways – Germany and the U.S.

Put succinctly, academization is a process by which more aspects of occupations, job content, and preparation are permeated by the full range of institutional products of formal education. As mass advanced education increases, the number of occupational fields of action and jobs in work organizations tailored to college graduates also increases, but academization also represents a profound transformation beyond expanding enrolment.

Take, for example, one of the key institutional products of academization and the cultural power of the university to transform occupations—the degree program. The expansion of applied degree programs in Germany and majors, minors, and graduate degrees in the U.S. reflects a logic of academization that implies material and social classification with consequences for job activities. The degrees awarded on successful completion of academic programs do not just represent and classify the curricular study programs nor just the corresponding expectations in terms of a graduate’s abilities, competencies, and skills in a material sense. They also classify programs as a legitimate and appropriate basis for performing specific practical tasks, providing services, and solving practical problems. As such, academic degrees also specify responsibilities for specific occupational fields and the working capacity of the graduates produced by universities.

Far beyond mere boundary maintenance among occupations, the combination of educationally enhanced cognitive functioning and specialized knowledge—acquired through degree competition—contributes to the human capital stock, productivity, wage differentials, and an education-oriented reordering of the occupational hierarchy, and thus to the social stratification system (cf. Baker et al., 2024; Mitterle et al., 2024). Degrees also classify and reclassify areas of professional responsibility and, hence, also employment positions. Often such classifications do not primarily stem from the world of work itself or even from work experience. Instead, over the long course of the university, they emerge from an academic process of knowledge production, redefining cultural ideas, and institutionalizing these with new areas and degrees in both countries examined here (Baker, 2011; Stock, 2016).

Contrasting country cases highlights consistencies in the process as well as the institutional forces from within national education systems that make certain dimensions of academization of occupations more salient. In each country, degree classifications are integrated with social classifications shaped by that nation’s unique educational structure. This mechanism aligns academic qualifications with occupational fields (such as public sector roles) in both material and social terms, thereby institutionalizing expectations regarding the practical applicability of academic skills, as well as the definition of roles within organizations and across occupations.

As a result, academization functions recursively across disciplines, occupations, societal expectations, and state regulations and policies. While each academic degree follows its own distinct trajectory, there are informative commonalities across cases—consider three of these.

First, across its various disciplines, the academic world increasingly classifies societal challenges as requiring authoritative interventions involving both high and low technologies. Entrepreneurship education, for example, emerged in response to the growing economic and technological significance of entrepreneurial activity, despite persistently high failure rates. Universities were tasked with studying and teaching entrepreneurship as a formal discipline, with the aim of reducing the frequency of start-up closures. Interestingly, this emphasis did not fundamentally reduce business closure rates, but it did make entrepreneurialism a theoretical—academic—subject for both teaching and research. The curricular focus of these programs reinforced an entrepreneurial culture that increasingly privileged the knowledge and practices of founding within “a theory of the company” as a rightful topic within universities.

A similar example is the set of academic business concepts behind full automation, developed within companies during the 1970s, which ultimately laid the groundwork for today’s digitalization agenda to emerge primarily as an academic endeavour. Both developments were further reinforced by the internal coherence of university mathematics, which reframed diverse occupational activities as mathematical problems, enabling the quantification of entrepreneurship and organizational efficiency.

Second, an expanding academic community constructs demand for new skills and services in specific occupational fields. This is accompanied by growing the number of graduates taking those skills into occupations, but this also includes the upgrading of skills and services based on the university’s knowledge systems. Thus, knowledge and competencies that can draw on scientific (i.e., all kinds of science, including behavioral and social sciences) evidence are valued more highly than those that are derived from generalizations based purely on experience or outdated knowledge. The fact that with educational expansion this is not merely an elite process but is now spread widely across all types of jobs and occupations adds further legitimacy to academization. When graduates with academic qualifications are available and lay claim to occupational areas of responsibility, this can devalue the knowledge base of those who have previously occupied these roles directly or indirectly.

The case of preschool education the U.S. shows the direct path: Scholarly research and the expansion of bachelor’s degree requirements went hand in hand, increasingly infusing early childhood education with cognitive skill requirements obtained in the university. In Germany, early childhood graduates met an institutionalized and highly valued and expansive vocational education system, leading to perceptions of mismatch in childcare practice among graduates, often channelling them into leadership or quality assurance positions. Indirectly they incrementally transform the discourse on early childhood education reframing the educational setting, parental views of child learning, and quality procedures in place.

Third, the construction of new skills through the academization process can lead to new job descriptions through synergy and also conflict: for instance, “architectural engineering” as a degree combines mathematical and technical skills with architectural imagination, anticipating and increasing overlap between the occupations, but also instituting new ways of combining building knowledge – such as in digital building modelling and maintenance. Learning therapy, in contrast, is structured through an academic struggle between pedagogy and psychology on the role of social and individual factors in learning problems, translating into different expectations and job profiles for practitioners.

In terms of both construction of new occupational and work categories to meet new social needs, the academization argument and the cases briefly presented here reconceptualize the relationship between university education and employment away from outdated historical social and material classifications.

The analysis of academization – as the first of its kind – built on country and case studies introduces the process of academization of occupations to the sociology of occupations, work, and ultimately the social stratification of post-industrial society. The cases do make clear that without a theory of academization many salient empirical trends of education, employment, worker skills, and advanced capitalism will remain underexplained.

Manfred Stock is at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (Germany), Institute for Sociology. Alexander Mitterle is at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (Germany), Centre for School and Educational Research / Institute for Sociology. David P. Baker is at the Pennsylvania State University (US), Department of Sociology and Criminology.

Baker, D. (2011).  Forward and backward, Horizontal and Vertical: Transformation of Occupational Credentialing in the Schooled Society. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility: A Journal of the International Sociological Association, 29(1), 5-29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2011.01.001

Mitterle, A., Mathies, A., Maiwald, A. & Schubert, C. (Eds.), Akademisierung – Professionalisierung. Zum Verhältnis von Hochschulbildung, akademischem Wissen und Arbeitswelt. Wiesbaden: Springer.

Baker, D., Schaub, M., Choi, J. & Ford, K. (2024). Education: The Great Equalizer, Social Reproducer, or Legitimator of New Forms of Social Stratification? In M. Berends, S. Lamb & B. Schneider (Eds.),  The Sage handbook of Sociology of Education. Sage.

Stock, M. (2016). Arbeitskraft- und Stellentypisierungen. Organisationssoziologische Überlegungen zum Zusammenhang zwischen Bildung und Beschäftigung. In M. S. Maier (Eds.), Organisation und Bildung (pp. 73-91). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

Stock, M., Mitterle A. and D. P. Baker (Eds.) (2024) How Universities                                                             Transform Occupations and Work in the 21st Century: The Academization of German and American Economies. Series on International Perspectives on Education and Society, Emerald Publishing: Bingley, U.K.

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What has VE Day to do with the European Union? Everything.

The European Economic Community – which later became the European Union – was created in the aftermath of the war with one overriding purpose: to build a lasting peace on a continent that had torn itself apart.

That was the passionate aim of the EU’s founding architects, including our own wartime leader, Winston Churchill.

Afer all, Europe had been infamous for nations resolving their differences through violence, invasion and war. Both world wars began here.

So, the EU was never just about economics or trade.

It was a political and social project as much as an economic one – a community of European nations committed not only to working together, but to never again going to war with each other.

The founding vision, set out in the 1957 Treaty of Rome, was to create ‘ever closer union among the peoples of Europe’ – not simply a union of states, but of citizens, bound together by shared values, cooperation, and peace.

Winston Churchill saw it clearly. In his landmark Zurich speech of 1946, he said:

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

That dream took shape just over a decade later, when six nations – France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – founded the EEC in 1957.

It was a remarkable feat. Some of these countries had been brutal enemies only a few years earlier. Four had been occupied by Nazi Germany.

And yet they came together, determined that war between them must become unthinkable.

It worked.

In the 80 years since 1945, no EU member has ever gone to war with another. That is an extraordinary achievement on a continent with such a violent history.

Whilst NATO has protected us – so far – from external threats, it’s the EU’s deep political and economic structure that has helped to prevent war between its members.

This is what many Brexiters never understood – or chose to forget.

The EU is not just a trading bloc. It’s a peace project. A human project. A bold, ongoing effort to build unity where once there was destruction.

By leaving, the UK sent a message: that we no longer value this remarkable peasce project as our neighbours do.

And that’s a tragedy.

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In the most dramatic shift in local politics for a generation, the party won around 677 council seats across England according to early results – more than any other party – and gained control of several councils for the first time.

They also secured multiple mayoral positions, further cementing their newfound influence on the national stage.

And in Runcorn and Helsby – a former Labour stronghold – Reform won a Westminster by-election by just six votes, the narrowest margin since the Second World War.

But is this a true reflection of national sentiment? Or a political mirage?

The success of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party can be neither denied nor ignored. But it must be understood in context.

Local elections are often marked by low turnouts and protest votes. In Runcorn and Helsby, only around 15% of the electorate voted for Reform. That’s hardly a national mandate.

Reform’s online presence and media attention far exceed its actual share of the vote. In a general election context, with higher turnout and broader scrutiny, the picture could look very different.

Polling paints a different picture.

Consistently, surveys show that a majority of Britons now believe Brexit was a mistake. Support for rejoining the EU exceeds opposition, particularly among younger voters and professionals. The public mood is shifting – but that shift is not yet reflected in party politics.

The truth is, Brexit supporters have done what pro-Europeans have not: Built a coordinated, media-savvy, emotionally resonant campaign.

Farage has dominated the airwaves for years, with a message that is simple, repeated, and amplified. Reform’s rise is the product of that persistence. Meanwhile, the pro-EU side remains fragmented, underfunded, and largely absent from mainstream political discourse.

We have the facts, but we’re not telling the story. We have the public gradually moving our way, but we’re not offering a compelling, united vision to channel that support.

And I say this not to criticise others, but to speak plainly.

I’m just one journalist, working without the backing of any political party or organisation. I’ve been posting articles, videos, and graphics on this topic for over a decade. And I’m far from alone – many others are working tirelessly to present the case for EU membership.

But it’s not enough.

What’s needed now is a coalition of voices – campaigners, creatives, economists, and everyday citizens – who believe Britain’s future lies in Europe and are willing to say so, publicly and proudly. To challenge Reform and the forces behind it, we need more than scattered voices.

We need a coordinated, professional, long-term campaign to present the alternative: a hopeful, forward-looking vision of Britain’s place in Europe and the world.

We cannot change the past – but we can shape the future. If Reform’s rise tells us anything, it’s that the appetite for change is real. The question is: will we leave that hunger to be filled by anger and division? Or will we finally work together to offer a better way forward?

The choice, and responsibility, is ours.

Reform is loud. We are quiet. That’s the real problem.

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• Related post: Labour’s Reform-style rhetoric against migration simply won’t work

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• Related post: Brexiters are outnumbered

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Linda Wanklin

Cecilia Ivardi

In Political Economy, we have historically examined the policies through which countries acquire skills as a national effort. Traditionally, skill provision has been considered a matter occurring within well-defined national borders. Scholars have investigated how economic elites secure the necessary skills and workforce for industries that foster economic growth (see research on growth regimes, Hassel and Palier 2021). However, we argue that this approach is no longer possible. Production increasingly spans multiple countries and value chains grow more intricate. Therefore, skill provision has evolved into a transnational endeavor that transcends national borders. We show that the strategies for sourcing skills now foster international networks.

Rising political-economic pressures have a transnational nature. First, the geography of production is changing. Previously, companies often outsourced only lower value-added processes to low-income countries. However, consumer demand is stagnating in saturated advanced economies and only increasing in middle-income economies and BRICS countries. Companies now find it more profitable to “produce where they sell”, meaning producing goods directly in the markets where demand is growing instead of outsourcing parts of the production (Herrigel et al. 2015; Fort 2017; Tintelnot et al. 2018). Second, advanced economies face demographic decline. They have a shrinking labor force, which is a particularly serious problem for the mid-skilled jobs that often used to be filled through vocational education and training (VET).

These pressures have implications for countries trying to secure adequate skills for their industries. On the one hand, companies that now produce abroad require a skilled workforce that can conduct operations abroad. On the other hand, at home, countries must grapple with the need for labor migration to fill in the shortages in their labor markets and focus on attracting the influx of workers that they need.

We conduct a case study of Germany since the financial crisis. Germany has traditionally been seen as a nationally anchored “skills machine” (Culpepper and Finegold 2001). Its economic model is based on exports and reliant on the skills provided by the national skill formation system (Baccaro et al. 2022). Thanks to the widespread availability of specialized mid-skilled labor trained in the VET system, the German export-led growth model has achieved unparalleled competitiveness.

However, the trends described above threaten the symbiosis between economic growth and the skill formation system. On the one hand, German companies have increasingly started to “produce where they sell”, meaning that they retain only high-level engineering and design in Germany while conducting most production activities in foreign locations (Herrigel et al. 2017). At the same time, VET has become less popular among youth, which, combined with demographic decline, creates an urgent problem of skills shortages particularly in the middle of the skills distribution, such as in the care, hospitality, retail, crafts, and construction sectors.

We argue that a coalition of state actors and employers has devised a transnational approach to source skills for the German economy.  This strategy rests on two pillars. First, the coalition has intensified the transfers of VET to foreign contexts. They are financed through official development assistance to the VET sector (which has increased to 400 million USD/year in 2022). Skill formation transfers involve adapting domestic VET concepts, institutions, and training models to foreign contexts at the firm, sector, or system level (Li & Pilz 2023).

These transfers occur through bilateral cooperation on VET reforms, sectoral incentives to implement German training standards, and firm-level initiatives, including the modernization of training processes and the issuing of internationally recognized certificates. Transfers are managed by the ministry responsible for the economy, which funds the German Chambers of Commerce Abroad (AHKs). AHKs provide services to facilitate VET transfers tailored to the needs of German firms and – increasingly/more recently – link training abroad to the migration of mid-skilled workers to Germany. Large German multinational companies benefit from this strategy – however, they are not its frontrunners because, as is well known in Political Economy, they possess the resources needed to train workers on-the-job and do not require a coordinated infrastructure of VET transfers.

The second pillar is the liberalization of labor migration. The coalition has increasingly opened the migration policy regime to mid-skilled workers, which was traditionally hard to access for anyone who was not highly skilled (e.g., in the IT and medical sectors) to access. They eased entry for mid-skilled workers through measures such as the 2012 Recognition Act, the 2016 Western Balkan Regulation, and the 2020 and 2023 Skilled Worker Immigration Acts. These reforms have linked foreign-trained workers to the German labor market, including standardized VET recognition abroad, transnational skill partnerships, and information platforms to streamline migration processes.

Increasing openness of the regime is visible in a four-fold increase in labor migration from non-EU countries since 2010, rising from 85,000 in 2010 to 351,000 in 2022. The ministry responsible for development cooperation has driven these efforts, among others, by changing its approach to migration. Once skeptical of the brain drain that labor migration can cause in the countries of origin, it now acknowledges the importance of funding training abroad to meet domestic labor market needs. Domestic employers’ associations, concerned about skill shortages, have encouraged labor migration to align with their needs and have obtained more autonomy in the recognition of foreign diplomas. Although the rise of right-wing populism in Germany has mobilized negative sentiments toward all migrants, this concern primarily affects refugees and asylum seekers and, to a lesser extent, labor migrants, towards which public opinion has remained more neutral – therefore, public opinion has not hindered these efforts.

Scholars interested in understanding how countries pursue economic growth must consider the way in which they source skills. In an age of globalization of production structures and skill shortages, skill formation has become a profoundly transnational effort. The approach to skills sourcing activities should be comprehensive, and not merely confined to the study of initial VET, as is common in studies of skill formation systems. Initiatives that transfer education systems and efforts to manage labor migration are seamlessly integrated into skill provision strategies and should be considered part of our research focus.

We encourage further research in this field and caution against perceiving the countries where labor is sourced as passive policy-takers, since these countries often recognize some benefits of migration, including reduced youth unemployment and increased remittances (Wanklin 2025). In conclusion, even institutions traditionally anchored within a national context, such as skill formation, are influenced by transnational processes and interdependencies that undermine their connections to the national political economy and their contours become increasingly transnational.

Cecilia Ivardi is a PhD candidate in Political Economy at the University of St.Gallen. She is involved in the research funded by the Swiss Leading House GOVPET, focused on the governance of Vocational Education and Training (VET). Her research focuses on how advanced democracies adapt to societal transformations such as the rise of the knowledge economy and examines the policy areas of education, labor markets and migration. She is particularly interested in the ideas and discourses through which national elites steer adaptation processes. To study these, she uses a mixed-methods approach that combines insights from discourse network analysis (DNA) with case studies.

Linda Wanklin is doctoral researcher at the University of St. Gallen, where she is finalising her PhD in International Affairs and Political Economy. As a researcher within the Swiss Leading House GOVPET, she is primarily interested in the governance of skill formation systems and policy transfer initiatives in the field of vocational education and training (VET), aiming to explain their rise. Her research is predominantly theoretical. In addition to her doctoral studies, Linda works as a thematic expert for the Donor Committee for dual VET in development cooperation (DC dVET). Her research interests are, among others, driven by her previous experience working in the field of international development for various organisations, including the German Development Cooperation (GIZ), the International Labour Organization (ILO), and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

This blog post is based on their paper that won the 2023 Award for Excellent Paper from an Emerging Scholar from the ECPR Standing Group ‘Knowledge Politics and Policies’. The award was celebrated during the 2024 ECPR General Conference. This was the seventh time this prize was awarded. Previous winners are Anke Reinhardt, Adrienn Nyircsák, Alexander Mitterle, Justyna Bandola-Gill, Emma Sabzalieva, Olivier Provini and Que Anh Dang.

Baccaro, L., Blyth, M. and Pontusson, J. (2022) Diminishing Returns: The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Culpepper, P.D. and Finegold, D. (2001). The German Skills Machine: Sustaining Comparative Advantage in a Global Economy. New York, Bergham Books.

Fort, T. C. (2017) ‘Technology and production fragmentation: Domestic versus foreign sourcing’, The Review of Economic Studies, 84, 650–687.

Hassel, A. and Palier, B. (2021). Growth and Welfare in Advanced Capitalist Economies: How Have Growth Regimes Evolved?, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Herrigel, G. (2015) ‘Globalization and the German industrial production model’, Journal for Labour Market Research, 48, 133–149.

Herrigel, G., Voskamp, U. and Wittke, V. (2017) ‘Einleitung: Globale Qualitätsproduktion – Annäherung an ein neues Muster transnationaler Produktion’. In Herrigel, G., Voskamp, U. and Wittke, V. (eds) Globale Qualitätsproduktion Transnationale Produktionssysteme in der Automobilzulieferindustrie und im Maschinenbau, Frankfurt am Main, Campus.

Li, J. and Pilz, M. (2023) ‘International transfer of vocational education and training: A literature review’, Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 75, 185–218.

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For most of our five decades in the EU, Britain was broadly pro-European. In the 1975 referendum, every part of the UK voted decisively to remain, with a huge 35-point margin. Pro-Europe sentiment remained strong for years. Polls in 2014 and 2015 showed Remain support at 56% and 61% respectively – well ahead of Leave.

The 2016 referendum was the anomaly. The Leave win was narrow – just 4% – and only 37% of the total electorate voted for it. Two of the UK’s four nations, Scotland and Northern Ireland, voted clearly to remain.

This was not a national consensus. Unlike in 1975, when the public voted with knowledge of the terms of membership, the 2016 referendum was held before any exit deal was known – and no confirmation vote followed.

Today, the British people have seen the consequences.

The economy is weaker, exports are down, and British citizens have lost their freedom to live, work and love across the continent. Promised benefits never materialised. Instead, businesses struggle with red tape, and farmers and fishers feel betrayed.

Now, poll after poll confirms what most of us feel: Brexit was a mistake. According to YouGov, 55% of Britons now say the nation was wrong to vote to leave the EU in 2016, with the same proportion saying they would support rejoining. Just 11% believe Brexit has been more of a success than a failure.

And now, a new poll this month reveals that a clear majority of UK voters want the government to prioritise rebuilding trade ties with the EU, rather than seeking a new economic deal with the US. Voters see Europe as key to future prosperity and security.

There’s also a new urgency. With Donald Trump back and threatening global trade with new tariffs, American democracy is under strain and no longer a stable ally. The UK must secure its future by aligning more closely with Europe – our neighbours who share our values, our economy, and our security interests.

Britain’s natural home is in the EU, among partners who respect international law, uphold democratic norms, and work together to face global challenges – from climate change to military threats.

We must stop pretending Brexit was a done deal. In a democracy, no decision is forever. When the facts change, when the people change their minds, when the nation suffers – there must be a democratic way forward.

It’s time to ask the British people again. Not out of bitterness, but because the country deserves better. The Brexit experiment has failed. Let’s restore our place in Europe – and our future.

Sources

• Ipsos poll  (2014)
• Ipsos (2015)
• YouGov ‘Few Britons think Brexit was good for anything’
• National Institute of Economic and Social Research: Revising the effect of Brexit
• The Guardian ‘Voters want Keir Starmer to focus on rebuilding trade ties with EU, poll reveals’ 

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by Matti Ylönen (Academy of Finland Research Fellow; Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki)

A few years ago, the idea of the Brussels effect took the European Union (EU) circles by storm as an exciting new framework for understanding the global exemplary impact of the EU rules. Now, it faces tumultuous waters as Donald Trump has returned to the White House, bringing with him Elon Musk and the backing from the emerging American tech oligarchy. They portray the EU more as an adversary than an ally, being irked by the major Acts and competition policy measures that the EU has introduced to reign in the power of large online platforms, digital gatekeeper firms, and large language models.

To grasp the challenge that the new world political situation poses for the Brussels effect, we must start by revising its original definitions. Anu Bradford devised the Brussels Effect in the 2010s to understand how the stalemate in global governance and American politics had given an outsized role for the EU as a global rule-maker. The big breakthrough of this concept came with her 2020 book The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World. In this blog post, I summarize my reconceptualization of the Brussels effect, recently published in JCMS.

Bradford envisioned the de facto effect encompassing Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) adjusting their global conduct to the EU rules. The de jure effect involved third countries adopting EU-style regulations for legislative simplicity, for enticing MNEs, or through policy diffusion via ‘economic and political treaties and via international organizations and governmental networks’. I illustrate Bradford’s original theory with Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. The original Brussels Effect

Bradford’s theory was a welcomed expansion from the theories of ‘Europeanization’, ‘market power Europe’ and ‘normative power Europe’, but its one-directionality and its focus on EU rules (instead of institutions) hindered its applicability in situations where the EU policy faces significant lobbying efforts or resistance. Moreover, the original definitions of de facto/jure effects lacked analytical tools for understanding how such effects may evolve over time. These are some of the key issues that I address in my reconceptualization of the Brussels effect.

Accordingly, Figure 2 below receonceptualizes the Brussels effect with systematic definitions of instrumental/structural power drawn from the International Political Economy (IPE) literature. (In key role here are two IPE articles: How does business power operate? A framework for its working mechanisms, and Structural power and bank bailouts in the United Kingdom and the United States.)

Whereas instrumental power means the power of A over B to make B to do something they otherwise would not do, structural power concerns the power to shape and determine the structures of the global political economy. It can be divided into two aspects. First, automatic capacities can be exemplified with the power that the control over the US dollar supply wields to the United States, given how decisions over the US monetary policy influence other jurisdictions. Second, structural power can manifest in agents’ strategic mobilization of resources that derive from their structural power.
Figure 2. The reconceptualized Brussels Effect

The ability of the de facto effect to make MNEs use EU requirements as a yardstick for their global operations essentially involves structural power as an automatic reaction to EU rules. Such adaptation is automatic in a sense that it does not require active involvement from the EU – companies adopt rules modeled after the EU because they want to avoid multiple overlapping reporting systems.

In the reconceptualiztion of the original Brussels effect, the EU’s structural power also affects third countries as an automatic reaction – either through direct exemplary influence, or through the lobbying efforts multinational corporations. When mediated by private firms, this power can be either instrumental or structural, depending on the amount of leverage they have over particular governments.

Now that the two mechanisms of the Brussels Effect have been given unified definitions, opportunities emerge for a broader inquiry into the two-way power relations associated with this effect. First, we much consider how the Brussels effect has taken on a life of its own in the speeches and texts of prominent EU policymakers. This tendency is addressed in the middle of Figure 2 by highlighting the potential socializing role of the Brussels effect.

The successful mainstreaming of this effect can even turn it into a conscious policy goal for European policymakers, signaling its transformation from an automatic capacity to strategic mobilization of the EU’s resources in its external relations. Such tendencies also highlight the need to approach the EU as (a set of) institutions instead of defining the Brussels Effect merely as the global impact of the EU rules. Institutions (such as the Commission or the Parliament) may advance the Brussels Effect also in more indirect ways that what can be captured with the term ‘rules’ .

Second, Figure 2 tackles the attempts by MNEs and third countries to influence or even derail the Brussels effect across policy processes. Such advocacy efforts are captured by highlighting the power of these actors to influence EU rules in different stages of policymaking. This advocacy can signal either instrumental or structural power, depending on the power resources an MNE or a third country possess.

The top-right corner of Figure 2 also introduces the modified de facto effect. It involves situations where companies are lobbying for EU-styled rules in third countries in form, while aiming to dilute their contents. In my article, I argue that such dynamics have characterized, for example, the dynamics surrounding the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.

The second part of my article addresses various forms that such advocacy can take across the EU’s policymaking cycle, building on the five background conditions that Bradford outlined for the Brussels effect to occur: market size, inelastic targets, regulatory capacity, stringent standards, and their non-divisibility. Two of them – market size and inelastic targets of regulation – are practically beyond influence for external actors. However, external actors can try to influence the remaining pillars. Figure 3 captures such dynamics.

Figure 3. Ways to undermine the necessary background conditions of the Brussels Effect

An important, novel starting point for Figure 3 is that the potential forms of the Brussels effect can change significantly as EU rules progress from the drafting stage to political, juridical and enforcement stages. If third countries copy EU-styled rules immediately after they have been ratified, they essentially mimic the political will of the EU. However, such policy diffusion can take very different forms after the EU rules have been tested in courts and enforced, possibly with significantly altered outcomes. This aspect has received insufficient attention in the literature.

Figure 3 also highlights how external actors can weaken regulatory capacity and the stringency of standards in various stages of policymaking. Regulatory capacity can be weakened through exerting ‘epistemic authority’ by flooding decision-making processes with misleading policy inputs. Poaching skilled policymakers from the EU institutions may also serve similar purposes. Stringency of standards, in turn, can be weakened for example by court cases with malicious intent. Finally, the non-divisibility of the EU rules can be weakened by weaponizing other policy fields (such as trade policy) to counteract the EU’s measures.

In conclusion, my reconceptualizon of the Brussels effect empowers this framework with the analytical tools for understanding the advocacy dynamics surrounding this effect in a pivotal situation where American tech executives are calling for Trump to counteract the EU’s competition and tech policy rules. Importantly, this contribution can also help policymakers to identify the weakest links in the EU policy processes for external influence. Such an understanding is crucial for strengthening the institutions that sustain democratic decision-making in the Union.

Matti Ylönen is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki, acting as a Principal Investigator in a project “Seeing Like a Tech Firm: Advocacy in the Era of Platform Capitalism”. He has published extensively on the political roles of various private actors in global political economy.

The post Reconceptualizing the Brussels Effect amidst the looming tech oligarchy appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

His imposition of sweeping tariffs on most imports to the United States is provoking retaliatory tariffs on American exports – an economically self-harming spiral that will ultimately make everyone poorer, including Americans.

In stark contrast stands the European Union.

The EU Single Market offers free, frictionless trade among its members – benefiting businesses and consumers alike.

This system, rooted in cooperation rather than confrontation, has created the largest and most successful trading bloc in the world.

The EU’s model is so attractive that most countries in Europe are either members or are actively seeking membership. That includes:

27 full EU member states
10 countries formally applying to join the EU
4 non-member countries in the EU Single Market
3 negotiating to join the Single Market

That’s 44 out of 51 European countries committed in some way to the EU project.

The outliers? Belarus, Russia, and – uniquely – Britain, the only member-state to have left the EU.

And not only most European countries want to be in the EU.

Trump’s tariff regime and erratic international behaviour have alarmed America’s closest allies.

In a revealing March 2025 poll by Abacus Data, 44% of Canadians said they supported their government exploring EU membership if Trump continued down a path of economic nationalism and annexation threats, while only 34% were opposed and 23% were unsure.

While the EU currently restricts full membership to European nations, the idea of expanding its reach is gaining traction as a stabilising global force.

But Britain’s decision to leave the EU has brought economic pain, not prosperity.

The UK economy has underperformed compared to EU economies since 2016, with losses in trade, foreign investment, and labour force dynamism.

UK exports to the EU fell sharply post-Brexit, and supply chain frictions have become the norm.

Meanwhile, EU countries enjoy:

Tariff-free and frictionless access to one another’s markets
Shared standards and regulations that cut red tape
Collective bargaining power on the global stage
Freedom of movement for citizens and workers
Stronger security cooperation on everything from cyber threats to policing

This isn’t just about trade – it’s about belonging to a political and economic union that defends democratic values, environmental standards, and social protections.

In the face of rising authoritarianism and isolationism, the EU offers a platform for peace, prosperity, and shared sovereignty.

In 1948, Winston Churchill famously said:

“We cannot aim for anything less than the union of Europe as a whole.”

Churchill’s vision of a united Europe is nearly fulfilled.

Yet Britain now sits outside the EU – like Russia and Belarus. We oppose their actions, certainly, but do we really want to be grouped with Europe’s outsiders rather than its democratic partners?

While populist parties exist in most EU countries, none of the EU’s 27 members is seeking to leave.

Quite the opposite: membership applications and pro-EU sentiment are rising. In countries such as Ukraine and Moldova, joining the EU is seen not only as a route to prosperity but as a shield against authoritarian threats from Moscow.

Even in Britain, public opinion is shifting. Polls consistently show a clear majority now believe Brexit was a mistake.

The economic evidence is mounting – and so is the political will for change.

Trump’s tariff-driven nationalism may grab headlines, but the EU’s quietly successful model of cooperation is what delivers real, long-term benefits.

For Britain, the choice is clear:

Align with global protectionists and economic saboteurs
Or rejoin the most successful peace and trade project in human history

It’s time to liberate ourselves – not through tariffs, but through renewed European solidarity.

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Between 2018 and 2020, during President Trump’s first term of office, the United States launched a major trade confrontation by imposing widespread tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of imports.

The goal was to reduce the US trade deficit, revive domestic manufacturing, and pressure trade partners – especially China – to agree to more favourable terms.

Instead, the result was an economically damaging trade war with global consequences.

The tariffs began with steel and aluminium, then expanded to include a wide range of goods from China, the EU, Canada, and Mexico.

In response, these countries hit back with retaliatory tariffs on American exports, particularly agricultural products.

What followed was a surge in farm bankruptcies, particularly across the Midwest, where soybean and dairy producers lost key export markets almost overnight.

Meanwhile, the steel and aluminium industries – supposedly the intended beneficiaries – also suffered job losses. Although prices for domestic steel temporarily rose, the higher input costs hurt manufacturers that rely on imported components, from carmakers to construction firms.

The tariffs also failed in their central aim: reducing the trade deficit. By 2020, the US trade deficit remained largely unchanged, as importers shifted supply chains rather than returning production to the US.

For American consumers, tariffs acted as a tax. Prices increased on goods ranging from washing machines and electronics to canned beer and bicycles.

Studies by the Federal Reserve and academic institutions concluded that nearly the entire cost of the tariffs was passed on to US households and businesses.

The broader impact included uncertainty in global markets, reduced business investment, and strained diplomatic relations with key allies.

In short, the US tariff war from 2018 to 2020 caused disruption across multiple sectors, raised costs, and weakened trade relationships – without achieving its economic objectives.

When President Biden took office in 2021, many expected him to roll back the tariffs – but he largely left them in place.

Tariffs on over $300 billion of Chinese imports remained, along with duties on steel, aluminium, and other goods.

While Biden eased tensions with allies like the EU by converting some tariffs into quotas, he kept most of Trump’s trade policies intact.

Rather than reversing the tariff war, Biden focused on domestic industrial investment and supply chain resilience.

As Trump now moves to impose even broader tariffs on all imports to the United States, history offers a clear lesson: protectionism may offer the illusion of strength, but in reality, it brings economic damage, isolation, and long-term decline.

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Footnote: The 2018–2020 timeframe covers the core period when the US imposed sweeping tariffs and the most direct economic impacts were observed. After 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted global trade, making it harder to isolate the effects of tariffs alone.

Sources of evidence:

• The Economic Effects of the 2018 U.S. Trade Policy: A State-Level Analysis 
• The impact of the 2018 trade war on U.S. prices and welfare 
• The U.S. Trade Deficit: How Much Does It Matter? 

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As trade tensions rise again in the US, we must remember one thing: no country in history has ever made itself better off by imposing blanket tariffs on all imports.

It has never worked – and it never will.

Just look at the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of the 1930s. It was supposed to protect American jobs during the Great Depression.

Instead, it sparked a global trade war, collapsed international markets, and deepened the economic misery.

World trade fell by more than 60%.

Or take Argentina, where protectionist policies in the 2000s caused runaway inflation, supply shortages, and long-term economic decline.

India, too, suffered from decades of self-imposed isolation until it opened up in the 1990s and began to grow.

The pattern is always the same. Broad import restrictions lead to rising prices, empty shelves, economic isolation, and weakened competitiveness.

There is not a single modern example of blanket tariffs making a country stronger or richer.

By contrast, open, rules-based trade works.

The EU Single Market, built on free movement of goods, services, capital and people, has delivered prosperity, growth, and geopolitical stability.

EU GDP has grown significantly since the development of the Single Market, with countries like Germany and the Netherlands thriving through trade.

China’s economic rise accelerated after it reduced tariffs and joined the WTO in 2001. Export-led growth fuelled rapid development – not isolationism.

Yes, the EU uses tariffs – but strategically and only when necessary, such as when a trading partner unfairly subsidises its industries. The goal is always fair trade, not retreat from it.

Free and frictionless trade doesn’t happen by accident. It requires shared rules, mutual trust, and political alignment.

That’s what the EU provides: a stable, democratic framework for trading cooperation and collective strength.

Compare that with President Trump’s closed-shop tariff policies, which failed during his first term in office – raising prices, hurting farmers and manufacturers, and doing nothing to reduce the trade deficit.

Now he promises even more tariffs, which risk even greater economic damage. It’s a race to the bottom.

The immediate market response underscores this risk.

Following President Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement on 2 April 2025 of sweeping new tariffs – including a baseline 10% tariff on all imports and much higher rates on specific countries and products – global stock markets plummeted.

In the two days that followed:

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by approximately 3,900 points, a drop of just over 9%.
• The S&P 500 declined by around 600 points, falling by almost 11%.
• The Nasdaq Composite dropped by roughly 1,900 points, marking a fall of more than 11%.

These were the most significant two-day losses for these indices in history, wiping out an estimated $6.6 trillion in global market value.

Major tech stocks were hit especially hard – Apple lost over $600 billion in market value in the two days following ‘Liberation Day’, while Nvidia’s market capitalisation fell by nearly $400 billion.

Other chipmakers also suffered steep losses amid fears of tariff-driven supply chain shocks and rising consumer prices.

International markets were hit just as hard.

• The FTSE 100 fell by over 6%, its worst two-day performance in five years.
• Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped nearly 9% over the same period.

The global sell-off reflected deep investor alarm over the potential economic fallout of Trump’s blanket tariffs and growing fears of a full-scale global trade war.

Britain now faces a clear choice.

• Stay lost-at-sea, stuck between a failing US trade policy and a thriving EU.
• Or rejoin the bloc that shares our values and boosts our economy.

The EU offers Britain a future. Trump’s America offers only decline.

Let’s stop drifting. It’s time to come home.

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Sources of evidence:

• Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and Its Impact on the Great Depression
• Argentina’s Protectionist Policies Leading to Economic Challenges
• India’s Pre-1990s Protectionism and Subsequent Economic Liberalization
• EU Single Market’s Contribution to Economic Growth
• China’s WTO Accession and Export-Led Growth

During his ‘Liberation Day’ announcement President Trump held up a chart claiming to list the tariffs that other countries charge for USA imports. But it was nothing of the sort. 

The figures in that graphic aren’t actual tariff rates. They refer to trade deficits, not the tariffs charged by each country on U.S. imports.

That’s been confirmed by independent fact-checkers, including Euronews, PolitiFact and BBC.

It’s a common confusion (and perhaps a deliberate one), but it’s important to distinguish between a trade imbalance and an actual import tax.

For example, in his chart Trump claimed that the EU charged the USA a tariff of “39%” on imports from the USA. But that isn’t an actual tariff. It refers to the trade deficit between the US and the EU – not the tariffs the EU charges on US goods. They’re not the same thing.

In reality, the EU’s average tariff on U.S. goods is around 1%, according to the European Commission – and many goods, especially under sector-specific agreements, already move tariff-free.

As for “reciprocal” tariffs, the US also imposes tariffs and non-tariff barriers, and uses subsidies in key industries like agriculture and steel.

A trade deficit simply means one country imports more than it exports. But that’s not the fault of the exporter – it reflects things like consumer demand, industrial focus, and competitiveness in the importing country.

As many economists have pointed out: if a country isn’t exporting enough, it should focus on improving its products, boosting competitiveness, or investing in innovation – not blaming its trading partners.

Also, it’s often overlooked that the U.S. runs a significant trade surplus with the EU in services, including finance, tech, and consultancy. But this isn’t reflected in the rhetoric or the “tariff charts” doing the rounds.

If we want a fair view of the EU–U.S. trade relationship, we have to consider goods and services. The EU isn’t “taxing” the U.S. unfairly – especially when actual EU tariffs average around 1%, and many sectors are tariff-free under WTO rules and bilateral agreements.

Reciprocity only makes sense when the whole picture is considered.

Putting up blanket tariffs may sound tough, but in reality, they often just raise prices for consumers, hurt exporters, and trigger retaliation. Long-term, it’s smarter to grow trade, not restrict it.

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________________________________________________________________________

• Related poster: Almost every European country is now in the EU or wants to be.

• Related video: The peace Brexit forgot

• Related video: What the UK has lost – the EU Single Market

The post Let’s liberate ourselves from Trump’s so-called ‘Liberation Day’ appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Myroslava Hladchenko

Global university rankings have got prominence in recent decades. Nation-states develop evaluation policies drawing on the assessment criteria of world rankings aiming their universities to take higher positions in these rankings (Salmi & Saroyan, 2007). QS Rankings is one of them. It is a profitable business that generated €46 m in revenue in 2019 (Shahjahan et al., 2022). Research assessment by QS Rankings takes the form of citations (excluding self-citations) per faculty indicator (Staff, 2021).

Since the 2010s Ukrainian media and the education ministry have traced the positions of Ukrainian universities in QS Rankings (Higher Education, 2011). However, since 2022, everyday survival has taken priority over research in the lives of Ukrainian scholars. The paradox of war is that, while life-threatening conditions, shelling, blackouts and economic recession are the part of everyday reality, work obligations and responsibilities remain the same as they were in pre-war life. This applies to all, including scholars. Despite the war, Ukrainian scholars continue to publish which deserves respect. As well, Ukrainian universities participate in QS Rankings 2025.

However, QS is a for-profit company the aim of which is not to contribute to societal well-being but to increase its profits. Elsevier which provides data for QS is another for-profit company the aim of which is also to increase revenue. The same concerns publishers issuing Gold Open Access journals, as many of them are oriented on publishing as many articles as possible to ensure profits.

The university is a key institution for social and economic development in a knowledge-intensive society (Mohrman et al., 2008). University performance is supposed to result in the quality of life, technological progress and social well-being of the nation. These are the ends that the university is supposed to achieve through research. Publications are just one of the means of achieving these ends. QS Rankings has turned the means of universities into their ends. The university’s position in the global ranking reflects, first, the economic development of the country. Second, the university position at the national level. A university cannot increase its position in the ranking, if there is no economic growth and beneficial conditions for science in the country. On the other hand, the university should contribute to economic growth at the national level.

The examination of the assessment of six Ukrainian universities in QS Rankings 2025, first, raise concerns regarding the mismatch between the faculty staff of universities announced on the QS Rankings website and the number of authors affiliated with the explored institutions in their research outputs. Second, it is unclear why the articles in the journals discontinued from Scopus are still in Scopus and correspondingly they are not excluded from the research output assessed by QS Rankings. Third, QS Rankings uses closed data. University managers do not have access to these data and cannot use them while developing research assessment policies. While developing the research assessment policies, universities mostly use SciVal provided by Scopus for a fee. However, there is a mismatch in data that shows SciVal and data that uses QS Rankings. First, QS Rankings normalises only by disciplines but SciVal normalises by year, discipline and document type. As conference papers are less cited than articles, normalisation by a document type results in a high FWCI shown by SciVal. Second, QS Rankings excludes self-citations but SciVal provides data including self-citations.

The IRN (International Research Network) index introduced by QS Rankings requires universities to increase the number of countries they collaborate with. It means that not academics but QS Rankings decides with whom they need to collaborate. Aiming to increase the IRN index, Sumy State University gives points if the article increases the number of collaborating countries. This is nothing else but means-ends decoupling.

The study findings resonate with the other studies that raise concerns about the ability of QS Rankings as well as other rankings to be a trustworthy assessment tool (Chirikov, 2023; Teixeira da Silva, 2024; Shahjahan, et al., 2021). In 2024, the University Zurich has withdrawn from the ranking published by Times Higher Education magazine. University announced that rankings create false incentives focusing on measurable output, forcing universities to increase the number of publications rather than prioritise the quality of content (Swissinfo, 2024). In 2023, Korean universities boycotted QS Rankings because of the IRN index (Jung & Sharma, 2023).

Six Ukrainian universities participating in QS Rankings 2025 have publications in discontinued from Scopus and MDPI journals. MDPI journals is a fast and easy way of publishing for a fee. The question is why academics from a country at war with underfunding science and low salaries are ready to pay an unaffordable APC (article processing fee). Arguably there is a high degree of international collaboration in articles in MDPI journals because Ukrainian academics are interested in finding a foreign co-author able to pay an APC. However, the question is who benefits from publications with a high APC except for publishers that make revenue? Academics publish at the cost of science because the money spent on APCs could be invested in science.

The findings highlight that articles (co)-authored by Ukrainian academics co-affiliated with foreign institutions or foreign academics have a higher impact than articles authored by only Ukrainian researchers. The share of articles authored by only Ukrainian authors ranges from 52.6% to 73.3%. Thus, Ukrainian academics have the space to strengthen collaboration with foreign colleagues.

To summarise, the research assessment criteria at the global, national and university levels must be oriented towards scientific excellence that results in economic growth and societal well-being. Ukrainian case shows that means-ends decoupling at the global, national and organisational levels results in diversion of critical resources, both financial and human. This negatively impacts on the development of society, the economy and the fulfilment of the talents of individuals in academia as well.

Myroslava Hladchenko is researcher in Kyiv, Ukraine. Her research focuses on higher education, universities and research assessment. This blog post is based on her recent article Hladchenko, M. (2025) Ukrainian universities in QS World University Rankings: when the means become ends. Scientometrics 130, 969–997. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-05165-2  

Acknowledgements

This project has received funding through the MSCA4Ukraine project, which is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the MSCA4Ukraine Consortium as a whole nor any individual member institutions of the MSCA4Ukraine Consortium can be held responsible for them.

References

Chirikov, I. (2023). Does conflict of interest distort global university rankings?. Higher education, 86(4), 791-808.

Higher Education (2011). Ukrainian universities at first in the global rankings http://vnz.org.ua/statti/879-ukrayinski-vnz-upershe-v-mizhnarodnomu-rejtyngu-zadovoleni-ne-vsi

Jung, U., and Sharma, Y. (2023) Korean universities unite against QS ranking changes https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20230704195008557

Mohrman, K., Ma, W., & Baker, D. (2008). The research university in transition: The emerging global model. Higher Education Policy, 21(1), 5–27

Salmi, J., & Saroyan, A. (2007). League tables as policy instruments: Uses and misuses. Higher education management and policy, 19(2), 1-38.

Shahjahan, R. A., Grimm, A., & Allen, R. M. (2021). The “LOOMING DISASTER” for higher education: How commercial rankers use social media to amplify and foster affect. Higher Education, 1-17.

Shahjahan, R. A., Sonneveldt, E. L., Estera, A. L., & Bae, S. (2022). Emoscapes and commercial university rankers: the role of affect in global higher education policy. Critical Studies in Education, 63(3), 275-290.

Staff, W. (2021). Understanding the methodology: QS World University Rankings https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings-articles/world-university-rankings/understanding-methodology-qs-world-university-rankings

Swissinfo (2024) University of Zurich withdraws from international university ranking https://education.am/abroad_en/tpost/48hm4eipi1-university-of-zurich-withdraws-from-inte

Teixeira da Silva, J. A. (2024). How are global university rankings adjusted for erroneous science, fraud and misconduct? Posterior reduction or adjustment in rankings in response to retractions and invalidation of scientific findings. Journal of Information Science, 01655515241269499.

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by Dr Caroline Emberson (Nottingham University Business School and the University of Nottingham’s Rights Lab)

New research, recently published in JCMS, examines the detection of labour exploitation within domestic care services. In the article, I identify a range of municipal activities including whistleblowing procedures; care-worker professionalisation; the expansion of employee’s roles and inter-agency data analysis. Yet my findings show that significant gaps still exist in the regulation of labour exploitation among domestic workers, particularly in relation to live-in care workers who are usually beyond the reach of national labour inspectorates.

I investigated municipal practices in four European countries: France, Italy, Sweden and The Netherlands. These countries allow paired comparison of practices in different welfare regime trajectory types. For example, long-term care in France and Italy has evolved from a tradition of conservative familialism – where the family is seen as the main support provider. Whereas in Sweden and The Netherlands, welfare services have followed universalist egalitarianism principles: where the state aims to provide access for all those in need.

In each of these different contexts, I asked: what actions have municipal government and other regional actors taken to mitigate the risks of labour exploitation among domestic care workers and what barriers remain?

These are important questions. Policy instruments such as Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings (ECAT) place human rights protections at the centre of European policymaking. Recent horizontal policy developments open up the possibility for the development of public procurement mechanisms to achieve these social policy aims. However, legal scholars have identified both risks and dilemmas for the state as it attempts to leverage its role as a ‘buyer’ to improve human rights. EU regional governments, sometimes in the guise of the local municipality, are important procurers and administrators of domestic care, a service which is, increasingly, delivered in the home. What role do these local municipalities play in guaranteeing the working conditions of these increasing numbers of domestic care workers?

My findings reveal a significant gap in labour enforcement regulation among domestic care workers. At the time of writing, in every case care workers’ conditions were beyond the scope of the respective national labour inspectorates, who are forced still to view the domestic setting as a private domain.

In addition, the governance activities that have emerged among regional state actors, particularly at the municipal level also warrant improvement. While initiatives to enhance individual agency are more commonly reported in traditionally familial welfare regimes, collective actions are described more frequently in countries with a more universalist approach to care provision. Importantly, my findings from the studies conducted in The Netherlands and Sweden do suggest that municipal roles to combat labour exploitation are starting to emerge. However, in France and Italy greater emphasis was placed upon enhancement of the agency of individual workers within an environment that placed significant cultural reliance upon a cohort of individualised domestic workers. Furthermore, in Sweden and The Netherlands, my informants placed greater emphasis on the collective response of municipal actors. These practitioners engaged with professionals in other national bodies to identify and eradicate labour malpractices.

In each of the countries I studied, my informants had no doubt that the phenomenon of exploitation was real. However, even where municipal engagement to address these problems was at its most extensive, collective action could be hampered by legacy legislation.

Two specific examples emerged at the time of the research. The Netherlands Regulations for Home Services prevented ratification of the ILO C189 Domestic Workers Convention, 2011, which aims to provide conditions for domestic workers that are no less favourable than those of other workers. My second example comes from the Swedish case study. Here, while much sophisticated gender-blind legislation is in force, my informants reported that labour enforcement legislation was still relatively immature and failed to recognise the most severe forms of labour exploitation, referred to in some third countries as modern slavery.

Despite these legislative gaps, findings from the studies conducted in The Netherlands and Sweden show that those in municipal roles are starting to change their practices to combat labour exploitation. This is an important and significant finding. In Amsterdam, specialist anti-trafficking coordinators have been appointed and the responsibilities of other front-line workers widened, including those in fire and building safety roles. Likewise, in Sweden specialist regional coordination roles have been introduced in the municipality of Jonkoping to support the gender equality aims of the Swedish Gender Equality Agency. Unfortunately, the regulatory gaps in labour inspection noted earlier mean that the enforcement activities of these role-holders remain focused predominantly on communal workplaces such as the factory. Scrutiny of the domestic sphere remains off-limits and this, coupled with resource limitations, continue to make it difficult for these municipal employees to uncover exploitation in the home.

The EU and its member states clearly have a duty not only to protect, but also to respect, human rights in the domestic care services that they fund. Municipalities with responsibility for the oversight of services of this type across the EU must act to ensure that the working conditions of domestic care workers are acceptable. To do this, the EU should consider how to address the regulatory loophole that precludes labour inspection within private households. Where legacy legislative regimes persist, EU members states should review and amend national legislation to provide equal rights for domestic care workers and work to ratify ILO convention C189. Where domestic workers’ contracts remain largely informal, as was the case in Italy, my informants suggest that member states should also consider the introduction of employer incentives to encourage formal contracting. As academics, we could usefully improve our understanding of the gendered nature of labour exploitation and, hence, appropriate labour standards enforcement actions.

Dr Caroline Emberson is Assistant Professor in Operations Management at Nottingham University Business School in the United Kingdom and a member of the University’s Rights Lab research group. Her research interests include modern slavery, especially in the supply chains of long-term care. She has consulted widely, giving evidence to UK Government and House of Lords Inquiries and the Canadian Government. Follow Dr Emberson on Twitter.

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by Dr Nicole Scicluna (Hong Kong Baptist University)

As we pass the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EU continues to deal with the many challenges to which the conflict has given rise. An overarching challenge is that of maintaining unity of purpose and of action – a task that becomes more difficult as the Trump administration’s apparent animosity towards Ukraine and Europe threatens the EU’s Ukraine strategy from without and as recalcitrant national leaders seek to undermine it from within.

My recent contribution to JCMS deals with another aspect of the unity challenge; namely that of maintaining the coherence of the EU’s legal order. In particular, this challenge has manifested on the EU’s external borders with Russia and Belarus. One aspect of it is well known – what has been described as the ‘instrumentalisation’ of migration by the Russian and Belarusian regimes, which have encouraged and facilitated the movement of would-be asylum seekers and migrants across the EU’s Eastern frontiers. The response of the affected countries, particularly Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, has garnered much attention and consternation for the way in which it has prioritised the securitisation of borders over the human rights and humanitarian needs of vulnerable people. Criticism has extended to the European Commission for not only condoning non-compliance with existing EU asylum law, but actually making it easier for states to derogate from their legal obligations.

Yet, this is not the only respect in which the actions of countries on the EU’s Eastern border undermine the coherence of the EU’s legal order. The treatment of Russian nationals seeking entry to Europe also warrants attention. This is an issue that goes back to the early months of the war and to debates over the type, breadth and depth of sanctions that should be levied on Russia for its illegal and brutal aggression. As the EU was placing sanctions on individuals and companies directly associated with the Russian government or with connections to the war, there were suggestions from some quarters that restrictive measures should be extended to the Russian population as a whole, with a focus on Russian tourists in the Schengen area.

Then-Estonian prime minister and now-EU high representative, Kaja Kallas, for example, argued that travel to Europe was ‘a privilege not a human right’ and that the privilege should be withdrawn from Russians owing to the illegal war their government was waging on Europe’s borders. The question was put on the agenda of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Prague in August 2022, at which the idea of a total ban on Russian tourists obtaining Schengen visas was rejected.

Nevertheless, on 8 September 2022, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland jointly announced that they would begin refusing entry to Russians holding Schengen visas issued by other member states. After some hesitation over the legality and viability of such an approach, Finland announced that it would also stop receiving visa applications in Russia and would deny entry to Russian holders of Schengen visas on 29 September 2022. Thus, the five EU member states bordering on Russia and/or Belarus (and which, therefore, account for the vast majority of Russians entering Schengen, given that the EU closed its airspace to flights originating in Russia at the outset of the war) effectively replicated among themselves the kind of Russian tourism ban that had been rejected by the Council.

The problem with this ‘regional solution’ is that it likely violates Schengen law, which does not allow for nationality-based bans on the granting of Schengen visas or entry at Schengen borders. And yet, the Commission has refrained from criticising these legally dubious policies, much less initiating any kind of enforcement action.

Would-be Russian tourists are not an obvious target for sympathy. But putting aside the substance of the dispute, the larger issue is that of creeping member state unilateralism and the Commission’s permissiveness towards it. Political agreement and legal obligation are the European Union’s lifeblood. When member states act outside the limits of what EU law permits, it is for the Commission, as ‘guardian of the treaties’, to take the lead in seeking redress. Yet, research has shown a steady decline in the number of infringements opened by the Commission over the past two decades. Moreover, the findings suggest that the proximate cause of this drop is not a fall in instances of probable non-compliance, but rather a growing preference inside the Commission for political solutions to legal compliance problems.

The Commission’s enforcement forbearance is especially evident when it comes to migration and borders. Aside from its deference to national prerogatives on migrant instrumentalisation, it has enabled – through both action and inaction – the widespread and prolonged reintroduction of internal border controls, seriously undermining one of the foundational principles of the Schengen area.

One may well understand why the Commission is reticent to lock horns with member states on matters of great political sensitivity. But at a moment when the prospective German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, wins an election campaigning on permanently reintroducing controls at all of Germany’s internal borders, the Commission’s tacit toleration of member state unilateralism seems to be contributing to an unravelling of foundational principles of EU legal order.

Dr Nicole Scicluna is an Assistant Professor in Government and International Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research and teaching interests include European and EU politics and law, and the relationship between international law and international politics. She can be contacted on Linkedin here and followed on X/Twitter here.

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EUHealthGov held its fifth Practitioner Perspective on 13 March 2025. We were delighted to host Sebastiano Lustig, Policy Coordinator for prevention, preparedness and response planning for medical countermeasures at the European Health Emergency preparedness and Response Authority (HERA). What follows is a summary of some of the key points addressed in the presentation. A recording is also available here.  

While the EU health security architecture predates COVID-19, the lessons learned from the pandemic, especially on the importance of coordination, have led this framework to be restructured and strengthened. Successful coordination during COVID, visible notably in mechanisms like joint procurement served as good examples to build on. However, the pandemic response was generally marked by a lack of coordination, which exposed fragmentation and vulnerabilities in supply chain of medical countermeasures (MCM). The new EU Health Security Framework aims to address this and represents the first pillar of the broader project to build a European Health Union announced by Commission President von der Leyen in 2020. The health security pillar includes the new Regulation on cross border health threats (replacing the 2013 Decision of the same name), strengthened mandates of the ECDC and EMA, and the creation of HERA. HERA deals specifically with MCMs, its mission is to strengthen the EU’s capacity to respond to future pandemics of other health threats, mainly by ensuring the provision of critical medical countermeasures. 

HERA’s work takes a so-called ‘end-to-end’ approach, covering each stage of the MCM from threat assessment (in partnership with the ECDC) through to stockpiling and everything in between. This approach was illustrated using the pandemic influenza case study, also pointing out that, at the R&D stage, HERA recently established a structure for coordinating clinical trials. The coordination role of HERA was also emphasised when outlining its interaction and collaboration with other EU institutions (in particular but not limited to the ECDC and EMA), industry and civil society stakeholder, and international actors to promote global health cooperation. 

HERA operates in two phases: preparedness and crisis. The activities and mechanisms of the crisis phase are set out in a separate emergency framework regulation. In addition to emergency measures aimed at accelerating the availability of crisis-relevant MCMs, the activation of the crisis phase triggers the set-up of a Health Crisis Board, composed of Commission officials, high-level member states representatives, and is the only structure within the EU health security framework that is co-chaired by the Council. 

Finally, the audience’s attention was drawn to two next steps: first, the upcoming release of a new strategy to support MCM against public health threats. Second, the assessment of national preparedness and response plan, a task undertaken by the ECDC, with the support of HERA.

You can watch the recording of the presentation here.

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It marked the birth of the European Economic Community, later known as the European Union. This ambitious new community emerged from the ruins of the Second World War, driven by a singular purpose: to secure lasting peace through unity.

The eleven founders of the European Union, including Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill, recognised that Europe’s brutal history of conflict demanded a new approach.

Twice in the 20th century, the continent had been devastated by world wars that began within its own borders.

To prevent history from repeating itself, these visionary leaders sought to create a social and political union of European nations – not merely a trading arrangement, but a commitment to coexistence, cooperation, and peace.

As articulated in the Treaty of Rome, the goal was “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe.” The achievement of six countries that had so recently been at war with each other was nothing short of remarkable.

Just months after the Treaty’s signing, Churchill delivered his final speech about Europe at London’s Central Hall, Westminster.

His message was clear:

“My message to Europe today is the same as it was ten years ago – unite. Europe’s security and prosperity lie in unity.”

This founding vision seems increasingly misunderstood in Britain.

Many Brexiters view the EU as a mere economic pact, overlooking its deeper purpose of fostering peace and unity.

Yet, on the continent, the importance of this community of nations remains widely understood and appreciated.

By severing ties, Britain has told its European allies that the remarkable EU project – built to safeguard peace and security – is less valuable to us than it is to them.

The question remains: Can our relationship with the rest of Europe ever truly heal?

• Anniversary of the Treaty of Rome: Watch this video and weep 



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In 2024 alone, drug companies reported 1,938 supply disruptions to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) – a sharp rise from 1,634 in 2023.

The worst-hit medications include essential treatments for epilepsy and cystic fibrosis, leaving vulnerable patients at risk.

This disturbing trend has been highlighted by the Nuffield Trust health think tank, which obtained the data under freedom of information laws.

Their analysis reveals a grim reality: while medicine shortages are a global issue, the UK’s situation is deteriorating faster than that of other European nations due to Brexit.

The root of the problem is evident.

The UK’s import growth of medicines has been the lowest among G7 countries since UK’s import growth of medicines has been the lowest among G7 countries since 2010, with the total value of imports falling by almost 20% since 2015 – the year before the EU referendum.

The collapse of supply chains previously connected to the EU is undeniable. As HM Revenue and Customs data shows, this decline is sharply concentrated on imports from the EU, making Brexit-related trade barriers the most likely cause.

Furthermore, UK drug exports to the European Economic Area – the 27 EU states plus Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein – have plummeted by a third since the 2016 Brexit vote.

The EU is responding to supply challenges by strengthening its internal systems, sharing supplies, and increasing domestic production.

Meanwhile, the UK finds itself increasingly isolated.

Pharmacies are on the frontline of this crisis. A survey by the National Pharmacy Association found that all 500 of its respondents were unable to fulfil at least one prescription daily due to unavailable medications.

This leaves patients distressed and frustrated, while pharmacists struggle to provide safe alternatives despite having suitable options on hand.

The government’s response has been to claim investment of up to £520 million to bolster domestic production of medicines and diagnostics.

However, without seamless integration into European supply chains, these measures fall far short of what is needed.

The solution is simple: end the madness of Brexit.

Rejoining the EU would restore the vital medicine supply chains that have been so needlessly severed. Britain cannot afford to remain on this destructive path.

It’s time to put patients first and repair the damage by rekindling cooperation with our closest and most important trading partner.

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The recent plan by President Ursula von der Leyen of a €150 billion European joint debt to fund the purchase of arms under the name ReArm Europe has sent shockwaves across the continent and beyond. The press announcement, made on March 4th, followed the infamous Oval Office meeting between US President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky. The bullyish scene marked a further decline in the liberal international order established by the US and its allies after the Second World War.

Against this backdrop, European leaders were quick to act. Meetings in the Elysée under the aegis of President Macron, gatherings in London with the British Prime Minister Starmer, or the recent European Council meeting on security policy signal the importance of recent events. However, it was von der Leyen’s announcement that seems to have ushered in a new age of European defence and security, but is that so?

The announcement focused on economic means to achieve a security goal, not on security itself. The EU is proposing to put its market power behind an initiative that will contribute to the long-term stability of that market. This is why the proposal must be seen through the lens of geoeconomics, not just defence or security.

Europe’s geoeconomic turn is nothing new. Even during the first von der Leyen Commission the President vowed to create a more geopolitical Commission, it was actually focused on a geoeconomic one. Geoeconomics are, according to Blackwill and Harris, “the use of economic instruments to promote and defend national (or European) interests, and to produce beneficial geopolitical results; and the effects of other nations’ economic actions on a country’s (or the EU’s) geopolitical goals”. Thus, it is clear that many of the Commission’s initiatives fall under this concept. It is worth mentioning a few that may have a direct bearing on Europe’s security and defence.

The first geoeconomic tool with a defence application that comes to mind is sanctions. These have long been part of the EU’s institutional architecture and rely on the size of the single market to damage the enemy’s economy in the short and medium term. They can take the form of import and export restrictions, asset freezes, or visa bans. Although they are branded as “peaceful tools of diplomacy”, they fit perfectly into the definition of geoeconomic tools provided above.

Another geoeconomic tool that can be directly applied to European security policy is the Foreign Direct Investment Screening Mechanism (FDI SM). This mechanism was legislated after Member States saw a worrying increase in Chinese investment in Europe, especially in sensitive industries. The same FDI SM could be directly applied to foreign investment targeting the European defence industry, again relying on the EU’s market power.

A number of strategies also complement these tools by defining what the EU’s priorities should be in different areas, such as 5G, critical raw materials, or energy, to name a few. The common denominator of all these geoeconomic instruments is their reliance on the size of the EU market and its attractiveness to other global economies. The measure recently proposed by von der Leyen on joint debt to buy weapons follows the same line. It has more to do with geoeconomics than with security or defence. From the point of view of competences, it makes sense for the EU institutions to focus on the Common Commercial Policy or the proper functioning of the internal market to guide EU policy, regardless of the specific policy area. Ultimately, these are also power struggles between the EU institutions and the Member States. However, it is unlikely that purely security measures will be led by the Commission in the short term. The creation of a common European army or further decisions to relaunch security integration will have to be spearheaded by the Member States.

All in all, the von der Leyen’s announcement is to be welcomed. The borrowing limit enshrined in the neoliberal rules imposed on the Member States by Maastricht is arbitrary. Its temporary lifting and mutualisation, as was the case during the Covid19 pandemic, is now considered an emergency measure in response to the emergency situation created by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the medium term, however, the repeated use of the same geoeconomic tool, the common debt, could become established. The only thing preventing the EU from unleashing its full economic power is the disagreement among member states on debt orthodoxy. It seems, as Monnet put it many years ago, that Europe is still built through crises and that it is indeed the sum of their solutions.

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It wasn’t the referendum.

The 2016 referendum, as explicitly stated in the Act of Parliament that created it, was advisory only and had no legal authority to decide Brexit. This was confirmed by the UK Supreme Court, which ruled that only Parliament could make the decision to leave the EU.

But Parliament didn’t make the decision either.

Following the referendum, MPs were never given the opportunity to debate and vote on the specific question of whether Brexit should happen. In January 2017, then-Brexit Secretary David Davis incorrectly told Parliament that a vote on the matter was unnecessary because ‘the decision’ had already been made by the referendum.

However, the Supreme Court had ruled that the referendum was not legally capable of making that decision.

In fact, the very reason the court case arose – thanks to Gina Miller’s legal challenge – was because Theresa May’s government had attempted to implement Brexit without any Parliamentary approval whatsoever.

David Davis advised MPs that since ‘the decision’ to leave had already been made, all Parliament needed to do was grant the Prime Minister the authority to notify the EU of an ‘intention’ to leave.

But an intention is not a decision. It’s not even binding.

The European Court of Justice later ruled that the UK could have cancelled Brexit at any time during the Article 50 notice period and remained an EU member on exactly the same terms. In other words, Brexit was fully reversible until 11pm on 31 January 2020, the date the UK formally left the EU.

In early 2017, Parliament was given one of the shortest bills in history – the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill. It simply stated:

(1) The Prime Minister may notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU.

(2) This section has effect despite any provision made by or under the European Communities Act 1972 or any other enactment.

Notably, this bill did not define the content of Theresa May’s Article 50 notification letter, which she unilaterally composed and sent to the EU. When Parliament passed the bill allowing May to notify the EU of an ‘intention’ to leave, the public was led to believe that MPs had voted to leave the EU.

Nothing of the sort had happened.

To reiterate: Parliament never debated or voted on the specific question of whether the UK should leave the EU.

This mystery was unravelled in June 2018 at a High Court hearing on the validity of Article 50. The court established that Theresa May, and Theresa May alone, made the decision to leave the EU.

Lord Justice Gross and Mr Justice Green ruled that the decision to leave was contained in the Prime Minister’s Article 50 notification letter to then-European Council President Donald Tusk on 29 March 2017.

In that letter, May wrote that ‘the people of the United Kingdom’ had made the decision to leave. But the Supreme Court had already ruled that the referendum had no legal authority to make any decision.

She also wrongly claimed that the ‘decision’ had been confirmed by Parliament, even though Parliament had only approved sending a notice of ‘intention’ to withdraw.

Article 50 requires a member state to trigger withdrawal from the EU “in accordance with its own constitutional requirements”. But the UK doesn’t have a codified constitution, and the advisory nature of the referendum complicated everything.

Would the written constitutions of other EU states have allowed an exit process based on just 37% of the electorate voting Leave? Unlikely.

Could the EU have rejected the Article 50 notice? Possibly. But it was politically expedient for the EU not to challenge Britain’s flawed decision.

The UK Parliament was denied the opportunity to properly debate and vote on Brexit.

Labour, however, could have legally challenged the process – right through to the Supreme Court or the European Court of Justice.

Instead, they complied with the flawed Brexit process and backed it, making it difficult for them to challenge it later.

After the advisory referendum, Parliament should have been asked the exact same question that was put to the British public:

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?

Instead, MPs were only asked whether they would allow the Prime Minister to notify the EU of an ‘intention’ to leave – which was a procedural matter, not a substantive decision.

As a result, Parliament debated and voted only on the terms of Brexit, but never on whether Brexit itself should happen.

Boris Johnson campaigned on the slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’, negotiated the terms of the withdrawal agreement, and Parliament voted to accept them.

But again, MPs were never asked whether the UK should leave the EU – only whether they accepted the deal on offer.

Brexiters argue that the 2019 general election gave Johnson a democratic mandate for Brexit. But the full picture gives a different story:

• In 2019, most voters did not vote Tory.
• Most voters backed parties offering a second referendum.
• The Tories won an 80-seat majority with only a 1% increase in their vote share from 2017, when they lost their majority entirely.
• If the 2019 general election had been a referendum instead, polling suggested Remain would have won.
• The public was never given a vote on the Brexit deal itself.

All this exposed deep flaws in the UK’s electoral system.

We now urgently need a full public inquiry into Brexit. Such an inquiry should investigate:

1. How Brexit went ahead without the explicit approval of Parliament.
2. How only 37% of the electorate were able to dictate such a momentous constitutional change.
3. How the Leave campaign won through lies, cheating, and illegalities – including unlawful overspending and the misuse of personal data to manipulate voters.

Had the referendum been legally binding, the illegal conduct surrounding it would almost certainly have resulted in the courts annulling the result.

But since the referendum was only advisory, it escaped legal scrutiny – even though the government treated it as if it were binding.

Do you get the feeling that the country has been conned on an enormous scale?

• Join the discussion about this post on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky (to follow)
• Related video: The moment the Theresa May government turned an advisory referendum into a binding vote, announced by Brexit Secretary, David Davis



• Related video: How referendums should be run properly – by former Brexit Secretary, David Davis (note: The EU referendum broke every rule)



• Related video: What Prime Minister, David Cameron, should have done after the referendum

• Why we need a new vote on Brexit



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Not so much a post as a list of links for you this time, as I’ve been working up from a thread on BlueSky to a graphic to a podcast.

The central theme here is how the UK-EU relationship is affected by the chaotic Trump administration in the US, particularly in the wake of his moves on Ukraine, Russia and NATO. Much as the EU had to respond to the UK’s stated willingness to break good faith during the Brexit negotiations, so too do the UK and EU now jointly need to respond here.

Of course, part of the problem with chaotic situations is, well, the chaos; you don’t know what’s coming next. Hence the title of this; circling the wagons to defend against the immediate threat, even as you want to continue on a longer journey.

As well as trying to work out some baseline assumptions, I also suggest what is in effect a holding model for the long-term relationship while the pressing needs around Ukraine can be addressed. I’ll not pretend it’s all that satisfactory, but we seem to be living in a world of less-than-satisfactory situations, so tough luck on that one.

Any way, back to the links.

We start with a first thread on BlueSky:

https://bsky.app/profile/simonusherwood.bsky.social/post/3liel7pudlx2y

This was essentially working through the unsustainability of UK hedging in the new context.

Then we move to a bigger thread:

https://bsky.app/profile/simonusherwood.bsky.social/post/3lijgqhoguf2e

This sets out the basics of my thinking, including discussion of the circling the wagons approach as a manifestation of a de-risking strategy. Particular mention needs to be made here of Nicolai von Ondarza’s work on security arrangements, which is excellent on the specifics of how the UK and EU could move to more institutionalised dealings. If you want more on de-risking, then I’ve worked off the EU’s European Economic Security Strategy.

If that’s all too much, then here’s a graphic form of the key bits:

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic137

And finally, if you just want to listen to me talk it out, then I’ve made an episode of A Diet of Brussels on all of this. Incidentally, I note I’m coming up to the tenth anniversary of the pod and I really didn’t think back then we’d be thinking about these kinds of things: I was right to think that we’d be banging on about Europe though.

Small victories, I guess.

And all of this is very much up in the air: would love to get your feedback on any or all of this as we proceed.

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1) Scholarly Interest in Russian Emigrees 

The immigration politics across Europe receive a greater actuality in the context of Russia’s full-fledged invasion in Ukraine.  The war prompted mass forced emigration not only from Ukraine, where the mass destruction takes place, but also from Russia, where repressions take various forms, as I demonstrated in my recently published books, first, “Diversity of Migrant Entrepreneurship in Varieties of European Capitalism. Post-Soviet Entrepreneurship in Austria, Spain, and Hungary” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), and second, “Global Crises, Resilience, and Future Challenges. Experiences of Post-Yugoslav and Post-Soviet Migrants” (Ibidem Press, 2024). Simultaneously, many of the European Union’s (EU) immediate responses to Russia’s full-fledged invasion in Ukraine were increasing restrictions in issuing visas for Russian citizens across Europe and increased controls at the EU – Russia borders. One of the questions that I address in my research is, how do immigration regimes shape Russians’ immigration in Europe? This question is conceptually situated in the scholarly discussions concerning the EU immigration and integration policies.

2) Recent Immigration of Russians in Serbia 

Building upon these findings, I embarked on an exploration of immigration politics towards Russian anti-war emigrees in the European Union (EU) candidate countries of the Western Balkans. Through my initial research in Serbia, I found that this country, which counts about 6 million population, received between 100000 and 400000 Russian immigrants since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Thanks to UACES’ Microgrant, in January 2025, I made a short field trip to Serbia, where I met and conducted interviews Russian anti-war emigrees, and by using their services and by attending some of their events, I analyzed their motives to immigrate in Serbia and economic activities. Russians’ in-mass exodus to Serbia provides a certain political paradox: while majority of the Russians currently residing in Serbia represent young anti-war emigrants and Putin’s regime opponents, close ties between Russian and Serbian authoritarian political leaders provided them with visa-free access to Serbia.  

3) Are Russian Immigrants in Serbia Short-Term Phenomenon? 

As I noted in “Global Crises, Resilience, and Future Challenges”, “it is essential to distinguish between people and states, especially in non-democratic regimes, as they are very different units and actors.” My initial findings from Serbia confirm this statement: my interlocutors revealed that many of them – relokanty (migrants) as they refer to themselves – in the beginning of the war first moved to visa-free countries territorially closer to Russia, such as Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Turkey. However, for a variety of reasons, they decided to move forward to the EU. Coming to Serbia, many of them found it both culturally close and convenient for living. Most of them are under forty years old, and they initially were employed by Russian companies, which relocated their offices to Serbia, such as the Russian tech giant, Yandex. However, after spending sometime in Serbia, most of Russian immigrants quit their jobs in large Russian companies and founded their small businesses. Most of my interlocutors expressed intension to stay in Serbia for a long-term. Similarly, most of them expressed deep sympathy with the current Serbian students’ mass anti-corruption protests.   

4) Russian Immigrants’ Current Impact on Serbia  

Seemingly endless number of restaurants, cafes, and small shops with Russian titles, and Russian language heard on every corner of Belgrade, making the portrayal of the city vibrant as never before. Relying on the theory built in “Diversity of Migrant Entrepreneurship in Varieties of European Capitalism”, I also found that Serbia resembles dependent market economy of Visegrad Four group of post-socialist countries in the early 2000s, before they joined the EU. Some Serbia’s official sources demonstrated that Serbia’s remarkable economic growth in 2023-2024 is owing to the large number of Russian immigrants in Serbia. At the same time, Serbia’s immigration policy, which particularly resembles the process of Hungary’s immigration regime at the time of its’ emergence in 2010-2012, has not moved further from visa-free regime for these Russian citizens, with largely liberal political views. It remains a question, whether and to what extent will they be enabled to contribute to further economic growth and democratic reforms in Serbia, and the country’s EU integration. 

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