European Union

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EU Environment Ministers are meeting on 18 September 2015 in Brussels to prepare the EU position for the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris 2015.

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Plenary sessions : An emergency proposal to relocate 120,000 asylum seekers from Italy, Greece and Hungary among EU member states was backed by Parliament on Thursday. The first temporary emergency rules for relocating an initial 40,000 over two years from Italy and Greece only were approved by Parliament on 9 September.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Plenary sessions : An emergency proposal to relocate 120,000 asylum seekers from Italy, Greece and Hungary among EU member states was backed by Parliament on Thursday. The first temporary emergency rules for relocating an initial 40,000 over two years from Italy and Greece only were approved by Parliament on 9 September.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

van der Lans
Transport
Even in the event of a flight cancellation on account of unforeseen technical problems, air carriers are required to compensate passengers

Total v Commission
Competition
The Court of Justice reduces the fine imposed on Total jointly and severally with Total France from €128 million to €125 million

Commission v Italy
State aid
Due to its delay in recovering aid incompatible with the common market, Italy is ordered to pay a lump sum of €30 million and a fine of €12 million per semester of delay

Autre temps…

It’s not been often that I’ve had cause to write about Labour and the EU in the past four or five years: apart from Ed Miliband’s semi-drift into referendum commitments last year, there hasn’t really been much of a policy. A general sense that it’s A Good Thing, but largely a continuation of the positional policy-making that has characterised British EU policy more generally – we like it because the other lot don’t.

However, Labout has always had a more complicated relationship with European integration than the popular memory often admits. Recall that until the 1980s, it was Labour that was more instinctively anti-membership of the EEC/EC, with the Tories pushing forward because of the trading opportunities it offered, while Labour worried about workers’ rights. Labour triggered the 1975 referendum, with Wilson only side-stepping internal opposition to his renegotiation by offering a free vote. With the possible exception of Tony Blair, there has been a certain sense that Labour leaders have always found the EU more useful as a stick to beat the Tories over the head with (more accurately, to let the Tories beat themselves with the stick) than as a central or fundamental plank of their programme.

And so we end up with Jeremy Corbyn, the great white hope of the Left.

Corbyn represents that long-standing part of the party that never really found an accommodation with European integration. While the leadership and most members turned in the 1980s under Kinnock and Smith, as workers’ rights came to the fore, the old Left (including many parts of the Trade Unions) merely skulked in the corner, biting lips, rather than expressing any enthusiasm. From the 1990s onwards, there were repeated formations of campaigning groups from this constituency, against the Euro, against the Constitutional Treaty, and now against membership.

That Corbyn secured as large a majority as he did last week points both to the relative lack of importance that the party attaches to European matters and to the latent constituency of sceptics that he has been able to mobilise: witness the TUC setting out their stall this week.

Corbyn himself has been very ambivalent about his position. From an initial refusal to give unconditional support to membership – which cost him some potential members of his shadow cabinet – we now have a statement that he couldn’t see himself campaigning to leave.

At one level, this is all just very Corbyn-esque: unspun, truthful and, in its way, reasonable. One would struggle to find anyone who would say that whatever it did they would support the EU (or anything else, for that matter). It’s bad politics and a bad way to live your live saying that your mind is made up and will never be changed, even if that’s often how things go. Of course, the EU is somewhat particular in that it’s a highly bargained system, with checks, balances and internal inconsistencies: from Corbyn’s perspective, Cameron doesn’t look like a man to be renegotiating more social or environmental protection, or to be stepping back from trade liberalisation, internally or externally.

But this reasonable position has its limits: as I’ve noted elsewhere, if Corbyn chooses not to be part of the ‘Remain’ campaign, then it becomes much harder to create the impression of a broad church of support. Certainly, his actions of the past weeks have already made it harder to take the whole Labour movement with him on this: it’s difficult to see him going down the road of a Damascene conversion in six month’s time. He’s Jeremy Corbyn, not Tony Blair.

The basic dilemma here is that the political life of the country is more than just EU membership, and Corbyn is entirely right to look at the big picture – a man who crowd-sources his interventions for PMQs is a man who wants to represent the people and their concerns. However, most people – including most politicians – don’t appreciate the extent to which the EU shapes, supports and constrains other areas. While the costs to the Left seem apparent – TTIP, austerity and the rest – the benefits are less clear, even more so the costs of non-membership.

The historic split of the Left came between those who decided to break the system and those who decided to shape it. The latter group, the socialists, might usefully recall that moment when they look at the EU: it is neither intrinsically good or bad, but rather a mechanism to be operated. The best way to get the EU they want, is to get stuck in, not to turn their back.

The post Corbyn’s EU trap appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Place:        Justus Lipsius building, Brussels
Chair(s):    Carole Dieschbourg, Minister for the Environment of Luxembourg

All times are approximate and subject to change

+/- 09.45         Doorstep by Minister Dieschbourg

+/- 10.00         Beginning of Environment Council meeting
                         Adoption of the agenda

+/- 10.05         Approval of non-legislative A items
                        Approval of legislative A items (in public session)

+/- 10.15         Preparations for Paris UN Climate Change Conference

+/- 12.45         AOB
                        Cycling as a mode of transport

+/- 14.00        Press conference (in public session)

followed by   Working Lunch

 

Plenary sessions : The Commission's €500 million aid package revealed last week is a step in the right direction but it might be not enough to get farmers struggling with falling prices back on their feet, many MEPs told Commissioner Phil Hogan in a debate on Wednesday. Crisis management instruments should be improved, and the position of farmers in the food supply chain strengthened, said MEPs. Some also ask the Commission to immediately increase intervention prices to tackle the current crisis.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Plenary sessions : The Commission's €500 million aid package revealed last week is a step in the right direction but it might be not enough to get farmers struggling with falling prices back on their feet, many MEPs told Commissioner Phil Hogan in a debate on Wednesday. Crisis management instruments should be improved, and the position of farmers in the food supply chain strengthened, said MEPs. Some also ask the Commission to immediately increase intervention prices to tackle the current crisis.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Last year, India held it’s general elections and as usual there was a smattering of political parties, all with something different to offer approximately 700mn adults registered or eligible to vote at least. The newly chosen (by public) members of the national parliament have had some time to spend on the budgets and they should feel proud of having been elected by a bigger democracy than most in the West. Elections in the country are a regular thing, despite insurgencies in Kashmir, and numerous piecemeal episodes of border struggles. India is a gigantic country in South Asia – both demographically and politically, and the picture of rule here is one of reasonable stability because unlike in neighbouring Bangladesh, there has been no issues of autocratic rule, and a break with civilian government. Regionally, this is not an unnatural occurence: in Nepal, autocratic rule with a constitutional monarch was supposed to be the order of the day, as it has been since 1990. In 2008, however, Nepal became a republic, as a party convinced of ways of the armed revolution based on the Maoist model became the single-most dominant force in parliament. In retrospect, India did plenty of things with its newfound freedom from the British Empire, such as introduce the rights to vote for both men and women, all together. Democracy is an experiment sometimes in this region, even though the thought process is aligned with the creation of effective democratic governance. Right after independence, democracy was tried to be made into a popular political choice for a nation of mostly illiterates and poverty-stricken people. It has been tough to forge national unity in a land divided by language and religion, which is why even though a population diaspora might dictate the dominating language of the land, it cannot ascertain the sense of belonging that one single language is supposed to give one land. Democracy exists to provide citizens with the right to choose and replace their leaders, the right to speak up against misgovernance or be openly supportive about government decisions. In order for a government to function democratically there needs to be multiple political parties, and a constant presence of free, fair elections, the press needs to have freedom to conduct matters nationally. Democracy in India has often been viewed with sceptism, particularly where Kashmir is concerned. The people of Kashmir have often voiced their anger at the constant injustices they have had to face because of repeated accounts of corruption in a localised rule. Violence sometimes escalated and because of these numerous political disagreements the region has constantly been subjected to conflict. Although, from time to time Kashmiris have toyed with the idea of abiding by the local government’s customs and traditions, the response to the whole situation hasn’t always been positive. Regional development has almost always been forsaken but what has been astonishing to learn off is how the violence has often forced people to resort to military struggle. The scenario has been present both in Kashmir and in those Nepal locales where armed guerrillas are also equipping themselves with a greater awareness and learning about Maoist traditions and battling to remove the sophisticated manner of doing things. They want to do this by spreading the seeds of revolution and striving for independence from Nepal. It is difficult to imagine that Kashmiris should arm themselves to demand basic necessetities. But on certain days, that is the tallest order of the day because the region cannot afford to live relatively peacefully, when you compare it to it’s neighbouring Bhutan. In Bhutan, the most politically eventful episode to have occured in recent times was the dethroning of a king by choice in favour of his son ruling. In Kashmir, citizens must arm themselves to protect and to practice the kind of politics they would like to see in government, because the state is being far too harsh on them. When you step out of Kashmir, and into the rest of India, the picture of democracy is fully intact and functional because the national assemblies, the state assemblies all conduct themselves with freedom and fairness. Capital, labour, and goods can move about the country unperturbed, but there is no denying that the nation is still a weak democracy. There are illiberal idealogies spreading through political corridors, and there is also a lack of thoroughness in governance. A peaceful solution to Kashmir is possible, which would contribute to a better notion of democracy in India than the one present. Both the state and it’s citizens with demands need to co-operate on democratic matters, conduct more open dialogue about regional security, have more regular and fair elections, nurture the language and culture of minority groups and there needs to be a greater understanding of how more more power needs to be given to the people of Kashmir to shape their politics.

The post What is Democracy in India? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

September 2015: Border controls between Germany and France.

It is difficult not to be impressed by the remarkable breadth and multidisciplinary outreach of contemporary European Studies that was exposed at the UACES conference in Bilbao. Paper and panels were fed and underpinned by the political sciences, but also by economics, law, sociology and anthropology.

Yet the newspapers read during the return flight from Bilbao were a good reminder that in twenty years’ time (or less) European Studies might have become a preserve of historians. The latter will then analyse the reasons for the collapse of what will have been, all in all, a rather short parenthesis in our continent’s long history. Perhaps they will identify the summer of 2015 as the tipping point, from which on everything went surprisingly quickly.

Those who find this overly pessimistic should remind themselves that as late as spring 1989 not a single voice believed the Berlin Wall would come down any time soon. Let alone the reunification of Germany would occur. Let alone the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

I cannot remember any moment in my life as European citizen where the EEC, then EC, then the EU (not to mention the Eurozone) were not reported to be in a serious crisis. I have even repeatedly amused audiences with a very nostalgic and pessimistic quote from Le Monde about how European integration had completely lost its appeal, which actually did not refer to the present situation, but was written in 1958!

But I cannot remember either any moment over the last decades where as many indicators for a possible disintegration of the European community were converging like they seem to be doing in the second half of 2015. The concomitance of the Greek drama, the Ukrainian tragedy, the refugee crisis and the ongoing noise about a looming Brexit may well be too much for to handle for both our political leaders and their voters.

Especially the refugee question acts like a litmus test for the oft-invoked community of values. A test that is likely to reveal, in a rather painful manner, the absence of such a community. And from this observation it is only a small step to put into question the basic assumption of solidarity within what Churchill called ‘the European family’ in his famous speech of 1946.

It is no longer far-fetched to speculate on the funeral of the Schengen Agreement. Today I heard about the reintroduction of border controls between Germany and France, which I was (half) joking about only a few weeks earlier. I take the (small) risk of predicting that full sovereignty over the state’s border will be a major, hysterically discussed, issue in each national election campaign of the two years to come, including France and Germany.

It is no longer taboo to openly threaten others with financial consequences for their lack of solidarity. In other words, to play around with the idea of putting an end to redistributive policies. ‘Who needs structural funds?’ might become a recurrent question. ‘Just look at how they were used in Greece over decades!’, a convenient answer. And who needs a Common Agricultural Policy that even French farmers hate?

It is no longer implausible to see in David Cameron a sorcerer’s apprentice that will be completely overpowered by a wave of Europhobic discontent which he unleashed without need in the first place. And who can exclude today that a Brexit, however messy and unsatisfactory, would produce a domino effect? Not only in traditionally Eurosceptic places. Let’s face it: is it so absurd to anticipate that even German public opinion may turn massively Euro-sour, forcing whatever government it will elect in 2017 to commit to the repatriation of a maximum of competences (and money)?

Maybe still add a question mark?

As they say in France: history does not pass around the dishes twice. It is perfectly possible that the EU historians of 2040 will have warm words for their object of study: ‘Was absolutely worth a try’, they might tell us, ‘it’s just that the times were not ripe yet for a supranational community of interests, let alone values’.

 

Albrecht Sonntag, EU-Asia Institute, ESSCA School of Management.

The post Total Recall appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Plenary sessions : A clear political vision to tackle the challenges of energy supply, climate change, transition to a digital society, job creation, migration, the rule of democracy and fundamental law should be at the core of the 2016 Commission's work programme. So say MEPs in a non-legislative resolution, voted on Wednesday, which sets out Parliament's recommendations for the European Commission’s 2016 work programme.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Plenary sessions : A clear political vision to tackle the challenges of energy supply, climate change, transition to a digital society, job creation, migration, the rule of democracy and fundamental law should be at the core of the 2016 Commission's work programme. So say MEPs in a non-legislative resolution, voted on Wednesday, which sets out Parliament's recommendations for the European Commission’s 2016 work programme.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

The economic affairs committee and the special committee for tax rulings will discuss the European Commission's proposals for transparent and efficient taxation of multinational companies with President Jean-Claude Juncker and Taxation Commissioner Pierre Moscovici on Thursday 17 September. This will be followed by a separate discussion with Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager. Watch the debates live from 10.15 CET.
Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs
Special Committee on Tax Rulings and Other Measures Similar in Nature or Effect

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

The economic affairs committee and the special committee for tax rulings will discuss the European Commission's proposals for transparent and efficient taxation of multinational companies with President Jean-Claude Juncker and Taxation Commissioner Pierre Moscovici on Thursday 17 September. This will be followed by a separate discussion with Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager. Watch the debates live from 10.15 CET.
Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs
Special Committee on Tax Rulings and Other Measures Similar in Nature or Effect

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP