European Union

The UK Home Office refused to rule out the possibility of deporting Ukrainian refugees to Rwanda, reports the Independent newspaper . When pressed on whether Ukrainians entering from Northern Ireland could end up in Rwanda, where the UK has an agreement to offshore asylum, an official said it depends on individual circumstances. Ukrainian refugees have not been excluded from its policy of who gets sent to Rwanda.

European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde signalled an interest rate increase possibly as early as July, but some experts warn for a repeat of the 2011-2012 debt crisis.

Length of video : 2'13''

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2022 - EP

Online child sex abuse continues to increase with EU-based servers hosting some 60 percent of the global content. But a proposal by the EU commission to stop it has riled privacy advocates.

French authorities launched an investigation into Interpol's president Ahmed Nasser al-Raisif, following accusations he was complicit in the arbitrary detention and torture of two Britons in the United Arab Emirates. The alleged victims say al-Raisif was a United Arab Emirates senior interior ministry security official at the time when the allegations took place, reports AFP. Interpol's headquarters are based in Lyon.

MEPs and UK parliamentarians will gather in Brussels on Thursday and Friday to discuss the state of EU-UK relations and the war in Ukraine.

Source : © European Union, 2022 - EP

The UK rejected proposals by the EU to tweak the protocol governing trade in Northern Ireland, and has threatened to suspend the rules as loyalists lost their majority in the Northern Ireland elections.

Length of video : 58'

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2022 - EP

MEPs have raised questions about the involvement of the EU — through its funding — in the development of the Israeli NSO Pegasus software, directly or indirectly, which has been used to target activists and journalists in Europe.

Length of video : 181'

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2022 - EP

UACES Chair, Prof Simon Usherwood

Dear Colleagues

In the few months since my last message to you, Europe has changed, perhaps fundamentally.

The unprovoked and unjustified Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier this year has been simultaneously a humanitarian disaster and an attack on the values of liberal democracy and free association in Europe. As an association, we condemn the invasion and express our solidarity with all those fighting to preserve and protect Ukraine from aggression.

As part of that work, UACES has been actively working to find ways to support all our members’ efforts, including encouragement and financing for CARA (the Council for At-Risk Academics). You will find an option to add a donation to their work when you register for our annual conference: UACES will match-fund your contributions up to £1500, so now is the time to make the most of our early-bird rates (ending 31 May).

However, money alone will not mend the damage done. As the recent elections in France and Slovenia have shown, the need to make the case for liberal democracy is one that should concern us all, both as citizens and as academics. I find it heartening to see so many of you providing fair, evidenced contributions to national and European debates about how we make democracy work as well as it can and I would encourage all of you to see our work as something that can bring about a better understanding of why democracy must persist, despite of all its frustrations.

Again, UACES is trying to help with this through its various activities.

As already mentioned, our Annual Conference in Lille this September is now open for registrations, with a great line-up of plenary speakers, panels and networking opportunities. The team at ESPOL have put together a fitting welcome for all of us coming together after the disruptions of Covid and I look forward to seeing many of you in this fine city. For those of you unable to join us in person, we have an additional day of virtual sessions, which also allow us to make this an even bigger part of our calendar and demonstrate the richness of work in European Studies.

For our student and early-career members, the Graduate Forum Research Conference in Maastricht in June will be another moment to make connections and reflect on European integration on the thirtieth anniversary of the eponymous treaty. The Graduate Forum’s work in helping those entering European Studies to build networks and gain experience has always been one of our association’s key concerns and the return to in-person activities is a very positive step.

Aside from events, we’re also very pleased to share the redevelopment of the Ideas on Europe blogging site. This has been one of the leading forums for those wanting to produce timely and informed content on all aspects of European Studies, and its new organisation makes it easier than ever to both find and create materials. For those of you looking to get your work out to a bigger audience, I can personally testify to the site’s value in generating interest and opening new conversations.

We also continue to strengthen and develop our links with sister organisations. Within the UK, we have been involved in ongoing discussions with other social science bodies about how we can make meaningful improvements in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, drawing on our exemplary work under Prof Roberta Guerrina. The joint seminar series with IACES on the UK, Ireland and the EU has been a very positive development over the past year and we continue to organise more of these. I also hope that our Lille event will be a moment to strengthen our ties with our French counterparts, AFEE-CEDECE, and I am always very happy to speak with colleagues outside the UK about where UACES might be able to help develop new collaborations.

To all those who have these activities possible – especially Emily, Melina and Emma in the UACES office – I give my thanks. Just as democracy stands on the participation of its citizens, so too does the association stand on the involvement of its members and we have been particularly fortunate to have so many of you be part of our work. The recent committee elections reflected this with a healthy slate of candidates from across the membership and I am looking forward to new members starting this autumn. UACES continues to work because of all your efforts and I applaud you all.

 

Simon Usherwood, UACES Chair

 

The post UACES Chair’s Message — May 2022 appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Czech Republic v Commission
Law governing the institutions
The General Court upholds in part the Czech Republic’s action based on the unjust enrichment of the Commission in so far as it concerns the repayment of an amount equivalent to approximately € 726 000 that that Member State had to pay to that institution in the context of the recovery of anti-dumping duties

Fininvest and Berlusconi v ECB
Economic policy
The General Court upholds the decision by which the ECB refused to authorise Silvo Berlusconi’s acquisition of a qualifying holding in Banca Mediolanum

A UACES Microgrant report by Marianna Lovato, PhD candidate, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin.

 

The Covid-19 pandemic has made online interviewing an everyday reality for qualitative research and turned us all into tech wizards (or, at least, self-proclaimed ones).

My research project, which investigates member states’ bargaining strategies and negotiation success in EU foreign policy, heavily relies on qualitative interviews, by virtue of the more secretive and confidential nature of CFSP/CSDP decision-making.

Much like that of many other researchers like me, my PhD project was affected by Covid-related travel restrictions: when I was only a few days into a fieldwork trip to Brussels, the dominos of national lockdowns across Europe back in March 2020 forced me to cut my stay short and start relying solely on online interviews. Zoom quickly emerged as the prevalent videoconferencing platform, but it soon became clear that the platform was falling short when it comes to users’ privacy and compliance with the GDPR (O’Flaherty 2020).

Unsurprisingly, therefore, Zoom was decidedly not the platform of choice for the diplomats and national functionaries that I was hoping to interview. Rather, they opted for a mix of Microsoft Teams, Webex or the platforms made available by their own Ministries, which complied with their national security standards. However, the 50-minute time limit on Webex meetings that comes with the free subscription soon turned out to be a rather problematic feature. I had interviewees cut off mid-sentence and had to send them a second link, with all the problems that this entails, such as having participants lose their train of thought and potentially missing out on critical interview data. Rather quickly, therefore, I resigned to the fact that I would need premium subscriptions to several different videoconferencing platforms at once. This seemingly trivial logistical concern actually calls for a more in-depth discussion around confidentiality and data protection in the context of online interviews, which, for all the burgeoning literature on remote interviewing (see e.g. the dedicated chapter in the 2019 volume by King, Horrocks and Brooks or the 2018 manual by Lee Ann Fujii), does not seem to have been explored in detail. For instance, it would be helpful to have an informed scholarly discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of alternative video conferencing platforms.

Additionally, we should recognize that confidentiality has a price. If we are to take our research participants’ concerns seriously, we should start a conversation about the costs of protecting our participants when carrying out online interviews and about the steps universities are taking to help PhD candidates and early career scholars shoulder the additional costs tied to secure online interviewing. While the latter certainly entails lower expenses than fieldwork research, my own experience shows that extra funding might be necessary to face the costs of multiple subscriptions.

In this sense, UACES certainly set the trend in providing additional funds to cover the costs of online research. As every PhD candidate knows, extra research-related expenses are always a cause for concern. UACES Microgrants scheme was truly the perfect funding opportunity to cover this type of unforeseen and non-negligible cost.

The post Grappling with online interviews: the costs of confidentiality appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This initiative focuses specifically on the issue of economic coercion and the EU's possible response, aiming to preserve the EU's open strategic autonomy and policy-making space. The IA clearly defines the problem, its underlying causes, and the objectives to address it. The creation of a new legal instrument to deter and counteract economic coercion is the only type of option retained for analysis. This presumably follows on from the political commitment made in early 2021 (although this is not stated explicitly in the IA). This option was broken down into several policy options based on possible parameters used for the design of the instrument. The IA is substantiated by academic work, stakeholders' contributions and examples. The majority of stakeholders support a new policy instrument and their input contributed to the design of the proposed instrument. The IA focuses mostly on economic impacts, while social and environmental impacts are assessed briefly. Important benefits are expected from the instrument. Costs are expected only from its use, in particular from the application of countermeasures. The IA focuses on a qualitative assessment of impacts linked to the instrument's creation and existence, acknowledging that the impacts linked to the instrument's use are difficult to estimate at the design stage. Adequate monitoring and evaluation of the use of the instrument and of progress made against the objectives will therefore be important aspects that would have benefited from further detail in terms of indicators and provisions. The proposal generally reflects the preferred option of the IA, although some elements differ from the IA, such as the objectives and definition of economic coercion.
Source : © European Union, 2022 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2022 - EP

Russia was not invited to an international donor conference on Syria in Brussels given its war in Ukraine. Moscow had also recently threatened to veto a humanitarian corridor from Turkey to Syria.

Length of video : 38'

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2022 - EP

The number of civilians killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the war is "thousands higher" than numbers currently given, Matilda Bogner, head of the UN's human rights monitoring mission in the country, said in a press conference on Tuesday. The official civilian death toll stands at 3,381 but thousands more would be added once the UN gains access to "black holes" like Mariupol, she said.

Finnish MPs have got the ball rolling on a week that's expected to culminate in a tectonic shift in Nordic security — Finland and Sweden's decision to apply for Nato membership.