European Union

AMENDMENTS 26 - 140 - Draft opinion Applying a generalized scheme of tariff preferences and repealing Regulation (EU) No 978/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Maria Arena

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

DRAFT REPORT on security in the Eastern Partnership area and the role of the common security and defence policy
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Witold Jan Waszczykowski

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

REPORT on the implementation of the Common Security and Defence Policy – annual report 2021
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Nathalie Loiseau

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

REPORT on human rights and democracy in the world and the European Union’s policy on the matter – annual report 2021
Committee on Foreign Affairs
María Soraya Rodríguez Ramos

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

REPORT on the implementation of the common foreign and security policy - annual report 2021
Committee on Foreign Affairs
David McAllister

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

AMENDMENTS 1 - 320 - Draft report The EU and the security challenges in the Indo-Pacific
Committee on Foreign Affairs
David McAllister

Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

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

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

 

Franco-German leadership in the corona crisis

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

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

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

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

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

 

Advancing European integration theory

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

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

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

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

Which institution sets the European Union’s policy agenda?

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

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

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

 

How much agenda-setting power does the Commission have?

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

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

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

Twitter handle: @akreppel

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

Trapeza Peiraios
Environment and consumers
The Court clarifies the extent of protection afforded to consumers under a loan contract repayable in a foreign currency

Randstad Italia
DFON
EU law does not preclude the highest court in the judicial order of a Member State from being unable to set aside a judgment delivered in breach of EU law by that Member State’s highest administrative court

Gtflix Tv
Area of Freedom, Security and Justice
Dissemination of allegedly disparaging remarks on the internet: compensation for the resulting damage in a Member State may be sought before the courts of that Member State

Azurair and Others C-188/20, C-196/20, C-270/20,C-263/20 Airhelp,C-395/20 Corendon Airlines
Transport
A flight must be regarded as having been ‘cancelled’ in the case where the operating air carrier brings it forward by more than one hour

Euro Box Promotion and Others,C-379/19 DNA- Serviciul Teritorial Oradea, C-547/19 Asociaţia « Forumul Judecătorilor din România », C-811/19 FQ e.a. ,C-840/19 NC
Law governing the institutions
Le droit de l’Union s’oppose à l’application d’une jurisprudence de la Cour constitutionnelle dans la mesure où celle-ci, combinée avec les dispositions nationales en matière de prescription, crée un risque systémique d’impunité

Bank Melli Iran
Free movement of capital
The prohibition imposed by EU law on complying with secondary sanctions laid down by the United States against Iran may be relied on in civil proceedings

Theresa May and the shaping of the Brexit process

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

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

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

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

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

 

Explaining the fate of the Withdrawal Agreement

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

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

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

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

 

Take-it-or-leave-it

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The changing circumstances of the vote

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Why it matters?

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

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

Twitter: @EdinburghPIR

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

Joint EU-U.S. statement following the EU-U.S. Justice and Home Affairs Ministerial Meeting, Washington D.C., 16 December 2021

President Michel received the letters of credentials from three new ambassadors to the European Union

Main agenda items, approximate timing, public sessions and press opportunities.

At the press conference following the European Council and the Euro Summit meetings on 16 December 2021, President Charles Michel highlighted the main results of the discussions.

The Euro Summit, meeting in an inclusive format, adopted a statement on 16 December 2021.