European Union

Plenary sessions : MEPs removed the last hurdle on the way to full abolition of retail “roaming” surcharges in a vote on Thursday.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : MEPs removed the last hurdle on the way to full abolition of retail “roaming” surcharges in a vote on Thursday.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : The European Parliament urges the Russian authorities to release opposition politician Alexei Navalny and other detained demonstrators, condemns the crackdown on peaceful protestors and arrests of human rights defenders and journalists in Belarus, and calls on the government of Bangladesh to close loopholes in new legislation that provide legal authorisation for child marriage, in three resolutions voted on Thursday.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : The European Parliament urges the Russian authorities to release opposition politician Alexei Navalny and other detained demonstrators, condemns the crackdown on peaceful protestors and arrests of human rights defenders and journalists in Belarus, and calls on the government of Bangladesh to close loopholes in new legislation that provide legal authorisation for child marriage, in three resolutions voted on Thursday.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

On 6 April 2017, the Council adopted additional restrictive measures against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). These measures complement and reinforce the sanctions regime imposed by United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions.

The EU decided to expand the prohibition on investments in the DPRK to new sectors, namely the conventional arms-related industry, metallurgy and metalworking, and aerospace. The Council also agreed to prohibit the provision of certain services to persons or entities in the DPRK, namely computer services and services linked to mining and manufacturing in the chemical, mining and refining industry.

The Council took these additional restrictive measures considering that the actions of the DPRK violate multiple UNSC resolutions and constitute a grave threat to international peace and security in the region and beyond. The EU calls again on the DPRK to re-engage in a credible and meaningful dialogue with the international community, to cease its provocations, and to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes as well as other weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programmes in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner.

The Council also decided to add four persons to the list of persons targeted by the EU's restrictive measures for being responsible for supporting or promoting the DPRK's nuclear-related, ballistic missile-related or other weapons of mass destruction-related programmes. This brings the total number of persons subject to travel restrictions and asset freeze to 41. Seven entities are also subject to an asset freeze.

The legal acts are published in the Official Journal of 7 April 2017. They were adopted by written procedure.

EU restrictive measures against North Korea were introduced on 22 December 2006. The existing measures implement all UNSC resolutions adopted in response to the DPRK's nuclear tests and launches using ballistic missile technology and include additional EU autonomous measures.

They target North Korea's nuclear weapons and nuclear programmes, other weapon of mass destruction and ballistic missile programmes. The measures include prohibitions on the export and import of arms, goods, services and technology that could contribute to these programmes.

If the EU is to survive…, major steps forward are needed in recognizing that the Deficit has become one of the most important issues… that threatens to tear the EU apart, and in drastically addressing it by increasing both better understanding of, and participation in, the EU decision-making processes by citizens. Otherwise, the rise of anti-EU sentiment will continue to ravage the much-cherished accomplishment that the EU is, through claims of restoration of power from the EU bureaucrats to the people.

In late March 2017, the celebration for the 60 years from the signature of the Treaty of Rome – arguably what then constituted the starting point of what eventually became the EU – took place in Rome. However, the past few years have been filled with challenges for the EU and its Member States: the Eurozone crisis, the immigration crisis, the rise of the far-right and extremism and anti-EU sentiment, terrorism, and, perhaps most challenging of all, Brexit.

At the heart of most, if not all, of these challenges, and especially at the center of Brexit, lies a festering and increasingly growing problem of the EU: the EU Democratic Deficit. In the latest Eurobarometer survey 55% of EU citizens do not trust the EU, against 33% that do. This percentage underwent a substantial decrease since 2004 when it was 50%. In addition, only 34% of EU citizens have an overall positive image of the EU, against 38% who are neutral and 27% with a negative view, i.e. a total of 65% of EU citizens have a non-favorable image of the EU.

All the above are indicative of the increasing alienation that EU citizens in relation to the EU decision-making process; what is termed in the literature as the Democratic Deficit. The Deficit scholarship is broadly separated across three main views: Input, Output, Throughput. The main argument of the Input approach is that mechanisms that ensure citizen participation (whether direct or indirect) at the EU level need to be strengthened because supranational-level actors have acquired increased ability to influence key national policy areas. As such, national democratic mechanisms are no longer sufficient and the reinforcement of input by citizens at the supranational level (whether direct or indirect) is needed to ensure conformity with the basic democratic principle of representation.

Against these points, the Output approach’s principal argument is that EU has, in fact, not experienced an increase in its ability to affect key national policies, such as taxation or social security. Hence, increasing representative input is not only unnecessary, but may also harm the argued mostly regulatory (and not redistributive) nature of the EU. In either case, it is suggested that the democratic processes at the national level are both sufficient and effective in providing legitimacy and accountability to decisions of the supranational level. Finally, the Throughput approach suggests that the solution is neither at the input nor at the output stage, but rather it is within the institutional processes themselves (increase and ensure transparency, stakeholder participation, etc.).

The EU has, for the most part and especially after the Eurozone crisis (oversight of national budgets by the Eurogroup and institutionalization of the Troika within the EU through the Two-Pack, the Treaty on Stability, Governance and Coordination ‘debt break’, etc.) and the refugee crisis (e.g. the establishment of the common European Border and Coast Guard), assumed considerable decision-making ability in relation to the national level. This is also apparent from the case of Brexit, whereby the British Prime Minister, in her letter to the European Council President activating article 50 of the Treaty on the European Union, draws a direct connection between the wish of the British people “to restore, as we see it, our national self-determination” and the outcome of the referendum for the UK to leave the EU. Ιt appears, then, that the Input (and perhaps Throughput) approach has gained ground.

Yet the EU and its institutions seem to largely underestimate or even be unaware of this phenomenon, something evident in two of the most important texts of the 60-year celebration: the White Paper on the Future of Europe by the President of the European Commission, and of course, the Rome Declaration by the 27 EU Member States leaders (except the UK), the European Council, the European Parliament and the European Commission. In the White Paper, it is established in the introductory section that “many Europeans consider the Union as either too distant or too interfering in their day-to-day lives.” However, and while there is even a section on “questioning of trust and legitimacy,” there are actually no specific references to how the democratic processes within the EU could be improved, or even how the perception of these processes (or perception of lack thereof) has impacted opinion of citizens. Rather, there are only very vague references that mostly transfer the entire issue to the national level, such as that it is the Member States that fail to take “ownership of joint decisions and the habit of finger-pointing” and that social media, etc., “will only accelerate and continue to change the way democracy works.”

The Declaration of Rome also falls short of expectations. The devotion to democracy appears twice in the entire text in a very general way, and specific references concern the fact that the leaders are “aware of the concerns of our citizens,” that they will “respond to the concerns expressed by… citizens,” and, finally, that they will “promote a democratic, effective and transparent decision-making process and better delivery.” These references definitely do not address the major commitments and improvements necessary in the area of democratic process within the EU (they even fall short in terms of recognizing this issue as a major concern for European unity), especially considering the recurrent attacks sustained during the last few years and the primary role that this issue assumes in terms of the citizens’ perception of the EU.

It is undoubted that people are increasingly losing faith in the democratic process and system, not just at the supranational but also at the national level. For example, 62% of EU citizens do not trust their national parliaments and 64% do not trust their national government. This is an alarmingly large percentage. However, in the hierarchy of necessity, both government and parliament take precedence over the EU; in simple terms, the EU is the first one to go. If the EU is to survive and in order to gain the much-needed support from its citizens, major steps forward are needed in recognizing that the Deficit has become one of the most important issues, and perhaps even the primary one, that threatens to tear the EU apart, and in drastically addressing it by increasing both better understanding of, and participation in, the EU decision-making processes by citizens. Otherwise, the rise of anti-EU sentiment will continue to ravage the much-cherished accomplishment that the EU is, through claims of restoration of power from the EU bureaucrats to the people.

The post The EU Democratic Deficit: A Recurring but Unaddressed Problem. appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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The Informal meeting of EU Competitiveness Ministers takes place on 6 April 2017, in Valletta, Malta.

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APVE and Others
Competition
According to Advocate General Wahl, agricultural producer organisations and their associations may be held liable for agreements, decisions or concerted practices contrary to EU law

Plenary sessions : An overwhelming majority of the house (516 votes in favour, 133 against, with 50 abstentions) adopted a resolution officially laying down the European Parliament’s key principles and conditions for its approval of the UK's withdrawal agreement. Any such agreement at the end of UK-EU negotiations will need to win the approval of the European Parliament.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : An overwhelming majority of the house (516 votes in favour, 133 against, with 50 abstentions) adopted a resolution officially laying down the European Parliament’s key principles and conditions for its approval of the UK's withdrawal agreement. Any such agreement at the end of UK-EU negotiations will need to win the approval of the European Parliament.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Is there ‘good’ and ‘bad’ populism? In the wake of last month’s general election in the Netherlands, Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde focussed on this theme, pointing to the juxtaposition of Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s ‘good populism’ and the ‘bad populism’ of Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration and anti-Islam Freedom Party.

The theme also applies to the French presidential election. It seems that every man and woman among the eleven candidates running to be head of state is positioning themselves as an ‘anti-system’ candidate, each brandishing their own virtuous populism.

Only five – possibly  six – stand a chance of winning more than five per cent of the vote. From Left to Right, these candidates are Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Benoît Hamon, Emmanuel Macron, François Fillon and Marine Le Pen. The sixth is Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, who has until recently has barely figured on the pollsters’ radar but who, in the face of Fillon’s decline, has advanced from around two per cent to five per cent in the polls at the time of writing.

The two with the most obviously populist messages are Le Pen, on the far right, and the ‘Left of the Left’ candidate, Mélenchon. This underlines the old truth that sometimes more binds extremes than separates them.

“Is there ‘good’ and ‘bad’ populism?”

Both deploy the language of ‘people’ and ‘nation’ at the heart of their projects, promising to refocus the energies of the state on saving the national economy. Mélenchon’s ‘Keynesianism in one country’ and proposals for renationalisation are not so far removed from Le Pen’s ‘intelligent, patriotic protectionism’. This is not surprising when we remember that the author of her project, Florian Philippot, is a defector from the Jacobin Left.

Both Mélenchon and Le Pen see globalisation as a false dogma and the root cause of France’s economic ills. Mélenchon, a forthright critic of the European constitution that was rejected by French voters in 2005, argues that the European Union has failed to protect workers from the effects of hypercapitalism, and has become a ‘market space’ instead of a social project. If elected, he would renegotiate the treaties before holding a referendum on continued membership. For her part, Le Pen has promised an autumn 2017 referendum on France’s EU membership. Le Pen’s rhetoric relies on her role as perennial outsider: the ‘victim’ of a system that has always manoeuvred to exclude her in the same way it did her father.

Mélenchon and Le Pen would also dismantle the Fifth Republic, France’s constitutional set-up since 1958. Mélenchon would do this by means of a constituent assembly, which he hopes would lead to the creation of a parliamentary republic (not unlike the Fourth Republic, but with extended recourse to referendums and the right of electors to ‘unelect’ Members of Parliament).

Le Pen, by contrast, has promised a series of constitutional reforms that would establish national priority and a plebiscitary dictatorship. What distinguish the two from each other are their positions over immigration and culture. Mélenchon envisages a more open France with better mechanisms for integrating migrants. He is unconcerned about the ‘death’ of the French culture that Le Pen ‒ and to some extent Fillon ‒ seeks to reverse.

Of Hamon, Macron and Fillon, the least expressly populist candidate is perhaps Hamon, the Socialist candidate, who is much more focussed on the challenges regarding the mechanisation of the French workplaces and environmental issues. For him, the EU is the key to France’s future, but it needs greater democratisation through the creation of a eurozone assembly comprising members of national parliaments. But even Hamon is proposing greater use of referendums, enshrining in the constitution what amounts to a popular power of veto over legislation.

“If France is to avoid a populist candidate winning in 2022, the ‘system’ must make the most of its last chance”

Macron and Fillon seem to be the least likely populists. Yet only a few days after the Dutch election Macron told Le Journal du Dimanche that he was happy to adopt the mantle of a populist on the grounds that he is a candidate who has not come through the party ranks or been involved in politics for many years: Fillon, for example, was first elected to parliament in 1981; Mélenchon became an MP in 1986; Le Pen inherited a party from her millionaire father.

But if one of the features of populism is to fill the air with big ideas but very little detail, Macron is quite the opposite. There is rhetoric, as one would expect from a candidate trying to bind together a diverse political centre, but it is often the sheer detail that leaves his listeners baffled. As a member of his audience put it after a campaign meeting, “Since he mentioned figures, here are mine: I understood about 30% of what he said”.

Fillon’s attacks on ‘the system’ focus on the public sector. The divide between ‘us and them’, public and private sector, is a deeply embedded cultural marker in France, and Fillon’s promise to cut 500,000 public service jobs is not just designed to deliver savings for the state, but would undermine an electorate that is not his. Generally, public sector workers vote Left or far right. But it is the rigidity of the state and over-regulation ‒ from Paris or Brussels ‒ that Fillon wants to render more flexible, hence the comparisons drawn between him and Margaret Thatcher.

The breakdown of the traditional Left-Right confrontation in France has contributed in no small way to the use of the ‘anti-système’ approach and the rise of the far right. Every voter feels that they are excluded from the system in some way, with more or less justification.

The two openly populist candidates, Mélenchon and Le Pen, are not likely to win the run-off election on 7 May. But if France is to avoid a populist candidate winning in 2022, the ‘system’ must make the most of its last chance.

IMAGE CREDIT: CC / Flickr – Blandine Le Cain

The post The French election is a battle of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ populism appeared first on Europe’s World.

Has there been, since the outbreak of the economic and financial crisis in 2008, one single op-ed piece in major international newspapers that did not, in one way or another, refer to Keynes, Keynesian theory and recipes, or Keynesianism as a kind of handbook or roadmap for political leaders dealing with failing banks, sluggish growth, national sovereign debt, or the imperfections of the European Monetary Union? If there were, I must have missed them.

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)

It has almost been a decade since the explosion of the subprime crisis and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and it has been a decade in which John Maynard Keynes’s major work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), has been enthusiastically rediscovered. It has been praised with the same zeal with which ‘neoliberalism’, identified as the theory underpinning the economic politics of Reagan and Thatcher, has been vilified as the ideology that had led to the crisis in the first place. Economic liberalism – in France almost systematically referred to as ‘ultralibéralisme’ – has not only been widely regarded as the underpinning of unlimited greed and corporate misbehaviour, but also blamed for the apparently cold-hearted, counter-productive austerity measures imposed on entire countries by supranational bodies like the IMF or the Eurozone.

Friedrich August Hayek (1899-1992)

One of the names that inevitable crop up in discussions about liberalist thought is Friedrich Hayek, whose major work The Road to Serfdom (1944) recently appeared in the same shortlist of ‘most influential academic books of the 20th century’ as Keynes’s General Theory (the latter being ranked first).

When commentators and editorialists, from national TV pundits to world-wide celebrities like Nobel Prize winners writing columns in American newspapers, start to throw the names of major economic theories at each other, it is no doubt a good moment to get back to the basics and try to obtain a better grasp on the original texts.

In his recent comparative essay Hayek vs. Keynes – A Battle of Ideas (Reaktion Books, London, 2017), Thomas Hoerber does exactly this. He takes two of the most important classics of economics from the shelf and opposes the thoughts and arguments they contain.

The fact that the author, director of the EU-Asia Institute at ESSCA School of Management, is not an economist himself, but an accomplished historian and political scientist with a focus on European Studies, turns out to be very helpful. Especially for readers who are – like the author of these lines – eager to get a better understanding of economic thought and theory, but hopelessly overwhelmed when confronted with the sub-discipline of applied mathematics that economics seem to have become. Here is an author who takes us by the hand, guiding us rather patiently through this battlefield of ideas, and constantly reminding us that economics can, and actually should, be a profoundly social science, providing insight into how society works and how economic measures can, and actually should, contribute to the common good.

It’s in defining the common good that Hayek and Keynes differ. Is it, in a grossly simplistic nutshell, the overarching objective of full employment, even if this means curtailing individual liberty through imposed state planning? Or is it first and foremost liberty itself, since substantial planning and intervention, even if well-intentioned, inevitably paves the road to … ‘serfdom’?

Replace ‘serfdom’, and its old-fashioned connotation to feudal society, with a more contemporary term like ‘illiberal democracy’, and the current relevance of the entire debate becomes painfully evident. While economists (with some degree of justification and credibility) celebrate counter-cyclical Keynesian planning policies as a means to break the circle of austerity and social inequality, such policies may also serve as blank check for authoritarian regimes based on the pseudo-legitimacy of the apparent will of the ‘people’ and displaying a striking disregard for civil liberties and the separation of power.

On the 130 pages of his compact and dense book divided in nine concise chapters, Hoerber manages to show that this is not an idle ivory tower debate between two schools of thought founded over 70 years ago, but a fundamental, unresolved, ideological dispute about how the economy ought to be organised and what a good society is. This is nicely illustrated with a chapter that applies the entire controversy to European Integration, a process of supranational market-building based on the principle of free and undistorted competition that neither Keynes nor Hayek could have dreamed of when they wrote their great works.

Thomas Hoerber’s essay thus spans the ‘battle of ideas’ from its inception to its contemporary impact. And the winner is …? The current consensus seems to be Keynes, who was recently qualified as ‘a stock value that is rising’ in a Le Monde supplement. But against the backdrop of the massive discursive cycle of rehabilitation of Keynesianism, the author finds himself, throughout his book, recurrently in defence of Hayek, whose work, despite being written in Britain, remains deeply impregnated by the scepticism that is so characteristic of his native Mitteleuropa and certainly deserves to be rediscovered.

Whatever the fluctuating penchants of the academic community or the volatile inclinations of an electorate that votes for policies implementing ideas and principles inspired by these great thinkers, the choices made will always depend on the context: time and space are crucial variables. The very currency of the debate illustrates just how much both the Zeitgeist of a specific moment and deeply-rooted cultural, often path-dependent, preferences shape the collective decisions about the society we want to live in.

For the French version of this book review, please click here.

The post Economics as a social science appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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Awareness-raising side event dedicated to the famine in the Horn of Africa on the sidelines of the Brussels Conference on 5 April 2017, in Brussels.

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Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : MEPs worry about the proliferation of hate speech and fake news, particularly in social media, they said in a debate on Wednesday. But they disagreed on how best to respond. Ideas aired included removing false and defamatory content, imposing fines to non-cooperative companies and fostering media literacy.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : MEPs worry about the proliferation of hate speech and fake news, particularly in social media, they said in a debate on Wednesday. But they disagreed on how best to respond. Ideas aired included removing false and defamatory content, imposing fines to non-cooperative companies and fostering media literacy.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : A visa-free regime for Ukrainians travelling to the EU is just the latest step in the European Parliament’s continued support of Ukraine. The Parliament has consistently shown solidarity by condemning Russia’s military involvement and illegal annexation of Crimea and promoting political and economic reforms.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary sessions : A visa-free regime for Ukrainians travelling to the EU is just the latest step in the European Parliament’s continued support of Ukraine. The Parliament has consistently shown solidarity by condemning Russia’s military involvement and illegal annexation of Crimea and promoting political and economic reforms.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Plenary session and committee meetings in Strasbourg

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Dear Mr Tajani,

Over the last months and weeks we have had several correspondences about my participation in a plenary debate in the European Parliament on Greece. As amongst others indicated in my letters of March 30 and April 4 I am fully committed to continue the discussion on Greece with the European Parliament as I for example lastly did on March 21 in the ECON committee. Due to scheduling reasons it was impossible for me to attend the Plenary session of this week.

Our services have already been in contact about finding a suitable moment to participate in a plenary debate in the near future. Through this letter I would like to indicate my availability for the next plenary session at the end of April. On the 26th I am available as of the late afternoon. The 27th is a national holiday in the Netherlands but I can be available all day.

I would like to suggest that our services find a suitable moment together on one of the suggested dates.

Yours sincerely,

Jeroen Dijsselbloem