European Union

Committee and political group meetings, Brussels

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

General : Aarhus in Denmark and Pafos in Cyprus are Europe's cultural capitals for this year. Since the capitals of culture initiative was launched in 1985, 54 cities around Europe have had the honour. The aim is to highlight the richness of Europe’s cultural diversity and looks at its shared history and heritage. Read more about this year’s cultural capitals.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

General : Aarhus in Denmark and Pafos in Cyprus are Europe's cultural capitals for this year. Since the capitals of culture initiative was launched in 1985, 54 cities around Europe have had the honour. The aim is to highlight the richness of Europe’s cultural diversity and looks at its shared history and heritage. Read more about this year’s cultural capitals.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

2017 is likely to go down as a year of historic elections with votes to determine who rules in Paris, Berlin and, err, Strasbourg.

The European parliament will decide its next leader on 17 January. In previous times, the role of president of the parliament was a stitch up between the two biggest groups: the centre-right EPP and the centre-left S&D. This time round, a proper race might develop.

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Three parliamentary committees will quiz Commissioner Günther Oettinger about his new portfolio for Budget and Human Resources, which Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has asked him to take over from former Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva.
Committee on Budgets

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Three parliamentary committees will quiz Commissioner Günther Oettinger about his new portfolio for Budget and Human Resources, which Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has asked him to take over from former Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva.
Committee on Budgets

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

DRAFT REPORT on the 2016 Commission Report on Kosovo
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Ulrike Lunacek

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Already two years since the Charlie Hebdo shootings, which in hindsight look like a prelude to a series the end of which does not seem to be in sight.

Is Europe still Charlie? Many Europeans, the large majority of whom had never heard of this magazine before, still claim they are, and there is no reason to question their sincerity in defending freedom of speech. What is striking, however, is the extent to which Charlie Hebdo was, and is, an utterly French interpretation of this apparently universal freedom.

Thirty years ago I was myself hopelessly lost in French satire. To start with, I was overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of satirical weeklies and monthlies that were on sale. Okay, I knew the Canard Enchaîné (which just turned a hundred years old – congratulations!) from school and was aware that France owed the ‘duck’ the uncovering of countless scandals and the invention of sarcastic puns by the dozen each Wednesday. No ads, no colours, old-fashioned layout, and always up to the beak in the spheres of power.

But there was more: a whole load of magazines that seemed to be rooted in a very particular comic-strip tradition, such as Fluide glacial, L’Echo des Savanes, and of course Charlie Hebdo. On television there was the Bébête-Show, followed by the hilarious Guignols de l’Info, brilliant in their first ten or fifteen years and so much funnier than Spitting Image (let alone their hopelessly boring German counterparts).

The greatest cultural shock, however, was the tone of it all: violently impertinent, furiously leftist, ruthlessly acid, and unbelievably tasteless. And this anger behind the humour! Charlie Hebdo was permanently outraged. Against racism and antisemitism, violations of human rights and militarism, pollution and bull-fighting, capitalism, and, of course, its most despicable opium: football. They hit out at the powerful, but also revealed, like Molière had done before, our own egoism and spineless laziness.

Sometimes their zeal in attacking dogma of all sorts turned against them and made them utterly dogmatic themselves. But the sheer radicalism with which the non-negotiable principle of ‘liberté d’expression’ was defended still forced respect. And in their best moments, their mix of bitter, black humour and stupid joking on teenager-level was refreshing.

If they had limited their anger to football, capitalism in general and French politics in particular, the murdered cartoonists would no doubt still be happily drawing caricatures in their office. But they were also the heirs of an aggressive, impudent and radical anti-clericalism, dealing sweeping blows against all kinds of religion, without any taboo whatsoever. Their coarseness made me wonder years ago to what extent this was transferable into other cultural areas.

In France, it functioned. Even Sarkozy, when he was still minister of the interior, defended them, declaring ‘I prefer an excess of caricature to an excess of censorship’. Such preferences, however, are directly linked to the normative, path-dependent and foundations of a given society. They have been negotiated and consolidated over long periods of time, within the legal and linguistic framework of the nation-state.

Three epochs of French history have been of particular impact with regard to satire, caricature, and the freedom of speech.

Concerning religion, the French enlightenment movement of the 18th century was significantly more radical than in other countries. For Voltaire and Diderot the fight against obscurantism and religious dogma in all its forms was no doubt the major challenge of the century and they could see no reason why religious susceptibilities should be subject to a special treatment. As early as 1791 the French Revolution abolished ‘blasphemy’ as an offence. In Germany it still exists today.

The second key epoch is the fight for the strict separation between the State and the Church at the beginning of the 20th century. The French type of secularism, always referred to with the untranslatable term ‘laïcité’, is a complex and demanding concept. Understanding and implementing it requires a minimum of intellectual effort by the citizen. In theory it is probably the best possible way harmonious coexistence of all confessions, including agnostics and atheists. In practice friction with the claim to absoluteness inherent to several religions is inevitable and painful. Only a few days before the Charlie Hebdo shooting there was a vivid public debate about the question whether state buildings like a Préfecture should be allowed to set up a nativity scene for Christmas in their hall. Would this just be some cultural heritage (to be tolerated) or a religious symbol (to be banned)? The discussion went on forever. Last summer, there was the ‘burkini’ drama. Swimsuit or religious symbol? The next headscarf scandal is already programmed.

The third key epoch for understanding French satire is the revolt of May 1968. One of the issues the French youth revolted against was the state censorship still practiced under de Gaulle and his ‘information minister’. The explosion of total freedom of expression in the early seventies wiped away all taboos. This is the time when all these ruthless satirical magazines were created and found a public eager to transgress the old red lines. It is not surprising that three of the great cartoonists killed in the January 2015 shootings were already in their seventies (even though their humour was sometimes more of the adolescent type…)

Three periods that are very specific to France and that have provided a wealth of codes and references that are only understandable within the French context. Which explains why behind the countless ‘Je suis Charlie’ signs of two years ago there were many non-French voices who expressed, to say the least, a certain bewilderedness after having taken a closer look on the magazine. Are there no limits to satire? Had these cartoonists not ‘gone too far’?

They need not worry. In 2017 Charlie Hebdo is not exactly toothless, but it has inevitably become much more selective in its anti-clericalism, preferring to hit out at religions, like the Catholic Church, who have grown accustomed to the existence of aggressive satire…

Some weeks ago, Charlie Hebdo has started publishing a German edition, based on the assumption that the massive solidarity and empathy shown by the German public two years ago suggests there is a demand for the Charlie kind of satire. I think they are wrong. My guess is that the German edition will be short-lived, and even if it survives its first year, it will hardly reach the target of 200,000 copies sold. Simply too French.

Albrecht Sonntag
@albrechtsonntag

This is post # 9 on the French 2017 election marathon.
Post #8 can be found here. Post # 7 here.
Post # 6 here. Post # 5 here. Post # 4 here.
Post # 3 here. Post # 2 here. Post # 1 here.

The post Two years on, how Charlie can you be? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

On behalf of the European Council, I would like to congratulate you on your appointment as Prime Minister of Romania.

You are taking up the lead of your government as Romania is celebrating 10 years of accession to the European Union on 1 January 2017 and is preparing for the rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU in 2019.

At a time when we are faced with many challenges, the continued responsible and constructive contribution of Romania to finding common European solutions and keeping European unity will remain essential for the prosperity and security of our citizens.

I look forward to working with you and I wish you and your government every success for the future.

In a Google search you put in what you are looking for and get thousands of results, with just what you want near the top of the list. Even if there is no exact match, you will get a number of suggestions that meet most of your requirements.

Like a blank Google search prompt, the EU’s negotiators will respond to whatever the British government puts in about what it would like the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with Europe to be. A variety of public statements and private leaks show there is no agreement on what it is searching for. If you do a search on Brexit hard soft, Google produces more than 5 million results.

The underlying assumption in Westminster is that whatever the British government states as its demands when negotiations start after it triggers Article 50 will return positive EU responses. Among these will be options that Britain can use to craft an agreement that it can confidently put to Parliament for approval at the end of the negotiation process. The ideal is a settlement that allows Britain to have its cake and eat it too, that is, continuing to enjoy benefits of freely trading with a single market of 450 million people while refusing to swallow the obligations that go with EU membership.

Unlike Google, EU negotiators have made clear that there are a number of terms that cannot be accepted on their own or in combination. For example, combining single market access and no controls on migration will not be possible. If British terms for negotiations ignore Europe’s red lines, then the search for agreement will produce no results because of the lack of an exact match between what Britain wants and what the EU is willing to offer.

The fuzzy logic of the Amazon search engine offers broader opportunities to search for a settlement.  Even if a fuzzy logic search does not come up with an exact match for what you want at a price you are willing to pay, it will offer a range of choices that more or less match what you are looking for. If this is the Brussels response to the British government’s initial demands, the Prime Minister will then have to explore whether her colleagues are prepared to modify their demands to match what is on offer or end negotiations without any settlement.

In a sense, the search for a settlement suited to British tastes is like examining the choice offered by the menus available at the several restaurants in a French holiday village. The range of choice will be limited and set by prix fixe menus. If none of the combinations that they offer are appetising, British politicians can open a tin of baked beans brought with them in their caravan and dream of taking their next holiday in a country offering a more agreeable menu, such as Canada.

What UK negotiators want is an à la carte settlement. This may be achieved at a price. For example, British universities could receive EU research grants if the British government is prepared to make an annual contribution to the research fund that is dished out under the control of Brussels. However, leading EU policymakers and politicians such as the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, have made clear that there are British tastes that they will not cater for on any terms.

As a mature politician, Theresa May knows that Santa Claus will not bring her an agreement that will satisfy the wishes of all her Cabinet colleagues. Her best hope is that the Lenten resolution of her colleagues will be to stop acting as if EU negotiators are ready to deliver the bagful of benefits that they would like. The best they can hope to get by Christmas 2018, the last before withdrawal happens, is some of the things on their wish list. To achieve this much, they must become Marxists, in the spirit of Groucho not Karl, and search for a friendly Sanity Clause.

The post The Brexit negotiation is not a google search appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

A new year, but the same old problems. Not only do we not know what Brexit will look like, we’re not even sure of the dimensions of what it could look like.

This is a real issue – both academically and politically – because any post-membership relationship will have to find positions for those involved on a number of matters of practical concerns.  Unfortunately, we don’t seem to know what all those issues are, let alone what they might be.

Overshadowing this is the rhetorical battle to define Brexit. As I’ve observed before, all political actors are currently trying to claim that definition, in pursuit of whatever political agenda they might wish to pursue. The only (partial) exception is Theresa May, who is trying to keep any definition vague, until such time as she finds a practical plan of action to follow.

So how do we get out of this? Three main thoughts occur at this stage.

Firstly, We should accept that everyone has an agenda in this. That might be for professional or personal reasons, or simply as a function of being a member of the polity. the whole point of democratic governance is that there is a competition of ideas and a protection of interests in a system that allows for controls on power and scope for changes in policy through agreed procedures.

In short, the system frustrates to protect. As the whole Ivan Rogers affair neatly exposes, it’s one thing to dislike an individual diplomat, but another to question the entire nature of diplomacy. You and I disagree on points of policy, we should agree on points of procedure on resolving those disagreements, certainly in the bigger scheme of things.

Secondly, as Richard North so delicately puts it, it might be helpful to recognise that no-one’s an expert on Brexit. Instead, people are experts in various other fields, that link to Brexit. Thus, no-one should have a monopoly of determining what happens in Brexit, or indeed what Brexit ‘means’. Any claim beyond saying that the referendum results means anything more than the UK has decided to leave the EU is a politically-contentious one.

Of course, even to get to that point requires a noticably minority of Remain voters to accept that they have lost their battle and that the result stands: that has broadly happened, but there is scant willingness to state that publically, which in turn casts long shadows over whatever work they now pursue. Thus the Supreme Court case – which returns to your frontpages in the coming weeks – is tainted by the suspicion that this is a front for non-notification of Article 50. Again, Ivan Rogers offers an alternative model: namely, that if you really don’t like what’s happening, then step away.

The final point is then a logical extension of the first two.

By talking with each other, we might start to find common ground on how to proceed. A quick glance around suggests some basic points of agreement:

• The need for a reliable framework for the process, both in terms of an end-point (i.e. the UK leaving the EU) and a timeline for decisions to be made (inside, alongside and around Article 50);
• The maximisation of benefits from leaving the EU, both economically and politically;
• The minimisation of costs from leaving.

Put like that, it seems rather anodyne, given that our preceptions of costs and benefits will differ radically. However, it still gives us something to work on, discussing and debating what these might be.

More importantly, it gives us the shared interest in the framework. We all want (and need) a structure to get us through this period and much of that is independent of whatever anciliary goals we might have.

So here’s my idea – a New Year’s resolution, if you like: let’s try and build that framework together.

During the coming weeks, I’m going to set up a website with wiki functionality and I’m going to start trying to write a text of an Article 50 agreement between the UK and the EU27: you get to join in too.

I’ll work on the basis that the UK is going to leave the EU and that this needs then clarification of a small number of basic points (see page 8 of the UKICE/PSA report that I contributed to back in November). Other that that, it’s open to debate what else goes into the text. I’ve suggested a plan for a transitional arrangement before, but we’ll see if that works in practice.

By writing something together, maybe we can help move debate on, even if only to point out the key problems.

Let’s see.

The post The substance of Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

In recent years a consensus has developed on dealing with the division of Cyprus: things will get better only if there is a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation on the island. But this is not necessarily the case as the solution that will be discussed at talks in Geneva from 9 to 12 January has a number of pitfalls. For example, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for Cyprus to continue in the eurozone. Serious concerns have already been expressed in various circles in Cyprus, as well as in the European Union and at the International Monetary Fund. Also, models based on ethno-nationalist pillars in a single state often lead to blockages, friction and frustration. Bosnia and Hercegovina and Lebanon are instructive examples.

A solution improving the status quo for the Greek-Cypriots seems difficult to achieve given the current stance of Turkey. Turkey aims to push aside the Republic of Cyprus to replace it with a new state entity. One of the risks involved in this is Cyprus being a ‘protectorate’ of Turkey. A bi-zonal, bi-communal federation with political equality would see Turkey gain a say in the EU affairs through its influence on the affairs of the new state of Cyprus. We should also not forget that there has been a gradual alignment of Greek Cypriot positions with Turkish demands since the latter’s invasion in 1974.

The status quo poses serious risks, but so does the current proposal for a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation. So we need an alternative proposal. We need to reassess the situation and focus on policy options that may help both sides to break the deadlock in a constructive way. And we need these alternative approaches to be based on an evolutionary rather than revolutionary process.

“The status quo poses serious risks, but so does the current proposal for a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation”

It will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to move from one state of affairs to another overnight. The issues are not just legal. There are separate narratives, experiences, perceptions, value-systems and political, economic and social realities.

So we need some basic principles to make the evolutionary approach work.

First, the occupied areas in the northern part of Cyprus should be turned into an EU region under the Turkish Cypriot administration. This means that Protocol 10 of the Treaty of Accession of the Republic of Cyprus to the EU, which suspends application of EU law in the northern part of Cyprus, no longer applies and European rules are effective throughout the island.

Second, Turkey should gradually return occupied territories to Greek Cypriot control, with the four basic EU freedoms of movement implemented and relevant obligations put on the Turkish Cypriot community.

Third, the Republic of Cyprus and Turkey must normalise relations.

Fourth, the two sides should develop a roadmap and guidelines for a federal constitution; it is essential to amend the 1960 ‘consociational’ constitution by introducing more federal integrationalist elements.

Fifth, the EU should take on its responsibilities to ensure a harmonisation process in the occupied territories of Cyprus. With the adoption of EU law in the occupied northern part of Cyprus, a process of internal political, social and economic convergence needs to be launched.

“We need to think outside the box − it is not too late to seriously consider an alternative proposal”

Sixth, Turkey must also assume its responsibilities. When Turkey invaded Cyprus in July 1974 it declared that its objectives were to restore the constitutional order of the Republic of Cyprus and to protect the Turkish Cypriot community. Turkey should now contribute to achieving these goals. The first steps should be to end its ongoing colonisation and withdraw its military forces.

Seventh, the Republic of Cyprus should react accordingly at all levels. It is essential to make the Republic’s voice heard and to promote it effectively.

Finally, any solution to the crisis should be based on a voluntary agreement between the two communities of Cyprus. The evolutionary approach gives both sides the necessary time to strengthen relations between the communities and make real the concept of an integrationalist, federal, indivisible state. If this is not possible, other ways should be sought to ensure peace and security within the framework of Cypriot membership of the EU.

Next week’s talks in Geneva will try to reach a comprehensive agreement. But achieving consensus with a strong majority support on each side will be difficult.

This is why we need to think outside the box. It is not too late to seriously consider an alternative proposal, one that is more rooted in the fundamental principles of politics, the economy, history and sociology. By doing so, we can have an outcome that satisfies multiple interests and objectives.

The article is based on a joint proposal made in the Greek-language policy paper ‘Bi-zonal Bi-communal Federation and the Alternative Proposal’ by Andreas Theophanous, Soteris Kattos and Constantinos Mavroedis

IMAGE CREDIT: CC / FLICKR – UN Geneva

The post Dealing with the Cyprus problem: an alternative proposal appeared first on Europe’s World.

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By Mehreen Khan

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Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

RECOMMENDATION on the draft Council decision on the conclusion of the Agreement continuing the International Science and Technology Center
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Elmar Brok

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

The Syrian ceasefire negotiated by Russia, Turkey and Iran is very fragile. Fighting continues in the Barada Valley region near Damascus, prompting the Syrian rebels to break off the preliminary talks being held in advance of a meeting in the Kazakh capital Astana at the end of January. Commentators wonder whether Russia will nonetheless be able to get the warring parties to sit down at the negotiating table.