European Union

The Romanians will vote for a new parliament under a revised electoral law on Sunday. Commentators hope that the people will be guided by their common sense despite a vacuous election campaign dominated by nationalist themes.

Alexander Van der Bellen has been elected as Austria's new president. The former Green Party leader won 51.7 percent of the vote, defeating Norbert Hofer, the candidate of the right-wing FPÖ. The Austrians have countered the populist trend but the right has emerged from the election stronger than ever, commentators warn.

Place:       Justus Lipsius building, Brussels
Chair:       Employment and Social Policy: Mr Jan Richter, Minister for Labour, Social Affairs and Family of Slovakia; Health: Mr. Tomáš Drucker, Minister for Health of Slovakia

All times are approximate and subject to change

EMPLOYMENT AND SOCIAL POLICY

+/- 08.50
Doorstep by Jan Richter

+/- 09.30
Beginning of the meeting (Roundtable Employment and Social Policy)
Adoption of the agenda
Adoption of the non-legislative A Items
Adoption of the legislative A Items (public session)

+/- 09.45
European agencies (Eurofound, EU-OSHA, CEDEFOP)

+/- 10.25
Posting of workers

+/- 10.50
European accessibility act

+/- 11.00
Equal treatment

+/- 11.10
European pillar of social rights

+/- 14.45
Council conclusions on accelerating the process of Roma integration (public session)
Council conclusions on women and poverty

+/- 15.10
European Semester 2017

+/- 16.10
Council conclusions on Youth Guarantee and the Youth Employment Initiative

+/- 16.20
Any other business

+/- 16.30
Press conference (live streaming)

HEALTH

+/- 14.15
Doorstep by Tomáš Drucker

+/- 16.45
Beginning of the meeting (Roundtable Health)

+/- 16.50
Annual growth survey 2017 (public session)

+/- 17.35
Any other business

+/- 19.00
Press conference (live streaming)

“The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.”

                                                                                           President Harry S Truman

The Six-Day War, also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War, or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967 by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. At that time,Mike Ungersma was a news producer for WLW-T Television in Cincinnati. He wrote this feature for the Midwestern city’s leading newspaper, The Cincinnati Enquirer in September of that year.

 ∞

 ‘The Hidden Report That Could Have Changed History’

Sunday 27 September 1967 –

Most Americans are aware that the recent Mideast crisis was deeply rooted in the soil of history, both events of our own time and happenings 4,000 years old.  But few of them know of the crucial World War I mission of Henry Churchill King, the late president of Ohio’s Oberlin College who was chosen by President Wilson for one of the most important tasks ever assigned a distinguished scholar and educator.  King and the businessman who accepted the responsibility with him came with a hair’s breadth of drastically altering the course of history in the trouble-plagued Mideast.

For it was King who was selected to lead a Commission sent after the First War to gather facts needed to implement one of President Wilson’s most celebrated promises of the war: the pledge that subjected peoples would have for the first time in their history the chance to determine their own future.

One of the most important results of the war was the utter destruction of the ancient Ottoman Empire.  A 20th century misfit, the old kingdom was near collapse when the fighting began and was in shambles when the shooting stopped.  Its downfall touched off a behind-the-scenes scramble for the Empire’s abandoned sphere of influence.  Allied with Germany during the war, the Empire paid a bitter price for defeat: the victors carved up its territory, some of the most coveted land in the world.  The carcass included the Holy Land.

It was the myriad of claims and counterclaims for the Holy Land which provoked Wilson to give serious consideration to an idea advanced by a Mideast expert, the president of the American University of Beirut.  Close to the area and appreciating its critical importance to the Peace, he suggested that Wilson and the French and British peacemakers empanel a blue-ribbon commission of experts to visit the Mideast and gather facts on the wishes of the people involved.

The suggestion sat well with Wilson, himself a scholar and idealist who was to conceive the the notion of a League of Nations.  He pressed for the adoption of the proposal at the peace table, and managed to extract the reluctant support of the Anglo-French negotiators.  Their unwillingness stemmed from the secret agreements the French and British already had concluded concerning the Ottoman Empire and how is remnants were to be divided among the victors.

Wilson’s plan included having the peacemakers name two of their most respected citizens to the fact-finding commission.  It didn’t take him long to settle on the American participants.  First he chose businessman Charles R. Crane, afterwards to become Ambassador to China.  Then Wilson tapped President Henry Churchill King of Ohio’s Oberlin College.  As one of the nation’s most highly regarded scholars and educators, King was no newcomer to international affairs.  At the time Wilson called him, he was in Europe having put in a year’s wartime service with a special detachment of the YMCA.  In addition, King had studied in Europe.  President of Oberlin since 1902, he was head of the prestigious Association of American Colleges.

Off to anything but a good start, and plagued by the continuing lack of enthusiasm by the French and British, Crane and King nevertheless proceeded with their plans for the mission.  Unknown to them and President Wilson, it was doomed from its outset.

There was some hint of its fate initially when the British and French dragged their feet in naming appointees to the Commission.  But at the urging of Wilson, and prompted by a frantic telegram from General Allenby in Palestine, the British finally appointed a pair of commissioners. Unfortunately, they never got beyond Paris.

But Wilson persisted, and after a visit by Crane and King in Paris, the President assured them that the investigation he promised the people of the Mideast would be made, and at once. That was May.  Within three weeks, King and Crane has landed in Palestine and begun their work.  They vowed to meet in conference with individuals and groups to obtain the broadest possible sample of Mideast opinion.  And that they did.

For six weeks, Crane and King and their entourage of experts visited one city after another.  From town to town and village to village they patiently listened to the pleas of representatives from 1,500 communities.  They received 1,863 petitions signed by 19,000 people.  Some pre-conceived notions were shattered, others fortified.  Encouraged by the sincere response, they retired to Constantinople on July 21 to prepare their detailed and exhaustive report they assumed would be a guideline for international diplomacy in the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Central to their report was the issue of Palestine.  As much of a problem in 1919 as it is in 1967, the venerable region was the home of three religions inclined to the bitterest kind of intolerance of one another.

Then part of Syria, Crane and King suggested Palestine be made a ‘mandatary’ or trustee territory under the new League of Nations.  This internationalization would be supervised by the United States.  If this had been the only question in the Mideast that required the attention of the Commission, it might have been accepted by the peacemakers since there is evidence to indicate France and England would have been content to yield Palestine to some other influence than their own.

But Crane and King had to deal with the Zionists. This international movement hoped to establish a national home for the Jews of the world in their ancient homeland, Israel.  Inspired by the opportunities presented in the War, the politically powerful Zionists obtained an important commitment from Lord Balfour, England’s Foreign Secretary.  Balfour sided with the objectives of the movement on the condition that the rights of existing non-Jewish population there be respected.

When Crane and King came to this crucial matter in their report they admitted they had changed their minds:

The Commission began their study of Zionism with minds predisposed in its favor, but the actual facts in Palestine, coupled with the force of the general principles proclaimed by the Allies and accepted by the Syrians, have driven them to the recommendations here made.

Their recommendations?  That the project of making Palestine a Jewish commonwealth should be given up.  Crane and King gave two reasons.  First, both said they felt that only the force of arms could maintain the Zionist program in Palestine so opposed to it were the Arab populations.  Secondly, Crane and King felt it would be a serious injustice to the Arabs, who had, after all, been in possession of the territory for 13 centuries and had at present an overwhelming preponderance of the population, even if Jews had a prior claim historically.

Their report and its controversial conclusions complete, King and Crane cabled President Wilson late in August outlining their essential recommendations.  It was this point where their product entered the political thicket.  It never emerged intact.

Wilson fell ill just days after having received the report, although there is nothing to indicate he would have been able to press for its conclusions in any case.  The ground had already been cut from beneath the idealistic Chief Executive.  His concept of the League of Nations torpedoed by opponents in the Senate, his political future dealt a fatal blow by his serious illness, Wilson could hardly muster the strength to live let alone energetically govern.

The King-Crane Commission’s Report?  It was unheard of until 1922 when a resourceful newspaperman convinced private citizen Woodrow Wilson that it should be published.  When it was made public, the report carried a sub-heading called, “A Suppressed Official Document of the United States Government.”

And President King?  He returned to Oberlin with a renewed image of a statesman and continued to serve as the school’s president until 1927 when he retired.

His report remains a monument to far-seeing and untiring scholarship and a constant reminder of one of King’s favorite maxims:  “One does one’s best and leaves he rest.”

-0-

 

The post The Hidden Report That Could Have Changed History appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

RECOMMENDATION on the draft Council decision on the conclusion of the Protocol to the Euro-Mediterranean Agreement establishing an Association between the European Community and its Member States, of the one part, and the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, of the other part, on a Framework Agreement between the European Union and the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria on the general principles for the participation of the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria in Union programmes
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Pier Antonio Panzeri

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Brexit“ and ”austerity“ are two of the most controversial subjects of recent times. Brexit is a political challenge stemming from an EU membership referendum; austerity is an economic challenge stemming from the political short-sightedness of pro-cyclical policies. But both phenomena have a direct effect on businesses and households across the European Union.

The Brexit vote, and Euroscepticism more generally, have come together with lengthy and hotly-disputed austerity policies in some countries to burden Europe’s economic revival by limiting the
influx of private money into the economy. The uncertainty caused by both Brexit and austerity is a key reason for the ineffectiveness of the European Central Bank’s quantitative easing policies. But how do Brexit and austerity interrelate? And what economic challenges can be expected from the referendum result?

One major impact relates to the EU’s multiannual financial framework (MFF) – for both the current (2014-2020) and next planning period. When Article 50 is invoked, the negotiations around and adoption of the 2021-2027 MFF will become more stressful and challenging than before. The withdrawal of Britain’s contribution will give greater power to net contributors and reduce the opportunities for net recipients. The decades of success stories that arise from EU funding is the primary argument for Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund. The fundamental importance of an
influx of capital into smaller, peripheral economies is visible in the Baltic states, and elsewhere too. Ireland may, yet again, be one of the best examples. Small newcomers to the EU rely on financial assistance – help that would otherwise have to be found in national budgets or on international bond markets. This alternative would invariably create new pressures and calls for austerity, meaning spending cuts to long-term projects such as preventive healthcare or fixing structural unemployment.

Should the Brexit negotiations result in a swift removal of contributions from the UK, we may even see austerity pressures and a sudden need to redistribute fiscal capacity away from projects
financed under the 2014-2020 MFF. The current British input to the EU budget is substantial. With the European project on a less-than-stable footing at the moment and the economic recovery not
as fast as had been hoped, expecting ad hoc contributions from other member states to make up the missing funds resulting from Brexit appears to be wishful thinking.

Two other aspects are trade relations and financial market interdependence. Both could lead to prolonged or re-introduced austerity policies in EU countries. The operations of British financial service providers in other EU members (and vice-versa) will need to be addressed during the renegotiation process. The relocation of financial services and workers will bring shifts in tax revenue streams, and some countries could lose out. The high degree of mutual exposure to financial services, along with the economic uncertainty and currency fluctuations that the Brexit referendum has brought about, are set to cause damage to national budgets and limit the room for fiscal manoeuvring.

This is most evident for trade in goods and services. Austerity measures will have to be undertaken because of falling trade – not only real, but projected. The UK’s economy is closely tied to those
of other EU member states. Many of these countries – including my own – could suffer or are already suffering losses due to the result of the referendum and the depreciating pound sterling. Falling
export values and smaller tax revenues from exposed industries are already affecting planning for 2017 national budgets.

These are the current and most immediate consequences of Brexit for the macroeconomic situation and budgetary planning. Additional costs could come from possible infringements of the free
movement of labour and the resulting social expenses required for repatriated families.

So does Brexit mean a stricter and more prolonged period of austerity is necessary for Europe? The uncertainty of Brexit has already reduced private and public spending. But this won’t turn into a fully-fledged austerity in all EU member states if the situation is politically managed and economic uncertainty contained. The EU’s leadership may well need to find a way to implement, not only
talk about, policies that will push Europe’s economy towards much stronger growth.

IMAGE CREDIT: duallogic/Bigstock.com

The post Welcome to Austerity 2.0 appeared first on Europe’s World.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Can Europeans learn anything from America’s experience with immigrants?

Mike Ungersma argues there is much to be gained.

What happens if we place a drop of red dye into a beaker of clear water? Do we have clear water plus a spot of red dye? Obviously not. We have a new coloration to every molecule of water. That is what I mean by ecological change. A new medium does not add something; it changes everything. In the year 1500, after the printing press was invented, you did not have old Europe plus the printing press. You had a different Europe.

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

While the American media theorist and cultural historian, Neil Postman, was talking here about the impact of television, he could just as easily been referring to the greatest sociological experiment in modern history: the mass migration of millions of Syrians, Afghans, Somalis, Nigerians and countless other nationalities into Europe. Moreover, it’s an experiment that is not happening in a laboratory, posed in a seminar room or offered up in a lecture hall, but actually taking place in an extraordinary short space of time on the streets and in the neighbourhoods of virtually every European city. No one knows what impact this remarkable event will have.  What we do know is – depending on your point of view – communities and their character are changing as a result, with their very essence under threat, or, they are being infinitely enriched by ethnic and cultural diversity while their economies benefit from low-cost workers and an injection of new, highly trained professionals.   Whatever the true effect, this is a wave of mass migration on a scale Europe previously saw only during two world wars.

There is no need to rehearse the amazing numbers, statistics from a variety of migration ‘watchers’ showing how London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Athens – never mind hundreds of smaller towns and even villages – are experiencing a rush of new arrivals who bring with them novel and even unknown religious, cultural, ethnic and linguistic differences and practices.  This societal change is tidal, unprecedented and challenging, causing many to wonder whether old, long established beliefs and familiar surroundings will be altered beyond recognition.

Europe’s economic ‘pull’ is magnetic and compelling.  There is the undeniable attraction of the welfare state and good jobs.  There is affordable housing in poorer areas in host communities away from the hostility of more affluent neighbourhoods.  Sympathetic support awaits migrants from countless voluntary agencies and charities, willing to not only assist in finding a place to live, learning the local language, locating schools and medical help, but also acting as a buffer from prying bureaucracy and rapacious landlords.

Historically, wherever people are free, they choose to live ‘among their own’, a truism that is even reflected among immigrants themselves.  Wherever they end up, they almost always elect to live with ‘their own’ – or – for a variety of reasons, are forced to do so.  Familiar faces that speak the same language are welcome indeed when one is faced with upheaval and displacement.  This is why Paris has its banilieues, London its Chinatown, Berlin its Turkish ghettos, and the the Roma are coerced into segregation in almost every host European country just as they were in their home nations.

Still another truism seems to be that this extraordinary state of population flux and historic movement in Europe shows no sign of ending.  As long as there are impoverished and desperate migrants and refugees who can find a way to prosperous Europe, they will come.

This phenomena is, however, not new.  Substitute the United States for every mention of Europe in the myriad of news stories about the ‘migration crisis’, and you have a more or less perfect fit, albeit a century or even 150 years earlier.  Remarkably, perhaps, substitute Roman Catholic for Muslim, and the parallel is striking.  Take, for example, this excerpt from one of many editorials in the Louisville Journal by its editor, George D Prentice, who was alarmed by the influence ‘foreign’ immigrants – especially Catholics – might exert in the upcoming election for Kentucky’s state governor:

Rally to put down an organization of Jesuit Bishops, Priests, and other Papists, who aim by secret oaths and horrid perjuries and midnight plotting to sap the foundation of our political edifices — state and national.

It was August, 1855.  Clearly not all of the ‘huddled masses’ – the inscription that was later to adorn the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour – were welcome in the ‘Land of the Free’.  Prentice was far from alone in his concern.  Charlie Hebo’s calculated irreverence toward France’s millions of Muslims was more than matched by the repeated insults hurled at the latest wave of 19th century immigrants to America by the ‘No Nothings’ – a offshoot of the early Republican Party.  While the movement disappeared as a political force, its anti-immigrant policies deeply infected the American body politic.

Irish immigrants were a favourite target.  Here is a cartoon from the satirical magazine Puck in 1889 showing the legendary American ‘melting pot’ working for everyone but one Irishman who stands aside holding a knife, waving the flag and demanding to be accepted.

 “The Mortar of Assimilation And The One Element That Just Won’t Mix”.

German Catholics were similarly regarded.

The Syrian, Afghan, Iraqi and African refugees streaming into Europe since 2015 have roiled its politics and tested its tolerance.  In 19th century America, the vast waves of immigrants pushed politics further and further to the right.  In every single decade from the 1870s to the present, the American Congress felt the need to respond with legislation, sometimes welcoming immigrants and but more frequently, restricting the flow.  The ‘crisis’ created a rollercoaster of action and reaction, what has subsequently been regarded by historians as a surge of populism.  When they were manifestly needed, the bar to immigrants was lowered.  When the need subsided, the welcome was suddenly withdrawn. The Civil War was an example. Some historians argue the outcome of that costly conflict might have  been very different were it not for the 500,000 German and Irish immigrants who served in the Union Army. Not all were volunteers however, and their forced conscription into ‘Lincoln’s Ranks’ touched off violent protests in New York in the summer of 1863.  Ironically, the Irish vented their frustration on the city’s blacks whom they felt threatened their jobs following the emancipation of southern slaves.  Unlike wealthier Americans who could literally buy a substitute when faced with draft, the Irish were swept up into the ranks in number which were far disproportionate to the Irish population.

Nearly a century later, with millions of young American men off fighting in Europe and the Pacific, the country welcomed Mexican ‘braceros’ to work the fields and farms.  Meanwhile, tens of thousands of blacks fled from poorly paid agricultural employment in the South to work in wartime northern mills and factories, a mass internal migration of unprecedented levels.  Most resided in ghettoes, and to this day, American cities live with the consequences. Similarly, the Chinese were welcomed as ‘coolie’ labour during the 19th century’s rapid push to connect every major American city by rail.   But when the ‘Golden Spike’ was driven and the Trans-Continental Railroad complete, Congress expressed its gratitude to the thousands of Chinese workers upon whose backs the task was made possible by passing the 1882  ‘Chinese Exclusion Act’, which not only barred further Chinese immigration, but forbade those already there to apply for citizenship.  Most were left unemployed, to fend for themselves in an increasingly hostile America. More recently, Hispanics, always present in America in numbers that continue to surprise Europeans, had arrived in the country by their thousands, and not just from Mexico.  Now their presence is altering the face of American politics and has pushed blacks down the ranking of ethnic minorities.

Europeans, representatives of an ancient culture that bequeathed so much to America, are not accustomed to thinking of the US as a role model, except perhaps in technology and enterprise.  But the experience of Americans dealing with wave after wave of immigration, of seeking to integrate disparate peoples into a still-expanding and developing democracy, may have lessons for Europe, and especially the European Union as it grapples with the influx of millions of invited and uninvited refugees and economic migrants.  What can be learned?

Some lessons are self-evident.  Given the mix enveloping Europe’s shores, count on disruption at virtually every level of society.  In the US, the country at least had the advantage of trying to accommodate people of a broadly similar background – largely expatriates of democracies with an historic Western Judaeo-Christian heritage.  Apart from a small injection of anarchists, communists and convinced socialists, immigrants to America were content to leave political ideologies behind.  Most were driven by the opportunities they perceived available. Much potentially divisive baggage was left behind.  While they may not have been uniformly and heartily welcomed, the US they encountered – at whatever period – was not alien and strange. Hence, a ‘Clash of Civilizations’ seems unlikely in any foreseeable American context, but Europe?

Secondly, America benefits from almost impenetrable natural borders.  With the exception of Mexico, migrants to America faced a very difficult and costly journey to Ellis Island’s immigrant reception centre in New York Bay, the gateway to 12 million immigrants to the United States for more than 60 years.  Europe’s borders are easily overcome, virtually impossible to patrol and a subject of fierce political disagreement.

Thirdly, if the American experience is a guide, expect even more unsettling turmoil.  Echoing the movement in 19th century America, the drift toward populism across Europe, as well as the discontent and discomfort many feel about their new neighbours, will be exploited and used by opportunists in every nation.  That certainly was the case in America.  The cost of ignoring rising public feeling in this regard has already been paid in Britain, where the precipitous and disastrous ending of the government of David Cameron is a alarming warning recognised in every chancellery in Europe.  As the Scottish-born historian Niall Ferguson argued recently:

Populists are not fascists.  They prefer trade wars to actual wars: border wars to military fortifications. The maladies they seek to cure are not imaginary: uncontrolled migration, widening  inequality, free trade with unfree countries and political cronyism are all things that millions of voters have good reason to dislike.  The problem with populism is that its remedies are in practice counterproductive.

Finally, the plaintive pleas of those who feel ‘We Can Do This,’ may be misjudging the magnitude of the task.  It is more than 150 years since Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation that freed three million black Americans from servitude.  In spite of decades of positive, energetic, forceful legislation and immense civic effort – not to mention the election of a black President – this thorny and difficult issue of integrating a minority remains unfinished.

Europe, like Sisyphus, has a mountain to climb and a very large boulder barring the path.

 

The post Adrift on a Sea of Cultures appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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Senegal and the EU have developped a close partnership which includes a structured political dialogue, strong trade relations, a fisheries agreement, and technical and financial cooperation in support of the country’s populations. It involves a sustained partnership as much with government authorities and public institutions as with civil society and the private sector.

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On Thursday, 8 December, the SEDE committee will exchange views with Brigadier General Lars Corneliusson, Director EUMS Intelligence, EEAS and Gerhard Conrad, Director EU Intelligence and Situation Centre, EEAS, on the war in Syria and the situation in Aleppo.
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Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

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Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

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Foreign fighters as well as “lone wolves” training and preparing terrorist attacks on European soil will be criminalised under new EU-rules to fight terrorism backed on Monday.
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

Foreign fighters as well as “lone wolves” training and preparing terrorist attacks on European soil will be criminalised under new EU-rules to fight terrorism backed on Monday.
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP