Ideas on Europe Blog

I’m being a bit of a dog with a bone on this one, mainly because no one else seems terribly interested in it.

As I’ve discussed before (here and here), the transition phase of withdrawal from the EU has been taken as a given. All parties were happy to sign up to the March text, it’s all highlighted in green, so job’s all done.

But as I discuss in the infographics below, there are lots of reasons why the transition period might not be long enough, plus various other reasons why extending it might not be an option.

In short, we might simply have replaced a cliff-edge in March 2019 with one at the end of December 2020.

So, some visuals for you, but not one on the consequences of falling off that new cliff-edge, because that’s essentially the same as all the stuff you’ve read about for ‘no-deal’ outcomes to Art.50 (like this).

Thanks to all my colleagues online who’ve helped shape these: any errors are mine.

 

The post Extending Transition appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The Danish government published its long awaited energy plan for 2030 on 30th April. The plan reflects the government’s green realism (see previous blog post), where ‘more environment for less money’ translate into spending and tax cuts for the energy sector.

The plan aims to reduce energy taxes and charges, strengthen market regulations, support Danish energy technology export, and increase energy saving thereby achieve 50 per cent renewable energies in 2030 and a low carbon economy in 2050. There is no detailed strategy for how to achieve a low carbon economy and green transition in all areas of society, such as electrification of transport. The silo thinking is problematic from a climate perspective where everything is connected.

According to  the 2018 Energy Projection published by the Energy Agency in March 2018, Denmark will not achieve its 50 percent renewable energy target in 2030 instead it will only reach 39.8 per cent. Moreover, the report predicts an increase in energy consumption after 2020 due to new data centres, electrification of heating and transport, just as the energy companies’ energy efficiency scheme ends in 2021. According to the new energy plan, the government main energy investments is a new offshore Wind Park (2024-2027). Yet several green organisations (e.g. Ecological Council, Concito, Skovforeningen) argue this is not sufficient to ensure Denmark meet its long term climate and energy targets. It is, therefore, necessary with more and earlier investment in renewable energies, energy efficiency and emissions cuts for Denmark to achieve its climate goal in 2030.

Furthermore, the energy plan does not explain how the electrification of transport will influence the Danish energy system. The government’s transport policy favours private transport i.e. car ownership and investment in road infrastructure. Without any incentives, transport users are likely to continue to choose fossil fuel cars instead of public transport or electric/ hybrid cars. Indeed, the 2018 Energy projection states that fossil fuels in transport will fall from 95 per cent in 2017 to 93 per cent in 2030. Compared to other countries, such as Norway, the Danish government is not considering banning fossil fuel cars although transport is one of the main sources of pollution, especially air pollution in cities. Clearly, Denmark will not reach its 50 percent renewable energy or emissions reductions targets in 2030 without integrating transport into the energy plan.

One of the government’s central goals is to reduce taxes and charges for all areas of society. Indeed the energy plan wants to reduce energy taxes and charges for both private and corporate energy users, which is supported by several energy organisations (e.g.  Danish Energy, the Danish Chamber of Commerce and Danish Wind Industry Association), who want cheaper electricity. The energy plan wants to cut red tape to allow better use of surplus energy from especially smaller companies, this is clearly positive step towards better use of resources and the energy plan focuses on creating better business environments for business and industry. Moreover, the green think tank Concito acknowledges that reducing energy taxes can be positive, if these create a tipping point for renewable energies, nevertheless this is not the case in the energy plan. Instead, a general reduction in energy prices might lead to increased energy demand thereby jeopardising Denmark’s climate commitment vis-a-vis energy efficiency and reduction in emissions.

Overall, the energy plan is a clear example of green realism, which believes in bottom-up market driven innovation to energy transition. Crucially, the energy plan is likely to miss both the 2030 and 2050 climate targets. The energy measures are not ambitious enough for Denmark to achieve its climate goals, especially as the plan predominately focuses on renewable energies instead of incorporating energy efficiency targets and emission reduction targets for 2030 currently debated at EU level, where Denmark is not part of the climate coalition in the Council (Euractiv and Altinget). Significantly, the energy plan does not take into account all the different elements of green energy transition, e.g. transport decarbonisation. Indeed silo thinking does not lead to energy transition and a low carbon economy. Finally, the government plans to publish separate plans for transport and climate in the autumn, which begs the question of whether the government will coordinate the policy aims for these three policies to ensure Denmark will achieve its climate goals.

The post The Danish government’s new energy plan: green realism & silo thinking appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Today in Parliament, Prime Minister Theresa May said:

“We are committed to delivering on our commitment to having no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and that we have as frictionless trade as possible with the European Union.”

She added:

“There are a number of ways that can be delivered.”

The best way to deliver ‘as frictionless trade as possible’ and ‘no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland’ is to have what we’ve already got: full membership of the EU

Nothing comes even close to being as good as that.

Ever since the EU referendum, Mrs May has been telling Parliament that she aims to get the benefits of EU membership without being a member. It’s nonsense of course.

For example, on 26 October 2016, Mrs May told Parliament she wanted “the best possible arrangement for trade” with the European Union.

Which is exactly what we have now.

Two months later, Brexit Secretary, David Davis, also told Parliament that he wants to get “the best possible access for goods and services to the European market.”

Which again, is exactly what we have now.

Last year Mr Davis also told Parliament that he had “come up with” the idea of a comprehensive trade and customs agreement with the EU “that will deliver the exact same benefits as we have.”

Of course, he has not found a way to achieve that. But this all begs the question: if EU benefits are so important to Britain (and they are) why on earth are we leaving?

In America they have a saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. So why does Mrs May want to fix something that isn’t broken?

She says it’s because that’s what the British people want. Well, that’s a moot point.

Yes, 17 million people voted for Britain to leave the EU – but that’s 17 million out of a UK population of 65 million.

And two of the four countries that comprise our Union of the United Kingdom – Scotland and Northern Ireland – don’t want Britain to leave the European Union at all.

What’s strange is that Mrs May also didn’t want Britain to leave the EU.

In a keynote speech during the Referendum campaign, she said:

“I believe it is clearly in our national interest to remain a member of the European Union.”

During a private and secretly recorded meeting with Goldman Sachs one month before the Referendum, Mrs May warned that companies would leave the UK if the country voted for Brexit.

What’s more strange is that, including herself, 70% of Mrs May’s current Cabinet voted to Remain in the EU. All of them said during the Referendum that leaving the EU would be bad for Britain.

So now they’re going to take Britain on a path that they all claimed would be against the interests of the country.

Mrs May now says we’re leaving so that Britain can trade with the rest of the world. But we already do that now. The EU doesn’t stop us.

On the contrary, Germany exports much more than Britain across the world, without any complaints that the EU is holding them back. Indeed, the EU was set up to facilitate better trade across the world.

Mrs May now says we have to leave the EU, its Single Market and Customs Union, so that Britain can be free to negotiate its own trade agreements with other countries.

Precisely for what advantage?

Currently the UK enjoys trade agreements with over 60 countries across the world, which we helped to negotiate as a leading member of the EU.

Since the EU is the world’s biggest free trade bloc, and the world’s biggest exporter, and biggest importer, of manufactured goods and services, it has the muscle and size to negotiate the best trade agreements with other countries.

By contrast, the UK, on its own and as a much smaller trader, is unlikely to get trade agreements anywhere near as good as the ones we have now, let alone any better.

On leaving the EU in March next year, the UK will have to tear up those 60+ EU trade agreements and negotiate them all over again from scratch. It will take years.

And for what?

Just so the name ‘UK’ is on the front of those trade agreements, instead of the name ‘EU’?

Big deal.

Does any of this make any sense?

No. It doesn’t. The EU is the world’s largest free trade area. As a member, we receive huge benefits worth enormously more than the net annual membership fee of £7.1 billion a year.

As a member, we enjoy free, frictionless trade with our biggest trading partner by far, right on our doorstep, where almost 50% of our exports go to and over 50% of our imports come from. Nowhere else in the world comes close to that.

The UK government is desperate to continue to enjoy similar membership benefits of frictionless trade with the EU after we have ended our membership, because they know that our economy’s survival depends on it.

But the UK government has said it wants to continue to enjoy membership benefits as an ex-member, without being part of the EU Single Market or customs union, without agreeing to the rules of the EU and its market, without being subject to the European Court of Justice to oversee those rules, and without paying anything to the EU for access.

It’s not going to happen. Mrs May knows this.

Before the referendum she said boldly and strongly, “It is not clear why other EU member states would give Britain a better deal than they themselves enjoy.”

Yet that’s exactly what Mrs May now wants. She says she aims to achieve a new trade agreement with the EU that’s unique to us, that no other country in the world has ever achieved.

Of course, it’s not going to happen.

What’s the point of a club if you are going to allow non-members to enjoy the same or better benefits as members? What club allows that?

So here’s the bottom line:

 Britain needs frictionless trade with the EU.

We need free movement of goods, services, capital and people for our country not just to survive, but to thrive.

For the sake of peace, we need an entirely open border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

To achieve this, we need to continue with the status quo: the arrangement we have now.

Has this sunk in yet?

We’re leaving all the benefits of the EU, only to desperately try and get back as many of those benefits as we can after we’ve left.

This is complete and utter madness. It will be much better to just keep the current arrangement. It will be cheaper, and we will all be better off.

Sometimes the truth hurts, but it’s time we faced up to it before it’s too late.

Brexit makes no sense.

________________________________________________________

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
• Follow my Stop Brexit campaign on Facebook: Reasons2Remain

________________________________________________________

• Join and share the discussion about this article on Facebook:

The post Prime Minister, we already have frictionless EU trade appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

At the European Parliament in Brussels I interviewed LibDem MEP, Catherine Bearder, who gave a positive message: We can stop Brexit.

“Absolutely it can be stopped,” she said, “and I think that’s the message that I would like to get out.”

The LibDem MEP added, “It has to be done democratically.”

Ms Bearder said that voters need to be told that, ‘This is not a done deal, this is your choice. Is this the deal you thought you were going to get? You can change your mind if you want to.’

“Lots of people do change their minds,” said Ms Bearder. “Even Mrs May has changed her mind.”

Ms Bearder, who has been an MEP for almost ten years, has promoted a hashtag, #GiveUsASayMrsMay.

Ms Bearder told me:

“My message is that Brexit is not inevitable.”

“We can stop this, but we need the voices to come from the streets. We need people to be saying: ‘This is not what we voted for.’”

Please share this 7-minute video. Polls show that most of the country now thinks that Brexit is a mistake, but that it’s too late to stop it.

But as Ms Bearder says, Brexit can be stopped. “We need to demand a vote on the final deal,” she said.

________________________________________________________

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
• Follow my Stop Brexit campaign on Facebook: Reasons2Remain

________________________________________________________

• Join and share the discussion about this article on Facebook:

(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_GB/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v3.0'; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));

'We can stop Brexit' – Catherine Bearder, MEP

→ Give us a say, Mrs May – Please shareVIDEO: ‘WE CAN STOP BREXIT’ – CATHERINE BEARDER, MEPAt the European Parliament this month, Reasons2Remain founder, Jon Danzig, interviewed Catherine Bearder MEP, who gave a positive message: We can stop Brexit.“Absolutely it can be stopped,” she said, “and I think that’s the message that I would like to get out.”The LibDem MEP added, “It has to be done democratically.”Ms Bearder said that voters need to be told that, ‘This is not a done deal, this is your choice. Is this the deal you thought you were going to get? You can change your mind if you want to.’“Lots of people do change their minds,” said Ms Bearder. “Even Mrs May has changed her mind.”Ms Bearder, who has been an MEP for almost ten years, has promoted a hashtag, #GiveUsASayMrsMay. “My message is that Brexit is not inevitable,” Ms Bearder told Jon Danzig. “We can stop this, but we need the voices to come from the streets. We need people to be saying: ‘This is not what we voted for.’”Please share this 7-minute video as widely as possible. Polls show that most of the country now thinks that Brexit is a mistake, but that it’s too late to stop it.But as Mrs Bearder says, Brexit can be stopped. “We need to demand a vote on the final deal,” she said.• This video is now on the Reasons2Remain YouTube channel. Please share widely: youtu.be/lfYrwxl86Vw• Please re-Tweet:twitter.com/Reasons2Remain/status/990923564948901888********************************************► Watch Jon Danzig's video on YouTube: 'Can Britain Stop Brexit?' Go to CanBritainStopBrexit.com********************************************• To follow and support Reasons2Remain just ‘like’ the page, and please invite all your friends to like the page. Instructions to ensure you get notifications of all our stories:1. Click on the ‘Following’ button under the Reasons2Remain banner2. Change the ‘Default’ setting by clicking ‘See first’.********************************************• Please rate Reasons2Remain out of 5 stars. Here's the link: facebook.com/Reasons2Remain/reviews/********************************************• Follow Reasons2Remain on Twitter: twitter.com/reasons2remain and Instagram: instagram.com/reasons2remain/********************************************• Explore our unique Reasons2Remain gallery of over 1,000 graphics and articles: reasons2remain.co.uk********************************************• Reasons2Remain is an entirely unfunded community campaign, unaffiliated with any other group or political party, and is run entirely by volunteers. If you'd like to help, please send us a private message.********************************************• © Reasons2Remain 2018. All our articles and graphics are the copyright of Reasons2Remain. We only allow sharing using the Facebook share button. Any other use requires our advance permission in writing.#STOPBREXIT #EXITBREXIT #PEOPLESVOTE

Posted by Reasons2Remain on Monday, 30 April 2018

The post ‘We can stop Brexit’ – Catherine Bearder, MEP appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

  Last night Theresa May’s Tory (aka UKIP2) government suffered a major defeat in the House of Lords.

By a large majority, the Lords agreed to an amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill to give MPs the power to stop the UK from leaving without a deal, or to make Theresa May return to negotiations if the deal is considered not good enough.

Supporters of the amendment said that Parliament, and not ministers, must “determine the future of the country”.

Government ministers have expressed anger at the Lords amendment, calling it a betrayal of ‘the people’s will’. Mrs May is now trying to persuade MPs to strike out the change.

But wasn’t one of the main points of the Brexit campaign to give our Parliament in Westminster ‘more sovereignty’?

Isn’t it the job of our Parliament to consider, in great detail, all decisions affecting the future of our country, and to hold the executive to account?

When making a decision, our Parliament has many debates, and multiple votes, over a period of time, often many months, and our Parliamentarians can reconsider, amend or reverse the decision at any stage of the process.

But in the referendum us, ‘the people’, only had one vote, on one day, on a simplistic binary choice, without any chance to reconsider, amend or reverse our decision, even though voting took place almost two years ago.

What sort of democratic process is that?

Furthermore, the referendum was seriously flawed. Here’s why:

Many people directly affected by the outcome of the referendum were denied a vote.

The referendum was, by Act of Parliament, advisory only and not binding, but a minority was allowed to ‘win’. (Yes, a minority: 17 million people voting for Leave is not a majority in a country with 46.5 million registered voters).

The margin between Leave and Remain was wafer thin – less than 4%, so well within the margin of error.

Two of the four countries of our Union of the United Kingdom did not want Brexit, thus literally splitting the UK in half.

There was no manifesto, blueprint or plan presented for Brexit (and there still isn’t). So, the 17 million who voted for Brexit didn’t all vote for the same Brexit.

No one could have given ‘informed consent’ for Brexit, because none of us were fully informed about the meaning of Brexit.

Some Leave voters thought we’d be staying in the Single Market after Brexit. (Yes, that’s what some Leave campaigners told us).

Some thought we’d be staying in the EU Customs Union, or at least ‘a’ customs union after Brexit. (Yes, that’s what some Leave campaigners told us).

Many voted for Brexit because they believed the lies of the Leave campaign (more money for the NHS; getting our country back; more sovereignty; control of borders; the EU is undemocratic; Turkey is joining soon.. all misleading and false).

Some voted for Brexit because they never imagined ‘Remain’ would lose, and so used the ballot box as a protest vote against Cameron’s Tory government.

There were many reasons people voted for Leave, but no single reason, and certainly no defined agreement on what Brexit would mean or entail. (We still don’t know).

So, frankly, it’s disingenuous to claim that ‘Brexit is the will of the people’. By no stretch of the imagination can Brexit be described as ‘the people’s will.’

And in any event, even if Brexit was ‘the will of the people’ on one day in June 2016, that’s almost two years ago, and multiple polls have since shown that the will of the people is not now in favour of Brexit.

But this is the problem of referendums. They are not democratic, and they are a lousy way to make a decision.

So far, this has not been a problem in the few referendums we’ve had in the UK, because referendum results have not produced controversial results.

But, for the first time in a UK referendum, voters on 23 June 2016 rejected the status quo, the advice of the government, and the consensus of Parliament.

The Brexit vote pitched ‘direct democracy’ against ‘Parliamentary democracy’, with potentially disastrous consequences.

And therein lies the problem now facing and fissuring the United Kingdom.

Direct democracy (referendums) and representative Parliamentary democracy can be dangerously incompatible.

They cannot co-exist without the potential of one damaging or even destroying the other.

The few referendums that Britain has held in recent decades haven’t caused such major problems because, until now, referendums were generally relied upon to return a result in accordance with the status quo and/or the will of Parliament.

Put simply, voters tended to dislike change.

But that ‘rule of thumb’ was dramatically and perilously turned around when Leave won. For the first time, ‘the people’ voted against the overwhelming will of Parliament.

So which ‘will’ has superior sovereignty: Parliament, or ‘the people’? The conflict has the potential to destroy the very core of our democracy.

This is a problem that has never happened before in Britain, but it should have been anticipated. After all, referendums are a relatively new phenomenon in our country, and many sage British politicians were, for good reasons, completely against them.

Labour prime minister, Clement Atlee, categorically stated that referendums “are just not British.”

He said:

“I could not consent to the introduction into our national life of a device so alien to all our traditions as the referendum which has only too often been the instrument of Nazism and fascism.”

Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was also adamantly opposed to referendums. She said that they were the “device of dictators and demagogues”.

And it’s true: Hitler, Mussolini and Napoleon III all used referendums to legitimise decisions they had made. They could go to the populace and ask them any question, and then interpret the simplistic one-word answer almost any way they wanted.

(Which is pretty much what our Prime Minister, Theresa May, and her Brexit ministers, are attempting to do.)

Of course, former Prime Minster David Cameron knew the dangers of referendums all along. But he never anticipated losing.

After all, he felt confident after previously ‘winning’ two major referendums in a row: a referendum to change the voting system (2011; answer no) and a referendum giving independence to Scotland (2014, answer no).

Since Mr Cameron was so convinced that there was almost no chance of losing the EU referendum, a potential clash between the ‘will of the people’ and the ‘will of Parliament’ was not going to occur.

How wrong he was.

What’s worse is that there was no need for a referendum at all. Mr Cameron only decided to hold one to resolve an internal dispute in the Tory party, rather than for the national interest.

Euroscepticism, and the call for another EU referendum after the one in 1975, had always been on the minority fringes of the main political parties, especially as around two-thirds of both houses of our Parliament strongly supported EU membership.

Mr Cameron not only gambled with our country’s future by holding an unnecessary referendum, but he also put at grave risk the foundations and established mechanisms of our traditional method of democracy.

Following the referendum result, MPs and members of the House of Lords felt stymied. The vast majority of their heads and hearts told them that Britain’s best interests are served by remaining in the EU, and that Brexit is likely to cause the country severe economic hardship and isolation.

After all, that’s what the vast majority of them told us during the referendum campaign.

Instead of the referendum giving our Parliament more sovereignty – one of the many disingenuous promises of the Leave campaign – the referendum result severely weakened and demeaned Parliamentary sovereignty and the function of MPs.

Even though it was decided by Parliament that the referendum should be advisory only and not legally binding, politicians have felt agonisingly compelled to obey the Brexit result.

Were it not for the referendum, by a huge majority, Parliamentarians would have strongly and unequivocally voted against Britain leaving the EU.

Instead of empowering Parliamentarians, the referendum result has turned them into puppets of ‘the will of the people’.

Unlike decisions of Parliament, which can be fully considered, amended, changed and reversed, the simplistic one-word answer of the referendum now appears to be cast in stone.

This is all a hopeless mess. The so-called ‘will of the people’ has trumped and thwarted Parliament’s sovereignty, even though that ‘will’ was based on a minority of registered voters, who voted for something that was not clearly defined or understood.

(Indeed, the promises and claims made about Brexit were based on shocking lies).

The simple fact is that referenda are only benign when they agree with the will of Parliament. But when a referendum returns a result that’s entirely the opposite to the will of Parliament, our democracy, and our country, are in danger of tearing themselves apart.

Prime Minister Theresa May must have realised this. She considered it necessary to resolve the very narrow margin for Leave in the referendum by calling a snap general election last year, with the goal of winning a huge majority to give her an unquestionable mandate to go ahead with Brexit.

But instead, the country rejected her plans, leaving her with no majority at all.

That should be the cue for Parliament to regain its confidence and to take back sovereignty that it imagined, falsely, had been removed from it by the advisory referendum of 2016.

We now need a return to fully fledged, representative Parliamentary democracy, that has served this country well for hundreds of years.

We now need Parliament to act in the best interests of the entire United Kingdom; not just the 17 million who voted for Leave, but for all the people of our country: the 65 million who live here, and who our Parliamentarians are supposed to represent, and protect. • Photo of the Houses of Parliament by Diliff (Own work) [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

________________________________________________________

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
• Follow my Stop Brexit campaign on Facebook: Reasons2Remain

________________________________________________________

• Join and share the discussion about this article on Facebook:

The post Why referendums and Parliament are incompatible appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The EU’s cohesion policy is 30 years old and now accounts for around a third of the EU’s budget. To celebrate, the European Commission has published a new dataset. This details annual payments to the EU’s regions since 1989.

The dataset covers most funds under the European Structural and Investment Funds umbrella. For the UK this covers the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the European Social Fund (ESF) and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD). This means some big areas of EU spending (such as payments made via the Common Agricultural Policy) aren’t included. The dataset also doesn’t include the territorial co-operation element of ERDF, such as Interreg.

This aside, it provides some interesting insights into how the EU has invested in the UK since 1989.

Between 1989 and 2016 the UK received a total of €37.4 billion from the three funds. There’s sometimes a popular assumption that the lion share of EU regional spending has been focused on central and eastern Europe, but over the long term the UK has done relatively well. The amount spent in the UK since 1989 is well above the EU-28 average of €28 billion.

This partly reflects that the UK has been a member state for a long time and so has been able to benefit from EU funds over a longer period. But it’s also important to remember that the UK pushed hard for EU regional policy to be adopted in the first place, mainly because many of its deindustrialising regions would be key beneficiaries.

The UK benefited most from the 2000-2007 programming period, which saw €16 billion worth of investment. Spending reached a peak in 2005. It then fell from the 2007-2013 programming period as funding shifted its focus to central and eastern Europe.

In terms of where EU money has been spent in the UK, West Wales and the Valleys have benefited the most. Merseyside, Northern Ireland, South West Scotland, South Yorkshire and the West Midlands have also seen high levels of investment. But something worth noting is that every area in the UK has benefited to some extent – EU investment has not just been the preserve of areas in industrial decline.

In the context of Brexit all of this leads to an obvious question: what will happen to this investment after the UK leaves the EU? The amounts spent are not insignificant. As austerity bites, localities have also become increasingly reliant on EU funding schemes to deliver projects.

During the 2017 general election the Conservative Party manifesto committed to establishing a “Shared Prosperity Fund” which would replace EU regional investment after Brexit. But there’s been little progress and clarity on this since the election. While the EU is preparing its proposals for the next cohesion policy programme from 2021, the UK has only got as far as guaranteeing to underwrite EU projects up to the end of 2020. For this reason, UK local authorities – the primary beneficiaries of EU regional funding – are starting to worry.

There are plenty of debates about how effective EU regional spending has been. But overall UK regions have seen sizeable investment from the EU, which the LGA says has been used to “create jobs, support small and medium enterprises, deliver skills training, invest in critical transport and digital infrastructure and boost inclusive growth”. The extent to which this support will continue after Brexit remains uncertain.

The post Exploring EU regional investment in the UK since 1989 appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Inspired by the growing debate on critical approaches to European Studies, Vladimir Bortun adds his own perspective. He argues for class analysis which not only asks how to fix the EU’s specific problems but which takes a more holistic approach. Is the EU in its current form even worth fixing or do we need to think about a different kind of transnational cooperation?

© frittipix / Adobe Stock

I was pleasantly surprised to read the two recent articles on Crossroads Europe by Rachael Dickson Hillyard and Vanessa Bilancetti, both making the case for a more critical approach to the EU within the field of European Studies.

I must admit that, throughout my PhD, I have been struck by the virtually unconditional support for the EU that seems to prevail in the academic community, probably best highlighted by the debate and developments around Brexit.

The limited critical analysis that does exist is mostly local and targets one aspect or another of the EU. Some focus on the shortcomings of the Eurozone or others on the famous ‘democratic deficit’. However, hardly anybody in the field – with some notable exceptions such as Carchedi or McGiffen – challenges the EU as a whole. Nearly all debates are about “what’s wrong with the EU and how to fix it”, thus reflecting an underlying, undisputed consensus over the intrinsic value of the EU and the need to preserve it; maybe improve it or fundamentally reform it, but nevertheless preserve it.

In a context of multiple crises faced and at least partly caused by the EU, we need to bring to the fore the more fundamental debate on whether the EU is indeed worthy of such unconditional endorsement. This debate should be at the core of our field rather than confined to the rather obscure subfield of Critical European Studies. Its present marginality is not healthy for European Studies as a whole, which currently falls short, I believe, of the main duty of social researchers and intellectuals in general – to critically analyse the dominant structures, practices and discourses that shape the world we live in.

For too long, scholars of the EU have assumed that their object of study is intrinsically defensible or, at the very least, a neutral phenomenon that needs to be treated accordingly. Class analyses from Marxist or neo-Marxist perspectives have been largely dismissed as ‘ideological’, although the fundamental endorsement of this European integration is by no means any less ideological.

It would be impossible to fully develop here such a class analysis, but it entails going beyond the mere acknowledgement of the neoliberal character of the EU’s policies over the last few decades. It asks us to look at the more structural class character of the EU as a whole.

Such an analysis understands European integration not as the noble project for peace and prosperity in Europe but rather as a realignment of capitalist classes in Western Europe following the Second World War. These classes had come to realise – to the backdrop of developments such as the rise of the welfare state and the process of de-colonisation – that their interests could be best served through the establishment of a common market.

The subsequent, neoliberal, developments of that project only consolidated and furthered those class interests. Thus, from the design of the Single Market and of the Monetary Union to the management of the (still) ongoing Eurozone crisis, the EU’s neoliberalism is not some qualitative departure from its initial mission, but a rather logical continuation of that.

At the same time, as Vanessa correctly pointed out in her piece, the limits of European integration are set by the inherent limits of the cooperation among the various capitalist classes in Europe. In other words, European integration only goes as far as their common interests go, which means that when a capitalist crisis develops and the competition between (and within) national capitalisms enhances (as reflected by the current revival of protectionism), then European integration also enters a crisis.

This is reflected not merely by the growth of popular Euro-hostility but also by the increasing divisions among member states. What all this suggests is crucial: that genuine European unity is not possible on a capitalist basis.

In conclusion, a class analysis of the EU doesn’t merely ask “how to fix it” but whether it can be fixed and, indeed, whether it is worth fixing in the first place. These are crucial questions that our field, I believe, needs to address more explicitly.

Indeed, our field – which is called European rather than EU Studies for a reason – should try and escape the tacit TINA-like attitude currently prevailing; it should start envisaging alternatives ideas of transnational cooperation and internationalism that might be able to premise the kind of genuine European unity that many of us are committed to.

Please note that this article represents the views of the author(s) and not those of the UACES Graduate Forum, JCER or UACES.

Comments and Site Policy

Shortlink for this article: http://bit.ly/2I0nfpn

Vladimir Bortun 
University of Portsmouth

Vladimir Bortun is a doctoral candidate at the University of Portsmouth. His research focuses on transnational cooperation of new left parties in Southern Europe since 2009.

 

The post European Studies Needs More Class Analysis appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

French society under Macron’s reform steamroller.

„I do think that we can build efficient politics; politics that escape ordinary cynicism and engrave in reality what must be the foremost duty of political action, I mean human dignity.”

Who would want to contradict Emmanuel Macron on this point? Certainly not the venerable ‘Episcopal Conference of France’, to whom he addressed these words on 9 April. And even less the German-born blogger, whose own Republic, after all, made human dignity (for good reasons) the top priority of its own constitution.

There is, however, a not insignificant number of French citizens who, the President’s noble words notwithstanding, feel violated in their dignity and are making it known on numerous parallel battlefields: from the train stations and universities to the slightly anarchist ecological guerrilla on the fields of the buried airport project in Notre-Dame-des-Landes.

Is it a first revolt against the uninterrupted reform stress after a year ‘en marche’ with Macron? Or is it an echo of the romanticised ‘Révolution’ of May 68, with which a vast majority of the French associates positive social change and the memory of which is currently celebrated on all media channels with great tenderness for those bygone days of innocence?

There is probably a bit of both in the current protest movements. True, the oft-quoted ‘convergence of social struggles’, invoked by the trade unions and conjured up by the Left around La France insoumise, does not seem to occur. Everybody remains focused on their own concerns and demands. Neither do the strikers represent a majority within the SNCF or among the students, quite the opposite.

Macron and his government know this, and they will emerge as the winner from the current battles. The railway reform will be pushed through rather recklessly – just watch the ‘No chance!’ of Macron when asked by Fox News whether he might give in to the strikers. And the universities will calm down again once an improvement of the admittedly imperfect admission procedures will have been commissioned. But it will be a very ambiguous victory, for it will leave behind losers who were not just defeated in a labour struggle, but will fill lastingly humiliated, violated in their dignity.

The key to understanding the sheer bitterness expressed by the railway workers and students lies in the immense perception gap between the citizens and the government. The latter sees itself as ‘pragmatic’, ‘steadfast’, and ‘honest’, since it was announced well before the 2017 elections that citizens would be confronted with a demanding ‘transformation of French society’ and that a high level of willingness for change would be requested. Its arguments are factual, buttressed by the technocratic shrug of those who ‘objectively’ know better.

As for the protesters, they moved almost instantly to a very different semantic field. They are mobilised by what they feel to be ‘contempt’ and ‘humiliation’, no matter whether the cause they defend is the civil servant status of the railway workers, the taboo of non-selection at university entrance, or the vision of a collectivist, ecological agriculture as in Notre-Dame-des-Landes.

The culture model by Geert Hofstede (1991).

They are in coherence with the inner core of Geert Hofstede’s famous ‘culture onion’, where the (most often unconscious) fundamental assumptions of a given (most often national) culture lie, shared beliefs about what is right or wrong, beautiful and ugly, clean and dirty, noble and debasing.

In several books based on his research in comparative anthropology Philippe d’Iribarne has convincingly demonstrated to what extent the perception of what is respectful or demeaning treatment, of what constitutes dignity or ignominy is determined by the ‘mental universe’ of a cultural community. He has been repeatedly perplexed to find out just how much French society represents a special case in this field. In his aptly titled book The French Strangeness (L’étrangeté française, 2006) he shows how French culture has, over centuries, formed a severe hypersensitivity for the ‘rank that is attributed to each individual in society’ (p. 85). A sector in which this is particularly visible is the ‘service public’, which is dominated by ‘the logic of honour’, more precisely: ‘a certain nobleness in being at the service of the common good without being enslaved to it’ (p. 124).

It is of course perfectly possible to shake one’s heads – as do most media in Northwestern Europe – about the eternal striking of the French, who simply don’t seem to get the rules of late capitalism. In Britain, there is always someone to observe that ‘what France needs is a Margaret Thatcher’. Meanwhile in Berlin, the political and economic elite condescendingly adds that ‘Germany has done its homework’…

But sorry, that’s simply beside the point. (And might well backfire one day). It makes much more sense to understand France in 2018 as the most fascinating experiment in cultural change, conducted in real time on a national scale. In this perspective, the current convulsions of a part of French society are a perfectly logical backlash against a major cultural disruption that is imposed on them.

The ‘Macron Project’, which, as Simon Kuper recently observed, seems to consist in turning one of Europe’s oldest nations in record time into a kind of ‘Scandinavia with sunshine and vineyards’, is an immeasurable civilizational stress test. In fact, it is astonishing that so many French citizens are indeed willing to complete this kind of demanding ‘homework’.

The open question is: for how long?

The final result of the experiment will depend on their stamina and their level of frustration tolerance. For the time being, the President, whose working capacity, tempo, and rhetoric brilliance in the face of adversity is even respected by the sceptics, seems to keep them on board. Yet, there are good reasons why his nordic-liberal revolution may still fail.

First, as outlined above, the flexibilisation of the labour market, the changes in the educational system, the modernisation of the public service, the transformation of fiscal policy, and the dismantling of corporatist privileges, are more than just reforms. They touch the cultural underpinnings of French society. But where fundamental concepts of honour and dignity are anchored, a violently bent twig – to borrow Isaiah Berlin’s famous metaphor – may spring back and lash out even more violently at the forces that bent it in the first place.

Secondly, Emmanuel Macron is finding himself, slowly but surely, entangled in the defaults and ambiguities of the political system of the Fifth Republic, which he so masterly used to his own purposes during the election campaign. The first-past-the-post system in two rounds provides incredible freedom of design, but it is a treacherous distorting mirror about the real balance of power in society. At the same time, the sheer extent of the power in the hands of the President, and the expectations that come with it, virtually force the Head of State to govern above the heads of a weak parliament, which in turn inevitably leads to the shifting of power struggles to the streets (or rails, for that matter). And the typically French technocratic centralism, cultivated and consolidated over centuries, which Macron’s vertical government embodies, is losing legitimacy by the minute in an age of increasingly horizontal and digital networks.

The so-called ‘pedagogical’ initiative launched by the President over recent weeks – with two long TV interviews on channels watched by ‘target groups’ plus a public debate and even a longer discussion with angry citizens in the street, reveals that he is aware of the dangers. Will his explanations and persuasions be sufficient to calm down the uncertainty triggered by the destabilisation of deep-rooted core values?

France in spring 2018 – the experiment enters its next stage.

This post was initially published in German
by the Berlin-based think-tank Zentrum Liberale Moderne.

The post The railwayman’s dignity shall be inviolable. appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

It’s reported that record numbers of migrant nurses and midwives from EU27 countries left Britain last year, exacerbating fears that a Brexit ‘brain drain’ will worsen the NHS’s already chronic staffing crisis.

According to the Nursing and Midwifery Council, a total of 3,962 such staff from the European Economic Area (EEA) left their register between 2017 and 2018.

Reported The Guardian today:

‘The number of departures was 28% more than the 3,081 who left in 2016-17 and three times higher than the 1,311 who did so in 2013-14, the first year the NMC began keeping data on such departures.

‘At the same time, the number of EU nurses and midwives coming to work in the UK has fallen to its lowest level. Just 805 of them joined the NMC register in 2017-18. That total is just 13% of the 6,382 who came over the year before.’

Janet Davies, the chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing said, “It feels that efforts to boost the number of nurses are being dragged down by a botched Brexit.”

She added that the government’s refusal to detail the rights that the 3 million EU citizens living in Britain will have once the UK leaves the EU in March next year is a key cause of the loss of EU staff.

“Nurses returning home, or giving Britain a miss entirely, are doing so because their rights are not clear enough.”

In interviews conducted by the NMC, Brexit was cited as the main reason why EU-trained staff are stopping working in the UK. Almost 3,5000 people who left the register between June and November 2017 were included in the survey.

In addition, mistreatment of the Windrush generation by the British authorities is “raising anxieties” among EU citizens hoping to settle in the UK after Brexit, a group of MEPs warned British officials in Brussels,

The delegation, led by the European Parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, met officials from the Home Office to summarise concerns they have about transition and post-Brexit arrangements for EU citizens who wish to live in the UK after Brexit.

The European Parliament has expressed concern for some time about the provisions on citizens’ rights set out in the Withdrawal Agreement between the EU and UK, in particular about the difficulties involved in applying for residence.

Commented Mr Verhofstadt, MEP:

“The treatment of the Windrush generation under UK immigration law has unfortunately created renewed anxiety among EU citizens in the UK and shows why we have to get this right.”

Brexit is causing distress; it’s making migrants settled here no longer feel welcome.

‘You’re talking about us as if we’re not in the room’, is how many EU and non-EU migrants have expressed their hurt and alarm at how some British people have displayed dislike for them during and following the EU referendum.

Too many EU migrants was cited as one of the main reasons people voted for Brexit.

The feeling of not being welcome in Britain was compounded by the speech of Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, at the Conservative Party’s first annual conference following the EU referendum.

She announced that foreign workers should not be able to “take the jobs that British people should do”.

After Brexit, she said, companies in Britain could be forced to publish the proportion of “international” staff on their books. It was a proposal that would effectively “name and shame” businesses which fail to hire British workers.

This Tory idea represented discrimination plain and simple – something that’s not allowed under EU rules or principles.

And even though the policy idea was quickly withdrawn (because of public outrage) it told us something about the true feelings of those in the Tory regime

Both the Home Secretary, and Prime Minister Theresa May, pledged during last year’s general election to reduce net migration to just tens of thousands. The message was clear: we don’t want EU migrants here.

None of this makes sense. Why make EU migrants feel so unwelcome here, when they give and do so much for our country?

After all, these EU migrants represent only 5% of our population – that’s small, and can hardly be described as ‘mass migration’.

And almost all of the EU migrants here are at work, spending most of their earnings here, paying taxes, and making a substantial net contribution to our Treasury.

They enrich our country economically and culturally.

Britain has a record number of people at work, and record numbers of job vacancies – currently around 800,000 vacancies (source ONS).

That’s far more than can be filled by British workers, so EU migrants here are vital.

They not only help on our farms and in our factories, and care for our elderly and infirm, but they also do highly skilled work too.

Such as scientists, doctors, dentists, nurses, lawyers, accountants, teachers, pilots, engineers, architects – skills this country urgently needs.

Since we have more vacancies than can be filled by the indigenous workforce, and since most EU migrants are gainfully employed here, it must show that the numbers already here are about right.

EU migration to Britain is already efficiently controlled by the jobs market, and businesses want to be free to choose the best people.

That isn’t always necessarily a British worker. If it was, why doesn’t Manchester United only choose British footballers?

In summary, EU migrants are a boon to this country, not a burden.

They are filling job vacancies that mostly Britons can’t or don’t want to do. They are making a significant contribution to the wealth of Britain.

They have become our work colleagues, friends and partners.

If all EU migrants here took the day off tomorrow, Britain would come to a standstill.

Maybe that’s what’s going to happen with this Conservative government’s nasty, xenophobic, Brexit policies.

It’s time to appreciate EU and all other migrants here. Let’s hug them, not hate them.

The evidence is all around us that Brexit promotes hate. Is that really the kind of country we want Britain to be?

________________________________________________________

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
• Follow my Stop Brexit campaign on Facebook: Reasons2Remain

________________________________________________________

• Join and share the discussion about this article on Facebook:

The post Migrants: hug them, don’t hate them appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Most Britons would now vote to remain in the European Union if there was another referendum held next week. That’s the result of a major UK-wide survey of more than 200,000 readers of local newspapers called The Big Brexit Survey.

The survey also revealed that a significant majority want the UK to stay in the EU Single Market, and that most people believe that Britain will be economically worse off outside the EU.

Almost 220,000 readers of newspapers belonging to publishing groups Trinity Mirror, Johnston Press, and Newsquest were surveyed in the study, which showed significant worries about the Brexit process across the country.

Just over half – 52 per cent of respondents – believe Britain would be economically better off inside the EU, with 56 per cent calling for a ‘soft Brexit’ inside the Single Market – including more than a fifth of Leave voters.

The survey also reported that Leave voters are twice as likely to have changed their mind since the 2016 EU referendum.

Local and regional newspapers across the country have been reporting the results of this major new poll:

‘Devon voters now want to Remain in Europe, major new survey reveals’

Reported Devon Live:

‘More than half of Devon now wants Britain to stay in the Single Market, according to a major new survey carried out by Devon Live – and 15 per cent of Leave voters would change their decision in a new referendum.

‘The latest Brexit survey shows 48% of Devon Live readers believe Britain will be better off economically inside Europe and 53% said Britain should continue to be part of the single European market.’

‘Majority of people in Wales think we would be better off inside the European Union, survey reveals’

Reported Wales Online:

‘Three-fifths of people in Wales think we would be better off economically in Europe – and a majority want to stick with the Single Market.

‘A new Brexit survey shows 59% of WalesOnline and Western Mail readers believe Britain will be better off economically inside Europe. As well as this, 62% said Britain should continue to be part of the single European market.’

‘Brexit: Over half the North East wants to keep the Single Market’

Reported ChronicleLive:

‘Almost two years since the region voted to Brexit, a new survey also reveals most people and aren’t happy with negotiations.

‘Half of people in the North East think we would be better off economically staying in the European Union – and a majority want to stick with the Single Market.’

‘Major survey finds Remain would win second Brexit referendum’

Reported The Scotsman:

‘Britain would vote by a narrow margin to remain in the EU if another referendum were held next week, according to a major UK-wide survey of more than 200,000 people.

‘The unprecedented survey, which included 17,000 responses in Scotland, shows that a significant majority want the UK to stay in the European Single Market and believe Britain will be economically worse off outside the EU.’

‘York Poll: Britain must stay in European market’

Reported The York Press:

‘A MAJORITY of York Press readers online want Britain to stay in the single European market after Brexit, according to a survey.

‘The study, run in partnership with Google Surveys, was completed by 1,600 people who visited the York Press website.

‘It showed that 56 per cent of readers believed Britain would be better off economically inside Europe, with 62 per cent saying Britain should continue to be part of the single European market.’

‘More leavers than Remainers in Cornwall have changed their mind and want the UK to stay in the EU, survey reveals’

Reported CornwallLive:

‘New figures have revealed that more than half of people in Cornwall think the UK would be better off economically in Europe – and a majority want to stick with the Single European Market.

‘The new Brexit survey shows 52% of Cornwall Live readers believe Britain will be better off economically inside Europe. As well as this, 54% said Britain should continue to be part of the Single Market.’

‘Almost two thirds of Scots believe we are better off in EU and want to stay in Single Market after Brexit’

Reported the Scottish Daily Record:

‘Most Scots believe the economy would be better off in the EU.

‘The result from a major Brexit survey also suggests a majority want to stay in the single market. The findings are in line with the EU referendum decision in Scotland and are higher than in the rest of the UK.’

‘One year to Brexit – this is what the people of Greater Manchester think’

Reported The Manchester Evening News:

‘Nearly three-fifths of people in Greater Manchester think we would be better off economically in Europe – and a majority want to stick with the single market, a new poll suggests.

‘Almost two years on from the EU Referendum a new Brexit survey suggests 57 per cent of Manchester Evening News readers believe Britain would be better off financially in Europe.

‘And more than six out of 10 (61pc) said Britain should continue to be part of the single European market.’

‘How Brexit opinions in Salisbury have changed two years on’

Reported the Salisbury Journal:

‘MORE than half of people in Salisbury think we would be better off economically in Europe – and a majority want to stick with the Single Market.

‘A new Brexit survey shows 56 per cent of Salisbury Journal readers believe Britain will be better off economically inside Europe. As well as this 59 per cent said Britain should continue to be part of the single European market.’

‘Brexit survey shows majority in Belfast think UK better off inside Europe’

Reported Belfast Live:

‘A new Brexit survey shows 65% of Belfast Live readers believe UK will be better off economically inside Europe. As well as this 66% said Britain should continue to be part of the single European market.

‘The figures show a split between those who voted Leave and those who voted Remain in the referendum. Among Leave voters, 11% think Britain is better off economically in Europe, while more than a quarter of these voters (28%) think we should continue to be part of the Single Market.’

—————————————————–

The tide is turning on Brexit. Steadily, and surely, more and more people across the country believe the Britain should remain in the EU, or at least, in the EU Single Market.

According to this major new survey, if there was another referendum next week, Remain would win.

No wonder Brexiters don’t want another vote.

They say that another vote would be ‘undemocratic’. But there is nothing undemocratic about asking people to vote again – more votes, mean more democracy, not less.

In a democracy, voters are allowed to change their minds. But it seems that some Brexiters do not want voters to be allowed to do that.

How democratic is that?

And if Prime Minister, Theresa May, is really interested to follow the ‘will of the people’ she should now take note that Brexit does not have majority support across the country.

Like a broken record, Mrs May keeps going on about the result of the referendum on 23 June 2016. But that was almost two years ago, and this is now.

Mrs May changed her mind once, going from supporting Remain to supporting Brexit. It’s time for Mrs May to listen to ‘the people’, and change her mind again.

________________________________________________________

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
• Follow my Stop Brexit campaign on Facebook: Reasons2Remain

________________________________________________________

• Join and share the discussion about this article on Facebook:

The post The tide is turning on Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Two weeks away from all this Brexit stuff has been very pleasant, especially now the sun’s come out too.

Naturally, part of me worries that everyone else has had a fortnight off, which is A Bad Thing when running a fixed-timetable negotiation, but there you go.

To ease us all back into things let’s try revisiting the old chestnut of ‘control’, because it’s floating around again and because there continues to be a lack of clear understanding.

Let’s try starting from here: lots of people see the world as a place when being strong means you get to decide how things are. My fancy words don’t count for much if you can punch me in the face, or even just threaten to punch me in the face.

As a model, it’s got a lot going for it: it’s simple, it fits with much of what we see around us and it taps into social expectations/conventions of the role of violence.

This worldview is a key part of the ‘control’ narrative in the Brexit process: others force us to do things against our will, so we must regain our agency to do what we chose.

However, it’s also highly problematic. Most obviously, ‘being strong’ covers a multitude of not-necessarily mutually-compatible things: thus, the US can be the most powerful country in the world, but still be subject to other powers defeating them in combat or to hacks or trade disputes. Likewise, strength is rarely stable, especially in competitive systems: if everyone believes they need to be strong to succeed, then security dilemmas ensue and everyone tries to push everyone else down.

Again, you might feel this is just how things are: the rat race is just a fact of life so we’d better get on with it.

And yet, try looking around you for a moment. You’ll notice that face-punching is the exception, not the norm.* That’s because it is possible to conceive of things in a different, more cooperative way. Yes, we need structures for making decisions and setting out what is and isn’t allowed, but these can be agreed jointly, rather than imposed unilaterally. Control here comes for the ability to be part of that joint decision-making: we each have a voice and a say, at the price that none of us has a say that imposes – by itself – on others.

‘Ah, a wishy-washy liberal: I knew it!”, you cry. “Why can’t we all just get along?” you say, with a sarcastic tone. Maybe making a peace sign while you’re at all.

Well, much as it’d be nice to all get along, we don’t, so this alternative perspective actually invites us to put in place checks and balances, so that there is that collective tying of hands. We lose some control – over what we can impose unilaterally on others – but we gain some – over what we can impose collectively on others (and ourselves).

And this is a key part of the logic on which European integration is built: we take decisions together, to provide a more equitable process and outcome than would otherwise occur. To take the classic example, France wanted the Euro because it would institutionalise French interests in a monetary policy system that previously failed so to do: the Bundesbank set policy for Germany, but that had effects beyond German borders. Likewise, German policy-makers got to make those other states joining the single currency follow the rigours of the German model, which would expand the zone of stability they had created in the post-war period.

(before you say, yes, expectations can sometimes be wrong)

But how does this come back to Brexit?

Much of the debate in the UK on control has been driven by passion and emotion, rather than cold rationality: who wouldn’t want more control, after all?

What has been missing is a questioning of what the purpose of having control might be.

Here we might think about a business engaged in international trade. If it wants to sell to overseas markets, then it has to conform to the standards in place there, as well as any domestic standards. Free trade types will explain how this all incentivises progressive regulatory convergence, as transnational economic operators will press to reduce wasteful variation. As I explained in a podcast some years back, the reason the EU has rules on fruit shape is because that’s less complex than each member state have their own rules.

Of course, some domestic producers will also lobby for different standards, precisely to limit international trade and protect their market share. This is then a non-tariff barrier; much mentioned, little understood. Even if there aren’t quotas or tariffs on products moving across a border, you can still make life difficult for others by requiring them to meet some arbitrary product standard that your domestic producers just happen to be much better placed to provide.

Economic theory tells us that limiting trade might provide some localised benefits, but at a global cost. Think of the US’s trade dispute with China: yes, raising tariffs on selected goods will make them more expensive, and thus attractive to US consumers, but typically that means those consumers are also now paying more for those goods – whatever their source – which hits their bottom-line. Add in the trade-diversion effects – cheap Chinese products flowing into other markets – and the economics not stack up to anything like the political claims.

In the British case, leaving the EU is more subtle in its effects. For many products, a system of mutual recognition operates: if it’s safe to sell in one state, then it’s safe for other states, even if it doesn’t meet the entirety of those other states’ standards. That means many British producers may find that even without changes to UK standards, they suddenly don’t have the access they once did. That’s on top of anything that does change.

And that brings us to the nub of the matter: why should anything change?

This brings us back to that starting point. Leaving the EU means the power to make our own rules, but there’s a difference between actually making changes because we can and simply having the power to do if we choose. Witness the way in which the government wants to use the EU Withdrawal Bill to continue using all of the EU law in operation in the UK until it can decide whether or not to continue using it: the default is continuation, not termination.

Again, many economic operators and sectoral interests want to see continuity, not disruption. And that has led several politicians and commentators to question: is it worth it? If we’re just going to carry on following most of the same rules, but now without that voice and vote, what’s the point?

That’s somewhat to miss the point of the popular debate. The power to divergence, if we so choose, is as important any actual divergence.  It doesn’t matter to most people that the EU has mechanisms for accommodating degrees of disagreement about specific pieces of legislation, because it still feels like an imposition.

However, the liberal nightmare to come in this is that instead of a sense of having to follow EU rules because we have to, there will be situation where the UK chooses to follow EU rules because it wants to: we agree on a lot more than we disagree on. Cue the next round of the long-running debate about what Britain’s relationship with Europe should be.

* If not, my apologies and my commiserations.

The post Control in theory and practice appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Just like I predicted it, Fidesz’s Viktor Orban recorded a landslide victory in last week’s elections, crushing the opposition political parties’ short-lived confidence.

Winning 134 of the 199 seats, Orban guaranteed a super majority in the Hungarian parliament, which would allow him to make any constitutional change he sees necessary.

Upon losing the elections, leaders of the opposition political parties including Áikos Hadházy of the LMP, Gyula Molnár of MSZP, and Gábor Vona of Jobbik have all resigned from their positions.

Emerging pictures of the long queues of people from the polling stations on the day of the elections have had raised hopes of the many that this time the opposition political parties would increase their share of seats in the parliament, hence deny Fidesz a super majority. However except in some districts of Budapest, in small Hungarian towns and in rural parts of the country Orban’s party polled best.

Not only Fidesz’s populist anti-immigration rhetoric, but also the failure of the opposition political parties in forming a united front against Fidesz, as well as Orban’s handling of the economy could explain why more than %49 of the Hungarians have once again opted for Orban.

However what is more striking are the developments that have been taking place post-elections both in Hungary and at the European Union level in relation to the newly elected Hungarian government.

The uncertain future of the opposition  media outlets in Hungary, dilemma of the European Party Groups’ in whether to congratulate Orban on his success and the European Parliament’s draft report on the state of rule of law and democracy in Hungary are some of which I could point to.

Right after the elections Magyar Nemzet, Hungary’s major opposition newspaper and its sister radio station Lánchíd Rádió announced their closure. It is suggested that Orban’s withdrawal of all the government advertising has contributed to this end. And what is more is that a pro-government weekly Figyelo published a list of 200 people who work for NGOs that included as Amnesty International, refugee advocates, and investigative journalists and are described as George Soros’s mercenaries, aiming to topple the government and open the country to immigrants. Both the closure of the opposition media outlets and the use of pro-government newspapers against the opposition point to the state the media has come to in Hungary. Like in any other illiberal democracy, for instance Turkey, media in Hungary no longer functions in the way we know in the Western liberal democracies. It is controlled and utilised as propaganda machines by the ‘democratically elected’ governments to maintain the popularity of their policies among the crowds at the cost of free media.

Since Fidesz is part of the European People’ Party group in the European Parliament, it was only normal for the leader of the EPP, Manfred Weber, and the president of the EPP, Joseph Daul, to congratulate Orban on his electoral success. However others like Bavarian MEP Markus Ferber and Gunnar Hökmark (MEP) from Sweden expressed their concern about the anti-Semitic rhetoric adopted by the leadership of Fidesz during the elections, and quiet rightly demanded Weber and Daul to stand up for the core values of the EU. Some even expressed dismissing the Fidesz MEPs from the EPP. Whereas Udo Bullmann, the newly elected leader of the European Parliament’s Socialist bloc also criticised the EPP for not directly confronting Orban and Philippe Lamberts, co-president of the Greens demanded that the EPP does not prioritise party friendship above fundamental rights and democracy. What is best under these circumstances is that instead of isolating Fidesz, Members of the European Parliament, regardless of their party group, should act like a critical friend to Fidesz and Hungary by constantly reminding them of the core values of the EU. And they should keep the Hungarian government accountable to the European Parliament, using the available legal mechanisms.

In fact in May 2017 the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs was instructed to examine the situation in Hungary after serious concern was raised about the situation in Hungary. Last week Thursday the committee recommended triggering disciplinary proceedings that could result in Hungary losing its voting rights in the European Council. The draft report found that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government “time and time again … has undermined the independence of the judiciary, freedom of the press and the fundamental rights of its citizens.” This draft report was not well received by the leadership of Fidesz, denying all the criticisms that have been put forward. The timing of this report is however perfect for there has been a new election, and Fidesz has gained a new term in office, which gives the Hungarian government a new chance to make a fresh start and work on some of the points that have been raised in the report.

Overall there seems to be pressure building on the freedom of media in Hungary. Critical voices seem to be facing a risk of closure or shutdown. However the newly elected government might change its position in the way it treats media and the opposition. It is only healthy that the electoral success of Fidesz is a cause of contention among the party groups of the European Parliament. If the interests of the party groups could be left aside, different mechanism of the European Parliament could be utilised to influence the way things are done in Hungary. Having Fidesz MEPs in the centre-right EPP is an advantage and must be utilised for the greater good of the EU.

As for the next couple of months, the European Parliament’s draft report will go to a vote in committee in June and to the full Parliament in September. If the Parliament approves the proposal, the matter would move to the European Council. Thus I will be keeping an eye on this.

 

The post Post-elections in Hungary— Fidesz, failed opposition and European Union! appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

International Space Station. Photo: ESA

Nicolas Rüffin

Science diplomacy has attracted a lot of attention during the last decade. Actors as different as the US State Department, the European Commission, the Royal Society, UNESCO and a great many of other intermediary organizations have adopted the term to rebrand their activities, programs, and agendas. The contexts in which the term science diplomacy emerges are just as diverse as the actors. It almost seems like science has become a panacea for most of the problems in public policymaking. For instance, when looking through the volumes of the journal Science & Diplomacy, we encounter topics like the global challenges, health diplomacy, issues of security and proliferation, international mega-science projects, and trade policies, not to mention regional priorities like the Arctic, Africa, the Middle East, or East Asia.

 

The rise of the concept of science diplomacy

Science diplomacy thus is first and foremost a new umbrella term to characterize the role of science and technology in numerous policy fields that have an international, boundary-spanning, component. As a matter of fact, a number of examples and documents illustrate that considerations regarding science and technology (S&T) have played a role in international policymaking before (e.g. Neureiter & Turekian, 2012). For instance, policy instruments like bilateral science and technology agreements (STAs) have been used at least since the 1950s (Rüffin & Schreiterer, 2017). These STAs formed a global network of legal commitments long before any remarks on a strategic use of science diplomacy emerged.

 

However, the scope and number of S&T related policies have increased over time. For instance, we are witnessing the emergence and differentiation of agencies explicitly dedicated to matters of international science policymaking (Flink & Schreiterer, 2010; Rüffin, 2018). Several countries, including Germany, the UK, Switzerland, and Denmark, have established S&T outposts abroad in order to access new markets, buttress their innovation capacities, and to foster bilateral relationships. In addition, non-state actors like academies or research associations pursue their own objectives in terms of international science policy. They maintain offices overseas, conclude collaboration agreements, and some even establish joint research laboratories (e.g. the French Centre national de la recherche scientifique or the German Max-Planck Society). The idea of science diplomacy, then, provides a new, more strategic and—more or less—coherent framework to integrate existing instruments in international S&T policymaking. Actors use the concept to propel their own agenda regardless of policy field or research area.

 

From my point of view, there are two items on the current research agenda regarding science diplomacy: The aspirations for the meaningful, “optimal” use of the concept (Van Langenhove, 2017) and the scholarly reflection on its role in a broader context.

 

Future directions for science diplomacy

There are several well-known and often cited examples of successful science diplomacy. For instance, physicists were the trailblazers in establishing diplomatic relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Israel in the 1950s. The Pugwash conferences provided venues for low-key exchanges between scientists and policymakers from Western and Eastern countries during the Cold War. International research organizations like the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, or the International Space Station, ISS, illustrate the opportunities that emerge if international partners join forces to pursue daring and high-quality big science research.

 

But aside from these famous examples, we know that the systematic implementation of the concept of science diplomacy faces serious challenges. Sometimes, scientists and officials from research organizations even are reluctant to use the term, stating that they would rather prefer to stay “under the radar” of politics. It is true that science diplomacy, as a type of track 2 diplomacy, always constitutes a balancing act between governmental interests and scientific autonomy. A strategic use of science diplomacy must take these concerns into account. Moreover, questions arise from the tension between competition versus collaboration of different actors.

 

In Europe, both the European Commission and a great number of Member States are engaging in science diplomacy, yet the relations between the different players, the division of labor as it where, often remains unclear. Propelling European science diplomacy thus means that the stakeholders must define the domains of (shared) responsibility, explore areas of common interests, and coordinate joint programs where advisable. Hence, scholars should investigate the subjects where science diplomacy can contribute to the peaceful and sustainable coexistence, increased scientific collaboration, and eased tensions between countries across the globe. But they should also continue to examine the limitations of the concept and how it might play into increasingly tough economic competitions and races for innovation. Overall, researchers should be aware that they contribute to the evolution of the concept by introducing new tools, structuring established instruments, and by identifying new applications.

 

Contemplating the nature of science diplomacy

However, it is important to remember that science diplomacy is only one expression of a broader “elusive transformation” of policymaking (Skolnikoff, 1993). We need to put science diplomacy into perspective by drawing connections to other mega-trends in science policy like the turn towards innovation and the increasing importance of the global challenges. This strand of research could include historical studies on the origins of the concept, analyses of coalition building, or in-depth case studies of how foreign affairs and S&T interact.

 

Luckily, the community of researchers engaging with science diplomacy—both in substantial and in reflexive ways—is growing. Already, scientists from many countries are contributing to this endeavor, and within Horizon 2020, there are a number of projects that advance the study and implementation of science diplomacy (e.g. EL-CSID, InsSciDE, and S4D4C).

 

After all, science diplomacy is a moving target and it will be interesting to watch which directions, trajectories and shapes the concept will take in the future.

 

Nicolas Rüffin is Research Fellow of the President’s Project Group at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. He joined the WZB in 2016, after receiving a master’s degree in science studies from the Humboldt-University of Berlin, and a bachelor’s degree in business psychology from the University of Bochum. Before moving to Berlin, he had worked as Programme Manager at Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, a joint initiative of companies and foundations for the advancement of education, science, and innovation in Germany. His research mainly focuses on issues of international science policy, the politics of intergovernmental big science projects, and science diplomacy.

 

References

Flink, T., & Schreiterer, U. (2010). Science diplomacy at the intersection of S&T policies and foreign affairs: towards a typology of national approaches. Science and Public Policy 37(9), 665–677.

Rüffin, N. (2018): Science and Innovation Diplomacy Agencies at the Nexus of Research, Economics, and Politics. EL-CSID Working Papers 10. Brussels: Institute for European Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Rüffin, N., & Schreiterer, U. (2017): Science and Technology Agreements in the Toolbox of Science Diplomacy. Effective Instruments or Insignificant Add-ons?. EL-CSID Working Papers 6. Brussels: Institute for European Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Skolnikoff, E. B. (1993). The Elusive Transformation: Science, Technology, and the Evolution of International Politics. Princeton, NJ: University Press.

Turekian, VC; Neureiter, NP (2012) Science and Diplomacy: The Past as Prologue. Science & Diplomacy. A Quarterly publication from the AAAS Center for Science Diplomacy. March, 2012; http://www.sciencediplomacy.org/editorial/2012/science-and-diplomacy

Van Langenhove, L. (2017). Tools for an EU Science Diplomacy. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.

 

The post Science diplomacy – a catch-all concept in public policy? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The reality of Brexit is now sinking in fast. It can’t be delivered. That’s why we need another vote.

Government ministers promised that Brexit will give us “the exact same benefits” as we have today.

That’s impossible. That’s why we need another vote.

Last year Brexit Secretary, David Davis, promised a trade and customs agreement with the EU “that will deliver the exact same benefits as we have.”

Prime Minister, Theresa May, also said that Brexit can have “the same benefits” as we have now for free trade with the EU.

Also promised by the government:

no hard border on the island of Ireland or across the UK;

an agreement with the EU that’s fully negotiated by March next year;

no payment for access to the EU market;

a complete end to EU rules and regulations;

converting around 40 EU trade agreements with 65 countries into UK bespoke deals “one second after midnight” on 30 March 2019.

Promises, promises, promises.

And the truth? These promises cannot be delivered.

In a business, if a company reneges on its promises, the customer can cancel the deal and claim compensation.

In a democracy, when a government reneges on its promises, the people – us – should be able to give its verdict. In a vote.

The people’s vote.

Because the promises of Brexit can’t be delivered.

The government knows this. They are desperate for the UK to continue to enjoy EU membership benefits of frictionless trade after Brexit, because they know that our economy’s survival depends on it.

But the government is pretending to us that we can continue to enjoy these membership benefits as an ex-member:

without being part of the EU Single Market or customs union;

without agreeing to the rules of the EU and its market;

without being subject to the European Court of Justice to oversee those rules;

and without paying anything to the EU for access.

It’s not going to happen. Mrs May knows this.

Before the referendum, she prominently stated:

“It is not clear why other EU member states would give Britain a better deal than they themselves enjoy.”

Yet that’s exactly what Mrs May now wants. She says she aims to achieve a new agreement with the European Union that’s unique to us, that no other country in the world has ever achieved.

Of course, it’s not going to happen.

What’s the point of a club if you are going to allow non-members to enjoy the same or better benefits as members? What club allows that?

So, here’s the bottom line:

Britain needs frictionless trade with the EU.

We need free movement of goods, services, capital and people for our country not just to survive, but to thrive.

We need to continue with the status quo: the arrangement we have now.

Has this sunk in yet?

We’re leaving all the benefits of the EU, only for our government to desperately try and get back as many of those benefits as we can after we’ve left, but on considerably inferior terms.

This is complete and utter madness. The government cannot offer us anything better than we have now; only something worse.

That being the case, it will be wiser to keep the current arrangement: to stay in the EU. It will be cheaper, and we will all be better off.

That’s why we need another vote.

As an EU member:

we have a say and votes in the running, rules and future direction of our continent;

we have full and free access to the world’s largest free marketplace;

we enjoy the right to live, work, study or retire across a huge expanse of our continent;

we enjoy state healthcare and education when living and working in any other EU country;

we enjoy free or low-cost health care when visiting any EU nation;

we are protected by continent-wide rights that protect us at work, when shopping and travelling;

we benefit from laws that protect our environment (and have, for example, directly resulted in Britain’s beaches being cleaned up);

we enjoy excellent EU trade agreements with around 60 countries, with more on the way, on advantageous terms that Britain is unlikely ever to replicate.

And what are we gaining from Brexit? Surely something?

No. All the reasons given to leave in the referendum were based on false promises that cannot be delivered.

More sovereignty? Nonsense. We’ll get less.

In the EU, we gain a share of sovereignty of our continent. Outside the EU, we’ll still live on a planet and have to obey thousands of international laws and treaties.

We share sovereignty with NATO, for example. Is that a reason to leave it?

Outside the EU, we will only be able to look on as decisions about Europe are made without us, even though those decisions will affect us just as much, whether we’re a member or not.

 Fewer migrants? Really? Just think about it.

Most EU migrants in Britain are in gainful employment, doing jobs that we simply don’t have enough Britons to do. So if they all left, we’d have to replace them with about the same numbers of migrants as we have now to get all those jobs done. What’s the point of that?

More houses, schools and hospitals? Think again.

Without EU migrants we’ll have fewer builders, teachers, doctors and nurses. Migrants are not the cause of our problems. Blaming them just excuses successive UK governments from investing sufficiently in our country.

Get our country back? We never lost it.

If being in the EU means losing your country, why aren’t the 27 other EU member states complaining?

With Brexit, we won’t be getting our country back. But we will be losing a leading place and role on our continent.

Our own laws? The vast majority of laws in the UK are our laws and passed by our Parliament in Westminster.

But in the EU, we benefit from laws for our continent that no single European country alone could ever achieve. Could our UK government have got mobile phone companies to scrap mobile roaming charges across the entire EU? Of course not.

It took the might of 28 EU countries working together to achieve that, and so much more.

 More trade for the UK as an ex-member? Another false promise.

The EU is the world’s largest free trade area. As a member, we receive huge benefits worth billions more to Britain than the net annual membership fee of £7.1 billion a year.

As a member, we enjoy free, frictionless trade with our biggest trading partner by far, right on our doorstep, where almost 50% of our exports go to and over 50% of our imports come from.

Nowhere else in the world comes close to that. Nowhere in the world can replace that.
________________________________

The bottom line? Brexit cannot be delivered as promised. The Brexit people voted for on 23 June 2016 was a mirage. It does not exist. It cannot happen.

That’s why we need another vote. To give our new verdict, not on the fake Brexit that was sold to the nation in the referendum, but on the real and entirely different Brexit that the government now wants to impose on us.

The ‘people’s vote’ on the final Brexit deal? Bring it on.

________________________________________________________

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
• Follow my Stop Brexit campaign on Facebook: Reasons2Remain

________________________________________________________

• Join and share the discussion about this article on Facebook:

The post Why we need another vote on Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

A couple of weeks ago my article ‘Subnational transnational networking and the continuing process of local-level Europeanization’ was formally published in the latest issue of European Urban and Regional Studies (an open access version can be found here).

The article explores how local government transnational networking has developed since the 1990s. ‘Transnational networking’ essentially involves local authorities in one country linking up and co-operating with local authorities in other countries. This can be broken down into three categories:

• Bilateral networking: involving two local authorities in different countries.
• Multilateral networking: involving three of more local authorities, often facilitated through an organisational structure.
• Transnational projects: involving co-operation between at least two local authorities which is time-limited and focusing on delivering a specific project.

This activity goes beyond the more traditional civic / cultural town-twinning links, with local authorities co-operating on substantive policy areas.

To see how much this activity developed since the 1990s I looked at the European networking activities of local authorities in South East England and Northern France. These regions were chosen because they were the focus of a lot of attention in the 1990s, and this research (such as this) provided a nice baseline to assess more contemporary networking activities.

Over a ten year period (2001-2011) I found that 14 local authorities were involved in 302 transnational links with other local authorities in Europe, either directly or through multilateral networks or transnational projects. A lot of these transnational links overlap and this leads to a picture of complexity:

Overall, there’s been a substantial increase on what was going on in the 1990s. This is partly explained by developments in European integration. EU enlargement to central and eastern Europe in 2004 provided many more partners to co-operate with. A gradual increase in the EU’s policy competences also provided more areas for local authorities to co-operate on. In this way, an increase in opportunities to co-operate has led to a natural increase in co-operation itself.

The nature of this co-operation has also changed. While much activity in the 1990s was about developing bilateral partnerships, the focus now has shifted to multilateral networking, where local authorities participate in EU level networking organisations, such as Eurocities, the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions and the Assembly of European Regions, reflecting changes in how the EU policy process has evolved and become increasingly receptive to interest representation. The number of transnational projects has also increased, as eligibility for EU-funded programmes such as Interreg have expended.

So, local authority engagement in transnational networking has increased. But not all councils follow the same pattern. Some (like Kent and Nord-Pas de Calais) were quite heavily involved. Others (like Portsmouth and Picardie) only had limited engagement. Brittany and Hampshire seemed to prefer taking part in multilateral networks over bilateral partnerships, while East Sussex preferred striking direct partnerships through bilateral networks. Medway, Kent and Nord-Pas de Calais were involved in a large number of transnational projects, partly reflecting their geographical locations and eligibility for various funding programmes.

A lot of this variation is down to local level factors such as the strategic objectives of individual councils and the importance they give to transnational networking. Local political leadership is also important here. Councils with dedicated political portfolios for external engagement were generally more involved. Previous experience of transnational networking also seems to be a factor. For example, Kent and Nord-Pas de Calais led the way with transnational networking in the 1990s and continued to do so during the 2000s.

So the overall picture is one where local authorities have become increasingly linked with their counterparts in other European countries and become more ‘Europeanised’. But it’s important to remember transnational networking remains a voluntary activity. It only takes place where opportunities to take part are present and often depends on a range of local level factors. This speaks to wider research on Europeanisation at the national level, which also finds a range of national factors mediate the overall impact of Europe.

Given the context of Brexit, this obviously has implications for local government in the UK. Will councils continue to co-operate with their European counterparts once the UK leaves the EU? On the one hand, Brexit by definition will lead to a reduction in opportunities for local authorities to engage at the EU level. However, the UK government has also suggested it wants to continue participating in programmes such as Interreg which has facilitated much of this co-operation. And EU membership isn’t a prerequisite for participating in transnational networking. Many Swiss and Norwegian localities have a presence at the European level, and many transnational networks (such as the C40 cities and nrg4SD) operate on a global scale. The future of UK local authorities networking with their counterparts in Europe will ultimately depend on the opportunities available to them. Until the outcomes of Brexit become clearer, much of this won’t be known.

The post The development and future of local government transnational networking appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Are we done yet?

Long time no see. At this particular moment a lot is going on around the EU. We are slowly preparing ourselves for an EU budget proposal beyond 2020 at the beginning of May. This exercise highlights main policy areas of Member State’s interest. The EU budget currently funds some of the most well-known and important EU programmes: Erasmus+, European Solidarity Corps, Horizon 2020, Galileo and the Cohesion policy. Although, if you go on any street in Europe and ask some random people about those programmes, they will not be able to say almost anything about them. OK, except for Erasmus. I think we all agree that the Erasmus takes it all. Unfortunately, the EU success story cannot always tell us very nice stories about studying abroad. It needs some new fuel. 

Close circle

What strikes me right now, in our debate about the EU is the failure of courage to protect this great project. This is in fact the biggest international cooperation on a global scale. Do not get me wrong, all pro-EU initiatives are super important (go and visit WhyEurope – super good initiative!!), but living in a heart of Europe, in Brussels, make me even more aware of the fact that our activities are somehow “blocked” for the public.

Part of my work here includes my presence at different conferences and seminars. The main aim is to grasp (yes, very unequal level of events) crucial and important information about the EU activities. A lot about EU policies, programmes and projects, initiatives, opinions, results, research, innovative ideas… Endless pages of notes. Hundreds emails. No one reads my report since it contains more than 170 words. You see how big words change your thinking, but not the reality around. When I hear “dissemination” in the EU context, I am ready to run as far as possible… I know that this means sending out information without any specific strategy and target group. As a result, it is rather a spamming exercise with a limited patient on the other side.

Even closer circle

I am still waiting for any EU campaign which will rock our minds. I strongly believe it is possible, but a nice animation is not the key element for that. You have to be less formal, less correct, less naive… People remember emotions, so get to their emotions. The best thing is that I know a lot of people working in the European Commission, which good ideas are immediately cut at the lowest level by the top people, who do not understand or are too bored already to be involved and let some fresh air into the room. What happens now is of your own making. Nothing great in this world happened, because someone was following blindly existing at that point in time rules. The same story with the EU. Some courage was needed to foreseen this kind of project.

Therefore, as long as the EC (since this institution represents the EU voice in its pure definition) does not let some people out of the box (desks), we will not see any change in the process. Currently, it is difficult to deny the fact that the EU is too far from its citizens to be understood.

The post Where is the EU? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Feedback is important for a research project, and it is central to student project work at Roskilde University, both as peer-feedback between students and feedback from supervisors.

Feedback enables the students to engage in a dialogue with peers and with their supervisor about how to progress with their project ideas, develop coherent research strategies and write up research projects.  We all know from our own research how useful it is to get comments from colleagues and often we hear ‘you have at least two papers in this paper’. Giving and receiving feedback enables the students to reflect on how to improve their projects. The Danish word for feedback is ‘konstrutiv kritik’ (constructive criticism), which have negative connotation for many. It is important that feedback is giving through an open dialogue, where comments are received as suggestions for how to develop the project further.

The problem area seminar is one of the first opportunities the students have for receiving feedback on their research statement, a two-page document outlining the group’s research topic, research questions, proposed methods and possible theories. The problem area seminar consists of three to four groups and one supervisor. The supervisor’s role is to facilitate the feedback between the groups and to give comments to all the groups.  In advance of the problem area seminar, the students receive a guidelines about what they should emphasise in their feedback. Not all students are familiar with giving feedback, so the guideline aims to help the groups identify gaps in the research statements.  The aim of peer-feedback is for students to learn how to give feedback and learn from other students. Moreover, strong groups sometimes complain that the feedback they received was not useful. Other students get confused if the supervisor present during problem area seminar is not their supervisor, and might offer different advice from their supervisor. Indeed, one of the key lessons of receiving feedback is to understand which comments are useful – just think of some of the comments we sometimes receive from reviewers!

Importantly, the groups are required to take contact to their supervisor and set up the first supervision meeting. The onus on the students to contact their supervisor is instrumental in the pedagogical principle of being responsible for own learning. However, some supervisors contact their groups first to let them know of his/her availability.  In supervision meetings, students often ask questions about the role of methodology, which reflects the interdisciplinary element of the degree, where the BA programme requires the students to carry out interdisciplinary projects. For example, the second semester project must include two of the four basic courses (political science, sociology, economics and human geography) thereby ensuring that the projects are interdisciplinary.

Students might write a sociology project one semester and an economic project another semester, as a result they will have supervisors from different disciplines. Similar the students become good at navigating between different disciplines, but they struggle to understand that interdisciplinary projects do not involve one economic chapter and one political science chapter. Indeed, I spent considerable time during project group formation and teaching qualitative methods to explain that inter-disciplinary research is a marble cake not a layer cake! Hopefully, the students got the message and have developed inter-disciplinary research statements and thus projects.

Other students just want to study one subject and struggle to develop interdisciplinary research projects, here, the role of the supervisor is important to make sure the students fulfil the project requirements. Moreover, the supervisor helps the students with literature suggestions, gives comment on draft chapters, and helps the students to use the feedback from the problem area seminar constructively in their project progress. Overall, feedback, both from fellow students and supervisor, aim to give the project group suggestions for finishing their project.

The post Student projects: giving & receiving feedback appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

In my last blog entry of 1st March, I talked about the possibility of Hungarian opposition political parties’ uniting forces against Fidesz in this General elections of 8th April and have speculated if Fidesz would live up to its statement that it would not use ‘Soros’ in their election campaign.  So what happened in the past four weeks? Did the opposition political parties form alliances? Is Soros still part of Fidesz’ election campaign material? How is Fidesz doing in the opinion polls? Is Jobbik losing ground on this election trail? Are Greens and the Socialists doing better? What pledges have been made in relation to the EU?

So far the opposition political parties did not form any alliance between them. The major opposition political party Jobbik refuses to negotiate with the Socialist Party (MSZP) and the Democratic Coalition, but suggests that it could talk to the LMP Green and the Momentum after elections. Likewise the Left and the socialist parties reject to have any form of interaction with Jobbik. I believe this means that the opposition political parties will not unite against Fidesz, at least not before the elections, but there is hope for post-elections.

George Soros is still at the top of agenda in Fidesz’s election rallies and is the most mentioned about during this election campaign. This will probably continue to be the case until the end of the elections. At the same time Fidesz remains to be the most popular in the opinion polls, it is polling around 50 % among the decided voters; hence is very likely to form the next government. However this is not because the opposition political parties are least popular, but because they are most divided, making the opposition significantly weak, unable to have the necessary number of seats to stand strong against Fidesz. Also it is not because Fidesz is pledging policies that would make some serious changes in the way the country is run, but because it is turning a blind eye to Hungary’s social, political and economic problems. On the contrary, immigration and Soros are the two single and intertwined issues that make up the rhetoric adopted by Fidesz at this election campaign. When it comes to immigration, Fidesz’s Viktor Orban can go as far as to reject EU’s migrant quotas and the United Nation’s Global Compact on Migration plan in its current form. He said that if migration becomes a human right, this would be a recipe for destroying the Earth, leading to a primitive humanity.

Whereas Jobbik that was once recognised as a radical and nationalist political party, which has now shifted to centre-ground, happen to find Fidesz’s position on immigration and Soros as extreme, suggesting that Fidesz is using Soros as a tool to scare the people and distract them from important problems. Furthermore Jobbik makes innovative policy promises that both could attract young people and could benefit the Hungarian people. For instance Jobbik’s leader Gabor Vona promises instead of party-political or communications political governance, they would introduce expert governance, and who would give the leading positions to those who have the most relevant expertise. And he proposes to introduce e-referendum and e-consultations as a means for soliciting social feedback. Political commentators predict that Jobbik will do much better in the election than it is expected, undecided voters are likely to opt for Jobbik this time, it is suggested. I think however that the unsavoury past of Jobbik will make voters think twice in the voting booth, while doubting sincerity of Jobbik’s leadership.

The Green LMP and the Socialists do not entirely seem to be part of this election campaign; there is not much media coverage on what they are proposing or on what they are up to. There may be many reasons for this, but this is not the right platform to speculate. I think these parties most probably will maintain their low profile/small party position in the Hungarian politics post-elections.

As for European Union, 4-6 weeks ago, Orban refused to take part in Macron’s consultation on the future of the EU, but now he said that ‘let’s hold them and each nation should make the best use of its national practices’. It is promising to see that Orban can change his mind on this matter and be part of the crowd. Moreover while the EU wanted to decide on the migrant quote issue in the current cycle of the European Parliament, Orban wishes that he could prevent that from taking place, pointing to the European Parliament elections of 2019, suggesting that the anti-immigration forces are to make advances and change the face of the EU on immigration. Fidesz is already forging alliances with other EU anti-immigration political parties such as the Italian Five Star Movement and the Austrian Social Democratic Party and Freedom Party. This means that if Fidesz wins this general election, which is very likely, then its anti-immigration stance and rhetoric will only get stronger and more effective with its newly formed alliances both at domestic and at the EU levels.

The post Ahead of Hungarian General Elections—issues, pledges and campaign rhetoric (II) appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

It’s one year ago today that Prime Minister Theresa May triggered the Article 50 notice for the UK to leave the EU.

29 March 2017 will not be celebrated in history. It’s the day that Britain’s interests were betrayed.

Almost all of Theresa May’s current cabinet said during the EU referendum campaign that Brexit would damage Britain, make us poorer, put our security at risk, and could undo our own union of the four countries of the United Kingdom.

But the Prime Minister and her ministers went ahead with Brexit anyway, against their own strong advice to the nation not to.

This is how I reported the triggering of Article 50 this time last year:

TRIGGER HAPPY THERESA HAS BETRAYED THE COUNTRY

SHE’S GONE AND BLOODY DONE IT – the one thing she said just one year ago would not be in Britain’s best interests. She’s triggered Brexit.

Theresa May has gone against her own advice that Britain shouldn’t leave the EU.

Not just her advice. But the strong advice of 70% of her cabinet ministers, who also less than a year ago urged the country not to Brexit.

Why are they doing it? Because people told them to? Does that make any sense? If people told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it? Would you volunteer to do it?

Because Mrs May and most of her cabinet have volunteered to do something they all said would be bad for Britain. In doing so, they are betraying our country.

They are doing something that, by their own admission, will not be in the nation’s best interests, but on the contrary, most definitely against our interests.

Two-faced Theresa today formally wrote to the European Union to trigger Article 50, starting two-years of gruelling divorce proceedings that could forever ruin our relations with the mainland of our continent.

She should listen once again to the speech she gave on 25 April last year. Then she said:

“I believe it is clearly in our national interest to remain a member of the European Union.”

And she also said then:

“My judgement, as Home Secretary, is that remaining a member of the European Union means we will be more secure from crime and terrorism.”

As for replacing the trade we do with the EU with other markets, she asserted that this would be an unrealistic route. She said:

“We export more to Ireland than we do to China, almost twice as much to Belgium as we do to India, and nearly three times as much to Sweden as we do to Brazil. It is not realistic to think we could just replace European trade with these new markets.”

And there were other serious risks too.

“If we do vote to leave the European Union, we risk bringing the development of the single market to a halt, we risk a loss of investors and businesses to remaining EU member states driven by discriminatory EU policies, and we risk going backwards when it comes to international trade.”

And other risks too.

“Outside the EU, for example, we would have no access to the European Arrest Warrant, which has allowed us to extradite more than 5,000 people from Britain to Europe in the last five years, and bring 675 suspected or convicted wanted individuals to Britain to face justice.”

And leaving the EU, she said, could lead to the disintegration of the EU, resulting in “massive instability” with “real consequences for Britain.”

In addition, Brexit might prove fatal to “the Union between England and Scotland”, which she did not want to happen.

And if Britain left the EU, she argued, we might not be successful in negotiating a successful divorce settlement.

Explained Mrs May,:

“In a stand-off between Britain and the EU, 44 per cent of our exports is more important to us than eight per cent of the EU’s exports is to them.”

She added, “The reality is that we do not know on what terms we would win access to the single market.

“We do know that in a negotiation we would need to make concessions in order to access it, and those concessions could well be about accepting EU regulations, over which we would have no say, making financial contributions, just as we do now, accepting free movement rules, just as we do now, or quite possibly all three combined.

“It is not clear why other EU member states would give Britain a better deal than they themselves enjoy.”

And in summary, Mrs May said:

“Remaining inside the European Union does make us more secure, it does make us more prosperous and it does make us more influential beyond our shores.”

Most of Theresa May’s cabinet were of the same view: Leaving the EU would be against Britain’s interests, it would represent a disaster for our country.

• Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond said: We will be safer, stronger and better off if we remain in the EU.

• Home Secretary Amber Rudd said: I passionately believe it is best for us all and our country if we remain a member of the EU.

• Justice Secretary Liz Truss said: I don’t want my daughters to grow up in a world where they need a visa or permit to work in Europe.

• Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon said: Make no mistake – a vote to Leave would be payday for Putin.

• Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt said: We will be better off and more secure by remaining in the European Union.

• Education Secretary, Justine Greening said: Staying in the EU is smart diplomacy and smart economics.

• Culture Secretary, Karen Bradley said: If you want a stronger, safer, better off Britain, then the positive choice is to vote Remain.

• Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green said: Leaving the EU would cause huge economic damage.

And so on, ad nauseam. The Prime Minister, and the majority of her government ministers, strongly urged Britain to remain in the EU in the interests of the country’s prosperity and security.

So, what’s happened to them all? Were they stupid then and clever now?

No.

Before the referendum, these politicians said what they sincerely believed to be in the best interests of Britain. But after the referendum, these politicians are saying and doing what they insincerely believe will be in the best interests of themselves.

Future history books will have a collective noun for them. Hypocrites.

Fortunately, it will prove to be their downfall.

Unfortunately, it’s likely to lead to our country’s downfall too.

________________________________________________________

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
• Follow my Stop Brexit campaign on Facebook: Reasons2Remain

________________________________________________________

• Join and share the discussion about this article on Facebook:

The post They said Brexit would damage Britain appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Brexit has two-faced double-standards and nobody knows what or who to believe.

On the one hand, the Prime Minister, Theresa May, says that three million EU migrants in the UK are too many; they take our jobs, they cause a burden to our housing and hospitals; they have zero value.

On the other hand, she said in an open letter to all EU migrants that we need you all; we’ll be poorer without you; please don’t go.

Yesterday, Home Secretary, Amber Rudd MP, said that the government was “committed” to reducing the numbers of EU migrants, despite Theresa May’s Christmas letter to them all saying the country would be poorer without them.

Ms Rudd told MPs:

“I’m still focused on making sure we reduce net migration to sustainable levels.”

But in an open letter in December to all EU migrants in the UK, Theresa May wrote:

“I greatly value the depth of the contributions you make – enriching every part of our economy, our society, our culture and our national life. I know our country would be poorer if you left and I want you to stay.”

So, what do you believe? That too many EU migrants have been coming to the country, or that we need them all and we want them to stay?

No wonder the country is confused. Brexit means forked-tongue nonsense.

Mrs May previously said that Britain has too many EU migrants, and we need to bring numbers down to a trickle.

But if that had happened, we wouldn’t now have the three million EU migrants that she recently said the country can’t do without.

Many people believed Mrs May when she said Britain has too many EU migrants.

Many voted for Leave for that very reason. They voted so we would have fewer migrants.

They voted because Mrs May said she’d bring the numbers down.

But then just three months ago, Mrs May said we needed all the numbers of EU migrants that are here.

There weren’t too many after all. The country will be poorer without them.

Does Mrs May and her Brexit government really know what they’re doing?

They’re messing with people’s heads; and their hearts, and their lives.

If Mrs May sincerely thinks that all the hard-working, upstanding, law-abiding, tax-paying EU migrants in the UK are needed and wanted, why didn’t she say so before the EU referendum?

Instead, at the Tory conference immediately prior to the referendum, she said the current numbers of EU migrants in the UK are of zero value. Yes, she did.

As Home Secretary, in her speech to the Tory Party faithful in October 2015 she said, “..at best the net economic and fiscal effect of high immigration is close to zero.”

High immigration to her then represented the three million EU migrants in the UK.

The front-page headline in the Telegraph the next day was her mantra that migration is “harming society”, causing ‘thousands of British people to be forced out of their jobs.’

She said then that, “when immigration is too high, when the pace of change is too fast, it’s impossible to build a cohesive society.”

She added:

“It’s difficult for schools and hospitals and core infrastructure like housing and transport to cope. And we know that for people in low-paid jobs, wages are forced down even further while some people are forced out of work altogether.”

She blamed too many foreign students (how can she possibly call students migrants?) and too many EU migrants.

She said, “The numbers coming from Europe are unsustainable and the rules have to change.”

She quoted her party’s manifesto, ‘we must work to control immigration and put Britain first’.

But just this last Christmas Mrs May said,

“As Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, I am proud that more than three million EU citizens have chosen to make your homes and livelihoods here in our country.”

She add, “I know our country would be poorer if you left and I want you to stay”.

Oh, so now those three million EU migrants are welcome here, when Mrs May previously made clear that she didn’t want them here (at least not in those numbers).

Mrs May said at Christmas that she is proud that those three million EU migrants made their homes and livelihoods in our country

But she previously said they were stealing our jobs and putting pressure on our schools, hospitals, homes and wages.

Does Mrs May and her cabinet really understand what is true and untrue?

The fact is that Mrs May, her government, and her Brexit are entirely two-faced.

Brexit involves double standards. Is that really what Britain voted for on one summer’s day in June 2016?

________________________________________________________

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
• Follow my Stop Brexit campaign on Facebook: Reasons2Remain

________________________________________________________

• Join and share the discussion about this article on Facebook:

The post Brexit is one big double-standard appeared first on Ideas on Europe.