tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/eu-convention-7545/articlesEU Convention – The Conversation2017-08-04T11:18:31Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/819802017-08-04T11:18:31Z2017-08-04T11:18:31ZCan Emmanuel Macron’s big gamble to save the EU really pay off?<p>French president Emmanuel Macron has promised to launch a series of “<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-politics-europe-idUSKBN19O1RR">democratic conventions</a>” to allow citizens across Europe a say on the EU’s future. His idea is an important element of plans to revive the EU’s fortunes at a difficult time.</p>
<p>Macron has suggested that national governments organise conventions in the form of national debates to discuss the EU’s future priorities and suggest ways to “relaunch” the union. He envisages the conventions running for between six and ten months, beginning towards the end of 2017. Governments will report back to the EU from their respective national conventions and member states will then work their conclusions into a five-year EU reform plan.</p>
<p>It remains to be seen how many member states will sign up to Macron’s initiative and what precise form the “conventions” will take, but for now the idea seems to be gaining momentum. Amongst others, German chancellor Angela Markel has indicated her broad support.</p>
<p>Macron’s idea is interesting and potentially very important. It resonates with recent heated debates about democratising Brussels. Many believe a more participative process could help the EU grapple with multiple problems, not least its legitimacy crisis.</p>
<p>The conventions are the practical proposal that, to date, has most seriously taken on board these calls. However, promising to hold public consultations is a high-risk strategy. It will raise expectations among EU citizens. The worst outcome would be for governments to hold the conventions and then not to take on board the suggestions and concerns that emerge from the deliberations.</p>
<h2>Lessons from the past</h2>
<p>The key matter is whether governments will be willing to follow through on the public preferences that the conventions reveal. To do this, EU and member state authorities may need to accept ideas that fall well outside their standard templates for EU reform. Citizens in some countries may, for example, want powers to be clawed back from EU institutions, more border controls, softer austerity measures, stronger commitments to reducing social inequality or a very different approach to so-called “flexible integration”. </p>
<p>If they fail to respond to citizen feedback in tangible ways, popular frustration with the EU may simply intensify.</p>
<p>Previous experiences point to a clear risk of the consultations being manipulated or stage-managed to simply legitimise a government’s pre-existing priorities. If governments essentially preempt their outcomes, the conventions could end up causing more harm than good.</p>
<p>This is what happened in the early 2000s, when public consultations were held on the drafting of an <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyourservice/en/displayFtu.html?ftuId=FTU_1.1.4.html">EU constitution</a>. While Dutch and French voters rejected the constitution in national referendums, major changes were still pushed through in the 2009 <a href="http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM:ai0033">Lisbon Treaty</a> that seemed to fly in the face of Europeans’ concerns. This elite stonewalling set the stage for the long years of crisis that have plagued the EU since 2008. Today’s European leaders will need to take care not to create the conditions for a repeat cycle of dashed expectations.</p>
<p>And while Macron has called the democratic conventions ostensibly for elites to learn and understand more about what the public wants from the future EU, his own vision seems fairly fixed. He wants deeper, centralised economic union, and deeper security integration. It’s far from certain that these aims chime with wider public opinion so there could be tension ahead.</p>
<p>Deeper EU integration has long been a difficult sell outside Brussels, but in the past few months, the EU has been feeling more confident. Many European governments and EU institutions have again begun to push for deeper, supranational integration.</p>
<p>Keen to harness the current positive momentum, EU governments and institutions may now be reluctant to hold off on new plans while the democratic conventions run their course. They may be even less willing to reverse course if that is what the conventions reveal people want.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180914/original/file-20170803-5612-kqkh0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180914/original/file-20170803-5612-kqkh0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180914/original/file-20170803-5612-kqkh0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180914/original/file-20170803-5612-kqkh0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180914/original/file-20170803-5612-kqkh0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180914/original/file-20170803-5612-kqkh0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180914/original/file-20170803-5612-kqkh0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Commission consults, but in its own way.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/glynlowe/14800284378/in/photolist-oxRjUS-oxYYt6-oQ4P8t-rnWEea-denSu-cXzNoG-Te8tcD-WFW13B-jzr4g-nGb7MK-WRAs5r-WicgCC-SPf7CR-6haEpM-hAoNMK-aaN4Li-74taDB-WuGjLi-RSrN9K-8E715f-SmXxdw-SdeGmf-dpFpLx-ipSiz-SZPkdW-Siy4d2-TU2ZgC-Wrkbp9-egUieh-dedt7t-RxsNjg-TnPuRf-SY2VDi-reqYZ7-Ruykm5-74sJAK-VdZHsz-TUzrZb-qocLw4-RSMEi5-7Dwg2Q-8YdxQH-SdLzgu-q7oao7-T9u38Q-8UYrv5-g7Ut2-dpFpFF-cXpB13-RPS3xW">www.glynlowe.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>There is a widespread view that the EU requires a more genuinely open and widely-cast model of participation. The conventions may provide a laboratory to test these ideas out. Many thinkers advocate EU decision-making processes that include citizens from all walks of life, at least in part through methods of random selection. </p>
<p>They criticise the European Commission’s tendency to hand-pick favoured civil society organisations to take part in its many consultations, knowing they will defend the status quo when asked for feedback. The fact that groups critical of the integration status quo feel so excluded from these processes at present is one factor that drives citizens into the arms of populist parties.</p>
<h2>Proceed with caution</h2>
<p>Governments may give in to the temptation to shape the democratic conventions for largely PR purposes. As currently formulated, it’s not clear whether Macron’s proposal will offer a radically new, more open-ended and freer process of participation or simply replicate the rather controlled consultation initiatives that the EU has overseen in the past.</p>
<p>If democratic accountability is to be meaningful, governments and EU institutions will need to spell out how they will implement the conventions’ results. It may not be enough simply to promise a standard five-year reform plan as output from the conventions. The EU’s history is littered with many such plans that gather dust.</p>
<p>Finally, governments will need to consider what comes after the conventions. They will not, in themselves, democratise the EU. The public needs far more permanent means to better influence EU decision-making. Little will have been gained if the conventions run for a few months and then the EU returns to its current pattern of opaque bargaining and deal-making.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81980/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Youngs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The French president is calling for a series of conventions to shape future decisions. But these projects have a history of going awry.Richard Youngs, Professor of International and European Politics, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/196332013-10-30T13:47:51Z2013-10-30T13:47:51ZIt’s time to take the human rights of Roma seriously<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33932/original/nz85m729-1382972035.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Focus for discrimination: Roma people in France.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alain Bachellier</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Two families in Ireland will have spent last weekend trying to forget <a href="http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/families-tell-of-trauma-as-state-looks-at-child-policies-29703040.html">the drama that engulfed their lives last week</a>. Garda officers arrived on their doorsteps and took away young children on the spurious grounds that they looked insufficiently like their parents. The families had one thing in common. They were Roma.</p>
<p>The children were taken into temporary care, amid a media frenzy, until DNA tests and the production of birth certificates and other documentation, proved they were who their parents said they were. The garda said they were acting in good faith by taking the children away, an assurance that has been accepted by the taoiseach (prime minister), Enda Kenny, and the minister for justice, Alan Shatter. “I don’t accept at all that there would be any institutionalised racial tendencies within the gardai,” <a href="http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/taoiseach-backing-for-gardai-on-romas-29701865.html">Kenny told</a> the Irish Independent. However, Alan Shatter has expressed concerns about these cases and declared his intention to review them.</p>
<p>Last week’s media frenzy began with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/roma-in-the-tabloid-crosshairs-over-blonde-angels-19526">discovery of a young girl called Maria</a> – dubbed the “blonde angel” because of her blue eyes and blond hair – at a Roma encampment in Greece. Maria’s story led directly to the removal of the two children in Ireland after members of the public who had seen Maria’s story contacted the garda to alert them to children in their area who, in their opinion, were too fair to be Roma.</p>
<p>The furore has reignited right wing anti-Roma hatred across Europe, ranging from Serb neo-Nazis <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/26/world/europe/for-the-roma-fears-of-kidnapping-in-europe-only-mirror-their-own.html?_r=0">trying to abduct a child in Novi Sad</a> who was not “as dark as their parents” to Italy’s Northern League MPs calling for across-the-board inspections in all Italian Roma camps for missing children. </p>
<p>Many human rights advocates, including the director of the <a href="http://www.errc.org">European Roma Rights Centre</a>, fear that the racial profiling from the past few days will lead to more indiscriminate raids on Roma settlements and more cases of child removal on ethnic grounds. More broadly, they are concerned this climate will represent a setback for the integration efforts that have been made by civil society groups and international institutions over the past several years, particularly in Europe, where many of the estimated <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-who-are-the-roma-19402">11 million Roma settled</a> on the continent pursue a sedentary life.</p>
<p>There are indeed many reasons for caution and reflection. Countering the centuries-old stereotype of the child-stealing “gypsy”, a Roma lawyer and civil rights activist in Bulgaria <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24657552">told the BBC</a> last week that Roma families have in fact been traditionally keen to adopt children abandoned by families, including non-Roma ones. Whether a crime has been committed by Roma members in Greece or Bulgaria, or whether Maria’s case can have a different explanation, will hopefully be the subject of a thorough inquiry. But whatever the outcome, the fallout from these incidents is bound to transcend their specific dynamics.</p>
<h2>Human rights legal framework</h2>
<p>What is at stake is effectively whether we are capable of distinguishing alleged or proven offences by individuals, regardless of their ethnic background, from forms of collective punishment against minorities that have been unfairly treated and demonised for centuries. </p>
<p>It matters that we understand racial profiling is morally and legally unacceptable. It matters that we comply with specific obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the European Convention on Human Rights. These obligations state that child removal be conditional on parental consent or otherwise tightly construed and evidence-based best interests of the child, or require it to be assessed against rights to respect for private and family life. It matters that we recognise the need to act on multiple internal and international statistics revealing <a href="http://www.errc.org/reports-and-advocacy-submissions/life-sentence-romani-children-in-institutional-care/3923">disproportionate representation</a> of Roma children in state care institutions, <a href="http://www.errc.org/cms/upload/media/02/36/m00000236.pdf">segregated educational facilities</a>, and precarious settlements from which they are likely to be forcibly evicted together with entire families.</p>
<p>From a human rights perspective, the <a href="http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/FS_Roma_ENG.pdf">European Court of Human Rights has addressed</a>, and continues to address, many of these questions acknowledging their systemic nature. There are least two points that can be brought home in this context. One is that no state measures can be taken against Roma individuals and communities that are not in accordance with the <a href="http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/glossary/proportionality_en.htm">principle of proportionality</a>. States are under an obligation to pursue the least intrusive forms of intervention. Child removals are only a last resort and cannot take place solely on grounds of poverty, let alone ethnicity. Convincing evidence of a real risk of abuse is needed.</p>
<p>Proportionality will be measured by the extent to which the special needs of Roma as a minority were properly taken into account, particularly in terms of support to Roma families and their involvement in the relevant decision-making process. It is on this basis, for example, that Strasbourg <a href="http://www.echr.coe.int">has found breaches of Article 8</a> of the Convention (right to private and family life) in connection with eviction proceedings against Roma and Travellers by the UK, Bulgaria, and France.</p>
<p>The second point is that special vigilance is required of states parties in the context of racial discrimination under <a href="http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf">Article 14</a>. The notion of indirect discrimination has been widely upheld by the Court in cases where segregation of Roma children in schools were found to have stemmed from general policies on, for example, learning disabilities or language deficiencies. </p>
<p>Triggered by several European Roma Rights Centre-sponsored applications, this new line of argument is the latest legal response to Roma’s endemic economic deprivation and social exclusion. It has begun to gradually expose structural dimensions of abuse across Europe and the need for effective public policies to combat this abuse. This approach has several components and may or may not be prompted solely by statistical data. The most basic requirement is for the authorities to conduct an investigation into possible racist motives behind a particular act or practice which may turn out to be incompatible with the Convention.</p>
<p>One can only hope that ongoing investigations in Bulgaria, Greece, and Ireland will generate responsible narratives and action on the part of the authorities and the media in the days and weeks to come. In times of economic crises and strong anxieties over national and sub-national identities, being able to tackle Roma’s poor living conditions and appalling marginalisation while respecting their distinctive way of life is bound to prove one of the most challenging tests: not only for individual countries, but also for Europe’s chances to survive as a meaningful transnational project.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19633/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gaetano Pentassuglia does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Two families in Ireland will have spent last weekend trying to forget the drama that engulfed their lives last week. Garda officers arrived on their doorsteps and took away young children on the spurious…Gaetano Pentassuglia, Reader in International Law and Human Rights, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/192552013-10-17T05:44:18Z2013-10-17T05:44:18ZPrisoners should not be locked out of democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33147/original/z2mv7nv3-1381920361.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Banged up: a Bill on prisoners' voting rights is presently before parliament.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">PA Archive</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The news that Peter Chester and George McGeoch have had their Supreme Court appeal against the ban on prison inmates voting <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/16/votes-prisoners-supreme-court-rejects-appeal">dismissed</a> will cause few people on the outside to lose much sleep - in fact the judgement, handed down yesterday in a unanimous decision, has been greeted with approval on all sides of the political spectrum.</p>
<p>The manner in which politicians of all stripes have taken to social media to applaud the decision bodes ill for the <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/joint-select/draft-voting-eligibility-prisoners-bill/">Draft Voting Eligibility (Prisoners) Bill</a>. The bill is subject to an inquiry by a <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/joint-select/draft-voting-eligibility-prisoners-bill/role/">Joint Parliamentary Committee</a> - to which we gave evidence last week. The draft bill sets out three options: to leave the blanket ban on prisoner voting unchanged, to withdraw the vote from people sentenced for six months or longer or to withdraw the vote from people sentenced to four years or longer.</p>
<p>We argued that only the third option would be anywhere near fair. Of course, practical concerns will influence politicians’ final decision. But at the heart of the matter there are two philosophical questions: why do we have voting rights in the first place? And how can we lose them?</p>
<h2>A human right?</h2>
<p>Political disagreement about prisoner voting tends to present itself as a clash of principle. On one side are <a href="http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/FS_Prisoners_vote_ENG.pdf">those who say that voting rights are human rights</a>. And human rights – the right against torture, say – are not normally lost if we commit a crime. On the other side are those who consider disenfranchisement - the loss of voting rights - appropriate punishment for crimes we commit. “Those who break the law can’t make the law,” they might say. But both positions are mistaken, because they each misunderstand why citizens have the right to vote in the first place.</p>
<p>Even though they reach very different conclusions, both views share the assumption that it is the fact that a voter benefits from having voting rights that justifies why he has them. The first assumes that the benefit we derive from the right to vote is so important that almost nothing – and certainly not the fact that we have committed a crime – can justify depriving us of that right. The second view starts from the thought that people should pay for their crimes; and that depriving criminals of the right to vote is justified precisely because having that right would benefit them.</p>
<p>Yet while being enfranchised is indeed usually good for us, that is not the main reason why we have the right to vote. By voting, we exercise political power over others. Directly, we play a role in determining which candidate can take a seat in parliament. Indirectly, we play a role in shaping the laws under which we all live.</p>
<p>However, we aren’t normally justified in having power over others simply because we benefit from that power. Rather, our power is justified insofar as others benefit from us having that power. Just think: I might greatly enjoy, and indeed benefit from, making decisions for my child. But if my power to do so is justified, this is because my child benefits from my having the right to make decisions for her.</p>
<h2>For the public good</h2>
<p>So if universal enfranchisement is justified, this is not because it is good for each of us to be enfranchised, but because it is good for all of us to live in a state where everyone is enfranchised.</p>
<p>How does universal enfranchisement benefit all? We all have an interest in living in a just society. Universal enfranchisement makes it less likely that MPs enact unjust laws. This is partly because those whose interests will be seriously injured by a policy will likely vote against it. But more importantly, they will argue against it, and persuade other citizens to also oppose a law that they recognise as unjust.</p>
<p>Couldn’t they argue against it even if they don’t have voting rights? Sure. But would they be listened to? MPs have a greater incentive to pay attention to the views of those who can vote than those who can’t. And as a politically active citizen, I too would engage more carefully with the views of those I need to persuade to vote for my cause.</p>
<p>If my right to vote is primarily justified, not by my interest in having it, but by the interests others have in living in a society in which everyone has a vote, then this requires us to fundamentally rethink the debate about prisoner voting. If, as is usually assumed, human rights serve to protect the interests of the right-holder, then our argument suggests that voting rights aren’t human rights. Indeed, we accept that there may be something to be said in favour of disenfranchising criminals: it expresses our objection to the crime they have committed and shows our solidarity with the victim, who might object to living under laws in which the perpetrator has an equal say.</p>
<p>But even if there is something to be said for disenfranchisement, and the criminal himself has no standing to object to it, this does not show that the punishment is justified, all things considered. An overall justification of punishment must also consider the costs the punishment would impose on innocent third parties. In deciding whether to send to prison a woman caught shoplifting, we must take into account how the punishment would affect her children, who might be forced into foster homes.</p>
<p>And since the right to vote is granted not, primarily, to benefit the voter, but to improve the quality of our collective decision-making and the justice of our laws, we must also take into account the losses that we all suffer when prisoners are barred from contributing to our collective decision-making. Sometimes the importance of distancing ourselves from the crime may be so great that this is a loss worth bearing. But often it is not. Thus disenfranchisement should be reserved for those prisoners whose crimes require the most severe condemnation – perpetrators of violent crimes like assault, rape, or murder. All or most other prisoners should be allowed to vote – not because they deserve it, but because it benefits us all to have them contribute to our political life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19255/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The news that Peter Chester and George McGeoch have had their Supreme Court appeal against the ban on prison inmates voting dismissed will cause few people on the outside to lose much sleep - in fact the…Christopher Bennett, Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy Department, University of SheffieldDaniel Viehoff, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.