tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/jean-claude-juncker-10640/articlesJean-Claude Juncker – The Conversation2019-03-01T15:37:12Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1125762019-03-01T15:37:12Z2019-03-01T15:37:12ZBrexit delay: what it would take for the EU to agree article 50 extension<p>For the first time – 23 months after the UK triggered the article 50 negotiations to begin the process of leaving the European Union – Theresa May acknowledged that <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-47373246/brexit-may-statement-on-future-votes-and-article-50-extension">it might be necessary</a> to delay Brexit day. Reportedly under pressure from a number of the Remainers in her cabinet, keen to emphasise her own opposition to a delay, but also hoping to push hard-line Brexiteers towards support of her deal, the prime minister conceded that an extension of the two-year article 50 period beyond March 29 might be necessary.</p>
<p>Missing from the discussion in the House of Commons was any reference to what say the other member states – the EU27 – would have in the matter. Such an omission is typical of what has gone on in the UK in the past few years. Much of the debate about the negotiations and the UK’s future relationship with the EU has proceeded without any reference to the position of the EU27, still less recognition of their interests, aims or strategy.</p>
<p>An extension to article 50 could, however, disrupt the UK’s solipsism. If it looks like the UK is heading down this course, loose talk about the desirability of extending the negotiations will confront a hard reality: the UK cannot unilaterally decide on an extension to the negotiations. London would have to make a proposal, to which the EU27 would have to agree – with unanimous consent.</p>
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<h2>Not yes to every request</h2>
<p>Let’s assume that May fails again to get her deal through the UK parliament and that MPs vote “no deal” off the table in mid-March when given the option. She then decides to ask the EU for an extension. This would already be a difficult move for the prime minister, who has reiterated – <a href="https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/bill-cash-and-peter-bone-on-theresa-may-brexit-betrayal-1-5907600">reportedly 108 times</a> – that the UK will leave the EU on 29 March. </p>
<p>The EU27’s response to such a request would depend on the circumstances. Generally positive comments on the issue have come from the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, who said he now regarded an extension as a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2019/feb/25/donald-tusk-article-50-extension-rational-solution-brexit-video">“rational solution”</a>, and president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, who said a request from the UK <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-juncker/no-one-in-europe-would-oppose-extension-to-brexit-talks-juncker-idUKKCN1Q71RF">would be welcomed</a>.</p>
<p>But as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said on February 27, the reason would <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-article-50-extend-macron-merkel-theresa-may-france-germany-eu-talks-a8799506.html">need to be “clear”</a>. It’s unlikely, for example, that the EU27 would agree to an extension in order to renegotiate the EU-UK withdrawal agreement, or the complicated issue of the Irirhs backstop. They consider both issues closed. They would also want to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/28/extension-article-50-must-be-one-off-brussels-eu27-uk-brexit-delay">avoid repeated requests</a> from the UK.</p>
<p>The EU’s first preference since the referendum has for been for a change of mind in the UK and for the country to remain in the EU. If that isn’t possible, the EU wants an orderly departure. It regards “no deal” as a disaster, even if the EU27 stand to be <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-no-deal-brexit-would-be-less-costly-for-the-eu-than-the-uk-110407">less badly hit</a> than the UK. </p>
<p>It’s unlikely, however, that the EU27 would give their consent to just any request from London. They see no evidence that May has been able to make any progress since the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/withdrawal-agreement-and-political-declaration">withdrawal agreement</a> was agreed in late November 2018, and they have little confidence in her ability to secure a majority for her deal at Westminster.</p>
<h2>Two, three or six months</h2>
<p>The prime minister told MPs that any extension would <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-47373246/brexit-may-statement-on-future-votes-and-article-50-extension">have to be short</a>. She would be subject to intense political pressures from Brexiteers in her party, sections of the press, and public opinion, which polls suggest would favour no more than three months. May would also want to avoid UK participation in elections to the European parliament. She said that people would find it strange for a country that is about to leave the EU to vote in the elections. </p>
<p>Since the elections are <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/at-your-service/en/be-heard/elections">scheduled for 23-26 May</a>, that would allow an extension of just under two months. Or, if the aim is for any extension to finish before the members of the European parliament (MEPs) take up their seats on July 1, that could allow for an extension of three months. Though since hearings to select a new commission president – one of the new parliament’s first major tasks – will not begin until the autumn, six months might be a possibility.</p>
<p>On the EU side, however, there is scepticism about what a short extension would achieve. Although the timing of the European elections does complicate the situation, the problem they present is not insurmountable. Even the fact that seats have been re-allocated in anticipation of the UK’s departure <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2018/06/29/the-european-council-establishes-the-composition-of-the-european-parliament/">could be dealt with</a>. </p>
<p>From an EU perspective, the obligation to contribute to the EU budget beyond March 29 on the part of the UK would not be overly problematic. As part of the arrangements for the transition period built into the withdrawal agreement, the UK has already agreed that it would maintain its contributions in 2019 and 2020. Problems would arise only if an extension period went beyond 2020, since that’s when the current EU budget period ends and the EU is currently negotiating the EU budget for the seven-year period that follows.</p>
<p>In the event, if the alternative is a no-deal Brexit with the disruption that such an outcome would entail, the EU27 may reluctantly agree to a short extension. However, it’s unlikely to do so without imposing conditions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hussein Kassim receives funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council. He is an Associate Fellow of 'The UK in a Changing Europe'.</span></em></p>Even if parliament votes to delay Brexit beyond March 29, the EU27 would have to unanimously agree. Would they?Hussein Kassim, Professor of Politics, Political, Social and International Studies, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1113012019-02-07T12:11:40Z2019-02-07T12:11:40ZBrexit turmoil: five ways British MPs misunderstand the European Union<p>With Theresa May on her way back to Brussels in an attempt to renegotiate a Brexit deal that has already been agreed, it’s once again clear that she and the parliamentary colleagues who sent her on her journey still harbour some fundamental misunderstandings about how the European Union actually operates and what it’s members think, even two years into talks.</p>
<p>Those who know how the EU works, such as the former UK permanent representative in Brussels, Ivan Rogers, <a href="https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2018/12/13/full-speech-sir-ivan-rogers-on-brexit/">are tearing their hair out</a> over the level of ignorance and wishful thinking on display.</p>
<p>At this crucial stage in the Brexit process, it’s important to explore why so many MPs, both Tories and Labour, misjudged the situation and what is realistically on offer. These are some of the problems that have ultimately caused such failings. They need to be recognised as soon as possible if the UK wants to thrive regardless of the Brexit outcome. </p>
<h2>1. Labour lost interest years ago</h2>
<p>Knowledge of the EU and professional connections in Brussels have been eroding in the UK over the years because of declining priority given to it by leaders. Under Tony Blair, the government was keen to set the agenda for EU. This started to change under Gordon Brown, who showed little interest in, or appreciation of, Brussels politics. Labour’s loss of knowledge continued the longer it stayed out of power and some former ministers left parliament, but also because those MPs with experience of governing under Blair were being sidelined under new leader Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn himself, a lifelong eurosceptic, tends to see the EU as an unreformable neoliberal project.</p>
<p>Now, he erroneously thinks that delivering the 2017 Labour manifesto requires freedom from EU state-aid rules. If EU membership is perceived as a problem, there is no need for coalition building with the socialist parties in Europe <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/10/jeremy-corbyn-europe-socialists-brexit">who want to stay and reform</a>.</p>
<h2>2. The Conservatives abandoned their friends</h2>
<p>The Conservatives’ understanding of the EU suffered from David Cameron’s early decision to withdraw his party from the <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/david-cameron-and-the-epp-a-rational-choice/">conservative grouping</a> in the European parliament in exchange for Brexiteer support for his leadership. This cut off the Conservatives from the European mainstream, damaged relations to sister parties such as the German CDU, and disrupted information flow and influence. As a result, British MPs overestimated both Germany’s capacity and willingness to accommodate British demands. </p>
<p>The 2011 watershed failure of the government to block the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16104275">fiscal compact</a> designed to save the eurozone was the first sign of misreading EU partners, closely followed in 2015 by futile efforts to block <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/27/david-cameron-loses-jean-claude-juncker-vote-eu">Jean-Claude Juncker</a> becoming Commission president after his party grouping won the European Parliament elections.</p>
<h2>3. They can’t see the EU’s viewpoint</h2>
<p>British MPs, and to some extent the British public, suffer from mirror-imaging when it comes to Brexit. This is when we deal with uncertainty about the intentions of the other side by imagining what is rational from our own point of view. From the perspective of many British MPs, the EU insisting on the backstop even if it risks a no deal is an irrational strategy given the economic damage it would incur. </p>
<p>Many also don’t understand why Britain could not enjoy the same kind of access to the single market as before. Why would the EU block its access and, at the same time, create new barriers for European businesses trying to operate in the UK? This reflects a strong tendency in British political discourse to evaluate policies, and the EU in particular, from a short-termist bottom-line perspective.</p>
<p>The EU sees Brexit not just on its own terms, but as a precedent-setting issue. How it deals with this matter will define its credibility in the future. Cutting a deal with Britain would come at the unacceptable price of weakening the union at a time when populist parties in member states are rising. The integrity of the single market is at stake if Northern Ireland leaves the customs union without border controls or if Britain is allowed to undercut standards to gain competitive advantage while enjoying good access to the single market.</p>
<h2>4. They aren’t used to compromise</h2>
<p>Furthermore, many British MPs struggle to understand that EU politics is largely defined by compromise. They see Brussels through the lens of their own confrontational system, where two parties dominate in first-past-the-post elections and are heavily whipped to toe the party line.</p>
<p>Many continental European countries are run by coalition governments and parliaments focuses on problem-solving. They more readily understand the give and take in Brussels. The EU is a compromise-making machine geared towards building the broadest possible support among its members. This only works because members agree on informal rules on how to act and share a certain amount of trust. </p>
<p>Casting vetoes, going into battle with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/05/theresa-may-brexit-red-lines-reckless-hostage-dup-promises-cant-keep">publicly announced red lines</a> and reneging on agreements has lost the UK trust and goodwill. That lost trust has now become a major obstacle for negotiation success.</p>
<h2>5. They’re stuck in outdated assumptions</h2>
<p>Finally, MPs have failed to update their thinking. Their perceived understanding of how Brussels works no longer applies. They are remembering the long EU summit negotiations of the past and the late-night compromises that typically enable a deal to made. </p>
<p>But Brexit negotiations are unlike EU summits where everyone needs to have prizes to sell at home. By deciding to leave, Britain has placed itself in a fundamentally different position. It is now a prospective “third country” against which the remaining EU members must defend their interests. The EU is keen to get Brexit done, and will show flexibility – but it’s not going to let either Ireland or its mandated negotiator, the European Commission, stand in the rain on a such a solidarity and credibility defining issue.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257722/original/file-20190207-174857-1pwsbqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257722/original/file-20190207-174857-1pwsbqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257722/original/file-20190207-174857-1pwsbqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257722/original/file-20190207-174857-1pwsbqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257722/original/file-20190207-174857-1pwsbqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257722/original/file-20190207-174857-1pwsbqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257722/original/file-20190207-174857-1pwsbqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&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">Barnier and Juncker: you just can’t get between them.</span>
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<p>The need to address these misunderstandings is pressing, whatever the outcome of Brexit. It will be central to making a success of the coming negotiations about future relations if May’s deal passes. Remaining successfully would require a major change of attitude. And even if Britain crashes out, it will still be connected to the EU by virtue of geography, economic links, law, security and, indeed, people.</p>
<p>As long as the EU exists and confounds Brexiteers’ predictions of its imminent demise, Britain, without a seat at the table, will need to understand how it works. How else can it influence the EU from the outside?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111301/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christoph Meyer 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>Theresa May is back in Brussels, but how can she get a deal without understanding where her negotiating partners are coming from?Christoph Meyer, Professor of European and International Politics, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1099702019-01-16T17:39:42Z2019-01-16T17:39:42ZEU reaction to Brexit vote defeat – regret, calls for clarity and no-deal preparations<p>The European Union has <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-19-442_en.htm">expressed its regret</a> at the rejection of the Brexit withdrawal agreement by the UK parliament. It also recognises there is not a sufficient majority in the UK parliament for a Brexit solution. As Guy Verhofstadt, Brexit coordinator for the European parliament, <a href="https://twitter.com/guyverhofstadt/status/1085261295056756741">put it</a>: </p>
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<p>The UK parliament has said what it doesn’t want. Now is the time to find out what UK parliamentarians want.</p>
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<p>While the outcome of the vote is no surprise to the EU, one might be able to hear a slight exasperation in the voice of Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, in his <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-19-442_en.htm">speech to the European parliament</a> on the morning after the vote: </p>
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<p>The EU feels that it has done all it can to deliver a Brexit agreement within the constraints of the British government’s red lines and the fact that a departing member state cannot retain the benefits of EU membership. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_STATEMENT-19-432_en.htm">stressed that</a> the EU had invested “enormous time and effort to negotiate” the deal and had “shown creativity and flexibility throughout”.</p>
<p>For the EU, the ball is firmly in the British government’s court. In the immediate aftermath of the vote, the EU is not willing to engage in any early guessing games as to what might happen next. It cannot act until the dust settles on the other side of the channel and the UK political process yields some kind of consensus as to what the British negotiating position may be moving forward. As the Irish government said in a <a href="https://twitter.com/simoncoveney/status/1085286263694024711">statement</a>: </p>
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<p>The government urges the UK to set out how it proposes to move forward. We will then consider what steps to take in consultation with our EU partners.</p>
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<p>This is a view echoed by <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-19-442_en.htm">Barnier</a>: </p>
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<p>As long as we do not have a way out of this current British political impasse, which has the support of a parliamentary majority, we cannot advance. That is why the next steps need to be clearly set out by the British government.</p>
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<h2>The EU gets ready for any scenarios</h2>
<p>For the EU, the withdrawal agreement is the best possible compromise to reduce the uncertainty and damage caused by Brexit and to ensure the UK’s orderly withdrawal from the EU. It delivers on all the objectives of the negotiation process and, together with the <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/759021/25_November_Political_Declaration_setting_out_the_framework_for_the_future_relationship_between_the_European_Union_and_the_United_Kingdom__.pdf">political declaration</a> and <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2019/01/14/joint-letter-of-president-tusk-and-president-juncker-to-theresa-may-prime-minister-of-the-united-kingdom/">assurances</a> from Juncker and Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, on the Irish border, it sets the framework for the negotiation of the future UK-EU relationship.</p>
<p>The Brexit clock is ticking. The UK parliament’s rejection of the withdrawal agreement increases the risk of a no-deal Brexit. While this is the worst possible outcome for the UK and the EU, the European Commission and EU governments are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/16/eu-nations-no-deal-preparations-may-brexit-defeat">stepping up their preparations</a> for a no-deal Brexit to ensure that all contingency measures are in place. </p>
<p>The EU is also not ruling out an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/13/eu-preparing-to-delay-brexit-until-at-least-july">extension of the article 50 process</a>. But this requires a request by the British government and the unanimous support of all remaining 27 member states.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/brexit-how-article-50-could-be-extended-to-delay-uks-departure-from-the-eu-109966">Brexit: how article 50 could be extended to delay UK's departure from the EU</a>
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<p>The outcome of this stage of the negotiation process will set the tone for forging a future relationship. Barnier has <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-19-442_en.htm">made it clear</a> that the ratification of the withdrawal agreement: “Is a requirement to create mutual trust between us, in view of our second negotiation”. The implication is that without an agreement to ensure a no-deal Brexit, the negotiation of a future relationship may take place in a less constructive atmosphere.</p>
<h2>Red lines</h2>
<p>The current withdrawal agreement and political declaration on the future relationship between the UK and the EU reflect the red lines of the British prime minister, Theresa May. The EU is willing to accommodate shifts in these. As <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/publications/slide-presented-michel-barnier-european-commission-chief-negotiator-heads-state-and-government-european-council-article-50-15-december-2017_en">Barnier’s Brexit staircase shows</a>, the current British red lines lead to only two possible outcomes: a free trade agreement along the same lines as Canada, or a no-deal Brexit.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254156/original/file-20190116-163274-s16817.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254156/original/file-20190116-163274-s16817.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254156/original/file-20190116-163274-s16817.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254156/original/file-20190116-163274-s16817.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254156/original/file-20190116-163274-s16817.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254156/original/file-20190116-163274-s16817.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254156/original/file-20190116-163274-s16817.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254156/original/file-20190116-163274-s16817.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Barnier’s Brexit outcome staircase.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/slide_presented_by_barnier_at_euco_15-12-2017.pdf">European Commission</a></span>
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<p>But, following the deal’s defeat in parliament, the expectation is that, despite the <a href="https://twitter.com/GuardianHeather">prime minister’s reluctance</a>, the British government’s red lines will have to change in order to achieve some kind of domestic consensus that can be turned into a workable negotiating position. </p>
<p>For the EU27, the Brexit negotiation has been a process of damage limitation. The EU respects but does not welcome Brexit. Some see <a href="https://twitter.com/eucopresident/status/1085260488903090176">Tusk’s reaction</a> to the government’s parliamentary defeat as a door left ajar for the UK to remain in the EU. But, faced with a weakened British government that is <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu/search-on-for-brexit-consensus-after-mays-crushing-defeat-idUKKCN1PA0LU">unable to command parliamentary support</a> for the withdrawal agreement, there is very little that the EU can do. </p>
<p>As Barnier <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c9ee16d2-4f8a-11e7-bfb8-997009366969">put it</a> during the interim between the Brexit referendum and the triggering of article 50: “I cannot negotiate on my own.” Ironically, with Brexit edging closer, Barnier finds himself in the same position – waiting for a reactive negotiating partner that wants to leave the EU but does not have sufficient domestic support coalescing around a unified solution to achieve this goal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109970/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nieves Perez-Solorzano has received funding from the ESRC, the British Academy, the European Commission </span></em></p>There is little the EU can do while the UK is in disarray.Nieves Perez-Solorzano, Senior Lecturer in European Politics, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1087022018-12-14T17:05:30Z2018-12-14T17:05:30ZBrexit Groundhog Day as EU leaders stand firm in face of British political stalemate<p>As the December European Council drew to an end, EU leaders must have felt that they were living their own Brexit Groundhog Day. As has become the norm since the Brexit negotiations began in March 2017, the European Union is faced with a British government in crisis.</p>
<p>A string of cabinet resignations, dependence on Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), and a mismatch between her negotiating red lines and the promise of a successful Brexit, have weakened Theresa May throughout the Brexit negotiation process. Today, the prime minister is an even weaker leader, at the helm of a disintegrating Conservative Party. </p>
<p>The prime minister attended the European Council meeting hoping that other 27 EU member states (EU27) would help her achieve the unachievable: a legal change to the withdrawal agreement that addresses domestic concerns about the Irish backstop sufficient to persuade a majority of MPs in Westminster to support her Brexit deal at some point before January 21, 2019.</p>
<p>Such steadfast support has not materialised. As the Brexit clock ticks, and the end game approaches, the <a href="http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/XT-20022-2018-INIT/en/pdf">European Council confirmed</a> that the withdrawal agreement “is not open for renegotiation”. The Council conclusions of December 13 restated that the Irish backstop is intended as an “insurance policy to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland”, but that if it were to nevertheless be triggered, “it would apply temporarily”. </p>
<p>The EU27 reiterated their intention that the backstop should “only be in place for as long as strictly necessary” and offered to start negotiations on the future relationship, “as soon as possible after the UK’s withdrawal.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/brexit-why-the-eu-doesnt-want-the-uk-to-remain-in-the-backstop-indefinitely-108451">Brexit: why the EU doesn't want the UK to remain in the backstop indefinitely</a>
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<p>The EU27’s clear and succinct language hides the exasperation, disbelief, impatience, and polite understanding of May’s difficult predicament that have characterised European leaders’ reactions after what was a torrid week in which the prime minister <a href="https://theconversation.com/brexit-vote-postponed-what-parliament-must-do-now-to-fix-theresa-mays-mess-108518">delayed a vote</a> in parliament on the Brexit deal and survived <a href="https://theconversation.com/theresa-may-survives-confidence-vote-but-her-brexit-deal-is-still-in-deep-trouble-108728">a leadership challenge</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1073516384095739904"}"></div></p>
<p>Despite a testy conversation caught on camera between May and the European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, over the clarity of the British government’s position, the prime minister later <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46569699">insisted</a> that “further clarification and discussion” were possible to ensure that the UK leaves the EU with a deal.</p>
<h2>Parliament’s red lines</h2>
<p>But something new is filtering through the EU’s narrative: a realisation that, until now, the negotiating partner has been the British government acting on May’s own red lines. But from now on it’s not May’s red lines that matter but those of the parliament in Westminster so that the withdrawal agreement can be ratified and an orderly Brexit ensured. Yet, to date, the British parliament lacks a common negotiating position of its own other than <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/nov/21/amber-rudd-parliament-will-stop-a-no-deal-brexit">avoiding a no-deal Brexit</a>. </p>
<p>As the prime minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/14/eu-leaders-tell-may-to-find-brexit-consensus-among-mps">put it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We know what Theresa wants, and she wants the best possible deal in Westminster, but the problem is the MPs in London. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Drawing on Denmark’s experience in negotiating the Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s, Denmark’s prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-summit-highlights-daytwo/highlights-eu-leaders-arrive-for-second-day-of-summit-dominated-by-brexit-idUKKBN1OD0VQ">advised</a>: “It is now up to the British to come to … a national consensus as we did in Denmark when the Danish rejected the Maastricht treaty in order to tell us exactly what to do to get it through the British parliament.”</p>
<p>The challenge for the EU is that, despite the skillful negotiating strategy demonstrated throughout the Brexit process, there is very little it can do when its negotiating partner’s position is seen as “<a href="http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/player.cfm?ref=I165747">nebulous</a>” and does not command the support of parliament or that of the wider public. Only <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/11/15/britain-does-not-back-brexit-deal">19% of the UK population</a> support May’s Brexit deal, according to a recent YouGov study, while the majority of the population in Northern Ireland <a href="http://ukandeu.ac.uk/most-people-in-northern-ireland-support-the-backstop/">support the Irish backstop</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250676/original/file-20181214-185252-i3vcoj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250676/original/file-20181214-185252-i3vcoj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250676/original/file-20181214-185252-i3vcoj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250676/original/file-20181214-185252-i3vcoj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250676/original/file-20181214-185252-i3vcoj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250676/original/file-20181214-185252-i3vcoj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250676/original/file-20181214-185252-i3vcoj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Big Ben is silent, but the Brexit countdown clock is ticking loudly.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/danieltamflickr/41993542575/in/photolist-26YPTb8-28bB7DU-L7XGmb-28bAYPq-26yasLB-252i1vd-252i1qd-27Fc3VJ-26D6Cub-KiDc2Y-HDzn3x-HDzmEP-264cqkd-JXcp57-Hr4TWi-26Zjz3n-26eSFjG-26bjyWJ-GyfBDx-269KWgP-24y1nH4-24LheNw-HECzfY-233EF4U-HEBEw1-24rnoUc-24kNKYn-22ES9B9-25em13n-Fy8YMg-23NYZKB-GXjrsW-GJ34mb-24KVjCG-EWBi9P-23p1WiA-EEpmTH-EEpmC2-EDHeDn-23ReTYm-22tBfbM-DTh96T-23qmDf9-JusYKg-22myXq7-221TCCR-221TCr8-221TCd2-221TBPB-221TAqK">Daniel Tam/flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Preparations for no deal?</h2>
<p>The article 50 process allows an extension of the negotiating period. The UK would have to request such an extension. The EU would favour it in the event of a general election or another referendum and to avoid a “no-deal” Brexit. Nevertheless, preparations are <a href="https://www.rte.ie/news/brexit/2018/1213/1016916-brexit-europe/">being stepped up across the EU</a> for such a scenario. </p>
<p>The EU27 has regularly said that no Brexit would be their preferred outcome. A recent ruling by the <a href="http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf;jsessionid=30070EAD3C16AB345376A71509ACC49D?text=&docid=208636&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1">Court of Justice of the EU</a> has confirmed that the UK can unilaterally cancel its notification to leave the EU. No Brexit has been recognised both <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-may/pm-may-says-its-my-deal-no-deal-or-no-brexit-at-all-idUKKBN1O50RT">by May</a> and the president of the European Council, <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-tusk-no-deal-or-no-brexit-if-uk-parliament-rejects-mays-deal/">Donald Tusk,</a> as one of the possible options should the British parliament not ratify the withdrawal agreement.</p>
<p>However, as Jean-Claude Piris, the former director general of the EU Council’s Legal Service, has <a href="https://twitter.com/piris_jc/status/1073513106620538880">confirmed</a> the EU will not “approve any Protocol, codicil or even Declaration saying something which would not be legally in conformity with the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement” to appease the British parliament. </p>
<p>As the countdown to leaving the European Union reaches 100 days, the EU’s unanimous reaction to the crisis in the UK is clear: the withdrawal agreement is the only Brexit deal available and it is the UK’s government responsibility to find the domestic consensus to ratify the withdrawal agreement. No deal is not the preferred scenario, but the EU is ready for it.</p>
<p>Ivan Rogers, the UK’s former permanent representative to the EU, offered an excellent description of the challenges ahead in a recent <a href="https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2018/12/13/full-speech-sir-ivan-rogers-on-brexit/">speech</a> at the University of Liverpool: “Brexit is a process not an event. And the EU, while strategically myopic, is formidably good at process against negotiating opponents. We have to be equally so, or we will get hammered.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108702/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nieves Perez-Solorzano 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 EU realises the red lines it needs to meet are now the British parliament’s, not Theresa May’s.Nieves Perez-Solorzano, Senior Lecturer in European Politics, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/994292018-07-11T09:03:45Z2018-07-11T09:03:45ZThe EU wants to avoid a ‘no deal’ Brexit – here’s how it could achieve that<p>Before the Brexit negotiations had officially started, back in June 2017, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c9ee16d2-4f8a-11e7-bfb8-997009366969">told journalists</a> what he needed on the other side of the table: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A head of the British delegation that is stable, accountable and that has a mandate. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Less than a year before Brexit day, scheduled for March 29, 2019, Barnier may feel he is still waiting for those conditions to be met, especially as the EU now finds itself with a new head of the British delegation, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c9ee16d2-4f8a-11e7-bfb8-997009366969">Dominic Raab</a>. Raab’s negotiating position for the next round of talks, starting on July 16, results from Theresa May’s attempt to <a href="https://theconversation.com/brexiteers-outmanoeuvred-at-chequers-after-theresa-may-corrals-cabinet-before-brexit-secretary-resigns-99405">hold her cabinet</a> and the Conservative Party together at a meeting at Chequers. In doing so, <a href="https://theconversation.com/whos-to-blame-for-theresa-mays-meltdown-and-where-will-it-end-99613">the prime minister provoked</a> yet another domestic Brexit crisis with a spate of resignations, including those of the Brexit secretary, David Davis – who Raab has replaced – and foreign secretary, Boris Johnson.</p>
<p>In the face of such uncertainty, the reaction of the 27 remaining EU member states (EU27) to the UK’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-statement-following-cabinet-away-day-at-chequers">new vision</a> for a future UK-EU relationship has been cautious but unenthusiastic. European leaders from Barnier to German chancellor <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44719576">Angela Merkel</a>, and from <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-44753265">Irish premier Leo Varadkar</a> to Sebastian Kurz, the Austrian chancellor whose country holds the <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/austrian-chancellor-sebastian-kurz-the-eus-new-power-broker/a-44466137">EU Council presidency</a>, have spoken with one voice. They have all welcomed the British government’s attempt to define a negotiating position on the framework for the future UK-EU relationship, but have asked for further detail. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-brexit-plan-that-could-bring-down-the-british-government-explained-99607">The Brexit plan that could bring down the British government – explained</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>As one <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/07/eu-diplomats-theresa-may-brexit-compromise">EU diplomat</a> recently put it: “We will try to receive it as well as possible but from what we understand it is still a carve-out of the single market.” The diplomat added that May’s proposed single market for goods is, “A lot of fudge with a cherry on top.”</p>
<h2>The final stretch</h2>
<p>European leaders are also concerned that time is running out for a deal to be finalised – even as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2018/jul/10/theresa-may-new-cabinet-boris-johnson-resignation-brexit-live">Barnier indicated</a>: “After 12 months of negotiations we have agreed on 80% of the negotiations.” This may be read as a reminder to the UK government not to divert too much from what has been achieved at the negotiating table so far – and an expectation of more clarity, soon. </p>
<p>Some have seen a recent <a href="https://twitter.com/eucopresident/status/1016327348919193601">tweet</a> from Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, in the wake of the UK cabinet resignations, as an opportunity to reverse Brexit altogether. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1016327348919193601"}"></div></p>
<p>The EU’s reaction to the detail of the British position will be shaped by the challenge of having to negotiate with an increasingly unstable British government while trying to avoid a “no deal” scenario. Even though European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, has confirmed that the EU has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jun/21/eu-is-getting-ready-for-no-deal-brexit-says-jean-claude-juncker">started preparations</a> for this eventuality, the EU is committed to an orderly British withdrawal that avoids uncertainty and protects citizens and businesses. </p>
<p>And while the EU27 will not do this at any price, it’s in this commitment to a final Withdrawal Agreement that the member states may find the political will to work constructively with the UK’s current vision for a future relationship even if there are fears that May’s government could fall at any point. </p>
<h2>Extend the Article 50 deadline</h2>
<p>So how might the EU do this? First, it can agree to extend the Brexit negotiation process. This might not have been a preferred outcome at the start of the negotiations, but if extending the negotiation period ensures that there is an agreed solution that avoids a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and thus UK agreement on the <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/draft_agreement_coloured.pdf">Withdrawal Agreement</a>, the EU27 are perfectly justified in drawing on this flexibility tool. The terms of <a href="http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/wcm/the-lisbon-treaty/treaty-on-European-union-and-comments/title-6-final-provisions/137-article-50.html">Article 50</a>, which govern the procedural requirements for a member state to be able to exercise its right to leave the EU, allow for the deadline to be extended beyond the initial two years.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-article-50-the-law-that-governs-exiting-the-eu-and-how-does-it-work-60262">What is Article 50 – the law that governs exiting the EU – and how does it work?</a>
</strong>
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<p>The UK and all EU member states must agree to the extension. Given its internal crisis, the UK government might welcome a softening of the ticking Brexit clock pressure. Even though Brexit day is enshrined in the <a href="https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/europeanunionwithdrawal.html">EU Withdrawal Act</a>, ministers can change it if necessary. May <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42424997">confirmed</a> that this would only happen in “exceptional circumstances” and “for the shortest possible time”. </p>
<p>For their part, the EU27 need to unanimously agree to the extension. The experience of other highly politicised negotiations such as the accession of new countries, has shown that the member states are able to leave aside their egoistic national preferences to pursue the collective EU interest – namely avoiding a disorderly Brexit.</p>
<h2>Softening red lines</h2>
<p>Second, the EU may decide to soften some of its red lines for the purpose of finalising a Withdrawal Agreement. Barnier hinted at this in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/06/michel-barnier-eu-willing-to-compromise-if-uk-softens-brexit-red-lines">a speech on July 6</a>, stating “I am ready to adapt our offer should the UK red lines change”, but making it clear that the integrity of the single market had to be protected.</p>
<p>If the forthcoming white paper can offer sufficient detail and some realistic substance for the EU negotiating team to work with, and if the UK and EU can find sufficient common ground on such detail, this might afford some leeway to get the negotiations over the hurdle of completing a Withdrawal Agreement. As Franklin Dehousse, a former judge at the EU General Court <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chaotic-deal-brexit-threatening-why-european-union-must-dehousse">has put it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are no serious legal reasons to exclude a Brexit deal with single market on goods and partial free movement of people (but with the proper institutional guarantees). Obstacles are political, and if people want to create them, they should justify them as such. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Brexit challenge is no longer an existential threat to the EU but rather to the Conservative government. However, the future of the EU depends on the success of the Brexit process and this requires a degree of ingenuity and political will that allows it to consider Brexit scenarios that protect the integrity of the bloc and its member states, without marginalising the UK.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99429/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nieves Perez-Solorzano has received funding from the British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council and the European Commission. </span></em></p>Despite the problems that lie ahead with the Brexit plan Theresa May hammered out at Chequers, the EU prefers a Brexit deal rather than a ‘no deal’.Nieves Perez-Solorzano, Senior Lecturer in European Politics, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/874742017-12-21T10:25:41Z2017-12-21T10:25:41ZMuscles for Brussels: why Europe’s defence union might not be such a good idea<p>A group of 25 EU member states has adopted a new agreement establishing what it is calling the European permanent structured cooperation on defence. Known in Brussels circles as PESCO, the deal will see these countries seriously committing to develop joint military capabilities and technologies. They will regularly increase defence budgets to produce and acquire shared equipment. They will also invest on a number of projects seeking to harmonise national military forces and enhance their readiness and interoperability. In other words, they are going to build muscles for Brussels.</p>
<p>The agreement is based on the <a href="http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/wcm/the-lisbon-treaty/treaty-on-european-union-and-comments/title-5-general-provisions-on-the-unions-external-action-and-specific-provisions/chapter-2-specific-provisions-on-the-common-foreign-and-security-policy/section-2-provisions-on-the-common-security-and-defence-policy/129-article-42.html">2007 Lisbon Treaty</a> and is therefore legally binding. This is an important change from the voluntary approach that has so far been the rule within the EU’s common security and defence policy. The very fact that it has taken ten years to implement this part of the Lisbon Treaty is quite telling of how important the change is. </p>
<p>PESCO has faced a multitude of political blockages, but adoption by 25 states is arguably a success, especially for European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker. He started calling for a stronger Europe on security and defence since his election campaign in 2014 and <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-17-3165_en.htm">recently made it clear</a> that his objective is to create a fully-fledged European Defence Union by 2025. </p>
<p>The only EU members outside PESCO are now the UK, Denmark and Malta. The position of the UK appears definitive because of Brexit, but Denmark and Malta could change their minds. Malta has chosen a “<a href="http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/europe/83085/malta_to_wait_and_see_before_deciding_on_pesco_defence_pact_muscat_says#.Wjfnw7aZOgQ">wait and see</a>” strategy to understand if PESCO clashes with its constitutional neutrality. Denmark can’t join yet because it <a href="http://www.fmn.dk/eng/allabout/Pages/TheDanishDefenceOpt-Out.aspx">opted out</a> of any integration on defence matters following two referendums back in 1992 and 1993. Should PESCO prove successful, Danish politicians might find the right incentive to try and reverse the opt-out.</p>
<p>Juncker is prone to using fairy tale metaphors when talking about PESCO. Last July, he called the agreement “<a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-17-1581_en.htm">the sleeping beauty of the Lisbon Treaty</a>” and, when it was finally adopted, he tweeted that sleeping beauty was “<a href="https://twitter.com/JunckerEU/status/940175532196589568">awake</a>”. Many others have presented PESCO as some sort of “<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/ad6c198a-c877-11e7-ab18-7a9fb7d6163e">awakening</a>”, triggered not so much by a kiss as by a perfect storm. </p>
<p>The migration crisis, terrorist attacks on European soil, uncertainties surrounding the US in NATO, the increasing tensions with Russia, and of course the economic crisis and Brexit have all combined to convince European leaders that it is imperative to maximise both the effectiveness of defence and defence spending. The result is a very pragmatic agreement building on the EU’s strongest assets: the Commission and the single market. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"940175532196589568"}"></div></p>
<p>There is much to celebrate in a deal that helps a solid EU progress towards further integration despite the political turbulence of the last few years. However, a defence union itself is not necessarily good news.</p>
<h2>Working together</h2>
<p>Most security experts and politicians are <a href="http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/74760">sceptical</a> about the EU’s capacity to develop a serious common defence policy. The European integration process, they argue, works only in those policy areas where common interests can be found and not where core state sovereignty concerns apply. Because defence and security are at the core of state sovereignty, cooperation is difficult, if not impossible. What’s more there are substantial differences in the way each European nation understands its own interests in this area.</p>
<p>PESCO is designed to challenge these beliefs. The European Commission will play a key part in implementing the scheme by providing financial and practical support at all stages of military capability building: research, development, and acquisition. Crucially, there will be financial incentives for member states to cooperate within PESCO as they will have privileged access to the recently established <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-1508_en.htm">European Defence Fund</a>, a €5.5 billion annual pot to be used mainly to develop new capabilities. </p>
<p>And even if the Commission can’t make it work alone, the single market – the most powerful weightlifting machine at the disposal of the European Union – will certainly help with the job. This is a first for the defence and security domain. PESCO creates incentives for collaborative investments in the European defence industry. This is expected to create an internal market for EU-made military technologies, which in turn is expected to deliver what politicians are currently most hungry for: jobs. </p>
<p>Market mechanisms are expected to create a virtuous circle that will produce more investments, more jobs, and ultimately common political interests. In fact, the 25 PESCO members have agreed on <a href="http://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/32020/draft-pesco-declaration-clean-10122017.pdf">a list of 17 projects</a> where political objectives clearly align with industrial ambitions. For example, there are two projects aimed at producing armoured vehicles and an artillery platform that clearly seek to launch a profitable business, creating jobs as well as filling capability gaps in European military forces.</p>
<h2>Birth of a military-industrial complex</h2>
<p>In the past 40 years, scholars have repeatedly <a href="https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/126120/smith.pdf">warned</a> against militarising the EU. They have suggested that the EU should instead enhance its economic and diplomatic means of influence and therefore develop more towards a distinctive “<a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-01826-0_1">civilian</a>” power. PESCO marks the end of this discussion: the EU is on a path to becoming home of a strong military-industrial complex.</p>
<p>European citizens as well as leaders should watch the process carefully. A European defence market could make cooperation in defence and security matters lucrative, cost effective and ultimately irresistible. But careful political direction is needed to avoid the dangerous consequences that the growth of defence economies may bring. A more muscular Europe could create rather than solve security dilemmas. In the present context, it might well cause Russia to feel more threatened and adopt an even more aggressive posture. </p>
<p>Juncker & Co. should make sure that what they think is a fairy tale today doesn’t become a bad remake of some cold war movie tomorrow. After all, there were <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=muscles%20from%20brussels">Muscles from Brussels</a> in some of those too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87474/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chiara De Franco receives funding from the Danish Research Council for a project investigating how the European Union practices the 'protection of civilians'. </span></em></p>A group of 25 EU countries is to work together more closely than ever before to develop military capabilities.Chiara De Franco, Associate Professor in International Relations, University of Southern DenmarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/888792017-12-08T10:50:27Z2017-12-08T10:50:27ZBrexit deal breaks deadlock – experts react<p>EU negotiators <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42277040">announced</a> on December 8 that enough progress has been achieved in Brexit negotiations for talks to move on to a second phase – the nature of the future relationship between the UK and the EU. A deal on the Irish border, a <a href="https://theconversation.com/q-a-whats-going-on-with-brexit-and-the-irish-border-88520">major sticking point</a> in the talks, was given the go-ahead by both the EU and UK. Here academic experts explain aspects of the agreement. </p>
<h2>The Irish border</h2>
<p><strong>Katy Hayward, Reader in Sociology, Queen’s University Belfast</strong></p>
<p>The UK government still seeks a future deal with the EU that brings the benefits of single market and customs union membership without the obligations. This goal set alarm bells ringing in Brussels and Dublin long ago. Its sheer impossibility meant hurtling towards either a “no deal” scenario (in which case the Irish border would become a hard border) or an “ignore the problem” scenario, in which case the border would be a dangerously gaping hole in the top left corner of the single market.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/joint_report.pdf">joint agreement</a> between the UK and EU secures against both these risks. It asserts that the UK seeks to realise its aims of avoiding a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland “through the overall EU-UK relationship”. But it then allows that “should this not be possible”, it will propose “specific solutions” to tie up the loose ends.</p>
<p>In the event that there is a failure to find such agreed solutions, the UK will “maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement”.</p>
<p>This is such a major concession, of the tail-wags-dog type, that efforts will be concentrated on finding those “agreed solutions” for Northern Ireland – which we can safely assume will be necessary. The Irish question is far from resolved and there are laborious and detailed negotiations to come.</p>
<p>As such, the joint agreement wisely allows for a special strand of the phase two discussions between the EU and the UK to be dedicated to the “detailed arrangements” necessary to give effect to the ambitious commitments to Northern Ireland/Ireland contained here.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Feargal Cochrane, Professor of International Conflict Analysis, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent</strong></p>
<p>So there we have it – more constructive ambiguity, which is fitting in terms of the Good Friday Agreement and broader peace process. This agreement can, and is, being read differently by the Irish government and the DUP, which is hardly surprising.</p>
<p>However, the Irish government position is unequivocal and the deal is essentially much the same as the one rejected by the DUP just days previously, certainly in terms of the implications for trade harmonisation in the two parts of Ireland.</p>
<p>The Irish government is clearly convinced that this means there will, in practice, be no need for border checks between the two jurisdictions after the UK leaves the EU.</p>
<p>The DUP, for its part, is <a href="http://www.mydup.com/news/article/democratic-unionist-party-statement#.WipAqmXOgSc.twitter">reassured</a> that Northern Ireland will be constitutionally aligned with the rest of the UK after Brexit and there will be no air-lock at Great Britain that differentiates Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. However, the DUP has, at the same time, admitted that the details of how full alignment will work in practice while maintaining NI’s alignment with the rest of the UK require more detailed explanation.</p>
<p>The implication of the wording is that the UK will have to harmonise with Ireland (which, by the way, means the EU). So it’s not entirely clear how the UK is leaving the customs union and single market, other than saying it has left but in practical terms not actually leaving. This might put the wind up some of prime minister Theresa May’s colleagues, who thought Brexit was going to give them their country back.</p>
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<p>It seems like the Irish government has received the guarantee it needed that there will be no visible border in Ireland after Brexit. The UK government and DUP have also bought some time to unscramble how to do this in the next phase of the process.</p>
<p>In essence, while the DUP may choose to dress it up in red, white and blue, it looks like Northern Ireland will be clad in blue and gold for the foreseeable future following this agreement.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Brendan Ciarán Browne, Assistant Professor & Course Coordinator MPhil Conflict Resolution, Trinity College Dublin</strong></p>
<p>Beyond practical realities, <a href="https://theconversation.com/brexit-never-underestimate-the-political-potency-of-symbolism-in-northern-ireland-88609">symbolically</a> the deal is important. In explicitly dismissing the notion of a hard border on the island of Ireland the negotiating teams have been sensitive to what this could lead to in terms of further political instability in Northern Ireland and the potential for a return to violence. </p>
<p>The hard fought strand in the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/136652/agreement.pdf">1998 Good Friday Agreement</a> focusing on self-determination, that affords citizens born in the north the right to determine as Irish, has undoubtedly been safeguarded as a result of the deal. This allows those in the north who identity as Irish to also remain as European citizens. </p>
<p>By placing the Irish question at the heart of this phase of the negotiations, the EU negotiators realised the symbolic importance of the right to self-determination for citizens in the north. They have also further demonstrated their commitment to upholding the values that are enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement. </p>
<hr>
<p><strong>David Phinnemore, Professor of European Politics, Queen’s University Belfast</strong></p>
<p>The Irish dimension of Brexit has at last gained the profile it deserves in UK political debate. The assumption that you can leave the EU, its customs union and its single market and avoid any hardening of the Irish border has been exposed as folly. </p>
<p>This is made abundantly clear in the text agreed by the UK and the EU. It commits the UK to regulatory alignment with those EU rules regarding the single market and the customs union that support not just north-south cooperation on the island of the Ireland, but also the “all-island economy” and the protection of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.</p>
<p>How this is to be achieved has still to be worked out. The same goes for the range of regulations where alignment would be required. Ultimately, if the UK and EU don’t reach agreement on all this when striking a trade deal, the UK has committed to maintaining the “full alignment” necessary. Given the EU’s insistence on respecting the integrity of its own legal order and the UK pledge not to impose a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, that could in effect mean the whole of the UK staying in the single market and a customs union arrangement with the EU.</p>
<p>The autonomous alignment this entails does not sit well with the “take back control” mantra of many Brexiteers, and that’s before its decided who oversees the eventual arrangement. Whether London can and will deliver remains to be seen.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Gavin Barrett, Professor at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin</strong></p>
<p>With this <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/joint_report.pdf">joint agreement</a>, an unfamiliar concept has found its way into the world’s political lexicon: regulatory alignment. It seem innocuous but don’t be fooled. Regulatory alignment will be the terrain on which Brexit’s ultimate shape will be determined. </p>
<p>The British prime minister, Theresa May, effectively needed Ireland’s assent to move to phase two of Brexit negotiations. Ireland wanted protection against any prospect of renewed controls on the Northern Irish frontier. The result was article 49 of the agreement, promising Ireland that the UK will “maintain full alignment” with the customs union and those internal market rules supporting Ireland’s all-island economy, cooperation and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. But to please the DUP, article 50 of the agreement nonetheless promises Northern Irish businesses “unfettered access” to the UK single market.</p>
<p>For hardline eurosceptics such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, the ability to diverge from EU regulations in pursuit of international trade deals is an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/dec/05/uk-brexit-team-is-walking-a-tightrope-to-reach-first-phase-deal">“indelible” red line</a> in Brexit talks. Pleasing them, May still insists the UK will leave both the customs union and the single European market.</p>
<p>These three commitments seem impossible to square – unless the UK does one of three things, each of which anger somebody. First, it angers Eurosceptics by recreating the present EU customs union with another similar EU-UK customs arrangement and by mirroring most single European market rules. Second, it angers the DUP by introducing customs controls on Northern Ireland, while keeping Northern Ireland in the UK’s single market, like a little Norway to the EU’s single market. Or, third, it angers Ireland by giving “full alignment” much less significance than Ireland thinks it has. </p>
<p>It is an impossible trilemma. Something has to give. But that is for another day. For now May’s government, and the truly lunatic escapade that is Brexit, hurtle onwards.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Citizens’ rights</h2>
<p><strong>Stijn Smismans, Professor of European Law, Director of the Centre for European Law and Governance, Cardiff University</strong></p>
<p>EU citizens in the UK and British citizens in Europe remain in a lot of uncertainty following the deal on the first stage of Brexit negotiations.</p>
<p>There is some progress in the Joint Agreement on the status and rights people will hold once they have obtained what’s called “settled status”, particularly in relation to family reunion and their acquired social security rights. However, this is far from a guarantee protecting their current rights.</p>
<p>Settled status will not be as protective as the current status of permanent residence. Even people who already hold permanent residence could be deported more easily on grounds of criminality, which goes beyond the restrictive criteria on when EU citizens can be deported that the EU <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-britain-can-deport-eu-citizens-according-to-the-law-86896">currently allows</a>.</p>
<p>The main problem is that the criteria and checks for registration to get “settled status” remain unclear. Neither is it clear which documents people will need to provide as proof. The previous application system for permanent residence for EU citizens led to nearly 30% of applications <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/feb/27/rejections-eu-citizens-seeking-uk-residency">being rejected</a>. If similar criteria are applied, such as applicants needing to prove being in work or having sufficient resources to live on, the consequences would be dramatic. </p>
<p>The agreement promises a simplified registration system but does not explain how this will be organised. Neither the criteria for application nor the way in which the online system could reach those most vulnerable are explained.</p>
<p>EU citizens have been promised to have their status guaranteed for life – but the proposal that the EU Court of Justice would lose its control powers over this after eight years undermines that principle.</p>
<hr>
<h2>How Europe reacted</h2>
<p><strong>Patricia Hogwood, Reader in European Politics, University of Westminster</strong></p>
<p>The first reactions from Europe to the deal were predictably anodyne. Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, <a href="http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2017/12/08/statement-by-president-donald-tusk-on-second-phase-brexit/#">gave all the credit</a> for the breakthrough to Theresa May. While this flatters the prime minister, it also serves the main aim of the European institutions and leading member states – to prop up May’s failing government long enough to conclude a viable Brexit deal.</p>
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<p>The Dutch prime minister has declared that <a href="https://twitter.com/MinPres/status/939064047944814592">he is “happy”</a> that the talks can move on. Only a few have dared to prod the gap between the constructive ambiguity of the statement and the problems that will arise in translating it into an acceptable political compromise in practice. Sven Giegold, a German MEP, has branded the deal a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/08/brexit-deal-nigel-farage-says-deal-not-acceptable-business-leaders/">“fake compromise”</a> and claimed that regulatory alignment won’t be enough to avoid a hard border. </p>
<hr>
<h2>What happens now?</h2>
<p><strong>Alan Wager, Research Associate, The UK in a Changing Europe at King’s College London</strong></p>
<p>This agreement looks like a political fudge that tells us very little, but keeps the show on the road. In fact, it’s the opposite. We now have a much clearer idea of what Brexit will look like. But, as a result, its political shelf life is limited. </p>
<p>Brexit means “full alignment” – putting the UK firmly in the EU’s sphere of influence when it comes to rules on trade. The Brexit choice at this stage can be boiled down to two different paths: one that continued to hug the EU27 close and remain in their trading sphere of influence, and another that returned “British laws” to the UK and facilitated expansive global trade deals. The first path is looking a lot more likely.</p>
<p>The key issue – how to leave the EU’s frameworks, while not hardening the Irish border – remains unresolved. This is because it is an intractable logical problem that cannot be meaningfully resolved. So the UK will, in any meaningful sense, remain subject to these rules and regulations. The question is, once all this comes out in the wash, whether this softer form of Brexit will still be sellable to Theresa May’s party.</p>
<p>Leading Brexit figures such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, sensing in the lead up to this crunch point that the Brexit process could have stalled, have rediscovered the joys of collective cabinet responsibility. But, in the new year, this could come to look less like a fudge, and more like one of those leftover stale mince pies: no one wants it, and harder than it looks.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88879/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katy Hayward was commissioned by the EU Parliament Committee on Constututional Affairs to co-author a report on UK Withdrawal and the Good Friday Agreement. She is a board member of the Centre for Cross Border Studies. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Phinnemore has received funding from the British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council and the European Union. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Feargal Cochrane is Vice Chair of the Political Studies Association in the UK.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stijn Smismans has given legal advice, on a voluntary basis, to The3Million association. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Wager, Brendan Ciarán Browne, Gavin Barrett, and Patricia Hogwood 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>Theresa May has reached an agreement with the EU that will enable her to proceed to the second stage of Brexit negotiations. Here’s what it all means.Katy Hayward, Reader in Sociology, Queen's University BelfastAlan Wager, Research Associate, The UK in a Changing Europe at King's College London, King's College LondonBrendan Ciarán Browne, Assistant Professor & Course Coordinator MPhil Conflict Resolution, Trinity College DublinDavid Phinnemore, Professor of European Politics, Queen's University BelfastFeargal Cochrane, Professor of International Conflict Analysis, School of Politics and International Relations, University of KentGavin Barrett, Professor at the Sutherland School of Law, University College DublinPatricia Hogwood, Reader in European Politics, University of WestminsterStijn Smismans, Professor of European Law, Director of the Centre for European Law and Governance, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/674092016-10-27T08:03:24Z2016-10-27T08:03:24ZThe spectre of a hard border is not just an Irish problem, it looms across Europe<p>The future of the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit is proving to be a complex political problem. As negotiators aim to avoid a new “hard border” between the two jurisdictions, their efforts will inevitably be shaped by a wider trend that has seen a tightening of border security around and within the European Union itself.</p>
<p>One option on the table during talks between British and Irish civil servants is to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/09/britain-to-push-post-brexit-uk-immigration-controls-back-to-irish-border">strengthen immigration controls</a> at entry points to the mainland of Ireland. This idea was met with some consternation among Irish political and public commentators, many of whom object to the very principle of Ireland acting as a conduit for the UK’s border policy. </p>
<p>The proposed immigration controls at Irish entry points would centre upon the ability to distinguish between British and Irish citizens, other EU citizens and those from outside the European Economic Area. Such measures would seek to protect the special status of British and Irish citizens in these islands, while avoiding the imposition of constraints on the movement of people across the Irish border. But they immediately pose a potential sticking point for the EU, which would baulk at the idea of Ireland, an EU member-state, positively discriminating in favour of British citizens over other EU citizens. </p>
<h2>An era of information sharing</h2>
<p>Border controls already vary among the members of the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/common-travel-area-cta/common-travel-area-cta">Common Travel Area</a> – Ireland, the UK and crown dependencies such as the Isle of Man – and across different types of borders be they land, sea, or air. Since the late 1990s, immigration officers in Irish ports have had the capacity to examine the identity documents of travellers from elsewhere in the Common Travel Area. This takes the form of fixed controls at air and sea ports and targeted controls along the Irish border. It is a tactic that means passengers are more conscious that they are being scrutinised, although their freedom of movement is not restricted. </p>
<p>In the mid-2000s, Ireland temporarily became a country <a href="http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/ireland-rapid-immigration-recession">of net immigration</a>. The British government responded to this with a proposal to introduce checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain in order to block a potential “backdoor for migrants” into the UK via the Irish part of the Common Travel Area. This proposal was <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/research/parliament/house-of-lords/defeats_tabs/2008-09/2009-defeat-5.pdf">defeated in 2009 by the House of Lords</a> partly in a pique of unionist concern at the imposition of any border controls between two parts of the UK, as had been the case during and after World War II.</p>
<p>In the wake of this, by means of compromise, both governments agreed in 2011 on <a href="http://www.inis.gov.ie/en/INIS/Pages/IRELAND-UK%20ACCORD%20TO%20FURTHER%20SECURE%20THE%20COMMON%20TRAVEL%20AREA">joint standards for entry</a> and further exchange of information on individual travellers. The price for mutual recognition across the Common Travel Area of visas for visitors from certain countries, such as India, is increased scrutiny before they can enter the country. There has also been greater use of electronic border systems, including biometric sensors, when passengers arrive and depart. These arrangements mean that there is already far more monitoring of people’s travel (particularly air travel) between Britain and the island of Ireland than there is across the Irish border. </p>
<h2>EU border controls tighten</h2>
<p>In the meantime, greater scrutiny of passengers as they traverse state boundaries has become standard across Europe. The EU Commission has been taking steps recently to enhance monitoring of its internal and external borders. The assumption it shares here with the British government is that there is an integral connection between inward migration and internal insecurity. The response of both the EU and UK to this perceived threat is to enhance centralised powers of surveillance and increase restrictions on the immigration and internal movement of <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/borders-and-visas/schengen/reintroduction-border-control/index_en.htm">non-EU citizens</a>. </p>
<p>Further measures for the “Security Union” confirmed by European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in his <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/priorities/state-union-2016_en">State of the Union speech</a> in September 2016 include the speedy adoption and implementation of an <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/securing-eu-borders/fact-sheets/docs/factsheet_-_entryexit_system_en.pdf">EU entry-exit system</a> to collect more data on travellers. The <a href="http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/09/14-european-border-coast-guard/">European Border and Coast Guard Agency</a> (a strengthened version of the existing Frontex agency) is a core component of this border securitisation and came into being in early October 2016 with a reserve pool of 1,500 border guards and advanced technical support.</p>
<p>These developments not only affect external borders but allow the European Council to approve the imposition of temporary border controls between neighbouring member states in the <a href="http://www.eppgroup.eu/press-release/European-Border-and-Coast-Guard-boosts-internal-security">interest of EU-wide security</a>. This may happen if one state, facing what is deemed to be “severe migratory pressure”, fails to “co-operate adequately” with this new agency. These measures have been processed through the European Parliament and EU Council of Ministers at unprecedented speed.</p>
<h2>Fortress Europe leaves no place for outsiders</h2>
<p>During a speech at the LSE in September, the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/pdf/2016-ST/20160923-Martin-Schultz-Transcript.pdf">claimed</a> that he would not countenance a Europe in which “lorries and hedge funds are free to cross borders but citizens are not”. In so doing, he was not merely advocating the inseparability of the <a href="http://www.europeanpolicy.org/en/european-policies/single-market.html">four freedoms</a> – of goods, capital, services and people – within the EU but also reiterating the hierarchical distinction between EU citizens and immigrants. With such policies, the EU is coming to resemble a new citadel, increasingly fortified against the movement of people from beyond its walls.</p>
<p>Since partition of Ireland in 1921, enforcement policies along the Irish border have run the gambit from “extreme”, to hard, to soft. There is one sure lesson from the “borders of the past” in Ireland, of the type that the British prime minister <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/kenny-and-may-agree-no-return-to-hard-border-after-brexit-1.2734884">Theresa May has said she wishes to avoid returning to</a>, that the UK and EU must heed. Increasing military and security presence along state borders worsens the patterns of social and economic disintegration in border regions, deepens divisions and mistrust on both sides, and leaves wounds that are still exposed long after the checkpoints have been <a href="http://www.seupb.eu/Libraries/Peace_Network_Meetings_and_Events/PN__The_Emerald_Curtain__100205_The_Social_Impact_of_the_Irish_Border.sflb.ashx">dismantled</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67409/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katy Hayward receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Economic and Social Research Council. She is a Board Member of the Centre for Cross Border Studies and the Institute for Conflict Research. She is a member of the Green Party in Northern Ireland. </span></em></p>The EU is tightening security on its own borders.Katy Hayward, Reader in Sociology, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/654392016-09-19T11:41:39Z2016-09-19T11:41:39ZHeading for a fall? With summer over, Europe must face up to its mounting crises<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137930/original/image-20160915-30587-z9opnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C8%2C2811%2C1656&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Clouds are gathering.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/patrickmuller/4125496170/in/photolist-7hyfhj-bftn7K-bftozc-bftnVi-bftnmv-bftoiP-bftmbM-bftk1F-bftmAz-bftiNr-7hyfLd-73f2Fs-aC2Zd6-dZhXDq-bftoZx-bftj24-5WM517-bftpeP-qRyckW-6hyFg-r97UKz-7hyfDm-7UVyCP-bftr64-nk4Dsz-r97UJc-5E3BsU-91CGkF-7Njp9W-r8Y1fB-26MQu-9Bjzti-7UVznn-bftnJv-7NjoZQ-aDd9ge-dRvspN-91FNnb-7NfqRX-dRpPDK-3pCy18-guRyXa-dRpQUP-bftmmH-7UYNpm-bfto7k-91FNPL-7NfqWx-fbRb1s-dRvv4f">Patrick Müller</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Europe is about to experience a hectic start to the political season. It has more problems on its hands than at any time in recent memory.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/eurozone-crisis-11464">eurozone crisis</a> created difficulties in 2009-2013, but they came in waves. Autumn 2016 brings three major challenges that all need attention at the same time. The aftermath of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/eu-referendum-2016">Brexit</a> vote, the migration crisis and discontent among some of the remaining EU member states are all problems that threaten to destabilise the union. </p>
<p>Add to these the prospect of a rudderless Spain, where various attempts to form a government over eight months have failed, and the coming presidential elections in France, where <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/marine-le-pen-2938">Marine Le Pen</a>, leader of the far-right National Front, leads in many polls.</p>
<p>This is certain to be, at best, a difficult few months for the EU. At worst it could be the start of splintered Europe, with a number of new member states calling for a total re-think of the responsibilities of EU institutions.</p>
<h2>Head in the sand</h2>
<p>Europe has, so far, done a very bad job of dealing with Britain’s vote to leave. At first, Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, insisted Brexit negotiations should <a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/jean-claude-juncker-comes-fighting-brexit/">begin immediately</a>. He was snubbed by the British and unceremoniously told to pipe down by other EU member states. One senior EU official said Juncker “wanted Britain to leave the parking lot before setting the navigation system”.</p>
<p>The European Council was charged with handling the politics and public relations of the separation. Just when things returned to normal, Michel Barnier, who barely speaks English and is known for <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/brexit-negotiator-michel-barnier-eu-referendum-result-leave-europe-european-commission-a7158301.html">unfriendly relations</a> with the City of London, was appointed chief Brexit negotiator.</p>
<p>We know by now that Brexit is going to be a drawn-out affair and that many people in the EU want as amicable a divorce as possible, which leaves lots of options on the table. What we don’t know, however, is how important Barnier will be or whether the process will ultimately be handled by Germany, just as many of the eurozone crisis decisions were.</p>
<p>Most of all, we don’t know what the new British government has in mind as a successful outcome. It is clear, however, that utmost care is needed – something that European institutions have yet to show.</p>
<h2>Neighbourhood watch</h2>
<p>The second thorny challenge is migration. Turkey is the EU’s most important partner in dealing with this problem but its behaviour has been erratic of late. The Turkish government <a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-europes-refugee-deal-with-turkey-is-it-legal-and-can-it-work-56054">agreed in May</a> to help stem the immigration flow in return for visa-free travel for its citizens. But the recent failed coup has thrown the deal into turmoil.</p>
<p>President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has imprisoned tens of thousands of alleged <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/turkey-coup-29363">coup plotters</a> in recent weeks. With the flagrant violations of human rights going on in Turkey, visa-free travel hardly seems feasible any more. And Turkey does not seem to be the safe destination for refugees it once was.</p>
<p>That said, Turkey is currently sheltering around twice as many refugees as the number who entered Europe in 2015. Erdoğan could, if he wanted, toy with European leaders by opening the border temporarily to ramp up the stakes. He <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/12/turkish-president-threatens-to-send-millions-of-syrian-refugees-to-eu">already threatened as much</a> in February, before the coup. If he sees through on the threat, it’s not clear how Europe would respond.</p>
<p>Eastern European heads of state have already called for a <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-wants-an-eu-military-force/">joint European army</a> and border police – and Berlin and Brussels were quick to respond. In his September <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-16-3043_en.htm">State of the Union Address</a> Juncker appeared to acquiesce to the demand.</p>
<h2>Reputation management</h2>
<p>The third challenge is to restore the European Commission’s reputation after its poor handling of both Brexit and migration.</p>
<p>There are increasingly vocal complaints coming from Eastern Europe about the failure of Brussels to manage crises and calls for Juncker to <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/future-eu/news/eus-juncker-under-pressure-to-resign-after-brexit-vote/">resign</a>. Several countries, mostly from Central Europe, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/07/13/hungarys-orban-urges-remaining-eu-members-claw-back-powers-brussels/">have asked</a> for powers to be shifted away from Juncker’s commission and handed to the European Council of national leaders. </p>
<p>It looks like Juncker will survive this storm but that his status will be weakened by it. The fact that <a href="http://qz.com/763022/angela-merkels-post-brexit-european-tour-mapped/">Merkel</a>, and not he, was meeting with heads of state to discuss Brexit and immigration shows how little the political elite trusts him.</p>
<p>Beyond his own failings, however, lie the apparent weaknesses in the Commission itself. It was slow to deal with the eurozone crisis, with the result of prolonged economic recession in Greece and high youth unemployment in most of southern Europe. The main lessons from this poor performance have not been learnt and the weakenesses continue to manifest themselves.</p>
<p>To recover from its current crises, the EU needs to take action. That means listening to Eastern Europe about protecting its external borders and investing more money in joint border control and in dealing with the root causes of the refugee flow.</p>
<p>And when it comes to Brexit negotiations, the task must be entrusted to politicians who truly believe in an amicable solution and are not after revenge. Finally, to re-energise and regain the trust of member states, the European Commission has to make real progress on important projects, such as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-european-banking-union-as-a-matter-of-equality-15495">banking union</a>, <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/priorities/energy-union-and-climate_en">energy union</a> and a <a href="https://theconversation.com/europes-digital-single-market-needs-to-foster-tech-startups-and-a-global-view-41589">single digital market</a>.</p>
<p>More than just tinkering is needed if the union is to survive the difficult months ahead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65439/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simeon Djankov is affiliated with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington DC. </span></em></p>The European Union has faced crises before but not this many at the same time.Simeon Djankov, Executive Director of the Financial Markets Group, London School of Economics and Political ScienceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/614842016-06-27T13:43:35Z2016-06-27T13:43:35ZBrexit: what Europe must do to avoid losing more member states<p>A few years ago, the European Commission’s London office felt compelled to publish an <a href="http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/">A to Z of euro myths</a>. There was an entry on eurocrats and an attempt to explain the EU’s reputation for being tyrannical about <a href="http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/eurocrats-to-ban-small-fruit/">small fruit</a>. The blog also reassured the people of Britain that the EU would protect their <a href="http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/cornish-pasties-made-in-america-will-not-be-coming-to-europe/">Cornish pasties</a> from American invasion. </p>
<p>It was all done in good humour but the blog addressed a serious problem. All across the member states, the quality of information about what the EU is and does is <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780230279865">abysmal</a>. The European integration project has been an <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/opposing-europe-the-comparative-party-politics-of-euroscepticism-9780199258352?cc=gb&lang=en&">incremental and unspectacular process</a> – the EU admits as much.</p>
<p>And sure enough, it has been greeted with indifference. Data on British attitudes towards the EU shows very low levels of trust and enthusiasm. Now the British public have voted with their feet and decided to leave the union.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127816/original/image-20160622-7181-1ppymus.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127816/original/image-20160622-7181-1ppymus.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127816/original/image-20160622-7181-1ppymus.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127816/original/image-20160622-7181-1ppymus.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127816/original/image-20160622-7181-1ppymus.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127816/original/image-20160622-7181-1ppymus.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127816/original/image-20160622-7181-1ppymus.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127816/original/image-20160622-7181-1ppymus.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British attitudes to the EU.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>British citizens generally think the EU has not benefited the country, and data on attitudes across the union since the financial crisis shows that negative attitudes towards it have stabilised at higher levels.</p>
<p>In the <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/COMMFrontOffice/PublicOpinion/#p=1&instruments=STANDARD">spring of 2013</a> only 30% of citizens had a positive image of the EU – down from 52% in 2007. The number of those having a total negative almost doubled, from 15% in 2007 to 29%. The perception was that the voices of citizens did not count in the EU (67%). Euroscepticism, as a form of opposition to the EU integration process, has now become <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcms.2013.51.issue-1/issuetoc">embedded, pervasive and enduring</a>.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/docs/35_years_en.pdf">2008</a>, when the economic crisis hit, only 44% of UK citizens said they were interested in EU affairs, with 58% showing more interest in their country’s national politics.</p>
<p>Without a strong message coming from the EU, bad feeling has spread. Euroscepticism thrives when a lack of knowledge combines with an inaccurate counter-narrative at the national level. Already <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/brexit-jean-claude-juncker-not-right-man-resign-czech-foreign-minister-a7105101.html">questions</a> are being asked about whether European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker did enough to convince the UK to stay in the EU. </p>
<p>According to a Centre for European Reform study, one of the most repeated claims made about the EU is that Brussels, namely, the European Commission, <a href="https://fullfact.org/europe/eu-facts-behind-claims-brussels-bureaucrats/">dictated</a> 75% of British laws. In reality, the percentage of secondary legislation resulting from EU requirements is actually about 10-13%. Most of that relates to business regulation, VAT and excise duties.</p>
<h2>Damage control</h2>
<p>As the British referendum has shown, the EU is seen as a dictatorship on a mission to destroy its own members. Britain, meanwhile, is the picture of democracy. Instead of that horrid EU rag with its nasty stars, Britain has its union flag. Instead of unelected bureaucrats, it has its legitimate system of MPs. Never mind the monarchy and the House of Lords. </p>
<p>It’s a similar story in other members states. <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780230279865">Before Poland joined</a>, the populist party Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland spread conspiracy theories about “EU elites” so effectively that some genuinely thought Poland would be destroyed by the EU.</p>
<p>This kind of misinterpretation of the EU evidently needs to be urgently addressed, before other countries follow the UK out. Eurosceptics have wasted no time in <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-outers-idUSKCN0ZA2AB">calling for their own referendums</a> on membership. </p>
<p>Indeed referendums are far more common outside the UK – which should provide an opportunity to debate the issues and raise concerns. And yet their binary nature exacerbates anti-establishment bitterness and fear, so it’s all too easy to miss the opportunity to deal with people’s concerns. </p>
<p>It was certainly missed in the UK’s case. The campaign focused obsessively on immigration and the movement of people, with alarmist reports on the number of EU migrants coming to the UK and the costs they burden on Britain. This was punctuated only occasionally with ill-informed arguments about Turkey joining the EU and plans to create a European army. </p>
<p>This vote is clearly being taken as a wake up call by EU leaders. Now that a member has been lost, they really need to put the evidence into action. It’s clear that trust and enthusiasm for the European project has been sliding. They must address misinformation in member states that plays a part in this lack of enthusiasm so that the EU can be framed in a different, or at least neutral, way.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61484/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simona Guerra 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>Leaders must address their critics to avoid losing more members.Simona Guerra, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/475202015-09-15T15:08:27Z2015-09-15T15:08:27ZOpen and shut: how Germany plays politics with its borders<p>Was it just a dream? Only last week, Germany made it clear that <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-some-european-countries-do-more-than-others-to-help-refugees-47115">all refugees were welcome</a>, and chancellor Angela Merkel became the Mother Teresa of European politics. </p>
<p>The country was able to bask in the glory of being an example of the good European – only months after Merkel had been chided for her <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-angela-merkel-does-next-will-define-the-future-of-europe-44328">politics of austerity towards Greece</a> and after she had, to much criticism worldwide, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/16/angela-merkel-comforts-teenage-palestinian-asylum-seeker-germany">told a young Palestinian girl</a> that “we cannot take everyone in”.</p>
<p>But barely a week after the hearty welcome, the country <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/13/germany-to-close-borders-exit-schengen-emergency-measures">closed its borders with Austria</a>, the route by which the majority of refugees were arriving. Police forces and helpers in Bavaria were simply unable to cope with the massive influx of people – more than 20,000 refugees had <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/13/refugee-crisis-germany-reaching-its-limit-officials-munich">arrived in Munich</a> alone over the course of the weekend, more than UK prime minister David Cameron said his country was prepared to take in <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/09/07/uk-europe-migrants-britain-idUKKCN0R71NM20150907">over the next five years</a>.</p>
<h2>Goodbye Schengen?</h2>
<p>Does the closure of the borders with Austria mean the end of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13194723">Schengen agreement</a>, which abolished the European Union’s internal borders? And what are the <a href="https://theconversation.com/business-will-suffer-if-border-crossings-between-european-neighbours-are-shut-47022">broader implications for Europe</a>?</p>
<p>On one level, the sudden closure of Germany’s border is simply an act of necessity. The German police, bureaucracy and welfare state simply cannot cope with the influx. </p>
<p>The Schengen arrangements <a href="http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:42000A0922(01)">explicitly allow</a> for the short-term suspension of the agreement in exceptional circumstances. This happened last time in 2011, when <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13171403">France reintroduced border controls with Italy</a> in order to stop large-scale immigration from Tunisia.</p>
<p>But there is a more important, more long-term element. Immigration is always a test case for asserting national sovereignty. And it is also a clear marker of sovereignty in international relations. One of the key characteristics of a nation-state is that it has clearly delineated borders that it has the capacity to control. </p>
<p>The Schengen agreement has, like so many European treaties, fudged the issue: it started life in 1985 as an agreement between the European governments of Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. It was only operational from March 1995 onwards. And it only subsequently became part of the complicated set of European treaties and part of EU law in 1999 (as part of the <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/treaty/pdf/amst-en.pdf">Treaty of Amsterdam</a>). </p>
<p>For its critics, Schengen is the symbol of a faceless and dangerous European superstate that diluted the character of individual nations; for its supporters, the embodiment of the freedom of movement. And for many continental Europeans (and many holidaymakers) a convenient fact of life. </p>
<p>Schengen has never just been about border controls. It has also been about what the German Foreign Office calls, <a href="http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/EN/EinreiseUndAufenthalt/Schengen_node.html">on its website</a>, a “common area of security and justice”. </p>
<p>This has always come with a key paradox for the signatories: freedom of movement on the one hand, but monitoring and control of that movement, especially on the borders, on the other.</p>
<h2>Symbolic gestures</h2>
<p>Merkel’s welcome was, for once, an act of true political leadership. It was a direct reaction to the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34050393">burning of several houses</a> that had been designated as asylum seekers sanctuaries, and campaigning by far-right wing groups. </p>
<p>Merkel wanted to send out a signal to Germany’s population as well as to the world: xenophobia would not be tolerated by the government; instead, the government would encourage those to come who genuinely required asylum. In that sense, the policy of open borders has been a gigantic social experiment. Many Germans have welcomed the refugees with open arms. But many others, silent, are unlikely to be so happy. The German government is well aware of this.</p>
<p>Germany’s welcome message was also a brilliant piece of public diplomacy and symbolic politics: all the capital that German foreign policy seemed to have lost in the Greek crisis appeared to have been rebuilt within a week. Germany’s self-interest was only rarely mentioned; given its own <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34172729">ageing population and a very low birth rate</a>, immigration is necessary to guarantee welfare and pension payments in the future.</p>
<h2>Realpolitik at work</h2>
<p>But Merkel and her government would hardly have been so naive as to assume that the social experiment could last forever. It is plausible to see this whole episode as part of Germany’s long-term foreign policy strategy, about what the German government thinks about the core of European integration – and how the European Union should develop. </p>
<p>Germany wants to put (symbolic) pressure on countries in Eastern Europe, Poland, for example – but also in the West, like France which has taken fewer asylum seekers than one might have expected. It is significant that so-called “transit countries” such as Hungary and Greece seem to be off the hook for the time being. </p>
<p>In his recent State of the Union speech, the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, bemoaned its lack of unity, <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-15-5614_en.htm">explicitly referring to the refugee crisis</a>. The German government’s almost unilateral initiative to welcome asylum seekers was somewhat at odds with Juncker’s call for a united approach. And the subsequent closure of its border with Austria was, like Germany’s actions during the Greek crisis, a direct challenge to the European Commission’s authority to frame policy on this issue.</p>
<p>Many have interpreted Germany’s recent policy towards refugees in the light of its own experiences of violence and mass migration that make the right to asylum one of the most cherished parts of its constitution. But “sovereignty through integration” has also been the recipe for Germany’s success story in Europe for the past 50 years. </p>
<p>Germany would like its European partners to adopt this model as the blueprint for the future of the European Union – but this model that continues to highlight national sovereignty and intergovernmental co-ordination is at odds with the bureaucratic route preferred by the European Commission or the democratic one suggested by the European Parliament. </p>
<p>Whether the German plan will work out – as a social experiment and an act of political leadership at home and as a call to action for a more concerted effort to shape the foundations of the European Union – remains to be seen. It was, in any event, worth trying.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47520/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Holger Nehring 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>How asylum seekers became political pawns in Germany’s foreign policy agenda.Holger Nehring, Professor in Contemporary European History, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/473272015-09-10T13:27:13Z2015-09-10T13:27:13ZMission impossible: Juncker calls for a more political EU<p>European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, has called for a more political EU in his <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-15-5614_en.htm">state of the union address</a>. From migration to trade, Grexit to Brexit, Juncker’s lengthy speech was a rallying cry for a more coordinated effort to tackle the problems the continent faces.</p>
<p>Juncker, who came to the presidency as a result of what many see as a <a href="https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/articles/opinion/junckers-election-crucial-step-towards-united-states-europe">more democratic procedure</a> than his predecessor, proposes a stronger line from Brussels as the solution – starting with handling the refugees crisis. </p>
<h2>Refugee crisis at the top</h2>
<p>More than half of the speech was devoted to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/migrant-crisis">refugee crisis</a> – the EU’s biggest priority at the moment, according to the president. He called for greater union in Europe’s asylum and refugee policies. He wants a permanent mechanism for the relocation of 160,000 refugees over the next two years and a proposal for a common list of safe countries of origin, making it possible to fast-track asylum procedures for specific nationalities. </p>
<p>Calling for more solidarity, he pressed member states to care for the better integration of refugees into their societies. Finally, he underlined that in an ageing EU, there is a need for a better strategy regarding legal channels for migration and for addressing migration as a “well-managed resource” rather than a problem. </p>
<p>There was praise for Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, which though poorer, have done much more to <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/09/syrias-refugee-crisis-in-numbers/">help</a> refugees from war-torn Syria than the EU. Juncker said that there has been too much finger pointing going on, with member states <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/05/migration-crisis-europe-leaders-blame-brussels-hungary-germany">blaming Brussels</a> for their own failure to assume responsibility. Fighting the corner of his office, the European Commission, Juncker suggested there is plenty of legislation coming out of Brussels on this issue, and far less implementation of it going on in individual countries.</p>
<h2>EU in the world</h2>
<p>The refugee crisis might sit somewhere between the internal and external agenda of the EU, but clearer international issues also took centre stage in the speech which also took in Ukraine, Iran and the EU’s controversial TTIP trade agreement with the US. By defending the closed nature of negotiations on TTIP (and valuing the strength of Europe’s negotiators over transparency), Juncker showed his desire that Europe take a strong position in the world. </p>
<p>Juncker only touched briefly on climate change, but he made an interesting link between this topic and the refugee crisis, warning that the next wave might be one of climate refugees. Ahead of the Paris climate talks this December, the EU should become a model for others in the world, he said. </p>
<h2>On Grexit and Brexit</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>If the Commission had not said loudly that Grexit is not an option, it could have happened.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Juncker took the opportunity in his speech to call for greater eurozone integration too. Specifically, he talked of his wish to see a more homogeneous <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/finance/bank/guarantee/index_en.htm">deposit guarantee</a> system to protect EU citizens’ savings and a European Treasury to better coordinate monetary policy. The debt crises in <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/greece">Greece</a> and <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/03/interview-athanasios-orphanides">Cyprus</a> have highlighted why this is necessary.</p>
<p>Talking of a “Europe of values”, the president also warned Britain that the freedom of the movement of workers is a fundamental and non-negotiable value. This follows the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/30/theresa-may-says-only-migrants-with-jobs-should-be-let-in-to-uk">recent call from Britain’s home secretary Theresa May</a> for a rethink of the EU’s borderless system and a ban on unemployed Europeans from entering the UK. </p>
<h2>Union impossible?</h2>
<p>Above all, this was a speech about how bad a state the EU is in. For Juncker, the way out of the continent’s troubles is to increase the EU’s power, for there to be deeper political and economic integration and for talk of rolling back past achievements like freedom of movement to be curbed. But the trouble is that the many crises that the EU has recently faced and the euroscepticism that has come with it have made greater integration all the more tricky. </p>
<p>Juncker attacked those who criticise European integration for failing to acknowledge its role in maintaining stability and peace (for Europeans and refugees alike). He also felt that critics had not given his Commission due credit for trying to limit its bureaucracy. It was the intransigence of member states, he emphasised, which had caused the failure of the relocation mechanism for refugees suggested by the Commission in May – he lamented that it had taken shocking images, such as those of the dead body of the three-year-old <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-one-terrible-image-change-the-direction-of-a-humanitarian-crisis-47067">Aylan Kurdi</a>, for some governments to start taking action.</p>
<p>It is therefore hard to be optimistic about the prospect of a more political EU. The still slow and inadequate response of these governments to this most pressing example of the disappointing state of the EU is indicative of why it is bound to remain as such for some time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47327/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Kyris 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 European Commission president believes more integration and cooperation is the solution to Europe’s many problems. But it’s hard to see this happening.George Kyris, Lecturer in International and European Politics, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/472882015-09-10T10:24:02Z2015-09-10T10:24:02ZJuncker gets political in State of the European Union address<p>While the refugee crisis provided main focus for Jean-Claude Juncker’s <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-15-5614_en.htm">State of the European Union address</a>, he also grappled with the whole project of the EU itself. And above all, he made a clear attempt to present himself and the European Commission as having a “political” role in the running of the EU, rather than a purely technocratic one. </p>
<p>Junker explicitly stated that he wants to lead a political commission. He was openly critical of the current state of the EU, which to his mind suffers from a double deficit: “There is not enough Europe in this Union. And there is not enough Union in this Union.”</p>
<h2>Enough finger-pointing</h2>
<p>Throughout his address, Junker acknowledged that the challenges currently facing Europe are political, with enormous consequences for stability and prosperity across the continent. His strategy was to be pragmatic and to-the-point, but also to press for immediate action. He was openly critical of the member states, but also made sure to sound inclusive and understanding of their concerns. </p>
<p>He strongly criticised the way EU has responded to the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean and the Balkans. Like other commission presidents before him, Junker was very careful to appeal to the importance of history and Europe’s common past.</p>
<p>But he stayed away from generalisations, instead pointing to specific nations and ethnicities within the EU – notably reminding his audience that “20 million people of Polish ancestry live outside Poland, as a result of political and economic emigration after the many border shifts, forced expulsions and resettlements during Poland’s often painful history.”</p>
<p>His argument went beyond the usual narrative that the European Union was created to prevent further war among European countries. Instead, he argued that since “Europe is a continent where nearly everyone has at one time been a refugee,” progressive values such as respect for human rights, pluralism and tolerance should inform the EU’s approach to the refugee crisis. </p>
<h2>Flexing muscle</h2>
<p>His other strategy was to criticise member states directly. He acknowledged that the EU’s members have their differences, but also argued that member states are unfairly blaming Brussels for their discord. This he used as a pretext for his argument for a more “political” commission, which he connected to the refugee and Eurozone crises alike. </p>
<p>Nodding to his being the first ever commission president who campaigned for the post as a <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/blighty/2014/05/european-election">Spitzenkandidat</a> – the top member of a party list, with a strong partisan backing – Junker reinforced his mandate to act as a guarantor of EU integration, preserve the unity of the EU and the Eurozone, and to take leadership in addressing the refugee crisis. </p>
<p>And then came a discussion of the UK and its upcoming EU membership referendum. Here Junker was remarkably politically pragmatic. Not only did he acknowledge the validity of some UK concerns – especially those related to the prosperity of EU citizens – he also admitted that these are not UK-specific concerns, and that they matter to citizens across Europe. </p>
<p>Juncker made it clear that as he sees it, the UK is not the odd one out in Europe, and the EU must focus on the concerns of all its citizens. Junker doubled down on his view that the UK should be part of the EU, especially by confirming that his commission is working on issues that address some British concerns: slashing red tape, creating a digital single market, negotiating trade agreements with the world leading trading powers, and strengthening the EU’s relationship with national parliaments. All these are integral to David Cameron’s renegotiation agenda. </p>
<p>In short, this speech was openly and strongly political. Juncker took a strong stance on the handling of the refugee crisis, attempted to reinforce the commission’s mandate to act – especially with regard to the Eurozone – and argued for a fair deal for the UK that takes into consideration all member states’ interests. </p>
<p>But of course, the extent to which Europe will become more European and more united, as Junker would wish it, remains to be seen. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-pm-cameron-confirms-uk-staying-out-of-eu-refugee-quotas-2015-9?IR=T">David Cameron</a>, for one, has already confirmed that the UK will stay out of EU refugee quotas – and with one of its three biggest powers holding a touch-and-go referendum on its membership, the future of the union looks as unclear as ever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47288/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Junker reinforced his mandate to act as a guarantor of EU integration, preserve the unity of the EU and the Eurozone, and to take leadership in addressing the refugee crisis.Sofia Vasilopoulou, Lecturer, Department of Politics, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/473212015-09-09T17:59:59Z2015-09-09T17:59:59ZJuncker appeals to European hearts with refugee plan, but one leader is already shaking his head<p>The refugee crisis and how to handle it has occupied the agenda of Jean-Claude Juncker’s European Commission presidency. It has been less than a year since he took office, during which time Europe has been plunged into the <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/r-migrant-tragedies-on-land-and-sea-claim-hundreds-of-lives-2015-8?r=US&IR=T">largest refugee crisis </a> since World War II.</p>
<p>It is no surprise therefore that the crisis was given such prominence in Juncker’s first <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-15-5614_en.htm">State of the Union address</a>. Since October 2013 when more than 300 people drowned off the coast of <a href="https://theconversation.com/italy-ignores-real-cause-of-lampedusa-refugee-tragedy-18928">Lampedusa</a>, the number of people dying at the borders of the EU has been <a href="http://www.unhcr.org.uk/news-and-views/news-list/news-detail/article/worsening-conditions-inside-syria-and-the-region-fuel-despair-driving-thousands-towards-europe.html">staggering</a>. </p>
<p>The refugee crisis has amplified existing <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/01/europes-migration-response-tempers-frayed-insults-traded-results-absent">tensions</a> in the EU and particularly between the European Commission and member states. Some are committed to using the current situation and what they see as a failure to protect EU borders to renegotiate their position in the EU, claim back powers from Brussels and appease growing nationalist forces at home.</p>
<p>Hungary is building a <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/08/hungary-building-border-fence-curb-immigration-150801051501749.html">four metre-high </a> fence along its border with Serbia to keep migrants and refugees from crossing its territory. Relations between nationals and the refugees who have entered the country are <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/08/hungarian-nationalist-tv-camera-operator-filmed-kicking-refugee-children">becoming tense</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33729024">the UK</a> is sending fencing material and sniffer dogs to Calais to keep a relatively small number of migrants from trying to cross from France to the UK via the Channel tunnel.</p>
<p>Juncker questioned how effective such measures are, both practically and morally, when he said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We can build walls, we can build fences. But imagine for a second it were you, your child in your arms, the world you knew torn apart around you. There is no price you would not pay, there is no wall you would not climb, no sea you would not sail, no border you would not cross if it is war or the barbarism of the so-called Islamic State that you are fleeing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In keeping with this tone, Juncker sought to shift the debate away from borders and security and towards asylum, solidarity and responsibility. He referred to a new EU-wide border management system and legal channel for economic migrants but the headline news was his call to significantly increase the number of places being offered on the relocation scheme for asylum seekers. </p>
<p>He called for quotas to be expanded from 40,000 to 160,000 and for member states to allow asylum seekers to work and earn from day one of their arrival in Europe. He also wants to make a fundamental change of the Dublin system that requires that asylum applications be dealt with by the first country of entry. Details on this are scarce at the moment but he called for greater unity in the EU’s approach.</p>
<p>On top of this, he argued that European governments should be able to fast-track asylum applications from people leaving certain countries that are considered more safe to live in – such as Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, Macedonia and Turkey. This, he suggested, would enable them to focus their efforts on applicants who are more likely to gain asylum, such as those from Syria, Iraq and Eritrea who currently have asylum recognition rate equal to or higher than 75%. </p>
<p>But, as the commissioner is well aware, the member states have not been particularly helpful so far. “I really hope that this time everyone will be on board. No poems, no rhetoric” he told the European Parliament. </p>
<p>The main question for him and his team is whether this call for action will shake the torpor of member states. Juncker has presented a coherent set of proposals but individual governments have taken a pick-and-choose approach before, such as when they failed to offer as many places as Juncker hoped through the <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/background-information/docs/communication_on_the_european_agenda_on_migration_en.pdf">EU migration agenda</a> in May. </p>
<h2>Sorry, not today</h2>
<p>As evidence of the challenges the commission has to face, it is worth noting that just as Juncker was calling on EU member states to contribute to the relocation scheme for 160,000 asylum seekers in Strasburg, David Cameron was declaring, over in London, that the UK would not be taking part in the scheme.</p>
<p>The British prime minister, whose relationship with Juncker is notoriously frosty, said that focusing on quotas won’t solve the problem “and it actually sends a message that it is a good idea to get on a boat and make that perilous journey”.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34171148">UK plan</a>,launched earlier in the week, instead involves the resettlement of 20,000 refugees over five years and will only include refugees from camps in the region around Syria, currently over 4 millions. This, according to a <a href="https://nandosigona.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/the-refugee-crisis-and-the-uks-pr-politics/">disingenuous</a> Cameron counts “an enormous national exercise”.</p>
<p>Cameron was the first to shuffle away from the responsibilities laid at his door by Juncker, but he is unlikely to be the last.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47321/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nando Sigona receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). </span></em></p>We need more Europe in our asylum policy. We need more Union in our refugee policy,“ says the Commission president.Nando Sigona, Senior Lecturer and Birmingham Fellow, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/411082015-05-06T14:14:36Z2015-05-06T14:14:36ZExplainer: does the EU need its own intelligence agency?<p>The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article4427521.ece">has called for a European Union</a> counter-intelligence agency that would protect EU institutions – the commission, council and parliament, among others – against espionage. </p>
<p>Juncker’s call came after revelations in the German media that Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/30/germany-spied-on-european-partners-on-behalf-of-us-for-years">had spied</a> not only on EU officials, but also the French foreign ministry and the Élysée Palace, before turning the information over to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).</p>
<p>What is surprising here is that Juncker’s proposed spy agency would be aimed at preventing counter-intelligence (CI) from member states within the EU itself in the first instance, though it would almost certainly have a role to play in broader CI activities. The notion of an EU intelligence countering, if not a gathering, organisation is interesting, as no other international organisation has a spy agency, per se. </p>
<p>Take for instance the United Nations, where the member states look after their own security and counter-espionage arrangements; the UN does not require a CI agency, simply because secrecy is not in the mandate of the UN itself. The EU – as a membership organisation – is arguably different and there are already areas in which some of the work of CI is likely to be happening. </p>
<p>For example, in the common policy area called security and defence. From the <a href="http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/glossary/nice_treaty_en.htm">Treaty of Nice in 2001</a>, the EU has had a common security and defence policy (updated after the Treaty of Lisbon 2007). From these initiatives, we have seen European operations all over the world – from East Timor to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The <a href="http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/institutional_affairs/treaties/lisbon_treaty/ai0026_en.htm">Common Security and Defence Policy</a> is aimed at activities outside the EU. In addition, the EU has the European Defence Agency which allows defence forces of member states to co-operate in developing shared doctrine and security strategies. </p>
<p>In non-military terms, perhaps more closely aligned with a proposed spy agency are the policy areas around <a href="http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/configurations/jha/">justice and home affairs</a> which involve member states’ civil agencies including police forces. In managing a common market with the free movement of labour and trade, there is a need to maintain a level of co-operation among member-states – but also a standard of compliance to make sure that no area of the EU leads to problems for the other. This mandates for traditional intelligence sharing – rather than gathering – especially in areas around counter-terrorism and combating international organised crime. </p>
<p>While security and defence policy largely remains the prerogative of individual member states, justice and home affairs has become an important part of the European Commission’s role in managing 28 member states in a common market. And while security and defence policy has been focused outwards, justice and home affairs has been primarily focused inwards, though the commission has provided training for non-member countries. </p>
<p>All of this is to say that the EU already does have the mandate to regulate its security profile in several ways.</p>
<p>Yet, some may see a CI agency as being far more active than either security and defence or justice and home affairs. Traditional CI means collecting intelligence in order to prevent espionage aimed at the home state. We could easily be in a place where an EU spy agency becomes less about countering intelligence and instead becomes a player in the espionage game for commission purposes. </p>
<h2>Who can trust the EU?</h2>
<p>Here lies the crux of the problem: whose intelligence is being protected in an EU spy agency? If it is to protect the member states as they go about doing business with each other through the EU’s institutions, then there is at least political room for manoeuvre – they are, in effect, pulling in the same direction against any external intelligence interference or threat. </p>
<p>However, if CI is to protect the European Commission against the intelligence agencies of the member states themselves, it is difficult to see where a mandate would come from. There is no interest among member states for deepening the commission’s agency in intelligence-gathering, especially not from member state intelligence communities.</p>
<p>The problem, though, is bigger than simply political will. On March 9, Juncker voiced support for the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31796337">development of an EU army</a>, possible under the Lisbon Treaty. Juncker was responding in his statement to the resurgence of Russia and its potential threat to EU member states, not all of which are NATO-allied states. </p>
<p>Has the president of the European Commission started on a path towards a more bellicose EU, with both a proposed spy agency and an army? The answer is more than likely no – at least, in the first instance. Juncker’s statements point towards an increasing gap between what our institutions are set up to do and how the world is changing. </p>
<p>While increased security and defence policies were seen as taboo for a very long time, especially among the UK and other more transatlantic EU member-states, this changed with the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/227598.stm">Saint Malo agreement</a> in 1998 between the British and French governments that allowed for greater military co-operation. The challenge for Juncker and member state governments is whether the current arrangements to safeguard the EU and its constituent parts is already covered – or whether we need something more, something different to tackle new challenges.</p>
<p>Let us not forget the state of the EU as it currently stands. Trust in the EU’s institutions has never been high – and in many states, not just the UK, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10586961/Trust-in-EU-at-an-all-time-low-latest-figures-show.html">trust appears to be getting lower</a>. On this basis, I cannot imagine that an EU spy agency, much less an EU army, will aid the EU in building trust in the union itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41108/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David J. Galbreath receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal European Security. These views are his own.</span></em></p>The president of the European Commission has called for the EU to maintain its own spy agency.David J Galbreath, Professor of International Security, Editor of European Security, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/343132014-11-17T14:15:14Z2014-11-17T14:15:14ZWhy Europe needs a chief scientific advisor<p>The past week saw two significant events in European science. You know about the first one: the triumphant Rosetta mission which <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/rosetta">landed a probe on a comet</a>. But the other event was less publicised, and much less welcome.</p>
<p>The European Commission has decided to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30037531">scrap its chief scientific advisor</a> (CSA) role. The current CSA, Professor Anne Glover, <a href="https://twitter.com/eu_sciencechief">tweeted</a> about the incredible achievement of the European Space Agency at the same time as her post was being axed. </p>
<p>I’m a chief scientific advisor myself, for the UK government’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/people/guy-poppy">Food Standards Agency</a>, so I understand the demands of the role and the value of such advice. Professor Glover’s dignity and continued enthusiasm for European science highlights her integrity and professionalism, something she has brought to the role throughout her tenure.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64714/original/t734w3mx-1416228412.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64714/original/t734w3mx-1416228412.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64714/original/t734w3mx-1416228412.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64714/original/t734w3mx-1416228412.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64714/original/t734w3mx-1416228412.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64714/original/t734w3mx-1416228412.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64714/original/t734w3mx-1416228412.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anne Glover, advising.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/49815520@N05/7002346357">Friends of Europe</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The removal of the CSA post was controversial. In the UK much of the media reaction framed it as an <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/researchers-attack-brussels-for-ousting-top-scientific-adviser-professor-anne-glover-9862272.html">attack on science</a>, or a triumph for the green campaigners who <a href="http://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/attachments/ngo_letter_on_chief_scientific_adviser_-_final.pdf">wrote to the EC</a> about Glover’s support of genetically modified crops. But this oversimplifies the issues and doesn’t focus on what does now need addressing, in the wake of Juncker’s decision not to have a CSA – what now for science and evidence in European policy?</p>
<p>Just days before the decision, I attended an event celebrating <a href="http://www.csap.cam.ac.uk/events/gcsa-50-reflections-on-past/">50 years of UK government CSAs</a>. Attendees heard about a battle during World War II between Lord Cherwell and Henry Tizard, both eminent scientists, over the effectiveness of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16110088">bombing German civilians</a>. Lord Cherwell said it was the best strategy, but Tizard thought Cherwell’s calculations were hopelessly optimistic – and Tizard turned out to be right. The politically favoured Cherwell had Curchill’s ear however, causing Tizard’s advice to be ignored, and Allied bombers were <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674072374">wasted on unproductive missions</a>. </p>
<p>The government realised scientific advice must be politically independent. Eventually, the ad hoc system favoured by Churchill evolved into an official role that helped create clear blue water between science and politics. The position in Europe was created for similar reasons and thus it is strange how those opposed to it suggest the CSA was not fully capturing the breadth of scientific opinion on certain issues (especially GM crops), suggesting the green campaigners thought the role was political and aimed navigating between opposing views. Of course, this is precisely what it is not. CSAs do gather consensus and the certainty of the evidence – but only among scientists and the evidence they have generated.</p>
<p>There needs to be a robust way to link the external world of science and scientific networks with the internal world of government and policy, which is why most UK government departments have a CSA. Of course, this is just one possible model and there are some objections – green campaigners fear too much power is concentrated with one person, for instance – but CSAs essentially work. They are an important and useful way to ensure the government looks at things through a scientific lens. </p>
<p>The Food Standards Agency is currently considering the safety of what some term “risky” foods such as raw drinking milk. As the CSA, I can offer the scientific evidence relating to such food: how to manage the risks, whether to regulate or offer information on best practice for producers and consumers.</p>
<p>Of course, my authority only extends so far – I’m a chief adviser, not a chief executive. At the 50th anniversary meeting former CSA Lord May put it well: “Science frames a stage for democratic policy making. It must provide the evidence, not the answer”, he explained. “When a problem arises, it’s imperative to group the best available people to get knowledge and emphasise openness and uncertainties.”</p>
<p>This, in a nutshell, is what a CSA is for, and it directly counters the arguments used by people who dislike the concept. The European Commission must address all sorts of complex questions from climate change to space exploration or disease control, and this means different bodies of evidence need to be linked by what Geoff Mulgan calls <a href="http://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/systems_innovation_discussion_paper.pdf">systems thinking</a> – and this means an independent expert.</p>
<p>People who draft policy look through many lenses and science is only one, albeit an important one. EC president Jean-Claude Juncker needs to quickly identify how he will have the clearest and most accessible advice to assist him in making decisions shaped and informed by science. He isn’t off to a great start – the commission CSA’s office will be replaced by the European Political Strategy Centre which has no scientific advisory role.</p>
<p>Many of the attacks on Juncker’s decision to abolish the post go too far, but I do wonder and worry how he will receive the words of scientific wisdom in a trusted and consensual way. Europe deserves the best possible link between science and government.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34313/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Guy Poppy is a Chief Scientific Adviser for the UK's Food Standards Agency. He is also a Professor at the University of Southampton where he works on global food security. He receives funding from the BBSRC, ESRC and from The Leverhulme Trust and from the ESPA programme led by NERC/ESRC and DFID.</span></em></p>The past week saw two significant events in European science. You know about the first one: the triumphant Rosetta mission which landed a probe on a comet. But the other event was less publicised, and…Guy Poppy, Director of Multidisciplinary Research and Professor of Ecology, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/339192014-11-07T11:27:43Z2014-11-07T11:27:43ZLuxembourg: a tax haven by any other name?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63977/original/jz5bfmww-1415367318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Luxembourg: a fairyland for tax avoidance?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Claude Wians </span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/05/-sp-luxembourg-tax-files-tax-avoidance-industrial-scale">revelations</a> that global and multinational businesses have been brokering “secret” tax deals with Luxembourg to avoid paying taxes in their home countries, may be the first time an entire country has been implicated in tax avoidance collusion. </p>
<p>A cache of leaked agreements <a href="http://www.icij.org/project/luxembourg-leaks">uncovered by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism</a> (ICIJ) appears to show that major companies have used the tiny EU state to dramatically cut their tax liabilities. </p>
<p>The ICIJ’s six-month investigation claims to have found household companies such as Aviva, HSBC, E-on, Tyco, Pepsi, IKEA and Deutsche Bank were among those which had taken advantage of legal tax avoidance schemes in Luxembourg.</p>
<p>Luxembourg is routinely named as a tax haven on many of the world’s authoritative lists of tax havens, including the one <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100541250">compiled by me and my two co-authors</a>, Richard Murphy and Christian Chavagneux. But Luxembourg has managed to remain “under the radar” not least because its politicians and bankers have been denying for years that it is, or ever was, a tax haven. </p>
<p>The revelations suggest Luxembourg has been playing a double game. Luxembourg has been quick to comply with <a href="http://www.oecd.org/tax/exchange-of-tax-information/peerreviewreportofluxembourg-phase1legalandregulatoryframework.htm">new regulations</a> proposed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the EU. In 2011, the OECD global forum on transparency and exchange of information <a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/taxation/global-forum-on-transparency-and-exchange-of-information-for-tax-purposes-peer-reviews-luxembourg-2011_9789264117884-en;jsessionid=20kt00wqyagqr.x-oecd-live-02">commended Luxembourg</a> for introducing new rules governing banking information or information protected by secrecy rules. </p>
<p>But at the same time, the revelations show that 340 well-known foreign companies have entered into secret agreements with the Luxembourg authorities, <a href="http://www.icij.org/project/luxembourg-leaks/leaked-documents-expose-global-companies-secret-tax-deals-luxembourg">brokered by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers</a>. To take a random example that applies for many of these companies, the ICIJ have a letter to the Luxembourg tax administration written on a PwC letterhead, where FedEx lays down its plan to set up a limited liability company as a tax resident in Luxembourg – so subject in principle to Luxembourg’s corporate income tax. </p>
<p>The letter then provides details of a proposed shareholding arrangement that will ensure, I quote, that “neither that Fedex SCS nor its shareholders will be subject to corporate income tax, Municipal Business Tax and Net Wealth tax in Luxembourg”. The letter implies that Luxembourg will serve in effect as a tax haven for Fedex. </p>
<h2>A scandal with a difference</h2>
<p>There have been a number of other highly publicised tax cases recently. For instance, many in the US involved branches or even key individuals working in branches of well-known Swiss and Israeli banks in the US, including UBS, Credit Suisse or Bank Leumi, or alternatively <a href="http://www.irs.gov/uac/Offshore-Tax-Avoidance-and-IRS-Compliance-Efforts">branches of American banks in Switzerland</a>. </p>
<p>But these tended to involve private firms. The Swiss government professed to have had no knowledge of such activities. Indeed, Swiss law prohibited Swiss banks, whether domestic or international, from providing any information on their clients to the Swiss state. </p>
<p>This is a scandal with a difference. The leaked PricewaterhouseCoopers books imply there has been systemic collusion between companies from all over the world and the Luxembourg authorities in flagrant contravention of EU rules. The documents suggest that preferential tax treatments were guaranteed to these companies prior to their incorporation in Luxembourg.</p>
<p>This is the first case of suspected collusion between a government and a foreign firm in tax avoidance matters that I am aware of. In that sense, the current scandal places Luxembourg on par with Greece whose officials allegedly <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/02/business/worldbusiness/02iht-drachma_ed3_.html?_r=0">provided misleading data</a> on Greek national debt to the Commission. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63962/original/qbqcghq3-1415353837.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63962/original/qbqcghq3-1415353837.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63962/original/qbqcghq3-1415353837.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63962/original/qbqcghq3-1415353837.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63962/original/qbqcghq3-1415353837.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63962/original/qbqcghq3-1415353837.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63962/original/qbqcghq3-1415353837.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63962/original/qbqcghq3-1415353837.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Questions are being asked of Jean-Claude Juncker.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/110900366@N07/14069654421">euranet_plus</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>More embarrassingly, all this took place during the time when the current president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, served as the prime minister of Luxembourg from 1995-2013. It is difficult to imagine that the prime minister of such a small state was unaware such deals were taking place. </p>
<p>There is a difference between the court of law and the court of public opinion. But we know from recent cases that the EU Commission has tended to follow the court of public opinion with criminal investigations of its own, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/08/european-commission-probe-amazon-tax-status-luxembourg">as was the case of Amazon</a>. It is likely that the Commission will now investigate these leaks and may impose fines on Luxembourg. I doubt Juncker can ride this one out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33919/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ronen Palan participated in a research program funded by the Norwegian Research Council entitled Systems of Tax Evasion and Laundering (STEAL). He is also senior advisor to a charitable organisation called Tax Justice Research.</span></em></p>The revelations that global and multinational businesses have been brokering “secret” tax deals with Luxembourg to avoid paying taxes in their home countries, may be the first time an entire country has…Ronen Palan, Professor of International Politics, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/315902014-09-12T05:30:43Z2014-09-12T05:30:43ZJuncker Commission line up shows he’s a man with a plan<p>Jean-Claude Juncker, the newly elected president of the European Commission, announced his nominated <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/about/juncker-commission/commissioners-designate/index_en.htm">team of commissioners</a> this week. Each represents one of the 28 members states and will take charge of a themed portfolio next year. They range from environment to transport to the internal market and were allocated after <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c1fc4876-328d-11e4-a5a2-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3D2SvqxzX">fierce lobbying</a>.</p>
<p>Juncker has put a number of prominent nominees in charge of policy areas that are reported to be problem areas for their respective national governments. This may well offer us some insight into the kind of commission he wants to lead. </p>
<p>Giving the UK’s Jonathan Hill the financial services portfolio is one example. Handing France’s Pierre Moscovici the economic and monetary affairs brief is another. It has even been suggested that Juncker is handing these two a mission to fix certain European problems by getting them to working intensely within their own countries.</p>
<p>This move reflects the role of commissioners as <a href="http://www.pressesdesciencespo.fr/en/livre/?GCOI=27246100221700&fa=author&person_id=324">crucial mediators</a> between Brussels and national governments. This is a job they’ve done since the very birth of the commission in 1958. Commissioners have repeatedly decoded, and often de-dramatised the EU within their own states, as well as transmitted important information and insights in the opposite direction.</p>
<p>But we also know that becoming a successful mediator means that commissioners will need to abandon any idea of being a self-interested national delegate in Brussels and, most importantly, they must not work solely on their <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-5965.00414/full">own portfolio</a>.</p>
<p>If Leon Brittan, UK commissioner from 1989 to 1995, won the respect of politicians throughout Europe, it was because he fought long and hard to represent the EU within a member state known for its knee-jerk euroscepticism. He continued to circulate in national government circles after joining the commission and often spoke about Europe in the British press. In the process, Brittan crucially went way beyond his portfolios of competition and trade by seeking to position himself as a European politician capable of covering the whole waterfront of issues dealt with at EU level.</p>
<p>The history of other commissioners, such as Ireland’s Ray MacSharry, shows what happens at the other end of the scale. Stick to your portfolio too rigidly and you risk becoming little more than a <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=WpQusE3W-9wC&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=Ray+MacSharry+commission&source=bl&ots=rj3qOQcEHC&sig=8OoVUXgZNVjJU4LN2MdxmidPDJo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6vwRVKT9MrT77Aa73oCoAw&ved=0CFEQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=Ray%20MacSharry%20commission&f=false">senior technocrat with no public profile</a>.</p>
<p>How Juncker’s team works out will depend on how each player manoeuvres. They could interpret their role in different ways. They might become a policy specialist or a political generalist on the one hand, and a technocrat, a diplomat or a politician on the other. Each nominee will be grilled by the European Parliament in the coming weeks and these auditions will provide some initial clues as to how they plan to operate. But we will know much more once they actually take up their posts in 2015.</p>
<p>In the meantime, Juncker himself may already be sending out signals about how he expects them to operate. In seemingly mandating many of his commissioners to work on issues that are particularly thorny in their countries of origin, he seems to have implicitly sent them a message that they should see themselves as politicians charged with representing the EU politically, at least in their own countries.</p>
<p>The question remains, however, about whether Juncker and his closest allies envisage this task of representation being conducted publicly and transparently or behind the closed doors of national governments. Are they spokespeople or fixers? This question goes to the heart of whether the EU has become a genuine space for politics and whether national and even European actors are willing for this development to actually come about.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31590/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andy Smith receives funding from the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche.</span></em></p>Jean-Claude Juncker, the newly elected president of the European Commission, announced his nominated team of commissioners this week. Each represents one of the 28 members states and will take charge of…Andy Smith, Research Professor, Sciences Po BordeauxLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/291812014-07-15T11:50:45Z2014-07-15T11:50:45ZWhat does the election of Jean-Claude Juncker actually mean for Europe?<p>After much controvery and some bitterness over his appointment, the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28299335">confirmation of Jean-Claude Juncker’s appointment</a> to the presidency of the European Commission makes him one of the most influential individuals in Brussels, heading up the European Union’s civil service and gatekeeper to the legislative process. But who is Juncker, and why has there been so much debate about his selection?</p>
<p>In many ways, Juncker epitomises the way much of European politics works, both nationally and internationally. In his native Luxembourg, he was finance minister for the 20 years up to 2009, a job that overlapped with being prime minister between 1995 and 2013, as well as president of the Eurogroup from 2005 until last year. </p>
<p>On the face of it, this might say more about Luxembourg than Juncker – but it still represents a considerable achievement: balancing a multi-party coalition at home and the demands of complex European-level negotiations abroad.</p>
<p>In this, Juncker highlights not only the deep linkage between national and European politics, but also the weight of his personal presence in the EU: this is not some ingenue, but a man with connections across the continent and a personal experience with deep roots the pre-<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/europe/euro-glossary/1216944.stm">Maastricht</a> era.</p>
<p>This experience has clearly left its mark on the man: he has a reputation as someone who works towards what is possible, rather than for some ideological holy grail. That faith in compromise and negotiation has sometimes manifested as a fondness for <a href="http://euobserver.com/economic/32222">back-room</a> deals in smoke-filled rooms, but in general Juncker’s priority has always been to make sure everyone somehow gets something – or at least saves face. </p>
<p>This, after all, was the man who put together the <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/economic_governance/sgp/index_en.htm">Stability and Growth Pact</a> in the late 1990s, the treaty which provided cover for the launch of the Euro.</p>
<h2>British problems</h2>
<p>All of which raises the question of why the British government expended so much political capital on trying to block him over the past couple of months. The reasons why it took that gamble are threefold.</p>
<p>Juncker comes across as an old-school federalist, primarily because of his “insider” position. For the British media, and some British politicians, that is tantamount to wanting a European state; even though he has <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/06/13/uk-eu-commission-juncker-insight-idUKKBN0EO0GB20140613">repeatedly</a> expressed his opposition to such a thing. A moment’s glance at <a href="https://theconversation.com/eu-election-junckers-bid-for-commission-presidency-spices-things-up-in-luxembourg-27091">Luxembourg</a> would show that such an agenda is about as common there as it is in the UK.</p>
<p>Juncker’s personality has also been held against him. A well-known drinker and smoker, assorted British media outlets had a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2681298/Cognac-breakfast-Daves-EU-nemesis-FAR-worse-skeletons-closet-including-Nazi-father-law-rumours-love-child.html">field day</a> painting a picture of him as the embodiment of Brussels’s worst qualities. That tarring-and-feathering didn’t reveal anything that wasn’t already known, but it made for more salacious copy than the results of the European elections.</p>
<p>And those elections were the real reason behind the livid British opposition. Juncker is becoming Commission President not because of a back-room deal, but because he was the lead candidate (<em><a href="http://euobserver.com/eu-elections/124796">Spitzenkandidat</a></em>, to use our latest German loan-word) of the European People’s Party (EPP) in the elections.</p>
<p>In the run-up to the elections, the centrist party groups in the European Parliament decided that they would make use of the wording of the treaties to put forward <em>Spitzenkandidaten</em>, to help give a face to the elections and so stimulate engagement and turnout. National parties were rather ambivalent about it all, but let the European groups press on. </p>
<p>Five of the groups ultimately choose individuals to put forward, and by the time anyone in a national capital had really thought through the process, it was too late to do anything to block any of them – hence the focus on the post-election period.</p>
<p>Juncker lucked out, in that the EPP had not been expected to emerge as the largest group. The weakness of the French socialists meant that the centre-left S&D fell short, leaving their man - another EU insider, <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/content/20140709STO52052/html/Martin-Schulz-bringing-Europe-closer-to-the-people">Martin Schulz</a> - to have to return to his old job as Parliament President.</p>
<p>In all of this, the parliament has played a <a href="http://blogs.surrey.ac.uk/politics/2014/06/19/the-continuing-fallout-from-the-ep-elections/">blinder</a>, getting a viable majority behind Juncker as the only person that they would approve for the commission job and effectively leaving the member states no option. For the British government, in particular, this sets a very big precedent at a time when they could be doing with an EU that shows some sign being responsive to their interests in the run-up to a renegotiation and referendum.</p>
<h2>What next?</h2>
<p>If Juncker’s election was already a done deal - other member states might not care much for him, but they had no good alternative - then does it actually matter? The short answer would have to be no, not particularly.</p>
<p>The job of commission president is an odd one. While it offers a bully pulpit, its powers are also rather heavily circumscribed; the Lisbon treaty does give the president the ability to shape and re-shape his team of commissioners, but he cannot force through decisions against their will. Likewise, while the commission can propose legislation, it cannot decide it – that falls to the council of ministers and the European parliament. </p>
<p>In short, the commission is on a rather short leash, something that has been reflected in the run of rather anodyne predecessors to Juncker’s post: not since <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28303750">Jacques Delors</a> has there been a strong personality running the Berlaymont.</p>
<p>But still, the president does get to set the tone, and Juncker’s organic link back to the European parliament will only enhance that. And this brings us back to where we began: Juncker’s lack of a strong ideology.</p>
<p>In this respect, he is actually as good a president as any from a British point of view. Unlike Schulz or <a href="http://www.debatingeurope.eu/2014/02/11/who-is-guy-verhofstadt/">Guy Verhofstadt</a> (the Liberal candidate), he is not a deeply committed federalist. Certainly, his political sensibilities seem to be <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-28231347">better attuned</a> than those of his immediate predecessor, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10820113/Jose-Manuel-Barroso-tells-David-Cameron-ever-so-politely-hes-lost-the-game.html">Jose Manuel Barroso</a>.</p>
<p>The EU remains in a difficult position. The Eurozone economy <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27420617">still needs major attention</a>, as does the development of a more coherent external European presence in the world. To address these areas, Juncker will need to have a strong team in the commission and the support of the member states, not to mention a clear plan that he can work to. </p>
<p>Much of that is not in his hands. When he does take office, we must remember that the management of the European Union is not the responsibility of any one person. As Juncker’s rival, David Cameron, might say: we’re all in this together.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29181/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Usherwood 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>After much controvery and some bitterness over his appointment, the confirmation of Jean-Claude Juncker’s appointment to the presidency of the European Commission makes him one of the most influential…Simon Usherwood, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of SurreyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/284832014-06-26T05:04:39Z2014-06-26T05:04:39ZCameron’s attempt to block Juncker is a masterclass in how to lose friends in Europe
<p>In one of the many memorable moments from Yes, Prime Minister, mandarin-in-chief Sir Humphrey Appleby suggests some “masterly inactivity” to a premier who is determined to show there is a
“firm hand” at the top of government. If in the past weeks a similar suggestion has been made by a real mandarin to the current occupier of Number 10 it looks like the advice has been supinely ignored. </p>
<p>Instead of practicing the important art of masterly inactivity, Prime Minister David Cameron has been conducting a hyperactive and quite ineffective campaign to block the appointment of Luxembourg’s former prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission. </p>
<p>Like the fictional Jim Hacker, Cameron wants to show resolve and principled firmness by blocking the appointment of someone he considers “<a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/32e23ef0-f0a9-11e3-b112-00144feabdc0.html#axzz35Uz7kTcH">totally unacceptable</a>” to head the commission, but doing nothing might have delivered outcomes closer to Britain’s national interest than Cameron’s rather undiplomatic offensive in Brussels. </p>
<p>The appointment of the new president will be decided at a European summit in the Brussels, but regardless of the outcome David Cameron and his government have managed to look weak, isolated and a bit clueless about how EU politics works. To complain in public, like the chancellor, George Osborne, <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f2bc1380-fa32-11e3-a328-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=uk">did this week</a>, that European leaders “are saying quite a lot of things privately which they are not saying in public” sounds unconvincingly naïve. Above all, it is unclear how such behaviour will help Cameron’s attempts to obtain the EU reforms he wants and needs. </p>
<p>The fierceness of his stance suggests that is an issue the PM cares deeply about but it also shows that he is trying again to win the favour of his <a href="https://theconversation.com/cameron-in-crisis-as-tories-glass-jaw-exposed-again-by-huge-commons-rebellion-13884">rebellious backbenchers</a>. At the moment he counts on their support but it will evaporate quicker than the foam on a cappuccino if, as it is expected, Juncker’s appointment is confirmed. Cameron should know by now that every time he tries to appease the Eurosceptic wing of his party he weakens Britain’s position in Europe. </p>
<p>His 2009 decision to remove the Conservative Party from the European People’s Party (or EPP, the group in the European Parliament that assembles all the centre-right parties in Europe) had the effect of upsetting those – such as the German chancellor Angela Merkel – the PM depends on to deliver the reforms he needs to keep Britain in the EU. More importantly, he voted himself out of influencing European politics. The EPP brings together parties of government in Europe and as such it is an important network where a large amount of informal but important decisions are made. Had the Conservative Party been a member of that group, Cameron could have used backroom diplomacy to prevent Juncker from becoming the EPP’s “<a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/content/20140602STO48703/html/Elections-buzz-words-spitzenkandidaten-camembert-and-stemfie">spitzenkandidaten</a>” at their <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/cameron-and-juncker-fight-over-role-in-european-commission-a-975528.html">March meeting</a>. </p>
<p>And now the prime minister’s European partners are beginning to show signs of impatience with the way he uses the threat of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU to obtain support for his agenda. Even Angela Merkel, who was already upset by his inability to prevent the German Eurosceptic party Alternative for Germany from integrating the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the EP, told Cameron to stop <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/32e23ef0-f0a9-11e3-b112-00144feabdc0.html">making threats</a>.</p>
<p>Not happy with upsetting Merkel, Cameron has also failed to build alliances with other member states. His only open supporter is the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, who happens to be one of the most unpopular leaders in Europe. In fact, Britain’s stance appears to have strengthened Juncker’s position. As one Le Monde columnist <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2014/06/18/juncker-l-ennemi-de-nos-ennemis_440215_3232.html">said of Juncker</a>: “The person who has as visceral opponents the British Eurosceptic David Cameron and the Hungarian ultra-nationalist Viktor Orban cannot be a bad guy.” </p>
<p>Cameron has also failed to keep an eye on the macro trends dominating European politics. Had he watched the European radar he would have known that reviving the old battles between federalists and intergovernmentalists is not a top priority for most of his European colleagues. EU arrangements have changed since the Lisbon Treaty and as result the EPP’s alleged “power grab” was widely anticipated. </p>
<p>Above all, most European leaders have little appetite for new treaty changes and want to focus instead on finding solutions for the Eurozone crisis, on which the future of the EU depends. It is precisely this endgame that explains Juncker’s almost certain appointment as president of the commission. </p>
<p>Eight centre-left European heads of government – including Francois Hollande and Matteo Renzi – have officially backed the appointment of the Luxembourger in the hope that he will support the loosening of the Stability and Growth Pact rules and gently <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2014/06/21/les-sociaux-democrates-soutiennent-juncker-en-echange-d-une-inflexion-de-la-politique-economique-de-l-ue_4442963_3214.html">steer Europe away from austerity</a>. As for Angela Merkel, she may sympathise with Cameron’s stance, but it is highly unlikely she will block a candidate that is overwhelmingly supported by her party and by her social-democratic coalition partner, Sigmar Gabriel. </p>
<p>The only hope for Cameron is that the appointment of Juncker may result in some concessions – as a consolation prize – in the negotiation of Britain’s terms of EU membership. In the meantime he might consider the virtues of masterly inactivity. In European politics it often brings better, if quieter, results.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28483/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
In one of the many memorable moments from Yes, Prime Minister, mandarin-in-chief Sir Humphrey Appleby suggests some “masterly inactivity” to a premier who is determined to show there is a “firm hand” at…Eunice Goes, Associate Professor of Communications, Richmond American International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/270912014-05-23T12:27:48Z2014-05-23T12:27:48ZEU election: Juncker’s bid for Commission presidency spices things up in Luxembourg<p>In Luxembourg, <a href="http://europe.demsoc.org/2014/05/06/luxembourg-eu-parliamentary-elections/">European elections</a>
have traditionally been held on the same day as national elections. Until 2009 all party heavyweights stood in both elections to ensure a good result for their European list (in Luxembourg voters can cast a vote for a party, one or several candidates on the same or on different lists, what is termed <a href="http://chaireparlementaire.eu/files/2011/04/plusdedtails.pdf">inter-party panachage</a>). </p>
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<p>Any big-name political leaders elected in both polls would subsequently decide which mandate they would choose depending on what happened in the national election and whether they might be in government. But it was decided by the main parties in 2009 that there would be no more double candidacies (the smaller parties kept on practising it however). </p>
<p>Another consequence of having the two elections simultaneously was that the European election campaign inevitably played second fiddle .</p>
<h2>Christian Democrat power waning</h2>
<p>This has all changed. Last July the <a href="http://www.wort.lu/en/community/all-about-the-letzebuerger-chrestlech-sozial-vollekspartei-csv-4f60c51ce4b047833b93b175">Christian Democrat-Socialist (CSV)</a> government led by Jean-Claude Juncker (who had been PM since 1995) collapsed, leading to the first unscheduled elections since the late 1950s. The resulting poll led to the formation of a coalition excluding the CSV, which had only been out of government for five years (1974-1979) in the post-war era. </p>
<p>CSV dominated the 2009 European Parliament elections, winning three of the six seats allocated to Luxembourg. The remaining three seats were equally split between the <a href="http://europe.demsoc.org/2014/05/06/luxembourg-socialist-workers-party-lsap/">Socialists</a> (LSAP), the <a href="http://europe.demsoc.org/2014/05/06/democratic-party-dp/">Liberals</a> (DP) and the <a href="http://europe.demsoc.org/2014/05/06/the-greens-dg/">Greens</a>. In a country where there has never been a great deal of difference between parties or voters on European issues, the big question of this first distinct European election is the fate of Juncker, who has been chosen by the European People’s Party as its candidate for the presidency of the European Commission – he is not a candidate for the European Parliament election.</p>
<p>The big issue, in the wake of the drop in support for CSV in the national election last October, is whether or not one of the ruling coalition parties can take a second seat in Brussels from the hitherto dominant CSV. The few opinion polls published since the national elections don’t tell us much on this count. </p>
<p>There are nine parties competing for the six available seats. Most of the smaller parties do so without any hope of winning any of these seats, but they want to maintain a presence on the political scene after making a mark in the national election last year. The <a href="http://www.ourcampaigns.com/ContainerDetail.html?ContainerID=152381">Party for Integral Democracy</a> (PID), <a href="http://piratetimes.net/election-hopes-of-luxembourg-pirates-exceeded/">Pirate Party</a>, <a href="http://www.solidnet.org/luxembourg-communist-party-of-luxembourg">Communist Party (KPL)</a>, <a href="http://www.dei-lenk.lu/Sujet/">Left (Lénk)</a> and the sovereignist <a href="http://www.adr.lu/"> Alternative Democratic Reform Party</a> (ADR) have no chance of scoring the double-digit result that would allow them to dream of being allowed to express their less than EU-enthusiastic views in Brussels and Strasbourg. </p>
<h2>European reform</h2>
<p>The four larger parties see in a stronger Europe the possibility of a stronger Luxembourg. The CSV campaigns with the slogan: “For Europe, for Luxembourg” and capitalises on its international image of competence as a result of its quasi permanence at the helm of the national government. </p>
<p>The Socialists and Christian Democrats are open to some reform of the EU in line with the message expressed by Juncker in his campaign for the presidency of the EU Commission for a social Europe and solidarity between member states. This fits with the CSV’s position but possibly less so with tha of the EPP. </p>
<p>The DP and the Greens are campaigning for a more democratic and transparent Europe. The first would like a convention followed by a European-wide referendum held on the same day to revise the treaties and to give the parliament a real right of legislative initiative. The Greens also want to keep on enlarging the powers of the assembly. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27091/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrick Dumont receives funding from the Fund for National Research, Luxembourg. He is also affiliated with the chair in legislative studies funded by the Chamber of Deputies.</span></em></p>In Luxembourg, European elections have traditionally been held on the same day as national elections. Until 2009 all party heavyweights stood in both elections to ensure a good result for their European…Patrick Dumont, Researcher in Political Science, University of LuxembourgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.