European Union

AMENDMENTS 1 - 151 - Draft report Security and defence implications of China's influence on critical infrastructure in the European Union
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Klemen Grošelj

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

The profound impact of mRNA technology on pandemic preparedness cannot be understated, making it a cornerstone in our collective efforts to safeguard public health.

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dr Kathryn Simpson, Associate Professor in Politics & Economics of the European Union, Keele University. Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

Together with Nick Startin, whom we know well at Euradio, you have recently published a piece of research on “how the tabloid press shaped the Brexit vote” back in 2016.

That’s right. There has been a wealth of academic research attempting to explain the Brexit vote, with a lot of different approaches. What we were interested in was to find out to what extent did the UK’s tabloid press shape public opinion during the referendum and whether this did influence the outcome.

In Britain ‘hard’ euroscepticism stemming from the tabloid press has long been widespread. Since the Maastricht era, tabloid newspapers such as The Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express have become renowned for portraying the EU in negative terms and as against the national interest. Some infamous headlines such as The Sun’s ‘Up Yours Delors’ front-page have become iconic reference points for British eurosceptics.

 

So how did you go about your research?

We analyse the final stages of the EU referendum campaign by focusing on the front pages of the five British daily tabloids – The Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Express and the Daily Star – looking at the four weeks prior to the referendum, which coincided with the so-called ‘purdah’ period during which no official information is released any more.

We found that the tabloid press progressively centred on the theme of immigration to shape its eurosceptic narrative and set the agenda in the final stages of the campaign. Which is in line with other research that found ‘coverage of immigration more than tripled over the course of the campaign, rising faster than any other political issue’.

In terms of support for Brexit by readership, The Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, with a combined readership of almost four million outnumbered the Remain supporting Daily Mirror by four to one. Scrutiny of the front pages of the five tabloids also illustrates how the three tabloids supporting Brexit devoted their front pages to Brexit far more frequently than either the Remain-supporting Daily Mirror or the neutral Daily Star.

 

So people were bombarded with Brexit-supporting front pages?

Yes, they were. The Daily Express and the Daily Mail devoted over three quarters of their front pages to the referendum. Overall, there were 48 pro-Brexit front pages, compared to the seven Remain or neutral front pages in the final stage before the referendum. And of these 48 front pages, 27 were directly (or indirectly) related to immigration. By contrast, the Remain-supporting Daily Mirror only started to illustrate its support for EU membership with front-page headlines in the final three days of the campaign.

Our analysis is reinforced by an IPSOS Mori opinion poll published on the day of the referendum which showed that ‘concern with immigration had risen by ten percentage points [to 48%] since May, when concern stood at 38%.’ Concern with immigration was particularly high – over 60% – ‘for Conservative supporters, those aged 65 and over and those from the socio-economic category C2, referring to qualified workers. All three of these demographics are core in terms of the readership of the British Tabloid Press.

 

But do people actually believe what they read in these newspapers?

It’s a long-standing debate, and we recognise this limitation of our conclusions. However, research in this area does reinforce our argument about the impact of the agenda-setting, anti-immigration, ‘bombardment approach’ on influencing tabloid readers. In a referendum, where one third of voters made up their mind which way to vote in the final stages of the campaign, such a highly polarized framing undoubtedly had an impact.

 

This post draws on the article ‘Tabloid Tales: how the British Press Shaped the Brexit Vote‘, co-authored with Dr Nick Startin, Associate Professor of International Relations, John Cabot University, Rome, and published in the Journal of Common Market Studies. A version of this blog was also published on the UK in a Changing Europe website.

 

Interview conducted Laurence Aubron

 

 

The post Tabloid Tales appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This Sunday Poles head to vote in the most consequential parliamentary elections since the partially-free elections in 1989 that turned a Soviet satellite state into a burgeoning democracy. Here is what's at stake.

MEPs have shortlisted Jina Mahsa Amini and the Woman, Life and Freedom Movement in Iran, Nicaraguan human rights activists and women fighting for a free, safe and legal abortion.
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Committee on Development
Subcommittee on Human Rights

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

MEPs in the environment committee approved new emissions rules for cars, with the final text weaker than the EU Commission initially had intended.

By Patrick Bijsmans (Maastricht University)

In recent decades criticism on the European Union (EU) and even the complete dismissal of European integration – a range of positions generally grouped under the umbrella term ‘Euroscepticism’ – have gained ground. Euroscepticism has become mainstream, as “it has become increasingly more legitimate and salient (and in many ways less contested) across Europe as a whole” (Brack & Startin, 2015, p. 240). Events such as referendums and European Parliament (EP) elections provide a particularly good opportunity for Eurosceptic movements to mobilise (Usherwood, 2017).

In my recent Journal of Common Market Studies article, I look at the mainstreaming of Euroscepticism by studying the coverage of EP election debates in the Netherlands in 2009, 2014 and 2019. I examine mainstreaming through a two-part qualitative analysis that centres around a fourfold typology, which distinguishes between supportive, Euroalternative, soft Eurosceptic and hard Eurosceptic claims (Table 1). Here, I build on the concepts of soft and hard Euroscepticism developed by Taggart and Szczerbiak. Yet, by introducing ‘Euroalternativism’, I avoid soft Euroscepticism’s catch-all nature. Euroalternativism implies criticism towards (elements of) EU policies or its institutional design that is essentially supportive of the EU and European integration (FitzGibbon, 2013). I also add support for the existing nature of the EU and its policies to my categorisation, so as to take into account the “complex interaction among competing pro-integration narratives and counter-narratives to European union” (McMahon & Kaiser, 2022, p. 1). Finally, I further refine the categorisation by distinguishing between statements regarding (I) the EU polity (its political system and its institutions) and (II) EU policies.

Table 1: Possible positions on European integration

There has been relatively less attention for mass media in the study of Euroscepticism, which is surprising given their central role in contemporary European democracies (Caiani & Guerra, 2017). Furthermore, most existing research has taken a quantitative perspective, whereas scholars have argued that a qualitative approach focussing on discourses and narratives is more suitable for achieving an encompassing understanding of Euroscepticism’s changing meaning and importance (Leconte, 2015). Indeed, as Brown et al. illustrate what is and what is not mainstream in the public sphere is prone to change because ideas change through debates in that same public sphere.

The first part of my analysis consists of a manual coding of EU-related claims by actors in three newspapers – De Telegraaf, De Volkskrant and NRC Handelsblad – that play a central role in the Dutch mediated public sphere. The analysis of claims focusses on two essential elements of a claim, namely, ‘who’ (the claimant) and ‘what’ (the subject of the claim), plus on determining the assessment of EU affairs through a close reading of the wording (Koopmans & Statham, 2010). The second part of the analysis zooms out again to place the claims analysis in the context of the wider EP election debates in the Dutch public sphere. Hence, in contrast to the first part of the analysis that follows a pre-established categorisation, the second part looks at the overall story and the key themes as present in the material analysed.

In total I analysed 3148 claims. Figure 1 presents an overview of the way in which the EU and its policies were discussed in the Dutch-mediated debate on the EP elections. Despite some differences between the three mediated debates, it becomes clear that supportive claims are least prominent. Instead, criticism of and opposition to the EU has become widespread, whether essentially supportive or fundamentally Eurosceptic; because, while representing “pro-system opposition” (FitzGibbon, 2013), Euroalternative claims are still a form of criticism on the EU.

Figure 1: Distribution of claims*

* In solid fill the percentages of claims that concern the EU polity. In pattern fill the percentages of claims that concern EU policy.

As such, Figure 1 suggests that Euroscepticism has indeed become mainstream; that it is at the centre of the debates in the Dutch public sphere. Yet, it comes in different guises, namely, Euroalternative, soft Eurosceptic and hard Eurosceptic claims. Building on this, the second part of the analysis calls for an even more nuanced assessment and puts forward three key points.

First, during the three EP elections, Euroscepticism in its various guises was specifically mainstreamed in a debate that concerned the pros and cons of integration, with limited attention for policies. This illustrates that there is an interplay between pro-con narratives, as suggested by McMahon and Kaiser (2022).

Second, what is being mainstreamed still amounts to a vague notion of Euroscepticism. As such, we may ask what Euroscepticism was being mainstreamed? For instance, in an article in De Volkskrant on 5 June 2009, the ongoing campaign was said to be “governed by Euroscepticism”, while it simultaneously referred to a “Eurocritical wave” and the “anti-European camp”.

Third, at the same time, the place of Eurosceptics in the debate gradually changes, turning them from outsiders into insiders. Eurosceptics’ existence is no longer merely observed and noted, but they are increasingly treated as equal and legitimate actors in the EU debate. Brexit may have mattered here, as the hard edges of Euroscepticism have at least partly withered away (cf. de Vries, 2018).

In essence then, my article illustrates that the statement that Euroscepticism has become mainstream is partly a simplification of a development in which criticism of and opposition to the EU are prone to change. Even focussing on EP elections alone creates problems, as they skew debates toward issues of integration – in some of my other work, I find that day-to-day EU debates focus on policies and policy alternatives. It is therefore important that we continue to treat the term ‘Euroscepticism’ with caution. In fact, perhaps we need to even go one step further and, paraphrasing Ophir (2018), ought to ask ourselves ‘what kind of concept is Euroscepticism?’. In other words, shouldn’t researchers in the field of Euroscepticism consider re-launching the conceptual debate? Obviously, this is not an easy challenge. Yet, it exactly this conceptual puzzle that I am currently exploring with my colleague Luca Mancin and we are looking forward to sharing our thoughts at a conference near you soon!

Bio

Patrick Bijsmans is Associate Professor in Teaching and Learning European Studies and Associate Dean for Education at Maastricht University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. His research focusses on media and Euroscepticism, as well as curriculum development and learning in the international classroom. Find more about Patrick’s work on Twitter and his personal website.

 

 

The post What is Actually Being Mainstreamed in the Mainstreaming of Euroscepticism? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This week saw UK in a Changing Europe drop a report on public opinion and Brexit.

It’s notable partly because there’s less and less in-depth exploration of this question with the passage of time: even if Brexit isn’t actually ‘done’ in poli-sci terms, it increasingly is in social and party-political ones (as witnessed by the ‘Europe policy’ wasteland of the Labour conference this week).

But it’s also notable because it reminds us that even with something as momentous as Brexit – which was genuinely A Big Deal not so long ago – publics do not hold consistent views.

Consider this:

This is a classic chart of recent years: ‘everyone’ thinks Brexit’s a crock, regardless of voting behaviour or intention. It’s the heart of the Bregret-Rejoin narrative, wherein we realised we’ve done a terrible thing, to which the answer is to undo it all and go back to The Good Old Days.

You can look elsewhere for discussion of why this is a problematic narrative, but let’s leave it with the observation that it was precisely The Good Old Days that led to the 2016 referendum in the first place. Old? yes. Good? debatable.

Anyway, let’s look at the next chart:

For all that most people think Brexit’s been rubbish so far, that doesn’t translate into the longer-term. A clear majority of Leavers think it can all turn the corner in the end, enough that the overall population view is much more ambivalent than the previous data might suggest.

When I tweeted about this at the time, much of the response was one of either “these people are obviously misguided” or “it’s just a minority of the population, so ignore them”.

I can understand where both views come from: the onslaught of evidence about the costs of Brexit continues week after week, while the swing from the referendum result is significant and clear.

However, it all feels like it has fallen once more into the classic traps of this domain.

The leitmotif of British European policy has always been its use to beat opponents; there has consistently been more interest in scoring domestic party political points than in finding broad consensus about the purpose of dealings with European states.

The referendum was much more a device to overturn domestic power structures than it was a considered debate on the situation of the UK in the world. Just as the fights to control the narrative of What Brexit Meant weren’t that much about EU policy but instead about owning the next generation of political discourse.

That this was both wearying and unsuccessful should be clear enough to all involved and – you might hope – would point to trying a different way of going about things. Maybe by looking for ways to reach across divides, instead of trashing those who disagree.

Maybe not.

As the referendum campaign and fallout demonstrated, rationalist arguments about costs and benefits have significant limits. People hold inconsistent views that are often more shaped (and shapeable) by emotion than cold, hard facts. ‘Take back control’ and ‘get Brexit done’ are powerful messages, whatever you think of the politics behind them (which many people didn’t think about particularly).

So yes, most people think Brexit is a mess, and yes, most people don’t think it’s ever going to turn out well. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be looking for ways to build new narratives and approaches that reach out those who disagree. Otherwise, we will find that any new policy choice is neither equitable nor durable.

The post A note on public opinion and Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The EU has unveiled a "toolkit" based on migration, parents, youth and older people, after EU states raised concerns about the impact of an ageing population on public finances — but what does it contain?

Norway is leading a Western restart in science cooperation with Russia in the Arctic — despite a wider EU cordon sanitaire against Vladimir Putin's Mosow, in the wake of the Ukraine invasion.

Representatives from EU governments will discuss and vote on the European Commission's proposal to renew the glyphosate's market license for another ten years this week. But it remains unclear if there is a majority to approve the renewal.

The prospect of Palestinians fleeing the Gaza Strip towards Egypt appears to have spooked the EU commission into fast tracking a possible migrant busting deal with Cairo.

The reality of EU hydrogen expansion is a well-funded, highly-orchestrated greenwashing scam. Some 99 percent of hydrogen produced globally is in fact 'grey hydrogen', made using fossil fuels.

In her strongest wording yet, US secretary Janet Yellen said she supported a European proposal to use the hundreds of billions of seized Russian assets currently held by G7 countries.

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

A delegation of AFET Members travelled to Santiago and Valparaíso (Chile) and Brasília (Brazil) from 18 to 23 June 2023. The main goal of this mission was to discuss how to make a qualitative leap in the EU-Latin America strategic bi-regional partnership in view of the CELAC-EU Summit on 17-18 July 2023.
Members held meetings with Chilean and Brazilian authorities to discuss global and regional security dynamics against the backdrop of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and the assertive behaviour of China. The visit allowed to exchange views on the state of bilateral relations in view of the forthcoming ratification of the EU-Chile Advanced Framework Agreement by the European Parliament and reinvigorating the strategic partnership with Brazil.
Location : Chile and Brazil
Interviews to the Chair of the delegation, Mr David MCALLISTER (EPP
     La Tercera (Chile)
     Globo (Brazil)
     Mission report
Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Does anyone think a blank cheque to the country which made the Palestinians refugees will create fewer refugees? Or a blank cheque to their occupiers will create less resistance? Is the problem really that Israel has not used enough force?

"Cutting water, cutting electricity, cutting food to a mass of civilian people is against international law," said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in Muscat.

The next ordinary meeting of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE) is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, 25 October 2023 from 9.00-12.30hrs and 14.30-18.30hrs and on Thursday, 26 October 2023 from 9.00-12.30hrs in Brussels (SPINELLI 5E2).

The meeting agenda and documents will be published here.

SEDE missions 2023:

• Germany and Poland - 24-26 July 2023
  
• Armenia - 19-22 June 2023
  
• Romania and Moldova - 15-18 May 2023
  
• Djibouti and Somalia - 1-4 April 2023
  
• Bosnia and Herzegovina - 20-23 February 2023
  

SEDE meetings' calendar 2023
EP calendar 2023
Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Within the rapidly-expanding area of competition law and healthcare, public hospitals and state aid may seem at first a mundane topic when contrasted with developments in connection with pharmaceutical policy and health technology. Nevertheless, the CJEU’s April 2023 Casa Regina Apostolorum judgment has reignited fundamental questions about the very applicability of EU competition policy which have implications far beyond the case’s focus on the interaction between private providers and public hospitals, and state support to the latter, in Italy.  

This post considers how the Casa Regina Apostolorum case fits within wider analysis of competition reforms in healthcare, and the tensions which now emerge between this judgment and the Commission’s Evaluation of the State Subsidy Rules for Health and Social Services of General Economic Interest which reported in December 2022. 

The four categories of European healthcare and competition reforms: 

The expansion of private sector delivery of public healthcare services might be considered at the heart of competition reforms in healthcare systems across Europe. This closer interaction between public and private healthcare has narrowed the gap where once the two may have appeared distinct. Such developments are found across the typologies of healthcare system in Europe, even though it is considered that insurance-based systems may be more amenable to competition reforms than taxation-funded systems.

Following discussion (by Guy and by Odudu) of competition reforms in English healthcare and the applicability of EU competition law, the interaction between public and private healthcare can be framed as “four categories of European healthcare” thus: 

 

Where once there may have existed a clear distinction between a public healthcare system (category 1) and a supplementary or complementary private healthcare market (category 4), the increasing interaction between public and private healthcare suggests a grey area which narrows this gap. Within this, category 2 represents the activity often underpinning competition law claims: a challenge by a private provider that, for example, state support favours public hospitals. Category 3 activity provides an example of arguments raised in such cases, including Casa Regina Apostolorum:  that public providers charging patients for certain services contributes to evidence that an entire healthcare system has shifted away from its solidarity basis to a competition basis. 

Such category 2 activity has been seen in various cases involving public hospitals across EU member states – notably the IRIS-H network in Brussels, but also in Germany, Czechia, and Estonia, as well as in Italy with Casa Regina Apostolorum. The latter is unusual for proceeding to appeal – these cases are typically handled under the Commission’s SGEI package for health and social services, which is intended to reduce the administrative burden on Member States in meeting compatibility criteria for granting support to SGEI. 

The two iterations of the SGEI package to date (from 2005 and 2012) have both specified hospitals as a candidate for this kind of assessment: this would seem to suggest a degree of intuition regarding the extent to which these particular healthcare institutions are amenable to competition reforms in general and being subject to the application of the Article 107(1) TFEU prohibition on state aid in particular. Here, three specific points are worth noting. 

Firstly, and most fundamentally to these assessments, the focus seems to “buffer” around the question of whether the recipient of the contested aid is an “undertaking”. A positive finding can simply lead to the conclusion of classification as SGEI, as in the aforementioned Brussels Hospitals case, thus an exception to applying the prohibition to other economic activities not so classified. A negative finding – as happened from the Commission, the General Court, and the CJEU in Casa Regina Apostolorum – means total exemption.  

Secondly, the requirement for the aid to give a “selective advantage” has required clarification. Here attention is typically paid to the functions of private providers in delivering healthcare services and where and how these may differ from the functions of public providers. The distinction apparently drawn here relates to questions of continuity and viability of service provision – in other words, where a private provider could exit, a public provider may be deemed broadly either “too big”, or certainly “too politically sensitive” to fail. Such considerations feature in the Brussels Hospitals case, but gave rise to an interesting categorisation of “genuine SGEI” in the aforementioned German hospital case.  

Finally, the apparent preference of patients not to travel for hospital treatment raises questions about the requirement for an effect on trade between Member States. Thus in this regard, contrasts emerge – for example between the aforementioned Brussels and Czechia hospitals cases between where a public hospital may deliver specialist services, or whether it may treat a significant or a negligible number of patients from neighbouring Member States in a border region. 

Taken together, it might be considered that if this diversity of considerations relate to a seemingly self-contained category such as hospitals, then the broader specification of “SGEI…meeting needs as regards health and long-term care” by the 2012 SGEI package could well generate further questions and hurdles. 

The legacy of Casa Regina Apostolorum 

As noted above, the Casa Regina Apostolorum case developed across a Commission assessment in connection with the 2012 SGEI package, and two appeals to the General Court and the CJEU, both of whom upheld the Commission’s finding that the state aid prohibition did not apply. This would seem to follow a range of relevant case law, so is not an unexpected finding. Indeed the absence of an Advocate General opinion would seem to highlight the lack of a new question of law for the CJEU to consider. Aside from the CEPPB approach of further disaggregating activities, it is currently hard to see how new questions of law might be developed in light of a tendency to “compare apples and oranges” with cases on diverse healthcare (and other) topics – notably the experience of the Slovak health insurance system in Dôvera with the situation in Casa Regina Apostolorum (as noted by the appellant in the latter). 

What is particularly notable also is the lack of attention paid by the courts to the relevance of Commission SGEI assessments. This is particularly striking in the case of the CJEU, whose judgment follows the Commission’s December 2022 review. In this, the Commission highlighted the lack of clarity about applying competition law and consequent legal uncertainty as a particular stumbling block. So with regard to state support to hospitals, we appear to be at something of an impasse which seems difficult to overcome. The lack of clarity regarding public hospitals is likely to pose questions about not only other healthcare institutions and practices, but also the effectiveness of the SGEI package more generally. 

For now, Casa Regina Apostolorum appears a niche case with broader implications which will emerge in time from a range of perspectives, not least competition and constitutionalism. 

 

This post is part of work being developed by Dr Mary Guy in the context of the “Public Health, Markets and Law” workshop hosted by Dr Mina Hosseini at University College Dublin in September 2023 and funded by the MSCA COMPHACRISIS project. 

The post State Aid and healthcare: Some (re)starter questions after Casa Regina Apostolorum appeared first on Ideas on Europe.