European Union

The unveiling of the Windsor Framework this week was important in many ways.

Not only did it provide a set of solutions to the most pushing and tricky problems facing the Northern Ireland Protocol, but it also marked a return to more conventional modes of British diplomacy towards the EU.

To watch Rishi Sunak and Ursula von der Leyen at their press conference on Monday speaking in not only warm tones but also in very coordinated language, as they sought to generate (successfully) buy-in for a package of measures that had been put together under close secrecy.

As someone observed in my presence this week, no more of the leaking and briefing of the Johnson period, when everyone had an agenda and was just using the issue to get ahead.

Even if we still await a final confirmation of acceptance from both Tory backbenchers and the DUP, the signs are that this is the only game in town: evolving the Protocol into the Framework and (hopefully) letting everyone focus on further refinements to its operation and on other points of UK-EU cooperation.

So it matters.

But it’s also fair to say that the drafters of the Framework have decided to go for the ‘let’s make life not easy for the casual reader” approach.

Partly that’s because of the necessary mix of political statements and legal work, but it also conveniently makes it much harder for critics to point to obviously unacceptable language.

With that in mind, I’ve been working on trying to get a clearer picture of what’s going on.

My first graphic today organises the 21 documents by their status and effects: as you’ll see, much of this is about political clarifications and unilateral actions to resolve points.

There is one Joint Committee Decision that is crucial, and we’ll come back to that in coming weeks, not least to explore the new mechanisms of the Stormont Brake and the question of whether the CJEU’s role has actually changed at all (spoiler: not obviously).

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic117

Secondly, I took a quick go at the most significant obstacle to the Framework’s successful agreement and implementation: DUP approval for it.

Note that even if the DUP accepts the Framework, that does not necessarily mean it will either return to the Assembly or form an Executive under a Sinn Fein First Minister, even if the Stormont Brake is designed to get them to do exactly that.

Given that a functioning Executive is at least as important to Downing Street as making the Protocol work, the DUP’s decision matters.

Their seven tests from 2021 are still their baseline and as you’ll see while the Framework has indeed made progress on all points, none of them are unambiguously resolved to narrow readings of the DUP’s demands.

So still things to be played for and debates to be had.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic116

If you have some aspect of the Framework you’ll like me to work on, just drop me a line and I’ll be happy to give it a go.

The post Starting to unpack the Windsor Framework appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

559 employees of TNT Belgium at Liège Airport who lost their jobs following a transfer of operations to Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport should receive €1.9 million in EU aid.
Committee on Budgets

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

559 employees of TNT Belgium at Liège Airport who lost their jobs following a transfer of operations to Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport should receive €1.9 million in EU aid.
Committee on Budgets

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dr Daniele Saracino, from the Department of Government at the University of Essex, in Britain. Bonjour, Daniele!

 

Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

Your research focuses on the concept of solidarity, one of these ideas or principles that we use every day, but that deserve to be questioned on their meaning.

Solidarity is everywhere in our lives. Solidarity among workers or social movements; solidarity among family and friends; solidarity with your football club or political party; solidarity with a whistle-blower or with refugees; solidarity between states or peoples; solidarity as a core principle of the welfare state or solidarity as the social glue that holds societies together.

This is the vast, multidimensional semantic field in which solidarity meanders as a colorful, but blurry, and seemingly ubiquitous concept. While it seems to maintain a positive connotation throughout, making it so appealing in the political sphere, at the same time it comes across as arbitrary and watered-down. From an analytical research perspective, the fact that there does not seem the slightest agreement on what solidarity actually means is problematic. Even more so on the level of the European Union, where solidarity has been a key concept since the very beginnings of the European project. Just listen:

« L’Europe ne se fera pas d’un coup, ni dans une construction d’ensemble : elle se fera par des réalisations concrètes, créant d’abord une solidarité de fait. »

 

Ah, that’s the voice of Robert Schuman delivering his famous speech of what is commonly considered the founding act of European integration!

That’s right! He called for true, effective solidarity to build a peaceful and unified post-war Europe. Ever since, solidarity has incrementally gained significance over the course of European integration, cumulating in the Lisbon Treaty where it has been settled as one of the central precepts of the EU. It is constantly invoked on the EU level, especially in times of crisis. Nonetheless, there is no agreement in the European legal or political sphere on what the concept entails. It can therefore be assumed that there is an underlying understanding of solidarity in the EU that is embedded in the specific historical context of the concept.

 

So where does it actually come from?

Counterintuitively, the concept of solidarity does not originate in the labour movement or in the classics of political or philosophical thinking. It has its roots in Roman law. The principle obligatio in solidum meant the debt or obligation that every debtor had vis-à-vis the joint community of debtors they are part of. This created a joint liability in which the debtors vouch for a common debt. This principle has survived in several legal systems that are strongly influenced by the Roman law tradition, like France, where solidarity, for the first time, gains further layers of meaning, specifically during the French Revolution where it develops in contrast to and as the political discharge of fraternity.

To cut the conceptual history short, it turns out that the concept of solidarity contains overlapping elements from legal, sociological, political, philosophical, theological, economical, and linguistic spheres.

 

That’s a very complex etymology. How can we use your studies for the European Union today?

Applying these findings to the setup and functioning of the European Union, we find that solidarity is non-universal. It is limited to particular groups wherein actors commit themselves voluntarily to a bond and develop interdependencies to achieve common objectives.

The European Union is such a reference group, and solidarity is the means to achieve its commonly agreed political objectives. Solidarity creates a mutual connectedness between the involved actors who vouch for each other in terms of the common objectives. Ultimately, solidarity creates a reciprocal commitment and mutual responsibility that is expressed by the expectation and discharge of support and assistance.

This is how common goals can be pursued and achieved. Since the common political will of the involved actors in the European Union is cast into law, so is solidarity. Consequently, the European Court of Justice has repeatedly confirmed the fundamental significance of the solidarity principle for the European Union. There are procedural duties that regulate the support and assistance demanded by the solidarity principle.

In short, the readiness to act in solidarity and to honour the outcomes of EU policymaking are necessary conditions for the EU to function effectively. States join the European Union on their own will and accept its precepts and objectives upon accession. If the rule of law to safeguard the outcomes of the political process is not adhered to anymore, the EU loses its purpose. In short: without solidarity, the European Union just wouldn’t make sense. This is why European integration as a whole is shaken to its core when member states decide to stop honouring the rule of law, renouncing European solidarity. And this is why the Union must find ways to remind them of their commitment to solidarity.

 

Many thanks, for this semantic exploration of one of Europe’s key concepts. I recall you work at the Department of Government at the University of Essex, in Britain.

The post Without Solidarity, the EU Would not Make Sense appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Parliament’s Environment Committee agrees to an ambitious reduction of fluorinated greenhouse gases emissions, to further contribute to EU’s climate neutrality goal.
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Parliament’s Environment Committee agrees to an ambitious reduction of fluorinated greenhouse gases emissions, to further contribute to EU’s climate neutrality goal.
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

REPORT on EU-Azerbaijan relations
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Željana Zovko

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

REPORT on EU-Armenia relations
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Andrey Kovatchev

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

REPORT on the EU Guidelines on Human Rights Defenders
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Hannah Neumann

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Length of video : 78'

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

EU negotiators on Tuesday struck a deal creating the first best in class standard for the issuing of green bonds.
Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

EU negotiators on Tuesday struck a deal creating the first best in class standard for the issuing of green bonds.
Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Length of video : 109'

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Length of video : 109'

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Length of video : 173'

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dario Mazzola, from the University of Bergen, in Norway. Bonjour, Dario! Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

 

In the year since the Russian aggression of Ukraine, many Ukrainians have found refuge in European countries. Dario, you have written your PhD about the border crisis of 2015, before analysing, as a post-doc researcher in the PROTECT project, contemporary crises in the provision of refuge.

When I started my postdoc in 2020, many researchers thought that refuge and migration would no longer be high on the agenda, not least because of the COVID crisis. I argued for the opposite, for a number of long-term reasons, and unfortunately, Ukraine proved I was right.

Seen from the humanitarian prospect of displacement, Ukraine is among the largest crises of all times, and its geographical proximity and political implication with the European Union make it particularly salient for us. We speak of 8 million refugees and asylum seekers, mostly women and children, but actual figures could be higher.

If I had to single out one feature of my research, I would say it consists in putting migration and refuge in context. Even with the exceptionality of the situation of Ukraine, there is a clear pattern: the background of the critically inadequate response by the European Union and other countries to previous waves of refugees, and the systemic degradation of the international community, from economic crises to COVID to the breakdown of international relations in a system of block confrontation reminiscent of the Cold War.

 

So how does Ukraine stand out when compared to previous crises?

There are both continuities and differences. The sudden peak in inflow is not dissimilar from the Syrian refugee crisis. We can also notice that some of the conflicting actors are the same.

And yet the reaction has been very different. Both between and within European countries, controversies over solidarity with refugees from Ukraine have been low or non-existent: unprecedented mechanisms such as the Temporary Protection Directive have been swiftly activated. If we were to look for analogues, we should perhaps look at Kosovo in the 1990s, but comparison has its limits.

 

What are the major differences between the two situations?

To start with, Ukraine is 20 times more populous than Kosovo. And times have changed since then!

At the moment of the Kosovo crisis, European countries were undergoing a period of economic growth and greater historical optimism, both in terms of the European integration process and of the pacification of global relations. Today, economic resources have been strained between the economic crisis of 2008 and the COVID pandemic. Even more important, neither Kosovo nor Syria involved a relevant military effort with an uncertain outcome, contrary to what we have in Ukraine. Finally, I would stress once again that Syria is further away, and Kosovo is much smaller: we should not think about politics and humanitarianism in the abstract, but in concrete numerical and geographical terms.

 

And how do these differences impact the response to refugees?

The implications of these differences are that while we see a commitment to solidarity that reminds us of Kosovo, the magnitude of the crisis recalls Syria. I hope European politicians are doing their math in planning responses for the short and, potentially, for the long term.

 

You sound like you fear this is not the case.

In 2015, the Italian researcher Giandomenico Majone denounced the collapse of the EU’s culture of ‘total optimism’, and his Swiss colleague Sandra Lavenex has aptly applied this concept to the failure that has been the response to the 2015 border crisis.

Wishful thinking is devastating in politics. When we plan and execute solidarity with refugees from Ukraine, which is our duty, we should have all scenarios in mind: a Ukrainian victory, a Russian victory, a stalemate. Refugees may return or may not. Between humanitarian and military support and the cost of sanctions, EU countries are sacrificing 1, 2% of their GDP, or more. Also, solidarity may be tested if fatigue is perceived in the public. When we pledge to support refugees, we do so amidst all these factors.

Europe needs to work on systematizing its Union-level response to refugees, and on developing a united and consistent foreign and global policy stance, with a strategic vision and not merely in response to crises. The EU can no longer afford to be self-centred or short-sighted: it has to articulate a doctrine and adhere to it consistently. But perhaps here I’m trespassing my programmatic realism into utopian thinking.

 

Maybe a bit more of utopian thinking is what we need. Many thanks, Dario, for sharing your research with us. I recall you work at University of Bergen, in Norway.

The post At Europe’s Heart appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The Legal Affairs Committee adopted its position on a new scheme to ensure the geographical indication of traditional crafts is protected in the EU and globally.
Committee on Legal Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP