Rethinking the European Integration Process Mikuláš Dzurinda

European View (2017) 16:183–184 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12290-017-0466-2

EDITORIAL

Back to the drawing board? Rethinking the European integration process Mikuláš Dzurinda

Published online: 13 December 2017 © The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication

In 2004 the EU witnessed a momentous occasion at Áras an Uachtaráin, the Irish presidential palace. There it celebrated its most extensive enlargement as 10 new members joined the Union. This included my home country, Slovakia, of which I was then the prime minister. At this same time the Union was discussing further political integration, an aspiration symbolised by the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. The EU was then a Common European House. In confrmation of its optimism, the integration process would be extended several years later to include still more countries.

Fast forwarding to approximately a decade later, we fnd that the Common European House looks like a different place. It is confronted with not only external challenges but also deep division among its members. As opposed to Dublin in 2004, the integration process now requires rethinking and a new vision for cooperation among its members.

This issue of the European View examines in depth the ways in which the EU member states can work together on some of the sensitive challenges the Common European House faces today: cooperation on defence and foreign policy, migration, eurozone

M. Dzurinda (*) Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, Rue du Commerce 20, 1000 Brussels, Belgium e-mail: [email protected]

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reform and internal cohesion. The central question this issue explores is how the EU can reform itself in key strategic areas with a view to the future of the integration process. This question is in line with the soul-searching that the European Commission launched with its White Paper on the Future of Europe. The topics this issue covers range from EU foreign policy and external action to security and defence, migration, eurozone reform, internal cohesion and political participation in the age of technology. Submissions go beyond the technicalities of policymaking and provide important political input as to how today’s and tomorrow’s challenges can be met. They provide inform- ative material on how to shape our Common European House.

As mentioned by Wolfgang Schüssel in his contribution, we must retain our sense of identity and preserve our European values, which bind us together, in the process of rearticulating our common European narrative. The integration process should avoid excessive centralisation as this fuels popular resentment and may lead to a reversal of the progress the Union has made since its inception 60 years ago in Rome. Instead, the different responsibilities on the national and the supranational levels should be clarifed based on the principle of subsidiarity. On this basis the recent developments towards increased cooperation in security and defence are welcome, and I look forward to further progress in this area.

It is natural to compare the blue sky over Áras an Uachtaráin in 2004 to the cloudy skies that currently hang over the EU. It is precisely at this time that we need both a sectoral and an overarching vision of how to settle our internal divisions so that we can overcome the challenges which history has placed before us. It is with this in mind that I invite you to engage with this issue’s contributions.

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Mikuláš Dzurinda is President of the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies.

184 European View (2017) 16:185–190 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12290-017-0469-z

ARTICLE

Europe’s protective power Wolfgang Schüssel

Published online: 18 December 2017 © The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication

Abstract The EU has weathered the fnancial crisis but continues to face a host of challenges: its role in international politics, the scope of security and defence cooperation, the question of how to redefne the concept of ‘sovereignty’, the societal impact of technological disruption and migration, and the general anxiety among the EU’s population in relation to globalisation. In this context it is important for the EU to remain conf- dent in itself and its sense of identity.

Keywords European integration | European identity | Europeanism | Culture

W. Schüssel (*) Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, Rue du Commerce 20, 1000 Brussels, Belgium e-mail: [email protected]

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Introduction

Has Europe fnally overcome its crises or are we still in the midst of them? Have we made it through the fnancial crisis reasonably well only to overlook the tsunami of problems that is rapidly approaching?

Everyone can understand the sigh of relief heard in Brussels and the capitals of Europe after the elections in the Netherlands, France, Germany and Austria. Everyone, of course, is hoping to see a quick and reasonable outcome of the Brexit negotiations and a compromise in the Spanish–Catalonian constitutional dispute. We all wish Presi- dents Juncker and Tusk every success in the coming rounds of talks with the Visegrad countries. A great deal will depend on the revived French–German community of action and the personal chemistry between Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel if the EU’s clout in international competition is to be strengthened within the framework of the existing Treaties. This includes a deepened internal market; more precise and, above all, supervised rules of the Stability and Growth Pact; the development of a secure Banking Union and Capital Markets Union; the protection of external borders; and a common foreign, security and defence policy.

Looking to the future, what can we expect?

Europe’s role in the world

Let me start with Europeans and their place in tomorrow’s global village. Until 1800 the world population was quite stable at just under one billion people, whose life expectancy was around 26 years. One third of the world’s population lived in Europe and generated approximately half of the global GNP. A hundred years later, there were two billion people: one ffth of them lived in Europe, where they had a life expectancy of 40 years and produced 40% of the global GNP. By 2000 population fgures had surged to six billion, with Europe accounting for no more than 10% of the world population but still generat- ing 25% of the world’s GNP. Our life expectancy has doubled. By 2030 there will be 8.5 billion people living on this planet, and the fgure may well rise to 10 billion by 2050. The number of people over the age of 60 will increase from 800 million to 2 billion. All this will not necessarily be disadvantageous, but it means that we need to concentrate intensively on the development of our strengths and talents. Brain power will be the true raw material of the future. Europe will have to fght for its place in the global village— both as a business location and as a model for a way of life. Those who prefer to ride on the nostalgia train run the risk of ending up in the local history museum.

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The changing security landscape

Security cannot be taken for granted: our world is no planet of peace. At present, 400 armed conficts are on record in the global village. The UN is supporting 60 million offcially registered refugees through the World Food Program and other specialised agencies. In reality, however, two to three times as many people have lost everything and are now struggling to stay alive. At the same time, a gigantic arms spiral has been set in motion. Purchases of weapons worldwide have increased by 50% in recent years. The US is spending the incredible amount of $600 billion a year on armaments. The Chinese have increased their military expenditure from $93 billion to $235 billion and want to build a ‘world-class army’, according to Xi Jin Ping (The Economic Times 2017). Over the past 10 years, Russia has doubled its military budget, which now stands at $70 billion. In contrast, military spending in the EU is stagnating, even though Europe is anything but a military giant. In the past a common defence and security policy seemed like a far-fetched idea. This seems to be changing. However, there is another sphere in which Europe has excelled: the art of diplomacy, of mediation, and of economic and cultural cooperation. It must have been the traumatic experience of centuries of wars and conficts in Europe that led us to develop new, more cooperative and sustainable view- points and strategies. These are indispensable for the future: hand-in-hand cooperation instead of head-to-head confrontation. Nevertheless, if our ‘soft power’ were supported by professional military capacities, it would be even more effective. The concept of rapidly deployable ‘battle groups’ could be transferred to humanitarian relief operations abroad and civil protection at home.

Sovereignty in a globalised world

What does the notion of sovereignty stand for in the twenty-frst century? In his ground- breaking work The Globalization Paradox, US economist Dani Rodrik argues that globalisation, democracy and national sovereignty are fundamentally incompatible. It would be possible either to contain globalisation in order to strengthen democratic legitimisa- tion, or to restrict democratic decisions in the interest of higher competitiveness. Another possibility would be to pursue global targets at the expense of national sovereignty. Most of the time, however, politicians shy away from clear decisions. They want voters to participate in the decision-making process, but not to vote for populist parties. Free trade is all very well, but when a crisis occurs, it should still be possible to protect domestic businesses, prevent closures and exercise national control—in other words, protectionism rather than free trade. Nowadays numerous decisions are being outsourced to techno- cratic institutions: fnancial markets, rating agencies, the Troika, the European Central Bank, the European Economic and Monetary Union and the Court of Justice of the Euro- pean Union. Many of these decisions have a strong impact on people’s daily lives and are not subject to democratic control in the traditional sense. This is why the ‘take back control’ slogan went down so well when the British voters had a choice to remain or to leave. To a growing extent, similar demands are being voiced by Scots, Catalans and the advocates of autonomy for Veneto and Lombardy. If we want our European way of life

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to be future-proof, we need to fnd the right balance between international competitiveness, citizen participation, national/regional identity and self-determination. The nation state is still very much alive and far from obsolete, but it will have to provide evidence of its power of cohesion. Regional identities alone are not enough. In an age of globalised networking, self-suffciency is not an option. Autarchy is a dead end. Rather, the future model of success is based on optimum networking in an effort to exercise as much infuence as possible at all levels. Active participation and shared responsibility will defne the future of sovereignty: chances of success are greater for those who are best able to contribute their points of view and interests to the general pool of ideas than for those who choose to be self-suffcient. More effective implementation of the principle of subsidiarity and of well-considered decentralisation should serve as important guidelines.

Demographic change

Where do we go from here? The recent electoral campaigns hardly addressed a number of the major challenges confronting Europe. These challenges include our ‘old’ continent’s sluggish demographic growth, as compared to the dynamic growth seen in neighbouring Africa, whose population will double in the course of this century. This is likely to cause migration pressure that will not ease for decades and cannot be kept under control by inadequate rules and institutions. Artifcial intelligence and biotechnol- ogy are changing our world as much as, if not more than, the advent of electricity, the automobile and television. According to Noah Harari, the crucial question today is ‘Who owns the data?’, a question which he considers just as important as ‘Who owns the land?’ in an agrarian society and ‘Who owns the machines and factories?’ in the indus- trial age. The most important economic drivers of the future will no longer be steel, cars, textiles or chemistry, but intellectual capacity, ideas and talent. This is what Europe must prepare for.

The rise of Western anxiety

In ageing and prosperous societies, anxieties come to the fore. All the challenges described above are materialising at breakneck speed. By global standards Europe is the continent of the elderly and the affuent. It is only logical that citizens are plagued by uncertainty and a fear of loss. In such situations of upheaval, people often tend to withdraw to a seemingly safe haven: pull up the drawbridge to keep your family, your region, your religion, your nation and your ideology safe. Feeling overburdened, some citizens even become aggressive, discontented, chauvinistic and backward-looking. And there will always be demagogues around to exploit their mood. They evoke the good old days (‘Make America great again’), which were not really so good at all. Retrotopias, the denial of scientifc fndings, fake news, expert bashing and the cultivation of negative images of outsiders are all part of the fearmonger’s’ tool kit. Therefore, for committed Europeans the only choice is to engage in this debate and to do so with passion. Very often, citizens who tend to side with populist parties are not enemies of democracy or

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of European unifcation, but merely disappointed democrats and Europeans. Jean Mon- net, one of the founding fathers of today’s EU, once referred to the two major political forces: the dynamics of fear and the dynamics of hope (Cuperus 2006, 143). Ultimately, however, he placed his trust in the power of optimism. He found a legitimate follower in David Precht, who said that ‘an optimist who fails has led a far more meaningful life than a pessimist who is proven right’ (Precht 2017, author’s translation).

Conclusion

It is worth our while to invest a little more in strengthening this optimism and in our European identity. It is no contradiction to have an identity that is Viennese, Austrian and European at the same time, or to be proud of one’s regional origin in Germany, France, Poland or Italy without forgetting the nation and the European perspective. In the coming months the European People’s Party will be getting ready for the important elections to the European Parliament. Why not organise a competition for an up-to-date text for the European anthem, which is musically a true ‘Ode to Joy’? Or let us remem- ber the luminaries of culture in all member states. Mozart, with his love of harmony and synergy, would certainly have opted for Europe. Voltaire reminds Europe of toler- ance. Michelangelo stands for beauty, Joyce for the notion of homeland, Preschern for freedom, Petöf for independence, Socrates for the freedom of thought, Havel for truth, Nobel for peace. There is something for each nation to identify with here, and all of it could converge into a fascinating kaleidoscope of our unique European model, our ‘European way of life’. This, by the way, is what we should propose as a campaign slogan for the 2019 elections to the European Parliament.

References

Cuperus, R. (2006). Europe and the revenge of national identity. In R. Cuperus, K. A. Duffek, E. Fröschl & T. Mörschel (eds.), The EU: A global player? (pp. 129–44). Mün- ster: LIT Verlag.

Precht, R. D. (2017). Was kommt nach dem Kapitalismus? [What comes after capital- ism?] Handelsblatt. 17 October. http://www.handelsblatt.com/my/politik/deutschland/ philosoph-richard-david-precht-was-kommt-nach-dem-kapitalismus/20453460.html. Accessed 24 November 2017.

The Economic Times. (2017). China to build world-class armed forces by mid-21st century: Xi Jinping. 18 October. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/

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china-to-build-world-class-armed-forces-by-mid-21st-century-xi-jinping/articleshow/61130471.cms. Accessed 6 December 2017.

Wolfgang Schüssel was the Federal Chancellor of Austria from 2000 to 2007.

190 European View (2017) 16:191–200 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12290-017-0455-5

ARTICLE

EU defence cooperation after Brexit: what role for the UK in the future EU defence arrangements? Jolyon Howorth

Published online: 30 November 2017 © The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication

Abstract The UK has traditionally played an ambivalent role in European security and defence policymaking. With Brexit, the EU loses one of its two serious military players. On the other hand, it has been liberated from the constraints imposed by London on the Common Security and Defence Policy, and this has created a new dynamism behind the defence project. There has been comparatively little commentary on the defence implications of Brexit, and the UK has been less than forthcoming in making concrete proposals for an ongoing UK–EU partnership. Both sides assert that they wish to maintain a strong cooperative relationship after Brexit, but the outlines of such an arrangement remain very unclear. This article suggests that the UK will have more to lose than the EU from any failure to reach agreement, and that UK ambivalence about links between the Common Security and Defence Policy and NATO will prove to be a major sticking point.

J. Howorth (*) Department of Political Science, Yale University, 115, Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06520, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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Introduction

It is remarkable that the future of defence relations between a post-Brexit UK and the EU has generated comparatively little debate. The overwhelming majority of commentators on the UK’s tortuous negotiations with the EU have focused on issues of trade, the rights of expatriate citizens, Northern Ireland and the European Court of Justice. And yet, destabilisation in both the Eastern and Southern neighbourhoods, uncontrolled migratory pressures across the Mediterranean, the war against the ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’, the rising threat of terrorism and deep ambivalence about the Atlantic Alliance from within the White House have combined to make this a critical moment in Europe’s security arrangements. At a time when security and defence issues have arguably retaken centre stage in the international politics of Europe, the withdrawal of one of the EU’s major military powers from the fedgling Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) is a policy challenge of the frst magnitude.

The UK and the CSDP

In all fairness, it should be recalled that the UK played a major role in the initial launch of the CSDP in 1999, drafting many of the foundational documents and working papers. But then the UK veered off to prioritise the UK–US relationship during the Iraq crisis of 2003 and thereafter functioned more as spoiler than driver (Howorth 2014). Despite playing a key role in the anti-piracy operation Atalanta in the Gulf of Aden, Britain’s main role over the past 10 years has been to apply the brakes—to proposals for an EU Operational Headquarters, to the funding of the European Defence Agency and above all to any expression of ambition for the future footprint of the CSDP, which London has tended to see as a potential threat to NATO. Ironically, then Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed, at the historic Franco-British summit in Saint Malo in 1998, to launch the CSDP because he was convinced that without a serious European military capacity, the Americans would begin to distance themselves from NATO. Yet, almost from the moment of the CSDP’s birth, London began to fear that its main consequence would in fact be American disengagement. Such disengagement may well be on the cards, but this would be the outcome of an internal US debate—not because of the existence of the CSDP. Growing numbers of US analysts propose a gradual US withdrawal from NATO and the transfer of leadership to the EU (Bacevich 2016; Mearsheimer and Walt 2016; Posen 2014).

Some authors have suggested Brexit will not negatively impact either the UK’s ability to continue to work with its European security partners (Menon 2016) or the effectiveness of the CSDP itself (Gros-Verheyde 2015, 2016). Others have suggested, on the contrary, that Brexit will make it extremely diffcult for the UK to play a proper role in European foreign and security policy (Bond 2015; Kerr 2016), and even that it will contribute to the unravelling, not just of the CSDP, but also of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (Hillison 2016). One key analyst sees an unfolding series of post- Brexit complications which will render the future of Euro-Atlantic security cooperation

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highly volatile for the foreseeable future (Heisbourg 2016). It is indisputable that the withdrawal of the UK from the EU will not change the overall geostrategic situation in Europe. No challenges are going to disappear, and it is unlikely that Brexit will result in the emergence of new ones, although some have argued that both China and Russia will beneft from the destabilisation of the Old Continent that follows (Godement 2016; Nixey 2016). The main geostrategic tensions will remain.

In the year following the Brexit vote, the government of Prime Minister Theresa May was totally preoccupied with attempting to formulate a negotiating position for the coming divorce. It failed for over a year to focus on issues of security and defence, other than—maladroitly and counterproductively—appearing to threaten to leverage its defence muscle to extract concessions from the EU on other policy issues. The implied threat was that, if the EU did not make concessions to the UK on trade, the UK would refuse to cooperate on the CSDP (May 2017).

The post‑Brexit ‘relaunch’ of the CSDP and the objective of ‘strategic autonomy’

The leading players in the EU, on the other hand, rapidly forged ahead with post-Brexit plans for a revamped EU strategy and common security policy. In June 2016 the EU’s much anticipated Global Strategy document (EEAS 2016) set the level of ambition for the revitalised CSDP as being nothing less than ‘strategic autonomy’ (the term appears no fewer than eight times in the document). Although the document makes no attempt to defne the concept, most analysts have taken it to imply the EU’s ability to stabilise its neighbourhood without being dependent on the US. Since the Global Strategy appeared, there have been a number of potentially signifcant developments.

These include the decision to go ahead with a Military Planning and Conduct Capa- bility (MPCC—the new acronym for what used to be called ‘the OHQ’); the launch of the European Defence Fund; new fnancial arrangements for the deployment of battle groups; and the agreement, reached at the European Council in June 2017, to opera- tionalise for the frst time the process enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty (but never hitherto acted upon) known as Permanent Structured Cooperation. How signifcant are these developments? The short answer is that they are helpful and creative, but they will not, in and of themselves, change anything fundamental, whether or not the UK can some- how be associated with them. There are still many obstacles standing in the way of ‘strategic autonomy’: persistent nationalist tendencies among the member states, ongoing divergences in European strategic cultures, lack of consensus about the level of ambition in this policy area, challenges to defence budgets in a time of austerity, the fet- ish of sovereignty, the problem of trust, the sheer scale of the challenges facing Europe in its Eastern and Southern neighbourhoods, and the absence of public awareness of and/or support for a more muscular or assertive Europe. Perhaps the biggest challenge is the parallel existence of NATO. The temptation of thinking that the new dynamic, in and of itself, is suffcient to overcome long-standing obstacles must be avoided—as

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must the hope (some would call it an illusion) that Brexit, in and of itself, will make some of those obstacles go away.

The UK begins to engage with the revitalised CSDP

The new defence dynamic across Europe was suffciently robust for policy-shapers in Whitehall to conclude that the UK urgently needed to formulate proposals for its future defence relationship with the EU. On 12 September 2017 this took the shape of a 22-page paper offering a ‘future partnership’ between the UK and the EU on issues of foreign policy, defence and development. It sought to build ‘a new, deep and special partnership with the European Union’ and stated that the UK was ‘unconditionally committed’ to European security (HM Government 2017). However, the paper spends its frst 17 pages stressing how important a military player the UK is, extolling the UK’s past commitment to European security and defence, and insisting that ‘the values we share are historic and deep-rooted in our societies, and the UK will always be an indefatigable advocate for them’. Only in the fnal few pages does the paper attempt to lay out concrete areas for a future security and defence partnership. But even here, the proposals remain devoid of all political, institutional, juridical or operational clarity. One leading observer noted that ‘one could be forgiven for thinking that this latest paper was written by a state trying to join the EU, not one trying to leave it’ (Smith 2017). Comment on the paper was universally sceptical, with ardent Brexiteers predictably seeing it as evidence that the May government had ‘walked into an EU ambush’ that would lead to Britain joining an ‘EU army’ (Gutteridge 2017).

The reality is that in September 2017 no leading UK politician, from either party, had a clear view of what sort of future defence relationship Britain might entertain with the EU. The volatility of the UK electorate, as shown in the general election of June 2017, in which Theresa May gambled on obtaining a strong mandate to negotiate a hard Brexit— and lost—made politicians wary of getting too far ahead of public opinion. In the autumn of 2017, every statement on Brexit from UK leaders, of whatever persuasion, seemed primarily aimed not at the EU negotiators, but at the UK electorate or at Tory grandees pondering the need for an alternative prime minister. Mrs May’s much-hyped ‘major policy speech’ on Brexit in Florence on 23 September was the clearest example of such coded rhetoric. The Financial Times, not known for hyperbole, passed the speech off as ‘45 min of repetitious and platitudinous abstraction [with] not a single memorable phrase’ (Leith 2017). On security and defence, the prime minister broke new ground by suggesting the need for a ‘treaty’ between the UK and the EU, but without offering the slightest clue as to what that might involve. It is therefore left to the analyst to try to imagine what the broad outlines of that future defence relationship might entail.

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UK–EU defence cooperation post‑Brexit: strengths and weaknesses

Let us begin on the negative side of the ledger and move towards the more positive. The UK continues to give the impression of not having realised how high the stakes are in its future defence relations with the EU. There is a general sense in Whitehall that— when it comes to defence muscle—the EU stands to lose far more from Brexit than does the UK. The British media’s obsession with the bogeyman of the ‘European army’ has always served as a smokescreen to avoid coming properly to terms with what the CSDP implies. Ever since the referendum on Brexit, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has continued to lay out publicity-ripe ‘red-lines’, insisting that the UK will veto the for- mation of a ‘European army’ (Kern 2016) and arguing that ‘defense is for NATO and not the European Union’ (Deutsche Welle 2017). This approach might seem to directly con- tradict the spirit of the 12 September paper extolling the security values shared by the two sides. Yet that same paper stresses on numerous occasions that NATO remains ‘the bedrock of the UK’s national defence’. Cooperation between the EU and NATO has become a shibboleth echoed by almost all players across the EU. Many experts and offcials across the Atlantic are currently calling for the EU to take on ever greater responsibility for the security of Europe’s neighbourhood. If the goal of ‘strategic autonomy’ is to be reached, the logic of the ‘Europeanisation of NATO’ becomes compelling (Howorth 2017). The UK’s post-Brexit role in that constructive development is likely to be highly ambivalent if not downright obstructionist. The fact that many of the remaining 27 EU member states feel ‘liberated’ by the departure of the British from the security policy sector clashes with the widespread desire across the EU to enhance relations with NATO. The eventual outcome of that relationship will determine the future of the EU defence project.

Fallon’s conviction notwithstanding, the UK–US ‘axis’ will undoubtedly be relativised by Brexit. The UK can no longer gamble on the ‘special relationship’—a relationship that, in any case, has been more talked about in London than in Washington. As long as the US (under Trump or any succeeding president) continues to see the defence of Europe as a vital strategic interest, it will have no alternative but to prioritise its relations with the EU. American offcials and analysts have been saying this for years. Fallon and the Brexiteers appear not to have been listening.

Another negative on the balance sheet is the UK’s post-Brexit situation with respect to counterterrorism. As Mortera-Martinez (2017) recently stressed, this is the dominant policy issue on the security agenda. Here, the UK has a massive interest in remaining attached to Europol and to the various intelligence databases such as the Schengen Information System. But even assuming the EU27 were willing to continue to involve the UK under some associate format, they would arguably impose two major conditions, both of which would cause headaches for London. The frst would be the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice over the use of these databases. The second might be the growing reluctance of the EU27 to share data with the Trump administration, given its hostile approach to refugees and asylum seekers. The UK’s 12 September paper

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studiously ignores these issues and confnes itself to asserting that there are ‘clear benefts for both sides in coordinating our efforts to protect our citizens’ (paragraph 70). The future role of the European Court of Justice is for most UK politicians an ongoing blind spot, if not a policy impasse.

UK defence spending is likely to tumble as a result of the economic costs of Brexit to the UK economy. The June 2017 launch of the new aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth II— with no support vessels—drew attention to the fact that the UK’s desire to be perceived as a major projector of military power requires it to procure a full carrier-group of support and protection vessels. It is far from clear that the British will be able to afford such a capacity. The Royal Navy is currently in dire straits, with many of its surface vessels inoperable (Coughlin 2017).

On the other hand, there is evidence that the British Ministry of Defence continued to play an important role in Brussels as the European External Action Service developed its Security and Defence Implementation Plan. This is, after all, their professional bread and butter. Despite UK reservations about the fnalité of the CSDP, it has always been in the UK’s interest to maximise EU defence capacity—and to prevent the EU from remaining ‘just’ a civilian power (Besch 2017). Many in London understand that this is an area where good relations with the EU can be maintained. That understanding lies at the heart of the UK’s offcial papers on this policy area—no matter how vacuous these might be in terms of concrete proposals. The UK defence industry (despite its global reach) also has a major interest in cooperating with its EU partners and in continuing to beneft from joint research and technology and access to EU fnancing, particularly under the recently launched European Defence Fund. However, recent statements from EU offcials make it clear that a post-Brexit UK will not be entitled to European Com- mission funding for such projects. London will undoubtedly continue to fght for such access, but there are few reasons to believe that the EU will make an exception in this case.

Franco-British cooperation (the 2010 Lancaster House process) will continue, but in a different framework: the emergence of the Paris–Berlin axis. London will no longer be able to play Paris off against Berlin, especially given President Macron’s commitment both to the EU and to Franco-German leadership. The UK will fnd it harder to engineer multiple bilateralisms, although Sweden’s and Finland’s 2017 decision to join the UK- led Joint Expeditionary Force suggests London still has signifcant clout. It seems the UK has not ruled out participating in Permanent Structured Cooperation, although how that would be arranged institutionally and operationally remains unclear. There is also little clarity about future UK relations with the battle groups (the UK is scheduled to lead a battle group in July 2019, shortly after the time limit for withdrawal from the EU) or about the UK’s future relationship with the European Defence Agency.

There is political will on both sides for the UK to be as closely involved as possible with the EU in this policy area. Both sides recognise this to be in their best political and geostrategic interests. For this to become a reality, there would have to be some imagination and fexibility on the legal side. When the CSDP was launched in 1999, the

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EU arguably should have been far more fexible in associating Turkey and Norway with the project. But the lawyers refused. This time the politicians should urge the lawyers to fnd a new politico-institutional framework to maximise the involvement of the UK in the CSDP—if necessary through some form of UK associate membership of the Political and Security Committee. The same fexible arrangements could then be applied, with appropriate modifcations, to countries such as Turkey and Norway. Much will depend on the atmosphere and tone of the Brexit negotiations. If this emerges as positive, then much is possible on the defence front (including UK involvement in Permanent Struc- tured Cooperation). If the talks become embittered, defence issues will be much more diffcult to resolve. At the time of writing, the EU negotiators remain frustrated at the lack of concrete proposals from London.

The one conclusion that imposes itself is that the imminent departure of the UK from the existing defence structures of the EU has opened a Pandora’s box whose eventual consequences remain diffcult to foresee.

Conclusion

Since 1945 the UK and continental Europe have had a highly complex relationship in the feld of security and defence. For 50 years (1949–99), the UK prevented Europeans from engaging in this policy area. The CSDP was launched in large part because Lon- don feared that, without it, Washington would disengage from NATO. Yet, whenever a genuine security crisis has arisen in Europe’s neighbourhood (the Balkans, Libya, Geor- gia, Ukraine or Syria), the EU has remained dependent on US military leadership. In 2016 three developments coincided to shift that unsatisfactory pattern: Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the stated ambition of the EU27 to move towards strategic autonomy. The future cooperation between the EU and the UK over the defnition of a new defence ambition for Europe will be diffcult but crucial to the future security of the continent.

References

Bacevich, A. (2016). Ending endless war: A pragmatic military strategy. Foreign Affairs, September/October. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-08-03/ ending-endless-war. Accessed 25 September 2017.

Besch, S. (2017). United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. In H.-P. Bartels, A. M. Kellner, & U. Optenhögel (eds.), Strategic autonomy and the defence of Europe: On the road to a European army? (pp. 414–21). Bonn: Dietz.

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Jolyon Howorth has been Visiting Professor of Political Science and Inter- national Affairs at Yale University since 2002. He is Professor Emeritus and Jean Monnet Professor ad personam of European politics at the University of Bath.

200 European View (2017) 16:201–209 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12290-017-0450-x

ARTICLE

The end and the beginning: the EU, Africa and the need for a new migration regime Tobias Billström

Published online: 30 October 2017 © The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication

Abstract in the years to come, Europe will face many diffcult challenges related to migration. To cope with the increased fows emanating from the African continent, present policies will have to be adapted and new ones created. The EU must pursue a course that protects the integrity of free movement, secures the external borders and enables it to work with stakeholders, both in Africa and elsewhere, to avoid an unchecked infux of migrants. The article reviews important elements of the debate that has been taking place in the EU in recent years and shows that a new basis for the European Migration and Asylum Policy is needed to ensure that it has a more realistic chance of success. It argues that there is a need for a review of EU policies on migration and asylum, and for the development of more useful tools to disentangle the complex web of interests which today is ever present in the debate on the European Migration and Asylum Policy.

T. Billström (*) Sveriges riksdag, 100 12 Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]

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Introduction

India’s folklore contains a compelling tale of three blind men who are asked to concep- tualise what an elephant is like by touching it. The crux of the matter is their collective ignorance of the animal. Depending on what part of the elephant they touch, they give different answers to the question, as one by one they come forward and offer suggestions of a snake, a tree trunk and a wall.

Some elements of this story can certainly be recognised when considering the forma- tion of EU migration policy. One might almost call it a ftting description of how the EU and its member states have repeatedly tried to articulate the concept of a Common European Asylum System (CEAS).1

In essence, the CEAS aims to harmonise the legislative framework on asylum in the EU member states, including on issues of fnancial solidarity and principles for family reunifcation, as well as providing rules for common standards and stronger cooperation. The CEAS should not be confused with policies relating to migration that is unre- lated to asylum.

One fundamental aspect of migration policies in a European context is the total inability of the states of Europe to agree on defnitions and stick to them. This is true whether we are contemplating the fawed way in which a person who submits an asylum application can receive vastly different replies depending on which member state he or she applies to, the discrepancies pertaining to the return of failed asylum seekers, or the variations and irregularities in support and reception conditions, access to the labour market and family reunifcation. All of these examples indicate the distance between the advocated policies and the crass reality of fragmentation that faces Europe.

An excellent example of this was shown in the recently published Standard Euro- barometer 87 (European Commission 2017c). In this survey, the question of whether respondents were in favour of ‘a common European policy on migration’ was put to them. The results presented in the survey show that 68% were ‘in favour’, 25% were ‘against’ and 7% were undecided (European Commission 2017c, 38). Typically this might be interpreted as quite a positive signal regarding EU citizens’ attitudes towards the CEAS. But the observant reader will already have spotted the problem: the lack of qualitative components in the survey. A description of exactly what ‘a common Euro- pean policy on migration’ might look like, what such a system would encompass and how it would work in practice was not presented to the respondents. Thus the given answers might be attached to every plan for achieving a CEAS of almost any shape, form, colour or size. The proverbial elephant has indeed entered the room.

1 For more information, see European Commission (2017a).

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The challenges of the EU, Africa and the future

Despite its failures, both recognition and appreciation should be given to all the efforts that have been made in the past regarding the development of a European Asylum and Migration policy. As the well-known scholar of international migration Betts (2009, 179) has claimed: ‘The EU is the only region in the world that has attempted to develop a common asylum and immigration policy, which includes common minimum standards on asylum, limited burden-sharing mechanisms, and an “external dimension” to asylum policy’. He states that it was the creation of a free-trade area that started the process, because this project made it an imperative that all of the states that joined adhered to the principle of standardisation regarding migration and mobility, since they would otherwise run the risk of attracting a disproportionate number of asylum applications. The idea of a Common European Asylum Policy thus has to be considered as a building block of great importance to the very structure of the EU.

If we look back over the recent history of migration in Europe, it is a commonly accepted fact that the Dublin Convention (which later became the Dublin Regulation, signed in 1990 and ratifed for the frst time in 1997) is the virtual starting point of the serious ambitions to create a joint framework for the processing of asylum applications in the EU. This was followed closely by the decisions of the Tampere European Council in 1999, and it has been a constant and ongoing process to harmonise the asylum procedure, with the aim of closing the existing gaps in methods, approaches, defcits and results. It is evident that everything that has happened during the more than 25 years that have passed since the Dublin Convention has its origins in the realisation that unless Europe manages to harmonise the asylum process, the political risks are considerable.

However, as the disputes about the implementation of the Dublin System also show, numerous problems have evolved as the result of attempting to harmonise policy in a world where the EU has expanded to more than twice its original size of 12 countries, and the number of asylum seekers has increased and sometimes even doubled (Con- nor 2016). In recent years these problems have reached a point where they threaten not only the Schengen system, but also the very fabric of the Union.

In a very well-written brief on EU policy published in 2014, Future EU Policy Develop- ment on Immigration and Asylum: Understanding the Challenge, researcher Elizabeth Collett of the Migration Policy Institute Europe gave a thorough and coherent account of the state of play, despite the fact that the brief was written before the crucial events of 2015 (Collett 2014). Collett (2014, 9) points to the need to bring forward solutions, underlining that any attempt to do so must have an added value: ‘the added value of having the European Union lead the policy, the added value for governments applying those rules, achieving goals they could not attain alone; and above all, the added value of the policy for affected populations (both native and foreign-born)’.

In the period of extreme turbulence and upheaval that the EU has witnessed regarding migration since the autumn of 2015, the questions regarding ‘added value’ have

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certainly multiplied. Today it is obvious that it is necessary to combine several areas of EU policy to make progress in the area of migration policy reform. Foreign policy, aid and development, security, combating terrorism, and trade and the economy all have a role to play in migration. There is a need for a much more holistic approach to the subject. Viewing migration as an area that solely concerns those who primarily deal with justice and home affairs, whether in the Council, Commission or Parliament, is, by default, an antiquated view.

This is underlined by recent developments: the EU has made efforts to trim its various policies to meet the escalating threat of migration fows from the Central Mediterranean route via Libya, Chad and Niger. Europe can no longer overlook the fact that steadily increasing immigration fows from Africa are likely to present both continents with immensely more diffcult challenges than the Middle East and Afghanistan, put together, have presented in recent years.

The reasons for this are rather obvious. Africa is undergoing a transition that consists of two changes of profound importance: both demographic and economic growth. In many ways the changes in migration fows should be considered a direct result of the improvement of living conditions, the lengthening of the expected life-span and the general economic development underway on the continent. In the Global Competitive- ness Report 2016–2017 (Schwab 2016), the World Economic Forum suggests that Afri- ca’s working-age population is set to surpass that of China or India by 2034 (Crotti and Moungar 2016). The same report also suggests that with 15 million people entering the job market annually, the pressure to actually get a job is naturally going to intensify.

To this picture has to be added the positive economic development in the many countries and regions of the continent. While it is still a relatively modest change with regard to those who have actually moved into the perceived middle class,2 there is no denying that these changes are making way for groups who will earn and save in the hope of further improving their living standards. For them, migration might offer an alluring opportunity.

In a compelling report from 2016 by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the subject of migration from Africa is viewed with a particular focus on Niger (Interna- tional Organisation for Migration 2016). The report focuses on the Migrant Resource and Response Mechanism programme, which was implemented in Niger with the support of the EU. In the conclusions of the report the authors draw attention to three observations: (1) the lack of economic opportunities for many migrants in West and Central Africa; (2) the risks faced by migrants during their journeys through the desert and their temporary stays in Algeria, Libya or Niger; and (3) the widespread misinforma- tion (or lack of information) on the reality of the journeys and on living conditions in the

2 Ninety per cent of Africans still fall below the earnings threshold of $10 a day, and the proportion in the $10–$20 middle class (excluding very atypical South Africa) only rose from 4.4% to 6.2% between 2004 and 2014; over the same decade, the proportion defned as ‘upper middle class’ (earnings of $20–$50 a day) grew from 1.4% to 2.3% (The Economist 2015).

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countries of temporary residence, particularly Libya. It goes on to state: ‘The number of migrants assisted in 2016 was the highest number recorded in 3 years, and represented a signifcant increase relative to numbers of migrants arriving in IOM transit centres in 2014 (2127) and 2015 (1388)’ (International Organisation for Migration 2016, 25). The total number in the fve IOM transit centres in Niger in 2016 was close to 6,300 (Interna- tional Organisation for Migration 2016, 25).

Without a doubt these observations and facts are evidence of the many challenges awaiting the EU in the years to come. As the population increases at a steady pace in Africa, and the economic improvements lead to the expansion of the group with enough money and motivation to risk the perils of a journey to Europe across the Mediterranean, there are strong reasons to believe that Europe will have to deal with signifcantly more migrants than before. While it is true that a lot of migration does occur between states in the developing world and that this will continue to grow, the bulk of the increase in numbers of potential migrants is more likely to affect Europe than any other geographical region close to Africa.

Towards new ways and means

In 2015, amidst the ongoing crisis of infux and confusion along the external borders of the EU, one of the rapidly evolving themes was the concept of internal relocation, paired with resettlement, and the impact this had on the solidarity between member states. In essence, the relocation mechanism aims to distribute arriving asylum seekers among the member states, while resettlement forms the basis of the worldwide concept of protection, which has been developed under the auspices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Mentioned by the Commission in several reports and the subject of lengthy discussions spanning several years, relocation is a concept of intense political debate (Euro- pean Commission 2017b). During my time in offce, it was certainly the most hotly debated topic at the meetings of the Justice and Home Affairs Council, as the states of Southern Europe demanded the relocation of asylum seekers to other member states, and the improvement or even abolition of the Dublin System. The idea of resettlement from abroad to individual member states, whereby states pledge in advance to accept the direct transfer of refugees from camps to their territories following an assessment process to establish any protection needs, was seldom discussed as a conceivable alternative.

The statements made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel show some of the ambiguity felt by European politicians in relation to the concept of solidarity. Chancellor Mer- kel has clearly stated that though she deplores the current state of affairs, she is not prepared to use the big stick of withholding EU funds from member states who fail to comply with the relocation targets (Frankfurter Allgemeine 2017). At the same time she has shown her own commitment, as well as Germany’s, by repeatedly stating that ‘The situation of the summer of 2015 must never be repeated’ (Der Spiegel 2016, author’s

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own translation). Reducing the level of confict between the member states is, of course, necessary. However, if the CEAS is to be saved from a continuously calamitous process, it is time to more closely analyse the root causes of the problem and look for additional remedies.

The end of relocation: the beginning of a new discussion regarding resettlement

In December 2016 the European Council of Foreign Relations published a commentary titled ‘The EU’s Migration Policy in Africa: Five Ways Forward’ (Toaldo and Barana 2016). Among the proposals outlined was the idea of ‘work[ing] towards processing asylum requests in third countries’. The idea was foated of using EU liaison offcers working within certain African states to enable the EU to ‘scale up direct processing of asylum requests in third countries’ (Toaldo and Barana 2016). The article was written following the meeting of European and African leaders in Valetta, Malta, in November 2015. This meeting to some extent changed the narrative on EU–Africa migration and is viewed by many as the starting point for a more intense dialogue between the two continents on the subject of migration, where resettlement could, for the frst time, play a crucial role.

If the EU was to truly embark on making the externalisation of the asylum process a top priority, it would be a step towards untying the knot of confict that has so far restricted progress. But this means that member states will have to give and take. It would also mean a Herculean effort would need to be made to convince all the parliaments of the EU and the European Parliament of the feasibility of such a move.

Yet, the strength of the case for replacing the idea of relocation is clear to every onlooker: as a concept for addressing the diffculties of migration it is failing, simply because it does not offer the stakeholders, that is, the member states, viable instruments of control. Relocation is simply more akin to an assembly line or a distribution chain than a mechanism that gives the participating states any guarantees on the numbers that they take on, bar the protection of the external borders. Resettlement, on the other hand, provided that it is based on common agreements between the member states and the countries of origin, and is funded in a proper manner, is a different matter.

The introduction of a resettlement policy would enable requests for asylum to be made in limited numbers outside the EU; safe zones, with reception and accommo- dation centres, and resettlement programmes could be developed in third states and, when possible, in countries of origin. It would also mean that the EU could offer safety and humanitarian assistance as close as possible to the asylum seekers’ places of origin in third countries. The meeting in Paris at the end of August 2017 between African leaders and President Macron and Chancellor Merkel could be perceived as the start of a new way forward along these lines (Vinocur et al. 2017).

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Resettlement would, of course, also call for a different approach towards the regime of protection. While the concept of protection as envisaged in law and practice has been that any person turning up at the border of Europe has the right to ask for asylum and be granted a way to establish their claims, the changes described previously in this article would make it imperative that an externalised process is created to offer asylum within the territory of any member state of the EU. Not only would this reduce the prospects for human smugglers, but it would signal the end of the senseless drownings in the Mediterranean Sea, and the beginning of a more humane and effective approach to the granting of asylum within EU territory.

Conclusion

The EU has to recognise the challenges inherent both within its physical borders and in the developments taking place in the countries of origin for potential migrants. The time has passed for the older paradigms for how to offer protection, process asylum applications in a fair and justifable way, and prevent human smugglers from carrying out their activities to the EU’s detriment. The need to protect people from persecution will always remain. But the practical measures of securing the route to protection have to be disen- tangled from migration based upon improving living standards.

To this end, it is time for the leaders of the EU to call forward new groups of ministers, state secretaries and diplomats, wise women and men, who should be given a strong, clear and, yes, bold mandate to outline a new future for European Migration Asylum Policy. From the perspective of 5 or 10 years from now, such a process might prove to be just as decisive as the meeting of the European Council in Tampere in 1999, which started the process of creating a Common European Asylum System.

It will not be easy, because one of the fundamental obstacles for the entities responsible to overcome will be the lack of trust in each other, something that has become all too common of late. But as another proverb, this time Chinese, tells us: ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’

We had better start on that journey as soon as possible.

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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Betts, A. (2009). Forced migration and global politics. Chichester: Wiley.

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Collett, E. (2014). Future EU policy development on immigration and asylum: Understanding the challenge. Migration Policy Institute Europe, Policy Brief Series no. 4. Brussels. http://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/fles/publications/Post-Stockholm-Collett-FINALWEB.pdf. Accessed 13 September 2017.

Connor, P. (2016). Number of refugees to Europe surges to record 1.3 million in 2015. Pew Research Center, 2 August. http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/08/02/number-of-refugees-to-europe-surges-to-record-1-3-million-in-2015/. Accessed 13 September 2017.

Crotti, R., & Moungar, V. (2016). Can Africa diffuse its demographic time-bomb? World Economic Forum, 28 September. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/09/ can-africa-diffuse-its-demographic-time-bomb/. Accessed 13 September 2017.

Der Spiegel. (2016). Angela Merkel beim CDU-Parteitag ‘Eine Situa- tion wie im Sommer 2015 darf sich nicht wiederholen’. http://www.spiegel. de/politik/deutschland/angela-merkel-bei-cdu-parteitag-fluechtlingskrise- darf-sich-nicht-wiederholen-a-1124599.html. Accessed 13 September 2017.

European Commission. (2017a). Common European Asylum System. 25 September. https:// ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/asylum_en. Accessed 25 September 2017.

European Commission. (2017b). Relocation and resettlement: Commission calls on all member states to deliver and meet obligations. Press Release, 16 May. http:// europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-1302_en.htm. Accessed 13 September 2017.

European Commission. (2017c). Standard Eurobarometer 87: Spring 2017. Public opinion in the European Union, frst results. May. http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffce/publicopinion/index.cfm/ResultDoc/download/DocumentKy/79565. Accessed 13 September 2017.

Frankfurter Allgemeine. (2017). Merkel bevorzugt keine Koalition. 14 August. http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/bundestagswahl/bundestagswahl-angela-merkel-bevorzugt-keine-koalition-15150747.html?utm_source POLITICO.EU&utm_ = campaign e6d4f261d7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_08_15&utm_medium email&utm_ = = term 0_10959edeb5-e6d4f261d7-189773441. Accessed 13 September 2017. = International Organisation for Migration. (2016). 2016 migrant profling report. Geneva. https:// gmdac.iom.int/iom-niger-2016-migrant-profling-report. Accessed 13 September 2017.

Schwab, K. (ed.) (2016). The global competitiveness report 2016–2017. World Economic Forum. Geneva. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2016-2017/05FullReport/The- GlobalCompetitivenessReport2016-2017_FINAL.pdf. Accessed 13 September 2017.

The Economist. (2015). Africa’s middle class, few and far between. 22 October. https://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21676774-africans-are- mainly-rich-or-poor-not-middle-class-should-worry. Accessed 13 September 2017.

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Toaldo, M., & Barana, L. (2016). The EU’s migration policy in Africa: Five ways forward. Euro- pean Council on Foreign Relations, 8 December. http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_ the_eus_migration_policy_in_africa_fve_ways_forward. Accessed 13 September 2017.

Vinocur, N., Barigazzi, J., & Paravicini, G. (2017). Emmanuel Macron’s migration summit: Who wants what? Politico, 28 August. http://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macrons-migration-summit-who-wants-what/. Accessed 13 September 2017.

Tobias Billström has been a member of the Riksdag, the Swedish Parlia- ment, since 2002, and served as minister of migration and asylum policy from 2006 to 2014 and as vice-president of the European People’s Party from 2012 to 2015. Between 2014 and 2017 he held the offce as the frst deputy speaker of the Swedish Parliament. He is currently the chief whip and parliamentary group leader of the Moderate Party and a member of the Executive Board of the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies.

209 1 3 European View (2017) 16:211–218 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12290-017-0457-3

ARTICLE

Prospects for a euro‑area budget: an analytical outline Siegfried Mure¸san

Published online: 4 December 2017 © The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication

Abstract in a refection paper intended to generate debate among euro-area governments, the European Commission has put forward ideas on what could be done to deepen the Economic and Monetary Union by 2025. One of the ideas outlined by the Commission is the creation of a euro-area budget. This article reviews the key issues that are relevant in the discussion on establishing such a budget; outlines the possible functions of such a budget, such as incentivising structural reforms or ensuring macro- stabilisation; and discusses the issues of size, funding, moral hazard and governance, while touching upon the role of non-euro-area member states. The article concludes with the assertion that the answer to this question is essentially political in nature and could constitute an example of how member states are ready to integrate further, while giving non-euro-area member states the opportunity to participate.

Keywords Eurozone | Budget | Structural reforms | Moral hazard | EMU

S. Mure¸san (*) European Parliament, Rue Wiertz 60, 1047 Brussels, Belgium e-mail: [email protected]

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Introduction

If fscal space was circumscribed to just the national level, states could use national monetary policy for stabilisation purposes. However, as monetary policy is conducted at the euro-area level, member states have abdicated the possibility to use it to counteract idiosyncratic asymmetric shocks (Hebous and Weichenrieder 2015). At the EU level, the treaties suggest that fscal policy constitutes a decentralised instrument, while fscal discipline is an absolute collective requirement (Wyplosz 2016). Given the current framework, new solutions are required in order to endow the euro area with enhanced fscal discipline and thus to provide governments with more room for manoeuvre to counter economic shocks.

In a refection paper intended to generate debate among euro-area governments (European Commission 2017), the Commission has put forward ideas on what could be done to deepen the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) by 2025. One of the ideas suggested is the creation of a euro-area budget.

The idea of creating a budget for the euro area was initially presented in 2012, in the Four Presidents’ Report (Van Rompuy et al. 2012). The report stated that a budget was required to improve the resilience of EMU as it would provide a shock-absorption function at the central level (Bénassy-Quéré et al. 2016). Furthermore, in June 2015, The Five Presidents’ Report (Juncker et al. 2015) defned the role of the euro-area budget as an instrument that would ‘improve the overall economic resilience of EMU and individual euro area countries. It would thus help to prevent crises’.

The goal of any new euro-area budget should be the improvement of the overall competitiveness of the EU. If our economies are strong and competitive, and our goods are in demand in the global market, we will be more resilient to economic crises in the future. The needed reforms have to be conducive to more investment, proftable projects and enhanced productivity.

An incentive for structural reforms

Structural reforms are highly important for the functioning of the euro area. They can incentivise long-term growth by increasing the adjustment capacity of the economy and by raising its potential growth rate, and can improve the functioning of the economy with the objective of producing better long-term GDP (Brinke and Enderlein 2017).

By increasing the adjustment capacity of the economy, relative prices would be able to adjust faster and thus output would be less affected by shocks. Moreover, the economy would be able to reallocate resources in a more effcient way, leading to faster output recovery. Other essential benefts of the ability to adjust capacity would be a reduction in the duration of unemployment periods for individuals and a lessening of the depth of any recession.

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Additionally, by reinforcing supply capacity, the structural reforms would also contribute to ensuring long-term growth. This would help to address the challenges that production factors face.

A euro-area budget could support, for instance, pension, labour market or public administration reforms. Pension reforms could be supported through providing fnancial incentives for measures that promote lifelong learning or active ageing, which are both consequences of a higher retirement age. If people are expected to live longer, social measures that encourage older people to stay active and acquire new skills could be stimulated and fnanced by a euro-area budget.

Those temporarily unemployed as a consequence of labour market reforms could be fnancially supported by the EU with training, mobility and assistance in fnding a job. Financial support for the externalities of labour market reforms is a key factor for less competitive economies (e.g. the training of personnel; the consequences of labour market reforms, such as redundancies in the public sector and the need for requali- fcation; and support for reforming the public administration). If public administration reforms demand investments in digitalisation or e-governance, the costs involved could be carried by a euro-area budget, thereby incentivising member states to implement the needed reforms.

A tool for counteracting asymmetric shocks

Fiscal stabilisation is the use of fscal policy to keep the economy afoat through higher spending or lower taxes in a downturn and the elimination of the budget defcit in an upturn (Bénassy-Quéré et al. 2016). At the national level, fscal policy can be used as a tool to offset country-specifc shocks. However, in a currency union such as the euro area, the issue is more complex. The initial confguration of the EMU did not include tools that would prevent asymmetric shocks.

In the euro area, monetary policy is constrained and cannot assist a single member state. If one country is hit by an asymmetric shock or if the structural differences across multiple members are signifcant, it is not possible to use an interest-rate policy alone to stabilise the economy of a specifc member state (Rubio 2017).

The European Stability Mechanism (ESM), a permanent crisis management mechanism, currently provides safeguards against imbalances in individual countries. It can provide exceptional assistance to countries in trouble by temporarily taking the place of private lending and offering conditional funding. Nevertheless, as already underlined in the academic literature, the ESM cannot be regarded as a substitute for a euro-area budget as it represents a mutual assistance scheme. It therefore cannot be construed as a common budget, as this would entail the entrusting of some competences to the centre (Pisani-Ferry 2014). Stabilisation through the ESM should therefore be comple- mented by other shock-absorption mechanisms.

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Measures to increase macro- and micro-prudential supervision, with the aim of strengthening the banking sector, are not enough to prevent a severe fnancial crisis. A euro-area budget could constitute a tool for ensuring macro-stabilisation in the case of asymmetric shocks. However, the issue of moral hazard has to be analysed thoroughly before this can happen.

Moral hazard

A key issue of this new fnancial construction that needs careful consideration is the risk of moral hazard. Member states could start to disregard their obligations to reduce debt if they know that there is a high chance that they would be bailed out should they get into diffculties. Moreover, the macroeconomic insurance that a budget would create for member states could create a rise in durable transfers and provide incentives to act in less responsible ways.

To reduce moral hazard, the budget would need to be constructed in a manner that would ensure distributional neutrality over time. According to this principle, net transfers could go towards a negatively affected country over a number of years, with the condition that after several years those same transfers would be offset. Consequently, greater mutual surveillance and stronger governance would need to be implemented.

Size and fnancing means

Like any budgetary instrument, a euro-area budget would have to be clearly defned in terms of size and funding mechanisms. This will, however, have to take into consideration the political challenges at play. Given the limited funds currently available and the incumbent exit of the UK, it appears that the budget would probably be rather limited in size, which raises the question of the effectiveness of such an instrument.

As for the funding mechanisms, to avoid adverse effects on domestic demand, it would be advisable not to provide resources through regressive taxes, such as VAT. One option would be for the resources to originate from a European tax. However, this could entail political challenges. Hence, any new tax should be fscally neutral to con- sumers and companies.

One other source of funding could be from a corporate income tax. The current practices of tax avoidance and tax optimisation have led to a situation where many mul- tinationals take advantage of the differences that exist between national legislations. Therefore, a frmly regulated common corporate tax base, which would still allow each country to set its own tax rate but with an additional rate levied at the federal level, could

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lead to the creation of an important source of funding for the euro-area budget (Piketty 2014).

Other options to ensure funding of the budget could be through member state contributions or the transfer of a proportion of taxes collected at the national level. However, the foreseeably limited size of the budget raises the issue of effectiveness.

Studies have shown that a federal budget of 20% of GDP provides a consumption smoothing effect of 15% in the US (Sørensen and Yosha 1998). Consequently, if the euro-area budget was the equivalent of 2% of GDP, it would presumably have a smoothing effect of 1.5% (Bénassy-Quéré et al. 2016). Furthermore, recent literature concludes that, again in the US, the degree of cyclical stabilisation via the federal budget is quite small, with only between 5% and 10% of state shocks being buffered through federal transfers (Poghosyan et al. 2015). A euro-area budget would not be large in size. Given these examples, it appears that such a budget would not be able to provide any noticeable smoothing. Any new euro-area budget must also be able to ensure the prevention of further crises; it must not only constitute a tool for managing such situations when they occur.

Governance

The creation of a euro-area budget would also create a new institutional gap which would have to be addressed. One solution could be to set up an entity with executive powers that would have competences in the area of establishing structural reform pack- ages and, consequently, in the area of implementation. A euro-area treasury, led by the Eurogroup president and subject to full parliamentary control, could be one option. Another option could be a European minister, fully accountable to the Parliament, who promotes and supports structural reforms in member states. Ideally he would also be a vice-president of the Commission. The aforementioned control could be ensured by creating a Parliamentary Committee for the Euro Area, or by following the model of the economic dialogue held with Mario Draghi every year.

What about non‑euro‑area member states?

We must recall that The Five Presidents’ Report underlined the principle that any budget should be open and transparent vis-à-vis all member states. Therefore, non-euro-area member states should be given full rights of participation and benefts. Moreover, they should be involved in the process of governance. This approach would allow for a euro- area budget that would improve the overall economic resilience of the EMU and of the individual countries that will eventually join the euro area. In turn, this would contribute to the prevention of future crises and secure sound and smooth integration into the EMU.

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Any euro-area budget should be open to all EU member states. Countries that have a treaty obligation to join the euro area and that make efforts to do so, should be given full rights of participation: they should contribute and beneft fnancially and take part in the governance. The economies of many non-euro-area countries lack competitiveness, especially in the public sector. These are impediments that need to be overcome to become a member of the euro area.

Adopting the euro now would be too early for many non-euro-area member states and thus the consequences of such a move could be negative. For their economies to beneft from joining the euro, these countries must become competitive enough to be able to face the competition in the euro area. Participating in the euro-area budget would help them to converge with euro-area countries, make their economies more competitive and ensure their further integration into the governance structure of the euro area.

Previous experience has clearly shown that instruments which were not specifcally designed for non-euro-area member states, such as the Fiscal Compact or the Euro Pact, have been benefcial for them. +

Conclusion

After providing a careful analysis of what a euro-area budget could entail, it appears that the question of whether such an instrument is necessary remains unanswered.

While this article suggests that there is a strong economic raison d’être for a euro- area budget, one should not disregard the strong link between this potential construction and the issue of a multi-speed Europe, which is of great political signifcance. The creation of a euro-area budget—which, in turn, may lead to the creation of a euro-area fnance minister and even a euro-area parliamentary committee—could constitute an example of how member states might integrate further, while giving non-euro-area member states the opportunity to participate. It would thus provide a strong example of an inclusive project of further integration.

The past economic and fnancial crisis has led to divergence and mistrust among member states. In light of current challenges, including the refugee crisis, increasing Euroscepticism and international conficts, the way forward for Europe is more unity. The answer is a stronger Europe, as the best tool to overcome any future challenge.

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References

Bénassy-Quéré, A., Ragot, X., & Wolff, G. B. (2016). Which fscal union for the euro area? Bruegel Policy Contribution no. 5, February. http://www.cae-eco.fr/IMG/pdf/cae- note029-en.pdf. Accessed 3 August 2017.

Brinke, A., & Enderlein, H. (2017). How to make sense of the structural reform lists for the euro area. Jacques Delors Institut – Berlin, Policy Paper 184, January. http://www. institutdelors.eu/media/structuralreforms-aufdembrinkeenderlein-ijd-jan17.pdf?pdf ok. = Accessed 12 September 2017.

European Commission. (2017). Refection paper on the deepening of the Economic and Monetary Union. Refection Paper, COM (2017) 291, 31 May. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/fles/refection-paper-emu_en.pdf. Accessed 4 August 2017.

Hebous, S., & Weichenrieder, A. (2015). Towards a fscal union? On the acceptability of a fscal transfer system in the eurozone. SAFE Policy Papers, White Paper no. 28, July. http://safefrankfurt.de/fleadmin/user_upload/editor_common/Policy_Center/Weichen- rieder_Hebous_Towards_a_Fiscal_Union.pdf. Accessed 3 August 2017.

Juncker, J.‐C., Tusk, D., Dijsselbloem, J., Draghi, M., & Schulz, M. (2015). The fve presidents’ report: Completing Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union. 22 June. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/fles/5-presidents-report_en.pdf. Accessed 2 August 2017.

Piketty, T., et al. (2014). Our manifesto for Europe. The Guardian, 2 May. https://www. theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/02/manifesto-europe-radical-fnancial-democratic. Accessed 3 August 2017.

Pisani-Ferry, J. (2014). The euro crisis and its aftermath. New York: Oxford University Press.

Poghosyan, T., Abdelhak, S., & Cottarelli, C. (2015). The role of fscal transfers in smoothing regional shocks. In C. Cottarelli & M. Guerguil (eds.), Designing a European fscal union: Lessons from the experience of fscal federations (pp. 60–89). London and New York: Routledge.

Rubio, M. (2017). The role of macro-prudential policies in prevention and correction of asset imbalances in the euro area. Directorate-General for Internal Policies of the European Parliament. Brussels, May. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ IDAN/2017/602074/IPOL_IDA(2017)602074_EN.pdf. Accessed 3 August 2017.

Sørensen, B., & Yosha, O. (1998). International risk sharing and European monetary unifcation. Journal of International Economics, 45, 211–38.

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Van Rompuy, H., Barroso, J. M., Juncker, J.-C., & Draghi, M. (2012). Towards a genuine economic and monetary union. 5 December. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/ uedocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/134069.pdf. Accessed 3 August 2017.

Wyplosz, C. (2016). The six faws of the Eurozone. Economic Policy. https://doi. org/10.1093/epolic/eiw008.

Siegfried Mure¸san is a Member of the European Parliament. Originally from Romania, he graduated from Humboldt University in Berlin. In 2011, he joined the headquarters of the European People’s Party as the political adviser for economics and social policy. He was elected as a member of the European Parliament in 2014 and is currently the European People’s Party spokesman.

218 European View (2017) 16:219–230 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12290-017-0456-4

ARTICLE

Why the eurozone needs a minister of fnance and economic reform Hans Geeroms

Published online: 5 December 2017 © The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication

Abstract The Economic and Monetary Union remains incomplete and vulnerable. The current economic and political climate offers a window of opportunity to further deepen this Union in 2018. Completing the banking union and creating a roadmap for a capital markets union are both essential. One of the missing building blocks is a minister of fnance and economic reform for the eurozone. This minister should have the powers and democratic legitimacy to better enforce the rules on budgetary and macroeconomic discipline. He or she should also be responsible for managing a budget line for the eurozone that can act as a countercyclical buffer when monetary policy and national fscal policy are insuffcient. This budget line, together with the European Structural Invest- ment Funds, should also act as an instrument for enforcing and supporting structural economic reforms aimed at making the national economies more resilient to external shocks.

H. Geeroms (*) College of Europe, Dijver 11, Brugge, Belgium e-mail: [email protected]

219 1 3 European View (2017) 16:219–230

Introduction

Already in 1970, Pierre Werner, charged with the development of a blueprint for an Eco- nomic and Monetary Union (EMU), had argued that this union entails the need for a ‘centre of decision for economic policy, to exercise independently, essential features of the whole of the public budgets, and in particular variations in their volume, the size of balances and the methods of fnancing or utilising them’ (Werner 1970, 12). Werner realised that this implied a political union. Because such a transfer of sovereignty was politically unacceptable at the time, the Delors report (Delors 1989) stopped short of creating this kind of ‘centre of decision for economic policy’ and established only an independent monetary authority: it substituted the economic pillar with a set of budgetary rules, the Stability and Growth Pact. To strengthen fscal rules, this pact was reformed several times, notably during the crisis: by the adoption of the ‘Two-Pack’1 and the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance. And under EU President Herman Van Rompuy, it was supplemented with rules governing other dimensions of economic policy: the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (the ‘Six-Pack’2). In 2010 the Euro- pean Semester was introduced. Based on the rules and procedures contained in the Six-Pack, it is the annual cycle of coordination and surveillance of EU economic policies.

Since then, many have pleaded for the creation of a minister of fnance for the eurozone. They include Chancellor Merkel, President Macron, former European Central Bank (ECB) President Jean Claude Trichet (2011) and Governor of the Banque de France François Villeroy (Villeroy de Galhau 2016). The mandate of this minister should also include the coordination and promotion of economic reform in the eurozone member states so that they can accommodate better to the constraints imposed by sharing a common currency.

1 The frst regulation of the Two-Pack improves and harmonises the budgetary procedures in the euro-area countries. It also imposes additional surveillance and reporting obligations on countries with excessive defcits. For member states subject to the Excessive Defcit Procedure (EDP), this same regulation requires monitoring that goes beyond what is provided for under the Stability and Growth Pact. The second regulation is only applicable to euro-area countries which request fnancial assistance from the European emergency funds or which face serious fnancial stability problems that could have negative contagion effects on other euro-area countries or the eurozone as a whole. The approach being followed for programme countries receiving assistance from the European emergency funds is largely institutionalised, including the provision of technical assistance for the implementation of the adjustment programme. 2 Most important and most binding are the four legislative texts of the Six-Pack that concern public fnances. They take over and improve on the principles of the Stability and Growth Pact. The decision- making procedure has also been modifed. Minimum quality requirements regarding the national budgetary frameworks of the member states apply. Two of the other regulations deal with the new Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure. This is the most important instrument for dealing with these fundamental problems. The regulation on the prevention and correction of macroeconomic imbalances applies to all EU member states, but a distinction is made between the euro-area countries and the others. The second regulation, which concerns sanctions, applies only to euro-area countries.

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Rules are no substitute for a minister of fnance and economic reform

In their enforcement of the budgetary rules, the Commission and Council have never failed to disappoint. France, for instance, has had a public defcit exceeding 3% of GDP for each of the last 10 years. Moreover, between the introduction of the euro and 2017, it increased its debt-to-GDP ratio from 60% to 96%. Italy was allowed to join the euro with a debt-to-GDP level almost double the 60% norm, and since then the country has further increased it to 133%.

The nominal unit labour costs (ULCs) in the eurozone have increasingly diverged since 1999.3 Even if the new member states and programme members are left out of consideration, one sees that there has been no systemic convergence. During the frst decade of the EMU, Germany improved its ULCs by 14% relative to the eurozone average, while in France and Italy ULCs deteriorated by 14% and 23%, respectively. The German unemployment rate has decreased since 2009, with the country now enjoying full employment (less than 4% of the active population are unemployed). Meanwhile, unemployment has consistently remained at a high level in France, and in Italy it has even increased steadily. And yet the divergence in ULCs has decreased only slightly (Matthes and Iara 2017, 12).4 Other indicators, such as GDP per capita, current account balances and unemployment rates, also point to rising macroeconomic imbalances and a lack of real convergence (Fig. 1).

Therefore, rules alone cannot be a substitute for an enhanced economic policy debate within the euro area, one that focuses on growth, fnancial stability and public fnance sustainability. This is where a eurozone minister of fnance and economic reform could step in. Current EMU governance does not really allow for such a debate: most of the proceedings of the Eurogroup of the 19 euro-area fnance ministers are con- fdential; they do not nurture national economic policy debate within the member states. The Council’s yearly adoption of the ‘country specifc recommendations’ proposed by the Commission tends to be a formal step. A eurozone fnance minister could embody and drive such a debate. Furthermore, as ECB President Mario Draghi has stressed many times (Draghi 2015), institutions may, under certain conditions, be more effective than rules. Taking the ECB as an example, he shows how institutions with a commonly agreed mandate and executive powers (monetary policy, Single Supervision Mecha- nism) can be more effective and fexible without undermining their credibility, as long as they focus on their mandate. The cornerstones here are the commonly agreed mandate and the powers that would be given to a eurozone minister of fnance. Without this mandate and powers, this position would merely add another administrative layer.

3 The author’s own calculations based on European Commission data (European Commission 2017). I used the standard deviation of ULCs compared to the average for the euro area. 4 However, Jürgen Matthes and Anna Iara (2017) point to the positive impact of structural labour market reform on wage fexibility.

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Figure 1 Changes in real convergence (ULCs compared to the eurozone average). The sharp drop in Irish ULCs is due to the upward revision of GDP in 2015.

125

120 Belgium 115 Germany Ireland 110 Greece 105 Spain France 100 Italy 95 Netherlands Austria 90 Portugal Finland 85

80 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2010 2011 2012 2009 2007 2008 2006 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Source: Data from European Commission (2017).

Can the EMU be completed without a minister of fnance and economic reform?

A major constraint for agreeing on a ‘centre for decision on economic policy’ is the need for democratic legitimacy. It took the US 200 years to centralise economic and budget powers in Washington. In the EU the current trend seems to be in the opposite direction: towards more sovereignty for the individual member states (Brexit is an example where a (small) majority of the population prefers more sovereignty over integration) and decidedly not in the direction of a federal Europe or a political union. As a consequence, several ideas for completing the EMU without a eurozone minister of fnance have been developed.

The IMF has shown that in the US it is the fnancial and capital market union, and not the central budget, that acts as the shock absorber (Butzen et al. 2014). Thus there is less need for central budgetary powers. It remains therefore of utmost importance that the euro area should complete the banking union by adopting a backstop to the Single Resolution Fund, moving forward towards a single deposit guarantee scheme and making solid progress on the capital markets union initiative.

The creation of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the launch of the banking union under the pressure of the crisis are sometimes also considered suffcient to address the shortcomings of the Maastricht Treaty. Although there is no doubt that the EMU is now more resilient than before the fnancial and euro crisis, one should recall that the banking union remains incomplete and that the ESM is a crisis instrument and does not provide for ex ante macroeconomic stabilisation.

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It has been argued that market forces will impose suffcient discipline and that the introduction of Collective Action Clauses in newly issued government bonds and a clear commitment to not bailing out countries in distress will lead to budgetary discipline being imposed by bond markets. However, the experience of the euro crisis shows that markets and rating agencies tend to underestimate budgetary derailments at frst and then to exaggerate them. This leads to a sudden fnancing stop, as happened in April 2012.

As recently underlined by the IMF in its staff report on Article 4 and euro-area policies, ‘unresolved legacy problems are holding back a stronger medium term outlook for the [euro area]’ (IMF 2017). Public debt reduces the ability of highly indebted countries to cope with a downturn or higher fnancing costs, and there is a risk of persistent divergences which over the years may undermine the basis of the EU project.

A minister of fnance and economic reform for the eurozone

The economic case for deepening the EMU is overwhelming, but political support is missing. This is mainly due to a lack of understanding between Germany and France. Germany—like other northern member states, including the Netherlands, Finland and Estonia—stresses the need to adhere to the rules agreed upon and to implement structural economic reforms, as was done under the Schroeder government. Moreo- ver, it expects all adjustment to come from the defcit countries. The northern countries also make a strong case for sound banks, which would be better capitalised and less exposed to national government debt and would solve any insolvency problems via bail-in by shareholders and bondholders. In theory, this could make a monetary union function without risk sharing or solidarity, except for certain extreme cases of serious asymmetric shocks.

On the other hand, France and other southern member states, such as Italy, plead for symmetric adjustment. And while acknowledging the importance of fscal rules, they criticise Germany and the Netherlands for their record high current account surpluses. They see the EMU as a project of solidarity and risk sharing. Indeed, the theory on Optimal Currency Areas (Geeroms et al. 2014) states that in the absence of suffcient economic fexibility and risk sharing via fnancial and capital markets, there is a need for solidarity through a suffciently large common budget. The northern countries are concerned that such solidarity would lead to a permanent transfer to the southern member states and even take away the latter countries’ incentive to reform their economies. The examples of north–south transfers in Belgium and Italy and the west–east transfers in Germany—all of which have failed to stimulate convergence—are used as evidence that a ‘transfer union’ would not be effective.

These differences in economic principles and the absence of mutual trust need to be overcome by adopting the principle that effective enforcement of the rules is needed before instruments of risk sharing and solidarity can be created.

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The eurozone minister of fnance and economic reform would have the following fve functions:

1. The frst is to independently exercise essential features of ‘the whole of the public budgets’ (Werner 1970, 12). This means preventing unsustainable debt-to-GDP levels. This is not to say, however, that the structure of the budget—revenues and spending—should be decided by this ‘centre of decision’ or a eurozone minister. Rather, it should remain a national responsibility, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity. The minister of fnance and economic reform should also decide independently on the optimal fscal stance for the eurozone as a whole, thereby complementing the ECB’s monetary policy. The word ‘independently’ is key. The independent character of this function makes it different from the role played by the toothless European Fiscal Board, which is thoroughly reliant on the Commis- sion. 2. The minister would monitor other parameters of macroeconomic policy and propose reforms where needed. The current framework of the Macroeconomic Imbal- ance Procedure is suffcient. It only needs to be enforced better and more sym- metrically. 3. The eurozone fnance minister would be in charge of the existing crisis mechanism, the ESM. The current intergovernmental agreement on which the ESM is based should be changed and then incorporated in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) to make it a community instrument. The idea of turning it into a European Monetary Fund is inspired by a lack of trust in the Com- mission and by the political argument that it is diffcult to ratify a treaty change. However, the Commission, with a special role for the minister of fnance and economic reform, should be in charge of the European Monetary System or European Monetary Fund. And a simplifed treaty change would suffce to incorporate the ESM in the TFEU. 4. Managing a budget for the eurozone would be another role played by the fnance minister. The European Monetary System (or European Monetary Fund) can never be a complete substitute for a eurozone budget. It is an ex post instrument aimed at ensuring fnancial stability based on compliance with strict conditions (Thirion 2017). A budget for the eurozone would come into action earlier since it is not based on requests by crisis-hit member states and offers hedging against extreme asymmetric shocks. Four parameters of this budget need to be defned:

a. How large would this eurozone budget line be? It can be small. The automatic stabilisers are suffciently large, if the member states achieve their Medium Term Objective of 0% of GDP.5 A centralised budget should only provide insurance against very large asymmetric shocks. Estimates of the size of the budget range from 2% to 3% of GDP.

5 Some member states with high debt-to-GDP levels and a high budgetary burden related to their ageing population have a higher Medium Term Objective.

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b. Where would the revenue for this budget come from? The euro-area budget requires its own stable resources. A number of possibilities are listed in the Monti Report (European Commission 2016). Another idea would be a uniform tax on banks. The banking union implies the complete harmonisation of all parameters of the fnancial industry (banking sector), except taxes. Harmo- nising taxes on the banks’ profts would constitute a fourth pillar of the banking union and contribute to levelling the playing feld for banks in the EMU. It would be a stable source of fnancing and one covering the EMU alone. The IMF proposal of a Financial Activities Tax (IMF 2010) can be a source of inspiration and at the same time be a good substitute for the ill-designed Financial Transaction Tax project. c. How would this budget be spent? It should be spent on public goods relevant to the eurozone. Most public goods for the eurozone are also public goods for the EU27, but providing them requires a reform of the EU budget. The most relevant functions of a euro-area budget would be economic stabilisation and economic reform. Several formulas have been proposed for the former. These include a scheme to compensate for a part of unemployment benefts (Lellouch and Sode 2014) and an investment scheme for regions or member states suffering from asymmetric shocks (Thirion 2017, 17–19). However, the latter function of stimulating national economic reform to make an economy more resilient and to better meet the conditions of a currency union is crucial, as is fnding political agreement between northern and southern member states. d. Is borrowing capacity needed? Borrowing capacity is necessary and would generate the safe assets that the eurozone very much needs. The euro area is the only monetary union without safe assets. At present there is only nationally issued debt, which is actually a subordinated debt that cannot be considered risk free (De Grauwe 2011). In the context of the Basel reforms, such safe assets would facilitate the debate on the prudential treatment of sovereigns in banking regulation (to apply non-zero risk weights to holdings of national public debt). Conversely, launching this debate without a safe asset would put the fnancial stability of the euro area at risk by increasing the possibility of a sudden stop in sovereign fnancing.

5. in the long run, the minister would take on the role of representing the eurozone in contexts outside the euro area, for example at the IMF, Basel Committees and meetings of the G20 ministers of fnance. The current fragmented representation of euro-area member states, many of which have historical constituencies with economies outside the euro area, is an anachronism. Germany and France could pave the way for such a move.

The instruments at the disposal of the euro-area minister of fnance and economic reform should include the following:

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• The budget for the eurozone: This has already been discussed. • The authority to rate sovereign debt for the purpose of enforcing budgetary and other macroeconomic rules: If the eurozone fnance minister were to be limited to the sanctions provided for in the Six-Pack, there is no reason to think that he or she would be more successful at enforcing these rules than the Commission and the Council have been. Therefore, the minister needs other instruments, and those based on the market would be most effective. One idea that could be explored is the following. The eurozone does not need to rely on ratings given by private third parties (moreover, companies from the US and the UK have a near monopoly on rating agencies). The ECB and the Commission are better equipped than private rating agencies to assess the sustainability of the public debt. They can provide the technical expertise to enable the minister of fnance and economic reform to attach a high risk weight where the debt-to-GDP ratio is considered to have become too high. He or she would create ‘red bonds’ (Delpla and von Weizsäcker 2010).6 These bonds would be subject to higher risk and to the possibility that the ECB might not accept them as collateral. This would lead to higher spreads, thereby de facto creating a fnancial sanction via the markets. To preserve its independence, the ECB would only provide data and technical expertise to the Commission. The minister would be solely responsible for deciding the rating. • The ability to infuence the use of EU structural investment funds: One of these, the Cohesion Fund, was created to help member states improve the competiveness of their economies so that they could converge in real terms before joining the euro. However, it is not clear that this objective has ever been reached (Butzen et al. 2006). The eurozone fnance minister should have a say in the allocation of the fve European Structural and Investment Funds. In this way he or she could encourage and support structural economic reforms and focus them on real convergence. The EU should link these funds more closely to achieving specifc output targets such as those indicated by the scoreboard of the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure: unemployment rate, ULCs and so on.

On the institutional side, the eurozone minister of fnance and economic reform should

• be appointed by the heads of state or government (as is the president of the ECB); • remain in offce for a minimum of fve years, a period that would not be renewable (so as to assure the minister’s independence); • combine the functions of chair of the Eurogroup and member of the European Commission (for the sake of simplicity and credibility); and • have the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN) and other Commission services at its disposal as treasury planning offce.

6 All sovereign bonds would be considered ‘red bonds’, as Delpla and von Weizsäcker use the term, if they are issued to fnance the part of the defcit exceeding a certain threshold, where this threshold corresponds to the nominal government defcit that is accepted by the eurozone minister plus interest charges and the repayment of all outstanding debt.

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Conclusion

As mentioned above, trust has to be renewed between the eurozone member states. The neglect of the Stability and Growth Pact, the experience with the bailout of Greece, the lack of economic reform and the bending of the no-bailout rules for banks in Italy have all eroded this trust. Therefore, structural economic reforms to bring the EMU closer to being an ‘Optimal Currency Area’, the prevention of unsustainable public and private debt, and stable banks are needed to reduce risk and are prerequisites to risk- sharing mechanisms being accepted. Risk reduction and risk sharing need to move ahead hand in hand.

One can only hope that the basis for sound mutual understanding will be restored. For all other matters, the political environment should be in place. There is a window of opportunity after the French elections of May 2017 and the German elections in Sep- tember 2017. The frst signs are promising. The idea of a eurozone budget and minister of fnance was proposed by Chancellor Merkel during a recent press conference with French President Macron (Macron and Merkel 2017). Former Minister of Finance Schäuble has long been in favour of both. It has to be seen what the German position will be under a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands), the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (Christlich- Soziale Union in Bayern) and the Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei). Perhaps the proposals above should, in the frst stage, exclude the acquisition of borrowing capacity by the euro area as this ‘smells’ like eurobonds. One should also move gradually and hope that the improved economic environment creates momentum for the deepening of the EMU.

As Werner suggested almost a half-century ago, the main hurdle to establishing the economic pillar of the EMU is democratic legitimacy. He pointed to the need for a political union. If we have to wait for a political union before deciding the fnal steps for completing the EMU, it could be too late. There is a risk that the euro will not survive the next economic or fnancial crisis.

It is remarkable that the question of the democratic legitimacy of fscal (budget) policy is not raised when it comes to monetary policy. Since the 1970s independent central banks, accountable to the respective national parliaments, have been created throughout the world. They are considered to have been successful in stabilising prices. On the other hand, the age of central banks that were dependent on politics is considered to have been a period of macroeconomic misconduct and infation and to have culminated in the stagfation of the seventies. The ECB is among the most independent central banks of the world—indeed, without this independence, Germany would have refused to adopt the euro.

I have argued before that the fscal stabilisation function of the eurozone is of the same nature as its monetary policy and should therefore be decided by an independent minister of fnance (Geeroms 2014). But for the minister’s other functions, such as defning the goals for economic reform and establishing the path to convergence and

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competiveness, the issue of democratic legitimacy is real. The European and national parliaments need to be closely involved. A eurozone chamber should be created at the European Parliament. Werner was correct in holding that social partners and other relevant groups in society should play an important advisory role.

Some will say that the current economic rebound being enjoyed by the EU, notably within the euro area, will reduce the appetite for reform. But one should rather see this recovery as an opportunity to move forward at both the national and EU levels on structural reforms, public fnance sustainability and reinforcement of the EMU.

References

Butzen, P., Cheliout, S., & Geeroms, H. (2014). Lessons from the US for the institutional design of EMU. National Bank of Belgium. September. https://www.nbb.be/doc/ts/publications/economicreview/2014/ecorevii2014_h5.pdf. Accessed 4 October 2017.

Butzen, P., De Prest, E., & Geeroms, H. (2006). Notable trends in the EU budget. National Bank of Belgium. https://www.nbb.be/doc/ts/publications/economicreview/2006/ecorevii2006_h4.pdf. Accessed 4 October 2017.

De Grauwe, P. (2011). The governance of a fragile eurozone. CEPS Working Docu- ment no. 346. 4 May. http://aei.pitt.edu/31741/1/WD_346_De_Grauwe_on_Eurozone_ Governance-1.pdf. Accessed 14 September 2017.

Delors, J. (1989). Report on economic and monetary union in the European Community. Committee for the Study of Economic and Monetary Union. http://aei.pitt.edu/1007/1/ monetary_delors.pdf. Accessed 14 September 2017.

Delpla, J., & von Weizsäcker, J. (2010). The blue bond proposal. Bruegel Policy Brief. May.

Draghi, M. (2015). Speech by the president at SZ Finance Day 2015. Speech made in Frankfurt on 16 March 2015. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2015/html/ sp150316.en.html. Accessed 14 September 2017.

European Commission. (2016). Future fnancing of the EU: Final report and recommendations of the High Level Group on own Resources. December. http://ec.europa.eu/ budget/mff/hlgor/library/reports-communication/hlgor-report_20170104.pdf. Accessed 14 September 2017.

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European Commission. (2017). AMECO database. https://ec.europa.eu/info/business- economy-euro/indicators-statistics/economic-databases/macro-economic-database- ameco/ameco-database_en. Accessed 4 August 2017.

Geeroms, H., Ide, S., & Naert, F. (2014). The European Union and the euro. Cam- bridge: Intersentia.

IMF. (2010). A fair and substantial contribution by the fnancial sector: Final report for the G-20. June. https://www.imf.org/external/np/g20/pdf/062710b.pdf. Accessed 4 Octo- ber 2017.

IMF. (2017). Euro area policies: 2017 Article IV consultation–Press release; staff report; and statement by the executive director for member countries. IMF Country Report no. 17/235. July. http://www.imf.org/en/Publications/CR/Issues/2017/07/25/ Euro-Area-Policies-2017-Article-IV-Consultation-Press-Release-Staff-Report-and- Statement-by-45121. Accessed 4 October 2017.

Lellouch, T., & Sode, A. (2014). An unemployment insurance scheme for the euro area. Trésor-Economics no. 132. June. https://www.tresor.economie.gouv.fr/Ressources/ File/403124. Accessed 14 September 2017.

Macron, E., & Merkel, A. (2017). Joint press conference by Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel at the Brussels EU Summit on 13 July 2017. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v YIM_3Qs2UfE. Accessed 14 September 2017. = Matthes, J., & Iara, A. (2017). On the future of the EMU: Is more fscal integration indispensable? European View, 16(1), 3–22.

Thirion, G., (2017). European fscal union: Economic rationale and design challenges. CEPS Working Document no. 2017/01. January.

Trichet, J.-C. (2011). Building Europe, building institutions. Speech by the president of the ECB on receiving the Karlspreis, 2 June 2011. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/ key/date/2011/html/sp110602.en.html. Accessed 4 October 2017.

Villeroy de Galhau, F. (2016). Europe at a crossroads: How to achieve effcient economic governance in the euro area? Speech at Bruegel in Brussels on 22 March 2016. http://bruegel.org/2016/03/europe-at-a-crossroads-how-to-achieve-effcient-economic- governance-in-the-euro-area/. Accessed 14 September 2017.

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Werner, P. (1970). Report to the Council and the Commission on the realization by stages of economic and monetary union in the Community. Council–Commission of the European Communities. October. http://aei.pitt.edu/1002/1/monetary_werner_fnal.pdf. Accessed 4 October 2017.

Hans Geeroms, Ph.D., is Professor of EU Economic Policy at the College of Europe and KU Leuven (Brussels). He has served as advisor on EU matters to several Belgian prime ministers.

230 European View (2017) 16:231–238 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12290-017-0460-8

ARTICLE

Regional cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe and its implications for the EU

Viktória Jančošekovà

Published online: 13 December 2017 © The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication

Abstract regional cooperation is mutually benefcial collaboration between neighbouring countries. This holds regardless of whether it is a matter of cooperation between the Benelux countries, the Nordic–Baltic states, France and Germany, or the Visegrád countries. The last-mentioned countries’ dismissive attitude to tackling the migration crisis has thrust them into the limelight. The most recent cooperative forums in the Central Eastern Europe region, such as the Slavkov Triangle and the Three Seas Initiative, evidence a new dynamic and a regrouping of forces on the basis of national interests and EU themes. Western and Eastern Europe have different approaches to the most pressing challenges, such as migration. These differences have caused deep divisions between their respective leaders. However, the disagreements on the migration issue and the future of the EU notwithstanding, regional cooperation among the Central and Eastern European countries remains valuable in areas that include the integration process, security and defence.

Keywords Regional cooperation | Visegrád group | Three Seas Initiative | Slavkov Triangle | ‘Hard core’ of the EU

V. Jančošekovà (*) Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, Rue du Commerce 20, 1000 Brussels, Belgium e-mail: [email protected]

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Introduction

Regional cooperation is mutually benefcial collaboration between neighbouring countries. This holds regardless of whether it is a matter of cooperation between the Benelux countries; the Nordic–Baltic states; Poland, Germany and France as members of the Weimar Triangle; France and Germany as such; or the Visegrád countries. The most recent cooperative forums in Central and Eastern European (CEE), such as the Slavkov Triangle (S3) or the Three Seas Initiative (TSI), evidence a regrouping of forces on the basis of national interests and European themes. All these new initiatives may signal a shift in the distribution of forces in the region.

Consisting of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, the Visegrád Group (V4) has been in existence for 25 years. Having fulflled its main goal, the integration of its countries in the EU and NATO, the V4 countries have recently been thrust into the limelight on the European level. The refusal to accept asylum seekers has severely damaged the image of the V4 countries, which have been accused of a lack of solidarity.

The already tarnished image of the V4 has suffered even more due to the steps taken by the Hungarian and Polish governments in defance of the Brussels institutions. Vik- tor Orbán quite openly declares that he wants to make Hungary a secure place for European Christians. Jarosław Kaczyński, with his populist national–conservative Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS), could change the direction of Poland through his pursuit of conservative patriotism. Both leaders have recently stepped up their rhetoric against the EU institutions. They are trying to frame the current confict as a wider battle for the soul of Europe. It is a battle that pits a younger, poorer, more conservative and more dynamic East against an older, richer, more liberal and more stagnant Western Europe, and especially against its elites.

The atmosphere is somewhat better in Slovakia and in the Czech Republic. Slova- kia has mitigated its stance on migration since the EU Court of Justice rejected the quota challenge at the beginning of September 2017. The migration theme has been superseded by other issues: the future of the EU and the place of Slovakia in its ‘hard core’—with Poland and Hungary rejecting any consideration of a multi-speed Union. On account of this new agenda, the headlines have spoken of a crisis within the V4 or even its demise. Relations within the V4 have been further complicated by the intensifying cooperation between the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria in the S3. Poland, until recently a regional leader and currently an anti-Brussels rebel, has been endeavouring to consolidate its foreign policy position through the TSI with the support of the US.

What’s going on in the V4?

With its rejection of refugee quotas, the V4 became a focus of public attention. Hav- ing earlier tended to accept the general EU agenda in a rather passive manner, the V4 countries suddenly adopted a very active position (Center for European Policy Analysis

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2016). The intensifying debate over the future of the EU has started to reveal differences of opinion within the V4 itself. The emerging forms of regional cooperation, such as the S3 and the TSI, may signal a shift in the distribution of power in the region. An even greater concern has been raised over Hungary’s and Poland’s attacks on independent democratic institutions.

For the last two years, power in Poland has been de facto held by Jarosław Kaczyński, who has made the tragic death of his brother a decisive element of his political identity (Onderčanin 2017). In 2010 former Polish President Lech Kaczyński died in an air crash, and the tragedy became part of a political struggle that divided the country into two camps. In May 2017 the stifing atmosphere in the country found its refection on the European level when Poland was the only country that did not support the candidacy of Donald Tusk to the offce of the president of the European Council. PiS holds that, as Polish prime minister at the time of the crash, Tusk failed to have the tragedy investi- gated in a proper manner. By adopting controversial laws and gaining control over the constitutional court, large parts of the judiciary and the media, Kaczyński has dragged Poland into a dispute with the Union. As if this friction with Brussels was not enough, Poland has also engaged in disputes with its neighbours. Most recently, it has reopened with Germany the issue of war reparations. The country is deeply polarised, and the only hope of reversing the situation may lie with President Andrzej Duda. Until recently considered a puppet of Kaczyński, Duda stood up to him by refusing to sign certain reform laws concerning the judiciary.

Hungary is another country in CEE that has become a source of concern. Orbán has been in power since 2010 and, in all probability, will continue to lead the country after the 2018 parliamentary elections. A controversial fgure at the European level, Orbán has also polarised the political debate within Hungary. In 2014 Hungary followed Bul- garia in erecting fences along the border with Turkey to stem the fow of refugees coming along the Balkan route. Towards the end of last August, Orbán asked European Commission President Juncker for a ‘solidarity’ payment of around 440 million euros to partly reimburse the construction costs. He argues that Hungary has saved Europe from further migratory pressures (WebNoviny 2017).

The Czech Republic held parliamentary elections in October 2017. Before they took place, some commentators had claimed that the outcome would be decisive for the character of the country: for whether the Czech Republic would continue to be a liberal representative democracy. As expected, the winner was Andrej Babiš, a Slovak-born oligarch who controls the media and the agricultural sector, and is presently the second- wealthiest person in the Czech Republic. His campaign was directed against the traditional political parties, which he accuses of being responsible for corruption. Before the election Babiš had been stripped of parliamentary immunity to allow investigation into an alleged fraudulent use of EU funds. Moreover, he is suspected of having collabo- rated with the former Communist secret police. His Action of Dissatisfed Citizens (Akce nespokojených občanů, ANO 2011) movement has no ideological anchoring, and thus hardly anybody can tell what course the Czech Republic will take now that Babiš has

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become prime minister. What is known is that deeper European integration and adoption of the euro are not among his priorities.

Compared to the other V4 countries, Slovakia may seem an oasis of stability. But appearances can be deceptive. Fico’s campaign in 2016 was based on his migration scaremongering. In recent months migration has been replaced by the new theme of Slovakia’s future in the core of the EU. ‘The fundamentals of my policy are being close to the (EU) core, close to France, to Germany’ (Jancarikova 2017). Fico made this statement at a press conference with Juncker at the end of July, when he was mandated by the V4 to lobby for better-quality food in the CEE region. By insisting that Slovakia belongs among the core countries of the EU, Fico is primarily distancing himself from the strongest opposition party, Freedom and Solidarity (Sloboda a Solidarita), which is Eurosceptic. The truth of the matter is that Slovakia does not need to fght its way into the inner core as it is the only V4 member in the eurozone. The bigger challenge will be whether Slovakia has the determination to tackle the most serious Euro- pean problems, such as migration. While Poland and Hungary make no secret of their contentious attitude towards the Brussels institutions, Slovakia is determined to stay in the hard core of the EU. It is thus obvious that the current situation in the V4 is not ideal for adopting a common approach to the present-day European themes. Divisions within the EU will also continue over sanctions against the Russian government and the war in Eastern Ukraine. Poland, traditionally a strong critic of Russian policies, views the geopolitical aspirations of the Russian president as a threat to its very existence. Slovakia and Hungary, on the other hand, take a more pragmatic stance, and the Czech Presi- dent is openly pro-Russia. It needs to be recognised, however, that the V4 countries continue to adhere to the EU line on sanctions against Russia (Nič and Dostál 2016). That Slovakia is pursuing deeper eurozone integration means that the V4 group is not a political monolith. The V4 alliance remains a forum for consultation and coordination, and it will continue to serve as the frst platform for identifying areas where the members’ individual agendas may overlap. Another reason that the V4 group has continued to function within the EU is that the alliance is not and never has been a straitjacket preventing individual member states from formulating and asserting their own positions where they consider it vital (Korčok 2017).

The weight of the V4 will be demonstrated again in the 2020–6 fnancial framework and cohesion policy negotiations since all four countries are net benefciaries and share the same interests (Center for European Policy Analysis 2016). At any rate, the V4 can make a positive contribution to the transformation of the countries of the Eastern Part- nership and Western Balkans, as the enlargement process continues to be one of the priorities of the V4. After all, it should be in the interest of the V4 not to stand aside when the future functioning of the EU is redefned. To be able to participate in the process, the countries must be ready to actively help address common problems. Having been in existence for a quarter of a century, the alliance could return to its roots and renew some of its founding principles, such as the principle of solidarity.

234 European View (2017) 16:231–238

Three Seas Initiative

The TSI is an informal alliance of CEE countries situated between the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Seas: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lat- via, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. The main objective of the initiative is to connect the northern and southern regions since, after the fall of Communism, all efforts and funds were concentrated on connecting Western and Eastern Europe. The initiative aims at modernising the infrastructure connecting north and south in the areas of energy, transport and telecommunications. Cooperation in the energy feld is aimed at reducing dependence on Russia. The initiative was promoted by Polish Presi- dent Duda, who had signalled such a cooperative alliance in his 2015 inaugural speech (Presidency of the Republic of Poland 2015).

The idea itself is not new. A similar arrangement had been envisaged in the 1920s under the name ‘Intermarium’. Aimed at promoting cooperation among CEE countries, it built on the legacy of the Polish–Lithuanian union. This geopolitically vulnerable area was to become a buffer zone between USSR expansionism and the rise of nationalism in Germany. However, the plan was never implemented. One reason for this was that the countries invited to join were concerned about Poland having too much infuence. Some perceive the failure of the Intermarium project as the key reason for the adverse fate of CEE countries after the Second World War, when most of them fell to the Soviet Union (Chodakiewicz 2013).

The visibility of the initiative received a signifcant boost in June 2017 when US Presi- dent Donald Trump participated in the second TSI summit in Warsaw. Several of the countries involved were concerned about the Intermarium’s links to neo-imperialism and thus were apprehensive about holding the summit (Lewicki 2017). Moreover, these countries found that Poland’s push for war reparations from Germany and Hungary’s troubled relationship with the EU were creating an East–West gap that they did not want to be associated with. At the summit Trump confrmed the delivery of liquefed natural gas, which even now is being shipped on a trial basis to the Polish port of Swinoujscie. This is clearly a disturbing situation for some of Germany’s large energy companies. It is equally disturbing for Germany’s Social Democrats, whose Nord Stream 2 project to bring gas supplies directly from Russia would make Europe even more dependent on Russian gas (The Economist 2017).

Time will tell whether the Poles seriously pursue this project or whether it is only a short-term manoeuvre to increase their visibility and strengthen their position in the CEE region. It is worth noting that it is Poland that has been responsible for several years’ delay in the construction of the north–south motorway connection with Slovakia that was one of the V4 goals. It is thus too soon to talk about the viability of the TSI. The member countries’ highly divergent national interests should also be mentioned. Whether the TSI will replace more natural and more manoeuvrable forms of regional cooperation, such as the V4, will depend on how successful it is.

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Slavkov Triangle

Since January 2015 a new forum for cooperation has emerged on the CEE scene, this time involving the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria. This is the S3, which aims to strengthen the region and pull Austria into the CEE sphere. The S3 has historical signifcance as Slavkov is the site of the well-known battle in 1805 where Napoleon secured what is considered his greatest victory. Whether this region will allow French President Emmanuel Macron, too, to score a victory by preventing the infux of cheap labour in the form of posted workers from CEE countries—a practice he labels as ‘social dump- ing’—will be seen in the future. To discuss this topic, Macron chose the S3 over the V4, even though most posted workers come from Poland. Poland and Hungary stand out as the countries with which France has strained relations because of their lack of solidarity in the migration crisis and their rule-of-law violations. Macron preferred to discuss the reform of the European directive on posted workers with the more compliant Czech Republic and Slovakia, both of which have the ambition to be in the hard core of the EU. For now, Macron has emerged victorious from the meeting because the leaders of these two countries, pursuing the ambition just mentioned, did not ask Macron to do what he is asking of the CEE countries: they did not ask French companies in Slovakia to pay French minimum wages to their Slovak employees.

The meeting between the French president and the Czech and Slovak prime ministers (but without Poland and Hungary) could forebode a gradual decline in the signifcance of the V4. Unsurprisingly, the S3 initiative has raised concerns among the other V4 members. In particular, Poland has asked for assurances that the S3 is not meant to be a substitute for the V4.

Conclusion

Regional cooperation will continue, but its forms will vary depending on the issues pre- vailing on the European scene and on their importance to the countries involved. The regional forms of cooperation that have been discussed all have a common denomi- nator: economic cooperation aimed at strengthening and developing the region. This dimension promises extensive cooperation between individual countries in the region, which would strengthen the economy of the EU as a whole. The irreplaceable role of the CEE region remains that of assisting the Western Balkan and Eastern Partnership countries in their transformation process.

However, there are different views on how to tackle the most pressing issues, including migration, asylum policy and the further functioning of the EU. These differences necessitate greater emphasis on communication: a forum for discussion is needed, as is better understanding of individual positions. For example, the regular meetings of the V4 prime ministers that are held before each European Council should be extended to include the participation of the French president and of other European leaders as well. This would send a positive signal about the readiness of both sides to discuss

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controversial issues and to come to a better understanding of the positions held by others. In his recent State of the Union speech, Juncker said, ‘Europe must breathe with both lungs. Otherwise our continent will struggle for air’ (Juncker 2017). He was referring to the gap between the East and the West and seemed to be seeking greater involvement from the CEE region.

The importance and the dynamics of regional cooperation offer two lessons. First, the EU is a highly diverse grouping of states. And these states—including the large ones, such as Germany and France—should realise that they have a future only if everyone sits at the same table. European institutions should understand that excessive centralisation can be counterproductive and may provoke resistance from individual countries or regional groupings. Secondly, it seems as if after its integration into the EU and NATO, the V4 group lost its main vision. But the same goes for the EU as a whole: if it fnds new inspiration, it may forge closer links with the V4 again.

References

Center for European Policy Analysis. (2016). The view at 25. 28 September. http://cepa. org/The-View-at-25. Accessed 27 September 2017.

Chodakiewicz, M. J., ed. (2013). Intermarium: The land between the Black and Baltic Seas. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

Jancarikova, T. (2017). Slovakia’s future is with core EU, not with Eurosceptic eastern nations: PM. Reuters, 15 August. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-slovakia-politics- eu/slovakias-future-is-with-core-eu-not-eurosceptic-eastern-nations-pm-idUSKCN1A- V1YY. Accessed 27 September 2017.

Juncker, J.-C. (2017). State of the Union address 2017. 13 September. http://europa. eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-17-3165_en.htm. Accessed 27 September 2017.

Korčok, I. (2017). Poliaci sa starajú o svoj zlotý, Maďari o forint, my o naše euro. Nez- namená to, že sa V4 rozpadá. [The Poles and Hungarians will look after their currencies and the Slovaks after the euro: This doesn’t mean that the V4 will fall apart]. DenníkN, 7 September. https://dennikn.sk/874071/poliaci-sa-staraju-o-svoj-zloty-madari-o-forint- my-o-nase-euro-neznamena-to-ze-sa-v4-rozpada/. Accessed 27 September 2017.

Lewicki, G. (2017). The Three Seas Initiative will strengthen Europe. Visegrad Insight, 3 July. http://visegradinsight.eu/the-three-seas-initiative-will-strengthen- europe/. Accessed 27 September 2017.

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Nič, M., & Dostál, V. (2016). Ak sa V4 rozíde s Bruselom, vítˇazom bude Rusko. [Rus- sia will win if the V4 breaks with Brussels]. Denník N, 18 January. https://dennikn. sk/346270/sa-v4-rozide-bruselom-vitazom-rusko/. Accessed 27 September 2017.

Onderčanin, L. (2017). Vášáryová: Kedˇ sa Poľsko a Madˇarsko dohadujú bez nás, musíme bytˇ opatrní. [We have to be careful when Poland and Hungary speak without us]. SME, 25 July, https://svet.sme.sk/c/20611460/vasaryova-polsko-zaziva-svoj-meci- arizmus-uz-sme-ho-predbehli.html. Accessed 16 October 2017.

Presidency of the Republic of Poland. (2015). Address by the President of the Repub- lic of Poland Mr Andrzej Duda before the National Assembly. 6 August. http://www. president.pl/en/news/art,7,address-by-the-president-of-the-republic-of-poland-mr- andrzej-duda-before-the-national-assembly.html. Accessed 27 September 2017.

The Economist. (2017). Germany fears Donald Trump will divide Europe. 14 July. http:// www.economist.com/news/europe/21725025-angela-merkel-troubled-presidents-chum- miness-putin-and-poland-germany-fears-donald/comments?page 1. Accessed 27 = September 2017.

Urbanskaya, T., & Honcharov, K. (2015). Intermarium alliance: Will the idea become reality? Unian, 12 August. https://www.unian.info/politics/1110820-intermarium-alliance- will-the-idea-become-reality.html. Accessed 27 September 2017.

WebNoviny. (2017). Orbán žiada milióny eur od Európskej únie, chce preplatitˇ náklady za ploty proti migrantom. [Orbán calls for millions of euros from the EU to reimburse the cost of anti-migrant fences]. 1 September. https://www.webnoviny.sk/orban-ziada-mil- iony-eur-od-europskej-unie-chce-preplatit-naklady-za-ploty-proti-migrantom/. Accessed 27 September 2017.

Viktória Jancˇošekovà manages the offce of the president of the Wilfried Martens Centre for European studies. During Slovakia’s transformation and integration period (1998–2006), she was head of the offce of then Prime Minister of Slovakia Mikuláš Dzurinda. Later she worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at the Slovak Parliament. Her research focuses on developments in Central and Eastern Europe and on the Visegrád Group in particular.

238 European View (2017) 16:239–249 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12290-017-0459-1

ARTICLE

Geopolitics and security in the Arctic: what role for the EU? Andreas Østhagen

Published online: 27 November 2017 © The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication

Abstract The Arctic has received considerable attention over the last decade due to climate change, positive resource appraisals and the increased military presence in the region. Portrayals range from those that warn of impending conficts to those that emphasise the region’s unique cooperative environment. To what extent are the generalisations about Arctic security and geopolitics accurate? What fuels these generalisations? Moreover, what is the role of the EU in this changing geopolitical environment? This article examines the causes of confict in the Arctic and argues that the disputes over territory, resources and the North Pole are limited in magnitude. At the same time, the security dynamics within the Arctic are relevant, given each state’s relations to Rus- sia. The EU’s role, however, is less a geopolitical one and more concerned with two dimensions, namely awareness and support. For EU policymakers and decision-makers, understanding the complexities of the north should take priority over re-inventing the Union’s role in the region.

A. Østhagen (*) Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Fridtjof Nansens Vei 17, 1366 Lysaker, Norway e-mail: [email protected]

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Introduction

At the start of the millennium, researchers, media and policymakers alike began making a range of claims about the future of the Arctic region. The Arctic was portrayed as the world’s new energy frontier and the next arena for geopolitical confict (Grindheim 2009). Coupled with these claims were positive estimates of the region’s hydrocarbon resources (USGS 2008; Hobér 2011; Claes and Moe 2014) and the lure of fnally making use of the northern ‘shortcut’ to Asia for shipping (Ho 2011; Jakobson 2010; Østreng 1999). As a result of all this, the region attracted considerable attention worldwide. In the aftermath, a number of scholars portrayed the Arctic as a region where empirical analysis could support predictions of imminent confict (Borgerson 2008; Huebert 2013; Sale and Potapov 2010; Ho 2011).

In 2008 the European Commission focused attention on the Arctic when it stated that ‘the overall effect is that climate change will fuel existing conficts over deplet- ing resources, especially where access to those resources is politicised’ (Solana and Ferrero-Waldner 2008, 3). In the predictions of confict in the Arctic, Russia holds centre stage. Since 2007 there has been an increase in the number of fights by Russian bombers, which fy along the north Norwegian coast or across the North Pole from the Kola Peninsula (Hilde 2014; Expert Commission 2015, 17, 20). Russia has been increasing its investment in military infrastructure in the Arctic: it has constructed new military bases in the north, manufactured up to 40 new icebreakers and established two special ‘Arctic brigades’ (Conley and Rohloff 2015, 9; see also Osborn 2017). When Russia’s relationships with the other Arctic states—Canada, the US, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark (Greenland) and Iceland—began to deteriorate in 2014, headlines warning about an imminent confrontation in the north reappeared in the media (Dough- erty 2015). Writers have concluded that the Arctic has become militarised, that littoral states have been placing pieces on the chessboard in advance of an imminent geopolitical confict.

Scholars have shown, however, that such hastily-arrived-at views are inaccurate. Over the past decade they have produced more nuanced depictions of the dynamics both within the region as a whole and amongst various players with a stake in the Arctic (Hoogensen Gjørv and Goloviznina 2014; Tamnes and Offerdal 2014b; Greaves and Lackenbauer 2016). Building on these studies, this article seeks to answer the following questions: What are the current security dynamics in the Arctic? And what role should the EU play?

The race for resources

The increase in activity does not imply that a stand-off is imminent. The foremost argument of those who believe there will be a confict over the Arctic has been the region’s abundance of resources. But this argument is not supported by the facts concerning the location and accessibility of these resources. The lion’s share of them—both onshore

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and offshore—are located in the territories or economic zones of the Arctic states themselves. Estimates vary since the total quantity of the resources is still somewhat uncer- tain. All the same, approximately 90% of the oil and gas resources of the circumpolar north are already under the control of the littoral states (Claes and Moe 2014). This situation fuels, not a race northward to grab unclaimed resources, but a desire for stable operating environments to extract costly resources far from their prospective markets (Keil 2014).

This is linked to other factors, namely the lack of economic proftability in the Arctic and the slow pace of offshore resource development. Here, again, there has been a tendency to generalise across the region and speak of ‘Arctic resources’. The truth is that the accessibility of resources and the potential for exploiting them vary greatly from region to region (Harsem et al. 2011). Oil and gas production is already taking place in the Barents Sea, an offshore area where more than 100 exploratory wells have been drilled. Climatic conditions are different in the waters around Greenland and Alaska, as is the availability of infrastructure, which means that companies operating in these regions are faced with a different economic reality (Østhagen 2013). Thus, it is diffcult to make generalisations about resource development in the Arctic. Indeed, the harsh climate, the distances involved and the lack of infrastructure make it questionable whether the littoral states will even be able to exploit the resources in their own economic zones (Łuszczuk et al. 2014).

Moreover, the Arctic riches have been almost completely allocated to the various states in the region. The largest maritime border dispute—between Norway and Rus- sia over the Barents Sea—was settled in 2010 (Hoel 2014). Minor border disputes exist between the US and Canada over the Beaufort Sea and between Canada and Green- land (Denmark) over the Lincoln Strait. But these disagreements will arguably not give rise to conficts of any appreciable scale (Byers and Østhagen 2017). The oft-cited dispute between Canada, Denmark/Greenland and Russia over who can claim the North Pole seabed is unlikely to become anything more than a diplomatic confict. As Byers (2014) contends, the North Pole is a distraction. The Arctic states have neither the economic nor the strategic incentive to undertake any signifcant operations to assert and establish further claims over the seabed of the North Pole. Symbolism is undoubtedly of great value, but the cost of North Pole operations is not matched by the Pole’s perceived gains (Byers 2013, 281–3). Even if we do see a spike in worldwide commodity prices in the next decade, Arctic resource extraction will remain a specialised, localised and costly affair. Conditions and thresholds vary across the Arctic, but an oil price of at least $50–$60 per barrel—and for certain regions even $100—is needed for operations to be commercially viable (Łuszczuk et al. 2014; Mathiesen 2015). In contrast to the South China Sea—which is often used as a point of comparison with the Arctic— the maritime and territorial disputes have been settled, and positive-sum outcomes are attainable.

Consequently, the Arctic states all have an interest in creating a favourable political environment for investment and economic development. The expectations of a scramble for resources have been founded on thin ice. Outright military confict with other

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states to claim a limited quantity of out-of-bounds offshore resources—many of which look likely to remain unexplored for at least the next couple of decades—is neither eco- nomically nor politically proftable. The argument that the race for resources will result in an outright confict over the Arctic does not hold.

Security dynamics

In 2007 Russia planted its fag on the seabed below the North Pole. The following year, in response to the ensuing outcry and to concerns about the ‘lack of governance’ in the Arctic,1 the fve Arctic coastal states convened in Ilulissat, Greenland to declare the Arc- tic a region of cooperation. They also affrmed their intentions to work within established international arrangements and agreements, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.2 Since Ilulissat the mantra of all the Arctic states has been cooperation, as stated in the relatively streamlined Arctic policy and strategy documents (Heininen 2012). The Arctic Council’s emergence as the primary forum for regional affairs in the Arctic plays into this since the organisation serves as an arena where the states can portray themselves as working harmoniously towards common goals, while still retaining their veto rights (Young 2010). As Tamnes and Offerdal argue, ‘[d]iscord does exist, but the main characteristics of the region are cooperation, stability and peace’ (2014a, 167). This situation was not changed by the events in Ukraine in 2014 as the Arctic states have made efforts to keep the region separate from the geopolitics of Ukraine, the Middle East and the Korean peninsula (Østhagen 2016).

The Arctic’s importance to national security and defence policies also varies considerably across the region. The dividing line appears to lie between the European Arctic and its North American counterpart, falling together with variations in climatic conditions. Whereas the north Norwegian and the north-west Russian coastlines are ice-free during winter, the ice—although in decline—is an ever-constant factor in the Alaskan, Canadian and Greenlandic Arctic (Hilde 2014). Due to the sheer size and inaccessibil- ity of the region, spillover of security issues between the various parts of the Arctic is in turn relatively limited. Despite the rhetoric suggesting otherwise, Russian investment in Arctic troops and infrastructure has had very little impact on Canada’s security outlook (Lackenbauer 2011). Indeed, Russian actions with bomber and fghter planes may cause alarm, but the real threat to Alaska and the Canadian Arctic is limited.

On the other hand, the Arctic states themselves are not exempt from confict and instability. Although a struggle over the Arctic is not cause for immediate concern, the regional relationships with Russia in the Arctic cannot be completely sheltered from further dete- rioration in the relationships between the Kremlin and certain of the Arctic states. Despite the emphasis on governance and regime building by the Arctic nations’ foreign ministries, an amicable regional order is not an inherent and unchallenged trait of the region. The

1 See the sections in the European Parliament’s resolution of 9 October 2008 that describe the need for a new Arctic governance structure (European Parliament 2008). 2 The document can be found here: http://www.oceanlaw.org/downloads/arctic/Ilulissat_Declaration.pdf.

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Arctic states have a multitude of interests at play simultaneously, and some of these clash with the idea of a peaceful region. In particular, this concerns sovereignty enforcement by maintaining a military presence in the north and the occurrence of small-scale disputes over the protection of sovereign rights—including rights related to fshing. Although the Arctic states have dedicated themselves to ensuring that the region remains peaceful and a place of cooperation, security infringements can still occur. The strategic importance of the Arctic for the European countries, especially Norway and Russia, should not be underestimated when discussing Arctic security. The situation in the north is therefore more complex than the confict/non-confict scenarios might suggest.

What role for the EU in Arctic security?

Within this security environment, what role is there for the EU? An ambivalence char- acterises the EU’s involvement in the Arctic. On the one hand, the Union has an obvious presence in the north in terms of market access and regulation; its member states Finland, Sweden and Denmark; and its various relationships with the other Arctic states. On the other hand, the EU’s efforts to become involved constructively in the Arctic have proved both controversial and complex over the last decade. First, it does not have direct access to the Arctic Ocean, a situation that has led some to question the extent of its relevance to the Arctic (Stępień and Raspotnik 2015). Second, some of the strategic documents on the Arctic published by both the European Commission (2008, 2012) and the European Parliament (2008, 2011) have a slightly paternalistic tone: they portray the EU as the solution to the region’s growing problems. Debates in Brussels at the time seemed to have been caught in a struggle between those who wanted to utilise the Arc- tic as a symbol of climate change and human inaction, and those who preferred a moderate approach that was sensitive to the Arctic states and their indigenous populations (Raspotnik and Østhagen 2014). These debates have not always been well received in Norway, Iceland, Canada, Russia or the US (Offerdal 2011; Østhagen and Raspotnik 2015). Finally, the EU’s own commitment to the region has fuctuated as more pressing issues have arisen on the agenda.

Nevertheless, on account of its geography and policy links with the Arctic, the EU has an overriding interest in participating in the international debate on the region. Addition- ally, internal systemic interests and foreign policy aspirations are driving the EU towards developing its own Arctic policy. The Union’s ‘Global Strategy’ for its foreign and security policy refers to the Arctic as an area of interest, especially in relations with Russia (European Union 2016). And in 2016 the Commission and the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy published the third version of the EU’s Arctic policy (European Commission 2016), following the two earlier communications issued by the Commission on the Arctic (European Commission 2008, 2012). Since 2008, EU policymaking has thus progressed towards a more nuanced, moderate approach that takes into account the existing regional regimes and the complexities of the region.3

3 For a more in-depth analysis of developments in the EU’s Arctic policy, see Stępień and Raspotnik 2015, and Keil and Raspotnik 2014.

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The EU does indeed have a clear, though limited, role to play in the Arctic. This role should centre less on direct action in the region and more on awareness and support. In terms of awareness, the EU should participate in relevant meetings in the north, such as those organised by the Arctic Council, the Barents Regional Council and the Arctic Coast Guard Forum. Knowing what is happening in the region, while also establishing working relations with the main players (states, indigenous groups, companies, and local and regional governments) will be crucial when, or if, the EU needs to become more involved in the Arctic.

In terms of support, the EU has the potential to encourage further local and regional business development through its research funds and innovation mechanisms, which are directly applicable to Sweden, Finland and Greenland, and applicable to an extent to Norway and Iceland. It can help set high standards for EU players’ activities in the Arctic, ranging from tourism to shipping and fsheries. Moreover, it can serve as a platform for low-level cooperation and dialogue with Russia in the north, in domains where all parties beneft from cooperation, such as trade, environmental protection and emergency preparedness.4

The EU’s direct security role in the Arctic, however, is restricted. It can assist and encourage dialogue through forums such as the Northern Chiefs of Defence Forum and Arctic Security Forces Roundtable. It can assist with intelligence sharing, and its member states can contribute to maritime security operations if needed. However, for four of the fve Arctic coastal states, the primary security guarantee comes through NATO. Moreover, as the region is relatively peaceful and amicable, the actual need for security operations and a clear EU presence is limited.

Conclusion

Concern about outright confict over the Arctic is largely inaccurate. It does not communicate the essence of the more nuanced discussions of this vast region and the differing roles it plays in the security outlook of the Arctic states. The potential for confict in the Arctic should not be overstated, but neither should it be ignored. The region still stands as a theatre for potential clashes with Russia. Yet this has little to do with symbolic quarrels over the North Pole, and everything to do with the relationship between Russia and the other Arctic states—both regionally and globally. When thinking about Arctic security, it is more relevant to divide the area into sub-regions: the North American Arc- tic and the Eurasian Arctic.

It is not possible to boil the dynamics of this region down to the mutually exclusive options of confict or no-confict. Under certain circumstances small-scale conficts in parts of the Arctic are possible. In such situations, it is the relationship between Russia and the other Arctic states that determines the parameters for the security environment.

4 These suggestions are based on a study conducted in June 2016 by the author and Andreas Raspotnik on behalf of the North Norway European Offce in Brussels (Østhagen and Raspotnik 2016).

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This is the case especially for incidents involving resource management where coastal states are safeguarding sovereign rights. Within this environment the EU has a particular role to play, albeit not a leading one. It can ensure that its member states and institutions (and related players) are aware of the complexities in the region, whether these relate to the livelihoods of indigenous peoples or to Russia’s (or other Arctic states’) military investments. Similarly, it can support northern development through mechanisms devised for research and innovation. These points are limited in their direct relevance to security matters and are less relevant to the EU as a geopolitical player in its own neighbourhood. Yet they speak to the complexities of the northern part of the world and to the EU’s relationship with it.

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Andreas Østhagen is a Research Fellow at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Oslo, Norway. He is also a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and a Senior Fellow and Leadership Group member at the Arctic Institute. He is an affliated fellow at the High North Center at Nord University Business School. He holds a Master of Science in Euro- pean and international affairs from the London School of Economics.

249 1 3 European View (2017) 16:251–260 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12290-017-0451-9

ARTICLE

The race for climate leadership in the era of Trump and multilevel governance Eva Palacková

Published online: 30 October 2017 © The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication

Abstract president Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change, albeit predictable, presents both challenges and opportunities for the global system of multilevel governance. Various stakeholders are ready to fll the void, including other world leaders, such as the EU, and in particular Germany; US state actors, such as California; and even cities and businesses. Whatever the outcome, the reaffrmed joint commitment to implementing the climate targets is good news for the planet.

E. Palacková (*) European People’s Party, Rue du Commerce 10, 1000 Brussels, Belgium e-mail: [email protected]

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Introduction

The election of Donald J. Trump as forty-sixth US president left many of the world’s leaders at a crossroads, as they had been on course to tackle global warming together. Trump’s disavowing stance on climate change had long been known, and was further confrmed when he appointed long-time Environmental Protection Agency critic Scott Pruitt to lead the agency (Mooney et al. 2016). This was followed by the undoing of Obama’s environmental and climate legacy by rescinding the limits for power plant emissions and, most signifcantly, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement (Environ- mental Protection Agency 2017). In light of these events, this article analyses the international system of multilevel governance and its opportunities for conducting climate policy in the absence of the US leadership.

The winding road to and from the Paris Agreement

On 1 June 2017, a little over four months after his inauguration, President Trump announced that the US would withdraw from the Paris Agreement—the withdrawal was later formally submitted to the UN. It is necessary to review what preceded this announcement. In December 2015 the frst-ever legally binding global agreement on climate change was settled, as 195 governments signed up to the goal of limiting global warming to well below the level of a 2°C increase. This agreement was ratifed less than a year after its adoption. What made this possible?

To enter into force, the agreement had to be ratifed by at least 55 countries representing at least 55% of global emissions. This was expected to be a long process, subject to cumbersome confrmations by national parliaments—yet it was hoped that it would be a smoother process than the ratifcation of the Kyoto Protocol, which took more than seven years. But, perhaps as the momentum of the euphoria from Paris lin- gered in the coming months, one by one, the signatories proceeded with their national ratifcations.

The real breakthrough came on 3 September 2016 on the sidelines of the G20 Sum- mit, when the US and China, together responsible for 40% of the world’s carbon emissions, sealed their countries’ participation in the Paris Agreement. This was especially important for US President Obama, who wanted to leave behind a legacy before the November presidential elections. With the US and China in, and the other big emitters, including Brazil, Canada and India, on track to ratify during the autumn of 2016, the EU found itself at risk of not being party to the agreement at the moment of its entry into force—rather an embarrassing prospect given the EU’s history of leadership in climate action, as well as the fact that the deal was struck on its soil. An extraordinary Environ- ment Council was called by the Slovak Presidency and, at last, an unprecedented deal was brokered that allowed the EU to ratify the agreement when it had not yet been ratifed by all 28 EU member states. The Paris Agreement thus entered into force on 4

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November 2016, less than year after its adoption—a record time for any international agreement.

The term ‘agreement’ is important here and, indeed, it is no coincidence that the word ‘treaty’ is nowhere to be found in its text. For the US to ratify any international treaty, it must be approved by two-thirds of the Senate, which at the time was held by a Repub- lican majority. Obama, aware of this constitutional hurdle, asserted that it was merely an executive agreement and ratifed it by executive order, thus bypassing the Senate. Some might argue that this was a short-sighted move by the president, as it risked that the executive order would be immediately reversed by his successor. On the other hand, the commitment of the US and China paved the way for the record-speed ratifcation of the Agreement and sent an important signal to the rest of the world about the seriousness of the issue of climate change and global willingness to tackle it.

Time to shine for the EU’s stars

While there are signs that the US’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is not set in stone, and legally it would not be effective before November 2020 anyway, it does leave a vacuum in global climate leadership.

The EU is a natural contender to fll this vacuum, since for almost a decade it has prided itself on being a leader in climate action. It would also not be the frst time it has found itself having to drive forward an international climate accord that the US has rejected. In 1998 the Kyoto Protocol was adopted under President Clinton but, with the Senate vehemently rejecting the treaty, he never submitted it for a vote. In March 2001, his successor, George W. Bush, announced that the US would not ratify it, as the accord exempted 80% of the world, including major players such as China and India, from compliance. The EU took the helm in the global fght against climate change, committed itself to the Kyoto targets and successfully brokered an agreement with Japan and Russia to enable ratifcation of the Protocol (Schreurs and Tiberghien 2007). Domestically, the EU implemented the world’s frst and still biggest international carbon emissions trading system as the cornerstone of its policy to combat climate change, and has put in place targets for carbon emissions, share of renewable energy and improving energy effciency, which are now being revised for the period up to 2030.

When President Trump announced the US’s withdrawal from the climate agreement, arguing that it would weaken the US economy and national sovereignty, it was feared that other big emitters, notably China, would also backtrack on their commitment. Instead it seems that the opposite is happening: the EU and China swiftly announced a joint ambition to implement the agreement (Boffey et al. 2017; Boffey and Neslen 2017). On 15 and 16 September, environment ministers from over 30 countries met in Mon- treal, Canada, co-hosted by the EU and China, to declare their continued commitment to the pact (European Commission 2017a). And while the ministers emphasised that the accord was irreversible and not open to renegotiation, there were suggestions that the US, witnessing the reaffrmation of the global ambition, was reviewing the terms on

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which it could be re-engaged or, as White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Wal- ters put it, could ‘re-enter on terms that are more favourable to our country’ (Al Jazeera 2017).

In his recent speech on the State of the European Union, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called on Europe to be the leader in the fght against climate change and, borrowing French President Macron’s dig at the Trump campaign, to ‘make our planet great again’ (Juncker 2017). And Europeans support this—according to the latest Eurobarometer survey published in September 2017, an overwhelming majority see climate change as a serious problem (European Commission 2017b). President Juncker has also called for a change in the EU’s decision-making to enable qualifed majority voting, thus stripping member states of the right of veto, on issues such as taxation. Granting the EU more authority in this area has previously been frantically opposed by the UK but, consequently, Brexit could pave the way for more ambitious climate policies, perhaps in the form of an EU energy tax.

Germany and California as pioneers of climate policy

Climate leadership can also be exercised from the state level. This is especially true for California in the US, as well as for Germany in the EU if we, for the purpose of comparison, take the EU’s federalist nature and Germany as one of its member states into account. Both Germany and California, the biggest economies on the two continents, have played a pivotal role in shaping, respectively, EU and federal US environmental and climate policies.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the response to the problem of climate change began in the 1970s and 1980s with vehicle emissions standards. California’s pioneering standards granted the state a special waiver from the federal government, allowing it to introduce its own emissions standards as long as they were not lower than the federal regulations (e.g. the Clean Air Act). As a result, other states could choose to either comply with the federal regulations, or uphold the more stringent California standards—a provision which continues to apply to date. In the absence of federal climate policies, California led the way. Early on, it adopted energy effciency standards for buildings and appliances. When the US failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, California pledged to reduce its emissions, established carbon-emission-reduction targets and put in place a cap-and-trade mechanism. After President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, California voted to extend its emissions trading mechanism up to 2030 (Milman 2017; BBC News 2017). Moreover, California is pushing the climate agenda through a number of regional alliances and has engaged in international agreements with Canada, China, Germany and Mexico to drive forward the implementation of the Paris Agreement (The Guardian 2017; Germany 2016b; Davenport and Nagourney 2017).

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While California is conducting its climate efforts in parallel with (or in the absence of) federal policy, Germany has been able to directly shape European climate legislation from within. Germany’s standards on vehicle emissions set the baseline for European harmonisation, mostly to avoid distortions to the common market. With the rising global consciousness about the threat of climate change in the late 1990s, Germany stood at the centre of development of European (and international) climate policy. It offered to host the seat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat in Bonn and chaired the frst Conference of the Parties meeting in Berlin. It was Angela Merkel, then Helmut Kohl’s environment minister, who helped to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol. Similarly, in 2007, under the German Presidency of the Council, the EU’s frst climate and energy targets for up to 2020 were adopted. Through diplomacy or by directly exerting its infuence in the Council of Ministers and the European Council, Germany continues to shape European climate policy to this day. Domestically, it has embarked on an energy transformation, or Energiewende,1 by 2050, with an emissions reduction target of 80%, and goals to reduce energy consumption by 50% and to raise the share of renewables in the mix to 80% (Graupner 2013). In 2016 it adopted an action plan to implement the Paris Agreement and become emissions neutral by 2050 (Germany 2016a). Moreover, the reinvigorated Franco-German alliance could pave the way for even more ambitious policy changes. France would be a natural partner for Germany to drive forward the climate agenda. The Paris Agreement was born on France’s soil and, since his election, President Macron has already announced ambitious plans to meet its targets, including an end to the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2040 (Chrisafs and Vaughan 2017). Shortly after Trump’s announcement of withdrawal from the climate accord, Germany and France announced that they would ‘grasp at new initiatives in order to ensure the climate agreement is a success’ (Watts and Connolly 2017).

Local push for a global fght

On the day of the announcement of the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, 377 US mayors, representing 67.7 million Americans, pledged to implement the Agree- ment’s climate goals (Climate Mayors 2017; Parker and Welch 2017). The New York Times reported that a group of mayors, governors, university presidents and businesses was negotiating with the UNFCCC to have its climate pledges submitted to the Paris Agreement (Tabuchi and Fountain 2017). UN Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that by redoubling their climate efforts, the cities, states and corporations could achieve, or even surpass, the US pledge to reduce its carbon emissions by 26% by 2025. The Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, who chairs a group of representatives of 40 major cities, said: ‘No matter what decision is made by the White House, cities are honouring their responsibilities

1 Energiewende refers to the transition in Germany to an environmentally sound, reliable and affordable energy supply, especially by phasing out fossil fuels and nuclear power, and by promoting energy effciency and renewable energy sources.

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to implement the Paris agreement. There is no alternative for the future of our planet’ (Watts and Connolly 2017). Later, in June, 7,400 city leaders met at the global covenant of mayors and pledged to work together to meet the climate targets.

These local pledges are not to be taken lightly, especially in the US, where urban areas account for 75% of the population and GDP production, and where leaders have committed to fght climate change. As Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed pointed out, cities have the ability to achieve 35%–45% carbon emissions reductions without the involvement of the national government (Boffey 2017). The global role of cities and other non-governmental stakeholders in fghting climate change was formally acknowledged within the UNFCCC when the Global Climate Action Agenda was set up and tasked to coordinate the local initiatives.

While local authorities face inherent challenges when infuencing global issues such as climate change, their initiatives are crucial for building up domestic support for future policies from within and for empowering and motivating citizens to act via a sense of individual responsibility (Dirix et al. 2013). As Lutsey and Sperling (2008) argue, local commitment at the individual level is the key to real, long-term progress and economic and social transformations. Their comparative study found that, even 10 years ago, more than 50% of US emissions were covered by state-level mitigation plans and if only half of the US states achieved their climate reduction targets, US national carbon emissions would stabilise by 2020. Bloomberg (2017) alluded to a similar phenomenon in his recent address to the European Parliament, when he explained that the US is already halfway towards its Paris commitment of a 26% emissions reduction by 2025—despite the federal government having had almost nothing to do with that progress. Rather, it is the achievements of the cities, states, businesses and citizens, together with the market, that have helped to mitigate and have adapted to the effects of global warming. Finally, as Shepura (2017) points out, local and personal stories of citizens directly affected by climate change or of the innovators combatting it might strike the right chord with President Trump.

Conclusion

Based on these developments, one can envisage what the future might hold for the Paris Agreement. International alliances and joint commitments from world powers should be able to drive its implementation, despite the absence of the US. In the EU, the reinvigorated sense of optimism and the forward-looking Franco-German leadership is likely to help this process further. There is a series of milestones ahead: the composition of the new German government following the 2017 federal elections, the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, President Juncker’s legacy for the EU and the 2019 EU elections, culminating in the 2020 German Presidency of the Council of the EU. Well-aligned results might have a long-lasting impact on the future of the EU, as well as on the global fght against climate change.

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Across the Atlantic, those leading the local and state initiatives are adamant about mitigating climate change. Under the US federal model, this bottom-up surge of progress has proven effcient and is perhaps the only way to enable change. As was the case in the past with the fght for civil liberties, or more recently same-sex marriage, the federal government will only dare to address the subject once there is acceptance (or indifference) within the majority of the population and it stops being a polarising issue for society. With climate change, the more states that follow California’s lead in green policies, the sooner the federal leadership will fnd the courage or political backing to re-engage on the international level. Cities will have an important role to play in enabling the changes locally, with the help of the private sector and its commitment to green innovation. Additionally, the process might be accelerated by the effects of climate change itself as the US recovers from the recent record-strong hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which devastated parts of its territory, bringing enormous economic costs. But regardless of whether the climate initiative comes from the top–down or the bottom–up, timely action will be to the beneft of everyone.

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BBC News. (2017). California votes to extend cap-and-trade climate law to 2030. 18 July. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40640445. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Bloomberg, M. (2017). At European Parliament in Brussels, Mike Bloomberg: U.S. will meet our Paris commitment. MikeBloomberg.com, 27 June. https://www.mikebloomberg.com/news/mike-bloomberg-delivers-remarks-climate-change-european-parliament- brussels/. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Boffey, D. (2017). Mayors of 7,400 cities vow to meet Obama’s climate commitments. The Guardian, 28 June. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/28/global- covenant-mayors-cities-vow-to-meet-obama-climate-commitments. Accessed 18 Sep- tember 2017.

Boffey, D., Connolly, K., & Asthana, A. (2017). EU to bypass Trump administration after Paris climate agreement pullout. The Guardian, 2 June. https://www.theguardian.com/ environment/2017/jun/02/european-leaders-vow-to-keep-fghting-global-warming-despite-us-withdrawal. Accessed on 18 September 2017.

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Boffey, D., & Neslen, A. (2017). China and EU strengthen promise to Paris deal with US poised to step away. The Guardian, 1 June. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/31/china-eu-climate-lead-paris-agreement. Accessed on 18 September 2017.

Chrisafs, A., & Vaughan, A. (2017). France to ban sales of petrol and diesel cars by 2040. The Guardian, 6 July. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jul/06/france- ban-petrol-diesel-cars-2040-emmanuel-macron-volvo. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Climate Mayors. (2017). 377 US Climate Mayors commit to adopt, honor and uphold Paris Climate Agreement goals. Medium, 1 June. https://medium.com/@ClimateMay- ors/climate-mayors-commit-to-adopt-honor-and-uphold-paris-climate-agreement-goals- ba566e260097. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Davenport, C., & Nagourney, A. (2017). Fighting Trump on climate, California becomes a global force. The New York Times, 23 May. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/us/ california-engages-world-and-fghts-washington-on-climate-change.html. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Dirix, J., Peeters, W., Eyckmans, J., Jones, P. T., & Sterckx, S. (2013). Strengthening bottom–up and top–down climate governance. Climate Policy, 13(3), 363–83.

Environmental Protection Agency. (2017). EPA to review the Clean Power Plan under President Trump’s executive order. Press Release, 28 March. https://www.epa.gov/ newsreleases/epa-review-clean-power-plan-under-president-trumps-executive-order. Accessed 18 September 2017.

European Commission. (2017a). EU co-hosts major international climate meeting with Canada and China. 15 September. https://ec.europa.eu/clima/news/eu-co-hosts-major- international-climate-meeting-canada-and-china_en. Accessed 18 September 2017.

European Commission. (2017b). Special Eurobarometer 459 climate change. Septem- ber. http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffce/publicopinion/index.cfm/Survey/getSurveyDe- tail/instruments/SPECIAL/surveyKy/2140. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Germany, German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Build- ing and Nuclear Safety. (2016a). Climate Action Plan 2050. Principles and goals of the German government’s climate policy. 14 November. http://www.bmub.bund.de/fleadmin/Daten_BMU/Download_PDF/Klimaschutz/klimaschutzplan_2050_kurzf_en_bf.pdf. Accessed on 18 September 2017.

Germany, German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety. (2016b). Germany and California vow to expand cooperation on climate and environment. Press Release, 18 November. http://www.bmub.bund.de/en/ pressrelease/germany-and-california-vow-to-expand-cooperation-on-climate-and-environment/. Accessed 18 September 2017.

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Graupner, H. (2013). What exactly is Germany’s ‘Energiewende’? DW.com, 22 January. http://www.dw.com/en/what-exactly-is-germanys-energiewende/a-16540762. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Juncker, J.-C. (2017). ‘Introduction—Wind in Our Sails’. State of the Union speech, Brussels, 13 September. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-17-3165_ en.htm. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Lutsey, N., & Sperling, D. (2008). America’s bottom–up climate change mitigation policy. Energy Policy, 36(2), 673–85.

Milman, O. (2017). California lawmakers extend program to cut emissions in bipartisan vote. The Guardian, 18 July. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/18/california-extend-carbon-emissions-climate-change-program. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Mooney, C., Dennis, B., & Mufson, S. (2016). Trump names Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma attorney general suing EPA on climate change, to head the EPA. The Washing- ton Post, 8 December. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/ wp/2016/12/07/trump-names-scott-pruitt-oklahoma-attorney-general-suing-epa-on- climate-change-to-head-the-epa/?utm_term .3f0177ff9eb0. Accessed 18 September = 2017.

Parker, L., & Welch, C. (2017). 6 reasons why U.S. Paris reversal won’t derail climate progress. National Geographic, 1 June. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/05/ trump-climate-change-paris-agreement-california-emissions/. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Schreurs, M. A., & Tiberghien, Y. (2007). Multi-level reinforcement: Explaining Euro- pean Union leadership in climate change mitigation. Global Environmental Politics, 7(4), 19–46.

Shepura, N. (2017). Ledgers, anecdotes and leadership: Guidelines for partnering with the new US president. European View, 16(1), 141–51. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12290-017-0440-z. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Tabuchi, H., & Fountain, H. (2017). Bucking Trump, these cities, states and companies commit to Paris accord. The New York Times, 1 June. https://www.nytimes. com/2017/06/01/climate/american-cities-climate-standards.html. Accessed 18 Septem- ber 2017.

The Guardian. (2017). China and California sign deal to work on climate change without Trump. 7 June. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/07/china-and-california- sign-deal-to-work-on-climate-change-without-trump. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Watts, J., & Connolly, K. (2017) World leaders react after Trump rejects Paris climate deal. The Guardian, 2 June. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/01/ trump-withdraw-paris-climate-deal-world-leaders-react. Accessed 18 September 2017.

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Eva Palacková has worked as a political adviser for the European People’s Party since 2012, with a primary focus on the EU’s environmental, climate change, energy and agricultural policies. In 2016 she was a senior diplomat during the Slovak Presidency of the Council of the EU and chaired the Council working party on the environment. She holds MAs in transatlantic studies (University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill/Sciences Po in Paris) and in European studies (Comenius University in Bratislava).

260 European View (2017) 16:261–269 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12290-017-0454-6

ARTICLE

London and anti‑terrorism in Europe Lord Toby Harris

Published online: 30 October 2017 © The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication

Abstract urban terrorist attacks have become increasingly frequent in Europe in recent years. The review conducted during 2016 into London’s preparedness to respond to a major terrorist incident found that London’s emergency services had improved their ability to respond quickly to such incidents. However, the safety of citizens from such events can never be guaranteed. Preparation is nevertheless essential, and emergency services need to adjust their tactics and plans in response to terrorist incidents that occur anywhere in the world as attack methodologies spread very rapidly through the Internet. The safety of all public spaces needs to be kept under review. There is a role for commercial businesses in enhancing security, and each individual has a part to play in building a culture of security and resilience.

Keywords Counterterrorism | Preparedness | Resilience | Emergency services

Lord T. Harris (*) House of Lords, London SW1A 0PW, UK e-mail: [email protected]

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Introduction

During 2017 there have been a series of terrorist incidents in the UK that have led to multiple fatalities—the frst for a number of years. Prior to this, in 2016, the mayor of London had commissioned an independent review of London’s preparedness to respond to a major terrorist incident. It found that, while the response times of the emergency services have improved signifcantly in recent years, it is never possible to guarantee safety. Indeed, further improvements in response times would change the look and feel of a city such as London, with far more armed police on the streets.

In the UK the threat from terrorism is adjudged as ‘severe’, meaning that an attack is regarded as ‘highly likely’. Developing threats and attack methodologies from around the world need to be fed into the response tactics that are planned and exercised by the emergency services. It is important that there is no complacency and that the emergency services are prepared to ‘expect the unexpected’.

There are physical security measures that should be adopted, but the security of all spaces to which the public has access should be kept under review. The aim should be to develop a culture of security, not just among public authorities, but also in the business and commercial sectors. Indeed the whole population should be encouraged to be vigilant and prepared.

Understanding the context of the attacks

The UK is by no means unique in Europe in having suffered a number of major terrorist attacks with multiple fatalities in 2017. These attacks include:

1. on 22 March, an individual driving his car into tourists and others, killing four people, and then stabbing a police offcer to death within the precincts of the Houses of Parliament, before being shot dead by another police offcer. 2. Exactly two months later on 22 May, a suicide bomber blowing himself up in the foyer of Manchester Arena at the end of an Ariana Grande concert, killing another 22 people and seriously injuring many more. 3. On 3 June, three terrorists driving a van into pedestrians on London Bridge and then, armed with 30 cm-long ceramic knives, running into the Borough Market area and attacking and stabbing people in the cluster of bars and restaurants there. As a result, 8 people were killed and 48 were seriously injured before the police shot the 3 perpetrators dead.

Other attacks have included an apparently Islamophobic attack close to Finsbury Park Mosque at the close of Friday night prayers on 19 June, in which a van was driven into the crowd, with one elderly man dying at the scene. In addition, a number of other attacks have been thwarted and disrupted by the security and intelligence agencies and

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the counterterrorist police. These incidents led to the frst deaths from terrorism on the British mainland since the bombings on the London transport network in July 2005, in which 52 people were murdered, and the fatal attack on Trooper Lee Rigby in May 2013 near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich.

The most recent attacks have occurred in the context of a series of murderous terrorist incidents across Western Europe, starting with the assault on Charlie Hebdo in Janu- ary 2015 and including—amongst others—the attacks on the Bataclan concert hall and other targets in Paris, the Brussels bombings, the heavy lorry driven through the crowds celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, the Berlin Christmas market attack, the hijacked truck crashed into a department store in Stockholm, and, in August, the attacks in and around Barcelona.

Counterterrorism strategy: the case of London

It was against this background that, shortly after his election in May 2016, Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, instituted an independent review of London’s preparedness to respond to a major terrorist incident. The review report (Harris 2016) was published in October of last year and many of its 127 recommendations are currently being implemented. The British counterterrorism strategy, ‘Contest’ (UK, HM Government 2011) (which is currently being reviewed and updated by the Home Offce), has four strands:

• ‘Pursue’: the investigation and disruption of terrorist attacks; • ‘Prevent’: working to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism; • ‘Protect’: improving our protective security to stop a terrorist attack; and • ‘Prepare’: working to minimise the impact of an attack and to recover as quickly as possible.

This article will focus on the Prepare strand of the strategy, although inevitably my conclusions touch on the other elements. The immediate focus of the review of the Pre- pare strategy was on the city’s ability to respond speedily and effectively to a ‘marauding terrorist frearms attack’, with the Paris attacks of November 2015 in mind. However, the review looked at a range of possible attack scenarios, including where vehicles could be used as a weapon (as in the Nice and Berlin attacks), as subsequently seen on West- minster Bridge, on London Bridge, in Finsbury Park and, of course, in Barcelona.

As the reviewer, I had previously been heavily involved in this feld, when, on behalf of successive home secretaries, I had oversight of policing work on counterterrorism and security from 2004 until early 2012. The headline conclusion was that preparedness had improved substantially compared with four or fve years earlier. In particular, based on personal observation, the emergency service response would now be much faster than it would—or could—have been in 2011. This was demonstrated by a stabbing incident in Russell Square in August 2016. This event turned out not to be a terrorist incident, although the response was triggered as if it was. An individual, whom the court was subsequently told was suffering from ‘an acute episode of paranoid schizophrenia’

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(Dixon 2017), attacked passers-by, tragically killing an American tourist. The length of time that elapsed from when the frst (of many) emergency calls was received, to the control room being informed that an individual had been subdued and arrested (and not shot dead, which might have been the outcome elsewhere) was just over fve minutes. This was a fast response by any standard.

In March 2017, the police and ambulance response was also rapid. However, that incident lasted precisely 82 seconds from the point at which the terrorist drove his vehicle onto the pavement and into the crowds, to him crashing into the barriers, leaping from the car, running around a corner into the gates of Parliament and stabbing to death a police offcer, before being shot dead himself. Just 82 seconds from start to fnish. Obviously, this took place in what is admittedly one of the most heavily policed areas of the city. Whilst the incident itself was swift, the subsequent lock-down of the building lasted for nearly fve hours while the possibility of there being a second attacker was eliminated. And in the London Bridge/Borough Market attack in June 2017, the police were on the scene within two minutes and paramedics from the London Ambulance Service within six. The three terrorists were shot dead just eight minutes after the frst emergency call was received.

In all of those incidents the emergency response was rapid. However, it is an important and salutary lesson that even those fast response times would have appeared far too slow to those caught up in the events. Moreover, the London incidents involved individuals carrying knives rather than guns or bombs. Had the incidents involved multiple assailants armed with automatic weapons or explosive devices, the death tolls in such crowded places would have been far higher. It would, of course, be theoretically possible to further increase the armed police presence and so further reduce those response times. However, this would not eliminate the risk or necessarily prevent fatalities. It is the work of a moment for a suicide bomber to blow himself up and people armed with powerful guns could still kill a lot of people, even if the emergency response time was much shorter.

Understanding the challenges of the terror threat

So the decision for politicians, including the mayor of London, is what level of risk is acceptable? Doubling or quadrupling the armed police presence obviously has a fnancial cost (even if it were practically possible to recruit, train and equip the offcers required), but it would also have a profound impact on our way of life. How far are we prepared to go in changing the look and feel of our cities to reduce—perhaps only slightly—the number who might be killed in such an attack? That is the dilemma: whatever we do, we can never guarantee safety. Thus, whilst it is right to be better prepared, other steps are necessary to make us safer and more secure. The UK’s security and intelligence agencies judge the risk of attack as being ‘severe’ (the second highest of

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fve levels), meaning that an attack is regarded as highly likely. There can, therefore, be no complacency.

The review showed that an impressive amount of thought and analysis had gone into planning and practising for a wide variety of attack scenarios. There is necessarily a constant need to consider developing threats and evolving attack methodologies. Thus a Security Review Committee, on which all the relevant agencies are represented, meets on a fortnightly basis to review terrorist-related incidents in the UK and elsewhere in the world. This sort of preparation is essential. It has to be remembered that new attack methodologies can be spread via the Internet within seconds, and it is imperative to have as good an intelligence picture as you can. However, planning should also be on the basis of expecting the unexpected. Because something has never happened before does not mean that it might not happen tomorrow. Similarly, if a particular meth- odology has not been used for several years, it may still be brought back into play without prior warning or indication.

In a number of areas the current intelligence assessment is that particular threats are considerably less likely than they were thought to be a few years ago. That should not mean that measures previously taken to address such threats should be abandoned, merely that they might perhaps be reduced—and even then with caution. In some felds the response of national government has not been as timely or as sharp as it should be. The frst of these relates to the availability of guns. The UK benefts from the fact that frearms are more diffcult to acquire here than elsewhere in the world. However, there is almost a complacency about this, with the assumption made that marauding terrorist frearms attacks, such as those that occurred in Paris in 2015, would not happen to us. However, London is not frearms free. During July and August 2016 the Metropolitan Police recorded 202 frearms discharges, compared to 87 in the same months of the previous year. These were criminal rather than terrorist incidents, but there is evidence that some convicted terrorists have tried to obtain arms from organised crime groups or from other sources.

Moreover, the review noted that our borders are not as secure as they should be: we have far-from-adequate coverage of our coastline by air and sea patrols, only a tiny proportion of vehicles crossing into the country via the Channel Tunnel or on ferries are ever searched, and the same is true for crates of goods arriving through our ports. The resources available to address this have declined in the last six or seven years. If there is complacency, it has been misplaced and it is only a matter of time before we see a signifcant gun-related terrorist incident in the UK. Similarly, there has been a dilatory response to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles or drones for terrorist purposes—something which is increasingly being reported in overseas theatres—either for reconnaissance or for delivering a payload.

More work is also needed on the interrelationship between mental health and those who commit terrorist attacks. In Israel, it has been reported that many of the Palestinian lone attacks have been precipitated by mental health crises in the individuals concerned. I referred earlier to the mentally deranged knife attacker in Russell

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Square in July 2016. As it happens, he was a Muslim. There is no evidence that he was inspired by any jihadist propaganda to carry out his attack, but it is a reminder that the dividing line between mental health and terrorism is perhaps a narrow one.

Taking preparatory measures against terrorism

In the meantime the threat remains severe, so what else could be done to make London more secure? Once it has been recognised that you can never guarantee safety and security, what is important is to try and build a culture of resilience into the fabric of the city so that risks can be mitigated. One aspect of this is about taking physical measures: inserting bollards and barriers to limit the scope for vehicle-based attacks, having the capacity to close off roads and prevent cars and trucks from entering areas where large numbers are gathered, and ensuring that closed-circuit TV is used more widely as both a preventative and investigative resource.

We should use design to make new buildings harder for terrorists to attack and require that certain physical standards be incorporated to make such attacks more diffcult to implement. When premises require licensing for public use or for specifc events, there should be expectations set as to their emergency plans and the extent to which their staff must be trained to manage certain types of incident. It should be an obligation to have police counterterrorism security advisers inspect premises and that their advice be acted upon. This is already standard for fre safety, so it should be the same for counterterrorism. The aim should be that a culture of security is developed in all spaces to which the public has access. The variability of security in such public spaces is striking. Some places of worship have given a great deal of thought to this; others have given none and seem to assume that nobody would bear them ill-will. The situation in schools is particularly concerning. Most schools have plans for evacuation in the event of fre. Very few have even thought about the need for an in-vacuation plan in the event of the school being under attack—what teachers should do and how pupils ought to be drilled. Most have some sort of rudimentary perimeter-control system, designed to keep out predatory paedophiles, but are less well-equipped to deal with a heavily armed marauder.

London is home to half a million businesses, all of which have a strong interest in ensuring London is a safe and secure place to invest and trade. So they too have to take on some responsibility for security. They have a duty of care not only to those who work for them, but also to their customers and perhaps also to those simply passing by. At the height of the London Bridge incident in June 2017, there were contrasting tales of those bars and restaurants which, on the one hand, ushered the people on the street inside to safety, and those, on the other, which barred access to those outside.

Many offces and businesses in London have trained security personnel. These personnel are regulated by the Security Industry Authority (SIA) and there are estimated to be some 100,000 operatives licensed by the SIA in London (SIA 2001)—roughly three times the total number of police offcers. In the event of an attack, depending on the

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location, it is those security guards who may be frst on the scene and, as uniformed members of staff, the public may look to them for advice and protection. At the very least, they need to be adequately trained on how to respond in the event of a terrorist incident and, at best, they are a massive resource to help protect the public.

Communication is key to all of this. During the recent attacks the Metropolitan Police used its Twitter feed to provide frequent authoritative updates to counter what might otherwise have been misleading material on social media. However, there is much more that should be done in terms of the development of alerts that are sent directly to people’s mobile phones—as has happened in a number of other cities. In time, the capacity to provide cogent real-time advice targeted at different cellular-sites or at different types of recipient should be developed. This must all be part of a process of enabling all of us to respond in the most appropriate way to any incident that may happen. The current mantra in the UK is ‘run’, ‘hide’, ‘tell’:

• ‘run’—to a place of safety. If there is nowhere to go then . . . • ‘hide’—turn your phone to silent and barricade yourself in if you can . . . • ‘tell’—the police by calling 999 when it is safe to do so.

This was the message being put out on social media during the London Bridge attack, but the aim must be for every citizen to have it engrained in their psyche, in the same way that as children we all learned the road-safety mantra of (in a UK context at least) look right, look left, look right again when crossing a road.

Conclusion

What are the general lessons for the rest of Europe from the experience of London? The frst is that it is not possible to guarantee the public’s safety against terrorist attacks. Politicians, the police and the security agencies have to be open with the public about this. This, of course, still means that every effort should be made to improve the speed and effectiveness of the response to an incident. This will require not only appropriate and proportionate resources to be made available to the emergency services, but also a willingness to practise for all scenarios, including those that have never been seen before or have not been seen for some time. Planning should be robust and fexible, and rapidly take into account terrorist attacks occurring elsewhere in the world.

Physical measures can make attacks more diffcult or mitigate their effects—especially where vehicles are used. Such measures can be designed so as to blend into the existing street scene and architecture (as, for example, in Whitehall—the road on which most British government ministries are located).

More work is needed to prevent and safeguard those who may become terrorists from going down the road of violent extremism. In particular, more work is needed to support individuals who are going through mental health crises. This is not to say that all terrorists have mental health histories, or that all those who are mentally ill are likely to

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become terrorists. Far from it. However, this is one of the areas where more proactive intervention is needed. Finally, the role of business, and—more widely—the need to involve the whole population in being vigilant and prepared for a terrorist incident, cannot be emphasised enough.

Preparedness has to be proactive and it has to be fexible enough to be relevant whatever the form of an attack. The responses encouraged have to enable all the relevant organisations—including the business community and the public—to react seam- lessly and effectively, whatever the nature of the incident. This means that all of us must acquire a mindset of community security and resilience. It should also mean that our cities have security and resilience designed in and that they are part of our society’s fabric. Ultimately, it means that everyone who lives and works in our cities needs to see security and resilience as their responsibility, just as much as it is the responsibility of the emergency services and the civic authorities.

References

Dixon, J. (2017). Teenager admits killing US tourist in Russell Square knife attack. South London Press & Mercury, 6 February. https://www.londonnewsonline.co.uk/16931/ teenager-admits-killing-us-tourist-russell-square-knife-attack/. Accessed 17 September 2017.

Harris, T. (2016). An independent review of London’s preparedness to respond to a major terrorist incident. Greater London Authority. London. https://www.london.gov.uk/ sites/default/fles/londons_preparedness_to_respond_to_a_major_terrorist_incident_-_ independent_review_oct_2016.pdf. Accessed 17 September 2017.

SIA. (2001). Home Offce—Security Industry Authority (SIA) framework document. UK Home Offce and SIA. https://www.sia.homeoffce.gov.uk/Documents/ho-sia-framework. pdf. Accessed 17 September 2017.

UK, HM Government. (2011). CONTEST: The United Kingdom’s strategy for countering terrorism. London: The Stationery Offce. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/fle/97995/strategy-contest.pdf. Accessed 17 September 2017.

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Lord Toby Harris has been chair of the National Trading Standards Board, which is responsible for delivering national and cross-boundary consumer protection enforcement activity, since May 2013. He is also the UK coordi- nator of the Electrical Infrastructure Security Council. In 2016, he conducted an independent review for the mayor of London on London’s preparedness to respond to a terrorist attack. He is also member of the Joint Committee on National Security Strategy in the UK Parliament.

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ARTICLE

The prospects for EU–India security cooperation Shashank Joshi

Published online: 30 October 2017 © The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication

Abstract For Europe, four security challenges predominate: Russian revanchism, Islamist terrorism, the migrant crisis, and the associated problems of civil war and state collapse in the Middle East and North Africa. For India, the environment looks very different. Its two most important security challenges are cross-border terrorism from Pakistan-based militant groups, often sponsored by the Pakistani intelligence services, and the steady growth of China’s economic and military presence along India’s land and maritime borders, including as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. These differing priorities risk pushing Europe and India in different directions. India’s hope is that an improved US–Russia relationship will create a thaw in Europe, allowing all parties— India, Europe and the US—to focus on addressing China’s rise. But there is little sign of such a shift at present. However, there is considerable room for greater convergence on a range of issues, such as maritime security, Afghanistan and counterterrorism.

S. Joshi (*) Royal United Services Institute, 61 Whitehall, Westminster, London SW1A 2ET, UK e-mail: [email protected]

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Introduction

In his recent book, How India Sees the World, the distinguished Indian diplomat and former foreign secretary Shyam Saran refects on Europe’s place in the world and India’s relationship with it. In 2004–5, when Saran was leading India’s Ministry of Exter- nal Affairs, New Delhi and Brussels ‘had forged a very strong partnership based on shared values as multi-ethnic, multicultural, multi-religious, multilingual plural democracies. Each side had a stake in the success of the other, and India looked upon a strong, united Europe as a pole in its own right in the global order’ (Saran 2017, 52). Indeed, it was in November 2004, at the ffth India–EU summit in The Hague, that the two powers signed a strategic partnership, including a breakthrough agreement on nuclear energy.

Unfortunately, Saran goes on to note, that momentum has gone. The eurozone crisis, Britain’s vote to leave the EU and US–Europe tensions under the Trump administration have taken their toll. ‘It appears unlikely that the promise of a cohesive Europe playing the role of an infuential international actor, either in its own right or as part of a powerful trans-Atlantic partnership, will be realized in the foreseeable future, if ever’, Saran (2017, 263) laments, implying that Europe’s value as a partner to India has correspondingly diminished.

Is this pessimism warranted, or can the spirit of the mid-2000s be recaptured in this era of greater nationalism, instability and uncertainty?

European and Indian priorities

It may be worth reviewing each side’s security priorities. For Europe, four challenges predominate: Russian revanchism, Islamist terrorism, the migrant crisis, and the associated problems of civil war and state collapse in the Middle East and North Africa (Ekim 2017). For India, the environment looks very different. Its two most important challenges are cross-border terrorism from Pakistan-based militant groups, often sponsored by the Pakistani intelligence services, and the steady growth of China’s economic and military presence along India’s land and maritime borders, including as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

These are not self-evidently complementary agendas. While India perceives a large and growing threat from China, Europe’s own efforts to create an economic and military balance vis-à-vis Russia have in fact pushed Moscow and Beijing closer to one another—to New Delhi’s detriment. At the same time, India’s efforts to prevent Russia from drifting closer to China (and Pakistan) have led New Delhi to take a softer line on Russia’s aggressive behaviour in Europe (Radyuhin 2014). While India has aggres- sively opposed the BRI (Jaishankar 2017), the EU—particularly some Central and Southern European member states—has been more receptive (Le Corre 2017). This is a structural problem: Europe’s priority is Russia, while India’s priority is China. This

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pushes them in different directions. India’s hope is that an improved US–Russia relationship will create a thaw in Europe, allowing all parties—India, Europe and the US—to focus on addressing China’s rise; but there is little sign of such a thaw at present.

Moreover, each side’s concerns around terrorism are distinct. The threat to Europe arises principally from European nationals and residents with ties to Islamic State and Al Qaeda, while India’s concern is Pakistan-based groups with a local, India-focused agenda. India, like Russia, believes that Europe should support, rather than undermine, the Syrian regime in order to reduce instability and terrorism. Meanwhile, Euro- pean states—and particularly Britain, with its large Pakistani diaspora—have historically required a high degree of intelligence cooperation with Pakistan, and have placed a lower priority on ‘local’ groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed.

EU–India convergence

However, on both of these issues, we should not exaggerate the tensions. There is in fact considerable room for convergence. While Russia looms larger, the EU has not overlooked the Chinese challenge. The EU’s Global Strategy, published in November 2016, is clear that ‘peace and stability in Asia are a prerequisite for our prosperity’, and that this requires upholding the ‘freedom of navigation,… respect for international law, including the Law of the Sea and its arbitration procedures, and… the peaceful settlement of maritime disputes’ (European Council 2016c, 37–8). This language, clearly directed at Chinese behaviour in the East and South China Seas, echoes that used by India, including in New Delhi’s joint statements with security partners (The Wire 2017; Times of India 2017). In July 2016, the EU responded to China’s rejection of a Perma- nent Court of Arbitration verdict with a strong statement invoking ‘the international order based upon the Rule of Law’, and implying that Chinese behaviour had put this at risk (European Council 2016b).

India’s most important security partners in creating a counterbalance against China are the US, Japan, Australia and Vietnam, with a particular emphasis on maritime cooperation in the form of naval drills. There is considerable scope for greater cooperation between India and Europe’s key naval powers in this area. France, which argues that Chinese behaviour in the South China Sea could affect maritime rights in the Arctic or Mediterranean, has called for a ‘regular and visible’ European presence in the South China Sea (Yee 2016), while the UK has conducted over-fights of the area (Brunnstrom 2016) and has signalled that its two new aircraft carriers will be sent on patrol there (Johnson 2017).

India is eager that regional naval cooperation is not viewed as a military alliance directed at China; an advantage of EU–India cooperation is that European involvement not only diversifes India’s security relationships at a time of fux, but also that European forces are less threatening to Beijing than those of the US or Japan. However, there will be questions over the sustainability and persistence of any European naval presence

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in Asia, and whether Europe can develop the breadth to make it more than an Anglo- French initiative (McGrath 2013).

Beyond naval cooperation, the EU and India would also beneft from greater coordination in their responses to the BRI. Both sides want to see Chinese investment that is transparent, sustainable and frewalled from non-civilian (intelligence or military) uses. While European states will continue to be more comfortable with the BRI than India is, they could include coordinated language in future joint statements, much as India has done with the US (White House 2017). This might be accompanied by mutual consultations on the shared concern regarding Chinese investment in strategic sectors, such as telecommunications and artifcial intelligence (Varadhan and Dasgupta 2017; Huang 2017; Beesley 2017).

On terrorism, the EU and India have also made important progress. At the 13th EU– India Summit in March 2016, attended by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the leaders issued a joint declaration on counterterrorism (Mohan and Xavier 2017). As with maritime security, the UK and France have made the important interventions. Both have strongly supported India’s interests in the UN, notably by co-sponsoring resolu- tions (with the US) in the so-called 1267 Committee to designate the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed leader, Masood Azhar, an international terrorist (The Hindu 2017). The 10th India–EU Counter Terrorism Dialogue in August 2017 also strengthened links between Indian security agencies and their European counterparts, including Europol, among other steps forward (India, Ministry of External Affairs 2017).

In practice, counterterrorism cooperation is likely to remain lopsided because of the larger European capability and interest in India’s neighbourhood relative to India’s capability and interest in the Middle East and Europe. For instance, Europe will have greater information about and interest in Pakistan-based plots against Indian cities than India will in Islamic State plots against European cities. Moreover, the counterterrorism relationship is also likely to remain largely bilateral because of the concentration of global intelligence capabilities in a handful of Western European states and the EU’s very limited institutional capacity.

Broader security cooperation

More broadly, Garima Mohan and Constantino Xavier (2017, 5) argue that the EU and India have shared interests in a ‘Eurasian arc of instability’, which stretches from Turkey to Pakistan, and as far south as the Indian Ocean. Two of the most important areas of overlap are likely to be in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

As India’s strategic horizons grow, the Middle East has become increasingly important as a provider of energy, as home to six to seven million Indian citizens, as a source of religious extremism and as an arena for anti-Indian terrorist networks (Joshi 2015, 251– 3). India has correspondingly deepened relations with both Iran and the United Arab Emirates, and expanded its naval presence in the Western Indian Ocean. Meanwhile,

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several European powers are actively involved in military operations against Islamic State, with the UK and France deepening ties to their own partners in the Gulf Coop- eration Council. While European nations are closer to Arab states and India is closer to Iran, both nonetheless seek a balanced relationship with both sides of the sectarian divide. European states have eagerly sought access to Iran’s post-sanctions economy, while India sees Iran as an important conduit to Afghanistan and Central Asia. Both Brussels and New Delhi oppose the Trump administration’s efforts to unpick the Ira- nian nuclear deal, and will fnd common cause should Washington repudiate the agreement. In recent years, as the India–Israel relationship has grown in importance, with the frst visit by an Indian prime minister to Israel occurring in 2017, India has also shifted towards a more balanced position on the Israel–Palestine dispute, in the direction of the European stance.

On Afghanistan, both sides have a stake in the survival of the Afghan government against the growing insurgency. European states have been major contributors to the US-led war in Afghanistan, and many—notably Italy, with over 1,000 troops; Germany, with over 900; and Romania, with almost 600—remain so (NATO 2017). India has also expanded its own security cooperation with Kabul, providing offcer training and attack helicopters (Krishnamurthy 2017). President Trump’s August 2017 decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan is likely to create pressures on both Europe and India to increase their own involvement, although both will prefer to do so through non-military means.

In recent years, European countries and India have been on the periphery of the most important diplomacy surrounding the Afghan war—such as the Quadrilateral Coordi- nation Group, and direct talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban—but they have maintained a close interest in these processes. The EU hosted the Brussels Conference on Afghanistan in October 2016 (European Council 2016a), while India has played a role in the six rounds of the Heart of Asia—Istanbul Process held so far (Nanda 2016). With greater uncertainty around the position of the US, and both Iran and Russia moving closer to the Taliban, there is scope for the EU and India to consult more closely on their approach to any political settlement, including provisions for human rights, the rule of law and democracy.

Beyond these regional issues, there may also be scope for greater EU–India cooperation on other traditional and emerging security issues. One such issue is non-prolifera- tion. With India’s nuclear programme having been ‘normalised’ over the past decade, and New Delhi joining several arms control regimes, such as the Missile Technology Control Regime, many of the old obstacles to EU–India cooperation have diminished or fallen away. Both sides wish to keep the Middle East free of nuclear weapons, to limit North Korea’s nuclear programme and to prevent any transfer of Pakistani nuclear technologies to third countries. However, the ongoing objection of the EU member states of Austria and Ireland to Indian membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group is likely to be a continued irritant (Williams 2016).

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Conclusion

Over the past decade, Europe has been mired in its own economic and security challenges. It is no longer viewed as a credible and cohesive future ‘pole’ of the international system, on a par with the US, China and other great powers, as it was in the 2000s. However, Europe’s major powers retain large and growing interests in Asia, with the UK and France emphasising maritime security, and Germany and Italy retaining a substantial footprint in Afghanistan. As a bloc, the EU has also engaged with Asian security issues, framing China’s behaviour in maritime disputes as a matter affecting the rules-based international order. At the same time, India is growing more active in areas of European concern, including the Middle East and Central Asia.

The challenge is translating these overlapping interests into concrete forms of cooperation. At a time when Europe is having to deal with a wave of Islamist terrorist attacks on the continent, an ongoing war in Ukraine and a continuing migrant crisis, is Asian maritime security of suffcient importance to drive a credible European response, several thousands of miles away, such that it would force India to take Europe seriously as a security partner, as it does Australia or Japan? And despite the weakening bonds of the India–Russia relationship, New Delhi continues to place value on Russia as a source of defence technology, a counterbalance against China and a hedge against the vagaries of American policy. There will therefore be a gap between Europe’s approach to India’s principal challenger (China) and India’s to Europe’s (Russia): while Europeans may play a role, albeit a modest one, in upholding (or infuencing) Asian security, India is unlikely to play an equal role in the European region.

Nevertheless, it is in Europe’s interest that Asia remains secure and stable. This interest relates to a number of issues, including avoiding a war on the Korean peninsula and preventing a collapse of the Afghan state. However, most European states agree that China’s rise, and the way it pursues its interests, is perhaps the largest and most complex challenge in this regard. Although India perceives a direct security threat from China in a way that Europeans do not, there is a shared desire to shape Beijing’s behaviour to ensure that it is stable, responsible and rule-bound.

Europe has only limited surplus military capacity to contribute to the loose balancing coalitions currently taking shape in Asia, such as the US–India–Japan trilateral (or, with Australia, quadrilateral). One of the most important forms of infuence, the sale of high-end armaments, will remain vested in national governments, with France and the UK vying for commercial opportunities in India. But Europe can have a larger impact through coordinated policies, such as joint European freedom-of-navigation patrols during moments of elevated tension, and the use of wider EU resources. With Britain’s impending departure from the EU, coordinating the policies of Europe’s most Asia- focused powers will be increasingly diffcult—but all the more important.

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References

Beesley, A. (2017). Macron and allies head for EU clash on foreign takeovers. Financial Times, 15 June. https://www.ft.com/content/73aadc3a-5118-11e7-bfb8-997009366969. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Brunnstrom, D. (2016). British fghters to overfy South China Sea; carriers in Pacifc after 2020: Envoy. Reuters, 2 December. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain- southchinasea-fighters/british-fighters-to-overfly-south-china-sea-carriers-in-pacific- after-2020-envoy-idUSKBN13R00D. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Ekim, S. (2017). What’s the future of European (in)security and (dis)order? Brookings Institution, 10 March. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/03/10/ whats-the-future-of-european-insecurity-and-disorder/. Accessed 18 September 2017.

European Council. (2016a). Brussels conference on Afghanistan: Main results. Press Release, 5 October. www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/10/05- bca-main-results/. Accessed 18 September 2017.

European Council. (2016b). Declaration by the high representative on behalf of the EU on the award rendered in the arbitration between the Republic of the Philippines and the People’s Republic of China. Press Release, 15 July. http://www.consilium.europa. eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/07/15-south-china-sea-arbitration/. Accessed 18 Sep- tember 2017.

European Council. (2016c). Shared vision, common action: A stronger Europe. A global strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy. June. https://europa.eu/ globalstrategy/sites/globalstrategy/fles/regions/fles/eugs_review_web_0.pdf. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Huang, Y. (2017). Why China invests more in Europe than in the US. Financial Times, 24 July. https://www.ft.com/content/a7641d16-6c66-11e7-b9c7-15af748b60d0. Accessed 18 September 2017.

India, Ministry of External Affairs. (2017). 10th India–European Union counter terrorism dialogue. Press Release, 30 August. http://www.mea.gov.in/press-releases. htm?dtl/28902/10th_IndiaEuropean_Union_Counter_Terrorism_Dialogue. Accessed 18 September 2017.

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Jaishankar, D. (2017). India feeling the heat on Belt and Road. The Interpreter, Lowy Institute, 21 August. https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/india-feeling-heat-belt- road. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Johnson, B. (2017). Foreign secretary keynote speech at Sydney Town Hall, Sydney, 27 July. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/foreign-secretary-keynote-speech- at-the-lowy-institute. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Joshi, S. (2015). India and the Middle East. Asian Affairs, 46(2), 251–69.

Krishnamurthy, R. (2017). India–Afghanistan relations: Innovating continuity. Institute of Peace and Confict Studies, 17 August. www.ipcs.org/article/india/three-years-of-the- modi-government-india-afghanistan-relations-innovating-5340.html. Accessed 18 Sep- tember 2017.

Le Corre, P. (2017). Europe’s mixed views on China’s One Belt, One Road initiative. Brookings Institution, 23 May. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from- chaos/2017/05/23/europes-mixed-views-on-chinas-one-belt-one-road-initiative/. Accessed 18 September 2017.

McGrath, B. (2013). NATO at sea: Trends in Allied naval power. American Enterprise Institute. 18 September. http://www.aei.org/publication/nato-at-sea-trends-in-allied- naval-power/. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Mohan, G., & Xavier, C. (eds.). (2017). Global governance, security, and strategy in the EU–India partnership. New Delhi: Global Public Policy Institute and Carnegie India. www.gppi.net/publications/rising-powers/article/global-governance-security-and-strategy-in-the-eu-india-partnership/. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Nanda, P. (2016). Heart of Asia conference: Pakistan ‘embarrassed’ on terrorism, but policy will continue. First Post, 5 December. www.frstpost.com/india/heart-of-asia- conference-pakistan-embarrassed-on-terrorism-but-policy-will-continue-3139826.html. Accessed 18 September 2017.

NATO. (2017). Resolute support mission (RSM): Key facts and fgures. March. www. nato.int/nato_static_f2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2017_03/20170313_2017-03-RSM-Place- mat.pdf. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Radyuhin, V. (2014). Putin thanks India for its stand on Ukraine. The Hindu, 18 March. www.thehindu.com/news/international/world/putin-thanks-india-for-its-stand-on-ukraine/ article5800989.ece. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Saran, S. (2017). How India sees the world: Kautilya to the 21st century. New Delhi: Juggernaut.

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The Hindu. (2017). The 1267 Committee, China’s hold and Masood Azhar: A short history. 23 February. www.thehindu.com/news/international/the-1267-committee-chinas- hold-and-masood-azhar-a-short-history/article17353817.ece. Accessed 18 September 2017.

The Wire. (2017). India, Australia discuss freedom of navigation, further ties. 10 April. https://thewire.in/122831/india-australia-turnbull-india/. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Times of India. (2017). India, US call for freedom of navigation amid South China Sea disputes. 27 June. www.timesofndia.indiatimes.com/india/india-us-call-for-freedom-of- navigation-amid-south-china-sea-disputes/articleshow/59332232.cms. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Varadhan, S., & Dasgupta, N. (2017). Exclusive: Taking aim at China, India tightens power grid, telecoms rules. Reuters, 17 August. https://in.reuters.com/article/india- china-business/exclusive-taking-aim-at-china-india-tightens-power-grid-telecoms-rules- idINKCN1AX278. Accessed 25 September 2017.

White House. (2017). United States and India: Prosperity through partnership. Press Release, 26 June. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-offce/2017/06/26/united- states-and-india-prosperity-through-partnership. Accessed 25 September 2017.

Williams, L. (2016). Politics or policy? What’s thwarting India’s nuclear suppliers group ambitions. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 14 August. https://www.thebulletin.org/ politics-or-policy-what’s-thwarting-india’s-nuclear-suppliers-group-ambitions10040. Accessed 25 September 2017.

Yee, T. (2016). France calls for European patrols in South China Sea. Straits Times, 6 June. www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/france-calls-for-european-patrols-in-south- china-sea. Accessed 18 September 2017.

Shashank Joshi is the Senior Policy Fellow at Renewing the Centre, a pillar of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. He is a specialist on Indian foreign and security policy, with wider interests in Asian and global security issues. He was educated at Cambridge and Harvard, and his most recently published book is Indian Power Projection: Ambition, Arms and Infuence.

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ARTICLE

Safeguarding the rule of law within the EU: lessons from the Polish experience Konrad Niklewicz

Published online: 20 November 2017 © The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication

Abstract The rule-of-law procedure against Poland, opened in January 2016, has painfully tested the safeguards supposed to protect the EU’s fundamental values. It is now obvious that the protective mechanisms need to be strengthened. For in their current form, tested in real life for the frst time, they have not dissuaded the present Polish government, led by the nationalist Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS), from seriously and continuously breaching the rules. All interested EU parties—that is, willing member states and institutions—should acknowledge this and start preparing modifcations both to Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union, which includes a sanction mechanism, and to the European Commission’s Rule of Law Framework, so that the EU’s internal defences are strengthened for future needs.

Keywords Poland | Rule of law | Democracy | Sanctions

K. Niklewicz (*) Instytut Obywatelski, Wiejska 12a, 00‑490 Warszawa, Poland e-mail: [email protected]

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Introduction

Poland1 is the frst country against which the European Commission has started proceedings under its Rule of Law Framework. It is also possible that Poland will eventually become the frst member state of the EU ever to become subject to the measures described in Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU). Although no formal decision has yet been taken at the time of writing, the probability of triggering the TEU’s ‘nuclear option’—so called because the proceedings in question could theoretically lead to suspension of the voting rights of the member state—is, in the author’s opinion, rather high.

Unfortunately, so is the likelihood of the European institutions failing to pursue the case to a positive resolution, either by consent or by force of sanctions. So far, a rather negative scenario has been unfolding, which has proved that the EU’s internal safeguards for the rule of law are fawed. This is a situation that the EU, its institutions and member states, should not tolerate. The EU’s internal protective mechanisms (the Rule of Law Framework and Article 7 of the TEU) need to be strengthened if they are to be of any value. The EU’s inability to stop the Polish government’s trampling of fundamental values needs to be discussed in detail in order to better understand the weak points of the above-mentioned safeguards and to help design substantial improvements.

The case against the Polish government

The case against the Polish government started in early 2016. The European Commis- sion initiated its Rule of Law Framework proceedings on 13 January 2016. This was done in response to both the assault on Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal by the ruling Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) and the new legislation relating to public service broadcasters, which gave the government political control over the public media (European Commission 2016c; DW.com 2016). While both areas are equally important, it is the Constitutional Tribunal issue that, understandably, raised the most fears. In December 2015, the PiS majority in parliament, acting under the pretext of seeking political pluralism in the composition of the Tribunal, passed a new law concerning its functioning and the nomination of its judges (European Commission 2016a). Before being effectively crippled, the Tribunal managed to rule on 9 March 2016 that the law of 22 December 2015 was unconstitutional (Poland, Trybunał Konstytucyjny 2016). However, this was to no avail. The PiS government simply refused to publish that ruling, claiming that it had no legal standing (Witek 2016). In the following months, the president and the vice-president of the Tribunal were replaced with lawyers close to PiS, and

1 Although the country’s name is used in this paper on many occasions, as it is in the body of the available literature, the author wishes to make one important clarifcation. The rule-of-law proceedings focus on the deeds of the Polish government, not on ‘Poland’, which is understood as the 1000-year-old country that is the homeland of the Polish nation and a total of 38 million people. As will be explained later in the text, this distinction is absolutely crucial from a communication point of view.

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additional judges (also linked to PiS) were nominated, despite the fact that the previous (unpublished) ruling of the Tribunal had deemed such actions unconstitutional (Poland, Trybunał Konstytucyjny 2016).

The European Commission’s initial assessment was that there was the possibility of a threat to the rule of law in Poland (European Commission 2016a). This was validated by the offcial opinion of the European Commission for Democracy through Law, better known as the Venice Commission, which is the advisory body of the Council of Europe (CoE) that deals with matters of constitutional law.2 In its March 2016 opinion, the Ven- ice Commission stated that PiS’s actions endangered not only the rule of law, but also the functioning of Poland’s democratic system. It warned that PiS undermined all three basic principles of the CoE: democracy, human rights and the rule of law (European Commission for Democracy Through Law 2016, 24). The Polish government effectively waved the Venice Commission’s opinion aside, as it did the European Commission’s initial fndings (Rp.pl 2016).

As the situation in Poland deteriorated, the European Commission’s Rule of Law Framework proceedings continued, albeit at a relatively slow pace. On 1 June 2016, almost half a year after the dialogue with the Polish government started, the Commis- sion adopted its formal opinion, effectively concluding the frst stage of the procedure (European Commission 2016a). The next stages took place in July and December 2016, and then in July 2017 the Commission issued formal recommendations to the Polish government (European Commission 2016b, 2017). The frst two were related to concerns about the lack of an independent and legitimate constitutional review in Poland. In these recommendations, the Commission reiterated its view that the composition of Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal was no longer in accordance with the Polish constitution (Timmermans 2017).

The third and most recent recommendation covers a relatively new, additional issue: legislative proposals in the area of court organisation that would limit the judicial independence of ordinary courts. In the European Commission’s view, this further increases the systemic threat to the rule of law in Poland (European Commission 2017). As Com- mission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans put it, under the legislative measures proposed by PiS, judges would serve at the pleasure of the political leaders and be dependent upon them from their appointment to their pension (Timmermans 2017).

While adopting the third Rule of Law recommendation, the European Commission explicitly warned that it was fnally ready to launch the sanctions procedure under the framework of Article 7 of the TEU (European Commission 2017). At the request of the Commission, the Estonian presidency of the Council of the EU decided to add a discussion on Poland to the agenda of the 25 September 2017 General Affairs Council (Mau- rice 2017).

2 The CoE is an international organisation founded in 1949 that aims to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe, and promote European culture. It is not an institution of the EU.

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One should note that it took the European Commission more than a year, numerous meetings (including two visits by Vice-President Timmermans to Poland), extensive exchanges in writing and consultations at different levels to come to this conclusion (European Commission 2016a). If the Commission fnds that the Polish government has not followed the recommendations, it is theoretically bound to formally launch the proceedings described in Article 7 of the TEU. Alternatively, those proceedings can be triggered by the European Parliament or the member states.

From the very beginning, the Polish government has made it clear that it is not interested in taking the European Commission’s actions seriously. This is despite the fact that, offcially, the PiS government has declared its readiness to maintain a dialogue with ‘Brussels’, as the European institutions are often collectively referred to in Poland. In practice, however, Warsaw has disregarded the Commission’s views and has paid only lip service to the Rule of Law Framework procedure itself. A particularly striking illustration of the PiS government’s attitude is the following excerpt from the Minister of Justice’s letter to Vice-President Timmermans: ‘Poland is a sovereign and democratic country, so I would like you, for future reference, to be more restrained in instructing and exhorting the parliament and the government of a sovereign, democratic state. Even if you—as a representative of the left—are different from us ideologically’ (News- week 2016).

The Polish government has not only persisted in wrongdoing, but has also methodi- cally added insult to injury. The gradual destruction of the Polish Constitutional Tri- bunal’s independence stretched over many months, during which PiS ignored all the opinions and advice given by various organisations (the European Commission, the Venice Commission, etc.), not to mention the protests from Poland’s opposition parties, non-governmental organisations and representatives of academia. On 28 August 2017, the Polish government offcially dismissed the Commission’s Recommendations related to the new laws on ordinary courts, stating that the Commission had no competence whatsoever to judge the organisation of the Polish judiciary. As usual, the offcial letter to the Commission was full of assurances that the government in Warsaw was ready to engage in constructive dialogue (Wroński 2017).

It is worth mentioning that the barely hidden contempt for Brussels has not been limited to the area of constitutional affairs. In August 2017, for example, the Polish government declared that it was not going to respect the injunction of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which had ordered Poland to immediately stop the controversial and possibly unlawful logging of the protected Puszcza Białowieska forest (Osiński 2017; TVN24 2017). This is the frst ever instance of a member state openly ignoring a CJEU injunction.

The structural weakness of the EU’s rule‑of‑law safeguards

There are two major reasons why the PiS government can afford such defance. First, it is determined to proceed with making the deep changes to Poland’s constitutional

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order, regardless of the political cost. Second, the PiS government has based its strategy on a very simple assumption, that both the Commission’s Rule of Law Framework and Article 7 of the TEU are only paper tigers.

As a matter of fact, Article 7 of the TEU allows a situation where another member state, that is, not the one subject to the procedure, may decide that it is not ready for a full confrontation and is able to block the deterrence mechanism in its fnal phase. Only the frst part of the Article 7 mechanism—that is, a formal confrmation by the Council that there is a clear risk of a serious breach by a member state of the values referred to in Article 2—can be triggered by a four-ffths majority of the member states. The crucial part of the deterrent—that is, the acknowledgement of the existence of a serious and persistent breach of the values, leading to the suspension of the voting rights of the member state in question—requires unanimity in the European Council.

The PiS government apparently believes that unanimity among EU member states does not exist in practice, and that there is at least one country willing to vote against the deterrent. Also, Warsaw does not take seriously the threat that any friendly veto could be circumvented by debating the cases of two countries at the same time, thus effectively stripping them of the possibility of protecting each other. The PiS’s thinking might be that any collateral damage would be limited to naming and shaming, something with which it could live. Since neither the European Commission nor the European Parliament has formally asked to use the Article 7 mechanism at the time of writing, this author’s assumption has not yet been tested in reality.

Nevertheless, irrespective of the fnal decision concerning the Article 7 procedure, one thing already seemed clear in September 2017: the existing provisions of the rule-of-law procedure have proved ineffective in the case of Poland. The rule of law in Poland has clearly been breached; this is something that the opinion of the Venice Commission alone states clearly enough. Yet, the EU’s structures have been unable to stop this breach. It is therefore evident that the existing framework offers no real protection from a determined member-state government as long as it is able to rely strategically on the political support of at least one other member state. The 26 against 2 scenario is all that is needed to give the rogue state effective impunity. One should also note that not only have the defences turned out to be impotent, but they are cumbersome and time-con- suming as well, especially if compared to the effciency of a determined illiberal power.

Of course, one may argue that the European system has been taken by surprise. To put it bluntly: at the time when the safeguard mechanism of Article 7 was created, no one could have expected that the basic constitutional rule of law might be so openly contested by an EU member state. Some scholars point out that both Article 7 and the Rule of Law Framework were introduced so that governments and institutions did not need to resort to ad hoc solutions, such as the bilateral sanctions that were imposed on

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Austria in 2000,3 which backfred politically (Kelemen and Blauberger 2016, 317). But clearly they were not intended to address a crisis of such intensity and bad will on the part of a member-state government. As Kochenov and Pech put it, the abiding nature of the rule of law was considered irreversible; hence Articles 2 and 7 of the TEU were considered largely symbolic. Article 2 was supposed be a token of remembrance of the underlying fundaments of liberal democracy, while Article 7 was to play a symbolically dissuasive role (Kochenov and Pech 2016, 1062–74). The same belief that no member state would dare to set a collision course with the very basic fundamentals of the community laid at the heart of the European Commission’s Rule of Law Framework. Appar- ently, the Commission believed that any rule-of-law crises to be addressed by the Framework could only result from unintentional mistakes, poor interpretations and so on, on the part of the government in question. At the same time, the Commission seemed to believe that governments would act in good faith and that they would be willing, in the end, to adhere to the aforementioned basic tenants of liberal democracy. It is highly probable that no one in Brussels expected a situation where a member-state government’s deeply nested and fully embraced intention was to act against the essence of liberal democracy.

The European Commission now seems to have understood the limitations of the Rule of Law Framework and the Article 7 mechanisms. This is why it has initiated an alternative attempt to incline the Polish government to change its stance: on 26 July 2017, it announced that it was going to explore, in parallel to the Rule of Law Framework, the classic infringement procedure (European Commission 2017). By doing so, the Com- mission is walking on a thin rope. Any infringement procedure needs to be related to a specifc provision of the EU’s acquis communautaire (directive, regulation etc.), while the EU’s fundamental values, such as the rule of law, are only vaguely mentioned in the treaties. There is no specifc EU directive on constitutional courts or the independence of judges. Nonetheless, the Commission has tried to fnd legal ways to use the ordinary infringement procedure as a kind of back-up plan. In the particular case of Poland, it has found two possible infringements in the Law on Ordinary Courts: discrimination on the basis of gender due to the introduction of a different retirement age for male and female judges (65 and 60 years respectively), and the conferment of undue dis- cretionary powers on the Minister of Justice. According to the Commission, the former provision might be in confict with Article 157 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Directive 2006/54 on gender equality in employment; the latter supposedly conficts with Article 19 of the TEU in combination with Article 47 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (European Commission 2017). The advantages of the classical infringement procedure are obvious: no member state can block the procedure and an independent court decides on the potential sanctions.

3 In February 2000, 14 countries of the EU imposed diplomatic sanctions on Austria, in response to the far- right Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ) joining the government—the frst ever instance of a far-right group taking power in the EU. The decision, taken by 14 member states, without any solid legal backing, had an adverse effect: the popularity of the Freedom Party in Austria and anti-EU sentiments soared. The sanctions were dropped in September 2000. See Hervey and Livingstone (2016).

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Conclusion

In the short term, faced with persistent contempt from the Polish government, the Euro- pean Commission has no choice but to clench its teeth, take the fak and continue its Rule of Law Framework proceedings. At some point it needs to decide whether to ask the Council to trigger the Article 7 mechanism. As already explained, the fnal outcome is easy to predict, but this should not stop the Commission from acting. Moreover, it has some chance of success in the parallel infringement procedure, at least theoretically. It remains to be seen if the Commission’s arguments fy in the CJEU.

It is probably too late to save Poland from several years of illiberal drift under the current PiS government, but this will hopefully only last for the duration of its time in offce. However, it is not too late for the EU to reinforce its safeguards for any future use. The EU needs to have a truly effective system in place for protecting its founding values, principles and rules. If these are neglected, then the whole European project is worth- less. The values of the rule of law, human rights and freedom of the press merit better protection. If the dissuading power is to be effective, it needs to be strengthened.

In the longer term, any meaningful change in the safeguard mechanisms would require a Treaty change, which is highly unlikely in the current political context. Hav- ing said that, the history of the EU tells us that nothing is set in stone: political circumstances may change, and a window of opportunity might eventually appear. The EU institutions and member states (those willing to protect the paramount importance of the rule of law) need to be ready with a concrete proposal when this happens.

This article suggests the following modifcation to Article 7 of the TEU: the decision- making mechanism described in the frst paragraph (the Council determining a clear risk of a breach by a majority of four-ffths of its members, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament) should apply to the second stage of the procedure (determination of the existence of a breach). This would still guarantee the democratic character of the decision to launch sanctions, but would make it more probable, should the EU ever face a comparable crisis. Needless to say, any modifcation to Article 7 would require the implementation of the full treaty-change procedure.

In parallel to some conceptual work related to a treaty change, the European Com- mission should act in two areas. First and foremost, the Commission should modify its Rule of Law Framework. Above all, strict deadlines need be introduced. As it stands now, the Framework simply takes too long to be effective. In the case of Poland, it took the Commission more than a year and a half to move from phase one to phase three of the Framework. In that time the Polish government and its majority in parliament had steamrollered the country’s Constitutional Tribunal, ordinary courts and part of the media. The construction of the Framework could remain the same; it is just the timing of the decisions that should change. Additionally, the Commission should consider inviting

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the European Parliament, at least in a consultative role, to the Framework proceedings. Such an invitation would protect the Commission from easy-to-imagine accusations.4

Additionally, the European Commission should stop disregarding the communication angle of the current situation. So far, the picture shows great asymmetry. The government media in Poland (they no longer merit the name ‘public media’) portray the Com- mission and other EU institutions in a negative way. For example, in one of the many television debates related to the Commission’s proceedings, aired by the state-controlled TVP Info news channel, Vice-President Timmermans was called a ‘gendarme’ (TVP Info 2017). Some independent commentators claim that the state-controlled media have been purposely tasked with vilifying the EU, with the government’s bless- ing (Grochal 2017). In fact, the leader of PiS and the de facto extra-constitutional ruler of Poland, Jarosław Kaczyński, admitted in an interview that his party needed to control the media to infuence public opinion (Cienski 2016). And in this particular case the Pol- ish government is apparently trying to use propaganda to dilute public support for Euro- pean institutions, which used to be relatively high in Poland.

And what has the European Commission’s response been to this propaganda onslaught? It has been timid, basically limited to some defensive declarations made at press conferences and to a few interviews with Vice-President Timmermans. To the best of the author’s knowledge, the Commission has not tried to reach the core public (in this case, Poles) directly with its own explanations and rationale. The Commission is wrong not to do so. In the author’s view, as long as it stays within the scope of its powers, the Commission is fully entitled to communicate its actions and their rationale directly to the relevant public, using all available and effcient means, including social media channels and so on. The independent, privately owned media in Poland do what they can, but the EU should not repeat its past mistakes and assume that mediation of its communications will do the job. In the dramatically different communication context of the twenty-frst century, this is no longer the case (Niklewicz 2017, 61). By explaining its case directly to the Polish public, the Commission has a better chance of defus- ing a potential danger—a rally-around-the-fag phenomenon and a rise in nationalistic and anti-European sentiments, fuelled by the aforementioned government propaganda. Additionally, in its communications with the citizens, the Commission needs to stress that the proceedings target the government, not the country or the nation (Kelemen and Blauberger 2016, 319).

An old adage attributed to Prussian Field Marshal Helmut von Moltke the Elder says that ‘no plan survived contact with the enemy’ (Freedman 2013, 104). Although this rather militaristic parallel might seem exaggerated or inappropriate, its logic is correct. The mechanisms designed to protect the Union’s core values from being breached have failed: the EU should acknowledge this and move on. There are ways to fx the EU defences in the area of the rule of law. The EU institutions can still prove that they mean

4 Governments colliding with the European Commission tend to use the argument of ‘unelected bureaucrats imposing their will on democratically elected bodies’.

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it when they say that they care about the essence of liberal democracy, the essence of this Union of Western democracies. That is what the rule of law is all about.

References

Cienski, J. (2016). Polish media veers back to pre-1989. Politico.eu, 11 July. http:// www.politico.eu/article/polish-tv-viewers-turn-off-tune-out-drop-out-poland-kaczynski/. Accessed 20 September 2017.

DW.com. (2016). EU launches frst-ever rule of law review against Poland. 13 January. http://www.dw.com/en/eu-launches-first-ever-rule-of-law-review-against-poland/a- 18975646. Accessed 11 September 2017.

European Commission. (2016a). Commission opinion on the rule of law in Poland and the Rule of Law Framework: Questions & answers. Press Release, MEMO/16/2017, 1 June.

European Commission. (2016b). Rule of law, Commission issues recommendation to Poland. Press Release, IP/16/2643, 27 July.

European Commission. (2016c). Rule of law in Poland: Commission starts dialogue. Press Release, WM/16/2030, 13 January.

European Commission. (2017). European Commission acts to preserve the rule of law in Poland. Press Release, IP/17/2161, 26 July.

European Commission for Democracy Through Law. (2016). Opinion on amendments to the act of 25 June 2015 on the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland. Opinion, CDL- AD(2016)001, 11 March.

Freedman, L. (2013). Strategy: A history. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Grochal, R. (2017). Wyjątkowo toporna, a jednak działa. Jak PiS i TVP robią propagandę [Exceptionally rude, but it works. How PiS and TVP create propaganda]. Newsweek, 19 March. http://www.newsweek.pl/polska/polityka/jak-dziala-propaganda- tvp-propaganda-pis-przyklady-,artykuly,407053,1.html. Accessed 22 August 2017.

Hervey, G., & Livingstone, E. (2016). What is Article 7? Politico, 13 January. http://www. politico.eu/article/hungary-eu-news-article-7-vote-poland-rule-of-law/. Accessed 22 September 2017.

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Kelemen, R. D., & Blauberger, M. (2016). Introducing the debate: European Union safeguards against member states’ backsliding. Journal of European Public Policy, 24(3), 317–20.

Kochenov, D., & Pech, L. (2016). Better late than never? On the Commission’s Rule of Law Framework and its frst activation. Journal of Common Market Studies, 54(5), 1062–74.

Maurice, E. (2017). EU ministers to discuss Polish situation again. EUObserver, 6 Sep- tember. https://euobserver.com/justice/138912. Accessed 7 September 2017.

Newsweek. (2016). Timmermans pisze list do Ziobry. Chce wyjaśnień ws. trzech kon- trowersyjnych ustaw [Timmermans writes a letter to Ziobro. Asks for clarifcations on three controversial bills]. 19 February. http://www.newsweek.pl/swiat/list-timmermansa- do-ziobry-timmermans-pisze-do-ziobry-,artykuly,380091,1.html. Accessed 18 August 2017.

Niklewicz, K. (2017). We need to talk about the EU: European political advertising in the post-truth era. Brussels: Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies.

Osiński, Ł. (2017). 11 września posiedzenie Trybunału Sprawiedliwości UE w sprawie puszczy [Court of Justice of the EU meeting on the primeval forest scheduled for 11 September]. Nauka w Polsce, 14 August. http://naukawpolsce.pap.pl/aktualnosci/ news,415342,11-wrzesnia-posiedzenie-trybunalu-sprawiedliwosci-ue-w-sprawie- puszczy.html. Accessed 18 August 2017.

Poland, Trybunał Konstytucyjny [Constitutional Court]. (2016). Wyrok, Sygn. Akt K 47/15. [Judgment, case no. K 47/15]. Warsaw, 9 March. http://obserwatorium- demokracji.pl/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/wyrok-TK_K_47_15.pdf. Accessed 11 Sep- tember 2017.

Rp.pl. (2016). Rzecznik rządu: stanowisko ws. opinii Komisji Weneckiej przedstawimy jutro [Government spokesman: We will publish our comments on the Venice Commis- sion tomorrow]. 11 March. http://www.rp.pl/Komisja-Wenecka/160319844-Rzecznik- rzadu-Stanowisko-ws-opinii-Komisji-Weneckiej-przedstawimy-jutro.html. Accessed 11 September 2017.

Timmermans, F. (2017). ‘College readout on grave concerns about the clear risks for independence of judiciary in Poland’. Opening remarks of First Vice-President Frans Timmermans. Brussels, 19 July. SPEECH/17/2084.

TVN24. (2017). Wycinają, choć jest zakaz. „Prawdopodobnie nie rozumiemy się w sprawach podstawowych” [They cut down the trees despite the injunction. ‘Most probably, we can’t understand each other on the most fundamental issues’]. 31 July. http:// www.tvn24.pl/wiadomosci-z-kraju,3/zakaz-wycinki-w-puszczy-bialowieskiej-szyszko-o- decyzji-trybunalu,761063.html. Accessed 18 August 2017.

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TVP Info. (2017). Timmermans wygłasza mowy w charakterze żandarma europejskiego [Timmermans talks like a gendarme]. 26 July. http://www.tvp.info/33369068/timmermans-wyglasza-mowy-w-charakterze-zandarma-europejskiego. Accessed 18 August 2017.

Witek, D. (2016). Andrzej Rzepliński żąda opublikowania wyroku TK i zaprzysiężenia sędziów [Andrzej Rzepliński demands the Constitutional Court ruling is published and the judges are sworn in]. Polska Times, 20 April. http://www.polskatimes.pl/ fakty/polityka/a/andrzej-rzeplinski-zada-opublikowania-wyroku-tk-i-zaprzysiezenia- sedziow,9899506/. Accessed 11 September 2017.

Wroński, P. (2017). Komisja Europejska przekazała Polsce zalecenia ws. praworza˛dnos´ci. MSZ odpowiada [The European Commission gave its recommendations on the rule of law to Poland. Ministry of Foreign Affairs responds]. Gazeta Wyborcza, 28 August. http://wyborcza.pl/7,75398,22289791,msz-odpowiada-komisji- europejskiej.html. Accessed 28 August 2017.

Konrad Niklewicz, Ph.D. is the managing deputy director of the Civic Insti- tute, a Civic Platform think tank. He previously served as the spokesperson for the Polish presidency of the Council of the European Union. Before entering public service, he was a journalist and an editor for Gazeta Wyborcza, the leading Polish daily newspaper. Between 2005 and 2007 he was the journal’s Brussels correspondent.

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ARTICLE

Where is the European frontier? The Balkan migration crisis and its impact on relations between the EU and the Western Balkans Emilio Cocco

Abstract For centuries the Western Balkans region has been a place of origin for migration into Europe as well as a transit route to Europe for migrants coming from other regions of the world. The 2015–16 migration crisis brought the region into the spotlight as large numbers of migrants used the Balkan migration route on their way to Western Europe. Individual countries and the EU institutions developed weak and often contradictory responses to the crisis. This has had a negative effect on the Balkan peoples’ perception of the EU, which had previously been positive. On a symbolic level the migration crisis has revealed the fragile relationship between the EU and the Western Balkan states. In the future, EU policy should focus on developing an integrated strategy for managing its external borders and migration, one that prevents member states from pushing back migrants at their borders.

Keywords Western Balkans | EU frontier | Migration | Borders

E. Cocco (*) Facoltà di Scienze della Comunicazione, Università degli Studi di Teramo, Campus Coste S. Agostino, Via R. Balzarini 1, 64100 Teramo, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

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Introduction

Using the appropriate frameworks and methodologies, researchers are increasingly studying borders and frontiers as social phenomena (Wilson and Donnan 1998). ‘Bor- ders’, ‘frontiers’, and ‘boundaries’ are the most typical words used, often interchange- ably, to describe something represented spatially by lines. These terms generally describe a line that possesses an outward orientation that is usually closed and fxed but that can be ‘permeable’ and ‘moving’ (Strassoldo 1982). More specifcally, the semantics of borders often reveals a dialectical relationship between a totally ‘fxed border line’, on the one hand, and a ‘vague frontier space’, on the other (Topaloglou 2009). In Central and Eastern European languages, for instance, there are words which are similar to ‘border’ but which defy the geographical linearity and fxity of border-ness. Rather, they refer to a different representation whereby borders are represented more as place-based and socially shaped contact areas: in other words, frontier spaces like imperial boundary areas and edges (i.e. krajna) (Ivakhiv 2006). That borders are place- based and socially shaped is also true of the Mediterranean region, where, as Bechev and Nicoladis (2010, 11) point out, the frontier ‘creates its own universe, as well as reshaping the social world around it’. Frontiers have symbolic features which transcend their immediately visible features, for example, gates, checkpoints or temporary detention camps. They represent instruments of power which simultaneously create spaces of exchange, exclusion and inclusion (Green 2005; Donnan 2015).

For centuries the Western Balkans have been a frontier region where migration between Europe, Asia and Africa has taken place. The region has served alternatively as a transit area and a point of origin for migration—it has sometimes served as both simultaneously (Düvell 2012; Papadopoulos 2007). Even today, the border between the EU and the Western Balkans is composed of material elements (including gates, checkpoints, temporary detention camps, cameras and biometric devices) and symbolic lega- cies that reinforce asymmetric power relationships between states and are reminders of previous imperial dominance, sometimes revived by EU policies.

Since the 1990s the Western Balkans have played the role of a dynamic European frontier. Its transformations have gone together and interacted with changes in the European institutions (Uvalić 2002). The collapse of Communism started the process of further European integration. Furthermore, during their transition periods, former Communist states adopted reforms geared toward integration in European and Atlantic institutions—although in recent years it has become less certain that this goal will be achieved (Bechev 2011).

The Western Balkans are currently facing new threats, while at the same time, some of the region’s old apprehensions are coming back to life. Old masters and new power- hungry players are standing in the wings, including Turkey, Russia, China and Iran. Global terrorist networks are conducting recruiting campaigns all over the region, with a special focus on the Muslim areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Yugo- slav Republic of Macedonia and Kosovo. At the same time, the region is being negatively impacted by two simultaneous but opposing processes: nationalism and regional

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integration. These processes have been revived as a consequence of the collapse of Albania’s institutions, the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s and the parallel process of European enlargement (Cocco 2013). If current trends continue, the region is likely to become more volatile, and the Balkan Peninsula may once more become a ‘powder keg’.

Stability in the Western Balkans is linked with the political health of the EU. In other words, the Western Balkans act as a barometer of European affairs: the more stable the EU, the more stable the Western Balkans. In light of this interdependency, the frictions between the EU and the Western Balkans in managing the migration crisis refect the deteriorating state of both the EU and the Western Balkans. It is important to understand this relationship, of which the case of the Balkan migration route is indicative, and to develop EU policies accordingly.

Migration in the Balkans and the re‑emergence of the frontier

The Balkan migration route had already become popular with migrants in 2012 (see Vathi 2015, 9). But it was not until May 2015 that, as a result of the migration crisis, the Western Balkans received extensive international press coverage (European Western Balkans archives 2017). The Balkan migration route was the only viable pathway for the massive infux of migrants from the Middle East and Africa. According to the United Nations, 80% of the almost one million refugees that found shelter in Germany in 2015 passed through this route by either registering at the Presevo centre in Serbia (600,000) or bypassing it and moving on (Mandić 2017a).

The 2015 infux was not only larger than the infuxes of previous years but also very different in its composition. Displaced persons from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan fed war or political prosecution and sought asylum in the EU. Thus, while migrants had earlier been classifed as either ‘legal immigrants’ or ‘illegal immigrants’, now new categories were added, including ‘asylum-seeker’, ‘refugee’ and ‘benefciary of subsidiary protection’ (Kogovšek Šalamon 2016).

The crisis of 2015–16 revealed the political instability of not only the Western Balkans but also the EU. The migration trends are important since they point to wider problems involving political stabilisation and the unfnished transition process in the Western Bal- kans (Bonifazi et al. 2014). For instance, the region is vulnerable to drug traffcking and human traffcking, particularly of illegal migrants from Asia and Africa. This is why the stabilisation of the Balkans and their fuller integration in the EU framework is a crucial step for European security policy as a whole (Kotevska 2010).

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(Mis)managing the Balkan migration crisis?

The re-emergence of the border question in the Western Balkans highlights shortcomings in the EU’s policy on this region. The border management practices (migration management, border control, visa arrangements and so on) proved incapable of handling a humanitarian emergency that required fast responses while protecting human rights. The EU provided the Western Balkans with neither integrated long-term projects aimed to secure its borders nor a shared value system to aspire to, which would presumably have improved domestic border management practices. Instead, the EU’s policy on the Western Balkans was ambivalent and sometimes even contradictory, at one moment offering assistance and at another tightening control. The April 2016 deal with Turkey reinforced the notion that the EU lacked an overarching policy on its south-eastern Mediterranean frontier. The absence of such a policy might have encouraged smugglers to relocate migration fows to Italy through the Strait of Sicily (Weber 2017, 9). The deal sent a negative message which opened the EU to suspicions of double standards and revealed a ‘run for your life’ approach (Neag 2015).

At frst, countries on the edge of the Schengen area (e.g. Hungary) and neighbouring non-EU countries such as Serbia and Montenegro were responsible for dealing with the large numbers of migrants. Migrants from Central Asia and the Middle East, joined by Somalis and Eritreans, crossed into Hungary, requested asylum and were accom- modated in already existing refugee centres. Quite soon the EU took responsibility and alleviated the social and material burden of the crisis. It provided both fnancial assistance and material support, especially after Angela Merkel’s infuential ‘Wir schaffen das’ (We can do it) declaration on 31 August 2015 (Wittrock and Elmer 2016).

Merkel’s announcement sounded in many ways like a call for asylum seekers to head towards Germany. The EU, international NGOs and local governments helped asylum seekers, many of whom were illegal migrants, to journey northward. Local governments facilitated this movement by using specially organised trains and buses to send illegal migrants across the border. Governments effectively replaced what had been illegal service providers (passeurs, traffckers and other agents of mediation) with state-owned buses, trains and vans that progressively connected border transit points along the route (Mandić 2017a, 6). At the same time, however, governments were still supposed to stop and reject illegal migrants, and they continued their activities to stop smugglers. This suggests an ambivalence which refects poorly on the EU.

Furthermore, this ambivalence was reproduced all along the Balkan route as states both opposed and facilitated the infuxes of migrants (Greider 2017). The immediate victims were the migrants themselves. For instance, the journey from the Greek islands, one of the most common landing points for illegal migrants, to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia was mostly organised by the Greek state, using state-owned vehicles. But the sea passage from Turkey was still in the hands of human traffckers and therefore subject to police intervention. For fear of prosecution, human traffckers adopted dangerous tactics for ferrying migrants from Turkey to Greece, such as send- ing migrants in boats without captains (Mandić 2017a, 6). In consequence, highly visible

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human tragedies occurred. One well-known example took place in autumn 2015, when the body of a Syrian toddler lying face down on a Turkish shore became a symbol of the dangers migrants were undertaking to reach the EU. Tactics similar to those used between Turkey and Greece were employed in the Mediterranean Sea near Sicily, where human traffckers rigged boats to sink in the proximity of humanitarian vessels.

The situation progressively worsened (Sardelic 2017) as the media continued reporting on these human tragedies. EU member states began to fear negative political fallout from the crisis. As a consequence, they put pressure on the Balkan countries, which, in turn, placed restrictions on the movement of migrants and even closed borders. Due to the lack of supranational coordination and of a coherent EU policy, migrants travelling the Balkan route faced the following paradox. The Balkan countries facilitated transit along the route with the support of international humanitarian organisations while EU member states pushed them to stop the incoming fows. In particular, to avoid becoming a cul-de-sac for trapped migrants, the EU member states tacitly promoted a domino effect based on the assumption that if one country stopped the fow, the others might well follow (Finnian 2017).

The crisis peaked in the summer of 2015, at which point hundreds of thousands of migrants had arrived in the EU via the Western Balkans. Migrants still in the Western Balkans had little hope of moving further west and north within the EU as they would have been stopped and sent back. They became trapped in Serbia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, which, paradoxically, are outside the Schengen area and had not been integrated into a comprehensive EU strategy. In other words, the peripheral transit countries suffered because of the lack of cooperation from the destination countries, namely the northern EU member states. Consequently, the Western Balkan countries, which were confronted with diffcult logistical challenges, allowed migrants to travel freely along the Balkan route. The fow of migrants reached Slove- nia, Croatia and Hungary, where the migrants were obliged to comply with the Dublin Regulation: those seeking protection must apply for it in the frst EU country of arrival. In July 2017 the European Court of Justice confrmed the applicability of this regulation (Sardelic 2017). Thus, migrants who managed to reach an EU state and then travelled on to another one could be sent back to their alleged point of entry, which put an additional strain on countries which were not the fnal destination of the migratory fows. Many migrants registered for asylum but then moved on and abandoned the country of application.

In November 2015 border guards in Serbia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Mac- edonia began subjecting migrants to an unoffcial but effective selection process on the basis of nationality. Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan asylum seekers were allowed to move onwards, while all others were rejected as being ‘illegal immigrants’ (Weber 2017). In February 2017 Hungary passed a law stating that pushbacks were legal within the entire country and not only at the border, thus widening the range of options available to those responsible for managing the migration fows (Weber 2017, 15).

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Only an apparent closure of the route

The April 2016 deal between the EU and Turkey aimed to curb migrant fows. The arrangement led to the closure of the Balkan route. Under the deal illegal migrants crossing the sea to Greece were to be returned to Turkey. In exchange Turkey got up to six billion euros in fnancial support and was offered a more liberal visa policy for Turk- ish citizens travelling to Europe (if all conditions of the agreement were met) (European Commission 2016).

This led to countries along the Balkan route closing their borders. Thousands of migrants became caught within the borders of individual countries and gathered in camps all over the region. In pursuit of their end destination, many migrants paid human traffckers to lead them north, which resulted in increased corruption linked to the management of migrant camps (Mandić 2017b). Migrants had to rely completely on human traffckers and were exposed to police violence (Arsenijevic et al. 2017). Moreo- ver, when it was announced that the Balkan route had been closed, the media largely stopped providing news on it, and thus the migrants who had been caught in limbo found themselves trapped in an even darker place (Knezevic 2017). The EU was heavily criticised for engaging with Turkey’s authoritarian regime and for causing humanitarian crises in the EU’s vicinity.

Conclusion

The Western Balkans have been especially affected by the illegal practices human traffckers used during the migration crisis because the population had experienced mass displacement, ethnic cleansing and state-promoted violence against civilians in its recent history. The crisis affected cooperation between the Balkan states, and the nationalist rhetoric of ethnic purity re-emerged. It also reinvigorated Euroscepticism and worsened the relations of the Western Balkan countries with both the EU institutions and certain of the larger member states, notably Germany, because of these member states’ self-interested management of the crisis. All these elements of strain and suspicion have to be considered against a backdrop of the recurring economic crises, youth unemployment and stagnant economies. Taken together—in a context in which the EU’s eastward enlargement has largely ground to halt, anti-elite populism is on the rise (as one sees in Brexit, for example) and autocratic rule is being de facto legitimised (Erdogan’s soft power is an example)—all these factors make for an explosive mix. In comparison with a few years ago, membership of the exclusive club of the EU is today less attractive to the Western Balkan states, some of which are starting to turn their heads towards new partners, such as Russia (Bechev 2017). Countries such as Bos- nia-Herzegovina and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, which rely on Rus- sia for oil and gas, are especially sensitive to Russia’s encouragement of anti-Western and nationalistic narratives. In 2016 Serbia’s military conducted more than ten times as many exercises with Russian troops as it did with Western forces (Greider 2017). Thus, the region risks being transformed again into a ‘powder keg’.

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One reason for this is that the EU’s grand ideas have been fading. Another is the EU’s inability to provide European-level management of its south-eastern Mediterra- nean frontier, including the Western Balkans. Conversely, the Balkan migration crisis and its controversial solution show that it is high time to apply to the European frontier region a single, integrated strategy for managing the EU’s external borders and migration issues—a strategy based on a common European policy. The mainland and the Mediterranean Sea should be kept together by opening humanitarian corridors for refugees and possibly revising overly harsh visa policies for economic migrants. It is irrational for countries to push back migrants at their terrestrial borders, which leads to migrants appealing to human traffckers, and, at the same time, to support search-and- rescue operations at sea in response to ‘accidents’ caused by human traffckers. The current fractured and ad hoc approach to migration management should give way to more serious and shared attempts at tackling common challenges. These new attempts should ensure that other regional and global players are included, for example, Russia, China and the Arab states. In any case, both smugglers and migrants see the European territory as having one frontier, and it is time for the EU to share this vision.

References

Arsenijevic, J., Schillberg, E., Ponthieu, A., Malvisi, L., Argenziano, S., Waeil, A., Elrah- man, A., Zamatto, F., Burroughs, S., Severy, N., Hebting, C., de Vigne, B., Harries, A. D., & Zachariah, R. (2017). A crisis of protection and safe passage: Violence experienced by migrants/refugees travelling along the Western Balkan corridor to Northern Europe. Confict and Health, 11(6). https://confictandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13031-017-0107-z. Accessed 2 October 2017.

Bechev, D. (2011). The EU as a regional hegemon? From eastern enlargement to the European neighbourhood policy. In G. Noutcheva, K. Pomorska, & G. Bosse (eds.), Values vs. security? The choice for the EU and its neighbours (pp. 25–45). Manchester: MUP.

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Cocco, E. (2013). The evolving role of the Adriatic space in the Mediterranean: Chal- lenges and opportunities. German Marshall Fund of the United States. Mediterranean Paper Series no. 23.

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Finnian, J. (2017). Blocked in the Balkans: The refugees that Europe won’t allow in. The Guardian, 8 August. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/08/eu-refugees- serbia-afghanistan-taliban. Accessed 2 October 2017.

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Emilio Cocco is a Professor and sociologist of international relations at the Faculty of Communication Sciences at the University of Teramo, where he teaches Globalisation and International Development, and at the American University of Rome, where he teaches in the Media Program and in the Food Studies Program. His research interests revolve around the sociology of borders and frontiers, with a particular focus on the Balkans and the Mediterranean region. He is also engaged in sociological investigations of the oceans and of maritime spaces.

302 European View (2017) 16:303–311 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12290-017-0458-2

ARTICLE

Political participation today: a radical shift, but with a positive or negative outcome? Florian Hartleb

Abstract political participation can be regarded as a basic need in democracies. After a worrying 2016, a year of populism and post-truth politics, two different narratives for the future have emerged: one optimistic, the other pessimistic. The former refers to a growing pro-European spirit and the arrival of a new civic culture, epitomised by movements such as Pulse of Europe. The latter sees the worrying growth of fake news and the decline of traditional institutions, as well as the rise of authoritarian tendencies, which seems to indicate that political engagement is seen as old-fashioned. In any case, today’s reality in this age of new technology requires a project- and network- based approach.

Keywords Political participation | Optimistic narrative | Pulse of Europe | Pessimistic narrative | Populism

F. Hartleb (*) Hanse Advice, Asula 3/5, 11312 Tallinn, Estonia e-mail: [email protected]

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Introduction

The year 2016 was an annus horribilis and acted as a warning about the new reality of post-truth politics. It included Brexit, the refugee crisis, the fear of Islamist terrorism with numerous and ongoing attacks, the rise of right-wing populist parties and, more generally, authoritarian developments on a global scale. Some visions for the future have already turned out to be, or will be seen to have been, illusions: the imminent enlargement of the EU, including Turkey, Ukraine and the Western Balkans; and the creation of a European plan for the distribution of refugees. In his September 2017 State of the Union speech, Jean-Claude Juncker proposed the following: ‘If we want the euro to unite rather than divide our continent, then it should be more than the currency of a select group of countries. The euro is meant to be the single currency of the European Union as a whole’ (Juncker 2017). The question thus arises: What do these dramatic political changes mean for political participation? They have opened the foor to two interpretations.

First, there is the optimistic one. Events such as the shock of Brexit and the challenge of migration have led to new forms of civic culture and basic grassroots movements in a ‘wind of change’. The second interpretation, the pessimistic one, refers to the growing distrust of representative democracy and party politics, and marks a new ‘end of history’. In the following, I want to discuss the basic concept of political participation before I turn to an analysis of the optimistic and pessimistic narratives. We should understand that political participation is the interaction of citizens with political parties or institutions. From the centre–right perspective, which stresses the merits of both tradition and modernity, this is based on Christian values such as solidarity and subsidiarity.

Forms of political participation

One of the features of democracies is that citizens are provided with a lot of opportunities for their interests to be incorporated into the political process. As well as participating in elections, they can, among other things, work for political parties, take part in civic initiatives, sign petitions, boycott certain products for political reasons, participate in demonstrations, donate money to political organisations, take part in civil disobedience or run for public offce. Civic engagement conventionally refers to actions by ordinary citizens that are intended to infuence wider society, that is, those outside their own family and circle of close friends. Political organisations encourage supporters to engage in these forms of behaviour via digital platforms. Political parties and non-governmental and civil society organisations attempt to draw citizens into promoting their campaigns, harnessing their dedication to a cause or the organisation. In times of populism, this also opens the door for old and classical mobilisation tools, such as door-to-door-campaigning. Indeed, the German ruling party, the Christian Democratic Union (Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands), has successfully returned to door-to-door campaigning. It has a modern component, however: technical support is provided via apps

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and data analysis. This initiative, called ‘Connect 2017’, has created a feedback loop between the party’s headquarters and door-to-door volunteers (Deutsche Welle 2017).

New forms of political participation should be inclusive, not exclusive. Spreading fear about migrants and refugees (as has occurred due to the urgent need for their fair distribution across Europe) is certainly exclusive, as the political campaigns based on fear in Poland, Hungary and Slovakia since the autumn of 2015 have shown. To unlock the mysteries of political engagement, it is important to have a closer understanding of an individual’s motivation—there is more psychology and less economics involved here. Anger, euphoria and moral outrage are one side of this coin; courage, bravery and, last but not least, hard work, as well as employment, are the other. The new digital decision- making process shortens the distance between the so-called political elites and the people, regardless of their level of technical sophistication.

Participation is derived from motivation, which can take several concrete forms (Ekman and Amnå 2012, 292):

• personal interest in politics, • electoral participation, • unlawful acts, • a sense of belonging to a group (collective identity), • voluntary work, • party politics, • a start-up approach: creating one’s own platforms and digital tools, • organised political participation, and • network- or project-based participation.

In the new world of digital politics, e-participation offers new possibilities, such as producing webcasts and podcasts; responding to surveys; participating in web-portals, chat rooms, polls and decision-making games; and e-petitioning and e-voting. The latter, frst introduced nationwide in Estonia in 2005, does not automatically increase turnout, as experience has proven. Across Europe many e-participation projects have been funded in recent years, but the effects and impacts of them are not very clear. The extent to which people are motivated through the mobilisation strategies of both political organisations and peers within their networks via social media is an issue of some debate. The mobilisation thesis argues that access to digital technologies has the capacity to draw new participants into civic life, particularly among younger citizens. In reality, however, studies often fnd mixed results, with digital technologies facilitating reinforcement and mobilisation among particular user groups of digital platforms (Nam 2012). Due to the mélange of beliefs and scepticism that exists regarding the future, the rest of the article will look at both the optimistic and the negative possible narratives.

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The optimistic narrative

After the events of 2016, some observers have commented that the populist wave has reached its zenith. The election of US President Donald Trump, who has clearly stated that he supports Brexit and does not care if the removal of the UK from the EU (the stepping down of the second biggest economic power in the EU) brings a new ‘end of history’. Eurosceptics have made such a loud noise that it has acted as a wake up-call for the silent pro-European majority. Going to vote matters: this is the lesson learned in and beyond the UK. About three-quarters of 18- to 24-year-olds who voted cast ballots for Remain, while three in fve of the over-60s opted to Leave, surveys show. However, only 36% of people between 18 and 24 years participated; and of those between 25 and 34 years old, only 58% voted; whereas 83% of those who are 65 and older voted (Henn and Sharpe 2016).

However, in reaction to the Brexit vote, a new movement called Pulse of Europe has started to advocate for the European project. It was founded in Frankfurt at the end of 2016 and is organised through personal networks, social media and voluntary dona- tions. The movement’s slogan could be described as, ‘Unite, Unite Europe! A Protest in Favor of the European Union’, which is the title of an article in the New Yorker about it: ‘So far, most Pulse of Europe demonstrations are located in Germany, though gath- erings have taken place in towns from Montpellier to Stockholm, and organisers say queries have come in from Warsaw and Budapest’ (McGrane 2017). Within just half a year, thousands of people have gathered in 130 cities and 19 countries. Since February 2017, demonstrations have taken place every Sunday in various locations, including in Albania and Ukraine. Tirana and Kyiv have both registered as ‘Pulse of Europe’ cities— a sign that they want to be part of the pro-European push too.

Unlike previous pro-EU movements, Pulse of Europe is a grassroots, decentralised organisation with no links to the Brussels-based institutions. And, unlike most movements, Pulse of Europe is not against, but for something: a European community of shared values. The creators of Pulse of Europe, who work for a legal company, believe in a liberal, fully supranational EU. The offcial website calls for activism: ‘Come on, grab your European fag and blue ribbons, bring your friends and family, and motivate your colleagues. Become active and join Pulse of Europe close to you!’ (Pulse of Europe 2017). The idea of standing up for Europe sounds very reasonable and perfectly timed. It appears that the clear goal of the movement, like that of many social movements, can be judged independently from its success. So far politicians have not been permitted to get involved in the demonstrations in order to allow the movement to retain its label as an independent movement.

Symbolically, Pulse of Europe fulfls the criteria for the current form of political engagement: it is organised via social media, operates like a business and stands for a particular issue—the success of the European project. In addition, it represents the new Zeitgeist in modern democracies, as is refected by political leaders such as Ger- man Chancellor Angela Merkel: it is not too concrete in form and is only a little ideological, instead appealing to emotions and offering a positive vision. The mechanisms

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of democratic representation play only a side role in this regard. The movement’s public relations strategy has been so successful that Pulse of Europe has received a civic prize from the editors of German newspapers. It seems that it is the frst clear social movement fghting exclusively for the deepening of the EU. The whole idea fts well with the idea of network- and project-based participation.

The British think tank Demos conducted an opinion poll based on the UK general election in 2015—before the Brexit referendum. A large majority (72%) of people who had used social media for political purposes reported that they felt more politically engaged as a direct result. Over a third (39%) of the poll’s respondents who had engaged with political content on social media felt more likely to vote as a direct result (Miller 2016, 11). However, the result of the Brexit referendum showed how poorly mobilised young people were to vote. But there is no doubt that the use of digital technologies can provide pathways to higher participation levels.

If we really are living in an age of anti-politics, political decision-makers can address this problem. In a rare touch of humour in the dour world of politics, the Spanish anti- austerity, left-wing radical party Podemos (We Can!) published its manifesto in the style of the Ikea catalogue. As in the Swedish furniture catalogue, the manifesto is organised on a room-by-room basis, with candidates pictured at home in the kitchen, on the sofa, in the garden or working at their desks in homely, affordable and cosy-looking spaces. Party members are depicted feeding their fsh, hanging out the washing, making the bed and brushing their teeth. The goal was to produce the most-read manifesto ever produced (The Guardian 2016). With this campaign idea, the claim of ‘bringing democracy back to the people’ found a response.

The pessimistic narrative

The spread of the Internet and related new tools since the 1990s had reinvigorated great hopes for a revitalisation of Western democracies. However, the great visions of cyberspace as an ‘electronic frontier’ of free thought and political activity have under- gone a reality check. The fragmentation and unpredictability of public opinion has been seen in the false prognoses of opinion polls on Brexit, the election of President Trump and on many other occasions. An ongoing and deepening protest culture, based on the idea of ‘citizens in anger’ and political alienation from the established ways of democracy is challenging liberal democracies (Hartleb 2011). It even seems as though the political discourse only consists of fake news, hate and conspiracy theories. Kellyanne Conway, adviser to President Trump, created the phrase ‘alternative facts’ to describe demonstrable falsehoods in the context of Trump’s inauguration on 22 January 2017. Facebook itself has published a detailed and precise study on civic engagement that discusses possible counter-measures. It states:

The networks of politically-motivated false amplifers and fnancially-motivated fake accounts have sometimes been observed commingling and can exhibit similar

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behaviors; in all cases, however, the shared attribute is the inauthenticity of the accounts. . . . In some instances dedicated, professional groups attempt to infuence political opinions on social media with large numbers of sparsely populated fake accounts that are used to share and engage with content at high volumes. (Weeden et al. 2017, 8) A concrete example would be the ‘Lisa’ case in Germany, which dominated the headlines and affected German public discussion for two weeks in January 2016. The 13-year-old Russian–German girl had gone missing for several hours and was reported by First Russian TV to have been raped by migrants. The story turned out to be fake (she had been with a friend that night, according to the police investigation) but was extensively reported in the Russian media, including by Russia Today and Sputnik. The Kremlin accused Germany, of ‘sweeping the case under the carpet’ (BBC 2016) and Russian–Germans went out onto the streets and gathered in front of the Kanzleramt (German Chancellery) to protest. This example shows how easily the masses can be manipulated.

In the US and Europe there is an image of the ‘angry white man’, who believes in a strong leader and who propagates the idea of a national disaster in various dimensions as part of a cultural ‘clash of civilisations’. On this, the Frenchman Gustave Le Bon, who published the famous book The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind at the end of the nineteenth century, still offers food for thought. Crowds, being incapable both of refection and of reasoning, possess a collective mind (Le Bon 2016). Anti-politics, the rejection of traditional politics and its practitioners, is a popular instinct today. The rising support for populist parties has disrupted the politics of many Western societies. Popu- list mobilisation can be defned as ‘any sustained, large-scale political project that mobi- lises ordinarily marginalised social sectors into publicly visible and contentious political action, while articulating an anti-elite, nationalist rhetoric that valorises ordinary people’ (Jansen 2011, 84).

The fact that even in Germany, for the frst time in post-war history, a radical right- wing party—Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD)—has entered the national parliament has its roots, not in the economy, but in a cultural backlash, based on a fear of migration and refugees. In its short history the AfD has rapidly mor- phed from being a ‘professors’ party’ of Eurosceptic economists to one focused on nationalist conservatism and anti-migration policies, similar to other European populist parties such as the Freedom Party of Austria (Freitheitliche Partei Österreichs) and the French National Front (Front National). The AfD has been very successful at consolidat- ing the anti-establishment vote and mobilising people who had not voted in previous elections. Exit polls from regional elections since the last federal election four years ago show that the party has drawn large parts of its support from minor parties and by rally- ing those who have never previously voted (Stabe and Maier-Borst 2017). The party’s success refects the basic strategic mistake of established parties—demonising their populist competitors. The mobilisation of an anti-populist campaign, including constant attacks on populist parties and openly excluding them from public debates, has brought such parties attention and has laid the foor open to a counter-mobilisation that requires little effort and few resources (Hartleb 2017, 165–93). Given that the highly emotive

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issue of migration and the refugee challenge is likely to remain unresolved in European politics, populist parties are easily able to play on people’s fears and build up resentment. Comparative studies see migration as a much more important factor for populism than socio-economic differences (Inglehart and Norris 2016). In other words: it is not just the ‘losers of modernisation’ who vote for populist parties.

Another worrying factor lies in the nature of democracies itself. The longitudinal data of the World Values Survey indicates that there is widespread disillusion with the West- ern model of liberal democracy (World Values Survey Wave 1–6, 2017). Citizens in a number of supposedly consolidated democracies in North America and Western Europe have not only grown more critical of their political leaders, but have also become more cynical about the value of democracy as a political system. They are less hopeful that anything they do might infuence public policy and more willing to express support for authoritarian alternatives. The authors conclude that young people engage in lower numbers than previous cohorts did at the same age. This decline in political engagement is even more marked for measures such as active membership of new social movements (Foa and Mounk 2016, 7; 11). The rise of populism is connected with the changing framework for political parties, which are facing problems of disenchantment. This affects old democracies as well: the declines in party membership and voter turnout are opening up the space for business-oriented types of political parties and simple protest platforms (Hartleb 2012).

Conclusion

Participation in politics can never be fairly distributed or balanced among criteria such as age, income and gender. However, the new reality in the age of new technologies demands a project- and network-based approach that goes beyond the traditional ways of working. Simply mobilising against populism has too little potential for success. We must face the new realities, regardless of whether our outlook is optimistic or pessimistic. This means we must

• promote the mechanism of representative democracy, • advertise the European idea, • listen to the electorate and treat social media as a two-way street, and • create a political sphere that exists beyond simple (and anonymous) online discussions.

Organised political participation should be based on the following pillars: representation, transparency, and a well-balanced mixture of confict and consensus. Every political engagement campaign needs a clear team structure for the volunteer operation and a framework for motivation. As Moisés Naím (2017) points out in the New York Times, political parties cannot give up their monopoly of mobilisation: ‘Political parties must regain the ability to inspire and mobilize people—especially the young—who might otherwise disdain politics or prefer to channel whatever political energy they have through single-issue groups.’

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References

BBC. (2016). Russia steps into Berlin ‘rape’ storm claiming German cover-up. 27 Janu- ary. http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-eu-35413134. Accessed 23 October 2017.

Deutsche Welle. (2017). German election: Parties return to door-to-door campaigning. 10 August. http://www.dw.com/en/german-election-parties-return-to-door-to-door- campaigning/a-40045887. Accessed 19 September 2017.

Ekman, J., & Amnå, E. (2012). Political participation and civic engagement: Towards a new typology. Human Affairs, 22(3), 283–300.

Foa, R. S., & Mounk, Y. (2016). The democratic disconnect. Journal of Democracy, 27(3), 5–17.

Hartleb, F. (2011). A new protest culture in Western Europe? European View, 10(1), 3–10.

Hartleb, F. (2012). All tomorrow’s parties: The changing face of European party politics. Brussels: Centre for European Studies.

Hartleb, F. (2017). Die Stunde der Populisten. Wie sich unsere Politik trumpetisiert und was wir dagegen tun können. Schwalbach/Ts: Wochenschau-Verlag.

Henn, M., & Sharpe, D. (2016). Young people in a changing Europe: British youth and Brexit 2016. EU Referendum Analysis 2016. http://www.referendumanalysis.eu/eu-referendum-analysis-2016/section-8-voters/young-people-in-a-changing-europe-british- youth-and-brexit-2016/. Accessed 1 September 2017.

Inglehart, R., & Norris, P. (2016). Trump, Brexit and the rise of populism. Economic have-nots and cultural backlash. Harvard Kennedy School Working Paper RWP16-026, Cambridge, Massachusetts, August. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_ id 2818659. Accessed 1 September 2017. = Jansen, R. S. (2011). Populist mobilization: A new theoretical approach to populism. Sociological Theory, 29(2), 75–96.

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Le Bon, G. (2016). Psychologie der Massen. Hamburg: Nikol. (German translation, frst published in French in 1895).

McGrane, S. (2017). Unite, unite Europe! A protest in favor of the European Union. New Yorker, 19 April. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/unite-unite-europe-a- protest-in-favor-of-the-european-union. Accessed 19 September 2017.

Miller, C. (2016). ‘We are living through a radical shift in the nature of political engagement..’: The rise of digital politics. London: Demos.

Naím, M. (2017). Why we need political parties? New York Times, 19 September. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/opinion/need-political-parties.html. Accessed 19 September 2017.

Nam, T. (2012). Dual effects of the Internet on political activism: Reinforcing and mobi- lizing. Government Information Quarterly, 29(1), 90–7.

Pulse of Europe. (2017). Become active. https://pulseofeurope.eu/mitmachen/aktiv- werden/. Accessed 1 September 2017.

Stabe, M., & Maier-Borst, H. (2017). German election. AfD’s advance in six charts. Financial Times, 20 September. https://www.ft.com/content/1e3facea-9d48-11e7-8cd4- 932067fbf946. Accessed 20 September 2017.

The Guardian. (2016). Flat-pack policies: New Podemos manifesto in style of Ikea catalogue. 9 June. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/09/podemos-manifesto- ikea-catalogue-fat-pack-policies. Accessed 2 September 2017.

Weeden, J., Nuland, W., & Stamos, A. (2017). Information operations and Facebook. Menlo Park, California, 27 April. https://fbnewsroomus.fles.wordpress.com/2017/04/ facebook-and-information-operations-v1.pdf. Accessed 2 September 2017.

World Values Survey Wave 1–6. (2017). 1981–2016. http://www.worldvaluessurvey. org/WVSDocumentationWV6.jsp. Accessed 2 September 2017.

Dr Florian Hartleb, a former research fellow at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, is currently working in Tallinn, Estonia, as a political consultant dealing with the digital society. He also contributes to international media and events on current political topics such as populism, Euro- scepticism and terrorism. Most recently, he has produced an offcial report on the 22 July 2016 terrorist attacks for the city of Munich.

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ARTICLE

Women in the CSDP: strengthening the EU’s effectiveness as an international player Irina Bratosin D’Almeida · Rebekka Haffner · Corinna Hörst

Abstract Security and defence cooperation in the EU is being upgraded, and therefore the importance of the civilian missions and military operations launched in the framework of the Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) is likely to increase. This article argues that much can be gained by improving the gender balance in CSDP missions and operations. The participation of female personnel in crisis management has a positive effect on operational effectiveness and contributes to the acceptance of the mission by the local population. Moreover, women deployed abroad play an important role in overcoming gender stereotypes and demonstrating the EU’s commitment to gender equality. This article explores the reasons for the low number of women in CSDP missions and operations. It suggests ways to improve the gender balance at the national and EU levels, which would increase the EU’s chances of resolving foreign affairs issues abroad.

I. Bratosin D’Almeida · R. Haffner · C. Hörst (*) WIIS Brussels, Rue Franz Merjay 125, 1050 Brussels, Belgium I. Bratosin D’Almeida e-mail: ibratosin@wiis‑brussels.org R. Haffner e-mail: rhaffner@wiis‑brussels.org C. Hörst e-mail: chorst@wiis‑brussels.org

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Keywords Women | CSDP | Crisis management | Gender equality | EU effectiveness

Introduction

The EU operates in an increasingly diffcult security environment. The nature of conficts is changing, as can be seen in the rise of hybrid and cyberthreats, the multiplication of non-state players and the increase in the interaction between security forces, civilian personnel and populations. These changes make international confict management even more challenging.

Against this backdrop, the EU’s Global Strategy—which was presented by High Rep- resentative Federica Mogherini in June 2016—makes it clear that the EU’s importance as a foreign and security policy player is growing:

The purpose, even existence, of our Union is being questioned. Yet, our citizens and the world need a strong European Union like never before. Our wider region has become more unstable and more insecure. The crises within and beyond our borders are affecting directly our citizens’ lives. In challenging times, a strong Union is one that thinks strategically, shares a vision and acts together. (European Exter- nal Action Service 2016a, 3) To be able to play this growing security role internally and externally, the EU is stepping up its security and defence work considerably. EU policies, coupled with implementation mechanisms and fnancial allocations, are under pressure due to the need to address the above-mentioned threats and conficts. The success of these policies is not only about the capability to produce the desired results but also about the legitimacy of the EU as an international player.

The civilian missions and military operations that the EU deploys in the framework of its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) are among its most visible tools for external action. They focus on a range of peace-building issues, including capacity building, training, reforming the security and justice sectors, supporting border management, enhancing maritime security and monitoring ceasefre agreements. Thus far in 2017, the EU has maintained 15 missions and operations worldwide. All missions and operations should mainstream human rights and gender throughout their work. Therefore, although limited in time and in scope, CSDP missions can contribute to the implementation of the EU’s commitments to promote women’s role in peace-building and confict prevention (Hörst et al. forthcoming). This article argues that women’s participation in crisis management both contributes to the effectiveness of missions and promotes the EU’s credibility and image as a defender of human rights. It is about making compliance not merely a matter of rhetoric but actually implementing policies in measurable ways. It is about humanitarian agencies, civilian police and academics, as well as the military and defence, diplomacy, and development sectors engaging in new and better ways to measure and achieve operational effectiveness. ‘Effectiveness is the term commonly used to refer to the goal-attainment of a measure, thus relating the

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outcome of a process to its original goals. In other words, an intervention is said to be effective if the outcomes match with the goals’ (Meharg 2009, 1).

Why is gender balance in CSDP missions and operations important?

Gender balance increases the operational success of missions and operations. Numer- ous studies have shown that diverse teams perform better than homogenous ones (Chen and Levine 2016; Hunt et al. 2015; Hoogendoorn et al. 2013). This evidence holds true both for police forces (Asquith 2016; Miller and Segal 2013) and for military teams (Hörst et al. forthcoming, 18–21). It is important to note that the argument here is not about women being more peaceful than men but about women bringing a different perspective and skill set to the table. For example, when deployed on missions abroad, female soldiers are able to liaise with segments of the host nation society to which their male colleagues often have no access at all: to women who are in some cultures are not allowed to talk to men outside their families. In Afghanistan, for example, NATO has set up Female Engagement Teams, Cultural Support Teams and Foreign Area Special- ists. Their roles include gaining a better understanding of the local security situation and insurgent activities, and gathering information by engaging with the female population (Tzemach Lemmon 2015; Lackenbauer and Langlais 2013). To address security concerns more effectively, the institutions handling security should refect the societies they are intended to protect.

Engaging female personnel in training efforts also increases the effectiveness of missions and operations signifcantly (Hörst et al. forthcoming, 19). According to the frst annual CSDP report, of the 9,000 people trained by civilian CSDP missions in 2016, at least 1,300 were women (European External Action Service 2016b, 4). Including more female trainers could lead to more female personnel being trained and thereby broaden the outreach of the EU’s training efforts. A more holistic approach enables the mission to address security concerns more effectively and demonstrates that it is accountable to the EU’s own standards of diversity. Furthermore, role modelling in training is a way to change mind-sets. Mixed training teams do not only teach skills. They also showcase patterns of behaviour, for example, how a male team leader should treat his female colleagues on patrol or when making decisions (Hörst et al. forthcoming, 18).

Furthermore, the presence of women on missions and operations contributes to the acceptance of the mission by the local population, as female personnel can reach out to both men and women in the host nations.1 This in turn contributes to the implementation

1 When deployed in Afghanistan, the US Army found that female soldiers are often perceived as a ‘third gender’ by Afghan men. While strict honour and tribal codes might prohibit Afghan men from sharing information with other men or Afghan women (to whom they are not allowed to talk if there is no family connection), the American women—and foreign women in general—were placed outside the strict moral codes, which made talking to them easier for many Afghan men (Tzemach Lemmon 2015).

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of the mission mandate. In Georgia no women serve at the check-points along the Administrative Boundary Line that divides the confict areas. As a consequence, local women preferred to talk to female personnel on the mission’s patrols rather than to local security offcers (Hörst et al. forthcoming, 19).

If a core aspect of a mission’s mandate is to promote human rights and women’s rights, then one of the best ways of accomplishing this is to showcase in practice how it can be done. The very presence of women on missions and operations challenges any stereotypes held by those in the host countries (and unfortunately, often by the women’s own male colleagues as well). Women functioning as patrol leaders or heads of missions—or in more general terms, women performing traditional military duties such as security checks or carrying out special forces assignments—send a strong signal about the professional roles women can play. This demonstrates the EU’s ability to hold itself accountable to its own standards on gender parity in employment and shows that its compliance leads to actual change on the ground.

Moreover, when deploying women to crisis-management duties, it is also important not to create or reinforce stereotypes and to ensure that women are strategically placed. For example, in Ukraine a community policing team consisted solely of women. This situation led the local population and counterparts to consider community policing a soft area and not as important as the mission’s other focus areas (Hörst et al. forthcoming, 18).

The presence of women in leadership positions is equally important. On the one hand, women in leadership positions serve as role models for other women that aspire to such roles. On the other hand, women leaders are more sensitive to issues of discrimination and sexual harassment and can contribute to creating a safer environment in which women working in the missions can feel more comfortable to speak out on issues such as (sexual) harassment. For example, it is reported that female managers contribute to a more positive working environment, with many women working in the missions and operations reporting feeling safer and more comfortable about discussing (sexual) harassment issues with a female manager (Hörst et al. forthcoming, 21). Diverse and inclusive leadership is key in implementing a mission’s directive. Thus it makes EU policies more effective when it comes both to addressing threats and conficts on the ground and to showing that the EU adheres to its own democratic principles.

Finally, aside from the argument that (gender) diverse work forces perform better, women’s rights are also workers’ rights, as set forth in the Treaty of Rome (Articles 118–19). Women should thus have access to equal rights in every aspect of life, including work. But CSDP missions are not only employment opportunities: they serve as ‘the face of the EU’ in host countries. Their composition in terms of diversity on all levels can further enhance the democratic principles and the legitimacy of the EU. Including more women in those missions and making them more visible would send a powerful message about EU principles of non-discrimination and gender equality. It would make the

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standards set out in UN Security Council Resolution 1325 more credible.2 This resolution states that women play an important role in the prevention and resolution of conficts, in peace negotiations, in peace-building and in peacekeeping. These declarations address all players. Thus, a diverse EU mission team leads by example.

Why are so few women deployed on CSDP missions and operations?

EU member states provide the majority of CSDP personnel. For civilian missions there is a degree of fexibility as member states nominate candidates but each individual mission selects its own personnel from those proposed. Missions have used this fexibility to proactively recruit women. However, it is the member states that provide personnel for military operations. And with personnel selection being dependent on the policies of the individual member states involved, personnel tend to be predominantly male. In 2015 women made up 10.8% of the personnel in NATO’s armed forces (compared to 10.3% in 2014).3 It is thus not surprising that the number of female soldiers deployed in CSDP operations is low.

Moreover, women seeking to join CSDP missions face other obstacles. In European societies, despite gender equality policies, soldiering is still largely perceived as a ‘man’s job’. While women have fought their way into European armies, military com- mand has often only opened up positions to women when forced to do so by court rul- ings. Although women can join the military, many of their fellow soldiers and large parts of society continue to believe that women are (physically) unable to do the job. In a recent study commissioned by the European Parliament, women who were interviewed acknowledged facing more prejudice from the men working inside the EU institutions and member states than from their male counterparts in the host nations. Many mentioned that their ability to do the job in confict environments or in male-dominated felds such as the police force had occasionally been put in doubt by their own colleagues. Women from civilian backgrounds faced even greater prejudice. The reality of the situation, however, is that women have led and currently lead some of the EU missions with the highest security risks, such as missions in Afghanistan, Mali and Niger. This contradicts the misconception that women cannot take on challenging roles or are less capable than their male colleagues (Hörst et al. forthcoming).

Additionally, the military structure and culture are highly vulnerable to the phenomenon of ‘toxic masculinity’, an extreme form of masculine behaviour which leads people

2 UN Security Council Resolution 1325 is the frst act passed by the UN that specifcally addresses the role of women in peace and security. The resolution emphasises that women bear the brunt of confict violence and that more should be done to prevent sexual and gender-based violence and to prosecute those who carry it out. It also clearly indicates that women have a role to play in contributing to peace and stability. 3 naTO member states are expected to report yearly on the numbers of male and female personnel serving in their armed forces (NATO 2015, 9).

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to take unreasonable risks and makes them averse to admitting error. Toxic masculine behaviour often leads to contests among men eager to prove to themselves and others how masculine they are. It cannot accept a situation where women do the same job as men and perform just as well (Haffner 2017).

Neither men nor women fnd it easy to combine a military profession, in particular deployments, with a family life. Working hours can be unsocial and unpredictable, and training and missions may regularly require long absences from home. As family and childcare are still widely considered a female domain, women face more problems than men when being deployed on missions. After her appointment in 2013, German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen caused a good deal of furore when she openly discussed the need to improve military personnel’s work–life balance.

Furthermore, positive narratives and widely known examples of mothers ‘leaving their children behind’ to go on a military mission are still rare. A German soldier addressed that gap and wrote a children’s book explaining to her three-year-old daughter what she was doing so far away from home and why it was necessary. The positive feedback and demand for the book4 clearly show the need for more such stories—and for deployed women to become the norm for their own families and for society at large. Having more men in the military speaking up about their wish to serve their country and about their desire to be present in their children’s life would be another way of breaking traditional gender stereotypes.

How to involve more women in CSDP missions

As most personnel on CSDP missions are seconded by EU member states, the solution to the shortage of women lays primarily at the national level. There are good practices from which countries could certainly learn.5

Sweden is reintroducing conscription, and in connection with this, Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist has stated, ‘It’s very important to emphasise that military service is for girls and guys’, and ‘it is important for the military to have a gender equal profle’ (Olter- mann 2017). Emphasising gender equality when it comes to conscription both sends a very important signal to society at large and is a great opportunity for young women to learn more about a possible career in the armed forces—which they might not consider without conscription. Sweden was not the frst country in Europe to call women to service: Norway introduced female conscription in 2016.

4 According to the author’s Facebook page, about 200 copies have been sold so far: https://www.facebook. com/meinemamaistsoldat/. 5 a resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recently summarised concrete best practices and recommendations with regard to hiring and retaining women in the armed forces and ending gender-based violence (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe 2016).

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It makes a difference when leaders communicate clearly and openly about the importance both of equality between men and women and of diversity. The Irish Defence Forces chief of staff, for example, made the case for diversity, emphasising the benefts of diverse teams, such as greater innovation and better decision-making. In view of the complex problems militaries face today, a gender perspective—a more holistic approach that takes into account the different needs of men and women and the value of greater gender diversity—should be ‘institutionalised’ (Siggins 2017).

Leadership commitment to equality between men and women must be backed up with concrete policies, and implementation processes should be more than just a ‘tick the box’ exercise. At the European External Action Service (EEAS), two women have been recently appointed as heads of mission, one in the EU’s Capacity Building Mis- sion in Sahel, Mali, and the other in the EU’s Police Mission in Afghanistan. This brings the number of women heads of mission to an unprecedented 4 out of 15 (European External Action Service 2016c). In Germany the minister of defence has implemented the ‘Attractiveness Agenda’, a set of policies that include measures aimed at enhancing fexibility and childcare facilities with the objective of increasing the German Armed Forces’ attractiveness as an employer.

Like any other employer, the armed forces are carefully watching the changing demographics in Europe and preparing for increased competition in attracting and retaining qualifed personnel. This is a challenge today, and it is likely to increase in the future. The importance of employers’ ‘diversity image’ was recently highlighted by a Deloitte survey which found that 72% of working Americans might consider leaving their employer for an organisation which they consider more diverse and inclusive (see Deloitte 2017). If similar attitudes are prevalent in Europe, the armed forces will urgently need to move from words to deeds to keep up in the race to become inclusive employers. In times of personnel shortages, armed forces simply cannot afford to exclude potential candidates because of their sex, religion, ethnic background and so on.

Integrating women into the military is one step; creating special female units to use the distinct advantages of having women on the battlefeld is another. This Norway has demonstrated by setting up the frst all-female military special-forces unit in the world. The special unit was justifed by the concrete added value of having women on the front- line. Moreover, Norwegian commanders found that the female unit contributed to troop motivation and ultimately helped to raise the standards of male units as well: where some women performed better than men, the latter would be likely to try harder or adopt more ‘female’ patterns of behaviour such helping other team members (Angerer 2017).

While several positive examples can be found on the national level, the EU should play a stronger role. First and foremost, the EU can continue raising awareness about the importance of equality between men and women on CSDP missions and encourage member states to nominate more women. Furthermore, the EU can adapt job descriptions and family policies to make missions more gender-friendly. Particular attention should be given to ensuring job descriptions are gender-neutral and list skills and experience that are needed to perform the job in the specifc working environment involved.

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The EU automatically defnes all missions and operations as non-family duty stations, and it is assumed that all personnel will work in hostile crisis environments. This, however, is not the case for all EU missions. Exceptions include the Advisory Mission in Ukraine, the Monitoring Mission in Georgia, the Police Mission in the Palestinian Territo- ries, the Border Assistance Mission at the Rafah crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza strip, and the Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo.6 In these types of mission, practical measures should be taken to ensure families can and are welcome to join family members working on the mission. (These measures include providing for health coverage and arranging visas.)

The Principal Advisor on Gender and on UNSCR 13257 can play an important role in making the CSDP more gender-friendly. At the request of several member states, the Principle Advisor on Gender recently visited several CSDP missions and operations in an effort to shed light on the important work undertaken by the gender advisors and focal points in the feld, work that is often neglected. Furthermore, these types of high- level visit are also a means to bring political pressure to bear on the leadership of the individual missions and operations for more action on gender mainstreaming. Mission personnel working on these topics report feeling more supported by EEAS headquarters when such high-level visits address gender and diversity.

There is also a role for the Informal Task Force on UN Security Council Resolution 1325. It can further support the development of gender equality strategies for missions and operations, as well as for EU departments dealing with crisis management. The EU’s Advisory Mission Ukraine has drafted a gender strategy for the mission which attempts to provide a comprehensive answer to the question of how to make the mission more gender sensitive. Offering such expertise and promoting these types of action can help institutionalise a practice which is today largely dependent on the personal commitments of managers or expert staff (Hörst et al. forthcoming).

Finally, while the European Parliament plays no formal role in CSDP missions and operations, it can raise much-needed political awareness of the issue by

• commissioning research on the topic of gender and the CSDP, • instructing the European Institute for Gender Equality to collect sex-disaggregated data from missions and operations, and • ensuring that EU staff in the CSDP receive questions on their efforts to increase gender-friendly policies within their structures.

6 This designation is without prejudice to position on status, and is in line with UN Security Council Resolu- tion 1244/99 and the International Court of Justice Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence. 7 The role of the EEAS Principal Gender Advisor is to ensure cooperation and coordination between the EU and international, regional and national actors on policy and action related to gender and UNSCR 1325. He or she is also to contribute to internal coordination on gender and UNSCR 1325 matters, and to increase the visibility of these issues within the EEAS as well as in its foreign policies. For more information, please see European Peacebuilding Liaison Offce (no date).

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Conclusion

The EU Global Strategy states that the Union aims to play a decisive role in global security. The EU has many well-developed soft-power policy instruments at its disposal, but they must be backed up by hard power. Indeed, the Global Strategy recognises that ‘to engage responsibly in the world, credibility is essential. In this fragile world, soft power is not enough’ (European External Action Service 2016a, 44). EU security and defence cooperation is being upgraded; thus, the importance of CSDP missions in the Union’s wider neighbourhood is likely to increase in the coming years. This makes addressing gender balance a key priority for achieving the operational success of CSDP missions. It also underscores the aim of taking a more integrated approach to conficts and crises, one that looks at the multiple dimensions of confict, including gender (European External Action Service 2016a, 28, 51).

While the evidence is clear that teams with greater gender balance increase the effectiveness of missions and operations, there is much to be done at the national and European levels to involve more women in crisis management in all positions and at all levels. EU member states are mainly responsible for recruiting and retaining women for CSDP missions and for deploying them to these missions. Efforts to increase diversity and equality must be strengthened. The EU has a vested interest not only in encourag- ing its member states to improve gender balance but also in adapting its own practices, rules and regulations to become more gender-friendly.

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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Irina Bratosin D’Almeida is currently working for the Secretariat of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality at the European Par- liament and is a member of the Steering Committee of Women in Interna- tional Security (WIIS) Brussels.

Rebekka Haffner is a Project Offcer at the European Organisation of Mili- tary Associations and a member of the WIIS Brussels Steering Committee.

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Dr Corinna Hörst is Deputy Director and Senior Fellow at the Brussels offce of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She is also Presi- dent of WIIS Brussels.

324 European View (2017) 16:325–328 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12290-017-0470-6

SATIRICAL REVIEW

The revolution of the ‘sans‑cravates’ José Luis Fontalba

According to radical chic writer and lover of ties Tom Wolfe, in 1959 dozens of students enrolled in experiments at the Veterans Hospital in Menlo Park that involved the use of psychotomimetic drugs. Wolfe states that Ken Kesey and his followers—the Merry Pranksters—emerged as a group from those experiments, and it was at that moment that they began loosening their ties.

In politics we have had to wait slightly longer for ties to be loosened. Just a decade ago, before the economic and fnancial crisis that plunged Europe and the world into recession and a state of deep pessimism, it was highly unlikely that any male political leader who chose to abandon the tie would be perceived as a viable candidate.

In the famous US presidential debate between Kennedy and Nixon (YouTube 2010), which few doubt signifcantly infuenced the result, the youthful Kennedy appeared smil- ing, tanned, well dressed and, most importantly, relaxed. Nixon, on the other hand, who was recovering from surgery, looked emaciated. He was sweating and jittery and his

J. L. Fontalba (*) Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, Rue du Commerce 20, 1000 Brussels, Belgium e-mail: [email protected]

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pale complexion was exacerbated by the light-coloured tie he wore, ultimately making him appear dishevelled and weak.

Since then, the use of the tie by American male contenders for the presidency has been sacrosanct. Bright red and electric blue have prevailed as the tie colours that sym- bolise power and leadership and, in short, make a candidate appear ‘presidential’. The culmination of this trend came in 2015 with Donald Trump.

It is rare to spot the self-made, self-tanned millionaire wearing anything other than a suit, often boxy and navy blue. But his choice of tie may be one of the most unmistak- able trademarks of his style—or lack thereof. The bright and sloppy, unusually wide and disturbingly long red tie is one of Trump’s most remarkable hallmarks. When Trump posed after his inauguration at the foot of the White House steps, wannabe-Jackie-Ken- nedy Melania Trump’s powder-blue designer outft contrasted starkly with the hastily applied line of Scotch tape holding Trump’s tie together. ‘Tape gate’ has already shown that easy solutions are often unsustainable, if not ridiculous.

But there are solutions that are even easier than applying Scotch tape to tie-related problems—for instance, not wearing a tie at all. For the European left this is symbolically nostalgic. This is the only way to explain their dislike of the tie. Podemos (We Can!) in Spain, Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) in Greece and Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (Unsubmissive France), to mention but a few of the most recent bas- tions of the new European left, have decided to agree on the militant abandonment of the tie. The politicians of the new European left have not abandoned moral superiority in the tone of their speeches, but have added an inferiority of dress that they want to pass off as exemplary. Pablo Iglesias of Podemos has surprised on more than one occasion by attending Congress or receptions with the head of state in a sad Alcampo shirt. After entertaining the public with his calculatedly dishevelled style, he tried to catch up with expectations at the Goyas, the Spanish Oscars, by wearing a hired dinner jacket that was two sizes too big. The message was clear: a leader of the new left does not surrender to the powerful, but to ‘Mother Culture’. If the twentieth-century left wanted a monopoly on the heart, the twenty-frst-century left wants a monopoly on kitsch. Of course Iglesias did not choose to wear this dinner jacket to the vernissage of a modest painter, or to a book fair in a Spanish village. Like the bigots of another era, who preferred to give alms at Sunday Mass in front of the whole parish rather than committing to a discreet good deed, Iglesias has decided that his efforts at dressing badly should be broadcast live from the red carpet.

Interestingly enough, the leader of Syriza has also made a symbol out of his ‘un-tie- diness’. When Tsipras visited Brussels in May 2015, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker decided to take the matter into his own hands. As Tsipras walked up for their offcial photograph, Juncker cheekily stretched his own tie over the Greek leader’s shirt, to the delight of the gathered journalists. Tsipras is a bit more measured in his non-use of the tie though. His rebellious instincts have been dampened by a sort of good taste. He renounces ties but still uses outfts and shirts with collars, giving him

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the air of a best man whose friend’s wedding has gone on for too long. The title of Tsipras’ former fnance minister and former best friend’s bestselling economics book in Spanish is Economía sin corbata (Tieless Economy) (Varoufakis 2015). This proves that the left’s renunciation of the tie is not just a matter of happenstance, but almost an esoteric symbol that goes to the very core of its political refections.

In France, a heated debate was sparked in the National Assembly when Jean-Luc Mélenchon—nostalgic for the times before the fall of the Wall—arrived in the chamber in an un-French, open-necked shirt. President Macron’s party called it an ‘insult’ to the French people, and angry French Internet users shared photos of Mélenchon wearing a tie when meeting the late Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Mélenchon seems to want to reserve the tie for honouring leaders rather than for serving the people. Despite this, he still adopts his signature, faded green Mao-style jacket, which confers on him a certain resemblance to a harmless 1970s comic-book villain.

There is in fact a contradiction between the European left’s love of symbols and its aversion to ties. By declaring war on ties, the European left has deprived itself of a sub- tle symbol. On the centre–right, Mariano Rajoy’s timeless ties are just like his policies: foreseeable, recurrent and somewhat reassuring. Fillon brought impeccably tied ties to the French election campaign, but they were perhaps too refned for general tastes. Equally, Sebastian Kurz brought bold, open collars and dry, effcient ties to his bold, dry and effcient programme in the Austrian campaign.

If we return to Tom Wolfe’s anecdote, and to the appearance of the tieless, which began in the early 1960s as a way to indicate non-conformity, it demonstrates once again the conservative tics of the European left. Revolutionaries have turned into reac- tionaries. Trapped in an incurable nostalgia, the new left is tied in knots: this nostalgia contradicts the left’s longing for subversion but alas, it is the subversion of another era. And in the process the left has ended up resigned to an uninspiring ideological copy paste, whose bulwark has been Jeremy Corbyn, the timid, blinking star of European socialism. The market system, we were told at one of the British Labour Party’s recent congresses, has failed (The New Statesman 2016). This sounded preposterous, not so much because of the statement per se, but because we were left waiting for an alternative. The sauce for the frozen turkey Corbyn served came with an anxiogenic promise— to introduce an era of ‘new forms of democratic public ownership’ brought back from the dead.

Very often we know what the European left is against. But seldom have we known what it is for. Well, the point is taken: it is against ties. Trying to make a statement out of sloppy protocol, the European left is determined, once again, to put old ghosts in old sheets. Tieless sheets.

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original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

References

The New Statesman. (2016). Jeremy Corbyn’s full speech at the 2016 Labour Party conference. 28 September. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/09/ jeremy-corbyns-full-speech-2016-labour-party-conference. Accessed 29 November 2017.

Varoufakis, Y. (2015). Economía sin corbata: Conversaciones con mi hija [Tieless economy: Conversations with my daughter]. Barcelona: Destino.

YouTube. (2010). TNC: 172 Kennedy–Nixon frst presidential debate, 1960. JFK Library, 21 September. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v gbrcRKqLSRw&utm_ = source Direct. Accessed 29 November 2017. =

José Luis Fontalba is Head of Communications and Marketing at the Wil- fried Martens Centre for European Studies.

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