Even though the current recession is not the Great Depression, certain parallels can be drawn.  As learned from the 1930s, during economic recessions protectionist measures become more likely.  There is a high awareness of this threat both in politics and the public, and the WTO is closely following crisis responses of its member states, publishing reports on protectionist barriers.  In the 1930s the leading industrialized nations responded to the crisis by imposing trade barriers on imports and raising the tariffs. This time protectionism has been kept at bay, at least when it comes to tariff barriers. However, the economic stimulus packages passed by major industrialized countries contain subsidies and buy-local clauses that have the potential to seriously distort competition and thus harm international trade.

Not all subsidies are bad.  There are different forms of subsidies with different effects on domestic markets and international trade. They are necessary to stabilise consumption and production, help weakened economies to recover, stabilize international trade, etc. However, some of them pose a great danger to distort trade by creating unequal conditions of competition.  Contrary to limiting the use of tariffs, the WTO’s toolbox to controlling subsidies is less well equipped. Within the EU, subsidies are causing tensions but the European Commission has more advanced instruments and more power to intervene than the WTO has in the global context. Read the rest of this entry »

Everybody knows it: the EU is a secular institution, which doesn’t have legal competence in religious matters. Moreover, its cooperation with non-state actors is based on the principle of non-discrimination, meaning that the EU should not discriminate any actor on the basis of its secular or religious nature. I was reminded of these two EU fundaments several times during interviews with EU officials last and this year.

In reality, is the separation between the EU and religion that clear? My experience is that while separation seems to be the case on paper and in many policy areas, there are also indications of emerging patterns of timid cooperation between EU institutions and religious actors, both religious leaders and grassroots representatives, in internal and external EU policies. However, this knowledge doesn’t seem to be fully acknowledged, internalised, nor reflected upon in current EU policy-making. Read the rest of this entry »

The Lisbon Treaty has now been ratified by 25 Member States. If, as we hope, it is ratified by the end of the year, and if the Treaty enters into force by the beginning of 2010, the changes that the Treaty brings about will mean a more efficient Europe, a more transparent Europe, and a more democratic Europe, to the benefit of all European citizens.

Europe’s major problem at the moment is that the current rules and voting methods are meant for a European Union of 15 Member States, not of 27.  The Lisbon Treaty gives Europe the right tools to be efficient with 27 Member States.

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“I don’t know what solidarność means in Persian. But this is what it looks like….”

This is the facebook comment of a Polish friend. Across the globe these days, when looking at the massive protests in Iranian cities, memories come back of Berlin, Budapest, Prague 1989  – in other words, of the peaceful revolution against European communism that ended the Cold War, heralded the collapse of the Soviet Union and meant the demise of state socialism as well as a triumph for market democracy.  Manifestations of mounting anger about a regime suppressing freedom, the global excitement, the regime’s reactions ranging from helplessness to intransigence to violence, its allegations of “foreign interference”, but above all, the feeling that we are seeing one of those rare but momentous points in time when history is made by the people in the street (quite literally): Whoever has lived through those dramatic months at the end of the eighties in Europe, had a clear sense of déjà vu this week about Iran.

So is this ’89? The short answer is no, because a collapse of the mullah regime is not imminent, according to most observers. The long answer is, however, that depending on further developments, this may very well be something like Prague in 1968. And I am less referring to the violence applied by Soviet troops then, although massive violence now seems to follow in Iran. The much more important parallel is that most of the people then, and certainly all of their leaders, did not want to abolish socialism. They wanted “socialism with a human face”, just like the demonstrators in Iranian cities constantly repeat they are not marching for “regime change”, only for their votes to be respected, for reform and more personal freedom. And come to think of it, even Poland’s striking shipyard workers in August 1980 did not dream about a market economy. But they paved the way for its arrival 9 years later, just like it took the Czechs and Slovaks 21 years to make Venceslas Square again reverberate with their protest – and this time, it was for the end of communism, period.  But all that means that in a wider sense, and with all due respect for cultural and historical differences – yes, we may witness some sort of ’89 moment, if not now, then in 1 or 2 or 3 years, not in 10 or 20. (Maybe YouTube and twitter have helped accelerate history, too). After all, it took a whole year from the first massive protests against the Shah in 1978, to the takeover of Ayatollah Khomeini in early 1979.

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European issues directly affect every single moment of our daily lives and the future Europe we will give our sons and daughters. Although European governance may appear distant from the everyday reality of European citizens, we shouldn’t become trapped by euro-scepticism. 

The EU is not an impenetrable ‘Kafkian castle’, but an evolving tangible reality that we, as the electorate, have the opportunity to shape according to our needs and values. It is most unfortunate that it is still evident that Europeans have widely not taken advantage of this opportunity, as more than half of citizens did not exercise their democratic right in the Parliamentary elections last week. Criticisms of the EU’s shortcomings, as of many national and supranational institutions, are well-circulated and, in certain cases, quite valid. However, this article is devoted to acknowledging the undeniable achievements the EU has ensured for its citizens. Read the rest of this entry »

To be clear, EPA is not called Economic Partnership Agreement for nothing. It is a not a Development Aid package but rather a trade agreement, one of many, such as its predecessor the Cotonou Agreement signed in 2000. EPA seeks to realign the business/trade relationships which were granted to ACP countries under a preferential agreement, reached at time of the signing of the entry of the UK to the European Union in 1972. In time, there has been a gradual change of these preferential trade relations between the Caribbean, African and Pacific regions and the EU. This is evident, amongst others, from the downturn in the regions’ sugar and banana industries.

The concerns voiced by the academics is typical of a “reactive approach” taken by peoples of our region. The academics claimed that representatives have made the deal of EPA with their eyes wide shut. The truth is, it is not for the representatives to make deals. They are channels of information. It is for the elected Caribbean leaders to make sensible decisions on our behalf. At this point, leaders are aware, or at least should have been aware, of the consequences of the UK’s membership of the EU. There was time enough, more than 30 years, in which our leaders should have created a strategic plan in which Jamaica, after almost 46 years of independence, would have been able to step up to the challenges of playing ball on an unlevel international field.

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The European Parliament relentlessly tries to inform citizens about the reasons for voting in the upcoming elections. As on the previous occasion, the EP this time around is running an information campaign to reach citizens and hopefully thereby increase turnout. Similar tasks are fulfilled by many NGOs, which in different countries organize information campaigns regarding the EP and the elections.

What is still missing, however, among other things, is a reliable set of information regarding party programmes. In an idealized version of the democratic electoral process (often referred to in political science as the ‘responsible party government model’), voters make an informed choice between the competing parties both on the basis of their programmes and on their government or opposition record. Most observers doubt that this is the case nowadays, both in relation to national and European elections.

Voters simply do not read parties’ programmes, and instead rely on other sources to make their judgment about which parties to vote for, such as the media. In the European Parliament elections, this problem is further exacerbated by the fact confirmed by many opinion polls, namely that the EU citizens are not fully aware of the nature of the EP elections, let alone their lack of knowledge about party programmes. So what can be done to get voters interested in these elections?

One way of doing this is through developing Internet-based voting aid applications, which aim both at informing the citizens about party programmes on various issues, but which also are able to show which political party is closest to a given voter. This task is an ambition of the revolutionary voting aid application created for the European Parliament elections – EU Profiler (www.euprofiler.eu), launched on 23 April. Read the rest of this entry »

Many political scientists have long been arguing that the lack of connection between the results of the elections and the subsequent composition of the European Commission has been one of the key obstacles to the emergence of a pan-European political debate, and ultimately, for increased voters’ attention. From the point of view of the Euro-parties, it has led to the effect that so far they have not shaped their campaigns around their approval or criticism of the previous Commission (as would be the case nationally with the governing and opposition parties), but instead have focused on their ideas and solutions for the EU without much reference to the previous commission’s record. Most Euro-parties were further complaining that their electoral role and a real partisan, pan-European campaign, cannot be fully developed until the introduction of a common, pan-European constituency. In other words, without changes within the EU’s institutional environment, not much change was predicted.

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Academics should not only concentrate on analyzing and explaining the elections post-factum – that is, writing books and articles some time after the elections – but also to offer reliable accounts of valid political events as they are taking place. That is why I have accepted a kind invitation from the Centre for European Studies to write a blog devoted to the 2009 elections to the European Parliament (EP). Contrary to most other blogs devoted to the European Parliament elections, my analytical perspective will usually include the historical reflections and comparisons to six previous direct EP elections, taking place since 1979, and will also offer a background and comparisons to the wider literature on the elections and political parties in general. In this sense, it will be both informative and polemic. I am convinced that there is a large number of Internet users who look for such type of analysis and by providing them with it I can contribute my small part to stimulate the debate on the EP elections in an EU-wide perspective. Furthermore, I do hope that some readers will take a little while to enrich this blog by commenting and discussing some of my thoughts, thereby writing it together with me. Read the rest of this entry »

The importance of the religious factor today from the lives of millions of individuals up to global dynamics does not need to be pointed out any longer. Neither does it need to be argued that our world is affected by many kinds of violence from the domestic to the global level. The link between religion and violence, conflict, extremism and terrorism gets a lot of attention, is extensively reported, researched and increasingly taken into account in policymaking and international relations. However, the other side of the coin, namely the link between religion and peace, gets far less attention. Given the obvious presence of religion on the world scene today and its role in stimulating, supporting or legitimizing conflicts and violence, it is rather surprising that within the international community and the academic world attention is rising so lately and sporadically to the role of religion in peacebuilding.

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