Challenges to EU unity...

Sunday 8 July 2018

The EU: how does it work, where is it going ("deepening" of relations between member states)?

BBC NEWS: How the EU works: a video guide

Link to europa.eu (official EU website): EUROPA

Page from europa.eu: Enlargement

Article from Wikipedia: European integration

Page on EUR-Lex (EU law): Deepening and widening

Page on CVCE.eu: Deepening

Article from Wikipedia: Multi-speed Europe

Article from Wikipedia: Federalisation of the EU

Articles from VOXeurop: Federalism

Article from Courrier International: Que ceux qui aiment l’Europe lèvent la main !

Hungary, member state of the European Union...

Where is Hungary?

Article from Wikipedia: Hungary

Article from the BBC: Hungary country profile

Page on the CIA website: THE WORLD FACTBOOK: Hungary

Page on the europa.eu website: Hungary

Articles from The Guardian: Hungary

Link to the Hungarian government website: About Hungary

Articles on Hungary in Courrier International: HONGRIE

Article from Aljazeera: How is Hungary's far right changing?

Article from TIME: Hungary's Far Right Leader Is Going Nowhere—and Europe Should Be Worried

Article (05/07/18) from Courrier International: Le départ de l’ambassadeur de France en Hongrie défraie la chronique à Budapest

Article from Courrier International: Vu de Hongrie. Le film “Budapest”, un concentré des “pires clichés” sur les Hongrois

Saturday 7 July 2018

What are the consequences of Trump’s foreign policy on European integration? By Mayssa

During his election campaign, Trump promised to radically reshape United States foreign policy with drastic consequences for Americans and the whole world. What is Donald Trump’s foreign policy exactly, and what are its consequences on the process of European integration?

President Trump’s worldview goes against the traditional American objectives as regards the USA’s foreign policy (those espoused since the Second World War). The United States has become, apparently, more inward-looking and isolationist. “America first will be the overriding theme of my administration” President Trump has said on numerous occasions… Trump wants to promote his country’s economic interests even if that means compromising geopolitical stability. Thomas Wright, a Brookings Institution scholar, has written that Trump’s beliefs include: “opposition to America’s alliance relationships; opposition to free trade; and support for authoritarianism”.

The United States has withdrawn from the multilateral Paris accords to reduce global warming (agreed on during the COP21). In his speeches, Trump has defended many other policy ideas that would diminish America’s role in the world: reducing American commitment to security alliances like NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization); more countries should be allowed nuclear weapons in order to protect themselves without Washington’s help; Russia should be an ally (though most American politicians see Russia as a threat following its meddling in the American presidential elections); build a border wall to prevent illegal migration from Mexico, etc.

Trump lacks diplomatic experience and his “policies” are ideologically-driven; he makes a decision and will not consider alternatives. The world is confused: does the USA have a coherent foreign policy? What will Trump do next?

European integration is a process. It concerns the harmonization of rules between nation states. The member states have common EU institutions and a common set of European-wide laws. The integration process started in the 1950s with the European Coal and Steel Community. A few years later the European Economic Community was set up and in 1992 the European Union was launched. There were six founding members (France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg). Today, the EU has 28 members. The EU is a regional trading block and political community.

Donald Tusk, the European Council President, wrote that the first weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency contributed to a “highly unpredictable” outlook for the Union, adding “change in Washington puts the European Union in a difficult situation; with the new administration seeming to put into question the last 70 years of American foreign policy”.

The United States is Europe’s most important trade and investment partner. Trump’s aggressive protectionist stance, which focuses on pulling out of existing trade agreements and tariffs on countries such as Mexico and China, as well as his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, indicates that he will not push for expanded trade deals. One victim of the current anti-trade and anti-globalization mood (seen not just in the US, but also in Europe) will be the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which the US and EU have been negotiating since 2013.

Multilateral economic agreements and military alliances like NATO exist for good reasons. Trump putting “American first” into practice will probably increase division in the world (not necessarily to the advantage of the USA) and Europe will become militarily weaker because of reduced US involvement in NATO and therefore even more politically divided. However, Trump’s aggressive attitude towards G7 partners could result in the opposite: EU members finally “doing it for themselves”, i.e. finding alternative economic partners and agreeing on a common foreign and security policy that works…

Webography:

> Article from THE HILL: US-European relations are in rough place, but it's not all Trump's fault
> Article from THE HILL: Do America and Europe have as strong a relationship as we think?
> Article from BROOKINGS (September 2000): Europe: Rebalancing the U.S.-European Relationship
> Article from WP: Trump may be doing the European Union and NATO a big favor
> Article from Slate: The EU Is Holding Together but Only With the Weakest Glue
> Article from About Hungary: A new chapter in Hungary-US political relations

Friday 6 July 2018

Is the migrant crisis over for the EU? By Louanne

Europa, the European Union’s official website, defines the migrant crisis as: “many people in need of international protection who are coming to the European Union to seek asylum [...] due to a well-founded fear of persecution or risk of suffering serious harm”.

Today, when we talk about the migrant crisis, we refer to the one million refugees who arrived in the European Union mainly in 2015 and 2016. Most of them were fleeing from war and terror in Syria and in countries in Africa.

A migrant is a person who moves from one place to another. There are different kinds of migrants, for instance there is the immigrant who is a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country, the asylum seeker who is a person who has left his home country as a political refugee and is seeking asylum in another. One has to be careful with the use of the words because all refugees are migrants but not all migrants are refugees. Refugees flee war, poverty, terror, oppression, etc., because their lives are threatened like in Eritrea, Syria or Somalia. The official status of the “refugee” is defined in international law with The Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, also known as the 1951 Refugee Convention, which is a multilateral agreement that defines who a refugee is, and sets out the rights of individuals who are granted asylum and the responsibilities of nations that grant asylum. Countries which have signed this Convention (like France) consider as “refugee” any person who gets asylum status in another country because this person was in danger and was obliged to flee (cf: SudOuest ).

Graph showing drop in number of refugees coming to Europe since 2016

As the graph above shows, since 2016, the number of migrants has dropped considerably (cf. also Europa) but the heated debates between the member states within the Union suggest a major political crisis with migration being the issue that reveals underlying problems like a lack of solidarity between the European Union countries since 2015 (2015 saw the biggest spike in numbers of refugees). The website VOXEurop.eu is one of many sources that states that the crisis is not actually about migration but rather about politics. I agree with this idea because the “crisis” has not been solved and this is due to bad management of the humanitarian emergency and poor cooperation between countries and the unwillingness of most countries to deal with it in a coordinated EU-wide effort.

Even though the European Union has planned to continue to rescue and help migrants in accordance with the European Agenda of Migration proposed by the European Commission (cf. Europa), Europe is now basically closed (we are back to a “fortress Europe” situation).

The purpose of the European Agenda of Migration was to organize how the European Union manages its borders, the migrant mouvements within its territory, the rescuing of lives at sea, the tackling of the root causes of migration, the reduction of migrant flows, and the opening of safe pathways. According to the European Commission (cf. Europa), the EU saved 400,000 lives in 2015 and 2016 and 2000 traffickers were arrested. The European Union worked with five African countries to reduce the transit flow. Moreover, during the height of the migrant crisis, the European Union agreed to pay Turkey €6 billion to take three million refugees (this is called the “EU-Turkey Statement and Action Plan”). According to the Express newspaper (cf. Express), similar plans were to be made with countries in Africa. All these efforts however have been insufficient (and inefficient).

The European Union says it now wants to create “controlled centres” outside or inside its territory to process asylum requests (cf. Reuters); I wonder if this suggestion in fact hides the EU’s real intention to close its borders, as the newspaper Liberation states in its article entitled “Europe : on ferme !” Indeed, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), has been strengthening the outside borders of the European Union (cf. Libération).

When a migrant manages to enter a European Union country, he must be relocated to a country which is willing to host him. This repartition of asylum seekers was decided during the summit about migration in the European Union with the leaders of member states. This summit took place in Brussels with sixteen European Union leaders on July 24^th the 2018. Some countries like Germany, France, Belgium and Sweden, have hosted migrants, though only 34,000 refugees have been relocated in two years. Other countries like Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which form the Visegrad group, refuse to take in migrants and are opposed to the idea of repartition and resettlement between the states. Even more worrying, the Hungarian Government passed a law on June 20^th 2018 which creates a new category of crime: “promoting and supporting illegal migration”. Any person or organization that provides any kind of assistance to undocumented migrants can be sent to jail. It “threatens to jail those who support vulnerable people” according to the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a human rights group. I think it is a barbaric law. Vox, in an article (dated 22^nd June) entitled “Stop Soros”, denounces this law: “The Stop Soros bill is every fear about right-wing populism made manifest: an attack on basic democratic rights by an elected government, one legitimized and made popular by attacks on vulnerable minorities.”

We may wonder why the refugees choose to go to Europe rather than the Gulf States. Indeed, the Gulf is nearer and there are few cultural barriers. Moreover, the Gulf countries have vast financial resources so they could afford to shelter the refugees. But the Gulf States have closed their borders from fear of terrorism and disruption of their labour market, plus they have not signed the 1951 Refugee Convention. However, Syrians don’t go to the Gulf because the refugees are badly treated there according to the website RTBF which published an article on that issue (cf. RTBF).

I would argue that the migrant crisis is not over for the migrants because their situation is getting worse: it is more dangerous crossing the Mediterranean and conditions in Libya are not improving. Host countries of the EU are becoming ever more unwelcoming (and difficult to live in for many refugees). In mid-June 2018 when the rescue ship Aquarius tried to dock, no one initially wanted to accept it and the 450 people on board had to wait for days in bad conditions.

The crisis is not over for European Union either because its members seem incapable of agreeing on how to deal with this humanitarian problem, letting it turn into a major political issue which threatens European unity. Some of the member states refuse refugees completely like in Hungary with the “Stop Soros” law. Far-right parties are growing in influence because they exploit people’s fear of the refugees. Governments do not act to help the refugees more because they are afraid that far-right parties will increase in popularity (and increase their number of seats at the European Parliament following the elections in 2019). The borders of Europe are closing because of xenophobia and weak leadership.

No one said it was easy to uphold the European Union’s fundamental values (respect for human dignity and human rights, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law). These values unite all the member states; a country that does not recognise these values should not belong to the Union. But, today, faced with an influx of desperate people, how many countries of the EU respect them fully? How many individual European citizens? What about you?

Webography:

> Article in Europa: The EU and the migration crisis

> Articles in French from Courrier International: Migrants Europe
> Article from EXPRESS: MIGRANT CRISIS: EU should send BILLIONS in aid to Africa to stop chaos, German MEP says
> Video from REUTEURS: EU cuts migration deal after marathon talks, differences remain
> Article from Vox: Hungary just passed a “Stop Soros” law that makes it illegal to help undocumented migrants
> Article from Libération: Europe : on ferme !
> Article from VoxEurop: La crise est politique, pas migratoire
> Video from In a Nutshell : The European Refugee Crisis

Does Brexit spell the end of the EU? By Manon

The term “Brexit” appeared for the first time on the 23^rd June 2016. But what does it mean? According to the Cambridge dictionary it is the abbreviation of “British exit”; it refers to the act of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union.

The EU is an economic and political association of 28 European countries including the UK.

Why have the majority of British people decided to leave the EU? And what are the views on Brexit today?

Ross Clark, a British journalist, said: “Brexit has led to a division in opinion in Britain”. In all the documents I have read, the main problem of British people seems to be the “EU’s handling of migration”: 77% of Britons think that illegal immigration is a serious problem (and that the EU is incapable of dealing with the problem).

According to the journalist Florentin Collomp the problem is global. There is the desire to regain the control on its population, a feeling of “enough already” exacerbated in England by the United Kingdom Independence Party. Indeed, it would seem that half of immigrants come from the European Union. The urge to reinstate national sovereignty is also present. For the British, the migrants, the integration of Greece in the EU, the EU’s restriction on agriculture and industry, etc. increased its wish to leave the EU. Brexit will be the way to bounce back economically… But what do other countries think of Brexit?

Many Europeans think that Brexit is a bad idea (28% in France and Spain, 24% in Germany and 23% in Italy. Asked if they think that future generations will be better off after Brexit, 52% of Germans, 58% of Spaniards, 62% of the French and 65% of Italians answered “no”. 41% Britons answered that their children would be worse off…

Only six countries tend to be confident in a post-Brexit future: Luxembourg, Portugal, Malta, Ireland, Estonia and Hungary.

Will Britain’s departure make the European Union stronger or weaker? Across the 28 countries only 16 % said that Brexit will make the EU stronger against 43% think the opposite. Surprisingly, only 2% of Hungarian people believe that Brexit will strengthen the EU against 66%.

The British Ambassador estimated that there are about 55,000 Hungarians who work for British companies in Hungary. But now they have to sign up quickly to keep their work and to benefit from the agreement. Iain Lindsay said: “It is very important British nationals make sure they are correctly registered over the next year”.

But there aren’t only Hungarians who work for British companies or go to work in the UK and it will be very difficult to go there after Brexit. According to the article by Marc Zaffagni, journalist for Futura tech, England needs people to work in agriculture; there will be a shortage of seasonal foreign workers after Brexit. Some are hoping the use of robots will solve the problem…

To conclude, Brexit will weaken the European Union for sure because the UK (the world’s fifth economy) has a powerful position in it, and it has the right of veto in the United Nations. And Brexit might inspire other European Union countries such as Italy to leave too…

Webography :

> Article from LE FIGARO: Brexit cinq raisons pour lesquelles les Britanniques veulent nous quitter

> Article from FUTURA TECH: Robotique, l'effet inattendu du Brexit
> Article from THE SPECTATOR: Brexit, immigration, future prosperity: the view from abroad

> Article from EXPAT PRESS Hungary: Post-Brexit in Hungary: Keep Calm and Carry On?

> Video from euronews: Hungarians see Brexit as lost opportunity for travel & work

> Articles from Courrier International: Brexit