European Institute

April 2013

Dr Bojan Aleksov
It is too early to tell whether the recently signed agreement between Serbia and Kosovo is indeed as historic as advertised by the European Union negotiators, most notably Catherine Ashton. Many a deal brokered in last 25 years between warring parties in what used to be Yugoslavia faltered before ever given a chance to be implemented. It is perhaps a twist of irony that its co-signatories for long contributed to if not created the conflict they are now attempting to resolve.

April 2013

Dr Başak Çali  The British government has made headlines with its statements that it's considering every option to deport Abu Qatada - including the temporary withdrawal from the ECtHR, Channel 4 News. Legally speaking, however, there is no such thing. It is not within the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights.  The two provisions that concern opting out from the Convention are Articles 15 and 58 and these are far from applicable in this case.

April 2013

Sir Stephen Wall

It is 21 September 1988 and, once again, that ‘bloody woman’ is being criticised and cursed in the chanceries of Europe. The ‘bloody woman’ in question was Margaret Thatcher and, on the previous day, she had made a speech in Bruges on the subject of Britain and Europe.

March 2013

The financial crisis has challenged the leadership of governments, financial institutions and the European Union itself. Mr Bajnai talks about these regional economic and political challenges, including the impact of the Eurozone crisis, the rise of populism and nationalism, the internal dynamics of the region as well as ECE countries’ future relationship with the EU. He discusses the two-speed development of the EU, the concept that some countries will progress and integrate into the EU faster than others based on economic and social conditions within their own borders. He also refers to the democratic deficit of the EU and the inefficient functioning of the European institutions and politicians' incompetence that could be deduced from one another, and thought it possible that politicians represent their own voters at the Council, but try to find solutions on a European level.

February 2013

Cultural action in the European Union may be a minor policy field: it enjoyed no formal Community competence until Maastricht, has received all but paltry budget provisions since, and plays little to no role in the key political debates of the day. Yet it is also an exceptionally contested one, linked as it is with suggestions of social governance and the encoding of collective identities. Regularly opposed by some member states wary of Community intervention in this traditionally national (or regional) policy field, its expansion has been described as symptomatic of the ‘EU’s will to power’ (Shore 2006).

February 2013

The main difference between public disorder in Bulgaria and everywhere else in Europe is that in Bulgaria the government responded. Although the immediate catalyst for protests was the state’s failure to control growth in the price of electricity, the core causes are shared in every European state: dissatisfaction resulting from the forced dismantling of social support services brought on by the European debt crisis, and a sense that policymakers are orienting their activity not to the needs of the public but to the service of large European banks.

February 2013

On the 17 January 2013 the Council of the European Union established a Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) military training mission (EUTM Mali) to specifically train and re-organise the Malian Armed Forces, in order to contribute to the restoration of the country's territorial integrity.

February 2013

Despite its worthy motives, social market philosophy provides neither a useful analytical framework for understanding modern capitalism, nor the policy tools to address our present economic and social predicament.  The concept of ‘market failure’, with its underlying assumption of market equilibrium, does not capture the systemically adverse outcomes of collective market forces.  A more sophisticated understanding of capitalist economies, and the societies in which they exist, would recognise that the market economy is a dynamic but not self-regulating system.  It is embedded in, and impacts on, four other economies – of the natural environment, of family and care, of voluntary association, and of the public sector – which operate under different motivations and allocative principles.  The role of government is central, to balance the values created by different kinds of institutions and to constrain the dynamic impacts of market forces.  A number of policy conclusions are offered arising from this framework.

February 2013

According to the House of Commons library as of January 23rd, “in the period September-November 2012, 957,000 young people aged 16-24 were unemployed, up 1,000 on the previous quarter but down 82,000 on the previous year.” 

January 2013

Dr. Christine Reh.
On 23rd January 2013, the UK Prime Minster David Cameron gave a speech in London outlining his pledge for an in/out referendum on the UK's membership of the EU to be held before 2018. In this video, Dr. Christine Reh gives her comments on the Prime Minster's speech and the likely political challenges he will face in Europe and the UK.

January 2013

See below for videos from a conference hosted by the European Parliament Information Office in London, the Embassy of the United States, London and UCL European Institute on how the UK, EU and the United States can work together to promote open and transparent business practices in emerging markets.

December 2012

Filmed lecture and images from a public meeting with Jean-Luc Mélenchon who presented a progressive alternative to the austerity policies which are being implemented across Europe and addressed the shortcomings of European integration. One of the most influential leaders of the ‘Other Left’ in Europe, he discussed the ‘historic failure’ of social democracy; its inability to shape a European Union based on solidarity and social justice.

January 2013

John Maynard Keynes argued that ‘Economics is a moral and not a natural science’. Analogously, austerity policies should not be seen as a natural or a hard science. On the contrary, it is an ideological and normative construction. Supporters of austerity aim to deregulate further labour markets. In their most extreme expression – the ‘Shock Therapy’ scenario - such as Pinochet’s Chile in the 1970s, Russia in the 1990s, Argentina in the 2000s or today Greece and Portugal – austerity policies inflict incommensurable suffering on the populations which are subjected to it. What is more, they are not working.

November 2012

Filmed lecture of the presentations and discussion investigating shifts in the role of the Holocaust in European public debates in the recent past. Contrasting developments in Poland, Germany, and Great Britain, they  identified common threads as well as differences in perceiving, presenting, memorizing the mass murder of European Jewries.

November 2012

See below for videos from the Eurozone Crisis and the Democratic Deficit event.  The panel on the 29th November, were part of a seminar series sponsored by the European Commission office in London and addressed various issues from different policy maker/stakeholder perspectives.

Professor Richard Bellamy

May 2012

Richard Bellamy's contribution to a "Citizenship Forum" debate on EU citizens' voting rights in national elections, hosted by the European Union Democracy Observatory at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. For the background on this initiative and other contributions, see the Forum website.

June 2012

With the next Eurozone Crisis & the Democratic Deficit event coming up on 29th November, here is a speech from co-founder and director of the Centre for European Reform Charles Grant on the subject.

Dr Sandra Kröger

August 2012

“Not all observers would share the view that the current European crisis is as much a crisis of politics as economics.  Yet it is fair to assume that the EU is currently undergoing a severe political crisis.  This crisis relates as much to the democratic legitimacy of its institutions as it does to their broader social legitimacy and that of the European project as such” (Kröger, 2012).

Prof Giandomenico Majone (EUI)
June 2012

A decade and a half after his groundbreaking arguments on the regulatory nature of the European Union and the case against the democratic deficit, Giandomenico Majone argues in this recent Working Paper, presented at UCL in June 2012, that the problems revealed by the crisis of monetary union, and the crisis itself, have their roots in the method of integration methods itself. The crisis, he argues, reveals the fundamental structural flaws in the European edifice – flaws concealed in the past by what he had previously called the prevailing “political culture of total optimism” (Majone 2011). In a severe attack on the democratic deficit he now diagnoses as being in full swing, Majone analyses these integration methods and beliefs, the limits of a one-size-fits-all policy model and the fragility of supranational institutions, before reflecting on the implications for teaching European integration after the debt crisis.

December 2012

See below for a recording of the second event in the Annual Sakharov Debate series, a yearly public event exploring current developments on Human Rights in Europe. Co-hosted by the European Parliament Office in London, it coincides each December with the "Sakharov Prize" being awarded by the European Parliament to people and organisations playing a crucial role in defence of human rights and freedom of speech.

Olaf Cramme, Policy Network, 2 May

Dr Ronan McCrea, UCL Laws
22 June 2012

OPINION: The Greek election result appears to have reduced the immediate threat to the euro somewhat but is far from solving the euro zone’s problems. The euro crisis has come to resemble a Hollywood action movie where a plane faces a ticking bomb, terrorists in control of the plane and the death of both pilots. The Greek election may have defused the bomb, but there are significant further threats before a safe landing can be guaranteed.

Rob Wainwright, Director of Europol, May 2012

Yannos Papantoniou, Greece’s Economy and Finance Minister from 1994 to 2001, 15 May 2012

Richard Bellamy, 1 May 2012