(Also published on The Parliament Magazine) The 2014 European elections will be remembered as those that transformed the EU into a sort of Parliamentary democracy by indirectly electing the president of the European Commission, or as those that ditched the whole process and lead instead to the first “coup d’état” operated by the European Council against the European Parliament and the voters. The results of these elections show it clearly: many citizens feel detached from the process of European integration. They consider it too complex and non-transparent. This often pushes them to cast a “protest vote” such as those for nationalist parties, or simply not to vote at all. It is exactly to simplify the way the EU works and …

Europe’s politics and the debate about the future shape of the Union dominated the 2014 campaign season for the European Parliament. As a result, the line between domestic and European politics has blurred or even disappeared and it has become clear that party politics at EU level will transform the functioning of European institutions in the coming years. The three main European political parties have already launched frontline candidates for the Commission presidency and committed to supporting them in the European Council and Parliament. Nevertheless, the coming post-electoral wrangling for key EU positions will reflect the strengths and weaknesses of national heads of governments and their respective countries. In France, the ballot count put the establishment in a state of …

From London to Rome, Warsaw and Athens, mainstream politicians seem determined to give us yet more of the medicine that caused the problems in the first place: deregulation, marketization, privatization and cuts to schools, hospitals and environmental protection. The public does not seem to trust the establishment any longer, but it has learned that changing governments does not lead to any significant change of government policies. We seem to be stuck with neoliberal recipes, with no alternatives in place. The one billion bitcoin question is why? With the 2008 financial meltdown and then the euro crisis, we all know the price of neoliberal economics. Inequality within and across countries is cascading, with no U-turn in sight. Public money is chiefly used to help large multinational banks, but not to help small investors getting off ground or researchers inventing new technologies. Tax havens are tolerated, while state pensions are being cut. Governments seem determined to clamp down on small unemployment benefits, but not on executive directors’ huge bonuses. Zero hour contracts are spreading, and trade unions portrayed as harmful relics of the past. No wonder those autocratic rulers of China and Russia are looking at present-day Europe with contempt and self-satisfaction. There are three possible answers, which focus on actors, democracy and ideology.

Tuesday afternoon, I went to the annual Dahrendorf Lecture in which German sociologist Ulrich Beck discussed the future of the European project. During the discussion following his talk, Beck asked the audience who among them had watched the first debate between candidates for the presidency of the European Commission, which had taken place the day before. Out of the 50+ members of the audience, four raised their hands. Considering this percentage in an auditorium full of Oxford students and faculty, who had specifically come to attend a lecture on the European Union, one can get an idea of just how strong the interest there is among the European public. I was embarrassed that my hand had to stay down too, so that after the lecture I went home to watch the debate. Ten minutes into it, I stopped the video, took out pen and paper and began scribbling down notes for this post. For this debate revealed a unique and interesting feature of EU politics: the impact of language on political rhetoric. The debate brought together four of the five contenders for the EU commission’s presidency: Jean-Claude Juncker (EPP), Ska Keller (EGP), Martin Schulz (PES), and Guy Verhofstadt (ALDEE) – Alexis Tsipras, the European Left’s nominee decided not to attend; Ska Keller is running together with José Bové. The Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, which is likely to gain significantly in the upcoming elections, declared in February that it would not field a candidate for the post. It did not want “to legitimise the idea that a European executive should be chosen by a federal legislature”.

Elections to the European Parliament in May will have a special significance. They will either help the EU regain public trust or let it sink further: it’s a “make it or break it” game. Europhiles want to stick to the EU because the end of European integration is likely to hamper businesses and take Europe back to old style geopolitics with numerous destabilizing implications. They want to reform the EU, but they cannot imagine integration without it. Eurosceptics have little trust in the EU’s ability to reform itself. They want to bring power back home from Brussels and replace European integration by inter-state cooperation. Both groups are right and wrong on some issues, which means that neither Plan A nor Plan B is ideal. Eurosceptics are right to argue that reforming the EU is a hopeless exercise. In today’s huge and multi-layered Union, bold reforms are contentious while timid ones are useless. Would people rush to the ballot box in May if they were told that the European Parliament is no longer to travel between Strasbourg and Brussels? And does anybody believe that a president of the European Commission elected by a popular vote will be able to bridge differences between creditor and debtor states within the EU?

Ukraine and its Place in the World - podcast Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new windowOn 14 March 2014 the Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre at St Antony’s College hosted the 2014 Elliott Lecture: “Ukraine and its Place in the World”. Organised by Dr Paul Chaisty in September of last year, the seminar was intended to explore the implications of the November Vilnius summit and the prospects for the integration of Ukraine into the EU. Given the extraordinary events in the region over the last few months, the focus became Ukrainian territorial integrity. Held on the eve of the referendum in Crimea, the three participants considered the causes of the Ukrainian revolution and the ways in which the outcome of the Crimean referendum is likely to shape regional and international relations over the coming months and years. Chaired by the Chancellor of the University of Oxford and former European Commissioner Lord Patten, the line-up included two distinguished politicians who have been deeply involved with Ukraine’s integration over many years: former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and former head of NATO, Javier Solana. Dr Gwendolyn Sasse of Nuffield College, Oxford added her expertise on Ukrainian politics, and in particular on the issue of Crimea.

The idea of a remaking of Ukraine’s constitutional order along federal lines is beginning to gain traction. On March 18, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk reached out to Russophones in the eastern and southern regions, announcing that “new measures linked to decentralization of power will be reflected in a new constitution.” Senior U.S. administration officials have encouraged the Ukrainian leadership to consider constitutional reform along federal lines. On March 17, the Russian Foreign Ministry proposed the establishment of an international “support group” to manage the crisis. The list of items that Russia wants to be the basis for negotiation in Ukraine includes a new federal structure for Ukraine and the recognition of Russian as a second language. Until recently the federal idea was an anathema among the greater part of Ukraine’s political elite. As a constitutional form it was largely rejected in the 1990s, partly as a negative reaction to the experience of Soviet federalism, and partly from fear of its centrifugal potential for splitting the country along ethnolinguistic fault lines.

The attempt to reassert secession in Crimea cannot be fully understood without locating it within a time frame that dates to the fall of communism in the early 1990s, and without recognising some other relevant key historical factors. This case is a legacy of the international management of secession in the 1990s, in which the EU (or EC as it was then) played a lead role. The European Community’s “Arbitration Committee” under the chair of French constitutional lawyer Robert Badinter, was set up to give legal opinions on the secessions from Yugoslavia. It restated a number of international norms on secession and established three main principles. First when states were “in dissolution” the decolonising norm of uti possidetis juris would apply, namely, that secession would only be permitted to the next highest administrative entities below the state level. The conclusion was that there could be “no secession within secession” – a decision which excluded Kosovo from legal recognition as a secessionist case.