BBC Blog Network

User Profile

Caspar_Heetman

Listed below are comments made by Caspar_Heetman between Thursday, 4th December 2008 and Wednesday, 27th May 2009.

«Newer
Older»

It's grim up north 3:21pm on 27 May 2009 Mark, I like it how you look criticqally at this poll. I would like to add something. The poll is not necessarily a bad poll, although I agree with you that the question is odd, and in fact invites the respondents to voice their own idea of what is wrong rather than others'.

With a poll like this the questions are, however, always: what are we measuring and to what extent could bias be involved in this research?

These are the European Elections, not the British House of Commons elections, that that makes a huge difference for how respondents SHOULD logically answer. In responding they should formally only take in mind what British MEPs have promised, the influence British MEPs have, and of the general attitude to the British political parties for their European Elections programs. Of course the reality is different and 99% of all respondents does not make that difference between British and European Parliament politics.

In this case, I'm willing to place a bet that the MEPs of the three mainstream British political parties actually did keep the promises they made on prospective European Parliament decisions, do have a reasonable degree of influence.

The frustration of the respondents likely reflects their frustration over how BRITISH politics deals with the topic of European integration, which has formally nothing to do with the European Parliament elections, since the EP has no formal say over the direction of integration: that is the responsibility of the governments of the Member States.

Which begs the questions: did the British government keep its promises, does it have any influence in the EU and how well does it perform in British Westminster politics in general?

The discussion here has often focussed on the promised referendum that wasn't held afteral. The UK took under Tony Blair a fairly central role in the EU. Under Gordon Brown it tends to take a role that is less in the centre of EU decision making and as such likely less influential, although we should not discount the economic influence Brown exerts behind the scenes. Thirdly, the MP's finances schandal is not good for the current British government or any of the other parties in the lower house.

Against that background, it is hardly surprising that respondents responded the way they did. It has been said many times before, but European Elections are not so much European elections, but rather an official nation-wide opinion poll on national politics, of which the national governments European agenda forms one part.

It would be good if voters would actually make the difference between national and European Parliament politics, but I'm afraid that in the current system, this will be false hope.
Lisbon not done deal for Irish 10:02pm on 23 Apr 2009 Democracythreat # 115.

Come on Democracythreat, you may have your eurosceptic opinion, but if you state that "nobody needs [the institutions]", you ought to present some evidence.

I'll tell you why you are undoubtedly mistaken on that point. First, let's look at Ireland's economic performance. Ireland used to be a poor country in Europe. I don't have access to data to come up with exact numbers, but feel free to check it out. Prior to the 1990s, the Ireland had a relatively low GDP per capita, and in 1973, when Ireland joined the then European Community, poverty was widespread.
After 1973 that situation gradually changed. Ireland received billions of Structural Funds Aid from the European Commission. I've been in Ireland a couple of times, and I've seen for myself how many a road has a sign saying that it was built with money from the EU. Experts agree in general that unlike Greece, Ireland has spent the EU money wisely and has for that reason profited incredibly. There can be no doubt that thanks to these investments, the Irish infrastructure was prepared for the economic boom of the 1990s.
Ireland is an open economy. It does not have many natural resources and as such Ireland has traditionally not relied on industry. The industry that is present in Ireland is dependent on imports. The products produced in the industry are mainly high-tech products, like those in the ICT branch and are produced for export. This is also true for the other sectors of the Irish economy: agriculture (predominantly meat) and services, such as tourism. Like many small European countries Ireland is a typical export-economy.
Given the nature of the Irish economy it is not surprising that Ireland's boom took place after the installation of the European Monetary System and after the completion of the Single Market. These developments have been especially beneficial to small export-economies like Ireland, because other than say Germany back then, such economies were dependent on foreign markets rather than their own, and the ability to easily and freely export to them. Developments in the liberalization of trade do in part explain why the ICT boom of the 1990s, from which Ireland profited like no other country, could take place at all. The EU played a very important part in this.
Today as well Ireland is heavily dependent om the EU for a different reason than that it is Ireland's most important market for exports. In order to export, Ireland, like other export-economies needs stable exchangerates. Without those, the hard-earned profits could easily vanish into thin air because of changes in the exchangerates between the national currency and foreign currencies. Alternatively, in an unfavorable exchangerate situation, an economy could see the costs of its imports become higher than the earnings of its exports. In an open economy that is dependent on imports for its export products, this means that production of goods and services for export is no longer sustainable. Companies go bankrupt and personnel faces unemployment. Such a situation is presently going on in large parts of the British manufacturing industry. Thanks to the Euro, Ireland has been able to avoid such problems and it needs no saying that this has greatly benefitted Ireland's ability to export and as such its impressive economic growth rates of the past 10 years.
At present experts have estimated that had Ireland not been within the Eurozone, there would have been no doubt or it would have gone exactly the same way as Iceland. As you might recall, recently there has been speculation of Ireland being forced out of the EMU by speculators who go short at the stock echange on poor economic performances. These pressures did not ease before Germany, seen as the foundation under the Eurozone said to support the Irish economy in any case. Without that and without Ireland within the EMU, this crisis would have set the Irish back many years in time.

What you should not misunderstand is that I respect the Irish and I have great sympathy for a people with a strong sense of identity, as long as it is a positive sense of identity of course, such as the Irish. During my trips to Ireland, both the East and the West, I have learned a bit about Irish history as well. With my own eyes I saw the prison in Dublin where the British kept the political prisoners during the struggle for independence and I know the roots of that struggle and the painful chapters in the history of the British occupation of Ireland, such as the Potato Famine.
However, pride and a strong sense of identity are not enough to keep one standing in this world of today. It may be an extreme example, but look at the pride you find with peoples in Africa. Once would do well to respect their pride, but their pride cannot hide the swollen empty stomachs they have. It cannot hide the pain on the faces of mothers and father who have lost many children to disease, hunger, war, and so on. Ireland is fortunate to be not in such a postition anymore, but it has been once during the Potato Famine. It is extremely unlikely that anything like that should happen again in the foreseeable future, but it is important to be reminded of it.

What's more, pride is also not enough to maintain independence. You could remark cynically that it is the EU that eats at Irish independence, but that would do no justice at the EU. It is because of external factors in the world that are simply too big, too powerful for a small nation like Ireland to defend it with that it turns to the EU and other organizations, as I explained above for the economic part.

Nations do not become neutral in their military cooperation because of their strength. It is traditionally out of weakness and fear that they do not choose sides so as not to offend one side for picking the wrong partners. A nice example of that is the Netherlands in both World Wars. The second time the Germans did not buy the idea. Sweden was more lucky, but had to bend very deeply.
Today, Ireland is not a member of NATO, but its own military would not be able to defend the homeland in case of a war. And it is completely inconceivable that in case any country would attack Ireland, NATO would stay aloof, saying: Ireland is not a member, so it's not our business. De facto, Ireland is shielded from the threat of war by NATO and as such Ireland relies heavily on NATO for its security, even though it is not a member. Independence? Formally, yes, effectively, no.

It is illustrative for anything you can say of especially small European countries these days. Even without the EU, to which they have delegated large parts of their sovereignty, they are only independent in name. Like the homeless person on the street, who is formally free, but whose life is in practice ruled not by what he really wants, by what he dreams, but by his biological need to eat and sleep, by his fear of being robbed or killed.
Ireland is not independent and so are most countries in Europe, if not all. It cannot go alone in this world. Those small countries that do tend to suffer terribly. Even Her Majesty's proud United Kingdom of Great Britain cannot afford to go alone in today's world and precicely for that reason is the UK so keen to emphasize its 'Special Relationship' with the US and does no member of the major political parties there even think for a second of stepping outside the EU. They, just like yourself, may not be completely happy with it, and some may argue that the UK is perfectly capable of doing things on its own, at the end of the day, they are oh so happy that they are a memberstate and that they are part of treaties that put them behind the backs of powerful allies that shield them from harm.

Hence, it makes me smile when I see people proclaiming proudly how their country will prove the world to be wrong. Pride is a beautiful thing as long as you don't act accordingly.
Lisbon not done deal for Irish 00:28am on 20 Apr 2009 Although the question you're raising is an old one, Mark, it's still interesting.

I don't think that anyone will disagree that in the scenario that the Irish vote No, the EU will be in a crisis that has probably no equivalent in the EU's history, since it is more or less 'beyond the control' of governments. How many times can you ask a people to vote on a proposal before you cease to call the voting process democracy (regardless of whether a referendum is truly democratic at all, but that's a different discussion). Twice is apparently still acceptable. Three times? No, I don't think so. So it would be a big crisis and the end of Lisbon. It would not be the end of the EU, still it would be such a heavy blow to those promoting a deepening of integration and/or federal European state, that we won't see the EU develop through deepening.

However, with all the efforts that have gone into the story of which Lisbon is the latest chapter since 2001, it is hard to conceive how the more powerful countries of Europe will simply accept the result of the Irish vote and let Ireland de facto impose on them a decision outcome that these countries do not support. Can Ireland dictate Germany and France what their Europe policy should look like? Not in a thousand years. France and Germany are way too powerful within Europe for that and they will make a deeper integration come around. For them the question will be: with or without Ireland. If not with, then without Ireland.

The history of Europe and even of the EU tells the story of powerful states that used their power to shape the kind of international regime they wanted. The current interests of the powerful European states are such that they want a deepening of integration and I am very much sure these states will get their way.

If they must, they might even set up a new organization to rival the EU, just like they did with the Council of Europe back in the 1950s. At the same time the other states would effectively abandon the EU as a forum for internal European law-making, although likely before then, Ireland would probably be forced to resign from the Treaties, after which the EU would continue with only 26 states.

I think the Irish should have no illusions about the EU: they need Europe a hundred times more than Europe needs them. Ireland must grab what it can get and be glad with it.
A battle with Eurobabble 10:11pm on 19 Apr 2009 To those who think it is in the interest of the US to have a divided Europe: this is changing. From a simple theoretical point of view, one can reason that in a unipolar world, such as we had in the previous decade or a bi-polar world with unipolarity within the two camps, there is a clear interest for the hegemonic power to have its partners and enemies divided. In such a situation, the dividedness of the partners, means that the hegemon does not have to share power, and the dividedness of his enemies makes it easy for him and his partners to maintain peace and stability.

The difference between unipolarity and bi-polarity is found in the potential danger the rivalling power represents, specifically his ability to make the first greatpower's partners join the rivalling camp. This danger was concretely represented by the threat of communist revolutions in Post-War Europe. In such a case, it is in a greatpower's interest to unite the weak partners in some way to overcome the threat, but not to the point that the common institution rival's the greatpower's own power. This is the rationale behind NATO and the EU.

However, in a multi-polar world, it is very dangerous for a greatpower to have divided partners, because, these can easily be manipulated by other greatpowers, weakening the greatpower's power internationally. In a multi-polar world, a greatpower wants to ensure that he and his partners closely stic together and that the partners are firmly united, so that they can aid the greatpower in an effective way.

The more positive attitude of the US in recent years towards European unity represents this logic. In the troublesome wars in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan, the US was confronted with the limits of its power and its willingness to risk American lives in conflicts far away. More and more it wants to see its partners help it to solve such conflicts, but it has faced the fact that its partners do not have the capacities to do so. Hence, the American support for European defense cooperation: a stronger Europe means a stronger West and therefore also a stronger America. Since the US does not have many other options to try to maintain as much of its global power as possible, it is willing to accept a stronger European voice in internal Western decision making as a consequence.

Now Europe has to understand that logic and use it it its full advantage. Alas, Europeans are keeping themselves busy with petty politics and topics in the margin of geopolitics, squabbling about whether the new treaty should contain subparagraph X or footnote Y and whether it be called a constitution or not.

Wake up Europe, the world doesn't wait for you to comprehend international powerpolitics, be the winner or the loser - your choice.
Could Greece laser the euro? 01:33am on 25 Mar 2009 Mark, several before me have said it, but linking to the Bruges Group is just wrong here. What I like about your posts or articles is how they provide some analysis and insight that regular articles in written (online) media do not provide. Importantly, you generally try to give all or major viewpoints a voice, showing their disagreement without choosing sides. Sometimes it's also the personal aspect, sometimes it's linking events and placing them against a background. However, what you posted above is falls into no category.

Into the matter of the 'Eurozone flying apart'. The Eurozone is no perfect monetary union according to economic theory, but if we look at the figures of the Eurozone economies since the introduction of the Euro, they actually become more alike. Empirical economic science can prove that the EMU has a huge impact and has brought European economies closer together like no other system has done so before.
This begs of course the question whether that is a good thing. The answer for that is found in the European economic data of the 1970s and early 1980s. Why was the EMU created in the first place in 1992? Because since its precedessor the EMS had been in place, Europe tended to be much more stable economically. Europe can today exist because its economies can easily export to each other. And for that to happen, they need exchange rate stability, the rationale behind the Euro.
Other systems with fixed-but-flexible exchange rates, like the EMS, are far inferior to the EMU, precisely for what we saw in the early 1990s when the Pound had to leave the EMS - speculation. Britain was forced to devaluate the Pound against the Deutschmark. Something similar we see with the Russion Rouble today - the coffers of the Russian central bank are emptying and it is quickly losing the unwinnable battle with international speculators, who have much more money at their disposal, and have bet for the Rouble to plunge.
And when we look at Eurozone economies that are very distinct from the backbone of the Eurozone, Germany, we see that these countries have actually out-performed the UK in the past 10 years. Italy is a nice example of this.
Today as well we can see how the Eurozone out-performs European countries that are not member of it. Sweden had the Krona pegged to the Euro, but was forced lo leave, because it could only sustain the peg with continuously raising interest rates to the point where they cripple economic activity. Since then the Krona was devalued, meaning that Sweden became poorer relative to the Eurozone.
Denmark is holding on, but increasingly under pressure. The Danes also have to raise interest rates at a time when most central banks lower them to stimulate investment. Denmark is at a recession actually discouraging investment, worsening the effects of the recession. But the alternative of unpegging its currency is even worse: Denmark will have more trouble to export its products to its main export partner, Germany, which would cause a loss of wealth and many job losses. Tough choice for Denmark.
And then the proud UK. The Brits think they are safe outide the Euro? Tell that to the factory workers who are going to be massively fired over the next months. Why? because the Pound lost about 26% of its value against the Euro. Britain has become 26% poorer relative to the Eurozone, because the British can buy 26% less with their money when importing products from the Eurozone. This happened over a period of one and a half year.
The same is true for the Pound-Dollar exchange rate: a decline of 25%, meaning that imports are 25% more expensive.
That is not all. Against the Japanese Yen, the Pound declined with about 40% in the last one and a half year.
Now what does this all imply? That to the extent that the UK is importing goods from Asia and exporting to the Eurozone and the US, it has to cope with decreased competitiveness. While British products would be 25% cheaper in the US and Eurozone due to a cheaper Pound, the higher rise in import costs means that the net effect is negative. This loss of competitiveness amounts to 15% of the price. That is a lot! The average import duty is 4%. A competitiveness loss of 15% is more than enough to put a British producer out of business. Add to this the fact that workers in the UK are expensive in comparison to certain Eurozone countries such as those in Southern Europe. So British industry heads towards bankrupcy and in an attempt to avoid this, workers are going to be mass-fired.
This is why Brown's VAT policy cannot work: in Britain, industry does not suffer from a lack of domestic demand, but of a lack of foreign demand for British products in Britain's most important export markets: the EU and the US. If Gordon Brown cannot dramatically increase British industrial competitiveness, Britain's economic furture will be a very uncertain one.
The Eurozone does not have a similar problem, because most of the trade of the Eurozone is internal European trade, which is not subject to exchange rates. Eurozone industry is suffering from exactly the opposite problem compared to the UK: a lack of domestic demand.
Unfortunately for the UK, the monetary instruments do not work: whether the exchange rate of the Pound is raised or lowered, as long as the rates of the Euro against the Yen and the Dollar against the Yen do not change, British competitiveness remains very poor. The best the UK could do is to stimulate the domestic consumption and investment. The Bank of England has done so by dramatically lowering interest rates, making borrowing much cheaper. However, with such poor competitiveness investors will continue to shy away, adding to the decline of the Pound. Moreover, in the unlikely event that the British monetary policy would result in an increase in domestic consumption, it won't be enough to comensate the loss of exports.
Now the Bank of England cannot lower interest rates further, its tools are mostly used up. As such, the power of the Bank of England is under the current economic circumstances in fact equal to that of any Eurozone national central bank: they cannot change monetary policy either. The difference is, however, that the Eurozone still has the ECB to stimulate its economy. The Bank of England is like the pheasant sitting on the road, waiting for the car to hit it, unable to move away.

So to all those who glorify British monatary independence: the price for being out of the Euro is paid by British factory workers. While the rich profit, the poor suffer. Do you call that social? Your Labour party orchestrated this for the UK.
Besides: don't delude yourself: if this crisis as per the explanation above shows anything, it is that the UK is heavily dependent on the Eurozone. The losses in relative wealth will even out over time, but the loss of competitiveness compared to the Eurozone and the US will have negative long-term effects in terms of employment, industrial production, economic growth and absolute per capita income.
The reality of today is that the British economy is completely grinded between the three most powerful economies at the present time: the US, the Eurozone and Japan.

So if anything is flying apart it's the export-economies outside the Eurozone.
EU considers its response to Obama 2:53pm on 27 Jan 2009 I like the response from the Netherlands.

The previous administration in Washington didn't grasp this either.

When will America learn that Europe is not there to clean up the mess America left behind after each stupid, unilateral mistake on the part of the US?

Why is it so difficult for America to let their own inmates immigrate to the US?

The Guantanomo prisoners are not refugees, so we don't have to help out either.

Europe can do a lot to help the US and it would be a good thing now to intensify the ties and reduce the 'Atlantic gap' between America and Europe, but asking us to import potential terrorists can never be part of that cooperation.
Lisbon charm offensive 04:51am on 17 Dec 2008 Freeborn-John (325): You should really try to get a feeling of the situation, the atmosphere of 1945. I think you are severely underestimating how people and leaders alike felt in 1945: a strong desire for everlasting peace. Never again another world war.

That feeling was the driving force behind the discussion that directly stems from it: How to realize that ideal: never again another world war? The discussion had been going on already during WW2. Roosevelt had his ideas and the UN was modelled around these: Four policemen who would intervene in regional conflicts. The actual number of 'policemen' became 5 when France was added. Roosevelt was opposed to veto power, because he foresaw that it could stifle decision making and prevent the council that would deal with security matters from making necessary decisions. Indeed in the negotiations at the Potsdam and Yalta Conferences, the US, first represented by president Roosevelt, later by president Truman, who largely copied Roosevelts agenda, held on to its position of no veto's. Because of a Soviet Union objection (fearing that the to-be-formed Security Council would be used against its interests, the US eventually agreed with veto power in the UNSC.

The UN is not the only response to the atmosphere of 1945. All organizations formed before 1965 could be said to have been founded in the spirit of 1945. The Bretton Woods institutions had to govern international financial and economic affairs. They were officially linked to the UN system of international government, as has happened with so many international organizations. They were at the time truly seen as an economic branch of the UN 'world government' and accordingly played a role much more important and much different than today.

Another indication for the desire of world leaders in 1945 to create a world government is the size of the bureaucracy. The bureacracy of the organizations that are part of the UN system is huge. we are talking about many tens of thousands of civil servants. This is in sharp contrast to other international organizations, which usually have nothing more than a small secratariat. There is a parallel to the EU there, which also serves as a supra-national level of government in much of Europe and was from the onset also intended as a government and also has a relatively large bureaucracy for a non-national governmental organization that is not a state.

The Council of Europe, the ECSC, the EEC and EC merger treaty have been founded in the same spirit.

Taken together,especially the UN, but surely also the intergovernmental and supranational organizations in Europe that were founded in the aftermath of WW2 consist a fledgeling kind of world government. When you look especially at the role the US played in the formation of these, one can only conclude that the objective of the states involved was to attempt to create some kind of world government. It was a very idealistic attempt, and the result was a series of very momentous achievements in the post-war years, which we today hold for granted and which now appear to be a rather a shadow of world government. The UN system's bureaucracy governs a lot of fields, however, and it is visible especially in developing countries.

Now the EU and the so-called democratic deficit. I am familiar with Mr Scharpf and Mr Majone and I am well aware that they represent one view in the discussion about the existance of a democratic deficit in the EU. The counter argument to democratic deficit is that the citizen is represented democratically on the European level: by his country's MEP's and by his Minister in the Council. Whether the EU ought to decide on some things or not because they are traditionally associated with the domain of the European nationstate is an entirely different matter that has nothing to do with democracy.

There is legislation of which I think that it is really not for the EU to decide about it, but if the EU arrives at a decision through the co-decision method in which both the Parliament and the Council have given their consent, it is a democratic decision, no matter what you think of the content of it.

Similarly you may question whether the United Kingdom should allow for partial autonomy for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and whether government at these lower levels is democratic. Or the other way around, why the English-dominated government in London should decide as well about whether to send Scottish soldiers serving in the British army to war, together with English, Welsh and Northern Irish soldiers. The Scottish Independence Party will surely think that such is for the Scots and not the English to decide.

This discussion plays in all political entities, whether or not they even have federal or confederal characteristics. We're all familiar with local people being upset because the central or provincial government has decided on something they feel had to be decided among their own townfolk through the local council. That doesn't make the central or provincial government less democratic.

The problem of incorporating the question at which level of government a decision ought to be taken is that it causes the discussion to break down into a stale-mate. The choice for a level of government is something strongly influenced by taste. Some like more centralization, others favor more statism. Some favor centralization or decentralization depending on the effectiveness of the decision making in solving the problem. This aspect of taste ought to be excluded from a theoretic discussion from something abstract like democracy, or else we are bound to confuse democracy with individual political tastes

I would be happy to enter in a discussion on the nature of certain policy fields and whether they should be decided on the 'federal' EU level or the level of the individual state. I fear, however that because it is a rather long discussion, there is neirther a place, nor time for it.

For the degree of democraticness it doesn't matter which body takes the decisions, but only the extent to which citizens are represented. As such, your point that the EU exceeded its legitimacy by deciding through the community method on politically sensitive issues is simply invalid. It is a choice or taste, an opinion, not a verifiable fact. You and I may actually both agree that the EU should not take such decisions, but it doesn't make them undemocratic. What people think about the legitimacy of a government doesn't make that government necessarily less democratic.

Only when it is obvious that the government does not have the support of the people it governs and somehow manages to stay in power, then there is clearly a problem about the democraticness of that government. That problem does not exist in the EU, since a very large majority of the citizens of the European Union approve it, even in Ireland.

Finally on the succesfulness of the inter-governmental method in dealing with global problems. If you are convinced that governments effectively deal with these problems through the agreements they sign now and then, like Kyoto, you should take a look at distortions of temperatures in the world as well as those in weathersystems. Or you could take a flight to Congo and see how effective we are in fighting global poverty, which we've been doing internationally for 60 years! Or you could travel to Bangladesh and verify if we are effective in banning child labor. Or you could study the records of Rwanda in 1994 and Yugoslavia in 1992-1995 and see if we were effective in fighting genocide, a key objective of our governments. A final suggestion is to verify the state of human rights abuses since the Universal Declaration 60 years ago and reapproval in 1993. Have we been succesful in economic, social and security fields using the method of mutilateral negotiations? I don't have to make the conclusion, the facts speak for themselves.

You are entirely right about the risk of a dictatorial world government, would it be created right now. Would you therefore ask me if I were supportive of a world government as such, regardless of which system of government it uses, I would answer negatively. As I pointed out in my previous post, if there were to be a world government, it ought to be democratic. The fact that it is impossible to even build something even close to a democratic world government, however doesn't mean that such an institution as such is not a necessity to deal with most of today's global problems. There can exist a need even if a solution to it is not present.
Lisbon charm offensive 07:06am on 12 Dec 2008 threnodio (106): Yours is a very insightful post as well and I have taken a long time to reply to it.

What you are touching upon is a difference in view by a student of (international) law and one of political science. To the former the law is the law and a commitment laid down in a treaty, including certain rights and duties will always be binding upon the signatories of the law. The International Court of Justice has made this clear in many decisions of it. So it is a correct observation. On the other hand there is the political scientist who maintains that the law is not something that came falling down from heaven, but was created by decision makers employing power. The political scientist will argue that while rules can be agreed upon one time as the result of the application of power, that does not mean they will stay around forever. Rules change constantly and when sufficient power is employed, negotiated agreements may be revised. And that is also what we see. So actually both are right. Once an agreement is signed, the signatories are bound to it until the moment that they are in a sufficiently powerful position and have a desire to change the terms of the agreement. The War in Iraq as well as this summer’s Caucasian war beautifully illustrate this dual logic.

There is of course a price to pay for not fulfilling one’s international obligations. Other countries could go to a court which may decide on the matter unfavorably. Sanctions may be put on a country. Foreign companies might pull out of a country. The country might collapse economically. In Europe we won’t see a military intervention of one democracy on the territory of another, outside Europe that is of course a different thing. But there is always a possibility to unilaterally step out of a treaty and forsake international obligations and responsibilities. The question is how high is the price you want to pay for that? In most cases by far, the price is far too high for what we are willing to pay.

We should have it, however, very clear that if we decide to agree internationally on something and make a legally binding agreement, we are for the full hundred percent responsible for that agreement. We cannot point to others and say ‘we had to’. If you didn’t want to commit yourself to what is in the treaty, you should not have taken part to it. And so if the treaty we become part of creates a belligerent international regime, then we are for the full hundred percent responsible for becoming subject to that regime. Nobody else to blame but ourselves. We are responsible for preventing that from happening.

Once we agree to a treaty, it is binding, period. Future governments and generations have to live with it or try to negotiate something new. It’s probably one of the most basic rules of politics. If you make decisions and make agreements only not to stick to them, there is no point in the effort of making decisions or agreements. The question of whether the UK government or any other government for that matter has a right to take those decisions is irrelevant. Any decision is by its nature binding on people in the future. That may be a near future or a future far away, but it is always a future. If not the UK government would take decisions that are binding on the people in the UK in the future because the decisions are of that nature, nobody would take a decision in the UK and no decision would be taken in the UK whatsoever; the UK would be a total anarchy. So I think we are in agreement there.

Your last pararapgh is the most interesting: “So is Lisbon a solemn binding long term commitment to a process from which there is no turning back or is it another staging post along an evolutionary route which begins in Rome, progresses to Maastricht and will eventually be replaced by something else?” My answer would be both, and I’ll explain why.

Starting with the latter option, yes, it is an evolutionary road which does not stop here. In fact the road never ends. The European Union and all of its predecessors, the EC, the EEC, Euratom and the ECSC are all responses to a perceived international situation. The word perceived is quite important here, because it does not matter what the exact international situation was, but how the decision makers perceived it, how they interpreted it. To that perception they have formulated responses and we can see those in the treaties and the decisions that came out of the institutions based on those treaties. As time proceeds, new situations will present themselves and these always require a response and if the situation is serious enough, it might necessitate a revision of the treaty. And then the leaders of governments sit down and create something new. That is what happened in the past and that will also happen in the future. In what direction the evolution will exactly go we cannot predict, but I think we can make a rough prediction based on our knowledge of the process of European integration.

That is when I get to the first option. We live in a globalized world that is ever becoming more and more globalized. Interdependence is continuously increasing. The notion of independence has become an empty shell: we can no longer take decisions on our own, our interdependence with other peoples, countries, forces us to coordinate our decisions with others. Is there a way back from globalization? Yes there is. Look at the Amish in the United States, look at the people in remote areas of the world, at the conservatism in some societies. But again there is a price to pay for that. It doesn’t come without charge. And again the question is: are we prepared to give up the gifts of globalization? Are we prepared to live under lower technological conditions, in less luxury, with less wealth, etcetera. Some of us would agree, but the vast majority, and that’s really ninety-five percent of us by far, would not be prepared to pay that price. And so we proceed with globalization and so we accept a growing interdependence and we accept that we are no longer independent.

Since the EU is ultimately a response to globalization, we also accept the EU. And we also accept that as we grow more interdependent, we must also integrate further and further. And so we also accept a Lisbon Treaty in 2009, from which there is no going backwards as long as we don’t want to pay the price of halting globalization or going backwards to globalization. The ‘end’ of the road of European integration insofar as you could call it an end, because as I said a true end does not exist, is a Europe that is ever closer and closer integrated. That is not a matter of choice. If we agree with globalization, we have no choice but to integrate Europe further and further. If at some point we decide not to, international processes will force us to. We can today sit down and say ‘NO we are not going to do something about greenhouse gas emissions’. In a few years time the north and south poles will melt, lands get flooded, weather systems go crazy and we are literally forced to further integrate Europe in order to deal with the mess we made and to avoid yet worse. It is the same with other global issues.

It is not for the sake of fun that we integrate, it is a necessity.

Should people have a say in it? Yes of course. We have to estimate if we are willing to pay the price for the choice presented before us, again and again. Every day Ireland is holding a referendum. Everyday referendums are held everywhere in Europe. Every day we make up our minds again and decide. What worries me only is whether we will not postpone tough decisions until the moment that outside processes force us to take them, possibly when it is already too late. That may cause us to give up all we have and that is for me a price much too high to pay.
Lisbon charm offensive 04:51am on 12 Dec 2008 Freeborn-John (95): 1) You may not like the EU, but you cannot dismiss President Sarkozy's cease-fire as 'some noise'. We may only guess what the Russian tanks on their way to Tblisi might have done had Sarkozy both as president of France and of the EU not done his diplomatic intervention, but it is a fact that they were well on their way to Tblisi.

Besides, Abkazia and South-Ossetia were already Russian satellite states before the summer. They have been since 1991. Since 1991 the Georgian government had no power whatsoever, no control, nothing in the two seccesionist regions. The only difference is that Russia officially declared this since the brief war this summer.

2) In what time do we live when western people regard democracy - be it international democracy - a flaw? In 1945 people wished that they could create an international democracy. The initiattors of the UN were quite federalist and envisaged a world government, alas for them, at the time the most they could manage to create was an assembly of states, not parlementary representatives, an international court and a flawed policing council without a standing policing force.

Do international relations have to be democratic? Yes of course they have to, there is no alternative to it. Our climate doesn't wait until the people of the Irish Republic have finally decided that it would be a good idea afterall to agree with an international agreement so that the world can move forward. Criminals, terrorists, hostile foreign powers or powers with questionable intentions, producers of dangerous products, the loss of jobs to low-wage countries, illegal immigrants, global poverty in general, in fact about anything that goes on in our modern globalized world, does not wait for states to finally take luke-warm, watered down decisions that address only yesterday's prolems but fail to deal with today's or tomorrow's.

These processes happen and we are faced with the choice to do something about them, or to let them just happen. Doing something about them involves that we take decisions quickly and efficiently. There's no point in deciding to protecting the environment when the two poles have melted away. Efficient and quick decision-making almost always involves some sacrifice in sovereignty. That is the price we pay and there is no alternative. You cannot hide and hope that the international processes, of which the above are just a random few, will skip the Republic of Ireland or the United Kingdom. You will have to deal with them or you will be usurped by them and the latter is something you don't want, so whether you like it or not, you have to go with the first.

Now the Irish might pride themselves in having become independent from the UK in the early 1920's, today the Irish are no longer independent. Four million Irish won't deal with the global problems on their own. Neither will 61 million British people for that matter. They both need others. The Irish need the British and the Germans, the Hungarians, Slovenians, Spanish, everyone. Ireland has de facto lost it's independence to all the countries in Europe already. And all the countries of Europe lost their independence to Ireland. The Lisbon Treaty won't change anything to that.

500 million Europeans have a much bigger shot at dealing with the world's problems, and even that, as the Kyoto protocol's history shows, is still not enough, but it does get us already closer to where we want to be.

There is only one reason why people are suffering in the 3rd world today: the State; the Western industrialized nationstate which jealously tries to keep the world's wealth for itself. What is a meagre 0.7 percent of the GNP budget for development aid, which is not even met by most western countries if each few minutes a child dies from poor healthcare, sanitation or food shortage? In a democracy that would not have happened. In a democracy your and my ministers would have had a direct responsibility to build proper hospitals and schools and what more because otherwise they would have been voted out of office. Compare that with the current situation. In 1973 Ireland was poor and Ireland liked to share in the wealth of others and others let Ireland share. But today Ireland is rich and today Ireland does not want to share. Because Ireland is a sovereign state and does not have to share because of that. That's how just, how democratic the world is. So is there a need for democracy internationally? Yes there is, a huge need.

I can go on like this much longer, but if my point has not come across by now, it will never come across. We have no world government despite that this world would be a lot more just if we had. Instead we are slowly, very slowly crawling in that direction. Regional integration like the EU represents an important step in that direction. A step that can help to deal with the world issues that demand our attention and thereby prevent us from being usurped by them and a step that can bring us an inch closer to a more just and democratic world. That is a step we ought to take.
Lisbon charm offensive 1:27pm on 04 Dec 2008 When the Irish government and parliament decide to do a second vote, many will argue that it is undemocratic. The critics will hold that the Irish people have spoken and that this decision should be respected. From a democratic point of view, they are entirely right. Surely, one can debate whether the referendum as such is a democratic political tool, but if we assume for the sake of simplicity that it is, holding another one because the outcome was unsatisfactory is not proper democracy.

There is, however, also another point of view. The same critics who claim to be the defers of democracy fail to ask themselves whether democracy actually has a place in international relations. International relations? Isn't the referendum in Ireland a domestic affair of the Irish?

Yes and no. While on the one hand this is a domestic affair because the Irish people have the constitutional right to ratify treaties, on the other hand, not the Irish people, but the Irish State is part to any such treaties. And there lies the fundamental problem which can be seen in so many of the modern western liberal democracies: a discrepancy between the institution of democracy and the institution of the State.

To understand this, I think one must look back into the history of both. The State is a very old concept which has evolved through time and has roots going back to ancient times. The concept of the state gained a more concrete form at the end of the medieval times, for instance in northern Italy, and by 1648 at the Treaties of Westphalia it was established as the prime institution by which the world's territory was ordered.

Democracy has long roots too it goes of course back to the Athenian democracy and has roots in ancient Republican systems. The concept underwent a redefinition by the end of the medieval times when it became understood as representative democracy. The idea remained fledgling for a long time, even in the United Kingdom and it was only with the French Revolution that the concept of representative democracy gained a concrete form. the United Kingdom had had a long tradition of non-universal suffrage and gradually other countries adopted this idea. Most of Europe would have to wait until the early 20th century still before real democracy, universal suffrage, was introduced.

Comparing the two concepts, the one of the State is much older than that of democracy. Indeed, the States of today's Europe already existed in this or another form. Democracy was only added to change the internal way of government of the State, not to replace the State as such.

The concept of the State was designed to have one sovereign in whom all power would be united: legislative, executive and legal power. The division of the powers and especially the democratisation of the legislative power could be understood as being fundamentally at odds with the idea of the State. One could also say that the concept of the State was not designed to deal with a domestic power other than the monarch.

So in the modern democratic State, it is quite normal for the concepts to have some friction. This conflict between the two manifests itself mainly when the executive and legislative powers are at odds over international issues. Because in the international arena, Ireland is represented by the Irish State, which may have entirely different ideas about what is in its highest interest than the Irish people. Domestically the Irish State might be subject to democratic control, internationally it has a mandate of its own and indeed the means to pursue its interests and ignore the Irish people if it deems this necessary.

It is quite easy to show that, according to our current understanding of international relations theory, it is for most European States in their highest interest to let the European Union further integrate, because they derive power from it, which they have lost as a result of decolonisation, Cold War and globalisation. In other words, for the European States, the EU constitutes a tool whereby they can regain a large portion of the power they have lost over the course of the 20th century. Indeed, today the European States are much more powerful than they were say 30 years ago. And just one look at how the EU solved the conflict in the Caucasus tells us the EU is today much stronger than it was in the middle of the 1990s, when it could not solve the Balkans conflicts.

For European peoples the advantages of greater European power largely overlap with those of the States, but there are some important differences. Often these lie in the area of cultural issues. Culture is typically something domestic and something the State does traditionally not care for. Another thing is the Irish neutrality: for the Irish State this would not be an issue, but in the event of a military mission, the Irish people are the ones who would have to bring forth the soldiers for it.

However, perhaps most importantly, States are internationally not interested in democracy. It constrains their manoeuvrability and as such they are very reluctant to implement it. Except for the EU there is not a single international organization (and there are hundreds) which can be called democratic because they have a directly elected parliament with substantial powers. The EU is the only democratic international organization. Perhaps not as democratic as we would like it to be, but still a day-and-night difference compared to say the United Nations or NATO or the WTO or any other organization the critics of the EU never have critique on. So my point is that it is right to criticise the EU and I'm very glad the critics do, but one has to put that critique into perspective.

It is almost a miracle that given the undemocratic nature of the international relations, where sovereign States and not peoples still hold most of the power, a remotely democratic body was created, which is, with every new treaty still becoming a little bit more democratic. The first democratic international body.

Personally, I think very positive of that. It is an accomplishment of epic proportions much like the first national democracy, the abolition of slavery and the founding of the UN. The EU is a raw gem that requires some serious polishing, much like the first national democracy ever (wasn't that the UK?) was far from perfect. Breaking it down doesn't help us there and causes us to lose all the benefits it gives us. As a matter of fact, breaking inventions down because they were not perfect never got us where we are today. It's been development, the careful polishing of raw gems. Contributing to that process of polishing is the way forward.

«Newer
Older»

^ Back to top

BBC MMVI

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

BBC.co.uk

BBC Blog Network

Find and talk to the BBC's bloggers.

User Profile

Caspar_Heetman