Overzicht

Centre for European Reform

51 Artikelen
Achtergrond: Jay Huang (cc)
Foto: Sargasso achtergrond wereldbol

Alleen samenwerken niet genoeg voor Defensie EU

, door

Een bijdrage van Tomas Valsek, director of foreign policy and defence at the Centre for European Reform.

How do you do more with less? The EU defence ministers agreed last week that the way to limit the impact of the economic crisis on their defence budgets lies in more co-operation. In a joint statement, they called for more military ‘pooling and sharing’: joint development and procurement of weapons, and partial integration of European militaries. EU member-states have trialled such ideas before but with limited success. Deep co-operation remains highly sensitive: governments are reluctant to build joint units because this may require them to share decisions on how and when to use them. The ministers’ conclusions are correspondingly cautious: they call for a “structured” and “long-term” approach while offering few specific guidelines. It need not be this way: past pooling and sharing attempts offer plenty of lessons on what makes military collaboration successful.
In a recent CER report,’Surviving austerity: The case for a new approach to EU military collaboration‘, May 2011, I suggested ways for European countries to avoid past mistakes. Partial military integration works best when participating countries have similar strategic cultures, a high level of mutual trust, comparable attitudes to defence industry, and relatively low corruption in defence procurement. It also helps if countries are roughly similar in size, and serious about defence matters: that is, they are willing to use their armed forces and keen to maintain their ability to fight for future contingencies.

Foto: Sargasso achtergrond wereldbol

Persvrijheid als EU-toelatingscriterium?

, door

Een bijdrage van Katinka Barysch, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform.

Countries that want to join the EU need to show that their democracies work well. However, press freedom – a key ingredient of any pluralist democracy – is under threat in most of the countries that are now queuing for accession. Independent newspapers and broadcasters are being squeezed out of the market. Critical journalists are being sacked, beaten or locked up. Without curious and courageous journalists, crime and cronyism flourish, public debate is stunted and politicians feel unaccountable. The EU could do more to protect media freedom in the Western Balkans and Turkey.

The erosion of press freedom has been most striking in Turkey recently. A shocking 50-60 journalists are now in jail (depending on who does the counting), mostly accused of plotting to overthrow the government or split the country. Some 10,000 lawsuits are pending against writers and broadcasters. Many journalists suspect that their phones are tapped and their e-mails read. Fear and suspicion pervade the media. In the press freedom ranking of Reporters without Borders, a Paris-based NGO, Turkey has dropped to 138th place, behind Iraq and only just ahead of Russia.

Foto: Sargasso achtergrond wereldbol

Can the Arab Spring bring peace in the Middle East?

, door

By Clara Marina O’Donnell, research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.

Many western diplomats and observers argue that the popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East reinforce the need for Israelis and Palestinians to return to peace talks. In May, US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are expected to lay out their views about how the process should be re-started. However, calls for an immediate resumption of negotiations are unrealistic. The political turmoil across the Arab world is making conditions on the ground – already dire – even less conducive to a lasting settlement. Instead, Europeans and Americans should exploit the hiatus created by current regional instability to encourage Palestinians to end their divisions and hold long-overdue elections before October. The EU and the US should also prod Israel to offer the prospect of serious peace talks to whoever wins those elections.

Western diplomats calling for progress in the peace process in response to the upheaval in the Arab world make two arguments. First they point out that Israel could end up with neighbours which are even more hostile to it. There is significant uncertainty about the makeup of the next leadership in Egypt – a key ally of Israel in recent decades. In addition, it cannot be ruled out that regimes in neighbouring countries, such as Syria and Jordan, will fall. In each of these countries, there are groups that are more hostile to Israel than the regimes which have governed in recent years. To limit the scope for conflict, some diplomats argue, Israel should solve its dispute with the Palestinians as soon as possible.

Foto: Sargasso achtergrond wereldbol

Eurocrisis? Libie? Nee, eurotop draait om migranten

, door

Een bijdrage van Hugo Brady, senior research fellow aan het Centre for European Reform.

wachten in lampedusaIn June, EU leaders arrive in Brussels for a meeting of the European Council, the quarterly summits presided over by former Belgian prime minister, Herman Van Rompuy. Some – Britain’s David Cameron and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy – are fighting a war in Libya. Others, like Angela Merkel and Silvio Berlusconi, are fighting political upheaval at home. Northern and Southern European leaders alike are watching anxiously as the markets continue to pound the euro. But everyone – apart perhaps from the newer members to the east – is worried about immigration. Hence, if events allow, Van Rompuy wants to leave the troubled currency aside to focus on border control, immigration and refugee policy.

This could easily become a bad tempered, inconclusive affair. First, the summit is supposed to take a broad strategic view of EU immigration and asylum policies. But instability in North Africa will inevitably skew discussion towards the present. Italy is adamant that it needs help to manage what it calls a “human tsunami” from Tunisia and Libya. Demands for greater “solidarity” from fellow EU countries essentially mean their agreement to take in some of the 20,000 or so migrants currently housed in tent camps on the islands of Lampedusa and Sicily and in the mainland region of Puglia. The EU has committed money, a humanitarian mission and border guards from Frontex, its border agency. Nonetheless, the Italians feel entitled to more. The EU-supported rebellion against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime and the Tunisian uprising against President Ben Ali have left its realist immigration policy, heavily reliant on the two dictators, in tatters.

Foto: Sargasso achtergrond wereldbol

Europe’s damaging obsession with competitiveness

, door

Een bijdrage van Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform.

Many European policy-makers and business leaders believe that a country’s economic growth prospects depend on its ability to capture a growing share of global markets. Indeed, European policy-makers are obsessed with national ‘competitiveness’ and genuinely appear to think that prosperity is synonymous with trade surpluses. Of course, imports have to be financed by exports. But the focus on trade competitiveness risks drawing attention away from Europe’s underlying problem, which is very weak productivity growth.

The idea of economic growth being determined by a battle for global market shares in manufactured goods is easy for politicians to grasp and to communicate to their electorates. Countries have little in common with firms, but referring to Deutschland AG, or UK plc, is conceptually attractive and seductively easy. Economies running external surpluses are regarded as ‘competitive’ irrespective of their productivity or growth performance. The trade balance is seen as a country’s ‘bottom line’, as if countries were firms. The trade balance is nothing of the sort, but is simply the difference between domestic savings and investment or more broadly, between aggregate spending and output. 

Foto: Sargasso achtergrond wereldbol

Turkey, the EU and the Mediterranean uprisings

, door

By Katinka Barysch, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform

turkse vlagThe revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have brought home to many people that Turkey has become a force to be reckoned with in this region. Turkey enjoys lots of credibility in the Arab world. It has burgeoning trade ties and solid political relations with many Middle Eastern and Mediterranean countries. As the EU scrambles to revamp its own neighbourhood policy, it would do well to work closely with Turkey. Turkey would also gain. Sadly, there is little evidence of such co-operation to date.

Asked at a recent Aspen roundtable in Istanbul whether the EU and Turkey were co-ordinating their responses to the revolts in the Arab world, Ali Babacan, a veteran minister in the Erdogan government, said: “We work a lot with the Americans, like we do on Afghanistan, but not with Europe.” The main reason, he said, was that his country’s plan to join the EU was going nowhere.

The EU – in acknowledgement of Turkey’s growing international clout – has offered Ankara a foreign policy dialogue outside the accession process. But the dialogue has yet to start in earnest. Most of the interaction between Turkey and the EU still revolves around a largely blocked accession process. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu – at the same Aspen roundtable – added a second reason why foreign policy co-ordination had been slow to get off the ground. Turkey, he explained, did not bother to work with the EU because the EU’s own neighbourhood policy was weak and inconsistent.

Foto: Sargasso achtergrond wereldbol

What US defence budget cuts will mean for the transatlantic alliance?

, door

Tomas Valasek is director of foreign policy and defence at the Centre for European Reform.

The US defence budget seems set to fall as Washington begins to restore order in its finances. Spending on the military has reached such heights – $700 billion, or 20 per cent of the US federal budget – that it has become too large for deficit-cutters to ignore. Even traditionally pro-defence Republicans now argue that military expenditures need to be reduced along with other government expenses. Europe, too, will feel the pinch: many of the American soldiers currently based on the continent seem certain to go, and some joint weapons programmes will be cancelled. In case of future crises in Europe, NATO’s and the EU’s ability to respond will be tested. The US will expect Europe to lead but European allies themselves have been reducing forces and budgets.

Congress is poised to cut the White House’s request for defence for the fiscal year (FY) 2011 by $15-$20 billion. That might seem low relative to the $700 billion total but of that amount roughly $160 billion is set aside for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and will decrease as those conflicts wind down. And much of the remaining money is tied up in non-discretionary spending such as pensions and healthcare for military personnel (the latter alone costs the Pentagon over $50 billion a year). The brunt of the cuts in FY 2011 will therefore fall on the pool of $200-$300 billion that pays for purchases of new equipment, foreign military assistance, overseas bases and non-core military operations. Money spent abroad will be particularly vulnerable to cuts – more and more Americans say that the US government should look after its own rather than, say, wealthy Europeans (all foreign aid is in for big reductions).

Foto: Sargasso achtergrond wereldbol

The EU’s new politics of movement

, door

Een gastbijdrage van Hugo Brady, senior research fellow aan het Centre for European Reform.

The freedom enjoyed by EU citizens to live and work in each others’ countries is a unique liberty. It is the basis around which European governments have tried to build a single border, a compensatory system of co-operation between police, judges and immigration officers and a common refugee policy. But hardening attitudes towards immigration in many countries and widening policy disagreements between governments and the EU’s institutions are exposing fault-lines in this structure. As the cracks threaten to widen over the coming months, policy-makers face some tricky dilemmas.

For a start, some EU governments are struggling with the very concept of the free movement. The Dutch government – prodded by far-right politician and coalition kingmaker Geert Wilders – recently announced that it wants to renegotiate the free movement directive. At first sight, the Dutch demand does not seem that outrageous: change the law to allow governments to deport EU nationals with criminal records back to their home countries. The problem is that any re-opening of the 2004 directive risks sparking a plethora of demands from France, Italy or Britain to restrict free movement in other ways. The law was also at the centre of last year’s spectacular row between the European Commission and France over arbitrary deportations of Roma. Poorer countries like Poland, Hungary or Romania would be livid, leading to a bitter split between east and west and, possibly, north and south.

Foto: Sargasso achtergrond wereldbol

The Berlin consensus

, door

Een bijdrage van Philip Whyte, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.

A broad consensus appears to have emerged across northern Europe on what ails the eurozone. The region’s current predicament, on this view, is the result of fecklessness and irresponsibility in geographically peripheral member-states. Countries in the periphery ran into difficulty because they mismanaged their public finances and lost ‘competitiveness’. The road to redemption, on this analysis, is for the peripheral countries to consolidate their public finances and embrace supply-side reforms. The task at EU level is to keep member-states on the straight and narrow by making sure that they comply with the fiscal rules and do what is required to remain ‘competitive’. This view, which is having a decisive influence on reforms to way the eurozone is run, coincides with that of the German government. Let us, then, call it the ‘Berlin consensus’.
As an analysis of what ails numerous economies across Europe, the Berlin consensus has much to commend it. There is no question that some countries have mismanaged their public finances. Greece, where governments disguised their profligacy by cooking the data, is the most egregious example. Nor is there any question that many ‘peripherals’, particularly across Southern Europe, face daunting supply-side challenges: low productivity, high drop-out rates from secondary education, inflexible labour markets, insufficient competition in services markets, rapidly ageing populations and low effective ages of retirement are a toxic brew. All these countries are on unsustainable paths and must push through thoroughgoing economic reforms. Depressingly, their reform efforts have been among the most pedestrian in the EU.

Foto: Sargasso achtergrond wereldbol

Ireland: from poster child to enfant terrible?

, door

By Hugo Brady, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.

tax the greedy, not the needyIreland will elect a new government on February 25th to replace a discredited administration loathed by most Irish voters. At first sight, it seems unlikely the election will re-open the fundamentals of a bail-out agreed with fellow eurozone members and the IMF last November. The last act of Fianna Fáil, the main party in government since 1997, was to translate the terms of that deal into an initial set of tax hikes and further public spending cuts before leaving office. Nonetheless, the poll – Ireland’s most important for decades – marks a shift in hostility towards the bail-out and the EU in general which its partners would be foolish to ignore.

European benefactors might express shock that Irish attitudes towards the EU have worsened in the wake of the bail-out. To many EU leaders – including José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission – they are helping to rescue a country where politicians and regulators, through incompetence or worse, allowed bankers and developers to drive the economy to ruin using other people’s money. That view is correct but cloistered. It takes no account of the part played by the introduction of the euro itself – at a low interest rate hitherto unknown in Ireland – in inflating a runaway property boom. And Ireland’s eurozone partners (along with Britain) do expect their money back at a profit, having – they hope – secured the common currency and the unwise investments of their own banks in the process.

Foto: Sargasso achtergrond wereldbol

Can Greece be saved?

, door

By Katinka Barysch, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform

rellen in griekenlandWill Greece have to restructure its debt? Among most West European economists and investors, this now seems to be a foregone conclusion. The Greeks themselves are not so sure. During a recent visit to Athens, none of the economists and politicians I spoke to thought that restructuring was inevitable or desirable. The Papandreou government looks determined. But to avoid default, Greece would need two things: economic growth and more help from its European neighbours.

Since Greece negotiated its €110 billion financial assistance package with the EU and the IMF last year, it has cut its government deficit by an impressive 6 per cent of GDP. The government has slashed public salaries and pensions, raised VAT and other taxes, and clamped down on ubiquitous tax evasion. Half a dozen big strikes and the occasional outbreak of street fighting notwithstanding, the Greeks have so far remained rather stoic in the face of this unprecedented belt tightening. Most realise that change is needed and hardship inevitable.

The other reason why Greeks have so far stayed calm is that the worst is yet to come. While civil servants, truckers and some other groups felt immediate pain, the population at large has not yet suffered unbearably. After 15 years of rising salaries, most Greeks can cope with an initial drop in income. Those who lose their job or business can usually rely on a tightly knit family network for support.

Foto: Sargasso achtergrond wereldbol

Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa and the euro

, door

Een gastbijdrage van Charles Grant, directeur van het Centre for European Reform.

Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa

At the end of last year, Europe lost Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, an eminent central banker and economist, and one of the founding fathers of the euro. As EU leaders struggle to cope with the continuing euro crisis, they would do well do ponder some of Padoa-Schioppa’s insights on the economics of monetary union.

Following Greece and Ireland, Portugal may soon require a rescue from its fellow eurozone members. With the benefit of hindsight it is only too evident that the euro has suffered from design flaws, and that European leaders have mismanaged the currency. Too many countries joined the euro before they were ready. Fiscal discipline has been too lax, though new rules will make it harder for governments to over-borrow. Some eurozone governments did far too little to promote structural reform, and have therefore suffered from inflexible economies and poor productivity; in 2010, Greece, Portugal and Spain belatedly implemented some structural reforms. The penal rates of interest at which Greece, Ireland and Portugal have had to borrow have revealed the need for a bail-out mechanism and a procedure for ensuring the relatively orderly restructuring of sovereign debt (both are on their way). The behaviour of many banks – and not only in Ireland and Spain – has shown that the tighter system of pan-European financial regulation now being put together is sorely needed.
The statesmen who designed the euro have been criticized for putting politics ahead of economics: motivated by the desire to promote European unification, they ignored the economics – or assumed that once the project got underway, the necessary rules for economic governance would somehow fall into place. There is truth in that criticism, but many people have forgotten that economics did play a role in the birth of the euro.

Vorige Volgende