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92. From Lisbon to Deauville: Practicalities of the Lisbon Treaty Revision(s)
- Author:
- Piotr Maciej Kaczyński and Peadar ó Broin
- Publication Date:
- 10-2010
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
- Abstract:
- It has only been one year since the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force and already there is a stack of pending issues requiring primary law change in the EU. The Franco-German Deauville Declaration of 18 October 2010 is probably the most politically prominent of them all, yet it is not the first, nor will it be the last in a long, incremental process of constant treaty revision similar to the national process of amending national constitutions. All of these proposals have one feature in common: none of them is an overarching treaty change and each one is designed in such a way that amends only one element of the system. This, in theory, should avoid the need to submit the change to public referenda in the EU as part of the ratification process.
- Topic:
- Treaties and Agreements and Law
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Germany, and Lisbon
93. The Place of Religion in European Union Law and Policy: Competing Approaches and Actors inside the European Commission
- Author:
- Sergio Carrera and Joanna Parkin
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
- Abstract:
- While the EU has no explicit legal competence in the sphere of religion and the management of relations with faith communities, religious concerns have taken on increasing importance within the legal and institutional framework and policy discourses of the European Union in the last years. This paper provides an overview of how religion and issues of religious diversity are being framed and addressed in EU law and policy by undertaking a critical analysis of the ways in which EU law and policy deal with, engage and understand religion at the policy level of the European Commission. Through an examination of EU legislation and both formal and informal policy initiatives in the fields of citizenship and fundamental rights, non-discrimination, immigration and integration, social inclusion and education and culture, this paper demonstrates that there is a complex and highly heterogeneous patchwork of EU normative approaches delineating the relationship between religion and the EU. These competing framings, very much rooted in the institutional structures of the Commission services, have important implications for discretionary power and sovereignty of the EU member states and for the coherence of European Union policies.
- Topic:
- Regional Cooperation and Law
- Political Geography:
- Europe
94. Policy Matters But How? Explaining Non-Compliance Dynamics in the EU
- Author:
- Tanja A. Börzel, Tobias Hofmann, and Diana Panke
- Publication Date:
- 02-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG)
- Abstract:
- The European Union's infringement procedure is highly legalized. Nevertheless, as in other international institutions, non-compliance occurs on a regular basis and its transformation into compliance varies across EU infringement stages and over time. State of the art compliance literature focuses mainly on country-specific explanations, such as power, capacity, and legitimacy. In particular power-capacity models explain a good part of whether non-compliance occurs and how quickly it can be resolved. Yet, these approaches leave substantial parts of the empirical variation that we observe unexplained. This paper argues that policy and, in particular, rule-specific variables – although often neglected – are important for explaining non-compliance. Based on a quantitative analysis, we show that policy matters not only for the frequency with which EU law is violated, but also the persistence of non-compliance over time and over the different stages of the infringement procedure.
- Topic:
- Regional Cooperation and Law
- Political Geography:
- Europe
95. Parliamentary War Powers: A Survey of 25 European Parliaments
- Author:
- Sandra Dieterich, Hartwig Hummel, and Stefan Marschall
- Publication Date:
- 12-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
- Abstract:
- This paper presents a survey of parliamentary 'war powers' based on a comprehensive and detailed review of the degrees and institutional forms of parliamentary involvement in military security policy-making. As our original research project focused on the involvement of European Union (EU) states in the recent Iraq war, we present data for the then 25 member and accession states of the EU as of early 2003. This survey of parliamentary war powers covers the legislative, budgetary, control, communicationrelated and dismissal powers of the respective parliaments relating to the use of military force. Referring to this data, we distinguish five classes of democratic nation-states, ranging from those with 'very strong' to those with only 'very weak' war powers of the respective national parliament.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, Democratization, Governance, and Law
- Political Geography:
- Iraq and Europe
96. The Role of Penal Reform in Security Sector Reform
- Author:
- Megan Bastick
- Publication Date:
- 01-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
- Abstract:
- Penal reform activities have been carried on in Europe and the United States since at least the late eighteenth century. Security sector reform (SSR), a much newer concept, is a governance-driven approach that looks to strengthen the roles of both state and non-state actors to deliver security to individuals and communities. As such, attention to the penal system is important in any comprehensive SSR process. However, much SSR programming overlooks penal elements, and lessons learnt through long experience in penal reform have not been applied to other SSR activities. There is limited discourse between the penal reform community of practice and the wider SSR community.
- Topic:
- Security, Governance, Law, and Prisons/Penal Systems
- Political Geography:
- United States and Europe
97. The Stockholm programme: Europe's next step to be an "area of freedom, security and justice"
- Author:
- Toby Archer
- Publication Date:
- 12-2009
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA)
- Abstract:
- The Stockholm Programme sets the agenda for the European Union's actions for the next five years in the area of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA). It is the next step towards the goal of making the EU into an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). Justice and Home Affairs became the third pillar of the EU after the Maastricht Treaty came into force in 1993. Originally, it was firmly intergovernmental area of policy-making but some parts were transferred to the supranational first pillar when the treaty of Amsterdam came in to force 1999. In the same year the EU decided it need a focused plan for cooperation in this field for the next five years; and the Tampere Programme was produced. This was followed in 2004 by the Hague Programme that ends this year, and the Stockholm Programme will lay out the next five years of JHA cooperation. Producing the programme has been complicated due to both the sensitive nature of many of the issues covered and by doubt until recently over whether the Lisbon Treaty would be ratified. The ratification of Lisbon changes the power balance between the European Commission, Council and Parliament and this has ramifications for the JHA area. With the success of the EU single market and the end of border controls within the EU, to stop crime within the EU, to guarantee the rights of citizens who are moving between EU member states, and to manage people from third countries who are seeking to come into the EU, requires cooperation across the Union. The Stockholm Programme seeks to lay out what path this should take. Migration policy is an important and difficult part of the programme. How Europeanised dealing with irregular migrants and asylum seeker should be has been one of the politically difficult areas within the programme.
- Topic:
- Security, Civil Society, and Law
- Political Geography:
- Europe
98. Medvedev's amendments to the law on defence: The consequences for Europe
- Author:
- Yury E. Fedorov
- Publication Date:
- 11-2009
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA)
- Abstract:
- In November 2009, the 'Law on Amendments to the “Law on Defence”' proposed by President Medvedev entered into force. It allows the Kremlin to dispatch troops outside Russia for four purposes: to counter armed attacks against Russian armed forces, other troops and bodies deployed beyond its borders; to counter or prevent an armed attack against another country if this country has requested Russia to do so; to protect Russian citizens abroad from an armed attack; and to combat piracy and guarantee the safety of shipping. The law is an attempt to close the gap between Moscow's strategic goals, primarily the establishment of its geopolitical dominance over the former Soviet republics, and Russia's legislation, which restricted its ability to deploy armed forces beyond national borders. In effect, the amended legislation enables the Kremlin to deploy its armed forces abroad in a wide range of situations, precisely because of a lack of clear criteria. The wording of 'Medvedev's amendments' sheds light on some plans and scenarios that may be taking shape in Moscow. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that Russia may plan to ignite large-scale disturbances and ethnic clashes in Sevastopol or in Latvia and Estonia, which may be used as a pretext for Russian military intervention. A Russo-Ukrainian conflict in Crimea would pose not so much a military as a political challenge for Europe and the West. Even though Ukraine does not belong to these organizations, if NATO and the EU failed to respond to Russian intervention in Crimea with strong political and economic measures, their strategic relevance would be seriously undermined. If NATO did not defend its member states in the Baltic, the strategic role of the Alliance would be reduced to zero. The aforementioned scenarios fall into the worst-case category, yet there are numerous precedents in Russia's history which demonstrate that worst-case scenarios can become reality. European dependence on Russian energy supplies and interest in Russia's support in resolving the Iranian nuclear problem and the conflict in Afghanistan, as well as the Obama administration's interest in Russia's partnership in nuclear issues, constrain Western ability to respond. However, the West could and should make it quite clear that new Russia's military interventions will result in the country's political ostracization. Furthermore, the West could propose and develop an internationally recognised mechanism regulating the most important aspects of humanitarian intervention. In particular, it should minimise the ability of individual states to make unilateral decisions to intervene militarily if the UN Security Council were unable to make firm decisions. Such mechanisms could be discussed and developed in the frameworks of the UN, the OSCE, the so-called Corfu process and similar international forums.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, and Law
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Asia
99. Justice in Times of Transition: Lessons from the Iberian Experience
- Author:
- Omar G. Encarnación
- Publication Date:
- 10-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- A key contention of the transitional justice movement is that the more comprehensive and vigorous the effort to bring justice to a departed authoritarian regime the better the democratizing outcome will be. This essay challenges this view with empirical evidence from the Iberian Peninsula. In Portugal, a sweeping policy of purges intended to cleanse the state and society of the authoritarian past nearly derailed the transition to democracy by descending into a veritable witch-hunt. In Spain, by contrast, letting bygones be bygones, became a foundation for democratic consolidation. These counter-intuitive examples suggest that there is no pre-ordained outcome to transitional justice, and that confronting an evil past is neither a requirement nor a pre-condition for democratization. This is primarily because the principal factors driving the impulse toward justice against the old regime are political rather than ethical or moral. In Portugal, the rise of transitional justice mirrored the anarchic politics of the revolution that lunched the transition to democracy. In Spain, the absence of transitional justice reflected the pragmatism of a democratic transition anchored on compromise and consensus.
- Topic:
- Human Rights, Politics, International Affairs, and Law
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Spain, Portugal, and Iberia Peninsula
100. Equality Law in an Enlarged European Union. Understanding the Article 13 Directives
- Author:
- Dimitry Kochenov
- Publication Date:
- 04-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- When you are on the subway in New York, it is difficult not to notice numerous Spanish language information posters about equality and non-discrimination, such as 'Housing discrimination on the basis of sex, race, ethnic origin… is unlawful'. They not only state the law: a telephone number in the corner informs you of where to call to make sure that if you are the victim of discrimination, help is available. Have you seen such posters in a Romani language in the Prague metro? Or in Arabic on the trains around Rotterdam?
- Topic:
- Law
- Political Geography:
- New York and Europe