Joaquín Roy

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Jun 27 2016 (IPS)

The hopes of many of those who confidently expected the British electorate to vote, by a slender margin, for the country to remain in the EU have been dashed. All that is left to do now is to ponder the causes and background of this regrettable event, and consider its likely consequences, especially for relations with the United States.

In the first place one must point out and – and this is a general criticism of the present British political system – that Prime Minister David Cameron was hugely irresponsible to steer his country into this risky adventure. It has resulted in the worst calamity to befall Britain in the last half century and has inflicted severe damage not only on the EU but also on all the countries of the North Atlantic rim.

Cameron went out on a limb, thinking to secure total control over the country for his Conservative Party for the next several years. Next he pursued a surrealist referendum campaign agenda, seeking to persuade the public to vote to remain in the EU, against the Brexit proposal that he himself had engineered. He relied on the advantages and special privileges promised to the UK by the EU if the British people voted to remain.

Brussels had already warned that the EU would not grant Britain any further concessions or benefits over and above the conditions that apply in common to all EU members. It pointed out that Britain was in fact already a privileged partner, having opted out of the common currency (the euro) under a special agreement that did not even fix a timescale for its putative future membership of the euro area.

London also retains full control of Britain’s borders, having declined to sign the innovative Schengen Agreement which abolished many internal borders and introduced passport-free movement across the 26 Schengen countries.

The EU has indeed done everything in its power to keep the UK government and people happy and flaunting their prized British exceptionalism.

And now the fateful moment is at hand. The effect on Europe has been devastating. The one possible advantage for the EU – which has discreetly remained unvoiced – is that of ridding itself of an awkward partner, a dinner guest with an unfortunate habit of drawing attention to itself in negative ways. Britain slammed the brakes on progress towards fuller European integration and was a temptation to other recalcitrant EU countries to follow its bad example.

Recently concerns were raised in Washington over the Brexit referendum.

President Barack Obama himself did his best to urge Britons to stick with the EU when he visited London in April.

Cameron, and the people who voted for the UK to leave the EU, have done Obama a disservice. Britain’s image in the United States will deteriorate to unprecedented depths. The vaunted special relationship between the U.S. and Britain will no longer be an effective force underpinning one of the strongest alliances in recent history.

The first victim of the debacle may be the approval process for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union, which is already looking shaky, at least for the immediate future.

The TTIP was meant to replicate the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an ambitious deal to cut trade barriers, set labour and environmental standards and protect corporate intellectual property. The TPP was signed in principle by twelve Pacific Rim countries including the United States, and now awaits approval by legislators in each of the countries.

The rise of populism and anti-free trade sentiment is reflected in speeches by both U.S. presidential candidates, and is likely to slow down what is now viewed as “excessive globalisation”. There is a return to a style of nationalism that exerts control over economic as well as political initiatives.

The next U.S. president will find it difficult to advance their country’s alliance with London on defence issues. The UK will have freed itself from what was already problematic military cooperation with Europe, and only its link with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) will endure. Some European NATO partners will be cautious about developing joint operations with a fellow member they view as uncommitted to agreements within the EU.

In the matter of trade per se, Washington will not take kindly to the new position of the City of London once it has lost its enviable status as a financial hub embedded in the EU. Siren songs from other European capitals solidly anchored in the soon-to-be expanded European community will be hard to resist, especially if European leaders adopt policies to strengthen the euro zone.

In Latin America, Brexit will be read as a confirmation that supranational practices and thoroughgoing integration are no longer a priority for the UK. The referendum result sends the message that national sovereignty is now paramount. All the time and effort the EU has spent over the years to promote the advantages of the European model of integration, based on the strength of its treaties and the effectiveness of its institutions, will be regretted as a sheer waste of time and energy.

An alternative “model of integration” based on the U.S. agenda, favouring one-off arrangements or treaties limited in scope exclusively to trade issues, will prevail over the already weakened European model.

The Caribbean region has strong historical and cultural ties to Britain. It will suffer from a less secure bond with the UK and will incline more closely to Washington.

The continent of the Americas, which is closest to Britain from the point of view of history and culture as well as in political and economic terms, will thus find itself further apart from Europe than before.

Joaquin Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Centre at  the University of Miami.  jroy@Miami.edu

Translated by Valerie Dee

Excerpt:

By Joaquín Roy
BARCELONA, Jul 7 2015 (IPS)

The decisive result of the Greek referendum held Jul. 5, in which voters overwhelmingly rejected (61.3 to 38.7 percent) the terms of an international bailout, has opened a new chapter not only for the future of Greece, but also in terms of the essence of the European Union itself.

Paradoxically, the future of the euro may become a secondary issue.

Joaquín Roy

In the coming week, the pages will be turned on some chapters of European history that had been regarded as a fixed part of the script.

The fact that, in their time, previous Greek governments blatantly misrepresented the country’s financial situation in order to secure entry into the euro zone will have to be put aside.

The authorities in Brussels will have to be forgiven for turning a blind eye so that the country using the world’s oldest existing currency, and that had founded a mythical democracy, should not be excluded from the inaugural party of Europe’s spectacular expansion.

The eternal European habit of brinkmanship and coming to last-minute arrangements – so that summits produce neither winners nor losers, but everyone can go home feeling vindicated – will have to be given up for practical reasons.

This battle may still cause significant damage and a high number of casualties.

In the first place, although the voting reflects clear overall rejection of E.U. impositions, Greek society remains dangerously divided on the choice presented to it by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. The problems the Greek people face in their daily lives will not disappear after the referendum.“If there is no new bailout or a massive debt write-off, the [Greek] government may be forced by its inability to satisfy the citizenry’s demands to choose between two evils … the humiliation of urgent humanitarian aid from the European Union … [or] the dangerous path of seeking protection from external interests”

Those who voted in favour of accepting the conditions of the European institutions and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will blame those who backed Tsipras for the costs they will all have to bear. Those who voted No and “won” the contest may well feel disappointed when they see the economic situation worsening, or not noticeably improving.

The referendum results indicate that conservatives and the middle classes decided to support the bailout conditions because they at least had some assets. On the other hand, the majority of people who have nothing, or who have lost nearly everything, preferred to carry on the struggle and reject E.U. pressures.

It is worth noting that the proportion of No votes in the referendum was higher than the proportion of ballots cast for the left-wing Tsipras in the recent elections that propelled his party to power.

If there is no new bailout or a massive debt write-off, the government may be forced by its inability to satisfy the citizenry’s demands to choose between two evils. On the one hand it may have to accept the humiliation of urgent humanitarian aid from the European Union, as has been suggested at the eleventh hour. On the other hand, it might take the dangerous path of seeking protection from external interests, as recent overtures towards Moscow appear to indicate.

E.U. leaders may pursue the threats they made in the final hours of the referendum campaign. The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, might have found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to take action to back up his last-minute arguments about the dire consequences of exiting the euro. Now, however, he has backed down and appears to be leaning toward negotiation.

Other E.U. leaders are also in awkward positions. Where will European Council President Donald Tusk and Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker be if Berlin’s hard line prevails?

Or conversely, where will everyone be if traditional negotiation and classic compromise are now being reconsidered?

A traditional forecast is that the European leaders in Brussels, backed by the IMF, will opt for negotiation, because they do not want to go down in history as participants in a conflict with unpredictable consequences. It does not suit the Greek prime minister to overstep the mark, either, and he could therefore make the European Union an offer it cannot refuse. For their part, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other holders of the enormous debt know that if Greece exits the euro, repayment will be impossible.

In the distance, the United States has expressed concern over the development of this process. Economic convulsion in Europe is not in the interests of Washington; moreover, from its standpoint, two issues are crucial for preventing damage from spilling over into other vital dimensions.

The first is the threat that Greece may be tempted to drift into the sphere of Russia’s protection.

The second is the disturbing sight of the European Union under a divided leadership and with damaged financial underpinnings at the height of negotiations for the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a free trade agreement between the European Union and the United States.

Indecisive leaders in Europe will make it very difficult for U.S. President Barack Obama to exercise his negotiation mandate granted by Congress, increasing the likelihood that the project will be delayed until a new U.S. president takes office.

In conclusion, the decisions taken now in Brussels and other European capitals will determine whether or not there will be further harm to the essence of the European Union – and to the euro, the jewel in the crown and the cause of the whole drama. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Pablo Piacentini/Phil Harris   

Translated by Valerie Dee

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Daya Thussu
LONDON, Jul 1 2015 (IPS)

As the leaders of the BRICS five meet in the Russian city of Ufa for their annual summit Jul. 8–10, their agenda is likely to be dominated by economic and security concerns, triggered by the continuing economic crisis in the European Union and the security situation in the Middle East.

The seventh annual summit of the large emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – also takes place with a background of escalating tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine and the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), as well as the growing economic power of Asia, in particular, China.

Daya Thussu

Nearly a decade and a half has passed since the BRIC acronym was coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill, a Goldman Sachs executive, now a minister in David Cameron’s U.K. government, to refer to the four fast-growing emerging markets. South Africa was added in 2011, on China’s request, to expand BRIC to BRICS.

Although in operation as a formal group since 2006, and holding annual summits since 2009, the BRICS countries have escaped much comment in international media, partly because of the different political systems and socio-cultural norms, as well as stages of development, within this group of large and diverse nations.

The emergence of such groupings coincides with the relative economic decline of the West.

This has created the opportunity for emerging powers, such as China and India, to participate in global governance structures hitherto dominated by the United States and its Western allies.

That the centre of economic gravity is shifting away from the West is acknowledged in the view of the U.S. Administration of Barack Obama that the ‘pivot’ of U.S. foreign policy is moving to Asia.“The major countries of the global South have shown impressive economic growth in recent decades … [it is predicted that] by 2020 the combined economic output of China, India and Brazil will surpass the aggregated production of the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy”

And there is evidence of this shift. In the Fortune 500 ranking, the number of transnational corporations based in Brazil, Russia, India and China has grown from 27 in 2005 to more than 100 in 2015. China’s Huawei, a telecommunications equipment firm, is the world’s largest holder of international patents; Brazil’s Petrobras is the fourth largest oil company in the world, while the Tata group became the first Indian conglomerate to reach 100 billion dollars in revenues.

Since 2006, China has been the largest holder of foreign currency reserves, estimated in 2015 to be more than 3.8 trillion dollars. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China’s gross domestic product (GDP) surpassed that of the United States in 2014, making it the world’s largest economy in purchasing-power parity terms.

More broadly, the major countries of the global South have shown impressive economic growth in recent decades, prompting the United Nations Development Programme to proclaim The Rise of the South (the title of its 2013 Human Development Report), which predicts that by 2020 the combined economic output of China, India and Brazil will surpass the aggregated production of the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.

Though the individual relationships between BRICS countries and the United States differ markedly (Russia and China being generally anti-Washington while Brazil and South Africa relatively close to the United States and India moving from its traditional non-aligned position to a ‘multi-aligned’ one), the group was conceived as an alternative to American power and is the only major group of nations not to include the United States or any other G-7 nation.

Nevertheless, none of the five member nations are eager for confrontation with the United States – with the possible exception of Russia – the country with which they have their most important relationship. Indeed, China is one of the largest investors in the United States, while India, Brazil and South Africa demonstrate democratic affinities with the West: India’s IT industry is particularly dependent on its close ties with the United States and Europe.

Although the idea of BRIC was initiated in Russia, it is China that has emerged as the driving force behind this grouping. British author Martin Jacques has noted in his international bestseller When China Rules the World, that China operates “both within and outside the existing international system while at the same time, in effect, sponsoring a new China-centric international system which will exist alongside the present system and probably slowly begin to usurp it.”

One manifestation of this change is the establishment of a BRICS bank (the ‘New Development Bank’) to fund developmental projects, potentially to rival the Western-dominated Bretton Woods institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF. Headquartered in Shanghai, China has made the largest contribution to setting it up and is likely that the bank will further enhance China’s domination of the BRICS group.

Beyond BRICS, Beijing has also established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which already has 57 members, including Australia, Germany and Britain, and in which China will hold over 25 percent of voting rights. Two other BRICS nations – India and Russia – are the AIIB’s second and third largest shareholders.

Such changes have an impact on the media scene as well. As part of China’s ‘going out’ strategy, billions of dollars have been earmarked for external communication, including the expansion of Chinese broadcasting networks such as CCTV News and Xinhua’s English-language TV, CNC World.

Russia has also raised its international profile by entering the English-language news world in 2005 with the launch of the Russia Today (now called RT) network, which, apart from English, also broadcasts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in Spanish and Arabic.

However, as a new book Mapping BRICS Media – which I co-edited with Kaarle Nordenstreng of the University of Tampere, Finland – shows, there is very little intra-BRICS media exchange and most of the BRICS nations continue to receive international news largely from Anglo-American media.

The growing economic cooperation between Moscow and Beijing – most notably in the 2014 multi-billion dollar gas deal – indicates a new Sino-Russian economic equation outside Western control.

Two key U.S.-led trade agreements being negotiated – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and both excluding the BRICS nations – are partly a reaction to the perceived competition from nations such as China.

For its part, China appears to have used the BRICS grouping to allay fears that it is rising ‘with the rest’ and therefore less threatening to Western hegemony.

The BRICS summit takes place jointly with Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Heads of State Council meeting. The only other time that BRICS and the SCO combined their summits was also in Russia – in Ekaterinburg in 2009.

Apart from two BRICS members, China and Russia, the SCO includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. SCO has not expanded its membership since it was set up in 2001. India has an ‘observer’ status within SCO, though there is talk that it might be granted full membership at the Ufa summit.

Were that to happen, the ‘pivot’ would have moved a few notches further towards Asia.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

The overwhelming majority of lobby meetings held by European Commissioners and their closest advisors are with representatives of corporate interests, according to an analysis published Jun. 24 by Transparency International (TI).

The finding was revealed by EU Integrity Watch, a new lobby monitoring tool launched by TI, which “works with governments, businesses and citizens to stop the abuse of power, bribery and secret deals.”

Today’s assessment of the situation of lobbying in Brussels follows the publication in April of TI’s report on lobbying in Europe. That report analysed lobbying in 19 European countries and in the three European Union institutions and showed examples of undue influence on politics across the region and in Brussels.

At the time, Elena Panfilova, Vice-Chair of TI, said: “In the past five years, Europe’s leaders have made difficult economic decisions that have had big consequences for citizens. Those citizens need to know that decision-makers were acting in the public interest, not the interest of a few select players.”"There is a strong link between the amount of money you spend and the number of meetings you get [with European Commission officials]. Those organisations with the biggest lobby budgets get a lot of access, particularly on the financial, digital and energy portfolios” – Daniel Freund, Transparency International EU

According to Tl’s new analysis, of the more than 4,300 lobby meetings declared by the top tier of European Commission officials between December 2014 and June 2015, more than 75 percent were with corporate lobbyists. Only 18 percent were with NGOs, four percent with think tanks and two percent with local authorities.

Google, General Electric and Airbus were reported to be among the most active lobbyists at this level, and Google and General Electric were also said to some of the biggest spenders in Brussels, each declaring EU lobby budgets of around 3.5 million euros a year.

Of the 7,908 organisations which have voluntarily registered in the EU Transparency Register – the register of European Union lobbyists – 4,879 seek to influence political decisions of the European Union on behalf of corporate interests.

Exxon Mobil, Shell and Microsoft (all 4.5-5 million euros) are the top three companies in terms of lobby budgets, according to their declarations made to the Register.

“The evidence of the last six months suggests there is a strong link between the amount of money you spend and the number of meetings you get,” said Daniel Freund of Transparency International EU. “Those organisations with the biggest lobby budgets get a lot of access, particularly on the financial, digital and energy portfolios.”

According to Transparency International EU, the portfolios for climate and energy (487 meetings), jobs and growth (398), digital economy (366) and financial markets (295) currently receive most attention from lobbyists.

The Commissioners in charge of the latter three – Finland’s Jyrki Katainen, the United Kingdom’s Jonathan Hill and Germany’s Günther Oettinger – are reported to have particularly low numbers for meetings with civil society – three, three and two respectively, representing between four and eight percent of the total number of their declared meetings.

While large global NGOs, such as World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Greenpeace, are in the Top 10 of organisations with most meetings, TI said it was notable that meetings with civil society are often held as large roundtable events with multiple participants.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who issued instructions In November 2014 that “Members of the Commission should seek to ensure an appropriate balance and representativeness in the stakeholders they meet”. Photo credit: CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

In November 2014, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker issued instructions on the Commission’s working methods: “While contact with stakeholders is a natural and important part of the work of a Member of the Commission, all such contacts should be conducted with transparency and Members of the Commission should seek to ensure an appropriate balance and representativeness in the stakeholders they meet.”

The new data also reveals that 80 percent of the 7,821 organisations currently registered did not have a single meeting reported with a Commissioner or their teams, demonstrating the limitations of the European Commission’s new transparency provisions that only cover the highest ranking top one percent of E.U. officials and only 20 percent of the registered lobby organisations.

Lower-level officials, such as the team negotiating the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the European Union and the United States, are not covered.

“The European Commission should be congratulated on providing this insight into lobbying of high-level officials, but this is just part of the picture,” said Carl Dolan, Director of Transparency International EU. “Officials are lobbied at all levels and greater transparency is required to reassure the public about the integrity of EU policy-making.

Transparency International EU also found that many organisations still remain absent from the register. This includes 14 of the 20 biggest law-firms in the world that all have Brussels offices, such as Clifford Chance, White & Case or Sidley Austin. Eleven out of these 14 law firms have registered as lobby organisations in Washington DC, where registration is mandatory.

“Much of the information that lobbyists voluntarily file with the lobby register is inaccurate, incomplete or outright meaningless,” said Freund, adding that over 60 percent of organisations that lobbied the European Commission on the EU-US trade agreement do not properly declare these activities.

Further, on the broad reform package of financial services entitled ‘Capital Markets Union’, many banks – including HSBC, BNP Paribas and Lloyds – that have had meetings on this topic fail to declare in the lobby register that they are active in this area.

The findings of EU Integrity Watch also reveal hundreds of completely meaningless declarations, with some organisations claiming to spend more than 100 million euros on E.U. lobbying or having tens of thousands of lobbyists at their disposal, showing the need for more systematic checks and verification by the Commission and ultimately a mandatory register.

Freund said that “all E.U. institutions should publish a ‘legislative footprint’ – a public record of all lobby meetings and other input that has influenced policies and legislation.”

Recognising that the European Commission has started moving in the right direction, TI says that the measures introduced so far need to be extended to everyone involved in the decision-making process, including the European Parliament and Council.

Edited by Phil Harris    

By Joaquín Roy
BARCELONA, Jul 14 2014 (IPS)

A few decades ago, even before the end of the Cold War and before and after Ronald Reagan’s election to the White House, analyses regularly referred to U.S. decadence. At other times, it was Europe’s turn for pessimistic descriptions, especially when it could not overcome its ambivalence over deepening integration, and above all because of the failure of its constitutional project. 

The West was in crisis. And now the pair are apparently going through a similar phase, with each one trying to outdo the other in inferiority.

The United States seems to be in the doldrums because of the apparently erratic foreign policy of President Barack Obama, who does not seem to be profiting from surmounting the legacy of George W. Bush’s actions in the Middle East.

Joaquín Roy

Obama’s agenda based on “leading from behind” is creating serious problems that would damage his re-election chances if he were eligible (which he is not).

Hillary Clinton may inherit this liability if she finally decides to run for the presidency. What is certain is that indecision in Syria, the disaster of Iraq’s disintegration and the still unsolved challenge of Russia in Ukraine, create a picture of the United States in international decline.“Both partners [Europe and the United States] are still the natural allies that could lead the world out of the crisis. And the future of both is welded to their role as immigration destinations” – Joaquín Roy

The European Union, for its part, does not offer a more hopeful scenario, and only if it is able to strengthen its institutions following the European Parliament elections in May will it be able to overcome the generalised forecast of a problematic future.

Gripped by the rise of populism and neo-nationalism and with its economy weighed down by inequality and lack of sustained growth, the European Union is a long way from offering alternative leadership and hope for the rest of the planet, and appropriately partnering the United States to beat the global crisis.

Yet curiously, this odd couple, which can be subsumed in what is generously called the West, can pride itself on an immense capital that is a basis not only for survival, but of sustained leadership for the rest of the world.

In both cases, a systematic humanitarian tragedy reveals their mutual strength and guarantees their future survival. Dramatic, repeated migration processes produce huge human capital flows to both Europe and the United States compared with other regions.

On the one hand, thousands of Latin American teenagers are invading the United States in search of a much better future than they are leaving behind in Central America, racked by crime, poverty and inequality.

On the other hand, the shores of Italy are being bombarded by desperate migrants cast up by traffickers, resulting in shipwrecks and deaths by suffocation. Elsewhere, attempts to take the Spanish border by storm in the enclaves in Morocco have ceased to call attention as newsworthy.

What do these apparently dissimilar scenarios reveal?

Quite simply, that the strength of these partners in crisis is based on their relatively powerful magnetism for migrants.

For all the present difficulties suffered by many European countries, the prospect of life in Europe is comparatively far better than in Africa or Asia, and even Latin America, in spite of the fact that many immigrants are returning to their countries of origin.

The future and the present of the United States – as it always was in the past – remains linked to the immigration pool. Hence, U.S. sectors that oppose migration reform are not only destined to fail, they are also currently rendering poor service to their country.

Both regions, now engaged in exploring a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement, are destined to surpass other world regions in terms of standard of living and future expectations.

Both partners are still the natural allies that could lead the world out of the crisis. And the future of both is welded to their role as immigration destinations.

Excerpt: