Source: Google images

I did recently translate the decision of the ECtHR as to the admissibility of application No. 14160/08 by Sergey Dolinskiy against Estonia, into the Estonian language. This is about a refused request for a residence permit and the subsequent detainment in the Harku deportation centre. The ECtHR refers to another decision in application No. 10664/05 against Estonia, in order to describe the conditions in the deportation centre:

„13.  The Government in their submissions have described the deportation centre as an institution with a guarded perimeter kept under visual and electronic supervision. It can accommodate 42 persons in rooms designed for four persons but as a rule no more than two persons are placed in one room. The detainees can use eating and rest areas equipped with television, radio, newspapers and literature. There is table tennis equipment and various board games and the detainees have free access to toilets and shower. Washing and drying machines are available. There are four periods a day (totalling almost ten hours) for outdoor walks. The detainees are served three meals a day, including at least two hot meals; there is a nurse present in the centre four hours a day and, if the need arises, a general practitioner is available. A psychiatrist and a psychologist visit the centre regularly. The detainees can buy additional food and other items through the centre; they are also allowed to receive parcels, send and receive letters and use the telephone. Furthermore, they can meet consular officials of their country of nationality, defence counsel and ministers of religion. Subject to authorisation they can also be visited by other persons, such as family members.“

That made me think, whether I have table tennis equipment and drying machine, and about my outdoor activities, hot meals, availability of medical aid and advice. When did I last time receive a parcel, or was paid a visit?

And – a weekend link to the European Court of Human Rights’ Quiz at the Court’s main website: http://www.echr.coe.int/50/en/#quiz

Extracurricular activities. Source: Website of the Faculty of Law of the University of Zurich

I unfortunately did not notice earlier, but the Faculty of Law of the University of Zurich in cooperation with the University in Cairo (AUC) are holding a summer program in international law in Cairo in five modules: Islamic and Middle Eastern Law,  Financial Market Law, International Criminal Law, Human Rights Law, and Comparative Private Law, from 12 to 15 July 2010.

For the vast majority of the European people secularism is one of the pillars of the society they live in.

Medieval European societies were most of the time organized and ruled by the combined authority  stemming from the clergy (temporal and moral power) and the monarchs (sovereign authority). Local princes or kings would need to get recognition from the clergy in order to fully consolidate their authority upon the populace in a widely fragmented Europe. A few centuries and numerous religious wars later the idea of multi-confessional kingdoms worked its way through (for instance the Edit of Nantes signed by Henry the IV^th in France which granted religious freedom rights to Protestants to appease the country after the numerous massacres – XVI^th century). By the end of the XVIII^th century the first French Republic and its constitution encompassed the right to religious freedom along with the Human Rights. It was only slightly more than a century later that the law of 1905 in France officially set apart the church and the state: religion is an affair which must remain that of the private sphere. Religious freedom is a right and the state institutions must remain neutral to guarantee this right. Each European country has its own history and its own set of laws (and exceptions) to reflect secularism in daily life but the core of the ideal which is about “religious freedom” is a common ground to most Europeans.

It’s important to get familiar with the development of secularism in our societies and realize that what we take for granted nowadays was a lengthy, sometimes bloody and complex achievement across the continent as many wars, intellectual enlightenment and revolutions had to take place before the ideal could expand and soaks in the intricate mosaic of European peoples’ minds & and traditions.

Since the end of the XIX^th century the visible practice of religion in Europe (practice of liturgies, dressing codes, impact of the religious moral on daily life ethic etc…) has been consistently diminishing while the industrial revolutions were shaping up the modern societies of standardized production and mass-consumptions where the place of the religious would drastically dwindle. As a result, secular post modern European fellows of the XXI^th century are sometimes at shock when observing a more visible spirituality of its fellow Muslim citizens who only immigrated lately to European countries.

Opportunists far right parties across the continent, give their own revisited definition of secularism (most of the time to highlight their own ignorance) to use it as an argument to justify the impossibility to integrate the Muslim populations within the European frame. They usually dangle the threat of shocking visible Islam and present the argument ad nauseam that Muslims cannot integrate in Europe because their religion is too pervasive and because the Koran precepts prevail on our “traditions and culture”. They like to point out the Muslims dressing codes, the fervor of the prayers or whatsoever that might appear exotic and scary enough to appall their constituency (not to mention all the stereotypes and the confusion about the Jihad, the terrorists and the “backwardness” of certain Muslim countries). The recent referendum in Switzerland which called on people to vote for or against the construction of new minarets was an appalling reality check of how malleable the public opinion has become in such fearful context to the point where they end up voting against one of the very basic principles that made up their nation (isn’t Switzerland made of confederations of different people and linguistic entities?).

The discussions in France (home to the largest Muslim population in Europe) and some of the voices around it about whether or not the “Niqab” (the veil that entirely covers the head except for the eyes) and the “burqa” should be forbidden or if the pupils should be able to wear headscarf at schools reveal the divergences on the interpretation of secularism. Some also tend to mix these problems with issues such as the national identity. These are the marks of the profound failure to understand the true social problems of our societies when the religious becomes the scapegoat of the failed social policies of our leaders. When one turns secularism into an ideology against Islam (or any other religion) he is turning his back to the philosophical work of our forefathers and chooses to forget (or ignore) history. When politicians or even intellectuals find it peculiar that some ordinary fellow citizens beg for some considerations which could make it easier for them to live by their religious precepts in the private sphere this is sheer hypocrisy or intellectual dishonesty. Don’t we have private Catholic or Jewish schools? Haven’t we been running separate swimming pools for men and women before the Muslims ever asked for it? Irony is that before the infamous students’ riots in Paris in May 1968 men and women were usually separated in schools and the French society was still predominantly patriarchal.

No, secularism is not asking Muslims to become non Muslims or less visible. Secularism is not about alienating people and their religious belief on behalf of the new natural religion called secularism which screams: “be like me and follow my truth, the unique truth”. The state via its inherent social contract is effective and viable when it facilitates the “vivre ensemble” (living together) based on universal values as opposed to creating disparate communities which share nothing in common and therefore legitimately feel disconnected to the res publica. By discriminating and by relentlessly pushing the Muslims to the fringes of our society we certainly risk more of creating resentful people and nurture fundamentalists who will only feel at odds with our culture than if we were capable of properly applying the very same universal principles that we have been applying to the different confessions on our continent since a few centuries be it the Jews, the Christian Orthodox, the Catholics or the Protestants. Islam has its place in Europe’s religious mosaic and the spirituality has its place in the Europe of the XXI^th century.

Finally I would like to end this second part with a quote from Henri Pena-Ruiz (French Philosopher):

“Secularism is a core value which by essence conveys the ideas of freedom of consciousness and equality of all men may they be religious, atheist or agnostic. The secular ideal is not that of resentment against religion. Interpreting the ideal as any sort of hostility toward the principle of religion would be the greatest misunderstanding of secularism. It is a positive ideal stressing freedom of consciousness and putting the religious and atheist people on an equal foot with the idea that the Republican law must aim at the common good instead of the particular interests. This is called the principle of the public sphere neutrality.”

Translated from the French : “La laïcité est une valeur essentielle, avec ce souci de la liberté de conscience et de l’égalité de tous les hommes, qu’ils soient croyants, athées ou agnostiques. L’idéal laïc n’est pas un idéal négatif de ressentiment contre la religion. C’est le plus grand contresens que l’on puisse faire sur la laïcité que d’y voir une sorte d’hostilité de principe à la religion. Mais c’est un idéal positif d’affirmation de la liberté de conscience, de l’égalité des croyants et des athées et de l’idée que la loi républicaine doit viser le bien commun et non pas l’intérêt particulier. C’est ce qu’on appelle le principe de neutralité de la sphère publique.”

How to explain that farmers in Greece receive three times more income and production support per hectare than their colleagues in Portugal? And why does a hectare of agricultural land in Malta get five times more support than in Latvia? Even more troubling is the question of why other EU member states obtain five or ten times more subsidies per hectare to promote rural development and environmental protection than the UK. Are their birds more beautiful?

The reality is that the distribution of subsidies can only be explained by EU power politics – and rigidity. Nowadays, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) supports farmers’ income independent of their current production. But how much CAP money a member state gets for its farmers depends on how much it has got in the past when payments were coupled with production. Countries that produced a lot of highly-subsidized crops or meat therefore reaped – and still reap – the lion’s share of the CAP budget. Countries with an agricultural sector that is less productive or specializes in products that were less subsidized, such as fruits and vegetables, are the losers of this system.

A look at the CAP payments for rural development and environmental protection reveals the same picture. Member states’ subsidy levels are again strongly determined by how much they received in the past. Entitlements up to 2013 are based on payments dating back as far as 1994. It is embarrassing that the EU’s distribution of more than 40% of its budget to the member states has nothing to do with policy objectives.

In the future, member states should be rewarded for sustainable farming practices. How much money each member state receives should depend on its Natura 2000 areas (in which stricter environmental standards apply), its organic farming areas (which have positive effects on biodiversity, water quality, flood prevention …) and its forest areas (to support biodiversity-and-climate-friendly forest management). Further criteria for distributing payments could be devised, such as high-nature-value or extensive grazing areas. Whatever the best distribution key, it should not be past agricultural production or past payment levels.

This article is based on the ECIPE working paper ‘Public Money for Public Goods: Winners and Losers from CAP Reform’

Further information can be found at www.reformthecap.eu.

• GEOSTRATEGY LEADS TO IMPERIALISM

It doesn’t have to. It is true that geostrategy is about the exercise of power over particularly critical spaces on the Earth’s surface; about crafting a political presence over the international system. It is aimed at enhancing one’s security and prosperity; about making the international system more prosperous; about shaping rather than being shaped. A geostrategy is about securing access to certain trade routes, strategic bottlenecks, rivers, islands and seas. It requires an extensive military presence, normally coterminous with the opening of overseas military stations and the building of warships capable of deep oceanic power projection. It also requires a network of alliances with other great powers who share one’s aims or with smaller ‘lynchpin states’ that are located in the regions one deems important.

It is correct that many geostrategies have in the past been built on imperial conquest: countries have annexed land to provide themselves with the means to protect or extend what they have already got. Britain, France and Spain conquered countries near their trade routes to protect and extend them; and Germany and the United States annexed land to acquire more living space. But these all turned out to be costly enterprises which were often ruinous. Imperialism is a particular kind of geostrategy, but not all geostrategies are imperialist. In fact, a good geostrategy should counsel against imperialism, which is extremely costly in terms of both moral courage and matériel.

• THE EUROPEAN UNION IS A ‘PEACE PROJECT’; IT DOES NOT NEED A GEOSTRATEGY

Mumbo jumbo. The European Union was a ‘peace project’. But peace is not a neutral, politically free, concept. A balance of power always lies behind peace. For most of the nineteenth century, world peace was underpinned by British hegemony – it was the age of the Pax Britannica. From the second half of the twentieth century Western Europe was part of a broader geographical area, encompassing the Western hemisphere and much of the Eurasian rimland, which was governed by the Pax Americana. Even if the European Union did not have a traditional geostrategy, its very existence was underpinned by one – that of the United States.

But since the end of the Cold War the European Union has come to play an increasingly active geopolitical role, particularly in the European continent. Enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe became a most effective form of geostrategy, facilitating the expansion of the European Union to cover most of our continent, increasing our security, prosperity and entrenching our values. Enlargement consolidated order where there could have been chaos; it brought prosperity where there could have been poverty and stagnation. It worked; it was a success.

Today, however, the European Union’s geostrategy needs to go beyond the European continent. It needs to develop a worldwide focus. A global geostrategy implies that Brussels must develop an understanding of which parts of the world are central to the European interest and which are less so; of where Europeans must focus their resources to uphold their interests and where they should not.

• EUROPEAN GEOSTRATEGY HAS BEEN MADE REDUNDANT BY GLOBALISATION

No. Globalisation has not made geostrategy redundant; in fact, globalisation has amplified the need for a European geostrategy. Why? The reason is simple: the European economy has become more globalised than at any other period in history; goods and services come to us via numerous maritime routes, air routes, energy pipelines and fibre optic cables. If any of these get severed, our economy will suffer, meaning that we as Europeans will suffer.

Globalisation also brings the domestic problems of foreign countries to our shores, which causes trouble for us in the form of extremism and terrorism; globalisation also elevates the importance of the planetary ecosystem, on whose stability we all depend. Globalisation has thrown back at us as many issues as it solves.

• GEOSTRATEGY IS ABOUT THE EXERCISE OF (HARD) POWER

So what? As Robert Gates, the United States’ Secretary of State for Defence, recently asserted, many Europeans have grown very timid about the exercise of power; some treat it almost like an aberration, something so repulsive that it should not even be mentioned in polite conversation. But European power provides the means to amplify European security, prosperity and, ultimately, provide us with the ability to undergird European values like freedom, democracy and social justice – both at home and abroad. These are the aims of geostrategy.

Insofar as they ever existed, gone are the days where Europeans could simply sit back and lead by example; when we were so overwhelmingly powerful normatively that others would accept our vision and fall into line. The European vision of society and international relations is no longer universal and is challenged more and more by the visions of our competitors. This is the main lesson Europeans must learn from the Copenhagen Summit in 2009.

• EUROPEANS HAVE ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO INFLUENCE GLOBAL POLITICS

Do they? Seriously? Many still seem to believe that there remain alternatives to the European Union’s emergence as a global power. Some hope that the United States will remain forever committed to our security and defend our interests and values globally. Others pray that the world is destined to become a better place, where nation will come to speak peace unto nation, through strengthened international structures. Others continue to think nationally when even the biggest of the European Union’s Member States have become too small for today’s world – let alone tomorrow’s.

But hope, prayers and clinging to the past do not a good strategy make. Less so at a time when the United States’ commitment to European stability will be put to the test by the challenges it faces elsewhere. The truth of the matter is that we Europeans have nowhere else to run: in a world that will be dominated by great economic and military superpowers, the European Union is the only way forward. Only by pulling our weight together through a European framework can we effectively gain the thrust and velocity needed to exert our power in the twenty-first century – and guarantee our geographic security, prosperity and values at that.

Tort: Workbook

Most people probably know, but for the new students who might not know two links to the newest and most recently reviewed EU law books, and international law books.

Tort: Workbook, Virtual Pack 2010, by Riley, Leon; Turner, Chris. Source: Hammicks Legal Bookshops.

In his recent speech at the College of Europe, Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council, likened the European Union to a convoy of twenty-seven ships, each flying both the Member State and the European flag. If the image is apt, some Member States’ ship seems to be a submarine though, for it is not always evident that all Member States are part of the European convoy. Even a submarine is useful however, provided that it does not go off on its own initiative, but acts in co-ordination with the rest of the fleet, co-ordination to be provided by the Admiral – or President.

That, as Mr. Van Rompuy rightly emphasised, requires a common strategic vision. He simultaneously stressed the role of the European Council in generating this strategy. Again, he probably is right that in the intergovernmental arena which the Common Foreign and Security Policy still is only the Heads of State and Government can create the political drive that is required to force the Foreign and Defence Ministers of the twenty-seven into – joint – action. It was the European Council that adopted the first European Security Strategy (ESS) in 2003; it should now be the European Council that, with the input of the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, completes the ESS by defining more concrete objectives in the priority areas that are key to Europeans’ position in the world. The resulting “sub-strategies” will be the mandate for the Foreign Affairs Council, chaired by the High Representative.

Mr. Van Rompuy himself already mentioned one key area: to review and strengthen our relationship with key partners – the United States, Canada, Japan and the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China). As the President stated, the European Union needs more than conviction to win them over to its proposals; it needs to reflect what it can do together with them. The European Union has so-called strategic partnerships with all of these, but they are often void of content and lacking in coordination. It is never quite clear who on the European Union side is driving these partnerships. A European Council strategy to guide a really strategic use of the partnerships would therefore be more than welcome.

The European Union could identify shared interests with each strategic partner, in order to establish in a number of priority policy areas (climate, energy, non-proliferation…) effective practical cooperation with those partners that share European objectives in that specific domain. Overlapping clusters will emerge, with the European Union co-operating with certain strategic partners on one issue, and with partly the same, partly others on another issue. Gradually, these forms of co-operation can be strengthened, institutionalised and linked up to the permanent multilateral institutions, notably the United Nations. Such a pragmatic approach of coalition-building and co-operation, on very specific issues to start with, can expand into broader areas, including with regard to values. If e.g. it is unlikely that we will see China at the forefront of democracy promotion, it has an economic interest in promoting the rule of law, if only to ensure that the mining concessions that it acquires are not simultaneously offered to someone else. Through cooperation on shared objectives, the European Union can gradually and consensually convince the other global actors of the validity of our policies and values.

Other areas as well demand a more strategic view from the European Council. What is the desired end-state of the Neighbourhood Policy? Can only democracy create a consensual value-based community and thus safeguard our interests, or will democratisation create such upheaval that our interests would be damaged? Only when our interests and red lines are clear can a true strategic partnership with Russia be pursued. What is the future of enlargement? A successful instrument so far, further enlargement is determining for relations with Russia and for the geopolitical position of the European Union – and cannot proceed therefore without strategic debate.

Further, before making room for the BRICs, the European Union must sharpen its view about the desired multilateral architecture, reconciling reform with increased effectiveness of European representation. Last but not least, European strategic thinking about conflict resolution and crisis management remains weak. A Common Security and Defence Policy sub-strategy should define Europe’s ambition as a security actor. Regardless of whether in a specific case Europeans deploy under the flag of the Common Security and Defence Policy, the Atlantic Alliance or the United Nations: which types of operations must European forces be capable of, which priority regions and scenarios require intervention, and which is the scale of the effort to be devoted to these priorities?

Once the European Council defines strategic guidelines on all of these issues, coordinated fleet action will be possible.

• A version of this article was originally published in Global Europe on 4th March 2010.

The Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has put up the new Estonia Quiz 2010. People are invited to test their knowledge and win a trip for two to Estonia.

Viru värav (Getaway to Tallinn Old Town). Source: Google images.

One Vienna-based Spanish diplomat likes to describe European Union’s security and defence policy in action as a ‘jazz band, not a classical orchestra: musicians with different abilities and instruments participating in a permanent jam session, with a basic tune and a general idea of the kind of music they want to produce [. . .] a band which finds it hard to agree on a specific arrangement, but which can eventually sound harmonious – though not necessarily completely homogeneous.’ The band is well known among music connoisseurs, while the general public either ignores it or is bemused by the strange sound. Other – more successful – bands, on the other hand, praise some of their individual qualities, as well as the fact that they do play (some kind of) music, despite all the problems, whilst grinning at its lack of success. That is a fairly good description of the European Union’s overall performance as an actor on the global stage during the rather unstable decade we are about to leave behind: some tactical achievements, the valuable experience of learning on the job as a European Union twenty-seven, but with a pervading sense of a lack of direction.

The Treaty of Lisbon should put an end to the European cacophony or to put it another way: make the very richness of European pluralism in foreign policy an effective added-value element for the European Union as an actor – and not a permanent hindrance. The new High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, should conduct the idiosyncratic music group. A chorus of the best diplomats throughout Europe should support her in the demanding task to produce some music: the European External Action Service. But the post-Lisbon reality is different: the Commission, the General Secretariat of the Council as well as the Member States haggle over personnel and finances, trying to get hold of that future backbone of European foreign policy. The only ray of hope is the role of the European Parliament. It has used the current power vacuum in Brussels and seized its way into the realm of foreign and security policy, not formally and through legal novelties, but by adeptly using its budget powers as well as the expertise of the parliamentarians. In fact, this revamped Parliament carries with it the potential to energise the strategic culture among Europeans, and, not less, building a strong democratic legitimacy to the European Union’s developing security policy.

Accordingly, the European Union is (again) dealing with inner-European issues – the self-centred approach, we all complained about over the last years. The problem is only, that the world moves on, even if the European Union is not yet ready to face that. Transatlantic relations serve as a vivid example: Barack Obama skipped the European-American summit to be held by the Spanish presidency in Madrid in May 2010. It became known that the president regarded this meeting with twenty-seven heads of states and governments (plus the representatives of the European Union) as boring and non-productive. From a certain point of view, this could be taken as a snub. However, it may be just seen as a wake-up call. The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, reaffirmed the message just a few days ago , and emphasising the great expectations the United States pins on the new so-called Common Security and Defence Policy. She offered the European Union direct partnership with the United States in security-related issues – something that until now has been the exclusive realm of the Atlantic Alliance. Probably even this call will trail off unheard and unanswered, because the European Union still does not know exactly, who could be speaking for the Union: the President of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso? The President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy? Or the High Representative? Apart from that, there is also no guidance at the European level, in terms of overall priorities and means to achieve them, apart from the brilliantly formulated but rather fuzzy European Security Strategy from 2003 (plus the Implementation Report of 2008).

This is not enough for a European Union, which is widely regarded as a global actor. Nor it is up to the responsibilities Europe as a whole has towards the international system; as the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, put it in Munich, both the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance are seen by the international community as providers of security. How can the European Union contribute through its civilian and military capabilities to maintain peace and security in an increasingly unstable environment – and thus make Europeans safer?

Yet there still is a huge strategic vacuum in the Common Security and Defence Policy: there is no ‘Grand Strategy’ and there is not even any operationalisation of the Security Strategy. Nonetheless the European Union has already conducted more than twenty missions worldwide. We therefore lack an ambitious but realistic policy orientation for the European Union as a global actor; we have not yet undertaken a Strategic Defence Review or – to use the continental term – a White Paper on Security and Defence. Such a White Paper should lay down our ambitions as a relevant power in security policy as well as a road map on how to achieve these ambitions:

1. A European White Paper should first contain clearer messages on why and how to intervene abroad – a sort of common European lines on interventions, combining tactics with strategy – as well as on the possible and necessary balance of civil and military means.
2. The White Paper should clarify the Post-Lisbon institutions and their interactions, to enhance coherence of the different policies of external action (from enlargement, to the neighbourhood policy, to security and defence policy); it should also pave the way for global visibility of the new High Representative, as the face and telephone number of global Europe.
3. There should be strategic guidelines for European partnerships with main global powers, like the United States, Russia, China, India, as well as NATO, and so on. These partnerships need to serve European norms and interests.
4. The White Paper should clearly spell out the necessary means a global Europe will need. Until now, there are many different frameworks and headline goals, without explaining the purpose of the capability building process.
5. The European defence and technology industrial base is a precondition for an efficient use of means especially in the military field. Therefore the White Paper needs to lay down the consequences of a Common Security and Defence Policy for the national defence industries.

Catherine Ashton, the new ‘conductor’ of European foreign and security policy, has quite a hard task. The European Union’s difficult worldwide challenges, the constant disunity of the Member States, as well as the huge footsteps of Javier Solana she is following, are demanding beyond description. By initiating a European process towards a Security and Defence White Paper, she could provide a consistent policy orientation and thus build on the rather successful achievements on the nearly eleven years of European Security and Defence Policy. This policy orientation could be used as a ‘sheet of music’ for her Jazz band. She will probably never transform it into a chamber orchestra, but maybe they would produce eventually one or two smash hits per year. And this will be in the interest of Europe as a whole, although some governments are slow to grasp the realities of the modern world, and try to get with their own music into the chart list.