Category: Europe

Remaining in the EEA was held up as a prospect in the referendum.

It’s being widely reported that Theresa May is going for the “hard’ Brexit, arguing that in the referendum people made a clear decision to  leave the EU behind altogether.  That’s not how I remember the debates. While the EU referendum was going on, we were constantly being told that leaving the institutions of the EU would not mean that the UK didn’t have access to the European single market.   For example, the pro-leave Bruges Group put out a video, fronted by Norman Tebbit, arguing for Britain to work through the European Economic Area.  A spokesman for the Bruges Group argued on that video:

“Britain could still remain a member of the single market, which is the European Economic Area, or EEA, which allows for free movement of goods, services, capital and people.  And that means that as far as business is concerned, businesses will trade as they have before.  But the difference will be that regulations will no longer apply to 100% of the UK, but only, if you want, the 9% that are directly involved with export.”

Michael Gove – remember him? – argued, in The Telegraph on 22nd June:

There is no trade-off between any of this and greater prosperity; in fact, the very opposite is true. The premises of Project Fear – that Brexit would trigger economic dislocation, a trade war and a recession – are utterly bogus. We would join the European Economic Area in the short-term, like Norway, retaining access to the single market, before negotiating our own, à la carte deal with the EU …

A YouGov poll, shortly before the vote, claimed that most people in Britain favoured the Norway option.   Now, of course, none of this is equivalent to an election manifesto, and there is nothing here that today’s politicians should need to feel bound by.  But it does reflect on the mantra that we’re hearing that people voted to get out and so the route is all very clear.

Additional note:  This video, linked to on the Guardian website, offers clips of Carswell, Farage, Daniel Hannan and Ruth Lea making contradictory statements about whether we would be in or out of the EEA and the customs union.  There was never, as people are now claiming, a clear agenda to leave all these arrangements behind.

Stopping in-work benefits for EU workers

It’s been widely reported (for example, in the Times, the Mail and the Sun) that Theresa May has plans to restrict in-work benefits to EU workers, putting them on the same footing as non-EU claimants.  I’ve been puzzling about what this means.  The only benefits specifically mentioned in the reported briefings are Tax Credits, which in any case are supposed to be being replaced by Universal Credit.  In most cases non-EU migrants are entitled to benefits as long as they meet the various tests – residence, presence or habitual residence,  depending on which benefit we’re talking about.  So, for example, to be entitled to Child Tax Credit, Working Tax Credit or Child Benefit a non-EEA migrant is expected to have lived in the UK for three months.  Refugees and family members don’t have the three month test; but both EU and UK citizens returning from abroad, who are not working, are subject to the  test.  If Ms May was saying only that there’s to be a three-month residence requirement for everyone, she wouldn’t need to wait for Brexit; it would be compatible with EU law now.

The main restriction that actively affects non-EU migrants is something quite different:  the restriction of the terms of entry on their visa, where they undertake not to be dependent on public funds and are threatened with deportation if they do.    Treating EU migrants in the same way could only happen after Brexit.  It would mean that the issue is not mainly about benefit law at all, but about the way that Britain deals with foreign citizens.  It’s only workable if we have a straightforward way of identifying who is, and who is not, a migrant, and a clear record of the terms of entry.  That could affect millions of people.

Amendment 882: preserving the fundamental rights of European citizens

The petition I submitted to the European Parliament in July has not yet been approved  for public view, but an interesting proposal has been made by a Luxembourg MEP, Charles Goerens.  The Constitutional Affairs committee is considering  the EU’s institutional arrangements, and Goerens has proposed the following amendment to their report:

Motion for a resolution, Paragraph 37a (new)

37a Advocates to insert in the Treaties a European associate citizenship for those who feel and wish to be part of the European project but are nationals of a former Member State; offers these associate citizens the rights of freedom of movement and to reside on its territory as well as being represented in the Parliament through a vote in the European elections on the European lists.

My petition, provisionally numbered 0922/2016,  had stated

As citizens of the European Union, the status of British nationals is protected by the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Citizenship is the right to have rights. If European citizenship is truly fundamental, not just a conditional privilege, no European citizen should have it withdrawn without consent or treated as if it never existed. When the UK ceases to be a Member State, the Parliament, as the guardian of Fundamental Rights, should ensure that European citizens of British nationality who wish to preserve their fundamental rights are able to retain their citizenship.

Goerens’ amendment, though it does not refer to the EU’s obligations under the Charter, is a substantive response to that.    As the amendment is framed, however, it asks for Treaty change, and it does so in relation to a document which seeks nothing less than a fundamental review of the Lisbon Treaty.  This is likely to be a slow and difficult process, if it happens at all.  In so far as the Charter of Fundamental Rights is already part of the constitution of the EU, Treaty change should not be necessary.  The EU should do what it has already undertaken to do.

Italy proposes a European Unemployment Benefit Scheme

The Italian Government has proposed the introduction of a European Unemployment Benefit Scheme, applicable to all the members of the Eurozone.  The benefit would provide 40% of previous salary for 6-8 months.  The purpose of the benefit scheme would be to provide solidarity when countries experience a surge of unemployment; the amount of benefit payable in a country would be limited to 200% of its contribution to the scheme.

I suspect the scheme is a non-starter.  The Italians have shrewdly put the proposal in a way which is not subject to treaty change or isolated vetoes, but it will be hard to get this past the presumption of subsidiarity.  Some of current arrangements within the Eurozone are based on independent and non-governmental arrangements – the Ghent system, based on trades unions, is used in Denmark, Sweden and Finland  (see this link by Clasen and Viebrock), and  the French scheme, Unédic, is administered by a ‘convention’ of employers and trades unions.   The Italian scheme is noteworthy, however, in three ways.  It shows that there is still continued interest in promoting the idea of a Social Europe.  It  reinforces the view that there is now a two-speed Europe, the Eurozone and the rest.  And it shows how very far the UK is out of step with the rest of the European Union, both in the objectives and in the level of benefit offered.

 

A petition to the European Parliament

I have prepared a petition on change.org, as the first step to presenting a petition to the European Parliament.  Here is the text.

Our European citizenship is a fundamental right. Please defend it.

We are citizens of the European Union. In the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, the Union committed itself to the principle that each and every citizen has basic rights. However, the treaties did not directly create distinct legal protections of the status of a citizen, which were considered to be sufficiently protected by the actions of Member States, and Protocol 30 specifically reserves judicial processes relating to such rights to the United Kingdom. If the United Kingdom ceases to be a Member State, British nationals may no longer additionally become European citizens.  It does not follow that the fundamental rights currently held by British nationals should be treated as if they never existed.

The EU needs now to consider how to deal both with the rights acquired by UK citizens and those acquired in the UK by citizens of other countries. Citizenship has been described as ‘the right to have rights’. If the rights of citizenship are truly fundamental, no person who currently enjoys the status of a European citizen should have their citizenship removed. No process which denies European citizens the right to have rights can be considered consistent with the Charter.

The consent of the European Parliament is required before any agreement with the departing member state can be concluded. We therefore petition the European Parliament, as the guarantor of EU citizenship, to safeguard the fundamental rights flowing from EU citizenship both for us and for those elsewhere in the EU. We ask the Parliament and the institutions of the EU to ensure that British citizens who are currently citizens of the European Community, and who wish to preserve that status, should on application be able to retain European citizenship after the UK ceases to be a Member State.

Please sign the petition by following this link.

I have had the advantage of comments and phrases from Tony Venables and Richard Upson.  The next stage will be, after signatures are in, to present this to the online petitions web-page fo the European Parliament.  It is difficult for people to register their support (it took me a day to get my first log in), which is why this is starting on change.org instead.

I’ve been asked – why start another petition, when others were off the blocks first?  The answer is (a) because this is going somewhere different – the European Parliament – and is the only one currently aimed there and (b) it refers to European principles.

Free movement demands planning: both the EU and the UK government have muddied the water on managing immigration

David Cameron has just been to an EU summit to say that the EU must accept the restriction of free movement of labour; it’s not going to happen.  I was reluctant, during the referendum campaign, to engage in debates on the subject of immigration:  every attempt to intervene on the other side only reinforced the idea that the EU referendum was really about ‘controlling our borders’.  The debate was misconceived in three ways.  First, the UK does ‘control its borders’.  In an open society, however, people cross back and forward across borders all the time, and they are routinely checked.  Routinely, of course, means not very thoroughly, but doing it thoroughly to everyone passing a border is unthinkable.   Border controls can in theory contribute to immigration control – in theory – but, as the experience of the USA shows, this is neither practical nor effective.  All it shows, not very reliably, is that some visitors overstay.

Second, what is done at the border is of very limited relevance to the control of immigration.   An ‘immigrant’ is not just a visitor; it is someone who comes to settle, which implies living, working and participate in another society.  While the UK controls visits, it does remarkably little about immigration as such, with a signal lack of intervention in employment in particular and policies for housing and urban planning that are substantially laissez-faire.

Third, restricting the flow of migration is not the same as controlling the numbers.  Restrictions limit potential numbers, because it restricts the flow, but it does not actually bring them under control.  There is no fixed quota or number that might be achieved (let alone a figure for ‘net migration’, which depends on other factors beyond the government’s control. )  The situation is made more complex because there are several different kinds of circumstances where people come to settle.  The principal categories are economic migrants (workers and families), family reunion, asylum seekers and refugees, and students. (There were 437,000 overseas students in 2014/15, including 125,000 from other EU countries.  Education is more than a service industry, but it counts as one of our major exports.)

There is a problem with migration, but it is not the problem that the UK government has been talking about. The problem is that once migration happens, as it does all the time, there needs to be some adjustment to it.  Both the UK government, and the institutions of the EU, are in the grip of a market based ideology which thinks that ‘free movement’ of money, goods, services and people is the same thing as unfettered movement.  Markets have to be structured,  regulated and facilitated.  Where they have negative effects, those need to be managed and compensated for.  When the EU was set up, the main concern was the impact of trade and specialisation on employment, and the Social Funds were set up to deal with that.  But now, the neo-liberals are in the ascendant, both in the UK and in the EU.   When it comes to the movement of people, there is no mechanism for management, at the level of the EU, the national government or local government.

Jobs need to be in places where people can live.  There have to be houses, schools, roads.  That means either that jobs are directed to those places, or that places have to be built and developed to go where the jobs are.  I prefer the first of those options, but that’s not crucial to this argument.  The point is that there is no inconsistency between the free movement of people – a fundamental principle of the European Union – and  planning to meet population change.  On the contrary, free movement depends on such planning.  If EU rules are obstructing free movement, because they prevent planning happening, they need to be changed.  But I suspect that the problem rests, not in the rules as such, as the assumption that the principle of free movement renders everyone helpless.

What happens to European citizenship?

Decisions have consequences.  Like many others, I’m deeply unhappy with the vote to leave the EU, and have had to think about the implications for myself and my family.  The first and most obvious solution is to seek to be part of a country that does want to be in the European Union.  I did not vote for Scottish independence last time; I will next time.

I have also been looking at the implications of the withdrawal of European citizenship.  Citizenship rights are part of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. (The UK did not opt out of the Charter.  The protocols on the UK say that judicial and legislative powers relating to those rights rest with the UK.)

It seems that there is no legal basis to continue to hold European citizenship when the UK leaves – which rather undermines the description of citizenship as a ‘fundamental right’ in the Charter.  (See for example comments by Steve Peers in the seventh question he addresses.)  That does not mean that there is no moral or political argument, or that the process is impossible.   In some other realignments citizens have been given options to retain citizenship on application – many people are currently taking advantage of the arrangements  in Northern Ireland.  The European Parliament has consistently pressed for European citizenship to be treated distinctly from nationality in the member states, and I am considering a petition to the Parliament on that basis.

A few things the EU has done, and a few more it could still do

There doesn’t seem to be much that’s positive in the referendum campaign.  Here are a few things that the EU has made possible for people in Britain.

  • The right to live, work or retire in Europe.  About 2.2 million Britons are doing this at present.  (The estimate is from the IPPR.  Lower figures from the House of Commons library rely on the UK Census – which does not count Britons living abroad – and unhelpfully exclude people who live in other European countries for part of the year.)  Scandalously, many of them have been denied a vote in this referendum.
  • Taking easy, safe holidays in Europe.  About 80% of all UK holidays abroad are taken in the EU.  I’m old enough to remember not being able to go on a planned holiday in Prague because of  visa restrictions.
  • Workers rights.  The EU’s record is patchy, but think about the Working Time Directive – which British governments have constantly griped about – or parental leave.
  • Gender equality.  Perhaps, again, people don’t remember the discriminatory rules for pensions or disability benefits that the EU has made us change, much to the fury of the UK government.  Housewives Non-Contributory Pension, anyone?
  • Consumer protection.  Much of this seems minor now, because we take the protections for granted – covering, for example, goods by post, customs, phone networks,  savings accounts – but there was a time when they weren’t there.
  • Environmental controls.  If, for example, you live somewhere near the coast – most of us do – you may have noticed the push to clean up the waters.  The UK can’t clean the seas or the air on its own.
  • Providing millions of jobs.  It doesn’t follow, because the UK now has large numbers of related jobs in finance,  cultural industries, education, science or that all of those jobs will be lost – but the reason those jobs are there has been our trade with Europe.
  • Infrastructure projects.  Unbridled free trade has a downside, which may mean the decline of local industries and regions.  The EU has a set of compensatory mechanisms to mitigate this – the social fund and the regional funds – and several of our regions have benefitted from them, at a time when London-based government was ready to let the market rip.
  • Security.  Again, perhaps people don’t remember the dictatorships, the wars or the Iron Curtain.  The EU was set up to stop this, and stop it it has.
  • Influence.  Britain has consistently pushed to extend EU influence in foreign policy and the effect has been to achieve things, e.g. on nuclear non-proliferation, which otherwise would not have happened.

The EU could do more:

  • controlling multinationals
  • limiting tax evasion
  • reducing the costs of currency exchange
  • creating a financial transactions tax
  • guaranteeing rights for its citizens
  • distributing its funds so as to reduce poverty
  • giving the European Parliament the power to legislate, allowing decisions of the ECJ to be set aside, and other powers to reduce the democratic deficit

However, it will only be able to do things like this if the member states let it.

They’re voting to take my rights away. And yours.

The polls have shown a marked increase in support for leaving the European Union.  The tone of the debate about Europe has been disturbingly negative.  Beyond that, it has become increasingly bitter and unpleasant.  The arguments in favour of staying have focused on the potential horrors that would visit Britain if we left; the arguments in favour of leaving in particular have plumbed new depths for untruthfulness and xenophobia. It seems likely that voting on the European referendum will be determined by people’s emotional reaction, and there is a strong possibility that this will result in secession.

If the UK leaves, UK citizens will lose their rights as European citizens.  Those rights include rights to representation within the EU, the right to move and live freely throughout the EU, reciprocal rights to public services, and consular and diplomatic protection from other EU countries when outside Europe.

There is something deeply flawed about a process that claims to be democratic but implies that a majority decision would deprive a minority of their rights.  If the vote is to leave, expect this one to come to court.

Vote Leave summarises its campaign: muddled, mendacious and offensive

The Vote Leave campaign has just offered us a referendum broadcast, which was aired on Radio 4 this evening.  Here is the full text.

“On the 23rd June there is a referendum to decide on Britain’s future membership of the EU.

This is your chance to Vote Leave and save the £350m a week we pay for Britain to be a member.

Vote Leave to spend that £350m on our priorities like the NHS.

Vote Leave to regain control of immigration and borders.

Vote Leave to stop future migrants from countries like Turkey, Serbia and Albania entering Britain freely.

Vote Leave and we can have a points based immigration system like in Australia.  It is safer and more humane.

Vote Leave to deport dangerous criminals and terrorists who threaten our safety.

Vote Leave to let Britain negotiate its own trade deals with the USA, China and India.

Vote Leave to stop British taxpayers bailing out countries like Greece.

Vote Leave to prevent unelected EU politicians passing laws for Britain.

Vote Leave to end EU law overruling British Law.

Vote Leave to stop paying corrupt expenses like £11m a year on a chauffeur service for MEPs.

Vote Leave to stop EU workers undercutting British workers.

Vote Leave to take back control.

Vote Leave on the 23rd June.”

There are thirteen claims in that list.  Four are questionable:

  1. Developed countries with open societies cannot in general control  immigration by policing the border – consider the position of the USA, which has millions of unregistered residents.
  2. Any money not spent on the EU is unlikely to be spent on the NHS; it will have to be spent on replacing the kinds of things the EU does (such as support for agriculture and promoting trade).
  3. MEPs can claim expenses for travel; this is part of the expense they incur, not corrupt practice.
  4. Isolation is not self-determination, and leaving is no  guarantee that Britain will ‘take back control’.  The UK will lose its present control over EU practice, and will have to accept EU conditions to continue trading with the EU.

Five are (more or less) true, but they might not be understood in the same light by everyone:

  1. Britain could introduce a points-based points scheme – but its current scheme for non-EU immigration suggests it is more interested in direct financial contributions.  The Australian approach to immigration favoured by UKIP is not exactly perfect  either.
  2. Britain hasn’t been faced with supporting Greece in the Euro, but that’s not the main point.  Members of the EU are committed to supporting countries in trouble, because that is implicit in solidarity, and almost every country in trouble will have been badly managed at some point.  Some of us think that mutual support is a good thing.
  3. Some EU workers can undercut UK wage rates, as the UK can undercut wage rates in much of Northern Europe.
  4. Britain could negotiate independent trade deals, given time.  Whether these would be favourable to Britain would remain to be seen.
  5. EU law can in certain circumstances trump UK law.  We’ve been required, for example, unwillingly to remove gender discrimination from our benefits and pollution from our coasts.

Four of the points made it the broadcast are just plain wrong:

  1.  Britain does not pay £350m per week to be a member.  (The figure disregards the rebate.  This is like saying that you have just spent £3 on a fizzy drink which was actually reduced to  £2, because the label included the price before the reduction.)
  2. Turkey, Serbia and Albania are not members of the EU.  Whether they become members depends on agreement of all countries, including Britain.
  3. All laws passed in the EU have to go through the Council of Ministers, all of whom represent elected governments.  That is not to say that they pass laws for Britain.  The system of regulations and directives works by asking national parliaments to introduce laws compliant with the treaties.
  4. The UK already has the power to deport dangerous criminals, European or not.

The frequent repetition of bogus claims looks like a deliberate and knowing attempt to mislead.  Add to that the snide, offensive comments on migrants, applicant countries, ‘corruption’  and the association with criminals and terrorists: Vote Leave comes over as something very unpleasant.

This is my 700th entry on this blog.