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Brexit, the personal and the political

March 25, 2019 by andrew36 Leave a Comment

Last week I was asked to write, for a German audience, a piece on Brexit that was short and “personal but also political”. This is what I delivered. The German version will be out in mid-April in Magazin Mitbestimmung.

As I write these words it is 1000 days since the 2016 referendum that is propelling the United Kingdom, after almost half a century of membership, out of the EU. It seems like an age. And it is just 10 days before the foreseen Brexit Day on March 29th. Yet confusion still reigns as to the outcome. Despite years of debate, all the options remain on the table: crashing out, leaving amicably with a deal and, after all, staying in. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Analysis Tagged With: Brexit, EU, European elections, European Parliament, Magazin Mitbestimmung, multi-level governance, subsidiarity, UK, UK referendum, Withdrawal Agreement

Macron and Kramp-Karrenbauer: vive la difference!

March 18, 2019 by andrew36 Leave a Comment

(Update 19.03: corrected misspelling of Kramp-Karrenbauer)

Earlier this month something unprecedented, as far as I recall, happened in European politics. The head of state and government of a member state of the EU, France’s Emmanuel Macron, directly addressed the citizens of all the EU countries, simultaneously, in no less than 22 European languages. In doing so he bypassed the usual intergovernmental channels completely and the filtering systems of 28 nationally organised media at least partially.

While the unusual form of the address ruffled some feathers, it drew a high-level response. The general-secretary of the CDU, and likely Germany’s next Chancellor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKK), issued a response, made available in five languages. Beyond the significance of the fact that Germany’s response came not from Angela Merkel, but the likely next head of government, this exchange constitute shoots of a tree whose stunted growth has long been considered a critical weakness of the EU: a European public space (Öffentlichkeit).

But what of the content? Here the differences are marked, but in the context of the upcoming European elections that may not be a bad thing. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Analysis Tagged With: AKK, CDU, economic governance, EU, European elections, European Parliament, France, Germany, Kramp-Karrenberger, Macron, Meseberg

The left-sovereigntist fantasy: A response to William Mitchell and Thomas Fazi

October 24, 2017 by andrew36 Leave a Comment

William Mitchell and Thomas Fazi (WM/TF) have written a piece that – under the presumptuous title of Everything you know about neoliberalism is wrong – offers a critique of the idea that nation states need to pool sovereignty in order to enact progressive policies and makes a plea for a “progressive emancipatory vision of national sovereignty”.  It has attracted some favourable attention, not least from colleagues at Eurointelligence. I consider that unfortunate, for the analysis fails, in my view, in both goals. It does not convincingly discredit the view that pooling sovereignty is a sensible response to the constraints imposed by globalisation. Nor does it make the case for a specifically left-wing strategy of enhanced national sovereignty, traditionally the mantra of the hard right, that might endear it to progressive politicians and academics.

The article alone would not necessitate a response: I am well aware that textual analyses do not make racy reading. But given the increasing hold of such ideas on parts of the European Left – some elements of which are taking positions indistinguishable from the extreme right – while social democracy is visibly searching for new ideas, the arguments made are important and a critical analysis is in order.

The piece starts with a statement of what the authors see as the “conventional wisdom” (to be debunked), namely that globalisation undermines national sovereignty and therefore “our only hope of achieving any meaningful change is for countries to ‘pool’ their sovereignty together and transfer it to supranational institutions (such as the European Union) that are large and powerful enough to have their voices heard, thus regaining at the supranational level the sovereignty that has been lost at the national level”. That is a clear and accurate statement. What, according to WM/TF, is wrong with it? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Analysis Tagged With: depoliticisation, EU, globalisation, national sovereignty, nationalism, neoliberalism, Social Europe, soveeignty pooling, sovereigntism, Thomas Fazi, William Mitchell

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Links to content I am involved in

  • My articles on Social Europe
  • IMK (EN pages)
  • iAGS - independent Annual Growth Survey
  • FMM - Research Network Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Policy
  • Hans-Böckler Stiftung

Recommended links

  1. Mainly macro (Simon Wren-Lewis)
  2. Paul Krugman
  3. econoblog101 (Dirk Ehnts)