Earth: Mostly Harmless

European Parliament to assert Lisbon powers in civil liberties and internal security?

Interesting times ahead in civil liberties in the post-Lisbon treaty era? An interesting analysis from the Centre for European Reform:

The new politics of EU internal security:

This is area of international co-operation that has long been the exclusive domain of national governments. For over 20 years, interior ministries – meeting in the EU, UN and Council of Europe – have quietly agreed and implemented inter-governmental agreements on internal security and judicial co-operation between themselves. There was little need to accommodate outside views and concerns. Now officials look nervously to 2009 when euro-parliamentarians should begin to use their new authority.

The ministries are right to be anxious. The European Parliament’s civil liberties and justice and home affairs (JHA) body – known as the LIBE committee – has made no secret of its intention to exercise the new powers to the full. The committee wants to reverse a trend in EU decision-making on terrorism, crime and immigration that many parliamentarians feel is wrongly skewed towards state security at the expense of civil liberties. For example, MEPs have been wary of the member-states’ eagerness to create databases and new information-sharing arrangements for terrorism and other cross-border crimes. They complain that the member-states are conspicuously less interested in reaching an agreement on data protection legislation needed to ensure such data is not mis-used.

That is, of course, after Ireland is coaxed into a ‘yes’ vote on the Lisbon treaty itself.

There has not been much debate on the costs of intergovernmentalism, and Council dominance in these areas of European integration. In Britain particularly, justice and home affairs is the area where national governments have been most keen to be seen to preserve national vetoes.

Perhaps as Lisbon rolls out, the parameters of the debate will change as the benefits of European Parliament involvement become clear.

Talking about European politics

This is probably a complete brain-fart, but I thought I should post it anyway. I’m studying for an exam on the subject of European integration, and I came across this paragraph by Brigid Laffan. It’s the most eloquent description of the problem of the national political environment within a transnational/supranational body like the E.U.

Political players within the member states have so far not communicated the realities of power in contemporary Europe to their electorates. They persist with an old language of national interest when in reality, janus-like, they serve both the national governments and collective European government.

Laffan, B (1999) ‘Democracy in the European Union’ in Cram, L.,
Dinan, D. and N. Nugent (eds.) Developments in the European
Union, London: Palgrave.
WorldCat reference

Things like the 2004 and 2007 accessions make me nervous about dealing with these things in Britain. They were presented consistently and positively by the media as being in Britain’s national interest, or ’supported by Britain’. The accessions were positive, but for different reasons: historical imperative, for one, and expanding and improving the single market by extending the same freedoms of movement, work and consumer protections as exist here to eastern Europe. But we must do a better job of discussing these things in the UK.

The European Union is not a series of treaty negotiations every few years, where the coffee is brewed strong, tempers get frayed, and we either ‘win’ or ‘lose’. It’s much more important than that. It reaches into almost every aspect of our political lives despite the disingenuous effort, or perhaps unconscious ignorance, of political actors and (sadly) the media to present it as if it is something which the national political space can exist alongside, but separate from.

Sovereignty is dead. Long live the new sovereignty.

SNP executive: what now?

On the week of the 300th anniversary of the Union of the Parliaments, an explicitly separatist party came into a position of government in the mainland United Kingdom for the first time (Welsh parties are crap and don’t count).

Still, it wasn’t a clean victory for the Scottish National Party. My good friend C.B. Buckland was working as a canvasser for the SNP, and also as an electoral assistant at a polling place last night. He has this to say of the much criticised voting arrangements:

The BBC are massively overstating the problems with [the electronic counting] machines. As expected I suppose.

The management of the election was at fault for the lack of information, the poor ballots, the lack of knowledge amongst the polling clerks (some were telling people to fold them, contrary to the guidelines) and the general mess of the forms. The DRS company were at fault for their poorly tested and expensive machines (£4.3 million this is costing you, by the way). The public were at fault for simply not making an effort to understand their democracy. The media were at fault for misinforming once the disaster had had happened. Blokes with golf clubs didn’t help either.
Full post

As for the result, it remains to be seen how the SNP will take the independence argument forward, if at all, in the next few years. The election contest was very noticeably fought on issues other than independence, yet the SNP manifesto contains a commitment to hold a referendum on the issue in the lifetime of this Parliament (probably in 2010). The polls show a fairly clear trend against separation at the moment, but all that could change if Westminster and Edinburgh antagonise each other enough in the meantime.

The subject of independence poses numerous intractable questions about the modern state, citizenship and political obligation. The matter of establishing the citizenship of each person at such time as a separation should occur offers myriad challenges in itself, but could perhaps offer a unique opportunity to change the nature of citizenship itself. For example, it’s impossible to imagine any kind of border controls between Scotland and England, so why not use the opportunity to build upon the freedom of movement and cross-border working that this and EU citizenship in general imply. This could mean both countries joining Schengen. Or they could go even further, and establish transferrable or pooled citizenship.

Why? Because interdependence is going so far as to render the concept of national independence almost moot, and indeed independence is often now more of a contingent effect of peoples’ general desires for closer and more multi-level governance than anything autarkic or Westphalian.

The reality is that ‘independence’ in the contemporary world, and especially in the EU, means little more than more control over issues of ‘hard politics’. Not absolute control, but certainly enough to keep from being dragged into offensive wars with which the minority nation disagrees. I think it’s significant that it’s taken an issue exactly like that (Iraq) - among other things - to bring an independence party to the fore.

But if independence really did become something the people of Scotland wanted strongly, the trump card played by Westminster will be exactly that played three-hundred years ago - a good old-fashioned buy-off.

Or they might just let us go.

UK digital rights group sets up

Good show, chaps! It’s about time we had a European version of the EFF!

UK digital rights group sets up:

A UK-based organisation to preserve digital rights and freedoms has been set up thanks to pledges of money by those passionate about such rights. It says it wants to highlight European and UK legislation which could threaten the rights of digital citizens.

Still at early stages, the Open Rights Group (Org) will serve as a hub for other cyber-rights groups campaigning on similar digital rights issues.

Org emulates US’s Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) digital rights group. The EFF has campaigned against entertainment industry attempts to limit what people can do with digital media. It has also provided guidelines and legal advice to bloggers at work, and has helped shape e-voting policies.

Org aims to nurture a grassroots community of volunteers to campaign on digital rights issues, such as ID card proposals, biometric passports, data protection, “fair use” rights over digital content, and vehicle tracking technologies.

(Via BBC News | TECHNOLOGY.)