You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Mobility' category.
As Ireland’s second vote on the Lisbon Treaty nears, concesssions won by the Irish government coupled with a resurgent civil society ‘yes’ movement could see the ‘No to Lisbon’ camp face an uphill struggle in the coming weeks
Source: EurActive [edited]
As Ireland’s second vote on the Lisbon Treaty nears, concesssions won by the Irish government coupled with a resurgent civil society ‘yes’ movement could see the ‘No to Lisbon’ camp face an uphill struggle in the coming weeks, experts told EurActiv.
Background:
Ireland rejected the Lisbon Treaty in a referendum in June 2008, effectively stalling the reforms contained in the treaty and causing widespread consternation among European politicians.
Following the result of the referendum, the Irish government conducted detailed research into why the public voted against the treaty and found concerns over military neutrality, the potential impact on Ireland’s corporate tax rates, workers’ rights and ethical issues related to the position of the family and abortion. Question marks over whether Ireland would lose its European commissioner were also said to be of concern.
Leaders meeting in Brussels in December 2008 agreed to find a legally-binding solution to clear up confusion over how the treaty would affect Ireland in the hope that this would allow a second referendum.
Following June’s European elections, where only one of Ireland’s 12 MEPs was elected on an anti-Lisbon platform, EU leaders reached a compromise in offering Ireland legally-binding guarantees on the Lisbon Treaty without requiring other countries to re-ratify the text.
The Irish government set Friday 2 October as the date for the second referendum.
There is a precedent for Ireland having a second vote on a European treaty, as two referenda were required to pass the Nice Treaty.
With the second referendum six weeks away, both pro and anti-Lisbon campaigns are grinding into gear.
While many of the 2008 arguments from both sides are being re-circulated this time around, experts told EurActiv that the political backdrop to this year’s referendum is profoundly different to that of last year.
According to the sources, who did not wish to be named given the politically sensitive nature of the current debates, many of the grounds for argument raised by the ‘no’ camp in 2008 are no longer in play, given that the guarantees and concessions granted to Ireland by EU leaders appear to have assuaged many of the fears expressed by Irish ‘no’ voters last June.
As a result, they indicated, the ‘no’ campaign could face an ‘uphill struggle’ to recreate its 2008 success.
Given the changed context, the ‘no’ camp will largely have to base its arguments on issues they feel have not been addressed by the EU guarantees, using, in particular, workers’ rights as a spearhead for its campaign.
Indeed, the combined ‘no’ campaign was launched earlier this week with a warning that the treaty would leave workers worse off and more exposed to spending cuts.
A profoundly undemocratic document, says ‘no’ camp
Speaking at the launch, Ireland’s sole anti-Lisbon MEP, Socialist Joe Higgins, argued that the Lisbon Treaty “is a profoundly undemocratic document, which seeks to turn right-wing economic policies into the only show in town”.
According to the MEP, if Lisbon is passed, “the EU Commission would uphold the right of big business to profit from public services, over and above the rights of workers to take action to defend these services”.
However, Andrew Byrne, Chief of Operations for pro-Lisbon advocacy group Ireland for Europe, dismissed the ‘no’ camp’s claims, arguing that its “scattergun approach” continues to falsely portray Lisbon as part of a “neoliberal economic agenda”.
According to Byrne, the ‘no side’ “will continue to misrepresent and distort the truth, playing on peoples’ fears and anxieties”.
Groundswell of groups adds legitimacy to ‘yes’ camp
But pro-Lisbon Byrne believes that despite what he sees as the fear-mongering on the ‘no’ side, the emergence of a plethora of civil society ‘yes’ bodies are giving a stronger legitimacy to the overall pro-Lisbon campaign.
“You only have to look at the number of groups out there to see that there is a groundswell of people who are not part of the normal political scene, who care about the future of the country and feel that Lisbon is a big part of that,” he said.
This “shows that there are people throughout Ireland who feel this issue is too important to leave to politicians and traditional groups”.
Byrne argued that the proliferation of civil society ‘yes’ groups “takes the wind out of the ‘no’ camp’s sails”, in that “it doesn’t allow the ‘no’ groups to paint Lisbon as merely an ambition of the political establishment”.
“We’re making the point to people that there is a new deal on the table and their concerns have been addressed. The loss of the Commissioner, for example, was a huge concern to people,” said Byrne.
The Ireland for Europe representative concluded that in his opinion, the ‘no’ camp is weaker this time around, but urged against “complacency,” among pro-Lisbon activists, arguing that all groups should remain active on the ground until the referendum.
UK Election Day : 4 June 2009
About the author : Emily Robinson is Research and Publications Officer at Unlock Democracy and has previously worked at the New Local Government Network and the Institute for Public Policy Research. Her publications include My Election: A Voters’ Eye View of the 2007 Scottish Elections (with Patrick Casey, Unlock Democracy, forthcoming); General Election 2005: What the Voters Saw (with Justin Fisher, New Politics Network, 2005); Living with Regions: Making Multi-level Governance Work (NLGN, 2004) and The Benefits of Community Engagement (with Ben Rogers, ippr/Home Office, 2004). Emily is also the series editor of New Politics, Unlock Democracy’s regular discussion paper.
Source: UnlockDemocracy.org [edited]
Author: Emily Robinson
British Citizens and the European Union : Findings from a deliberative process
Britain’s relationship with the European Union excites a great deal of emotion. It is a staple of the tabloid press and one of the few political topics that is regularly discussed in pubs and offices. However, this does not necessarily mean that we know much about the EU or how it works.
British citizens are less confident that they know about the EU’s policies and institutions than the people in any other member state, except Hungary. In a Eurobarometer poll conducted in Autumn 2005, only 46% of British respondents were aware of the UK’s Presidency of the EU and MORI research found that 82% of those
polled do not feel they have enough information to make an informed decision on whether or not to adopt the Constitutional Treaty.
Lack of knowledge leaves us vulnerable to misinformation and myth-creation. This is worrying, not only because it leads to frustration and alienation but also because political parties shape their policies on Europe according to what they believe the public will accept. If the public do not have enough information to engage in a serious debate about the future of the European Union and our relationship to it, then it is likely that our policies will be unsound.
This project was designed to gauge informed public opinion on Europe. We wanted to find out what citizens would think when all the information had been presented to them.
…
The [research] highlighted a sense of unease about the way that the European Union is governed. Even the most Europhilic panellists complained about a lack of democracy, transparency and accountability.
The panellists felt very strongly that, as the only directly elected body, the European Parliament should be at the centre of European decision making. It was also suggested that the Commission should be made in some way accountable to the Parliament. Important steps to enhance the transparency and accountability of European procedures could be taken at the national level. For instance, it was suggested that British members of the Council of Ministers should have to report back to Parliament and that the House of Commons Select Committee on Europe should meet in public. We think these are both important proposals, which would place Europe more clearly in our existing democratic framework and create a new layer of accountability.
Another problem identified by many of the panellists was a lack of reliable accessible information about the EU and its activities. This was seen to be partly a problem with the information made available by the European institutions, but also the result of a lack of media interest in the workings of the EU. It was suggested that the broadcast and print media should cover the European Parliament in the same way as Westminster.
Download the full report here: http://www.unlockdemocracy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/british-citizens-and-the-european-union.pdf
The European Parliament is the only directly-elected body of the European Union. The Members of the European Parliament are there to represent you, the citizen. The European Parliament channel offers you insights into the parliament´s work and show you which of our activities and decisions affect your daily life.
You are invited to be informed and also create awareness for the upcoming elections as well as to interact with others from all European countries.
Visit http://www.youtube.com/user/EuropeanParliament
Users can look up MEPs' individual voting records or access voting data according to nationality or political group affiliation.
Source: EurActiv [edited]
Citizens will be able to track the voting records of their MEPs ahead of next elections following the launch of a new website making such details easily accessible to the public. VoteWatch.eu was developed by political scientists from the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Free University of Brussels (ULB). Those involved include Sara Hagemann of the European Policy Centre, a Brussels-based think-tank, LSE professor Simon Hix, Doru Frantescu of the Qvorum Institute in Bucharest and Adbul G. Noury, associate professor of economics at ULB.
VoteWatch.eu is described as a “not-for-profit organisation” supported by the Open Society Institute, an NGO, Burson Marsteller, a consultancy, and Electionmall.com. The VoteWatch.eu project – which seeks to boost the transparency of EU decision-making and improve the quality of debate – collates publicly available attendance, voting and activity data on MEPs on a single, searchable portal.
The project “provides detailed information about parliamentarians’ voting records and formal political activities – from committee work to parliamentary reports – and includes easy-to-access information on the political coalitions that are formed around policy issues,” reads a statement on the website. “We’re not campaign-oriented, party-political, or receiving any money from the EU institutions or government organisations,” explained project leader Sara Hagemann of the European Policy Centre (EPC), a Brussels-based think-tank. “All the info is publicly available, but it’s difficult to find. We’ve collated it all,” she said.
Users can look up MEPs’ individual voting records or access voting data according to nationality or political group affiliation. The search tool allows users to identify whether an MEP voted with or against his or her government or political group’s line on a particular issue.
“Cohesion scores” displayed alongside the results allow for comparisons with members’ previous votes on similar issues or alignment with the party line, allowing users to track how the positions of their MEP or a political group have evolved over the years. “There are shifting coalitions in the European Parliament, just like the shifting coalitions in the US Congress,” said Simon Hix of the London School of Economics, another of the site’s developers.
‘No naming and shaming’
The information on VoteWatch.eu is purely objective. “This is not a naming-and-shaming site, and I think it’ll be difficult to use the site for this. It is not subject to any editorial manipulation. It means people can now use the information that the Parliament is providing. Before, this was not the case.” One drawback of the website is that it can only track roll-call votes, and not electronic or show-of-hands ones. “But all the most important votes, and all those that involve lobbying, are roll-call,” Hix said.
Site ‘must not hide’ EU institutions’ failings
But EU Ombudsman P. Nikiforos Diamandouros warned that the initiative must not be allowed to hide the European Parliament’s own communication troubles, and especially not those of the Council. “Citizens will not be satisfied until all legislative deliberation is made public,” said Diamandouros, expressing his belief that with the upcoming Swedish EU Presidency committed to improving transparency, the issue is “likely to acquire even more importance in the years to come”. .
Hailing the launch of the tool, EU Ombudsman P. Nikiforos Diamandouros said the best way of increasing trust in the Union was to improve transparency of decision-making. “Lack of transparency in the legislative process, alongside difficulties in accessing documents, is by far the most common complaint I hear from citizens,” he said. “Transparency did not feature highly on the EU agenda until recently, but it’s at the forefront now. The Access to Documents Regulation was a key landmark, because it made openness the rule and secrecy the exception. But the situation is still far from perfect,” Diamandouros said.
Sarkozy proposed to create a large joint economic area, noting that a similar concept might work to bind Russia closer to the EU.
Source: EuroActiv [edited]
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has strongly rejected German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s idea of a “privileged partnership” between the EU and Turkey, saying his country would not accept any alternative to full membership of the European Union.
Speaking at a gathering of young conservatives on 10 May, Merkel said it does not make sense for the EU to continuously expand if it leaves the Union unable to operate. She added that she would prefer Turkey to receive a privileged partnership from the EU, rather than full membership, echoing recent comments made by French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the launch of his EU election campaign (EurActiv 8/05/09).
At the same meeting, Sarkozy told German newspaper Bild am Sonntag: “We need a well-organised Europe [...] That means we cannot expand without borders. We shouldn’t make any empty promises to Turkey.” As an alternative, Sarkozy proposed to create a large joint economic area, noting that a similar concept might work to bind Russia closer to the EU.
The Turkish press expressed widespread dismay at the statements, made by the two EU leaders during a young CDU (Christian-Democrats) activists’ event. The daily Milliyet wrote that “Merkel has officially shocked Turkey”. Before being elected president in May 2007, Sarkozy frequently spoke out against Turkey’s EU accession, but softened his stance after his election (EurActiv 28/08/07). In the case of Germany, Merkel’s unfavourable view of Ankara’s accession is tempered by the more positive attitude of her foreign minister and Social Democratic coalition partner Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The French press, for its part, interpreted Merkel’s statements as a veiled attack on the UK Conservative party. “Those who refuse the Lisbon Treaty – which would allow us to work better and to take aboard new members – but who still talk about enlargement, we refuse to shake their hand,” the AFP agency quoted Merkel as saying.
The agency quotes an unidentified member of the French government as saying that Merkel was referring to the Conservative party led by David Cameron. The Eurosceptic tone adopted by the British Conservatives, who decided to leave the centre-right European People’s Party, is “worrying” Paris and Berlin, the source added.
Official vs.unofficial partnership with the EU institutions
Source : EurActiv [edited]
Please see the EuroElections add here : http://www.europarltv.europa.eu/YourVoice.aspx?action=view&PackageId=3aa717a9-86c7-48b6-af0d-3046a364b605
Online broadcaster YouTube and TV channel Euronews launched a new broadcasting service to “connect voters and candidates” ahead of next month’s European elections. ‘Questions for Europe’ is not the first time YouTube has hosted political messages. The White House, Queen Elizabeth II and 10 Downing Street all have official channels on the site, while YouTube has worked in partnership with local broadcasters for elections in Spain, Poland, Israel and New Zealand.
The ‘Questions for Europe’ projectexternal seeks to encourage candidates, constituents and experts “to engage in a dialogue through online video”. The project, which becomes active for the public later this week, primarily relies on user-generated content, inviting citizens to submit questions to candidate MEPs by uploading videos to a dedicated channel on YouTube, a popular online video community owned by US giant Google.
Euronews will broadcast a selection of the questions – and MEPs, think-tank representatives and other Brussels commentators’ answers to them – at the end of its half-hourly news bulletins, which reach 256 million households in 144 countries.
Echoes of MyBarackObama.com
The European Parliament and the EU executive already have their own YouTube channels, but Questions for Europe’s backers stressed that the new initiative was completely independent from the EU institutions’ preparations for the elections. “There is no official partnership with the EU institutions,” said Echikson, and “there is no official partnership with the candidates or political parties either,” added Euronews managing director and board member Michael Peters.
Asked what the motivation behind the project was, Echikson said “we remembered the Obama ‘Yes we can’ phenomenon, and thought, ‘Can we do this in Europe?’” “It’s too early to say whether this will take off like ‘Yes we can’. It’s an experiment. It’s something new,” he added. “The glossiest veneer isn’t always the most authentic in politics,” added Aaron Ferstman, director of political communications at YouTube. “Raw can be better sometimes, which is where YouTube comes in.”
‘Not a marketing exercise’
Refuting suggestions that the whole enterprise was simply a marketing exercise for all concerned, Peters said the project was “about giving concrete, professional answers to individual questions”. “It’s a question of educating people. We are trying to be a bit of a Wikipedia on the EU elections,” Peters said. “It’s about putting intelligent user-generated content on air.” “It’s also about having the right questions available at the right time when we’re interviewing MEPs. It’s not a question of using our partnership with YouTube in a marketing way,” he insisted.
Some observers present at yesterday’s launch suggested that the channel could become a Eurosceptic hub, as most public contributions to such initiatives tended to be anti-EU. “We’re not afraid of it becoming a Eurosceptic channel. We know that it will be mainly Eurosceptic, and we’re waiting for that. We need all points of view for it to be credible,” insisted Euronews’ Peters. “Please Eurosceptics, come to us,” he urged.
Positions:
“The upcoming European election will captivate European citizens and generate discussions from Portugal to Poland. Our news, online content, and soon YouTube videos in Euronews broadcasts all fuel impassioned political conversations,” said Michael Peters, managing director and a member of the board at Euronews.
“The Euronews-YouTube channel enables a global audience to delve into politics in a way that simply was not possible during the last [European] Parliamentary election,” said YouTube’s director of political communications, Aaron Ferstman. “In conjunction with Euronews, a leader in both television broadcasting and editorial programming, we are for the first time enabling voters from around the European Union to ask their potential future member of parliament a question in video form and hear the answer,” Ferstman continued. “One of the things that works most successfully for politicians is to upload frequently and be engaged,” he said. “YouTube can raise awareness of the EU elections. Many people don’t even know when the elections are, but everyone recognises the YouTube logo.”
European Health Insurance Card
Protection Of Cultural Heritage
Human rights throughout the world
Conference theme: In June 2009 European citizens will elect a new European Parliament, some of them who joined the European Union only recently for the first time.
17 – 18 September 2009
The conference will be organised by the ECREA Political Communication section, the Centre for Digital Citizenship and the Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence at the Institute of Communications Studies.
Conference theme: In June 2009 European citizens will elect a new European Parliament, some of them who joined the European Union only recently for the first time.
2009 will also see numerous national elections throughout Europe. The Political Communication section will take this important election year in Europe as an opportunity to revisit one of the key areas of political communication research – how democratic participation is shaped and transformed by processes of mediatisation and what consequences this has for the nature of contemporary citizenship.
The nature of democratic citizenship is presently undergoing fundamental changes, which are assumed to have far-reaching consequences for the way democracy works. The relationship between citizens and their elected representatives seems to be characterized by growing distance, mistrust and ignorance. Long gone are the days of an ideal (or idealized) Athenian polity where political engagement was regarded a virtue and daily life was permeated by political debate.
Instead, a growing number of citizens has withdrawn from politics and doesn’t even find it worth the while to follow the news or to cast their vote. Meanwhile, the enthusiasm that initially inspired the citizens of the new democracies in Eastern Europe has evaporated and we now see similar patterns of disenchantment in these countries like in their established counterparts. Media organisations and political actors have responded to these developments in various ways – so far without significant success. Turnout continues to drop, and news programmes, in particular current affairs programmes, are losing their audiences.
Are modern democracies, then, left without citizens, as Robert Entman suggested twenty years ago? The question is even more urgent with regard to the European Union, which for a long time has been largely ignored by its citizens, but is now at risk to be rejected altogether, as the recent No votes in the referenda in Ireland, France and the Netherlands demonstrate.
However, the situation might be more ambiguous and complex. While citizens are withdrawing from institutionalized politics and established channels of communication new arenas of participation and new forms of communicating political ideas have emerged, which for many – in particular the young – appear more meaningful and more trustworthy. In particular the Internet has opened up new spaces for democratic citizenship from the local to the global level that could not have been dreamed of twenty years ago.
The ECREA Political Communication sectional workshop aims to provide a forum to discuss these themes with scholars who are working on the changing nature of citizenship, political involvement and the media both in the European and the national context.
Call for Papers
We invite empirical as well as theoretical papers that contribute to understanding contemporary democratic citizenship and the role of the media, old and new, in shaping the way it is experienced and practiced. We are particularly interested in papers that address the following aspects:
* European citizenship: media and perceptions of Europe; Participation and vote choice in European elections and referenda.
* The ballot box and beyond: media and national electoral politics; non-institutionalised participation; non-voting and political disengagement.
* Communicating to citizens: Mediated and mediatised political messages; implications for political information and participation.
* Making sense of politics: citizens’ response to political information; information processing and civic knowledge.
* Conceptualizing citizenship (European, national): relationship between media and citizenship; lay understanding of citizenship.
Submission of contributions: Abstracts of not more than 500 words should be sent to ics-conferences@leeds.ac.uk, mentioning ‘Mediated citizenship’ in the subject line. Deadline: 15 May 2009 If you wish to propose a whole panel please get in touch with Dr. Katrin Voltmer at k.voltmer@leeds.ac.uk
Key note (Thursday afternoon) Prof. Peter Dahlgren – Lund University, Sweden: “Mediated Democracy and the Centrality of Civic Identities and Practices”
Please download registration form and send to ics-conferences@leeds.ac.uk
Contact: Dr. Katrin Voltmer (academic organiser) Houldsworth Building, Room 3.50 Institute of Communications Studies University of Leeds Leeds, LS2 9JT United Kingdom Email: k.voltmer@leeds.ac.uk Tel: +44-(0)113-3435829 Fax: +44-(0)113-3435808
What has Europe ever done for us?
Source: European Movement
The European Dream
source: Wise Enterprise
Nicolas Sarkozy “Turkey is not European!”
Recent Comments