Federal Union

A failure of strategy in Iraq

2010-01-29T17:12:00.002Z

I have already reported in an earlier blog entry on the Chilcot inquiry about flaws that emerged in the strategy of using the threat of invasion to press Saddam Hussein to disarm, principally that the military forces deployed to back up this threat could not be kept on stand-by indefinitely. There was a timetable and deadline implicit in the strategy that was never made explicit and was never agreed by the UN Security Council. Saddam Hussein’s slow but nevertheless real submission to the process of inspection brought this strategic problem to the fore and broke apart the alliance against him.

The evidence session with Tony Blair today has revealed another fundamental error in British and American thinking. The assumption was that they would have to fight and defeat the Iraqi armed forces, and then install a successor regime that would be broadly welcomed in that country. They underestimated the scale of the resistance they would meet: how come secular Baathists and religious Islamists could make common cause against the invader? The answer is the seductive appeal of nationalism, a parallel form of ideology that cuts across other kinds of political concern. (Ironic that, in view of the Bush administration’s own attachment to and pronouncements on nationalism.)

Moreover, they underestimated the willingness of their sworn enemies to oppose them. As Tony Blair said, “It was the introduction of the external elements of AQ and Iran that really caused this mission very nearly to fail.” He went on, “The conventional wisdom, if you like, at the time, was that you might get elements of the revolutionary guard playing about, but basically the evidence was that Iran would more or less have a watching brief to see how it would play out but it had no interest in destabilising [Iraq].”

But have announced a war on terror, why the surprise that terror fights back? Having declared that Iran was, like Iraq, a member of the axis of evil, why the surprise when Iran plots revenge? Isn’t that exactly what a member of the axis of evil would do? It would be hardly evil if Iran had simply sat back and done nothing.

There appears to have been a monumental failure of empathy behind this strategic mistake. The assumption was that Britain and America were at the centre of everything, and that other countries mattered and acted in relation to that centre. The idea that other countries have their own views of the world and their own reasons for acting and do not look at things through Anglo-American eyes has been learned the hard way. If, that is, it has been learned at all.

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I repeat, and juxtapose, a couple of quotes that have appeared previously on this blog, to give an illustration of the point I make above.

“We must establish what sort of world we want to live in. We want to live in a multi-polar world, that is to say with several large groups with relations between them as harmonious as possible, a world in which Europe, in particular, has a role, a world where democracy expands, where the United Nations plays a role – in our view, the central role – of providing a context and impulse for this democracy and this harmony …”

Jacques Chirac, 10 March 2003

“Structural questions about the United Nations and the European Union are secondary to those around future relations with the United States. Partnership is infinitely preferable to the French desire for a rival pole of power, which could revive the dynamics of the Cold War.”

Tony Blair, 25 March 2003

Why does the government employ lawyers?

2010-01-26T20:42:00.002Z

The Chilcot inquiry’s encounter with Jack Straw is turning up yet more gems. Jack Straw was foreign secretary at the time of the invasion of Iraq and the inquiry into British government decision-making has revealed this comment from him in response to legal advice that UN Security Council resolution 1441 was insufficient justification for war.

He starts: “I note your advice, but I do not accept it.” He goes on: “I am committed as anyone to international law and its obligations, but it is an uncertain field. There is no international court for resolving such questions in the manner of a domestic court. Moreover, in this case, the issue is an arguable one, capable of honestly and reasonably held differences of view. I hope (for political reasons) we can get a second Resolution. But there is a strong case to be made that UNSCR 687, and everything which has happened since (assuming that Iraq continues not to comply), provides a sufficient basis in international law to justify military action.”

He is responding to legal advice not only that a second resolution was necessary but that this requirement was clear and not, as he supposed, arguable. (Read it here.) What is the point of having lawyers if what they can say can be waved away so lightly if it turns out to be inconvenient?

Jack Straw explains his thinking in a further note to the Attorney General dated 6 February 2003:

“I have been very forcefully struck by a paradox in the culture of government lawyers, which is that the less certain the law is, the more certain in their views they become. … On the one hand, in well-rehearsed areas of domestic law the advice I am offered has usually been acute, but also admitted to a range of possibilities. On the other hand, in issues of international law, my experience is of advice which is more dogmatic, even though the range of reasonable interpretations is almost always greater than in respect of domestic law.”

What does a lawyer do? It is to advise a client of how behave in view of what the law says. Where the law is unclear, as it often is, it is to advise of risks and possibilities: “Do X, and you are 90 per cent certain to be all right, do Y and you will be 95 per cent certain, but you will need to do Z if you want to be completely sure.” The client may think that the extra cost of doing Z is not justified and is willing to do Y with the 5 per cent risk of being found in the wrong and bearing the costs that result. That is how litigation works.

But the issue of whether or not the war in Iraq was compatible with international law goes beyond litigation. An aggressive war conducted outside the authority of the United Nations risks being treated not as an administrative error but as a crime. The idea that government ministers could ask for a range of recommendations and then choose a potentially (in fact, on the advice of his lawyers, almost certainly) criminal one is quite hard to accept. But this is what Jack Straw appears to have done.

Sir Michael Wood, who drafted the legal advice with which Jack Straw disagreed, said to the enquiry: “Obviously there are some areas of international law that can be quite uncertain. This however turned exclusively on the interpretation of a specific text and it is one on which I think that international law was pretty clear.”

Furthermore, he reacts in an entirely different way to the absence of an international court. Jack Straw thought that it meant that one could be less precise, while Sir Michael thinks the opposite: “Because there is no court, the legal adviser and those taking decisions based on the legal advice have to be more scrupulous in adhering to the law.”

What is a federalist to make of this? As I have remarked before, federalism is founded on the idea that the rule of law should apply to states as well as within them, but also that the rule of law must be legitimate. International treaties, among the signatories of which are countries that are not democracies, do not have the same legitimacy as domestic law produced as the result of democratic politics, but that does not make them entirely illegitimate. This is partly what makes international law, in Jack Straw’s words, “an uncertain field”.

But federalism proposes not to exploit this uncertainty but to end it. The legitimacy of the rule of international law needs to be strengthened, not undermined. If someone like Jack Straw, who styles himself as being “committed as anyone to international law and its obligations”, feels free to duck away from its more awkward implications, what is to be expected of politicians who have reputations of caring even less for principle and more for expediency than Mr Straw?

There is a further interesting point that arose from the evidence published today regarding not international law but the British constitution. It follows on from the notion that there is no international court to reach decisions. Instead, the Attorney General has been treated as the final arbiter on this matter. Because he said that the war was legal, that means that it was. But who is the Attorney General? He may be a lawyer, but he is a political appointee of the government. The idea that the legality of a politically controversial matter can be settled beyond doubt by somebody who is in a partisan position makes no sense. It shows that, whatever the flaws in interpreting and applying law internationally, there are serious flaws in the British legal and political system too.

It should be established that the role of the Attorney General is to present advice to the government of the “90 per cent, 95 per cent, 100 per cent” variety but not to be the final judge. One conclusion from the Chilcot enquiry must surely be that this confusion of roles within the British political and legal system surely cannot go on. The final arbiter of the law cannot be a political figure.

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It is revealed by another note published today that Jack Straw actually intervened to prevent the Attorney General from outlining the range of opinions and instead to offer a single settled view. Compare this to his insistence on 20 February 2003 that “As far as the implementation of Iraq UNSCs is concerned, this is an uncertain area of law. The US, Netherlands and Australian government legal advisers all, I understand, take the view that SCR 1441 provides legal sanction for military operations. The full range of views ought to be reflected in the advice offered by our Legal Advisers.” The Attorney General was told not to reflect the full range of views in his advice, thank you very much.

Nonsense on asylum

2010-01-26T12:13:00.001Z

Two types of nonsense on display in the Daily Express today. The spark is a report that 124 illegal immigrants found on a beach in Corsica were set free by French judges rather than held in detention. It is thought likely by police and charity workers that most of the immigrants will try and head to Britain rather than stay in France.

The first type of nonsense came from UKIP MEP Gerard Batten, saying “Once again the French are exporting their illegal immigration problem to Britain.” Gerard Batten believes in national sovereignty: according to his view of Europe, the French are entirely entitled to export their problems to other countries, as they choose. That is what national sovereignty is for. Perhaps Gerard Batten is being quoted in an approving manner, but I don’t think so.

He goes on to say “Britain must regain control of its own borders so that illegal immigrants will be in no doubt they will be denied entry.” Britain’s ability to police its own borders in order to keep out illegal immigrants is unimpaired by membership of the EU. Citizens of EU member states have the right to come to Britain without visas, about which UKIP complains also sometimes, but they must still pass through border controls. Gerard Batten’s statement is wrong on the facts and inconsistent with his own political philosophy.

The second bout of nonsense comes from Matthew Elliott of the TayPayers’ Alliance. He is quoted as saying “It’s shocking that British taxpayers will now have to foot the bill for these asylum seekers. If they were picked up in France they should have been processed there, not merely shuttled along to the UK. The fact that so many asylum seekers are desperate to get to Britain over any other European nation shows we are a soft touch.”

Maybe the reason why so many people want to claim asylum in Britain is that Britain is a better place to live and work and, whisper it quietly, pay taxes. The nonsense comes from the idea that each country should pay for the people to whom it grants asylum. If a disproportionate number of people are going to end up in the UK, then it would be in the interests of the UK taxpayer for there to be some kind of burden-sharing among EU member states so that the financial cost does not fall equally disproportionately. Why does Matthew Elliott want to put British public expenditure up?

A fundamental point that the traditional model of asylum policy does not take into account is that asylum seekers themselves have preferences. They might very well prefer to live in one country rather than another, if they have friends or relatives there, or if they speak the language; the current difficulties with asylum policy stem in part from a bureaucratic inability to recognise this. Solving this problem and balancing out the interests of the different member states along with the interests of the asylum seekers themselves is going need more European cooperation, not less.

Jack Straw at the Chilcot enquiry: a blunt instrument

2010-01-22T18:40:00.003Z

Jack Straw’s evidence at the Chilcot enquiry into the Iraq war yesterday, and the discussion that it led to of deadlines and resolutions, tells an interesting and important story about the conduct of international relations and the problems that it causes. (You can read the transcript of Jack Straw’s session at the enquiry here.)

The enquiry summoned Jack Straw to give evidence because he was foreign secretary at the time of the Iraq war and was thus intimately involved in the diplomatic build-up to the invasion. The various interviewees who have given evidence have all carefully covered their own actions at the time, in some cases delicately suggesting that a different part of the machinery of government might have been responsible for whatever mistakes were made. A case in point is the famous, or infamous, 45 minute claim in the foreword to the September dossier: the then prime minister’s official spokesman Alastair Campbell claimed he thought that it had been approved by the intelligence experts, while Sir John Scarlett, who was at the time chairman of the Cabinet Office Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), said that he had not looked at the foreword because it was obviously political material. In this exercise in covering oneself, Jack Straw is a past master.

Central to the case involving Jack Straw is the question of the second resolution. The fact that Britain went to war in Iraq without the explicit agreement of a UN Security Council resolution in the spring of 2003 is controversial: does the absence of that resolution actually go further and make the war illegal? The arguments over this are furious.

Jack Straw’s view is that the first resolution was sufficient. This resolution, 1441, was agreed unanimously by the Security Council on 8 November 2002, after extensive and detailed negotiations between the permanent members. It is interesting that the five permanent members were agreed on how to deal with Saddam Hussein at this point, because 3 or 4 months later, they were bitterly divided. What happened? What went wrong in the international community?

That first resolution (read the text here) was intended to force Iraq into disarming its WMDs, sending in an inspection team backed up with the threat of invasion if Iraq failed to cooperate. A large military force was accordingly assembled in order to make that threat of invasion credible. There was international consensus on this strategy. Where divisions emerged was on the process that should be followed in order to decide whether Iraq was cooperating or not.

On this vital matter, the resolution read as follows:

“12. Decides to convene immediately upon receipt of a report in accordance with paragraphs 4 or 11 above, in order to consider the situation and the need for full compliance with all of the relevant Council resolutions in order to secure international peace and security;
13. Recalls, in that context, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations;
14. Decides to remain seized of the matter”

Jack Straw explained to the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs on 4 March 2003 that: “When the Security Council unanimously adopted Security Council Resolution 1441 last month it sent Iraq a simple message: co-operate immediately, unconditionally and actively with the United Nations' inspectors or face serious consequences. The language could not have been clearer.”

But do “serious consequences” include war? On the previous occasion that the UN Security Council had passed a resolution leading to war against Iraq, resolution 678 of 29 November 1990, it had used the following words:

“2. Authorizes Member States co-operating with the Government of Kuwait, unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements, as set forth in paragraph 1 above, the above-mentioned resolutions, to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area;”

The words “all necessary means” were the UN code for war. Those words were missing from resolution 1441.

Furthermore, in the statements made at the time of the adoption of resolution 1441, the British ambassador to the United Nations had declared that:

“We heard loud and clear during the negotiations the concerns about "automaticity" and "hidden triggers" -- the concern that on a decision so crucial we should not rush into military action; that on a decision so crucial any Iraqi violations should be discussed by the Council. Let me be equally clear in response, as a co-sponsor with the United States of the text we have just adopted. There is no "automaticity" in this resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the Council for discussion as required in paragraph 12. We would expect the Security Council then to meet its responsibilities.”

By what does “meet its responsibilities” mean? Along with “serious consequences”, the language could indeed have been clearer. Jack Straw, in his words on 4 March 2003, was wrong.

The truth is that the issue of whether a second resolution was a precondition of invading Iraq was fudged. There was no agreement among the member states – there was no agreement within some of the member states! – meaning that the careful wording of resolution 1441 was a record of disagreement, not a record of agreement.

Jack Straw argued in a debate on the matter in the House of Commons on 25 November 2002 that:

“Resolution 1441 does not stipulate that there has to be a second Security Council resolution to authorise military action in the event of a further material breach by Iraq. The idea that there should be a second Security Council resolution was an alternative discussed informally among members of the P5 of the Security Council and the elected 10 during the weeks of negotiation, but no draft to that effect was ever tabled by any member of Security Council, nor put to the vote. Instead, every member of the Security Council voted for and accepted this text.”

But the absence of such an additional draft resolution could easily have been due to the absence of the words “all necessary means” from resolution 1441. The requirement for a second resolution went without saying. The clever wording of 1441 may have solved one problem but instead created another, bigger one.

The public did not know at the time, but revelations since have told us, that the government’s understanding of the legal position during the period that resolution 1441 was being negotiated was that a second resolution would be necessary to authorise war, the wording of 1441 itself being insufficient. The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, only provided his revised advice concluding that war was permissible without a second resolution and on the strength of 1441 alone on 17 March 2003.

Notwithstanding this legal advice, there was nevertheless an effort by Britain and America to get a second resolution adopted by the Security Council to give them UN approval for the war. The passage of such a resolution would have satisfied a great many critics of the Anglo-American policy, and was thus worth striving for. However, it would have required the positive votes of 9 out of the 15 members of the Security Council and avoided the veto of France, Russia or China. This level of support was not forthcoming.

The most prominent opponent of the second resolution, when it came, was the French president, Jacques Chirac. He was of the opinion that the efforts to disarm Iraq using the combination of inspections and the threat of war were working, and should be continued. What was the urgency in turning that threat of war into reality?

Here we find a second flaw in the UN strategy. Not only was there no agreement on how to take the crucial, subsequent decision to go to war, there turned out to be a time limit inherent in the military pressure that had nowhere been acknowledged by the decision-makers. It simply was not possible to keep an invasion force on stand-by for months on end, in readiness to invade when called upon. Jack Straw said to the Chilcot enquiry that “I talked to Secretary Powell about his judgment about how long you could keep such a large expeditionary force at a state of alert without it, as it were, degrading. You know much better than I, you can't continue them in that state of readiness for long, but the advice which I got, as well as from our own people, but it was crucial to get his take on what the United States felt, was late March/early April.”

This was not a deadline expressed in the programme of inspection and disarmament. Again, there is an unfavourable comparison with the previous war with Iraq: the Kuwait resolution 678 adopted on 29 November 1990 set down an explicit deadline of 15 January 1991 for compliance. (In the event, air attacks started on 17 January.)

The problem posed by this sudden emergence of a deadline was that it undermined the credibility of the inspections process. It was this that Jacques Chirac could not support.

We find here a third failure of British policy, a failure to understand the French.

Jacques Chirac gave an interview on French TV to explain his policy and the reasoning behind it. (You can read a transcript of that interview here.)

The central statement of that interview, which was broadcast on the BBC and elsewhere, was this: “Ma position, c’est que, quelles que soient les circonstances, la France votera non parce qu’elle considère ce soir qu’il n’y a pas lieu de faire une guerre pour atteindre l’objectif que nous nous sommes fixé, c’est-à-dire le désarmement de l’Iraq.”

This translates into English as "My position is that, regardless of the circumstances, France will vote "no" because she considers this evening that there are no grounds for waging war in order to achieve the goal we have set ourselves, i.e. to disarm Iraq.” But what does this mean?

In front of the Chilcot enquiry, Jack Straw said this:

“I know there has been some textual analysis of the use by President Chirac of the word "Le soir", but I watched him say this and I took this as no more than saying, "This evening", comma, and then he announces, "France will, whatever the circumstances", he says, right? If he was saying, "Look, just for tonight, we are going to veto, but not tomorrow", he would have said that, but this was a great Chiracian pronouncement. "Whatever the circumstances", he says, "La France will…”

But what were the circumstances Jacques Chirac was referring to? The previous part of the interview discussed two scenarios: one where France was in the majority on the Security Council in opposing the Anglo-American second resolution; the second was where France was in a minority or alone in its opposition. Would France really vote No in such circumstances, dropping the “diplomatic atomic bomb”? Yes, said President Chirac, it would, even in those circumstances.

He went on in that interview to say:

“Je le répète: la guerre est toujours la pire des solutions. Et la France, qui n’est pas un pays pacifiste, qui ne refuse pas la guerre par principe, qui le prouve d’ailleurs en étant le premier contributeur de forces de l’OTAN actuellement, notamment dans les Balkans, la France n’est pas un pays pacifiste. La France considère que la guerre, c’est la dernière étape d’un processus, que tous les moyens doivent être utilisés pour l’éviter en raison de ses conséquences dramatiques.”

In English: “I repeat, war is always the worst solution. And France, which is not a pacifist country, which does not reject war in principle, which proves it by being the leading contributor of forces to Nato at present, notably in the Balkans, France is not a pacifist country. France considers that war is the final step in the process, when all other means have been tried in order to avoid it because of its dramatic consequences.”

This is not the argument of someone fundamentally opposed to the strategy of disarming Saddam Hussein under threat of invasion. This is the argument of someone arguing over the timing, and the urgency. This is something that Jack Straw did not, or chose not to, understand.

To try to make a foreign policy without understanding the opinions and strategies of major players is a certain route to failure. That is where the British policy on Iraq ended up.

What conclusions can we draw from this sorry tale?

First, diplomatic drafting can be part of the problem, not part of the solution. In the case of 1441, it postponed the moment of decision, it did not embody it. The failure to think through the consequences of this postponement damaged the United Nations severely.

Secondly, war is not an easy option, a threat that can be turned on or off like a tap. The strategy of threaten and inspect had a built-in expiry date, which was never established or articulated clearly in the minds of its supporters. The experience of Blair’s previous wars, in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, had given the impression that military force could be applied like a scalpel, but it can’t. It is more of a blunt instrument.

Thirdly, there is the Anglo-French disagreement. The British tried to rally European support for the American policy, the French tried to rally support against it. In the event, neither succeeded, leaving Europe essentially absent from the most important decision in world politics of the decade.

Finally, one cannot avoid speculating further about what might have happened if Tony Blair’s promise in 2004 of a referendum on the constitutional treaty had been fulfilled. Can we really imagine that Jack Straw would have happily campaigned for a Yes vote in that referendum on the grounds that it would enable stronger foreign policy cooperation between Britain and France?

Different and hostile

2010-01-20T17:25:00.000Z

Norman Tebbit gets his second mention on the blog this month, with his latest piece on the Telegraph website, “I used to believe Britain had a lot in common with Europe. How wrong I was”. (You can read it here.)

He articulates a key question about British membership of the European Union: do we really belong? Can we share the same institutions? Do we have enough in common?

He concedes that once he thought we did, but now he thinks he was wrong: “It was not that I dislike my European colleagues – it was just that I realised that the underlying history and culture which had formed their institutions was deeply different and indeed hostile to those which had formed ours.”

I think that many historians will dispute Norman Tebbit’s assertions about the different histories of Britain and the rest of Europe, but I take a different tack. Even if the respective histories are different, that is not what matters now. What matters is whether our different countries have interests in common now and in the future, and when one looks at the rapid transformation of the world into a multi-polar system, it is undeniable that we do. Politics is more important than history.

Old-style defenders of the British unwritten constitution reject the idea that one parliament can bind its successors with the phrase “dead men shall not govern”. But in rejecting the EU on historical grounds, governing is exactly what Norman Tebbit would have them do.

A parliament with a purpose

2010-01-15T12:59:00.001Z

European Alternatives is circulating a petition calling upon the European Parliament to try to attach conditions to its approval of the members of the next European Commission. (You can read the petition here.) The EP is currently scrutinising the appointments that have been made, giving the lie to the notion that the Commission is run by faceless placemen.

The three conditions suggested by European Alternatives are as follows:

1. A Parliament that takes real decisions
If the European Parliament proposes a legislative measure, the European Commission should come up with a legislative proposal within a year. This means that the Parliament can effectively make European laws on behalf of the citizens it democratically represents.

2. A foreign policy responsible to the citizens
Members of the European Parliament should take an active part in the negotiation of all international agreements of the European Union. This means European citizens can finally have a say over the foreign policy of the European Union.

3. International representatives agreed by the citizens
Nominations for the key posts of the EU External Action Service should be approved by the Parliament after facing a hearing. If these people are meant to represent EU citizens abroad, they must have the approval of the citizens’ representatives.

Taking these in reverse order, it makes sense for senior officials within the EU to face the European Parliament before taking up their posts. One of the most damaging criticisms of the EU is that it is run by unelected bureaucrats (although an elected bureaucrat is a contradiction in terms) and the central role of the European Parliament needs to be restated.

I am not quite sure how the second point would work in practice. Introducing more disparate voices into the process would probably weaken the EU’s influence in negotiations – this is one of the reasons for trying to have a common European foreign policy in the first place – and the Lisbon treaty requires in any case that “The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy shall regularly consult the European Parliament on the main aspects and the basic choices of the common foreign and security policy and the common security and defence policy and inform it of how those policies evolve. He shall ensure that the views of the European Parliament are duly taken into consideration.”

The first proposal is the best one. The European Commission may have the monopoly on the right to propose legislation but that does not mean that it has, or should have, the monopoly on ideas. The exclusive right that it has to propose legislation is sometimes taken as an expression of a bureaucratic approach but it is not, of course. In most member states, legislation starts life as a proposal from the government; the opportunity for individual backbenchers to propose new laws is actually rather rare. Ensuring that all legislation emanates from the Commission ensures that there is some coherence and consistency in the legislative life of the Union.

However, it is a central part of the federalist vision that the legislative process within the EU should become ever more political. Giving the EP the right to call for a legislative proposal would enable the political parties contesting the elections every five years even more scope to present to the voters choices about the future political direction of the EU. It is not so much the parliament that would be enabled to take “real decisions” (I think it does within the current system) but the citizens. And in their hands, surely, is where the “real decisions” belong.

The snow reveals as much as it covers

2010-01-14T17:54:00.000Z

Archaeologists sometimes find that a covering of snow on the landscape can reveal to aerial photography previously unknown features such as barrows and homesteads that in normal weather conditions would not be seen. In a similar way, the covering of snow that has fallen on Britain in the last two weeks has brought to light some interesting political issues, too.

I was set to thinking about this after the heavy snowfall last week, when I dutifully cleared away the snow from the steps and the path outside my house, but I did not clear the pavement on the road outside. My reasoning was that everyone visiting or leaving my house would have to walk up the path that I cleared, but only half of those people would have to walk on the cleared pavement, as they might approach the entrance to the house from the right or the left. Looking up the street, I saw that other people had done the same thing, clearing only the path that every visitor would have to follow. (We live on a quiet residential street so there is no question of the local council coming to clear it.)

Having done this much snow clearing, I reflected on how irrational it seemed from a collective perspective. When walking from my house to the tube station, say, I will cover a much greater distance walking on the pavement than on the path from my house to the front gate. So if each householder cleared the pavement and not the path, we would all have to navigate snow and ice for the short walk from the house to the street rather than for the long walk to the tube. But hardly anyone cleared the pavement outside where they lived.

The combination of actions that are rational from an individual perspective – each person clearing their own path – is not the best course of action from a collective one – each person should clear the pavement outside their own property. But we lack a means of ensuring that each person will clear their own stretch of pavement. There is an institutional failure here: the invisible hand does not clear much snow. (As it would not cut carbon dioxide emissions, if that were to be left to individual efforts.)

Conservative anti-European MEP Daniel Hannan wrote about the same issue (read his comments here), and he asked whether it was the existence of big government that had sapped the public willingness to clear their pavements. But in my part of London, government would have to be truly enormous to get as far the street in which I live. No, it is not the case that people were sitting around waiting for the council to send people with shovels.

I posted some thoughts about this on another site and got the response back that, in Germany, to clear the pavement outside one’s house is a legal obligation. This is a different role for government, as regulator rather than as resource provider. (The sloppy phrase “big government” describes two different activities.) I am not sure whether this approach could be made to work, though. What about the elderly or the infirm: are they to be required by law to wield a shovel? Outside a property made up of several flats (like mine), on whom would the legal duty fall? And how popular would it be for the council, in the event of sever snowfall, to send round its staff not to clear the snow but to spy on whether householders are doing so?

I don’t think there is an institutional or a political solution to this problem. A bit more public spiritedness would undoubtedly be a good thing, but I am not going to suppose that this can easily be engineered. One of the basic assumptions that federalism makes is that politics has to adapt to human nature and not the other way round.

When we had the second round of snow earlier this week, I cleared the pavement outside as well as my own steps and the path. But no-one else in the road did the same. The political observation remains valid.

The language of priorities

2010-01-05T09:46:00.003Z

Aneurin Bevan famously declared at a Labour party conference that “The language of priorities is the religion of socialism”. This will not be a blog post about socialism – I am going to write about Tony Blair instead – but about priorities. There has been an interesting new report about Tony Blair’s attitudes to Iraq and Europe.

An article by Mark Seddon in the Independent on Sunday reports on discussions within the Labour party in the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003. (Read the article here.) The Labour party’s National Executive Committee, of which Mark Seddon was a member, three times debated the prospect of war and some NEC members attempted to challenge Tony Blair’s policy on the subject.

The minutes of those NEC meetings reveal some fascinating nuggets of the Blair government’s thinking. At a meeting on 25 March 2003, Tony Blair asserted that “structural questions about the United Nations and the European Union are secondary to those around future relations with the United States.” Standing by America in Iraq mattered more.

This blog would, of course, disagree. It is not possible for Britain to think meaningfully about its relations with third countries without taking the European Union into account. Many of our interests around the world are shared with our closest neighbours, and we will achieve much more if we work with them. One of the major reasons why the American adventure in Iraq went wrong is that the Europeans stood by, divided, and offered no alternative policy. Britain tried to rally support for the Americans, France tried to rally opposition: both failed. A meaningful and coherent European policy could have made a substantial difference. It is in the American interest that there should be a united European policy on offer, not only in the European interest.

Tony Blair continued, at the NEC meeting, to say that “Partnership is infinitely preferable to the French desire for a rival pole of power, which could revive the dynamics of the Cold War.” Raising the spectre of a Cold War between Europe and America is just ridiculous, but there are rival poles of power in the world now, whether Tony Blair likes it or not. That is a major reason for treating the United Nations, too, as a central locus of foreign policy making in the future.

Relations with America are an atypical example, because of the strong and friendly ties that the Europeans already have. How do we manage our future relationship with China, for example, if we put a bilateral relationship with America above all else? The future world will be multipolar, with many countries vying for influence, and we have to build constructive relationships with all of them and not just one.

As a further illustration of the need to participate in the global system on a multilateral basis rather than as an appendage of the United States, think about the recent execution of Akmal Shaikh, a British citizen in China. The British government has been criticised in some quarters – by Dominic Lawson in the Times here, for example – for not standing up for British interests, and talking instead about how China had “failed in its basic human rights responsibilities”. The fact is that China need take no notice of British interests, for the Chinese are much stronger than the British. (Has Dominic Lawson not noticed?) However, by pointing out the extent to which China is placing itself outside the norms of the global system, the implicit pressure on China to conform will become stronger.

Of course, that global system is still in the process of being created and there are strong interests that oppose it. The position of those who oppose the development of rules and laws to govern the behaviour of states has been strengthened by what was effectively an Anglo-American boycott of the United Nations in order to get their war in Iraq. The consequences of those decisions will be with us for a long time to come. Why should China listen to our advocacy of international rules if we ourselves flout them whenever we choose?

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Tony Blair’s priorities, though, were to be nothing if not flexible. Six months after that fateful NEC meeting, in September 2003, he was reported as saying the opposite. Peter Hain, then leader of the House of Commons, revealed that Tony Blair had told him that the outcome of the convention on the European constitution was “absolutely fundamental - more important than Iraq”. If only he had expressed such an attitude six or twelve months earlier.

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The Labour NEC minutes also report the then foreign secretary Jack Straw as explaining France’s opposition to the Anglo-American second resolution authorising war in Iraq on the grounds that “France simply can’t cope with the fact that America is also intellectually and scientifically dominant”.

The one dimensional nature of such a statement puts me in mind of the memorandum circulated on Margaret Thatcher’s behalf for a seminar on 24 March 1990 to discuss the consequences of German re-unification. (Read about it here.) This included observations on the German character such as: “insensitivity to the feelings of others (most noticeably in their behaviour over the Polish border), their obsession with themselves, a strong inclination to self-pity and a longing to be liked.”

The Germans displayed “Angst, aggressiveness, bullying, egotism, inferiority complex, sentimentality …a capacity for excess, to overdo things …a tendency to overestimate their own strengths and capabilities”.

“There was a strong school of thought among those present that today's Germans were very different from their predecessors … But what about 10, 15 or 20 years from now? Could some of the unhappy characteristics of the past re-emerge with just as destructive consequences?”

Surely British foreign policy can, in future, be more sophisticated than this?

A healthy surplus

2010-01-04T11:31:00.000Z

The limitations of small c conservative economics are laid bare by Peter Oborne in the Observer yesterday in his description of the problems facing the eurozone. (Read the article here.)

Countries such as Greece, Spain and Ireland are in recessions with growing rates of unemployment, particularly among young people. The traditional means of improving national economic competitiveness is to devalue the currency, but that option is ruled out by membership of the euro. Exchange rates among eurozone members are fixed forever. He contrasts the state of the countries in recession with that of Germany, which “has coped well with the recession, has a jobless rate of about 8% and a healthy trade surplus”. If the ECB runs a monetary policy to suit Germany, it will make economic conditions elsewhere in Europe harder.

This is not just an economic worry. Peter Oborne worries that political debate about leaving the euro in the countries in recession is suppressed, but might re-emerge in the face of what he describes as a “massive, deadly and sustained attack on the livelihoods of ordinary working people”. There has been a rise in the far-left vote in Portugal and there are riots on the streets of Athens, for example. (You might marvel at a conservative commentator blaming rioting on anything other than the fecklesness of the rioters themselves. After all, Norman Tebbit’s father didn’t riot.)

But Peter Oborne’s economic understanding is wrong. Devaluing the currency is itself a means of reducing the standard of living of ordinary working people. Imports become more expensive. Devaluation is not pain-free. The blunt truth, as a commentator who writes “you can only defy political and economic reality for so long” ought to realise, is that a country will get relatively poorer if it is relatively less productive. Ireland and Spain devoted too many resources to construction, Greece has sclerotic public services. These are the problems that need to be fixed. The old-fashioned notion of devaluing your way out of trouble only postpones these problems, it does not solve them.

The attraction that EU membership offers to recent former dictatorships such as Spain and Greece is not only a certificate of democratic stability but also an economic framework that will tend to promote discipline and wiser policies, precisely because the short-term easy way out is closed off. Again, one is surprised that a conservative commentator does not appreciate this.

The further point about the survival of the eurozone, and it is a good one, is not about what Greece and Spain will do, but about what Germany will do. But again, Peter Oborne does not understand. It makes no sense to criticise some countries for running trade deficits while congratulating Germany on running a trade surplus. It is not possible for every country to be in surplus. When thinking about the condition of Greece and Spain, one could equally consider Germany’s trade surplus to be unhealthy. This is why it matters what Germany does.

For the future health of the eurozone, it is necessary to think of the eurozone not as a collection of countries but as a system. Policies need to be made for the benefit of the system as a whole. This does not necessarily imply fiscal transfers or bailouts, but it does require macroeconomic coordination. In particular, countries with trade surpluses within the EU such as Germany and the Netherlands need to promote domestic consumption: in a scenario of deficits and surpluses, the surpluses need to be tackled just as much as the deficits. (The same message can be directed to China, when thinking of the global economy, too.)

It is a good question whether the politicians in power in the various member states are capable of thinking in these terms. Their rhetoric about building Europe needs to be matched by the appropriate policies. But what is certain is that Europe’s problems can only be solved by thinking this way. The British conservative (and Conservative) philosophy of rejecting euro membership on principle is a rejection of this idea of supranational macroeconomics altogether, and will only make matters worse and not better.

Failure at Copenhagen

2009-12-21T12:05:00.001Z

They say that the definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same action over and over again expecting a different result each time. 193 national governments were represented at the Copenhagen climate talks hoping to find unanimous agreement on how to fight climate change. They failed. Never mind, there is another summit in Mexico next year.

Geoffrey Lean in the Daily Telegraph reports on the chaotic and erratic way in which the summiteers reached their conclusions. Many environmental campaigners are dismayed and disappointed at the failure of Copenhagen to take big enough steps in the fight against climate change: a simple look at the proceedings explains why.

The issues at the Copenhagen summit could be gathered under three main headings: the size and distribution of the cuts in carbon dioxide emissions; scrutiny of the cuts; and turning commitments to cuts into a treaty. Behind all of these lies the defence of national sovereignty.

Taking the issues in reverse order, enshrining a new climate policy in a treaty will give it legal force and constrain, in future, the freedom of action of individual national governments. They will be obliged to take into account the effects of their decisions on other countries. Souverainists think that this is a bad thing: I disagree. People who want a serious international effort to fight climate change will have to make a choice.

Scrutiny is also a threat to national sovereignty as traditionally conceived, but much less of a threat to democracies than to autocracies. Not only will a climate change treaty give rights to other countries, it will also give rights to citizens. Governments will be held to account for their actions and their policies, so that inadequate emissions reductions can be identified and rectified. The democratic system of government is founded on the idea that citizens have rights: the Copenhagen deal will extend that idea at the international level.

But it is the first issue, that of the size and distribution of cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, that is the most important and the most difficult. It is important because, in the end, cuts in carbon dioxide emissions are what will avert the worst consequences of climate change (on the assumption that the broad mass of the world’s scientific knowledge and thinking on the subject is correct) but also because it has the most far-reaching implications for decision-making too.

For all the talk of what is the right percentage to cut emissions by compared with the present level, whether 30 per cent, 50 per cent or 80 per cent, nobody can know for sure. Scientific knowledge on the subject will surely develop over time. Furthermore, no-one can know how successful existing and future policies will be in reducing emissions: that too is unknown. Thirdly, beyond the scale of the cuts, there is the distribution: which countries should make biggest cuts, and how should the poorer ones be compensated? This decision, too, will change over time, as countries develop and get richer (or not). China’s behaviour in Copenhagen, apparently, was influenced by the realisation that it was becoming an industrialised country and would be subject to different rules and expectations in future.

Against all three of these uncertainties, it is not possible that a single summit in Copenhagen this year, or in Mexico next year, or anywhere else the year after, could settle everything. What the world needs to fight climate change is not a treaty but a mechanism. The decisions that are taken need to be revised easily and smoothly as the facts change and as knowledge changes. We cannot imagine that heads of government sitting up all night will solve our problems. It is crazy to use the world’s worst decision-making methods to take the world’s most important decisions. Copenhagen did not address this issue. That is its biggest failure.

Obama in Oslo

2009-12-18T12:14:00.001Z

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama was widely dismissed as premature, a sentiment that President Obama himself acknowledged in his acceptance speech. (Read the speech here.) Furthermore, President Obama also felt it necessary to explain why he could accept the award even while he was the commander in chief of the armed forces in an escalating war in Afghanistan.

He explained that “War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease -- the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.”

History was marked by attempts to regulate the use and the manner of the use of warfare, attempts whose gradual success had produced a world that was more peaceful than in the past. International institutions, the notion of the “just war” and the spread of democracy had all helped to reduce the incidence of conflict.

He argues that the continuation of this progress depends on “the continued expansion of our moral imagination” and “that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls.” All this is fine, but it is insufficient.

Perhaps the Nobel Prize itself is misnamed. It does not relate to peace as Immanuel Kant understood the term. We should think of it as the Nobel Truce Prize. For peace lies not in trusting in humanity’s better nature, but in laws and institutions that constrain the worst aspects of human behaviour. Federalism does not ask people to change their instincts; instead it changes the system of government so that those instincts can be used for good and not ill.

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It is interesting to read the reaction of some of President Obama’s fans – the word “supporters” hardly does them justice – to this award. Commentators such as Simon Schama and Jonathan Freedland are wrestling with the contradiction of the man in whom they vested so much hope being bound by so many restraints in domestic and international politics. Their conclusion is that, in the circumstances, he is doing the best he can, using his position at the head of what is still by far the world’s most powerful country to promote order and justice in a way that his predecessor would not do and did not even understand.

And perhaps that is what the Nobel Prize awarding committee had in mind, too.

The trial of Tzipi Livni

2009-12-17T17:47:00.001Z

Let me say at the outset that there is no simple answer to this question. The development of the law in theory has outstripped the implementation of the law in practice, which is bound to create difficulties. I shall come back to this theme.

The facts are simple. Tzipi Livni, who was Israeli foreign minister at the time of the Gaza war in January of this year, was due to attend an event in London. Campaigners against that war in Gaza secured a warrant for her arrest on charges of war crimes. She cancelled her visit and addressed the event by video link.

I should have opened that previous paragraph saying that some of the facts are simple, for others are not. The allegations of war crimes arise from a report by UN Special Prosecutor Judge Richard Goldstone, and its genesis and conclusions are hotly disputed. The existence of the dispute is sufficient for the purposes of this blog entry.

The issue of the arrest warrant was founded on the principle that war crimes can be tried in the UK, wherever in the world they were allegedly committed. This principle of universal jurisdiction is held up as an expression of the outrage against humanity that certain criminal acts embody. Piracy is traditionally held to be such an offence; war crimes and genocide naturally fall into the same category.

Argument about the issue of the arrest warrant and the cancellation of Tzipi Livni’s visit have elsewhere centred on the foundedness, or otherwise, of the Goldstone allegations and also the fact that the English legal system does not require evidence before a warrant is issued: whether or not there is a case to answer will be dealt with when a trial comes, and not before.

The first of these two issues might be addressed in a subsequent blog entry, but what I really want to address is the idea of universal jurisdiction. It is an example of the mismatch between powers and levels of government. For if a crime is genuinely an offence against the whole of humanity, then it should not fall to an individual state to bring the prosecution. It should be an international court that should fill this role.

Leaving the conduct of international prosecutions to the actions of national courts will not bring justice. It invites too many politicians into the process: whether or not a prosecution is merited on an international issue is to be decided by officials in another country who are accountable only in that country. If the outrage is shared, should not the reaction be shared, too?

We have a half-formed notion of international justice. The desire to implement it has outstripped the political institutions that are needed to implement it, and trying to use our existing political institutions for this new purpose is producing uneven and unjust results. Leaving it to individual countries to decide how to pursue allegations of war crimes will fragment the efforts against them.

Better to recognise that we are dealing with a new type of crime and need a new type of court. I am not going to comment here whether or not she should be tried, but Tzipi Livni should not be tried in England.

Can Australian states survive?

2009-12-10T17:11:00.000Z

A very interesting talk on the state of federalism in Australia yesterday, given by Geoff Anderson of Flinders University, Adelaide. The discussion about whether federalism is primarily about centralisation or decentralisation gets some extra dimensions from the discussion in Australia.

On one side, there is the development of communications and transport connecting the different states together – “Australians treat aeroplanes like buses”, said Geoff Anderson – which encourages the strengthening of the federal level. The Australian business community firmly supports the moves for efficiency, in the form of “a seamless national economy”: the qualifications for hairdressers and plumbers in one state are not recognised in others, for example. This is the political consensus. Anyone who attempted to raise a discussion about states’ rights would be seen as an economic wrecker.

There are other examples, too, where decision-making is perhaps too decentralised. The Murray-Darling river basin, which flows through four states, lacks a common approach to managing abstraction rates, so it is often at very low levels and sometimes even dries up altogether.

The notion of subsidiarity, in which powers are exercised at the most appropriate level, would be very relevant here. But Geoff Anderson also described how centralisation could go, in some respects, too far.

The fact that Australia had signed an international treaty of the protection of habitats gave the federal government the right to intervene in state government decisions on infrastructure questions, according to a judgment from the High Court of Australia. Australian participation in the war on terror had led to the federal government, which does not have the competence for law and order, imposing expectations on the state governments, which do. And a feature of the constitution which permits the federal government to attach conditions to its financial transfers to the states had, unsurprisingly, led to a great many such conditions being attached. Schools, a state responsibility, would only get funding if they had working flagpoles, for example, and followed a standard history curriculum.

One of the factors encouraging this development had been party political. For a number of years recently, the federal government had been Liberal while all the state governments were in the hands of the Labor party. The debate about the best level at which to enact a particular policy had therefore become entwined with a debate about which policy to follow.

There were no obvious answers to these dilemmas. A further factor in the centralisation of Australian politics is the national media, that demands that national politicians take action even on matters that could (and should) be decentralised. The politicians themselves are able and happy to oblige. The Australian federal constitution does not appear to have enough protections for the rights of the states, and power accretes upwards.

It is not inevitably the fate of a federation that power should become more centralised: the whole point of federalism is to ensure that it cannot, but the factors that kept Australia decentralised – the sheer size of the country, its origins as a set of separate colonies – have grown less important as time has passed and the factors that reward centralisation – economic liberalisation, environmental impacts – have become stronger. I did not get the impression from Geoff Anderson that decentralisation and diversity are generally seen in Australia as values in their own right. I think that is probably a pity.

The legitimacy of Lisbon

2009-12-08T13:08:00.000Z

In a debate at University College London yesterday, the argument came forth from the anti-European speakers that the Lisbon treaty was illegitimate in a way that was not true of previous European treaties. It is hard to work out exactly what they mean – they were quite confused in their reasoning – but I think the argument rests on the supposed facts (1) that the Lisbon treaty is more far-reaching than previous treaties and (2) that the promised referendum on the treaty was not in fact held.

Of those two supposed facts, neither is true.

The argument that the Lisbon treaty is more far-reaching than previous treaties seems to rest on such features as the legal personality acquired by the European Union (but the European Community already had it), or the creation of the post of president of the European Council (but the European Council already had a presidency, changing hands every six months). Sometimes, the idea of a ratchet clause or some kind of self-amending feature of the treaty is floated as the reason for especial concern about the Lisbon treaty, but no such clause or feature exists.

The farthest-reaching features of the European treaties are (1) the supremacy of EU law over domestic law and (2) the introduction of Qualified Majority Voting. The first of those derives from the Treaty of Rome and the second from the Single European Act. Lisbon is less significant than either of these.

The argument about the promised referendum is slightly stronger. It is indeed true that a referendum was promised by all three parties on the previous constitutional treaty, and the explanation that the Lisbon treaty is different from the constitutional treaty, while factually correct, is a resort to the small print rather than a bold statement of principle. However, it remains the case that the Lisbon treaty passed into law because parliament voted for it. It is as legitimate as any other act of parliament; it is as legitimate as parliament itself.

In my speech in the debate, though, I went further than this. I wanted to lay out the extent of the political support for the Lisbon treaty and what it represents. In the UK, every general election since the Treaty of Rome was first signed has elected a majority of MPs in favour of membership (there have been 13 of them: 1959, 1964, 1966, 1970, 1974 twice, 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992, 1997, 2001 and 2005) and the referendum on the subject in 1975 produced a 2 to 1 majority in favour of staying in.

In Europe as a whole, the Lisbon treaty was supported by 27 national governments and the main opposition parties in 26 countries. In the European elections in June, 2/3 of the votes went to parties that supported the Lisbon treaty. If you look at the referendums that have been held, more votes have been cast in favour of the Lisbon treaty than against it (1.96 million compared with 1.46 million), and the same was true in the referendums on the constitutional treaty, too (26 million compared with 22 million).

Now, this is not to say that either the Lisbon treaty or the EU as a whole is loved. The narrowness of victory and the resort to the small print are clear proof of that. But it is to say that the claim that the Lisbon treaty lacks legitimacy or has been imposed in the teeth of popular opposition across Europe as a whole is false.

(British anti-Europeans might point to the British election results in June which showed a much more eurosceptic outcome than in the rest of the EU, and a future Conservative government would be the most eurosceptic of the 27 should David Cameron become prime minister next year. But the British picture is different from that of the rest of Europe.)

What interested me most in the debate was the reaction of the anti-European speakers to these facts. There was sheer disbelief that I might even think them relevant. But I do, because they are.

Opponents of the EU have got it into their heads that the EU is a conspiracy by the elites against the voters. Manoeuvres such as the on-again off-again referendum are proof of this, they say. The EU has the effect of being anti-democratic and is intended to be so. Why, then, would a pro-European speaker try to justify the legitimacy of the Lisbon treaty? Should they not revel in the fact that it is not? Quotes by Giscard D’Estaing are trotted out to support this view.

But readers of this blog will know, and perhaps share, its conviction that the EU is in fact advancing democracy and not undermining it. Giscard D’Estaing is not the sole representative of the pro-European idea.

I think that the problem the anti-European speakers had last night was that they were so convinced of their own point of view and their own analysis of the pro-European point of view that they could not comprehend this democratic alternative.

There are some opponents of the European Union who concede that supranational democracy is a nice idea but in practice cannot work in Europe. Last night was different, with the argument that supranational democracy was not even being tried. It is one thing to impose upon your opponents’ arguments your own interpretation of their conclusions, but it is quite another to impose upon them your own interpretation of their motives.

There are too many myths in circulation about the facts of the European Union. Let us not add to them myths about the politics of the European Union, too.

International anarchy at sea

2009-12-07T16:34:00.000Z

This blog has written before about the spate of piracy in the seas off the coast of Somalia. Ships are being taken hostage and ransomed back to their owners; the same is true of passengers on smaller craft.

The limits of the law are exposed in these dangerous waters. They are a place where normal rules do not apply. There is no police force to enforce the law; ships are dependent on the intervention of ships from the world’s navies, who may or may not be ready to help.

The law that applies differs according to the nationality of enforcers. The French, it is reported, have taken Somali pirates prisoner and taken them back to France for trial. The British, on the other hand, are reputed to let their captured pirates go for fear of their bringing cases under the Human Rights Act.

Added to this we now have reports of different approaches towards freeing the hostages. Some countries are willing to negotiate with the pirates for the release of their citizens held captive. The British policy is to refuse to do so. This policy has been criticised by some of the private security companies working in the region.

The British refusal to negotiate or pay ransoms is intended to deter the taking of hostages in the first place: there is no point if there is nothing to be gained from it. However, as long as any countries are willing to meet ransom demands, it is worth the pirates’ while. They can have little idea what the nationality of the crew of a small boat will be, and that crew might be from a country that will pay up. British hostages might be captured by, in effect, mistake.

The British approach may be, in principle, the best one, but it will only work if every country follows it. As long as there is a possible reward for hostage taking, Somali pirates will continue to try. And the international community lacks the ability definitely to rule out the possibility of paying up.

It wasn’t a vote about architecture

2009-12-05T11:51:00.001Z

The timing could not have been better. The fallout of the Conservative decision not to hold a referendum on the Lisbon treaty now that it has come into force, and not to hold a referendum on any other European question either until new proposals come from Brussels, blends into the news reports from Switzerland on the referendum on minarets. (Read about the referendum here.)

Advocates of direct democracy hail this as an example of how referendums permit the people to take decisions even when the entire political class opposes them. Isn’t that what democracy should be? Daniel Hannan, on his blog, sweetly worries that the national constitution might be the wrong place to settle matters of local planning law.

But it wasn’t a vote about planning. The Swiss were not asked to go to the polls because of worries about the skyline, or to take a decision on the future of the built environment. No, the cause of the referendum was a growing popular fear about the presence of Muslims in Switzerland, and in particular their assertiveness. A small religious minority might not in themselves be a problem, but once they start to have an impact on the way that the majority live their lives, even if it is only a slight impact, then the concerns start.

There is a certain idea of Switzerland which is that it is a country without Muslims. Once that idea becomes untenable, those people who hold it have to respond. They see their notion of their country disappearing before their eyes. A minaret might be a symbol of this, but it is by no means the ultimate cause.

This is why the attempts to discuss the issue in terms of traditional architectural styles ring so hollow. Even if there a Swiss design of mosque with eaves and gables like a chalet, there would be a dispute over something else. Ritual slaughter had been mentioned, for example.

The argument is actually over that certain idea of Switzerland. Muslim practices might be fine elsewhere, but not there.

The same refrain emerges from the allegations made earlier this year that Michal Kaminski, Polish MEP and leader of the ECR group in the European Parliament, was anti-semitic. He denies it, and amongst the evidence advanced by his supporters is his support for the state of Israel. As with the discussion of Swiss planning law, this is irrelevant. The allegation of anti-semitism rests not on the existence or otherwise of a Jewish state, but on whether or not Jewish practices belong legitimately in Poland. Is there a certain idea of Poland?

By way of comparison, in Britain, no-one would excuse for a moment the suggestion that the presence of black people in government in African countries means that they do not belong in government here. There is no conflict between being black and British. (Well, I say no-one, but the BNP got nearly a million votes in the European elections in June so one should not be quite so complacent.)

To say that Jews should be able to live safely in a foreign country is a very different thing from saying that Jews should be able to live as citizens locally. Nick Griffin is a supporter of the state of Israel, after all, yet he has campaigned repeatedly against what he sees as Jewish influence in the UK. Indeed, given what he believes about Muslims, he is doubly sympathetic towards Israel’s struggle against Hizbollah and Hamas.

The underlying truth is that, in the modern era of migration and interdependence, that certain idea of Switzerland no longer corresponds to reality. However, European countries do not yet have the political vocabulary and institutions needed to construct a new idea to replace the old one.

The notion that culture and lifestyle can be decreed from above is dying, as is the principle that culture and lifestyle are what we have in common. Our future “certain idea”, whether of Switzerland, Poland, Britain or Europe, will be founded on shared ideas of democratic citizenship and rights, and not on shared ideas of worship or the shape of the buildings where worship takes place.

Reforming the City

2009-12-03T11:48:00.001Z

The appointment of a Frenchman as European commissioner responsible for the City of London has produced ridiculous claims by people who hail it as a victory over Anglo-Saxon capitalism, and ridiculous counter-claims by people who fear it means the end of civilisation as we know it.

The truth is that the Commission acts collegiately, and has to get its legislation approved by both the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. The nationality of the Commissioner with the financial services portfolio is a rather minor consideration, but notions of collegiality and balance play rather poorly in the national newspapers when it comes to Europe.

A more considered view of what to do with the City was presented at the launch of a new book, yesterday: “Reforming the City”, edited by Sam Whimster. (You can order the book here.) A number of the issues covered in the debate are outside the scope of this blog – the judgement of when enough financial stimulus to get the economy out of recession becomes too much stimulus in that it debauches the currency, for example, or the proposal to distinguish between narrow banking and the casino – but there were some issues about which federalism has something to say.

First, there is the realisation that a globalised economy needs globalised regulation. There must be no exceptions to this, otherwise mobile capital will go to wherever the regulation is absent. A bucket only needs one hole in it to be useless. This implies that tax havens need to be brought to order, given that fraudulent funds thrive on a lack of regulation and can do substantial harm to the legitimate economy.

The second point arises from a mismatch of levels. Federalism proposes that there should be different levels of regulation to deal with different kinds of problem, with the level matched to the problem. What we have seen lately is that banking losses have been accumulated around the world by British banks but that they turn to the British taxpayer alone when they need to be bailed out. Why should a country of 60 million people be expected – or expect – to provide financial or banking stability for the world as a whole? The British national strategy of hosting the world’s financial services centre makes greater demands on the national finances than can easily be borne.

The third point relates to the British constitution, and specifically the over-dominance of London within the UK. The British economy has been allowed to become lop-sided because the economic interests of the capital city have lacked counter-balance from the rest of the country. A federal UK would possess alternative sources of political and economic power that might restrict the ability of a single location or a single industry to distort or take over the national economic interest as a whole.

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I gave a talk at Ventotene this year on federalism and the financial and economic crisis which you can read here.

A vote on Scottish independence?

2009-12-01T11:36:00.001Z

A settlement of Scotland’s long-running constitutional debate came a step closer yesterday with the publication of a White Paper outlining a road to independence. Four different scenarios are set out for the future relationship between Scotland and the rest of the UK, with the aim of holding a referendum at some point next year. (Read the White Paper here.)

Over the past 2 years, the Scottish government has been staging what it calls the National Conversation, on the basis of which this White Paper has been drafted. However, looking at the White Paper, one rather gets the impression that all this has been largely prepared beforehand and, until the referendum gets closer, the debate that matters is yet to begin.

This impression is strengthened by the fact that Scotland has seen not one national conversation but two. In addition to the exercise launched by the government, there has also been the report of the Calman Commission, which was set up by the Scottish Parliament. (The government is a minority nationalist government, while the parliament has a unionist majority.) The Calman Commission was asked to look into ways of amending the devolution arrangements but was specifically excluded from looking at independence as an option. It was as nakedly political as the National Conversation. (Read the Calman Commission report here.)

The four scenarios outlined in the White Paper are:

- the status quo
- an increase in devolution as proposed by Calman
- total devolution, keeping only a very few powers over defence and foreign policy for the United Kingdom government
- independence

The Scottish government claims to support the fourth of these scenarios, but the latest opinion polls show that the Scottish people do not. It is not yet clear whether there will be a referendum held at all – there is not majority support for the idea in the Scottish parliament, (the flirtation with the idea of a referendum by Wendy Alexander when she was Labour leader in Scotland is now history) – nor, if there is a referendum, what the question would be.

In 1997, the ballot paper had two questions on it: whether to set up the Scottish parliament, and whether to grant it the right to vary the rate of income tax. I suspect that a multiple question referendum might be tried again, but there will be a lot of political argument before that issue is settled.

The hand of history

2009-11-23T17:30:00.000Z

In the Daily Telegraph, we find that Conservative shadow defence secretary Liam Fox is adjusting his tune on Nato members’ military commitments. (Read the article here.)

Formerly, he had expressed the view that Nato should lay down minimum requirements for defence expenditure by each member state. Of course, as this blog pointed out, such a policy must lead to an end to decision-making by unanimity if countries are effectively to be forced by others to spend more on defence. Conservatives have long argued that defence was a matter of exclusive national sovereignty, and it was remarkable to see Dr Fox propose an end to this previously unassailable position.

He has learned now that a Conservative eurosceptic is not the most credible advocate in the eyes of other countries that are being asked to spend more. His new policy reflects that realisation. Instead, he wants to recognise that countries bring different sets of concerns to the international table and cannot be expected to emulate the British model just because he says so.

He says:

“We need to be clear that there are constitutional and political reasons why some Nato countries will not be able to do the same amount when it comes to expeditionary warfare. We can either hammer on about burden sharing, or we can start looking at what countries will be able to do within their political, constitutional and military constraints. Far better in Nato that countries have roles which they are 100pc willing to carry out.”

The suggestion is that British forces will withdraw from their bases in Germany, themselves a post-war hangover, and that other countries, e.g. Poland, might provide soldiers to replace whatever it is that the British troops are doing there right now. This way, he hopes to get a greater commitment to Nato from some other countries without dragging them into the war in Helmand straightaway.

It implies a degree of mutual decision-making on defence matters that Nato often aspires to but does not often reach. If it takes a Conservative eurosceptic to increase the degree of supranational thinking within Nato, that is an ironic but nonetheless welcome step.

Dr Fox has critics. A correspondent in the Daily Telegraph today wrote “This can only mean that the forces of other Nato countries will sit around in Germany while we go and do their fighting. What possible justification for this can there be?”

The justification for this is that other Nato countries have no intention of doing the fighting that the British happen to think is necessary, and that under the rules of national sovereignty, they are not obliged to change their minds. Yet another illustration that national sovereignty does not always work in the national interest.

A president for Europe

2009-11-19T10:28:00.001Z

The BBC appears to have taken some kind of corporate decision to refer to the post of president of the European Council as “president of Europe” or “president of the EU”. (Here, for example.) Sometimes, when they’ve got the space, they use the proper term, but they are willing to use the misleading shorthand.

Of course, one has to accept that the national broadcaster is entitled to use the vernacular rather than stick to the technical terms, in order to be comprehensible to the audience, but that vernacular should not serve to be misleading, which the term “president of Europe” is.

First of all, the powers of the president of the European Council are nowhere near as extensive as those conjured up by the notion of a president of Europe. He chairs, he does not lead. He certainly does not “rule” (pace the Daily Express yesterday) nor does he “control” the European Council, as the BBC political analyst Mark Sanders said on the Richard Bacon show when I was a guest. Do not get carried away with the novelty.

Second, if one must use the term “president of Europe” because it is so convenient and attractive, use it to describe the president of the Commission. It is the Commission president who sets the legislative agenda, controls the budget, and manages the civil service staff, not the Council president. Better not to use the term at all, but if you must, it is President Barroso.

The fact that the European Council president chairs but does not lead gives the lie to the second bit of nonsense on the TV last night, when ITV declared that the procedure being followed was ridiculous: each national government leader expressing views about other potential candidates as and when their names emerge, rather than anything more formal. Think about how the secretary-general of the United Nations is chosen, or the secretary-general of Nato. The EU is simply following that method.

Now, federalists criticise the way that intergovernmental organisations take decisions like this, and we would criticise the manner in which the European Council president is being chosen, too, but the EU is not unusual in behaving in this manner now. Above all, the realisation that this is the method being followed must impact on the expectations that some people have of the post and, by contrast, the relative expectations that they should have of the Commission president instead.

¤ ¤ ¤

I broke with my normal writing practice in the third paragraph of this blog entry to refer to the Council president has “he” rather than a gender neutral term. Partly this was because it made the sentences flow better, but mainly it was because that is an expression of the likely reality. It is wrong that politics at EU level is so male-dominated, but let me point you to a website that argues for the opposite: http://www.genderbalancedcommission.eu/

Tuna off the menu and onto the agenda

2009-11-18T15:01:00.001Z

Environmentalists are angry about the decision by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) at the weekend to reduce the allowable catch next year from 22,000 to 13,500 tonnes but not to abolish it altogether. Stocks of tuna are at dangerously low levels and might not come back, even if fishing is halted for a while.

But tuna is a popular foodstuff and thousands of jobs in different countries around the world are dependent on meeting that demand. There would be severe economic consequences from closing down the tuna fishery.

Tuna shoals roam widely and often in international waters. National management of tuna stocks would never work, therefore, and since the late 1960s, there has been an international organisation, ICCAT, to take international decisions instead. This is not a blog about fishing, but it is a blog about international organisations and the experience of ICCAT tells us a lot.

What we find is that ICCAT has not worked. Its aim is “to co-operate in maintaining the populations of these fishes at levels which will permit the maximum sustainable catch for food and other purposes”, but from the present state of the tuna population it is clearly failing to meet its aim.

What redress is there? How can ICCAT be brought back to doing what it should have been doing all along, namely conserving tuna stocks?

There is no parliamentary assembly in which these issues can be raised. The only bodies represented in ICCAT are national governments: there is no role for people with a political mandate other than that of the governments themselves. In effect, ICCAT is in the hands of fisheries protection officials. The first step in ensuring proper representation has not been taken.

The second step in ensuring proper representation has not been taken either. The ICCAT system does not include a court in which decisions of the officials can be challenged on the grounds that they are in breach of the ICCAT rules. The people who judge whether the officials of ICCAT are doing a good job are the officials of ICCAT.

But the interest in conserving tuna stocks goes way beyond the officials in the ICCAT system. If tuna stocks are to be protected, ICCAT itself needs to change.

What we see in ICCAT is purest intergovernmentalism at work. Governments are free to act without the awkward incumbrances of public opinion or the rule of law. This, in the world of the euroscepticism, is international decision-making the way it should be. I, along with anyone who really cares about saving fish stocks for future generations, beg to differ.

Two points about Afghanistan

2009-11-11T11:50:00.001Z

George W Bush won the 2000 presidential election arguing that America should turn away from the nation-building efforts that had characterised Bill Clinton’s foreign policy and focus more narrowly on specifically American interests around the world. His immediate focus was China, which he saw as a “strategic rival”, leading to crises such as the downed American navy surveillance plane that was forced to land in Hainan after a collision with a Chinese fighter jet in April 2001.

His attention was forced back to the Middle East by the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Centre and on Washington DC, at which point the neo-cons in his administration had a pretext for regime change in Iraq and America found itself back in nation-building on a scale even Bill Clinton would never have contemplated. Before the war in Iraq, of course, there was the war in Afghanistan and the removal from power of the Taliban. That war in Afghanistan is still with us (and with the Afghans), as are the nation-building efforts.

Hamid Karzai has been re-elected as Afghan president, which was a clear goal of western policy. Every country has a president, so Afghanistan must have one too; no matter that his government is rotten and corrupt, winning a fraudulent election that in many parts of the country did not really happen at all. This is nation-building.

It would have been better to have had a policy of democracy-building instead. Politics should start from the bottom with local elections, before rushing to elect a national president. Democracy needs to be based on the foundations of local participation, rather than suspended from international intervention from above. Nick Horne, a former UN official in Afghanistan, puts it like this:

“Afghanistan requires fundamental political reform — a stronger parliament so that power can be shared between Afghanistan’s myriad ethnicities, who can hold the executive to account; and decentralisation to enable Afghans to participate in governance within their communities — something much more in keeping with Afghan traditions.”

(Read his whole article here.)

The obsession with national politics is obscuring the more important concern about politics as such. Politics can, and must, exist at levels other than the national.

My second point about Afghanistan is the same one, but applied to the western armies themselves.

Given the current failure of strategy – 8 years of war and no closer to victory – politicians in Britain, America and elsewhere are thinking about what to do next. One idea is another surge, sending a lot more soldiers to the battlefield to try to win the war. Another idea is to redefine what victory means, abandoning the idea of creating a western-style liberal democracy where one has never existed before and settling instead for stability. If that means that the Taliban gets back into power and oppresses women again as it did before, then that is a price worth paying if it means an end to the flow of casualties back to Wootton Bassett and Dover Air Force Base.

Whatever decision is finally reached, about whether to escalate or withdraw, it is essential that the decision is taken and implemented collectively. A number of the problems that exist at the moment arise from a patchy and uneven implementation of the current policy. Some countries are willing to send soldiers to fight in Afghanistan, while others see their contingents as there to build schools and direct the traffic. One does not look at the western military presence in Afghanistan and see a coherent determination to prevail.

Barack Obama won his election to the presidency promising to re-engage with America’s allies around the world. Here is his test: can he assemble a collective international understanding and commitment to a new Afghan policy, or will he merely be able to lead America and one or two friends? Will he establish an American policy on Afghanistan, or a policy that might actually have the chance of success?

Six pledges by David Cameron

2009-11-05T14:22:00.001Z

The speech by Conservative leader David Cameron yesterday dropped the previous commitment to a referendum on the Lisbon treaty and replaced it with six pledges that he aims to achieve in the course of the next parliament. (Read the speech here.) Arch-opponents of the EU like Daniel Hannan and Roger Helmer have protested about the end of the referendum commitment, but David Cameron has recognised that the only thing a referendum on Lisbon could do would be to drive Britain to the margins of Europe: it wouldn’t actually get the Lisbon treaty changed.

His six pledges are divided into three that Britain can do on its own and three for which it needs the agreement of the other member states. The first three are:

1. A law to ensure that any future pooling of sovereignty within the EU, such as a new treaty or joining the euro, is approved by a referendum. Referendums have increasingly become the norm for constitutional matters in the UK – think of the votes on devolution to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, London and the north east of England, or the promised votes on the euro or the constitutional treaty – so it is hard, on a specifically European basis, to object to this. It is wrong, though, to picture this as a criticism of the EU: no, it is a criticism of the unwritten British constitution. (And theorists of representative democracy might have something to say, along with people concerned about the influence wielded by a biased, unfair media.)

2. A law to ensure that any use of the passerelle clauses in the Lisbon treaty, which replace the voting method of unanimity with QMV in certain policy areas, has to be approved by primary legislation, rather than a simple parliamentary vote. Again, this is a reflection, and a rather damning one, on British parliamentary procedure. So much for the esteem in which Westminster was once held.

3. A law to assert that, in the last resort, the British parliament remains sovereign. We are told that the German constitutional court has already ruled something similar in Germany. The fact that, in Germany, a court has decided this tells us a lot. The court was ruling on the Lisbon treaty and whether it was compatible with the German constitution, and the answer was that it was. The point about where ultimate sovereignty lies arises from an examination of the Lisbon treaty, and the conclusion reached in Germany could be reached here already. (If the German court had reached a different conclusion, it might have had words to say about the Lisbon treaty as a result.) For a law to be passed in the UK to confirm what the German court has already identified would be about as meaningful as passing a law to confirm that London is the capital of the UK. Some people might find comfort in such a law, but it would merely state something that is already an objective fact.

(There is a school of thought that interprets Mr Cameron’s rather vague remarks on this point as meaning that UK law should become superior to EU law. If that is really what is meant, that would be tantamount to passing a law for Britain to leave the European Union, and that would surely be in profound contradiction with point 1 above.)

All of these three proposals are purely domestic laws. They are entirely within the capacity of the British parliament to agree. The next three proposals are changes to European laws, and would need to be agreed by all 27 member states.

4. An opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights. It is already the case in the Lisbon treaty that the Charter cannot be used in the UK domestic courts, but that does not mean that judgments on cases arising in other member states that rely on the Charter cannot be applied as law in the UK too. I suppose that Mr Cameron thinks that this goes too far, but the legal wording that will deliver such an outcome is surely going to be hard to find and even harder to agree.

5. An opt-out from social and employment policy. Britain used to have an opt-out of this kind written into the Maastricht treaty, but one of the first acts of Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1997 was to get rid of it in the Treaty of Amsterdam. To reinstate it would be harder than David Cameron seems to think, given that social and employment provisions are scattered in several parts of the treaty (making the legal drafting hard) and are considered by the other member states to be an integral part of the single market (making political agreement even harder). Why should the other countries agree to something that will either give the UK a competitive advantage or impair the rights of workers in their own countries? Some small concessions in some areas may be possible, but demanding anything general or major looks as though it will lead to a serious fight.

6. An opt-out from criminal justice measures. In the Amsterdam treaty, where all this started, and in the Lisbon treaty that is about to come into force, the UK already has the right to choose whether or not to take part in European cooperation on criminal justice. Perhaps Mr Cameron’s complaint is that the Labour government has in the past often agreed to take part in these measures and he now wants to reverse those decisions. As with social and employment policy, some small changes might be possible but larger ones will be much harder.

In his speech, David Cameron sought to emphasise that, while the three changes to European laws that he sought required the agreement of the other member states, he did not expect them to refuse given that they would not have an adverse impact on those member states. In that respect, he is wrong.

I have already mentioned the impact on the single market that might come from a British opt-out on social and employment policy. The current British opt-out from the Charter contained in the Lisbon treaty already reduces the rights of non-UK citizens in that it limits their ability to bring cases against the British government on human rights grounds (and there are several million such people in the UK) and any government is going to be interested in the rights and well-being of its expat citizens in other countries. And this blog has written repeatedly about the importance of cooperation in the field of criminal justice and extradition, given that a country that provides a safe haven for criminal fugitives is actually a danger to its neighbours.

In each of these three cases, the impact on the other member states might be small, but it is not non-existent. Any attempt to open negotiations on these points needs to be aware of this fact.

Mr Cameron hopes that his new policy will lead to a settled and sustainable relationship between Britain and the rest of Europe. He will need to satisfy both his anti-European critics within his own party and the governments of the 26 other EU member states. He may find this quite hard.

A deal with the Czechs

2009-11-03T10:48:00.000Z

So, a deal was struck with the Czech Republic to get the Lisbon treaty through. An opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights, along Polish and British lines, was added to the treaty, and that was enough to satisfy the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus. (Read page 15 of the European Council conclusions here.)

Opponents of the European Union say they find the manner in which agreement was reached unedifying: they are right, but for the wrong reasons.

The treaty that will finally come into force is not the quite the treaty that the Czech parliament thought it was voting for. Czech citizens will be denied the right to litigate against their own government on the strength of provisions in the Charter, a denial of rights that will be approved retrospectively by the Czech parliament in the next accession treaty (probably for Croatia). This is a rather clumsy and inelegant way to give or deny rights to citizens, but it is a principle of the European Union that it is for each country to decide for itself how to ratify the treaty and if this is what the Czechs want to do, they are entitled to do it.

The argument put forward by federalists that member states have obligations towards each other even in the way in which they ratify the treaty still holds good, and indeed gets extra force from the Czech example. It remains an error on the part of the European convention not to have considered the ratification procedures as an intrinsic part of the whole treaty-drafting process. If ever there is to be another treaty, not only the content but also the manner of ratification needs to be thought about too.

Two other observations arising from the Czech experience. First, the opt-out demanded by President Klaus was entirely unnecessary. His concern was to ensure that the Beneš Decrees could not be overturned by the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and that therefore the Charter had to be disconnected from the Czech courts.

The Beneš Decrees were established in the aftermath of the second world war and the expulsion from what was then Czechoslovakia of the ethnic Germans who had lived there. The rights of the expelled to return and reclaim property were annulled by these decrees, and there is an insistent lobby in Germany and Austria, composed of these expelled Sudeten Germans and their descendants, that they should be overturned.

An analysis of the issue by Professor Steve Peers, of the University of Essex, published by Statewatch argues convincingly that the Charter could not be applied anyway. It has been established by the European Court of Justice that EU law, of which the Charter is part, only applies to member states after they joined the EU. It cannot be backdated. The Beneš Decrees therefore, because they date from the 1940s, predate Czech membership of the EU and are beyond the reach of the Charter. (Read Steve Peers’ briefing here.)

A second point relates to the intervention of the Czech president in this matter at all. The Czech constitution, like most national constitutions within the EU, requires ratification of the treaty by parliament, with, as with all other laws, a final signature by the head of state. The presidential signature was conceived of as a symbolic, procedural act, and not the expression of a political opinion. UK law only comes into force when it has received Royal Assent, for example, but that does not mean that the Queen has a veto over all Acts of parliament.

However, the Czech president, who unlike the British Queen has an electoral mandate of some kind, has chosen to interpret the constitution differently. He has turned his duty to sign legislation into a right, and has imposed his views upon the country against the will of a majority in the parliament.

What this shows is that systems of government, even those founded upon written constitutions, are dynamic systems, not static ones. It is not possible to define precisely how a political system will work in advance. The argument put forward by some federalists that there is a profound difference between a set of treaties and a constitution looks more theoretical than practical, in this light. In reality, there is a continuous spectrum of political documents, and the transition from treaties to constitution will be gradual and not dramatic in its effects. Some federalists may have oversold the consequences of having a constitution; many eurosceptics have certainly exaggerated the dangers.

Expats and MPs

2009-11-02T11:34:00.000Z

President Sarkozy has floated the idea of having French MPs to represent French people abroad. There are hundreds of thousands of French citizens living in the UK – London is now the seventh largest French city – and they currently have little voice in French politics. Candidate Sarkozy came to London to campaign for votes during the presidential election – French expats in the UK are probably more favourably disposed to the centre-right than the average French voter at home – and now he thinks about extending the principle.

In Italy, there already are parliamentary seats for expatriate voters, and in a narrow election they may well have made a difference. In the first years after communism, Hungary considered setting up polling stations among the ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania, but to do so would have caused a major dispute with Romania and so they wisely did not press ahead.

Giles Tremlett in the Guardian today welcomes the proposal. (Read the story here.) As a long time resident of Spain, he pays taxes there but has no vote: as a long-term expat from the UK, he has no vote here either. So where does he have a vote? The answer is nowhere, as far as national elections are concerned. (He has a vote in municipal and European elections, thanks to the Maastricht treaty, but as everyone reading this blog should know by now, the issues of tax and spend are decided nationally and not by the EU.)

The simplest and most straightforward change would be to extend the right to vote in national elections to long-term legal residents. Within the EU, this could be done on the basis of mutual confidence among the member states: ideally, there would be a treaty change but there is not much enthusiasm for another one of those in the near future.

As Giles Tremlett observes, the current system of denying the vote to long-term foreign residents makes a travesty of the principle of no taxation without representation. He has found another example where the principles of democracy and national sovereignty are in conflict: as ever, faced with such a conflict, this blog chooses democracy.