scholarly journals The odd couple: analyzing United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and Italian Five Stars Movement’s (FSM’s) European Union (EU)-opposition in the European Parliament (EP)

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedetta Carlotti

Since the late 2000s economic and immigration crises are testing the European Union (EU). Such challenges have opened up a period of radical change for the EU, among them, the Brexit referendum that will radically change EU’s geography. This turmoil is mirrored by the last European Parliament (EP) election results; extreme right- and left-wing parties succeeded in the electoral competition at the expense of their mainstream counterpart. These forces are generally labelled as ‘Eurosceptic’, even though the literature still lacks a clear-cut definition of Euroscepticism. Starting from this observation, this paper reviews the conceptual evolution of Euroscepticism, stressing its pros and cons and proposes a reconceptualization of it in terms of EU-opposition such that the objects of criticism are clearly identified as the EU-policies, the EU-elite, the EU-regime, and the EU-community. The paper applies ‘EU-opposition’ to examine empirically the activity of two ‘Eurosceptic’ parties in the EP: the Italian Five Stars Movement (FSM) and the British United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), using the speeches they deliver in the arena of the EP as the main source of data. From the analysis, it can be seen that UKIP and FSM are an odd couple working in the same party group in the EP, and the concept of EU-opposition is able to better disentangle UKIP and FSM’s criticism of the EU.

Author(s):  
Federico Fabbrini

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Withdrawal Agreement of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU). The Withdrawal Agreement, adopted on the basis of Article 50 Treaty on European Union (TEU), spells out the terms and conditions of the UK departure from the EU, including ground-breaking solutions to deal with the thorniest issues which emerged in the context of the withdrawal negotiations. Admittedly, the Withdrawal Agreement is only a part of the Brexit deal. The Agreement, in fact, is accompanied by a connected political declaration, which outlines the framework of future EU–UK relations. The chapter then offers a chronological summary of the process that led to the adoption of the Withdrawal Agreement, describing the crucial stages in the Brexit process — from the negotiations to the conclusion of a draft agreement and its rejection, to the extension and the participation of the UK to European Parliament (EP) elections, to the change of UK government and the ensuing constitutional crisis, to the new negotiations with the conclusion of a revised agreement, new extension, and new UK elections eventually leading to the departure of the UK from the EU.


2018 ◽  
pp. 10-37
Author(s):  
Barbara Curyło

In the discussion on the future of the EU, the topic of differentiated integration has become a strategic issue, with different variants beginning to appear as modus operandi of the European Union, which has become a subject of controversy among Member States. Significantly, the debate on differentiated integration began to be accompanied by reflections on disintegration. This article attempts to define disintegration on the assumption that it should be defined through the prism of integration, and that such a defining process can not be limited to concluding a one-way contrast between disintegration versus integration and vice versa. This is due to the assumption that the European Union is a dichotomous construct in which integration and disintegration mutually exclude and complement each other. This dichotomy is most evident in the definition of integration and disintegration through the prism of Europeanisation top-down and bottom-up processes that generate, reveal, visualize, stimulate integration mechanisms what allows to diagnose their determinants.


Author(s):  
Panagiotis Delimatsis

Secrecy and informality rather than transparency traditionally reign trade negotiations at the bilateral, regional, and multilateral levels. Yet, transparency ranks among the most basic desiderata in the grammar of global governance and has been regarded as positively related to legitimacy. In the EU’s case, transparent trade diplomacy is quintessential for constitutional—but also for broader political—reasons. First, even if trade matters fall within the EU’s exclusive competence, the EU executive is bound by the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) to inform the European Parliament, the EU co-legislator, in regular intervals. Second, transparency at an early stage is important to address public reluctance, suspicion, or even opposition regarding a particular trade deal. This chapter chronicles the quest for and turning moments relating to transparency during the EU trade negotiations with Canada (CETA); the US (TTIP), and various WTO members on services (TiSA).


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 4772
Author(s):  
Hanna Klikocka ◽  
Aneta Zakrzewska ◽  
Piotr Chojnacki

The article describes and sets the definition of different farm models under the categories of being family, small, and large-scale commercial farms. The distinction was based on the structure of the workforce and the relationship between agricultural income and the minimum wage. Family farms were dominated by the farming family providing the labour and their income per capita exceeded the net minimum wage in the country. The larger commercial farms feature a predominance of hired labour. Based on surveys, it was found that in 2016 in the EU-28 there were 10,467,000 farms (EU-13—57.3%, EU-15—42.7%). They carried out agricultural activities on an area of 173,338,000 ha (EU-13—28.5%, EU-15—71.5%). Countries of the EU-28 generated a standard output (SO) amounting to EUR 364,118,827,100 (EU-13—17.2% and EU-15—82.8%). After the delimitation, it was shown that small farming (70.8%) was the predominant form of management in the European Union (EU-13—88.2% and EU-15—79.8%) compared to family farming (18.4%) (EU-13—10.5% and EU-15—29%). In most EU countries the largest share of land resources pertains to small farms (35.6%) and family farms (38.6%) (UAA—utilised agricultural area of farms).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman Senninger

Governments redistribute ever larger shares of their budgets to enhance the economic performance of specific areas within their jurisdiction. However, there is little evidence about one of the most fundamental questions arising from such place-based policies: Do citizens reward politicians for funding that benefits their local environment? To answer this question, I turn to the European Union and leverage quasi-experimental data from an initiative that distributed vouchers to European municipalities to establish free and high-quality WiFI connectivity before the European Parliament election in 2019. Moreover, I analyze geolocated data about beneficiaries of two major European Union funds, European Parliament election results along with register data from polling stations, and a city-wide survey experiment in Denmark. The results show that European place-based policy has little to no impact on turnout and Eurosceptic voting in European Parliament elections. The findings are discussed in the light of the recently introduced European Union recovery fund to combat economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.


Author(s):  
Petr YAKOVLEV

The decision on Britain’s secession from the European Union, taken by the British Parliament and agreed by London and Brussels, divided the Union history into “before” and “after”. Not only will the remaining member states have to “digest” the political, commercial, economic and mental consequences of parting with one of the largest partners. They will also have to create a substantially new algorithm for the functioning of United Europe. On this path, the EU is confronted with many geopolitical and geo-economic challenges, which should be answered by the new leaders of the European Commission, European Council, and European Parliament.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (16) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna J Young ◽  
Denis Coulombier ◽  
Dragoslav Domanović ◽  
Hervé Zeller ◽  
Céline M Gossner ◽  
...  

West Nile virus (WNV) infection is notifiable in humans and equids in the European Union (EU). An area where a human case is detected is considered affected until the end of the mosquito transmission season (week 48) and blood safety measures have to be implemented. We used human and equine case notifications between 2013 and 2017 to define the WNV distribution in the EU and to investigate the relevance of using equine cases as a complementary trigger for blood safety measures. Adding areas with equine cases to the definition of an affected area would have a major impact on blood safety measures. Adding areas with equine cases where human cases have been reported in the past would increase the timeliness of blood safety measures with only a limited impact. Although the occurrence of human and/or equine cases confirms virus circulation in the EU, no evidence was found that occurrence of equine cases leads to human cases and vice versa. We conclude that information about equine data should contribute to raising awareness among public health experts and trigger enhanced surveillance. Further studies are required before extending the definition of affected areas to areas with human and/or equine cases.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomasz Kubin

The exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union (so-called Brexit) is one of the most important events in the process of European integration. It has a lot of extremely remarkable implications – both for the EU and for the United Kingdom. Among other, Brexit will affect the security of the United Kingdom and the EU. The aim of the study is to answer the research question: how will Britain’s exit from the EU influence the EU common security and defence policy? In order to answer this question, the factors that are most relevant to the United Kingdom’s significance for the EU’s security and defence policy will be identified. This will show how the EU’s potential of the security and defence policy will change, when the UK leaves this organisation. The most important conclusions are included in the summary.


Author(s):  
Kreuschitz Viktor ◽  
Nehl Hanns Peter

This concluding chapter explores EU's anti-subsidy instruments, which are designed to address subsidization by other WTO members. After a hesitant start, the EU since 1995 has progressively used the AS instrument to act against subsidization by third-country governments. While initially focusing on relatively clear-cut export subsidies, over time the EU has more and more also countervailed domestic subsidy programmes. This is clearest in the AS cases initiated against China during the past five years, where the majority of the countervailed programmes have consisted of domestic subsidies. In this context, it is important to note that the findings of specificity reached by the EU in cases concerning China are largely based on the use of facts available, resulting from the imposition of very high burdens of proof on the Chinese government that domestic subsidies in fact are not specific.


Author(s):  
Eleanor Sharpston

The chapter examines the role played by the Court of Justice of the European Union (the CJEU) in ruling authoritatively on the meaning of European Union legislation. The EU legislative process differs from the parliamentary process in the United Kingdom for good reason. Within the European Union, there are many different traditions of how such drafting should be done; whilst, at EU level, multinationalism and multilingualism have a significant impact on what emerges as the final text. The chapter explains the difficulties encountered and gives illustrations from the Court’s case-law of instances where the Court has either decided not to take steps that might be construed as ‘legislating’ or, conversely, has gone to the limits of ‘constructive re-interpretation’. The chapter concludes by asking how far the Court should ‘bend’ a legislative text.


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