Refugee protection in Europe: Some contemporary challenges

On 23 January 2024, the European Studies Centre (ESC) discussed the challenges of refugee protection in Europe and of the implementation of international conventions at sea. The two speakers for this seminar were Catherine Briddick, Andrew W Mellon Associate Professor of International Human Rights and Refugee Law and a fellow of St Antony's College, and Steven Haines, Professor of Public International Law in the University of Greenwich. Othon Anastasakis, ESC Director, chaired the seminar. While Briddick focused on the challenges of refugee protection in Europe, Haines discussed his efforts and those of his colleagues to draft the Geneva Declaration for Human Rights at Sea.

Briddick’s discussion was focused on the application of the EU’s common asylum system to women who have experienced, or who are at risk of, gender-based persecution. Relevant to EU law are a range of international legal instruments, including the 1951 Refugee Convention, the Istanbul Convention, and European Convention on Human Rights. Article 78 (1) of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union further provides for the development of a common policy on asylum, subsidiary protection and temporary protection. According to Briddick, however, the EU Directive 2011/95/EU excludes EU citizens. The definition of a ‘particular social group’ is also textually narrowed, and grounds for exclusion are expanded.

ESC Annual Lecture - Beyond Civil Society: Renewing the traditions of reform in Europe

On the 30th of May 2023, the European Studies Centre hosted its Annual Lecture. This year’s speaker was Charles S. Maier, the Leverett Saltonstall Research Professor of History at Harvard University. Maier studied at St Antony’s from 1960-61 between his bachelor’s and PhD at Harvard. He had published a number of influential books, including Recasting Bourgeois Europe (1975), Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany (1997), and the Project State and its Rivals (2023). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations and has received the Commander’s Cross of the German Federal Republic and the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and the Arts. The ESC’s director, Othon Anastasakis (St Antony’s College, Oxford), chaired the event.

Maier’s lecture was entitled “Beyond Civil Society: Renewing the traditions of reform in Europe.” Interrogating the historical record, he argued that the fashionable slogans of governance and civil society need to be rebalanced by a renewed agenda for state/EU political institutions.

Maier began his lecture by reflecting on the political changes that have taken place in Europe and around the world since 1989. Transformations of political language, he said, provide a good window into analysing how politics have changed. The key concept in the Europe of 1989 was “civil society.” The term denoted a far more intense engagement with democracy than, for example, the phrase “parliamentary democracy.” Václav Havel famously said that traditional parliamentary democracy could not protect freedom without the help of a thriving civil society.

The impact of the new geopolitical context on European trade policy

On May 19th, The European Studies Centre welcomed Ignacio Garcia-Bercero to deliver a speech entitled “The impact of the new geopolitical context on European trade policy.” Garcia-Bercero is the Director in charge of Multilateral Affairs, Strategy, Analysis and Evaluation at the Directorate-General for Trade in the European Commission. Active within the European Commission since 1987, he participated in the Uruguay Round negotiations and was the Chief Negotiator for the EU-Korea and EU-India Free Trade Agreements.

The event was chaired by Othon Anastasakis (St Antony’s College, Oxford) and Jonathan Scheele (SEESOX) acted as a discussant. As the talk was convened jointly by the European Studies Centre and the Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre, Roy Allison (St Antony’s College, Oxford) was also present to ask questions before the official Q&A session.

Garcia-Bercero began his presentation by outlining the connection between the global trading system and worsening geopolitical tensions. In 2021, he co-authored a document on the direction in which EU trade policy should develop in the context of worsening US-China relations. The paper made three important arguments. Firstly, the WTO needs to be reformed. Secondly, there ought to be a closer connection between EU trade policy and EU economic priorities. Thirdly, the EU must put together a toolbox for autonomous economic action that will enable the body to act more assertively when faced with pressure. These proposals combine openness, sustainability, and assertiveness as goals for European trade policy.

The European Parliament’s engagement in international human rights: Achievements, limitations and prospects

On February 21^st 2023, the European Studies Centre welcomed Dr Eamonn Noonan (EU Visiting Fellow, St Antony’s College, Oxford) to present the European Parliament’s role in promoting human rights internationally from the 1980s to the present. The presentation was chaired by Dr Hartmut Mayer (St Peter’s College, Oxford).

Using annual reports from the European Parliament, Noonan summarizes elements of continuity and change in the Parliament’s work through the decades. There is an interplay between three categories of human rights: (1) civil and political, (2) economic and social, and (3) solidarity and international cohesion. This division roughly corresponds to the slogan of the French Revolution: liberté, egalité, fraternité. In foreign policy, civil and political rights dominated in the 1980s. True, the European European Community from its foundation was engaged with social rights; the Treaty of Rome, for example, prohibited companies from cutting workers’ wages in certain circumstances. But these policies were not part of foreign policy. It was also true that the Council of Europe placed greater emphasis on political rights than social rights. The European Union ultimately developed its own Charter of Fundamental Rights, in 2000, and this included social rights.

The Lost Future and How to Reclaim It

On February 7^th 2023, the European Studies Centre hosted Tony Barber (Financial Times), Gavin Jacobson (New Statesman), and Helen Margetts (Oxford Internet Institute) to launch Jan Zielonka’s new book The Lost Future and How to Reclaim It (Yale University Press, 2023). The panel was chaired by ESC Director Othon Anastasakis.

The panel started with Professor Zielonka, from our college, introducing his main argument: democracy is myopic, no matter who is in charge. In terms of space, democracy is myopic because it is confined to the borders of nation-states although most current problems are local or transnational. In terms of time, democracy is short-sighted because it is a prisoner of current voters and when tough decisions are to be made, the future is being sacrificed. The internet revolution plays an important role here because it changed dramatically the notion of time and space, but democracy hardly took notice. We need to empower public actors that benefited from the digital revolution most or else democracy will falter. In essence, we need to gradually move from the world of states to world of networks, local, national and transnational.

In Jacobson’s interpretation, the book’s argument can be read as a response to the unresolved problems of democracy from the 1990s. Of course, the question of how to solve the problem of time began in the second century at least. Polybius, for example, wrote that all governments seemed to collapse due to an eternal cycle of monarch, kingship, tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, mob rule, Caeserism, and chaos. Then, during the French Revolution, the acceleration of industry, culture, and technology was recognized as the tool to stabilize society and prevent its collapse. Acceleration reached its climax in the 1990s during the Cold War because, here, change was the only part of politics that was permanent and certain. The era created circulations of capitalism, confining life to repetitions in the grocery store, at work, and in other everyday aspects of industrial privilege. Here, time and space conflated together because there was an eternal present moment with no “elsewhere” to seek.

Reparations and the search for justice

The European Studies Centre began the new year with a presentation by Jakob Zollmann (WZB, St Antony’s College, Oxford) with Patrick Cohrs (University of Florence; St Antony’s College, Oxford) acting as discussant and Paul Betts (St Antony’s College, Oxford) as chair. The event on 31st January 2023 was entitled “Reparations and the search for justice: International law and the Anglo-German and Polish-German mixed arbitral tribunals (1919–c.1932).” Zollmann’s insights into WWI reparations form part of a planned book on international law between 1648 and 1940.

The speaker began his presentation by introducing the material and legal impacts of the First World War. Millions of people lost property through both damage and requisitioning, the goods ranging from entire companies to hotel linens and towels. Germany’s case was particularly serious: 40% of the country’s income was generated abroad, and it lost three times as much money from confiscation by the Allied powers than vice versa, with the Allies appropriating two thirds of the country’s capital stock. On the other hand, the war largely took place on Allied territory, and so in its closing months, public pressure grew to make Germany pay.

Allied discourse framed reparations as the basis of a just post-war settlement, generating a novel idea: that wronged individuals should not be left defenceless before their own or another state. The idea completely changed old notions regarding international law. Private individuals could now bring their case before mixed arbitral tribunals, profoundly shocking German leaders and scholars.

Mixed arbitral tribunals (MATs) were set up by peace treaties to determine the sums to be paid out to claimants. A core provision in the peace treaties was that allied governments reserved the right to retain and liquidate rights and interests in their territory belonging to German nationals, claiming them as reparations for the war. At same time, Germany was forced to restore the confiscated property of Allied nationals – as well as its nationals – in its own territory.

Italy and the Future of the European Union

On the 29th of November 2022, the European Studies Centre hosted a talk entitled “Italy and the Future of the European Union.” The panel was chaired by Anna Chimenti (Academic Visitor, Saint Antony’s College, Oxford) and was attended by three speakers: Timothy Garton Ash (St Antony’s College, Oxford), Giuliano Amato (former Prime Minister of Italy), and Maurizio Molinari (Editor in Chief, La Repubblica). The current Ambassador of Italy to the United Kingdom, Indigo Lambertini, said a few words by way of introduction. He reminisced about meeting Molinari in Washington after the 9/11 attacks and credited the influence of Garton Ash with inspiring his diplomatic career. He highlighted instability both inside and outside the EU, saying that within his eight weeks as ambassador to the UK, he had already seen two Italian and two British governments. 

The first speaker, Garton Ash, noted that he himself is not an expert on Italy and attended the panel only upon Amato’s insistence. Instead of delivering a presentation, he posed a “set of European questions” to the speakers. He contextualised these within the framework of two books: Molinari’s Il ritorno degli imperii (The Return of Empires) and his own From the Ruins of Empire. The whole history of Europe in the last 30 years, he hypothesized, was contained between these two books. 

 The first set of questions regarded the war in Ukraine. Will Italian military, economic, and diplomatic support for Ukraine last under Prime Minister Meloni? And, taking a broader geopolitical view, what position will Italy take on the restructuring, reform, and enlargement of the EU? Garton Ash pointed out that former Prime Minister Draghi was one of the first EU leaders to propose admitting Ukraine into the organisation, and supported the EU’s eastward expansion into the Balkans, Georgia, and Moldova. Before the war, Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz shared only the ambition to admit the Balkan countries. In his recent Prague speech, however, Scholz espoused Draghi’s vision.