Tag Archives: European Commission

Burka bans, Brussels and bended knees

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…the niqab is a feminist dilemma… and a European one…

Eurogoblin today reported that the three Presidents of the EU – Council President Van Rompuy, Commission President Barroso and Parliament President Buzek met with religious leaders from across Europe to discuss poverty and social inclusion.


Image of leaders family photo from Flickr under Creative Commons licence

What’s faith got to do with poverty and social exclusion?
While it is possible to argue that it should be the duty of all to mitigate against poverty and social exclusion, we have a choice.
Either, we say that the state should provide and by means of “fairer” or “progressive” taxation that can be spent for the good of all.
Or we say that the Big Society will provide, because as responsible citizens we should rail against and commit ourselves to the fight against poverty and social exclusion.
In most Member States the reality is somewhere between the two – the state takes some tax from us in the name of that purpose, but as it is not hypothecated we’ve no idea what percentage actually goes on these projects locally, regionally, nationally.  All we do know is that a huge number of people are homeless or do not feel themselves to be part of the wider community.
And the reality is that it is often faith groups that step into the breech.

Let me give you a small and very parochial example.
I’ve spent today at the Rare Breeds Centre – a kind of farm zoo and current home of the Tamworth Two.
This was the Ashford Baptist Church toddler group outing.  Some anonymous donations via the church and lift-sharing arranged by the ladies from the church who run the toddler group made it possible for a big group of us to go out for the day, with our packed lunches and have fun playing at the farm without having to pay for anything.
Now this may not sound like much, but the majority of people there don’t have holidays, don’t go for days out because incomes are low and costs when several children are involved just aren’t compatible.

In fact, most of the toddler groups in Ashford town centre are run by faith groups – not religious, in that we don’t require membership of a church to attend and we don’t “spout religion” at people who come.
But we do use the church hall, the organisers tend to be from one church or another and the children’s holiday club which is based around bible stories is advertised.  There’s no obligation to attend that either.  I don’t actually attend the church that runs this toddler group but I do approve of its open, inclusive approach and that it genuinely welcomes everyone, of all faiths and none.
There is a non-religious Sure Start centre, and a toddler group was started that declared that it was “an alternative to all the church-based play groups” but I can no longer find any details about it online.  The situation is a little different for play schools for pre-schoolers, not least because 12-15 hours worth of state funding is available.

That’s not to mention the soup kitchens, the event organisation, the small but helpful charitable efforts  that almost go unnoticed generally but help to keep heads above water.
So in these ways, we try to help with the physical needs of those around us.  Jesus commands us to this  - give him that asks of us our coats our shirts also.  There’s no sin in being poor – although the comments about workhouses etc. on the government’s spending cuts website suggests that some people today feel there should be.
Jesus also spends a lot of the sermon on the mount talking about the poor being blessed, the meek inheriting the Earth, everybody selling their possessions, and rich men having less than a camel-through-a-needle’s chance of entering Heaven…  Oh and for more on “the poor will always be with you”, see this link.

But surely it’s not just Christians that do this?
Of course not.  It is just noticably Christian-dominated around here – one of the things we noticed on moving here was the huge number of churches.  I’m sure in other areas of the country there are thriving synagogue toddler groups, muslim women’s get-togethers and more.

I know that charitable works are a requirement of some faiths, and that performing them is not only good for the individual but also good for the community.

But please don’t think that Christians do these things in some kind of effort to earn their place in heaven.  If you read the Bible, we don’t have seven things we have to do to (nor do we have to follow the rules of the old covenant in Leviticus), that just not the Christian position.
While some parts of the church have attempted to create structures and rules to make it easier to understand actually reading the New Testament shows how hard Jesus and the early Christians worked to say – no, that’s not ever going to be enough, God forgives you, accept it and that’s it.
And so when it comes to charity, we do these things because God himself has paid the price for the sins we have commited and we want to praise him and make his world a bit better.  going to church reminds us of this, because just like everyone else we find it hard to find time and hard to feel motivated all the time.

But you don’t have to be a person of faith to do this?
Of course not.  Humanism is after all placing the human at the centre where others place God.  But it is humankind and not the self that needs to be the centre.
And if it is hard to feel motivated without external help as a person of faith, imagine the sheer bloody self-motivation required to do it without and keep it on track and not self-serving.  It would take a stronger person than me to do that.

Is there a place for faith in the EU?
But I digress.
Does religion have a place in the EU?  Indubitably.

Look at the fuss about the Constitutional Treaty and whether there should be a reference to religion within it.

One religion?  It is indisputable that the present Europe was shaped by the Christian faith, Catholic and Protestant, and also by the enlightenment and the freedom to question (itself part of the true nature of protestantism) from which modern atheism takes its roots.

But even as a practicing Christian I’m still not sure that the Constitutional Treaty should have had a reference to this (and at the end, the Lisbon Treaty doesn’t).

I don’t think that we can always claim that all decisions taken in a state can truly reflect the ethos on which the state evolved.  To claim that we do everything in the EU on the basis of our faith/ faiths is to deny the nature of compromise by which decision-making to cover many conflicting and competing interests take place.  While it’d be great to think that all the politicians and policymakers were doing as Mark Greene suggests and remembering in their work that they are a “might policymaker for God”, I’m pretty clear that the UK expenses scandal shows that it is all too easy to forget how to do the right thing.

But the future of Europe looks multifaith rather than secular.
For all that we might try to draft rules of public engagement that exclude religion, that we might ban people in public office from actually mentioning the thing that shapes, inspires and drives them, most people across the EU have some sort of belief.
This may be in something ranging from “spirituality” and the supernatural, through humanism to the deification of science or money, to agnosticism, deism, right through to following an established faith.
Human beings bend at the knee.  This is not a design flaw.
How on earth can we expect decent policymaking if asking people to deny their fundamental belief systems?

And that brings me to the burka question…

Should women in the EU wear the niqab or the burka?
This is a European question in the sense that it is currently being asked all over Europe.

As Eurogoblin pointed out, the recent burqa ban overwhelmingly passed by the French parliament last week (335 votes to 1).
The Belgian lower house voted on a ban in April 2010 (note the handy BBC guide to different veils.
The Dutch were debating this as far back as 2006.
The Spanish parliament is also likely to start debating their own burqa ban this week.

And the UK? Immigration Minister Damian Green has said that any ban on religious clothing would be awfully “un-British”.  And he’s right.
Freedom of the individual is a very British concept and the idea that a woman might be fined as in the Netherlands for wearing something expressing their religion is distasteful.
I’m not sure I’d want to live in a UK that imposed on me whether or not I could wear a sign of my faith outwardly, and if this is a move away from the mealy mouthed illiberalism that clamped down on it through uniform policy, sudden changes to health and safety policy and statements from the NSS.
Besides, have you been to the West End in London?  This particular Nation of Shopkeepers could find itself hit in the profits if rich middle eatern visitors could not dress as the wish to shop.

So there’s no common approach.

Is the burka ban a European issue?  It seems Vivianne Reding thinks not – I hear that when asked about it, she said that this was an issue for national governments and not something that she would touch with a bargepole.

But as the Commissioner for women and equality (and fundamental rights, and justice), Commissioner Reding also needs to think about the burka as a feminist issue.
And that’s a dilemma.
On the one hand, equal rights means the right not to be subjected to men’s control, nor objectified.  Women should be able to work – or not to work – as much as they like, and so should men.  They should be able to dress as they want to dress…
Ah.
Because what if a woman want to celebrate her faith and her devotion to her God by wearing a headscarf, a veil, a chador, burka, hijab, niqab etc. ?
What if she’s not being oppressed into it by bullying male members of her family or her husband but has chosen freely and in full knowledge of the implications of what she is doing both religious and worldly to separate herself from the world?
Surely fighting for a woman’s right to self-determinism extends to her right to cover up if she wishes too?

So these are hugely tricky issues.  But we don’t live in the lyrics of “Imagine”, we live in the real world in all its messy, diverse glory.
God inspired, uplifts and makes us more than we can be by ourselves.  Europe needs that to flourish, no matter what flavour that inspiration is.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Having our say in Europe – but will we get anywhere?

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You may not have caught it on the main news bulletins today (though kudos to Radio 4′s World at One for covering it) but today saw the launch of the European Citizens’ Initiative. 
Despite the name, which has slight Orwellian overtones in English, the policy which was introduced under the newly in force Lisbon Treaty is actually designed to increase the direct access that citizens have to the EU level.

So what do you have to do to get your idea considered by the EU?  Well, the Treaty says you need:
- one million citizens;
- a third of EU countries represented amongst the million (so nine at the moment)..

But it’s not as simple as that.  Today’s announcement was related to the clarification of the rules that the European Commission has just launched following several months of public consultation. 
Presumably in order to stop the accusations of token representation of some countries by having one or two signed up (see the formation of the ECR Group in the European Parliament for the type of debate I’m talking about), the Commission proposes that the number of signatures from each country must be proportional to its size – “4500 for the four smallest countries up to 72,000 for the largest, Germany”.  So if I’ve got, say, 60,000 Germans in amongst my million, that may be an awful lot of individualsbut not enough to count as having representation from Germany and being able to tick off Germany as a Member State where interest has been expressed?
I guess what’s trying to be overcome is the idea of having 995,000 French farmers, or British hunt supporters or Greek public servants or Danish students or whatever on board with the remaining 5000 made up from a ragbag of other people who think the idea is interesting.
But is there anything so wrong with that?
Inside a country, if one part of that country felt so strongly about a specific issue, would it really escape discussion at the national level…?  Or are other Member States with more federal structures (that’s federal as it’s really meant, with decision-making at clearly defined and subsidiarity-applied levels, rather than the perjorative sense in which UK Eurosceptics tend to use it) immune to discussion issues at the wrong level of decision-making?  
And in the internet age, it might actually be quite straight forward to get 4500 Cypriots interested in something (via Twitter, Facebook etc.) whereas 72,000 is a big ask for anyone – this seems a small country bias? 

The Commission is proposing quite a sensible mid-way stage – “once at least 300 000 signatures from citizens in a minimum of three countries have been collected, the petition will be registered with the Commission and a decision made on whether the initiative falls within the scope of its powers. From that point, the organisers would have one year to provide the outstanding signatures”.
As Michael Mann pointed out on the radio earlier “if a million people called for Mickey Mouse to be President, we couldn’t do that as it is not within the Commission’s powers“. Quite.

The antifraud measures are likely to be the ones that cause sensitivity to this idea in the UK.  We’re used to having to provide our names and addresses for petitions but without a compulsory identity card we are unlikely to have passports on us and as for handing over our National insurance number for a petition… I feel slightly incredulous!  Expect to see headlines about the huge potential for identify fraud with this proposal, ironically just what the Commission are striving to avoid.  If anyone publishes anything on this at all in the UK, of course.

The “who’s the money?” point is a good one though.  It would not be good if this worthy intitiative became an exercise in big companies buying influence.

Finally, once all of the signatures are in place and the request meets the criteria (another is apparently being in the spirit of the EU so I guess that stops one million “federalists” fed up with UK recalcitrants getting together a proposal to kick us out? :) ), then the European Commission has four months “to investigate and decide to pursue legislation, launch a study or forgo further action. It will need to explain its decision publicly“. 
At this point there’s a new feature of decision-making.  Although the Commission is the only Institution with the right of intiative, the idea is that the “proposed rules must be approved by parliament and council”.  This is not the case if, for example, the Commission has some ideas in a White Paper – those might be presented at a Council but they don’t have to be endorsed (I’m happy to be corrected on this!)

I really want to believe that the Commission are going to get some initiatives under this scheme “potentially as early as 2011″.  After all the requirements are setting the bar quite high.
And I hope that there will be a technological level of support for this initiative – will there be a section of the Europa set up to enable this?
My starting point for this is the “petitions” section of the Number Ten website, the UK Prime Minister’s website named after the official residence.  While most petitions tend to get an answer along the lines of “yes the government recognises that this is an important issue and is doing x about it/  which is related to it/ which is nothing really to do with it but the civil servants really hope you won’t notice”, it is important that each petition is on there from a starting point of no one except the originator being signed up to it, and can grow virally (through promotion on subject related internet forums or social media campaigns, mentions in the press, friends telling each other, bake sales etc. etc.) and that the gvernment is seen to be facilitating this.

So that’s the challenge for the Commission now – it needs to be facilitating this process and making it as easy as possible for citizens to meet the criteria, and to be seen to be doing so.  If it succeeds, then it can genuinely say that it is bringing Europe closer to the people.  If not, then the EU remains that thing over there that imposes things on us in the popular perception.  That’s not a challenge I’d want to see end in failure.

Bearing gifts to the Greeks?

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euro

Or Oi! Desmond! No!

So the outcome of the emergency meeting on Greece’s financial situation was – unclear.  A whole lot of commentary by the British press focusing mainly on whether:
1) Greece going bakrupt would mean the end for the Euro;
2) the British taxpayer would be bailing out Greece.
As it turns out, neither happened.  Yet.

A very sensible commentary from the FT’s City editor pointed out that, in the USA, cities and states go bankrupt all the time (California did so recently) but no one talks about the US dollar collapsing as a result.  It’s a big deal yes, but not a ginormous one.

But something had to be done.  Whether explicitly or tacitly, Greece needed to be helped by the stronger Euro countries.
In part this is a Treaty requirement. The Treaty of Rome set out that it is desirable that the Member States regard their economic policies as a matter of common concern. As EUpedia points out, Article 103 stipulated that they should consult each other and the Commission on the measures to be taken in the light of the prevailing circumstances. 
But in the end the risk of the “contagion” effect – making investing in the other Euro countries, which in turn would affect investment in economies such as ours in the UK which have such closely linked economies- meant that there was self-interest as well as altruism in acting. 

So self-interest dictates that something had to be done, and it will be, probably.  The agreement reached was not exactly a master piece of clarity.  But it will do as a starting point and the seriousness with which it is being taken was illustrated by stern words from Angela Merckel and the brilliant commentary by an unnamed German diplomat to the effect that other Eurozone members did not want to see their economies suffer so that the Greeks could have nice lives.

e15546507 image from the must-read www.mailwatch.co.uk

And will the UK have to bail out Greece? 
Peter Mandelson has been in the press recently saying that “talking down” the UK economy (whether that’s -say- to international audiences, for which also read competitors at Davos, or making unflattering comparisons between the UK and Greece’s economies) and he has something of a point, not least because of the contagion effect explained above.
And it seems that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, has been robust in saying that this is a eurozone rather than an EU problem.  But remember what I said about the contagion – it is not in the UK’s interests for the Euro to fail, particularly since – because of the way in which Treaties are written- we are still technically supposed to be lining up to join the Euro and therefore have a convergence plan.

I have not had a chance to read the agreement that’s emerged after the meeting, but I imagine that the text will not shut the door on whole-EU action at some unspecificed future point if the alternative was total economic collapse… and so in that way I suppose the UK taxpayer could at some future point still step in to support the Euro.

But I just can’t see how that corresponds into that headline “Now We Have to Bail Out the Euro”.
Firstly, define “now”?  As far as I can see that’s an inappropriate use of the word.  France and Germany, primarily, seem to be bailing out the Euro.  Not Britain.
But hold on… may be this is a new pro-European “we” that I would not previously have expected from the Daily Express where the impact of the bail out on the French and German taxpayers (amongst others) is being expressed as a kind of pan-European shared pain? Somehow I suspect not…

Was this all fair on Greece?  Criticism of Greece which the Prime Minister has angrily refuted covered everything from alleged lying in accounting to the fact that the retirement age for public servants in Greece is 47. 
47!!!  It’s currently 60 here, going to 65, but I can’t help thinking for my generation we’re going to be minimum 70 and probably til-we-drop before we can think of retiring. 
And Germany – due to a low birthrate and the complete lack of childcare that resulted in women having to make a choice between being out of the labour market and having children or remaining childless in order to work – is also facing a pension crisis.
No wonder that German diplomat was so scathing… not so much Greeks bearing gifts as what must be borne by others to prop their economy up…

The Greek Prime Minister blamed the previous administration for most of the problems – that’s par for the course from most public officials facing problems.
But he also blamed the European Commission for not having kept enough of an eye out and not having stepped in if it expected problems.

Interesting stuff.  That’s what some people I know would call a “Belgian” approach to the EU – if it’s hard to keep your own house in order you call for the EU to provide a solution.  But to blame the Commission for not doing something it’s not supposed to do? And somthing which, if it was proposed that it should do, we’d have an issue with?

Why can’t the British press do something useful like take the Greek prime minister to task for this sort of expansionist approach to the role of the EU rather than print what turned out to be a completely untrue story?  But that’s too much to expect.
 
Although the Daily Express did manage to put out an apology for the ludicrous “EU spouts off about our milk jugs” nonsense they published the other day… well done @EULondonRep!

Gender balanced Commission – my sort of cause

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There’s a rumour going around at the moment that Jose Manuel Barroso might be having some trouble persuading Member States to nominate as many women for the 2009-14 European Commission as were there in 2004-9.
The same old arguments -for example that there are not enough women of sufficient quality for the key roles – have resurfaced.

So a group of eurobloggers, twitters etc. have got together and decided to do something about it…  Here’s the blurb from the site they’ve launched which can be found at www.genderbalancedcommission.eu:

The idea of this website is simple. Every 5 years a new team of European Commissioners is chosen, normally as a result of a messy behind the scenes deal between the Member States. Last time this happened in 2004 we were lucky to end up with 8 female Commissioners. This time around it looks like the gender balance will be even worse.
We believe in gender balance. Neither men nor women should be under-represented in political bodies. Especially not in one of the most important political bodies of the European Union, the European Commission, representing half a billion European citizens. To challenge this we are proposing a Commission of 26 competent women!
Rumours have been circulating that the European Parliament might refuse to approve the team of 27 Commissioners unless it contains at least as many women as the outgoing Commission. We support the European Parliament in doing this, to push for a gender balanced executive, but instead of proposing simple quotas of women, we here put forward individual names from each and every EU member state. We believe that in order to achieve gender equality, women of flesh and blood should be promoted, not only quotas or numbers!

European Voice has now reported on this campaign, and the twitter stream is already tweeting politicians asking if they will support the campaign.

What I like about this campaign is that it’s so sensible and moderate – it’s not demanding that 50 percent of the new Commissioners should be women (this sort of thing tends to lead to accusations of quantity over quality), only one third. 
However, perhaps the unique feature of this campaign is the request that, instead of just backing an initiative about quotas, anyone can suggest a female potential candidate from any of the member states, to demonstrate that a well-qualified and fully female Commission is possible, although with Barroso at the head as he has already been reappointed.
Given recent reports that big hitters in national politics don’t see going to the European Commission as a career-enhancing move (although all the Commissioners that returned home to roles in national governments from the 2004-9 Commission including Lord Mandelson may beg to differ), and the surprise choice of candidate being put forward by Germany showing that the pool of people that can be considered is potentially much bigger than just politicians from the mainstream parties in national politics, there should be no reason that 9 women can’t be found from the number of women in pubic life across the EU.  And if this campaign identifies at least 26, so much the better.

Do web campaigns work?  The short answer is to ask you have you seen the increased number of atheist and religious adverts on the sides of buses in the last year in your town too?
But this campaign is not just trying to persuade the heads of state that appoint the national candidate Commissioners to put forward women.  It also asks the European Parliament – which has a veto over the appointment of the European Commission and, in 2004, managed by threatening a veto of all to exert power ove the choice of certain individuals – to exercise this influence if there are fewer women put forward than in 2004.

So please, the nonsense that “gender doesn’t matter” needs to be got beyond – it does matter. 
Women bring a different sort of perspective to decision-making – but they don’t all bring the same different perspective. 
We suffer when the people taking decisions all have the same sort of outlook and lack of comprehension of the implications for others of what they decide. 
Having one extra woman compared with the last 5 years won’t change that of itself, but having access to a wider pool f talent, wide range of different backgrounds and life and work experiences can enhance the qualities of the decisions made.
So that’s got to be good for all of us. 

There’s loads of ways to join in – look at #gbc09 or follow @genderbalance on twitter, join the group on facebook or just start by looking at the website…
And being a multi-party, non-partisan initiative, I’m happy to back it!

Getting competitive… getting in to the European Commission

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Berlaymont building - European Commission headquarters

Who’d want to work in the EU institutions? 
Thousands, apparently, including me. 
It’s not easy to describe the job of a European Commission official, but in reality the actual work is not so different to the work of the civil service in any of the EU Member States.  And the pay, the tax rates and final salary pension – despite the recent reforms – are pretty attractive too.

So how exactly to you whittle down thousands of applicants to the couple of hundred you need to fill the vacancies that are available in the EU instututions?  Until recently the answer was essentially this: set a multiple choice quiz on EU related issues, and a numeracy test.  Put all prospective candidates through this in their second language (preferably English, French or German), then get them to write essays against the clock on EU-inspired subjects which, despite all the research and practice would not actually be marked unless the candidate passed the multiple choice and numeracy parts of the test sufficiently well…  there were further rounds with interviews etc, but as I didn’t reach them that aspect’s a bit less familiar to me.
Julien Frisch had a very interesting post over at http://julienfrisch.blogspot.com/2009/08/epso-criticised-by-european-court-of.html on the criticism of the European Personnel and Selection Office (EPSO – interesting to note that the Commission uses “personnel” long after other adminstrations have swtched over to “human resources”) by the Court of Auditors.  It’s worth reading, even if this post is a couple of weeks old now, not least because ESPO officials have actually joined in the debate below.
It is clear now that future methods of staff recruitment will be via Assessment Centres, a process familiar to many job applicants.  And the new approach is aimed at ensuring that it’s not just a way of identifying those with the time to study EU trivia (e.g. those still in educational environments).  Instead, the approach is supposed to allow demonstration of skills that would be required when doing the job.

So, with a decade of relevant experience, relatively good French (some remaining Spanish – and I’d have to improve at that in order to get a promotion within the Commission once in) and having entered my career for the purpose of gaining the skills to do this, am I actually going to enter the next concours?
I’ve been taking some time on my holiday to think about this.  Basically we’d be happy about a move to Brussels and I want to sit the concours.

But there’s a but.

I’m working part-time in the office and full-time as a mother.  While the UK Civil Service is actually pretty good about recognising the contribution that I can make, it’s not actually as easy as I’d hoped because face-time in the office does still count for something, especially as you get more senior. 
So I’m not sure the Commission would want me. 
Unless they’ve changed the rules that were in place when I did my stage that as Directives (e.g. those covering maternity rights) are addressed to the Member States so they don’t actually have to be exemplary in terms of employment law when it comes to part-time and flexible working?  They must’ve done – I gather there may even be some jobsharers now, but no one’s yet been able to point me to where within the Commission they work (and at what level).  
And with many highly qualified candidates attempting to find themselves the ideal post by appealing to the relevant DGs, who’d take on someone that only wanted to work part-time?  Several of the people I knew that passed the last concours have given up on trying to find a post – in other words they went through all of the stages I mentioned above, officially “got the ticket” but still have not got a job at the end of it.
Could I really put myself and my family through the extra stress of preparing for the different stages of the concours? And the extra stress of trying to get a job as a part-time employee?

The other thing is that, with 10 years experience, I’m not terribly keen on starting at the bottom again (moving from middle management to policy administration without a team).  Now, if there was to be a Head of Unit concours in the near future I can imagine that that would really be of interest…  So unlike my normal work-self, I’m feeling a bit indecisive.

There are probably people out there thinking that I’ve no right to expect to be employed as a part-timer.  That by having chosen to have a child and – let’s be honest about this- the likelihood that I’ll want to have another at some point, I somehow forfeit the right to be pursuing a professional career too.  Especially when you read some of the comments that are attracted by articles on this sort of subject on the Daily Mail’s website or even Comment is Free at the Guardian’s site. 
My brain hasn’t switched off.  I’m no less good at the decision-making or subject analysis or line management aspects of my job than I was before I had a child.  
What I can’t do any more is work more than my official conditioned hours, unless there’s a real emergency and/or I’ve had a chance to arange alternative childcare. 
My childcare is timelimited.  Even if it wasn’t, there’s a tiny little person who loves me and is dependent on me, and would not understand if he suddenly couldn’t see his mum.  
But the thing is, should there be an expectation that you’ll work more than conditioned hours on anything other than a rare occasion?

May be I’d better go and try to find the latest version of the Staff Regulations, and then think about it some more.  I’ve got a few months to find out…