The Brexit Vote, One Year Later

An excellent analysis! (hfk)

Date: 23-06-2017
Source: Foreign Affairs By Stephen G. Gross

The Historical Roots of the Decision to Leave the EU

On June 23, 2016, citizens in the United Kingdom voted 52 to 48 percent to leave
the European Union, sending shockwaves around the world and raising concerns about a new type of populism on both sides of the Atlantic. The common explanation of Brexit presents it as a revolt by the losers of globalization. As the international movement of goods, capital, ideas, and people has intensified, this argument runs, the latter shaped the referendum results most profoundly. The intra-European flow of migrants from east to west, combined with the potential for an influx of refugees in 2015, convinced many British citizens that they stood on the losing end of a globalized, borderless Europe.

Although this story captures important dynamics, it misses crucial historical developments that influenced British leaders’ decision to hold the referendum, as well as its outcome. Four trends converged to lead the United Kingdom to split with the EU: a divergence between the United Kingdom and the continent about the meaning of the European project and the nature of sovereignty; a gradual estrangement of British political parties from the public; the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis; and Brussels’ lackluster management of the EU’s problems. These developments help explain why the message of Leave resonated and that of Remain proved counterproductive. They reveal, moreover, just how fragile and elite-driven the European project remains.

Letting these countries in was a mistake

Date: 14-06-2017
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Subject: EU Raises Stakes Over Refusal to Take Asylum Seekers

European Commission launches legal proceedings against Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic

BRUSSELS—The European Union’s executive launched legal proceedings against Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic for refusing to take in asylum seekers, reigniting a fight that is likely to widen as the bloc seeks unity in Brexit negotiations with the U.K.

A majority of EU states voted in 2015 to distribute around the bloc up to 160,000 asylum seekers who had arrived in Italy and Greece, infuriating many in Central Europe who saw it as an unfair imposition from Brussels.

By mid-June, near the planned two-year end date of the program, just 20,869 people were relocated.

“When it comes to relocation, let me be crystal clear: [it] is a legal obligation, not a choice,” said EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos in announcing the European Commission’s decision.

Germany’s Coming Silver Age

Michael Heise

Michael Heise is Chief Economist of Allianz SE and the author of Emerging From the Euro Debt Crisis: Making the Single Currency Work.

APR 25, 2017 Project Syndicate

MUNICH – Record levels of migration to Germany over the last two years have called into question the country’s demographic projections. But Germany’s rapid shift to a more favorable profile is not a reason to postpone politically painful policy decisions about retirement and pensions.

At the beginning of this century, forecasts that were considered reliable predicted that Germany would lose more than ten million inhabitants by 2050, owing to declining immigration and a low average birth rate. Today, population projections are significantly brighter. According to the government’s latest calculations, Germany’s population could remain above 80 million until 2060, and the reduction in the labor supply might not be as drastic as was previously feared.

Demographic forecasts needed to be corrected significantly, because the number of immigrants to Germany has fluctuated wildly and unpredictably, as opposed to emigration from Germany, which has remained relatively stable.

Dann werden 30 Millionen Einwanderer in die EU kommen

https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article163215714/Dann-werden-30-Millionen-Einwanderer-in-die-EU-kommen.html

Europe’s future is multi-speed and multi-tier

Date: 23-03-2017
Source: The Economist

The EU must embrace greater differentiation or face potential disintegration

Charlemagne had a point

IS EUROPE READY to embrace a new model built around not sameness but difference? Although the recent commission white paper and several national leaders have come out for a multi-speed Europe, they really have in mind a way for small groups of countries to go forward in such areas as defence or taxation, without having to wait for all, using the treaty’s tools that allow enhanced co-operation. A true multi-speed, multi-tier Europe would be far more ambitious. Yet the troubles of the EU may seem to many quite enough to worry about without having to rethink the structure of their project.

That is certainly the message coming from national capitals and Brussels. Asked about how euro and non-euro countries will co-exist in future, one senior official in Paris notes that, after Brexit, nearly 90% of the union’s GDP will be generated by the euro zone. Others say all non-members except Denmark will join the euro within five years. The rows over asylum-seekers between east and west will similarly end, says a Eurocrat in Brussels, because central Europe gains so much from the EU. Brexit will hurt Britain more than its partners. And ideas for more variable geometry, such as the “continental partnerships” touted by Bruegel, are “suitable for think-tanks”, as another senior official (this time in Berlin) puts it, not to be taken seriously.

A Wounded Metropolis

Date: 25-03-2017
Source: Der Spiegel

London in the Age of Terror and Brexit

London is the epicenter of globalization, a glut of money and creativity — and the antithesis of Brexit parochialism. It is also the best city in the world.

The crap weather, the traffic, the noise, the obscene amounts of money, the horrific rents, the Central Line during rush hour, the greed, the indifference, the Russians in Mayfair, the French in Notting Hill, and the price of a pint has long since risen above six euros: There are, of course, a number of reasons to hate London.

But then the sun peaks through the clouds for a second, the woman sitting across from you in the subway smiles and you are given a ticket for a theater premier — and all the aggravations are forgotten. In such moments, it becomes clear: There is no better place in the world than this wondrous city. Nowhere is more exciting or more polite, nowhere else gives you more, despite terror, despite Brexit and despite the constant chaos.

A Threat on Migration That May Prove to Be Empty

Date: 15-03-2017
Source: The New York Times

Migration through Turkey rose sharply that year, with 850,000 people leaving Turkey for Greece.

ISTANBUL — When Turkey and Europe reached an agreement a year ago this week to restrict migration to Greece, it was bad news for Abu Samir, a Syrian-Palestinian people-smuggler in Istanbul.

By late 2015, Abu Samir, a former house painter from Aleppo, had become a key cog in one of the largest Europe-bound migrations in history, sending thousands of refugees, most of them Syrians, to Greece and earning up to $4,000 on some days. But in the 12 months since Turkey’s pact with the European Union, his business has collapsed.

The problem: Too few refugees and too many border patrols.

Navigating the New Abnormal

Absolutely essential reading! (hfk)

Date: 03-02-2017
Source: Project Syndicate

Slawomir Sierakowski, founder of the Krytyka Polityczna movement, is Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Warsaw.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, and, most recently, The Age of Sustainable

The Trump administration lacks both a global strategy and anyone who could formulate and implement one. And unless anti-populists in general – and the center left, in particular – face up to some hard realities, the menace of a rogue US will only grow.

The Populist Backlash

SS: You’ve written that Brexit and Trump are the same phenomenon. Do you think the populist wave that lifted both will spread further?

JS: I think societies everywhere are very divided. Whether it’s 51-49 or 49-51, we are not seeing landslide wins for populism, but rather a reflection of deep social divisions. And, yes, I think we’re going to see more of this, because there are so many anxieties that we don’t seem able to overcome.

Even the foundations of foreign policy are giving way. The Middle East crises are the result of America’s failure and fading global power, which are part of the social anguish many voters feel. Likewise, Brexit reflects a collapse in belief in the postwar order in Western Europe, which was forged during the Cold War but has now basically disintegrated.

SS: You attribute populism to four factors: rising nationalism, the weakening of American foreign policy, the crisis of the center left, and the refugee crisis. Yet you’re an economist. So what about economics?

Brexit’s Doom Spirals

Harold James

Harold James is Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University and a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation. A specialist on German economic history and on globalization, he is a co-author of the new book The Euro and The Battle of Ideas, and the author of The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle, Krupp: A History of the Legendary German Firm, and Making the European Monetary Union.

NOV 8, 2016 Project Syndicate

LONDON – Financial markets are giving a thumbs-down to Brexit, and they are right to do so. But because it is finance, not democratic civil society, that is pushing back against the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union, the Brexit debate will become more bitter, and the fallout more severe.

The June referendum’s initial economic effects were negligible, and may even have been slightly positive, now that the UK’s post-referendum growth figures are being revised upward. But the British pound is sinking, the cost of financing UK government debt is rising, and the process of actually withdrawing from the EU could be highly destructive.

Having decided to leave the EU, it is in the UK’s interest to manage withdrawal in a way that minimizes short-term adjustment costs and long-term adverse effects. Likewise, it is in the EU’s interest to mitigate not only the economic impact, but also the reputational damage implied by the loss of a major member state.

A Sea Change: The New Migration from sub-Saharan Africa

Posted on November 2, 2016 by iMFdirect

By Jesus Gonzalez-Garcia and Montfort Mlachila

Migration of sub-Saharan Africans is growing rapidly. Just like the region’s population, the number of migrants doubled since 1990 to reach about 20 million in 2013. In the coming decades, migration will expand given the demographic boom in the working-age population—the group that typically feeds migration. We studied these trends in a recent paper because both receiving and sending countries need the right policies so all can benefit.

People on the go

Two trends dominate the evolution of sub-Saharan migration.

The number of refugees—people fleeing due to war or persecution—has decreased considerably since 1990, both within and outside the region. In 1990 about half of total migrants were refugees, and this share has declined to only about 10 percent by 2013.

At the same time, the share of migrants that move outside the region for economic reasons has increased steadily, growing sixfold between 1990 and 2013—from about 1 million to 6 million. In comparison, economic migrants within the region increased threefold—from 4 million to 12 million (Chart 1).