Judicial expansion on the cards as the ECJ is sued for delays

The length of time the EU courts can take before they give their rulings can be long – so long that they can even run into years - so now disgruntled litigants are suing the court itself for the delays. Famously the Italian justice system was so slow that the European Court of Human Rights found that, in the case of Ferrari v Italy (1999), that there were some 1,400 similar cases before the court concerning court delays.

The action against the EU courts will be embarrassing, though thankfully not to the same extent as Ferrari. Although the time taken for cases to be heard and receive judgment can be extraordinary – there’s a case involving Rubik’s Brand Limited dating from 2006 that’s still ongoing – the courts have been asking for more judges to help them deal with their workload for some time now. For a long time Member States couldn’t come to an agreement on the extra judges. The courts had only asked for another 12, but in a Union of 28 Member States it became hard to decide “whose” judges these would be.

In the end the Member States decided to come up with a new round of 28 judges to make sure that national representation in the courts remained equal. They won’t all have arrived until 2019, but they should be more than enough to whittle down the judicial backlog. But the question now is how much will all of the delays to date cost the EU in compensation pay outs…?

Solidarity over Refugees is a key test for European Values

The Commission is planning to propose binding quotas for Member States accepting refugees.  This would be a major break from the Dublin Regulation mind set, where asylum seekers can only apply where they enter the EU – a system that has put intolerable pressures on the Mediterranean countries to the benefit of northern Europe. The Commission plan aims to have an equitable division of refugees, taking into account a Member State’s population, economic situation, employment levels and the number of refugees already accepted by that Member State.

The European Parliament has also called for binding quotas to be put in place to share the influx of refugees more equitably, with a grand coalition of the EPP and S&D backing the motion. The situation highlights not only the moral imperative to act to help those trying to escape desperate circumstances, but also the fundamental tension between the Dublin Regulation’s “common border” approach and the lack of true common policies within the EU on asylum seekers.

Getting agreement on any binding quotas will be an uphill struggle. In the wake of the most recent Mediterranean tragedies, EU ministers failed to agree on 5,000, so the Commission number of 20,000 appears ambitious.  Though the UK, Ireland and Denmark would not be bound by such quotas (they have an “opt-in” in justice and home affairs matters, except for Denmark which has an opt-out), the UK’s new Conservative government was quick to make clear that it won’t accept mandatory quotas and would reject this and any other future Commission plan on quotas. Within the Schengen zone, Hungary has also raised objections. The Commission will have to be creative in balancing Member States’ concerns over sovereignty over borders and immigration while being bold enough to push for a system that will commit Europe to living up to its global responsibilities.

Interesting Times in Britain

Thursday’s election in the UK returned, against all expectation, a majority Conservative government.  In the months in the lead up to the vote the polls had shown the Tories and Labour in a tight neck-and-neck race to become the biggest party in the Parliament, with UKIP, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens also fighting for seats. The Scottish National Party was on course to overturn the Labour majority in Scotland, and all the talk was of a hung parliament with Ed Miliband’s Labour party in a better position to form a coalition or minority government.

In the end Labour was heavily defeated in Scotland and England. The defeat in Scotland was so devastating that the SNP now hold all but 3 of the Scottish seats, with their candidates unseating Labour heavy-weights (Labour’s foreign affairs spokesman was unseated by a 20-year old politics student, who will presumably be automatically granted her degree by the university). The Conservatives managed to take some seats from Labour (the net exchange was slightly in Labour’s favour, but they didn’t make up nearly enough ground to offset their Scottish losses), and the Lib Dem seats were divided by the Conservatives and Labour, leaving them with a mere 8 seats.

A majority Conservative government and a strong SNP presence in the Parliament heralds some interesting times for Britain. Cameron has had trouble with the rebellious right-wing of the party in the past, which has driven him into ever more Euroskeptic positions. The slim majority his government will have means that these rebels could have a big impact on the government, ensuring that it is steered further to the right.  Meanwhile, the SNP were elected on a platform of being anti-Conservative and anti-austerity, as well as seeking to maximise Scottish autonomy within the UK after the failed independence referendum. Together with the two big issues of this parliament – how to deal with devolution in Scotland (and its effects on England) and how to define the relationship with the EU – it looks like the next 5 years will be politically turbulent. Already this weekend Cameron appointed Michael Gove as Justice Secretary with the job of repealing the Human Rights Act that transposes the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law.

Since Cameron announced the referendum on EU membership in 2013, he has failed to properly articulate what he wants to change. The last government laboured over a report on the UK-EU relationship, which was meant to be a comprehensive inquiry into the balance of competences. It got a lot of PR at the time, but ever since the report concluded that the balance of competences are pretty much right, the report has sunk into political obscurity. The referendum, whether in 2016 or 2017, will now have to be held, but the shape of a “reformed EU” that would be acceptable to anyone has yet to be defined.

It’s going to be a rocky few years in the UK…

Liberal Hungary being led up the gallows

Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán (of "illiberal democracy" fame) has called on the EU to re-open the debate over the death penalty.  It seems that the growing popularity of the far-right Jobbik, which performed well in the European elections last year, has pressured Orbán’s Fidesz party into lurching even further to the right. With past controversies over meddling with the judiciary and the media, it might seem hard to imagine Orbán has much room left on his right to move into, but bringing back the death penalty is certainly eye-catching.

There is no chance of this debate gaining any traction, however, since being anti-death penalty is practically a point of continental pride (though there are days when it feels like it’s one of the few policies we have left to be proud of ). The abolition of the death penalty is enshrined in the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights, and it’s not simply an EU matter either - abolishing the death penalty is a key part of the European Convention on Human Rights, which is part of the Council of Europe. All of its member states, including Russia, have signed up to it, and most have even abolished the death penalty in times of war (the remaining exception to the original ban on the death penalty). The only country in Europe that still executes its own citizens is Belarus, which is hardly a role model among nations.

It’s increasingly worrying that Hungary is drifting further and further to the right. After years of Fidesz rule, it’s sadly all too easy to be jaded and cynical about Hungarian politics. The civil liberties committee of the European Parliament is looking into the situation in Hungary, and the spectre of the Article 7 procedure – which would suspend Hungary’s EU voting rights if it’s found to be in violation of the founding principles of the Union – is constantly haunting the Parliament’s debates on Hungarian politics. Whatever the merits of Article 7, in the long term lecturing is unlikely to encourage a return to a fuller liberal democracy in Hungary. Perhaps some of the debate needs to turn to the question of how to engage Hungarian voters in less authoritarian alternatives.

Operation Triton falls far short of our proclaimed values

The recent news that 800 migrants died in the Mediterranean is a tragic reminder that Europe has still failed to come up with a proper plan for the humanitarian crisis taking place on its southern shores.  Lampedusa was supposed to be a wake-up call, alerting us to the scale of the crisis and its human cost.  Every year thousands die crossing the Mediterranean Sea in the hope of finding safety and a better life.  Wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq and Somalia have thrown our neighbourhood into chaos.  While the brunt of the burden is borne by the neighbouring countries, the numbers have exploded, with 3,000 dying in the attempt last year.

In the wake of Lampedusa, the Italian Navy launched its Mare Nostrum mission, patrolling the Mediterranean as both a border security and a humanitarian mission to prevent more death along our shores. The mission was a success, but it was an expensive one for the Italian state to bear in facing what is essentially a European crisis.

The Dublin Regulation system was set in place so that asylum seekers would have to apply for asylum in the EU state that they arrived in.  This was to prevent “forum shopping”, where asylum seekers might try to apply in other Member States. The upshot is that Member States with an external border – such as Italy, Malta and Greece – have borne the brunt of the burden. Indeed, in Greece things have become so bad that their facilities and treatment of asylum seekers has been found to be in breach of human rights. Proposals to share the burden more equitably between the North and the South in Europe have rarely received much sympathy from the Northern Member States.  Operation Triton, an EU mission led by Frontex, the border agency, replaced Mare Nostrum last year.  The EU mission has only a third of the budget of the Italian mission, with 7 boats, 2 planes and 1 helicopter – hardly an adequate patrol for the sea lanes of North Africa. Border patrol and surveillance, rather than search and rescue, is the focus, though as this case shows rescues will be attempted.

There was strong opposition to Triton having the same search and rescue mission as Mare Nostrum. Shockingly, the UK position was that saving lives would make Europe a more attractive destination – effectively arguing that the dangers and death faced by migrants is a good deterrence. It seems that Europe is worryingly content to let its values stop at the border. With thousands dying every year just off our coast, you would think that Triton would be upgraded to a full Mare Nostrum-style mission.

This tragedy must wake the EU up to its humanitarian duty and the need for solidarity within the EU on tackling the crises that drive this migration as well as helping those in need.