Synopsis:

Robin Niblett, Director of Chatham House, delivered the following talk in The Europe Center series “The European and Global Economic Crisis”.

With measured optimism about the prospect for a way out of the current Eurozone crisis, Dr. Niblett argues that the introduction of the common Euro, seen by many in past years as a vanguard tool for European integration, is now potentially a functional wedge between ‘debtor’ and strongly capitalized nations.  

Dr. Niblett, arriving directly from participating in the World Economic Forum in Dubai, and based on Chatham House research, described the “perfect storm” of the past two decades of credit-driven growth, divergence within the EU, rising debt-to GDP ratios of member nations especially in the cases of Italy and Greece.  His analysis combines these economic details with the following:

• Demographics – high levels of unassimilated immigrants
• European welfare economies still distributing resources at twentieth-century levels now in the twenty-first century
• The rise of anti-immigrant and anti-free-trade populist parties
• The weakening of Europe’s center parties
• The “Russification” of Europe’s East – especially in recent events in Ukraine
• The stalled integration of Turkey into the EU

The totality of the above paints a grim portrait of Europe under the weight of nearly impossible conditions.   And yet, Dr. Niblett underlines evidence for measured optimism:

• Ireland is making strides to reform its economy
• Ireland’s educated and yet unemployed workforce does have the possibility to immigrate to Europe
• The UK is finally rebalancing its state budget and market liberalization
• France is facing, albeit with massive labor protest, its state budget levels
• Spain will likely turn over its government in the face of its massive youth protest
• Italy is evaluating in its political process a series of budget reforms

These are the structural side of what Dr. Niblett sees as Europe’s tools for recovery.

On the side of European practice, the Franco-German proposals for European Central Bank “bailout funds” include new rules for transparency of internal government operations. This promises innovation to make the EU into an area of political and financial transparency, and to enable the EU to engage in direct investment, as evidence is beginning to show, in the world’s emerging economies.  In this sense, Dr. Niblett sees for Europe a competitive edge over the US in engaging in world markets.

Perhaps most sanguine of Dr. Niblett’s analysis is his reading of the Eurozone crisis as a force to push the member nations of Europe further towards supra-national economic strategies.  In order to participate in the investment in emerging markets, the Benelux countries, not to mention France, Germany, and neighboring European states, are responding to the crisis by considering policy that promotes investment and outsourcing for service-sector employment, instead of export commodities which have been undercut in recent years.

There is a risk, in Dr. Niblett’s view, that Europe will respond to the Eurozone crisis by fracturing into rival “clubs” of small and large or debt-restructuring and creditor nation-states.  But the European nations, especially those currently participating in the Eurozone, have untapped capacities for growth:

• Educated youth
• Underemployed female laborers
• Outstanding higher educational institutions
• Pent-up small- and medium-enterprise markets
• Potential for growth in the service sector labor market
• Room for more tightly integrating and rationalizing the region’s energy market.

Those interested in further detail and analysis are invited to visit the work and productivity at:

The Europe Center, at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies: http://tec.fsi.stanford.edu

Chatham House, at the Royal Institute for International Studies: http://www.chathamhouse.org/

Speaker bio:

Robin Niblett became the Director of Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International
Affairs) in January 2007. Before joining Chatham House, from 2001 to 2006, Dr. Niblett
was the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Washington based
Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS). During his last two years at CSIS, he
also served as Director of the CSIS Europe Program and its Initiative for a Renewed
Transatlantic Partnership.

Most recently Dr. Niblett is the author of the Chatham House Report Playing to its
Strengths: Rethinking the UK’s Role in a Changing World (Chatham House, 2010) and
Ready to Lead? Rethinking America’s Role in a Changed World (Chatham House,
2009), and editor and contributing author to America and a Changed World: A Question
of Leadership (Chatham House/Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). He is also the author or
contributor to a number of CSIS reports on transatlantic relations and is contributing
author and co-editor with William Wallace of the book Rethinking European Order
(Palgrave, 2001). Dr Niblett is a frequent panellist at conferences on transatlantic
relations. He has testified on a number of occasions to the House of Commons Defence
Select Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee as well as US Senate and House
Committees on European Affairs.

Dr Niblett is a Non-Executive Director of Fidelity European Values Investment Trust. He
is a Council member of the Overseas Development Institute, a member of the World
Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Global Institutional Governance and the
Chairman of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Europe.

He received his BA in Modern Languages and MPhil and DPhil from New College,
Oxford.

John Micklethwait is the Editor-in-Chief of The Economist. After studying history at Magdalen College, Oxford, he worked as a banker at Chase Manhattan between 1985 and 1987 before joining The Economist as a finance correspondent in 1987. Since then his roles at The Economist have included setting up the bureau in Los Angeles, where he worked from 1990‑93; being the newspaper's media correspondent; editing the business section; running the New York bureau; and editing the United States section. The Economist now has a circulation of around 1.4 million worldwide.

Mr. Micklethwait has appeared on radio and television around the world. He has co-authored with Adrian Wooldridge, also an Economist journalist, five books: The Witch Doctors; "A Future Perfect: the Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalisation; The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea; The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America and God is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith is Changing the World, published by the Penguin Press in April 2009.

Mr. Micklethwait was named Editors' Editor of the Year at the British Society of Magazine Editors 2010 annual awards.

The session will focus on the social, political and economic changes that have been taking place in Turkey, and its implications for the U.S.-Turkey relations. Panelist will discuss Turkey’s EU process, shift in current Turkish foreign policy, the recent flotilla incident, and increasing trade and investment relations with neighboring countries.

Soli Ozel is Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Istanbul Kadir Has University. He received his M.A. from School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. Ozel taught at University of California- Santa Cruz, Johns Hopkins University, University of Washington, Hebrew University, and Bogazici University (Istanbul). Ozel's articles and op-eds appear in a wide variety of leading newspapers in Turkey and elsewhere around the world. Currently, he is a columnist for the Turkish Haberturk newspaper and a frequent contributor to The Washington Post. Most recently, he co-authored the report “Rebuilding a Partnership: Turkish-American Relations for a New Era.”
 
Abdullah Akyuz received his M.A. in Economics from the University of California-Davis and graduated from Wharton School's Advanced Management Program. He served as an economist on the Capital Markets Board (the Turkish equivalent of the SEC), Director and later Executive Vice-Chairman at the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE), Board Member of the ISE-Settlement and Custody Bank, Inc., and a member of the Turkish Treasury’s Domestic Borrowing Advisory Board. In 1999, Mr. Akyuz joined Turkish Industry and Business Association (TUSIAD) as President of  TUSIAD's Washington Representative Office.

RSVP: http://www.stanford.edu/group/mediterranean/feb_rsvp.fb

Sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Forum. Co-sponsored by the Europe Center, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and Turkish Student Association at Stanford.

On December 1, 2009 the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force, bringing to an end eight years of discussions on treaty reforms in the European Union (EU). It included many of the institutional reforms that were originally part of the proposed EU Constitution, voted down by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005. The Treaty of Lisbon could potentially be one of the most important EU treaties, depending on whether, for example, the newly created permanent European Council Presidency will manage to assert its authority and whether the Parliament will succeed at imposing its interpretation of the treaties. The objectives of this seminar are twofold. First, it will present an overview of the most important political and institutional reforms of the Treaty of Lisbon, and discuss its implications. Second, it will focus on EU trade policy and study how the Treaty of Lisbon will affect it. Trade policy is a good policy area to analyze, because it is one of the areas in which the EU’s powers are most extensive, and because the Parliament acquired new powers in this area, as it did in many other policy domains. Procedurally trade policy differs significantly from other EU policies: the Commission negotiates trade agreements based on mandates it receives from the Council. Agreements need final approval from the Council and, since December, the Parliament. The seminar will present a political-economic analysis of EU trade policy, analyze the role of the mandate, and study the implications of the increased role of the Parliament.  

Christophe Crombez is a specialist of European Union (EU) politics and business-government relations in Europe. His research focuses on EU institutions, the institutions' impact on EU policies under alternative procedural arrangements, EU institutional reform, lobbying in the EU, and electoral laws and their consequences for voter representation, party politics and government formation.

Crombez has been at the Forum on Contemporary Europe (FCE) at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University as a visiting professor since 1999. At FCE he organizes seminars and other events on European Union politics and economics and European political systems. Crombez is also visiting professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, where he teaches a course on Politics and Business in Europe. He also teaches in the International Relations Program.

Furthermore, Crombez is professor of political economy and strategy at the University of Leuven in Belgium. He has been teaching in Leuven's business and economics department since 1994. His teaching responsibilities include political business strategy and applied game theory.

Christophe Crombez obtained a B.A. (Licentiaat) in Applied Economics from the University of Leuven in 1989, and a Ph.D. in Business, Political Economics, from Stanford University in 1994.

Audio Synopsis:

Professor Crombez first highlights key characteristics of the EU treaty system: each iteration of the treaty increases European integration; the growth of majority voting promotes smoother decision making; and every new treaty requires compromise between member states, and between political factions within the EU. Crombez then outlines changes in the Lisbon Treaty, including new policy areas for cooperation such as climate change, space policy, sports, judicial and police cooperation, and homeland security. The treaty establishes the European External Action Service, a kind of European diplomatic corps. Majority voting has been implemented in 68 new policy areas, including transport policy, immigration policy, and social security for migrant workers. The treaty grants significant new power to Parliament in multiple policy areas, and creates a permanent EU presidency. Progress has not been smooth, however: the Lisbon Treaty was voted down by Ireland in 2008 (before later being ratified), and much progress on actual policy is slowed by the reluctance of member state representatives to vote against the views of their constituents. Areas for optimism, Crombez explains, include two clauses that enable progress without a change to the treaty:

1.     Passerelle Clause: 8 articles outlining new policy areas previously requiring unanimous decisions which can now be decided through majority voting, except on defense-related issues.

2.     Flexibility Clause: decisions can now be made on issues where the EU lacks explicit authority if those issues promote the goals of the treaty. Unanimity is required, but not a formal change of the treaty.

Professor Crombez then turns his focus to trade policy under the Lisbon Treaty. An important change is that Parliament now has the option of codecision, in addition to the existing procedure of consultation (where the Council approves the Commission's proposal by unanimous decision). Codecision, in contrast, allows for qualified majority voting - leading the Commission to propose policies it may not think are ideal but which will more likely pass. In this way, Crombez feels codecision has made EU trade policy resemble US trade policy, wherein the executive branch may desire more liberal policies than what the legislature will accept. Crombez predicts this system may "lower the bar" and lead to more protectionist trade policies.