Facilitated dialogue in the Balkans vindicates the EEAS. CEPS Commentary, 29 April 2013

As a result of EEAS-led facilitated dialogue, on April 19th the prime ministers of Serbia and Kosovo reached their first agreement on the principles governing the normalisation of relations. The agreement handed Catherine Ashton a diplomatic victory she badly needed and offered proof of the added value of the European External Action Service (EEAS) as a new EU foreign policy actor.

Ukraine and Russia: a hindered rapprochement. OSW Commentary No. 44, 2010-12-15

The policy of rapprochement with Russia that President Victor Yanukovych and his entourage had been actively promoting in the first months of his presidency has slowed down notably. One of the reasons for this lowered pace is that current talks between Russia and Ukraine concern the spheres in which Kyiv is not ready to make concessions to Russia. Despite numerous top-level meetings, recent months have failed to bring a breakthrough in energy issues of key importance. First of all, no compromise was reached in gas issues where the divergence of interests is particularly large and where Ukraine has adopted a tough stance to negotiate the best conditions possible. Even though some agreements were signed during the October session of the inter-governmental committee presided over by the prime ministers (the agreement on linking the two states’ aircraft production and on the joint construction of a nuclear fuel production plant), these resulted from prior agreements. Economic negotiations will continue in the coming months but the observed deadlock is not likely to be broken any time soon. The results of these talks are likely to reflect the interests of both Russia and Ukraine, as well as the competition among Ukrainian business groups, some of which opt for closer cooperation with their Eastern neighbour. Ukraine’s consent to send oil to Belarus along the Odessa-Brody pipeline shows that the government in Kyiv is ready to engage in projects they consider profitable, even those that run counter to Russian interests. Ukraine’s adoption of this stance may trigger irritation in Moscow and lead to a cooling in bilateral relations.

Will Cameron get what he wants? Anticipating reactions to Britain’s EU reform proposals. CEPS Commentary, 29 October 2015

After months of speculation about the British Prime Minister’s specific demands in terms of the “renegotiation” of the UK’s relationship with the EU, David Cameron has bowed to pressure from the heads of state or government of the other EU member states and committed himself to setting out the UK’s specific “concerns” in writing by early November. While we cannot be certain of the contents of David Cameron’s missive to the EU, his recent pronouncements before Parliament set out an agenda whose contours have become quite clear. In this Commentary the authors consider how far the other EU member states might be willing to accommodate Cameron’s demands and provide him with the political capital he seeks to lead the ‘in’ campaign. They distinguish four different attitudes among EU countries, and advocate a constructive approach that sets the scene for a Convention after 2017 – one that opens the treaty for a revision that could accommodate both the British demands for an ‘opt-out’ from ever closer union and gives leeway to those who wish to integrate further. Putting emphasis on strengthening the single market in the more immediate term would allow the Prime Minister to show his home audience that he is a leading reformer and that the EU gives oxygen to the British economy.This is an obvious area where he might be able to seal deals during the UK’s Presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of 2017. The authors also consider what the European Council Conclusions on the UK’s wish list for EU reform might look like, given that any treaty revision before the time set for the UK referendum is unattainable. They present the results of a two-day simulation exercise involving a cross-section of national experts and present mock European Council Conclusions on the areas of ever closer union; the role of national parliaments; competitiveness; economic and monetary integration; and the free movement of labour.

Dear Donald … Yours, David. CEPS Commentary, 12 November 2015

The cordial letter of November 10th from the British Prime Minister to the President of the European Council is an important document. It sets the stage for deliberations on whether the UK stays in the EU, or quits in an historic act of destructive disintegration for the EU that condemns the UK to what has fittingly been called “the spectre of geo-political irrelevance”. Overall the letter is looking like a plausible move towards settling the Brussels part of the Prime Minister’s manifest objective to keep the UK in the EU, argues Michael Emerson in this CEPS Commentary. But there is one major part of the debate that is underdeveloped so far: the clarification of the scenarios and consequences of secession. Eurosceptics have not detailed their positions on how to manage the secession, but what is becoming clearer is that all conceivable options are far more problematic than the status quo.

The life of William Ewart Gladstone,

v. 1. 1809-1859.--v. 2. 1859-1880.--v. 3. 1880-1898.

An autobiography ...

At head of title: Margot Asquith.

La traduction des discours politiques au Canada

This work focuses on translated political speeches made by Canadas prime minister during times of national crises. Delivered orally in both English and French, this translation-based political discourse is examined in a tripartite manner, offering the reader contextualisation of the corpus researched; description of the translation shifts encountered; and interpretation of the discourse varies greatly depending on the era observed. Since the latter half of the 20th century, for instance, different text types have been assigned to different categories of translators. As for translative shifts revealed in the corpus, they have been categorised as either paratextual or textual divergences. Paratextual differences indicate that the Canadian prime ministers national statements in English and French do not necessarily seek to portray symmetry between what is presented in each language. Each version of a national speech thus retains a relative degree of visual autonomy. In sum, accumulated instances of paratextual divergence suggest an identifiable paratextual strategy, whereby translation contributes to the illusion that there is only one federal language: the readers. The deployment of this paratextual strategy obscures the fact that such federal expression occurs in two official languages. The illusion of monolingualism generates two different world views one for each linguistic community. Similarly, another strategy is discerned in the analysis of translative textual shifts a textual strategy useful in highlighting some of the power struggles inherent in translated federal expression. Textual interpretation of data identifies four federal translation tendencies: legitimisation and characterisation of linguistic communities; dislocation of the speech-event; neutralisation of (linguistic) territory; and valorisation of federalism.

Golda Meir at United Jewish Appeal Dinner

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Book review: The Postwar Legacy of Appeasement: British Foreign Policy since 1945. By R. Gerald Hughes (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. xii +331pp, AU$40.99 (pb).

“Appeaser”; since the Second World War there is perhaps no other label that prime ministers and presidents in the English-speaking world have strived so hard to avoid. It is extraordinary how powerful and long-lasting the term appeasement, the name Neville Chamberlain and the place Munich have been in the discourse of post-war international relations. It is a reflection of the all-powerful historical legacy of the Second World War that these terms still resonate with policy makers and their publics well into the twenty-first century. Such a phenomenon deserves scholarly attention and R. Gerald Hughes has done justice to this topic in his very fine book The Postwar Legacy of Appeasement: British Foreign Policy Since 1945.

El rol de las redes de apoyo transnacional en la evolución del régimen de trata de personas en la región del mekong, 2004-2015

Con el fin de la unipolaridad no sólo se fortalecieron mecanismos de gobernanza global como los Regímenes Internacionales, sino también se fortalecieron actores no estatales. A pesar de la importancia que tomaron estos dos elementos aún no existe una teoría que explique exhaustivamente la relación que existe entre ellos. Es por lo anterior que, la investigación busca responder de qué manera el rol de las Redes de Apoyo Transnacional ha incidido en la evolución del régimen de tráfico de personas en la Región del Mekong. Asimismo tiene como objetivo comprender las relación entre el Régimen y las Redes de Apoyo Transnacional a través de la formulación de un caso de estudio basado en metodologías cualitativas, específicamente, en el análisis teórico-constructivista y el análisis de contenido de documentos producidos por actores estatales y no estatales.

Grown-Up Government: Bindi for Prime Minister! (Or President!).

Last week I called the Australian federal campaign the Inception election. As we lurch toward voting day on August 21, reality has tried to kick in, but to little avail. The two leaders, Prime Minister Julia Gillard (Labor) and challenger Tony Abbott (Liberal), both of whom recently toppled their predecessors in party-room coups, are now frantically searching for their own identity. And that’s what the election itself is increasingly about. Even though both have substantial track records as ministers, they are untried as national leaders. The real conundrum of the campaign – for them, if not for voters – is: Who the heck are these people?