On July 15

On this day in ...
... 2009, Natalya Estemirova (right), a 51-year-old journalist and human rights advocate whose documentation had made her "a central source of information on abuses in Chechnya," was found dead of gunshot wounds near a highway in Ingushetia, 50 miles from her home in the Chechen capital city of Grozny, from which she'd been kidnapped hours earlier. Estemirova had worked since 1999 for the human rights group Memorial. She was a co-recipient of the 2005 Robert Schuman Medal, awarded on account of her human rights work by a group within the European Parliament. In the years leading up to the incident, reported The New York Times,

Estemirova focused on kidnappings that she believed had been carried out under the authority of the Chechen president, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, who has enjoyed unwavering public support from the Kremlin.

The Times said this past February that investigators believed they knew the shooter, "but have been unable to arrest the suspect."

(Prior July 15 posts are here, here, and here.)

On October 13

On this day in ...
... 1934 (75 years ago today) , a daughter, Ioanna, was born on the Greek island of Crete, to parents who worked in the town's movie theater. The family moved to the Greek capital, where the father became part of the resistance against Nazi occupation. After World War II the girl, known by her nickname, Nana Mouskouri (left), attended the Athens Conservatoire, turned from opera to jazz and contemporary music, and eventually became "one of the world's best-selling female recording artists of all time," having recording in more than 8 languages. (Below, she sings "Adieu Angeline" on a French show.) In 1993 she became a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, a position made vacant by the death of Audrey Hepburn. Mouskouri's mission to Bosnia led her to give a series of concerts in Sweden and Belgium to raise funds for Bosnian children; her UNICEF activities have spanned the globe. (credit for photo (c) UNICEF) She served as an elected Member of the European Parliament from 1994-99, and now lives in Switzerland.




(Prior October 13 posts are here and here.)

Europe’s Political Deficit

(Thanks to IntLawGrrls for inviting me to do this guest post!)

The Irish government has announced that a second Irish referendum on the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty will be held in the autumn. As IntLawGrrls have posted, the treaty was rejected by Ireland’s voters in a referendum last June. (photo by Peter O'Neill of "No to Lisbon" poster in the west of Ireland, June 2008)

The Lisbon Treaty is effectively a ‘de-constitutionalized’ version of the EU Constitutional Treaty, which French and Dutch voters had rejected in popular referenda in 2005. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts).

At the same time, recent newspaper reports are suggesting that across Europe in one month's time, the turnout is likely to be lower than ever for European Parliament elections.

Each of these news reports highlights an aspect of what might be called Europe’s political deficit – in other words, the chronic lack of political engagement of ordinary European citizens with the EU, and the failure or unwillingness of Europe’s political leaders to fully grasp this fact.

In a recent paper, I criticized the EU’s response to Ireland’s no vote to the Lisbon Treaty on the basis that the EU leadership chose to treat the referendum result as essentially an Irish problem rather than as a European problem. According to the Europe’s political leaders, the no-vote reflected concerns specific to the Irish population. The solution proposed was for the Irish government to suggest ways for the EU to respond to these particular concerns -- ultimately, through a package of largely redundant legal and political ‘guarantees’ -- so that the Lisbon Treaty could be ratified.

In this sense, Ireland's no-vote to Lisbon was treated very differently from the French and Dutch no-votes to the Constitutional Treaty in 2005. On that occasion, the complex but overwhelming tide of discontent reflected in the no-votes was quickly recognized as a collective European problem rather than as a specifically Dutch or French problem, and the Constitutional Treaty in its original form was rapidly declared to be dead.

My paper argues that despite the various plausible reasons for distinguishing between the Constitutional Treaty no-votes and the Lisbon Treaty no-vote, the EU strategy of treating Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty as primarily an Irish problem is a short-sighted one which is likely to backfire in the longer term. Ireland's no-vote is merely the latest manifestation of an ongoing crisis of popular legitimacy in the EU, and the European Council's strategy of treating it as essentially an Irish problem is part of the ongoing failure of Europe's political leaders to acknowledge the link between this crisis of popular legitimacy and the deliberately de-politicized nature of the European Union.

If you’re interested in reading more about the debate on whether and how to politicize the European Union, have a look at this exchange on the subject between Simon Hix of the London School of Economics and Stefano Bartolini of the European University Institute.

On March 7

On this day in ...

... 1848, was concluded the māhele, or division of Hawai'ian lands in a single transaction that had begun on January 28, 1848. The division was made among King Kamehameha III, the chiefs, and the protectors of land known as the konohiki. The transaction is recorded in the book whose cover is at right.

... 1989 (20 years ago today), by orders numbered 1 through 5, the Beijing-controlled "People's Government of the Tibet Autonomous Region" declared martial law in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, and certain other areas. The move, which followed days of demonstrations, provoked statements of concern from, inter alia, the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament.

(Prior March 7 posts are here and here.)

On January 18

On this day in ...
... 1930, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo (left), a "pioneer feminist," was born in Abrantes, in Portugal's Tagus Valley. Having "she opted for a 'man's subject' so as to demonstrate the abilities of women," in 1953 she earned an engineering degree in industrial chemistry. She was active in Catholic women's political groups beginning in her university days, and served as the 1st woman on an advisory group to the country's long-in-power dictatorship. But after that dictatorship ended in 1974, Pintasilgo served in the new government, 1st as Minister for Social Affairs, then as UNESCO minister, and, in 1979, as the 1st woman Prime Minister of Portugal -- and the 2d woman to hold such a post anywhere in Europe. Her later bid for the presidency having failed, she served as a Member of the European Parliament for 2 years in the late 1980s. Pintasilgo, who died in Lisbon in 2004, once said of her male colleagues:

'You know, they never forgive me for having dared to enter their world.'

... 1689 (320 years ago today), Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, known through history simply as "Montesquieu," was born at his family's chateau near Bordeaux, France. Following education and marriage he launched a career as "one of the great political philosophers of the Enlightenment." An enduring work is his 1751 treatise De L'Esprit des Lois (Spirit of the Laws) (right). In it Montesquieu articulated a theory of separation of powers that -- in an early instance of comparative constitutionalism -- inspired the framers of the U.S. Constitution and bedevils commentators on the powers of the U.S. President in this new millennium.

"Harmonizing" Detention and Deportation

Despite many protests from immigrant advocates, including an eloquent open letter from Bolivian President Evo Morales, the European Parliament this week passed a "return directive" setting "common standards and procedures in Member States for returning illegally staying third-country nationals" (a.k.a. undocumented migrants). Intended to safeguard the rights of migrants, the directive seems instead to push member states towards the lowest common denominator. Two of the most concerning provisions of this new law are a 5-year ban on re-entry into the EU for migrants who fail to depart within the allotted time frame and a detention period of up to 18 months pending deportation. According to the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, pre-removal detention periods in Europe currently vary tremendously, from a 32-day limit in France to an unlimited duration in the United Kingdom. While "harmonization" might protect some, it surely will harm others as more migrant-friendly countries may be encouraged to change their laws to conform to EU standards. Moreover, the directive permits detention of families and unaccompanied minors, a practice that we've criticized here in the U.S. Indeed, the entire exercise may serve to bring European policies in line with American "crimmigration" practices that ladle out a particularly retributive brand of justice against those who have committed no crime, but may seek protection from persecution and torture or simply to feed their families. Harmonious? Not for the sans-papiers and clandestinos, whose already perilous circumstances may become even more dire.

On July 13, ...

... 1955, as 500 protesters sang and chanted outside Holloway Prison in London, Ruth Ellis was executed on the gallows, having been convicted of the Easter Sunday shooting-to-death of her racecar-driver boyfriend outside a pub. Fully 48 years later a review commission would reject her family's contention that Ellis (right), who'd miscarried after the boyfriend punched her, suffered from "'battered woman syndrome.'" Nonetheless, the notoriety of this final execution of a woman in Britain contributed to the country's 1965 suspension and 1970 abolition of capital punishment.
... 1927 (80 years ago today), Simone Veil (left) was born in Nice, France. A survivor of Auschwitz, Veil was a member of France's Conseil constitutionnel from 1998 until March of this year, and also has served as French Minister of Health (1974-79, during which time she led a successful campaign for the legalization of abortion) and President of the European Parliament (1979-82).