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      Can the India-China Confrontation Play Out in East Africa?

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      China and India have never been friendly neighbors. The laws of geopolitics set the two Asian giants against one another. In recent years, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s confrontation with the US and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitions for a powerful and global India have inflamed nationalism on both sides of the Himalayan border. Bilateral tensions peaked in June, when a border clash in the Himalayan Galwan Valley resulted in the death of 20 Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of Chinese troops.

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      Now, the competition between China and India is moving to Africa, and to East Africa in particular. Since 2000, the continent has witnessed China’s deep and ubiquitous penetration through trade, investments, infrastructures, energy, budget support and security cooperation. In 2008, New Delhi showed a newfound interest in Africa.

      Despite China’s head start, India is trying to catch up to counter Beijing’s predominance over the continent. East Africa is the region where the two Asian powerhouses share vital interests and where their competition will likely play out more seriously.

      India’s Africa Policy

      India–Africa relations are rooted in history. The Indian Ocean constituted a channel of trade and population exchange for centuries. Consequently, East Africa has always enjoyed close ties with India, and around 3 million people of Indian descent live between the Horn and South Africa. After independence from British rule in 1947, India was politically active in Africa as a champion of decolonization and South-South cooperation. The period that followed saw India–Africa relations phase out until New Delhi brought the continent back into the picture from the mid-2000s.

      In economic terms, trade augmented eightfold between 2001 and 2017, making India Africa’s third-largest trading partner with a total exchange worth $62.6 billion. While Chinese trade with the continent largely outnumbers it, India has kept up the pace and investments grew alongside trade, jumping to $54 billion in 2016.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As a fast-growing manufacturing power, India places strategic relevance to raw materials for the stability of its supply chain and energy sector. Indeed, New Delhi’s exchange with Africa, like Beijing’s, is driven by natural resources — with oil and gas accounting for approximately two-thirds of the total — followed by gold and other ores.

      Political ties have also strengthened over the years. In 2008, the first India–Africa Forum Summit was launched in New Delhi and took place again in 2011 and 2015, with 41 African heads of state attending; the next conference was scheduled in September 2020. These summits allowed African leaders, on the one hand, to set out their cooperation priorities and India, on the other, to respond accordingly. As a result, India–Africa cooperation pivoted around capacity building, technology transfer and infrastructural investments. Lastly, India has sought support on UN reform, which would be unrealistic without the votes of African countries in the General Assembly.

      Security issues have been on the agenda as well. New Delhi is particularly active in the realm of anti-piracy. After the kidnapping of several Indian citizens by Somali pirates, the Indian navy stepped up its efforts after 2008 and escorted over 1,000 vessels across the Gulf of Aden, sometimes in cooperation with the European Union’s Mission Atalanta.

      Another domain that saw India at the forefront is UN peacekeeping missions. The Indian subcontinent has always been one of the leading suppliers of peacekeepers to UN missions, with 80% of them deployed in Africa. On top of that, Indian defense academies have provided training to the Nigerian, Ethiopian and Tanzanian military.

      Modi and the Challenge to China

      Modi has given further impetus to India–Africa relations. In July 2018, he outlined the 10 guiding principles of India’s engagement with Africa during a visit to Rwanda and Uganda. On that occasion, the prime minister leveraged India’s role in South-South cooperation to advance his credentials as leader of the developing world. Besides rhetoric, Modi moved from words to action by signing a defense agreement with President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and by extending two credit lines worth nearly $200 million to the Ugandan government. He also announced the opening of 18 new diplomatic missions in Africa by 2021, bringing the total to 47.

      The prime minister has placed a keen eye on East Africa, which is set to become the epicenter of the India–China confrontation. The Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden are essential maritime routes for India’s export-oriented economy. China is heavily investing along these two waterways through the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), especially in the port of Djibouti and the Suez Canal.

      Djibouti is indeed becoming yet another element of the Chinese maritime network in the Indian Ocean, along with Pakistan, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar. This network, the so-called “String of Pearls,” geographically surrounds India and is perceived as a strategic nightmare in New Delhi. Therefore, the Chinese expansion in the western Indian Ocean urges India to intervene.

      To counter the BRI in the Indian Ocean, New Delhi launched a similar initiative for East Africa: the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC). Conceived in 2016 and still at an early stage, this Indo-Japanese project will attract investments on development, quality infrastructure, institutional connectivity, capacity building and people-to-people cooperation to the region. Due to its anti-Chinese nature, the AAGC primarily targets contested countries like Djibouti and Ethiopia.

      In 2017, Indian President Ram Nath Kovind clustered both countries for his first official visit. At the time, Ethiopia was already the largest beneficiary of India’s scholarship scheme and lines of credit for Africa with $1.1 billion, besides being the scene of the 2011 India-Africa Forum Summit. Djibouti was a relatively new target for New Delhi. In the year of the visit, China opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti. Consequently, Kovind not only signed some cooperation agreements, but he also reportedly expressed India’s interest in a military base on Djiboutian soil, a project still under discussion.

      The geopolitical confrontation between India and China looms on the horizon. Africa — particularly the east — is set to become an arena of such a global, momentous challenge. India has economic, energetic and security reasons to deepen its relations with the continent. Furthermore, China’s ubiquitous presence in Africa and the Indian Ocean is a direct menace to Modi’s global ambitions. Although China is still out of reach, New Delhi’s engagement has been steadily expanding in all fields, and its approach based on soft power looks promising. The concepts of building Africa’s capacities and unleashing its potential, along with the employment of African workers instead of foreign labor like China, have resonated across the continent.

      On the one hand, East Africa is under India’s radar more than any other region of the continent for its strategic position. On the other, East African governments have a long track record of balancing off the influence of external actors. East Africa is also the region where India can rely on a robust diaspora community. Hence, India presents itself as a useful ally to balance China’s growing influence in the region.

      Finally, yet importantly, the US and the European powers might prefer New Delhi’s penetration into the continent at the detriment of China’s, which is perceived as a growing geopolitical threat to the West. East Africa, in sum, might soon become the new battleground of the economic and security confrontation between the two Asian giants.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of Gulf State Analytics.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Tug of War in Washington Around the War in Afghanistan

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      The struggle has been going on for four years and is once again approaching a possible turning point. On one side you have a majority of Democrat and Republican legislators united with the intelligence community in the team called “proponents of a massive US military presence across the globe.” On the other side, an unpredictable US president who, since his 2016 election campaign, has consistently confirmed his intention to pull back the troops still engaged in the greater Middle East by the two presidents who preceded him.

      The tug of war continues between these two opposing forces as the place of the United States as “leader of the free world” appears up for grabs. (“Free” in the preceding sentence can be defined as “subject exclusively to corporate control” as corporations are deemed the only legitimate wielders of power.)

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      It has been a full 19 years since President George W. Bush launched his first campaign of perennial military occupation that the media labeled the “war in Afghanistan,” as if it was just another struggle between two opposing national armies. Bush still called it a war, but by ennobling it with the moniker the “global war on terror,” he made sure that, at least concerning public expectations, it was a war whose narrative didn’t require rational battle plans, declarations of victory, surrenders or truces. Nor did it require any of those singular moments that have defined past wars, producing all those “important dates” on the calendar that future generations of schoolchildren can memorize and then regurgitate as their responses to multiple choice questions on the tests that will decide whether or not they have mastered the logic of history.

      For anyone familiar with the mechanisms that require a constantly expanding military budget, US President Donald Trump’s insistence on reducing the footprint of the American military in the greater Middle East is heresy. Do Americans really think their continued presence is vital in Afghanistan? They said the same thing about Vietnam in 1973 when they abandoned Saigon to the Vietnamese communists. What disaster followed? The Vietnamese developed their country within a global economic context dominated by the United States and the two nations have since become best of friends, even though the communist party still officially runs Vietnam.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In 2001, Bush launched the war that was intended to drive the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. Regime change didn’t take long to complete. Though officially banished from power, the Taliban have remained the most powerful political force in the country. Driven by his impatience, Trump imagined that the only solution might come from recognizing that state of affairs and reaching an agreement with the Taliban. After several false starts, negotiations began again on September 12. This propension for dialogue with the enemy does not sit well with those Americans who see their nation’s role in the world as the defenders of democracy, who because they believe in that ideal deserve absolute trust. For these strategic thinkers, history has shown that the Taliban are untrustworthy and simply do not merit the confidence of the always respectful and trustworthy United States. 

      Reviewing the reactions of the camp committed to maintaining the US presence, Sean D. Naylor, Yahoo’s national security correspondent, cites retired Admiral William McRaven, former commander of Joint Special Operations Command. He tells us that McRaven opposes the negotiations because he is “skeptical that the Taliban would follow through on its commitments.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Commitment:

      In diplomacy, a formal promise to respect a number of agreed-upon rules and behaviors until one of the parties can demonstrate, thanks to its obviously superior force and capacity to intimidate, that the respect of those rules and behaviors is no longer required

      Contextual Note

      McRaven was blunt in his appreciation, using a tired cliché to express his conviction that no official agreement should be taken seriously. “I’m not personally convinced that any deal with the Taliban will be worth the paper that it’s written on.” Joining McRaven in his opposition to negotiations, Michael Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, asserted that his “assessment is that the Taliban would take over the country again in a matter of months.”

      For those unfamiliar with CIA jargon, “assessment” is synonymous with “my self-interested opinion.” Pursuing with the same vocabulary, Morell added that despite the terms of the envisaged peace deal that explicitly forbid it, “my assessment is that they would provide safe haven to al-Qaida.”

      This seals the case that in the intelligence community, the word “assessment” literally means “opinion” and not much more. Like a banker analyzing the curves of a real estate market in 2007 who believed it would keep growing forever, or like a schoolboy ready for a history test, Morell remembers the reasons Bush cited to attack the Afghan government in 2001: they had given “safe haven to al-Qaida.” If they did it once, they’ll do it again. Morell may be right, but he should also know that it was the US that gave the initial impetus to the creation and development of al-Qaida when they mobilized Osama bin Laden against the Soviets who had taken control of Afghanistan in 1979.

      The language feast continues when McRaven suggests that keeping troops in Afghanistan may be “a high price to pay” before adding this thought: “But what we have learned in the military is how to do this in a way that hopefully will not lose a lot of great soldiers.” The generals hope; the soldiers die. It’s just a question of when to pat yourself on the back when the numbers announced by the media remain sufficiently low.

      Historical note

      William McRaven and Michael Morrell have every reason to be suspicious of the value of commitments by any political entity. International understanding and world peace depend on trust and the respect of agreements reached by the political leaders of all nations. To wield clout in this complex world of international relations, financial power and military might may be sufficient to impose a nation’s policies in specific contexts, but the capacity to conduct business with every other nation in the world depends on the ability to maintain a reputation for keeping one’s commitments.

      The US has proved its capacity to wield financial power and military might, though not always to convincing effect. In his book, “In the Shadows of the American Century,” historian Alfred McCoy wrote, “Future historians are likely to identify George W. Bush’s rash invasion of Iraq, in 2003, as the start of America’s downfall.” It was the misuse of American power under Bush that began a precipitous decline in the reputation of the US as a political model and as a legitimate defender of the rule of law.

      That meant that to redress the balance, it became more important than ever for the US to show its determination to respect commitments. But as Annalisa Merelli, writing for Quartz, documented with a long list of examples, “the US is an unreliable international partner—and it has long been one, even before the current administration pulled out from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Paris agreement on climate change, and threatened to end NAFTA. History is dotted with treaties that the US has signed but not ratified, signed and then unsigned, and even refused to sign after pushing everyone else to sign.”

      Americans find this hard to understand because the media rarely, if ever, track the international reputation of the US in its proclaimed role as “leader of the free world.” They prefer to see the constant betrayals of trust as inevitable and regrettable but, at the same time, forgettable results of the differences between the two sacred political parties — Democrats and Republicans. Each has a different view of the world and, once in power, quite naturally seeks to impose that view, if only to keep their campaign promises to voters (and donors). International agreements always take a backseat to electoral tactics. 

      Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee for the US election in November, has expressed his admiration of McRaven’s “moral courage” and his pride in being associated with him. McRaven, who supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and has openly criticized Donald Trump, has a clear vision of the future that gives a good indication of what Biden’s foreign policy may look like. He affirmed that the US will “probably need to be in Afghanistan for a very long time.” Nineteen years has clearly not been long enough.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Dominic Raab to face hard questions about Irish border on US visit

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      The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, is travelling to Washington for talks with senior US officials and senior Democrats, where he is expected to be pressed by pro-Irish legislators to explain whether the UK is intending to break international law and undermine the Good Friday agreement.The Irish ambassador to the US, Daniel Mulhall, has been lobbying in Washington, warning that the UK’s latest row with the EU may yet lead to the re-emergence of a hard border on the island of Ireland.With the US presidential elections less than 50 days away, and the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, still the favourite to win, according to polls, Raab will be eager to reassure members of the Senate and the House of Representatives about the UK’s plans to revise the EU withdrawal agreement.The pro-Irish lobby in Washington rivals that of the UK, and the Democrats, who tend to be Brexit sceptics, want to see the dispute settled without threats, real or imagined, to peace in Northern Ireland.The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, warned last week that there would be absolutely no chance of a US-UK trade deal passing Congress if Britain violated its international agreements and Brexit undermined the Belfast accords. Any such trade deal needs two-thirds support of the Senate, and so requires substantial support from Democratic senators.A key target of UK lobbying is also likely to be Richard Neal, the chairman of the ways and means committee, which oversees trade agreements. In a statement last week he pointed out that the US was a guarantor of the Good Friday agreement.“I urge both sides to uphold the terms of this joint agreement, particularly with respect to the treatment of Northern Ireland, in accordance with international law,” Neal said. “The UK’s departure from the EU at the end of this year and any US-UK trade agreement must preserve the Good Friday agreement, which has maintained peace and prosperity for British and European peoples since 1998.“I sincerely hope the British government upholds the rule of law and delivers on the commitments it made during Brexit negotiations, particularly in regard to the Irish border protocols.”Tony Blinken, a senior foreign policy adviser to Biden, warned on twitter: “Joe Biden is committed to preserving the hard-earned peace & stability in Northern Ireland.“As the UK and EU work out their relationship, any arrangements must protect the Good Friday agreement and prevent the return of a hard border.”Biden has Irish roots and will look askance at anything that brings the threat of a hard border closer.A set-piece speech at the Atlantic Council thinktank on Thursday may be Raab’s single biggest public chance to explain UK government thinking on Ireland, as well as Iran. The UK is at loggerheads with the Trump administration on the US claim that it has the right to impose UN snapback sanctions on Iran.The UK also questions the practical impact if the US unilaterally declares it has the right to order UN member states to reimpose the sanctions lifted in 2015. The US already has punitive secondary sanctions against Iran.Like the US, the UK would like the UN embargo on conventional arms sales to Iran to be extended, but cannot see a way in which the Russia and China would not use their security council veto to block such a move.Raab on his trip will also be seeking an update on the civil lawsuit being filed by the parents of Harry Dunn in Virginia against Ann Sacoolas, who was charged with causing death by dangerous driving after a crash last year in Northamptonshire that resulted in the 19-year-old’s death.The US has refused a UK government request for the extradition of Sacoolas, the wife of a CIA operative. The UK is not expecting the US administration to change its position on extradition, but is sympathetic to the case. More

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      'A savagely broken food system': Cory Booker wants radical reform … now

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      From a viral pandemic to the movement for racial justice to the worsening climate crisis, Senator Cory Booker says the massive challenges facing the US right now are all tied to a “savagely broken food system”.And last week, his most recent challenge to that system gained new momentum, when a coalition of 300 farm, food, and environmental advocacy organizations sent a letter to Congress urging legislators to pass a bill that would eventually eliminate the country’s largest concentrated animal feeding operations (Cafos).Speaking exclusively to the Guardian, Booker, a New Jersey senator who ran for the democratic presidential nomination earlier this year, says: “Nobody seems to be calling out how multinational, vertically integrated industrial agricultural companies are threatening American wellbeing, and I just think that the more people learn about these practices, the more shocked they are.“I don’t think most Americans realize that the way we raise animals is such a betrayal of the heritage of our grandparents. I don’t think they realize that … these big companies like Smithfield and Cargill and others have our American farmers now living like sharecroppers in constant debt, forced to follow their rules. I’ve watched the suffering in North Carolina of minority communities who live around Cafos and can no longer breathe their air … and I’ve seen workers in the meatpacking plants and how dangerous those plants are.“Everybody is losing in this system – except for the massive corporations that have taken over the American food system.”Booker was elected to the Senate in 2013, after serving as mayor of Newark, New Jersey, from 2006 to 2013. During his time in the Senate he has focused his efforts on progressive issues like criminal justice reform, reducing economic inequality and increasing access to healthcare.More recently, the food system and the way it shapes inequalities in the US has emerged as one of his defining interests. As mayor of Newark, where more than 50% of the city’s residents are people of color, Booker observed a high rate of poverty and food insecurity. “I learned early in my time as mayor, when I was focused on things like criminal justice reform and economic justice, that all of these issues and injustices were intersectional, and you have to deal with them with a holistic view,” he says.“Kids who walk into bodegas can buy a Twinkie product cheaper than they can buy an apple because 90% of our agriculture subsidies go to four major monocrops,” he says. Workers exposed to dangers in meatpacking plants and to poor working conditions and pesticide exposures on farms are also disproportionately people of color, concerns recently amplified by the Black Lives Matter movement.Kids who walk into bodegas can buy a Twinkie product cheaper than they can buy an apple“What’s motivating me is that I think we need to really sound the alarm in America,” he says. “There are so many crises [that relate] to public health, from global warming to economic justice to humane treatment of animals. What should not be surprising is that a senator is taking this on. What should be more surprising is that we as a country have not seen this broken food system, especially after a Covid crisis, which has so exposed the fragility of the American food system. The real question is why isn’t Congress as a whole moving to address this massive threat to public health?” More

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      Trump election ad uses stock military image 'featuring Russian fighter jets'

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      A fundraising ad for US president Donald Trump’s re-election campaign reportedly used a stock photo featuring Russian fighter jets and weapons as part of a call for viewers to “support our troops”.The ad, which has since been removed, was made by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, which is run by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Trump campaign. The stock image shows five soldiers in silhouette against a sunset as the three planes fly overhead.Pierre Sprey, who helped design US Air Force planes, told Politico the jet featured in the ad is “definitely a MiG-29”, as did the director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow, Ruslan Pukhov.“That’s definitely a MiG-29,” said Pierre Sprey, who helped design both the F-16 and A-10 planes for the U.S. Air Force. “I’m glad to see it’s supporting our troops.”(via ⁦@dlippman⁩ ⁦@politico⁩) https://t.co/NibVOLdO63— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) September 15, 2020
      “I’m glad to see it’s supporting our troops,” said Sprey. Pukhov pointed out that at least one of the soldiers in the image was also carrying Russian-made AK-74 assault rifle.Politico said the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment, and the RNC declined to comment.The MiG-29 was designed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s to combat US fighter jets.Their appearance in the campaign ad comes as recent reports from intelligence officials have suggested that the Russian government is meddling in the US election by attempting to undermine Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate, in order to boost Trump’s chances of winning.This month, Microsoft warned that Russian hackers were targeting US political campaigns. On Sunday, a former member of Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US elections said that Trump was “compromised by the Russians”.Mueller, the special counsel appointed after Trump fired FBI director James Comey, did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Moscow, but did hand down multiple indictments and secure convictions of close Trump aides. He also laid out extensive contacts with Moscow.On 9 September, former top intelligence official in the Department of Homeland Security, Brian Murphy, accused Trump loyalists in the department of having manipulated intelligence reports, starting in 2018, to downplay the threat of Russian election interference. More

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      Biden condemns Trump as 'climate arsonist' as wildfires burn – live

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      Democratic contender attacks Trump’s climate strategy
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      Failing to Protect the Independence of the European Commission

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      I have always believed that the independence of members of the European Commission (EC) was a keystone of successful European integration. Commissioners are obliged by their oath of office to seek a European solution to problems, rather than just seek a balance between conflicting national interests. They have done so ever since 1958. This is why European integration has succeeded, while integration efforts on other continents have failed under the weight of national egoism.

      As the European Union grows, the independence of commissioners from national politics has become ever more important. Some believe the European Commission is too large. From an efficiency point of view, they have a point. But Ireland, among others, has insisted that despite this, each member state should have one of its nationals as a member of the commission at all times.

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      But if the one-commissioner-per-member-state rule is to be upheld as the EU enlarges, commissioners from all states — large and small — must demonstrate that they put European interest first and are not subject to the vagaries and passions of politics in their country of origin. In other words, European commissioners must be independent. All member states must be seen to respect this.

      This is why I am deeply troubled by the attitude taken by the Irish government, and then by President Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission, to call for Phil Hogan to resign as EU trade commissioner. Both of them failed in their understanding of the European Union and of one of its vital interests — namely the visible independence of members of the European Commission from the politics of any EU state, large or small.

      I was genuinely shocked by what happened. Late in the evening of August 22, leaders of the Irish government called on Hogan to “consider his position.” That means to resign. They piled on the pressure thereafter, with a further statement on August 23 containing a political determination that he had broken the government’s quarantine rules to combat the spread of COVID-19 after returning to Ireland from Belgium. Hogan resigned on August 26. That was his decision and one he was entitled to make.

      Lessons From This Precedent

      But there are profound lessons to be learned by President von der Leyen — and by the European Commission as a whole — as to how and to whom commissioners should be held accountable, and a need to understand what this precedent means for the future political independence of commissioners from their home governments. Separately, there are also questions to be asked about the internal management of and the collegiality of the EC.

      I will set out my concerns here, drawing on the words of the EU treaty, which I helped draft as a member of the Convention on the Future of Europe.

      On August 26, von der Leyen clearly withdrew any active support from Commissioner Hogan and unquestioningly accepted the line of the Irish government. This influenced him to resign from his position. In this action, I contend that the president did not fulfill all of her responsibilities under the treaties. I know she faced genuine political difficulty. But the treaties were framed to deal with fraught political situations while preserving the independence of the EC and due process.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The European Commission is the guardian of EU treaties and should be seen to defend the rules laid down in the treaties under all circumstances, even when it is politically difficult. Article 245 of the treaty requires member states to respect the independence of commissioners. Ireland is bound by that article, after having ratified it in a referendum. One should note that Article 245 refers to respecting the independence of commissioners individually, not just to the EC as a whole.

      It is for the Irish government to say whether publicly demanding a commissioner’s resignation for an alleged breach of Irish rules is compatible with the Irish government’s treaty obligation under Article 245. But it had other options,

      If a commissioner is visiting a member state for any reason, he or she is subject to the laws of that state on the same basis as any other citizen. A visiting commissioner would not be above the law, nor would they be below it either. If they breached the law, due process in the courts ought to be applied — as with any citizen. This is what would have happened if the visiting commissioner was from any country other than Ireland and had experienced the difficulties that Hogan did, and due process would have been followed.

      The statements of the Irish government, and the unsatisfactory explanations by Hogan, created political problems for von der Leyen. She had to do something, but not necessarily what she did. Yet there were options available to her, which she inexplicably failed to use or consider.

      Rules Ignored

      Commissioners are subject to a code of conduct. Under that code, there is an ethics committee to determine if its guidelines have been breached. If the matter is urgent, there is provision for a time limit to be set for a report by the committee. Nonetheless, a reference to the ethics committee would have allowed for due process and a calm and fair hearing. More importantly, using this process would also have asserted the independence of the European Commission as an institution.

      The code says that it is to be applied “in good faith and with due consideration of the proportionality principle,” and it allows for a reprimand that does not warrant asking the commissioner to resign. Due to the course followed, we will never know if there was any breach of the code at all by Hogan.

      President von der Leyen’s failure to use these mechanisms seems to be a serious failure to defend due process and proportionality and to protect the independence of individual commissioners, as was required by the treaty. The EC and the European Parliament should inquire into why she did not do so. There are consequences now for the viability of the code of conduct if it is not to be used in a case like this.

      Criteria Not Applied

      Was what Phil Hogan did a resigning matter anyway? Article 247 allows for only two grounds for asking a commissioner to resign. These are that he or she is “no longer being able to fulfil the conditions for the performance of [their] duties” or “has been guilty of serious misconduct.” I do not think either condition was met in Hogan’s case.

      Hogan would have been fully capable of carrying out his duties while the ethics committee did its work. Instead, his position is now effectively vacant.

      Most people I have spoken to do not think the breaches committed by Hogan — while foolish — amounted to “serious misconduct” within the meaning of Article 247. Failure to recollect all the details of a private visit over two weeks, or to issue a sufficient apology quickly enough, may be political failing, but they hardly rise to the level of “serious misconduct.” Any deliberate and knowing breach of quarantine measures should have been dealt with in Irish courts without fuss.

      In any event, von der Leyen would have been far wiser to have gotten an objective view on all of this from the ethics committee before allowing Hogan to resign.

      Why Did the European Commission Not Meet?

      Another issue is the president’s failure to call an EC meeting if she was considering that a commissioner should resign. Under Article 247, it is the EC — not the president alone — that can make a commissioner resign, and even then it must be approved by the European Court of Justice. These safeguards were put in the treaty to protect the independence of the European Commission. They were ignored in this case.

      The subsequent weakening of the institutional independence of the commission is very damaging to European integration and to the interests of smaller EU states. This should be of concern to the European Parliament.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More