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31.3.2021 | Redebeitrag von Dest Dan / Istanbul-Konvention 2 April 2021
1.4.2021 Ausstellungseröffnung und Panel „Perspektiven auf den Paragraph 218“ 30 March 2021
31.3.2021 Kundgebung: In Solidarity with Women in Turkey and in Poland 27 March 2021
25.3.2021 BUNDjugend Berlin: Action-Talk des A-Teams mit uA Dziewuchy Berlin 25 March 2021

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Dziewuchy Berlin

Of course it was a deliberate snub from Erdogan. A woman coming to lecture him on women’s rights was always going to be put in a corner – or, as it turned out, a corner seat. Diplomacy is a subtle power game, and a would-be strongman like Erdogan revels in such an occasion. The question is why we let him. As long as the EU doesn’t know what it really is, others will define us as they see fit.

We thought we had solved the so-called Kissinger issue back in 2009, when the Lisbon Treaty came into effect. Henry Kissinger, it is said, as Secretary of State had asked a question both practical and existential: “Who do I call if I want to call Europe?” So as the European Union became a bigger force politically and diplomatically, we decided to have a permanent president of the European Council and a High representative for foreign affairs, who was also Vice-president of the European Commission. These leaders would also put a face on the power of the EU, because the readability of Europe’s increasing power left much to be desired.
So now, Kissinger would know who to call, and citizens would know who to call upon if they wanted to change or criticise the EU.

It has been a disappointing compromise ever since. Because instead of unifying roles and responsibilities, we simply created new posts and added to the confusion.

Protocol is one thing—like when the EU nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize led to a minor bureaucratic war in Brussels over who would travel to collect it, and who would speak, and who would sign and whose signature would be above and whose below… But behind such petty protocol issues are serious questions of power and politics. Erdogan didn’t just snub a female leader, he snubbed a divided leadership. Being the player that he is, he sought the weakest link and found it right where he wanted it: in the Commission, and the constraining role it is meant to play towards Turkey. He read us well.

The European Union is a hybrid political animal. It combines federalised powers conferred to Brussels institutions and politicians with competences that remain firmly in national hands. There’s nothing wrong with that if – but only if! – the division of labour is right. We often play good cop/bad cop for instance on trade, where the Commission does the hard and unpopular work of negotiating and applying the rules, and national governments can go around the world promoting their country’s businesses untainted.

But it doesn’t work if the roles are unclear or not adhered to by the politicians involved.

One of the problems of the euro crisis for instance was the Eurogroup taking decisions with implications for the euro area and the EU as a whole, while the accountability of the Eurogroup president was de facto only to his own country—not towards any of the other countries or the European institutions. The logical proposal to combine the eurogroup president with the post of commissioner in charge of the euro, has been rebutted by member states.

Such institutional confusion it is typical of an EU that doesn’t consistently draw lessons from its shortcomings: We know we need more unity in European policies, but shy back from unifying our politics. We know we need to pool our sovereignty in order to maintain it, but we refuse to rise above national, bureaucratic or personal interests. As long as we ourselves cannot define Europe by strength, others will define us through our weaknesses.

In setting up the Conference on the Future of Europe, many were quick to say it shouldn’t be an institutional discussion—that would be abstract, self-centred, meaningless. But institutions matter: They show the world who we are, where we stand, whether we stand united… or not.

What we saw in Ankara was a Europe falling between two stools. It is time to fix Europe’s indecisiveness and weakness!

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