Serena Giusti

Reshaping Cultural Heritage Protection Policies at a Time of Securitisation: France, Italy, and the United Kingdom

Abstract In the context of the increasing securitisation of cultural heritage, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom have reacted differently to the recent wave of iconoclasm perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and similar radical groups and terrorist organisations. With cultural heritage now discursively identified as a security concern, the three states enacted security practices to deal with the newly emerged security threats. All three cases show a tight association between the protection of cultural heritage, development and security policies. State-driven cultural heritage protection policies continue to be designed around the notion of multilateral cooperation, although innovative forms of public-private multilateralism and civil-military cooperation are increasingly being introduced.

Russia in crisis. Implications for Europe

The aim of this chapter is to point out the consequences of the global financial and economic crisis for the Russian Federation and its implications for the Russia-EU relationship, the pan-European space and the global balance. Russia has been dramatically hit by the crisis, proving its high integration in the global market. There is not a Russian ‘exceptionalism’. The crisis was expected to have serious political implications in Russia where the legitimacy of the ruling elite broadly depends on the country’s economic performance. Furthermore, since the first of Vladimir Putin’s terms of presidency, the return of Russia among the world powers has been mostly due to its economic rebirth. However, at least in the short term, Russia has reacted well to the external shock and it is already experiencing a recovery, albeit bumpy. The country’s ‘actorness’ has not been seriously hampered. On the international front, the crisis has been rather exploited, strengthening its influence and establishing profitable strategic alliances. The EU has only played a marginal role in its big neighbour’s post-crisis plans; relations between Moscow and Brussels are not becoming more involved.

The securitisation of cultural heritage

ABSTRACT It is not a novelty for art to come under attack: cultural heritage has always been endangered by wars, conflicts and political violence. Since the last century, the international community has started reacting, moved by the concern that these threatened monuments be protected. Lately, cultural heritage can be seen to undergo a veritable crescendo from politicisation to criminalisation and securitisation. Accordingly, this article seeks to analyse the pathway that characterises the international protection of cultural heritage in crisis-torn contexts, employing a discursive lens and mapping the narrative threads that the main international actors have constructed in reaction to recent attacks on archaeological sites (i.e. Palmyra) and historical artefacts, especially in the Middle East (namely Syria and Iraq). After having traced this process, we will offer a tentative explanation of what we consider a process of securitising an under-researched field (i.e. cultural heritage).

Women in the Mediterranean: Still Discriminated Against?

This Special Issue is the outcome of a successful and lively debate, taking place in the course of the Women in the Mediterranean event organized within the context of the Festival d’Europa 2015 in Florence. The panel consisted of women addressing, from a variety of viewpoints, the challenges faced by women on the two shores of the Mediterranean. The thoughts, views and analyses presented in the course of this debate are the inspiration for the present publication. In it, we are aiming at proposing different disciplinary perspectives and methodologies offering a composite, although not exhaustive, picture of such a complex and multifaceted issue. At the roots of this effort is the attempt to give voice to women and to their questions through the contribution of experts in various related fields. What emerges is a kaleidoscope of overlapping images, realities, information, all hinting at the fact that women are still experiencing inequality on both the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean. In the EU’s Mediterranean countries social patterns have evolved and women now are strongly present on the labour market and have become financially independent. Nevertheless, inequalities persist, as women’s employment rate is still lower than men’s. For young women it is even harder than for young men to enter the labour market and women are still paid on average less than men for the same job. They are more likely than men to take up part-time jobs or interrupt their careers altogether to care for children or a sick parent. This inequality is also carried on to women’s pensions, which are on average lower than men’s. The glass ceiling has not disappeared: there are still too few women in leadership positions both in private and public sectors as well as in politics. While in the EU’s Mediterranean countries inequality is mostly linked to the social sphere, and in particular refers to labour market dynamics, in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) area the situation is more complicated as the social and private spheres overlap and cultural and religious factors have a great impact on women’s autonomy and opportunities beyond the family perimeter. The different challenges women are facing on the two sides of the Mediterranean have sometimes led to incomprehension and misperceptions. Western-supported policies devoted to closing the gap between men and women in the Southern Mediterranean area have overlooked those countries’ peculiarities, simply exporting models tailored for EU’s member states. The EU’s attempts to strengthen relations with the Mediterranean countries on a multilevel basis have not rescued women from marginalization. Nevertheless, during the 2011 awakening, women played an important role in activating civil society and they are still to play a role in the modernization of their countries. They are considered as a key part of the fight against terrorism and radicalization,

Gender Mainstreaming towards the Mediterranean: the Case of the ENP

Abstract This article explores how the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has supported policies promoting the improvement of women’s conditions in Mediterranean countries. It points out the evolution of the European Union’s gender mainstreaming in the various manifestations of its external policies directed to the region. Gender mainstreaming has been pursued through the usual practice, largely used in recent enlargements: norm diffusion. This method does not allow for a reconceptualization of the policies issued: partners only have the possibility of deciding the pace of implementation of a set of goals selected among those recommended by the EU. The 2011 wave of turmoil on the southern shores of the Mediterranean has contributed to refocusing the EU’s actions on women. The new framework for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment delivered in 2016 has established that gender equality will be mainstreamed through all the EU’s external policies. Although efforts have been made to appraise it, the EU’s gender strategy has mostly failed to confront the structural causes of inequality. It has mainly focused on the external aspects of the question while underestimating cultural, domestic and familial impediments and neglecting national debates or the contributions of local feminists. The EU’s gender mainstreaming remains a unidirectional policy.

Practising EU foreign policy, Russia and the Eastern neighbours

from Muslims and “illegal” people coming on boats, a deliberate and careful use of language because the argument goes: if all asylum seekers are illegal (hence criminals), then it is possible to justify excessively harsh measures against them. In this crafty way, nativist parties condition their public to see asylum seekers (with rights granted by the UN convention) as criminal, and therefore governments are expected to punish and detain them. If the national security alarm bell is raised or, if it is a “war against people smugglers”, then the nation can accept military deployments. “It meant that harsh asylum-seeker policy suddenly became recast as compassionate” (p. 260). Nativist parties’ leaders base their pitch to voters on such noteworthy phrases: “We are the party of the people against the elite” and use new social media, like Twitter and Facebook, as the equivalent of a referendum for majoritarianism, a way to send regular messages directly to “the people” without any checks and balances. In the end, what the crisis is really about is more than an ethical crisis: it is a crisis about the laws and institutions that have been enacted in order to block any form of elitism and protect democracy’s core values. Elitism of any kind – be it academic, journalistic, political representatives’ or any other form – undermines democracy, and measures are needed to disembark from elitist bubbles and listen to the people who are on the damaging side of capitalism’s globalization forces. Alternatives to representative democracy are possible and can be put into practice. In our classrooms, we could start by asking our students to engage in a conversation with family members or close friends who voted for the Danish People’s Party or the National Front and to build on those conversations a nuanced way in which we can take emotions (grievances) seriously and to give a voice back to the people. Michelle Pace Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark mpace@ruc.dk

The Pros and Cons of ‘de facto’ Polish Opting-Out of the EMU

The World Bank economist Marcin Piatkowski concluded in a recent report that Poland ‘has just had probably the best 20 years in more than one thousand years of its history’. Within the EU, the country has shown itself to be the most resilient to the 2008 global financial crisis. While the limited connections to international and European financial markets is part of this explanation, one cannot overlook the role of sound macroeconomic policies set up over the years in reducing the likelihood of transmission effects based on free trade, fiscal discipline and more integration at the European level. Despite its extraordinary economic performance, Poland has not yet entered the EMU. Polish leadership has mostly calibrated its economic policies following this aim, but the goal is still very controversial in the country both from a political (public opinion and the opposition are contrary) and a legal point of view (Euro accession would require constitutional changes). This chapter seeks to understand the motivations behind the Polish postponement of the accession to the EMU and the pros and cons (economic, political, social) of this delay. Is this limbo situation going to be a permanent one establishing a ‘de-facto’ opting-out from the EMU?

The European Endowment for Democracy and Democracy Promotion in the EU Neighbourhood

The European Endowment for Democracy (EED) is a recently established instrument of democracy promotion intended to complement existing EU tools. Fashioned after the US National Endowment for Democracy, the EED’s privileged area of action is the European neighbourhood. Meant as a small rapid-response, actor-oriented ‘niche’ initiative, its main task is to select those actors, from both civil and political society able to produce a change in their country. The EED represents a step forward in the EU’s capacity to foster democracy, but does not necessarily go in the direction of more rationality and effectiveness. Not all EU member states support the EED with the same enthusiasm and it is still not clear how it fits into the EU’s overall democracy promotion architecture. Its actions may be successful in a very constrained timeframe. However, recent crises at the EU’s borders would seem to call for a strategy that takes into consideration systemic hindrances, post-regime change complexities, regional dynamics and finally rival plans of autocracy promotion.