Written by: Amanda Dara Amadea
Last Fiday (23/09), EUROS had the pleasure of being visited by Professor Martin Holland from University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Professor Holland, a celebrated expert in the field of EU, where he has obtained the prestigious title of Jean Monnet Chair ad personam for his distinguished high-level international teaching visited UGM on the occasion of EUROS’ discussion series, a public lecture dedicated to discuss on EU’s current pressing issue: Britain’s withdrawal of its EU membership, or known publicly as Brexit. The event itself was held in UGM’s Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, aside from being open to public, the lecture was also a part of the curriculum for History of European Diplomacy class of the International Relations Department, taught by Drs. Muhadi Sugiono, M.A., that also acted as the moderator of the public lecture.
The lecture that was titled “Two Referendums and How Many Funerals?: The End of Four Decades of British Prevarication and Ambivalence Towards European Integration” was delivered eloquently by Professor Holland, attracting more than 50 attendants. Professor Holland, in his lecture, highlights the ever-shifting position of Britain within the EU, where his analysis on Brexit was extracted from. One of the most interesting part of Professor Holland’s lecture was his usage of mass media’s political cartoon as the representation of public perception towards the forty years relations of Britain and the EU.
Professor Holland started the discussion by addressing the attendants a question: “What is the suitable level of integration?” Where he explains that despite EU’s celebrated success, the entity which oftentimes dubbed as the world’s most successful integration is not free of conflicts, where Brexit becomes a monumental change in the EU, and is most likely to become the start of series of change within EU in the foreseeable future. The internal conflicts between EU parties become the major concern that might affect the foundation of EU, where the Conservative parties have been garnering major support with their Euroskeptic concerns, strengthened with the exponential growth of far-Right movements endorsed by parties like National Front in France with its influential leader, Marine Le Pen, on the frontier. For years, the existence of EU has been contested and reaching its full challenges this year, the entity itself is a wonderful anomaly, where portions of national sovereignty flourish to a single union, but being consisted of 28 countries, the union comprises of great variety of multiculturalism, this leads to inevitable compromise by the entity. Oftentimes the tendencies for EU to compromise in order to preserve unity lead to its inability in taking definite actions on pressing issue, like the recent migrant crisis. However, despite the popular notion that dubs issues like migrant crisis, British parliament’s compromised power within EU and EU’s financial downturn as the main triggers of Brexit, Professor Holland argues that Britain has always had the tendencies of being an outsider as member of EU, seen through their rejection towards Schengen or Euro, while showing historical cartoons on British mass media that shows Britain joining the ECC in 1973 as alike to Trojan horse, where Britain is depicted as aiming to ruin the EU initiative from inside. Finally, Brexit only becomes the inevitable end that has been predicted by many scholars, including Professor Holland himself.
Click the pictures for full size.
The public lecture was ended with vibrant questions from the attendants’ to Professor Holland, with most concerning on the future of respectively EU without Britain and Britain without EU, with the Britain having to redo trade deals with dozens of countries following their secession from the EU, and the possibility of greater alienation of Britain from the rest of the European countries.
The presentation of Professor Holland can be freely downloaded. Click here to download.