Well, it’s July 1, so the UK is now officially the holder of the rotating presidency. Yesterday Jack Straw outlined the UK government’s priorities to an enthralled House of Commons:
Mr Straw told the House of Commons that Britain would ?work hard to reach an agreement on future financing by the end of the year?
The foreign secretary said that another key area of concern for the UK presidency was Turkish membership of the EU, acknowledging that the issue was ?controversial? in many parts of Europe. Mr Straw said: ?The British government remains strongly committed to Turkey joining the EU.?
Let the games commence!
They are commited to bring turkey but they dont want pay for it !
i think bring this non-european country in europe it s the last british method to destroy any european identity, ambition, coherence.
and sadly, no politicians have the courage to say NO to this ridiculous project.
spend some much time to build something, put so much dreams and hope on it and see the european project dying like that is painful.
They are commited to bring turkey but they dont want pay for it !
No. They say so to have something to give away in negotiations. Mr. Blair is a realist and knows that there are limits to what he can push through.
fact : he ask for bring a huge burden and UK pay less than all other rich countries (9th).
accept UK in europe was a deadly mistake, Turkey will finish the job.
sad end but i still hope someone will say to this foolish.
By principle I’m favorable to the membership of the UK in the EU, like I’m favorable to the entries of Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and other. But it would not surprise me much that Turkey would be a very enthusiastical member if we take them. And frankly the Turks are not that different from the rest of Europeans.
DSW
“accept UK in europe was a deadly mistake, Turkey will finish the job?
It was a deadly mistake for the Chirac-Schroeder vision of Europe, but not for the average European view. Tony Blair is the only big-country leader that can show a successful economic record and the only one willing to push the badly needed Lisbon agenda.
UK is a necessary counterweight for France and vice versa. Europe may reach the Aristotelic golden-mean virtue if both views are taken into account.
I don’t see the UK as such a success. In recent years a comparison of productivity in which the USA score 100 gave 79 to the UK and 100+ to France. Simplifying, in the UK it takes 5 workers to produce the same as 4 in France.
DSW
“in the UK it takes 5 workers to produce the same as 4 in France”.
This would be a comparison of labour hours. But this is only one measure of productivity, if the wages are lower, your productivity might – in theory – be higher. The question is what is the measure. If what you want to do is put people to work, and share out the work, the UK system would seem to be preferable.
This issue is, in the end, a question of how you distribute the benefits system. In France the benefits system still seems to be loaded towards staying at home, in the UK (the FT was arguing last week) the resources are directed to income support *once you are in work*. This seems like a more rational use of the resources to me.
Whether the UK economy will turn out to be a big success or not, I think the jury is out right now. We need to see how the housing boom terminates before being able to make any assessment over a sufficient time horizon. (Ditto for the US, with the China endgame being the key item). You can obviously live well on credit for a number of years, but if the beneficiary is your principal rival, then the seven fat years may be followed by seven or more lean ones, and all this enters the solde de tout compte.
You are right that it was an hourly production comparison, so total productivity is another matter. Still I think that the UK system has as its purpose to achieve social control, a system in which the lower castes are not in a position to question their masters. Another comparison of social equality have a range of 15 for France and 24 for the UK, of income between higher pays and lower pays (or 14 and 25, I think the USA had a much higher disparity: 400. However I might be mixing different comparisons). That would imply that work is much less interesting in the UK than in France. Weren’t it because scolarisation and healthcare are free in the UK it would truly be a caste system, or at least thats my opinion, you may know better.
DSW
I just notice a change in German media reflection. Two weeks ago, the German media wrote Tony Blair down for not agreeing to finaces and now, the media tells us, how well it is in Britain. Especially remarkable it is in Germanys primary TV newscast Tagesschau. So, I’ld say, well done, Tony.
Those of us still entrapped in antedilevian habits and traditions of objectivity feel a need for confirmation of claims about EU budget figues and here is a helpful and illuminating recent brief posted from Ireland on EU member state contributions to the EU budget: http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/printer_10002107.shtml
Another brief, also from Ireland, reminds us that, “Despite being one of the richest countries of the European Union, Ireland will continue to receive significant amounts of what can be termed ‘Foreign Aid,’ until 2007.”
http://www.finfacts.com/comment/irelandeunetreceiptsbenefits.htm
This second brief includes a chart showing how Ireland attracted more cash income from the EU per head of population than any other EU member state.
“Only four countries benefited from EU money in 2003 – Portugal, Greece, Ireland and Spain – while the rest were net contributors. In terms of cash per head, the funding amounted to a net receipt of ?391.70 for each Irish national. At the other of the scale, Dutch, Luxembourg and German nationals pay ?120, ?125 and ?92.7 respectively, while each Briton pays ?46.50.”
A table reports that in 2003 – the latest year for which figures are shown here – Ireland made a net receipt of ? 1,563.3 millions, equivalent to 1.4% of Ireland’s GDP.
The latest official Eurostat estimates of GDP per capita in EU countries:
http://epp.eurostat.cec.eu.int/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/PGP_PRD_CAT_PREREL/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2005/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2005_MONTH_06/2-03062005-EN-BP.PDF
The official EU brief on financing the budget is here:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/budget/financing/index_en.htm
A quick and illuminating presentation on how the EU budget is spent shows that agricultural subsidies and rural development swallow 46%:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/europe/04/money/html/introduction.stm
France and then Spain gain most from EU spending on agricultural and rural aid:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/europe/04/money/html/agriculture.stm
“Figures on who receives most EU farm subsidies show most payments go to large, wealthy landowners, not small farms, according to a leading think tank. . . ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4373397.stm
“fact : he ask for bring a huge burden and UK pay less than all other rich countries (9th).”
fact: Britain is not opposed to providing money for the poor (cf aid to foreign countries, debt relief). Britain IS opposed to CAP. If the EU gives up CAP, I suspect Britain would give up it’s rebate without much struggle. CAP is not a moral issue; don’t waste people’s time by trying to pretend that Britain’s lack of support for CAP represents some huge hypocrisy.
“Weren’t it because scolarisation and healthcare are free in the UK it would truly be a caste system, or at least thats my opinion, you may know better.”
I don’t know whether I know better or not Antoni, I think with this kind of thing there isn’t ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, it’s a question of what you prefer. But as you say there is the NHS, there is a state eductation system (including a good and accessible university system), and the thing you don’t mention, provision for the elderly, who are the main recipients of the social security system.
(This would be, in my view, the great weakness of the Spanish system: the lack of such substantial systematic provision for the elderly. This, again, I know a little about, since we have an elderly family relative at home with Alzheimer right now.)
I don’t think the idea that the UK has a system “in which the lower castes are not in a position to question their masters” is a valid description of the UK, a country where the serfs have busied themselves criticising their lords since the times of Watt Tyler and Robin Hood (maybe this should go in the national cliches post). I don’t think the British ‘underclasses’ have ever been renowned for their servility. My impression is that what has happened is quite the contrary.
If you go back to the 60’s and 70’s the ‘British Disease’ was the “I’m alright Jack” syndrome, or “f**k you mate, I’m going on strike”, where industrial issues were almost exclusively resolved through confrontation, much to the detriment of national productivity. In that epoch great was our envy of the Japanese and German systems of industrial consensus and conciliation. Then came Mrs T and the de-industrialisation of Britain. While this was often carried out in a cruel and heartless fashion, I cannot help but feel that this, at root, was a good thing. I only need to look at Germany and the US today, with the de-industrialisation process that is going on in those countries, and the problems that are arising in that context, to feel that the UK has at least been ahead in something.
Now this ‘taming of the giant’ which was the UK proletariat hasn’t produced a ‘nation of servile ‘yes people’, my feeling is that it has produced far more social consensus, which is something different. You can see some of this in the political system, where you have had a decline in the extremes, and the rise of a centre party.
I think, at the end of the day, the big issue is labour market reform. Whether you want a society that runs on 10% unemployment, or one which runs on 5%. I think it is perfectly possibile to believe in social justice and harmony, and in reducing inequality, and think at the same time that so many people being without work is a tremendous injustice.
Of course much of this in the end is rather theoretical, since the big issue is going to be – in the epoch of rapidly ageing European societies – how any of us are going to continue paying for it all (the welfare system I mean).
Maynard, the UK opposes the CAP because they have not enough constituents in that field, now lets speak of lack of taxes on financial institutions, and then the UK turns a lion.
DSW
They are not necessarily wrong about it, just because they are opposing it for selfish reasons.
“And frankly the Turks are not that different from the rest of Europeans.”
This has to be one of the most ignorant comments I’ve heard in a while. Sure, except for the genocide denial, the ethnic cleansing and 30 year long illegal occupation of Cyprus, apartheid-esque laws concerning the rights of Kurds, and an illegal embargo on Armenia aimed at starving them into submission. But other than that everything’s just fine.
Does it make you happy shilling for a fascist, racist state?
It seems that Blair wants to destroy
Europe.
UK has always been the submarine of USA but I was not sure, but now it’s more clear than before.
Because there is no reason having Turkey in Europe. 97% of their country is in Asia.
“It seems that Blair wants to destroy Europe”
As is perhaps generally known in the blogsphere, I personally regard Blair as a menance for many reasons and think he ought to be indicted for war crimes before the International Criminal Court in the Hague. His international credibility has been dented somewhat since he told G8 political leaders at the summit in Evian in June 2003 that “he stood ‘100%’ by the evidence shown to the public about Iraq’s alleged weapons programmes. ‘Frankly, the idea that we doctored intelligence reports in order to invent some notion about a 45-minute capability for delivering weapons of mass destruction is completely and totally false,’ he said.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2955036.stm
However, as we have come to recognise, it is a deeply entrenched European political tradition of deflecting attention from persistent internal policy failures and domestic scandals by creating and blaming an external enemy. This seems to be Chirac’s present intent for motives that become increasingly apparent from this succession of news reports during the last sveral years:
“Police acting on a judge’s instructions have searched the offices of the French Finance Minister, Thierry Breton.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4626489.stm
“France’s finance minister has resigned over an embarrassing row over the cost of his state-funded flat.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4298293.stm
“A spokesman for President Chirac’s political party and a former defence minister have been convicted of money-laundering in a party finance scandal.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3493197.stm
“A court has found former French Prime Minister Alain Juppe guilty of involvement in a party funding scam in Paris in the 1980s and early 1990s.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3444239.stm
“The death has been announced of Alfred Sirven, the former executive and central figure in the corruption trial two years ago at the oil giant Elf. Sirven was jailed for five years and fined 1m euros for creaming off money from an illegal slush fund which he ran from Geneva.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4262377.stm
“French President Jacques Chirac is to remain immune from prosecution for his alleged role in party-funding scandals for as long as he is in office, a judicial commission has recommended.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2569887.stm
“More than 40 people – including former ministers – are named in an official report on one of France’s biggest corruption cases. Investigating magistrates on Monday ended an eight-year inquiry into allegations that politicians and directors of the formerly state-owned oil company, Elf Aquitaine, connived to siphon off hundreds of millions of dollars.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1800653.stm
Anyone fancy a tourist trip to Paris to watch the changing of the ministers?
“It seems that Blair wants to destroy
Europe.
UK has always been the submarine of USA but I was not sure, but now it’s more clear than before.
Because there is no reason having Turkey in Europe. 97% of their country is in Asia.”
Are you the stupidest person in creation? You think Turkey should be kept out of the EU cause of the EU’s NAME?
OK, how about this. We rename the EU to the DU, Democratic Union. Problem now solved — no more bullshit about how Turkey is not “European”.
JLS:
It is Britain’s continued destiny to come to rescue Europe from its own internal madnesses: whether alone or with allies.
Remember the Napoleonic and Hitlerian attempts to force European ‘unity’ (and the customs union that led to the creation of the Second Reich). At the risk of rubbing it in, we in Britain have to remind ourselves that a Frenchman is someone who can tell the the difference between Napoleon and Hitler…
“We rename the EU to the DU, Democratic Union. Problem now solved — no more bullshit about how Turkey is not “European”.”
you perfectly understood the problem : with turkey, it’s not EU anymore its another project, between ONU and freemarket, nothing more, a poor stuff without any interest.
Sorry but i m not stand up for this bullshit DU :
I WANT EU nothig else and by consequences I DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT TURKEY !!!!
” And frankly the Turks are not that different from the rest of Europeans.”
I dont know, in my country if a woman gets raped her friends and family usually do their best to get the perpetrator behind bars, they dont organize an execution squad to kill the poor woman.
Turkey has a long way to go, too soon to talk about full membership.
Very funny thread. Can I flaunt my prejudices too?
50 years ago, what Europe has already achieved would have been dismissed as a pipe-dream ? and perhaps, in British eyes, a nightmare.
Sadly, there?s no denying that Britain does not (yet?) share the vision of Europe that has driven those achievements. That vision was, is and will remain that of a confederacy. It demands the growth of a European identity based on an understanding of what we share; an affection for our common cultural roots. We Europeans partake in intertwined histories, both ancient and modern, from Graeco-Roman times to fascism, communism and liberalism. It has been a constant debate among ourselves, not merely an interaction.
The economic side of things is a means, an approach, not the thing in itself. Without the vision, the concrete achievements would not have materialised, and will flounder and fail, even today.
Turkey?s accession runs counter to the further institutional development of this European cultural identity and political projection. Turkey’s full membership is not essential to any of the purposes associated with the European project. German, French and British access to Turkish markets, reduction of Greece?s defence spending, demilitarisation of Cyprus, and the stabilisation of democratic secularism in Turkey itself, could just as easily be served by some special status crafted to fit, and negotiated very firmly, as it was for Switzerland and Norway.
The FCO is steeped in Atlanticism and in this sense, Jack Straw has gone native. I doubt many Brits realise how things like Echelon are viewed by ordinary people in Europe ? as an act of outright enmity. Britain doesn?t sit on the fence between the US and the EU. Britain has chosen, mistakenly, which side it?s on. Since it will now, inevitably, be put to a referendum, Turkey?s membership is dead in the water. One has to ask ? why pursue it now?
“Can I flaunt my prejudices too?”
Very eloquently put John. I don’t agree with you, at least not entirely. But I enjoyed reading what you had to say, and it made me think. It was probably that rather than the post prandial coffee that woke me from my heat-induced lethargy.
Interestingly, what you outline reflects to a great extent what I used to think when I still lived in the UK.
At the end of the day I am sure that we share a broadly similar vision of the Europe we would like to see. My differences revolve around two themes: Atlanticism and the common understanding of what we share.
I am not really interested in a Europe which is established as a bulwark *against* something, whether that something like to the south-east of the Bosphorus, or to the west of Lands End.
My feelings are that the United States, when it finally does manage to extricate itself from Iraq, will be more or less embroiled in thinking about what it does, and doesn’t need to do about China. This behoves a super power once it recognises the emergence of a strong, and potentially more powerful rival.
Since the Europe I would like to see doesn’t need to have ‘super-power’ ambitions, and since the US-China thing won’t be a re-run of the US-USSR precursor, where ethically you have to belong to one side, Europe will in fact find itself with a great deal more room for manoeuvre. I have long been arguing that I see India as a natural ally for us in this situation, there is a community of values there which can make for real and strong ties (the Indo-European community? No, this couldn’t be, the Basques aren’t I-Es). The UK is the EU member with the closest ties to India, do you see where I am leading?
So this would be OTOH. Forget Atlanticism and anti-Atlanticism, this is a still lingering part of our recent past, but the future lies in the Pacific.
Now, the common roots.
“the growth of a European identity based on an understanding of what we share”
I am interested John in a Europe that is capable of survival, a Europe that can offer a healthy and prosperous life to its children and grandchildren. The greatest menace to that as far as I am concerned is the process of demographic ageing. Coping with this issue will involve the development of a whole array of new policies, and alliances. In this the Lisbon process is just the begining.
Immigration will not answer all our problems (see various of my posts going back) but it will form a core part of any rescue operation. Accepting immigration, and cultural difference is in my book the main challenge facing all of us across Europe today. So what I am trying to argue is that we need to build a culture which is open to difference, which is inclusivist, and not exclusionist. A culture which is a common understanding of what we share *plus*. And this is why I welcome Turkey. I think having Turkey in, not today, not tomorrow, at the earliest in 10 years time, will force Europe to look at itself and make the changes it needs to make.
‘Europeans’: what’s in a name?
The British example is instructive here. I don’t imagine (and I don’t know for sure John, but I have the impression that you remember this as I do) that those early Jamaicans who arrived at the end of the 50s to drive London Transport buses, or to clean in NHS hospitals, would ever have thought that one day they would be called ‘black British’. Times change, and so do the meanings of words. In Catalonia we say that Catalans are whoever lives and works in Catalonia (this expression, which was first applied to Spanish migrants who came from Andalusia and Extremadura, is now extended to Ecuadorians, Gambians, Senegalese, Morroccans etc etc). The Europe I would like to see, would be just like that: flexible, and capable of adapting to changed circumstances.
Of course, these are my ideals, and those thoughts you expressed were yours (and not as advertised your prejudices). And what’s wrong with that, since without ideals we are dead.
On pragmatics: the two most imminent threats to the whole shebang would be, the euro (and the traumatic consequences any forced break-up might bring in its train) and the recent bout of anti-constitution votes. When you say “Turkey?s accession runs counter to the further institutional development”, I assume you mean that forcing the Turkey question would also place the whole institutional process under enormous strain. I would say this is an empirical issue, it might be the case, and I hope if it is that Blair is intelligent enough to know when to push, and when not to. Instead of ‘yes’ or ‘no’, sometimes you need to say ‘maybe’, and live to fight another day.
On Turkey, I have posted detailed opinions in a number of posts, and their comments:
http://fistfulofeuros.net/archives/001321.php
http://fistfulofeuros.net/archives/000835.php
http://fistfulofeuros.net/archives/000806.php
http://fistfulofeuros.net/archives/000777.php
“As is perhaps generally known in the blogsphere, I personally regard Blair as a menance for many reasons”
Bob, I am terribly torn. I have the deepest sympathy for what you say about TB – as indeed I do for what you say about Mandelson – but when I look at what they say and do on EU and related issues, I cannot help agreeing with them, I cannot get away from the fact that this is so, and that they are head and shoulders the clearest and most articulate of Europe’s political leaders in this difficult moment. Much, much more than say Brown or Straw, or Merkel, or Sarkozy, or (for that matter) Zapatero. Or am I simply looking with rose tinted glasses from a distance?
Long comment – please say if this contravenes local Blogging etiquette.
Edward, I have found your ideas of the economic significance of age pyramids very intriguing, and the connection to immigration is a very natural one. Since one of the areas I am particularly interested in is relations between Albania and Greece ? the one being a country which still has high natality , and the other one of the states worst affected by the current decline ? I?m looking forward to reading the detail of your analysis and arguments. (Hint? Where do I start in the archives?) But we can and will have Turkish immigration, as and when it suits us – and I hope with attendant European citizenship for those immigrants, eventually – without granting Turkey full membership.
I don?t have a problem with immigration at all ? Arab, Turkish or West Indian ? providing it produces more Europeans, people who share many of the core values of the European country they grew up in, by the third generation at any rate. I assume the process of integration is a lot easier if the networks first-generation immigrants rely on do not become autonomous substitutes for relating to the host society, especially if the immigrants are from an agrarian cultural background. That implies a controlled pace of immigration, not sudden waves, some basis for identification, and a clear policy that demands and encourages both linguistic integration and acknowledgment that immigration means adopting a new set of values. I support the French policy on the foulard wholeheartedly, and note that non-Cypriot Turkish communities, in France and elsewhere, have a particularly poor record in these regards. DoDo?s interesting statistics from Germany in one of the threads you referenced addressed religion, not the tenacious survival and glorification of a sense of separate ethnic and national identity.
British Empire immigrants have such a long history of interaction with Blighty, from the CLR James vision of cricket to Hobson-Jobson, that it?s not a fair comparison.
Yes, on Atlanticism, we disagree. It?s a long debate, and I think part of it stems from the fact that Socialism continued to be seen as a form of subversion and treason to the realm by our spooks. Britain?s spooks are older-established and were until very recently infinitely more significant in policy-making than their equivalents elsewhere in Europe ? and drawn from a very different and much grander milieu. The Atlantic alliance is thus seen by many influential but unelected people in the British State as an internal matter as well as an issue of foreign policy.
This determination to rely on the US cousins rather than on those fundamentally lefty continentals to protect Britain from reds, under the bed or across the seas, translates into important formative issues for Europe, like the priorities that determine allocation of defence contracts, as illustrated by the complaints of the Western European Union over next generation military aircraft.
http://www.assembly-weu.org/en/documents/sessions_ordinaires/rpt/2005/1901.html#P190_44537
http://81.144.183.107/Articles/2005/06/14/Navigation/177/199030/Europe+warned+on+F-35+dangers.html
Which brings us to Turkey. The sense in which Turkish membership will hamper the development of a European identity is twofold.
Firstly, Turkey, having merely suffered rather than catastrophically embraced the dynamic that produced the two world wars, cannot share the fundamental perspective behind a European Union. It also has very different geo-strategic determinants, a pan-Turkish vocation, and still requires institutionalised military oversight of civil affairs to preserve secular liberties from its Islamic culture.
Secondly, that Islamic culture, in a large nation, would so water down the ancient historical basis of a shared European identity as to make it meaningless. The connection between culture and religion ? I speak here as an atheist – is ?incontournable?. The politics of identity are not always as pretty or pragmatic as the prospect of happy, wealthy grandchildren you depict. I?m not a great fan of Huntingdon?s, but it?s clear that, for centuries, the Ottoman east was Europe?s ?other?
It?s hard enough for even educated Europeans to understand and empathise with why our various nations ? Brits and Iberians, Germans and Italians, let alone the French – have such different views of Napoleon, as this thread illustrates. If we are to move towards real solidarity it will be on the basis of a much deeper understanding of each other?s historical roles in Europe than the current misconceptions and clich?s that divide us ? again as illustrated by this thread.
So let?s leave Mehmed II Fatih and Suleiman the Magnificent for the next generation but one. The Turks themselves have yet to come to terms with Talat Pasha.
“Long comment – please say if this contravenes local Blogging etiquette.”
No John, absolutely welcome, and another very good read. Perhaps this is a good opportunity to say that I think that the commenters on this weblog are as much a part of what makes Afoe work as are the contributors. People sometimes ask what blogs are, and I think there is no easy definition, since they are many things to many people. But one of the ambitions of this blog is certainly to have some of the most informed and civilised debate about Europe and its future that it is possible to find on the internet. I think btw the German elections post just above this is a great example. I think there you can find readers providing clear and considered analysis of a complex, but actually quite important topic.
So please John, consider yourself very welcome….even, of course, while I disagree with you.
Also btw, when I went to school in the UK they still worked by the three Rs – reading, writing, and rithmetic. Here we also go by the three Rs: reason, reasons, and reasoned.
“CLR James vision of cricket”
You too grew up with ‘Lift Up Your Hearts’: actually I met Selma once, very different cup of tea.
But the point would still be that the participation of these ‘new arrivals’ in British society has changed irrevocably what it means to be British.
“have such a long history of interaction with Blighty”
Including, I’m sure, the gentleman who impaled a policeman with an iron railing during the Toxteh riots.
Now…….
“It?s a long debate, and I think part of it stems from the fact that Socialism continued to be seen as a form of subversion and treason to the realm by our spooks.”
I’m not sure about this. In part this may be because I look at the world through different specs. I am not a socialist, and have never really been able to feel any nationalist sentiment.
But the divide you describe is real enough. Indeed I personally experienced it quite subjectively as an adolescent – I really wanted to study the French Bac – and felt myself in some strange way unable to fit in with the aspirations of those around me. Later – and in a process which seems to remarkably resemble what my gay friends describe to me about their ‘discovery’ of sexual orientation – I pinned down the problem, I was a ‘continental’.
I came to the conclusion in the end that the root of the problem was a national dislike of ‘theory’, and an almost patriotic ‘love of the facts’. Facts are fine, and indeed pretty important, but you don’t need to be so deep in them that they arrive all the way up to your neck.
Many people claim to have lead a mis-spent youth either leaning against a bar, or stroking balls on a snooker table: I, for better or worse, mis-spent mine in the philosophy seminar. One of the things I discovered there was that this divide, which you put down to fear of socialism (actually probably this would be extremism, since fascism has been as much a part of the European tradition as ever socialism has, at least the kind of socialism that the ‘spooks’ are afraid of), well, this divide was already carved out in tablets of lead right at the heart of British (or should I say English here, since there was after all a separate Scottish Enlightenment, and Edinburgh has long been considered the real Athens of the North), of the British intellectual tradition. There was anglo-saxon philosophy, and there was that other ‘continental’ stuff. Baloons of hot air, was how one famous anglo-saxon philosopher once put it.
Well what I discovered in the philosophy seminar, was that theory was grey, whilst life was green, and in fact the two leading luminaries of Anglo-saxon philosophy (Popper and Wittgenstein) were in fact Europeans, not ‘anglo-saxons’.
Now where does all this huge digression lead? To the fact that the difference between UK intellectual traditions and those of many of the continental European societies is old, runs pretty deep, and isn’t going to go away tomorrow. To the fact that I personally feel more ‘continental’ than anglo-saxon, and to the fact that in the future Europe that I would like to see built, there will be room for both tradtions and more.
One of the great virtues of American thought is its pragmatism. Important influences here would be Pierce, Dewey, and William James. This is a far cry from the kind of thinking which eminates from Washington right now, but, I don’t think is entirely a lost cause in the US. That this pragmatism is entirely compatible with ‘European thinking’ can be seen from the use made of the work of the aforementioned pragmatic philosophers by people like Habermas and Apel in Germany OTOH, or by some of the structuralists in France OTO.
“providing it produces more Europeans, people who share many of the core values of the European country they grew up in, by the third generation at any rate.”
Well this is what the evidence in the US suggests happens there. It doesn’t always happen here, and we need to look at and reflect on why this is. In part this depends on what you mean by core values I suppose, since tastes in music, food and clothing are bound to be altered in significant ways by the newcomers (to everyone’s benefit as far as I can see: the chicken tikka massala society). But what you mean by core values are something different. Weren’t these what were defined in the ‘Constitution’, and curiously wasn’t part of the ‘no’ vote a rejection of these very values by some of the people who would consider themselves to be the most European of Europeans (the Le Pen people eg).
I think this core definition may in fact have been one of the most important functions of the ‘Constitution’.
“I assume the process of integration is a lot easier if the networks first-generation immigrants rely on do not become autonomous substitutes for relating to the host society,”
Of course, we’re going to agree about this, and we need to take a long hard look at how ‘multiculturalism’ has been defined and applied in the UK OTOH, and how ‘exclusion’ has been practiced in France and Germany OTO. Both excessive ‘laissez faire’ and excessive rejection can serve to fuel the same result. But one think I believe in, and deeply, is that we are capable of learning from experience.
“That implies a controlled pace of immigration, not sudden waves, some basis for identification, and a clear policy that demands and encourages both linguistic integration and acknowledgment that immigration means adopting a new set of values.”
I think that this is a good starting point for a policy. If we had a positive policy of systematic immigration I think this could do a lot to change things. The ‘wave’ phenomenon is more complex, since the little research I have done on this topic leads me to think that the waves are more pulled than pushed. Germany had two big waves, and Spain and Italy are having one now. Basically, in the case of Spain, the explanation is clear: the ECB interest rate is too low, Spain probably needs a higher rate than the BoE one, and this is leading to a huge distortion in the property market, leading to a massive influx of construction workers (this also impacts on the demand for domestic workers but I can’t spend the time explaining this here). So immigrants are entering Spain willy nilly at the rate of 600,000 a year (or 1.5% of the population per annum, and nearly all of them starting off as ‘illegals’). This flow will stop when the housing boom ends. In fact my guess is that at least part of the new arrivals will return home. All I am arguing is that we need to study, try and understand, and try to put a modicum of order in all this.
It is clear as daylight to me that there is an ‘in-security’ element here, since the chaos and tensions surrounding the present way of doing things provides the best possible cover for the implantation and expansion of the sort of chain-network that Zarqawi seems to be setting up in Iraq.
I think first-off we need to come out of denial on the fact that we need immigrants.
“I support the French policy on the foulard wholeheartedly”
On this we will have to disagree, since I, like you, not being a believer (agnostic in my case, since I lack the necessary criteria to be able to decide one way or another )still respect religious difference (I’m not saying btw that you don’t, but our ways of doing this appear to be different).
On the Turkish question itself, I won’t repeat what you will obviously have read already. I see this differently from you, although I regard your point of view as perfectly respectable and responsible. On this:
“and still requires institutionalised military oversight of civil affairs to preserve secular liberties from its Islamic culture”.
I want to re-iterate clearly that were Turkey to prove unable to overcome this dependence on ‘military oversight’, membership would be out of the question. As it happens, and as I have indicated elsewhere already, events eminating in Iraq may domino themselves through Kurdistan in a way that means all of this becomes a very academic question indeed. I simply sincerely hope that this will not be the case.
“(Hint? Where do I start in the archives?)”
Perhaps the most comprehensive recent piece on Afoe would be this:
http://fistfulofeuros.net/archives/001266.php
also the demography page on my weebsite:
http://www.edwardhugh.net/demography.html
where you will find lots of links to interesting aspects of the problem. The *big news* as far as I am concerned is the ‘age structure is important’ macro economic work, which is growing, and will, I would argue, one day become the dominant paradigm.
I am preparing an immigration page, and when this is ready I will post something about it here.
“we in Britain have to remind ourselves that a Frenchman is someone who can tell the the difference between Napoleon and Hitler…”
Just to continue with this nonsense. May be a Briton is someone who can tell the difference between the British Empire and the Third Reich
Edward, just which seminar rooms did you miss-spend your youth in? I wonder if we were classmates. Anyway, this thread reminds me of them, wandering all over the place ?WTH, why not.
Not only was Wittgenstein a continental, I am belatedly coming to think that his quite independently arrived-at opus will eventually be seen as part of the same philosophical development as both Heidegger and Pierce. You might enjoy this: http://hcs.harvard.edu/~hrp/issues/2001/Minar.pdf
Meaning as linguistic ?forms of life? is pretty Heideggerian, just a bit narrower. Poor old Russell. (my childhood hero from when I saw him, as a grand old man, yet again tear up his Labour Party card). And I agree with you about the Pragmatics. I?m all in favour of Occam?s razor too, on which point Laplace?s theological observation to the Emperor comes to mind when addressing a stubborn agnostic like yourself.
Humeian scepticism is an admirable and indeed much admired tradition ? on the continent as well. Dogmatic slumber and all that. Cross-fertilization from distinct cultures is what makes the European tradition so great. Long may it last.
Selma ..n?uff said, ditto Toxteth and socialism. But core values ? no way the stuff in the Constitution.
I meant the values of the individual nations, an appreciation of what Anglicanism and Puritanism have done for England, an understanding of what went into ?and is there honey still for tea?, and what happened to its author and his values when the old lie was exposed; a recognition that France has been shaped by Catholicism and militant republican anti-clericalism; every teenager?s right to be a bateau ivre, providing he?s good at his alexandrine verses, and Jean Meslier?s proposition honn?te et modeste.
Multiculturalism is fine in popular culture and in restaurants but in schools, let?s not con kids, black, white or brown, with misunderstood relativism and mock-diwalis at Christmas, leaving the real texture of the nation?s cultural life to Winchester and Westminster, Pasteur and Henri IV. Nos anc?tres les Gaulois, 1066 and all that, for everybody. Levelling up not down, even for the children of the immigrants who get Europe to work and change the bed-pans. And by the time they get to college, (some will) an understanding of what Byron meant by the rainbow of the free.
On the technicalities of immigration, I?ll try to follow your references; an interesting parallel to your example is perhaps the way EU subsidies are pulling in Albanian farm-labourers to deserted parts of the Greek countryside ? not necessarily a bad thing, actually. Greek telecomms are doing well, but the country is short of yoghourt, would you believe.
As for Blair, yes, he?s right to demand CAP reform ? in the same way Bush was right to invade Iraq ? for completely the wrong reasons and without adequate planning or sufficient troops. Mandy seems to be enjoying himself in Brussels though: http://www.guardian.co.uk/airlines/story/0,1371,1496590,00.html
“just which seminar rooms did you miss-spend your youth in?”
This was in Manchester, with Raymond Plant and Wolfe Mays. In theory I was supposed to be spending my time elsewhere (in another department that is).
“Wittgenstein a continental, I am belatedly coming to think that his quite independently arrived-at opus will eventually be seen as part of the same philosophical development as both Heidegger and Pierce.”
Yes, I was convinced of that at the time. Popper is really also heavily influenced by the hermeneutic tradition, which isn’t often recognised.
Thanks for the reference: form of life, life-world, being in the world etc, yes, the important thing is that we are always already ‘thrown’.
I’m not going to answer this more here John, as I imagine and hope this can be an ongoing and amicable debate.
For your interest, I just noticed that:
“The OECD will publish its latest economic survey of Greece, including a special study on immigration, on Thursday 7 July 2005.”
If there is anything of interest I will post on it.