Author Archives: David Weman

About David Weman

The founder of A Fistful of Euros. He is Swedish, and was born in 1980. Works as a translator and subtitler.

Maybe I’m on to something

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I found this article from Dagens Nyheter (temporary link) very interesting.

“‘If anything, I think we work more effectively now than we did before, even though we’re almost twice as many’ an EU diplomat tells Dagens Nyheter.

‘People stop to think one more time, if what they’re going to say really adds something new or is just a way of [looking good?] in front of their colleagues, says an experienced negotiator.

Since the new arrivals signed the accession treaty in Athens this April they get to participate in the Council of Ministers as observers. They attend all meetings, on all levels. They have access to all documents. They have complete freedom of expression, and may also bring up issues they want to dicuss on their own. In short, they have everything except the right to vote.

The thinking is to give them the possibility to learn what’s on the agenda, and how things are done.
[..]
‘In the beginning it was the same old countries that dominated and the newbies were mostly quiet. But now they’re picking up steam. In questions of importance to them they’re active, and both can and want to influence decisions, even if they can’t be a part in making them.’

The Poles are among those that most often speak up. They’re big, they’re many and they’re hard bargainers. Representatives of the Baltic countries are also fairly active, as well as Hungarians and Czechs.
[..]
With 25 [delegations] around the table, everyone realizes that they can’t be too longwinded. Even if every country only would speak for three minutes there would be an hour and a half of debating. Just to do one item on the agenda.

Negotiations are therefore more to the point. The elaborate flowery language has been cut down, and silence has increasingly come to signal agreement. This is true on all levels, from the working groups to the ambassador’s preparatory meetings to the ministers’ Council meetings.”

(Crap translation by me)

This suggests that people like for instance Chris Bertram were wrong:

“But getting back to enlargement …. My take on this, for what it’s worth, is that it gives the UK everything that lukewarm Europhiles/moderate Eurosceptics have always wanted. EU will now be so large and will vary so much in cultural and economic conditions that a thoroughgoing federalist project is dead in the water. The centre – Brussels and Strasbourg – will be fatally weakened vis-?-vis the component parts of the union because twenty-five (or more) states will find it almost impossible to reach agreement on anything but the most anodyne proposals.”

And that I was right.

And hey, seems I was right about this too. DN writes: “How the countries line up depends more on the issue and where one can get support than old bonds and allegniances.”

Update: Slightly edited.

Col Lounsbury

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I’ve added a new blog to the blogroll that has quickly become one of my favorites.

Col Lounsbury is a financier currently in Jordan, involved in Iraqi reconstruction. He’s a scathing critic of the administration’s efforts.

He’s quite bright, extremely knowledgable about Middle Easter culture and society. He’s also a delight to read, with a very distinctive style, and also a very distinctive, larger than life personality.

Give him a try.

A different pro-war argument

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Kevin Drum says thinking about the war in Iraq: that there was a perfectly sensible case for war, and wonder why the Bush administration didn’t use it:

  • We can’t keep up sanctions forever, and they’re hurting the Iraqi people anyway.
  • Saddam’s past history is pretty unambiguous, and if we lift sanctions there’s not much doubt that he will begin developing WMDs again and might very well use them in a regional war.
  • Therefore, the only reasonable course of action is to forcibly remove him from power.
    It’s funny, that’s exactly why I (most of time) think the Iraq war was the right thing to do, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard that argument from any pundits or bloggers or the like.

    Actually, I think I know why that is.

    The government weren’t prepared to argue that way, because they would then be arguing against sanctions, which was their policy.

    Likewise, all the hawks, or rather all opponents of the far left position of simply ending sanctions were emotionally invested in defending the sanction policy, and weren’t prepared to attack it too.

    In the minds of both hawks and peaceniks, “sanctions are bad” was the peacenik argument. They “owned” it.

    It’d be cognitive dissonance.

    Also, if they would have argued along those lines, I suspect the media would have decided it was a bad argument. Simplism is the new being persuasive, to (very poorly) paraphrase Josh Marshall. The hawks may ahve made a good call in going for the “wrong” arguments. (Of course, I’m fairly certain their “right” argument weren’t this one, but PNAC’s.)

    In fact now that I think about it, I remember a writer in the NY Review of Books, raising the argument just to dismiss it by saying something like “not even the hawks have the gall to argue like that. He only raided it to mock the hawks. I’m like: Yes I have you tool, try to refute it.

    • Where is the European project headed?

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    This is a slightly revised version of an early Europundit entry that I thought deserved a second life.

    What will enlargement mean?

    There has been a lot of talk lately [back in May at least] about what the long-term consequences of enlargement will be, and also about the rift that the Iraq war has caused in Europe. Some people, especially Americans have been saying there’s a risk of crisis, and that the Union will become divided and dysfunctional. There’s one in my estimate strong indication that they’re wrong: Look at the Convention. Divisions have not at all been on the lines of “old” or “new” Europeans, but between small and big states and between intergovernmentalists and supranationalists. The actors have taken positions out of what they think is right, and what they perceive is in their interest. And that’s how things will continue to be.

    The Common Foreign and Security Policy have been weakened, but no one has ever imagined nations would take common positions on every issue. I think the Convention also demonstrates there’s a lot of agreement, and a strong will to work together and move forward. Integration and reform has been continued at a rapidly accelerated pace. If the issues of division of power between institutions, between the nations, and the future shape of the EU aren?t causing paralysis, why would fishing disputes or whatever?

    There’ll probably be friction between France and the Central Europeans, but what people have missed is that the group of eight’s letter was not the only cause of divisions, but mostly something that brought divisions to the surface. In my opinion, it’s not so much because of any particular irreconcilable differences; rather it’s part of a long-term trend. Starting about five years ago nations stopped deciding almost everything by unanimity. This has to do with the growing number of members and with the increase of decisions taken on the EU level. Indeed, it’s also because national sensitivities have decreased, and issues aren’t looked at only from the national perspective or as national horse-trading, so therefore acceptance has grown of majority voting. Also, the group of eight’s letter was a reaction to French-German hegemonic tendencies, but remember the reaction was because the French-German engine had been revived after being dead 1997-2002. Changing alliances aren’t an impediment to progress or “ever closer union.”

    So what we will see is these trends continuing, and being reinforced by, enlargement and further integration. More open divisions, and factionalism, but not so much divisions between any set camps, rather division on an issue-for-issue basis, and not so much one nor two power centers, though France-Germany still will be a power center in many instances. And, I don’t think it will put any brakes on integration.

    Ever Closer Still

    The last six or eight years saw these trends starting, and at the same time integration has not just continued, but at an accelerating pace. These were also the years of the Commission losing power and initiative to the Council (the national governments.) Integration is not driven by ideology or by some long-term federalist strategy. Rather, it’s the product of a thousand smaller decisions. Rather, it’s driven by “historical forces”, by a situation where every further step makes sense, by a self-reinforcing logic, and because there are no significant factors acting to slow or stop integration.

    By the evidence of the Convention, plus my general knowledge of the Candidate countries, I don?t see enlargement seriously working against these trends, though if the constitution will be a drastic step, it may cause a temporary breathing pause. I don’t see anything else seriously slowing the process either in the foreseeable future. (Granted, in these matters, that’s hardly longer than a decade as I see it.)

    That begs the question when will it stop? I don’t think this gradualist, often not noticed by the public, process can’t possibly continue to the point where suddenly we find ourselves citizens of a federal state. At some point something’s gots to give. When and how that will happen, I have no idea. Everything about the EU’s development is so gloriously uncertain and unprecedented, which is why it’s so fascinating.

    (Actually, things are already changing, integration is no longer mostly by stealth or couched in bureaucratic terms, and there is a debate about what the final goal is.)

    I started out sounding like I defended the EU from its detractors and now I sound almost like a eurosceptic. I should note that one explanation for the success of “Ever closer union” is that it simply makes sense, because of increasing interdependence et cetera. But the problem is, no one bothered involving the public, or at least didn’t succeed.

    The results are in

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    Estonia said yes to the EU. 67% voted yes, 63% turnout.

    Sweden said no to the euro. 56,2% voted no, 41,8% yes, 81,3 turnout.

    The numbers are preliminary (postal votes aren’t counted). They can hardly change the result, but it might be too early to call a winner to Nick’s contest.

    Update: In comments, Guessedworker raised the issue of another referendum. During the campaign, the prime minister and the leader of the second largest opposition party made a joint statement, explicitly ruling out another referendum in this parliament or the next, which means 2010 at the earliest. They’re not likely to go back on it, which means that Sweden will not join the eurozone until 2013 or later.

    On another note, regarding Estonia’s vote, let me say Hooray! and a warm welcome our Estonian cousins.

    Around the Internet

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    Polls indicate Estonians will vote yes to EU accession tomorrow.

    In Sweden, “polls give widely differing indications as to the likely outcome of the referendum.”

    The Economist has a pretty decent primer on our referendum. (Via Crooked Timber)

    International Herald Tribune reported yesterday enlargement seems to be bad news for African farmers::

    For France the prospect of support from Poland and Hungary is a welcome development.

    For years French politicians have feared that the enlargement of the European Union would mean a dilution of French power and influence in Europe. But on the question of farm policy, enlargement could provide much-needed moral and political support.

    It is a different story for groups that support a radical overhaul of the E43 billion, or $48 billion, program, for whom enlargement is a worrying prospect.

    “The opportunity for reform was this summer,” said Sam Barratt of Oxfam, an aid organization that has been very critical of Europe’s farm policies. “And given the obstinacy that the French had then, when the Hungarians and the Poles join it’s going to make any reform even harder.” The number of farmers in the Union will increase by 50 percent with the admission of 10 new countries into the Union in May.

    Blogs:

    The indispenable Cosmocrat finds increasingly strong signs that the EU Constitution will be fundamentally re-examined by the Inter-Governmental Conference.

    Gary Farber is back!

    Stefan Geens blogs about The Wall Street Journal’s comments on Anna Lindh. He was pleasantly surprised, then quite unpleasantly surprised.

    Juan Cole on Al-Qaeda’s new geostrategic masterplan

    What a day

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    As you know, today is the second anniversary of the attack on the WTC, and the 30th anniversary of the coup in Chile.

    To all victims of al-Qaida and all victims of Pinochet, to all the victims of terrorism and all victims of state terror, to all victims of war and all victims of political violence; we think of you today.

    Some thoughts

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    Scott said in comments to the Anna Lindh post: “They also claim that Sweden has a fairly high murder rate by European standards. Considering how often reports on this murder have evoked how safe Sweden is, and how politicians hardly need bodyguards, I found this claim very surprising.”

    It turns out we’re at the EU average, but his comment did spawn these thoughts of mine:

    Perhaps it wouldn’t be that surprising. The difference between crime frequency between the US and Sweden surely is huge, but I suspect the difference in how safe people feel is even greater. I know that crime was a much bigger election issue in for example France and other countries than in Sweden last year. It’s possible we have somewhat more crime than a some other countries, but feel a lot more safe and unconcerened than them.

    An interesting thing I read is that residents of the poor immigrant suburbs of Stockholm felt much, much more unsafe than residents of neighbouring middle class neighbourhoods, to the point where it was seriously detrimental to their quality of life, even though the incidence of violent crimes was rougly similar.

    People’s perceptions are (in this regard) more influenced by the media, by prejudice, and by the mood of the culture, than they are by actual facts.

    As to not using bodyguards; we already had the Palme murder, and still it’s only the prime minister that always uses bodyguards. From what everyone tells me, most countries are different, I would guess that includes even ones without comparable experiences. It’s a cultural issue.

    Partly it’s a question of our self-image and what I discussed above, but I believe it’s also because in some ways the political elites aren’t as far apart from the electorate as they are in many other countries. And what’s worth noting is that I’m not talking about the electorate’s attitude, but that of the politicians. To stop shopping in department stores and taking the train, etcetera, to stop living more or less like an ordinary middle class person, is an intolerable sacrifice for many Swedish politicians on the highest level. I’m only speculating here, but is that really as true of say French politicians?

    This isn’t a minor thing, but a great strenghth of Swedish democracy, and that’s one reason why this is so horrible. On the other hand, again looking at the Palme case, maybe things will mostly stay the same after all.