Category Archives: A Few Euros More

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Sure is cold

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Eastern Europe is currently enjoying its coldest weather since 1979. Temperatures in Moscow have been below minus 20 C (that’s minus 5 Fahrenheit for our American readers) for a week straight now, with regular visits to minus 30 (minus 22 Fahrenheit). In Bucharest, where we live, it’s currently minus 9 Celsius; that will drop to minus 14, or about plus 8 Fahrenheit, later tonight. (To give some perspective on that, you should know that most of the houses in our neighborhood have arbors full of grape vines, and roses were blooming in our yard at the beginning of December.)

It’s cold. Over 100 people have died in Russia. I’m in Pristina, Kosovo at the moment, and it’s right around minus 15 as the sun goes down. I won’t even convert that to Fahrenheit — it’s too depressing — but there’s a stiff wind blowing sinister little arcs of snow around the roads, and I’m really not in a hurry to go outside again.

The cold is coming from a cold air mass with sharply defined edges. Just a couple of hundred kilometers south and west of me, Tirana, Albania is enjoying a balmy +3 Celsius. It’s been gradually creeping westward, so right now the edge seems to be somewhere in Germany; Prague and Berlin are getting whacked, but France is still pleasantly warm. It’s possible that the whole thing may dissipate without reaching further. In which case it won’t ever be much of a news story because, you know… Eastern Europe.

Ah, don’t mind me. Weather like this makes me paranoid. Because Mother Nature is trying to kill me…

Who else is sitting under that blue-white splotch on the map? Consider this an open thread for weather talk.

Spain’s Immigration

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As Spanish commenter Pepe would probably say, ‘hot labour’ is moving into Spain at a nifty clip: 2% of the total population per annum. In 2004 the number increased by 700,000. Last year, although we don’t have the numbers yet there was probably the same number or more. Here is a story from El Pais which was linked-to in the IHT based on this press release (in Spanish). Note that these numbers are for 1 January 2005, we still have to add 2006.

The number of immigrants in Spain rose last year to the equivalent of 8.5 percent of the total population as of January 1, 2005, according to figures released on Tuesday by the National Statistics Institute (INE). Of the total 44.1 million people registered as residents, 3.7 million were non-Spanish. The total population rose 2.1 percent from the year-earlier figure, while the number of immigrants rose 23 percent from the figures released on January 1, 2004.

The regions that registered the largest rise in population were Catalonia, Andalusia, Madrid and Valencia, largely due to immigration. Only in the North African enclave of Melilla did the population decrease, the INE said.

The largest immigrant group hails from Ecuador with 475,698 residents, followed by Morocco with 420,556, Colombia with 248,894, Romania with 207,960 and Britain with 174,810.

For towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants, Rojales in Alicante boasts the largest percentage of foreign-born residents. Of the total population of 13,807, 65.3 percent are immigrants, the INE said. Rojales, about 35 kilometers from Alicante, is a popular spot for British citizens to buy vacation and retirement homes.

In November, the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) released a survey showing that three out of every five Spaniards responded that there are too many immigrants in Spain. Immigration also was shown to be the second-most important problem for Spaniards (40 percent) after unemployment (54.1 percent) and ahead of terrorism (25.3 percent).

Nevertheless, the same survey showed that nearly 61 percent of Spaniards feel immigrants should have the right to vote in local elections, while 53.4 percent would extend that right to national elections.

The Czech Growth Engine?

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Interesting news from the Czech Republic in this week:

The Czech republic has joined Slovenia among new member states with higher levels of wealth per capita than old member Portugal, according to European Commission statistics.

The central European country enjoyed gross income per capita of 73 percent of the EU 25 average last year compared to 71 percent in Portugal, according to the latest estimate by the commission’s statistical wing, Eurostat….

The results have left Slovenia and the Czech republic chasing Greece, on 83 percent, as the next old member state to overtake, with Slovenia set to draw level with Greece by 2007 and the Czech republic to narrow the gap further in the next two years, the study predicts.

This now raises some interesting questions. How will Slovenia’s future growth compare with that of the Czech Republic (remember Slovenia is about to join the eurozone on 1 January 2007 while the Czech Republic is in no particular hurry to join)? What is the relation between Portugal’s low-growth and eurozonemembership? Will the Czech Republic now overtake Greece?

We can also, I think, see more clearly some appropriate comparisons for testing the ‘euro has been a spectacular success’ hypothesis: we can look at the UK vs France, Finland vs Sweden and Denmark, and we can look at the Czech Republic vs Portugal.

Not Before Time

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Brighton College, a modest private school in the South of England, has announced that Mandarin Chinese is to become part of school’s core curriculum from September. Now all it needs is for the state sector to follow suit:

In a clear sign of China’s growing economic and political clout, a British school has become the first in the country to make Mandarin Chinese a compulsory subject for all pupils…..

“One of my key tasks is to make sure that the pupils at Brighton College are equipped for the realities of the 21st century, and one of those realities is that China has the fastest growing economy in the world,” Richard Cairns, headmaster of Brighton College, said.

“This year China replaced Britain as the world’s fourth largest economy. We in Britain need to face up to this challenge, see it for the trading opportunity that it is, and ensure that our nation’s children are well-placed to thrive in this new global reality.

“A better understanding of the language and culture of China will be hugely to the advantage of the children of Brighton College.”

Will They, Won’t They?

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While Latvia is still arguing with the EU Commission over the spelling of eiro (or is it euro), the FT today asks the much more pertinent question: will the other baltic states even be able to join? On the backs of the energy hike Estonia and Lithuania are struggling to comply with the entry conditions, especially those on inflation. Slovenia is, however, expected to join on target on 1 January 2007.

Estonia, Lithuania and Slovenia set themselves the target of being in the first wave of new euro members next January and of complying with most of the rules, including public debt levels, interest rates and budget deficits.

Estonia, however, is struggling to meet the inflation criterion, which is likely to be set at about 3 per cent this year, 1.5 per cent above the average inflation rates of the three countries with the lowest inflation….. Like in other former Soviet-bloc countries, energy has a bigger weighting in Estonia’s consumer price index because the country uses power less efficiently than the EU’s older members.

“We feel that it’s a shame that just when we need to qualify for euro entry, the world oil prices go up,” said Kylike Sillaste, adviser to the prime minister….

Joaquin Almunia, the EU’s monetary affairs commissioner, has said he will apply strictly the entry standards for the candidate countries, although the ultimate decision on enlarging the eurozone lies with member states.

Not A Happy Week In Iraq

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This seems to be the big-picture story in Iraq:

Sunni Arab politicians, meanwhile, expressed anger over remarks by Iraq’s most powerful Shiite politician suggesting that the new constitution, approved in October, would not be amended….

A key Sunni demand is weaker federalism and a stronger central government. The constitution now gives most power — including control over oil profits — to provincial governments. The Shiites in the south and the Kurds in the north control nearly all of Iraq’s oil.

To win their support, Sunni Arabs were promised they could propose amendments to the constitution in the first four months of the new parliament.

“We, the Iraqi Accordance Front and other lists will not bow to any kind of blackmail from any party and we will stand shoulder-to-shoulder to defend Iraq,” al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press.

Another prominent Sunni Arab politician, Saleh al-Mutlaq of the National Dialogue Front, agreed.

“If they do not accept key amendments to the country’s new constitution, including the regions issue, then let them work alone and divide the country, as for us we do not accept this,” al-Mutlaq told the AP by phone from Amman, Jordan.

The WHO and Avian Flu

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Well the WHO certainly isn’t thinking of taking half measures. The debate is now surely divided between those who say ‘don’t panic’, and those who want to be able to argue ‘don’t say you weren’t warned’.

The World Health Organisation on Thursday predicted governments would need to quarantine about 120,000 people to contain an initial pandemic flu outbreak of just 19 cases……Not only would such aggressive quarantining raise legal and human rights concerns, he said, but knowledge about how to use antiviral drugs as a preventative measure was limited.

Meantime the virus seems to have undergone a small mutation, while the firus itself seems in danger of becoming endemic in Turkey and spreading.

Benjamin Harvey seems to be blogging the situation from inside Turkey, but I can’t find his blog. Anyone got the link?

Picking Cherries or Dead As A Duck?

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There are opinions to suit all taste this week. According to EurActiv:

EU leaders have almost all declined a proposal by French President Jacques Chirac to save the EU Constitution by splitting it up into single chapters and integrating those into the existing EU framework.

The EU observer puts it more bluntly – The Hague says constitution is ‘dead’:

The Dutch foreign minister Bernard Bot has said the EU constitution is “dead” for the Netherlands, rejecting EU leaders’ recent pleas for a resuscitation of the charter.

So it seems, at the end of the day, there will be no low-lying fruit, like cherries, just there for the pickin. Time to start building some ladders I think.

Latin America’s First Woman President

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A continent renowned for its supposed machismo seems about to get its first female president, Michelle Bachelet. This in itself is interesting, but equally interesting is the divide that can be seen across the continent between a more or less pragmatic group of politicians – Bachelet herself, Kirchner in Argentina, Lula in Brazil, or, to take a name not widely mentioned, Medellin’s new mayor Sergio Fajardo Valderrama, and the more “mediatic” group – Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Commandante Marcos.

“Although originally from the hard-leftwing of Chile’s Socialist party, Ms Bachelet is expected to pursue broadly the same mixed economy policies as President Ricardo Lagos. She would inherit sound public finances and an economy that grew by more than 6 per cent last year. Mr Piñera is also an economic moderate, unlikely to change significantly the direction of Latin America’s most successful economy.”

Of course, my explanation for this very striking differential can be found here.