I can’t help feeling that no sooner do I lift someone up than I find I have to knock him down again. I ended the last post offering a best case scenario excuse for Jacques Chirac, but now another topic lands on my in-tray: France and strategic industries.
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Tag Archives: EU
Here We Go Again
The Financial Times is running this story this morning:
“Britain is coming under pressure from the European Commission to say when it will honour its 25-year-old promise to go fully metric, converting miles to kilometres and pints to litres.G?nter Verheugen, EU enterprise commissioner, says he wants clarity on the issue, claiming he is facing pressure from British pro-metric campaigners to act.”
Isn’t this really the kind of silly non-issue the EU could safely live without? UK consumers and citizens have every right to purchase their beer in pints or measure their journeys in miles if they chose so to do. Trying to force them to change is not non-intrusive government. And the argument about pressure from the ‘pro-metric’ lobby is a canard: if they want to lobby, they should lobby inside the UK, and try and convince public opinion there, while Verheugen should have the strength of character to tell them to get lost in the meantime.
Incidentally, on this issue I have no strong feelings personally, since frankly my dear I couldn’t give a damn.
Update, here’s another example:
“The decision by the Netherlands to lock up 5.5m free-range birds as a precaution against the spread of avian flu may have breached European Union rules, it was claimed on Friday. The European Commission said its lawyers were studying whether the unilateral action was legal, since animal health is an EU matter and the Dutch action was taken before EU animal health experts had co-ordinated their response. Commission lawyers are also considering how long Dutch free-range egg producers should be allowed to market their products as such, following the decision to confine all poultry to sheds last week.”
It seems little has been learned from the referendum ‘sebacks’. What we are in danger of creating is an intransigent’s paradise. If the Dutch government can’t take the measures it sees fit to protect its citizens because it’s against the rules then it’s time to ammend the rules in question and not castigate the government of the Netherlands. This is the case whether or not it could be claimed that the government have ‘overreacted’.
CAP Research File
In the internal political life of the EU the Common Agricultural Policy seems guaranteed to hold and maintain pride of place as the topic which produces the highest level of acrimony and vitriol per paragraph of debate space. It has also featured of late as the hotspot which lead to the summer low-point in Franco-British relations. Yet while the debate is strong on heat, it is often poor on detailed information. A report whose final draft is being made available to a wider public this week may help to do something to remedy this failing.
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Merkel’s Reform Agenda
Angela Merkel has an interview in the Financial Times today. Unfortunately the transcript is subscription only. This is a pity, since to some extent she defines the kind of Europe she would like to see:
In an interview with the Financial Times, Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democrat Union, on Wednesday issued a clarion call for economic reform in Europe based on countries borrowing successful policies from one another. ?If I look at Scandinavia, for instance, I see we still have a long way to go in decoupling our social security system from labour; if I look at central and eastern European countries, I see I still have a long way to go in reforming my tax system; and when I look at the UK, I see I still have much to do to make my labour market more flexible.?
Ms Merkel’s references to central European countries and to the UK are striking, since the former are identified with low corporate taxes and in some cases, such as Slovakia with a ?flat tax? system. The deregulated UK labour market is often demonised by continental European politicians as alien to the European social model.
Her remarks provide clear backing for Tony Blair, prime minister and current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, in his campaign to put economic reform at the centre of the EU’s effort to reconnect with European voters after their rejection of its planned constitution in France and the Netherlands in the past two months.
The big difficulty I see with her proposals is that they will put more of the burden of financing government on consumer taxes (VAT), and this will not help Germany lift domestic consumer demand which is one of the ‘big issues’.
Morgan Stanley economist Elga Bartsch, who I have in the past maligned somewhat here on this blog, has a pretty fair and balanced summary of the CDU reform programme here.
Confronting Demographic Change
Confronting Demographic Change is the title of a two day conference currently being organised by Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities Commissioner Vladimir Spidla. The emphasis of the conference is on gender and family impact issues.
You can find a background briefing paper here.
This is also an interesting presentation.
Here’s a summary of the objectives. It’s very ‘commission speak’ of course, but at least it marks a growing recognition of the problems we are all going to face. I’m also intrigued by something: “Demographic changes, globalisation and rapid technological change are the three major challenges facing Europe today”. I’m intrigued to know when the hell they figured this out, especially since (if for globalisation you read China) it is something I have been arguing for over five years now, in this precise combination.
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Two on Turkey
With Turkish accession one of the most important issues facing the European Union, people interested in the question could do much worse than read these two recent, and reasonably short, books that focus on the country: Crescent and Star
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EU Enthusiasm Study
According to a new study released today by the commission, the EU’s image amongst its citizens is deteriorating and confidence in EU institutions is decreasing:
The EU’s image is worst amongst British (28%), Finnish (30%) and Austrian (30%) citizens but best amongst the Irish (68%), Italians (63%) and Luxembourgers (58%).
Support for the thorny issue of further enlargement lies at 50% in the EU – a slight decrease since 2004 (53%) – but the figures show a large discrepancy between old and new member states.
Forty-eight percent of EU citizens from old member states support Croatia’s membership of the bloc with the number reaching 72% amongst the new member states.
Croatia is followed by acceding countries Bulgaria (46% support among old member states and 70% amongst the ten new members) and Romania (43%, and 58% respectively).
Turkey has gathered the least support particularly amongst the old member states (32%) and picking up 48% support from new member state citizens.
France Suspends Schengen
French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy has announced that in the light of what has happened in London France is reintroducing European Union border controls. There is a clause within the Schengen Agreement which allows for controls to be reinstated and Sarkozy said that this had been activated by France. The decision is described as temporary. Such suspensions have occured in the past for sporting events (or in the case of Spain for EU summits), but this idea of ‘temporary’ might be a little longer.
There is suggestion in the Italian press that the Netherlands may also have done so, but I still can’t find confirmation. Italy has explicitly said it isn’t going to suspend. The UK of course isn’t party to the Schengen agreement.
More On The Social Model
Well French Central Bank Governor Christian Noyer is back in the news again. Today the FT have an interview with him, and some of his points make interesting reading.
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And It’s A Yes!
Just in case everyone had forgotten, Luxembourg voted today in a referendum on the EU constitution. They voted yes, by 56.52% to 43.48% to be exact. Not that it changes much since Luxembourg has a population of just 465,000. Junker will soldier on as Prime Minister, and now someone else has to think up a good excuse for terminating the process, but that is about all you can say.