Tag Archives: EU

Subsidiarity To The Rescue?

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The wrangling continues. To the world this must present a pretty unedifying spectacle of day-to-day political life here in the EU.

Italy has now threatened to use the veto, Peter Mandelson (taking time out from advising the US on how to handle China) asks Blair to think again, Blair himself is on a whilstlestop, and the whole question of how to handle Turkey admission is – like the proverbial hot potatoe – rapidly moving from one hand to the next.

Yesterday the euro – reeling from the referendum and the ECB rate crisis, went bobbing up and down like a yo-yo, and all in all we’re having a ‘very happy time of it’.

What the EU needs now is some short term success, some visible signs that things actually work, some ‘baby steps’ even.

Well one possible area where things could advance, and to everyones pleasure, might be related to the so-called ‘early warning system’ contained in the Consitution Treaty. Ian Cooper explains:
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Czech Voters Becoming Constitution Sceptics?

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Evidence is growing that the legacy of the French and Dutch votes will be more enduring than many of our leaders seem to have thought. Now a survey in the Czech Republic finds voters increasingly unwilling to vote the constitution.

The poll showed that 29 percent of Czechs would reject the constitution and 19 percent would support its ratification… More than a quarter of the population is not concerned whether or not the document will be ratified, and another quarter believe ratification is unnecessary in the current situation. “At present, the European constitution would not be approved in a referendum and in addition, a very small number of voters would have take part in it,” Jana Hamanova from SC&C said, in reference to the results of the poll.

This means that the EU constitutional treaty is not currently supported by the majority of potential voters of any of the parties represented in the Chamber of Deputies.

“F?ilte!”

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Or if you prefer: welcome. In a move which is to go into effect Jan. 1, 2007, Gaelic is to become an official EU language. After that any Irish representative will be free to speak in the language at EU ministerial meetings or in the European Parliament. The downside: spiralling translation costs. Translation costs for the EU’s 20 official languages are already set to pass $1 billion following the entry in 2004 of the 10 new accession members..

Meantime the European Union also granted semiofficial status today to three more of Spain’s national languages: Basque, Catalan and Galician :).

Back to the Roots.

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Today, the IHT reprinted post referendum reflections about Europe by former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt that were first published last Thursday in the German weekly Die Zeit.

I’m sure some will call it elitism in light of the recent constitutional referanda, but Schmidt still believes that real political leadership is now more important than ever in Europe, for

[b]ecause Europeans can look back on more than a millennium of national development, the Union cannot be brought to completion in just a few decades by ministers and diplomats: The EU needs the consent and will of its citizens. The coming experience of increasing helplessness of smaller and medium-sized nations acting alone will increasingly convince their citizens of the need for the Union, but that will take time and perseverance.

Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, Val?ry Giscard d’Estaing, Jacques Delors, many of the old guard knew: We can repress the historically created egocentric nationalism of Europeans only gradually. Today’s statesmen and the overzealous Brussels commissioners should follow this example.

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Denmark In A Quandry

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Danish foreign minister Per Stig M?ller seems to be in something of a quandry. He has given up hope that one clear message could be sent on ratification of the constitution when EU leaders meet for a summit later this week. At the same time he doesn’t seem clear what to do about the Danish referendum – due on 27 September – since Copenhagen has made it a pre-condition for asking Danish voters to go to the polls, that Paris and the Hague say clearly what they plan to do next. I think he will have to learn to live in hope.

Enlargement Issues Brewing

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EU foreign ministers approved a protocol today adapting a customs union with Turkey to the 10 new member states, including Cyprus, in so doing they brought membership negotiations with Ankara one step closer. This ‘haste’ – cdecent or indecent – is not proving popular with everyone. The EU Observer is reporting that enlargement is definitely *off* the agenda for this weeks summit and EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner has already indictated that in her view there should be a slow-down in enlargement.

This is being interpreted as meaning that Austria may even have reservations about Romania, and Bulgaria:

A senior official from one new member state said there were some signals, particularly from Austria, that it could be difficult to ratify the accession treaties of Romania and Bulgaria, due to join the bloc next in 2007.

Finally this does seem to be evidence of ‘indecent haste’:

Diplomats said EU president Luxembourg was pressing Ankara to sign the accord within the next three weeks, and if possible before Thursday’s EU summit, to cut short any attempt to call the negotiations into question in the light of public concern shown in the French and Dutch referendums.

Asterix Economics

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There is no doubt that the EU Budget debate will warm up considerably this week. Unfortunately, as Le Monde suggests it is a case of “Le budget europ?en entre rabais britannique et subventions agricoles” (The EU budget: between the British rebate and the agricultural subsidies). Now it does occur to me that there is another dimension here:

“Generations of French children have grown up on the “Asterix” comic books and the myth of the leisurely British who were conquered by Rome because among their shortcomings was a horror of working on weekends. Today, instead of poking fun at their island neighbor, some in France are wondering whether they can learn from it.”

Now *a* generation of French children grew up on this because there was a time when it bore some relation to reality: let’s say in the 60’s and 70’s. But things have changed. Today, according to French Socialist politician Henri Emmanuelli:

“You can’t speak about Great Britain without specifying that to earn a living, people there have to have two or three jobs….Even better than that would be slavery with a bowl of rice as recompense. That way there would be no unemployment at all.”

There is just one snag attached to all this fun-poking at the expense of the Brits, and it is called the rebate. If things in the UK are going so badly, then how come they are considered to be so rich they can afford to pay proportionally more? There appears to be an inconsistency here. Isn’t someone about to find themselves hoisted on their own petard?

Visegrad Group Meeting

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Now this is interesting. The prime ministers of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia are meeting in Poland to talk about a common response to the constitution and enlargement issues following the rejection by French and Dutch voters of the proposed treaty. Also in attendance will be Ukrainian pm Yulia Tymoshenko. They are expected to issue a declaration of support for Ukraine’s campaign to become an EU member.

Obviously they will not be following Chirac’s advice that the best policy for them would be silence.

EU Budget: The Plot Thickens

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Perhaps better said, the crisis deepens. Jaques Chirac started things off:

“The time has come for our British friends to understand that they must now make a gesture of solidarity”

and Tony Blair, of course, rose to the bait:

“Britain has been making a gesture, because over the past 10 years, even with the British rebate, we have been making a contribution into Europe two and half times that of France.”

“Without the rebate, it would have been 15 times as much as France. That is our gesture,”

It doesn’t look like there’s too much understanding going on here. Then there’s the nub of the matter.

According to Blair, the reason the rebate exists is because otherwise there would be a ‘quite unfair’ proportion of British contribution and:

“The reason for the unfairness is because the spending of Europe is so geared to the Common Agricultural Policy. My view is that if we want a debate on future financing, one part of that has got to be what Europe needs to spend its money on to prepare Europe for the 21st Century, which is not the same as Europe 30 or 40 years ago.”

I think at this stage it is really hard to say how this will work out at the summit. At this moment in time there seems to be little love lost between the French President and his ‘British friends’. Of course a lot of this could change when they get down to the negotiating table, but at this moment in time it isn’t easy to see how.

No-Win Situation For The EU Commission?

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Italy’s Finance Minister Domenico Siniscalco is in defiant mood. ?The times of creative finances are over,?, he told a parliamentary committee in Italy today. By ‘creative finances’ he means a cost-cutting exercise. He means any serious attempt to bring the Italian deficit into line this year. What he is in fact saying is that he is prepared to try bring Italy’s deficit below 3 per cent of GDP in two to three years time (there are of course elections next year and Siniscalco in all probability won’t be in office to carry this through) but that he is not prepared to ?strangle? the economy by introducing an emergency budget next month.

This now becomes a very serious problem for the EU commission. After the defeat of the constitution in the recent polls, the Commission is badly in need of some credibility. After the ‘locura’ of recent days, the euro is badly in need of some credibility. Sticking to the Stability and Growth Pact would help to give credibility. But sticking to the SGP would also send Italy further into recession. This is known as double bind. Mr Siniscalco has Mr Almunia with his back to the wall. Of course the recent threat of a referendum is all about this.

According to the FT:

“Sandro Bondi, national co-ordinator of Mr Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, complained on Tuesday about the European Commission’s ?bureaucratic attitude? to Italy’s public finances, and said it risked ?transforming Italy from a champion of a united Europe into a country pervaded with anti-European feeling?.”

I think this has a name, it’s called blackmail. Either you let us do what we want to, or we’ll make you pay for your efforts. I always thought we should have acted much, much earlier against Berlusconi. I hope we all don’t really regret being so tardy in waking up. To be continued.