Tag Archives: EU

HOWTO Protest with a Tank

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Der Standard reveals all you need to know about driving a stolen tank into the police lines. Apparently, the man who stole an ex-Soviet T34/85 from the 1956 revolution commemorations and used it on the Hungarian riot police has been arrested. He is reportedly a former soldier (no surprise, as Hungary either has or used to have universal conscription) who might conceivably have driven one before.

This is not that likely but is possible. The T34/85 was possibly the best tank of the second world war and remained a mainstay of the Red Army into the 50s, but was already being replaced by the T54 series in 1956. By the time anyone likely to be fighting with cops in Budapest this week would have been serving, the Warsaw Pact armies had long since flushed most of their T34s out of the ranks, and for that matter their T54s. Most of the T34s that avoided scrapping, museums or use as targets were exported to the Third World – as is well known, there’s nothing you can do for poor people that will do them more good than sending guns.

Anyway, the report in the Standard gives some useful hints on how to protest with a tank. You’ll need enough voltage to turn over a really hefty diesel engine. The Hungarians solved this with several car batteries hooked up in series (not in parallel, mark!). You’ll probably find the tank is locked or worse, so bring an angle grinder, oxy-acetylene torch or arc welding set. In Budapest, the tank’s hatch proved to be padlocked – so it was a good job he came with the right tools.

It doesn’t sound likely that the tank would be fuelled up and ready to go, so the wise man would want to bring a jerry can or three of diesel – after all, once you get it started you can always stop and fill up. Given all the equipment, you’ll almost certainly need an accomplice, or perhaps several. But when arrested, remember to say that you acted entirely alone.

Virtual politics and real bullets

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The Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, renowned for her reporting on the North Caucasus wars, was murdered yesterday in an evident assassination (three shots, two to the chest and one to the head) in the lift leading to her home. It was the birthday of the Russian President, and just after the birthday of the Russian-appointed prime minister of Chechnya, who she was about to accuse of torture. After a week of rising hysteria in the Russian media and state, with a wave of goon-squad assaults on Georgian businesses and the collection of sinister lists of Georgian-sounding schoolchildren – what, pray, is the purpose of this? – this ought to inter any lingering myths of Russian democracy. It is time to grasp that we are sharing a continent with a very large tyranny, in fact, that we never ceased to do so.

Exactly what will happen next is unclear, but the worst must be assumed. The reaction of Europe so far appears to be deafening silence. See the BBC report above for a tasty quote from the secretary of the Council of Europe, Terry Davis, suggesting she was killed by “self-appointed executioners”. Self-appointed? I don’t think his Midlands constituents lost very much when they voted him out back in 2004. No Baltic gas pipelines were involved, so German silence is a given, France will presumably continue to find Russian support on the UNSC useful, and Britain will probably shut up – hasn’t Tony Blair prided himself on his personal relationship with Putin? (Personal politics, the great delusion of the last hundred years.)

If you need any convincing, I recommend Andrew Wilson’s book Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World. This is a truly impressive march through a morass of deceit and state-sponsored bullshit, whose central thesis is simply that most of Russian politics, as it was marketed both to the Russians and also to the western politicians, businessmen and bureaucrats who funded it through the 1990s, does not exist. Parties do not have members, policies, or constitutions, and do not represent real interest groups. Even when, like the Communist Party, they actually do exist, they are frequently not actually trying to win the elections-sensationally, Wilson quotes a senior Communist as being horrified how close the party came to unwanted victory in 1996.

Instead, parties, movements and politicians are usually prepared from whole cloth for specific political projects, and created in the public mind by a barrage of TV advertising for the mass and outrageous web propagandists for the elite. It is possible to buy an entire political party, tailored to one’s specifications, from $100,000.
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Barroso: Constitution Before Enlargement

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Maybe Commission President Barroso did not specifically say the Union needed a constitution, despite setbacks in France and the Netherlands. He said that the Union had to address its institutional issues before proceeding with any additional enlargement after Bulgaria and Romani join at the beginning of next year. But the only way to re-jigger the institutions is with something very much like a constitution.

So tough luck for now, Croatia. Should have gotten into the express lane.

The German presidency will feature institutional reform as one of its key issues, but this will be tough going. In general, Merkel has benefitted from being underestimated, but pushing through changes at the EU level is an area where it would probably be better to have an outsized reputation.

Well, these issues have been hibernating for more than a year. No longer.

In the Morning, In the Evening, and at Night

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Just following up briefly on Dougs recent post on Hungary, a right royal poitical scandal now seems to be brewing there since Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany has accepted that a tape recording which was made public over the weekend and which contained comments he made to deputies of his Socialist Party is authentic. The extracts quoted in the AP aritcle which describes the outcry surrounding these revelations are as follows:

Gyurcsany said that Hungary had managed to keep its economy afloat only thanks to “divine providence, the abundance of cash in the world economy and hundreds of tricks……I almost died because for a year and a half, we had to pretend that we were governing. Instead, we lied in the morning, in the evening and at night. I don’t want to do this anymore,”

As the article concludes by saying “Hungary’s 2006 budget deficit is now forecast to reach 10.1 percent of gross domestic product, compared with the government’s pre-election target of 4.7 percent.”

Inherently Left of Center?

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Romano Prodi, writing in Le Monde, claims that the European Union is inherently a left-of-center project. It’s an interesting claim–certainly one that Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl would probably dispute. But certainly the European institutions have changed since either of those Chancellors’ days, and a contemporary view might lend more strength to Prodi’s views and explain the relative prevalence of anti-EU sentiment on the right side of the political spectrum.

I’m of course relying on the summary from the estimable folks at Eurotopics, but it’s an interesting thought.

The new great game

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Our next anniversary guest post is written by the the great Jonathan Edelstein.

It’s starting to look like the season of referenda in the near abroad.

On September 17, less than a week from today, voters in the unrecognized republic of Transnistria, located between Moldova and Ukraine, will be asked to vote on whether to “renounce [their] independent status and subsequently become part of the Republic of Moldova” or “support a policy of independence… and subsequent free association with the Russian Federation.” The option of “free association” with Russia, which is widely considered a prelude to outright annexation, is reportedly backed by a large number of Russian-financed business and political organizations, some with long-standing presence in Transnistrian politics and others apparently formed for the occasion. In the meantime, South Ossetia, which had earlier explored the possibility of petitioning Russia’s constitutional court for annexation, has just announced its own referendum for November 12, and although Abkhazia currently denies similar plans, there are rumors that a plebiscite may be in the works there as well.

The referenda, which are rather transparently supported by Moscow, represent something of a change in policy for the Russian Federation. It’s certainly nothing new for post-Soviet Russia to attempt to maintain its influence over the countries comprising the former Soviet Union, and it has at times used Russian citizenship to cement the “soft” annexation of neighboring territories; for instance, at least 90 percent of Abkhazians and South Ossetians now hold Russian passports. Nevertheless, up to now, it has soft-pedaled the issue of de jure territorial expansion. The forthcoming vote on whether Transnistria should become a second Kaliningrad suggests that policymakers in Moscow are at least starting to think seriously about taking formal responsibility for the territories that have broken away from other former Soviet republics.

At first glance, it’s hard to see why Russia would push such a policy at the present time. All three of the breakaway republics have substantial minorities who oppose union with Russia; Transnistria is almost evenly divided between ethnic Russians, Ukrainians and Romanians, and despite post-Soviet ethnic cleansing, South Ossetia and Abkhazia retain Georgian minority enclaves. The recent wave of terrorist bombings in the Transnistrian capital of Tiraspol may well be linked to the referendum, and Russian annexation of the Georgian breakaway republics would only intensify border conflicts such as the Kodori Gorge. Nor would successful plebiscites lend a veneer of legitimacy to a Russian annexation; indeed, given the current international attitude toward non-consensual secessions from recognized states, this would only make Russia’s legal position worse by transforming it into an occupying power.

In other words, the referenda seem like a recipe for stirring up ethnic conflict within the breakaway republics, making Moldova and Georgia even more alarmed over Russian political ambitions than they already are, and creating new diplomatic and legal problems for Moscow. Which leads naturally to three questions: why now, what does Russia stand to gain in compensation for these risks, and how much should the rest of the world (and particularly Europe) care?
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Hungary’s Reform Programme

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Just a bit of background info to accompany Doug’s post on AFOE:

“Everybody in Hungary knows that real income will decrease in the next two years … and very significant social groups will feel their interests hurt. If this simple rejection is transformed and mixed with national radicalism and social populism, then this is a dangerous thing,” Gyurcsany (Ferenc Gyurcsany, Hungary’s Prime Minister) said.

He has said that Hungary aims to meet eurozone criteria on the public deficit, national debt and inflation by 2009 and adopt the common currency by 2013.Last week, Hungary submitted to the European Commission a revised plan to prepare for adoption of the euro. Under the plan, the public deficit would be slashed from 10.1 percent of gross domestic product GDP) this year, the highest in the EU, to 3.2 percent in 2009. Although it is an ambitious programme, some analysts have called on the government to cut spending further in social areas such as pensions, in order to tidy up the country’s shaky finances, a recipe Gyurcsany has so far rejected.

The so-called euro convergence programme, not deemed aggressive enough for some, has also sparked protests in Hungary and led to a huge drop in the government’s popularity. The reforms include ending free public university education and overhauling the state-run healthcare system that is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, by introducing co-payments for visits to the doctor and to the hospital, among other things. The aim of the plan is to put a greater financial burden on citizens and curtail the welfare state, which is becoming increasingly hard to finance in a society that, like much of Europe, is growing older.”

This information also has some relevance to the debate which is raging on this thread about reform.

Who gets under the EU umbrella when it rains?

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This anniversary guest post is written by the clever and wittty P O’Neill.

For understandable reasons — the addition of 10, and soon to be 12, new member countries, and the constitutional crisis, the European Union has been preoccupied with foundational questions in recent years. But an older concern is working its way back onto the agenda: how to handle an economic crisis in a member country. The last major convulsion was Black Wednesday in 1992. Yet the only real long term impact of Black Wednesday was on the electoral fortunes of the Conservatives, as the legacy of mismanagement proved very difficult to shake. But there was little other damage: the UK economy managed to shed an exchange rate straitjacket that it had never particularly liked and growth recovered quite quickly, and the Eurozone project, then its in infancy, shed its most reluctant large member, setting the stage for monetary union 7 years later. Furthermore, the crisis itself was limited in scope, as it never concerned the ability of the UK government or the country as a whole to pay its bills.
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Europe: feudalism and tribes

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From The Weekly Standard’s essay The return of the tribes by Ralph Peters (emphasis mine):

Now, in 2006, we see one European state after another enacting protectionist measures to prevent foreign ownership of vital industries (such as yogurt-making). France paused, as hundreds of thousands of its best and brightest protested the creation of new jobs for the less-privileged in a spectacular defense of the ancien régime. And a new German chancellor has called for saving the European project by destroying it–or at least by hewing down the massive bureaucracy in Brussels that alienated the continent. The future of Europe lies not in a cosmopolitan version of the empire of Charlemagne, but in a postmodern version of the feudal fragmentation that succeeded the Frankish empire. Brussels may be the new medieval Rome, its bureaucratic papacy able to pronounce in limited spheres, but there is ever less fear of excommunication.

You know the drill: discuss if you like.

(hat tip)

1..2..3..And They’re Off!!

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Well, with the summer party universités d’été done and everyone going back to work, the run-in begins in earnest to the French presidential election. This shows every sign of being very interesting indeed. After all, it’s the biggest direct mandate for any politician in Europe and the second-biggest in the whole democratic world (I exclude Russia because whatever it is, it ain’t democracy), so it ought to be worth watching anyway. This one is especially interesting, though, as everyone has a lot to prove.

The Socialists are desperate to recover from the disaster of 2002 and regain some power. Whether they can do this, and how they do it, is going to be a bellwether for the Left throughout the world. Inside the party, there is a whole world of bitter conflict to work out. The extreme-left is desperately trying to unite, in the hope of capitalising on the victory against the CPE and eventually getting some tangible results from their combined 12-15 per cent of the first round vote. After all, whatever they hoped to achieve, you can be sure that a Chirac-Le Pen runoff wasn’t it.

On the Right, there is an even more savage internal struggle in progress. The blue-eyed boy, Nicolas Sarkozy, is lining up for the final straight with his bid to bring something eerily like Tony Blair to France – free markets and mass surveillance – whilst Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin still hopes to seize the succession to Jacques Chirac. This overlays the old distinction between the Gaullists and the “classical right”. But what’s this?
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