MEPs are soon scheduled to debate a new ‘Common Circus Policy’. This is following the publication of a report: “new challenges for the circus as part of European culture”. Apparently MEPs agree that circuses should be referred to as part of Europe’s cultural heritage, but tend to disagree on whether they should include presentation of animals or not:
At the moment, Austria does not allow circuses to use any wild animals (even in the parliament?), while the Scandinavian countries ban some kinds of animals, such as lions and tigers (hence the more touchy-feely approach to politics there I imagine).
Tag Archives: European Union
UK and German Retirement Policies Compared
As we all know raising the participation rates of older workers is both essential and a core component of the Lisbon Agenda, so here’s a timely report from the Anglo-German Foundation for the Study of Industrial Society comparing policies directed towards older workers in the UK and Germany. More salacious material to stimulate all you policy wonkers out there. (Hat Tip to David from North Sea Diaries). Looking at the table on page 3 the UK seems to have been a good deal more successful in acieving these objectives over the last decade. In both coutries male participation rates in the 55-64 age group has actually gone down since 1990, with the increase for the group as a whole being a matter of increasing female participation. On the other hand the UK has managed to reverse the 1990 – 2000 downward male trend and between 2000 and 2004 55-64 male participation went up, something which it noticably didn’t do in Germany.
The report concludes that the primary deficit concerning active labour market policies for older unemployed in Germany is the lack of specific targeting of this group both in active job placement and training. In the UK, the scope of active measures is rather limited both with regard to the kind of measures � New Deal 50 plus/New Deal 25 plus � and the level and duration of funding………In the UK � despite a more socially inclusive stance recently � funding of job creation and a broad application of training measures has not taken place so far, given the low intervention character of labour market policies. In Germany, in the wake of recent labour market reforms, a shift in paradigm towards a more activating approach to job placement has been implemented.
In No Hurry
The EU Observer reports today on how some states are decidedly tardy in producing their Lisbon Agenda action plans:
Embassies are due to hand in their national plans, consisting of 30-40 page dossiers with statistical annexes, by the weekend, with EU experts flying back and forth to member states in the past few weeks to help finalise the texts.
France, Sweden and Denmark told EUobserver that they will not make the Saturday deadline however, while question marks hang over Germany and Poland as well.
Paris hopes to send in its document by the end of this month, Stockholm is aiming for 21 October and Denmark for the “next few weeks”, citing delays over the late sitting of parliament and translation back home….
The UK, the Netherlands, Greece, the Czech republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia confirmed that they will get their plans in by the weekend however, with the Czech republic claiming to have had its text finished months ago.
Mind you, we should put all this in some kind of context, according to another EU Observer article the OECD (see this post) is at pains to convince some member states that they really do need to seriously address their early retirement culture!
Europe needs to stop subsidising the early retirement of its citizens, despite social protests caused by pension reforms, according to a new OECD report…….According to the paper, several European countries have been striving to sustain their early retirement culture, introduced in the past as a way to tackle high unemployment among young people
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Europe’s Shame
What is happening right now in Ceuta and Melilla is shameful, it brings no credit to any of us. The anomolous position of these two Spanish North African enclaves should have been resolved long ago. As an urgent interim measure some sort of dual-sovereignty agreement between Spain and Morocco (such as that which was applied between France and Spain in the case of Andorra) should be thrashed out as a matter of urgency. I will try and find the time for a longer post on Afoe later.
Hundreds of African immigrants stormed a fence surrounding the tiny Spanish enclave of Melilla on the Moroccan coast on Tuesday, trying to climb over on makeshift ladders before being repelled by police in riot gear.
Spanish authorities called it the biggest ever mass attempt to breach the fence guarding the coastal enclave, about 100 miles from the Spanish mainland across the Mediterranean. At least 19 people suffered minor injuries.
Of the 500 who stormed the enclave, some 100 immigrants, all from sub-Saharan Africa, managed to break through and enter Spanish territory. They were taken to a police station for identification, said Narciso Serrano, from the Interior Ministry in Melilla.
Serrano said police found some 270 ladders made of tree branches in the area.
Germany Not An Immigrant Country?
This is the opinion of Hamburg State Interior Minister Udo Nagel, as interview for an article which appears in the English version of Der Spiegel today. The context for the quote is the implementation of a decision taken at a conference of German state interior ministers last November which determined that Afghanistan was now sufficiently stable for the 58,000 Afghan refugees currently living in Germany to start returning home. 10 months later, that decision is finally being acted upon and as Der Spiegel reports Hamburg is taking the lead. Hamburg is home to some 15,000 Afghan refugees — the largest such population in Germany — and the city state plans to deport 5,000 of them over the next two years.
Nagel, for his part, makes no apologies for the deportations. He insists that Germany has fulfilled its duty to Afghan refugees and is proud of his nation’s asylum policy. The bottom line, he insists, is that Afghanistan is now safe. He even paid a short visit to the country before the ban on repatriation was lifted in May this year. “When a crisis has passed, and emergency assistance is no longer required, then refugees should return, because their country needs them to help the reconstruction,” he says.
Nagel also notes that the twice weekly flight to Kabul from Frankfurt was booked solid with holidaymakers throughout August. His point is clear: Afghans who have been granted permanent residency in Germany are happy to return to their homeland. The others are just trying to exchange their refugee status for immigrant status. Then, puffing on his trademark pipe, he repeats a line cited often by German conservatives: “Germany is not a country of immigration
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Looking at this in the context of the recent debate in Germany about Turkey and the EU, and in the context of Germany’s inability to avail itself of the recent wave of migration from the new EU accession countries, I cannot but feel – looking at the age pyramid of the German population – that a mistake of historic proportions is being made right before our eyes.
Polish Plumbers Arrive In Denmark
The EU Observer has a piece on a row which has blown up in Denmark over some ‘new arrivals’ from Poland. The issue is itself interesting since there has been a good deal of talk in recent weeks about flexibility in the Danish labour market and the idea of ‘flexicurity’:
Danish trade unions have accused the Polish embassy in Copenhagen of encouraging Polish construction workers to ignore the collective agreements that regulate the Danish labour market….
They argue that the Danish labour model is being undermined but their opponents believe that the Danish trade union model itself undermines the EU principle of freedom of movement.The Plumber perth can help with plumbing services that one can get and also save money.
The Polish embassy website had informed Polish workers interested in coming to Denmark that they should comply with regional and national agreements on salaries and working conditions, but also points out they are not under legal obligation to do so.
This would mean that Polish workers could technically work for under the agreed minimum wage – making them more attractive than Danish workers.
An EU G6?
Switzerland Says Yes
Swiss voters said yes in a referendum this weekend to extending an agreement with the EU on the free movement of workers to include the EU-10 ‘new accession’ members (and here). Well sort-of. They voted by 56% to 44% to gradually ease restrictions on the working rights of citizens from these countries so that by 2011 (the same year as France and Germany) they will enjoy equality of access with those from other EU countries. (The only EU states to have opened their labour markets to the new members to date are the UK, Sweden and Ireland).
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Think-Tank Policy-Wonking
What better way to spend a quiet Sunday afternoon whiling the hours away before the imminent German election results and Barça’s next away match than leafing through think-tank papers?
Well at least I have found myself a good thread to feed me them:
“Policypointers is an online facility created to enable those involved in government, academe and the media to gain rapid access to the research and conclusions of think tanks around the world.”
Among the interesting links I found there was this one to the European Policy Centre Website.
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The Outermost Regions
In the comments to a recent post, the question arose of the “natural boundaries” of the EU. Apropos of that, let us briefly consider those parts of the EU that are outside of Europe. Sometimes very far outside.
The EU has a formal name for these territories: they are “the Outermost Regions of Europe”. Officially, there are six of them: Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Réunion, the Azores, the Canaries and Madeira. Four French overseas possessions, two Spanish and one Portuguese archipelago.
I say “officially”, because there are a number of territories that aren’t covered under this. The Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Africa aren’t, presumably because they’re considered part of metropolitan Spain. The Falkland Islands aren’t, because that would be very upsetting to Argentina. And French Polynesia isn’t, because French Polynesia is very confusing. (This is a territory where everyone has double citizenship — French and French Polynesian — and that’s the least complicated thing about it.)
Then there’s Greenland, which is part of Denmark, except not exactly; the Turks and Caicos Islands, whose citizens are British citizens, and so EU citizens, but who can’t vote in EU elections; the Netherlands Antilles… oh, the list goes on.
But let’s keep it simple, and just look at the bits that are absolutely, positively part of the EU: the seven official “outermost regions”, plus Ceuta and Melilla.
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