The emergency meeting of EU interior ministers today has recommended that next week’s heads of government meeting appoint an EU anti-terrorism ‘czar’, but there will not be a centralized ‘European Intelligence Agency’
Tag Archives: European Union
Time To Smell The Coffee
You can smell the coffee now: this is the opinion of Morgan Stanley’s Serhan Cevik referring to the nearest thing to an ‘economic miracle’ that we have in or around the EU at the present time:
“It?s time to smell the coffee ? Turkey?s disinflation process is not a temporary phenomenon. Though currency movements play a notable role in driving inflation mechanics of highly dollarised economies, disinflation in Turkey has not been just a by-product of exchange-rate valuation. We believe that it is unfair to take currency appreciation for granted and overlook fundamental factors driving both exchange-rate and inflation dynamics. First, the favourable pass-through effect is a result of fundamental improvements such as a rebalancing of residents? portfolio allocations and productivity-driven export growth. Second, monetary discipline assisted by fiscal consolidation and structural reforms has played a critical part in improving institutional credibility. Third, productivity gains that have resulted in a remarkable drop in unit labour costs help lower the rate of price increases. And last, but not least, economic slack as manifested by the cumulative output gap and labour-market developments has accelerated the pace of disinflation.”
But if this is how things look to some (even if the looking is done not from Turkey but from Serhan’s London window) this is not the way they seem to EU single market commissioner Frits Bolkestein:
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Europe’s ‘Sad Day’?
“A sad day for trade relations between the US and Europe”. This is how John Disharoon, vice president of the trade committee at the American chamber of commerce to the EU described the decision by the European Union to begin imposing trade sanctions on US goods as of today. Of course, the arguments about why this measure is totally justified (or conversly totally un-justified) will be legion. However, at the end of the day, I can’t help agreeing with the above-mentioned comment. With all the problems we face out there in front of us, with all the dangers of a renascent protectionism which we can clearly see inside the US itself, this, it seems to me, is the last thing we need right now. It wreaks of the worst kind of logic of bureaucratic decision making.
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Let’s Go To Bulgaria
Actually just after my Chinese visitor dropped by I received a Bulgarian one, my former ‘research assistant’, young Bulgarian anthropologist Yassen Bosev. And what did Yassen want? To tell me to Forget India, Let’s Go To Bulgaria. Only trouble was, I had some bad news for him: India’s minister of Disininvestment and Technology, Arun Shourie, already got there first. Why does everyone think Indian president Kalaam was in Bulgaria on his first overseas visit late last year?
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AIDS in Eastern Europe
Actually the Scotsman puts it like this: “Enlargement of the European Union in May will bring the world?s fastest-growing area of HIV infection on to the doorstep of the EU, United Nations experts warned today.”
Which pretty much scandalises me: how can you turn a human tragedy into a eurosceptic thing, for gods sake? The problem isn’t either nearer or farther due to the enlargement process: it is simply there. The background to this is that Peter Piot, executive director of UNAids, the UN body with responsibilities for HIV/Aids, has been speaking at the start of a conference today in Dublin, held at the invitation of the Irish EU presidency. Among the preoccupying facts contained in Piot’s speech: as many as one in 100 adults in the eastern European states and their neighbours Ukraine and Russia are infected with HIV , and the numbers are growing fast.
?Of the states who are to join, the Baltic states particularly are affected. Then you have got at the borders Ukraine and Russia, where 1% of all adults are infected.
?What may be more important is that in 10 years? time, the number of people infected with HIV has multiplied by 50. There are now about 1.5 million people living with HIV on the doorstep of the EU.?
Would it be unduly hard-hearted of me to point out that these countries are already facing the most dramatic population crisis in Europe. ‘Sempre plou sobre mullat’ we say in Catalan (it always rains on the wet). Is there nothing we can get right. Couldn’t we try, just this once.
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The Last Foreign Correspondent
This is really a case of two stories in search of a common theme: a theme, that is, which goes beyond the rather random unifying factor of the work of Shanghai based ‘foreign correspondent’ Fons Tuinstra. In fact both points emerged from browsing his blog.
In the first place we have the problem with the uses and abuses of statistics – an issue which surfaced once more this week with the outrageous use of the carefully crafted 7% Japanese GDP growth number (those looking for a rather more jaundiced – not to say realistic – view on this, could do worse than consult Bloomberg’s ever intelligent William Pesek).
But Fons target this week is not the investor-seeking financial press, but rather his own compatriots, the Dutch politicians, and how they have turned the creative use of statistics into an art form, for, as he says:”Dealing with figures is an art: the Dutch call themselves the Chinese of Europe, for a good reason.”
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We’ll meet again – Berlusconi leads the criticism of the Franco-German-British summit, as they insist they intend to continue meeting as a triumvirate
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A Guardian Q&A on the working rights citizens of the 10 accession countries will have in the 15 current members of the EU
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Britain’s Conservatives have agreed a deal to remain within the EPP-ED group in the European Parliament