Orange Market Status

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The European Union has agreed to accord Ukraine market economy status, a move that recognises Ukraine’s reform programme and will obviously mprove the trade relations with the 25 EU member nations.:

The agreement, which will help Ukraine’s steel producers gain access to European markets without being subjected to anti-dumping measures, was announced at a meeting in Kiev between Tony Blair, the British prime minister, Jose Manuel Barroso the European commission president, Viktor Yushchenko, president of Ukraine, and other EU and Ukrainian leaders.

The End of the Dolce Vita?

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Are the good times and the good life still going to continue to roll in the Italy of the twenty first century? This is the core question the Economist’s Europe editor John Peet asks in the latest Economist Survey: Italy, Addio, Dolce Vita. As Peet says:

Italy is approaching a crunch. Rather like Venice in the 18th century, it has coasted for too long on the back of its past success. Again like Venice, it has lost many of the economic advantages which underpinned that success. For Venice, it was a near-monopoly on trade with the East that paid for the creation of its beautiful palaces and churches; today’s Italy has benefited hugely from a combination of low-cost labour and a switch of workers away from low-productivity farming (and the south) into manufacturing (mostly in the north). But such good things invariably come to an end.

Italy badly needed a dose of pro-market reforms, liberalisation, privatisation, deregulation and a shake-up of the public administration, all of which Mr Berlusconi had promised. He even pledged to cut taxes. A majority of Italian voters, backed by much of Italian business, were willing to overlook both his legal entanglements and his conflicts of interest and give him a chance to reform the country. But as the next election approaches, very little of what he promised has been delivered, so many of his erstwhile supporters are feeling disillusioned.
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Angela Merkel’s Best Foot Forward

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Angela Merkel sets an ambitious and optimistic note in her opening speech, going back to the ‘postwar reconstruction’ theme raised in her election campaign. Fine words, and why not, but unfortunately it will need more than good intentions to get to grips with Germany’s present day problems:

Angela Merkel on Wednesday called for a “second reconstruction” of Germany, by recalling the efforts deployed to rebuild war-torn Germany in the 1950s and reconstruct the former Communist east after reunification, in her eagerly-awaited first speech to parliament as chancellor.

“This land has great possibilities – Germany is full of opportunities,” Ms Merkel told the house. “I am looking forward to unleashing this dormant energy.”

Old Bailey database symposium

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The Head Heeb: Call for papers

I’m pleased to formally announce a project that Sharon Howard and I have been discussing for some time: the first online symposium on the Old Bailey Session Paper database. The Old Bailey database is, quite simply, the largest primary source collection currently available online, with reports (and often complete transcripts) of more than 100,000 criminal trials from 1674 to 1834. As such, it provides almost unlimited opportunity to use the online medium for original historical work.

Planting The News?

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Wow! The FT today has a very long and extensive story about how the US military have been ‘placing’ stories in the Iraqi press. While I don’t disagree with the observation by one commentator in that “I don’t think that there’s anything inherently evil or morally wrong with it” in a war situation, I do agree with another Pentagon spokesman quoted who argues that it is more than just efficacy which is at stake:

“Here we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq. Every speech we give in that country is about democracy. And we’re breaking all the first principles of democracy when we’re doing it,” said a senior Pentagon official who opposes the practice of planting stories in the Iraqi media.

All this takes me back to my Afoe post last week about alleged suggestions that it might be a good idea to bomb the Doha headquarters of the Arabic satellite TV channel al-Jazeera. The point is, you don’t bomb people just because you disagree with their opinions. That in fact is terrorism, not anti-terrorism, and if you want a free and independent pressthen that is what you have to accept, that it won’t necessarily agree with, or support you. The big danger is that the official Iraqi press loses credibility through this kind of thing, and as a consequence the fragile Iraqi democracy also loses credibility.

Morocco’s Offshoring Advantage

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Following up on my Euromed post on Afoe, I see McKinsey have a report of Morocco’s potential as a services outsource base for the Spanish speaking and Francophone parts of the EU (registration required, but easy and worthwhile IMHO):

Morocco’s appeal includes wages for white-collar workers that are half those in France, a relatively high proportion of university graduates, and many citizens who speak French, the second language in the central region of the country. Furthermore, the cost and quality of its already respectable telecommunications infrastructure are set to improve further with the expected entry of Spain’s Telefónica as a second fixed-line operator. The country’s nascent offshoring sector, with an estimated current turnover of €85 million, includes some 50 mostly small providers that will employ a total of about 10,000 people by the end of 2005. Still, Morocco has captured almost half of the fledgling market for call centers serving French-speaking companies. In addition, Telefónica has established a captive call center in northern Morocco, where Spanish is the second language.

Against All Advice

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Well, despite the fact that the eurozone finance ministers aren’t on board, and that the OECD doesn’t approve, Trichet and company will undoubtedly go ahead tomorrow with the first refi rate rise in 5 years. (I think important issues are involved here, so I’ll try and write something more substantial for Afoe tomorrow, when the decision is announced.):

Europe’s finance ministers on Tuesday delivered a last-ditch plea to the European Central Bank not to raise interest rates, amid fresh international criticism of the bank’s hawkish stance.

Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s prime minister, claimed inflation was under control and warned the bank that a rate rise could hit growth in the 12-country eurozone. Simultaneously, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said it believed a rate rise was premature.

Incidentally, the IMF, in the person of Rodrigo Rato, is also contrarian, so this is very much ‘go it alone’ stuff from Frankfurt: ‘into the valley of death, rode the 600’.

EU Suspension?

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This was unexpected.

Franco Frattini, the European commissioner for justice and home affairs, warned that any countries found to be allowing the CIA to operate the detention centres – part of a global secret gulag used to hold al-Qa’ida suspects and other “ghost detainees” – could have its voting rights suspended.

I don’t think it’s going to happen, though it’ not wholly inconceivable. It probably should. In any event, cheers to Frattini for raising the issue.

….Henry Farrell comments.