The Outermost Regions

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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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German Election: Lawyered Up

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Well, it’s back to another wave of German electoral goodness. The latest bizarre artefact of coalition weirdness is that Angela Merkel’s team are frantically denying claims that they have a secret plan to call new elections in the event that the elections end in a hung parliament. Obviously, this would rely on Merkel actually becoming Chancellor, but without a working majority…and would mean a really tiresome bout of national self loathing.

As the election campaign powers into the final desperate dash, some rightwingers have been frantically signalling that they might, might, just go in for a grand coalition (read: that way we can ditch the bitch AND get back in power). The CDU’s deputy leader, and chief in Rheinland-Pfalz, says at the link above that this would encompass “their duty as citizens”. Ha. (What is it with people from RP?)

Meanwhile, on the Handelsblatt‘s election futures market Wahlstreet, where the percentages are quoted to two decimal places and the cigarettes are paid for on the bill, the CDU showed a marked turn for the better, pushing back over 40%. But the Greens also showed an uptick, or perhaps only a technical rally, getting back to 8.1%. The result? Neither black-gold or red-green can quite make the nut. BG is hovering around 47-48%, with RG around 41% – which sounds like a decisive margin until you remember that the Linke are still in the game, with enough points to push RG over the finish line. And, equally, there are still enough FDP about to give the Ampelkoalition a majority over all other parties….
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Unwanted

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There’s nothing better for livening up all this dull, wonkish chatter about the German elections than a bit of CDU-bashing. So, how shall I bash them today? Oh, I know! How about this: they’re a shower of xenophobe racists.

Yes, yes; not exactly news, is it? What is news, though, is that the Union appears to value xenophobia even more than it does winning elections.

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More Bigtime Divergence

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As people may have noted, last weekend Tobias and I were in Stockholm. One of the topics I wanted to post on but couldn’t was the latest Human Development report from the UN. There was plenty of press coverage: here, here, and here

There was even coverage in the blogs, but the tone seemed to be set by Slugger O’Toole who seemed mainly to take issue with Ireland’s rating in the HDI.

Personally I think the issues involved are much bigger than this.
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A little flutter

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Oodles of stuff here about the German elections these days, you’ll have noticed. Meanwhile, in our secret headquarters deep beneath Brussels, we afoers are sitting round enjoying fat Cohibas and lashings of ancient brandy in snifters the size of your head, talking about (what else?) football, when suddenly one of the technical staff rushes into the boardroom, all apologies at disturbing us but perhaps we’d better have a look at this item that has just come across his monitor:

EuroSportwetten has a unique 50-1 double-header for Hanover’s modest soccer club to beat German champions Bayern Munich on Saturday and Hanover’s best-known citizen, Schroeder, to be victorious the day after.

Schröder to beat Merkel and Hannover to beat FCB? At 50-1 those odds are far too short, surely. Daniel Davies is fascinated by electoral betting markets; perhaps he’ll want to look into the arbitrage opportunity here.

The Danish Job

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This is really a hybrid post, although perhaps the unifying theme – for reasons which should be clear by the end – is Denmark.

In the first place Danish journalist Kjeld Hansen has a hard-hitting article in EU Observer about just what does actually happen to all that money paid-out in the form of agricultural subsidies (hat tip New Economist), whilst in the second one there is news today that the Commission is preparing a position paper on the EU’s social model for discussion at the October 27/28 summit.
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The Horse-Trading Model

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Earlier in the week Doug Muir posted on the generally negative attitude most Austrians seem to have towards EU enlargement. Others in comments have been suggesting that it is important not to go soft on human rights issues in the case of Turkey’s application. Well……

According to the French newspaper Le Figaro (as reported in EUPolitix) “Croatia forms part of the total bargaining on Turkey.” (that’s a quote from an anonymous diplomat btw).
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German Election: Beck Again

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Before anything else, the Federal Constitutional Court in fabulous Karlsruhe has ruled that publishing the election results from everywhere else before the delayed Dresden poll is indeed legal.

Minister-President of Rheinland-Pfalz, Kurt Beck, has done it again. This time he burst into the headlines by attacking the Greens. He told the Rheinische Merkur that the continuation of Red-Green was not the highest priority compared to making the SPD the biggest single party, and went on to say that in the event that a Red-Green government was impossible, he would prefer a grand coalition coloured red and black like a 1980s teenage boy’s bedroom. He further expressed pleasure that the SPD, apparently, was campaigning on an independent platform to the Greens.

For this he got a bollocking from Gerhard Schröder..
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CDU: Screwing up on purpose?

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Ok, now that Edward has already mentioned it, I might as well explain in a little more detail what I meant by saying that “on some level, the CDU might be afraid to win.”

Last Saturday evening, strolling through Stockholm’s Gamla Stan, Edward asked me about my gut feeling concerning the outcome of the German election next week. I told him that, while it was rather entertaining, this campaign has also been confusing – and confused – in many ways, particularly when looking at the CDU. And I believe the confused and confusing campaign the CDU is conducting is even more an expression of the way the German establishment is puzzled about the way ahead than the fact that Schröder “called” the elections a year too early, too early for any of his reforms to have any perceptible impact on the economy, not even in the West.
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