Another disaster

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On thursday a split European Commission “decided to launch unprecedented legal action against member states over their effective suspension of the euro rules last November.”

“The Commission will now ask the European Court of Justice to rule on a procedure taken by finance ministers last November to avoid disciplinary action being taken against France and Germany for their persistent breaking of the rules underpinning the euro. Brussels believes the procedure was “not appropriate” and has received legal advice confirming this.

The spokesman also confirmed that the Court would be asked to “fast-track” the case, which would mean the issue is resolved in 3 to 6 months rather than one or two years. But it is up to the court to decide whether to grant this.”

Analysis by Andrew Duff MEP

I’ll writing some belated commentary of my own, but meanwhile you can talk about it here.

EU to seek WTO authorisation for new sanctions

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I don’t know enough to make any major comments about this story, but it’s the sort of thing that should interest our readers.

A trade dispute between the US and the EU escalated today as Brussels asked the World Trade Organisation for authorisation to retaliate against an illegal US trade measure.

The EU is seeking to impose sanctions that could run to hundreds of millions of dollars of duties on US goods, with the aim of forcing Washington to revoke a scheme that has been ruled illegal by the WTO.
…
The dispute over the Byrd amendment is not on the same scale as the steel tariffs, but it illustrates the underlying trade tension between the two blocs, and it comes at a time when the US and the EU are trying to revive stalled world trade talks.

The Byrd amendment allows the US government to distribute proceeds from anti-dumping tariffs to American firms that complain of damage from foreign imports. The WTO made a final ruling in January 2003 that the provision violates trade rules and set a deadline of December 27 for it to be revised, but Washington has so far failed to comply.

It Was Easy to Miss…

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but one of the most important decisions about the future of European security was announced Monday in Germany. Defense Minister Peter Struck has been on the airwaves and in the papers a great deal since the beginning of the year, talking about military reform. He’s been having a bit of a rough time of it. The Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung tartly noted that at the same time Struck was calling on the Bundeswehr to suit up for more demanding missions, he was announcing plans to cut the German armed forces? procurement over the next decade by considerably more than 20 billion euros. That’s more than a fistful, even by military standards. Predictably, there?s been a fuss, most loudly from armaments companies, saying that the planned cuts deny them the “planning security” that they had come to expect from the government. Second loudest has been the opposition, which has been doing its job by opposing the government’s plans.

But Struck’s pronouncements weren’t the important ones. The most important news about German defense, and thus European security, came from the Renate Schmidt, Minister for Families, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. No, really.
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Links to comments

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We like to keep on top of the latest in high tech here at AFOE. So, thanks to our crack AFOE research and development team, you can now create links directly to comments on this blog by using the URL you get by clinking on the comment’s data and time.

AFOE Labs appreciates the support it has received for this challenging, ground-breaking software engineering development project. Calpundit had nothing to with it. Honest.

I Don’t Understand Modern Conservatism

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The recent biography of Mrs Thatcher by John Campbell (in particular volume one, The Grocer’s Daughter) did a good job of setting out just how much Hayek’s writings shaped Thatcher’s political outlook from her student days in Oxford onwards, in particular by paying close attention to her political speeches around 1950, when she was running for Parliament in Deptford, some of the few occasions in her early political career when she was making speeches without being bound by front bench discipline.

That part of the Right of the Conservative Party which is most keen to claim its legitimate political descent from Mrs Thatcher is most adamantly opposed to the European Union in general and British participation in the single European currency in particular.

I sometimes think that this should puzzle us more than it does…
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The Price of Obesity

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Economist for Dean Lerxst gets hold of something really interesting in a post yesterday ( which Calpundit also picks up on). He draws our attention to the fact that some US economists have recently been arguing that there has been a significant rise in individuals claiming disability benefits and this has taken a large number of workers out of the labor force, thus – at a stroke – reducing the “official unemployment rate”. The research by Mark Duggan and David Autor is discussed in a NYT op ed by University of Chicago Professor Austan Goolsbee.

Lerxst also highlights the significant role obesity may play in this. He cites an article in Friday’s Wall Street Journal describing a new study by RAND Health economists showing that obesity may actually be the “primary” explanation for the rise in the disability rolls. According to Dana P. Goldman, director of health economics at Rand and the principal investigator on the study cited in the WSJ there is “evidence to support (the idea) that obesity may be a primary reason.”
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Fabian Funnies

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I was reading the new almost-worthy-but-dull Fabian Society pamphlet by Gisela Stuart MP on “The Making of Europe’s Constitution” on a bus-ride yesterday.

“There were moments in the sixteen months I spent in close proximity with my fellow Europeans when I had great sympathy with the suggestion of my laptop spellcheck; which, whenever I typed in the word Giscard, replaced it with ‘discard’.”
But that’s the only highlight, I’m afraid.

Greetings from the Guest

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As David mentions below, the kind people at Fistful… have invited me in and asked me to do a guestblogging stint, in the (vain) expectation that I might have something interesting to say about things European.

For people who haven’t stumbled across me before, I blog over at the Virtual Stoa, was the subject of a recent Normblog profile, and spend my days teaching politics at Magdalen College in Oxford — though my expertise, such as it is, is in topics in pre-20th century history of political thought rather than in anything useful (contemporary European politics and society, for example).

I’ve enjoyed reading Fistful… from time to time since its launch last year, and was very pleased to see A Fistful of Dynamite aka Duck, You Sucker, aka Once Upon a Time in the Revolution again over Christmas in Berkeley, CA. And I’m now the proud co-owner of an almost authentic-looking Sergio Leone-style duster coat, so I’m feeling especially qualified right now to contribute to the discussions here.

Before I close this introductory post, do check out, if you haven’t already, Scott Martens’s superlative summary of the argument of Karl Marx’s 1843 essay, On the Jewish Question, which appears in the comments to this recent post: it’s a patient and accurate summary of a complex and much-misunderstood text which deserves a bit more prominence than it gets buried away at the end of a long comments thread. Good stuff, Scott.

Right, more soon.

A good week

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This week, A Fistful of Euros is very proud to present two new members of our team, Scott MacMillan, and Mrs Tilton. I trust they are already familiar to our regular readers, and their qualitifications speak for themselves.

A warm welcome to them both.

Also, this week we’re very happy to have the brilliant Chris Brooke as guest contributor. We’ll feature guests regurarly from now on.