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Assesment of DURBAN COP 17 – from a model of league of nations to a Global Communitty for the Environment

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Jan 232012
 

Yet another Conference Of Parties (COP) finished in Durban in December 2011 with yet another decision to postpone action. Like in any European Council summit, after more than a fortnight of multilateral negotiations most national and regional delegations returned home and claimed victory in silence while, once again, the common interest was the main loser. A deafening silence that was reported as such by the national and international media who, after the failure of Copenhagen, have learnt to keep expectations low and dance along to the tune of the climate change requiem.

The expectations were so low that this time only 12 heads of state assisted to the negotiations, not a single one from the G20, meaning that none of the leaders among the big polluters bothered to show up.

If we look at what was politically possible, the outcome of Durban can be qualified as acceptable; the process is alive and continues to move forward. Concretely, the COP17 succeeded to “agree to launch a process to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or a legal outcome under the Convention applicable to all Parties” (art 2) and it gave itself 4 years to do so “no later than 2015 (…)” although a very late date to enter into force; “and for it to come into effect and be Implemented from 2020.” (art 4). It also managed to create a Green Climate Fund, with the World Bank as a trustee, which is supposed to receive $100bn a year but, with the exception of South Korea, Germany and Denmark, nobody has yet committed to chip money into it.

As a result, the Kyoto Protocol will expire leaving it up to the countries to voluntarily reduce their emissions until 2020. The Kyoto protocol, with all its weaknesses of enforcement and limited scope, was the only legally binding treaty for its signatories. However, Canada for instance didn’t hesitate to stab the dying protocol on the back with her withdrawal from the treaty right after Durban in order to avoid paying $14bn for having increased its emissions in one third –according to the protocol it should have reduced them by 6%-. The move from Canada reminds us that no matter how lengthy the negotiations, there is no guarantee that countries won’t walk away from their commitments later down the line.

Indeed, even if Canada had opted for staying inside the Kyoto protocol and refused to pay the $14bn there is little the feeble Compliance Committee could have done other than naming and shaming. After all, one may wonder whether the end of the Kyoto protocol is so sad when the case of Canada illustrates very well how, regardless of the commitments, it is up to the inner motivation of the parties to reduce emissions. The EU is a good example of how what matters when reducing emissions is the political will and not the protocol itself. It is an illusion to think that an international treaty can compel national decision makers to cut emissions faster than their domestic populations are willing.

On the other hand, if we look at the results of Durban from the point of view of what was necessary to avoid catastrophe the results are, once again, an unacceptable failure. While total emissions continue to grow there are no short or mid-term legally binding measures to reduce or stabilise them.

If we take a step back to observe the evolution of the climate change negotiations it is fair to claim that the weak link between the problem and the solution is the inadequate governance structure under which the negotiations take place. The current methodology consisting in identifying a common problem –excess of emissions- and trying to agree on national emission limits -the final enforcement of which falling on the country itself – is just not working.

In fact, this methodology can be compared with the methodology that was used in Europe to manage a common problem –war- after World War I; the creation of an organisation –League of Nations- where countries would discuss matters and settle multilateral agreements the enforcement of which was inapplicable. In both cases the methods have proven inadequate; the CO2 emissions, far from stabilising, have increased dramatically same as the League of Nations couldn’t settle the disagreements which led to the World War II.

Same as in the post-WWI period, national governments lack the will to challenge entrenched constituencies to change their ways of life and their vision of the world. And even if one would dare to, this is a clear “prisoner’s dilemma” case in which in the short term there is incentive to collaborate and it rather pays off to free-ride on the good behaviour of others.

Another parallelism we can draw between the League of Nations and the UNFCCC is that in both cases the only way for the parties to cooperate, to overcome the prisoner dilemma’s syndrome, is after the cost of non-cooperation has revealed to be higher than the cost of cooperation. It took the Europeans two world wars to politically accept that the risks of integration were worth to be taken. However, so far the price of the cession of sovereignty to create a World Community for the Environment is considered to be higher than the costs of global warming. Considering the scientific evidence and the impressive costs associated to the effects of climate change (according to Lord Stern they amount to 5 to 20% of the world GDP) it is very telling that the national governments regard their sovereignty as something even more precious!

There is still one more thing about the European experience that can be extrapolated to the problem of global climate governance; that is the difficulty of providing common supranational goods without a supranational checks and balances system –judiciary and legislative- and above all without a supranational government –executive- and, as a consequence, a supranational budget. The current European economic crisis highlights how much the lack of an European government and of an European budget are responsible for inadequate action. The parallelism is valid for the UNFCCC negotiations; firstly, without a judiciary capable of penalising those countries breaching the emission limits there is no enforcement capacity. Secondly, without a body representing the citizens of the world –the Conference of Parties represents the governments of the world and as such it can’t represent the common will of the world peoples- the global interest is not pursued. Reality illustrates very well how the sum of national interests is far from being the global interest, rather the opposite. Thirdly, without an empowered global executive, accountable to a global parliamentary assembly, taking the lead and showing the way towards decarbonisation of the world economy it will be in the hands of the G20 –and in the end the G2, China and US- to continue hijacking the fight against global warming. And finally, because if we don’t have the last three institutions it will be very difficult to have a proper budget to invest in the transition to a new industrial model. So far, the absence of a global budget to fight climate change has meant that the financing has gone through bilateral deals in the Clean Development Mechanism and carbon markets which have ended up increasing emissions and fuelling speculation in these very lucrative markets.

The UNFCCC negotiations are providing acceptable deals as regards what is politically possible but continue to fail to provide what is actually needed. Emissions continue to increase and speculation in carbon markets is more profitable than ever. Durban confirmed once again the frightening limitations of the UNFCCC model. In this sense, the precedent of the League of Nations can be a useful example to illustrate what could be the fate of the UNFCCC. The question that humankind faces once again is whether it will take a climate catastrophe of the scale of a world war to realise the real risk of non-integration, to build the political momentum among the peoples of the world and its leaders necessary to create a World Community for the Environment.

Repeating mistakes? A reminder from Charlie Chaplin…

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Dec 152011
 

Charlie Chaplin in the movie “The Great Dictator” (1940) gives a brilliant speech which surprisingly it can be applied in times of World War II as it can be used today. So little have we changed? Indeed, the underlining problem hasn’t changed; the fiction that the national differences are a reason for exclusion rather than an important added value of the world we live in, understanding that, after all, the borders are there to separate and not to unite and that, like it or not, in the long run we either learn to live together or we’ll perish separately.

At the end of the day, a call to create a place beyond national interests where the global goods can be discussed and the national differences properly managed and turned into assets. A real Global Democracy instead of a circus where national interests engage in what, in the long run, is always a lose-lose situation.

 

How the EU could end up breaking what it was supposed to unite

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Nov 212011
 

Unless the macroeconomic diet imposed to southern countries it is complemented with fiscal transfers, it will asphyxiate economic recovery which in turn is going to break-up the already unstable countries. A new European Convention is necessary to build the new European fiscal Union.

 

As new governments take the reigns of battered countries in the European periphery a new wave of inconditional expense cuts is on the move. Countries such as Italy, Spain, Greece or Portugal will continue cutting expenses whereas former “safe havens” such as France or Austria are starting to consider haircuts.

 

Many predicted the domino effect that would unleash unless a European fire cut was put into place. Few opposed the validity of this domino scenario but nobody acted in a manner sufficient to stop it. Pretending to have financial discipline and fiscal rectitude and at the same time expect economic recovery at national level was as naive as expecting that IMF macroeconomic adjustments will start working after 40 years of failures.

 

However it is true that those highly indebted countries whose costs to finance their debts are skyrocketing and who at the same time find themselves in the corset of the monetary Union have only two ways to cut the deficit; cutting public expenditure or generating economic growth. Economic growth cannot spontaneously happen by itself in countries with cronical innefiencies and bad economic habits; it requires investment and good governance. Hence, the only option left is cutting expenditure knowing that this will only depress internal demand and increase unemployment, a recipe incompatible with economic recovery. The only way to keep the diet from killing the pacient is by pumping fiscal transfers from the rest of the EU to guarantee some economic recovery whilst cutting expenditure and restructuring the economy at national level. Alternatively in an integrated European economy once the domino starts falling it can endanger the big pieces of the model; the requalification of the debt of France is a clear example of the contagion.

 

The potential effect of all this is that the EU might end up breaking what was supposed to unite. The European Union was to unite the European citizens and the European states whereas the European reaction to the crisis so far is pushing the countries out of the union; for only outside the union they can –albeit at very high price- regain monetary policy and devaluate their currencies. But the insufficient European reaction is not only endangering the union, it is also endangering internal stability of countries such as Spain where the severe cuts in public expenditure are putting into question the internal organisation of the state; requiring a re-centralisation of competences in order to reduce the indebted and indebting regions. For regions such as Catalonia this loss of autonomy can trigger further reclaims outside the current institutional framework. The same argument can be made for those countries that some don’t see fitting in the EU as for those regions that don’t fit inside current states. The disintegration of the EU and of some of its member states will then be served.

 

Centripetal forces are working in the EU. To stop them it is necessary that financial and fiscal solidarity mechanisms are established at European level with a proper EU treasury in charge of economic policy and capable of issuing EU project bonds and raising EU taxes. So far, well-off countries have been opposing –and profiting (!) from- such a move; but the domino effect is now close to hitting them too. It is reasonable that countries such as Germany or the Netherlands ask for guaranties before taking this federative step forward but there is not much time left before the destructive inertia makes current changes irreversible.

 

If the EU is to continue uniting our diversities a new European convention should be called at the earliest convenience in order to democratically organise the treaty changes necessary to move into the fiscal and financial union. Any alternative scenario will be self-defeating.

Global Democracy – from utopia to necessity

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Oct 122011
 

The US and the EU are going separate ways. And contrary to what it may seem, the room for political manoeuvre is smaller in the US than it is in the EU, despite the fact that the toolbox in the hands of the former is richer than the one in the hands of the latter.

Indeed, the US has a federal budget and a treasury, federal bonds and federal taxes and a more integrated market and political governance when the EU only has the monetary leg at the European level and other budgetary and economic legs at national level. However, politically the US finds itself in a narrowing corridor that is effectively handicapping the country’s chances of successfully tackling the crisis.

The Obama administration wants to reduce the deficit and trigger growth but with the Republicans blocking any tax-increase in Congress the only fiscal measure to reduce the deficit is cutting expenses. This is why, before the impossibility of using effective fiscal policy to fight deficit and reduce debt –cutting welfare will help figures look better but it will cost more in the mid/long-term- the only way to stimulate the economy is the old strategy of use-and-abuse of US monetary policy, i.e. printing money and making the rest of the world pay for it. The US Federal Reserve has kept the interest rate at low rates (0,25%) to inject liquidity in the economy and stimulate demand in the hope that this will trigger growth with which it can reduce unemployment and deficit. So far, the success has been rather moderate (1,3% growth) and the Obama administration knows very well that they can’t continue fueling the world economy for long. The Triffin dilemma according to which the country providing liquidity to the world cannot keep the value of the reserves is once again very relevant to understand the nature of the problem and predict further developments. The current US expansionary monetary policy is damaging the reserves in dollars of its creditors whilst continues to increase the US deficit. The fact that world reserves in euros are on the rise shows that despite the problems in the eurozone there is a growing tendency to move away from the dollar as a reserve currency. Moreover with the decline of the US economy the policy of having the American debt financed by the rest of the world will become increasingly untenable.

Arguably, the US economic policy is a result of the internal political circumstances. This doesn’t mean that Obama’s economic choice is the best one, it’s just the only one possible. The flaw of this false form keynesianism is that as long as poor and middle-classes lose social benefits and unemployment stays high the injection of money will not reactivate the domestic demand nor it is succeeding in increasing external demand either. Hence the US is turning to the EU to ask for help to stimulate demand, but Europe is against any expansive measures before deficit is under control. Indeed, Germany has been very vocal against expansionary monetary policy and the resignations of German representatives in the ECB reiterate this approach.

One must bear in mind that the effects of expansionary monetary policy in Europe are very different from those in the US. Since the 70s the rest of the world has been financing US deficit thanks to the fact that the Federal Reserve could afford to print money without generating inflation or bringing down the currency value. The EU cannot do that. If the EU follows an expansionary monetary policy the Euro will go down and inflation soar and it is not clear that the EU is in a situation of generating growth to compensate the increasing prices. Therefore, although it is understandable that Obama is putting pressure on the EU to gear up the European economy, it is equally understandable that the EU doesn’t want to go along the US lines.

How to marry the US and the EU monetary and economic policies? The only room for manoeuvre lies at European level. The creation of European federal state is the only way to raise global demand by generating supranational income (taxing speculative capital transactions, EU project bonds…) and placing better value-for-money investments.

 

The creation of the United States of Europe can be the solution that can match the needs of both the EU and the US in the short/mid term. However, as much as Europeans and the rest of the world can benefit from it, the truth is that it will not be able to solve the Triffin dilemma nor will it guarantee the adequate distribution of food, energy and materials among the peoples of the world.

The closer we get to the creation of some sort of United States of Europe the clearer it is that this alone will not suffice; if a better world is to emerge from the crisis a radical reform of world governance is needed. Indeed, the solution to the economic problem will need to be political; sooner or later the people of the world will need to sit down around the same table to agree how big is the cake we have to share – for sure smaller than what we thought it was some time ago- and decide how do we want to share it. World democracy is quickly moving from the stage of utopia to the stage of necessity.

Joan Marc Simon

MERKEL, SARKOZY… TIME FOR THE NEW FEDERALISTS?

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Aug 102011
 

Or how reality forced a generation of realists to become federalists

It is in times of crisis when the EU makes the biggest steps towards integration. This sole fact dismount all the theories that see in the EU a complot or a conspiracy. Once again it is proven that the European integration is driven by necessity and not by intelectual curiosity.

 

We are living the times of faster economic integration since the Maastricht treaty . During the last 2 years the EU has created the European Semester, the European Financial Stability Facility (to be followed by the European Financial Mechanism, a mini European Monetary Fund) together with other surveillance authorities and committees in order to give a short term answer to the crisis. More in the mid-term, the door is open to raise own resources for the union in the shape of taxes on capital or carbon or VAT, financing the EU debt with Eurobonds and the creation of an EU treasury . The steps in this direction –specially after the European Council meeting of July 21st- have been the only way to show the people and the markets that the EU has a grasp on the crisis and can face the repayment of the accumulated debt.

 

Before the meeting of July 21st Germany and France have been doing everything in their hands to pospone doing what needed to be done; the result beeing a constant increase in the numbers of vulturs profiting from the European economies. It is not a tabu anymore, President Sarkozy himself acknowledged last month that “We can’t keep having a currency disconnected from economic policy“. Chanciller Merkel with all her reservations finally seems to agree to walk the path towards an European Economic policy.

 

What we are seeing is that the current generation of European leaders, after having tested any other option on the table, are finally realising –at a high cost in credibility for Europe and themselves- that the only way forward is more Europe, the federalist way. These “New Federalists” have in common that none of them have lived a war and hence their vision for Europe is different from those fathers of Europe -Adenauer, Schuman, Churchill, Monnet…- from whose heritage the EU has lived until today. If there was any doubt, today we have the confirmation that the “old” federalism is over. Whether we like it or not, the pragmatic federalism of the style of Merkel and Sarkozy is what has to drive the European integration in the years to come.

 

The “old” federalists were visionaries; they were arguing in favour of more European economic integration only when followed at the same pace by political integration, democratically legitimated by the European people. They defended that the sharing of sovereignty between local, national and supranational levels is necessary but no delegation of sovereignty should take place without democratic control. This is why institutions like the European Parliament representing the European citizens and tools such as a European Constitution were conditio sine qua non to advance in the path of further economic integration. Economic integration without political integration –i.e. the people have no control on setting the rules that regulate the markets- would lead to a lack of legitimacy of the European project. They were visionaries but they were right; current EU legitimacy crisis has its roots in the lack of popular identification with the European project.

 

The “old” federalists argued from the beginning that a common monetary policy cannot survive without a common economic policy. During the last decade greeks and spanish have been borrowing money at german interest rates which didn’t match their productivity; this time of living beyond their possibilities has created an indebtment that now they can’t pay back. With an EU treasury, backed with Euro-bonds and a proper European budget the current crisis could have been a lot better managed and the current bailouts would not have happened because this over-indebtment would not have been allowed.
But let’s go back to the “new” federalists. The “new” federalists are hardcore realists –the same realists that 4 years ago were saying that more integration was not necessary and that an EU treasury would never happen-.

 

The problem with “realists” is that, contrary to visionaries, they are in a constant state of improvisation –no vision = no plan-. Our European leaders have been grossly improvising since 2008 and the financial markets are punishing us all for the chaos linked to improvisation at 27. Secondly there is the problem of democratic legitimacy; the measures adopted during the last 3 years have been taken behind closed doors and observed with scepticism by the majority of europeans. This constant improvisation rules out any public participation in the current process of European construction; not even the European Parliament -already seen by many as being to far away- hasn’t been allowed to participate in the creation of the latest institutional fixes such as the European Financial Mechanism. What is worst is that so far the “new” federalists haven’t expressed any regret or worry about this current lack of democracy in the current shape-up of the EU. Not surprisingly the EU is in the lowest popularity rates since its creation.

 

Many claim that the time for visionaries has passed, and with it went also the first chance to build a political EU capable of controlling the economic sphere; an EU governed by the people and for the people. It is claimed that the realists have imposed their lack of vision; the result being that the necessity of more integration is driving the agenda but the democratic nature is missing in most of the decisions. Something is wrong when to save the European peoples they have to be locked outside the decision room…

 

It is true that we are in the path of a transfer union which will lead us to a fiscal union and which will bring with it a European treasury and European bonds. Eventually, having an European fiscal and monetary policy might force the creation of a political union. After all, the political integration in Europe after WWII has followed the economic integration, and it is important to underline that the political union has been a consequence, and not a cause, of the economic integration. Regretably, it can be argued that the failed results of the referendums on the EU Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands and after the failed Lisbon treaty referendum in Ireland also prove that political integration cannot preceed economic integration. Yet political integration has to be encompassed –even when a bit delayed- with any progress in European integration. Therefore, the latest developments in the creation of tools of economic policy should open the door to further participation of the European people in the EU decision making. Failing to do so puts the credibility of the european project at stake.

 

A lot less romantic than one could have imagined, the path towards an European federation is not led by the European people, not even by strong leaders with a vision, it is led by markets alone. However we have learnt from history that democracy doesn’t happen if people don’t ask for it. It is therefore of high importance to pursue the vision of an “European democracy”, and this cannot be done by our “new federalists” alone. Against all odds the people of Europe have to retake control of the European process and for this visionaries are still very much needed!

An EU seat in the Security Council as first step towards a democratic organisation of world security

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Jun 142011
 

The reform of the UN Security Council (UNSC) is one of the ever-pending issues of world governance.  Set up in 1946 , by the winners of the WWII, the UNSC  represents a world order that no longer exists – that of France, UK, US, China and Russia as world “gendarmes”.  Although outdated and unbalanced in representation, the UNSC continues to be the only global body charged with the duty of dealing with world security issues.

The UNSC is not –and was not meant to be- democratic, accountable, representative, or transparent. This has justified many claims for reform. The main obstacles of reforming this body are two; firstly, those in the Security Council (SC) are not willing to give up or share their veto power and secondly, there are so many pretenders to enter the club that opening the body without changing the veto right would make the SC simply unworkable.

Amid the more general debate on UNSC reform there is also the discussion on whether the EU should become either a member or an observer in the SC. This option has a lot of opposition, both from within the EU (France and UK) as well as from outside. Alternatively, some experts have been proposing a reform of the SC in which the EU and other regional organisations alike could sit to discuss world security issues. This option has been widely regarded as visionary and politically unrealistic. However, the latest developments in the world and the growing regionalisation in South-America, Africa or Asia start to hint a tendency which could change world politics as we know it. The question arises on how would a change from a SC composed of a selected and privative club of 5 countries evolve into a council of world regions.

Changing the institutional structure of the UNSC

The architecture of UN, and more specially of the UNSC, is a lot weaker than that of the EU. The fathers of the EU wanted –as Jean Monnet put it- that the “institutions survived them” in a sense that the institutions would be able to carry the European integration forward after the founding fathers died and when the memory of the war would have faded. Indeed, the EU institutions have been designed in a way to allow for enlargements, democratisation upgrades, changes in distribution of power, and other changes. The UNSC is exactly the opposite. It is a body that was designed for a very different historical reality and is as such not prone to enlargements or democratisations. With the veto power as its main decision-making characteristic, the architecture of the SC doesn’t provide any incentive for change permanent members, such as France or UK who will hold on to privileges regardless of how unfairly they represent their current weight in global politics.

Germany has been intermittently pushing to have a permanent seat in the UNSC since 20 years and after the likely failure of the G4 initiative (Germany, Brazil, India and Japan push to get permanent seats) it looks like the biggest European economy will have to look for an alternative strategy to make its voice heard in the UNSC. Germany has always stated that its goal was to obtain a European seat in the SC but in view of the negative response from UK and France to give away their seats this was seen as a mission impossible.

A seat for the EU in the SC

What are the arguments for the EU to have a seat in the UNSC? Unlike with trade policy the EU doesn’t have single foreign and defence policy. Thus, many claim that this is a reason not to change the status quo. However it might well be that the EU seat in the UNSC could be a mean rather than an end in itself; by being in the SC the EU would be forced to craft a more cohesive foreign policy in order to speak with one voice.

Another consequence from the EU being in the SC would be the first injection of world regionalism into the SC. Such move could open the door for other world regions such as the African Union to enter world governance structures. At the same time, it is unlikely that world regions such as the EU could obtain veto power, unless France or UK would resign their privileges –which they won’t do in the near future-.

The main practical reason behind the EU wanting a seat in the SC would be to give Germany indirectly a seat at the SC table. This is particularly relevant after its last decade’s frustrated attempts to obtain a seat.

Notwithstanding the motivations, it is a generally agreed that any change of the status quo that requires opening the UN charter is very unlikely to happen in the short term. More pressure from the emerging economies to shift the balance of power in the world governance bodies is needed before the SC fortress can be cracked.

Workable short term reform of UNSC

In order to work out a realistic short term solution while continuing the discussion on the development of the world regionalism, we should take into account the following factors: Firstly, as discussed above, it is unthinkable that France and the UK will give away their seat in the SC freely. Secondly, it is in the interest of the EU to find an answer to the calls for a more balanced and updated representation of world powers -and the sooner the better because its decline on the global stage is associated with the decline in its bargaining power-. Thirdly, that a solution has to be found to accommodate Germany in the new world order especially after the failure of the G4 experience.  Fourthly, that outside Europe the perception is that “too many Europeans” are already in the global institutions. And finally that whatever solution is found it is preferable that it doesn’t require amending the UN charter for it can mean opening the Pandora’s box.

Bearing in mind these conditions, a workable short term solution for the EU –and more concretely for Germany- would be to merge the two European regions with rights to nominate non-permanent SC members (western Europe has the right to select 2 non-permanent members and Eastern Europe 1) and merge them into one “EU + others” group but giving only 2 rotating non-permanent seats to this new region. This option would allow the EU to arrange at least 1 of these 2 representatives and hence give priority to Germany so that it could effectively be present in most UNSC negotiations –although without veto right. Moreover, it would decrease the “European” presence in the UNSC –it would have 2 instead of 3 non-permanent members- which would make this proposal acceptable for other world countries who believe that the European representation should be scaled down. Finally it would give the option to the EU to work better as coordinator of this new “UN grouping”.

Rise of world regionalism

In a more long term and sustainable vision for the SC we should note a growing tendency to regional integration around the world. Oddly, it is in times in which the European integration project finds itself in its lowest popularity levels when one can find progress in supranational integration and/or coordination elsewhere.

In Latin-America the last decade has brought an unprecedented rapprochement between countries and leaders which has been materialized in an ever-increasing cooperation. For instance the Mercosur, a free-trade area between southern-American countries founded in 1991, saw a big push in 2005 when it decided to start electing its members starting from 2011 and organise a simultaneous elections in 2014. In the African continent the African Union, founded only in 2002 and composed of all African countries except Morocco, has also made unexpected progress and in less than a decade and following a different a new path is advancing towards a political union without having built on the economic free-trade leg first. In Asia what started as club for South-Eastern Asian countries (Asean) in 1967, has seen an increasing interest from the rest of the continent and although it is mainly an economic organization without foreign policy ambitions it is a fact that it has been instrumental for the advance in the regionalization in the area.

These are just three examples that mark a tendency; that of a growing regionalisation in the world. They are in different stages of development, follow different models, and they are still very far from achieving the degree of integration of the European Union. However, the tendency matters and justifies exploring the option of a future regionalisation of the world which could be useful to envisage a new kind of global governance, particularly in the future of the SC.

A SC composed of World Regions

The advantages of having a SC composed of international organisations are significant. Firstly , this would allow for a better and bigger representation of the world community which increases the legitimacy of the body. Secondly, even in the case where veto prevailed the limited number of members –world regions would not be more than 10- would make the organization more workable than the current options of enlarging the SC. Finally such a structure fits the –so far unbeaten- traditional logic of state organization in which the SC could become an upper chamber representing the states via the international organisations and allow for the development of another chamber representing the people –a world parliament in the way proposed by the UNPA campaign-.  The distribution of voting rights and composition of both chambers in order to be representative is a technical matter that falls out of the scope of this article. However, the EU is a good example of how to distribute power in order to accommodate states of different populations and GDPs.

Advancing in the path of world regionalism

The idea of having a SC composed solely of international organisations following the EU model is still far but considering the rise in world regionalization it should not be considered anymore as too visionary. In fact, it is necessary to set a goal of this kind in order to orientate the UNSC reform in a way that allows progress to be measurable and defines a final destination that can be acceptable and desirable by the international community.

Two requisites have to be met for a SC composed of international organisations to be feasible; first, these international organisations should have the capacity to speak with one voice and second, they have to be able to implement the decisions taken in the SC. Currently the EU has the power to implement the decisions , such as sanctions. When it comes to speaking with one voice, the EU also fulfils this condition in most of the cases, although it is also true that the EU tends to be split in most important decisions-. However neither of these two conditions are yet met by any other regional international organisations. It is therefore necessary to wait until organisations such as the African Union, Mercosur, Asean and others can reach the minimum level of integration that would make such a SC acceptable and functional.

The role of the EU in changing the UNSC reform

Advancing towards a SC composed of world regions will be slow and cumbersome. Changing the status quo is never easy. However the EU has an important role to play in this transition. Being the most developed world region in terms of political and economic integration, the EU could start by asking for a permanent observer seat in the SC with the condition that other world regions who want and can be represented would also be allowed to join the SC as observers when they fulfil at least one of the two conditions mentioned above (capacity to speak with one voice and to implement decisions). This last condition consisting in opening the door to other world regions is a must; first because most countries oppose the EU seat in the SC because of the current over-representation of Europeans and they could only support this option if the door is open for their region too. Second, because the participation of the world regions as observers would have an effect in developing procedures and mechanisms to organise common positions and the implementation of the decisions among world regions. The learning by doing would be important to pave a future in which the SC could be composed solely of world regions.

This change consisting in inviting world regions to participate as observers would not require amending the UN charter in the short term, as long as the regions are only observers. And only when the world regions have evolved sufficiently would be time to consider amending the charter to replace the current SC with a new one composed of world regions –and eventually a big state such as the US, China or Russia.

A forum for world regions outside the UN system

The other option is to create a forum outside the UN setting where the world regions can start to interact and negotiate as well as exchange best practices. In the beginning, and because of the different levels of integration it need not take binding decisions but in a not too distant future it could be possible to envisage developing commonly agreed legislation and taking decisions applicable in those countries bound to the regions represented. It could be the embryo of a world upper chamber that could one day replace the SC. In this case the leadership of the EU in setting up this forum would be welcomed and recommendable. By inviting other world regions to sit down as equals around the same table, it would help combat the negative perception from the rest of the world of what some call the “European moral superiority”.

The difficulty of both options –besides the still insufficient integration of world regions- are the opposition from the current members of the SC who undoubtedly will be suspicious of any initiative that can hinder their privileged position. However, there are more countries outside the SC than inside it and with the emerging economies there can be a good consensus to push in the direction of a reform that is acceptable for the majority.

Europe’s last chance

The times are changing, we find ourselves in an age of multipolarism in world relations. Some European states refuse to accept that the world has changed and their weight in the world has been considerably reduced. The current financial and economic crisis combined with the developments in the rest of the world are shaping a new global order in which European countries will no longer be superpowers. Only under the umbrella of the EU they can continue to influence world politics and hence it is crucially strategic that the member states and the EU itself change their approach to world politics.

We might be facing the last chance for Europe to enter the history as a generous player rather than a loser. In situations like these, in which power is shifting, it is always better to give away power than to have it taken away. The EU had a first taste of how it feels to be pushed aside during the Climate Change negotiations in Copenhagen in which the final deal was stricken without the EU inside the room. Hence there is certain urgency for the EU to act while it can still do it. If the EU waits too long it might see how the opportunity to get a decent compromise is gone forever.

The EU needs to change its policy in world politics and stop angering other countries by pushing forward with more European over-representation. Instead, the EU should think long term and help the articulation of its natural partners; that is other world regions. No doubt building world regions will take time and patience but this long-term goal would be the most stable, legitimate and democratic alternative to current world governance, especially as far as UNSC is concerned. The EU should encourage and assist the development of these world regions and lay the ground for a new and more democratic level of world governance.

Article published in Europe’s World, June 14th

Federalism and the future of Spain

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May 102011
 

Spain is a Unitarian state like France and Italy. Its constitution defines it as “one and indivisible”. Since 1978 Spain has structured itself as Estado de las Autonomias, a state with 17 Autonomous Communities with an asymmetric decentralisation of competences. Some Communities such as the Basque Country have inherited from the past the right to collect and administer its own taxes, some other Communities like Catalonia have regained competences such as healthcare and prisons that other regions have left to the central power to administer.

Over the last 35 years, Spain has seen substantial decentralisation in the administration of competences but it cannot be called a federation. Some scholars define the Spanish political system as asymmetric federalism but in my opinion that is an overstatement because the country doesn’t fulfil the minimum conditions to be called such. For instance, it lacks a territorial chamber representing the 17 Autonomous Communities, a clear cut division of competences or the simple acceptance of the subsidiarity principle, among many others. The institutional framework of Spain is of a central state with the characteristic of having ceded some competencies to the regional level.

The nature of the Spanish decentralisation has been also somewhat awkward. The delegation of competencies to the regions has neither followed a functionalist nor an efficiency rationale. In fact, in 1978 the majority of the Spanish regions did not ask for such decentralisation. If it happened it was to satisfy the demands from “historic nationalities” such as the Basque Country, Galicia and Catalonia. In order to accommodate these demands – Spain opted for the “à la carte” method- but at the same time kept certain homogeneity in the governance system for those regions that either did not wish or need to have more autonomy-, whilst avoiding radicalised debates clearly unfit for the time of political transition from dictatorship to democracy in the 1970s. , A method that has become to be known as “café para todos” –coffee for all- was created.

All Spanish regions, regardless of their history, culture or political will were defined as e Autonomous Communities, a compromise solution which upgraded the majority of the Spanish regions, those who did not seek such decentralisation, whilst temporarily satisfying the demands of the most demanding regions. This meant the creation of regional administrations, regional parliaments and all the pertinent bureaucracy in which was seen as a workable compromise given the delicate historical and political moment.

Many saw in the “café para todos” the embryo of a federalist project for Spain but in reality this process was implemented in the name of unity and not of federalism. Indeed, since then the governance of Spain has been fragile and the lack of a proper senate or regional chamber has meant that all negotiations between regional governments and the Spanish government have had to take place on a bilateral basis and there has never been an open discussion between the regions as to how they would like to see the state organised. In this sense Spain has remained a union of Spanish people and not of regions/communities/nations. This lack of debate and transparency has kept the Spanish government in the middle, deciding which region gets what competence and when. This pivotal position of the Spanish government has allowed it to exercise power but also to create mistrust and jealousies between Autonomous Communities.

After 30 years of development of “Estado de las Autonomías” the process of decentralisation reached a stalemate with the ruling of the Spanish Constitutional Court on the constitutionality of the new Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia. After an appeal from the Partido Popular, the leading opposition party, the Spanish Constitutional Court declared parts of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy unconstitutional, notwithstanding that the text had been approved in a referendum by the Catalan people. Leaving aside the considerations on the democratic legitimacy of a court ruling against a text approved by popular referendum -which has been a case study very much enjoyed by avid constitutionalists-, the decision of the Spanish Constitutional Court may be interpreted as an end of a process. The Constitutional Court has ruled that the Spanish government, backed by the Congreso de los Diputados, cannot continue to give what some Autonomous Communities want. From here onwards the Catalans are aware that a limit has been put to what can be achieved inside the state of Spain in the current constitutional setting.

The end of the “café para todos” means that Spain has to find a new way to structure itself and find new procedures to negotiate the future organisation of the country. Broadly speaking there are two options: going back to a Unitarian centralist state or advancing towards a federation.

The first option is defended by some members of the Partido Popular, the Spanish conservative party, and more especially by its former Prime Minister Mr. Aznar. However, this idea has little chances of succeeding, unless it is imposed by force – an unlikely scenario in the current European framework. It was precisely in the times of maximum push for centralisation during the years when Aznar was in power when the independentist parties in regions such as Catalonia or Galicia grew the most. Therefore one of the consequences of a move towards centralisation could be the dissolving of the country, especially if we take into account the relative maturity obtained by the independentist parties, particularly in Catalonia, and the successful self-organised citizen-led consultations on the independence of Catalonia on April 10.

The second option is to advance towards a Spanish federation. There are many challenges with this option. The first being that this option has a lot less proponents than the pro-centralisation one. In fact, the federalist cause does not have any prominent figure supporting it in Spain. Mr Zapatero, the current Prime Minister, gave his pro-federalist stance up a while ago. Indeed, it seems that there are very few federalists in Spain but what makes it more complicated is that firstly, most of them are in Catalonia and secondly, they seem to be slowly starting to forego loose the illusion that Spain can ever become a federation. As Mr Carod-Rovira, former Vice-president of the Catalan government, put it: “In Spain nobody wants to be federated with us”.
Indeed, the federalist ideal has been traditionally identified with Catalonia. The First –and short-lived- Spanish Republic of 1873 was a federal one with the Catalan government of Mr Pi i Margall, and since then most of the federalist Spanish intellectuals have come from Catalonia. This has caused some reservations in the rest of the country that has never seen the need for such a change in the institutional setting but, above all, also a change in the understanding of what a pluri-national multicultural Spain intrinsically means. Partly, the problem lies in the fact that Spain has never seen accommodating historical nations such as Catalonia or the Basque Country in the state as a Spanish problem that needed a Spanish solution but rather as a regional problem that the central government should fix.

Federalism has been proven to be the most viable way to satisfy both the need for union and the desire for autonomy around the world. But in Spain this “need for union” is fading away because of the globalised economy –markets and economy are less and less national- and the EU membership -with sovereignty being diluted in the European project. Simultaneously, in some regions the “desire for autonomy” is changing into a growing desire for independence. It is the case that former Spanish federalists and even important figures who always defended the “need” for Spain are starting to look for other options outside the constitution after the ruling of the Constitutional Court on the issue of the Catalan Statute, as well after having seen the lack of feedback in the rest of Spain about the need to define the future of the country as a whole.

There is the danger of reaching a point of no return in this continuous misunderstanding of the parts. The federalisation of the parts is not something that can be agreed overnight by the two ruling parties; it requires a “federalisation process” based on trust in which the Spanish citizens should participate in the creation of this common space in which democracy and rule of law would organise the relationships between regions and peoples. Neither autonomy nor loyalty can be imposed by decree.

Nicolas Schmitt from the University of Friburg describes very well the danger of using federalism as a tool without embracing its values. He contrasts the example of Switzerland in which federalism was a way to organise a common future in a fair and democratic way, to the example of Belgium in which federalism was introduced as an administrative tool to allow the two linguistic communities to coexist without having to cohabitate.
Historically federalism designated a process of union. The federal pact between citizens and states consolidated the process of convergence that in countries such as Germany or Switzerland started as loose confederations and with the time evolved towards a federation. It is a fact that the opposite process of evolving from a unitary state towards a federation does not have many successful records. Czechoslovakia became a federation shortly before disappearing and it looks like Belgium is following a similar path.

The federation should be seen as the consolidation of a relationship. This is why trying to solve problems of coexistence with a forced federation is like trying to force a marriage in a couple that is already undergoing serious crisis. The European Union is a good example of this gradualist approach; the process of integration has been slow but the “need” for the union, as highlighted by the current crisis, is making the process of European federalisation advance with a lively –albeit sometimes harsh- debate in the capitals and in Brussels about how the EU should structure itself. This debate is non-existent in Spain except for some circles in Barcelona and Madrid.

The theory says that Spain should start a federative debate about the internal organisation of the country and the understanding of the country itself. This is crucial as the only alternative is the radicalisation of both Spanish and regional nationalisms. Only after lengthy and in-depth honest and transparent debate, and based upon the will of the Spanish people whilst observing the right to self-determination of the parts, it can be decided whether a federation is the best way to look at a common future or whether a third way could be envisaged –perhaps a confederation?-. Unfortunately, history teaches us that the organisation and disappearance of states very rarely follows academic theories. Currently, Spain lacks the political and intellectual figures capable of raising and facilitating such a complex but necessary debate. Instead, the media, the political class and the academia seem to prefer to look at the future of the country as if it would be a football match between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid in which the purpose would be to knock out the opponent -ignoring the fact they need each other in order to continue playing. Time will tell whether the maturity of the Spanish political debate is that of a football fan or that of a mature democracy.

Why ousting Ashton won’t get it fixed – the need to rethink EU`s foreign and defence policy

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Mar 232011
 

The last events in the northern Mediterranean, starting from Tunisia and ending in Libya have helped to define what EU’s foreign policy currently is and, more than that, what it is not.

When it comes to foreign policy the EU was and continues to be a dwarf with 27 legs, each of them trying to move the body in a different direction. With the treaty of Lisbon some might have thought that by giving a single head to this dwarf it would be easier not only to move but also to grow up into a more respected figure in international relations. Well, the dwarf is still, in the best case, a dwarf.

Many are blaming Ashton for the lost opportunity to make the EU shine in international politics. Indeed, in the Libya case everything was aligned for the EU to score its first points as international player with the use of its new tools of foreign policy. Yet, the lack of consensus in Europe forced individual member states to look for support for action elsewhere. Surprisingly, the old UN Security Council, with all its cons and ifs, and once the US had agreed to move forward, it proved to be a very useful body to trigger action from the international community.

It is not the intention of this paper to analyse the Libyan war or the role of UN Security Council but rather draw some conclusions on the performance of the EU foreign policy instruments.

Firstly, it is undeniable that the figure of High Representative underperformed throughout the crisis –and arguably also before-. Fifteen months after having taken on this position, Baroness Ashton has not yet taken the measure of her post. Sadly, the best it can be said about the baroness is that she has not been obstructive to other initiatives undertaken by member states. As a facilitator of foreign policy and as EU’s spokesperson for foreign affairs she has been clearly missing. Academic and online community give many convincing reasons to justify her ousting from the position. Yet, finding a replacement for her will not be easy. Especially in view of current diverging views regarding the shape and purpose of European foreign policy; indeed, some member states might find Ashton’s low profile more than convenient to perpetuate the illusion of a common European foreign and defence policy. The weaker and lower profile the high representative has, the more power stays in the hands of some –big- member states, regardless of what treaties say. One can then enquire whether a country like Germany or France would lose rather than gain, were Ashton to be sacked.

This opens the door for the further analysis on the question of European foreign policy: is Ashton the real problem or is she only a scapegoat?

The real question that we should pose ourselves, and which the EU has been trying to answer since decades, is whether it is in the interest of the Europeans to have a common European foreign and defence policy. Neither the Constitutional treaty nor the Lisbon treaty managed to address this fundamental problem. In view of current developments one could argue that by creating a “foreign minister” without an European army and without a foreign policy the Lisbon treaty only made things worse.

Under the current treaties, same as before, decisions on foreign affairs and defence are to be taken by unanimity (art 42). This decision-making procedure means that currently a consistent common foreign and defence policy is just not possible. Does this mean that the job of the High Representative is an impossible task? Most probably… under Nice the figure of the High Representative had to keep a low profile; Solana was representing the council and the expectations on him were clear. With Lisbon the High Representative has to represent the Council (the interest of the member states) and the Commission (the common interest) and is required to be one of the prominent faces of the EU. Yet the mandate is always unclear and the big member states always do what is in their hands to spoil the party so that it is clear to everyone that foreign policy remains a national competence.

The problem, and going back to the question of what is in the interest of the Europeans, is that the current situation is unsustainable in the long run. Pretending to have a European foreign minister but refusing to give it the relevance and the means plays against the credibility of the European project. Having Ashton, or whoever else, being constantly contradicted and overrun by the national ministries undermines the EU as a whole, inside and outside the Union. Inside the EU, the citizens realise that with the Lisbon treaty everything changed so that everything could stay the same; the same old story all over again about the EU having a single voice in the world but in the end the big member states do as they wish. Outside the EU, the US still has no one to call in Europe in times of crisis and ends up dealing with two or three European capitals whilst the rest of the world continues to assist to the decline of the old continent… We just can’t afford to continue in the current situation.

If we are to continue along this path and in order to avoid further damage to the image of the Union I would argue that the EU should reconsider the current rhetoric and study going back to the former situation of a High Representative representing the Council and a European Commissioner for External Relations representing the common interest. This situation would be self-defeating but it would minimise the danger of deception.

However, in my opinion the preferable option is not to retreat but to advance with an European project that includes a common foreign and defence policy. In order to do so it is necessary to identify the problems that stay in the way and address them strategically.

The problem for European foreign and defence policy is lack of political will, but also a lack of appropriate tools and rules. In view of the current experiences it is clear that the political will is probably what will come last for it is unthinkable that most member states will give away sovereignty in the field of foreign affairs and –especially- defence unless they are able to cover their backs.

The challenge for the future of the EU foreign and defence policy is how to create a set of tools and rules that can give enough confidence to member states so that they can put together the political will to make a step forward in the direction of communitarianism. European Federalists have traditionally identified the unanimity principle as the Gordian knot of European integration; i.e. if the Council would be able to decide by qualified majority voting or even super qualified majorities it would be possible for the EU to have a common foreign and defence policy. Although this is true in theory, it is difficult to imagine how it would happen in practice because no big member state could afford to be outnumbered in a decision that implies going to war. Here we collide not only with the problem of political will but also with the principles of national sovereignty.

At the end of the day and to simplify the matter, the question would be as simple as who would be responsible for sending the condolence letter to the family of a fallen soldier of a member state who voted against the military intervention but still had to pay for his deployment. The mother could rightly ask the national government why her son had to die in a war that the same democratically elected government opposed. Who in the EU would be in the position of sending these condolence letters to soldiers from the national armies?
It all boils down to the fact that there cannot be a European defence policy without an European army, financed with the own resources of the Union and accountable to the EU institutions. In case of war these soldiers would be fighting for the EU and not for any member state and may they fall, the EU would have the right to make the appropriate honours. Under these circumstances it would be possible to remove the unanimity principle from the Council meetings. Then, this core European army, financed and managed by the EU, could be complemented with the national forces from those states that voted in favour of the military intervention whilst those who abstained or voted against can stay away but without stopping the EU from taking on the role that the majority of Europeans want it to have.

Hence, the right strategic decision on the tools can manage to unblock the institutional problems and generate the political will necessary to make the EU shine in situations such as the revolts in the southern shore of the Mediterranean.

In a situation like this even Baroness Ashton would be able to deliver as High Representative, for it would allow a European position on the issue to unfold and evolve, giving a lot more protagonism to the EU which would result in a lot more support and credibility to the European project. Also, one can argue that this solution would also be fairer to the middle and small EU member states which in the current situation are nothing else than observers in a show run by old declining super-powers with leaders fighting for any protagonism that can give them votes.

All in all, the economic crisis and now the political crisis in the southern shore of the Mediterranean highlight the need for more Europe. Time has proven that in lack of European Economic Government, Germany will be the European Government and that in lack of European common foreign policy, France, UK and Germany will decide on foreign policy. The loser will be the small and medium member states, the European citizens and the European project as a whole.

Foreign and defence policy has been the field in which the EU has advanced the less, yet together with the development of a European budget and a European fiscal policy they are the main components of the reforms that the EU will have to face in the next years. If Europe is to recover the constructive path that it abandoned after the adoption of the euro it needs to address these issues urgently. Ousting Ashton from her position is like fighting the economic crisis with technical changes to the Growth and Stability Pact; they are short term measures that don’t deal with the real nature of the problem.

Maybe rediscovering the draft treaty establishing the European Defence Community could help close the chapter that Europe has left open for too long. It’s been 65 years of European decline in world politics, how much more can we afford to fall?

Merkel, the hara-kiri of national sovereignties and the birth of the European Economic Government

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Feb 072011
 

The front-page of today’s Spanish newspapers (4-2-11) joined the country’s main political actors in cheering the words of Merkel: “Spain is going in the right direction”. I almost fall off the chair: A foreign leader coming to Spain –a sovereign nation-state, at least on paper- and telling the democratically elected leaders what they have to do. And everybody finds it normal!

This is the most serious intromission into Spanish sovereignty in my living memory and the Spanish media and actors welcome it as good news. I’m not going to do a qualitative analysis of the reforms that Merkel has imposed on Spain -and other countries- but rather on the fact that a sovereign country is managing to force other sovereign countries to do what it thinks to be right. In the past this could be achieved only with the use of military force. What has changed?

Many will argue that what Merkel is doing is necessary for the common interest; that we need to encompass fiscal policies in the euro-group in order to bring macroeconomic stability to the euro-area so that the euro can continue to exist. They might be right but the method she is using is questionable; what power does Germany have –other than being the big brother and creditor of the euro-zone- to impose fiscal policies to other sovereign states? According to the EU treaties the monetary policy is European and managed by the ECB but the fiscal policies remain a national competency. This has been questioned by many since the Maastricht treaty and time has proven that we can’t have a common monetary policy and 17 different fiscal policies. Instead, the Growth and Stability pact was supposed to regulate the fiscal convergence of the union and any attempt to advance towards a European Government was sabotaged by one or another country on the ground of national sovereignty.

Well, the events of last months show that national fiscal sovereignty is gone… to Germany. Germany decides the measures and evaluates its implementation and, whether we like it or not, it didn’t ask for permission to do so.

Legally speaking the guardian of the treaties is the European Commission and if the G&S pact was infringed it is the role of the EC to intervene. The problem is that nobody obeys. The current crisis has shown the real power of the “European executive” when is the time to “execute”. The only one who –on paper- should be going from capital to capital telling others what to do and evaluating if countries are doing the homework should be the EC president, J.M. Barroso. But he just can’t. When things got tough the commission has been pushed aside and the show has been handed by those who really have the power, i.e. Germany and, to a certain extent, France.

Once again, I’m not saying that the measures that Germany is imposing on the rest of Europe are wrong but I do find surprising that the biggest takeover of national sovereignty by a European member state since World War Two goes unnoticed.

During the last decades the big obstacle that has stopped the EU from moving forward has been the unwillingness of the member states to share more sovereignty, notably in budgetary and fiscal matters, yet they have no problem ceding this sovereignty to another EU country when it is necessary… This doesn’t make sense. If the citizens of say Spain care about Spanish sovereignty they should react when the government –and the opposition- they elected place a foreign government at the wheel of the national economy. Or is it that no such a thing as “national economy” exists anymore?

I’m one of those who believe that the concept of national sovereignties belongs to the past and that we need to shape supranational democratic structures that distribute sovereignty in different layers but I also know that not too many people share these views, especially in Spain. Yet when the time comes to defend this national sovereignty all the Spanish nationalists see no problem in letting the German government decide on behalf of our democratically elected politicians. Is it that people just got used not to have any say on anything and accept the reforms from abroad as an apocalyptic punishment? How can we justify this from a democratic point of view?

I have no doubt on the good-faith of the German government in its current role of playing the European government. Their motivation to intervene in other European economies is driven by the fear of losing the credibility of the common currency, losing the European market of consumers of German products and risking the pay-back of German loans and investments in case of bankruptcy. After all, Germany is only defending its own national interests by intervening into others sovereignties. But even if the German motivation is sensible the method can’t be acceptable as modus operandi for the EU.

I think it is too early to draw economic lessons of this crisis but we have seen enough to draw the political lessons; those are:
- Like it or not, the EU needs a common fiscal policy. Nobody can continue to oppose it on the ground of national sovereignty because the crisis has shown that such a thing doesn’t exist anymore, currently the German government decides on the national fiscal policies of most states in the euro-zone.
- We need an European Economic Government, because in the absence of it the European Economic Government of the euro-zone is Germany which some might argue that it is not that bad but it certainly goes against the democratic principles of the EU,
- In order to legitimise the European Economic Government and give it the necessary strength to make credible interventions in crisis situations it is necessary that the presidency of the European Commission gets the mandate from the European people. And that can only be done with European-wide elections to elect the president of the EC. Only like this can the future the president of the EC do what Merkel is currently doing.

Arguably these and other political reforms will have to wait until the house is put back in order and this means that until that happens Ms Merkel will continue to be Ms Europe and the German government the de-facto European Economic Government. But once the macroeconomic situation is back on track these political reforms are indispensable for the future of the EU.

If when it comes to fiscal policies the euro-zone countries continue to be attached to their national sovereignties there are only two options; the end of the euro –caused by the imbalances between monetary and fiscal policy- or the end of European democracy with the logical revival of nationalist tensions between European states.

The only desirable way forward is to give the EU the tools to act in a credible and democratic way. The time when Germany was willing to give away power and money to the EU is over. Germany has learnt the hard way that the European partners were not reliable and in the absence of the right governance tools it had no choice but to intervene and impose fiscal discipline to other sovereign states. The weak “common trust” that existed before the crisis has evaporated and the current model of German control on the national fiscal policies is not acceptable. The only way forward is to have a democratic and capable European Economic Government.

Democratic so that in the future all the euro-zone states can together take the decisions that this time Berlin had to take on its own. And “capable” so that it has the means to generate the necessary trust and checks-and-balances to prevent situations in which some member states report false budget data or spend EU money in highways going to villas of some politicians.

Sadly, I’m quite sure that the day we have such a plan on the table the same national media and political actors that today cheered the intromission of Ms Merkel into national affairs they will jump and scream against “Brussels” trying to take over the indivisible and intransferable national sovereignty –that they lost long ago-. But as Proudhon said “When deeds speak, words are nothing”.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FROM AGONY TO EPIPHANY?

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Jan 082011
 

“Cancún may have saved the process but it did not save the climate.” Said a Greenpeace activist at the end of the last Cancun Conference of Parties (COP) 16 Climate negotiations in December 2010.

True. Broadly speaking, what was agreed in Cancun’s COP16 is to continue working together, with more transparency, more cooperation in technology transfer, more money on the table but without the commitment to neither reduce emissions to a level that could keep global warming under the catastrophic 2 degrees nor targets and rules on how to organise the global transition to low carbon economy. To put it simply; the success of Cancun was to avoid the end of multilateralism in climate negotiations. There were no commitments to replace the Kyoto protocol except for its financial mechanisms. The Kyoto protocol, which back in 1997 was seen as nothing exceptional, is now seen as the panacea and few countries are willing to go beyond it even when knowing that Kyoto is insufficient to save us from climate change.

The process was saved but the world citizens continue to lose. The negotiations didn’t collapse but they are far from being able to provide what would be the minimum compromise acceptable for the world citizens: keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius -the agreed text could allow global temperatures to increase by more than 4 degrees which estimations show that could increase climate-change related deaths from current 300.000 to 1 million-. In the current format of intergovernmental negotiations the world citizens are not present in the negotiation table, hence it should surprise no one that they were the losers of the successive COP 15 and 16.

Should we be happy that UN-type multilateralism survived one more round? Arguably this is the best system that we have and although it has not served the purpose of uniting the world against climate change it is our only tool in a “politics as usual” scenario. The problem is that in a “politics as usual” scenario the humankind has little chances of surviving.

If the Cancun agreement had been about global disarmament and not climate change an equivalent of the shady results could be accepted. Some players such as the EU pushed a bit more, some others such as Japan tried to stop it, but overall the result is not a step backwards and hence an acceptable outcome. Fair enough. We can always trust that if we survive another world war we can try to learn the lessons as we partially did after World War II. The problem with climate change is that if the scientists are right and we are facing severe irreversible changes in the climate the result of Cancun is as insufficient as unacceptable. If achieving the maximum of what is politically possible is not enough to save the planet there is a need to change the rules of the game or the game itself. In other words, if we accept Bismarck’s quote “politics is the art of possible” to explain the climate change negotiations, then we have no option other than changing politics until we can make possible what is necessary.

International politics as usual can’t be an option if we want to meet the minimum conditions to have enough chances to survive. A change of the magnitude of what happened in the post-WWII is needed: At the end of WWII the world was split as ever and there was an attempt to unite it with the creation of the UN. However, the high conditionality, the absence of real integration, the veto power, the lack of democracy and the persistent intergovernmental approach made the UN weak and irrelevant when important issues were at stake –wars and others kind of major crisis like climate change-. What history teaches us is that UN kind of multilateralism is not enough to deliver systemic changes.

The other side of the coin was Europe, where a core of countries decided to move ahead with the revolutionary proposal of creating the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), a common project with common institutions that with limited but real power managed to achieve a common goal. Had the ECSC waited for the United Kingdom to start the process that was to lead to what is today the EU, we would probably not have the EU today. A parallelism can be drawn for the global Climate Change action, the US threat to block the process has conditioned 20 years of negotiations. The system of cap and trade and offsetting of carbon that we have today and which is failing to reduce emissions -but succeeding in creating lucrative speculative carbon markets- is the only concession given by the US. If the US had continued to play the positive role that it played in the WWII period we would probably have established a system of emission limits managed by a small supranational body that would have delivered a lot better results than the current system. But the US has not been in favour of democratic international institutions since 1946 and we have been paying a high price for it. Likewise, currently the emerging economies might be blinded by the illusion of power and not willing to join a supranational institution at once.

It is necessary to move on.
There are three possibilities to move ahead; the first and full-blown possibility is the creation of a Global Community for the Environment (GCE) to manage the emissions, the transfer of technology and the common actions in a democratic and accountable way. It would follow the model of the ECSC; creating of a communitarian body that takes care of the global common interest, a bi-cameral legislative assembly composed of representatives of the people of the union and a council representing the member-states and finally a judiciary with the role of settling disputes. This would be the optimal way to approach a global problem; with democratic institutions that can take democratic and accountable decisions minimising the danger of blockade.

A second possibility is the creation of a World Environment Organisation whose structure would resemble the current World Trade Organisation. It could be created with a treaty and it could do the job if it managed to put in place a good system to settle disputes. This is an old proposal retaken by the German and French leaders, Merkel and Sarkozy, which was proposed to the SG of the UN without much success. The draw-backs of such as solution are; that it only includes the interests of the states but neither the interests of the citizens nor the global interest, that if it is to follow the WTO system the communitarian body –the secretariat- would be too weak to steer anything and that it would be a lost opportunity to engage the citizens in the fight against climate change. The WTO doesn’t have a good reputation among citizens; it is perceived as distant and surrounded by demonstrators and riots. The fact is that despite the procedures can be democratic; the decisions are taken in the intergovernmental limbo far away from the citizens.

A third option is the International Court for the Environment (ICE) following the precedent of the International Criminal Court. A global judiciary on climate issues –ruling on the jurisdiction provided by the convention and protocols- is indispensable to avoid the current lack of enforcement of the policies. The ICE would be a first step towards communitarianism from which it would be possible to evolve towards a democratic and accountable system of world relations.

All three options have no chances to succeed in the short term if all the countries are expected to sign in. It is necessary that a group of countries decide to move ahead –like France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux did 60 years ago with the creation of the ECSC- and set up institutions that are capable to deal with global problems. If we study the impact of the ECSC we see that building a communitarian approach to fight climate change would not only benefit those who are in the union, it would also benefit those who are outside. For instance; the UK, Poland or Spain profited from the stability, common understanding, vision and good management of resources of the European Community even before they joined the EU. The same would happen for the US and the few other countries who would decide to stay out of the first Global Community for the Environment.

For instance, the US, the first polluter per capita in the world, would benefit not only because they will profit from the effort of the others to fight climate change but also because they would understand that it is in the interest of everybody to change the current fossil-fuelled economy into a more efficient and decarbonised one. It is a paradox that a country with a structural fear to state intervention approves that the government continue to use the tax-payers money to subsidise fossil fuels. This is not only against free-market but also against the world interest. For what matters a Global Climate Community would foster pooling of research and technologies and by bringing in the concept of supranational solidarity and thanks to the economies of scale it would allow rapid decarbonisation of the world economy. From the competitive point of view, any country that continues to subsidise fossil-fuels would be interested in joining the community, same as the UK decided that joining the EU is better than staying outside, because of widening technological gap. A coherent and responsible communitarian management of the transition to low-carbon economy would spark a lot more innovation and productivity than an economy that subsidises fossil fuels. The US would have to join the Global Climate Community before the Tea Party can imagine.

What about China and India? They are becoming the biggest world polluters and hence it will be difficult to strike a deal on capping emissions. However their opposition to a better governance solution is not of the same nature as the one from the US. A communitarian approach to GHG emissions, eco-efficiency, resource use, biodiversity, energy savings, transnational infrastructure and renewable energies as well as a progressive deal in worldwide converging emissions per capita are possible positive outcomes of setting up a communitarian system based on trust and equality between the members. The EU enlargement process is a good example of the positive and quick spill-overs of political and economic union. However, whilst the EU is a good benchmark of the positive effects and externalities of setting up a communitarian system, the UN system and more concretely the UNFCCC is a benchmark of how little can be achieved in horse-trading deals in intergovernmental forums.

In order to solve the current challenges it is important to leave intergovernmentalism behind and find ways for human-beings to work in the same direction, towards the same goal. For diplomats and politicians the climate negotiations are seen as a battle-field where there are winners and losers –funnily those who think they are the winners are those manage to continue to pollute and the losers those who have to cut emissions-. The truth is that with the current system all the world citizens lose and as we start to feel the effects of climate change so does the faith in democratic institutions and politics in general as an instrument to serve the citizens problems.

Let us not be blinded by the change of mood after Cancun’s COP 16. World emissions continue to increase and the rhetoric of world cooperation and leaving the solutions to the carbon markets will not suffice. The current economic crisis proves that markets alone –be it financial or carbon markets- will not work; it is the combination of market tools with regulations, democratic control and political leadership that have the power to get us out of the current financial, economic and ecological crisis. And this combination cannot happen without global institutions. Like 60 years ago, history is pushing humankind to the “unite or perish” dilemma. May we be wiser this time.

COP16 Cancun – All for one and one for all

 2 Responses »
Nov 262010
 

A communitarian approach is the only way to save us from Climate Change

The expectations about the outcome of the COP16 in Cancun are low. A sad prospect if we think Climate Change is the biggest threat to our future and we have very little time to solve it. A change of approach is necessary; we need a common solution for a common problem.

Despite the multiple rounds of negotiations since the creation of the UNFCCC the GHG emissions haven’t stopped increasing and there is no sign that the tendency is going to be reversed in the near future. In fact, the only tangible outcome of all these years of negotiations has been the creation of carbon markets and financial mechanisms such as the Clean Development Mechanism. Neither of them have been a big success and it is a fact that lucrative parallel markets to speculate with carbon credits have been created. Many polluters are richer than ever whilst total emissions have not decreased…

The current system needs to be changed. And the solution is not in creating another treaty outside the UN framework, such as the last proposal of the US to work on a kind of new Montreal treaty. Behind the ecological and economical problem lies a governance problem that is blocking the process from moving ahead. And the problem lies in the incapacity to turn rhetoric into action; if Climate Change is a global problem it has to be treated with a global solution. And so far Climate Change has been addressed only from the national level. It is important to remind ourselves that the same way that the addition of national interests doesn’t result in the global interest, the sum of national actions is not a global action.

If we look into history, at the end of WWII the world was split as ever and there was an attempt to unite it with the creation of the UN. The high conditionality, absence of real integration, veto power, lack of democracy and persistent intergovernmental approach of the UN are the reasons of its weakness and irrelevance when important issues are at stake –wars and others kind of major crisis like climate change-. The other side of the coin was Europe, where a core of countries decided to move ahead with the revolutionary proposal of creating the European Coal and Steel Community, a common project with common institutions that with limited but real power managed to achieve a common goal. Had the ECSC waited for the United Kingdom to start the process that was to lead to what is today the EU, we would probably not have the EU today. A parallelism can be drawn for the global Climate Change action, the US threat to block the process has conditioned 20 years of negotiations. The unaccountable and inefficient system of cap and trade and offsetting of carbon that we have today is the only concession given by the US. If the US had continued to play the positive role that it played in the WWII period we would probably have established a system of emission limits managed by a small supranational body. But the US has not been in favour of democratic international institutions since 1946 and we have been paying a high price for it.
It is necessary to move on. The effects of a war can be reversed but those of Climate Change cannot. It is necessary that a group of countries decide to move ahead –like France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux did 60 years ago- and set up institutions that are capable to deal with global problems.

There are three possibilities to move ahead; the first and full-blown possibility is the creation of a Global Community for the Environment (GCE) to manage the emissions, the transfer of technology and the common actions in a democratic and accountable way. It would follow the model of the ECSC; creating of a communitarian body that takes care of the global common interest, a bi-cameral legislative assembly composed of representatives of the people of the union and a council representing the member-states and finally a judiciary with the role of settling disputes. This would be the optimal way to approach a global problem; with democratic institutions that can take democratic and accountable decisions minimising the danger of blockade.

A second possibility is the creation of World Environment Organisation whose structure would resemble the current World Trade Organisation. It could be created with a treaty and it could do the job if it managed to put in place a good system to settle disputes. This is a proposal that the German and French leaders, Merkel and Sarkozy, have already proposed to the SG of the UN without much success. The draw-backs of such as solution are; that it only includes the interests of the states but neither the interests of the citizens nor the global interest, that if it is to follow the WTO system the communitarian body –the secretariat- would be too weak to steer anything and that it would be a lost opportunity to engage the citizens in the fight against climate change. The WTO doesn’t have a good reputation among citizens; it is perceived as distant and surrounded by demonstrators and riots. The fact is that despite the procedures can be democratic; the decisions are taken in the intergovernmental limbo far away from the citizens.

A third option is the International Court for the Environment (ICE) following the precedent of the International Criminal Court. A global judiciary on climate issues –ruling on the jurisdiction provided by the convention and protocols- is indispensable to avoid the current lack of enforcement of the policies. The ICE would be a first step towards communitarianism from which it would be possible to evolve towards a democratic and accountable system of world relations.

All three options have no chances to succeed in the short term if all the countries are expected to sign in. More importantly, it is very unlikely that any of the three options will be supported by the US. Indeed, the US since the end of WWII has opposed any step in the direction of supranational democracy, in 1948 it initially didn’t accept the disputes settlement mechanism of the GATT –precursor of the current WTO- and the US is one of the few countries in the world that has un-signed the Rome Statute which founded the ICC.

There is no reason to believe that the US will be willing to change its policy in the short term, yet in the short term action is needed. A good number of countries in the world are ready to move ahead with a more democratic and communitarian approach for world relations when it comes to Climate Change. Same as with ECSC building a communitarian approach to fight climate change would not only benefit those who are in the union, it would also benefit those who are outside. For instance; the UK, Poland or Spain profited from the stability, common understanding, vision and good management of resources of the European Community even before they joined the EU. The same would happen for the US and the few other countries who would decide to stay out of the first Global Community for the Environment.
For instance, the US, the first polluter per capita in the world, would benefit not only because they will profit from the effort of the others to fight climate change but also because they would understand that it is in the interest of everybody to change the current fossil-fuelled economy into a more efficient and decarbonised one. In a way, the US is committing economic suicide with their reactionary policies of protection of the status quo. It is a paradox that a country with a structural fear to state intervention approves that the government continue to use the tax-payers money to subsidise fossil fuels. This is not only against free-market but also against the world interest. For what matters a Global Climate Community would foster pooling of research and technologies and by bringing in the concept of supranational solidarity and thanks to the economies of scale it would allow rapid decarbonisation of the world economy. From the competitive point of view, a country like the US that continues to subsidise fossil-fuels would be interested in joining the community, same as the UK decided that joining the EU is better than staying outside, because of widening technological gap. A coherent and responsible communitarian management of the transition to low-carbon economy would spark a lot more innovation and productivity than an economy that subsidises fossil fuels. The US would have to join the Global Climate Community before the Tea Party can imagine.

What about China and India? They are becoming the biggest world polluters and hence it will be difficult to strike a deal on capping emissions. However their opposition to a better governance solution is not of the same nature as the one from the US. A global approach to GHG emissions, eco-efficiency, resource use, biodiversity, energy savings, transnational infrastructure and renewable energies as well as a progressive deal in worldwide converging emissions per capita are possible positive outcomes of setting up a communitarian system based on trust and equality between the members. The EU is a good benchmark of the positive effects and externalities of setting up a communitarian system, on the opposite the UN system and more concretely the UNFCCC is a benchmark of how little can be achieved in horse-trading deals in intergovernmental forums.

In historical moments like the one we find ourselves in it is necessary to take a step back and observe our history; understand that humanity has advanced when it has worked together and has failed when it has been split. In order to solve the current challenges it is important to leave intergovernmentalism behind and find ways for human-beings to work in the same direction, towards the same goal. For diplomats and politicians the climate negotiations are seen as a battle-field where there are winners and losers –funnily those who think they are the winners are those manage to continue to pollute and the losers those who have to cut emissions-. The truth is that with the current system all the world citizens lose and so does the faith in democratic institutions and politics in general as an instrument to serve the citizens problems.

Changing the course of history is not easy but if we continue the route of intergovernmentalism is at our own peril. Thomas Jefferson said “One man with courage is a majority” let’s hope we can find one among the hundreds of leaders in Cancun that dares to go for a communitarian solution.

Catholic church and child abuse – time to ask the right questions?

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Sep 142010
 

Living in Belgium I’m observing the debate about the abuse from some members of the Belgian churchwith bewilderment.

Why is it that every time religion appears in the media is not to discuss the religion as such but the wrongdoings of the -self-appointed- representatives of God on earth? Be it perverted catholic priests or mad evangelical priests I think we are all losing it a bit. Shouldn’t we see the fact that churches are being used only for weddings and funerals and the number of europeans going to church is decreasing every day as a sign of something?

Spirituality is paramount in one’s life. Yet, what is happening in today’s Europe regarding religion? I don’t want to believe that we are being less spiritual than before. Is it that Europeans prefer finding their own spirituality on their own by doing yoga, meditating, cheering their football team or smoking weed?
What is clear is that europeans refuse to be told what to believe; they want to chose their own spirituality and the current old model of priests seems to be old-fashioned. Every time the vatican and the church appear in tv is to be spanked in public. Isn’t it time to reflect a bit?
Is it better that one’s spiritually is closer to a commercial brand such as Apple than to the spirituality of the church?

These are questions that in my opinion lie behind the media attention given to the current scandals of children abuse. Let’s be honest, does anyone believe that this didn’t happen before? that this is the first time that catholic priests molest children? that this happens only in Belgium? What has changed is that now there is a public audience who finds a strange pleasure in reading these news and we know that media sells what people want (need?) to hear.

All in all, shouldn’t we use the current scandals of the catholic church to reivindicate that:

1- catholic priests are human beings like the rest of us (they should be judged like the rest of us too),

2- they should have the right to have their own sex life (sadly current news prove that they appear to be having it anyway)

3- it is about time to re-introduce the possibility for catholic priests to get married and have a normal life.

I used to believe that religion was intrinsically bad; the opium of the people, a way to manipulate the masses… but I see everyday how the human beings can manage to free themselves from the manipulation of the church but only to fall in the -maybe even more perverse- manipulation by the media, the marketing and new populism.

At the end of the day we are finding out that human emancipation was not as simple as we thought. We are realising that emancipation was not about eliminating religion but rather about replacing with something that serves us better. And when looking around I express on whether we -collectively- have found what we were looking for.

Hence the call to start a debate about the role of religion in the western society… but first please allow the catholic priests to have a sex life, get married and be normal people. It will be good for the catholic church and it will set the basis for this debate we need to have.

State of the European Union speech: Something is terribly wrong

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Sep 082010
 

Something is terribly wrong when pro-Europeans join the Eurosceptics at making fun of the president of the European Commission. Something is terribly wrong when in the toughest times since WWII we fight the crisis with nothing else but words. Something is terribly wrong when in any parliament the deputies have to get economic incentives to go listen the president of their executive…

When listening to the state of the European Union speech delivered by J.M. Barroso on tuesday 7th September it was confirmed over and over that yes: something is terribly wrong with the European Union. and guess what? It is not Barroso. I wish I could join the pro-Europeans and the Eurosceptics in lapidating the president of the Commission for being undemocratic, lacking ideas, boring, non-delivering, fake, powerless, etc. But that would be too easy. Plus it won’t help much.

The reason why nobody wanted to show up in the hemicycle to listen to Barroso’s state of the union speech is not because they despise Barroso as a person; it is just because everybody knows that the emperor is not only naked but also incapable to deliver any of the reforms that the EU needs to get out of the crisis. He just doesn’t have the power. Even if Barroso would have the personality of Obama that would not make him more attractive or powerful. It is a dead end.

The commission has done wonders during the last 60 years; the community system has been one of the most important and for sure most revolutionary pillars of the European project. Yet the times we live in prove that we need more than the current European Commission to reverse the decline of our continent.
The EU needs leadership as much as it needs the tools to act. Currently it has neither of them. 2010 has shown that the “European” leadership is in Berlin and the tools are in the EU capitals. Brussels is the place where the member-states come to sit around the table to coordinate national responses to the crisis, not where the European response can be crafted. The European Commission has become a “privileged spectator” of the dismantling of the European dream. In the best cases it coordinates and facilitates the meetings but it can never decide. Let’s not forget that the only participant in the negotiations looking after the European interest is the European Commission, the other participants are there to protect the interests of their national citizens. In 2010 we have observed how the European interest has never prevailed over the national interest. And the European citizens (who happen to be also citizens of a member state) are paying the price for it.

The only way forward to avoid further decline is to reform the governance of the union. This can be unpopular and insurmountable yet it is necessary. If we want that deputies turn up to listen to the state of the union speech we need to have the president of the European Executive speaking to his electorate; the European citizens, presenting the European solution to the crisis with the right tools; EU budget and EU policies, and reassuring citizens and member states about his commitment because he can deliver.

Currently the president of the Commission is just the minimum common denominator of the will of the leaders from the member states. We have seen how in times of crisis he has been pushed aside to let Merkels and Sarkozys run the show. This needs to be fixed by, firstly, giving the president of the European executive the backing from the European citizens so that he has the responsibility and the legitimacy to impose the European interest over the national interest. And secondly, the European executive should have the tools to act and this means having an European budget big enough to have an impact.

Power stems from the people and from the money. Barroso has neither of them; hence he gets little respect.
These are difficult times for the EU, and difficult times require bold changes lead by courage and vision. The governance of the EU should come out of the crisis fully refurbished; from the current weak and compromising European Commission we will need to obtain a strong European executive that should resemble as much as possible to a government. A government with a federal budget to implement policies and backed by the European citizens.
How to empower the president of the European Commission so that he can deliver?

Firstly by legitimising the position in the eyes of the European citizens. Barroso was selected and not elected. The EU needs to turn the European Parliament elections into European elections in which the different European parties run at European level with a head of the list who, if achieving the majority, should preside the European Commission and maybe also the European Union. The current double-headed system of the EU, i.e. Barroso & Van Rompuy, is clearly not helping to identify the EU leadership and there is a need to debate whether the positions should be merged –it wouldn’t require treaty changes-.

Secondly, by building a real European budget based on own resources which could fill the empty words of the state of the union speech. The EU budget would not be an added burden on the EU citizens, just a more efficient allocation of expenditure. The new budget would add to the current insignificant EU own resources with Eurobonds –as suggested by the Commission- but also of taxes on speculative capital transactions and taxes on carbon, leaving the tax on labour to the member-states.

Unfortunately in order to allow the reform of both the European electoral law and the creation of European taxes the EU needs to unanimity from its member states. Once again the old blockade that has stopped the union since its very beginning.

What would have happened if the state of the union speech would have been delivered by chancellor Merkel? After all she has played a more important role than anyone else in Europe on the EU response to the crisis -she has the power and the money-… wouldn’t both the pro-Europeans and Eurosceptics join again their critics in saying that Europe is taken over by one or two member states and this is democratically unacceptable? Well, this is what 2010 has taught to those who still refused to see: Europe is run by a few EU capitals –not Brussels-.

For all this, dear pro-Europeans and euro-sceptics, Barroso is not the problem but just one more of the symptoms of a much larger European problem.

What is terribly wrong with Europe is that its member-states and citizens refuse to accept that, like it or not, European governance needs an European government. The impact of this on the national sovereignties is scaring everybody from moving forward; yet in view of latest developments we can confirm that the decision to be taken is not whether member states should be giving away more sovereignty to the EU but rather whether they prefer that their sovereignty is taken away by force -i.e. Greek crisis- or with their consent and participation –i.e. Coal and Steel Community-.

PHILLIPS ANTI-REUSE CAMPAIGN

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Aug 222010
 

My Phillips razor is 15 years old and still perfectly working. When I bought it the only thing I asked for is that I wanted a machine that works and lasts, for this I paid some extra money which has been largely paid off by not having to buy a new razor.

Yet, is this a good business for Phillips? There is a big problem for those companies who design things that last and can be repaired: the problem is that they risk selling less than those companies who design products to break and can’t be repaired. This is kafkian but this is how it is.

This is the reason that explains why when I go to buy the new shaving heads for my razor they charge me 42€. Yes, 42€!!! It is obvious that three shaving heads don’t cost 42€ but instead Phillips is charging me for not changing my razor. It would only cost me twice as much to get a new razor so why should I stick to my old one which happens to be working perfectly?

On the top of that; in how many places in Barcelona you think you can renew shaving heads for Phillips razors? Only in 1 place especialised in Phillips repairing!!! On the other hand you can guess that Phillips is selling its products in 100s of retailers and shopping malls but they only sell the renewed shaving heads in one place. Wouldn’t I be better off just buying a new razor in the shop next to my place and save all this headache? That’s what the companies would like!

This is just one of the examples I run into my everyday life when trying to be sustainable. In this case Phillips, which is not better or worst than any other company producing electric appliances, has only copied the same system it uses to sell printers –sell them cheap and charge the ink very expensive- to razors. Indeed they would be stupid if they wouldn’t because they could not compete with the other companies that would continue to cheat in their prices and their products. It is a perfectly designed unsustainable system.

As far as the market rewards building obsolescence in products companies such as Phillips can continue to proclaim their love for green economy and whatever other greenwashing statements. The truth is that they are just another brick in the wall of insustainability.

Lebanon – tourism in a dump

 1 Response »
Aug 162010
 

3 weeks touring around in Lebanon and one thing I can tell is that there is garbage everywhere. Coming from the west I thought Lebanon was one of the most advanced places in the arab world but the truth is that the reality does not match what the lebanese ministry of tourism is promoting abroad. There is a dramatic lack of infrastructure for everything but also for tourism and this is something important when the country wants to prortay itself as the jewel of the middle-east. Tourism is an industry whose capital is the environment and culture of a region. The culture of the peoples living in Lebanon is millenarian yet the environment is so degraded that for me it is enough reason to go spend the holidays somewhere else.
From the seaside to the mountains, from the valleys to the caves and from the cities to the villages everywhere there is waste sidelining the roads, the paths, the rivers and the buildings. Lebanon has no waste management system whatsoever and everything –be it glass bottles, metals, paper, etc…- ends up indiscriminately dumped anywhere.
In Tripoli, north of the country, if you visit the only Islands of the country –which happened to be protected by Unesco because of rare birds and turtles- you will find they have been turned into waste dumps. Families go there to spend the day and all they bring ends up dumped there. Even the former fishermen now employed bringing people to the Islands –no fish anymore- don’t mind throwing their trash into the water. The submarine wildlife is still remarkable and foreign to the inhumane behaviour on the islands but it is a matter of time before the fish and shells will be affected.
In Saida –the famous and ancient Sidon- they have been piling the rubbish next to the sea since decades until it reached a 4 story high. Two years ago it collapsed and half of the dump ended up in the water, only hundreds of meters away from the most famous tourist sites of the city and where the fisherman do their work.
Some years before, Hezbollah burnt down the only incinerator in the country because of the health impacts that this dirty technology was having on the neighbouring communities.
Neither dumps nor incinerators will do the work in a country without law and without government but which wants to be modern. Beirut appeared to me as the perfect example of bad copy of western society: high consumist and individualist attitude, the culture of showing off instead of investing in the being, liberalism for some whilst the people with dark skin can’t step into the beaches or swiming pools… but at the same time unsustainaibilty to the extreme; brand new SUVs and luxury cars blocking the roads and polluting the air, garbage everywhere, exhausted fish reserves, high energy and food dependency from outside when the country could be self-sufficient…
It is difficult to organise a country that is unstable by nature and in a constant state of semi-war. Yet this speaks in favour of a decentralised waste management system in which every village and community should manage its own rubbish. With a couple of tweaks the whole country could offer a completely different face to the world.

First; most of the waste in Lebanon (60%) is organic which means it could be used for compost to replenish the exhausted soils of the Bekaa Valley. This doesn’t need big infrastructure or investment and could easily be organised with a door-to-door separate collection system with assistance from other good practices.

Secondly the remaining waste is plastic, paper, glass and cans from beverages and plastic bags. The glass, metals and plastic could easily be recovered by re-introducing a deposit system (Lebanon had a well-functioning deposit system that is slowly dying in favour of the throw-away society) or just by paying an amount per kg for separately collected pile of paper, PET plastic, glass and metal. This would boost the recycling industry in the country, it would provide jobs to a part of the young and hopeless generation which now wanders around and it would clean the country so that tourists can enjoy visiting one of the craddles of civilisation.

There are lots of other measures that would be necessary and sooner or later someone will have to teach the young lebanese not to dump waste in the street but to these measures could be a good start.
At the moment Lebanon doesn’t have any waste law and the ministry of environment is trying to push forward a law with the help from NGOs. They will need all the help to clean up the country (“cleaning” in the widest sense).

The Story of Cosmetics

 No Responses »
Aug 122010
 

Another great contribution from Annie Leonard to help us understand the other side of “stuff”:

Yet another fantastic contradiction of our times: the fantastic creams and cosmetics that are supposed to make us look better in fact they are harming us… having said that; if we live in a world of coffee without cafeine, beer without alcohol, meat without fat, etc… wouldn’t if make sense to also consume cosmetics without toxics?

From an European perspective we can be proud that the European Union has been in the vanguard of safeguarding the consumers with the succesful REACH legislation. It also served as a wake-up call for the industry lobbies that since then have geared up and haven’t allowed the EU to score high in any other environmental legislation (IPPC, WFD, Renewables, etc…).

However, the fact that in Europe the companies are forced to state the ingredients of the cosmetics doesn’t mean that we are safe. It’s been years since I stopped using soaps and creams from the famous brands (except for suncream) and went back to authentic soaps that were used since the middle ages and the truth is that I can’t be happier with the results. But that´s another story… :-)

TAX CAPITAL AND CARBON: THE ONLY WAY OUT OF THE VICIOUS CIRCLE

 1 Response »
May 132010
 

Ok, we got what we what we deserved: a fully-fledged recession. But from bad things, good things someday come!

The austerity plans of countries like Greece, Spain or Ireland –low investment and expenditure to reduce deficit- will hamper growth and without growth they will not be able to neither finance the service of the debt nor the necessary investments to modernize and green the economy.

Greece is getting a rescue of 110 billion € and is going to have to restructure the economy in an IMF way, and few countries have ever come alive from these macroeconomic diets… The compulsory deficit reduction will imply cutting expenditure (and investments), and/or increasing revenues. If the government doesn’t succeed in bringing law enforcement to the country –making people pay taxes, work longer…- there is no way they will manage to increase the revenues.
And in the best case, cutting in the expenditures will help reduce the deficit but it won’t generate much growth and the little growth that the country might generate will go to repay the service of the debt.

Ireland and Spain were the heroes of the European growth until the machine broke and showed that their growth was the most unsustainable of all –speculation and borrowing from the future-. Now Ireland has a national debt that is 9 times the size of its GDP and Spain has an acute problem with unemployment and deficit. Spain made everyone happy in the ecofin meeting of 9th of May when it announced a cut in the deficit of 5 billion €. This cut will mean less investment in public works and hence less dynamism in the economy and less internal demand.

The PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) and countries like Ireland which are going through a tough macroeconomic restructuring will have problems to generate economic growth. And the little profits generated by a hypothetic economic growth will go to cover the deficit and pay the service of the debt. Hence no growth in sight… Economic history shows a continuously rising public debt in a shrinking economy is a recipe for disaster. Yet, it is difficult to see how half of the EU member states will avoid falling into such a vicious circle.

There is a burning need to raise revenues in the EU in order to break the above-mentioned spiral. The current measures won’t work: Taxing labour will do more harm than good, increasing VAT (like they want to do in Spain) has a uneven impact which won’t help, delaying going into pension is good when workers are productive but will not save the situation in the PIGS with low qualified labour.

Yet this catastrophic situation might open a door that the policy-makers –well-advised by their friends in the industry and banks- have tried to keep close until now.
Taxes are not only a way to generate revenue, they are way to steer and create markets. Therefore it is of common sense to raise taxes there where is needed in order to pave the way towards a more sustainable economic and environmental future: taxing capital and taxing carbon is the way forward.

Taxing capital transactions: The current crisis was triggered by the excessive speculation and in order to incentivate productive investment a tax on the financial speculative transactions is not only useful to raise income but it is also fair.

Tax carbon: The big challenge of the current times is the decarbonisation of the economy, whatever economy comes out of the current crisis will have to be more sustainable and efficient and less based on carbon. A tax on carbon it would help raise revenues and it would bring the right incentives to the market, pushing the economy to be less carbon-intensive.

The problem is that those who put us in the current crisis are supposed to get us out of it and, sadly, so far we have only seen old ideas to fix new problems. Someone said “Never waste a good crisis”; now the European leaders have the perfect excuse to do the right changes. The problem is that neither the industry, nor the political parties, nor even the trade unions want the change. In France, Sarkozy’s plan to tax carbon had to be left aside because in the end “nobody” –except the common people- wanted it. In Spain Zapatero –and the common people- wanted to tax capital but he had to give in to some “interests”…
Ideally the initiative should come from the European Commission but so far it hasn’t shown much initiative in anything relevant and, sadly, people tend to expect more from German government than from the European Commission.

The EU member states have been taking difficult decision regarding rescue-packages and others. Had they been bold and brave enough before we would have saved lots of tax-payers money. Latest experiences are a sad portrait of the cost of inaction; with the current pre-depression situation countries like Greece have to break the vicious circle imposed by IMF rescue plans. Taxing carbon and speculation is the right way forward and now it is the time to implement them. The longer we wait the higher the bill will be.

Achtung! The Germans are back. Is it good or bad?

 No Responses »
May 042010
 

“The germans are back” is a statement I’ve been hearing quite often in different spheres and from different nationalities in Brussels. This statement is made with a mix of skepticism and fear, is this justified?

It is a fact that the current crisis –specially the Greek crisis- has triggered new waves of nationalism everywhere in Europe and history teaches that nationalism is powerless without a real or invented enemy. Germany’s predominance and power in Europe, well-anchored in its strong demographics and economics, has been translated into hate and fear during the first half of the XX century and into respect and admiration during the second half of the same century. Are we entering a new phase of German attempt to dominate Europe or does the EU offer the guarantees that this can not happen? Is this a real German strategy or it is rather the result of a lack of leadership in Europe?

In Brussels the German influence has been steadily growing and now it is more visible than ever. According to the different people I’ve been talking to: “germans are taking all strategic positions in the institutions and they work as a clan” is this true? Leaving aside the fact that all nationalities tend to work as a clan, as far as the higher positions is concerned: it looks like the new Secretary General of the Council will be a German –replacing a French- which adds to the german Klaus Welle having taken over the secretariat of the European Parliament from the British Julian Priestley. According to my experience the Germans are the best organized and coordinated country in the EU and it is practically impossible to pass any position that the Germans as a whole oppose. Again are the Germans to blame for their own efficiency or are the others to be blamed for not taking the EU seriously enough?
Can Germany be blamed for having –in comparison with other big EU states- a strong non-populist government led by a strong leader with a clear vision or should we blame the other big EU countries for the opposite?
What is undeniable is that the demographic and the economic power of Germany can be very powerful when MEPs, states, lobbies and civil servants push in the same direction. However, the whole point of building a supranational democracy is precisely to avoid countries dominating Europe and instead let the people of Europe govern the continent…

I have mixed feelings with this criticism that the Germans are facing “behind the scenes”. On one hand it is true that these last months we have seen in the German press the most nationalists comments since WWII –mainly on the Greek bail-out- and that the German society is slowly leaving behind the complexes and guilt-feelings carried since the defeat of the 3rd Reich. On the other hand during last half century Germany has been one of the most pro-european countries and if we don’t have a well-functioning and democratic European Federation right now is not because of them but because of the intermittent sabotage from the French and the Brits to projects of further political integration.
If the Germans have to take the lead of the EU today is because we don’t have an EU able to advance as one political unit. The European Commission doesn’t have neither the leadership nor the power –given by the institutional setup- to act as a government. Once again the member states have committed the mistake of thinking that by preserving their sovereignity they were better serving their citizens and even the EU. Time, once again, is proving them wrong.
But on the top of that it looks like the anger for an ill-functioning, purpose-less EU might fall on Germany precisely for being in the situation of having to take the lead which I think is unfair. Imagine for a moment where would the EU be without the current German leadership.

To conclude, it is a fact that “the Germans are back” but I remain to be convinced of whether this is either good or bad -or both at the same time-. It can be bad if the other EU member states don’t get their acts together to properly be represented and organized in the EU because the uncontested German efficiency and power will have negative consequences in the form of nationalism and mistrust with unforeseeable negative consequences for the European project.
However, it is good that the engine of Europe is leading the pack because it can have the effect of convincing the other countries that it is better to complete the political union in order to lead all together rather than leaving to the Germans full control of the steering wheel.

HOW I MANAGED TO REDUCE WASTE BY HALF

 No Responses »
Apr 212010
 

Less than a year ago I participated in the 2h training course organised by Bruxelles-Environement in home vermi-composting and it really worked. Looking back to the time when I started to do home-compost, August 2009, I can confirm that the white bag (residual waste for Brussels) has been reduced by more than 50%.
The waste we produce is now so little that we only have to take it out once every two or three weeks!
If you live in an apartment and never heard about vermi-composting you probably think that keeping the garbage at home for 2 weeks must stink as hell… the truth is that it doesn’t because most of the things that stink are biodegradable and hence the worms will eat them without generating odours.

Doing vermi-composting is not difficult but it does require some time and commitment. However, it really pays off in understanding how and what we eat, the cycles of nature –even when living in the city- and in knowing that we are throwing away less stuff which would end up in the incinerator and hence emitting more CO2. Also the by-products of vermi-composting are soil fertilizer and compost which are better than commercial fertilizers and I use for my plants.
The only problem I have is that I produce a bit too much compost for my needs but this is easy to fix by just giving it to your neighbour.

One thing that surprised me is how much water and carbon is in our food; i.e. the worms turn 1kg of food waste into less than 50gr of compost and a bit of fertilizer. When I first harvested the compost it was 6 months after I started and I collected around less than 2kg of compost. Amazing…

If we look at the big picture we can see that in this last year in which I reduced my waste generation in more than 50% without much effort, the European Union continues to deliberate if compost is good or bad, better or worst than incineration, etc and still –after more than 10 years since it first considered it- doesn’t see the point in producing a Biowaste Directive. In the meantime gigatons of waste have been landfilled and incinerated and climate change goes on… it is a good indicator of who does the European Commission listen to when drafting legislation. One more example of how the EU rhetoric is contradicted by its actions: The sad “Do as I say (not as I do)” approach that we are used to.

At a local level, I could have waited for the city of Brussels to start a program of separate collection of organic waste so I wouldn’t need to organize the vermin-composting at home but knowing that the city is obliged to feed the incinerator for the next decades I know too well that this won’t happen.

Conclusion, if you care about climate change, environment and all these sort of things the best is if you start fixing it yourself with small things; by the time the EU or the city gets it right we might be under water.

Still drinking bottled water?

 1 Response »
Mar 222010
 

In Brussels I still run into friends who complain about tab-water -not daring to try it- and prefer driving to the supermarket to spend a good amount of money -and time- in buying the same water -sometimes with less quality- as they can get from the tap.

Both the flemish and walon water authorities declare that “L’eau est le produit alimentaire le plus contrôlé de Belgique et elle est analysée tous les jours dans des laboratoires” or  “L’eau du robinet est testée de manière minutieuse en vue de dépister les éléments comme le plomb, le sodium, le magnésium, les nitrates, les bactéries et divers autres éléments potentiellement dangereux”.

The american activist Annie Leonard has produced an excellent video explaining the economic interests behind bottled-water and how it becomes another example of  ”manufactured demand”:

Another issue is the growing trend to use water as a luxury good and appreciate the different taste and flavours of bottled water. In my opinion this is respectable because it is true that depending on the source the water has different taste and composition and for those who don’t drink wine or beer, matching food with water can be justifiable in some special occasions. Me, I can pay 20 euros for a bottle of wine but not for a bottle of water but I’m fine if others do it as long as the tap water remains good, available and at current prices.

However, as the video rightly points out, lots of the bottled water is a rip-off because they just bottle tap-water which creates this fake demand on a common good but it also is unfair competition with the real special bottled-water which truly offers a product worth paying extra money for.

On the other hand there are the huge amounts of waste (and emissions related to extraction, transport and disposal)  related to drinking bottled water but to get the full picture see the video.

It is funny how changing the business as usual that has created the climate and economic crisis can start with such a simple thing as drinking tap water: saving money, time and the planet!

Still drinking bottled water?

E. Commission: take the initiative or face a vote of confidence

 No Responses »
Mar 092010
 
Since the creation of the new Barroso II commission the European Commission doesn’t stop confirming that she is going to be as daring as the Barroso I Commission. That is: not daring at all. Europe continues to be left at the mercy of the member states and globalization.

One of the reasons to understand why the EU has got to where it is today lies in the creation of the European Commission with the monopoly on legislative initiative.

In times of hardship the European Commission has been the one proposing to go further in the integration. For instance, in the 80s Delors pushed the creation of the single market which, although it postponed the constitutional project of Spinelli, managed to be the springboard that led to the successful 90s.

If the European Commission doesn’t take the lead the EU has to look for other ways to move forward. During the Barroso I Commission nothing can be recalled as main achievement, on the other hand 3 referendums were lost and the Lisbon strategy was an appalling failure. Yet, as I explain in my former post, last week the Barroso II Commission presented another economic plan for 2020 that is doomed to fail.

The cherry on the cake are the last news from Germany about the need for a European Monetary Fund. Following the proposal from some think tanks, the Belgian prime minister Yves Leterme said that it was a good idea and now Angela Merkel confirms the validity of the proposal to equip the EU with the right tools to deal with the crisis. This is a full and deserved discredit of the European Commission: one week after the European Commission presents its empty 2020 economic strategy the member states are already going further than the institution allegedly responsible to lead the EU has gone in the last 10 years. Now Barroso says that that the European Commission will study the possibility to create a EMF… Why didn’t you propose it in your plan for 2020? Are we planning to deal with the problems that Europe has with economic governance in 2025 Mr Barroso?

Yes, the EU needs a European Monetary Fund and yes, the European Commission should have presented these ideas a long time ago. It is their duty to think about the instruments that will take Europe out of the crisis; the instruments that allow a smarter European integration. It is worrying that, out of desperation, the member states have to take the lead in telling Brussels what Europe needs and not all the way round. This is against the treaties and the teachings of history.

It can be argued –by some- that in times of economic boom it is politically convenient to have a weak and quiet European Commission… but in times of crisis the Commission has to change business as usual, take the lead and propose solutions. Instead in the strategy for 2020 the Commission is showing a very worrying lack of attitude and seems to wait for the member states to pave the way forward.

If the newly elected European Commission continues to refuse to take the lead the European Parliament, the body to which it is accountable, should call for a vote of confidence. The Parliament is too much used to blaming the European Commission for lack of this and lack of that but after all the three big groups –conservatives, socialists and liberals- voted in favour of Barroso II for his promises of change. It Barroso II fails to deliver the Parliament should preserve the European interest.

New EU economic strategy – Repeating the failure of Lisbon strategy

 1 Response »
Mar 042010
 
Remember the slogan of  the EU during last 10 years? Yes, that thing about becoming the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world? Well, then get ready to continue laughing –or crying- because the European Commission has published its new economic strategy for 2020 and it seems we are willing to throw 10 more years down the drain.
The Lisbon strategy didn’t work because of lack of political instruments, lack of financial means and, above all, lack of political will from the member states. The fantastic new economic plan that the European Commission published yesterday insists on setting targets without providing financial and enforcement tools to achieve them. Yes, the objectives are ok (they are way to short and unambitious but let’s assume they are ok):
• 3% of the EU’s GDP should be invested in R&D.
• The “20/20/20″ climate/energy targets should be met.
• The share of early school leavers should be under 10% and at least 40% of the younger generation should have a degree or diploma. .
• 20 million less people should be at risk of poverty.

But how the hell is the European Commission planning to achieve them? How do we want to create employment without investment? To add insult to injury the EC requires that these objectives are met whilst respecting the Growth and Stability Pact and without increasing the own resources of the Union… In times when the Monetary Union is at risk and the Growth and Stability Pact is violated by most member states what is the great solution from the EC? Business a usual and repeat the same mistakes of the Lisbon strategy. Depressing.
The text of the commission doesn’t say anything on how to reform the financial markets, doesn’t provide any proposal on how to reform the economic governance to tackle problems such as Greece indebtedness, there is nothing on social Europe, nothing on Euro-Bonds or any ideas of how to increase the own resources of the Union…
Plus, why do we need a strategy for 2020? The only reason I can think of is in order to guarantee that all those who should be responsible of the next failure can be out of the game by then and therefore escape any attempt to hold them accountable. If the current Commission, the current European Parliament and the Council want to go ahead with this ludicrous plan let’s set the goals for 2014 so that at the end of their mandate we can see what they have delivered.
The new Barroso Commission was approved by the three big groups in the European Parliament –Conservatives, Socialists and Liberals- only two weeks ago under the promise that he would change the business as usual, that he was not the grey and submissed Commission president that he was during his first term. Well, here is the first test and the lack of ambition and guts can’t be more blatant. What are they going to do now? If the big groups in the EP are consequent with themselves either they force a radical change in the economic strategy or they should threaten with blocking the EU budget. Anything less will put the Parliament at the same level as the Commission.
But let’s not fall in the usual trap of blaming the EC for everything. The EC is not guilty for its lack of ambition alone, I’m convinced the Commission is aware –and probably shares- what I mentioned above but the main problem lies on the lack of political will from the member states. Lack of political will boycotted the Lisbon strategy, boycotts the creation of any kind of European economic governance and will stop any attempt to give to this European economic strategy any chance to succeed.
In a perfect example of the prisoner dilemma the Commission and the member states opt for the worst possible option, an option that will harm both Europe and the member states.
The issue is very serious and the Europeans deserve a lot more. If Barroso doesn’t dare to take the risk to challenge the status quo the European Parliament should stand up to defend the future of the Union. If nothing else because nobody else will.

Linking climate change with social change – The experience of the Green revolution in the US

 No Responses »
Feb 132010
 
The Green revolution in the US
During this last week in Northern California I had the chance to check the pulse not only of the civil society groups but also of the political scene in the US and the most relevant thing I found is how the green movement is really kicking-off with a strong political agenda, very often linking green demands with social justice.
In Europe very often we dissociate green politics from social justice because this allows everybody to be green and trendy –even Barroso from the wheel of his SUV promotes green economy-. This is interesting. The ecological crisis, to a certain extend caused by a concrete economic model of production and consumption, is happening and the mainstream parties tend to see it as a mere technological reshuffling to convert the business as usual into a green business as usual.
There is another approach to the issue of climate change that because of the higher social equality in Europe I haven’t seen in the old continent and that is the social justice approach to climate change and the green economy. Using a politically neutral approach to the current crisis allows to apply technological changes without questioning who profited from the appropriation and exploitation of resources during last centuries. A social justice approach to the current crisis wants to link the problem of climate change to its social causes and impacts, namely; how those who suffer the most from failing states or failing ecosystems are those who profit the less from the economic progress.
Europeans tend to ignore or oversee this point. This is strategically good because it avoids social unrest and allows a civilised response. However this is a problem when dealing with the rest of the world because they have a different take on it. For instance during the Copenhagen summit the developing countries insisted in having Europeans (and north-americans) pay the ecological debt.
In the US, a highly fragmented society in racial, social and economic terms, more and more green movements are linking the green revolution with social demands. After all it is low-wage workers who work in the most polluting industries or live next to a hazardous waste incinerator. Since they are the ones who suffer the most from the wealth that the upper-middle class American families accumulate, it should not surprise anyone that this kind of local movements are growing strong. The reason why it is highly interesting to listen to them is because of the take they have on the green economy i.e.: they promote the real green solutions and do not hesitate bashing the greenwashing from the industry and the political stablishment about using nuclear power or burning waste to fight climate change.
The green revolution has to be linked with a social agenda that allows to decarbonise the economy whilst creating sustainable jobs and social equality. A lots of red-neck Americans call them green-communists. I think that their demands, albeit sometimes too populist, make a lot more sense than the greenwashing with which the industry and in consequence the European and national governments bomb us with everyday. Even what is considered to be quality media promote this greenwashing.
Below a video from Van Jones, one of the leaders of this movement in Oakland, California, founder of “Green for all” and former responsible for Green Jobs for the Obama government –before being target of the neo-cons who ousted him from Washington-. A good example to understand what is going on outside the old continent.

During this last week in Northern California I had the chance to check the pulse not only of the civil society groups but also of the political scene in the US and the most relevant thing I found is how the green movement is really kicking-off with a strong political agenda, very often linking green demands with social justice.

In Europe very often we dissociate green politics from social justice because this allows everybody to be green and trendy –even Barroso from the wheel of his SUV promotes green economy-. This is interesting. The ecological crisis, to a certain extend caused by a concrete economic model of production and consumption, is happening and the mainstream parties tend to see it as a mere technological reshuffling to convert the business as usual into a green business as usual.

There is another approach to the issue of climate change that because of the higher social equality in Europe I haven’t seen in the old continent and that is the social justice approach to climate change and the green economy. Using a politically neutral approach to the current crisis allows to apply technological changes without questioning who profited from the appropriation and exploitation of resources during last centuries. A social justice approach to the current crisis wants to link the problem of climate change to its social causes and impacts, namely; how those who suffer the most from failing states or failing ecosystems are those who profit the less from the economic progress.

Europeans tend to ignore or oversee this point. This is strategically good because it avoids social unrest and allows a civilised response. However this is a problem when dealing with the rest of the world because they have a different take on it. For instance during the Copenhagen summit the developing countries insisted in having Europeans (and north-americans) pay the ecological debt.

In the US, a highly fragmented society in racial, social and economic terms, more and more green movements are linking the green revolution with social demands. After all it is low-wage workers who work in the most polluting industries or live next to a hazardous waste incinerator. Since they are the ones who suffer the most from the wealth that the upper-middle class American families accumulate, it should not surprise anyone that this kind of local movements are growing strong. The reason why it is highly interesting to listen to them is because of the take they have on the green economy i.e.: they promote the real green solutions and do not hesitate bashing the greenwashing from the industry and the political stablishment about using nuclear power or burning waste to fight climate change.

The green revolution has to be linked with a social agenda that allows to decarbonise the economy whilst creating sustainable jobs and social equality. A lots of red-neck Americans call them green-communists. I think that their demands, albeit sometimes too populist, make a lot more sense than the greenwashing with which the industry and in consequence the European and national governments bomb us with everyday. Even what is considered to be quality media promote this greenwashing.

Below a video from Van Jones, one of the leaders of this movement in Oakland, California, founder of “Green for all” and former responsible for Green Jobs for the Obama government –before being target of the neo-cons who ousted him from Washington-. A good example to understand what is going on outside the old continent.

The most sustainable shopping in my life

 2 Responses »
Jan 252010
 
The most sustainable shopping of my life
I never thought I would be writing about such a “simple” thing as going shopping but the experience I had this last weekend really deserves it.
My experience these days is that eating sustainable food has become a fulltime job and it is not cheap. If you go to a local market in Brussels it is possible to buy seasonal products and if you try even harder you can even find out where the products come from (but you are quite likely to go back with a good amount of one-use packaging).
During this last weekend that I spent in Tuscany I went to the most sustainable shop I’ve ever seen. In the shop Effecorta 80% of the products come from 70km around the Capannori municipality (aiming to get to 95%), many of them biological. But this is just the top of the iceberg; the shop adheres to the principle of Zero Waste and it doesn’t use any plastic bag or any non-reusable package. This is not only true for the tomatoes but also for soap, milk products, cosmetic creams, beer, wines, beans, rice, spices, salt, sugar… you name it! Everything they sell is in refillable, re-usable or/and biodegradable packaging.
This system:
- allows every buyer to buy according to its needs which minimises the waste eventually produced by normal packaged stuff and responsible for lots of food to be wasted (8.3 million tonnes of food is thrown away by households in the UK every year), http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/about_food_waste
- saves us from having to check the source and composition of the products because you know they are all local and in most of the cases biological (time saving),
- contributes to minimise the waste generation at home (no waste packaging and a lot less food wasted).
Believe it or not because of what I explain above you end up spending (and buying) less than in a normal supermarket, even if you buy bio!
This initiative was started by 6 idealists from Tuscany in August 2009 and it has already achieved economic stability and from all the products, the sales of the biological products are increasing by a 20%.
A lot of people questioned in the beginning the quality of natural biological refillable soaps and others. For this reason the entrepreneurs gave to normal people (not the already convinced greeny) different soaps to try and in the end the customers decided to stay with the locally produced biological soap with the refillable packaging for pure practical and quality reasons. The customers of the shop are all kinds of people; the main aim being that this shop should be a normal shop of the future and not something strange thought for already aware people. I could see with my eyes that they are succeeding.
Personally, from all the amazing products I tried it surprised me a fantastic local beer, a really authentic wine (without sulfites!) and above all the fact of being in a shop without marketing; a shop where you see, smell and touch what you buy and not end up deciding according to the nice face on the packaging or anything except what matters. This reduces the bill because you get less distracted and you buy only what you need. How twisted can this society be when I can be surprised of being able to see what I buy?
Anyway, back to my cloudy Brussels now I can’t stop from wishing to have one day one of these shops close to my place. I know that there are other sustainable options in Brussels such as:
- the consumers cooperatives that I highly appreciate and value
- and  http://www.reason2.be/ which offers online shopping of seasonal food and even meat with free delivery. It is not a shop as such but a delivery service of mostly organic and local products.
Unfortunately people with jobs like mine can’t use either of these two options because they require a commitment and regularity that I just can’t guarantee with a job that obliges me to travel constantly. Plus they only provide vegetables, fruits and a little more whilst Effecorta offers almost everything you need at home.
If the world is to be sustainable one day Effecorta is the shop of the future.
http://www.effecorta.it/

JM Simon

I never thought I would be writing about such a “simple” thing as going shopping but the experience I had this last weekend really deserves it.

My experience these days is that eating sustainable food has become a fulltime job and it is not cheap. If you go to a local market in Brussels it is possible to buy seasonal products and if you try even harder you can even find out where the products come from (but you are quite likely to go back with a good amount of plastic bags and other kinds of packaging).

During this last weekend that I spent in Tuscany I went to the most sustainable shop I’ve ever seen. In the shop Effecorta 80% of the products come from 70km around the Capannori municipality (aiming to get to 95%), many of them biological. fotos EffecortaBut this is just the top of the iceberg; the shop adheres to the principle of Zero Waste and it doesn’t use any plastic bag or any non-reusable package. This is not only true for the tomatoes but also for soap, milk products, cosmetic creams, beer, wines, beans, rice, spices, salt, sugar… you name it! Everything they sell is in refillable, re-usable or/and biodegradable packaging.

This system:

- allows every buyer to buy according to its needs which minimises the waste eventually produced by normal packaged stuff and responsible for lots of food to be wasted (8.3 million tonnes of food is thrown away by households in the UK every year),

- saves us from having to check the source and composition of the products because you know they are all local and in most of the cases biological (time saving),

- contributes to minimise the waste generation at home (no waste packaging and a lot less food wasted).

Believe it or not because of what I explain above you end up spending (and buying) less than in a normal supermarket, even if you buy bio!

This initiative was started by 6 idealists from Tuscany in August 2009 and it has already achieved economic stability and from all the products, the sales of the biological products are increasing by a 20%.

A lot of people questioned in the beginning the quality of natural biological refillable soaps and others. For this reason the entrepreneurs gave to normal people (not the already convinced greeny) different soaps to try and in the end the customers decided to stay with the locally produced biological soap with the refillable packaging for pure practical and quality reasons. The customers of the shop are all kinds of people; the main aim being that this shop should be a normal shop of the future and not something strange thought for already aware people. I could see with my eyes that they are succeeding.

Personally, from all the amazing products I tried it surprised me a fantastic local beer, a really authentic wine (without sulfites!) and above all the fact of being in a shop without marketing; a shop where you see, smell and touch what you buy and not end up deciding according to the nice face on the packaging or anything except what matters. This reduces the bill because you get less distracted and you buy only what you need. How twisted can this society be when I can be surprised of being able to see what I buy?

Anyway, back to my cloudy Brussels now I can’t stop from wishing to have one day one of these shops close to my place. I know that there are other sustainable options in Brussels such as:

- the consumers cooperatives that I highly appreciate and value

- and reason2.be which offers online shopping of seasonal food and even meat with free delivery. It is not a shop as such but a delivery service of mostly organic and local products.

Unfortunately people with jobs like mine can’t use either of these two options because they require a commitment and regularity that I just can’t guarantee with a job that obliges me to travel constantly. Plus they only provide vegetables, fruits and a little more whilst Effecorta offers almost everything you need at home.

If the world is to be sustainable one day Effecorta is the shop of the future.

foto effecorta 2

The Ryanair Flying Circus

 No Responses »
Jan 242010
 
I was called to give a conference in Capannori, in Tuscany and unsurprisingly there was no other option than flying there. The train would have taken 14h each way (changing 4 times), cost 4 times as much and taken extra time to book the part of the trip that can be booked in the Belgian station (booking the trip online is close to impossible) and considering the reliability of the train system in Europe lately (link to Jon’s articles) a trip with more than 2 changes involving 3 countries is something that I couldn’t afford to risk. So far about European transnational networks.
So here I go with the fantastic Ryanair, paying 100eur for a return ticket (+ 26€ to get to Charleroi airport from Brussels) and contributing to global warming and global environmental and economical dumping by using a mode of transport that doesn’t pay taxes on fuels. Sadly enough, nothing new until here.
But it is good to always let the events surprise you! Ryanair is as famous for being one of the most punctual airlines in Europe as it is for having the worst labour working conditions (link to Wiego or whatever). My surprise comes from the fact that the 1,5h flight is a flying supermarket circus in which they start with selling hotdogs, hamburgers and drinks to later on move to selling tobacco (with the stewardess seductively walking up and down the corridor showing the cigarettes packages like in a fashion parade) to be followed by selling participations for a lottery for I don’t know which NGO to save I don’t know which children in I don’t which country and to conclude with a duty free with watches, perfumes…
All in all, a flying shopping mall promoting consumism up in the smoky clouds. How better can it get?

RyanairI was invited to give a conference in Capannori, in Tuscany and unsurprisingly there was no other option than flying there. The train would have taken 14h each way (changing 4 times), cost 4 times as much and taken extra time to go to book in the station. Note that the part of the trip that can be booked any the Belgian station (booking the trip online is impossible) and considering the reliability of the train system in Europe lately a trip with more than 2 changes involving 3 countries is something that you just don’t want to risk. So far about European transnational networks.

So here I go with the fantastic Ryanair, paying 100eur for a return ticket (+ 26€ to get to Charleroi airport from Brussels) and contributing to global warming and environmental and economical dumping by using a mode of transport that doesn’t pay taxes on fuels. Sadly enough, nothing new until here.

But it is good to always let the events surprise you! Ryanair is as famous for being one of the most punctual airlines in Europe as it is for having the worst labour working conditions, not displaying the complete prices or charging unreasonable charges to pay with debit or credit cards. My surprise comes from the fact that the 1,5h flight turns into a flying supermarket circus from the moment it takes off. They start with selling hotdogs, hamburgers and drinks, they continue with tobacco advertising and selling (with the stewardess seductively walking up and down the corridor showing the cigarettes packages like in a fashion parade) followed by selling participations for a lottery for I don’t know which NGO to save I don’t know which children in I don’t which country and the flight concludes with a duty free with watches, perfumes…

All in all, a flying shopping mall promoting consumerism up in the clouds. How better can it get?

Good news from Copenhagen: how a colossal failure opens new doors to reform

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Dec 212009
 
I have to admit that this time our politicians surprised me (which is something very difficult to do). Having spent last week in Copenhagen and last years following climate change negotiations I could have never expected that our politicians could have dared to craft such a disastrous non-existing deal. I just couldn’t even dream that they could be so bad.
Years and years of meetings and negotiations between more than 150 countries have been wasted and in the end US and China decided that the rest of the world can go to hell and decided to pull the hand-break. Copenhagen is an amazingly fabulous failure; a betrayal to the purpose our politicians are elected for.
This exercise of prepotence and dismissal from the US and China towards the rest of the world will have deadly impacts in the trust in international multilateral negotiations. I analyse this in a former post of mine.
But this colossal failure has the potential of bringing to the stage a major problem to which nobody wanted to pay attention to: the way negotiations take place are key to understand why the outcome has been nothing but a waste of time, resources and trust (link a l’article sobre trust I climate change). The UNFCCC is not the right institutional setting to deliver the appropriate decisions and provide its implementation and enforcement.
It was very sad to see that during the negotiations the “relevant” countries were negotiating among themselves bypassing the other countries –even the EU!- and even the UN, the facilitator of the whole thing, didn’t know what was going on.
The UNFCCC has lost all credibility as manager of international relations to fight climate change.
The role of the UNFCCC right now can be compared with the League of Nations during the years preceding the WWII, when Hitler was occupying Austria and Czecoslovaquia the other nations were wasting their time in the multilateral talks in the League of Nations. Menawhile, Hitler and Mussolini were fooling Chamberlain and Daladier in bilateral negotiations. This is why the European Union was created after WWII; as a result of the experience that integration works but cooperation clearly doesn’t. If we want the world to be able to face the threats of Climate Change it needs to integrate and that can only be done by creating global democratic and accountable institutions where the world interest is represented. To know more about the details go here.
Once again Copenhagen has demonstrated that the sum of the national interests is very far from delivering the world interest. It is hence vital that we build institutions that allow the world interest to be represented. A first step in this direction would be to constitute a “world parliament” in line with what the UNPA demands (link to Leinen’s declarations). The second step would require the reform of the world financial institutions (IMF and World Bank) so that they can levy taxes and democratically administer a budget aiming at reducing emissions. The third step would be the creation of a kind of a world government (replacing the security council) charged with the mission to deal with the crisis situations that climate change is causing.
Some environmentalists like Lester Brown argued that the problem is so immediate and huge that we don’t have time to reform the world institutions; we only have time to act! Well, the result of Copenhagen proves them wrong. These are the sad good news to be learnt from the Copenhagen failure.
Obama can’t save the world, neither can the EU nor China. The world can only be saved if we act together, and we can’t act together in the frame of UNFCCC. It is mandatory that UNFCCC is abandoned –it is no longer trusted big majority of the countries- and a new setting is created, a setting capable of providing democratic and accountable results. It is the time for world democracy! I know it is difficult to have world democracy stemming from non democratic countries but no matter how imperfect it can be, it won’t deliver less than the last 2 years of negotiations of UNFCCC.
UNFCCC is deadI have to admit that this time our politicians surprised me (which is something very difficult to do). Having spent last week in Copenhagen and last years following climate change negotiations I could have never expected that our politicians could have dared to craft such a disastrous non-existing deal. I just couldn’t even dream that they could be so bad.
Years and years of meetings and negotiations between more than 150 countries have been wasted and in the end US and China decided that the rest of the world can go to hell and decided to pull the hand-break. Copenhagen is an amazingly fabulous failure; a betrayal to the purpose our politicians are elected for.
This exercise of prepotence and dismissal from the US and China towards the rest of the world will have deadly impacts in the trust in international multilateral negotiations. I analyse this in a former post of mine.
But this colossal failure has the potential of bringing to the stage a major problem to which nobody wanted to pay attention to: the way negotiations take place are key to understand why the outcome has been nothing but a waste of time, resources and trust. The UNFCCC is not the right institutional setting to deliver the appropriate decisions and provide its implementation and enforcement.
It was very sad to see that during the negotiations the “relevant” countries were negotiating among themselves bypassing the other countries –even the EU!- and even the UN, the facilitator of the whole thing, didn’t know what was going on.

The UNFCCC has lost all credibility as manager of international relations to fight climate change.

The role of the UNFCCC right now can be compared with the League of Nations during the years preceding the World War II, when Hitler was occupying Austria and Czecoslovaquia the other nations were wasting their time in the multilateral talks in the League of Nations. Menawhile, Hitler and Mussolini were fooling Chamberlain and Daladier in bilateral negotiations. This is why the European Union was created after WWII; as a result of the experience that integration works but cooperation clearly doesn’t. If we want the world to be able to face the threats of Climate Change it needs to integrate and that can only be done by creating global democratic and accountable institutions where the world interest is represented. To know more about the details go here.
Once again Copenhagen has demonstrated that the sum of the national interests is very far from delivering the world interest. It is hence vital that we build institutions that allow the world interest to be represented. A first step in this direction would be to constitute a “world parliament” in line with what the UNPA demands . The second step would require the reform of the world financial institutions (IMF and World Bank) so that they can levy taxes and democratically administer a budget aiming at reducing emissions. The third step would be the creation of a kind of a world government (replacing the security council) charged with the mission to deal with the crisis situations that climate change is causing.
Some environmentalists like Lester Brown argued that the problem is so immediate and huge that we don’t have time to reform the world institutions; we only have time to act! Well, the result of Copenhagen proves them wrong. These are the sad good news to be learnt from the Copenhagen failure.
Obama can’t save the world, neither can the EU nor China. The world can only be saved if we act together, and we can’t act together in the frame of UNFCCC. It is mandatory that UNFCCC is abandoned –it is no longer trusted big majority of the countries- and a new setting is created, a setting capable of providing democratic and accountable results. It is the time for world democracy! I know it is difficult to have world democracy stemming from a mix of democratic and non democratic countries but no matter how imperfect it can be, it won’t deliver less than the last 2 years of negotiations of UNFCCC.

Rewarded to destroy wealth? Recycling has higher social return than banking

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Dec 162009
 

Photo: Dave Ciplet

There are lots of new approaches about how economics should be reformed in order to allow prices to tell the truth, internalising future or environmental costs, integrating scarcity in the equation, new indicators of wealth, etc.  All these topics which might have looked revolutionary or idealist not too long ago are not provocative anymore for many.

However I run into a report about a new approach in looking at the value of work which struck me. A study by NEF in which they look at how much the different professions are paid in comparison to how much they contribute to society it concludes that whereas waste recycling workers they generate 12 pounds for every pound they are paid, bankers destroy 11 pounds worth of value for every pound in value they generate. Yet in our economic system those who destroy wealth are rewarded with huge salaries and those who create it receive minimum wages.

I love it when common sense competes with economics even though the former always loses…

Worth a read:

Waste recycling workers do a range of different jobs that relate to processing and preventing waste and promoting recycling. Carbon emissions are significantly reduced when goods are recycled instead of sending them to incineration or landfill. There is also a value in reusing goods, and we have included this in our model. Our model projects that for every £1 of value spent on wages, £12 of value will be generated.
High-earning investment bankers in the City of London are among the best remunerated people in the economy. But the earnings they command and the profits they make come at a huge cost because of the damaging social effects of the City of London’s financial activities. We found that rather than being ‘wealth creators’, these City bankers are being handsomely rewarded for bringing the global financial system to the brink of collapse. While collecting salaries of between £500,000 and £10 million, leading City bankers to destroy £7 of social value for every pound in value they generate.
Although the role of an advertising executive has high status, the impact of the industry has always been a point of controversy. It encourages high consumer spending and indebtedness. It can create insatiable aspirations, fuelling feelings of dissatisfaction, inadequacy and stress. In our economic model we estimate the share of social and environmental damage caused by overconsumption that is attributable to advertising. For a salary of between £50,000 and £12 million, top advertising executives destroy £11 of value for every pound in value they generate.

Waste recycling workers do a range of different jobs that relate to processing and preventing waste and promoting recycling. Carbon emissions are significantly reduced when goods are recycled instead of sending them to incineration or landfill. There is also a value in reusing goods, and we have included this in our model. Our model projects that for every £1 of value spent on wages, £12 of value will be generated.


High-earning investment bankers in the City of London are among the best remunerated people in the economy. But the earnings they command and the profits they make come at a huge cost because of the damaging social effects of the City of London’s financial activities. We found that rather than being ‘wealth creators’, these City bankers are being handsomely rewarded for bringing the global financial system to the brink of collapse. While collecting salaries of between £500,000 and £10 million, leading City bankers to destroy £7 of social value for every pound in value they generate.


Although the role of an advertising executive has high status, the impact of the industry has always been a point of controversy. It encourages high consumer spending and indebtedness. It can create insatiable aspirations, fuelling feelings of dissatisfaction, inadequacy and stress. In our economic model we estimate the share of social and environmental damage caused by overconsumption that is attributable to advertising. For a salary of between £50,000 and £12 million, top advertising executives destroy £11 of value for every pound in value they generate.

Climate Change and the will to exist

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Dec 092009
 

If I take a step back to look at the historical moment we find ourselves in, I have to say that the negotiations in Copenhagen are different than any other negotiations I’ve ever assisted to.
Political negotiations are about compromise between the parts, it is about agreeing on the kind of grey that will rubberstamp the agreement. Survival negotiations are not negotiations; they are black or white. In Copenhagen there are two kinds of people; those who take this as a political negotiation and those who take this as a survival decision. Needless to say, a compromise will be more than difficult.

But, as I said, I wanted to look at this with a certain distance; humankind finds it self in a religious moment, in a purely philosophically existential dilemma, in a maturity test, in a “to be or not to be” situation…

We are in a religious moment because the world is about to “flood” for a second time (according to the old testament), the “sinners” have been warned by science (!) that if we continue with our life-style, with the business as usual, we will be flooded. Fair enough. The human race didn’t listen to the warnings of God the first time, the earth was flooded but God gave us a second chance. If we prove again that we are incapable of listening, of taking action to save ourselves… why should nature (or God for that matter) gives us another chance?

We are in a philosophical existential dilemma because as a race, as the big herd that we are, we have to choose between survival and extinction. The evolution of our philosophy has produced a society built on the basis of individuals, with irrational and artificially created material needs, and in which short term profit is put before the preservation of the species. Our philosophical evolution has also equipped us with phantastic logic reasoning, common sense, prudence. What will prevail?

We are in a maturity test because nature is testing our sociological and psicological evolution as a “team” to see if we are ready to survive as a whole or we rather prefer to test our luck. This means that blinded by the short term profit we chose to play our long term existence in a Russian roulette which in the best case will mean the sacrifice of some of us for the sake of the rest but which in 9 out of 10 cases means the disappearance of us all.

It is a “to be or not to be” situation because we have to take a common decision to “be”; to “exist”. Even if climate change would be an invention what is at stake in Copenhagen negotiation is the trust in ourselves as human beings beyond our national borders. If the developed and most polluting countries chose to abandon the developing countries with another treachery compromise the situation will deteriorate and the trust gap will increase. The south will become more and more suspicious about the north; whatever is left of trust will evaporate. And lack of trust in the team is the root of serious and long-lasting conflict.

Sadly, the text leaked today in which Denmark, US and UK worked behind all the other countries is a perfect example of how to destroy confidence with an otherwise very logical short-sighted move from the developped countries.

As redundant as it might sound humankind can only get out of this as a team… Today in Copenhagen I could see Africans screaming and crying out of rage, desertification is literally killing them. It is the second day and this risks getting emotional. Emotions? That animal instinct?

In my opinion the only way we will get anything useful out of Copenhagen is if our repressed animal instinct comes out and we make the irrational decision that “YES! Even though it will cost us money, sacrifice, power, you name it we still want to take the irrational decision to exist.”
Will we be that illogical? I doubt it…

Dirty tricks in Climate negotiations

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Dec 072009
 
The US has been giving the impression that they were taking the climate change negotiations more seriously than in previous times. And they do. To the extend of influencing the composition of the delegations that other countries are sending to the COP15 in Copenhagen so that they can get their way easily by taking out those negotiatiors known to be a pain.
The ultimate example of this sabotage strategy is the “coincidence” of the visit of US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton to the Philippines with the destitution of Bernardita de Castro Muller as climate-change advisor of the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs and coordinator for the G77 (group of the 77 development countries) and China Group in the climate-change talks.
Bernadita has been one of the main responsibles that the heterogeneous group of G77+China managed to articulate a strong and united message that tells the inconvenient truths that the developed countries don’t want to hear. Hence, the US thought it would be a good idea to get her out of the way so that the Copenhagen talks can be more “peaceful”. The 20 years experienced diplomat and her whole team were removed from the Philippine delegation, which at the same time left the G77+China without spokesperson.
The surprise came when right before the negotiations the Sudan delegation announced that Bernadita de Castro Muller would be representing the country which happens to chair the G77. Other members of her team appeared representing countries such as Bolivia. The “Ditas” team was back in the game!
The Philippino government made a fool of itself when it came out that the US strategy to behead the G77+China backfired and as Muller declared: “By serving as the negotiator for Sudan/G77, we will all be proving a point to the Annex 1 countries. Vulnerable countries, despite their “vulnerability”, can and will stand as one and be strong for each other and for the entire humanity.”
The US and the EU have been repeatedly trying to torpedo the unity of the developing world so that they can continue polluting whist at the same time even manage to make some money out of it. The old “divide and rule” tactic is being used over and over again.
It is true that the G77 is extremely heterogeneous and that countries like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait are radically different than countries such as Ruanda or Bangladesh but it is also true that the only way the G77+China can push the US and the EU to face its responsibilities is by staying together and acting as one. Having the experienced Bernardita Muller back in the negotiations, despite the efforts of the Americans to get her out of the way, will definitely help to bring in realism to Copenhagen.

Rich countries pay your climate debtThe US has been giving the impression that they were taking the climate change negotiations more seriously than in previous times. And they do. To the extend of influencing the composition of the delegations that other countries are sending to the COP15 in Copenhagen so that they can get their way easily by taking out those negotiatiors known to be a pain.

The ultimate example of this sabotage strategy is the “coincidence” of the visit of US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton to the Philippines with the destitution of Bernardita de Castro Muller as climate-change advisor of the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs and coordinator for the G77 (group of the 77 development countries) and China Group in the climate-change talks.

Bernadita has been one of the main responsibles that the heterogeneous group of G77+China managed to articulate a strong and united message that tells the inconvenient truths that the developed countries don’t want to hear. Hence, the US thought it would be a good idea to get her out of the way so that the Copenhagen talks can be more “peaceful”. The 20 years experienced diplomat and her whole team were removed from the Philippine delegation, which at the same time left the G77+China without spokesperson.

The surprise came when right before the negotiations the Sudan delegation announced that Bernadita de Castro Muller would be representing the country which happens to chair the G77. Other members of her team appeared representing countries such as Bolivia. The “Ditas” team was back in the game!

The Philippino government made a fool of itself when it came out that the US strategy to behead the G77+China backfired and as Muller declared: “By serving as the negotiator for Sudan/G77, we will all be proving a point to the Annex 1 countries. Vulnerable countries, despite their “vulnerability”, can and will stand as one and be strong for each other and for the entire humanity.”

The US and the EU have been repeatedly trying to torpedo the unity of the developing world so that they can continue polluting whist at the same time even manage to make some money out of it. The old “divide and rule” tactic is being used over and over again.

It is true that the G77 is extremely heterogeneous and that countries like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait are radically different than countries such as Ruanda or Bangladesh but it is also true that the only way the G77+China can push the US and the EU to face its responsibilities is by staying together and acting as one. Having the experienced Bernardita Muller back in the negotiations, despite the efforts of the Americans to get her out of the way, will definitely help to bring in realism to Copenhagen.

Climate Change and the Story of a Distraction

 No Responses »
Dec 012009
 

Copenhagen negotiations are starting in one week and everything is set for the big show of business bullying the world, fantastic magical solutions and great speeches.
All in all a lot of distraction from what is really the problem:
1- How to effectively reduce emissions
2- How to change the business as usual in the scale proposed by Lester Brown in Plan B 3.0

All the rest is mainly distractions. The video below is an excellent and understandable explanation of what is important and what is superfluous about the historical negotiations we are about to assist to:

Plea for a swap: Barroso for president of the E. Council and Van Rompuy for president of the E. Commission

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Nov 302009
 

Fuer ein foderals EuropaApparently, Van Rompuy is an European federalist (see Jean Quatremer’s post). This is great news albeit bizarre ones… Isn’t it weird that the first president of the European Council, who is meant to represent the interests of the member states is more federalist than the president of the European Commission (meant to represent the European interest)???

So far, if there is anything that Barroso has  proven to be capable of is to listen and obey the European Council. He has never dared to call himself a federalist. In small circles he has even mentioned that he is not sure of what he really is! In fact, he is probably the less federalist Commission president that I can recall…

On the other hand Van Rompuy comes from Belgium, a country that knows what federalism is and hence knows what he is talking about when he says that he is a “non-fundamentalist” federalist. It is excellent that we have a federalist presiding the European Council because this will allow him to shape the position in the right way; i.e. not wanting to be the head of the executive or use a kind of a prime minister approach that probably someone like Tony Blair would have taken on.

However, I still believe that it would be good (or even mandatory) if the president of the most communitarian body of the EU would be a federalist. History tends to put people in strange positions but such a contradiction of vocations in the two top jobs of the EU is quite remarkable.

Wouldn’t it make more sense that Barroso becomes the president of the European Council and Van Rompuy the president of the European Executive?

If there is common agreement between the two a swap could be arranged. I believe they would sleep better at night if they would know that during the day their political beliefs match their political roles.

SEPARATING ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE: THE RIGHT WAY TO KILL EITHER OF THEM?

 2 Responses »
Nov 282009
 
In its new European Commission JM Barroso has decided to separate environment from Climate Change; Environment portfolio goes to Janez Potocnik (Slovenia), who wad Research in the last Commission, the new ‘Climate Action’ nominee is Connie Hedegaard from Denmark.
Is this the result of member states short-sightedness and not understanding the system when amending the Constitutional treaty so that the new Lisbon treaty would have an European Commission (representing the European interest) with 27 commissioners?
Could be…
But what is for sure is that Barroso is using this illogical increase in the name of portfolios to divide and rule. It is understandable, this is politics.
The field of Environment has been a pain during the last 5 years; one of the policy fields that more legislation has produced, that more cases has brought in front of the European Court of Justice and with one of the stronger commissioners: Stavros Dimas.
Stavros Dimas, outgoing Environment Commissioner, has been one of the positive surprises of the last commission. Nobody expected the greek conservative to take environment seriously, hence he was the perfect candidate to keep Environment low profile. This didn’t work and luckily for the environment he has been a pain; he has never hesitated in contradicting his president and the member states.
But Barroso is learning; he doesn’t want to have a strong profile on Environment (remember his cutting red-tape obsession) so he separated Environment from Climate Change first and then put Potocnik, a profile with proven record of uncontroversiality, ahead of it. This should help him keep things under control…
But is this good for Europe? The problem with separating dossiers is that when producing policy it is often the case that different DGs of the Commission produce contradictory policies. For instance; the industry DG deciding push for more cars when environment DG says we should have less or Environment DG deciding on policies that reduce employment, contradicting what is preached by DG Employment.
So far, it has been very useful (and logical) to have Environment DG dealing with climate change because it assured that all environmental policies were intended to fight climate change. This might seem obvious but it is not. Even now DG environment has promoted legislation that does not help to fight climate change. For instance; instead of pushing for recycling the EU is effectively promoting incineration. The argument of climate change was useful to make the case that destroying resources and having to start with extraction and production cycle again is worst than recycling. Still the EU chose incineration because of one more example of the power of industrial lobbies. This is one of the exceptions, but generally speaking DG Environment has been consistent in policies that link environmental protection with climate change.
By splitting the Enviroment portfolio and giving it to low profilers we will have more examples of uncoordinated action to fight climate change. More contradiction means less action, less action means less trouble. We can continue to play the role of the naked emperor with the aggravation of using climate change as an excuse to justify anything, even what is not good for the environment. There is a danger that the new Climate Action DG might become the newest greenwashing tool at supranational level.
Barroso is showing he is willing to manage power and it is to be welcomed that he is now taking own decisions under his sole responsibility. But is this emergence of a real head of the European executive good for the environment and, at the end of the day, good for Europe?

climate change heartIn its new European Commission JM Barroso has decided to separate environment from Climate Change; Environment portfolio goes to Janez Potocnik (Slovenia), who wad Research in the last Commission, the new ‘Climate Action’ nominee is Connie Hedegaard from Denmark.

Is this the result of member states short-sightedness and not understanding the system when amending the Constitutional treaty so that the new Lisbon treaty would have an European Commission (representing the European interest) with 27 commissioners?

Could be…

But what is for sure is that Barroso is using this illogical increase in the name of portfolios to divide and rule. It is understandable, this is politics.

The field of Environment has been a pain during the last 5 years; one of the policy fields that more legislation has produced, that more cases has brought in front of the European Court of Justice and with one of the stronger commissioners: Stavros Dimas.

Stavros Dimas, outgoing Environment Commissioner, has been one of the positive surprises of the last commission. Nobody expected the greek conservative to take environment seriously, hence he was the perfect candidate to keep Environment low profile. This didn’t work and luckily for the environment he has been a pain; he has never hesitated in contradicting his president and the member states.

But Barroso is learning; he doesn’t want to have a strong profile on Environment (remember his cutting red-tape obsession) so he separated Environment from Climate Change first and then put Potocnik, a profile with proven record of uncontroversiality, ahead of it. This should help him keep things under control…

But is this good for Europe? The problem with separating dossiers is that when producing policy it is often the case that different DGs of the Commission produce contradictory policies. For instance; the industry DG deciding push for more cars when environment DG says we should have less or Environment DG deciding on policies that reduce employment, contradicting what is preached by DG Employment.

So far, it has been very useful (and logical) to have Environment DG dealing with climate change because it assured that all environmental policies were intended to fight climate change. This might seem obvious but it is not. Even now DG environment has promoted legislation that does not help to fight climate change. For instance; instead of pushing for recycling the EU is effectively promoting incineration. The argument of climate change was useful to make the case that destroying resources and having to start with extraction and production cycle again is worst than recycling. Still the EU chose incineration because of one more example of the power of industrial lobbies. This is one of the exceptions, but generally speaking DG Environment has been consistent in policies that link environmental protection with climate change.

By splitting the Enviroment portfolio and giving it to low profilers we will have more examples of uncoordinated action to fight climate change. More contradiction means less action, less action means less trouble. We can continue to play the role of the naked emperor with the aggravation of using climate change as an excuse to justify anything, even what is not good for the environment. There is a danger that the new Climate Action DG might become the newest greenwashing tool at supranational level.

Barroso is showing he is willing to manage power and it is to be welcomed that he is now taking own decisions under his sole responsibility. But is this emergence of a real head of the European executive good for the environment and, at the end of the day, good for Europe?

ECONOMY – ECOLOGY = 0

 No Responses »
Nov 262009
 

Filipines - ManilaJust came back from the Philippines and I could see with my own eyes a very clear example of how the environment is the basis of the economy.

Manila suffered severe floods a month ago: 4 typhoons visited the archipelago and almost all the city (20million hab) was flooded.  Water and mud reached three-stories high. This might sound like the typical climate change story (and it partly is): unusual intense rains blocked the sewers, not used to such big flows. However, the fact is that when being there I could see how the high intensity of torrential waters was only responsible for 50% of the damage; the truth is that sewers were blocked by the huge amounts of waste, mainly plastic bags, dumped in the streams across the city. If the damage that these plastic bags caused had been included in their prices they would have been so expensive that they had not been able to be sold. The price of the plastic bags only reflected part of the cost of production but in no way its environmental cost.

On the top of that, the mud that covered the city was dragged by the waters from the hills surrounding the city. This had not happened in the past because the forests were keeping the soils in place (40 years ago similar storms struck Manila but the mud stayed in the hills) . During the last 20 years all these trees have been cut to build residential complexes and gulf fields. It is now clear that those trees, because of its function, had a lot higher value than what economists and developers thought and what prices reflected. And the top of the paradox is that those paying most of the price of removing the trees are now the poor people living downtown who have seen their households covered with mud. Those who live in the hills only paid a marginal cost for cutting the trees.

All in all; man-made climate change, man-produced plastic bags and forests cut by men are all three the living demonstration of bad economics. The prices didn’t tell the truth; most of the costs (that should have been included in the price) were to be paid after the products were sold and the profit was made by some whilst costs had to be shouldered by many.

Economic theory is useful to nurture philosophical discussions and make one’s ego feel good but seeing with my eyes the effects of getting things wrong (and it’s been 200 years of bad economics) is as humbling as it is infuriating. Being “green” is not a trend, not even a matter of political choice; it is about understanding that the real meaning of economics is the efficient management of today’s and future’s resources in a world of scarcity.

Lost Generation

 No Responses »
Nov 202009
 

I am part of a lost generation
and I refuse to believe that
I can change the world
I realise this may be a shock but
“Happiness comes from within.”
is a lie, and
“Money will make me happy.”
So in 30 years I will tell my children
they are not the most important thing in my life
My employer will know that
I have my priorities straight because
work
is more important than
family
I tell you this
Once upon a time
Families stayed together
but this will not be true in my era
This is a quick fix society
Experts tell me
30 years from now, I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of my divorce
I do not concede that
I will live in a country of my own making
In the future
Environmental destruction will be the norm
No longer can it be said that
My peers and I care about this earth
It will be evident that
My generation is apathetic and lethargic
It is foolish to presume that
There is hope.

And all of this will come true unless we choose to reverse it.
Read the message, then read it again in reverse.

By Jonathan Reed

Stories of the belgian mafia in healthcare

 1 Response »
Nov 052009
 

Someone once told me “If the mafia is not outside the system, then it is inside the system”. My experience with the Belgian healthcare makes me think of the second option.

My girlfriend had to be operated of an infection and because of language issues and lack of knowledge of the Belgian system she decided to go for the private sector, choosing an English-speaking doctor recommended by a friend working in the European institutions.

The first checkings were quite expensive but considering the gravity of the situation we didn’t want to look at the prices and focus on getting the operation done. This private/independent doctor operated her in the Clinique Edith Cavell which is supposed to be among the best in Brussels.

The doctor was leaving the same day for holidays so we had to rush to operate or we risked having to wait one month –aren’t there other surgeons in the most expensive hospital in Brussels?-. Anyway, the day of the operation came and we went to this fantastic private hospital. We had to wait 2 hours more than scheduled, and when the operation finally took place my girlfriend was sent back half-unconscious to the room where I was waiting. The doctor didn’t show up to explain how it went so I had to ask a nurse to call her to get a briefing of the situation. The doctor doesn’t work for the hospital which means that it took more time to find her mobile number. We finally managed to talk to the doctor who was already on her way to the airport eager to start her holidays, luckily the operation went well. The only personnel I saw that day apart from the nurse was the anaesthetist who showed up 1h later…

We went home and she started the recovering of the surgery. Some days after the operation my girlfriend started bleeding. We called the bureau of the doctor who operated her but not a single doctor was left for urgencies; all the doctors were on holidays. We had no other choice than going to urgencies in the same expensive private Clinique of Edith Cavell, the waiting room was empty and yet they had us 1,5h waiting with her close to fainting due to the haemorrhage. Exercising extra pressure we managed to find a bed where she could lay down. Then a very nice nurse informs us that they have no urgency doctors available in the hospital but they are trying to find someone, hence the delay. 45 minutes later a kind doctor appears telling us from the start that he is a surgeon and not a generalist and hence he doesn’t know much about these kinds of operations but he will have a look anyway. Luckily the haemorrhage is nothing serious and it can be stopped. 2h later we go back home.

We start to find this scandalous.

The story continues when I have to go visit a doctor in the same hospital to check that I have not been contaminated by the infection of my girlfriend. My girlfriend’s doctor before leaving on holidays had asked her to have me seen by a doctor friend of hers who is also working as independent in the facilities of the Clinique Cavell. Full of suspicion I follow the instructions. I go see the doctor, the visit happens normally, except from the fact that he uses his own laptop and not the computer or the hospital facilities. The surprise comes when is time to pay: he asks me to pay cash the arbitrary amount of 50eur. I’ve been to other doctors so I know that this price is quite expensive; I ask why is 50eur and he tells me that independent doctors are free to charge us whatever extra to the regular amount for their honoraries. Weird. I don’t have 50eur in cash so I ask if I can pay by card to the secretary outside. No, he charges customers directly and he wants it cash so he asks me to go to withdraw money in the ING ATM machine which is in the ground floor of the Clinique. I find this very awkward. Before leaving he asks me to put the 50eur in an envelope and slide it under the door of his room later on because he will be with another visit.

Before leaving I ask for the voucher for the “mutualite” so that I can get some money reimbursed, he agrees but refuses to write down the amount of 50eur. It is not necessary, he says. Right, so he doesn’t want to declare the expenses; perfectly visible black market operations in the healthcare jetset…

Puzzled by the experience I leave the room to go withdraw money. The ING ATM inside the hospital doesn’t work so I end up having to go to another bank 5 minutes walk.

When 15 minutes later I slide the envelope under the door of the room of the “doctor” I ask myself how it can be that in a developed country such as Belgium:

- I can’t pay by bankcard in a hospital,

- I get charged random amounts that don’t appear in the receipt,

- Payment is done sliding an envelope with cash under the door?

All in all, how can it be that the Belgian tax authorities don’t stop this legal black market taking place in their semi-private hospitals?

In order to find out whether the system is weird or it is me that I’m special I go directly to my mutualite with the voucher from the doctor. When I explain them the situation they recognise it immediately: these are the famous rip-offs of private hospitals such as Edith Cavell or Park Leopold, they employ independent doctors who are free to charge whatever they feel like and are not accountable to the hospital, they make good money with EU civil servants and internationals. They work as a network so they send customers from one another for different kinds of checks. This way they work in parallel to the normal system.

They explain me that the price of the visits is regulated and the official price for my visit was 23.7eur (the basis on which I get reimbursed by the mutualite) and they charged me twice as much and it’s ok, they are free to do so. The Belgian system allows this. If I would be an EU civil servant and the mutualite of the European Commission (taxpayers money) would be paying the bill for me I could chose not to care but as an average person with a normal salary the issue really shocked me.

Perplexed and irritated I went home and think of moving to Siria…

Do you have the swine flu? – symptoms

 3 Responses »
Oct 142009
 

Creative Commons

I normally don’t write about these kind of topics but since I see the hysteria kicking off in this beginning of Autumn I thought of bringing some information to the issue of swine flu.

How to know if you have swine flu? How to know if what you have is swine flu or a normal flu?

According to the doctor I just visited in Belgium, if you get the swine flu the first symptoms are going to be really strong. In a matter of less than one hour you should be feeling very, very bad, with high fever and pain all over, and even vomiting. A normal flu is a  lot more gradual. This is just one opinion I found after lots of effort, is it right?

It is really a problem that nowhere in internet but even in hospitals is explained the symptoms of the flu whilst at the same time the media don’t stop making everyone go paranoid about it. After searching a bit in internet the closest thing I found about Swine Flu H1N1‘s symptoms are:

- Sudden onset of fever, depression

- Coughing and sneezing

- Discharge from the nose and/or eye

- Diarrhea and vomiting

- Breathing difficulties

- Red eyes or inflammation

- Reduced or no food intake

We are in the beginning of Autumn, the flu season is just starting and Belgian hospitals are already collapsed with people thinking that they have the swine flu. If the authorities allow media to go paranoid about this so-called “pandemic” they should also give the means to the people to know what is it about and how to detect it. Most of the people don’t go to the doctor when they catch a flu because they know how to handle it, however they will go to the hospital this time round because of the hysteria about this virus. It would be a lot cheaper and responsible if there would be a phone number or a website where people could find basic information about detecting whether they have this flu or not.

I want to believe that, despite the economic benefits that a few will get out of this, there is no interest in letting the paranoia spread on this issue.

WHY EUROPE NEEDS BALKENENDE AND NOT BLAIR FOR PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL

 4 Responses »
Oct 122009
 

After Barroso’s reappointment for a second term as president of the European Commission and having had the treaty of Lisbon finally ratified it is now time to define work-programs, assemble a new –and huge- European commission and start implementing the Lisbon treaty.

One of the novelties of the treaty is the change of a rotative presidency of the European Council for an elected position of 2,5 years mandate. The new president of the European Council will chair and organise the meetings and represent the EU in the international sphere. In a way, if we build a parallelism with a state the new president of the European Council would be the equivalent of a king whilst the president of the Commission would be more of a prime minister. However the definition of the position is vague enough in order to give the possibility to the future president of the European Council to grow into a kind of a president of the “European republic” in a more French approach.

In other words, the power relation between the president of the European Commission and the President of the European Council is not set and it will very much depend on the personality of politicians presiding either institution.

From the side of the European “executive” the personality of Barroso is known for its non-confrontational and servilist approach and experience has shown that in case of conflict the Commission has preferred to be a secretariat of the Council rather than following the will of the European Parliament. It is hence to be expected that in case a strong figure, such as Tony Blair, would be appointed president of the European Council, the European Commission led by its president would easily fall under the control of the most intergovernamental body of the union. Therefore, for the sake of keeping interinstitutional balance and maintaining right of initiative as well as the communitarian will it is important that a personality of the level of Jan Peter Balkenende is appointed as president of the European Council.

Balkenende has proven to have a diffuse personality, lacks initiative and, same as Barroso, is experienced in losing referendums (Netherlands 2005). As sad as it is, Balkenende might be the best candidate to chair the European Council: he won’t go beyond the treaties, he won’t step into others competencies, he won’t have progressive ideas to increase the power European Council and as a consequence he will leave space to a very crowded, confused, rather powerless and ambition-lacking European Commission.

The EU needs strong figures to assert its role but it needs them in the right positions. A strong president of the European Council combined with a weak Commission president is not in the interest of Europe. The strongest European character should be leading the European Government, and the only embryo of an European Government should be found in the European Commission, not in the European Council.

STIB + CAMBIO + VILLO = ???

 No Responses »
Sep 242009
 

brussels-cardsThe Brussels region has been considerably improving its supply of public transport and right now it has valid options of car-sharing and bicycle-sharing.

The STIB (Société des Transports Intercommunaux de Bruxelles) is the largest urban public transport company in Belgium and supplies the city with buses, night buses, trams and metros. In 2003 it launched the Cambio car-sharing with great success and right now there are Cambio car-sharing stations all over Belgium and in Brussels there is a big supply that allows many of us to happily live without a car. However no common card Cambio+Stib exist and you need one for every different service.

Then in 2009 the company JCDecaux won the license to develop a bike-sharing system in the Brussels region. In partnership with the region and Brussels mobilite this company that has already successfully implemented similar systems in cities such as Paris or Lyon is quickly expanding its presence in the European capital. The bicycles are not as cute as others but they are solid and do the work. This bike-sharing system seems to be expanding all over the world, however having been one of the first “Villo-people” in Brussels I can say that the deployment of the bike-sharing is still far from being finished and still lots of work has to be done by the company to make sure some stations are not left without bicycles during most of the time, but things are improving. The problem again is: you need another card for Villo.be!

I wonder how can it be that in these times of multifunctionality, when a mobile phone can serve as radio or a calendar or when a computer can be used as a TV, how can it be that it is not possible to produce a single card which would allow access to STIB, CAMBIO, VILLO and maybe even other transport services. Any modern ID card could easily integrate all these functions.

The problem is clearly not technical, the STIB has integrated cards for transport and museums,  but a matter of either lack of will or lack of demand from the consumers. It is undeniable that even though STIB, CAMBIO and VILLO are different companies it would clarify the concept of “sharing” if the region would ask all of them to produce an integrated card.

In the meantime I’m afraid I’ll have to keep on carrying the three different cards plus the card of the supermarket, of brico, miles and more, privilege customer of I don’t know what store and whatever else is needed to have access to all these wonderful services.

The new world monetary order and the need for EU foreign monetary policy

 No Responses »
Sep 222009
 
Why the EU needs to reflect on the role of the euro in world politics

The monetary policy is an exclusive competence of the eurozone of the European Union, yet it is unclear what role the European currency is to play in the world, in comparison to other important currencies, or what is the strategy of the EU regarding the current reshuffle of world power relations. Even more worrying is the fact that in the current discussions on the programme that the European Commission should implement during the next 5 years not a single word is mentioned about this issue which, if excluded, on its own, can do away with all the EU’s efforts to get out of the crisis.

In any normal state the currency is one of the main tools of foreign policy, for devaluation can increase exports, for it can attract or repel investments or when used as reserve currency it can help finance national debt. Any remotely good school of economics teaches its students that the equilibrium of balance of payments is one of the most important tools for the stability of a country. The EU seems to have forgotten that even though it is not a state, having a common currency means that it needs to act as if it were one when it comes to using monetary policy with its relations with the world.

Indeed, most of the trade of the EU countries takes place within the EU which might give the false impression that the role of the euro as tool of foreign policy is not that important. Are we, Europeans, reading the historical moment we find ourselves in correctly?

The 20th century has seen the rise and consolidation of the US as the world superpower which has been interlinked with the establishment of the dollar as the world currency. The current economic crisis, with the US decline and the emergence of new world powers, is leading towards a multipolar world and this will result in a new world monetary order which will re-shape economics, internal policies and international relations for years to come. During the last decades the US has been exploiting the condition of the dollar as a reserve currency to run colossal deficits in its trade and current-accounts with which it has financed its economy and has managed to keep its status of the world superpower. This time it looks like the dollar domination is over and during next years most probably we will assist to the birth of a new monetary world order.

We are observing how the continuous depreciation of the dollar is having devastating effects in the reserves of most world countries which are held in this currency. Most importantly, countries such as China which have huge surpluses in their trade account with the US see the fate of their economies linked to the strength of a currency whose strength diminishes whilst being forced to buy US debt to avoid further devaluations of the dollar.

Paul Kennedy in his article published in the New York Times on 28 August rightly pointed out two facts which signal an important change: during the G20 meeting in London of April the IMF received an allocation of 250 billion $ in Special Drawing Rights (SDR) and two months later a meeting of the BRICs –Brazil, Russia, India and China- debated shifting currency holdings from the dollar to these IMF units of account in order to diversify risk.

The debate on the post-dollar era and with it the new world monetary system is something that is happening, even if the EU wants to ignore it. We are assisting to the most important change in world monetary policy since 1944 when in Bretton-Woods John Maynard Keynes proposed the creation of a “bancor”, a world currency unit based on the average price of 30 commodities, and the US opted for a monetary system based on the gold standard linked to the dollar which effectively turned the dollar into the world currency. Back then nobody could challenge the strength of the American currency, fair image of the then most powerful world economy. This is no longer the case and the emerging economies don’t want to see its efforts to develop go up in the air with the destruction of its reserves whilst continuing to finance the US economy.

The United States have a clear interest in keeping the status quo in the world monetary relations, since this allows them to get their economy financed by the rest of the world. The Chinese have an interest in changing the rules of the game but they are not against the dollar per se because they indeed have most of their reserves in this currency. However they do understand that if things go bad and the Americans start printing money to finance their way out for the crisis this will lead to inflation and subsequently to a depreciation of the dollar which will decrease the value of the chinese reserves and do away with their development effort of the last decade. A similar reasoning applies for other emerging economies such as India or Brazil.

Also the European Union is and will continue to be severely affected by this constant depreciation of the dollar, since the comparative strength of the Euro will render the European exports more expensive and hence move jobs and economic activity out of the EU. There is a lot at stake for the EU in this game and if we look at the current state of affairs and the discussions taking place between the European Commission and the European Parliament on next years programme, it seems that neither have a clear understanding of the stakes in the game.

What should the role of the EU be in this new monetary world order? There are some reasons why the EU should take the lead in proposing a new system:

First and foremost, because it is easier to push for an equitable, democratic and transparent system in a multipolar world than in a polarised world. History teaches us that the predominance of a currency tends to be proportional to the power of the country that issues it. The end of the US hegemony will bring with it the end of the dollar hegemony and the new multipolar world will bring with it a new distribution of power that will be reflected in the monetary strength. Now is the time when emerging economies can agree to a compromise, in 10 years it might be too late. It is strategically important to take advantage of the moment to work out a plan from which all can benefit in the years to come. China may join a world system today but it won’t do it once it is doped with the taste of power.

Secondly, as indicated above because the current status-quo damages the competitiveness of the EU and unless it is reversed it can seriously harm the recovery of the EU economy. If we add a strong exchange rate and political disunion in monetary policy to the lack of a coordinated recovery plan and the inability of the EU to properly finance itself we have the ingredients for a troublesome future.

Thirdly and finally because if the EU doesn’t take (or join) the initiative the world will move on without and the cost of hopping on the train once it has started moving will be higher than being in the vanguard. Clear signs that the train is moving is when in March this year Zhou Xiaochuan, head of the Chinese central bank, called for an overhaul of the global monetary system by replacing the dollar for a world unit composed of a basket of the most important currencies (SDR). As explained before the talks among the BRICs after the 250 billion $ in SDR given to the IMF to guarantee stability also show a tendency.

The EU, except some timid initiatives taken by the French presidency a year ago, did not react to these declarations and signs and instead we continue to behave like if we were in the 20th century.

At present the EU 27 holds most of the voting power in the IMF and if acting together it could even decide to move the siege of the organisation to Europe. This simple example shows the power that the EU still has, although not for long, in influencing world monetary policy. The EU‘s weight in the IMF is disproportionate to its economic and demographic size and it will be corrected soon.Why not taking advantage of the last moments “in power” to give the right steps to create a more representative, fair and above all stable and robust monetary system? Isn’t it in our interest? The euro can not and should not be the new world currency; instead the European experience of monetary integration could be very useful for the setting up of a new world monetary system based on SDR. Why does Europe stay silent when the status quo is harming European interests?

The eurozone has delegated competence in monetary policy and the council can decide by qualified majority on a proposal from the European Commission: it is therefore in the hands of the European Executive to put together the EU monetary plan. Ideally, the newly elected president of the European Commission should seize initiative and put the European Union at the forefront of these crucial negociations for the world governance. The role of the euro in the new world monetary order should have a prominent place in the program that Barroso will present for approval in front of the European Parliament together with the new European Commission in December 2009 or January 2010.

May the Barroso program fail to tackle this vital point for the future of Europe, the European Parliament should better start looking for another candidate to lead the EU executive.

Belgium rollers parade greenwash – a breath of CO2?

 No Responses »
Sep 202009
 

belgiumrollersI’ve been a passionate supporter of the Brussels rollerskate parade www.belgiumrollers.com since 5 years. Thanks to the rollers parade I managed to skate thousands of km in this otherwise ill-prepared city for skaters and cyclists.

However, something that from the beginning has surprised me is how the opportunity to promote green transport and practices in these congregations is being missed. The parades are lead by a hummer and a 4WD which run on LPG -see pic- which is all very well because this Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) reduces around 20% the CO2 emissions in comparison with a normal car in petrol. But for heaven sake, the consumption of such an irrational and mad machine as the Hummer is still of 24 liters per 100km in the city!

So, the logo claiming to be riding green is nothing less than greenwashing and being severely misleading as it is the organisers should make a point in replacing it by a normal car with capacity to carry a couple of good speakers. The ideal solution -if they want to use a car for it- would be to get an electric car running on clean electricity powered by Lampiris. It will help reduce the consumption, the noise, the pollution, it will not stink -if you skate after the car or even during the breaks the skaters are inhaling the fumes of this thing- and it will allow them to correctly brand themselves as “we ride green”.

One more thing that can be improved from the environmental impact point of view is the disposal of the bottles of water given by the sponsor evian to the sweaty rollers -also the cans from Redbull-. Even though Evian as a company has some good environmental credentials the truth is that they are really committed with the environment they should make sure that the bottles they distribute are collected and recycled. Having participated in many of the roller events I can assure that all these bottles are not separately collected and I would bet more than 80% of them end up in the Brussels incinerator. Therefore it would be good if Redbull or Evian would ask the organisers to take care of the collection of the waste produced by the parade. I’m sure the rollers themselves would be happy to collaborate and it would really be preaching by doing which would be a lot more effective than just sticking the label “we ride green”.

The season of  belgianrollers will be finishing in two weeks. Let’s hope next year the organisers plan these things better and improve this great initiative to give the city to the skaters for some hours.

Barroso: the EP is the wrong audience

 No Responses »
Sep 152009
 

Having read the program of Barroso and having listened to the debate today (15/09/09) in the European Parliament, and regardless of the result of the vote of tomorrow where most likely he will be confirmed with the new mandate, I can only say one thing: this man is talking to the wrong audience!

When he speaks about Europe taking the lead,
When he speaks about the need of a strong commission in a strong Europe,
When he says that Europe needs a serious transparent budget giving the EU the capacity to raise its own resources,
When he talks about common immigration policy, coordination of R&D, European recovery package, green economy, regulation of financial markets…

When Barroso talks about all this in the European Parliament he is preaching to the converted. The European Parliament has already expressed several times, and many times even before the European Commission, about the need to bring more Europe in all the abovementioned topics.

If this didn’t happen it was not because the EP didn’t want to, or the European Commission was not aware of it… they didn’t happen because the European Council and the council of ministers, guardians of the national interests, have been extremely reticent in letting go in these fields.
If we don’t have a stronger European Commission –let alone an European Government- is because the European Council insists in treating the commission as a secretariat of the Council and prioritises putting weak politicians to manage it,
If the EU has such a tiny, non-transparent, subject to national bargain budget is because the member states prefer to spend money at national level even when that is economically inefficient and politically wrong,
If we don’t have a common immigration policy, or a true European research strategy, or we don’t have a serious European recovery plan or we don’t have the necessary investment in green economy to get out of the crisis it is not because the EP or the Commission don’t want to, it is because member states continue to think they can do better apart than together!

The EP and the European Commission are the two communitarian institutions “par excellence” and this facilitates the understanding of many issues for they deal with them everyday. The real problem is the European Council where the heads of state and prime ministers meet to bargain about their national interests and where the EU is very seldom the winner. The discussions in the European Council are of very low level and our heads of state and prime ministers, not understanding what their real role is, only try to get as much as they can back home.

I put my hand on the fire that not a single member of the European Council has followed the debate in the European Parliament. Even the Swedish presidency sent the minister for EU affairs Malstrom and not its prime minister.

For all this I reiterate my conclusion with a pledge to Mr Barroso:

Dear Jose Manuel,
Convincing the EP is peanuts, in fact your program is a copy-paste of many of the European Parliament policies and decisions. Now, please go and explain all what you presented in the EP to the European Council, present them your program and see what they say. It is in the European Council where you will find the real problem for the future ambitions of Europe. As you well know, there is where the power and the money are and they are the people that will decide whether you can become the leader you want to be or stay their mere secretary.
Let us know how it goes, the fate of Europe depends on it!

How to get a smart-phone 25 times cheaper thanks to the EU common market

 2 Responses »
Aug 112009
 

sony-ericsson-xperia-t-mobileHow much would you pay for the iPhone 3G 8Gb? Or the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1? Or the Nokia N96?

Thanks to the common market you can chose from a range of 25 to 700 euros. Wait a second, 25 times difference in the price of the same product in the same market? It can’t be…

Unfortunately for many, and fortunately for some, it can be.

In the Netherlands the deals with the phone companies can get you a iPhone for 26 eur, the Sony Ericsson Xperia for 29 eur and the Nokia N96 for 33 euros, but you can also get them for free if you have a contract with T-mobile. In Spain the deals with big companies like Movistar can get you the same mobiles for free. But in countries like Belgium where telecommunication companies can not offer such deals if you want to buy an iPhone you can pay 575 euros with mobistar or pay even more if you want it liberated. If you want to buy the Sony Ericsson Xperia or the Nokia N96 you can’t find them with the company but you shouldn’t be able to buy them for less than 500euros…

I don’t want to go into considerations -otherwise perfectly legitimate- on whether big companies offering expensive mobiles for free opens the door to unfair competition with emerging telecom companies or the theoretical considerations on to which extend a market can be distorted -and hence stop working as a free market- when prices stop working as information-providers for the consumer, I just would like to highlight the flagrant breach of common market rules by allowing this rip off on the prices of mobile phone:

We are in a common market, yet telecommunication companies can not offer services beyond the national borders -for that we have the roaming services-. Now, if I want to buy a mobile phone in Spain or the Netherlands to use in Belgium I should buy liberated because this way they can charge me a more homogeneus European price since I will only be allowed to use a belgian telecom provider. Or that’s what they think… What happens in reality is that some people are making a highly lucrative legal business reselling the phones bought for free or for 30 eur to companies like Movistar or T-Mobile and getting back 25 times what they paid by selling them in legal shops.

I tested this twice during last 4 weeks in two different countries: in Barcelona I entered a shop attracted by the price of a brand new iPhone 3G, 250 euros! a bargain? When checking the mobile it was clearly written on the box and on the mobile that it was a movistar phone. Good deal for the shop, they get a margin of 250eur and good deal for me, I get a phone for half the “official” price.

I repeated the experience in Brussels, I enter a shop attracted for the price of Sony Ericsson Xperia, 50 eur cheaper than the 500 official price. When checking the phone the seller tells me that because I’m nice I can get it for 400 eur and he includes the 8Gb memory card… same trick: on the box and on the mobile it is clearly written T-Mobile and all the instructions and software of the mobile are in dutch, I check a bit further and in the dialled and received calls appear calls with the code +31 of the Netherlands. They probably got the phone for free in Amsterdam and they will make a profit of 400 eur in Brussels. Not a bad business!

Is this ilegal? In both cases I ask for the guarantee and to get an official invoice and they said guarantee of 2 years and getting an invoice poses no problem at all.

This is clearly a case of common market failure where the European consumers are the ones being clearly ripped off and where only action at European level can bring a solution.

The European Commission has already taken succesful action in the communications market when legislating on roaming costs against abusive prices charged by the big companies. Now it is time for the European Commission to show its commitement in protecting European consumers by stopping this abuse of the common market.

Once this is done we will be closer to answer the 1 million euro question: what is the real price of a mobile phone?

Not all bitches and pussies are animals but all women are human beings

 No Responses »
Aug 052009
 

arabic-book-learn-englishI’m spending some time in Damascus improving my skills in the arabic language and in the hostel where I’m staying the kurdish boy with whom I spend evenings playing chess and baggamon kindly offered me to have a look at his study books, with which he is learning english.

It is not of much use because the book is thought for those who speak arabic and want to learn english but to be polite I was going though its pages and by curiosity ended up checking the different word categories. To my surprise in the cathegory “animals”, which was far from being comprehensive, there were three special animals: kid, bitch and pussy. I know they all happen to be animals but this is not the first thing that comes in mind when you read these words…

My first reaction was to laugh at it but then I thought about how single women or even those women going without partner are regarded in the some parts of the muslim world but also in places in Europe, such as Brussels.

pussy-bitch-kidI linked this to the several complaints from my girlfriend that every time she goes for a run in the park in Brussels she is called names and yelled at by some teenagers and grown ups from second or third generation marrocan or algerian belgians. Why is it that girls can not go for a run in the park in cities like Brussels without being harassed or yelled at?

I don’t think that looking down on women is something they are taught in the european schools or see in western media… if some of them regard women walking on their own as prostitutes is because either at home or in books they are told that men are superior to women and have the right to misstreat them.

I see this book that qualifies “bitches, kids and pussies” as animals, when their mainstream meaning is another one, as just a sad coincidence but can give a hint to undertand why this denigrating attitude towards a very important part of the population continues to happen.

If from the west we want to stop these kind of attitudes and behaviours from these young people I”m convinced that it is vital to analyse how, where and what they learn in order to act on the root of the problem.

As for Brussels the solution is not to infest parks with policemen but rather focusing on the real integration of these young europeans and the communes should have programs targeting these especific problems. Otherwise we can expect nothing less than a raise in racism and social fragmentation in our society.

Why a coalition of conservatives, socialists and liberals to fight eurosceptics?

 No Responses »
Jul 222009
 

Since the European Elections a new big coalition of conservatives, socialists and liberals has been forged arguing that a strong coalition is needed to fight eurosceptics. Well, coalitions are sometimes good because they bring stability but in the EP this stability doesn’t require a coalition for the simple reason that there is no possible euro-sceptic blocking minority in the EP. Moreover it tends to divide the EP between pro-europeans and anti-europeans which is something that after 30 years of existence of the European Parliament and 60 years of existence of the EU should have been since long time overcome.

The pro and anti-european debate is a false one, the reasons and supporters of eliminating the EU are so lunatic and little in numbers that should not be given the importance they are getting. Instead there are a number of policies where it is important to work and real political fight is needed. This is what can interest the citizens, this is what is not happening and this is what media should be denouncing.

By keeping the fight between Europeans and anti-europeans the debate will be dominated by populists and other UKIP lunnies who, even when very small in numbers, and just because they tend to be more mediatic, irresponsible and fun than pro-europeans end up bringing the debate to their field. The European Parliament must grow up and accept that it is here to stay, with no need to justify the reason of its existence. There are many challenges like climate change or economic crisis that need to be properly addressed and we need to hear the different alternatives suggested by the ideologies represented in the European Parliament on this issue.

The argument of building a big coalition to fight eurosceptics clearly doesn’t stand. What is the reason for building this big coalition then?…

European Socialists – You don’t play, you don’t win

 6 Responses »
Jun 082009
 

the-lost-opportunityShortly after the results of the European Parliament elections have been made public the most astonishing thing is the defeat of the socialist parties in Europe.

Imagine that you have a economic crisis caused by lack of regulation and which according to economic theory requires social(ist?) policies, imagine that you have the head of the executive who is a conservative and who has led the Union through last years, rising unemployment, delocalisations… who do you think would be expected to rise? The right?

The socialists have only themselves to blame for their failure: they played defensive when they should have attacked. Now more than ever it was the time to have a clear program for the recovery of Europe and to play the European card. In France, UK, Spain, Portugal, Germany… they could have hidden their weaknesses by rallying behind a project for Europe. Instead they decided to run national campaigns where, for different national reasons, they were weak and vulnerable.

When the president of the European Commission was conservative and weak the socialists could have taken advantage of the situation to come up with an alternative candidate who could have personified their program for the European recovery. In national politics people would kill to stand against a weak president in times of crisis of neoliberalism, timing could not be more suitable! Yet the socialists decided not to move and play conservative. 

It is a lost opportunity for the socialists but also for Europe. Had the socialists been more daring they could have managed to give a new vision and leadership for Europe which would have been good for them and for the Union. Neither will happen. Without a clear program, the right won thanks to not being contested. It will be difficult and anti-democratic to push Barroso out of the European Commission when the EPP has such a majority in the European Parliament.

I’m convinced that socialists have pages to write in European history but in order to do so they have to be able to articulate their message more clearly, update it to the XXI century and have leaders who in times of crisis can stand up and lead the boat. 

It was the time to think out of the box and they preferred to stay inside and hope for the best. And the best doesn’t happen by itself: if you don’t play, you don’t win.

Enjoy Brussels or put worms in your life

 3 Responses »
Jun 032009
 

wormpower-soon-in-your-homesToday I assisted to a session to learn to do compost at home with worms -vermicomposting- organised by the Inter-Environment Bruxelles and it showed me to which extend we live in a strange world.

The session was very entertaining and a huge success. I was expecting that in a meeting like this I would find 5 to 10 housewifes and/or old hippies, rather the opposite: it was mainly young people -both genders- that you could find any day in the metro. We were taught how to build a worm composter and everything we need to know about the life of the worms: what do they eat, what do they like, when to feed them, how to protect them, how -and when!- they have sex, how long do they live… amazing. I found a bit surreal that our civilisation has reached this level of paroxysm.

On one hand it is clear that more and more people are starting to be conscious about the unsustainability of the throw-away society we live in and this is good. It is good when people look at the garbage bin and ask themselves how can they generate so much trash and they want to help by doing home-composting. On the other hand it shows how people are starting to take the initiative as a reaction to the inaction from the institutions. Because, wasn’t it the role of the municipality to take care of our garbage?

Don’t get me wrong, I think that doing home composting -and vermicomposting which enables those of us who live in apartments to do compost- is great and necessary because it raises awareness about the impact of our actions and it reduces the amount of mixed waste we generate, which in Brussels ends up in the incinerator (producing CO2, toxic ashes and destroying resources; let’s not forget that organic waste is more than 60% water and burning water is not very smart). HOWEVER, shouldn’t it be the authorities who should be ordering the organic waste to be collected separately in order to either generate energy with anaerobic digesters or directly compost it?

I mean, vermi-composting and home composting are great but having seen how it works I can tell you it is not as easy as it looks, it is time consuming and having worms at home is something that we can’t expect that everyone will accept with open arms. Personally I’ll do vermi-composting because I believe in it but I know that the market of this is rather limited and I’m fully aware that nothing really substantial will really change until organic waste is separately collected and treated.

Currently EU legislation says that organic waste should be gradually phase out from landfills -where it produces methane- but it doesn’t say what should we do with it. So we burn it. The EU has been avoiding having compulsory separate collection of organic waste since 10 years and only some countries have taken the initiative to impose it. Of course the incineration industry is happy to burn organic waste -again, mostly water- that would be a lot more valuable as carbon returned to the soil and the European Commission is also happy because less legislation means less work -even when this is effectively damaging the environment-. How long will we have to wait to make possible what is environmentally and economically sensible?

In Flanders they collect organic waste separately and they have reached recycling rates of even 75%, in San Francisco they do the same and they are also recycling 70%. Separate collection, better if door-to-door, radicaly increases recycling which saves money to the people, helps the environment, creates jobs and is the right path towards a Zero Waste society. 

I was surprised by today’s unexpected interest generated by the training on vermicomposting, more and more people are realising that things need to change and they are willing to their bit. Will the competent authorities also dare to look beyond the interests of the industrial lobbies?

In the meantime I’ll start taking care of my worms :-)

Barroso “European of the year”!

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May 292009
 

 

Taken by EM Denmark

Taken by EM Denmark

The European Movement Denmark has awarded Barroso as “European of the year”. I have to say that I ignore the reasons that led them to this at first surprising -if not shocking- choice but thinking it twice they might not be that wrong…

 

I would just formulate it otherwise, this year Barroso has been important for Europe but not thanks to himself but despite of himself.

Barroso with his servitude to the European Council, his lack of leadership and his laissez-faire and anti-regulation policy as president of the Commission combined with the economic and financial crisis has managed to find himself in the eye of the hurricane.

He has been campaigning to be reappointed as president of the European Commission with the www.tellbarroso.eu website -paid by the European Parliament- and has been visiting European capitals and even convincing socialists prime-ministers to support him (Zapatero, Brown, Socrates…). He has been successful in raising support for his re-appointment.

At first nobody noticed and nobody cared. The European Socialist Party was doing everything possible to avoid discussing the election of the next Commission president and the other parties were complices in the silence. With the crisis and thanks to the pressure of organisations like the federalists the issue has been climbing positions in the agenda and now the election of the new Commission president is an open topic discussed among socialists -Schulz and Rassmussen are making stronger and stronger declarations- among greens and leftists -with the anti-Barroso alliance- and even among liberals with Verhofstadt also raising his voice in favour of a strong commission president.

So YES! maybe Barroso is the European of the year; because he is the last president of an European Commission designed to talk a lot, do little and stay far from the scrutiny of the public. The crisis has shown the need for a visible and accountable European Executive and how the EU can not afford weak presidents anymore. When the media were looking for the “face of Europe” or the leader that would present the European solution to the crisis they found Barroso, who didn’t have the solution but at least was there for the parties and the citizens to confirm that lowest common denominators might be ok in quiet times but they don’t work in times of troubles.

The newly elected European Parliament will have in its hands the approval of a new Commission and a new EC president and for the first time the parties are starting to behave like European parties, deciding to chose the president of the European executive according to their political ideas and programs and not following corridor deals.

After all, if we look at blogs dealing with European issues -starting with this one you are now reading- the politician that appears more often, 95% of the time as scapegoat for Europe’s problems, is Barroso. What would we do without him? :-)

We can say that Barroso despite of himself, and in a very peculiar and contradictory way, managed to spice up Europe!

A great step for supranational democracy, thanks Barroso!

EU institutional failure in the management of financial and economic crisis

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May 282009
 

 

European and world economy are submerged in an economic crisis, direct result of the financial crush of last months.

Two comments on this: 

One; the EU has not fixed the problems that caused the current chaos in the credit market, Two; the response of the EU to the crisis continues to be insufficient. 

To which extend is this an institutional failure?

 

Firstly, it is important to fix the problems that the crisis caused. Whilst much of the G20 debate has concerned issues such as global fiscal stimulus, the real challenge remains in choosing a new philosophy for the international financial system and its regulation. 

 

Unless we want to hermetically close the borders and change the economic system, we will need capitals flowing in and out. So far this has been done without much control and the lack of information on what was being traded has created the bubble that exploded a year ago. How to fix it?  

It is the old story of choosing the right tools to address the problem which is the fact that financial markets are global when the regulators remain national. Understandably, as soon as capitals start flowing between countries it is more and more difficult to keep track of what is being traded. Different accounting rules, lack of transparency, lack of accountability… As soon as information is missing, speculation escalates and a few get filthy rich whilst money disappears from pension funds, saving accounts and people lose their jobs because the company they work for can’t have access to financing. This is institutional failure. The system is failing to protect their citizens from legal theft. This requires a change of system or justifies and upraising from the citizens against the institutions representing them.

 

Although, if we take into account the increasing integration and interdependence of the world economies, a world financial regulator would be the solution, it still seems to be too far away for many; especially for those countries not used to the exercise of sharing sovereignty -which has delivered so much to the European citizens-. However, within the EU it is unacceptable that we can have a common market, free movement of people, goods, capitals and services –at least on paper-, a common currency and monetary policy and a high level of economic integration without having a functioning European financial system. 

It took this crisis for the non-interventionist/regulation-phobic European Commission to start working on the regulation of hedge funds, transparency of derivatives markets and improved accounting rules aiming at creating a level playing field between EU countries. It is better late than never, but this will fall short to prevent a new crisis. As long as European financial markets continue without a regulator -which should be democratically managed, transparent and with the power to enforce its decisions we will continue to live under the threat of a new financial meltdown. 

The decision to allow more or less speculation, to allow using money for the sake of just create money instead of directing to productive investments is not a technical one that can be self-regulated by a market. It is highly political and it requires intervention of European legislators.

 

Secondly, whilst working on the prevention we need to act to fix the damage done by the crisis. Of course money matters when we want to protect those who are losing their jobs and at the same time invest in economic reconversion but is also a matter of political leadership to pick and implement a coordinated approach to transform the European economy. 

So far there is no serious European recovery plan as such but a sum of multiple stimulus plans. The European Commission put forward a recovery plan that falls short in scope and objectives when the EU needs bold new vision to move forward. European taxes –without increase tax pressure on EU citizens- or issuing EU bonds to increase the financial capacity of the EU is not a “tabu” issue only supported by some “lunatic federalists” anymore; time has proven that the unbalances of power and competences within the EU may be able to exist as transitional structures but when going through troubled waters the EU needs fiscal federalism and a consistent European budget.

 

This is why in the new legislature starting next month we need the European Commission to start behaving more like a federal government in order to manage an expanded EU budget of at least 2% of the community GDP, with the capacity to issue Union-Bonds and develop a European fiscal policy matched by an increase in the political responsibility.

This reaction is far from radical; it is what any state is doing right now, from China to the US and from Argentina to Germany. In the EU the level of economic integration and the fact that we share a monetary policy justifies why this is the only sensible, yet politically difficult, way forward.

 

Continuing with the current indecisive situation puts at risk more than just the recovery of the economy but the current structures of the EU because the increasing and unbalanced indebtedness of national budgets will endanger the common market and the euro. 

We can talk of institutional failure when the institutions fail to deliver the pillars for normal functioning of a society; namely rules (regulatory framework), transparency, fairness and political and budgetary capacity to act in times of crisis. This is needed today and it doesn’t look like is going to be delivered by the EU. 

 

Parts of the solution require treaty changes, some others don’t. A strong leadership is necessary to lead either of them and this leadership should come from the European Commission. If the current Commission is not up for the work the newly elected Parliament should exercise its democratic power and reject any new commission that lacks leadership and a plan for the future of Europe.

The European Commission is -literally- on fire

 No Responses »
May 182009
 

 

Pic taken by Joerg Janssen

Pic taken by Joerg Janssen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was walking by the Commission building today and I saw that the heart of the European Union was burning.  

 

Did they launch an impact assessment on whether it is better to burn the institutions instead of have them working?

Has the European Commission started to produce its own energy by burnning coal in the rooftop?

Is it that they were having a barbecue in the terrace and they ended up burning the sausages?

Where can we find the CO2 emissions of this fire?

Is it the love of European citizens for the Commission which lit the fire?

Is it a Commission official who went for a smoke in the terrace?

Is Barroso burning the secret files of the institution?

It is very easy to make metaphores about the fire in the European Commission building, I’m inclined to think that this is just a desperate attempt from the Communication DG to bring people to vote for the EP elections of 4-7th June…

Climate Change fever: without a World Environmental Communitty temperature will go up!

 1 Response »
May 042009
 

world-environmental-communityAs the economic downturn and the swine flu dominate the pages of newspapers a lot more important issue, for it affects our long term survival in this planet, disappears from the media: the fight against climate change.

In December will take place in Copenhagen the next United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in which the new rules and targets will be laid to replace the Kyoto protocol. The Kyoto treaty was based on 5 principles: commitment to reduce greenhouse gases, implementation measures, minimization of impact in developing countries –via adaptation fund-, accounting reporting and review and compliance.

A decade later evidence shows that worldwide emissions have increased by 38% and even though the EU15 did a good job in stabilizing the emissions the increase of emissions in China (+150%), India (+103%) or the US (+20%) among many others has caused the emissions to grow.

Hence, the Kyoto protocol, albeit its concretion in what needs to be done is failing to deliver what it was designed to do. And what is worst, we are not learning.
The relative failure of Kyoto can be due to the wrong setting of objectives or to the inadequacy of the tools used to meet the objectives. I believe the objectives, although sometimes arbitrary and not scientifical enough, are not the problem. The instruments we use are clearly failing.

The weakest point of Kyoto, same as any international treaty, is its implementation and enforceability. Who does what, how, and who monitors that job is done properly and has the power to sanction it when this is not the case.
The EU offers a good example about implementation and compliance: whilst cooperation has proven its inability to deliver, integration has clearly been the key to success. Once something is agreed among the 27, implementation takes place –at European, national or regional level- and enforceability is monitored and the European Court of Justice can sanction the non-complying member states. This effective system of supranational governance descends from the European Coal and Steel Community, where the 6 founding states decided to put under a supranational democratic rule what they considered was a public good, and which had been the cause of disputes and wars over the years. From this milestone the successful story of European integration unfolded.

The EU is the most successful example in the history of supranational governance for it has had the capacity to deliver. Yet, the virtues of the model have not been followed by other supranational structures. Kyoto has had a very weak mechanism of enforcement; a feeble compliance committee has been deciding on who was following the commitments. For instance: Greece was excluded of the Kyoto protocol in 2008 due to unfulfilled commitment of creating mechanisms of monitoring and controlling emissions and reporting false data.
Excluding countries from the protocol is not the way to guarantee enforcement; it is just a declaration of impotence to manage the system.

Environment is a common public good for humankind; pollution doesn’t stop at the borders, can’t be fought with weapons but it has the potential to exterminate us. It is therefore high time to get organized to fight climate change effectively and this can only be done with the right tools. Never before we have known so much about the threat before us. Yet, knowledge is a mighty two-faced asset for it gives us the false impression that we control the situation: We know what is happening, we know what we need to do and hence we might think that we can solve it. But we can’t.

Whatever objectives the world community sets for itself in Copenhagen, they can only be met if we manage to set up an institutional structure where global interest is put before the national interests. This world institutional setting that we could call “World Environmental Community” would treat environment as a global public good and would have a “High Authority” which would care only about the global interest. The national interests could be represented in intergovernmental meetings such as UNFCCC or in a more formalized body. However, the “High Authority” should be supervised by a body not representing the states but the global interest and the members of which could be elected or appointed by the states. The system would need of a Court of Justice able to guarantee the enforcement of the decisions. Such a structure would create the space and the tools where a system of global taxes could be set up –if needed- and properly managed in a democratic and transparent manner.

What stays on the way?
The will of the our elected governments who have to decide what is the best way to defend the national interest: by not letting go in the short term and putting our survival in danger in the mid term or by ceding a bit of sovereignty in the short term to be able to have a long term at all.
Also, Environmental NGOs should look at broader picture and along the world emissions targets; ask for a governance deal that empowers the treaty to deliver.

History shows that humans always learn the hard-way. Sane decisions tend to take place after disasters such as WWII.

Would we be the first generation to anticipate and prevent the disaster?

The world has climate change fever and temperature keeps going up. We have all the symptoms to get pneumonia soon and we continue to stay alone in the cold.

Until when?

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