The new EU fiscal pact – the medicine that may end killing the patient

 Brussels, Europe, Europe english, Financial crisis  No Responses »
Jan 312012
 

A new international accord between the majority of the EU countries – a treaty on “Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union” – was born last night –Monday 30th January-. Presumably the bearers were 27 EU leaders but 2 of them refused, for the time-being, to adopt the new-born. The birth took place behind closed doors and no representative of the European peoples was allowed in the room.
Now the 25 member states will start the long and cumbersome march of ratification in the respective national institutions. However this treaty, differently to the custom EU treaty ratification process, would enter into force as soon as 12 Eurozone countries will have ratified it.

The purpose of the treaty is to impose long-term fiscal and financial stability to the member states, the underlying assumption being that this should bring about growth. Many leading political figures and economists raised their voices to argue the impossibility to generate the latter solely with the former. Yet, the only initiative to stimulate the European demand has come from the Commission President J.M. Barroso has proposed to reallocate funds originally intended to regional policies. As much as this should be welcome, the amount considered is clearly insufficient to give the boost the European economy needs.

On the request of Germany, the decisions taken during the summit were mainly about enforcing mid and long-term austerity measures. The treaty is being referred to as “fiscal pact” but this name is misleading because all the measures go in the direction of reducing expenses and restricting budgets. No real fiscal solidarity between states is being established. In other words, if a country is in a downward spiral there is no mechanism to transfer income from surplus to deficit countries, instead the country should ask for help to the European Stability Mechanism, an intergovernmental organisation. The Eurozone might qualify as a monetary union but for sure not as a fiscal union.

It is important to note that, the European parliamentarians, i.e. the elected representatives of the citizens of Europe, have not been part of this dramatically important process. The new treaty will use the European Commission and the European Court of Justice to enforce the rules but the European Commission has seen its powers removed like never before and has de-facto become a secretariat of the European Council.

Taking a step back to regard the process of European unification, this treaty reaffirms the coup d’état given by the states to the integration process. Since the crisis started in 2008 any pretended solution, from the EFSF to this “fiscal pact”, has increasingly downgraded the European Commission and consistently ignored the European Parliament. This dynamic has not brought about benefits; whereas the financial crisis of 2008 was caused by the US and the financial markets, the current economic crisis has its roots in the actions taken by the Franco-German directoire and in the inaction of the EU as a whole. It is hence worrying that this treaty will continue administering the medicine that may end up killing the patient.

A real European solution requires more than governance; it requires a government. The Franco-German directoire has proven ineffective in governing the crisis precisely because it has put the national interests before the European interests. During the last years the communitarian institutions have proven to be as effective in pursuing the common interest as they have been incapable of showing the necessary leadership. The only way the European Commission can stop the tendency of becoming the Council’s secretariat is if it manages to gain legitimacy in front of the European peoples. Therefore, it is necessary that the next European elections are not only about the European Parliament but also about the election of the leader of the European government. i.e. the President of the European Commission. Once such a leadership is established, it will be possible to create a proper EU budget and an EU treasury capable of replacing the “fiscal pact” with a real fiscal union.

This intergovernmental treaty is neither a solution to the short-term problems nor it will be the long-term solution to the problems of Europe. However it can be an intermediate solution in the run-up to the construction of a real European government which could emerge from the new EP elections in 2 years’ time.
There is still time but… is there political will?

 Posted by admin at 16:57  Tagged with: , , ,

Repeating mistakes? A reminder from Charlie Chaplin…

 Europe english, world governance  No Responses »
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.

 

 Posted by admin at 10:40  Tagged with: , , ,

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

 Europe english  No Responses »
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.

 Posted by admin at 11:49  Tagged with: , , ,

Global Democracy – from utopia to necessity

 Europe english, world governance  No Responses »
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

 Posted by admin at 14:14  Tagged with: , , , ,

MERKEL, SARKOZY… TIME FOR THE NEW FEDERALISTS?

 Europe english  No Responses »
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!

 Posted by admin at 9:20  Tagged with: , ,

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

 Europe english  No Responses »
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?

 Posted by admin at 1:41  Tagged with: ,

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

 Europe english  2 Responses »
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”.

 Posted by admin at 0:02  Tagged with: , ,

State of the European Union speech: Something is terribly wrong

 Europe english  No Responses »
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-.

 Posted by admin at 11:46  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

The Story of Cosmetics

 Environment, Europe english, Sustainability  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… :-)

 Posted by admin at 11:33  Tagged with: , ,

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

 Europe english  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.

 Posted by admin at 12:25  Tagged with: , , , , ,

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

 Brussels, Europe english  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.

 Posted by admin at 8:52  Tagged with: , , , ,

HOW I MANAGED TO REDUCE WASTE BY HALF

 Brussels, Economics, Environment, Europe english  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.

 Posted by admin at 17:14  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

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

 Europe english  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.

 Posted by admin at 18:13  Tagged with: , , , , ,

New EU economic strategy – Repeating the failure of Lisbon strategy

 Europe english  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.
 Posted by admin at 0:51  Tagged with: , , , , ,

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

 Europe english  No Responses »
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.

 Posted by admin at 16:04  Tagged with: , , ,

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

 Environment, Europe english  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?

 Posted by admin at 10:28  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

Do you have the swine flu? – symptoms

 Brainwashing, Europe, Europe english  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.

 Posted by admin at 12:03  Tagged with: , ,

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

 Europe, Europe english  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.
 Posted by admin at 3:28  Tagged with: , , , ,

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

 Europe, Europe english, Financial crisis, world governance  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.

 Posted by admin at 15:43  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Barroso: the EP is the wrong audience

 Europe, Europe english  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!

 Posted by admin at 19:53  Tagged with: , , ,

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

 Europe, Europe english, Political campaining  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?

 Posted by admin at 17:33  Tagged with: , , , ,

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

 Europe, Europe english  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?…

 Posted by admin at 11:13  Tagged with: , , ,

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

 Europe, Europe english  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.

 Posted by admin at 1:04  Tagged with: , ,

Enjoy Brussels or put worms in your life

 Environment, Europe, Europe english  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 :-)

 Posted by admin at 1:32  Tagged with: , , , ,

Barroso “European of the year”!

 Europe, Europe english  No Responses »
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!

 Posted by admin at 18:03  Tagged with: , , , ,

EU institutional failure in the management of financial and economic crisis

 Europe, Europe english  No Responses »
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.

 Posted by admin at 1:10  Tagged with: , , ,

The European Commission is -literally- on fire

 Curiositats/Funny things, Europe, Europe english  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…

 Posted by admin at 16:41  Tagged with: , , ,

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

 Environment, Europe, Europe english, world governance  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?

 Posted by admin at 11:03  Tagged with: , , ,

Tell Barroso that: YES HE CAN!

 Europe, Europe english, Political campaining  No Responses »
Apr 142009
 

 

 

This is weird. Normally you ask opinions when you start something, not right before finishing. Why does Barroso ask us now our opinion now? Has he finally realised (after more than 4 years as president of the EC) that citizens exist? Has he realised that he might have to convince someone else, other than his friends in the Council, about his skills to lead the EU?   

 

Is he -maybe- campaigning? …

He didn’t campaign 5 years ago, why should he do it now? 

This is fun. Barroso, the candidate of “some European political leaders” leaders seems to be running a campaign, without being official candidate but supported by the conservative think-tank CES, to be re-elected as president of the European Commission which is financed by the European Parliament…

Neither the European Parliament nor the European Commission wanted to spend a cent to campaign for the constitutional treaty and now the EP finds itself financing the campaign of the head of a Commission who refused to campaign and lost three referendums… a lonely runner in a race without participants, where the slowest is doomed to win.

With such a passionate, breathtaking, competitive and hard campaign we can tell Barroso that: YES HE CAN!

 Posted by admin at 17:41  Tagged with: , ,

Barroso, the candidate of all European parties?

 Europe, Europe english  5 Responses »
Mar 202009
 

This is as confusing as it is absurd. In yesterday’s meeting the EPP leaders back Barroso for a second term as president of European Commission but still no party is behind Barroso’s ambition to renew his mandate as president of the European Commission.

One could expect that if the leaders of a party back a candidate of the same party and nobody in the party opposes, this candidate would become THE candidate of THE party. Not in European politics.

Same as EPP, the European Socialist Party has no official candidate for president of the European Commission. When Rasmussen, PSE president, was asked about the PSE candidate in the presentation of the PSE manifesto he said that they hadn’t decided on a candidate “yet”. At the same time socialist prime ministers such as Zapatero, Socrates or Brown already openly expressed their support for Barroso. I guess it is easy to back a candidate when the contest is a false one…

Barroso, the president of what is to be the executive body of the EU,  is backed by individuals. These individuals are not “normal” individuals; they are heads of state and heads of governments. However, what does it say about the future president of the European Commission and the Commission as a whole?

Firstly, that the “European interest” can’t be defended by a body whose president is held hostage by heads of state and governments. The role of defending the interest of the member-states was the role of the president of the European Council but it seems like the Commission is dangerously shifting towards the intergovernmentalist option.

Secondly, and as a consequence, no expectations about leadership or initiative should be put on a body elected without a political program and that is held hostage of the interest of the member-states.

Leadership is crucial in times of crisis and without a strong European Commission taking the initiative to regulate the financial markets, in raising resources for a economic relaunch, in investing in the infrastructure necessary to launch a new green economy the EU is doomed to fail to its citizens.

Leadership comes from personality but also from legitimacy and recognition. Why should the Europeans, even those who will to vote in the European Parliament elections, feel that Barroso is representing them? They will vote for a program that can’t be implemented because Barroso’s program is improvised in the heads of state meetings and not subjected to public scrutiny.

If the EPP happens to have the same political program as Barroso -which would make sense if he belongs to the party the leaders of which support him- why isn’t Barroso the candidate of the EPP? Is the EPP scared that if they declare Barroso as their candidate the socialists might be forced to declare that Barroso is NOT their candidate?

By Barroso not being the candidate of any party… should we interpret that he is the “de-facto” candidate of all parties?

If so, we certainly live in a strange stage of the European democracy…

 Posted by admin at 19:22  Tagged with: , , ,

Comment on Žižek – Are we free and independent enough to stop and think?

 Europe, Europe english, Filosofia  No Responses »
Mar 172009
 


(www.vest.si) Žižek na Bledu from Jaka Tomc on Vimeo.

Žižek perception of reality is as provocative as enlightening. So many things happen in front of our eyes and we all march blind…

In a world of coffee without caffeine, beer with alcohol, coke without sugar… are we finally having political parties without political ideology?

In a world where there is no money to feed the people, to invest in renewables, to save ourselves from the effects of climate change… there is money to save car makers and bankers?

In a context of refusal of knowledge and complexity, the transmission of ideology has left the old channels of political parties to infiltrate our everyday life:  we are bombarded with commercials all day, every holywood movie is a political panflet and going shopping is our economic contribution and act of faith to the ideology of consumist/throw-away society that finances the power that controls us.

“Non-political” people go shopping and watch videos non-stop in order to cope with a world they don’t understand and believe ideologies are dead when they are unconsciously supporting a very clear political option.

Humankind has been rushing during last 100 years and increase the speed of innovation, change, destruction, growth…

…

…

time to stop and think?

 Posted by admin at 18:16  Tagged with: ,

The EU – a philosophical player?

 Europe, Europe english  No Responses »
Feb 062009
 

“They are always talking about philosophy with us,” Deutsche Welle paper reports Andrei Klimov, deputy chairman of the committee for international relations in the state Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, said about the Europeans.

There are two approaches to this: firstly, once cradle of western civilization, the EU sees itself as resort of morals and values that are at the core of all their policies and which should reign in the relations with other countries, regardless of how economically or politically developed they might be. This is laudable and it gives a moral strength and ideological coherence to policies that otherwise would look as disperse and arbitrary as the Russian policies.

The second approach is that philosophy is always a good rhetoric tool when unable to articulate a coherent message. That is in European energy policies and anything that relates to foreign policy where the EU is a political ghost. Until we are not able to have a political Union with a legitimised European government, capable of properly representing the Europeans the best thing we can do is philisophise about how things should be according to X values and principles.

When our great “philosophers” are stars like Barrosso maybe we are dealing more with the second option?

Whether we continue to live in the ideal world of Plato or we turn around and walk out of the cave it is something that the current crisis will push us to decide upon.

 Posted by admin at 17:46  Tagged with: , ,

A funny way to explain who is who in EU bureocracy

 Curiositats/Funny things, Europe, Europe english  No Responses »
Jan 262009
 

From my experience, this joke is not far away from reality:

A man in a hot air balloon over the Belgian countryside realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. Descending a bit more he shouted, “Excuse me, can you help? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago but I don’t know where I am”. The woman replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above the ground, between 40/41 degrees latitude, north, and 59/60 degrees longitude, west.”

“You must be a middle-grade Commission Official”, said the balloonist.
“I am”, replied the woman, “How did you know?”

“Well”, answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct but I have no idea what to make of your information and the fact is, I am still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If anything, you have delayed my trip.”

The woman below responded, “You must be a Senior Commission Official”.
“I am,” replied the balloonist, “But how did you know?”

“Well,” replied the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problem. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault.”

 Posted by admin at 20:23  Tagged with: , ,

EU difficult to understand? Try the UNFCCC!

 Curiositats/Funny things, Environment, Europe english  2 Responses »
Dec 082008
 

It is nice to see the EU, the G77, the US and all the others gathered in the Poznan UNFCCC to discuss the NAMAs, the NAPAs and the QUELROs both in AWGKP and AWGLCA. As expected CAN and CJN have been critical and it looks like the BINGOs are going to get a good result in front of the TUNGOs and the RINGOs.

REDD and LULUCF don’t seem to be taken very much seriously despite the efforts of REFUK and the PAM and it is clear that SIDS will end up paying the highest price of the inadequacy of CDMs and others measures.

After all agreeing on MRV targets and a common vision is not a technological problem but a political one.

——–

This is just an example of how codified the talks on the Climate Change Conference taking place in Poznan until 12th December can be.

For those who say the European Union is difficult to understand; you haven’t tried the UN negotiations on Climate Change. EU is peanuts!

UNFCCC: United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change

NAMAs: Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions

NAPAs: National Adaptation Programmes of Action

BINGOs: Business and Industry Non-Governmental Organisations

TUNGOs and RINGOs: Trade Unions and Research and Independent NGOs

RFUK: United Kingdom Rainforest Foundation

REDD: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation

PAM: Policies and Measures.

SIDS: Small Island Developing States

LULUCF: Land-use, Land-use Change and Forestry.

QUELRO: Quantified Emissions Limitation and Reduction Objective

MVR: Measurable, Reportable and Verifiable

 Posted by admin at 0:54  Tagged with: , ,

European political parties: what kind of animals are they?

 Europe, Europe english  3 Responses »
Nov 282008
 

In view of the forthcoming European Parliament elections and the deep sleep in which EU politics seems to be, a big hope to revitalize the debate lies on the role that the European Political parties can play in the next months.

For the first time in the short history of EU politics the European Political parties will be allowed to campaign, will have a budget and the political foundations will be able to play a role.

However, the European political parties continue to be strange animals; firstly, they are made up of national parties, not individual members, secondly they don’t have lists of candidates, every constituency has its own lists, thirdly they are not the main actors in the campaigns, which happen at national level, fourthly they normally don’t have a common program and when they do, it can not be implemented because the winning party has no possibility to execute it because the elections are only about legislative lower chamber with no impact on the executive, fifthly even if they win the elections they have no take in the direction of the EU and if they had a take, the current system doesn’t held them accountable for that…

This is even more bizarre when we think that the European Parliament is representing the citizens whilst the European parties’ political line can not be changed by the citizens but by the national parties.

In order to analyze the challenges for the European political parties it helps to bring into the analysis the other strange animal of European politics; what some people think is a kind of European ghost and others see as a sleeping beauty: the European demos.

It is clear that for the fathers of Europe the “European awareness” –as it is called in the Maastricht treaty- or the concept of the “European people” was vital for the future of the European Union. And the European Parliament was created as a personification of this European demos which the only European institution directly elected by the citizens was supposed to shape.

In this process of overcoming the national mindsets and construction of the European demos the European parties were thought to play an important role. Yet, I believe their contribution to the European project is still a blank page to be written soon.

The campaigns for European Parliament elections have always been run at national level, run with national arguments and where very little is discussed about European issues.

However, we know well that the big majority of national laws start at EU level, with the EP playing a major role. In fact if we look at the amount of copy-pasting of EU law into law of other non-EU countries we could claim that these are among the most important elections in the world.

Then, why such low turnout?

Is it that people don’t get it?

Is it that national parties are incapable to explain the importance of these elections?

It is probably a bit of everything. I believe the European parties can help bridge this gap by bringing the flesh to the European bone. Bringing excitement to the EP elections. Connecting the EP elections with the allocation of the European power.

Typical of any elections campaigns are “faces”, “promises”, “expectations”, “excitement”, “HOPE”! In the US elections last month we saw the importance of the personification of hope. Who will personalize the European “hope”?

The EU is the biggest donour of development aid in the world, we have the most progressive environmental legislation, our quality of life is envied all over… The European dream is a lot more real than the American dream! Now, where is the marketing? Who embodies these assets? Who can legitimately explain to Europeans and to world citizens what the EU does and why it is important?

It is necessary to link the EP elections with a political idea for the EU, able to be implemented and held accountable every 5 years, and this European ideal should be linked to a face, to a person embodying the hope.

In order to have a competition of European figures we badly need the contribution of the European Parties. If they are not willing to play the political game and continue to be held hostage of the interests of the national parties, the European project will progressively lose legitimacy.

Hence the fundamental question is: the continued decrease in turnout for EP elections is a structural problem or is it rather a temporary tendency that will pass?

If we believe that the problem is structural we have to substantially steer the direction of the boat if we want to avoid seeing the project sink. The European political parties play a vital role in this new direction the EU has to take to democratize the composition of its executive.

Therefore, it is not that the European Parties are strange animals because this is their nature; rather the opposite, they are strange because they are unfinished creatures!

If European democracy is meant to exist it is necessary that the European Parties continue its transformation into solid political movements, working with democratic structures and electing the leadership that will embody their vision for the EU and will defend it in the public arena. Then the European citizens can have something substantial to decide on and participation will go up.

If this doesn’t happen we will continue to expect the citizens to give the right answer to the wrong question. And some times the best answer to a wrong question is silence: people don’t turn up to vote… The citizens want to decide about power! about the person who will embody their hopes for the future. The European Parliament elections are important but time has come for the European parties to grow up and live up to what the citizens expect from them: a choice between political programs and political leadership.

 Posted by admin at 12:17  Tagged with: , , ,

Where do Spanish millions go?

 Europe, Europe english, Financial crisis  No Responses »
Nov 022008
 
Spanish government helping banking sector

Spanish government helping banking sector

The spanish government is the only european government not openly saying which banks will get how much money in the financial crisis.

It is accepted by everyone that this financial crisis is the result of bad regulation and hence bad management and functioning of the financial markets. The citizens are not to be held responsible for this mismanagement; we were instrumentalised by the financial and political power to bring big profits to the financial sector and its friends in politics by living on credits, we are now indebted for the next decades, we will have to pay with our taxes all the money now being lend to the banks and the last news in Spain are that the citizens won’t be allowed to know where the 250.000 milion euros of their taxes will go. The spanish government decided, once again, to hide from the people and, using once again methods in place since 70 years ago, is going to spend the public money at its will, deciding which banks they will help and with which amounts.

Ole Zapatero! Such a torero attitude when it comes to dealing with the bull, typical of spanish left and right parties, will help you manage it so that you get the job done without getting hurt but in the long run either the bull goes mad and takes you out of the way or you run out of bulls to kill… and your torero career is over.

 Posted by admin at 14:25  Tagged with: ,

The excessive carbon footprint of the European Parliament

 Coses que pasen, Environment, Europe, Europe english, Viatges  No Responses »
Oct 282008
 

The European Parliament -EP- is unique. It is the only directly elected supranational parliament in the world. It is also quite especial for having two meeting places; Brussels and Strasbourg.

The recently released study on the carbon footprint of the EP confirms the fact that commuting between the two seats is not only stupid but also envirnmentally harmful.

If we look at the distribution of Green House Gas (GHG) per source at world level we see that transport causes 13,5% of GHG, whilst electricity and heat represent 25%. It is quite shocking that the EP is close to producing 30% of its GHG from transport costs (home to work commuting, duty travel between and outside the three main working sites and transport using official and hired cars). This is more than twice as much than the average!!

The study doesn’t reveal how much of this 30% of GHG is caused by commuting from Brussels to Strasbourg. What is clear is that whatever these emissions could be easily saved just by stopping the commuting.

The Resolution of the Parliament of 24 April 2007 decided to cut the EP carbon emissions by 30% by 2020.  Stopping the commuting between Brussels and Strasbourg is something feasible, sensible, necessary and it even has a political majority in the house, among the governments and among the citizens.

The step number one to reduce the carbon footprint of the EP has to be stopping this travelling circus!

 Posted by admin at 18:17  Tagged with: , ,

Who would die for free? Who would die for Freedom?

 Environment, Europe, Europe english  1 Response »
Oct 202008
 

Today I visited the american cementery at Omaha Beach, Normandie, where 3000 american soldiers died on the 6th of June 1944 whilst trying to gain the shore in the first step to free Europe from Nazi occupation.

Everywhere in this memorial we are reminded that these soldiers died for our Freedom.

I walk around these many crosses wondering, once again, about the limits of human stupidity whilst I read amazing stories of courage and sacrifice of these soldiers in their twenties coming from the other side of the ocean to give their lives for us. By “us” I mean “us” in the broadest sense.

Could a scene of sacrifice like this be repeated today? I remember reading of a soldier from Illinois, 18 years old, who lied about his age to be enroled as volunteer and who was among the first to be killed in Omaha beach… Would a white, middle-class, 18 year old american of today be capable of a similar sacrifice? Would a 18 year-old, middle-class european bother enrolling in an army to go defend freedom in the other side of the ocean?

More amazing even is the fact that these people died “for free”.  They were not a professional army, they were not getting paid -as we understand a “pay” today-, yet they gave their lives when its country requested them to do so.

Currently, the armies have been professionalised and middle-class boys -an girls- can easily avoid getting killed in wars. Wars are fought by “latinos”, afro-americans, arabs… and they don’t fight for “freedom” in general but for the ticket for their families to a better world. They don’t fight for general ideas or countries but for papers and money to bring their families out of poverty. In this sense, modern soldiers put a price to their lifes. Yet, I don’t think they would dare to jump on the beaches of Normandy like these soldiers of the second world war did. The price is “too” high.

We definitely live in a different world where “freedom” doesn’t mean what it meant to those youngsters in the 1940s. We can say that the pursue of freedom has been individualised in the same way as the consumist society has turned the “people” into a “consumer”. We are all different individuals having our individual freedom as one of our main assets. The concept of collective freedom has been diluted and prostituted to an extend that it is only use by clowns such as G. Bush to justify forcing ilegal wars upon empoversihed countries.

This is not the freedom the american, british, polish, french, russian soldiers died for during the WWII. However, the need for this “collective freedom” tends to be rediscovered in times of economic, political and moral crisis. The current systemic crisis has the capacity to rally the youngsters of the world to save the destruction of the planet resources, to bring them together to ask for their right to freedom and consequently build structures and institutions that make war impossible but also that control the financial markets, the fiscal paradises, the food markets, etc…

The question is: will the new generation be ready to jump in the Omaha beach of the 21st century exposing themselves to the enemy fire?

Would they be willing to do it “for free”?

 Posted by admin at 1:46  Tagged with: ,

Looking for a president for the European Commission

 Europe, Europe english  No Responses »
Oct 172008
 

After two failed referendums in France and Netherlands the European Commission had the chance to intervene in favour of the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland. Very little was done. After the results were known does the president of the EC go to Ireland? No. The political price has to be paid by Vice-President Margot Wallstrom.

Lately we have had the financial crisis. In the past the European Commission was good at anticipating crisis and former EC presidents took an active stand on the issue. The current Commission did not anticipate the crisis and during the last two weeks the protagonism was taken by UK prime minister, Gordon Brown, wellknown for his leadership skills…

Although it is true that the economic governance is not an EU competence, a visionary president of the EUropean Commission would have taken advantage of the opportunity to bring the EU forward.

This crisis is only starting and more opportunities will come to set up the right structure in order to better regulate the anarchy in financial markets. Can we trust the current president Barrosso to properly represent the European interest or should we rather start looking for a new president of the European Commission?

The forthcoming European Parliament Elections are an opportunity we should use to this effect.

 Posted by admin at 15:49  Tagged with: ,

The Economist – “The magazine irrationalis”

 Europe, Europe english  No Responses »
Oct 082008
 


I’m perplexed by the ideological coherence of this widely read -and
respected- magazine that preaches logic, rationalism and economic liberalism.

Not too long ago -one month- it was still preaching free market, no regulations, no intervention of the state and that the government should work only in those areas where it is not profitable for the private sector to operate.

This same magazine has always preached globalisation without regulations, without institutions responsible to monitor anything and has been actively campaigning against any political integration in Europe because that could “undermine” economic competitiveness in the continent…

For them, democracy is only valid as colonialist tool when the western countries intervene in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, but they will never advocate for democracy at supranational level, putting the economic powers under democratic scrutiny is “nonsense” according to the prestigious magazine.

The big laugh about all this comes in times of crisis like the times where we are now. The financial crisis has changed all the ideological rational of this very theoretical magazine: from asking the state to stay away from private sector is now applauding the big bailouts and nationalisation of private banks.

The time to privatise profits is over, now it is time to nationalise debts and make the people, the “consumers” as they call them, pay the price of private businesses mismanagements.

Now it is time to promote fiscal authority intervention, meaning the finances ministries will use taxpayer money to nationalise the banks. Beyond that they are proposing that it would be good to have the possibility to act as financial authority at European level, in other words, the need to collect
takes at European level and “de facto” launch an European economic policy which is something that they have always opposed based on ideological grants.

In a rational world, once this crisis is over, the magazine would learn from its mistakes and move to ask for a minimum regulation at supranational level on the financial markets and for the EU to have economic governance.

Unfortunately this magazine is as rational as human beings.

 Posted by admin at 10:39  Tagged with: ,

Don’t vote!

 Europe, Europe english  No Responses »
Oct 032008
 

We would need something similar for the European Parliament elections…

 Posted by admin at 14:31

Ireland neutrality challenged by the the Lisbon treaty or rather the USA?

 Europe english  No Responses »
Sep 232008
 

After all, it looks like we can blame someone of the NO to Lisbon in Ireland: the USA. The poor americans  get blamed by everybody ;-)

If it is finally proven that the funding for the NO campaign in Ireland was coming from the US and more concretely the military sector, it will be fun to see how most alegations against the Lisbon treaty for interfering in Irish neutrality will be challenged.

Declan Ganley, the multi-millionaire businessman behind Libertas, has significant business interests in America which could have been a decisive contribution to bring the EU to the standstill caused by the irish rejection to the Lisbon treaty. This is particularly worrying because one of the main arguments used by Libertas in the campaign, together with legalisation of abortion, death penalty and other lies,  was precisely the danger that an EU with stronger Foreign and Defense policy would have for irish neutrality -and american interests-.

Here we go! The irish, allegedly US-sponsored, neutrality is stopping the EU from moving forward in democratic reform. This is a nice paradox!

A treaty meant to bring more transparency to the EU hijacked by a campaign whose funding was everything but transparent but who claimed to ask for a more transparent and democratic EU…

 Posted by admin at 13:34

Lisbon Treaty ratification – What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger!

 Europe english  No Responses »
Jun 202008
 

Stable structures benefit from crisis whilst unstable ones tend to be destroyed by them. The EU was born from a big crisis named 2nd World War and has been forged crisis by crisis. Following the saying “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger” I have no doubt that the EU will come out stronger of the new crisis generated by the Irish NO to the Lisbon treaty.

Democracy is based on conflict and discussion to find the consensus that can bring the best outcome to the citizens. If you want gain without pain authoritarian regimes can deliver the best solution. Countries like Libia, China or Russia don’t have to debate the ratification of treaties bringing more democracy and transparency to the country… however, I still prefer our “crisis”.

It is true that the EU is sometimes too far away from the citizens, that the heads of state say at home the opposite of what they say in Brussels, that the EU is sometimes too elitist… but with or without Lisbon treaty the EU will continue to be the most successful intend to overcome nationalist interest and achieve lasting peace in the European continent. Therefore it is the procedure and not the content of the project what should be questioned.

Federalists and other sensible groups suggested from the beginning that the European Constitution should not be ratified with unanimity because that would block the process if only one country would say NO. The French and the Dutch said no and the process was blocked. Then they watered down the text and tried again with the same stubborn system that will give to any national democracy the capacity to stop the European democratic process.

Legally speaking the text should not go on if only one country opposes it, this is the virtue of unanimity! However it looks like the European leaders will decide to move on disregarding the Irish vote. This is unfortunate but necessary. The EU needs to get the institutional reforms out of the way as soon as possible and focus on delivering to the citizens. Whatever the way we get there from here will be neither entirely democratic nor highly undemocratic; I believe the content of the treaty improves European democracy but the ratification procedure by unanimity undermines it. From the democratic point of view it can be justified to move on with the implementation as soon as the majority of citizens and majority of member states ratify the text.

With the current situation and with the Council running the show I’m convinced we won’t get any better democratic system to ratify the text, hence the need to get it out of the way as soon as possible. The longer it takes to solve this ratification problem the more the people will doubt about European project. In any case, this “crisis” won’t destroy the European project, it can delay it instead. However the climate change and food, financial and energy crisis can be a lot more harmful for Europe if not faced with the right equipment. The Lisbon treaty better equips the EU to face the challenges of the 21st century and should enter into force in the countries that ratified it as soon as a majority of citizens and states approve it.

 Posted by admin at 18:40

Madness in Dublin – No to Lisbon Treaty… but nice tits!

 Europe english  2 Responses »
Jun 122008
 

Below you can find a number of funny reactions I got when campaining in the streets of Dublin for the YES to the Lisbon Treaty.

As you will see they are mostly highly intelectual considerations about the meaning of the text put to a referendum.

—

Italian activist: Will you vote for the Lisbon treaty tomorrow?

Random irish pedestrian: I hope not. I’m English.

—

Catalan activist: bla, bla, bla, in favour of the treaty…

No campaigner (red with rage): I’m against abortion and that’s why I will vote against this treaty… but I wish your mum would have taken the pill of the day-after!

—

Swedish activist: Will you vote for the Lisbon treaty tomorrow?

Random irish pedestrian: No.      But nice tits!

—

Dannish acitivist: Will you vote for the Lisbon treaty tomorrow?

Random irish pedestrian 2: I will vote no.

Dannish acitivist: please! You have to vote yes!

Random irish pedestrian 2: I’ll vote yes if you give me a blowjob.

Dannish acitivist: …

—

Italian activist: Will you vote for the Lisbon treaty tomorrow?

Random irish pedestrian 3: mmmm… don’t know. If you let me cut your hair I’ll vote yes.

Italian activist: mmm… ok, let’s go!

15 minutes later the Italian activist comes back with new hair cut and having won not one but 2 votes for the YES.

—

Catalan activist: Will you vote for the Lisbon treaty tomorrow?

Random irish pedestrian 4: pardon?

Catalan activist: ah! Pardon, you’re French? Then I guess you can’t vote…

French tourist/immigrant: Oui, I’m here since two weeks trying to find a job to learn English… When did you arrived?

Catalan activist: mmm… yesterday afternoon.

French tourist/immigrant: you arrive yesterday and you already got a job?!?

 Posted by admin at 19:51
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