British citizens love the EU

An interesting poll about British attitudes has been conducted. You can find the original poll data here (as a pdf). Summaries of the poll results can be found at E!sharp and here is a summary form the blog Gulf Stream Blues.

Some interesting results:

...though only 37% of survey respondents said they have a positive image of the EU, 48% said that the British media has a negative bias against it....When asked how much the UK contributes to the EU’s budget, the average said that it was 23% of Britain’s gross national income. It’s actually 0.2%. Yet only 6% of respondents said they believed it was under 3%.

And overall there are many areas where majorities think EU involvement is a good thing:

Respondents were pretty evenly split on whether the benefits of membership outweighed the drawbacks. But they did see a role for the EU in issues of cross-border impact, with around four in every five supporting its involvement in protecting human rights, and in dealing with climate change, terrorism and the financial crisis. Questioned on whether certain initiatives had benefited Britain specifically, clear majorities gave the thumbs up to the single market (67 percent), environmental legislation (58 percent) and the greater clout accruing to the country in world trade negotiations. Even 49 percent said working conditions had improved (against 46 percent who did not).

Libertas...again

Despite my misgiving about Decaln Gangley and his Astroturf organization Libertas, I can not deny that the election would be extremely boring without him. Well, in fact the election is still boring, but Libertas creates at least some interest. Via Julien Frisch I found this blog that is solemnly dedicated to anti-Libertas work*.

Additionally Ralf Grahn has an interesting write up of the Libertas congress that happened yesterday:**

• Declan Ganley & Libertas: One big mess?
  
• For Libertas Brussels is Washington
  
• Libertas’s big catch: Lech Walesa
  
• Who are Libertas? And what?

So far the webpage of Libertas does not of all that much information about specific policies. I also was not able to find some list about the national canidates. That would be most interesting. According to the everything I have read so far the Polish chapter of Libertas is consists essentially of the League of Polish Families. A strongly anti-EU party.

The leading candidate from Spain seemed to have a fascinating vision for the future of the EU (via the anti-libertas blog):

And Senor Duran won one of the biggest cheers of day during his address, when he announced: "I want to find with Declan a new Europe, a white Europe, not a black Europe."

Maybe he just wants to say that he wants Europe to have bright future, but it sure sounds strange.

The head of the German Libertas branch is Carlos A. Gebauer. From what I found. He seems to be a standard issue economic liberal. His personal webpage contains a huge amount of his writings on all kinds of subjects. However, a quick search shows that only three contain anything about EU issues. This leaves it unclear, what kind of institutional structure of Europe Mr. Gebauer envisions. Furthermore his articles on European issues display the typical Eurosceptic structure of total outrage against some rather inconsequential and technical decision taken in Brussels.


Update: Vic van Rumpt has just informed me in the comments that Libertas will not be running in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, Romania, and Slovakia.

*I did not only find the link to the blog on Juliens page, I also use the exact same turn of phrase to describe what it does. I hope Julien can forgive my for plagiarizing his work.

**Mmhhh... ok I actually copied these links from Julien as well...so why write a post at all. I guess I have to add some independent "analysis".

Everybody Loves Iceland

Iceland a country with about 300.000 citizen is about to join the European Union. Or to be more precise, there is a strong likelihood that the new social democratic government will apply for EU membership. Iceland has been part of the EEA since its inception in 1994. But so far the Common Fisheries Policy has made full EU membership rather unattractive for Iceland.

I am not exactly sure how Iceland is going to resolve disputes about Fishing rights. Maybe Icelandic membership will be discussed in tandem with a reform of the Common Fisheries Policy. EU officials seem ready to welcome Iceland with open arms. From Barrents Observer:

Former EU enlargement commissioner Gunter Verheugen ... said both Iceland and Norway could obtain union membership in as little as six months should they want it.

I do not want to spoil the lovefest, however I have already previously expressed my opposition to further enlargement of the EU. At the current moment the EU is still at an institutional dead end. The Lisbon Treaty might get passed sooner or later, but this will not solve the major problems in the EU. Any further increase in the size of the EU will make changes more and more difficult.

Additionally to the likely membership of Iceland, all Balkan states (including Albania) seem to be on the path towards accession. As a report of the EPP-ED stated:

"The good news is that the EU sticks to its position of unlimited accession prospects for all countries in the Western Balkans. This prospect pushes reforms in these countries and is a guarantee for stability in the entire region."

Good news? And how is the EU actually going to guarantee stability in the region? What instruments does it have? We can not even agree on the recognition of Kosovo.

To come back to the major point of this post. I do not want to offend any Icelander, but I do not think that enlarging the EU is currently feasible.

The European Citizen of Europe

I just updated my blog role and added some new blogs. It seams that we are all European Citizens now:

Citizen Europe by Josef Litobarski,

The European Citizen by Eurocentric,

and

Federal Consitution Europe by Citizen of Europe.

Properties of a President

The Independent reports that Tony Blair is seen by many European leaders as a possible candidate for the job of the European President, which might or might not come into existence (depending on the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty). There is a discussion of this article at the European Tribune, here. It is not clear to me if this article really represents the thinking of Euroepan leaders or if it is make believe of the Editors.

Some things stick really out here:

Other European leaders are also broadly supportive because they want a high-profile figure to represent the 27-nation bloc in the new alliance with the US administration. Mr Blair remains a popular figure in the US.

What? Popularity in the US is an important criteria? I am in complete favor of strong alliance with the US, but this should be a secondary issue at best.

Moreover, the claim that Sarkozy now supports Blair is difficult to swallow. If Angela Merkel and Sarkozy are as serious about regulation of the financial markets, as they claimed at the G20 meeting, a British president is absolutly out of the question. Tony Blair will never let anything happen to The City.

Paul Krugman: A Continent Adrift

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman writes today about the economic situation in Europe. Key passage:

But there’s a deeper problem: Europe’s economic and monetary integration has run too far ahead of its political institutions. The economies of Europe’s many nations are almost as tightly linked as the economies of America’s many states — and most of Europe shares a common currency. But unlike America, Europe doesn’t have the kind of continentwide institutions needed to deal with a continentwide crisis.

Economic Integration cannot work without political Integration.

Does the EU matter in the Financial Crisis?

Unfortunately I did not have the time to say more about the speech of Vaclav Klaus in the European Parliament, despite my repeated promises. About 4 week have passed since the speech, but there is one more thing I liked highlight.

Mr. Klaus claimed that Government intervention, and especially European Coordination of Government intervention will not help to solve the current financial crisis. Considering this one wonders if the European Union would work a little bit more effective if the Council presidency would not be held by the Czech Government.

Saving Democracy by abolishing the Parliament

Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, gave a speech yesterday, in front of the European Parliament. Vaclav Klaus has always been rather outspoken in his opposition to the European Project. So the speech contained not much new. But it is a nice example to discuss many things that are problematic with the Europhobic view in general.

So lets take a look at some parts of the speech. After a polite introduction the more relevant part starts:

At this forum, I would like to repeat once again clearly and loudly – for those of you who don’t know it or do not want to know – my conviction, that for us there was and there is no alternative to the European Union membership and that in our country there is no relevant political force that could or would want to undermine this position. We have been therefore really touched by the repeated and growing attacks we have been facing; attacks based on the unfounded assumption that the Czechs are searching for some other integration project than the one they became members of five years ago. This is not true.

Mr. Klaus opposes the current structure of the EU, and as we will later see, it is difficult to imagine any type of EU corresponding to his ideal model of integration. Therefore the assurance that there is no alternative to European Union membership is rather strange (especially considering that in his view the Czech Republic is member of a Union equivalent to the Soviet Union).

One might also note that he and the Czech people are in fact not equivalent. Attacking the opinions of Vaclac Klaus is part of the free discussion about European matters that he himself supports strongly. So maybe the better form of the penulitmate sentence would be:

I have been therefore really touched by the repeated and growing attacks I have been facing; attacks based on the unfounded assumption that I am searching for some other integration project than the one the Czech Republic became a member of five years ago

He now defines the purpose of the EU

- removing unnecessary – and for human freedom and prosperity counterproductive – barriers to the free movement of people, goods, services, ideas, political philosophies, world views, cultural patterns and behaviour models that have been for various reasons over the centuries formed among the individual European states;

- a joint care of the public goods, existing on the continental level, meaning projects that cannot be effectively carried out through bilateral negotiations of two (or more) neighbouring European countries.

Well that is possible definition. But obviously that is also quite an amount of stuff that has to be done. A significant amount of decisions has to be made
and to be executed. At the same time Vaclac Klaus opposes the bureaucratization (whatever that exactly means), and calls for the end of the EU Parliament. So how should his goals be accomplished?

I will go through the rest of the speech tomorrow.

Vaclav Klaus: sad, old Dude!

I do not have them time right now to write about it, but I intend to excerpt the speech of Vaclav Klaus tomorrow.

Libertas moving to the hard right

There has been some discussion in the interwebs about what to expect of the new party Libertas. But I think this issue has been resolved. Libertas is going to be far right party full of crazy Eurosceptics (see also here and here, including comments). The Irish Times reports:

“We want the elections to European Parliament in 2009 to be a kind of a referendum against the anti-democratic Brussels and Treaty of Lisbon,” said Mr Ganley at a weekend rally, broadcast live on Polish television and which received widespread coverage.

The Polish Libertas line-up has yet to be finalised but is expected to draw on figures from the populist Self Defence party and the ultra-Catholic League of Polish Families (LPR), an anti-abortion, anti-Semitic, anti-gay grouping.

LPR figures at the Libertas event included creationists and death penalty proponents, as well as a former MEP who once suggested that “deviant” gay rights marchers in Warsaw “need to be walloped with a big stick”.

LPR and Self Defence have been relegated to the fringes of politics after failing to re-enter parliament in 2007; their voters have been absorbed by the main opposition, conservative Law and Justice Party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Whats up with Declan?

When we last left our hero, he was busy assuring everybody at a meeting at the Heritage Foundation that he is solidly pro-Europe. We now know that he is totally, pro "democracy" and "accountability", yet a little short short on specifics.

As Mark Mandel reports the European Parliament has started to investigate the funding sources of Libertas. As Mr. Mandel notes, several of the theories, regarding the funding, are borderline conspiracy theories.

...many believe that the mysterious Mr Ganley is a stooge of the American military industrial complex, doing the bidding of the right-wing neo-cons in the CIA and Pentagon, hell-bent on smashing the rise of a political Europe.

As I have said before, one should be careful with this type of accusation. Nothing of that sort has ever been proven. And even if some funding comes from American Think Tanks, it is most likely still legal.

In the last update on the Libertas Homepage, Mr. Ganley addresses the accusations, and (to no surprise) call the "absurd". What is more interessting is that he has now clearly stated that he intents to create a political party for the European Election:

Over the past four months, we have travelled throughout the EU, meeting political leaders and ordinary citizens. We have sought, and received, support for the Irish position, and we are working to build a platform that could give all EU citizens a chance to express their views on Lisbon, - and indeed on the future of democracy and prosperity in Europe, - at the ballot box next June.

However, what hasn't changed is that there is zero positive vision. It is all about reecting the Lisbon Treaty, and despite his stated desire to see a directly elected European President, he offers no alternative vision.

Well, that is actually not totally true. There is one policy related point on the Libertas webpage and it is about Energy, or more specificially Energy independence. Maybe Mr. Ganley has some investments in alternative energies which he wants to see funded, by the European Union, who knows.

What would be needed is an alternative vision for the insitutional organization of the European Union. But Libertas has nothing to add, and seeks only to destroy.

Introducing an EU bond

The unofficial European Economic Advisory council, VoxEU, recommends that
common EU bonds should be issued. This type of bond would have to be backed up by all Eurozone members.

Only a few month ago I would I have rejected such a suggestion out of hand, but the recommendations published on VoxEU have had a decent track record throughout this crises. So maybe this is a good idea. Jan Seifert offers his opinion on the issue here.

Berlusconi: A Great Leader in Troubled Times

Italy is leading the way towards a new European Economic structure. In the face of large budget deficits and mounting public debt the Berlusconi Government has identified a crucial area of wasted taxpayer money: Education .

Steep cuts in the money spend on Education and hopefully significant wage adjustments will help to move Italy towards a more manual labor based Economy, on a level playing field with China.

P.S. Knowledge Economy is for suckers!

Message to Margot

There is an easy way for Margot Wallstroem to improve the Communication of the commission with European Citizen.

Blogging commissioner Margot Wallstroem is responsible for "Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy" and as such "plays a critical role in the European Commission, by helping to develop a new approach to European communication". However from looking at her blog it is rather obvious that she takes a more classical Marketing point of view, instead of working for institutional changes which would increase accessibility and transparency.

But fear not Margot! All lot of work has already been done. There is compact document produced by Statewatch which outlines concrete steps necessary to improve European Communication.

Will Margot take action and do more then write feel good stories on her blog? About on year ago there was another issue which could have gone a long way in helping people understand the EU. Back then no consolidated version of the Lisbon Treaty was available and so it was impossible for a Laymen to form any opinion about the upcoming treaty. In the Blogosphere the issue was mainly pursued by Ralf Grahn, but Margot was completly absent. Maybe this time things will be different.

Free Movement

In context with the possible entry of Iceland into the EU I have taken a look at the Common Fisheries Policy and how it developed historically. Since fishing is a significant part of the Icelandic Economy there is a certain fear that the Common Fisheries Policy might be of disadvantage for Iceland.

I want to add to my previous discussion that there is another obvious reason why it is of advantage to govern fishing on an EU level. Because of the vast range of space of fish movement, enforcement of Fishing quota on the national level is completely useless.

Causa Mandelson

Update: Reading through the comments here, it was mentioned that the whole conflict of interest issue only surfaced after he left his position as a commissioner.

I more or less completely missed the whole Mandelson affair. Mandelson has been recalled from his position as EU trade commissioner after accusations of conflict of interest. It seams that Mandelson visited and stayed on a yacht owned by a Russian Billionare, who subsequently profited from a decrease in Alluminium tarifs. However, Mandelson denies that there is a conection between the meeting and the policy.

Bruno Waterfield has a lengthy post on "luxurious hospitality, lavished on European Commissioners by their billionaire buddie".The plural in European Commissioners means essentially two, Manuel Barroso and Peter Mandelson. In this article he demands that all these meeting should be public knowledge.

Generally I am all for transparency, however I am not sure how privat social meetings of Commissionars should be treated. I am not aware that German Gouvernment officials have strict rules, about declaring this type of activity, and I wonder how this is done in other European countries.

A constructive Vision for Eurosceptics

In an article in the Telegraph Norman Tebbit (via European Avenue) lays out a proposal for Eurosceptics. One should note here that Norman Tebbit himself is a Eurosceptic, who believes that Britain has no place inside a federal European Union. But in contrast to other Europhobes, in this artice a least, he does not simply throw dirt, but presents a positive vision how the EU should be structured.

He starts with the following observation (while talking about Giscard):

Like de Gaulle half a century ago, Giscard has recognised that Britain would no more fit into the 21st-century European state than it would have fitted into the European empires of the 16th, 19th or 20th centuries.

The overal point here is the neccessity for pro-Europeans to recocinze that we have to develop towards a multi-speed union. His proposal:

Giscard may well find the EU more likely to unravel into a new West European Republic of six or 10 states willing to sacrifice their identities to gain the undoubted advantages that the United Kingdom has enjoyed in its own union of England, Scotland, Ulster and Wales, and 15 or 20 still sovereign states in a new treaty relationship.

That is indeed a distinct possibility and in my opinion it is absolutly possible that this really that best structure for our continent. After he talks a little about Thatcher and internal Tory stuff he comes to the conclusion,

The task for the Tory leadership, the euro-sceptics, the "Better Off Out" supporters and Ukip is to crystalise the vision of Mrs Thatcher's Bruges speech into the architecture of a new European treaty, one that would constitute a framework within which sovereign states would co-operate with a European Republic formed of those nations willing to enter a complete political union of their own

Exactly! It would be a really positive devolpment if Europhobes would present a vision how they think the EU should be structured in the future along the lines of this article. This would finally enable us to have constructive debate about the EU.

Towards a more perfect Union

vie Ralf Grahn, I found this very interesting proposal by the organization Statewatch. The summarize in a very short and precise way concrete steps which can be taken to make the EU Institutions more accountable and transparent. All this steps can be taken without signing any new treaty.

They propose for example measures which would enhance the accessability for documents produced by the European Council and by the European Court of Justice. Those ruels are included in the Lisbon Treaty, but can be adopted immedialty.

Overal the document is to long to be summarized here. But it is really brilliant and adopting the draft resolutions which are appended would go a long way in changing the way the EU operates.

As I am writing this post I see that Julien Frisch has also posted about the proposal. Let me point out that much more is discussed then the Council. There are also important ideas how to change the drafting process of directives and much more. Read the whole thing!.

Gone Fishin'

In this comment thread, about Iceland and the possibility of Iceland joining the Union, the possible negative effects of the EU Fishing policy on Icelands economy have been mentioned. To get a better understanding of this question I looked at the details of the Common Fisheries Policy on the repository of All That Is Known and True, also known as Wikipedia and on the European Commission Webpage.

One thing which is notable is that according to the Commission webpage, fishing is "generally less then one percent of the gross domestic product" of member nations. That doesn't sound particularly important especially if one considers additionally that "Fish farming is the fastest growing area of world food production." Which means that the need to fish the seas might decrees significantly in the future.

So why do we have an EU wide Fishing policy at all? According to Wikipedia:

The first rules were created in 1970. When the fisheries policy was originally set up the intention was to create a free trade area in fish and fish products with common rules. It was agreed that fishermen from any state should have access to all waters.

That sound reasonable, however with the change of the international definition of sea rights the policy took an interesting turn:

In 1976 The EU extended its fishing waters from 12 miles to 200 miles (22.2 km to 370.4 km) from the coast, in line with other international changes. This required additional controls and the CFP as such was created in 1983.

So far so good. But the rubber meats the road when it comes to setting the quotas for fishing. Overall the way these quotas are set seems to be rather dysfunctional and for example forces fishers to throw dead fish back into the sea because they don't have the right to fish this particular sort of fish (but then the fish is dead anyway, and stocks a depleting).

A second source of discontent is the possibility to buy fishing right all across the Union waters. This is something that would specifically affect Iceland. It would give fisheries all across Europe the possibility to buy up the fishing rights in Icelandic waters (however I am not exactly sure who pays what to whom in such a case). In Iceland, despite the recent surge of the financial industry, fishing industry provides 70% of export income, which is very significant. Therefore joining the Union, might be indeed a bad deal for Iceland.

At the end of this post which discusses the problems with the Common Fisheries Policy, I want to use the chance to give the word to the real victims of the tyrannical EU.

Stealing good Ideas

I again restructured my sidebar and I wanted to note that I stole the Idea to put blogs with many different Languages in a single section called "Tour de Babel" from DJ Nozem.