Archive for February, 2009
Let us Start Thinking About a Post-Recessionary Europe
Posted by: Peter Sain ley Berry in EU on February 24th, 2009
Photo of polar panel courtesy clean-energy-ideas.com
We are in the midst of a global recession. All kinds of experts are beavering away writing deep and impenetrable analyses about financial regulation. Government leaders meet, making one pronouncement after another, in an attempt to shore up an ever tightening spiral of decline. Each day almost brings news of some other catastrophe or business failure. Massive amounts of money are being thrown at the stumbling economy. Where, when will it end?
We all assume that it will end. That the efforts now being made on our behalf will succeed and that our economic jumbo will pull out of its nosedive and begin climbing again. But what I want to ask is this: where are we trying to get to?
Let me explain. Let’s jump forward a few years (and it seems unlikely we shall be again in any routine market situation anytime soon) and ask what we want post-recessionary Europe to look like?
Is all the current activity directed simply at recreating 2006 – the last year before the financial cracks began to be noticeable? Having skidded off the road, is the extent of our ambition just to get back on tarmac again and to carry on speeding as before?
Certainly we shall repair the car, fit better brakes and steering; we shall stand less chance of coming off the road; but is it the intention that by 2012, say, we shall all be rolling along, as before? The container ships brimming once again with Chinese manufactures, shops full, lights on, a new car every three years? Is this the vision?
It seems it is. Eye-watering amounts of taxpayers money are being directed at shoring up banks and businesses. I see the various liabilities incurred by the British government to mitigate the effects of the recession now stand at some €1.5 trillion - about the same as the total value of the British economy.
But still the parks are full of unsold cars and vehicle plants hover on the brink of collapse. As big businesses go under an ever-increasing number of suppliers are forced into administration, unemployment rises inexorably and the toll of home repossessions mounts. Elsewhere in Europe whole governments flirt with defaulting on the amounts borrowed to finance their past reconstruction and development.
The British government is not alone in its actions. The Commission is urging all member states down the financial stimulus path. But what worries me is the absence of debate as to where all this money is being directed. Indeed, is returning to nothing more than a better regulated status quo likely to be sustainable in the longer term?
Should we prop up the car industry when we know there is already 20 to 30 per cent over-capacity in the vehicle market? Is it not possible to do something else with these plants – and the vital employment that they provide – that might serve some alternative and more sustainable post-recession vision?
Could we not, for instance, convert surplus car and supply plants to make solar panels with the unsold cars going to armies of fitters – recruited from the ranks of the unemployed – who would install the panels in the European housing stock? The whole exercise financed from the debt that we taxpayers (and our children) will be repaying for far further into the future than even the most gloomy prognostications of the recession’s duration.
Of course, I know that such matters are never simple. Yet in wartime quite amazing feats of manufacture seem to be capable of accomplishment if sufficient government money is available, as seems to be the case today.
However my purpose is not to prescribe; I am expert neither in manufacturing nor in renewable energy. My concern is the lack of political debate about the possibilities: whether using the recession to mount a full-frontal attack on our lack of energy sustainability, or whatever. The assumption seems to be that we shall just surmount this present economic inclemency to return to where we were. The thinking all appears to be narrow, focused on the immediate road ahead, rather than any strategic objective.
This matters. It may be easy to borrow money – at least if you are the British government – but it is considerably harder to pay it back. Britain was left reeling under the burden of the debts it incurred in the Second World War. We shall be left reeling again by the debts now being incurred. We are not alone: many other countries will reel too. That is why it must surely be imperative to ensure that money borrowed is invested wisely in activities that will produce a payback.
That brings me back to renewable energy, for which, clearly, there is just such a payback. Borrowing invested in renewable energy can be repaid from savings on imported energy without burdening the taxpayer.
The sun provides enough energy in a day to supply the world’s energy needs for 40 years. That’s what Benita Ferrero-Waldner, European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy, said the other day. True, the unit costs of the equipment and installation are presently high, but then the market is tiny: there must be enormous potential for economies of scale.
Manufacturing solar panels and equipping domestic and industrial premises in suitable locations in Europe with them could easily absorb the casualties of this recession. It would be productive investment. Moreover it would be something to lay on the table when the international community meets in Copenhagen at the end of this year to discuss the world’s climate change future.
Above all solar energy could provide a vision for European manufacturing, post recession. Not merely carrying on in the same unsustainable way, but a radical switch from energy dependency to energy security and a more sustainable lifestyle.
But who is talking about this? Who will pick up the baton and provide the grand plan? Where are the politicians with vision? With the elections around the corner this surely is a unique opportunity for the political groups in the European Parliament to make their voices heard.
Hallo, Good Evening and Welcome
Posted by: Peter Sain ley Berry in EU on February 17th, 2009
Hallo! And welcome to my blog – ‘A View from the Outfield.’ Having written columns for EUobserver for the last four years or so, the format will be changing and I shall be joining distinguished colleagues, Nic, Bruno, Hajo and Honor here in our own blogosphere.
Living in Britain, I have never been a European ‘insider’ – but my career has frequently run alongside the great river of European construction. I have written about the Union, assisted on projects, travelled about Europe and of course engaged in the great British European political debate.
‘The outfield’ is a cricketing term. It refers to the players who inhabit that part of the ground on the periphery of the action. These may have great influence on the game, taking a distant catch or retrieving a ball short of the boundary. Outfielders gain a sense of perspective from their position.
History, like geographical distance can give an equally vital perspective. It helps us to see the woods as a whole and not to get lost within the forest. And if there has been one overarching theme in my previous columns it has been to distinguish between those broad rivers that flow slowly in this direction or that and the chiff-chaff of events blowing hither and thither on which analysis is often focused.
Yet looking to history to discover where the broad rivers came from prompts other questions about where they are going. Let me illustrate with a question that I am frequently asked: ‘Should Turkey join the European Union?’
To which I find it very hard to respond. For before answering this question we have to ask the broader question about the sort of future European Union we want.
I also say ‘Do you mean Turkey alone?’ Or do you mean Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus and so on? Official thinking here seems confused: the Commission says that Turkey is short to medium term, with the rest long term and perhaps even never. Which seems reasonable enough until you consider that each accession is not an isolated event. Ukraine’s path is facilitated by Turkish entry and the timescale between Turkey joining and the Ukraine following is unlikely to be more than ten years.
I am philosophically neutral on this. But what I do want to see is something properly debated – a long-term plan – and not some piece of political ad hocery by politicians determined to flag up a ‘trophy’ that can be written into their obituaries.
It is true, we have a Committee of Wise People under the sagacious leadership of Felipe Gonzales supposed to be considering such questions. ‘Where should Europe’s final boundaries lie?’ ‘What should the Union’s eventual competences be?’ What adjustments to Europe’s machinery of government may we need?’ And so on.
These matters should be the stuff of popular debate. Although we have an election to the European Parliament in prospect in a very few months it is safe to say that the would-be parliamentarians are unlikely to trouble their electors’ heads with such weighty matters.
And here we run into another fundamental problem, which is the yawning gap between ordinary Europeans and European Government. I use the term European Government because quite clearly we are governed at European level as well as being governed at the member state level, the regional level and often various local levels as well; (for that matter we are ‘governed’ after a fashion at the global level too through the United Nations).
Good governance implies the broad consent of the people for the system of government itself (whatever form it may take) as well as the opportunity, at regular intervals, to change political direction by voting in an alternative set of politicians with an alternative set of policies. Clearly, despite having a European Parliament, we cannot say this applies to the Union.
The Commission will tell you that widening and deepening can go hand in hand. True they can. But what they do not say is that widening of borders and deepening of integration can only go hand in hand with a simultaneous degree of widening and deepening of democratic consent.
In its developmental stages the European Union was not very wide and not very deep. It developed an enlightened ‘community model’ which commanded a degree of acceptance sufficient for the limited governance it had to bear. The Union has widened and deepened since, but, the degree of acceptance, the degree of democratic control over the executive, hasn’t.
We ordinary folk cannot vote to bring Turkey in; we cannot vote for a party that backs a wider, shallower union over one that backs a narrower, deeper union. Meanwhile, major change, including monetary union and enlargement proceeds.
It is that feeling of powerlessness, in my view – that the development of the Union is some runaway train beyond democratic control – that is concerning and causes the revolts against the otherwise broadly sensible measures to reform Europe’s constitutional structures.
Besides, while we have been focused on the Constitutional and Lisbon treaties a major constitutional change has taken place in the Union, unwritten, unheralded, almost unnoticed and one which is accelerating.
This is the shift in power – and especially the power of political initiative – from the European Commission to the European Council and to the larger states in the European Council at that. Partly this has been an unintended consequence of enlargement – from 15 to 27 – and the complexities that that has caused for the ‘community method;’ partly it has been due to democratic tensions, partly it follows the inability of the Commission to give political weight to Europe’s trading power.
And partly it is a result of the failure of the European Parliament properly to articulate the voices of the people and to put itself at the forefront of European development. Sadly, the Parliament is supine: too concerned with its own procedures and privileges even to decide where it should sit. To those of us brought up on tales of parliaments that defied kings and armies, tanks and artillery, one despairs that this European Parliament will ever do anything more important, collectively, than twiddle with regulations. That may be a harsh judgement – I would so much like to be proved wrong – but it is the view from the outfield.
A l’Eau, C’est l’Heure
Posted by: Peter Sain ley Berry in EU on February 13th, 2009
Last Month the European Commission announced that 300,000 maritime workers across the EU are to benefit from better working conditions. This, I am sure, is good news for the sailors even if the phrase ‘across the EU’ did made me think immediately of that mythical institution – the Swiss Navy. This agreement will mean better medical care, better access to training and better accommodation for seafarers.
Samuel Johnson, the great eighteenth century British lexicographer would have been pleased. He detested ships and could never understand why anyone should ever embark voluntarily. ‘Prison with the chance of drowning,’ was how he described them, or words to that effect.
Still, on-board conditions have improved somewhat since the days when it could take upwards of half a day to cross the Channel and a month to cross the Atlantic. The new arrangement, says Vladimír Špidla, Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, “is proof once again that social dialogue can play a very decisive role and deliver real benefits, both for workers and employers.”
One hopes so. But the danger is always that shipping will be contracted out to those countries who care even less about their workers that even the hardest-faced European employer. That’s when there’s something to ship, of course. At present ships are just being laid up and crews paid off.
Our Hope is Beyond the Stars
Last month in Prague the Slovenian Commissioner responsible for Science, Janez Potocnik, launched the ‘International Year of Astronomy 2009.’ These days there are international years, and world days, for just about everything; it is only a matter of time before they find their way into our diaries and calendars. This one was ‘proclaimed’ by the United Nations in December 2007 to mark the 400th anniversary of the first recorded astronomical observations with a telescope by Galileo.
This seems to be a trifle contrived. Galileo certainly developed an early telescope in 1609, but people had been using lenses and recording astronomical observations as far back as the Babylonians whose 360 degree circle – presumably corresponding to the number of days in the year – we are still using. Nevertheless, there has to be some peg on which to hang a hat.
“Astronomy is the kind of science that gets peoples’ attention,” said Commissioner Potcnik. “And it’s that appeal which can have another important impact: as a showcase for a new generation of scientists and engineers.”
This is true enough – but the question is why? Of course the space race has generated all sorts of new technologies – but what information of practical usefulness has ever come out of star-gazing per se? Is this why there are so few women astronomers?
On the Naming of Cats
I am feeling especially sorry for my fellow Europeans who recently lost their gas supply, thanks to the shenanigans between Kiev and Moscow. The only way to have a predictable and sustainable supply of fuel is to live in a forest and to burn wood, as we do down in the Auverne. Even without the actual heat from the wood, the labour of all that chopping and sawing and humping logs to the wood-burning stoves keeps us pretty warm.
But of course wood is a poor fuel when it comes to industry and almost impossible to use as a feedstock. That’s why chemical plants have been closing left right and centre. I was struck by a report of two such in Bulgaria – Neochim and Agropolychim – mentioned in despatches so to speak, last month.
These wonderful names simply roll off the tongue. They sound, not like the fertiliser factories that they are, but like names appropriated from a pair of superior Persian cats.
My mother’s family used to christen their large congregations of felines after American railroads: Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé, one lot were called. Two others became Baltimore and Ohio, the latter being a particularly violent Siamese with a tendency to pounce on unsuspecting guests in the middle of the night.
I don’t own any cats at present, but if I should acquire a pair I shall call them Neochim and Agropolychim.
…..and Cat Fur
Still on the subject of cats it is sad to relate that there are still countries in the world who farm these beautiful creatures (and dogs too) for their fur, which is made into garments and exported to Europe, usually under some label to camouflage what it really is. European institutions have been trying to outlaw this practice for some time and finally a comprehensive ban on imports, exports and intra-Community trade came into force on 1 January 2009. Another small slow but welcome step for animal welfare.
