Archive for March, 2009
The great debate?
Posted by Honor Mahony in EU on March 30, 2009
In the narrow world of Brussels politics, high entertainment is looming. On Wednesday, Declan Ganley, founder of anti-treaty group Libertas, will face off with Dany ‘le Rouge’ Cohn-Bendit, co-leader of the Greens in the European Parliament in a debate on Europe. And already everybody’s talking about it.
To some in Brussels, Ganley is the devil himself. Charging around, upsetting the political apple cart with loose talk about the treaty all the while claiming to be pro-European. To others, Ganley, who wants to be an MEP, is bringing a welcome edge to the EU political debate ahead of the European elections.
But still he remains an unknown entity in the EU capital. While most have read about him – the Irish businessman who spearheaded a successful campaign against the Lisbon Treaty resulting in Ireland’s no vote last year – few have heard him speak, let alone debate.
He will be facing one of Brussels’ best known politicians. Cohn-Bendit, of 1968er fame, is strongly pro-European, highly opinionated, and a good debater. Ganley, who only recently made the switch from the boardroom to politics, has yet to show himself to be in the same league.
Still I am looking forward to the meeting. Ganley, I feel, is indeed tapping into a swell of people who feel alienated by Brussels. But I don’t think his one-horse campaign – table-thumping, slogan-filled but ultimately lacking in ideas as it is – is the answer.
At the recent unveiling of Libertas’ Brussels office – in which he harangued journalists like they needed to be converted to his politics – the party’s list of ‘principles’ consisted of a ragbag of ideas including less EU meetings, making MEPs’ expenses public and reducing the Union’s annual budget. There was little of what Libertas stood for and much of what it stood against.
So let the gloves come off on Wednesday – but let it be a debate on substance…
In search of political will
Posted by Honor Mahony in EU on March 27, 2009
Earlier this week, former Spanish prime minister Felipe Gonzalez outlined his vision for a strategy that would see the European Union through to 2020 or 2030. It’s a crowded field this whole opining on the future of the EU business, but Gonzalez’ views carry some weight as he heads a reflection group set up by member states to deliberate on what the main challenges for the Union will be for the coming years.
According to Gonzalez, who remains Spain’s longest-serving prime minister, most of the fundamentals upon which Europe and its societies stand need to be changed. Education must be shaken up to stop the flood of overly educated but not company-attractive graduates emerging into the jobs markets. The way society approaches its working day must be turned on its head so it is viewed as a function of productivity per hour rather than length of time worked by per week while risk-taking entrepreneurship must be actively encouraged. And lastly of course, that big elephant in room, creaking under the EU’s ageing population, the welfare system. Relatively vague on details, he suggested moving away from the idea that employees have to retire at a certain age while involving women more in the workforce and encouraging migration without which “social welfare would have gone ages ago.”
But all of this would imply some courageous and far-sighted political leadership. And there is not much of that around at the moment. The recent acrimonious haggling over how to allocate a €5bn overflow among member states for energy and internet projects and the thin consensus on the EU’s position ahead of next week’s G20 summit only serve to underline how difficult it is for member states to agree short-term measures, never mind the long-term structural changes needed for Europe.
Who knows how the political landscape will look in June 2010 when the report is due to be presented. There may be new faces in Berlin and the UK where elections will be held before the report’s deadline, while the economic crisis could cull yet more leaders.
But the sense of using this crisis to transform Europe is not yet there. If it does not come, Gonzalez’ report and its recommendations risk being consigned to the bin, albeit a worthy and wise bin.
Just look at the Lisbon Strategy of 2000. It was supposed to turn the EU into the world’s most dynamic economy by 2010. This headline goal is now – well it has been for some time – laughable. Instead, the Lisbon Strategy is synonymous with failed policies, missed deadlines and endless dutiful but mindless comparisons with the US. Will the next 10 years be the same?
Czech chutzpah
Posted by Honor Mahony in EU on March 25, 2009
My, oh my. What an unseemly institutional mess for the European Union. Its presidency has been hijacked by Czech domestic politics, meaning the bloc is now being run by a lame-duck caretaker government.
But not a particularly chastened one.
Despite having lost a confidence vote on Tuesday evening, Czech PM Mirek Topolanek, who still speaks on behalf of the European Union even if no longer for his country, had a undiplomatic bash at President Barack Obama’s plans to spend his way out of the economic crisis. On Wednesday, he called Washington’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan “a road to hell” noting bluntly that “the United States did not take the right path.”.
While many member states might agree with him in principle, not one of them would couch it in those terms. Particularly as the US and EU are to meet to next week to try and agree a common approach to tackling the economic crisis at the G20 meeting in London. The comments gave rise to the unusual situation of the European Commission chastising the EU presidency, saying they were “not helpful.”
Topolanek’s outspokenness is also odd given the obvious pride with which he announced that Prague had secured a visit by Obama for a summit on 5 April. If you invite someone more important than you to your house and you are patently grateful that they have accepted to come, why publicly criticise them beforehand? That takes quite some chutzpah.
But the Czech Social Democrat opposition, organisers of the political coup, don’t come out of this particularly well either. Was it really necessary to stage a no confidence vote now? Prague’s stint at the EU helm ends on 30th June.
Social Democrat leader Jiri Paroubek’s justifying comments that Topolanek’s government is a “disgrace” for the EU as it has no clear position on the Union and is unable to ratify the Lisbon Treaty ring rather hollow.
The result of Tuesday’s manoeuvrings mean the Czech Republic’s presidency is now an embarrassment to the EU while ratification of the Lisbon treaty could conceivably be postponed until next year.
Of course the EU will not grind to a halt. The Czech Presidency, planned well in advance, can largely be carried forward by Czech diplomats and officials. But in politics, where perception is everything, the EU has once again been damaged.
Ireland still open for business
Posted by Honor Mahony in EU on March 19, 2009
Irish leader Brian Cowen was in Brussels early Thursday pressing the flesh with officials from US software giant Microsoft and spreading the message that Ireland is still “open for business”.
Ireland’s vulnerable open economy, where exports of goods and services represent about 80 percent of national output (over double the EU average), has been hard hit by the economic downturn. Figures published earlier this week suggest unemployment will average 12 percent this year, exports will be down by six percent; GDP will fall by six percent and consumer spending will contract by 4.5 percent.
But Cowen, whose party has slumped in the polls and who is to announce a painful belt-tightening emergency budget to an already angry population next month, says Ireland’s economy is to be made over into a smart economy, ready to take advantage of an eventual global upturn.
The new economy is to be built using the tried and tested ingredients of Celtic Tiger years: a young highly educated English-speaking population; strong links between businesses and universities and “highly favourable business supports (and) tax regime.”
So any hopes that Germany may have had that Ireland would bring its corporate tax rate – the lowest in Europe – in line with its corporate tax look misplaced.
For his pains – and Mr Cowen has European ones too in the shape of pressure from other member states on ratification of the Lisbon treaty – he received some encouraging news from Microsoft.
Jan Muehlfeit, head of Microsoft Europe, said his company, already Ireland since 1985, had been “partners during the good times” and would continue to during the “challenging times.”
Anyway, he indicated, it’s not all bad news. Ireland has just featured for the first time in an episode of The Simpsons, a fact, noted Mr Muehlfeit, greatly appreciated by his 12-year old daughter. Cowen, who permanently has the expression of one who regrets ever taking on the job from Bertie just-got-out-in-time Ahern, cracked a small smile.
Talking about the EU
Posted by Honor Mahony in EU on March 18, 2009
Try as I might, I just can’t picture it. At least not in the way I imagine the organisers intended it. I am talking about the video booths (36 of them) that are to appear in each member state in the run-up to the June European elections. The good citizens of Europe are invited to pop inside and record a message on the EU and/or its policies.
While most of the EP’s campaign launch on Tuesday made sense to me, this had the kiss of Brussels on it. Thought up by people working in Brussels for people already living and breathing the EU.
Does Europe inspire people enough either way to get into one of these ‘choice boxes’ (a large, room-size, multi-media box as the blurb says) and say something about it? Constructive or otherwise. I am not sure it does.
Well, perhaps the organisers are not sure either. “No opinions are censored; only racist, sexist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic or intolerably rude statements will be moderated,” they say, which of course raises the question of where tolerably rude ends and intolerably rude begins.
The messages are to be relayed in Brussels. I shall be very curious to see the results of this exercise. And I am ready to eat humble pie if necessary.
Brussels gets paraded
Posted by Honor Mahony in EU on March 16, 2009
It is quite amazing how Ireland’s national holiday, St. Patrick’s Day, has been adopted by people all over the world. And even before the actual day itself. Pictures from the pre-17 March celebrations on Sunday showed people from Tokyo to London to the Green Zone in Baghdad celebrating the fact that St Patrick, who is thought to have been Welsh and began his days in Ireland as a slave, helped bring Christianity to a small nation in Western Europe.
This makes it all the more remarkable that Brussels, where Irish networking skills means the country punches far above its weight in EU policy-making, has not yet put the day firmly on the European capital’s calendar of events.
But it looks like that will change now.
Sunday saw the first ever St Patrick’s Day parade in Brussels, held in the Parc Cinquantenaire. There were Leprechaun hats, a tea and crisps stand, pints of Guinness and dogs with green ribbons. There were ‘Ben there, Dunne that and bought the Taoiseach’ T-shirts (Dunne is a rich entrepreneur once embroiled in payments to politicians scandals) and Brussels’ Irish butcher was feeding the masses. There were Gaelic games. U2 and the Cranberries blasted from a tinny speaker. I heard French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Danish and many children, and I met most of the Irish people I know in Brussels.
Alas, there were no floats. Someone else, German, I think, wanted a Riverdance display or at least “some foot-tapping”. But the weather was suitable. “Say, ‘I’m freezing’,” said one father getting his children to pose for a photograph.
It’s great that people other than us Irish want to wear a funny hat, paint a shamrock on their faces, and drink green beer. But I often wonder why.
Denis Buckley, promoter of Irish culture in Brussels, who got the inaugural parade off the ground reckons it’s down to people wanting to take part in a “day of being open.”
He believes it’s the “phenomenon of living a good life and enjoying ourselves” that people want to be a part of. “Everyone wants to let their hair down and have a good party.”
I sense the beginning of annual event.
Clinton charms her European audience
Posted by Honor Mahony in EU on March 6, 2009
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton charmed her way through an hour-long session with a young audience in the European Parliament on Friday, answering ten questions with grace and humour and doling out enough compliments about the EU to earn herself a standing ovation.
She was introduced by an obviously delighted EP chief Hans-Gert Poettering, who underlined how “very great” everything about her was: her past achievements, her likely future achievements, her being in the parliament, the answers to the questions she gave. It was almost toe-curling, but he stopped just in time.
Before Clinton started the Q&A she said she was struck by how the hopes and anspirations of other young people around the world were largely the same. The young Welsh nationalist, who asked about the breaking away of regions such as Wales and Scotland in the EU, probably bucked this trend somewhat.
A young Moldovan got to ask a question by virtue of wearing an “I love Hillary” t-shirt. Clinton said she could not leave without being quizzed by him. He turned out to be a gay rights activists and asked about the rights of gays and lesbians. She started by giving a stock answer but ended on a less standardised note, speaking about the rights of an individual “no matter who that person loves.”
A seasoned politician, she neatly sidestepped a question on divisions between old and new Europe saying all of Europe “is our essential partner” and did enough beating of her home country on its climate change record to thrill her listeners – bright young things from the EU institutions.
She praised Europe, calling it a “miracle,” and was careful to give a nuanced answer to a question essentially asking whether she did not find all the layers of EU structure, leaders and member states rather complicated to deal with.
Democracy is by it nature complex she noted, giving a mini lecture on the dangers of “process for the sake of process.”
And that was that from her side – the highest ranking US visit to the parliament since Ronald Reagan in 1985.
You speak just like a European, Poettering marvelled before giving a rallying cry to Irish voters to say yes to the Lisbon Treaty so there can be a “united and strong” Europe. And then Clinton’s European Parliament hour was over.
Making Brussels beautiful
Posted by Honor Mahony in EU on March 5, 2009
To step out of the European Commission and cross the road to its sister institution, the council of ministers, is to risk quick death under the wheels of a cranky car ripping towards the centre of town or a slow death from their exhaust pollution. That is during the day. At night time, the EU area descends into an after-work pall, empty of life.
In short, years of chaotic planning, for want of a better word, have left the European Quarter in Brussels, covering 170,000 square metres, an ugly, soul-less mess. Offices occupy 80 percent of the space and the area is cut through twice by multi-lane roads leading in and out of the EU capital.
Ordinary Bruxellois rarely go there and speak of an EU ghetto. People who work there during the day, live and enjoy themselves somewhere else. At weekend, many of the shops and restaurants that thrive on the deep pockets of the EU officials simply close and the most common sight is an earnest tourist or two trying to distinguish one big grey building from another.
In fact, as a metaphor of how far citizens commonly perceive the EU to be from ordinary life, it is sadly apt.
But now Brussels authorities, themselves sick of this eyesore, have taken the matter in hand on Thursday announcing the winner – Atelier Christian de Portzamparc – of a competition to “beautify” the area and make it a “diverse and living” neighbourhood.
Work will begin in 2011. The plans foresees most of the change for around theRue de la loi (one of the avenues splicing the quarter and famed for always being at least twice as windy as anywhere else in Brussels due to its wierd channelling effect and for the fact that you have to wash your face, and preferably your clothes, after walking down it during rush-hour traffic).
There will be some “iconic buildings” – this means they will be the highest in Brussels – more green spaces, more pedestrianized areas and more bike lanes. Some 160,000m² will be devoted to shops and 100,000m² to housing. There might even be a European school.
Will this make the quarter just more habitable just for ex-pats or will it appeal to Brussels people in general, I wonder.
In any case, don’t expect anything too soon. It is set to take 15 years to unroll and past projects don’t inspire confidence. The reconstruction of the commission’s asbestos-riddled Berlaymont building went several years over deadline and several millions over budget.
Meanwhile, I find it a shame that the project is still so car-friendly and doesn’t foresee a public transport nirvana as befits the EU’s message on the environment. “We’re not going to ban traffic from the Rue de la Loi,” Charles Picque, minister president of Brussels capital region, said. Why ever not?
Clinton’s young Europeans
Posted by Honor Mahony in EU on March 5, 2009
Europe wasn’t the first port of call for US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton since taking office, but she is more than making up for it by letting a gaggle of EU personalities squeeze on to her Brussels to-do list.
On Friday, She will meet the EU’s triumvirate of foreign policy officials – Benita Ferrero Waldner, Karel Schwarzenberg and Javier Solana – as well as commission president Jose Manuel Barroso.
And in rather a nice coup for the European Parliament, and particularly its chief Hans-Gert Poettering, Clinton will take part in a “town hall” Q&A session in the EU house. Of course, it could not be more different to a real town hall session, usually characterised by a preoccupation with local issues, varied listeners and the odd left field question.
This ‘town hall’ will be bright, shiny and young. In fact, it is to be an “audience of young Europeans” as the pre-event blurb says. Some 300 participants will take part with ‘young’, in this instance, meaning being between 20 and 35 years old. (So generous!).
The European Parliament will send around 150 officials from inside its walls, coming from the different political groups as well as from the administration. Choosing who gets to go and from where has remained good-natured, according to one EU official and has not reached d’hondt levels of entertainment (the fiendishly complicated system the parliament uses for distribution of posts in the house).
The remainder of the participants has been chosen by the US side and will consist of officials from the council, European commission and civil society. “We’re inviting the young people who we work with, young people in the institutions and also outside the institutions too,” a spokesperson for the US mission in Brussels said.
Clinton is to make a ten-minute introduction and then stay for about half an hour of questions. The Q&A session is to be open but not for journalists. “The journalists are not supposed to ask questions, it’s really for the young people in the audience to do that.”
But even if it is all a bit staged, it is somehow rather marvellous that the US Secretary of State will be dropping off to the European Parliament for a while.
Shame it’s a Friday though. I hope the assistants, officials, journalists and others make up for what is likely to be a glaring lack of MEPs in the corridors.
Indeed, some naughty euro-deputies have suggested that Clinton, who made the overture to the parliament in the first place, had to have this type of Q&A session with youths and not MEPs because, as we all know, weekends start on Thursday evening in the Brussels House.
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Behind the Scenes
Honor Mahony is editor of the EUobserver in Brussels and has also written for The Irish Times, Sunday Business Post and Spiegel Online. Her blog takes a closer look at political life in Brussels as well as wider trends in the European Union.
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