I am back from my holidays and a blogging hiatus to find that EU finds it easier to rally behind a mindless G20 Obama love-in on fiscal and bank bailouts than it is to hold a summit on preserving jobs.
EU heads of state and government have decided to run away from cancel a Prague meeting, originally scheduled for May 7, which aimed to bring together national leaders with businesses and trade unions.
Only last week, the European Commission President José Manuel Barroso was insisting that it would be a “fundamental error” not to hold the summit.
“Our public opinion would not understand, it would be unacceptable that EU leaders meet at the highest level and that they discuss the problems of the banks and not social problems. That they discuss the problems of the financial sector and not that of employment. That would be really unacceptable,” he said on Mar 18.
Oh well.
Nicolas Sarkozy was the first to beat the retreat at an EU summit last Thurs night as back home over a million French citizens took to the streets in demonstrations against his administration, the most unpopular in over 50 years of the French Fifth Republic.
The French President was insistent that he would rather not face the music at a summit that was bound to become a Mayday focus for international protests and growing social discontent.
“Mr Sarkozy was most emphatic that he did not wish to provide French people or trade unions with another opportunity to protest,” said one official close to talks.
Update: Over on main EUobserver news, Honor Mahony quotes a Czech official, who says: “A number of countries felt it would raise too optimistic expectations before the European elections.”
Is it unreasonable to expect EU leaders to do something about unemployment?
#1 by Eurostar on March 24, 2009 - 10:34 am
Why would you call the EU ” cowardly ” if mainly Sarkozy rejected the idea of such a meeting? Why organize such a meeting anyway if it is just show with zero impact anyway? A big show will only lead to dissapointment cause the citizens ask for serious answers and solutions. Something the Prague meeting would not have been able to deliver.
#2 by Patrick on March 24, 2009 - 3:29 pm
Funny how the same people who bang on about the EU taking too much power and being so useless are always the first to complain when it doesn’t act. Damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t?
This is all the more interesting as it comes from a journalist writing for a paper published in a country known more for whinging about national sovereignty than the future direction of the EU, and one of the two countries most responsible for the current crisis. Perhaps if this country would get off its proverbial glutus maximus and put some sensible propositions (other than spending invisible money) on the table, then perhaps we could do more than just wait for a franco-german initiative?
#3 by zeleneye on March 24, 2009 - 6:39 pm
More bile from Bruno. Poor old Bruno, I am really starting to feel sorry for you. You must be really miserable. Your blogs here and elsewhere are dull, clichéd and repetitive. Just because you write for a rag like the telegraph doesn’t mean you have to become as jingoistic as all its readers. You used to be such a nice young boy.
#4 by al on June 10, 2009 - 11:30 pm
I like how those who oppose what Mr Waterfield has to say can only do so through infantile personal attacks and rhetoric. Kind of vindicates him, I think, even more than what Europhiles like Habsburg and Kohl say openly. Never mind Barroso, who showed his open contempt—how do you like being told that you (yes you) “would not understand”? Good little subjects.