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On April 29, between 3pm and 4.30pm, Open Europe’s Director Mats Persson will participate in a panel discussion in Washington DC, hosted by the Heritage Foundation. The topic will be “Debts and Deficits: Warnings and Lessons from Europe for the Next U.S. President”. The discussion can be viewed online via this link:
http://www.heritage.org/events/2011/04/debts-and-deficits

Europe

Commission to review EU free movement rules at France and Italy’s request;
Cavendish: EU’s failure to reform the CAP is written on the faces of migrants arriving in Europe
El País notes that the European Commission is due to present a review of the Schengen agreement on the 4 May which will reportedly take account of French and Italian demands that member states be temporarily allowed to re-introduce border controls in exceptional circumstances. However, EUbusiness quotes German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle saying, “free movement in Europe is such an important achievement that it should not be up for renegotiation”.

Camilla Cavendish writes in the Times that, “Ten years ago, the EU could have reformed the Common Agricultural Policy to end the disgraceful subsidies to farmers that have kept African goods out of the market and contributed to North Africa’s grinding poverty. The EU’s failure to reform the CAP is written on the face of every single leather-jacketed hopeful arriving in Lampedusa. Now, it is too late. Youth unemployment is 18 per cent in Morocco, and 30 per cent in Tunisia.”

Cavendish adds, “The Schengen accord, which lets people travel between 25 EU nations without passport checks, is regarded in Brussels as one of the two great pillars of the European Union. The other is the euro. Both are looking increasingly shaky, with Eurocitizens wondering why their governments have so readily given away power over vital questions of economic management and immigration.”
El País EUbusiness Mail Mail: Glover Times: Cavendish

Irish banks continue to issue bonds to themselves in order to gain ECB loans
The Irish Independent reports that Irish banks’ controversial issuance of ‘own-use’ bonds is set to continue. ‘Own-use’ bonds are issued by the banks to themselves, but are guaranteed by the Irish state, and then posted as collateral to take cheap loans from the ECB. In the past few days Irish banks have issued €12bn of these bonds in order to roll over the original ‘own-use’ bonds until August, highlighting ongoing problems in the Irish banking sector.

Meanwhile, the FT reports that the Spanish government has urged its regional governments to work harder to meet their deficit targets, amid fears that it could be dragged further into the peripheral eurozone crisis. Separately, German inflation reached a new high of 2.6% in April, further increasing pressure on the ECB to raise interest rates more quickly. Most economists now expect another two rate increases this year, and one early next year.

Writing on Conservative Home, Andrew Bridgen MP argues that the bailout of Portugal would be throwing “good money after bad” and that the series of eurozone bailouts are ultimately wasted as they fail to “address the fundamental flaws in the Eurozone currency model”. For these reasons, Bridgen argues that the UK’s participation in the Portuguese bailout should be brought before Parliament for “an urgent debate”.
Irish Independent FT WSJ Conservative Home CityAM FT: Milne Irish Times Irish Times 2 El País: Vidal-Folch

EU’s Court of Justice set to ban patents on discoveries that involve stem cells
Leading scientists have warned that Europe’s bio-engineering industry will be “wiped out” if the EU’s Court of Justice follows the advice of its Advocate General, Yves Bot, and imposes a ban on research using human embryonic stem cells, on the grounds that it represents an immoral "industrial" use of human embryos.
Independent Guardian Times Mirror Mail Express BBC NewScientist

An opinion piece in El País notes that Spain has refused the co-presidency of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), suggesting that it should be taken over by the EU institutions. However, the article notes that if this were to happen, control “would end in the hands of [EU Foreign Minister] Catherine Ashton…the person who seems to have been appointed to send to sleep…European diplomacy created by Javier Solana.”
El País

The FT reports that Angela Merkel, German Chancellor, is set to approve Mario Draghi, President of the Italian Central Bank, as the next President of the ECB. However, Merkel is not expected to announce her support for sometime as she is hoping to gauge public reaction to Draghi following the French government’s announcement in support of his candidacy.
FT FT: Editorial WSJ: Smith

ECHR warned not to interfere in asylum and immigration cases
The Council of Europe, which represents 47 European states and oversees the European Court of Human Rights, has issued a statement relating toasylum and immigration cases, whichurges the ECHR to“take full account of the effectiveness of domestic procedures and… to avoid intervening except in the most exceptional circumstances”. In the Mail, UK Justice Secretary Ken Clarke argues that: “I believe that it is primarily for national parliaments and courts to protect the rights contained in the Convention”.
Mail Council of Europe Declaration

Writing in the WSJ Dutch MEP, Derk Jan Eppink, argues that the EU seems to be “on a different planet” given its request for a 4.9% increase in the EU budget at a time when most countries are cutting their spending. Eppink notes that, not only does the EU not properly document expenditures, but “billions of euros remain unspent every year”. Eppink concludes that the EU should focus on “levelling the playing field for entrepreneurial activity”, rather than increasing spending or finding new ways to tax EU member states.
WSJ: Eppink

Following the escalating violence in Syria, the EU summoned Syrian ambassadors from around Europe to discuss the situation and warn them over potential EU reactions, including sanctions and visa restrictions. Senior EU diplomats will meet tomorrow to discuss the nature and possibility of potential sanctions on Syria.
WSJ European Voice

Austria and Germany will, over the weekend, fully open their labour markets to include those member states of central Europe that joined the EU in 2004, however Romania and Bulgaria will face continued restrictions. The UK is also set to keep restrictions on workers from Romania and Bulgaria in place. The Netherlands is still calling for higher restrictions on workers from new member states, reports Dagens Nyheter.
Dagens Nyheter European Voice EurActiv

Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Commissioner Maria Damanaki has put forward a plan to reform the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, which allows fisherman to trade their assigned portion of the quota and scraps the controversial discards policy.
European Voice

European Voice reports that a study into the EU’s biofuels policy has concluded that changes in land use caused by biofuel production may cause more emissions than previously realised and called into question the EU’s target to derive 10% of transport fuel from renewable sources by 2020.
European Voice European Voice 2

The FT reports that at least 10 of the 27 EU member states have refused to relax their regulations on liquids at airports despite being instructed to by the EU, meaning that confusion looks set to increase for travellers around the EU.
FT WSJ

New on the Open Europe blog

Up, up and away…Peripheral Europe’s debt and deficits continue to soar.
Open Europe blog