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BERLIN (Dow Jones)--German Chancellor Angela Merkel expects a package of measures towards solving the euro zone debt crisis to be agreed on Oct. 23, but has warned against hoping that all of Europe's debt woes would be resolved, her spokesman said Monday
http://tinyurl.com/6k5ytku
Germany Shoots Down 'Dreams' of Swift Euro Crisis Solution
http://business.financialpost.com/2011/10/17/germany-shoots-down-dreams-of-swift- eurozone-solution/
EU to mull three-pronged plan for banks - sources
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/10/17/uk-eu-banks-recapitalisation-idUKTRE79G24E20111017
http://rt.com/business/news/eu-debt-coming-soon-017/
But German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in a speech in Duesseldorf on Monday that while European governments would adopt a five-point platform to address the turmoil, it was wrong to expect "a definitive solution" at the summit.
Schaeuble said the plan would have to include a reduction in Greece's debt mountain. He repeated at the weekend that private bondholders would have to accept steeper voluntary write-downs on their Greek holdings than the 21 percent agreed last July.
A lead negotiator for the banks said this could only happen if policymakers addressed the "full range" of sovereign debt issues in Europe. Charles Dallara of the Institute of International Finance (IIF) declined comment on reports that the private sector might have to take a 50 percent loss.
http://www.portfolio.com/business-news/reuters/2011/10/17/banks-under-pressure- berlin-dampens-summit-hopes
German minister dampens hopes of crisis resolution
There is anxiety in Dublin and other capitals that this could prompt market investors to speculate that other bailout recipients like Ireland and Portugal might follow suit.
At a time of heightened market volatility, any such pressure would make it much more difficult for the Government to prepare Ireland’s return to private debt markets next year.
Although notional Irish borrowing costs have fallen appreciably in recent weeks, the Government fears bond yields could rise again suddenly.
In recognition of such concern, a senior European official involved in the summit said EU leaders were likely to make a specific pledge to rule out any form of debt restructuring by any other country in an EU-IMF rescue programme.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/1017/breaking2.html
Europe's Politicians Side with the Protesters
Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Europe and around the world this weekend to protest against the global banking system. Politicians in Europe, engaged in their own dispute with the banks, stood firmly on the side of the demonstrators.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,792199,00.html
In the Sunday Telegraph, Business Editor Kamal Ahmed argued, “There are at present at least 38 pieces of European regulation that have either been passed or are being formulated in Brussels which will have an impact on the UK’s financial services sector…We are in danger of sleepwalking to a new crisis – a crisis of regulation…It is time this Government put its foot on the regulatory ball and said enough is enough.”
Open Europe research Sunday Telegraph: Ahmed
Huhne dictates a cold future - nominates Danish Green Party co-Chair, Fries Jurassofv, as new head of Climate Change Monitoring Group
Chris Huhne May Kill UK Shale Revolution Over Seismic Link
CCNet – 17 October 2011
The Climate Policy Network
Chris Huhne May Kill UK Shale Revolution Over Seismic Link
Controversial gas drilling did cause Fylde coast earthquakes. And now DECC have sent a stark warning to shale gas company Cuadrilla Resources – stop the tremors or we will shut you down. --Blackpool Gazette, 15 October 2011
After years of talk about the green revolution as a far-off eventuality, it has finally collided with the real world, and everyone is running for cover. --Danny Fortson, The Sunday Times, 16 October 2011
Tomorrow, Chris Huhne will co-chair an energy summit with the Prime Minister. Huhne faces a major fight to preserve his green agenda in the face of mounting opposition from Chancellor George Osborne, who increasingly views it as an impediment to growth. One senior Tory tells me: ‘There is a Huhne-Osborne war going on, which Osborne is not going to lose.’ --James Forsyth, Mail on Sunday, 16 October 2011
How big does Shale have to get before our policymakers wake up to its implications? There is an Energy Summit in No.10 today where Chris Huhne wants to focus on the need “to help consumers save money on their gas and electricity bills”. But shale gas is being kept off the agenda because the big energy companies see this as competition from upstarts. Green warriors don’t want to know because it confounds their careful predictions of apocalypse and destroys the rationale for subsidising hugely expensive renewable energy. The discovery of Shale in Britain is being studiously ignored, because it goes against the conventional wisdom on green energy. --Fraser Nelson, The Spectator, 17 October 2011
Chris Huhne in particular is renowned for his uninhibited antagonism towards natural gas. At the Liberal Democrat party conference in Birmingham last week he promised to halt a new "dash for gas" because it would undermine the UK's unilateral climate targets. His real apprehension is that if a significant amount of cheap shale gas were to enter the UK market, it would almost certainly deter investment in expensive renewables. In order to stifle the emergence of a cheap energy market and to shield expensive renewables, DECC's energy bill would force UK families and businesses to subsidise renewable energy by approximately £120bn in the next 20 years. Electricity prices would likely double as a result. David Cameron would be well advised not to allow his green minister to squander Britain's golden shale gas opportunity. --Benny Peiser, Public Service Europe, 27 September 2011
Rising bills and increasing levels of ‘fuel poverty’ have embarrassed the UK government. And perhaps for the first time, the UK public is finding itself exposed to the realities of climate change policies. In other words, climate change policies just got political. They are now part of people’s daily lives, exactly as the green NGOs wanted. As a consequence, Quangos, NGOs, government departments, and their ministers past and present are trying to distance themselves from those consequences, by pretending to champion the interests of the consumer. “It wasn’t us”, they scream. –Ben Pile, Climate Resistance, 16 October 2011
The BBC, in determining its policy towards the coverage of global warming, which is of course not simply a scientific issue but an economic and a political issue, too, ought to shred that section of the Jones review and revert to the impartiality laid down in its charter. No doubt it is influenced by the fact that all three political parties at present cleave to the conventional wisdom, and that there is thus no problem of achieving party political balance. However, some might reasonably contend that the unanimity of the three main parties makes it all the more important that, in the public interest, adequate airtime is given to informed dissent. --Nigel Lawson, The Sunday Times, 16 October 2011
1) Chris Huhne May Kill UK Shale Revolution Over Seismic Link - Blackpool Gazette, 15 October 2011
2) Britain's Power Struggle - The Sunday Times, 16 October 2011
3) The Huhne-Osborne War Intensifies - Mail on Sunday, 16 October 2011
4) Fraser Nelson: The Poverty Of Britain’s Energy Debate - The Spectator, 17 October 2011
5) Nigel Lawson: Listen Up, BBC, The Climate Debate Is Far From Over - The Sunday Times, 16 October 2011
1) Chris Huhne May Kill UK Shale Revolution Over Seismic Link
Blackpool Gazette, 15 October 2011
Controversial gas drilling DID cause Fylde coast earthquakes. And now DECC have sent a stark warning to shale gas company Cuadrilla Resources – stop the tremors or we will shut you down.
It comes as the company this week held urgent talks with the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to consider a report into the risk of earthquakes associated with fracking – the process used to extract shale gas from deep beneath the Fylde coast.
The meetings followed the British Geological Survey’s (BGS) conclusion two recent earth tremors felt nearby were most likely to have been caused by fracking.
The BGS said the correlations between the earthquakes and the time of fracking operations and the proximity of the quakes to the site, all pointed towards the earthquakes being a result of the fracking process.
Seismologist Brian Baptie added: “These are still very small earthquakes, even by UK standards and won’t cause any damage, if fracking continued I couldn’t see the tremors getting much bigger.
“But it is obviously a concern for local residents and I’m sure the report commissioned by Cuadrilla will be greeted with interest.”
Cuadrilla has came under fire from activists for its drilling technique, which involves pumping high volumes of water and sand into drill holes to crack the rocks so gas can be extracted
The company commissioned a report following the tremors earlier this year.
Soon after the quakes were felt the firm halted the fracking process after admitting the low magnitude tremors felt in Poulton in April and May, close to Cuadrilla’s Singleton site could be linked to them.
And experts said Cuadrilla’s operations could be shut down permanently if proposed methods to reduce the risk of earthquakes fail.
Toni Harvey, a senior geoscientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said: “If we allow fracking to continue and their mitigation didn’t work, then we would shut them down again, without a doubt.
“There is a lot of concern in the media and from ministers about public safety.”
“DECC has requested a detailed report from Cuadrilla, which we understand they are close to finalising. When the report is received, it will be carefully considered, with input from British Geological Survey and other experts.
“We will also be discussing the report with other regulators before any decision is made on resuming hydraulic fracturing operations for shale gas.”
Last month Cuadrilla, the first company to explore for shale gas in the UK, announced the Fylde coast holds a total potential resource of 200 trillion cubic feet of gas.
It estimated the discovery – between Blackpool and Southport –could be worth £6bn to the UK economy and create 1,700 jobs locally.
However protesters are campaigning to stop the drilling and anti-fracking group, Frack Off - London, rallied outside the DECC headquarters on Thursday as Cuadrilla presented their study.
And the chairman of the Blackpool and Fylde Green Party Philip Mitchell today called on the Government to halt all UK hydraulic fracturing industry activity until there had been a thorough and robust evaluation of the risks related to future activity.
He said: “Any suggestion of an acceptable level of earthquakes caused by fracking should be rejected.
“The Government must realise it must stop treating our communities like guinea pigs and accept these techniques carry unacceptable risks to the British public.
“Ministers must stop the industry activity at least until parliament and the public can be guided by a full and robust appraisal of the total risk to the themselves and to the environment.”
Mark Miller, CEO of Cuadrilla Resources, said: “We met with officials from DECC and their technical advisors and had a useful, in-depth working session on the initial findings of the report.
“There is some considerable work still to do and we absolutely share with DECC the need to have the complex issues involved addressed dealt with satisfactorily.”
Editor’s Note: It is illuminating to compare DECC’s rash threat with the more balanced results on the same issue recently published by the Polish Academy of Science; see this article in the Warsaw Business Journal, 30 August 2011: Production of shale gas in Poland will not cause dangerous seismic movements, according to research conducted by Polish geologists. The results of the research were presented on Monday by Aleksander Guterch from the Geophysics Institute of the Polish Academy of Science, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna reported. The technology used in the extraction of shale gas deposits involves pumping water and sand at high pressure into small gaps in rocks. This can in certain cases cause minute seismic activity that can only be picked up by ultra-sensitive equipment. However, scientists stress that there is no risk of earthquakes that may endanger the population.
2) Britain's Power Struggle
The Sunday Times, 16 October 2011
Danny Fortson
After years of talk about the green revolution as a far-off eventuality, it has finally collided with the real world, and everyone is running for cover.
What is certain is that the penny has finally dropped. One in four households is now “fuel poor”, which means that more than 10% of its net income goes on energy bills. Things are going to get worse and not just because unemployment last week hit a 17-year high. Britain is on the cusp of a £200 billion low-carbon overhaul. The government wants to replace our dirty coal-fired stations with expensive offshore wind farms and nuclear reactors to meet climate change targets. The makeover is the biggest since North Sea oil and gas came on stream in the 1970s and you and I will pay for it. Analysts said the average domestic energy bill could hit £1,800 a year by 2020.
After years of talk about the green revolution as a far-off eventuality, it has finally collided with the real world, and everyone is running for cover.
“It’s here now. Cheques are going to have to be written to build this stuff,” said Mark Powell at KPMG. “But the world has changed and all of a sudden the question of affordability has come front and centre.”
That is what the government aims to tackle tomorrow. Huhne has called a “consumer energy summit” at his department’s offices in Whitehall. The showdown will bring executives, consumer groups and Ofgem into the same room. Ostensibly, the purpose is to hash out how to help the hard-up get through the winter.
Yet for the industry the meeting is about much more than the next few months. It is about one of the world’s biggest industrial undertakings. It is about the government’s faltering attempts to shape it, while at the same time bashing the industry for the inconvenient consequences of the very policies it has chosen to pursue.
The Big Six are tired of carrying the can. “We need an honest debate about the consequences of the investment required and the impact on bills,” said Phil Bentley, managing director of British Gas, the country’s biggest energy supplier.
“The energy industry isn’t trusted and we accept we have to do something about that. But we also want honesty about the data. If the government is quoting misleading numbers, it makes everyone look stupid and confuses the public.”
George Osborne, the chancellor, dropped a bombshell in Manchester this month. There he was at the Tory party conference, holding forth on his plan to revive the flagging economy. And then he said it. “We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business ... so let’s at the very least resolve that we’re going to cut our carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe.”
It was a stunning reversal. After all, it was the chancellor who just seven months earlier had unveiled a new carbon tax on industry, which would make Britain the first country in the world to impose a domestic carbon levy.
Civitas, the think tank, said it amounted to “economic suicide”. Industry revolted, and Osborne seems to have listened.
Yet just down the road from No 11, Huhne seems to have different ideas. In May the energy secretary made Britain the first country in the world to commit to emission reduction targets beyond 2020. By 2027, he wants us to halve carbon dioxide emissions from the 1990 level.
Osborne may be slowing down, but Huhne shows no such signs. An executive said: “The Treasury seems to be moving in one direction, while Huhne is going another. It’s hard to tell who is actually driving the bus.”
One thing they can both agree on, however, is that the energy companies deserve a good kicking. They haven’t done themselves any favours. An investigation by Which?, the consumer group, found that when the Big Six were asked by callers for the lowest tariffs, a third of the time the best deals were not offered.
Full story (subscription required)
3) The Huhne-Osborne War Intensifies
Mail on Sunday, 16 October 2011
James Forsyth
Liam Fox's departure turns the spotlight back on to Chris Huhne, the Cabinet member who, until Fox’s troubles, was the favourite to be the next to leave the Government.
But the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, who still has the threat of prosecution hanging over him for allegedly passing off speeding points on to his then wife, shows no sign of being bothered by all of the scrapes he keeps getting into. He has the thickest hide in Westminster.
Tomorrow, Huhne will co-chair an energy summit with the Prime Minister.
The event is designed to show that the Coalition is doing its bit to keep a lid on energy prices. He will announce plans to make it easier for consumers to switch both their tariff and the energy company they use in an attempt to help keep bills down.
But Huhne faces a major fight to preserve his green agenda in the face of mounting opposition from Chancellor George Osborne, who increasingly views it as an impediment to growth.
One senior Tory tells me: ‘There is a Huhne-Osborne war going on, which Osborne is not going to lose.’
Huhne, though, is nothing if not resilient. When I asked one Liberal Democrat what it would take to shake his self-belief, he replied: ‘A small nuclear device.’
Mail on Sunday, 16 October 2011
4) Fraser Nelson: The Poverty Of Britain’s Energy Debate
The Spectator, 17 October 2011
How big does Shale have to get before our policymakers wake up to its implications? There is an Energy Summit in No.10 today where Chris Huhne wants to focus on the need “to help consumers save money on their gas and electricity bills”. A preview interview on the Today programme underlined the dire situation. First, Huhne was not asked about how his own green regulations have massively contributed to the problem. Then, the managing director of British Gas was invited on to say that “unless someone discovers huge amounts of gas and imports it into the UK…”. And, bafflingly, no-one mentioned the small fact that one of BG’s rivals recently discovered 200 trillion cubic feet of gas near Blackpool. As Matt Ridley says in this week’s Spectator, that’s enough to keep the entire British economy going for many decades. And it doesn’t even need importing.
It’s being kept off the agenda because the big energy companies see this as competition from upstarts. Green warriors don’t want to know because it confounds their careful predictions of apocalypse and destroys the rationale for subsidising hugely expensive renewable energy. When oil was discovered in the North Sea in the 1970s, Wilson’s government was delighted: here was a cash boon that would transform Britain. The discovery of Shale in Britain is being studiously ignored, because it goes against the conventional wisdom on green energy. Ridley’s brilliant feature gives you a full briefing. He challenges the conventional wisdom which I expect will be echoing around the No.10 discussion today. Here are some extracts:
What’s that you say? Gas is running out? Have you not heard the news? It’s not. Till five years ago gas was the fuel everybody thought would run out first, before oil and coal. America was getting so worried even Alan Greenspan told it to start building gas import terminals, which it did. They are now being mothballed, or turned into export terminals…
The impact of shale gas in America is huge. Gas prices have decoupled from oil prices and are half what they are in Europe. Chemical companies, which use gas as a feedstock, are rushing back from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Mexico. Cities are converting their bus fleets to gas. Coal projects are being shelved; nuclear ones abandoned.
The best thing about cheap gas is whom it annoys. The Russians and the Iranians hate it because they thought they were going to corner the gas market in the coming decades. The greens hate it because it destroys their argument that fossil fuels are going to get more and more costly till even wind and solar power are competitive. The nuclear industry ditto. The coal industry will be a big loser (incidentally, as somebody who gets some income from coal, I declare that writing this article is against my vested interest).
Little wonder a furious attempt to blacken shale gas’s reputation is under way, driven by an unlikely alliance of big green, big coal, big nuclear and conventional gas producers. The environmental objections to shale gas are almost comically fabricated or exaggerated. Hydraulic fracturing or fracking uses 99.86% water and sand, the rest being a dilute solution of a few chemicals of the kind you find beneath your kitchen sink.
Like Japanese soldiers hiding in the jungle decades after the war was over, our political masters have apparently not heard the news. David Cameron and Chris Huhne are still insisting that the future belongs to renewables. They are still signing contracts on your behalf guaranteeing huge incomes to landowners and power companies, and guaranteeing thereby the destruction of landscapes and jobs. The government’s “green” subsidies are costing the average small business £250,000 a year. That’s ten jobs per firm. Making energy cheap is – as the industrial revolution proved – the quickest way to create jobs; making it expensive is the quickest way to lose them.
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5) Nigel Lawson: Listen Up, BBC, The Climate Debate Is Far From Over
The Sunday Times, 16 October 2011
The BBC, in determining its policy towards the coverage of global warming, which is of course not simply a scientific issue but an economic and a political issue, too, ought to shred that section of the Jones review and revert to the impartiality laid down in its charter.
In the second half of July, when most of us were preparing to set off on our summer holidays, the BBC Trust published a lengthy review of the impartiality and accuracy of the corporation’s coverage of science, most of which was taken up with what was described as an “independent assessment” by the geneticist Professor Steve Jones.
A substantial section of Jones’s assessment was, understandably, devoted to the important issue of global warming. Regrettably, that section was characterised chiefly by ignorance and intolerance. I was saddened not only by these general defects but also by an unwarranted attack on me personally. So, to be completely fair, I should quote the section in full.
Claiming that there is no longer any scope for serious debate over global warming, and that the media “face the danger of being trapped into a false balance, into giving equal coverage to the views of a determined but deluded minority and to those of a united but less insistent majority”, Jones complains:
“The impression of active debate is promoted by prominent individuals such as Lord Monckton and Lord Lawson. The BBC still gives space to them to make statements that are not supported by the facts: that (in a February 2011 The Daily Politics show) 95% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from natural sources, while in fact human activity has been responsible for a 40% rise in concentration, or (a November 2009 Today programme) that volcanoes produce more gases than do humans (the balance is a hundred times in the opposite direction). For at least three years, the climate change deniers have been marginal to the scientific debate but somehow they continued to find a place on the airwaves.”
The false accusation that I am in the habit of making statements about global warming “that are not supported by the facts” was highly damaging not only to me personally but also to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which since its inception in November 2009 has become a respected and reliable source of information relevant to the global warming debate, and of which I am founding chairman.
And not only had I not made either of the statements complained of leaving aside the question of their veracity; I had not appeared on either of the two programmes. (Nor, for that matter, had Christopher Monckton, whose position on this issue is, incidentally, not the same as mine.) I immediately emailed the chairman of the BBC Trust, Lord Patten, to complain. Receiving no reply, and after consulting the trustees of the GWPF, I instructed my lawyers to demand an apology and retraction.
This the BBC did on the BBC Trust’s website in the following somewhat grudging terms:
“On 8 August 2011, the trust published an updated version of Professor Steve Jones’s independent review of the accuracy and impartiality of the BBC’s science coverage due to an ambiguity [sic] in the section on climate change ... “The trust and Professor Jones now recognise that the passage as originally published could be interpreted as attributing statements made in those two programmes to Lord Lawson or to Lord Monckton. Neither programme specifically [sic] featured Lord Lawson or Lord Monckton and it was not Professor Jones’s intention to suggest that this was the case. Professor Jones has apologised for the lack of clarity in this section of his assessment, which has now been amended [by the removal of my name and that of Lord Monckton].”
But that does not dispose of the matter. The thrust of the Jones review is that in its coverage of global warming the BBC gives too much airtime to dissenters from the conventional wisdom such as me.
The very reverse is the case. Despite the authoritative role of the GWPF, invitations to either me or its excellent director, Dr Benny Peiser, to appear on air on this issue are almost as rare as hen’s teeth.
This is not because of any hostility to me personally. I am frequently invited to appear on BBC programmes about the economy, and from time to time I do so. But on global warming the BBC has a clear party line, and anyone who might provide an informed challenge to the party line is not wanted.
Jones’s mindset is revealed by his use of the term “climate change denier” to describe anyone, such as me, who is a dissenter about any aspect of the global warming orthodoxy. It is a term I find particularly disreputable and offensive, as it is clearly intended to group climate change dissenters with Holocaust deniers.
In its letter to my lawyers containing Jones’s grudging apology, the BBC litigation department wrote that “Professor Jones does not, however, resile from the statement ... that your client promotes the impression of active scientific debate on the issue of global warming when in fact there is clear consensus to the contrary”.
In fact, as the name of my think tank makes clear, our concern is primarily in the area of policy: in the light of the facts, to the extent that we know them and understand them, what policy is it rational and proportionate to pursue?
We are, of course, interested in the views of well-qualified scientists. It was for this reason that we recently published The Truth about Greenhouse Gases, a briefing paper by William Happer, an eminent professor of physics at Princeton University. The paper should be read in its entirety, but at one point Professor Happer provides his own summary of the main thrust, in these terms:
“Let me summarise how the key issues appear to me, a working scientist with a better knowledge than most in the physics of climate. CO2 really is a greenhouse gas, and, other things being equal, adding CO2 to the atmosphere by burning coal, oil and natural gas will modestly increase the surface temperature of the Earth ... The combination of a slightly warmer Earth and more CO2 will greatly increase the production of food, wood, fibre and other products by green plants, so the increased CO2 will be good for the planet, and will easily outweigh any negative effects. Supposed calamities like the accelerated rise of sea level, ocean acidification, more extreme climate, tropical diseases near the poles etc are greatly exaggerated.”
I do not know whether Jones regards Happer as “deluded”, still less what qualifications he has to do so; but it is interesting that he essentially torpedoes his own thesis, and implicitly agrees with Happer (although he wholly fails to grasp the significance of this), in one lone sentence of his review:
“Now, there is general agreement that warming is a fact even if there remain uncertainties about how fast, and how much, the temperature might rise [my italics].”
The difference between a slow and gentle warming (Happer puts it at something like 1C over the next 200 years) and a sharp, accelerated warming this century is massive and at the very heart of the lively scientific debate that Jones claims no longer exists. (Last week that debate was intensified by the publication of research suggesting that solar activity might lead to a cooling. Previously such a possibility was discounted by the scientific consensus.) The fact that there has been no recorded global warming at all so far this century adds credibility to the Happer view, but it is of course too soon to be sure. What is sure is that this has a profound bearing on what policies it is rational to pursue.
It is clear that the BBC, in determining its policy towards the coverage of global warming, which is of course not simply a scientific issue but an economic and a political issue, too, ought to shred that section of the Jones review and revert to the impartiality laid down in its charter.
No doubt it is influenced by the fact that all three political parties at present cleave to the conventional wisdom, and that there is thus no problem of achieving party political balance. However, some might reasonably contend that the unanimity of the three main parties makes it all the more important that, in the public interest, adequate airtime is given to informed dissent.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 1 Carlton House, London SW1Y 5DB
Director: Dr Benny Peiser
http://www.thegwpf.org
William Hague can’t ignore the prospect of treaty change for much longer
Open Europe blog
Hague can't ignore prospect of treaty change for much longerSpeaking on Andrew Marr's show yesterday, William Hague repeated his view
that there is no "immediate prospect" of repatriating powers from Brussels. "The repatriation of powers, which is something I support by the way, is not an immediate prospect because no countries are proposing widespread treaty change," he said.
"That may change, but at the moment, that is not what they are proposing..."
But as we've said before, this is all moving much faster than the UK Government is letting on or perhaps would like. Contrast Hague with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle's rather more urgent tone in an interview with the FT last week. He said that Berlin wants to persuade other members of the EU to draft changes to the bloc’s founding treaties at a new 27-nation convention (or IGC) that would take place in 2012.
The Convention should be given a clear mandate and a one-year time limit to deliver results by mid-2013, when the eurozone’s permanent €500bn rescue fund – the European Stability Mechanism – is supposed to come into effect, he said. "We need treaty changes to overcome the shortcomings of (European) construction."
He added that the Convention should consider whether the European Court of Justice would be used to enforce budgetary discipline, and if a “stability commissioner” for the euro should be appointed, suggesting “Probably both are necessary.” (now we hear the crack of the whip...........Idris)
These are clearly "widespread treaty changes" that Hague seems to suggest are far off on the horizon but 2012 is less than three months away. Yes, the actual process of negotiating Treaty changes takes years. But, which the UK govenrment should know from experience, getting in early and getting with a clear agenda, is absolutely vital if a country wants to influence the outcome.
It's time the Government picked up the pace.
Labels: germany, hague , treaty change, westerwelle
By Open Europe blog team
On Monday, October 17, 2011
Dutch Economy Minister Maxime Verhagen has argued in De Volkskrant that the European Commission should be given the power to force all EU member states, not just eurozone countries, to address their economic problems, adding, “National competences should remain national. But the measures shouldn’t be free of consequence. EU countries should be judged on the result.”
De Volkskrant
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