It hasn't gone away - by Richard... Monday, January 02, 2012

It hasn't gone away - by Richard... Monday, January 02, 2012

So few Bills are going through the Westminster parliament these days that you wonder what our MPs find to do with their time. But not so the EU, which at the fag end of the year offered its plan for delivering European renewal, sneaked out on 27 December when the rest of Europe was on holiday.

This is the annual "roadmap", the EU equivalent of the Queen's speech – which The Boy currently has on hold – issued annually by the EU commission. The current 2012 edition amounts to 129 separate initiatives.

For those who thought the EU was just about trade, they may be a tad surprised to learn that one of these initiatives is a "Communication on the engagement with civil society and local authorities in development",

Amongst other joys, the Commission to concerned to find "a common understanding on the main issues related to Civil Society Organisation and Local Authorities involvement in EU development cooperation: their added value, mandates and synergies of different categories of new and emerging actors". Readers will be pleased to learn that:

… the Communication will integrate the results of the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness taking place in Busan in 2011 by building on the Forum outcome document. The forthcoming Busan milestone is expected to bring a stronger political perspective, building on intense dialogue among stakeholders on the implementation of the commitments taken in Accra. As an example, in recent years Civil Society has been more and more recognized as legitimate actor in international for a playing a key role in the aid effectiveness debate.

Some might think that anyone who utters such murky text should be subject instantly to ritual execution, but that would make for a heavy workload. There are 128 more of such tracts.

One thus needs to look at the forthcoming Commission Communication on a strategy for the internationalisation of higher education. However, it is difficult to get past the definition of the "political context", before the brain starts shrivelling under the assault.

This, we are told is the Europe 2020 Strategy "which sets ambitious objectives for smart, inclusive and sustainable growth, and which puts a strong focus on knowledge and innovation, sustainability, employment and social inclusion and calls for increasing the share of 30 – 34 years old having completed tertiary education".

As if they had not done enough damage already, the commission also has a proposal for "an initiative on enforcement of rights of EU migrant workers and members of their families in relation to the fundamental principle of free movement of workers".

One is thus pleased to know that the commission is considering "how to promote and enhance mechanisms for the effective implementation of the principle of equal treatment for EU workers and members of their families exercising their right to free movement".

Also on the stocks is a communication on renewable energy strategy. There are "gaps and shortcomings" in the commission's current policy regime post 2020, so we are to get a "2050 Energy Roadmap".

This will explore the need for actions to meet EU energy policy goals. The new communication will "dive deeper" to explore the issues and policy options surrounding the creation of a post 2020 renewable energy framework.

Lucky Europeans will also see a revision to the strategy on endocrine disruptors, alongside the 7th Environmental Action Programme and we are all throbbing in anticipation of the proposal for a regulation on "processes, standards and metadata for European statistics".

We may also be seeing a European Immigration Code, a regulation establishing the European Police Office (Europol) and a Council Regulation modifying Regulation 2001/2157/EC on the Statute for a European Company (SE).

Viewed alongside the establishment of a European Railway Agency and an initiative to create an arbitration mechanism for double taxation disputes and a communication on car taxation, there is thus no evidence that the commission feels the euro crisis is dragging it down.

The evil empire has not gone away. It is just as active as before and it clearly thinks it is going to live forever.

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Sacrifices are necessary - by Richard...

The Financial Times and others have reports of "Europe's leaders" and their New Year addresses, warning that 2012 "was likely to be tougher than 2011". Sarkozy says the gravest crisis Europe has faced since the second world war "is not over" and Merkel admits "next year will no doubt be more difficult than 2011".

Merkel adds: "The path to overcoming this won't be without setbacks, but at the end of this path, Europe will emerge stronger from the crisis than before".

The biggest dollop of BS, though, comes from Italy's Giorgio Napolitano, who tells his audience that, "Sacrifices are necessary to ensure the future of young people, it's our objective and a commitment we cannot avoid".

I do love these fully paid-up members of the political classes, collectively responsible for creating the mess of a lifetime then telling us that, in order to clean it up, "sacrifices are necessary" – while they are themselves living in the lap of luxury.

Yet it does seem to me that sacrifices are necessary ... the kind more familiar to the Aztecs. But forget the virgins … senior politicians sound a much better idea. There should be no limit to the number of sacrifices made here. One from each of the member states would do for a start. Nevertheless, others seem less bloodthirsty, although just as focused. The techniques are interesting.

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A political response to a political project - by Richard... Sunday, January 01, 2012

Given the hazards of making predictions for the coming year, Booker in his column (click to enlarge to readable size) has taken the safer and more entertaining course of predicting what is likely notto happen. His first is that it is no longer conceivable that the sad little nonentities who preside over the affairs of the EU will be able to find any rational way out of the hole they have dug for themselves over the euro.

Nothing they did in 2011 went anywhere towards saving them and us from the consequences of this folly, says Booker. The right measures could not be allowed because the single currency was never designed as an economic venture.

This is something a great many commentators have yet fully to understand, especially when they complain of Merkel, in particular, taking the wrong or insufficient action, of "dithering" or delaying.

But what may seem to be a flawed response when looked at from an economic point of view takes on a wholly different aspect when seen as political acts. Merkel, Sarkozy and the others have as their primary concern not the rescue of the European (and global) economies, per se, but the preservation of le projet.

The euro, says Booker, was a wholly hubristic political gesture, the supreme symbol of the real agenda of the "European project" from its foundation: the desire to lock all the nations of Europe indissolubly together in ever closer political union.

For any country to leave the euro would be a defeat too great to be countenanced, and thus must be prevented at all costs. And it is this political agenda which is driving all the rescue attempts. As a result, Booker avers, they are all now completely boxed in. Even in practical terms, it is too late for such a remedy.

A country leaving the euro would find itself in a worse mess than ever. Its regained national currency would be instantly devalued, leaving it even less able to repay debts contracted in euros than it is now. Defaulting banks and defaulting countries would send shockwaves through the entire European economy and spread chaos in every direction.

So all that is left to those in charge of the "project" is to prattle on about the need for "more Europe", as they belatedly attempt to set up some kind of "fiscal union": that all-powerful economic government of the eurozone which wiser counsels warned, as much as 30 years ago, was a necessary precondition of launching a single currency – not a half-baked measure to be cobbled together after the damage was done.

To keep the euro together, and the eurozone intact is, by any sound economic measure, impossible, but the greater political need dictates that the "colleagues" continue to try.

It is for that reason that they are inflicting such deflationary pressures on the debtor countries of southern Europe that their economies are driven to collapse, inflicting social misery on a scale unknown since the Second World War. We can see this already in riot-torn Greece, where hapless families are driven to dump their children on a bankrupt state because they can no longer afford to feed them.

Just how the catastrophe will unfold from here, and what the consequences will be for the future shape of the EU, no one can predict, says Booker. Even the Commission President, José Manuel Barroso, has suggested that a collapse of the euro would inevitably call into question the survival of "the Union" itself.

Booker nevertheless sees "one faint consolation in recent months" - the sight (as broadcast on YouTube) of Nigel Farage, leader of Ukip and of the Freedom and Democracy group in the European Parliament, repeatedly standing up in its front row to rub in the inescapable realities of this disaster only a few feet from those currently responsible for it – Barroso, President Van Rompuy and the leaders of the other political groupings in the parliament.

These deflated apparatchiks simply stare ahead, dead-eyed and stony-faced, knowing just how powerless they are in the face of the unfolding tragedy.

Booker is entitled to that view. Others might ask what Farage does to manage the £3 million or so that passes through the hands of his group of MEPs – what we get for the money, and whether we are paying an incredibly high price for the Farage ego show.

In that real world, Booker adds that we must not forget that, when it comes to nations running up a debt out of control, our own Government is still having to borrow an additional £2.5 billion every week, just to fund its own overspending – which, despite all talk of “cuts”, still races upwards.

Any moment now, he says, our own national debt will top the £1 trillion mark, having more than doubled in six years. However damaging disintegration of the euro may be to our economy in 2012, we also face a crisis we have brought upon ourselves – one for which our government has no more of a real answer than do the impotent rulers of the eurozone.