For people who are pursuing stories concerning immigration. My favourite part of the story is at the end of it, it presents a list of what measures/restrictions different EU member states will deal with the migrant workers. Hope it will be useful.
Again it's from European Voice. You need to register to read the story. Originally it was by Martin Banks of The Economist.
MOVES to curb the ability of workers from new member states to take advantage of their EU citizenship and seek jobs in another country of the Union were this week branded “unfair and unjust”. The restrictions, which come in response to fears of a huge influx of workers to the present EU states after 1 May, have been staunchly attacked by accession states’ politicians.
The European Commission announced it would check whether bans introduced by member states were in line with EU law.
Although initially several EU states pledged to open their labour market to new countries’ workers, all of them made a U-turn in recent days, following popular concerns and media pressure.
On Monday (23 February), the UK announced it would impose restrictions, under which people from accession states will have to register for jobs. Migrants without work will be banned from most benefits for at least two years but those with jobs will be able to get some state help. Workers will be able to claim benefits, such as jobseeker’s allowance, only if they have worked continuously in Britain for at least a year.
The UK announcement was followed shortly by Ireland’s – the country stated it plans to limit access to its benefits system.
Ireland’s Social Affairs Minister Mary Coughlan said the move had been forced by the action of all the other member states.
Commission President Romano Prodi expressed his concern at the restrictions that were being announced. The most important question, according to Commission officials, is if arrangements that deny workers from eastern Europe benefits while granting them to others are discriminatory. Only citizens from Malta and Cyprus are exempt from the new rules.
Slovakia’s Foreign Minister Eduard Kukan led a chorus of criticism of the restrictions, describing them as “unfair and unjust”. “When negotiations took place in 2001, many EU members insisted they would not introduce restrictions and that our citizens could work in these countries after May,” he said.
A spokesman for the Hungarian foreign ministry described them as a “backward step”. Margot Wallström, who is the acting employment and social affairs commissioner, has called on member states to “come clean” about what their exact plans are.
“There needs to be more transparency on this issue and we are asking member states to give us the information,” a spokesman said. Although all EU citizens in theory have the right to live, work and claim benefit in any member country, existing members are allowed to limit employment rights for residents of accession states for up to seven years, under the terms of a harshly negotiated deal. Member states, however, are going to apply varied restrictions for different periods of time:
Germany and Austria are set to keep restrictions for the full seven years. Only people with work permits will be allowed to seek employment;
Belgium and Finland will only allow those with work permits the right to jobs, for two years;
In France, work permits will be needed for two years. Immigrants who obtain a work permit will have the same access to social benefits as French citizens;
Greece plans to apply restrictions for two years. The new government after the 7 March elections is set to announce if restrictions will be prolonged;
Ireland will announce changes to its social security system to “prevent abuse” by newcomers;
Italy hasn’t announced its decision yet;
Luxembourg will apply restrictions for two years;
The Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden initially pledged to let newcomers work freely in their countries but made U-turn recently. The Hague announced quotas of 22,000 workers in the first year, but is likely to revise the figure down. Sweden will apply benefits restrictions and Denmark refuses the right to benefits but will give residence and work permits to immigrants if they find a job within six months;
Portugal: will apply restrictions of up to two years. It offers 6,500 work permits yearly to applicants of all nationalities, and;
Spain will close its labour market for two years. Bilateral agreements with Poland are possible.
martinbanks@economist.com
Interestingly, although there are so many disputes on the trade of various products between the US and EU, the two giant economies are hoping to establish a free trade zone. Of course, it won't happen soon.
The story is from a website based in Belgium, European Voice. You have to register to read the top five news stories unfortunately. Originally the story was by Dana Spinant of The Economist. Enjoy!
Speaking exclusively to European Voice, Doug Bereuter, chairman of the Europe sub-committee in the US Congress, said that such a development “is conceivable and desirable”.
However, he added, “I had predicted, a decade ago, that by 2004 we would have such a free trade area: it was way too optimistic”.
Bereuter is the second politician to openly call for an EU-US free trade pact – Spanish premier José María Aznar had put forward the same idea while visiting Washington last month.
But Bereuter insists that the world’s top two economic blocs should first concentrate on reviving the Doha Round of trade liberalization talks and reforming the World Trade Organization (WTO) system.
The congressman launched a scathing attack on the EU’s farm subsidies, warning that if it wants to save the Doha Round, the Union must dismantle the “devastating subsidies it gives to its farmers”. He is adamant the onus is on the EU to unblock the talks.
“If we expect them [developing countries] to open their markets for our services or hi-tech products, they say they are right to say ‘not until you open your agricultural markets’.
“We don’t mind how much they [EU states] pay per cow, double than the average of the money Africans get; that’s their business.
“But they should delink it from production.”
Bereuter thinks that working together on reforming the WTO and the “obsolete structures” of the United Nations would help improve relations between the two sides of the Atlantic, damaged by the bitter bickering surrounding the war in Iraq.
He warned that “attitudinal gaps between Europe and the US” have led many Europeans to have negative feelings “about America, the American government and Americans”.
He blames this on “differences over foreign policy, over the treatment of multilateral institutions”, but also on the press, education and on failures “in American public diplomacy”.
In addition, he claimed Europe suffers from a “Gulliver complex” and has a naturaltendency to try to hold back the American superpower.
Referring to one of the first clashes between the EU and the Bush administration, the rejection by Washington of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, Bereuter said: “Kyoto was unacceptable to all developed countries; however, we catch most of the blame” for having spurned it.
“Our problem is that we did not put an alternative on table.”
The congressman, who was in Brussels to chair a plenary session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly last week, said he has seen a big change in Europe’s relations with the US since February 2003, when he last visited the Belgian capital.
“It was during the Turkey-Article 4 debate in NATO,” he recalls, referring to the row sparked when Belgium, France and Germany rejected a NATO plan pledging defence for Turkey in the event of Iraq aggression in retaliation to the attacks America planned to launch from Turkey.
“That was one of the low points in NATO’s history. But since, we all took steps to correct it. I’ve never seen so many French, Belgians and Germans in my office as last year.”
One year on, NATO has begun helping out the coalition forces in Iraq, he pointed out. “[NATO will act] in the Polish sector in the beginning, but its role can grow gradually bigger. Perhaps it could next take over the British sector in the south.”
Although “it would be desirable” for the Alliance to take over the control of military operations in Iraq, as it did in Afghanistan, Bereuter said NATO lacks “the manpower and resources” to do it.
But one of his European counterparts on NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly said it would be “inconceivable for Americans, for a while, that their troops in Iraq are commanded from Brussels and not from Washington – even if an American general would be in charge”.
danaspinant@economist.com
This isn't a directly U.S. related story, but I've seen this mugshot on every single news paper I've visited in the last week. We'll probably see a lot of public protesting while we're in Brussels and it's good to know about how this trial is affecting the public's view of the criminal justice system in Belgium.
After an eight-year-trial delay, Marc Dutroux will finally face charges of kidnapping six young girls and murdering four of them in Belgium. The delay is due to police blunders and investigations into a supposed larger pedophile ring.
The public is very sensitive and critical of the criminal justice system because of the blunders. For example the police allowed Dutroux to escape custody in 1998 and failed to find two of the victims that were in the house they were searching.
The initial arrest of Dutroux in 1996 triggered the White March, Belgium's largest public protest, grieving the loss of the young victims.
There are a two BBC links for the straight news--one about the context of what this trial means and one telling the stories of one of the victims. The last link gives an opinion from a magazine called Expatica for Belgiums living abroad.
Belgium is ready for Dutroux Trial
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3520819.stm
Belgian kidnap victim tells story
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2795545.stm
Blind Justice or Blind Eye
Expatica
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=24&story_id=3597
Belgium is ready for Dutroux Trialhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3520819.stm
Belgium ready for Dutroux trial
Dutroux's trial has been delayed for eight years
Belgian police are mounting a huge security operation as one of the country's most notorious men finally goes on trial in the town of Arlon.
Alleged child-killer Marc Dutroux is accused of kidnapping and abusing six girls aged from eight to 19 in the 1990s and of murdering four of them.
The trial has been delayed for eight years as police investigated claims of a wider paedophile ring.
Perceived police incompetence triggered huge demonstrations in Belgium.
It should be a normal trial, but everybody knows this won't be the case.
Justice Minister Laurette Onkelinx
Justice on trial with Dutroux
Three hundred police officers will guard Arlon's Palace of Justice on the first day of a trial expected to last three months and cost $5.8 million.
They will hope to avoid the humiliation of 1998 when Dutroux succeeded in escaping for three hours after overpowering an officer who was guarding him.
Conspiracy theory
Dutroux will stand trial with his estranged wife, Michelle Martin, 44, businessman Michel Nihoul, 62, and Michel Lelievre, 32, a drug addict alleged to have helped Dutroux kidnap several young girls.
Thousands of Belgians took to the streets in protest
"It should be a normal trial, but everybody knows this won't be the case. You cannot compare it to any other," Justice Minister Laurette Onkelinx told the Associated Press.
All four defendants were arrested in August 1996 by police investigating the abductions of two girls, Sabine Dardenne (then aged 12) and Laetitia Delhez (14).
Both girls were discovered alive two days later in the cellar of a property belonging to Dutroux in the southern town of Charleroi.
Investigators then unearthed the bodies of four other girls who had been missing for more than a year, from the gardens of other Dutroux properties.
They also dug up the body of Bernard Weinstein, an accomplice whom Dutroux has admitted murdering.
Thousands march
Dutroux has accused the Belgian police and justice system of refusing to investigate leads he provided, which he says would prove that he was just part of a wider paedophile conspiracy.
But Belgian officials say that the long delay bringing the case to court partly results from the need to investigate these alleged networks, which they say do not exist.
The government - shaken by the immense scale of public anger at perceived police incompetence - promised changes to the constitution to reduce political interference in the judicial process.
Belgium kidnap victim tells story
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2795545.stm
One of the victims of the notorious Belgian suspected paedophile Marc Dutroux has for the first time told the horrific story of her kidnapping ordeal.
Sabine Dardenne, then aged 12, was snatched on 28 May 1996, and spent the next 80 days confined to a cellar, where it is alleged she was raped and psychologically abused until her kidnapper was apprehended by police.
Dutroux is yet to stand trial for the rape and murder of four girls, and the rape of two others, including Ms Dardenne, found alive together at one of his properties.
Now 18, Ms Dardenne told several Belgian newspapers she still rereads the letters and journal she wrote during her captivity - "in order not to forget, and to prepare to go through his trial... He must pay."
Chained up
She said she was snatched by Dutroux and an accomplice, Michel Lelievre, while cycling to school, bundled into a van, and lifted inside a house inside a metal trunk.
"He chained me to the bed by my neck," she told Belgian newspapers Le Soir, La Derniere Heure and Vers L'Avenir.
"I stayed there two or three days."
Ms Dardenne said Dutroux later moved her down to the cellar, where he had built a secret compartment equipped with "a mattress and bare light bulb."
"He passed down cans after me - cold tins of meatballs in tomato sauce, and bread that turned green after two or three days."
Although she said she sometimes heard voices outside, she only ever saw Dutroux. He allegedly justified his acts by saying he was protecting her from a worse fate.
Saviour
"According to him, he was saving my life. He was the kind one, he was protecting me against someone who wished me harm and had demanded money from my parents.
"In this way, he was my friend, my saviour."
Delays in bringing Dutroux to trial brought thousands out onto the streets
But when she disobeyed him, Dutroux would threaten to "hand me over to some gang or other he knew... [who] would torture me and kill me after making me suffer."
The teenager said one of his cruellest tricks was to lead her to believe that her parents knew of her whereabouts but had simply abandoned her.
"He said I could write letters. I wrote to my parents. I told them about my day, as if I were on holiday.
"I wished them all the happiness I could. According to him, my parents were mean. I still loved them even so. I just wanted to go home."
Secret symbols
She said she believed Dutroux posted these letters. However, Dutroux would read them and use the information gleaned to pretend he had spoken to her parents and siblings on the phone, reporting back on her pet dog and saying the family had taken out the paddling pool for summer, she said.
Police investigators discovered about 30 such letters under a carpet upon her release.
On a calendar she used to mark the passing of time, she used symbols to denote events: circles for her mother and nurse's days off; crosses on days she saw Dutroux.
Stars denoted "other scenes", her lawyer told Le Soir, alluding to days when she was raped.
Ms Dardenne was later joined by another abductee, 14-year-old Laetitia Delhez.
Days later police freed the pair.
Dutroux, his wife Michele and Mr Lelievre are finally to face trial after years of delay as the police tried to determine the extent of a wider paedophile ring described by Dutroux.
Blind Justice or a Blind Eye?
Expatica
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=24&story_id=3597
For many Belgians the justice system is a source of shame and embarrassment
A survey published this week by a leading Belgian newspaper found that almost 60 percent of people living in this country have no faith in the criminal justice system.
The study, commissioned by ‘La Libre Belgique’, showed that on average 57 percent of Belgians do not trust the country’s courts and judges. The figure for Brussels region was even higher at 67 percent while in French speaking Wallonia it rose to 70 percent.
In most European countries such findings would be greeted with shock and dismay. Here, however, the most common reaction is likely to be a weary ‘is that all?’
Belgium’s criminal justice system is quite clearly a shambles. Last week saw the end of a 12-year trial into the murder of leading Socialist politician André Cools. Six men were eventually convicted of carrying out the crime. But as this site and much of the Belgian media reported in detail, the trial is likely be remembered as much for its failures as for its final conclusion. After 12 years of inquiries that produced well over 80,000 pages of evidence, investigators were still unable to determine the role of one of the key suspects in the case.
Did Walloon socialist politician Alain Van Der Biest — a former Cools protegé turned political embarrassment — have a hand in the crime? He seemed to have a motive, although he always strenuously denied any connection with the killing. One thing is certain: Van Der Biest himself will never shed any light on the question. He committed suicide two years ago.
But you’d have thought that after such a long and detailed enquiry into such a high-profile affair, Belgium’s top judges could have come up with something a bit more concrete than their final conclusion. Effectively they have said they simply don’t know whether Van Der Biest was involved or not.
If the Cools trial were just a one off case, then perhaps Belgium’s judges and investigating magistrates could be forgiven for having an unlucky break. But it wasn’t — and that’s the whole point. For many Belgians the confusion and bungling that marked much of the Cools case seem par for the course when it comes to solving serious crimes here.
The Marc Dutroux affair revealed monumental levels of police bungling
In the early 1980s for example a gang who became known as the Brabant Killers murdered 28 people in a series of apparently motiveless attacks. The police have been investigating the murders for the best part of 20 years but no one has yet been bought to book for the crimes.
And later this year, in principle on March 1, Belgium’s most notorious suspected child killer should finally stand trail — almost eight years after being captured.
Marc Dutroux was arrested in 1996 and charged with the abduction murder of several young girls including Melissa Russo and Julie Lejeune, whose faces had featured on a country-wide missing persons poster campaign for months previously. His capture revealed a series of monumental blunders on the part of the police. Officers had questioned Dutroux on several occasions without connecting him to a series of child abductions, despite the fact that he already had an earlier conviction for raping five girls.
Curtains on Cools trial
But the most glaring failure came when policemen searched the house where the convicted paedophile was holding Julie and Melissa prisoner — and failed to find the two girls.
The Belgian public reacted with shock and outrage to the case. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in a protest that became known as the ‘White March’. The Prime Minister of the day, Jean-Luc Dehaene, promised sweeping changes to the justice system — and then nothing happened.
Well, that’s not entirely true. After finally capturing the country’s most wanted man the police very nearly lost him again in 1998 when he briefly escaped from custody.
But, that short dramatic interlude aside, the Dutroux case has essentially foundered in a legal and administrative quagmire since 1996. Trial dates have been pushed back again and again amid more Cools-style investigative bungling, rowing between prosecution and defence lawyers and allegations of top-level cover ups and corruption — never proved, of course.
Justice in Belgium is not so much blind as totally headless
The authorities have now promised a March 1 trail date, but most Belgians seem to be at the point where they will only believe things are moving when Dutroux actually walks into the witness box.
The impression all of these cases give is that justice in Belgium is not so much blind as totally headless.
And until the country puts into practice at all levels some truly fundamental changes to the way it handles criminal investigations, gloomy opinion surveys like the one published this week are set to remain all too common.
Starting Monday, the EU will impose trade sanctions on US imported goods. That means an extra 5% tarriff on goods ranging from honey to nuclear reactors. And that is to continue increasing 1% a month.
This landmark sanction is an attempt to retaliate against U.S. corporate tax breaks (Foreign Sale Corporation- FSC--ruled illegal by the WTO).
This is a huge move that some EU officials are celebrating and others are calling the beginning of a hostile relationship between the EU and US. I see the move as justified, as many U.S. corps are able to get the leg up with tax breaks and dominate the market, but I foresee the consequences snowballing negatively.
Here are a few different viewpoints.
'Sad day' as EU imposes sanctions on US goods
Financial Times
By Tobias Buck in Brussels
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1077690772765&p=1012571727108
Europe slaps sanctions on US over export tax breaks
EU Business
http://www.eubusiness.com/afp/040227224025.yw5ij37j
Sanctions give Europe Prime Opportunity
Scotsman.com
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=240252004
US firms to be hit by multimillion-euro sanctions
EU Observer
http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=14634
'Sad day' as EU imposes sanctions on US goods
By Tobias Buck in Brussels
For the first time in the history of transatlantic trade relations, the European Union will on Monday impose trade sanctions on US goods, in an attempt to force Washington lawmakers to repeal controversial corporate tax breaks.
EU customs officials will levy an additional 5 per cent tariff on a wide range of American products. The duty on imports of natural honey, for example, will rise from 17.3 per cent to 22.3 per cent. Roller skates will be subject to a 7.7 per cent duty up from 2.7 per cent.
The punitive tariffs will also apply to textiles, agricultural products, steel and glass, books and newspapers, sugar and toys - even nuclear reactors. And they will rise, by 1 percentage point each month, until they affect US exports worth $666m a year.
The aim is to force the US Congress to change the foreign sales corporation provision (FSC), which grants tax breaks to US exporters and was ruled illegal by the World Trade Organisation in 2002.
But to John Disharoon, vice president of the trade committee at the American chamber of commerce to the EU, Monday is simply "a sad day for trade relations between the US and Europe". He says: "Nobody wants to see sanctions. It adds to the negative climate."
European companies share some of Mr Disharoon's concerns. But according to one trade expert, there is "no sense of disaster" among European trade officials, business lobbies and observers. The European Commission is keen to play down the significance of the trade sanctions. It insists that Brussels has shown patience and diplomacy in the run-up to March 1, and that Washington as well as US companies have had ample warning and enough time to prepare for the sanctions.
"We've been extremely patient, but there is no way now we can avoid these sanctions, which hopefully will concentrate a few minds on the urgency of this legislation," Pascal Lamy, EU trade commissioner, told reporters in Washington on Friday following two days of meetings with US lawmakers. He added: "The day the necessary legislation is there, I will remove the sanctions." Officials close to Mr Lamy have argued for months that there would be no backlash from US lawmakers.
Monique Julien, a trade expert at Unice, a business federation that claims to represent some 16m European companies, says: "If you look at the record on the European side there has always been an attempt at conciliation. Sanctions were repeatedly postponed but at the end of the day, it is a question of [upholding] the credibility of the WTO dispute settlement system."
But even Europeans admit that - at some point - the Commission and its counterpart in Washington might have to rethink the way they approach trade disputes. Like many trade experts, Ms Julien is worried about the "multiplication" of recent EU-US trade spats - of which the dispute over FSC is only the most visible example.
In the past two months the EU has moved closer to trade sanctions in a string of cases, many of which are linked to US anti-dumping legislation and practices. In a dispute over the so-called Byrd amendment, which allows US companies to keep the anti-dumping proceeds raised from foreign competitors, sanctions could come this summer.
Nick Clegg, a British Liberal Democrat member of the European Parliament and trade expert, warns that "everything is being shuffled off to the WTO, and if that trend continues it begins straining the credibility of the institution".
Although he applauds Mr Lamy's approach in the FSC case, Mr Clegg believes that at some point it could become necessary for the EU and the US to settle their disputes through direct negotiations. "If we continue along the same trajectory, there needs to be some kind of political decision to clear the decks in a comprehensive way.
"I think more and more businesses, especially big companies with transatlantic links, are asking: is this really the best way to handle the biggest trade relationship in the world?" Additional reporting from Edward Alden in Washington
Europe slaps sanctions on US over export tax breaks
http://www.eubusiness.com/afp/040227224025.yw5ij37j
EU Business
European trade chief Pascal Lamy said time has finally run out and Europe will launch sanctions Monday to pressure the United States to scrap illegal export tax breaks.
But for the first time, Lamy said he would consider allowing a transition period for removing the subsidies, ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization.
"We have been very patient but there is no way now that we can avoid this action, which hopefully will concentrate a few minds on the urgency of this legislation," the European trade commissioner said.
The European sanctions, to be ratcheted up each month to increase pressure on the United States to overturn the law, would be lifted when Congress passes legislation to repeal the subsidies, he said.
Tariffs, already approved by the WTO, begin at five percent on a range of goods from American meat to nuclear reactor parts. The duties will rise by one percentage point a month.
In 2004, the extra duties would be worth a total 315 million dollars, according to the Europeans.
The WTO has ruled that the so-called foreign sales corporation (FSC) law flouts global trade rules by allowing US firms, operating through subsidiaries in offshore tax havens, to benefit from reduced export taxes.
WTO arbitrators have agreed with the EU that just over four billion dollars (3.4 billion euros) would constitute "appropriate countermeasures" based on the trade impact of the US policy.
Lamy said he had no desire to take sides on the various proposals for US legislation to replace the FSC law; he only wanted to check the final proposal before it becomes law.
The House of Representative and Senate are drawing up rival proposals for legislation, which would need to be hammered out in a compromise text before signature by President George W. Bush.
Two of the main proposals contain a three-year transition period to phase out the tax break, however.
"The WTO ruling says that the only WTO-compliant transition period is zero. That is what the WTO ruling says," Lamy said.
"This being said, we have a margin of appreciation and if my judgment at that time is that I can use a bit or part of this margin of appreciation, I will do it (while) keeping my goal ... which is getting this thing repealed."
The trade boss said he would have to consult with the European industries affected by the US tax break, however, "to see whether or not they can live with such and such option."
Lamy noted that he had received a letter from European business chiefs suggesting they could live with a transition period.
The European business group UNICE sent a letter to Lamy on February 13 noting that the Congress was considering a three-year transition period for removing the tax break.
"For our part, we are ready to consider, while reluctantly, a reasonable transition period, as short as possible, for repeal of the current legislation," it said.
"It would therefore be appreciated if such flexibility could be explored, provided that the final outcome would be WTO-compatible and not affecting negatively European interests."
Sanctions give Europe prime opportunity
Scotsman.com
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=240252004
OFF a dirt road in a quiet section of Tripoli, a trailer camp flies two flags. One is the green flag of Libya. The other is a red banner bearing a single word: "Halliburton".
The British general manager, Richie Jones, squirms a bit when a journalist shows up. He explains that United States sanctions bar him from expanding his business. He can’t import anything with a US part, he can’t use US technology. He isn’t even supposed to communicate with Americans or anyone who pays US taxes.
"I don’t know if we’re breaking the sanctions by talking to you," Mr Jones says in a conspiratorial tone. "If you sent me an e-mail it would be illegal for me to open it."
He manages the Libyan branch of Halliburton Germany GmbH, a subsidiary of the oil services giant once run by the US vice president Dick Cheney, and his hands are tied. The US sanctions, imposed in 1986 to punish Libya for supporting terrorism, bar Americans from most Libyan business. While sanctions have cost Libya at least $30 billion (£16 billion) in lost revenues, they have also taken a toll on US business.
European and Asian companies are cashing in, building a $5 billion (£2.67) project to pump and pipe Libyan natural gas to European power plants. They will soon vie for work on a $2 billion (£1.07 billion) upgrade for a major oil refinery.
"We’re preparing for a very active and promising decade," says Tarek Hassan-Beck, planning director for the government-owned National Oil Corp. But unless the sanctions end, the Americans will be sitting it out.
US firms to be hit by multimillion-euro sanctions
EU Observer
http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=14634
The EU will impose sanctions worth hundreds of millions of euro on US businesses from next Monday.
The move is retaliatory, counteracting tax breaks for US companies which the WTO has ruled illegal.
"I think the picture is now clear: countermeasures will come into force by Monday", Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said after talks with his US counterparts Thursday.
A 5% levy will be placed on all US exports to the EU, with that figure rising each month that the US tax break stays in place.
"Our countermeasures will start in a relatively modest way but the system has been devised so that it increases every month, the notion being that this will focus minds on the necessity to comply, which is the real name of the game", Mr Lamy said.
The figure is expected to rise by over 30 million euro a month.
With the US in an election year, any pressure from the sanctions will be made all the greater, with voters calling for politicians to protect US jobs and interests.
The Foreign Sale Corporation (FSC) - as the tax break is known - creates a loophole allowing US companies to benefit from decreased export tax.
The EU, backed by the WTO, says the FSC gives US companies an unfair market advantage.
Coupled with the strong euro, the FSC has led to very cheap US imports.
Similarly, the strong euro may also mean that the US companies hit by the sanctions will not feel the pinch quite as much as they otherwise would, with their products still being competitively priced.
The WTO has ruled that the EU may impose sanctions of up to 3.4 billion euro.
It is up to the US Congress to repeal the law.
An Italian convert to Islam who fought to have crosses removed from schools is now suing the Pope for comments he made in his 1994 book, allegedly calling Christianity superior to other religions, in violation of the Italian constitution.
I find this fascinating. I don't know much about the previous lawsuit, but it seems this devout Muslim is fighting so that the secular Constitution is upheld in a land that is richly Catholic. How do Italians view him?
I posted a short news blurb. Maybe some of our Italian speakers can tell us what the Italian press thinks.
Muslim activist sues Pope
A Muslim activist sued the Pope, a top cardinal and other church officials, claiming their comments about the superiority of Christianity violated the Italian constitution. In a civil suit filed in Aquila, central Italy, activist Adel Smith said he was seeking a court condemnation of the comments. Smith, president of the Muslim Union of Italy, has made headlines for his court battle to have a crucifix taken down from his son's classroom. In his latest legal effort, Smith said that, over the years, Pope John Paul II and other church officials had violated the Italian constitution, which proclaims that all religions are equal under the law.
We don't have to be so serious all the time with political stories, do we? Just some light reading.
Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) -- More than 10 million giant Pacific crabs, each weighing up to 25 pounds (11 kilograms) and with a claw-span of more than three feet (1 meter), are moving south along Norwegian coastlines, the Telegraph reported, citing fishermen, environmentalists and government officials.
The crabs, called Kamchatka or Red King crabs, have moved about 400 miles (644 kilometers) and could travel as far south as Gibraltar, the paper said. They are descended from crabs introduced to Europe in the 1930s by Josef Stalin, the paper said.
They can survive on almost anything, including kelp, dead fish, seaweed and fish eggs, and they eat crushed shells for calcium, the paper said, citing Lars Petter Olie, a Norwegian diver. Northern clams and other shellfish, which were abundant, have been nearly eliminated by the crabs, the paper said.
Their population is exploding because they have no natural predators, the paper said, citing Andreas Tveteraas, an Oslo-based analyst with the World Wildlife Fund. Some experts are calling for government to sponsor a ``blitz'' to stop the crabs, the report said. On Jan. 1 Norwegian authorities lifted some restrictions on crabbing along the shore, the paper said.
Some fisherman welcome the crabs, whose meat is similar to the finest lobster and can fetch around 200 Norwegian kroner ($28.6) per pound, the paper said. One leg provides a filling meal for a grown man, the paper said. site)
Thirty-two Green parties are uniting to create the first pan-European political group, according to this Christian Science Monitor article. The article considers the challenges facing such a coalition in light of increasing skepticism about a European Union identity. It also talks about the motives of creating such a party.
Pan-European parties boost the idea of a united Europe and highlight the similar political issues facing Europeans. However, what other issues outside of the environment can unite Europeans? I think it's a great experiment in EU poltiics though.
Christian Science Monitor, Greens seek pan-European political clout
Greens seek pan-European political clout
By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
PARIS - Thirty years ago a handful of ecology-minded activists threw themselves into the European political fray and succeeded, over time, in turning what had been radical environmental demands into mainstream, conventional concerns.
Now the Greens are going against the grain again. Even as Europe flounders in its search for cohesion, and Europeans retreat further into their national identities, 32 Green parties have founded the first pan-European political party with a transnational election platform and continental reach.
The goal, says Monica Frassoni, cochairwoman of the European Parliament's Green members, is to create a genuinely European electorate for the first time. With parliamentary elections set for June, she says, "we see a space for European politics to become more autonomous from national politics."
They are pursuing this dream at a difficult time, for the Greens are less likely than any other group to win new seats from the 10 new European Union members joining in May. Though environmental problems are enormous in the post-Communist countries that make up the bulk of the new entrants, most of their citizens are more concerned with prosperity than with pollution.
The Greens are launching their election campaign with a psychological boost, however. In Latvia, former Environment Minister Indulis Emsis has just become the world's first Green prime minister, appointed by the president to break a political deadlock.
Nowhere else in Europe do the Greens hold such a senior post, and their support rarely rises above 10 percent in national elections. But they enjoy visibility beyond their numbers through leaders such as Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a leader of the May 1968 uprising in Paris and now probably the best-known European Parliament member, and Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister.
Many grass-roots members appear ambivalent about whether they even want to be in government, preferring the freedom to remain true to their principles as thorns in the side of authority. The French Green party, for instance, grew bitter at being ignored as a junior partner in the last Socialist-led government.
At the conference in Rome 10 days ago where the new European party was founded, Mr. Fischer fustigated such dilettantism. "It is all well and good to be on the right side of history, but that means nothing if history follows the wrong path," he told some 1,300 delegates from 29 countries.
"Beautiful ideas are all very well, but we must fight for power; it is a challenge."
The new party is a step in that direction, Ms. Frassoni says. "We founded it because we want to win elections," she says. The question is whether European voters are ready for a continent-wide party. Recent EU opinion polls show that less than half of EU citizens now believe that their country's membership in the Union is a good thing, and turnout in European Parliament elections has fallen every time they have been held, to just 49 percent in 1999.
"Since Europe does not deliver, people have lost confidence in it," argues Frassoni. "But one of the reasons why Europe cannot get its act together and be really united is that people think in national terms.
"We have to show that Europe works, and to do that we need instruments," she adds. "A European party will be a very good instrument."
Though European socialists, conservatives, and liberals are also banding into formal continentwide parties to take advantage of new EU funding for such groups, the Greens may be best suited for such an approach, analysts say, if only because the sort of environmental issues that move their voters - such as renewable energy and genetically modified food - transcend national borders.
"As Europe becomes more politically divided, parties that appeal to narrowly defined constituencies will grow in popularity and power," suggests a recent report by Stratfor, a US political consultancy group. "Narrow-issue parties will be among the few that can overcome national politics."
The task will not be easy. European Green parties are divided among themselves on fundamental issues such as how much power national governments should cede to EU bodies: The German Greens are federally minded, while the British and Scandinavian parties are more 'Euroskeptic.' The Danish Green party refused even to sign the common electoral platform.
Green leaders insist that their new formation merely reflects the goal set by the proposed EU Constitution - of "unity and diversity." And in the European Parliament, "When you look at our voting record we are the most coherent of all the groups," says Green deputy chairman Pierre Jonckheer.
At the last European Parliament elections, the Greens won 38 of the 625 seats, and they do not expect to win many more. But to maximize their appeal, they have drawn up a "back to basics" manifesto that focuses on core Green issues, while skirting divisive questions such as defense.
Campaigning as a single party, says Frassoni, the Greens will be able to get their message across more clearly. "People close to the Greens are particularly sensitive to the fact that to regulate environmental issues or to control globalization you need a hard core of power," she argues. That power must be Europe and it must be visible."
What we're looking at here is global energy policy and security. The US, as recognized, is reaping the benefits of "rebuilding" Afghanistan and Iraq, with the potential for a greater harvest of energy reserves in the region after its "preventive" action in the latter country and manhunt in the former.
The author outlines how Germany has remained more or less on the sidelines, which is potentially troubling. But now, the constant political instability in the region is perceived as an underestimated threat to energy supplies. Perhaps it's time to get more involved.
Quoting a couple of academics, the writer lists that German dependence on foreign oil is increasing, and there is a need to diversify imports. But what is most curious about one of the academics suggestions is how it follows U.S. policy on foreign oil.
The author tucks this at the bottom of the piece, but it stuck out the most to me: linking energy and security policy. Putatively these are disparate and seperate realms. It also reminds me of a recent New Yorker article that examines Dick Cheney's involvement with Halliburton and defense contracts.
According to this piece, written by Jane Meyer in the Feb. 16 & 23 issue, a high level National Security Council official wrote a memo in Feb. 2001 that "directed NSC staff to cooperate fully with [Cheney's] Energy Task Force as it considered the 'melding' of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: 'the review of operational policies towards rogue states,' such as Iraq, and 'actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.'"
As dependence on foreign oil increases, and oil exports go more and more to China and expanding economies, will this 'melding' become a commom policy practice? Will the west dispose more and more "authoritarian" rulers who happen to sit on "exploitable" energy reserves?
Of course, many suspect that invasions and regime change have something to do with energy supplies and lining pockets, but will this become explicit policy?
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - An ever more dangerous dependency
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An ever more dangerous dependency
By Nikolas Busse
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have led the United States into the region with the bulk of the world's energy reserves, and Washington has been quick to start exploiting the economic advantages of its position. American companies are active in the Gulf and central Asian regions; in such countries as Azerbaijan (oil reserves) and Georgia (oil pipeline to Turkey) the old regional superpower Russia is being forced to watch as the United States secures its strategic interest.
Germany has so far shown little interest in this game of influence and oil, believing that a well-functioning world market offers the best guarantee of reliable supplies. It considers additional political or military efforts unnecessary; after all, the German Economics Ministry says, the oil-producing countries are keen to sell.
Past experience seems to confirm that view. Even the oil crisis of the mid-1970s was basically a price crisis; the basic supply was not threatened. Throughout all political crises in recent decades, oil and gas imports have never subsided, whether they are from the Middle East or Russia. Even the Soviet Union was a reliable supplier.
Nonetheless, a debate over the future of German energy provision has been started in Berlin's foreign policy institutions. Such researchers as Friedemann Müller of the Science and Politics Foundation and Frank Umbach of the German Society for Foreign Policy see the persistent political instability in the Middle East as an underestimated threat.
The two academics are above all concerned by statistics showing that in 30 years Europe will be far more dependent on energy imports than it is today. In 2000, the European members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development still produced 48 percent of their own oil, thanks mostly to the North Sea reserves, but the International Energy Agency estimates that this share will drop to 15 percent by 2030. Most of the shortfall will have to come from the Middle East.
Given the latest political turbulence in this region, this is worrying. Since Sept. 11, 2001 caused new disruptions, perhaps even a war of cultures between the Western world and the Islamic world, oil has begun to look more like a potential political weapon. The authoritarian rulers in the Gulf region could be tempted to ward off Western attempts at political intervention - and democratization - by raising prices or reducing supplies, and if Islamists came to power in one of these countries, oil supplies would be seriously threatened. What's more, the Gulf states are no longer as dependent on the West as a buyer; already, 60 percent of Gulf oil is sold to Asia, a share that is likely to increase further, given the rapid economic growth of southeast and east Asia.
Dependence on imported gas, Germany's second most important source of energy, is also increasing. In 2000, the European OECD countries bought 36 percent of their gas abroad, a share that will rise to 63 percent by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. Europe currently buys 66 percent of its gas imports in Russia and the rest from Africa. This gives Moscow, in particular, substantial political leverage. Müller argues that the Russian government is already trying to channel gas supplies from other countries, such as Turkmenistan or Kazakstan, to Europe across its own territory so as to gain influence on volumes and prices. “There's a clear conflict of interest here between Russia and Europe,“ Müller says.
Windmills won't be able to change all of this. Even the German Economics Ministry says that alternative sources of energy will account for no more than 7 percent of German energy provision in the medium term. The planned abandonment of nuclear energy will worsen the problem, which is why people like Umbach believe it is time for Germany to link energy and security policy. The United States did this quite a while ago, diversifying imports so that the United States today is less dependent on individual supplier countries. Müller's conclusion: The Europeans should buy more oil from the Caspian region and more gas from Iran.
Feb. 27
This article written by a German and published in OpenDemocracy, an "online global magazine of politics and culture" based in the UK offers a critical view of the French ban on hijab, but succeeds in giving a balanced, and helpful account of how it was passed, what it means in the history of France and why there is something wrong about it. Very helpful.
openDemocracy - The French republic: making Muslims into citizens?
The French republic: making Muslims into citizens?
Johannes Willms
26 - 2 - 2004
France’s education system has long worked to transform peasants, migrants and believers into national, secular citizens. Will the process fail with the headscarves worn by the country’s young Muslim women?
Since the 1789 revolution the French state has used its school system to make French citizens out of people from the country’s many different regions: Corsica, the Basque areas, Provence, Brittany, Gascony, Savoie (Italian), Alsace-Lorraine. In the late 19th century, the process intensified under the influence of a centralist state. The memorable title of Eugen Weber’s fascinating book evokes its profoundly transformative impact: Peasants into Frenchmen (1976).
The wars, colonial struggles and economic cycles of the 20th century brought new generations of children into French schools: east European Jews, Poles, Spaniards, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Senegalese, Algerians. All, whatever their origin and first language, rote-learned the stories of nos ancêtres, les gallois (“our ancestors, the French”).
There are successful examples of “assimilation by education” in many fields of French national life – from soccer to cinema, literature to politics. The most prominent current example is the minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy – the son of an aristocratic Hungarian refugee who fled his homeland in 1944.
So it is both ironic and appropriate that the ambitious, charismatic Sarkozy – “the government’s Zinedine Zidane”, according to an ally – has been in the frontline of the latest stage in this long national project: the French parliament’s controversial new law enforcing a ban on the display of explicit religious symbols in educational institutions.
The law decrees that “in schools, junior high schools and high schools, signs and dress that conspicuously show the religious affiliation of students are forbidden.” It is neutrally phrased and in principle applies equally to Catholic crucifixes or Jewish kippah; moreover, it is intended to confirm and consistently apply existing practice, rather than to establish a new legal order. In this sense it is a continuation of a historical project rather than a fresh departure.
For all that, the controversy that the measure has provoked in France reflects the sense among both proponents and opponents that it had a tangible, specific target: the Islamic headscarves of young women, members of the 3.26 million-strong Muslim population of France.
Realms of history
The law confirming a prohibition on the wearing of religious apparel in state schools was passed by the French parliament on 10 February 2004 with an overwhelming, cross-partisan majority – 494-36, with 31 abstentions. The senate, the upper house of parliament, is now considering the law for final approval.
It must be stressed that the law applies only to state-run schools, not to private schools run by religious institutions which are obliged only to teach elements of the national curriculum. Thus, French Muslim people who want their daughters to wear the headscarf still have a choice. In the northern city of Lille, for example, a Muslim private school has operated since September 2003, and like similar Catholic, Protestant or Jewish schools is entitled to state subsidies.
Yet despite the political majority in support of the law, and the continuing space for religious education in France, the law provoked an eruption of intense protest among Muslims and sections of the French left – accompanied by a mixture of bafflement and outrage outside the country.
If these reactions had no effect, the explanation lies in a mixture of history and political opportunism. The continuing desire of the French centre-right not to lose voters to the radical, emphatically xenophobic right – mainly organised in Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National – is one calculation behind the timing of the law. But the deeper current the law reflects is the preservation of the uncompromising secularism of the Fifth Republic (1958 onwards) in the face of the visible diversification of the “global nation” on French soil.
In essence, the French political establishment is resisting a multicultural solution – one that would accept this form of society as a fact (even if its utility as the best way to integrate minorities is as yet unproven) and base public policy on tolerance of diversity.
The French elite insists rather in the principle that national identity is exclusively shaped by culture and can therefore be acquired in a learning and assimilation process. This universalistic – and, in an older reading, liberal – approach can be understood as the dominant trend in a historical development rich in political convulsions.
In this perspective, modern France is the inheritor of a state, a nation and a secular understanding forged in centuries of painful argument, and present across the many available “realms of memory” (in Pierre Nora’s famous concept). This argument began with the succession of Charlemagne as ruler of a unified Frankish kingdom in 771 and found its climax, but by no means its finale, in the revolution of 1789. It continues today. The “headscarf law” is French history.
A project unfulfilled
But if the processes of state-isation, nation-isation, and secular-isation have been underway for centuries, why are they still incomplete? Three immediate possible explanations suggest themselves.
First, alongside the secular, republican ethos central to France’s official self-perception is a country shaped by deeply conservative, Catholic values. It is true that Napoleon’s Concordat with Pope Pius VII (1801) effectively suborned the Catholic Church and obliged it to exert political control over its flock; and that a century later, the Third Republic (1871-1941) concluded two decades of intense social argument by decreeing the unconditional separation of church and state in 1905.
Even this rigorous laicité, however, did not eradicate other mentalities with a significant presence in French society; a fact illustrated by the huge, and successful, demonstrations in the early 1980s against government plans to abolish subsidies for the country’s – and mostly Catholic – private schools. This social current views widespread and often militant displays of Islamic allegiance as a hostile challenge.
A second explanation is that immigrants to France from the majority Muslim societies of the southern rim of the Mediterranean are particularly resistant to cultural assimilation by “Frenchness”. Their insistence on maintaining a series of religiously-motivated social practices and prohibitions – regarding pork meat in school canteens, gender-specific use of swimming pools – impacts on the majority population as dogmatic and exclusivist. It is answered by the latter’s exclusion, tinged often with racism and leading to the marginalisation of these immigrants and their descendants in alienated urban or suburban ghettos.
A third element in the incompleteness of the secularist project may be that the sheer number of Muslims in France has grown so rapidly in a relatively short period of time; inevitably, the cultural assimilation process had to fail because it had not been devised for such profusion. In particular, the family reunions permitted during Giscard d’Estaing’s presidency (1974-81) enabled many thousands of male immigrant workers from the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), whom France needed for its then booming economy, to bring their next of kin to France.
This trend, and the higher birthrate of Muslim immigrants, has made the Muslim minority in France the highest in the European Union at 3.26 million (5.5% of the population of mainland France), against 4.3% in the Netherlands, 3% in Germany, and 2.6% in Britain.
The social cost of secularism
In the face of these challenges, official France adamantly insists on the principle of equality between citizens, underpinned by a policy of cultural assimilation. By the same token, it rejects “affirmative action” – significantly labelled discrimination positive in France – as a means to accelerate the integration of minorities. Members of ethnic or religious minorities living in the country are not even registered in official statistics as long as they are French citizens.
The insistence on a secularist state policy can be interpreted partly as a cost-neutral exercise. Its proponents can also invoke the argument that if the slightest concession to Muslim demands would immediately risk arousing the desires of other religious groups, thus compromising both the secular principle and France’s cultural identity.
Many Muslims also see this as a danger; as many as 40% of French Muslims, and even larger numbers of women and younger people among them, may support the ban. Dalil Boubakeur, president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), welcomed the law, arguing that it would successfully defend France’s secular institutions from the intrusion of Muslim fundamentalism.
But can these institutions, and the principles that underlie them, endure if the state refuses to acknowledge significant dimensions of its social landscape – unemployment and crime statistics that would be even more frightening if measured according to religious denomination? A pregnant remark of the architect of French socialism, Jean Jaurès, echoes across the decades: “A republic which is not social cannot be secular”.
This article was translated from German by Julian Kramer
More in openDemocracy’s Europe & Islam debate:
Navid Kermani, “Roots of terror” (February 2002)
Gilles Kepel, “The trail of political Islam” (July 2002)
Usman Sheikh, “Lessons from Bosnia” (November 2002)
Tariq Modood, “Muslims and European multiculturalism” (May 2003)
Abdal-Hakim Murad, “European Islam: the return of Hagar”, (July 2003)
US-France Analysis series, the Brookings Institute
“The Transatlantic Allergy: Partnership or Strategic Counterweight?”
I'm including this piece because it shows additional intellectual thinking on the role of the EU in international relations, and I think it's a good compliment to Balibar's “Europe: Vanishing Mediator?”
The author of this piece, Jean Dufourcq, is a member of the Brookings EU Military Committee. And the piece explains how the evolution of EU policy is being shaped by different perceptions of American policy.
But before he gets into perceptions, Dufourcq starts by contrasting the different thinking of the two powers - in general - saying, “the US has adopted a classic imperial stance that emphasizes hard power… and immediate solutions” while the EU “emphasizes a new model of gradual expansion of its zone of peace.” He then says the EU can simultaneously prevent this transatlantic gap from widening and increase its power, by becoming – neither a threatening imitation of the US, nor its benign mediator – but “an example of a regional integration process” that moves “beyond the outmoded notion of national sovereignty …a forum for mutually beneficial exchanges between different peoples.” He says this new kind of power can operate as a non-threatening autonomous balance to the US and “a compliment to American practice.”
I find Dufourcq agrees with Balibar in many respects, and I find it interesting that they both have such similar, hopeful visions of the future. But they seem to differ in one respect - Dufourcq says the EU can become a new type of power even if the US does not change its current approach to foreign policy. He also aims to give a clearer sense of what the new EU power might look like - though it's still pretty fuzzy.
Brookings Institution US -France Analysis Series
U.S.-FRANCE ANALYSIS SERIES
January 2004
The Transatlantic Allergy: Partnership or Strategic Counterweight?
Jean Dufourcq
EU Military Committee
The deterioration of transatlantic relations is no longer a debatable issue.it is a reality that has resulted from a variety of convergent circumstances. For some, transatlantic tensions stem from the difficult but temporary adaptation of the Alliance to the new security threats of the 21st century; for others it signals a long-deferred re-balancing of responsibilities within the Alliance or even a divorce of the transatlantic couple. Probably it is a bit of all of these, but what is certain is that the criticisms, sometimes the outright insults, that have been hurled across the Atlantic by both sides have provoked a mutual loathing that threatens the interests of both sides.
Taking the long view, history has merely retaken its normal chaotic course after the parenthesis of the cold war. Unfortunately, we have not experienced history in the same way on both sides of the Atlantic. Confronted with a new strategic threat, that of terrorism, we reacted differently because our historical experiences and the implications for our geopolitics are different. One need not be troubled by this divergence.the United States and Europe have taken different but not inherently incompatible approaches. The United States has adopted a classic imperial stance that emphasizes hard power, military tools, and immediate solutions to pressing problems. The still-consolidating European Union emphasizes a new method of gradual expansion of its zone of peace that offers the possibility of escaping from classic balance of power dilemmas. The challenge is to find some strategies for common action that will permit the Atlantic Alliance to confront together what is primarily a crisis of modernity.
Transatlantic Differentiation
When the Soviet threat disappeared and no other threat emerged to replace it, the core rationale for transatlantic system also began to disintegrate. After the Cold War, the base of transatlantic relations seemed to be recreating itself through the articulation of distinct societal models. American society, universally identified with modernity, established itself as an ideal that held a powerful attraction for youth throughout the world. However, especially on the periphery of the Atlantic world where American standards of living remained unattainable, strong frustrations and even violent backlashes resulted from unrealized aspirations. Within Europe, the celebrated American model was adapted to the regional context in effort to create an original European
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model. European society became an extension of the American dream, but one with very distinctive characteristics that showed the possibility and the advantages of distinct models of social organization.
The terrorist attacks on September 11 against symbols of American civilian and military power also targeted the transatlantic values of democratic societies and liberal economies. As a result, one might have expected an immediate re-constitution of the Cold War front, even if this time, the enemy could not be so clearly identified. This did not happen. Instead, the Iraq crisis triggered a deepening of the process of transatlantic divergence leading to a very visible clash over the use of force against the Iraqi regime.
These events have already been well analyzed, as have been the roots of latent anti-Europeanism in the United States and reflexive anti-Americanism in Europe that exacerbated the recent quarrels. No one should believe, however, that the parties to this transatlantic dispute, despite their often overblown rhetoric, were questioning the Alliance’s founding virtues of liberty and progress. These virtues form the basis for the U.S.-European geopolitical alliance and stand at the heart of a civilization that exerts enormous influence over a world in which Westerners constitute a small, yet disproportionately wealthy, minority of the population. Rather than a disagreement about such fundamental values, the Iraqi crisis revealed the autonomy of two self-assertive groups of Western players and their distinct approaches to assessing and managing global threats.
Theoretical debates about multilateralism or multiple models of capitalism are no longer really the point. From now on, the important issue is the division of responsibility in the world of the 21st century. This doesn’t mean a new Yalta agreement that will divide the world into spheres influence, but rather a new strategic partnership that will enhance global stability. The task of adjusting the international architecture will, over the next few decades, bring together the pragmatists on the two sides of the Atlantic. This process must take into consideration not only the redistribution of power since the end of the Cold War and the fissures resulting from the current crisis but also the change in the notion of power that occurred during the Cold War, especially in Europe.
It will start from the premise that the entire Western world exists within an interdependent transatlantic community whose strategic interests are at base compatible. The Atlantic Community currently has a decisive advantage over other.Asian, Arab-Muslim and African.geopolitical poles, in part because the different actors within the Atlantic Community are able to mobilize different tools towards common goals. In this view, the current disagreements between the United States and Europe on dealing with international terrorism do not reveal a fundamental disagreement over goals so much as a debate on the most effective way to exercise power to achieve those goals. This profound and important debate has only just begun, but it has already highlighted the transformation of the European Union, its emergence as an international actor, and the novelty of the EU approach to power as an alternative and a complement to American practice.
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The European Model
“Europe” qua Europe did not play a role in the Iraq crisis and, indeed, few of the important debates on the future of the transatlantic alliance have taken place in the halls of the European Union. Nonetheless, it was, paradoxically, in the middle of this troubled period that the European Union made some of its greatest strides toward a common security and defense policy. The EU finally ratified its own space project, Galileo, (“complementing” the American Global Positioning System [GPS]) and launched three crisis management operations, the first such operations in European history: The EUPM (European Union Police Mission) in Bosnia taking over from the UN’s IPTF (International Police Task Force), “Concordia” in Macedonia taking over for NATO’s Allied Harmony , and “Artemis” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in a mission of urgent military support for an existing United Nations operation. It was also during this period the Union finished its preparatory work to establish a constitutional treaty that plans to add coherence to the Union’s Common Security and Foreign Policy in several ways: through a European solidarity clause committing the Union to unity in the face of security threats, through approval of the principle of pre-defined or “structured” cooperation between willing subsets of member states, and through the creation of an agency devoted mainly to arms procurement. With these efforts, the European Constitutional Convention decisively committed itself to the creation of an EU strategic identity and defense capability. Lastly, and also in the middle of the Iraq crisis, Javier Solana presented to the heads of States and the governments of the Union the first outline of a European security strategy1 that asserted that EU would be a global actor in the 21st century, distinct but still working in harmony with the United States.
This evolution of EU policy clashed with the aspirations of the heterogeneous club that had formed during the Iraq crisis: the British and Spanish governments and most of the 10 countries due to accede to the European Union in 2004. One can understand the source of their unease with the attempt of Europe to play an independent role during the crisis. For the British, London has for over fifty years served as the European entry point for the United States and its privileged intermediary in Europe. This relationship is the central policy and basic strategic choice of every British government since the Suez Crisis in 1956. Madrid discreetly aspires to take over from London as Washington’s favorite transatlantic intermediary. The states of Central Europe are caught between an old dream—that the American “liberator” will guarantee their security against the hordes from the East—and a recent nightmare—that they would be forced to choose between the American offer of a security guarantee and the European offer of prosperity. This ad-hoc alliance formed by the United States created new dividing lines on the European continent. These divides will last a long time, even if they do not have the potential to completely disrupt the movement toward integration in Europe. In the meantime, the United States has completely and abruptly re-nationalized the American defense posture and effectively deprived the Atlantic Alliance of any military role.
1
“A Secure Europe in a Better World,” Report by Javier Solana to the European Council at Thessalonika, Greece, June 20, 2003. This document, in an modified form, was accepted by the European Council in Brussels in December 2003 as the European Security Strategy.
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In the US, the policy differences with Germany, France, Russia and China, the latter three permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, came as a terrible shock. Even more, the return of the Franco-German couple to the world stage triggered a visceral reaction of stupefied fury. This initial reaction only intensified after the interventions of these two accomplices stymied U.S. efforts to gain approval from the UN Security Council for an invasion of Iraq. The emerging Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis, as well as the mini-summit in Brussels on April 29, 2003 that asserted a European desire for an autonomous defense capability presented Washington with a momentous challenge to its leadership. These assertions of strategic autonomy by meaningful actors in the international community are being progressively taken seriously by Washington, apparently more at the Pentagon than at the State Department and the White House.
The central challenge today is thus to define Western solidarity within the new system defined by these assertions of autonomy. Given the array of challenges the West faces, many think that Western ranks must close. The most prominent advocate of this approach is British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who addressed the U.S. Congress on July 17 in precisely these terms: “Do not abandon Europe, work with it …. All great alliances begin with America and Europe…” Clearly, the threat that today justifies this alliance is that of terrorism, and for the future, the creation of another pole of power in Asia. But this Western solidarity, obviously needed to meet these challenges, should not prevent Europe from consolidating itself as a center of power.
Everyone understands.Blair better than anybody.that to establish the European Union on the model of the United States of America would trigger a process of direct confrontation that would be intolerable to London and harmful to the entire Atlantic Community. Thus, Britain does its best to undermine the creation of a fully integrated and sovereign version of the “United States of Europe,” suspecting that French diplomacy is working unremittingly toward just this goal. But this very notion is an illusion. The EU is about something more complex and more innovative than just recreating in Brussels a new state according to a model of power that European governments consider, mostly without regret, entirely out of date. The EU does not seeks to be a counterweight to the United States. Rather, it offers itself as a partner to the United States, but one that presents a new type of international actor that has specific values, responsibilities, and interests that neither completely correspond nor completely conflict with those of the United States.
The European Union in 2004 has its own security strategy and will soon have a constitutional treaty capable of regulating its complex operations for the coming decades. In enlarging to twenty-five members, with possibly over thirty member states by the end of the decade, the EU offers an example of a regional integration process capable of moving beyond the outmoded notion of national sovereignty and of providing a forum for mutually beneficial exchanges between its different peoples. In the process, it acts as a sort of pacifying force for the local or regional conflicts that it touches. Enlargement, thus presents neither a historic opportunity for sovereign expansion nor a risk of dilution, but rather a detailed plan for forming a peaceful and prosperous strategic neighborhood around the core European zone of peace. As such, it will have an important impact on transatlantic relations, because it privileges the regional dimension of European unity above Atlantic ties, be they cultural, ideological, or political.
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This is model of a stable international actor based on a “community spirit” has emerged out of Europe’s common troubled past and out of the recent experience of shared governance of the continent. This European model does not conflict directly with the American one that rests on the hard realities of military, economic and technological power, but it renders some of these dimensions meaningless. More geared towards development, prevention, securing common interests than towards superiority and preemption, this model of regional power could be very useful for global security in the 21st century. All the more so because the European zone of peace will promote the spread of stability and prosperity to its closest neighbors and partners, in the Arab and Slavic world, in the Mediterranean and in Russia, until, in some cases, they are eventually integrated as new members. In this way, the European Union is undoubtedly the indispensable partner to the United States. It balances American preeminent power while offering a more acceptable image of a Western club that today seems to many outsiders to use the rest of the planet a means to preserve its members’ privileged status.
From European Model to Global Governance
Beyond the Western Club, each of the big players in the world of the 21st century.Europe, America, China and Russia.must be assigned a role in the common effort to stabilize the international security environment. It is not for the United States, on its own, to define these roles. Neither America’s resolute efforts to promote liberty in the 20th century, nor its sense of a universalistic mission to spread the American creed confers upon it that right or that capability. The global challenges to come will require different types of power centers that each operate according to their own logic.
The creation of a new informal executive that could give coherence to United Nations action would certainly help toward meeting these challenges. In this new structure, the European Union, along with the United States, Russia and China, will set the tone of international relations. The EU can provide to that structure the experience and legitimacy that comes from having pursued a successful regional integration process. It can also share with its partners from the old “imperial” culture the new experience of cooperative multinational regulation that they currently lack but will desperately need in the future.
So, will the EU be a partner or counterweight to the United States? Strictly speaking it will probably be neither, rather it will form the basis of a compromise vision of Western responsibilities and of burden sharing that can promote security and spread prosperity in the 21st century.
- 5 -
This is a big blob of information, but you can check out the table of contents to see if there is anything that pertains to transatlantic relations after Iraq. This is a book by the European Union Institute of Strategic Studies published in November.
Shift or Rift:Assessing US-EU relations after Iraq
Late Tuesday night, the US government announced to suspend importation of all processed meat and poultry from France, saying that some plants that process delicacies like foie gras didn't meet the US standars for food safety, as reported in San Francisco Chronicle story.
The EU, on the other side, banned the import of poultry and eggs from the United States on the same day after the bird flu cases in Texas.
As pointed out in the story, there's some political reason behind the food import fight. It could help better understand the relations between France (or EU countries as a whole) and the United State.
The story is from AFP. Sorry there's no direct link to the article. You need to get on the website of AFP then click the title.
PARIS (AFP) France and the United States were locked in a food fight as Washington slapped a suspension on imports of French cold cuts and foie gras after finding fault with French health safety measures.
The ban was announced here late Tuesday, the same day as the European Union said it was halting imports of poultry and eggs from the United States after an outbreak of highly contagious bird-flu in Texas.
A US Department of Agriculture official denied suggestions that the US action was retaliatory and a spokeswoman for the EU commission in Brussels said the timing of the two announcements appeared to be coincidental.
But some EU observers privately suspect that diplomatic factors may indeed have been involved. "Yes, there is very likely a political aspect," said a European diplomat who asked not to be named.
France challenged the US decision, describing it as "unjustified" but vowing to stay in contact with US authorities in order to get the suspension lifted as quickly as possible.
French meat producers affected by the ban were stunned and outraged by the US move and vowed to seek the intervention of the World Trade Organization or to take reprisals against US exports to France.
French government officials rejected the findings of a visiting team of US veterinary inspectors, who found what the agriculture ministry here called "non-confomities" with US practice in French health protection measures.
But Agriculture Minister Herve Gaymard maintained that there are "100 times more deaths from food poisoning in the United States than in Europe."
He told journalists here that a high-level French delegation had gone to Washington on Monday to confer with US public health officials.
"But the Americans had already made their decision, mass had been said," he added.
The US move followed a visit to France by a team from the US Department of Agriculture from January 15 to February 5 that included inspections of 11 companies authorized to export food products to the United States and the veterinary services that supervise them.
"In this case we found repeated problems with those plants that are certified to export," Agriculture Department spokesman Steven Cohen said.
The plants manufacture beef, chicken, pork and duck-based products, he said, without naming the factories.
Cohen also insisted that no link existed with the EU suspension of live poultry and egg imports from the United States.
"This is a process that began, concerns that were documented, beginning in 1992," Cohen said.
French producers of cold cuts and foie gras reacted with fury to the US suspension.
"The Americans don't respect the rules of the game," said Vincent Truelle, co-director of a professional committee of foie gras producers.
"They had already done us great harm by applying, since 1999, 100 percent customs duties on certain French products -- such as foie gras -- because of the measures taken against (US) hormone-treated beef by the European Union.
"Today, they are wiping out years of work by French producers to conquer the US market.
"It's not for health reasons that the Americans are closing their borders to our products ... The real reasons lie elsewhere."
Added Robert Volut, head of the federation of cold cut producers: "We are considering filing a case at the World Trade Organization or taking reprisal measures against US products imported by France."
Sales to the United States account for a only a small percentage of annual earnings by French meat exporters. But the US market, free of constraints, presents an outlet of great potential, exporters say.
France produced 18,000 tonnes of foie gras last year, of which just 20 tonnes of the prepared product -- compared with 50 tonnes before 1999 -- was exported to the United States. Another 100 tonnes of raw meat parts and products made from foie gras was also shipped.
The leading importer of French foie gras is Spain, with 300 tonnes, followed by Switzerland, Belgium and Japan.
Nearly 90 percent of French foie gras production is consumed in France.
You are not alone: most Europeans don't know their institutions very well. They don't see enough of their Euro-deputies and tend to be confused by the role of the Commission, and the Parliament. Only a third intends to vote in the coming election. The good side of this is that there seems to be a "European public opinion." The general feelings seem to be shared by most countries. This includes the 10 incoming members.
You should get a sense of what this all means in terms of the strength of European institutions, and in terms of identities.
You can read the story in French, and/or check for similar stories published by other media. The first link will lead you to the institutions that did the survey.
Eurobarometer - Website for the Public Opinion Analysis sector of the European Commission
Le Monde - A la veille des lections europennes, institutions et eurodputs restent trs mal connus
A la veille des lections europennes, institutions et eurodputs restent trs mal connus
LE MONDE | 25.02.04 | 14h09 MIS A JOUR LE 25.02.04 | 18h25
Une enqute rvle notamment que les Europens ont une ide fausse des rles du Parlement et du conseil des ministres. Moins d'un tiers des citoyens ont l'intention d'aller voter en juin.
Bruxelles de notre bureau europen
A quatre mois des lections europennes, moins d'un tiers des citoyens de l'Union (31 %) dclarent avoir la ferme intention de voter. Ce rsultat inquitant a t rendu public, lundi 23 fvrier, par la Commission de Bruxelles, d'aprs l'Eurobaromtre semestriel sur l'tat de l'opinion publique, ralis du 1er octobre au 7 novembre 2003 auprs d'un chantillon reprsentatif de 16 082 personnes.
Le manque d'enthousiasme des personnes sondes se traduit par un nouveau recul de leur confiance dans les institutions europennes (41 %, contre 44 % au printemps 2003, et 46 % au printemps 2002). Un manque de confiance qui s'applique aussi aux institutions nationales (seules 31 % des personnes interroges disent avoir confiance en leur gouvernement national, au lieu de 39 % au printemps 2002).
Cet tat d'esprit se nourrit manifestement d'un grand pessimisme sur la situation conomique : 46 % des Europens prdisent que la conjoncture va se dgrader en 2004, tandis que 16 % restent optimistes. Seuls les pronostics de 1992 taient plus noirs, avec 48 % de pessimistes.
Dans les dix pays qui rejoindront l'Union europenne au 1er mai, 35 % seulement des citoyens se dclarent srs d'aller voter. Il faut dire qu' l'Est aussi le pessimisme domine : 33 % de personnes pensent que leurs conditions de vie vont empirer cette anne et autant misent sur la stagnation, selon un sondage effectu du 11 octobre au 9 novembre auprs de 12 165 personnes des dix pays candidats, plus la Bulgarie, la Roumanie et la Turquie.
LUS NON IDENTIFIS
Curieusement, le Parlement europen est l'institution europenne la plus reconnue : 91 % des personnes interroges l'Ouest en ont entendu parler et 78 % pensent qu'il joue un rle important dans la vie de l'Union europenne. 70 % donnent le premier rle la Commission et 58 % au conseil des ministres.
Cette hirarchie, identique l'Est, montre que les Europens ont une vision errone du fonctionnement de leurs institutions. "La surreprsentation du Parlement europen est sans doute lie son nom", suggre Bruno Jeanbart, directeur adjoint du dpartement opinion de CSA, qui a particip l'enqute pour la France : "Les gens calquent ce qu'ils savent de leur Parlement national sur le Parlement europen, alors qu' Bruxelles le lgislatif a deux ttes", explique-t-il. Il prcise que, en France, "la trs faible connaissance des institutions est lie au fait que les hommes politiques ne font pas l'effort de parler de l'Europe".
Bien que le Parlement soit l'institution la plus plbiscite, l'opinion publique ne connat pas ses eurodputs : 44 % des personnes interroges dclarent n'avoir "ni vu, ni entendu, ni eu de contacts avec un membre du Parlement depuis les dernires lections europennes". Seuls le Danemark (17 %) et la Finlande (26 %) font exception ce constat d'ignorance. En France, "cette mconnaissance s'explique par le mode de scrutin", indique M. Jeanbart : "Les lecteurs connaissent, la rigueur, les ttes de listes nationales, mais elles sont presque toutes parties." Seuls sont rests Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Charles Pasqua, Jean Saint-Josse, Arlette Laguiller et Alain Krivine. M. Jeanbart ajoute que le nouveau dcoupage, en trs grandes circonscriptions, "ne permettra pas plus l'identification des eurodputs".
Les mdias ne facilitent pas cette connaissance : seules 38 % des personnes interroges disent qu'elles ont vu des membres du Parlement europen la tlvision. Ce pourcentage augmente toutefois au Danemark (77 %) et en Finlande (61 %). Or 42 % des personnes interroges disent qu'elles aimeraient voir leurs eurodputs sur le petit cran.
Rafale Rivais
ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 26.02.04
The economic battle between US and EU agriculture is heating up as the two blocs halt imports of each others meat products. Europe bans American poultry, the US bans French meats. This is the current playing field for US/European hostility as the U.S. anti-dumping law was ruled to be illegal by the WTO roughly four years ago, which allowed the EU to move forward with trade sanctions against the US.
With disputes over steel tariffs and the weak dollar, there is growing animosity over trade. This builds on Sophia's earlier entry and could grow to a broarder view of trade relations.
BBC - US Stops imports of French meat
US stops import of French meats
The US has suspended imports of French meat products on safety grounds, it has been announced.
Items such as sausages, hams and foie gras are affected, France's Agriculture Ministry has reported.
The US has introduced the ban after a team of American farm officials visited the 11 French firms allowed to export such products to the States, it said.
The French ministry added that while the US noted "non-conformities" in its health safety system, it did not.
Below standards
"France agrees neither with the statements made by the US authorities, nor the conclusions they thought they needed to draw from them," it said.
However, it admitted that the French Farm Minister Herve Gaymard had taken a last-minute trip to Washington on Monday to present the steps taken by French firms to comply with specific US standards.
This however failed to prevent the ban.
The visit to France by the US Department of Agriculture team took place between 15 January and 5 February.
In addition to inspecting the 11 French firms licensed to import foie gras and other processed meat products to the US it toured the veterinary services that supervise the companies.
Other events
Mr Gaymond said he wanted to see the export of French meat products to the US restart "as soon as possible".
The US ban on French meats comes just hours after the European Union introduced a Europe-wide total ban on poultry and egg imports from the US after a bird flu outbreak in Texas.
It also comes on the same day that the World Trade Organisation gave the EU the go-ahead to introduce trade sanctions against America, because of the US's failure to repeal an historic anti-dumping law
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/3518983.stm
Published: 2004/02/24 21:47:11 GMT
© BBC MMIV
New 'Al Qaeda' tape airs
AP, Reuters
Two tapes bearing the voice of Al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman Al Zawahiri, were broadcast on the Arabic satellite channel Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera today, according to an article in the International Herald Tribune.
In one of the tapes, aired on Al Arabiya, a voice supposedly to be that of Zawahiri condemns France for its move to ban the wearing of the hijab in schools and lumps France's decision with the larger Western campaign against Islam.
"The decision of the French president to issue a law to prevent Muslim girls from covering their heads in schools is another example of the Crusader envy that the Westerners have against Muslims," the voice said on the tape, which was broadcast on Al Arabiya, a pan-Arab satellite channel. "This envy boils in their hearts and overflows in their chests and they pass it on to the generations."
http://www.iht.com/articles/131017.html
France, which was widely praised by Muslims and other anti-war factions for being against the Iraq war, is now the subject of protests in the Islamic world because of the new law. The article mentions that the outcry is hardly uniform, however.
The tape also goes on to condemn one Egypt's foremost religious leader, Muhammed Sayyed Tantawi, grand sheik of Al Azhar, for issuing an edict in support of France's entitlement to pass such a law. Tantawi also asked Muslim women living in France to comply with the law.
I will be interested to see how France publicly to this tape and its criticisms.
With the accession of 10 eastern European (and poorer) nations into the EU in May 2004, one the main issues currently facing present EU members is the significant social and economic effect that is likely to occur as a new wave of immigrants start pouring in from the east. However, the following article, based on information from the National Confederation of Hungarian Trade Unions, sheds a different light and attempts to dismiss the likelihood of the occurrence of a large migration of jobseekers to the west. The article indicates that it was difficult to persuade Hungarian jobseekers to move 200 to 300km for well-paying jobs let alone moving to a different country. Also mentioned is that in 2003 only 638 Hungarians applied for the 2000 work permits available to them in Germany.
Even though it provides an interesting point of view, I think it is erroneous to try to extrapolate migration patterns for all the soon-to-be members of the EU based on information from Hungary for three reasons. First, the desire to immigrate has different connotations from culture to culture, therefore, it is wrong to assume that since few Hungarians chose to immigrate that the same will occur from the other soon-to-be members of the EU. Second, there are significant differences in relative wealth between the ten countries slated from accession. If we look at GDP per capita (US$), for example, it ranges from $4,421 in Latvia to $13,974 in Cyprus, while Hungary’s is $8,033. Again, with this much difference in wealth, it would be hard to imagine that immigration patterns would be the same for all slated entrants to the EU.
West's Fear of Influx Puzzles Hungary, Financial Times, Christopher Condon, Feb. 24, 2004.
EUROPE: West's fear of influx puzzles Hungary
By Christopher Condon in Budapest
Financial Times; Feb 24, 2004
At the height of an investment boom in western Hungary in the late 1990s, multinational investors began running out of locals ready to fill their assembly lines and offices. Many cast their eyes to poorer eastern Hungary, where unemployment was as high as 40 per cent.
Companies such as Audi, IBM and Philips were sure they could persuade job-seekers to move 200km to 300km for well-paying jobs with a prestigious foreign company. But they were wrong. Even within their own country, Hungarians proved largely immobile.
As aresult, Hungarians are wondering what all the fuss is about in other EU capitals over the flood of workers and spongers who will supposedly arrive from eastern Europe when the
Union grows from 15 to 25 members in May.
Of current EU members, all but Ireland and the UK have said they will restrict labour from new members for up to seven years.
Karoly Gyorgy, an official with the National Confederation of Hungarian Trade Unions, said the fears were unfounded.
"All the studies on this show the migration potential for Hungarians is about 2 per cent - about the same as in current EU countries," said Mr Gyorgy. "Frankly speaking, it's my perception that the debate in the UK is fuelled by politics and British trade unions."
Mr Gyorgy also pointed to recent news that, despite being more likely to head for Germany than the UK, Hungarians applied for only 638 of 2,000 German work permits available to them in 2003.
Beyond the fear of eager workers lie worries that thousands of poor Roma, or gypsies, will head west not for jobs, but simply for more generous social benefits.
Earlier this month, prodded by a rightwing press campaign, the British government announced plans to tighten migrants' access to welfare benefits.
About 1.5m Roma live in countries set to join the EU in May, including an estimated 500,000-600,000 in Hungary. Many of them live in squalid conditions with access to education and employment restricted by discrimination.
But Roma leaders and advocates in Hungary argue that those concerns over Roma emigration are also exaggerated.
"We have little indication there will be any significant movement," said Claude Cahn, programmes director for the European Roma Rights Centre in Budapest.
This French report helps to understand the Italian media, the current political situation and the big problem of Berlusconi's conflict of interest.
On January 28, the Italian Senate approved a decree allowing Berlusconi's TV channel Retequattro to continue terrestrial broadcasting. This would allow him to keep all three his private channels (while controlling the three public ones, too, as a Prime Minister) -- against a Constitutional Court rule. The lower house will discuss the decree on February 27.
If the decree passes, would the media monopoly be acceptable, in a Western Democracy? Thinking of future common international rules, how will the EU relate to that kind of issues?
One European Green Party? This article is an interesting peek into how the Green party is not only gaining ground and significance throughout Europe, but also the party's potential for serving as a unifying force between several European nations with varying interests while still maintaining the national identities of each of its participating nations. Is it possible for one political party with vested interests in the environment and social justice issues to bring together the European Union and find common ground? If nothing else, it is certainly innovative...and the collective monetary resources of the 32 formerly independent parties can’t hurt!
BBC News, Greens Launch Europe-Wide Party, By Frances Kennedy
The Roma (commonly referred to as “gypsies”) represent a significant and often despised immigrant group throughout Europe. It is the threat of their expansion and growth into Western Europe that is precipitating tight new immigration legislation such as the regulations introduced in Britain yesterday by David Blunkett. But are the Roma really as hell-bent on seizing jobs and sucking up space as they are often portrayed? This profile of a Czech Roma and his family challenges that notion, showing that many Roma reject the idea of immigrating to Western Europe, for fear of encountering language barriers and further prejudice.
The Guardian, 'I Don't Even Speak Perfect Czech, How would I manage English?' by Luke Harding
The Washington Post's "Germany and France Driving EU, to Distraction of Other Members" is a good review of the ties and tensions that exist between France and Germany and gives them some historic perspective.
From the UK, The Daily Telegrap in an article titled "Blair must not blow his European triumph" presents the meeting as a great victory for Blair (France and Germany have failed in their politics towards Iraq, and in reforming their economy) but is worried by what they view as a temptation to "get into bed with two countries whose recent record has been so retrogarade," and that are trying "to build a defence capability to rival NATO's."
The Portuguese Diario de Noticias, in a story titled "Uma Europa a vᲩas velocidades" considers that the existence of a so-called Directory is now a fact. It concedes that the three men who recently met in Germany may very well has the good of Europe as a goal, but it underlines the loss of credibility suffered by France and Germany for their no compliance of the stability pact.
In what appears to be an editorial from The International Herald Tribune "Europe's Big Three," the European version of the New York Times favors the summit for several reasons among which, "the main reason why the trilateral meeting makes sense is that unless Britain, France and Germany see eye to eye, little gets done in the EU."
La Vanguardia from Barcelona in Spain tries to keep a balance between those who see the meeting as a "mistake" as in the story "El tripartito" and those who consider as in "Un directorio europeo?" that anything that can contribute to moving forward is good. Many stories one can find in the Spanish press point out the fact that Blair, Chirac and Schr? are politically weak at this point.
The Washington Post - Germany and France Driving EU, to Distraction of Other Members
Two Say Close Relationship Does Not Harm Europe's Interests
By John Burgess
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 22, 2004; Page A25
GENSHAGEN, Germany -- Every six weeks or so, the leaders of Germany and France drop everything and get together for a meal.
This month, the place was this tidy village 10 miles south of Berlin. French President Jacques Chirac arrived by helicopter, then rode through the streets in a black Mercedes, waving to the locals. Ahead, up the cobblestone drive of a mansion that houses a French-German cooperation institute, his counterpart Gerhard Schroeder was waiting. Beaming, the two men embraced, bantered for a moment by the car, then disappeared inside amid a clutch of aides for lunch and private talk.
From the start of European integration a half-century ago, French-German cooperation has been the driving engine. Today the tie is so close, at both the personal and national levels, that elsewhere in Europe some people see too much of a good thing. In their view, France and Germany are sometimes crafting the new Europe on the principle that what's good for them is good for everyone.
In the past year, the two countries have stood firm against the United States in the Iraq war, ignoring sentiment in other European capitals. In efforts to restart their stalled economies, they have violated the fundamental pact of the five-year-old euro common currency. Now they are helping hold up the drafting of the first European Union constitution by insisting on a voting system weighted in their favor.
"The two cooks come from the kitchen and say they have already prepared the dinner . . . You can either eat it or not eat it, but this is what the dinner is," said Jan Truszczynski, who represents Poland, an incoming European Union member, in negotiations. Too often, he said, that's the unpleasant taste the two leave behind.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, another critic, recently summed up the constitutional deadlock: "There's one issue being debated -- who's going to be the boss in the Europe of the future?" he told Washington Post reporters and editors last month.
In Berlin and Paris, officials concede that such tensions exist, but they say that whatever others may say, Europe's interests remain at the heart of the cooperation. Hans Martin Bury, Schroeder's coordinator for relations with Europe, depicts agreement between France and Germany, countries that have vastly different cultures and a history of animosity, as a natural starting point for any decision to be made in the 15-country EU as a whole.
"If we can't get together, there won't be a consensus in Europe," he said in an interview in his Berlin office. "We bring different interests and traditions together. Our interest is not to dominate Europe but to create new solutions."
The partnership is overseeing a future that includes admission of 10 new member countries on May 1, strengthened rule of law, human rights and environmental protection and a progressive pooling of money and decision-making. The union sometimes functions as a counterbalance to U.S. influence in the world, though in foreign policy the two big partners don't always prevail. During the Iraq war, Britain, Spain and Italy led a faction siding with Washington.
The union is creating closer ties between all members, but nowhere are they closer than between Germany and France. Their cabinets hold joint meetings twice a year. Ministers meet to work on "road maps" on issues of mutual interest. French officials are stationed in ministries in Berlin, and Germans serve with their counterpart agencies in Paris. In a few countries, the governments have joint diplomatic offices and cultural institutes.
The heads of German states and French regional governments met in October to approve the exchange of more students and teachers and generally enhance people-to-people links; about 150,000 people already take part in youth exchange programs each year. Plans call for a 50 percent rise in the number of students studying the other country's language. Historians from both sides are meeting in an effort to draft a common textbook for use in French and German high schools.
As the war generation dies out, ordinary people on the both sides of the long-disputed border are acquiring warmer feelings toward each other. In a November 2002 survey of people aged 15-30, 88 percent of Germans described relations as rather good or very good; 94 percent of French respondents did.
French and German officials contend that each day that things go so smoothly is a miracle, in view of the rivalries and wars between the two peoples stretching back to the Middle Ages.
Preventing yet another armed conflict between France and Germany was the vision underlying the EU's founding in 1951 as a six-country common market for coal and steel. In subsequent years, President Charles de Gaulle acted as Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's patron in readmitting Germany to respectability in the postwar period.
National needs have often helped smooth over personal differences between German and French leaders in the past, as is happening today. Chirac is a highly cultured man who attended France's elite schools and leads a right-of-center government. Schroeder has blue-collar roots and governs from the left. But by all outward signs, there is a personal rapport, and officials on both sides say it is real.
Relations between the two leaders were not always smooth. At an EU summit in Nice in December 2000, France and Germany clashed over a new framework for governance of an expanded EU. But a month later the two met for dinner at a restaurant in the French village of Blaesheim, on territory that had changed hands four times in 130 years. They decided to meet every six weeks or so, just to keep up. The lunch in Genshagen on Feb. 9 was the 17th such get-together.
The first big sign of parallel thinking came in 2002, when France and Germany reached a deal on restructuring EU farm programs, the largest single drain on the EU's $120 billion annual budget.
As the Iraq war approached, the two leaders again stood together, in opposition. Their reasons were different. Chirac sought to assert France's independence in the world, political analysts say, while Schroeder found he could save a failing reelection campaign by playing to antiwar sentiments among German voters. But the positions were the same: no support at the United Nations, no troops.
In the meantime, both countries' economies were stagnating as part of the global slowdown that followed the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Both governments tried to stimulate their economies through deficit spending, at levels supposedly outlawed by a pact that laid down rules for countries using the euro.
In theory, they became liable for fines equivalent to billions of dollars. In November, finance ministers from the euro countries voted 8 to 4 to forgive the transgression. Dutch Finance Minister Gerrit Zalm, a dissenter, complained that other ministers "had been intimidated by these two big countries."
France and Germany have also stood firm in the unsuccessful negotiations on the EU's first constitution. They and other countries say that to pass, a measure must have the backing of a majority of countries that represent at least 60 percent of the expanded EU's population of nearly 500 million people. That would make it hard for smaller countries to gang up against the big ones.
People in other countries sometimes see hints of coercion in statements from Germany, the biggest net contributor to the EU budget, that without agreement on the constitution it will be hard to settle on budgets.
The new style of business has also drawn criticism at home. In Germany, a debate broke out last year on whether the country was squandering trust and friendships built at great effort since 1945. "There is less willingness by people to think that France and Germany act in the interests of Europe," said Christoph Bertram, chairman of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. "The Germans have lost something very important."
In France, said Jean-Luc Parodi, an analyst at the IFOP polling institute, the political elite is committed to the German ties. But among ordinary citizens, feelings can differ. Some "see a little risk in giving too much importance to this alliance and not enough to the total European alliance."
Officials in the two countries promise to try harder to consult, but some say that at times there's just no pleasing the critics. At the constitutional convention, said a senior French official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, delegates from other countries frequently asked: " 'What will France and Germany do?' They were waiting for the initiative from France and Germany . . . In other cases, they said, 'be careful, we don't want you to impose your views.' "
Bury said that Germany and France work hard to include other nations in consultations. British Prime Minister Tony Blair periodically attends three-way summits with Chirac and Schroeder, most recently Wednesday in Berlin. In addition, Germany and France are developing European military policy with Belgium and Luxembourg, and strengthening ties with Poland.
But in their public words and body language, Chirac and Schroeder seem to try to show there is no relationship like theirs. At news conferences, they talk about holding identical views. At times, each publicly grants the other a sort of political power of attorney -- the right to speak for both.
In Genshagen, dressed in similar gray suits, they stepped into a ballroom to deliver that message again to reporters.
Schroeder said: "The close, friendly French-German cooperation that has brought very, very pleasant personal experiences is truly fit to make progress for both countries, to make progress for Europe and to let the weight that we have together be clearly known in international discussions."
Chirac chimed in: "On the European topics that we have discussed our positions are absolutely identical. We have the same views." He went on to say that later in the day Schroeder would present those views on behalf of both men to Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU.
But one French reporter managed to zero in on discord. France wants to lower the EU-regulated value-added tax that restaurants collect; Germany is opposed. Chirac replied that France understands Germany's position, and Germany understands France's. Smiling, he added that on this issue France will not budge.
The Daily Telegraph - Blair must not blow his European triumph
(Filed: 19/02/2004)
Never did Britain appear more at the heart of Europe than at yesterday's trilateral summit in Berlin. Tony Blair is being courted by France and Germany because they realise that on their own they cannot remain the driving force in a union shortly to expand to 25 members. In addition, they are having second thoughts about having alienated the United States, and a large part of Europe, by their opposition to last year's invasion of Iraq. They hope that Britain can provide the impetus for new moves towards integration, and at the same time act as a bridge to Washington.
For his part, the Prime Minister seeks to convince a sceptical domestic electorate that his "passionate" commitment to both the transatlantic relationship and the union is paying off. Events of the past year - the invasion of Iraq, the imminence of enlargement - have handed him a diplomatic coup.
The kudos of Berlin, however, raises more questions than it answers. Will not France and Germany seek to exploit Mr Blair's delight at being at the heart of Europe for their own ends, the first to build a defence capability to rival Nato's, the second to advance a federal agenda? Do we want to get into bed with two countries whose recent record has been so retrograde, initially over reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, then in breaching the guidelines of the stability and growth pact?
What of our relationships with other European allies, notably Italy, Poland and Spain, which fear that the Berlin triumvirate is an embryonic directory designed to present European summits with faits accomplis, thus excluding them from decision-making? And can a country which remains outside the euro zone really claim to belong to the core?
The seismic shifts which are taking place offer Britain an opportunity to reassert Europe's vocation as a union of nation states rather than a would-be federation. France and Germany, the old motors of integration, have alienated many of their partners by their behaviour over Iraq and the stability pact.
The Commission has rarely been weaker. Differences over voting rights have prevented adoption of a European constitution. The new entrants are looking for liberal economic policies which will allow them to make the most of membership. As a champion of transatlantic unity and free trade, Britain has the potential to be the continent's pace-maker.
The problem is Mr Blair's ambivalence. He is a close ally of Washington, yet has accepted the union's acquiring an autonomous defence capability outside Nato. Despite domestic opposition, he still dreams of taking Britain into the euro zone. His attitude towards the new European constitution remains confusing: he talks of red lines that cannot be crossed, yet appears ready to accept a document which would radically alter the union's status.
This may be the hour of Britain within European councils, but it is far from certain that he is the man to match it.
Diario de Noticias - Uma Europa a vᲩas velocidades
O chanceler alem㯠tentou ontem minimizar a import⮣ia da cimeira tripartida de Berlim, onde participaram, al魠do pro Gerhard Schroeder, o Presidente franc곬 Jacques Chirac, e o primeiro-ministro ingl곬 Tony Blair. O que alguns pas europeus temiam - recorde-se a carta de seis lres de outros tantos pas (Portugal, Espanha, Itᬩa, Holanda, Pol e Est) ao primeiro-ministro irland곬 que este semestre preside ࠕni㯠Europeia, em defesa do Pacto de Estabilidade e Crescimento e do princo da igualdade para todos - acabou por acontecer: a cria磯 de um direct europeu.
Schroeder afirmou que a iniciativa n㯠visava o domo de ningu魠e muito menos da Europa. O chanceler alem㯠sublinhou que os tr고pretendiam apenas resolver os problemas comuns e aumentar a eficᣩa da UE. A afirma磯 頶erdadeira, jᠱue os tr고procuram fugir aos problemas internos dos seus pas e, por isso, querem assumir a imagem de estadistas que resolvem os problemas da UE. A quest㯠頱ue os outros pas olham com desconfian硠para Fran硠e Alemanha, que foram durante anos o motor da Europa, sobretudo na concretiza磯 de projectos como a Uni㯠Econa e MonetᲩa e o pro euro. O facto de n㯠cumprirem as regras do PEC sem serem alvo de qualquer san磯 retirou-lhes credibilidade. Agora precisam do Reino Unido para voltarem a poder reunir consensos e ditar regras na Constitui磯 europeia. Tony Blair, debilitado internamente pela morte de David Kelly e pela inexistꮣia de armas de destrui磯 maci硠no Iraque, tamb魠procura apoios que hᠵm ano eram impensᶥis.
Uma locomotiva anglo-franco-alem㠧era grandes apreens?aos restantes 12 pas da UE, a que se juntam os 10 do alargamento, marcado para Maio. Os condenados a viajar nas carruagens de tr᳠jᠮ㯠tꭠd?s de que vai passar a existir uma Europa a vᲩas velocidades. Slta saber quem vai ficar nas carruagens de tr᳠e se se vai perder o princo de um comissᲩo por paou as presidꮣias rotativas da UE.
El tripartito
FRANCIA VUELVE a poner en peligro la construccie Europa
MIQUEL ROCA I JUNYENT - 24/02/2004
El tlo se presta a engahoy, no sen Catalunya, sino en toda Espaa mencie ?tripartito? se atribuye en exclusiva al Gobierno de Catalunya. En esta ocasino obstante, se estᠨaciendo referencia a la pretensie Chirac, Schr? y Blair de constituir, de hecho, un poder tripartito para conducir la nueva etapa polca de la Uniuropea. Cansados de intentar alcanzar un consenso que no llegan a conseguir con los dem᳠estados miembros, singularmente con Espa los pas recientemente incorporados procedentes de la Europa del Este, pretenden gobernar Europa prescindiendo de ellos.
?Es un ejercicio de prepotencia? No, simplemente es ignorar que la UE o se construye desde el consenso o va a refugiarse en una triste y limitada realidad como mercado econo, sin proyecciolca ni capacidad de influencia en la escena internacional. Francia vuelve de nuevo a poner en peligro la construcciolca de Europa. Lo hizo con Mendes France en 1953, cuando lo que se pretendera la comunidad europea de defensa, y lo vuelve a hacer ahora, antes que aceptar que Europa pueda constituirse sin hegemonfrancesa.
Y lo pretende hacer de la mano de Alemania, pieza clave de la Europa de futuro, pero que no puede olvidar que su nombre inspira a muchos pas del Este el mismo recelo que despierta el vecino ruso. Unos y otros, germanos y rusos, se han pasado los dos ?os siglos de nuestra historia ocupando sucesiva y alternativamente el escenario del centro de Europa, dejando tras de sn reguero de vimas y agresiones.
Y, por si fuera poco, la compase culmina con la presencia de Gran Bretaque ha ido siempre a remolque en la construcciuropea y que, hoy por hoy, todavno ha aceptado el euro como moneda com?ste tripartito stiene de com?n el de Catalunya, que tambi鮠atribuye la culpa de todos los males a Aznar. Pero, igual que aquen Europa deberdecirse qu頳e propone, cse quiere avanzar, en qu頤irecciNo basta con definir el adversario, adem᳠debe saberse proponer cuᬠserᠥl futuro que espera a los europeos.
En todo caso, en este momento el tripartito europeo huele a retroceso, a volver muy atrᳮ La ampliaciueda en entredicho y la construcciolca de la Uniuropea en vmuerta. Lo que franceses, alemanes y britᮩcos se proponen no es suna respuesta a la oposicie otros pas, es sacar provecho de 鳴a para retroceder a muchos aatr᳠y volver a construir la Europa de los potentes, recelosos del protagonismo de los nuevos. A los euroesc鰴icos se suma ahora una nueva categor los de ?Europa spero nunca a costa de nosotros?. ?Ad vas, Europa?
?Un directorio europeo?
QUE CHIRAC, SCHRքER y Blair concierten un proyecto para revitalizar la economno debe rechazarse sin m᳠por supuesto hegemonismo
CARLOS NADAL - 22/02/2004
La reunie Chirac, Schr? y Blair celebrada en Berlel pasado mi鲣oles la han tomado a mal los gobiernos de EspaItalia, Portugal, Holanda, Polonia y Estonia. Sobre todo el de Aznar, quien, al parecer, puso el asunto sobre la mesa en la reunieciente de la internacional del Partido Popular Europeo con el resultado del redactado de una carta que estos seis pas enviaron al presidente semestral de la Uniuropea, el primer ministro irland鳬 Bertie Ahern. Una misiva en la cual se expresaba el temor a que Alemania, Gran Breta Francia pretendan constituirse en algo asomo un directorio dispuesto a marcar las pautas que seguir por la UE, en veras y despu鳠de que se amplcon diez estados m᳠a partir del 1 de mayo de este a
El recelo de los gobiernos espay polaco a todo tipo de iniciativa de los pas de mayor peso demogrᦩco, territorial y econo de la UE en el sentido de querer imponer los criterios a ellos m᳠favorables y en detrimento de los miembros medianos o pequeha ocasionado ya m᳠de una diferencia comunitaria. Ocurri rade que los ministros de Economresolvieran no aplicar a Francia y Alemania las penalizaciones que merec por no cumplir el pacto de contenciel d馩cit y, anteriormente, cuando la guerra de Iraq crea escisirave entre los gobiernos de la UE que se alinearon con Estados Unidos y los que, encabezados por Alemania y Francia, mostraron su disconformidad con la iniciativa norteamericana. Tambi鮠entonces Espa Polonia encabezaron agrupaciones de estados proamericanos. Concretamente, Espaon un documento firmado por ocho gobiernos. Estos desentendimientos crearon el ambiente enrarecido que condujo a la reunie Bruselas en que el proyecto de Constituciuropea elaborada por una Convenciajo la presidencia de Val鲹 Giscard d'Estaing quedrinconado en espera de una mejor oportunidad.
La susceptibilidad espa se apoya en el rechazo de que haya en la UE distintos grados de autoridad y capacidad de decidir. Pero al mismo tiempo responde a la hipersensibilidad de la soberannacional, el temor a que Espae vea arrastrada a cumplir decisiones polcas que perjudiquen sus intereses, no sen el seno de la Comunidad Europea, sino tambi鮠en polca exterior. Esto ?o se puso claramente de manifiesto respecto a Iraq. Es decir, al distanciamiento de la polca francesa y alemana en beneficio de un acercamiento preferencial a Estados Unidos como principal gestor de la polca en el escenario mundial.
Pero entre tanto se han producido cambios en el contexto europeo. El m᳠notable ha sido el acercamiento progresivo de Gran Breta Francia y Alemania. El deseo del ?premier? britᮩco Blair de reequilibrar su postura acentuadamente proamericana mediante la aproximaciontinental a Francia y Alemania. Como si entendiera la necesidad de borrar el efecto de la reuniripartita con Bush y Aznar en las Azores.
Este paso progresivo del eje ParBerlal triᮧulo ParBerlLondres establece relaciones especiales entre los tres pas miembros de la UE que suman el mayor peso demogrᦩco y econo. Y, sin duda, militar, sobre todo por la aportaciritᮩca, que en este terreno tiene una superioridad indiscutible. Precisamente la que le convirti el ? aliado de peso en la guerra y ocupacie Iraq. No en vano es en las cuestiones militares donde se comenzforjar este entendimiento tripartito europeo, mediante instrumentos de una defensa com?rimer paso en la direccie establecer ?convergencias aceleradas?.
Y ahora esta nueva realidad se ha consolidado en la reunin Berldel pasado mi鲣oles, de la cual ha surgido un acuerdo muy amplio para que la UE d頵n paso adelante en su potencialidad industrial, tecnola, de investigacide creacie infraestructuras, de actualizaci ampliacie la educacide ajuste de la polca social y sanitaria. Un conjunto de iniciativas que tienen su vertiente polca, por ejemplo, con el proyecto de crear una especie de superministro europeo encargado de poner en prᣴica estos objetivos. Los reunidos en Berllo han considerado como la figura de un vicepresidente de la Comisiuropea con amplios poderes.
Las denuncias de que los acuerdos tomados en Berlson la manifestacie una voluntad hegema inaceptable no parecen en principio la respuesta m᳠adecuada. Es comprensible que levanten recelos. Pero Chirac, Schr? y Blair han procurado desvanecerlos, advirtiendo de que no se trata de imposiciones, sino de propuestas que plantear, sobre todo, cara a la cumbre comunitaria que ha de celebrarse el 25 y el 26 de marzo.
Si es verdad que puede sospecharse la creacie una especie de triunvirato, de la aplicaciel principio de la ?convergencia acelerada?, tambi鮠lo es que se trata de un proyecto que m᳠bien estᠥncaminado a evitar las ?geometr variables? en la participacin la UE. Porque, habida cuenta de las circunstancias actuales, lo ocurrido en Berlm᳠parece responder al temor de un desfase econo general de la UE respecto a las grandes y poderosas unidades macroeconas como Estados Unidos y Jap al avance hacia el primer plano de potencias en crecimiento acelerado como China e India que a la voluntad de predominio triangular en el seno de la UE. Es la conciencia de que Alemania y Francia estᮠa punto de quedarse peligrosamente atr᳠y de que Gran Bretapese a encontrarse en condiciones algo mejores, tampoco da la medida del gran desafecono y por tanto polco que estᠰlanteado o planteᮤose a escala global.
Los gobiernos de Par Berly Londres han comprendido la urgencia de conjuntar esfuerzos si no quieren quedarse atrᳮ Y esto, lamente, han de resolverlo teniendo muy en cuenta el marco comunitario en el que estᮠinscritos de manera irreversible. Que algunas potencias medias o pequehagan interpretaciones peyorativas de las propuestas elaboradas en la reunie Berlen vez de disponerse a estudiarlas y comprenderlas como una iniciativa con la que es conveniente colaborar no les ayudarᮠEs natural que los estados miembros procuren no salir perjudicados por las decisiones comunitarias, pero un puntilloso nacionalismo por sistema cada vez serᠭenos rentable en una UE que sva a ser verdaderamente viable si acrecienta la interdependencia.
Ni Chirac ni Schr? ni Blair estᮠen sus mejores d polcamente. Lo cual les empuja a apoyarse mutuamente en lo que puede ser una empresa com?paz de devolverles el cr餩to popular del que no van sobrados. Si esta merma les lleva de verdad a ser creativos con una perspectiva europea, no parece razonable acusarles de hegemonismo sin esperar a estudiar sus propuestas y hacer las aportaciones crcas o participativas que se estimen oportunas y legmas.
No es Berlusconi la persona m᳠indicada para despacharse sobre el asunto afirmando que Europa no necesita ning?rectorio que cree confusiY parece exagerado que la ministra espa Ana Palacio diga que ?nadie deberestar autorizado a secuestrar el inter鳠general de Europa?. De momento mejor serdarle un margen de confianza a Blair cuando dice: ?No tenemos por qu頰resentar excusas a nadie. Estamos buscando cdeberos hacer para hacer funcionar a Europa de una manera m᳠eficiente en inter鳠de nuestros pueblos?.
Europe's Big Three
The International Herald Tribune
The meeting of the leaders of Britain, France and Germany on Wednesday was guaranteed to get other Europeans grumbling anxiously about a "big three" directorate. The fears are understandable, especially with the approach of the expansion of the EU, and it was right for six nervous European prime ministers to issue a joint statement effectively reminding Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schr? that they have no monopoly on EU policy-making.
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That said, there is nothing wrong in a separate get-together of the three, especially after the bitter disputes over Iraq. In fact, it is critical for the heads of Europe's three biggest economies to be talking. What is important is that Blair, Chirac and Schr? come up with concrete ideas in advance of the next EU summit meeting on March 25 about getting Europe over some of the toughest times in its history and delivering real benefits to the people of Europe. And it is equally important that they present their decisions in a way that does not rouse new anxieties, in Europe or the United States, and avoids any talk of a "two-speed Europe" or patronizing lectures to new members.
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The conventional wisdom about the big three is that the French-German "motor" is no longer powerful enough to drive European integration and needs the added horsepower of Britain. So Blair's trip to Berlin should be good news for all Europeans, all the more so since Britain, a trusted friend of many new entrants and Europe's leading Atlanticist, will temper French-German tendencies to go it alone. It should also be welcomed by Washington, which will be less suspicious of French and German intentions for Europe if America's British ally is in on their talks.
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In the end, though, the main reason why the trilateral meeting makes sense is that unless Britain, France and Germany see eye to eye, little gets done in the EU. When they do pull together, they can often achieve more, and more quickly, than the cumbersome bureaucratic beast of Brussels in full battle armor. Recent examples of trilateral success include the mission to Tehran last year that persuaded Iran to allow inspection of its nuclear program, and burgeoning defense cooperation, notably the agreement last week by Germany to join the Franco-British plan for rapid reaction forces.
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Such cooperation, of course, can easily strain the nerves of those left out; hence the warning letter from Italy, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Estonia. But fears of a trilateral directorate are exaggerated; Britain, France and Germany have very differing national agendas, and the three men are hardly bosom buddies, however chummy they may try to appear over their beer and w?
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The greater fear is that their separate ambitions will deflect them from the responsibility they bear for all Europe. The EU on the eve of enlargement is a fragile thing, as demonstrated by the debacle in December over the Union's draft constitution. A compromise proposed by Blair, Chirac and Schr? - or even just an agreement to compromise - could go along way toward solving the constitution wrangle; bulldozing by the big three, on the other hand, could do enormous damage to Europe's big house.
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The most promising thing about the Berlin meeting is that social and economic reform is high on the agenda. The EU has worked so far, most of the time, because it is an economic union; and globalization's success stories worldwide show that economic progress is the best recipe for stability. Settling on the best ways to tackle unemployment, social security and health care, and to improve the business environment, would not only help Europe through its current rough patch, but also give Europeans some evidence that the EU is not such a bad thing.
As we all saw in the last few days (see articles on the Berlin summit and the Big Three), the struggle for power and the fear for a country’s dominance are not confined to the US VS Europe strategic competition/conspiracy. Europe has its own internal tensions, too.
In this phase of expansion and re-definition, every little step seems crucial (therefore controversial) for the attribution of a future European leadership.
As Francis mentioned, the Berlin meeting raised a lot of polemics in Italy, especially from Berlusconi, who called the meeting a “pastiche” and opposed the idea of a European “directory” altering the EU foundation (a union based on equality and unanimity of all members.)
The article says that the main result of the Berlin meeting was an agreement about a new “Super Commissary for the European Economy” that – according to Schroeder - would have the goal “to make the EU the most competitive area in the world.”
While underlining the economic competition between EU and the US (helped by the Euro), Schroeder recalled that the “Three Big” have no will of dominance in Europe. And that that the idea of an exclusive summit between the three countries that have the 50% of the European GDP is “natural.”
Now, I definitely think that the three-vertix summit was natural. And we all know that Berlusconi, with his proverbial egotism, always tends to take it personally. But it’s also natural that Italy, as a borderline power and a founding father of the EU, doesn’t like to be excluded from the process. And the idea of a two-speed Europe and a European directory based on economic strength is problematic and questionable.
While the EU is trying to build its institutional, constitutional, political and cultural common identity, should the economy (the GDP) be the only distinctive factor in the decision-making process?
The fact is that – before the War in Iraq – Berlusconi, Aznar and Blair formed a new pro-war, pro-American axis, which excluded France and Germany. Now – as the situation in Iraq changed – the central axis is shifting again reuniting the three European bigger powers. Not Italy, Spain and Britain, but France, Germany and Britain. So, it seems that Italy instrumentally used the war to “gain weight,” but now – going back to the economic criteria – is loosing relevance in the international arena.
(Also, note that the Berlin summit discussed the lack of resources for universities and the scientific research – and that the problem was, once again, a French concern, brought at the discussion table by Chirac.)
La Repubblica, "Un supercommissario per l'Economia Europea"
With friends like these
By Christopher Caldwell
Financial Times; Feb 14, 2004
This is a very comprehensive analysis of the Right and Left governments in the main European countries, and their position towards the US. There are also - not surprisingly, if you know European history - friends of America on the Left, and rivals of the Bush Administration on the Right. Be aware that the author is a columnist for the FT but also for The Weekly Standard, the influential magazine of the US Neoconservatives.
When Henry Kissinger, the former US Secretary of State, went to Berlin about a year ago to assess what he calls the "psychological situation" of young Germans, he got a rude surprise. At a roundtable set up by the German Marshall Fund, an American foundation that promotes transatlantic ties, Kissinger met a dozen young leaders - including Bundestag members from the conservative Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union - both a traditional source of support for Washington.
Kissinger was told that anti-American sentiments, the balder the better, could draw big applause at political-party rallies. Mostly this happened at Green Party rallies, but Social Democrats, and even some Christian Democrats, now also stood and cheered when the United States was anathematised.
"It was not a hostile meeting," Kissinger recalled in an interview, insisting that his surprise not be taken as anger. "It's a new generation that is trying to find its own identity. It's not burdened by the war, not obsessed with economic recovery. That means that they are not automatically pro-American."
In its diplomacy, as in its military strategy, the United States is discovering that it has a very shaky idea of who its real friends are. In the old days, it was very clear where the instinctive pro- Americans, or "Atlanticists" were to be found. They made up most of the Christian Democratic parties everywhere, and an influential right-wing rump of the Socialist parties in Germany, Scandinavia and Britain. And some of today's pro-Americans are still on the right: Germany's CDU still backs America, as do the British Tories, although not unanimously, and particularly not when Labour is in power. Beyond them, though, today's Atlanticists are an unfamiliar mix of New Labour (in its British and Dutch variants), continental human-rights activists (particularly in France), Eastern European ex-dissidents and post-cold war parties of the right (in Spain and Italy). It would be surprising if America's future foreign policy did not take some account of which Europeans like it, and which don't.
Dennis MacShane, Britain's Labour minister for Europe, tells me that I shouldn't overstate the shift in support. There were, he says, always important exceptions to the rule that America's friends in Europe were on the right. De Gaulle called the United States the biggest threat to world peace as early as 1965, while in Britain, Labour's support has been broader than the American right tends to remember.
"The roots of European social democracy are anti-communist," says MacShane. "European social democracy has far more in common with American values, including the war on terrorism, than with any other ideology." The European left should never feel embarrassed about siding with the US, provided the US is a progressive force, MacShane thinks. In the 1980s, they should have remarked (but mostly they didn't) that Ronald Reagan was, by many measures, tougher on South Africa than Europeans were.
Today, he thinks they should be quicker (but they're pretty slow) to embrace the sympathetic parts of George W. Bush's agenda. "I look at Bush, who has rejoined Unesco, talked about legalising eight or nine million immigrants from Mexico, and massively increased help for HIV/Aids," MacShane says. "This is not what we would call a hardline, right-wing agenda."
But MacShane's "we" doesn't embrace all or even most of his own party, and it sells poorly in continental Europe.
In France, Senator Jean Francois-Poncet was a pillar of Atlanticism during his term as Valery Giscard d'Estaing's foreign minister in the 1970s. He isn't one any more. He says now the Euro-American battle over the Iraq war exposed differences that cannot be ignored, and Europe marches to a different drum. "What you have to face," he told me calmly, "is that the Franco-German position had the overwhelming support of public opinion all over Europe."
Johannes Rau, Germany's president and a social democratic Atlanticist, made the same point at the height of European agitation against the war when he said: "In some ways, Europe has never been more united."
And this anti-American unity is being voiced in the traditional sancta of pro-Americanism. At a conference last summer in Berlin - sponsored by Atlantik-Brucke (Atlantic Bridge) and the American Council on Germany, two groups whose raison d'etre is bilateral comity - the rapporteur Daniel Casse, a former aide to the first President Bush, said morosely: "What I heard was that America had to be 'checked', 'tamed', 'steered', 'counterbalanced' and 'Europeanised'."
Bundesbank president Ernst Welteke sounded wistful as he recalled that "'chewing gum' and 'chocolate' were the first American words I could speak". These were the good old, Good American, days. Now, he said, "a rift is slowly developing, and has been since the end of the cold war". Amity was no longer a glue. All that could be hoped for was that interests would remain common. Winding up his remarks, he reached for the John D. Rockefeller adage that: "Friendships founded on business work better than businesses founded on friendship." One could say the same of China or Russia. Or, nowadays, Libya.
There are still "classic" pro-Americans in Europe, even in France, who think that Europe and the US, because of shared values and civilisation, will always wind up in the same geostrategic boat. Claude Goasguen, who represents Paris's wealthy 16th arrondissement, likes to remind visitors to his office in the National Assembly that he is a Breton who hails from Finistere, France's westernmost point, "turned towards the Atlantic". Goasguen is as nationalist as any French politician, but he thinks it bad for France to "wind up in a 'minority camp' in the West".
Alain Madelin, who stood on the Liberal Democrat ticket for the French presidency two years ago, is with him and with the Americans. On a sunny morning in his office in the seventh arrondissement, he says that he is unhappy that France has, in the past 12 months, become the "Mecca" of European anti-Americanism. "I'm not pro-American for the joy of being pro-American. When the United States was backing Pakistan, I opposed them. But I'm with the Americans strategically. Still, we have to realise that this is the end of the generation that lived the war. They don't have the same feeling for America, deep down."
For Madelin, those who would understand the current international predicament must realise that we live in an age of individual networkers. "The 20th century was the century of unlimited confidence in states," he says. "The 21st is rediscovering confidence in people." Madelin has made contact with like-minded political thinkers in Europe. In Venice recently, he discussed French-American links with the US under secretary of state, John Bolton, a high priest in the neo-conservative temple. Pierre Lellouche, who was the only French assembly member besides Madelin to vocally support the war, has kept up contacts in the United States, and, during the run-up to war, organised meetings for a handful of sympathetic Paris intellectuals every Tuesday night in Paris.
But such networking among individuals is as nothing compared to the anti-American, anti-war forces which control dozens of anti- globalisation and leftist websites and, in several European capitals, could put close to a million people onto the streets. And it is little compared with the rhetoric that President Jacques Chirac and foreign minister Dominique de Villepin can muster - to great applause - when they excoriate America. Many conservative parliamentarians describe a window of potential sympathy for the US that is even wider, saying wistfully that the stance of the French right towards the United States would be different if Alain Juppe - prime minister at the beginning of Chirac's first seven-year term - had been president. (The eventual chances of that, of course, moved from slim to none with Juppe's conviction in late January on corruption charges.)
Others speak of conservatives in the government who are much more pro-American than they let on in public. Interior minister Nicholas Sarkozy, for instance, who is emerging as a future rival to Chirac after spending much of January on high-profile diplomatic visits to Egypt and China, has siblings in the US.
Even if there were many pro-Americans who dared not speak their name, it probably wouldn't matter. After half-a-century of being set by the right, no matter who was in power, French foreign policy has seen its centre of gravity shift leftwards in the last half- decade. In recent French debates, there has been little difference between left and right. According to Senator Francois-Poncet, the two sides differed little in the past year's contretemps with the US, except in one respect. "The left," he said, "played a role in insisting that Chirac must follow his logic all the way to the end."
The old links and ties which sustained the right across the Atlantic have gone, in part because the necessity to stick together in face of the Soviet threat from the East, and the socialist challenge from within, have also gone. Atlanticism no longer finds its deepest roots in Christian democracy.
Europeans often look for an explanation of this estrangement in something George W. Bush "did". But perhaps the explanation rests in Christian Democracy - or in Christianity. The idea of Christianity as a conservative force has been an illusion for a long time. First, it is not a force. The weakening of piety (probably) and church affiliation (certainly) since the second world war have led the German CDU to transform itself from wooing Christians through church groups into wooing consumers through television. And the Italian Democrazia Cristiana could not manage even that transition, shattering into several tendencies after the "Clean Hands" corruption investigations of the early 1990s.
Also, the Christian churches are not particularly conservative. According to Franco Venturini, of the Italian daily, Corriere della Sera, Italy's Eurocommunists found it necessary, by the end of the cold war, to back Nato. But "in the Christian Democrats you had the opposite phenomenon because they were basically Catholic and Catholics are basically pacifist". The result was surprising: "By the time of the Kosovo war," says Venturini, "the former communists behind Massimo D'Alema were more pro-American than the former Christian Democrats."
This increasing pacifism among Christians may explain the large number of rainbow-coloured flags reading "Pace" ("Peace") that one saw throughout Italy during protests over the US/UK Iraq invasion - and still see, a little tattered and grubby now, in many Italian streets. Most Italians believe that the chief constraint on the Berlusconi government's ability to adopt a stance of full-throated Atlanticism has been the anti-war position of the Pope.
The issue now is: can the United States, and particularly the neo- conservatives who believe in the use of force to defend Western values, connect with like-minded people in Europe to create a new international alliance? Here is the first problem: in the United States, the neo-conservatives are on the right. In Europe, their natural home is, or has recently been, on the left.
In France, for example, the intellectuals most often associated with support for the war in Iraq were the filmmaker Romain Goupil, the philosopher Andre Glucksmann, Bernard Kouchner, a founder of Medecins sans Frontieres, and the novelist Pascal Bruckner.
Sitting outside a pub near Les Halles, Bruckner tells me he's all for a "European neo-conservatism". In his mind, this would mean a European army that would take aim at the weak links in the world's totalitarian chain. He thinks it would have an advantage over its American variant, because Europeans - partly by virtue of the French and British colonial administrative traditions - have been more rooted in other cultures than the US has, and may have formed a better sense of how to respect local cultures, recognise the local power-elites and administer transition governments. Early on in the Iraq invasion, Bruckner was struck by how much more successful British troops had been in controlling Basra and the south of Iraq, compared to the Americans who were running the rest of it.
This brand of "neo-conservatism" is not an emulation of America's; it may even reflect a distrust of it. Europe's problem, as Bruckner sees it, is not that it has drifted too far to the left - for the left-right concept is one that he considers "totally discredited". Nor is Europe's problem simply anti-Americanism.
"Anti-Americanism can only be very ambivalent," he says, "where American culture sets the tone. The French are voting for America - in the market place - all the time." Rather, Bruckner says, "our great problem as Europeans is that we want to exit from history. Sometime after 1989, we developed the belief that barbarism could be refuted intellectually." Here, he makes clear, he is speaking primarily of France and Germany, not the UK.
Italy is both the same and different. There, as mentioned, Christianity has drifted into the orbit of the left, taking some formerly conservative Christian Democrats along with it. As in most continental countries, a large majority of Italians opposed the war. But Italy also has, in Silvio Berlusconi, a leader who revolutionised his country's media - and through them, his countrymen's politics - by importing American television.
Parliamentary deputy Enrico Letta is a member of the Margherita Party, a branch of Christian Democracy that, when the collapse in Italian parties came, sided against Berlusconi. As Letta explains it, the big change came in the 1980s, and it was Berlusconi the media wheeler-dealer - as opposed to Berlusconi the politician - who brought it. As he took over one Italian television network after another, Berlusconi Americanised the country. US television changed Italians' priorities, drawing them away from politics and towards consumerism.
"Berlusconi brought a model of television from the US," Letta says. "Not just a business model but a programming philosophy." Just as Tony Blair had to move his party's base from the mill to the university before he could take over his country, Berlusconi had to move his country's culture into the television age before he could reap the political benefits. Berlusconi knows what his countrymen think, because it is he who made them think it. In concrete terms, says Letta, the result is an American-style party system, in which weak parties compete for control of a strong government - the opposite of the old Italian system. Berlusconi's Forza Italia is just such a weak party. The majority of those supporting the government, in this view, are Republicans (in the American sense). "We, in turn," Letta admits of the opposition, "have become more and more similar to American Democrats."
This implosion of Italy's party system may be laying the groundwork for a more durable pro-Americanism than the old Christian Democrats could offer - and, not for the first time, it could be pioneering a new trend in Europe. After all, Italy has been the only one of the EU's six founder nations to offer the US its steady support for the past two years. Personality explains part of it. Something in US president George W. Bush, and the America he represents, is very attractive to Berlusconi. According to the Corriere's Venturini, "Berlusconi thinks: 'They will understand me... That is the country of the self-made man. Here in Italy, people will tell me I used to play piano on cruise ships. In America, they don't care. They even like that. In Italy, they tell me I'm not a real politician. In America, they distrust real politicians.'"
Different metaphors are possible: Giancarlo Loquenzi, a Senate aide, prefers to compare Berlusconi to the New York mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg. Bush - unlike Schroder and Chirac - never criticised Berlusconi's election in 2001, and Berlusconi's camp includes such US admirers as defence minister Antonio Martino, who imbibed a good deal of American philosophy through his participation in the free- market Mont Pelerin Society.
In Britain, Mark Leonard, director of the Blairite Foreign Policy Centre, says there is a new strain of Atlanticism which is "revolutionary rather than status-quo". This new strain attracts a certain number of Conservatives - Leonard names the Times columnist, Michael Gove, and the MP Michael Portillo - who believe in "a neo-conservative idea of democracy".
But he also recognises that the Atlanticist project has a great appeal to part of the left. "This is a left that thinks the American tiger can be ridden to promote human rights," he says, "which is fine, except for two problems. The first is American nationalism - we're not Americans. The second is an impatient belief on the left that to deal with big problems, we are going to have to develop a more multilateral way." While Leonard thinks that certain Europeans are too obsessed with multilateralism - those who would not have attacked Serbia in 1999 without a UN mandate, for instance - he thinks the US is far too inclined to go it alone.
Israel is central to the ideological divide over Atlanticism. Much attention has been given on both sides of the Atlantic to the rising tide of anti-Semitism in many European countries, especially France. Less focus has been given to pro-Israeli movements and initiatives. Claude Goasguen says: "There are about a hundred pro- Israel people in the National Assembly, and it's among them that Atlanticists can be recruited."
Berlusconi's refusal, in the six months of Italy's EU presidency, to meet with Palestinian strongman Yasser Arafat, despite an EU directive to the contrary, can be understood as placing him on the pro-American side of the Atlanticist divide. In general, though, support for Israel is haemorrhaging away in the political classes of Western Europe. In Germany, that support came primarily from political leaders - Helmut Kohl, Johannes Rau - whose generation is dying off, and whose immediate successors are evidently much less inclined to nail their colours to the Israeli mast.
By contrast, former leftists are moving to the Zionist cause as they swing to the centre, and so is one major party of the right - a party which would have been the last one would have thought could take such a position. Gianfranco Fini's post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale party, heir to Mussolini's fascists, was once viscerally hostile to the Jewish state - but Fini made an official visit to Israel last autumn.
As European integration comes to revolve increasingly around foreign-policy questions - from defence, to the Turkish candidacy for membership - hard and unavoidable decisions present themselves. Politicians on both right and left feel that Atlanticism has become a zero-sum game: they cannot take a firm stand in favour of the United States (through bilateral agreements, for instance) without endangering the European project.
It's a state of play, paradoxically, that favours the emergence of traditionally Eurosceptic Britain as a model for smaller European states. Particularly in Italy, politicians note with interest (or jealousy) Britain's ability to balance two roles - an occidental/Atlantic/Nato one and a European one. Italian Senate aide Giancarlo Loquenzi says he hopes his own country can replicate Britain's "not-so-ritual vision" within Europe.
As Italy took a hard line to protect its position on milk quotas during recent EU Common Agricultural Policy negotiations, Margaret Thatcher's name was frequently invoked.
For Giuliano Ferrara, the charismatic former communist who now edits the Berlusconi-friendly daily, Il Foglio, the Blair government represents the triumph of the political ideas of "a certain right" in Europe. "Blair acknowledges that we now live in a shareholder society." says Ferrara. "He has been consistent in foreign affairs with both Clinton and Bush." But others, inside Italy and out, doubt that the country has the means to emulate Britain's diplomatic bigamy. Enrico Letta considers the idea that a traditionally pro-EU Italy can replicate Britain's freedom of action within Europe to be delusional. France's Senator Francois- Poncet thinks Blair's stance is a dangerous one to imitate in the first place: "The British think they are in a better position by being largely subservient to the Americans," he remarks. "I would say that they wildly overstate their influence."
The point, however, is that Britain is more important in Europe because it is now becoming evident that dealing with America and dealing with the EU are not separate issues. As Gianni Bonvicini of Italy's Institute for International Affairs put it, "There is an increasing feeling that the Europe relationship can't be monopolistic. It can't mean giving up other relationships."
And Britain is the only EU-member country, at present, that is managing both relationships satisfactorily. Even French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin seems to recognise the indispensability of British military capabilities to European construction, particularly after those capabilities have been enhanced by 10 months of battlefield exposure to American technology and logistics. "There will be no Europe without a European defence," de Villepin wrote recently, "and there will be no European defence without the United Kingdom." That is why, for the Anglo-Franco-German summit recently announced for February 18, Britain appears to hold all the trumps.
Transatlantic ties are now shifting to different bases, but the bases still exist. Henry Kissinger is correct to say that the new generation of Europeans is not automatically pro-American. But neither need it be automatically anti-American. And others tend to miss the present Europe-wide unease about the European project. In the wake of December's Brussels summit, this unease has reached its highest level since the Maastricht agreement. The gloom arises, in part, from the failure at Brussels to find a constitutional voting formula acceptable to both the large countries (particularly Germany and France) and the medium-sized ones (particularly Poland and Spain.) But it also rests on the inability over the past year to find a common European voice on foreign policy, and specifically on the US.
In January, in a thoughtful Brussels post-mortem, the Le Monde writer, Thomas Ferenczi, speculated that "one of the most visible causes of the exhaustion of the European project is the retreat of those political forces that defended it, come hell or high water, for the past half-century." By this, he meant the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, the former transformed into Chirac-followers and free-marketeers, the latter losing significant numbers of voters, in France, to a more charismatic extreme left. These are the two parties, Ferenczi says, with a natural link to the total history of Europe - one through religion, the other through the Enlightenment.
But they are also the parties with a natural link to the foreign policy Europe has pursued through the longest period of peace in its history. For that reason, it may be hard to strike at the roots of the European relationship with America without striking at the roots of the project of European construction. Politicians increasingly see this link. Dennis MacShane, who is so impatient with European attempts to paint George W. Bush as a radical rightist, says: "What I recognise as a hardline agenda is anti- Europeanism from the British right. Like anti-Americanism from the Continental left, it's a politics that leads nowhere." This is a two-way street. If Washington sees the same link as MacShane, it will resist the temptation to damage the EU. And indeed, in the past year, the US has moved steadily away from defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld's evocation of an "Old Europe" and from a White House aide's urging that the Bush administration work towards the "'disaggregation' of Europe."
In most of his speeches since his visit to Warsaw last year, Bush has stuck to the line that one need not choose between the US and Europe. On one hand, the US has shown - for instance, through its threats, believable or not, to deny Iraq contracts to those unwilling to aid the coalition last spring - that it will not sit idly around if European countries seek to poison its bilateral relationships with other European allies. On the other, the US has dropped any larger project of undermining Europe's project of self- government, seeing that it risks creating a pretext for anti- Americanism that politicians across the political spectrum can endorse.
It is with such considerations in mind that Devon Cross, an American philanthropist whose career has included service on the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, showed up in London in January. Cross hopes to start an NGO that will link American policy-makers and strategists with European journalists and publics - and, she hopes, promote a better understanding of how American foreign- policy thinking works and what the American government is trying to do. While she is a longtime friend of Donald Rumsfeld, and might be called a neo-conservative in the US, Cross says she will make it a priority to bring to London the widest possible variety of foreign- policy voices, from Bush Republicans (she has invited the under secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, to participate) to Clinton Democrats (such as the former CIA director James Woolsey) to the human-rights activists of the Democratic left (who cluster around the Freedom House Foundation and American organised labour). This varied coalition is what Americans naturally think of when they think of the political constituency for their foreign policy. But it is not what Europeans think of.
And that is just the point, according to Cross. Her view - that America is losing the battle for the world's hearts and minds by neglecting "public diplomacy", of the sort that its government, foundations and labour unions carried out throughout the cold war - is held quite widely in the US.
Cross's London operation is the first fruit of such thinking, but it is hard work starting up an organisation that aspires to do the work of such lavishly funded, celebrity-studded cold war organisations as the Congress for Cultural Freedom. The Chelsea house where she had hoped to locate her operation fell through, but at least now the organisation has acquired a name: The Policy Forum. Which is an improvement from the time Cross first had the idea to start such an organisation, at the nadir of trans-Atlantic relations in the days following the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom. "Back then," said Cross on her first day in London, "I had thought of calling it Operation Just Show Up."
Christopher Caldwell is an FT columnist and a senior editor at The Weekly Standard
Following more cases of the birdflu in Texas, the European Commission has banned imports of poultry and eggs from the U.S., at least until March 23 when EU farm ministers will review the policy. Safety is the number one concern, not economics, says David Byrne the EU health commissioner.
The EU gets a substantial amount--nearly 25%--of its eggs from the U.S. (that's a 20 million euro business)
This story would be helpful for anyone looking at the US/EU economic relationship through export/import. We could do a follow up on how it's affected economy or local poultry/egg markets.
We could also get a piece of the story here. Without the EU demand, what will happen to local U.S. poultry/egg markets?
EU bans US poultry imports after Texas bird flu outbreak
EU Businesshttp://www.eubusiness.com/afp/040224113607.bhcq0rjf
EU bans US poultry imports after Texas bird flu outbreak
EU Business
http://www.eubusiness.com/afp/040224113607.bhcq0rjf
The European Commission announced Tuesday an immediate ban of EU imports of poultry and eggs from the United States after an outbreak of bird flu in Texas.
European Union health commissioner David Byrne said the import suspension, hitting trade worth over 20 million euros (25 million dollars) annually, will be reviewed by EU farm ministers next month.
He acknowledged the economic impact of the decision, but said: "Safety is what comes first... Trade considerations are important, but they are secondary to the protection of public health."
The EU executive was informed late Monday of the Texas outbreak -- the fourth US state to be hit with the virus following outbreaks in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
The health commissioner, who briefed EU farm ministers about his decision Tuesday, said the Texas outbreak was more serious than the other US cases because the strain of virus concerned is more contagious.
Byrne said the ban will remain in place until March 23 when it will be reviewed by a meeting of EU farm ministers in Brussels. EU veterinary experts will meet next week to confirm the commission ban, as required by EU rules.
The EU imports primarily day-old chicks and eggs for consumption and live eggs for farmers from the United States, Byrne said.
EU imports of US poultry and eggs are substantial: some 13,000 tonnes of eggs are imported annually, representing 25 percent of such imports with a value of 20 million euros. The EU also imports some 800,000 chicks every year, with a value of 2.5 million euros, of which 450,000 are from the United States.
The Texas outbreak was detected among a flock of chickens on a farm in the county of Gonzales, which was quarantined, the Texas Animal Health Commission said in a statement.
But US authorities stressed the virus was not the same deadly strain that has swept across 10 Asian countries this winter, and does not appear to be linked to the other US outbreaks.
Bob Hillman, Texas state veterinarian, said that the flu strain, H5N2, "poses no health threat to humans and causes relatively low mortality in chickens."
"At present, there does not appear to be any connection between the cases on the east coast and the infected flock in Texas," Hillman said.
I’ve included two articles from the Guardian. The first is a list of figures and quotes that, taken together, suggest the worry over immigration from new member countries is motivated, more, by racism (it includes and interesting quote about gypsies) and xenophobia, and less, by the valid economic concerns of current member countries. The most interesting figure: “According to one study the economic gain of EU expansion to the existing 15 countries will be about £6bn and approximately £15bn to the newcomers.”
One statistic I do not see here is the UK estimate of the drain a projected influx would have on welfare, health and education. I looked, but could not find these estimations in other sources, but I would like to know what the estimation is because this ‘drain’ seems to be the only strong argument for migration controls.
With this list I’ve included a related article from the Guardian that humanizes the Roma in the Chez Republic. I find it gives new perspective to the migration debate by relaying the views of potential immigrants (who don’t want to move) and the Czech Republic the Prime Minister, Vladimir Spidla (who says “the concern over influx is provoked ‘by silly media’”).
I find the list and the article important because they suggest that the worry over migration stems from the friction between national identities (the Czech preference for “home” is also evident) and the EU ideal.
The article even reaches (for a moment) to address the identity crisis that some individuals experience within their own country. It introduces a man who lost his Czech citizenship – “I'm not Indian. I'm not Polish. I'm nothing,’ he complained bitterly. " And I think this supports Balibar’s conception of the situation.
EU enlargement: facts and fears
Steven Morris
Monday February 23, 2004
· Ten countries will join the EU after May 1: Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Cyprus
· Of the existing 15 members, Germany, Italy and Austria are likely to ban migrants from the 10 new EU states until 2011, as they are entitled to under EU rules. France is expected to take a similar line. Even traditionally liberal countries such as Sweden and the Netherlands imposed restrictions. Britain and Ireland stood alone in their willingness to open their borders to workers from the new member states
· Britain's policy was heavily criticised by tabloid newspapers. Under the headline See you in May, the Sun said "tens of thousands" of eastern European Gypsies planned to settle here. The Express claimed 1.6m Gypsies were "ready to flood in". Referring to an British government advertising campaign in Slovakia asking people not to come to the UK, the Mail asked: "Are ministers living in the real world?"
· Tory leader Michael Howard called on the government to follow the example of its EU counterparts and impose restrictions. During his visit to Burnley last week, he said racial tolerance depended on people knowing that "immigration is controlled"
· In the Commons earlier this month Tony Blair conceded there was a "potential risk" of an influx from new EU states. He said the government was examining rules governing the eligibility to benefits of new migrant workers
· The Home Office believes 5,000-13,000 people a year will enter the UK from new member states. Rightwing group Migrationwatch UK claims soon 40,000 people a year will enter the UK from eastern Europe
· According to one study the economic gain of EU expansion to the existing 15 countries will be about £6bn and approximately £15bn to the newcomers
· Supporters of the UK's open door policy, among them home secretary David Blunkett, believe an influx of new workers will boost the economy. Home Office statistics show legal migrants make up 8% of the UK's population but generate 10% of the gross domestic product.
EU enlargement: facts and fears
'I don't even speak perfect Czech. How would I manage English?'
Luke Harding in Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic
Monday February 23, 2004
The Guardian
There are no traces of the wall that once fenced off Josef Lacko's flat from those of his neighbours. Five years ago locals in the Czech industrial town of Usti nad Labem built the wall to separate their homes from the Roma housing estate across the street. The wall got knocked down.
But antipathy towards the town's 5,000-strong Roma community has proved harder to demolish. With less than three months to go until the Czech Republic joins the European Union, the jobless Mr Lacko seems exactly the kind of migrant worker who might end up in Britain and who, it has been claimed, could soon be sponging off Britain's benefits system.
Except that Mr Lacko doesn't want to go to Britain. "I have my roots here," he said yesterday, sitting in the kitchen of his council flat, a few yards away from the demolished wall, and overlooking a grassy yard where his sons were kicking a football. "I don't even speak perfect Czech. How would I manage to speak English?" he asked. He added: "I admit it would be nice to live in a country where people don't look at you in a funny way all the time. And it would be great to take my grandchildren to the zoo. Here, we are afraid the skinheads will beat us up. But I would worry about my kids. In Britain I wouldn't know what to do if one of them fell sick."
Despite the problems Roma face in finding jobs, Mr Lacko said most of them wanted to stay in Usti, a depressed but picturesque town on the banks of the Elbe, with a ruined medieval castle, three communist-era factories, and a baroque church.
The town in north-western Bohemia (population 100,000) was once a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It was known as Aussig an der Elbe until 1945, when its German-speaking residents were forced out. These days, though, its modern-day citizens are reluctant to migrate anywhere, despite high levels of unemployment.
"I've got to go to France for five days with a Roma folk group," Mr Lacko said. "I don't even feel like going there."
After initially agreeing that Britain would open up its labour markets to workers from all of the 10 new countries that join the EU on May 1, Tony Blair has had second thoughts following a campaign by the tabloid press. The Daily Express has warned of a wave of "benefit tourists" flooding in from eastern Europe and today the home secretary, David Blunkett, will announce how the government intends to regulate the potential increase in migration.
In the Czech Republic the tabloid campaign has been met with rising political irritation. Earlier this month its social democrat prime minister, Vladimir Spidla, said that the British government's concern over an influx of Roma was provoked by "silly media". His deputy, Petr Mares, complained of "hysteria".
An exhaustive study by the Czech government, meanwhile, revealed that the "vast majority" of the Czech population, 82.3%, didn't want to work abroad. Of the 1.6% who were genuinely interested in leaving, most wanted to go to neighbouring Germany. Only a small minority of those - 11.1% - mentioned Britain.
"The whole scare is nonsense," Jan Jarab, the Czech government's human rights commissioner said yesterday. "Under the British system these people are not entitled to welfare benefits anyway. The problem is the Czech media have picked up what is in the Sun - that the Roma will come over in large numbers. The effect is to encourage more people to go. The media is now creating reality rather than describing it."
Not surprisingly, in the snow-covered villages around Usti, where Vietnamese traders invited in during the communist years sell garden gnomes from roadside stalls, the locals are only interested in working in Germany. The border is less than half an hour away by train; German tourists driving BMWs come here in search of cheap skiing and goulash - and, it would appear, bearded garden ornaments.
"I definitely wouldn't go to Britain," Petr Kopecky, a bricklayer from the village of Petrovice, said. "I don't want to be away from my family. But of course if there was a chance in Germany I would take it."
Mr Kopecky spent five years during the 1990s working on housing sites in Germany until his work permits were no longer renewed. Unlike Britain, Germany has refused to allow migrant workers from the new EU states in after May 1. Every other existing EU country except Britain and Ireland has followed Germany's lead.
Mr Kopecky, though, has his own doubts about the wisdom of closer European integration. In the Czech Republic's referendum last summer on whether to join the EU he voted no. "States have to defend their workers," he said. "The problem now is that if I try to get a bricklaying job a Ukrainian will do it for less."
Over at the nearby ski lift Jan Maska, who worked as a roofer in Germany during the post-unification boom, said he was baffled by the idea of moving to Britain. "It is too far away." Business at the lift was poor, but he didn't intend to leave his job selling tickets: "Moving abroad is for young people."
It is, nevertheless, hardly surprising that some of the Czech Republic's 150,000 Roma should fantasise about a better life elsewhere. Outright racism is rarer these days, but a hidden intolerance persists.
Mr Lacko's brother-in-law Josef Kulena recently got out of prison. He said he had stolen "things" from pubs because he did not have any money. Like many Roma Mr Kulena lost his Czech citizenship after the collapse of communism. "I'm not Indian. I'm not Polish. I'm nothing," he complained bitterly. "It took me five years to get it back. What kind of a country is this?"
Mr Kulena said he was "thinking about" trying to find a job in Britain but was uncertain how to go about it. "I don't have the right documents. I don't have papers. They took them away," he said.
Mr Lacko, meanwhile, said the local mayor knocked down the wall around his house following an international outcry. The wall reached two metres in height and lasted for three weeks. "It was silly, really as we could get out round the back. We pointed out that this is what the Nazis did to the Jews."
Asked where the wall was now, Mr Lacko said: "The local zoo bought it. They use it to keep in the animals."
'I don't even speak perfect Czech. How would I manage English?'
This is a 4 part series that aired on National Public Radio in October of last year.
There are reports from France, Poland, Italy and Germany. It's pretty interesting how they choose to report these stories. For instance they talk about the French fascination with American pop culture, Polish admiration for American business practices and German interest in Native Americans. It's both an interesting listen, and instructive for how to put together (or not put together)our stories.
I am including a link to the audio files on NPR's website and transcripts to the pieces.
National Public Radio: America Seen Through European Eyes
History of French anti-Americanism and how it bears on France's relationship with the US today
October 15, 2003 Wednesday
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
The day after the attacks of September 11th, France's leading newspaper, Le Monde, ran a sympathetic headline: We Are All Americans. Maybe not since Lafayette helped George Washington defeat the British had the French been so pro-American. But it didn't take long for that attitude to sour. After a brief demonstration of solidarity with Washington, France once again began waving its age-old banner of anti-Americanism. Now differences over the war in Iraq have plunged French-US relations to their lowest point since the days when a proud Charles de Gaulle led France to boycott NATO in the 1960s.
In the second part of our series "America Seen Through European Eyes," NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports on the history of French anti-Americanism and how it bears on France's relationship with America today.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI reporting:
Autumn is the 'rentre literare,'(ph) the height of the French publishing season, and this year the number-one topic is America. In this bookstore in central Paris, shelves are filled with conspiracy theories and diatribes against the US-led war in Iraq, titles such as "Bush's Secret World," "Who Profits from the War?," "The United States and Planetary Manipulation." There are also novels inspired by September 11th, such as this English title "Windows on the World." And there's the unexpected "Loving Dictionary of America." One of the biggest best sellers is "The American Enemy," the first scholarly analysis of the roots of French anti-Americanism. Its author, Philippe Roger, was in New York on 9/11. When he returned home he found the French media's condescending coverage of the terrorist attacks a frightening confirmation of his main thesis.
Mr. PHILIPPE ROGER (Author, "The American Enemy"): That anti-Americanism was so entwisted in the French intellectual identity that people were able to repeat the same stereotypes just as if nothing had happened.
(Soundbite of children laughing)
POGGIOLI: Here in the Paris Botanical Garden, schoolchildren with large notebooks crouch near the elegant flower beds. They're drawing asters, roses and dahlias. Towering above them are bronze statues of the French greats of natural history. One of the most prominent is the 18th century scientist Georges-Luis Buffon, a man who never visited the New World but who could be considered the founding father of anti-Americanism. Buffon elaborated a theory that everything in the New World was degenerate and that its flora and fauna were stunted. Buffon was a man of the Enlightenment, and his theories soon led to the widespread conviction that in America dogs don't bark and birds don't sing as they do here. Philippe Roger says that Buffon's followers extended the naturalist theory of New World degeneration to its human beings.
Mr. ROGER: And they made a point that if a dog that was transferred from England to America couldn't bark anymore, humans themself would become weaker, less intelligent, less potent; that Europeans, after one or two generations in America, had lost their fertility, they had lost most of their impetus or intellectual stamina, so on and so forth.
POGGIOLI: Thomas Jefferson was so infuriated by Buffon's claims that he decided to combat them scientifically. He got himself a dead moose and brought it to Paris, where he displayed the seven-foot-tall carcass in the entry hall of his hotel. Buffon was invited to inspect the American mammal, but the French scientist, himself less than five feet tall, was unimpressed and refused to revise his theory on the inferiority of American nature.
Mr. FREDERIC BEIGBEDER (Author): What I don't like about anti-Americanism is that it's naive and it's caricatural, it's grotesque.
POGGIOLI: Frederic Beigbeder is another best-selling French writer focusing on America.
Mr. BEIGBEDER: Because if we think about it, a long, long time ago the French were very powerful, and they were a very big nation. And now it's over, I think.
POGGIOLI: Beigbeder, author of a novel about 9/11, says that for the last two centuries French anti-Americanism always had a large dose of irrationality. Philippe Roger goes further. He claims that contemporary French anti-Americanism is the result of sedimentation, a 200-year-old layering process in which each generation of intellectuals added its own contribution to what has now become a coherent national conviction that America poses a danger to everything the French hold dear.
The symbolist poet Baudelaire coined the expression 'Americanization,' which he described as 'materialistic heartlessness.' In "Remembrance of Things Past," Proust invented a character who symbolizes the United States' late entry into World War I. According to the French, that was a calculated move, so America, taking advantage of a war-weakened France, could become the arbiter of Europe's destiny. And a book called "The American Cancer" excoriated Woodrow Wilson for his self-righteousness and his failure to persuade Congress to ratify the Treaty of Versailles.
A dangerous form of Ameriphobia emerged in the inter-war period, says Philippe Roger.
Mr. ROGER: The French were so obsessed by America as a negative, an utterly, completely negative model, that they failed to see that an obvious ally should have been America against the rise of political totalitarianism.
POGGIOLI: While Hitler and Mussolini were consolidating their axis on France's doorsteps, the high priests of French culture were thundering against what they saw as the American peril: the mediocrity of American culture.
Mr. ROGER: 'Oh, they are null, zero. They will never have anything: no painters, no writers. I mean, let's not worry about it.' And suddenly in the 1930s everything changes, and the major factor is, of course, the cinema. It's a movie thing. It's Hollywood.
(Soundbite of movie music)
Unidentified Woman: (French spoken)
Unidentified Man: (French spoken)
(Soundbite of movie music)
POGGIOLI: By 1939, half of France's movie theaters were American-owned, a blow to the proud, prewar French cinema. The influx of things American accelerated after World War II, and many saw this as the sign of the definitive loss of French stature in the world. The novelist Roger Vagnon(ph) denounced what he called the 'barbarity of comfort,' saying the refrigerator was part of an American conspiracy to destroy French domestic culture. And the newspaper Le Monde sniffed that Coca-Cola was a 'social menace.' And then came television.
(Soundbite of "Bonanza" theme music)
POGGIOLI: French TV stations were soon filled with American-made sitcoms and series, imports a French minister denounced as part of a cultural imperialist plot.
(Soundbite of "Charlie's Angels" theme music)
POGGIOLI: Today France is perhaps the most visibly Americanized country in Europe. The Les Halles area in Paris is a landmark for eateries, but don't come here for foie gras or Beaujolais. Around the outdoor plaza people are lining up at McDonald's, Haagen-Dazs, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut, while shoppers browse the aisles of Foot Locker and Skechers. And the first French Starbucks is coming soon. Writer Frederic Beigbeder believes the voracious French appetite for Americana, which is baffling to outsiders, resembles a dirty little secret.
Mr. BEIGBEDER: There is this fascination for luxury, fascination for power. This ideology of comfort, the American way of life, being beautiful, being famous, being rich, this is what's making people crazy, guilty and jealous.
POGGIOLI: Envy and resentment are among the root causes cited by many analysts for French anti-Americanism. America's perceived as having displaced France as a major world power, a position it held with Great Britain and Germany a century ago. It was the US-led war in Iraq that further widened the Franco-American divide. In a recent poll, 70 percent of the French say they are opposed to the United States holding the dominant position in the world.
Yet another writer about America is Patrick Farbiaz. A leader of the French Green Party, he's co-author of the recently published "Dangereuse Amerique." Farbiaz says that despite the French president's conservative credentials, Jacques Chirac has become the flag bearer not only of the anti-war movement but also of a specific European philosophy of life.
Mr. PATRICK FARBIAZ (Author, "Dangereuse Amerique"): (Through Translator) The war in Iraq was just the first round of a clash of civilizations, not between Islam and the West but within the West itself, between two views of the future. There's a European model of society and its environment, of relations between people and communicating, which is moving further and further away from the American model. So Americans must ask themselves why millions and millions of people in the world are opposed to this American model of always wanting to be the most powerful in the world.
POGGIOLI: The Pompidou Center is Paris' whimsical monument to pop art. Upstairs its library is crowded with university students. It's lunchtime and we join a group of friends sitting cross-legged on the floor munching sandwiches. The topic America hits a chord.
Ms. ALICE LEHENNE(ph) (Student): (Through Translator) There is a sort of anti-Americanism in France, which is real, which is cultural. It's something in the population. You can feel it.
POGGIOLI: Twenty-three-year-old Alice Lehenne studies history.
Ms. LEHENNE: (Through Translator) For us, America is very powerful, very dominating in the world. The country wants to impose its economy on the world. For us, it seems an economy without any rules, completely out of control, a sort of wild capitalist.
POGGIOLI: Next to her, 22-year-old Damien Glen Arec(ph) says the French are a bit ambivalent.
Mr. DAMIEN GLEN AREC (Student): (Through Translator) There is anti-Americanism, but at the same time we admire the United States. We buy the country's movies, literature and music. We dream about the country and how we'd love to go there. After September 11th, we felt America's suffering. So despite the war in Iraq, there are still feelings of love: I love you, I hate you.
POGGIOLI: As the success of the crop of new French books about America demonstrates, the events since 9/11 have opened up a new debate here. Author Philippe Roger says he's pleased the French are beginning to examine the origins of their animosities more rationally.
Mr. ROGER: But it must be said that Mr. Bush is the perfect embodiment of the stereotypes the French have about America, starting with trigger-happy Texans and excessively religious manners. So it doesn't make things particularly easier at this point. On the other end, that should not prevent anybody in France or elsewhere from exerting a legitimate criticism of whatever we see as unsatisfying in American policy.
POGGIOLI: This process of anti-Americanism soul-searching comes at a time when French disapproval of American policy has never been so intense. Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News.
BLOCK: You can find more on this series, including an essay by Sylvia Poggioli, at our Web site npr.org. Tomorrow on the program we'll head south to Italy.
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
History of Italian attitudes toward the United States
October 16, 2003 Thursday
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
When the United States decided to go to war in Iraq, the Italian government of Silvio Berlusconi was one of a handful that wholeheartedly supported the Bush administration, but the Italian people were overwhelmingly opposed. Today, in part three of our series America Seen Through European Eyes, NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports on Italy and its long history of complex and contradictory relations with the US.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI reporting:
A vast, freshly mowed lawn reaches all the way to the horizon.
Mr. SILVANO CASALDI (Curator, Allied Forces Museum): We just passed the gate and we are actually in the United States territory.
POGGIOLI: Silvano Casaldi, curator of the Allied Forces Museum in Nettuno, takes us on a tour of one of the largest US cemeteries in Europe.
Mr. CASALDI: There are 7,861 soldiers buried here.
POGGIOLI: In the shade of Roman pines and cypresses, there's row upon row of white marble markers, crosses and Stars of David stretching over 77 acres. Many of them are American GIs who landed in Anzio nearly 60 years ago.
(Soundbite of waves hitting the shore)
POGGIOLI: It's along this southern Italian beach that one of the most ferocious battles of World War II took place.
(Soundbite of vintage recording; explosions)
POGGIOLI: This is a recording of the landing of more than 50,000 Allied soldiers at Anzio on January 22nd, 1944. The amphibious operation was a dress rehearsal for D-Day six months later. Trench warfare against the Nazis lasted nearly six months. With no safe place on the beachhead, soldiers described it as a turkey shoot, and there were nearly three times as many casualties at Anzio as at Normandy. Despite huge losses, Anzio pinned down Hitler's elite units, thus hastening the dictator's defeat. Amerigo Salvini was born just after the Americans arrived. He was named after his country's liberators.
Mr. AMERIGO SALVINI: I remember my father's story. He goes to the window and see three soldiers. They are Americans, 3rd Division Infantry. And he was very, very emotional because my father--he was an anti-fascist. OK? He don't like Mussolini. And when he see for the first time the American people, he say, 'Liberatore! Oh, thank you. Grazie! Grazie!'
(Soundbite of waves hitting the shore)
POGGIOLI: The American campaign progressed northward and in June, Rome became the first European capital to be liberated from the Germans. War-weary Italians cheered and welcomed the American GIs ecstatically and with gratitude.
Mr. GIULIANO MONTALDO (Film Director): (Through Translator) It was triumphant. I remember the soldier tossing us cigarettes, Lucky Strike cigarettes, and then chocolate. And we were so hungry.
POGGIOLI: Film director Giuliano Montaldo was 14 then. He describes the exciting new world the Americans brought with them.
Mr. MONTALDO: (Through Translator) We had boogie-woogie for the first time, "The Chattanooga Choo-Choo" and then Abbe Lane and Armstrong and Ella, all those voices. It was constant discovery. And then Rita Hayworth with those lips, those thick lips made for kissing. It was freedom, freedom of behavior and customs. In the movies, we saw people drinking, drinking like Hemingway, and for the first time, we heard the sound, the 'tinkle, tinkle' of ice in a whiskey glass.
POGGIOLI: The next few years were heady. With the injection of massive US aid under the Marshall Plan, Italy had an economic boom. And although its large Communist Party put Italy on the East-West front line during the Cold War, the country enthusiastically embraced American pop culture and the consumer society. It was cool to be American.
(Soundbite of song)
Unidentified Man #1: (Italian sung)
POGGIOLI: Then came the years of 'la dolce vita.' The Cinecitta Studios turned Rome into Hollywood on the Tiber, and in the mid-'60s, a new genre was born, inspired by the quintessential American myth: the West as seen through Italian eyes.
(Soundbite of music from "A Fistful of Dollars")
POGGIOLI: With "A Fistful of Dollars," director Sergio Leone introduced the world to spaghetti Westerns.
(Soundbite of "A Fistful of Dollars")
Unidentified Man #2: (Italian spoken)
(Soundbite of gunshots)
POGGIOLI: Giuliano Montaldo worked with Leone. He says the director amplified the Western myth more than any American movie maker ever did.
Mr. MONTALDO: (Through Translator) The American myth is made of wide, open spaces, horses, silences, wind, of harsh gazes of strong men who have to conquer immense territories. Leone had the American Dream, but he knew that in the soul of every people there is 'the good, the bad and the ugly.'
POGGIOLI: By the late '60s, in response to America's involvement in Vietnam, spaghetti Westerns turned political and began to stress the ugly. Leftist screenwriters wrote proletarian Westerns where the US was depicted as the oppressor of the poor. Italy began to be openly and stridently anti-American.
Mr. GUILIANO FERRARA (Editor in Chief, Il Foglio): I think that during the anti-Vietnam War fights, the key motto was that we would defend l'altra America, the other America.
POGGIOLI: Guiliano Ferrara is an Italian neocon, the editor in chief of the conservative daily Il Foglio. But he used to be a party apparatchik. It was the time when the Italian Communist Party was the biggest in the West. Taking its cues from Moscow, the party ranted against American imperialism during the Cold War. Ferrara says he and his comrades were convinced that the entire American counterculture was a fellow traveler.
Mr. FERRARA: It was the idea the America contained two opportunities: the opportunity to be with Joan Baez, with Bob Dylan, with the universities, with Martin Luther King, with the civil rights movement, and at the same time, there was an America of the government, of Lyndon Johnson, of Richard Nixon, which was the bad Americans, the bad guys. We had this kind of mechanism with--I mean, the Italian Communist Party.
(Soundbite of neighborhood activity)
Unidentified Child: (Italian spoken)
POGGIOLI: The working-class neighborhood of San Morenzo is a bastion of the left. In July 1943, an errant American bomb was dropped here, killing perhaps as many as 3,000 people. That tragedy is commemorated with a monument at the center of a run-down little park: four old artillery shells around a marble column, the names of the dead carved on sheets of Plexiglas.
Unidentified Man #3: (Italian spoken)
POGGIOLI: In a corner, groups of old men are playing card games. For them, the wounds of 60 years ago have not healed. It's immediately clear that Americans are not welcome here. Franco Paupa(ph) was six years old during the bombing. He remembers the bodies strewn all over the streets.
Mr. FRANCO PAUPA (San Morenzo Resident): (Through Translator) What do I think about Americans? They machine-gunned us down while we were running to them, our liberators.
POGGIOLI: His friend Dob di Rossi(ph) is even more blunt.
Mr. DOB DI ROSSI (San Morenzo Resident): (Through Translator) Well, if Bush were not around, there wouldn't be any war in Iraq. It would be all over.
POGGIOLI: Political analyst Ernesto Galli Della Loggia says Italian anti-Americanism is not limited to the left. He says equally strong sentiments can be found in both Italian fascism and Catholicism.
Mr. ERNESTO GALLI DELLA LOGGIA (Political Analyst): (Through Translator) All three ideologies perceive America the same way: as a materialistic society dominated by materialistic values, a society with an arrogant, actually an imperialist foreign policy, a system with no social solidarity which keeps the poor on the margins while the treatment of blacks is seen as the symbol of the injustice that dominates American society.
POGGIOLI: The Catholic Church's antipathy for American society has deep roots. In 1899, Pope Leo XIII condemned the supposed heresy of Americanism. After World War II, Pope Pius XII opposed Italy's entry into NATO, fearing the alliance was a Trojan horse for Protestant domination of Catholic Europe. And in the '50s, the governing Christian Democrat party bowed to Vatican concerns and expelled from the country numerous American Protestant missionaries. In recent months, it was Italian Catholics who were in the forefront of opposition to American military actions in Iraq.
Pope JOHN PAUL II: (Italian spoken)
POGGIOLI: In his appeals against waging war in Iraq, Pope John Paul II became unofficial spokesman for the anti-war movement. Alberto Merloni(ph) is a church historian.
Mr. ALBERTO MERLONI (Church Historian): The voice of the pope really became an important reference for Catholics. The voice of the pope did express a strong anti-American feeling in Italian public opinion and in the Catholic public opinion. And what is not so acceptable from a Catholic point of view is that the US administration is making choices that are not simply inspired by Realpolitik, but are made in the name of moral values.
(Soundbite of shop activity)
POGGIOLI: The Ave Bookshop(ph) is a few hundred yards from St. Peter's Square. It sells books about religion and theology. Inside, we meet Father Claudio Bucciarelli, who is eager to tell us what he thinks about the American president.
Father CLAUDIO BUCCIARELLI: (Through Translator) In his speeches, Bush takes God's name in vain. It is wrong when religion is identified with politics, but it is equally wrong when politics identifies with religion. This is fundamentalism. This is just like Islamic fundamentalism. It has nothing to do with the Word of God.
POGGIOLI: This spring, thousands of windows and balconies throughout the country were festooned with a made-in-Italy rainbow peace flag. The anti-war movement brought together Catholic activists, the traditional left and young anti-globalists. Polls indicated 70 to 80 percent of the public opposed the war in Iraq, according to Roberto Menotti, a researcher at the Italian Aspen Foundation. He says this is a manifestation of the multiple strains of anti-Americanism in Italian society.
Mr. ROBERTO MENOTTI (Researcher, Italian Aspen Foundation): Italians have always had a somewhat contradictory, maybe paradoxical relationship with the US as a country and as a nation and as a great power. There was a love affair, but it was complex and constantly shifting.
POGGIOLI: Menotti believes the gap between the two societies is widening, and that many Italians feel Americans have developed a dangerously simplistic mind-set.
Mr. MENOTTI: The sense that the world is essentially black and white, is essentially good people and bad people, good countries and bad countries. And this explains why we tend to feel that America is going essentially the wrong way.
POGGIOLI: Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News.
(Soundbite of music)
NORRIS: We conclude our series tomorrow with Poland.
(Soundbite of music)
NORRIS: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
America as seen through Poland's eyes
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
People in Poland often say they love America more than Americans do. Next to Britain, Poland was Europe's most fervent supporter of the US-led war in Iraq. Since the collapse of communism, Poles have embraced a Western-style free market. Poland has become a NATO member and hopes to gain full membership in the European Union. Today Poland concludes our series America Seen Through European Eyes. As NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports, despite their enthusiasm for America, Poles are increasingly worried about tensions between their European neighbors and the US.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI reporting:
The Fakro Skylight Factory(ph) is the poster child of Poland's gung ho entrepreneurial spirit.
(Soundbite of machinery)
POGGIOLI: We're at company headquarters in Novi Sonch(ph) near Poland's southern border. Fakro was founded in 1991 when a man bought not much more than a shed.
Mr. GREGOS BALLAS(ph): This is that garage where Fakro started.
POGGIOLI: Gregos Ballas is chief operating officer.
Mr. BALLAS: We started preparing the first roof window together with 15 persons here in this small room, and today the Fakro group employs 1,700 people all over the world.
(Soundbite of machinery)
POGGIOLI: Today this state-of-the-art plant sprawls across a huge expanse, towering over the humble garage. Fakro now covers 15 percent of the global skylight market and has just opened for business in the United States. Ballas says the secret of the company's success is American-style management training.
Mr. BALLAS: I think that if we are joining the European community, this can be our advantage to have this American spirit here because we can--we'll have some advantages against the European companies which are very European.
POGGIOLI: By implication, European means too much outside bureaucracy and meddling.
Mr. BALLAS: I don't think that the people really need the union here because they have own representations. Every department has own manager. The manager is really protecting their people. We just don't need the union here.
POGGIOLI: This statement sounds odd in the country that fought to give birth to Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the communist world. But the heyday of the Solidarity union is long gone. Poland now has a jobless rate of nearly 20 percent. There's been little retraining of workers, and no one dares strike for higher wages.
(Soundbite of trams)
POGGIOLI: In the working-class town of Nowa Huta, which means new steelworks, the trams are still running, but they're all nearly empty. Nowa Huta was built as an ideal city for the new communist man, the dedicated worker at the massive Lenin Steel Plant. No churches were envisioned here, and the rigid geometry of its architecture was a model for Stalin's brave new world. In the '80s, Nowa Huta was a bastion of Solidarity agitation, the times when a union poster depicted Gary Cooper the sheriff as its champion.
(Soundbite of whistle)
POGGIOLI: The steel mill is still in operation, but Lenin's nowhere to be seen. A train carrying cylinders of sheet metal chugs for miles around the plant's perimeter, but production has plummeted and the number of workers plunged from 40,000 at the height of communism to just above 8,000 after the government sold a majority share of the factory to a foreign company. Vladislad Quillien(ph) is the Solidarity trade union leader at the plant. We asked him how he feels now that Poland is back in the Western world.
Mr. VLADISLAD QUILLIEN: (Through Translator) The fact that Poland supported the US on Iraq I think politically was a very good move. But support for US actions over there does not mean that we automatically want to adopt the economy. When I think of the word 'capitalism,' I see people who have everything and people who have nothing. There are people with no safety net. There's no way for them to live a life of dignity.
POGGIOLI: Commentator Constanti Gebberd(ph) says Poland's have-nots feel not only exploited but also humiliated.
Mr. CONSTANTI GEBBERD: The concept of dignity of labor has been lost, and the idea, 'If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?' is very much in.
(Soundbite of shouting in foreign language)
POGGIOLI: Since the fall of communism, downtown Warsaw has become one big construction site. The city's skyline used to be dominated by the boxlike Palace of Culture, a gift from Stalin to his Polish communist brothers. Today the ground floor houses a movie theater and the building is dwarfed by new glass and steel skyscrapers and by towering cranes used to build even more. Constanti Gebberd.
Mr. GEBBERD: Poland is reinventing itself socially as it moves on. And this is much more American than European. We almost never had this kind of Western European approach to business which essentially considers business success a sin to atone for, right?
POGGIOLI: There's an MBA boom at the many new Szkola Biznesu, and Poland is also undergoing a cultural transformation. The sounds of Chopin have been drowned out by a Polish version of hip-hop.
(Soundbite of hip-hop music with singing in foreign language)
POGGIOLI: Young Poles, like their European counterparts, are passionate about American pop culture. Hip-hop rules the airwaves, songs about wanting to have more money, nice digs and a cool set of wheels.
(Soundbite of hip-hop music with singing in foreign language)
Unidentified Announcer: (Foreign language spoken)
POGGIOLI: MTV Poland arrived three years ago and is also a big success, already in two million homes. The creative director at MTV PL is Derrick Ogrodny. A Polish-American from Chicago, he's found his land of opportunity in the homeland, where he says American qualities are highly appreciated.
Mr. DERRICK OGRODNY (Creative Director, MTV Poland): The thing that most people notice about me being from there is my positive attitude towards things and my ambition. If there's a problem, I look for ways to solve it. There's this kind of John Wayne-like, 'All right, boys, we've got to get rid of these cattle rustlers. What are we gonna do?' You know, 'And let's form a posse and, you, you're gonna do this and you're gonna hold the gun,' and everything's well thought out and organized, and it works. And I think that's one of the things they look up to in America.
POGGIOLI: Poland's pro-American feelings are rooted in gratitude for US support throughout the 20th century, as well as the weight of the large number of Polish immigrants in the United States. Commentator Constanti Gebberd also cites the Poles' affinity for America's classless society and their embrace of the rags-to-riches American Dream. But on a political level, Gebberd says, Poland's strong support for the United States has to do with security.
Mr. GEBBERD: I hope it will never come to it, the proposal that America would be willing to risk New York to save Bialystok, that this proposal would be ever put to a test. But if somebody is going to risk their neck to save Bialystok, it's slightly possible it might be the Americans. It's simply not imaginable it would be anybody else.
POGGIOLI: But not all Poles are quite so sure.
Ms. ANYESKA MORISHINSKA(ph) (Pentor Poli Institute): I've got here one interesting survey. Where was it?
POGGIOLI: Anyeska Morishinska is a researcher at Warsaw's Pentor Poli Institute.
Ms. MORISHINSKA: I was very surprised because of the result. The question was, 'What do you think? Who can give Poland greater security, United States or European nation?' And 51 percent European Union, and 24 percent United States.
POGGIOLI: While the majority of Poles did side with the United States in waging war in Iraq and Polish peacekeeping troops have been sent there, there was one strong anti-war voice in Poland.
Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken)
POGGIOLI: Radio Maria is the mouthpiece of one of the conservative movements in the Polish Catholic Church.
Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken)
Unidentified Caller and Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken in unison)
(Soundbite of music)
POGGIOLI: It has persistently opposed not only the war in Iraq, but also Poland's entry into the European Union, which it fears will undermine Poland's Catholic values. And the movement's priests have often preached against the Western secular and materialistic society most closely associated with the United States. But most Poles don't seem to be listening, especially those who belong to what's being called Generation E, where E stands for Europe. They are university students and young urban professionals who did not grow up under the heavy yoke of communism. We meet some members of Generation E on a warm Sunday afternoon in a Warsaw park. They are students at the American Studies Department of Warsaw University who want to discuss their feelings about the United States and its relations with Poland and Europe.
Katarjina Dujik(ph) is writing her thesis on the Native American in American cinema. She has doubts about American foreign policy.
Ms. KATARJINA DUJIK (American Studies Department, Warsaw University): Many people from my generation, we perceive it a bit different than the older generations. I think that with all the power and influence that the United States have, they could act in a more, I think, positive way towards other countries. I mean, they could forget about selfishness and behave more multilaterally.
POGGIOLI: Fellow student Marios Kitsiana(ph) is studying the US Supreme Court, focusing on the issue of individual rights.
Mr. MARIOS KITSIANA (American Studies Department, Warsaw University): There could be a very positive scenario of Poland being the link between Europe, or the old Europe, and the US. Well, and I think that will be the best development for the future.
POGGIOLI: Janusz Onyszkiewicz was one of the early dissidents in the Solidarity movement and a defense minister in one of the first post-communist governments. He's openly pro-American, but he also suggests that America could show more willingness to work collectively with its allies.
Mr. JANUSZ ONYSZKIEWICZ: I think that American unilateralism should be somehow restrained, and perhaps US should try to build Europe as an important US partner. But I am afraid that there will be a temptation in the United States to divide Europe and to work with those European countries which will be more ready to accept American leadership.
(Soundbite of trumpet)
POGGIOLI: Every day, on the hour, a golden trumpet appears at the top of the spire of Krakow's Church of St. Mary. The signal is broadcast live on nationwide radio at noon.
(Soundbite of trumpet)
POGGIOLI: Starting in the middle ages, the signal warned citizens of an impending attack. The melody stops abruptly before its last note, commemorating a 13th-century trumpeter shot with an arrow through his throat as he played.
(Soundbite of trumpet)
POGGIOLI: Today, Poland is not under threat from any direction, and wants to be friends with everyone. But trans-Atlantic tensions are creating new insecurities. Many Poles fear they may be forced to choose between Europe and America. Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News.
NORRIS: You can hear the other stories from this series and find photos and links by going to our Web site, npr.org.
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
America as seen through the eyes of the German people
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
When terrorists struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon just over two years ago, sympathy and outrage poured out from around the globe, and there was great understanding, especially from Europe, when Washington declared its war on terrorism. But many recent opinion polls show that the image of America as a victim has been replaced with that of a bully. To its longtime European allies, the United States has become an imperial power bent on using its military muscle preemptively.
BLOCK: Today, we begin a series of reports, "America Seen Through European Eyes," and we start with Germany. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has emerged as a strong critic of the United States. That would have been unthinkable during the Cold War when West Germany was strategically dependent on the US. Now anger over the war in Iraq has weakened the historically strong ties between Washington and Berlin. As NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports, there's a growing mistrust in Germany of the country that has long been its ally.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI reporting:
Bad Segeberg is a lake resort an hour's drive south of Hamburg. It's best known for its 8,000-seat open-air theater, originally built during the '40s for Nazi rallies. After the war, Teutonic folklore was considered tainted by the Third Reich and, therefore, off limits. So city authorities turned the Bad Segeberg arena(ph) into a shrine for the German cult of 'der vild vest.'
(Soundbite of "Ring of Fire")
Mr. JOHNNY CASH: (Singing) And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire, the ring of fire.
POGGIOLI: Tonight's crowd, an equal number of adults and children, have come to see a play.
(Soundbite of applause)
POGGIOLI: The spectators are rapt as they follow the story of an Apache brave named Winnetu(ph) who comes to the rescue of his cowboy friend.
(Soundbite of play; gunshot)
Unidentified Man #1: (German spoken)
(Soundbite of gunshots)
Unidentified Man #1: (German spoken)
POGGIOLI: When it comes to German fascination with the mythology of America, it's the Native American who captures the imagination.
(Soundbite of play)
Unidentified Man #2: (German spoken)
(Soundbite of music; applause)
POGGIOLI: Many in the audience have painted faces and are wearing headbands with feathers. One of them is Andreas(ph), a youth counsellor who has brought 12 children to see the play. He says that identifying with Native Americans is a way to take a stand against what he calls America's unresolved past.
ANDREAS: (Through Translator) It has to do with compassion and empathy with those who were killed by the white man. I really blame Americans for killing nearly all the Indians who were there first. It also has to do with the Holocaust in Germany. Americans often blame us for our recent history. They point their fingers at us Germans without realizing what they did to the Indians.
POGGIOLI: Such a critical and confrontational tone is a new post-Cold War phenomenon. Following Germany's defeat in World War II and its partition, West Germany became a virtual American protectorate. The purpose of the American occupation was to create a Western democracy, a pro-American democracy that was essentially a replica of the United States. Close relations and dependency were cemented by the Berlin Airlift. In 1948, Soviet troops sealed off the city, and for nearly a year, Berlin was supplied exclusively from the air by Allied planes bringing in coal, food and machinery.
(Soundbite of crowd noise)
POGGIOLI: Fourteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany's relationship with its former protector is the topic of a special John F. Kennedy exhibition at Berlin's German Historical Museum.
(Soundbite of vintage recording)
President JOHN F. KENNEDY: Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was (Latin spoken).
POGGIOLI: For months, large crowds of visitors have been lining up to watch a grainy black-and-white film that captures one of the iconic events of the Cold War.
(Soundbite of vintage recording)
Pres. KENNEDY: ...the proudest boast is 'Ich bin ein Berliner.'
(Soundbite of applause)
POGGIOLI: At the show's opening in June, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said the trans-Atlantic partnership is more important than ever. Unintended irony perhaps since relations between Berlin and Washington were at their worst in decades. Anti-war German demonstrators had carried banners with the words, 'Bush, you are not a Berliner.'
Karsten Voigt is the man in charge of US-German relations at the foreign ministry. He says the Bush administration's pressure on Germany to take part in the Iraq war undermined those non-aggressive principles the United States had fostered in post-Nazi Germany.
Mr. KARSTEN VOIGT (German Foreign Ministry): Now quite all of a sudden, some people are saying to us, 'If you stick to that position, you are not part of the solution of a problem; you are part of the problem.' So they said we should change our policy, our culture, our values, which we got from the US and which everybody wanted for us for 50 years.
POGGIOLI: Voigt says that Germany has overcome its Cold War angst of being attacked and now is looking inward.
Mr. VOIGT: Germany is now increasingly moving in a direction where pursuit of happiness is on the top of the agenda. For the first time, Germany is surrounded by countries who are friends, or at least give the impression as if they are friends. This is the most happy situation in which we have been since centuries.
(Soundbite of applause)
Ms. GAIL TUFTS: Danke schoen. This is the big show.
(Soundbite of applause)
POGGIOLI: Gail Tufts is the new Sally Bowles, a Yank who's brought cabaret back to Berlin.
(Soundbite of performance)
Ms. TUFTS: (Singing) It's the... big show, yes, the big show. (German sung).
POGGIOLI: She delights German audiences with her invention, a hybrid Deutsche-English lingo she calls Denglish. A Berliner by adoption, she says America is no longer calling all the shots.
Ms. TUFTS: It's not the only game in town.
POGGIOLI: And she believes Germany won't be treated like a teen-aged kid.
Ms. TUFTS: The kid is in college now. The kid is a young adult and maybe has a mind of its own, not in a bratty kind of a way, but in saying, 'Hey, listen. I've read a few things. I have an opinion of my own now, and I'm allowed to have an opinion of my own.'
POGGIOLI: As Germany begins to sever its umbilical cord with the US, it's trying to forge a new identity out of its two long-divided halves. While the American way of life shaped West German society, it was painted as the number-one enemy on the Communist eastern side of the Berlin Wall.
(Soundbite of song)
Unidentified Choir: (German sung)
POGGIOLI: The German Democratic Republic was laid to rest more than a decade ago, but its anthem still stirs emotions among some Ossies, those raised in Communist East Germany.
(Soundbite of song)
Unidentified Choir: (German sung)
Mr. HAGEN KOCH: (German spoken)
POGGIOLI: Hagen Koch is 63 years old. He's the man who in 1961 literally painted the white line around Berlin where the dividing wall was to be built. He still lives in a Communist-era apartment block stuffed with maps, photos and other archives. Koch is the self-appointed curator of the legacy of the Berlin Wall. He tells us how a distorted view of America was implanted in East German minds.
Mr. KOCH: (Through Translator) There was this summer when there were a lot, a huge of amount of potato beetles destroying the harvest.
POGGIOLI: Koch says children were taken out of school and sent to potato fields to remove the bugs. It was at the time of the airlift when US planes were often flying overhead on their way to Berlin. East German propaganda exploited the coincidence and turned it into an American plot; (German spoken), the dumping of potato beetles.
Mr. KOCH: (Through Translator) And these two events--on the one hand, a blight of these insects, and on the other, the airlift--were linked by the Communists in order to brainwash the children. Their aim was to create fear and loathing of the enemy, which was the United States.
POGGIOLI: East Germans like Koch, who was indoctrinated to hate America, have been overwhelmed by the recent Westernization of their society. But even younger Easterners feel displaced. Free-lance journalist Silke Schumann says she's still trying to adapt to what she calls the West German 'elbow society.'
Ms. SILKE SCHUMANN (Journalist): By 'elbow society,' I mean that you have to push other people away to make your way. You have to show self-confidence. And this wasn't so in East Germany; it was the contrary. You had to be a group member who fit in and then you were allowed to progress. Of course, I do think that the American way of life did shape West Germany. It influenced the people who live there.
POGGIOLI: Many East Germans are now questioning the cost of freedom, both emotional and practical, that has come with reunification. TV shows and movies reflect a new wave of "ostalgie," nostalgia for the East.
(Soundbite of "Good bye, Lenin!")
Unidentified Woman: (German spoken)
POGGIOLI: "Good bye, Lenin!" has been a box office success for months. The movie satire tells the story of a hard-line Communist woman who in November 1989 has a heart attack and falls into a coma. When she wakes up eight months later, the wall has fallen, capitalism has triumphed and East and West are on the path to reunification. But her son believes this turn of events would be too devastating for her, so he undertakes an elaborate subterfuge to recreate the socialist world. He has to find disappearing East German groceries such as Spreewald pickles. He shoots fake newscasts and pays children to sing kitsch socialist tunes.
Outside the theater, we talk to Reinhold(ph). A man in his 40s, he has come to "Good bye, Lenin!" for a second time with his 14-year-old daughter. He says the movie has revealed to West Germans that real people lived in the East, each with their own personal narratives. It's a step, he says, toward psychological reunification.
REINHOLD: There was a certain dimension of Western life which was designed in the US, and there was a certain element of East German life that was designed in Moscow. Now things are moving, moving towards each other, moving towards Europe into a common future.
(Soundbite of traffic noise)
POGGIOLI: Today as Germans from West and East try to forge their new identity, many old taboos that solidified in the post-Nazi period are being broken. For the first time, books are being written on German suffering during the war. And two years after 9/11, fierce anti-Americanism is now more openly expressed than before. One of several conspiracy-based best-sellers even claims that the American and Israeli intelligence services brought down the World Trade Center. The book was written by a former government minister. And a recent poll in the magazine Der Spiegel showed that one in five Germans believes the US government was behind the attacks. Josef Joffe, co-editor of the weekly Die Zeit, says this new animosity toward the United States is rooted in simple fear.
Mr. JOSEF JOFFE (Co-editor, Die Zeit): America inflicts itself on the rest of the world. It's forcing people to become more competitive. It's forcing an enormous change on our economy, which makes people very uncomfortable. And so America is this ruthless, relentless engine of modernity.
POGGIOLI: Even those Germans who do not embrace the new anti-American conspiracy theories are increasingly wary of the United States. Michael Hoenisch is a professor of American studies at Berlin's Freie University. He's among those whose passion for all things American is being tested.
Professor MICHAEL HOENISCH (Freie University): It's a crisis in the love affair, one could say. The feeling of security that was spread by the United States is gradually being replaced by a feeling of being made at least uneasy.
POGGIOLI: There is a growing concern in Germany that America is less predictable than it was in the past. In fact, it's America's new angst about its own security that Germans find deeply unsettling. Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News.
BLOCK: We continue our series tomorrow with France. There's more on this story at our Web site, npr.org.
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
LOAD-DATE: November 10, 2003
Talk about a battle over immigration! Legal workers from the 10 EU member states set to join in May will receive full rights and benefits, but the "traditional" EU countries are placing some tough short term conditions.
Here is a good summary of the British dynamics leading to David Blunkett's decision to place restrictions on Eastern European immigrant workers. It includes some interesting stats on the economic benefits of EU enlargement.
This other extended Guardian piece highlights some of the debates (and last minute panic, according to the newspaper) that took place before the home minister said immigrants must, for one, register their jobs with the UK.
What these articles make clear is the xeonophobic views of some, and the balancing act governments have to make with regard to policies on Eastern European immigration. It seems practical to place conditions on guest workers, even if they are EU citizens, all goverments do, but those conditions should be fair and driven not by nationalist or xenophobic sentiments, but by sound policy decisions. But then again, if the EU is one fluid "body" why the restrictions on any citizens?
Benefits clampdown for new EU citizens
Michael White and Alan Travis
Tuesday February 24, 2004
The Guardian
David Blunkett last night bowed to pressure in the controversy over East European immigration when he unveiled tougher-than-expected restrictions on jobseekers coming to Britain after 10 new member states join the European Union on May 1.
In a move that won the applause of the CBI and the TUC - but set Britain apart from most EU states - Mr Blunkett insisted he is "balancing" the labour needs of a dynamic economy with measures to prevent "benefit tourism" and potential strains on public services.
But the home secretary failed to stem criticism with his announcement that he will restrict access to benefits for up to two years and require workers from so-called "accession" countries such as Poland, Hungary and the Baltic states to register their UK jobs.
On left and right, the government was accused of a last-minute panic. In response, ministers insist they will deport fraudsters and that - after 20 illegal Chinese workers died in Morecambe Bay - they are determined to stop migrants sliding into "the exploitation of the sub-economy".
Mr Blunkett's decision, taken in consultation with Tony Blair and cabinet colleagues last week, will mean that jobseekers from eight EU newcomers from the old Soviet bloc will have full rights to enter Britain from May 1 along with tourists and other visitors. But they will be required to join a workers registration scheme once they have found a job and will have to provide evidence that they are being paid at least the minimum wage.
New migrant workers will not be eligible for the full range of UK benefits - housing benefit, income support or council housing - until they have been in continuous employment for at least 12 months. Those who fail to find jobs will not be able to claim benefit for two years.
If officially sponsored predictions that no more than 13,000 a year will arrive from among the 75m new EU citizens prove wrong, officials stand by to follow France, Germany and most EU states in blocking new entrants, as EU "transition" rules permit, for up to seven years.
Emphasising the advantages of an open door policy, Mr Blunkett reminded MPs that the government welcomes legal migration.
"At the same time we have balanced this by taking tougher measures to clamp down on illegal working, abuse of the asylum system and clandestine entry," he said.
Yesterday's formula is less than the fully-fledged work permit regime which Downing Street, fearful of the xenophobic tabloids, had been urging. It is believed that Mr Blunkett's plea to the cabinet that if new workers were not encouraged to come legally they would come illegally anyway, clinched the argument.
The Conservatives backed work permits, as they warned of a flood of cheap labour and benefit tourists heading to wards Dover, some accompanied by children who could not be left "destitute" in the streets.
Mr Blunkett told his Tory shadow, David Davis, that work permits would be costly and bureaucratic, compared with what aides called his own "light touch" approach.
But he has been forced to embrace tougher restraints than initially predicted after last week's discussions at No 10. No paper registration certificate was then expected and benefit restrictions for those who fail to find work were thought to be likely to last 18 months, not two years.
· The Irish prime minister, Bertie Ahern, last night hinted at restrictions on benefit, after Ireland became, in effect, the only EU state with a wholly open door policy to migrants after Mr Blunkett's announcement. "We must protect ourselves from what could be an abuse of the system. That was always our position," he said.
This is another article on resistance to immigration. It covers the likely migration of poor minorities in Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech republic to richer EU countries. And it specifically examines worries in the UK.
The article highlights the lack of overarching policy to handle inter-EU migration - for instance, do immigrants from memebr states get the same access to the welfare system?
But most interesting for me is the connection between immigration and the proposed 25% increase in EU spending. Could it be that countries opposed to the increase are increasing their immigration woes? Maybe they could bridge their domestic political quagmires by promising that a steep tax hike will stave off floods of immigration by giving newer, poorer EU members more incentive to stay home - thereby keeping local office and satisfying EU expectations?
Immigration
Those roamin' Roma
Feb 5th 2004 | BRATISLAVA AND BRUSSELS
From The Economist print edition
The government may change the benefit system to deal with the threat that lots of poor central Europeans will turn up when the European Union expands in May
AN UNSTOPPABLE tide of British journalists is flooding into eastern Slovakia, swamping law-abiding local residents with demands for free interviews. The reason for the hacks' sudden interest in the obscurer bits of central Europe is that Britain has just woken up to one of the consequences of the enlargement of the European Union on May 1st—the free movement of people and labour, including the wretchedly poor Roma minorities of new member-states like Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
AP
Have freedom of movement, will travel
The reaction to the idea that Roma might choose to exercise their right to move to Britain has been—to put it mildly—uncharitable. The Daily Express proclaimed on January 20th—“The Roma gypsies of Eastern Europe are heading to Britain to leech on us. We do not want them here.” Reports like this prompted Denis MacShane, Britain's Europe minister, to speak out in Parliament against “rancid hate campaigns” in the British press, which he likened to the demonisation of Jewish immigrants in the 1930s. But Tony Blair is clearly feeling the pressure. On February 4th, he suggested that Britain might re-examine its “concessions” to would-be workers from the new EU members and will tighten up the welfare system to prevent possible abuse.
But while the language used by some newspapers is repellent, they may have identified a real issue. Incomes are low and unemployment rates high across much of central Europe. But conditions are much worse still for the Roma minorities, who number about 1.5m in the countries joining the EU this year, and another 3m or so in Romania and Bulgaria, which are on schedule to join in 2007. In Hungary the poverty rate is about five times greater among Roma than among non-Roma, the World Bank reported last year.
The poorest of Slovakia's 500,000 or so Roma live in clusters of wooden shacks without mains water or sewerage, on refuse-strewn wasteland, often segregated from “white Slovak” housing. Families pack into freezing huts. Roma were usually the first to lose their jobs when communism collapsed. Whole villages have been living for years on meagre child-benefit payments, charity and foraging. With no jobs to be had, parents have lost sight of the link between education and employment, so many Roma children are growing up unschooled.
Slovakia's “Roma parliament”, a community body, said last month that the favoured destinations for Roma emigrants this year would be Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the Czech Republic. Many may be too poor to make the trip to Britain. But for those who can scrape £60 ($110) together, there is a flight from Bratislava to London.
The British government is under particular pressure because it is throwing the labour market open immediately to workers from the new member-states. The south-east of England is already awash with Polish builders and nannies. More may come in May when the remaining restrictions lapse—and a good thing too. But would those who fail to find work be eligible for welfare benefits?
That is not clear. A senior diplomat in one of the accession countries says that he has appealed to London several times for guidance, but that the answers he has received have been incomprehensible and contradictory. One thing is clear, however: EU countries cannot introduce laws that discriminate against other EU citizens on grounds of nationality, so the benefit rules that apply to Britons must apply to immigrants from the rest of the EU.
Other EU countries clearly fear that their welfare systems might be open to abuse. Last week, Goran Persson, the Swedish prime minister, said that workers from the new member-states would, “once inside our country, have access to the entire social security safety net. I expect enormous problems unless we protect ourselves.” The Swedes—and almost all other EU countries except Britain and Ireland—will require workers from eastern Europe to get work permits for the first few years.
Britain is—so far—resisting taking similar measures. British officials point out that insisting on permits for those who want to work will do nothing to roll back one of the fundamental freedoms of the EU—the freedom to move from one country to another. Even without the right to work, central European immigrants could apply for the bottom level of the British social safety net—means-tested payments such as income support and housing benefit.
To qualify for those, applicants must meet a test of “habitual residence” in Britain. This used to be defined as six months' unbroken residence, but the conditions were softened after complaints from Britons who had spent time abroad. Government officials are talking of reintroducing a well-defined “habitual residence” test.
Would such a measure—combined with the fact that the most generous benefits are restricted to people with a record of employment—solve the problem? Not necessarily. Central Europe's poor may still come, on the grounds that poverty in Britain is unlikely to be worse than destitution is Slovakia; and, as one British minister puts it, “If people are lying around on the streets, we won't leave them to die.” The burden of providing emergency housing and food would fall on local social-services departments. This kind of help is normally regarded as strictly temporary, until a more permanent solution can be found. What that solution might be in the case of Roma immigrants is unclear.
The Bush Administration is urging NATO to expand its prescence in Iraq and Afghanistan to ease some of the military burden off of the U.S. The International Herald Tribune article says the administration's goal is for NATO to make a "headline-grabbing commitment" by the end of June and a few months before the presidential election. The administration has struggled to reduce its military prescence and vulnerability in the two countries, the article said.
I think this story touches a broad range of topics from national identity to defense to perception. While Europe tries to unite and build up its military defense, the U.S. request to expand NATO into Iraq and Afghanistan would cause a significant drain on European forces but at the same time make Bush look good for the elections. Its also interesting that France's president Jacques Chirac is trying to mend his political differences with the Bush administration after clashing over the Iraq war.
Nato role expanding at urging of the U. S.
Elaine Sciolino, International Herald Tribune
NATO role expanding at urging of the U.S.
Elaine Sciolino/NYT NYT
Saturday, February 21, 2004
Bush wants alliance, now in Afghanistan, to add Iraqi mission
BRUSSELS NATO is back.
The much-maligned cold war military alliance lost its mission when its primordial enemy, the Soviet Union, collapsed, and was ridiculed by the Bush administration and rendered impotent by its own division over the American-led war on Iraq.
Only 16 months ago, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lectured NATO defense ministers in Warsaw that if NATO did not transform itself, "it will not have much to offer the world in the 21st century." Now, the Bush administration is struggling to reduce its military presence and vulnerability in Afghanistan in Iraq. And it is turning to NATO to expand its mandate in Afghanistan and play a substantive role in Iraq. "I believe in NATO," President George W. Bush told Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the new NATO secretary general, when the two met in the Oval Office last month, senior NATO officials said. "I believe NATO is transforming itself and adjusting to meet the true threats of the 21st century." When de Hoop Scheffer pledged to work hard to get NATO to do more in Afghanistan, Bush replied, "I'm with you." And when the conversation turned to Iraq, Bush said, "The more of a NATO role the better."
De Hoop Scheffer, the Bush administration's choice to lead NATO, came home and pitched the new line. At a speech in Brussels on Tuesday, he said that the alliance was willing to deploy in Iraq. "Under the right conditions we could do it," de Hoop Scheffer told the German Marshall Fund's Trans-Atlantic Center. If a sovereign Iraqi government with United Nations backing were to ask for NATO's help, it would be difficult to "abrogate our responsibilities." Until NATO took command of the force that policies Kabul and the area around it, NATO was in the midst of an identity crisis, uncertain of its role, its future and what constituted a military threat in the post 9/11 era. Its role in stabilizing Afghanistan represents NATO's first "out of area" mission beyond Europe; Iraq would be the second. The United States wants NATO to deliver on an ambitious plan to extend its peacekeeping presence outside Kabul and create links with the American-led offensive military operation in the south, which is struggling to rout the remnants of Taliban rule. It also wants NATO to take command of the vulnerable 9,500-strong multinational brigade in central Iraq, which is now run by Poland, and possibly the larger British-led operation in the south. The goal is for NATO to make a headline-grabbing commitment to both missions at the NATO summit meeting in Istanbul, just days before the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis at the end of June and five months before the U.S. presidential election. The problem in expanding NATO into Iraq is that it already has failed to persuade countries to do enough in Afghanistan. In the four months since the UN authorized NATO to expand its peacekeeping mission of about 6,000 outside the Afghan capital, Kabul, the alliance has managed to send only a few hundred troops under German command to the relatively safe northern city of Kunduz. It took months of high-level arm-twisting of NATO members last year to get them to pledge to send desperately needed helicopters to Afghanistan.
George Robertson, the former secretary general, was forced to lobby hard for the helicopters at the NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels and at every farewell meeting in December, finally getting commitments of three Black Hawk helicopters from Turkey and three or four from the Netherlands. "Lord Robertson had to use everything he had to bludgeon the foreign and defense ministers into committing helicopters," said Robert Bell, a former White House and senior NATO official who is now a private defense consultant in Brussels. "NATO can't operate that way." General James Jones, NATO's top commander in Europe, told a Senate committee last month that Afghanistan was a "defining moment" for the alliance as it adopted a broader global agenda, but then complained that NATO members were not providing enough troops for the country's reconstruction. "The alliance has agreed, the donor countries have been identified, and yet we find ourselves mired in the administrative details of who's going to pay for it, who's going to transport it, how's it going to be maintained," he said. On Wednesday, Jones presented NATO members with a wish list of what it need to enable NATO to deploy in five provincial cities, senior NATO officials said.
De Hoop Scheffer also has acknowledged his failure so far to persuade NATO nations to send more troops to Afghanistan, saying on Tuesday that force protection was a continuing problem. No member of parliament in any NATO country would approve the new request for troops if there was not an answer to the question, "Who will come to the assistance" of the troops "in extreme circumstances," he said. Asked whether the alliance could contemplate moving into Iraq when there was so much to do in Afghanistan, de Hoop Scheffer launched into a long answer about how the mission was possible, and then said that he could not be expected as secretary general "to bang my head on the table and say, 'This has to work.'" On the positive side, France, whose opposition to the war in Iraq damaged its relationship with Washington, sees NATO as a vehicle for projecting its own military and political power and repairing its American ties. In recent weeks, the United States quietly has welcomed two French one-star generals onto the staff of the NATO Response Force, a creation of Rumsfeld's set up to move rapidly in case of crisis. Jones pushed hard for the administration to grant the French request that the two generals be placed, but the issue was so divisive that Bush himself had to made the final decision, according to NATO officials. France has not been part of NATO's military command structure since President Charles de Gaulle, on a campaign to assert France's military autonomy, withdrew from it in the 1960s. But now, with about 2,000 troops in the first rotation of the 6,000-troop Response Force, France is the force's largest troop contributor. France and three other NATO countries - Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg - have also dropped plans announced at a summit meeting in Brussels last April to build a separate European Union military headquarters in Belgium that the United States vehemently opposed as duplicative of NATO and counter to American interests. Instead, last Friday, Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy envoy, unveiled a much more modest - but face-saving - plan to ambassadors of member countries.
A golden opportunity for Bush to patch up differences with both President Jacques Chirac of France and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder will come with the 60th anniversary of D-Day on June 6. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, has recommended that Bush accept Chirac's offer to dine at the Élysée Palace the night before and visit the Normandy beaches together, but Bush had not yet accepted, senior administration and French officials said. Senior American and French officials have said privately in recent weeks that Bush has no choice but to accept, given the historic importance of the event. They also noted that a photo of Bush standing side by side in Normandy with Chirac and Schröder could help deflect charges by Democrats that he has squandered good relations with two of America's most important allies.
There's an excellent cover article in the Feb7-13 Economist. It goes into a nice explanation (with history) on how the weaker dollar actually benefits the U.S. We started to touch on this in the first few classes. It says that many economists expect the dollar to drop even more, and illuminates how a few--Japan & China--are trying to intervene.
If anyone wants to borrow this from me, please let me know. (I'll type out a few paragraphs)
"Competitive Sport in Boca Raton"
Europeans think the dollar is in danger of becoming too weak; Americans disagree, Who is right?"
The Economist
February 7-13
"Competitive Sport in Boca Raton"
Europeans think the dollar is in danger of becoming too weak; Americans disagree, Who is right?"
The Economist
February 7-13
Second paragraph
"The euro has risen by 50% against the dollar since its trough in July 2001. European officials are frustrated by America's lack of concern for the dollar's slide and the disproportionate burden this is imposing on the euro. In the run-up to the Boca Raton meeting, some European policy makers were alling for a joint statement to stabilise the dollar. But this seems likely to have fallen on deaf ears. As John Connally, a former treasury secretary, told the rest of the world in 1971: "The dollar is our currency, but it is your problem."
It basically talks about the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) project which is planning to build a nuclear fusion actor. The six members of the ITER are Japan, US, China, Russia, the European Union and South Korea. The two candidate sites for the fusion reactor are Cadarache, France and Rokkasho, Japan.
Even though the members have reached some compromise, as reported by The Japan Times, due to the adamant attitude of France and Japan who both want the reactor to be built in their countries, the talk on the site-choosing this Saturday in Vienna will not be breezy easy.
The topic is kind of related to my area of interest. Clear/renewable energy has been a huge topic in Europe, compared to the lukewarm reaction it receives in the US (think about Kyoto Protocol and so on). I'll keep an eye on the progress of the talk among the members of ITER, and see if there's possible new stories to explore.
This story is by Tim Radford, published on The Guardian.
Europe's scientists hope to mimic the power of the sun and create limitless energy on Earth with the help of a £6bn experiment in the south of France.
Ministers in Brussels gave the go-ahead yesterday for Iter, the world's biggest and most ambitious fusion reactor, at Cadarache near Aix-en-Provence. It will be 10 years in the making and, in its 20-year operating life, researchers will experiment with a kind of slow hydrogen bomb in the hope of extracting vast amounts of clean energy from tiny amounts of heavy water.
Iter will replace Jet, the current joint European fusion research project, based at Culham, Oxfordshire.
Sir Chris Llewellyn-Smith, head of the UK fusion programme, said yesterday: "The Iter project will allow a major step towards an inexhaustible source of environmentally friendly power."
Petroleum and coal deliver chemical energy liberated by the breaking of chemical bonds in the form of fire. Nuclear fission of enriched uranium exploits the energy released by the breakdown of a unstable heavy atom to a lighter one. But the "ash" from a fission reaction is radioactive and it stays too hot to handle for thousands of years.
The great prize has always been fusion power: the fusion of two hydrogen atoms to make one of helium, releasing huge quantities of heat. Every second, the sun converts 600m tonnes of hydrogen into helium and illuminates and warms this planet from 90m miles away.
To do the same on Earth, engineers and physicists have to collect deuterium and tritium - isotopes of hydrogen - and heat them to more than 100m C, many times hotter than the heart of the sun. At these temperatures the heavy hydrogen would become a plasma, a ball of subatomic particles which would fuse to become helium and a shower of neutrons and a supply of heat. One kilogram of heavy hydrogen would supply the heat now generated by 10m kg of fossil fuel. There would be no greenhouse gases, no soot, and no long-lived radioactive waste. The oceans contain all the heavy hydrogen such reactors would need.
Fusion power would, in theory, be safe, because the challenge is not to stop a fusion reaction, but to keep it going. But that is the catch. If plasma at 100m C so much as touched anything, it would go out like a light. The trick is to keep tiny pellets of fuel suspended in a kind of magnetic "bottle" in a sealed chamber. Then engineers would have to pump blasts of laser fire at the pellets, compressing them to 20 times the density of lead, at which point they would start to behave like tiny stars, releasing a thermonuclear blast of neutrons to heat up a containment wall many metres away.
Fusion's most ardent enthusiasts believe that a viable power plant is 30 years away. Iter is just another stage in the research.
Although the Cadarache site has Brussels' backing, the decision has yet to be confirmed by the other partners in the project. These include Canada, the US, Russia, Japan, South Korea and China. There is one other candidate site - at Rokkashomura in Japan - and the final decision could be made in Washington next month.
This is somewhat a continuation of the "Big Three: What Europe needs?" entry.
Those not invited to the "Big Three" party should be upset. El Paîs’ editorial patiently explains how important it is to keep the ENTIRE EU involved. But, again, Balibar would say, well, do something about it Spain, Holland and Italy. Action leads to power.
Principally Spain, Holland and Italy are potentially falling behind as the Big Three set the agenda. It also appears that talk of equal states in Europe is just that – talk.
Divergence and convergence among member nations on various issues can create an equilibrium, albeit fragile, in European affairs. France and Germany split on something like the role of NATO and European security, but agree that Britain is good as an additional leader. But, what El Pais argues is that the interests of the entire EU is best served by cooperation from all member states.
I think it’s interesting that the tone of the El Pais editorial is, for the most part, relatively calm. The Italians sure weren't.
I’m also reminded of the United States and relations between states. Arizona, California, Colorado may battle over water rights, for instance, but when it comes to the Western United states and, say transportation dollars, states will line up. This is the state of affairs with politics in the EU. There is a model that already exists, despite its flaws.
An aside:
In regard to security policy and the EU, I wonder again about examining a US model. Countries can maintain its own military, something akin to individual states and their respective "National Guard" outfits, while still developing and maintaining a larger "united" military. Of course, there is the concern of resources.
I need to read more on Britain’s take on a European Union army. I can still see Blair wanted to keep a more autonomous approach to Her Majesty’s security. Has anyone seen anything on this?
Basically, what this editorial is saying that the Big Three discussion of employment, competitiveness and innovation was used as a red herring perhaps to distract from a potential power grab before the EU expands to 25.
However, the best cooperation is among all member-states, and not just the three giants.
Cita en Berlín
EL PAIS | Opinión - 19-02-2004
Sobre la reunión en Berlín de los tres grandes han sobrevolado las quejas de unos socios no invitados -Holanda, Italia y España básicamente- que creen que Alemania, Francia y Gran Bretaña pretenden dominar la futura Unión Europea de 25 miembros que nacerá en semanas. Quizá para disipar en parte este clima envenenado, la agenda formal del encuentro, el tercero de este tipo desde septiembre pasado, ha estado centrada en temas como el empleo, la competitividad industrial o la innovación en la UE. Pese a este temario deliberadamente degradado por los interlocutores para evitar la impresión de que se erigen en puente de mando continental, la comitiva ministerial que les ha acompañado revela la importancia que Berlín, París y Londres han dado al encuentro.
La grisura de la actual realidad europea, con la futura Constitución en el limbo y el desafío de organizar un club que en pocos meses tendrá casi el doble de afiliados, hace más tentadora para sus miembros más poderosos la idea de dar un paso al frente. En este sentido hay que saludar la propuesta alumbrada en Berlín para revitalizar la agenda de Lisboa enunciada en el año 2000 -un intento de crear empleo, estimular el crecimiento y reducir el foso entre Europa y EE UU- y poner a su cargo a un nuevo vicepresidente de la Comisión Europea.
Pero Francia, Alemania y Gran Bretaña deberían resistir cualquier eventual tentación de convertirse en directorio de sus socios. Mejor que peor, la UE se las ha arreglado hasta ahora para mantener un cierto equilibrio entre los intereses de sus miembros mediante el mecanismo mixto del Consejo intergubernamental y la Comisión Europea. Los países más grandes tienen más votos en el Consejo, y la Comisión vela por los intereses del conjunto. Trasladar este engranaje a una asociación de 25 va a poner a prueba el sistema. Pero una Unión donde los más poderosos controlaran la adopción de decisiones mientras una superpoblada Comisión permaneciera entre bambalinas destruiría contrapesos que han mostrado su eficacia durante años.
La nueva UE ampliada necesitará sin duda de un liderazgo estratégico, sobre todo en materia de reforma económica y defensa, que evite su transformación en un magma sin claros objetivos comunes. Pero es más que discutible que esa dirección deba llegar de la alianza bilateral entre Berlín y París, con la ineludible participación británica -todavía fuera de la eurozona- en razón, entre otras, de sus capacidades militares. El mejor servicio a los intereses de tantos y tan dispares Estados y la flexibilidad del conjunto estarán probablemente mejor garantizados por la cooperación entre los grandes y los pequeños que por el designio de los gigantes.
El emergente tripartito, en definitiva, debería concentrarse en los ámbitos donde su esfuerzo puntero sea más útil para un conjunto cuyo dibujo está a punto de ser alterado sustancialmente. Pero las decisiones sobre la Unión Europea, con todo el esfuerzo y la cintura política que requieran, deben dejarse al total de sus miembros. La UE como realidad global será de todos o no será.
My initial thought on both the meeting of the Big Three and the reaction of the excluded nations is how critical it is that the EU get its constitution created and ratified as soon as it can.
With the persistent tectonics of European politics, it’s crucial that there is other ligature to bind the EU together and to keep other countries from forming isolated alliances. Despite efforts by smaller countries to keep the EU equitable, especially the effort to keep voting weights equal for EU members, a hierarchy already exists among the 15 nation-states. Adding 10 more is going to amplify this and instead of consensus building I see more countries polarizing on various issues without a constitution.
I am reminded of pre-World War I Europe and the dealing for alliances. Of course, with the EU, and its common currency, this extreme example of alliance grabbing seems unlikely.
Now, I may not have a solid grasp of the recent historical context here, but to add Britain to the mix certainly causes future disruption, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, particularly if you consider Balibar and his "anti-strategic" policy of action over power.
It seems that the rest of Europe at least acquiesced to the idea of France and Germany assuming a joint leadership role in the EU. But, as Vinocur (and others) points out, they aren’t able to pull the EU on its own. While it is a symbolic move to bring Britain into this dialogue, I think it is also symbolic in efforts to mend relations with the U.S., a point that an El Paîs editorial makes.
Along with taking on this shared leadership role, Britain will certainly take on a mediator role between the core European Union countries (and those who opposed the invasion of Iraq) and the United States.
I also see Britain getting squeezed between France and Germany. France, as Vinocur mentions, wants to be a military power on par with Britain. However, Germany has said it's ready to have NATO assume a security role for Europe.
But, perhaps, the Big Three also recognizes something critical Balibar points out in his work -- The sum of European Union nations is less powerful than some of the constitutive states. Also, (paraphrasing Timothy Garton Ash) how important it is for both sides of the Atlantic to have the U.S. involved, and, perhaps with the help of Britain, make the U.S. a partner, and not a rival.
News Analysis: A new power equation
John Vinocur/IHT
It takes three nations to lead Europe
PARIS Regardless of how much or how little new European solidarity eventually comes out of Wednesday's Big Three summit meeting in Berlin, it produced one element of exceptional clarity: With Britain now consecrated as at least a theoretical partner, the French-German axis has lost its status as the reference point for leadership in the European Union.
On one hand, the meeting demonstrated there are now wider, richer, more consensual possibilities for pushing the EU forward than the joint impetus emanating from Paris and Berlin for the past 40 years. Three strong players, the participants seemed to say, were better than two.
On the other hand, the willingness of Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, and Gerhard Schröder to promise new cooperation for the good of all Europe commanded examination of the serious differences among the three - on trans-Atlantic relations, the euro, the level of EU integration, tax and veto powers - as well as possible new elements of divergence in policy between France and Germany.
At a news conference, the three leaders seemed intent on giving an unexceptional and nonepochal feel to their get-together. Blair, low-keying the event, talked about "finding ways of making Europe work more efficiently." When the first question at the news conference went to the idea of whether they were trying to run Europe, Schröder responded, "We don't want to dominate anyone."
All the same, the three men, side by side with Blair's eager-looking addition, signaled an attempt at a new way of doing Europe's business. And the meeting hardened into obviousness the notion that whatever the real limits of agreement among the three, the French-German relationship no longer represented the optimal leadership approach to lead an EU running to the borders of Russia, or, in 10 years, very possibly to the Turkish frontier with Iraq.
Who says so? British officials and German think-tankers. And, startlingly to some, the French.
Without devaluing the real and special ties between France and Germany or granting a psychic seal of full Europeanness to Britain, stuck outside the euro's common currency zone and self-defined as a Euro-Atlantic nation, a French diplomat recently acknowledged that France and Germany alone did not have the means in 2004 to pull along an EU of 25 members.
That is the professionally scrubbed version of where Europe has come, scraped clean of scales and asperities. In fact, by just taking place, the summit meeting gave legitimacy to a novel, coarser notion of reality.
Hours before the meeting began in Berlin, drive-time listeners to Europe 1 radio, a national mass-market broadcaster, were told matter-of-factly that the summit meeting's backdrop was a French-German partnership that had "neither the energy nor the credibility" to lift Europe from its miseries and was now turning toward Blair, "the indispensable hyphen between 'old' and 'new' Europe."
Hardly suspect of Euroskeptic gloating, the leftist newspaper Liberation was drawing roughly the same conclusions. "The French-German axis no longer has the weight to hope to conserve its European role," it said in an editorial.
Across the Rhine in Frankfurt, the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung was on much the same page. The newspaper wrote, "It will no longer be accepted that Paris and Berlin alone share the imprimatur on plans for shaping Europe."
These new realities, taken for the first time as givens in mainstream political discourse in France and Germany, accept that the two countries' attempt at joint European political and economic leadership became a train wreck in 2003.
They failed to rally their neighbors behind them in opposition to the United States' and Britain's war on Saddam Hussein. As a result of half-hearted reforms and unwillingness to make cuts in state spending, they deliberately broke the economic performance rules of the Stability and Growth Pact they themselves had created. And they were unable to muster the leverage within the widening EU to avert the collapse in December of its talks on a constitution.
Mockingly, some German commentators, breaking into Italian, began last year to refer to Paris/Berlin-Chirac/$ Schröder as the "Duo Infernale."
In this light, the summit meeting had the appearance of an attempt to redistribute leadership from a vacuum of vanished direction. Yet, even with the addition of Blair, the three participants (already distressed in their home constituencies) had no instant, amplified credibility in relation to their neighbors in Europe.
Against the determination expressed in Berlin by the three leaders to raise a beacon of European economic reform, a group of six EU members pointedly insisted on Monday, in an open letter to the EU's current president, that the Stability and Growth Pact must be applied, and that specific European economic directives carried out. This was an unmistakable jab at France and Germany as the pact's miscreants, and as the countries judged by the EU to have the lowest level of follow-through in the hard business of enacting on the national level the community's Lisbon pledge to make itself an economically competitive world-beater.
Of the six countries - Spain, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Poland and Estonia - none have any tolerance for the idea that a triumvirate would run Europe, whatever the Big Three's repeated reassurances about contrary intentions.
In this view, the addition of Britain as an adjunct to the old French-German duo represented no quick reassurance. Countries like Spain feared Blair could be more an alibi for Schröder's and Chirac's difficulties in reforming their economies than a guarantor of change and new openness in Germany and France. Pushing further, Italy charged that the three were grouping together for individual national advantage and that their undertaking had visibly little to do with the EU's welfare as a whole.
A subtext of potential new rivalries, perhaps magnified in a three-cornered relationship, came in here.
Germany is giving the appearance of trying hard to make clear to all its partners what former Defense Minister Volker Rühe this week called "its driving role for Europe" in the Middle East. This involves Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's open attempt to coordinate Europe's diplomacy in the region with the United States and NATO and his definition of the world's central problem, dear to the heart of the Bush administration, as "the new totalitarianism" of "destructive jihadist terrorism."
If Germany maintains it will not send troops to Iraq, it appears, with its good relations in Israel and among the Palestinians, to be cutting ahead of France in trying to create a European approach on the region that is complementary rather a rival to the approach of the United States. German press reports say the French, unlikely to take as their own Fischer's dire assessment of Islamic fundamentalism as the global menace, consider the initiative an elbow in the ear and powerfully resent that Fischer did not consult with them beforehand.
Besides the Germans' obvious direct interest in improved relations with the Americans - Schröder travels to the United States next week to meet President George W. Bush - they also hope for a Washington-London-Warsaw carom effect on the EU's new members from Eastern Europe. Schröder's difficulties with the Bush administration have been described as a serious impediment to reinforcing German influence in a "new" Europe.
This is not the stuff of Chirac's continuously repeated characterization of a "perfect identity of views" between the Germans and the French, and it comes against a backdrop of France's recent eagerness to emphasize its role as the continent's most competent military player and its proximity and parity with Britain as a nuclear power and member of the UN Security Council. In the sense that both France and Germany, without jumping back chest-deep into the Atlanticist camp, are likely to look separately to Britain for reinforcement and legitimization on security and foreign policy matters, a new situation is being created with its own uncertain pressure points and arbitrages.
But on a day of professions of unity and common expectation, these and all the tens of mortally divisive issues within the EU may be considered as details. However far from taking operational form, by its great possibilities alone, a Big Three equation at the very least has given the French-German European leadership axis the look of yesterday's math.
International Herald Tribune
Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune
This article from the Daily Star newspaper highlights a two-day conference taking place in Lebanon between Europeans and Muslims from across the Arab countries to Indonesia. It's not clear from the article what's on the conference agenda, but organizers are emphasizing that the point is to create a dialogue between "Islam" and "Europe."
Interestingly, a main sponsor is a think tank associated with Hizbullah, a Shia group that challenged the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon. Hizbullah, incidentally, is on Washington's list of terrorist organizations. No dialogue there.
It's surprising that such a conference is taking place. I will look further into it to make an analysis of the potential impacts such "dialogue" could have on European policies with respect to the Middle East and indigenous Muslim communities in EU nations.
I wasn't able to find European stories on this (at least in the British press).
Daily Star, Lebanon "Conference aims to take heads out of the sand"
Conference aims take heads out of the sand
Organizers hope to promote dialogue between Islamic world and Europe
‘The idea came from the think tank of Hizbullah in 2002, and they proposed this idea and we welcomed it’
Christian Henderson
Daily Star staff
A conference aimed at promoting dialogue between the Islamic world and Europe held its opening session Tuesday in which the speakers called for
Manfred Kropp of the Orient Institute in Beirut set the tone when he called on the large crowd of religious figures and academics from all sects and nationalities to remain open to what others had to say.
“Dialogue entails a method to listen to the words of others, and to expect in return to be listened to by the other, and it implies that certain rules are strictly followed: from the renunciation of any kind of violence down to the rules of respect and politeness,” Kropp said.
The Islamic World and Europe: From Dialogue Toward Understanding was organized by four different groups, a fact that is evident in the wide variety of speakers who include MPs from Lebanon and Indonesia as well as academics whose expertise cover a wide range of disciplines and schools of thought. The conference is being held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
Leslie Tramontini a research fellow at the Orient Institute, and one of the organizers of the event said that combining the efforts of four organizations had not been easy.
“Organizing the event was more difficult with four groups than it was with one.”
Tramontini said that the Orient Institute was first approached by Hizbullah with a proposal to set such a conference up.
“The idea came from the think tank of Hizbullah in 2002 and they proposed this idea and we welcomed it. How could we not welcome such a thing?”
The event has been the result of some controversy in Germany after a commentator in a newspaper accused the conference of being anti-Semitic and questioned why German government funds should be used to help fund such a conference.
Tramontini dismissed the criticism. “We have had so much positive response in Germany,” she said. “I think this is a polemic,” she said in reference to the criticisms.
“We are of the point of view that putting your head in the sand is of no use. You have to do dialogue.”
The conference covers subjects ranging from democracy, resistance against occupation, political Islam and US foreign policy although the absence of any US officials or academics is conspicuous.
Tramontini said that the magnitude of the subject made it difficult to include everything.
“The Islamic world is a big world and Europe is a big world. There is no way we could include everything,” she said, pointing to the size of the two-day agenda.
“Look at the program, you would be destroyed by those two days, it’s 10 hours,” she said.
Samir Farah, the representative of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, an NGO that promotes democracy and one of the organizers of the event, said that he hoped a permanent working group could be established as a result of the conference.
“We are hoping that they will come to a certain understanding, and that they will form a sort of permanent committee to sustain such dialogue among the Islamists and Europeans.”
Mohsen Salah, a member of The Consultative Center for Studies and Documentation think tank, which is directed by Hizbullah, and is the only Lebanese group to play a role in the event, said that he hoped a new attitude could be found on behalf of both sides.
“We try to have a new approach. We try to shed light on some issues," said
Jamal al-Banna, a writer and younger brother of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Hassan al-Banna, lauded the spirit behind the event.
“I think that this conference is very important, and it must be a continuous movement, and it is very important to take a bridge between Islam and Christianity and the East and the West,” said Banna, who is presenting a paper on democracy. “Confrontation (between East and West) didn’t get anyone anywhere. It’s a harmful phenomena.”
There are numerous editorials and columns in the European press about the unofficial meeting between Shroder, Chirac and Blair. This Guardian link provides a sidebar full of stories and commentary, so do check it out.
It seems that Europeans are saying on the one hand, this is an ill-fated menage a trois or not so alarming, while others are bristling nonetheless and calling the meeting a threat to EU unity. As one Financial Times columnist noted though, the so called directoires will not agree enough ... so those who support them should worry that they won't be able to lay down the law too much.
I think I agree. There are fundamental differences between these partners. Where two agree on Iraq, one will disagree, and where another pair agree on EU immigration policies, a third dissents. Interestingly, an Independent editorial notes that, at the end of the day, their national interests will supercede a common EU position.
The Guardian, Press Roundup of "Big Three" Summit
'Those not invited will begin to howl'
The 'big three' are determined to lead the union
Thursday February 19, 2004
The Guardian
Julian Lindley-French
Wall Street Journal Europe, February 18
"Britain, France and Germany [met yesterday] in the latest attempt to kick-start a new power hub for Europe, a 'trirectoire'. The fact that the meeting is taking place at all represents a failure of Franco-German attempts to lead Europe and a tacit recognition that such 'leadership' is unrealistic these days without the British ... Even the suggestion of a British-French-German power hub hints to the US of an alternative to the special relationship ... [But] it will be a long time before the British forsake the reflected glory of the special relationship. First, because other Europeans are at best ambivalent about Britain in Europe. Second, because the loss of the special relationship would end once and for all Britain's view of itself in the world."
Grard Dupuy
Libration, France, February 18
"The meeting in Berlin reflects the stand the three leaders have taken on Europe - starting with their common refusal to see their influence diluted by the arrival of new members. The summit also corresponds to [the French president] Jacques Chirac's idea of having pioneering coalitions within Europe, linked by a common affinity (for example, the military).
"The three men who had a rendezvous in Berlin may not see themselves as the natural leaders of Europe, as some accuse them of doing. But the circumstances of their meeting back up that interpretation."
Angelo M Petroni
Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy, February 17
"The true, dual novelty here is, on the one hand, the inclusion of Britain in the renewed alliance, and on the other, the fact that the Franco-German claim to superiority is being staked at a time when the EU is getting set to face a constitutional moment unprecedented in its entire history ...
"The fact that France and Germany have decided to proceed down this path ... shows just how fragile their Europeanism really is, and how their national interests prevail over the ideology of a united Europe ... The price for satisfying these national interests is going to be very high for Europe."
Der Tagesspiegel
Editorial, Germany, February 18
"Berlin cannot escape the eternal problem of European politics. If you wait for consensus among the 15 member states, you will be waiting forever ... But if Germany begins an initiative with fewer EU partners, those who are not invited will begin to howl ... The widening of the Franco-German partnership to include Britain should be valuable not just to the struggle over European economic reforms, but it should also dispel mistrust over the 'Schrder-Chirac duo'."
Independent
Editorial, February 18
"For all the honeyed words in Berlin, this is a marriage of convenience. France and Germany need Britain if they want to achieve anything on foreign policy, and Britain needs both, especially after Iraq. For now, they are at one in demanding such things as a cap on EU spending. But it will surely not be long before national interest rears its head once again."
El Pas
Editorial, Spain, February 18
"The Spanish prime minister, Jos Mara Aznar, has gone back to behaving like a battering ram striking at the heart of Europe ... The motive [this time] is the stability and growth pact ... and its purpose is to underline his disagreement with the meeting in Berlin signalling to France and Germany, that their failure to stick to the deficit agreement did not incur sanctions, unlike Portugal ...
"It is not clear whether Mr Aznar is pursuing these kind of initiatives to spread division within the EU and to pay them back for not taking him into account. But it does not help with the construction of Europe nor does it increase Spain's influence in it."
Even though this article does not relate to the EU, it is important in that it identifies changes that are occurring within the American educational system and how these changes attempt to create a balance between the acceptance of Arab culture and anti-Arab sentiment that continues to exists post 9/11.
The decision of the Atlanta school board to create the Amana Academy, an elementary school which requires students to learn Arabic, may create a path to understand Arabic customs and culture. Schools such as this could ultimately lead to achieving solutions to the problems currently faced in France in regards to the potential requirement of banning young girls and women from wearing Islamic headscarves.
INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY: Rise of Arabic in US speaks volumes for war on terror
By Betty Liu
Financial Times; Feb 17, 2004
Last week, school officialsin an Atlanta suburb approved the creation of a new elementary school that,among other things, will require pupils to learn Arabic.
While the news barely registered on the national radar, its passage has excited foreign language educators as further proof that Arabic, a language few Americans have any knowledge of, is worthy of attention. Amana Academy, which opens in August, will be the first publicly funded elementary school in the US requiring students to learn Arabic.
For decades, foreign language study has reflected US immigration trends and the nation's view of the world at large - German and Italian were first introduced to schools after a rush of European immigrants arrived at the turn of the twentieth century; Russian gained popularity shortly after Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, orbited the earth in 1957; and Japanese learning leaped during the country's economic rise in the 1980s. For Arabic, it has been the events of September 11 2001, the "war on terror" and war in Iraq that account for rising interest in the language.
According to the Modern Language Association, the number of university students enrolled in Arabic courses doubled from 1998 to 2002, to 10,584 students.
"We always have these waves of foreign language study in the American educational arena," says Muhammad Eissa, a former Arabic professor and educational consultant to secondary and elementary schools. "There was once such a demand for Japanese in college that they had to expand classrooms and hire lots of teachers in a short period of time - everyone wanted a piece of the pie. You have these surges and then they fade out again."
According to the founders of Amana Academy, white Christians, African- Americans and Asians in the community have all joined Arab-Americans in championing the study of Arabic. "Less than a quarter of the student population will be Arabs," predicts Ehab Jaleel, a Jordanian-American parent who helped establish the school. "We've been able to rally parents to go to board meetings and say 'This is something I want my kids to learn'. If my kids can learn Spanish, French and Japanese, why not Arabic?" Only a couple of people have asked if there is really a need for this, he adds.
The US government - the largest employer of foreign language speakers - still suffers from a shortage of Arabic speakers in its operations against terrorism and in Iraq. The Central Intelligence Agency has been on a recruitment drive for Arabic speakers since last year; the State Department employs fewer than 60 fluent Arabic speakers, and is likely to need hundreds more in the next few years. The dearth brings about a comedy of tragedies: a US army using an assemblage of Arab "convenience store owners and cab drivers" for intelligence operations, according to one of the army's own reports; few Americans on Arab television able to argue the US viewpoint effectively; American troops on patrol in Iraq communicating with hand gestures and rudimentary Arabic.
It was only in 2002 that the Department of Education established the National Middle East Language Resource Center, at Brigham Young University in Utah, to help foster Arabic speakers. "I think that our government has never made it very clear to the general public that it's important to learn foreign languages," says Dora Johnson, director of the National Capital Language Resource Center.
Until now, most students of Arabic in the US have been Arab-Americans, so-called "heritage students" who simply want to understand their culture better. With the recent emphasis on Arabic, the reasons become more varied - and the potential for misunderstanding is increased. Antonia Folarin Schleicher, a foreign language teacher at the University of Wisconsin and president of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages, recalls: "I remember one of our students learning Arabic telling us he wanted to work for the CIA all the time." Talking to another student she mentioned that he had "a golden opportunity" to work for the government. "He said, 'I don't want to learn Arabic so that I can use my language to kill people'."
Even as the US government seeks more Arabic speakers, this recruitment is tempered by caution. Last year at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where hun suspected terrorists are in US custody, three translators were arrested on suspicion of spying. Which is why, perhaps, the instigators of the Amana Academy have distanced their school from political origins.
September 11 "had nothing to do with our pursuit", Mr Jaleel stresses. And as religious education is forbidden in public schools, there will be no teaching of Islam. But Mr Jaleel says Arab culture and history will be a part of the Amana curriculumEven though this article does not relate to the EU, it is important in that it identifies changes that are occurring within the American educational system and how these changes attempt to create a balance between the acceptance of Arab culture and anti-Arab sentiment that continues to exists post 9/11.
Take a look at the new decision (well...in fact, no detail yet) of the UK. It looks like within the government there's also a lot of debate on whether or not to accept migrant workers from the new EU member states.
This is from The Guardian.
David Blunkett is to announce new measures on limiting migration from the new EU states after a day-long mini-summit in Downing Street on the issue.
The home secretary will brief MPs on the details in the Commons on Monday, with No 10 confirming nothing tonight other than that a "package of measures" had been agreed to prevent so-called benefit tourism.
The topic had become a hot political potato in the past fortnight, after the Conservatives challenged the prime minister on the fact that only the UK and Ireland had no restriction on the movement of workers after the 10, mostly poor former communist east European nations joined the EU in May.
Today's talks in Downing Street - conducted without any publicity from No 10 and during the parliamentary recess as MPs are away from Westminster - are a sign of the seriousness with which Mr Blair took the emerging issue.
They were attended by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, the home secretary and the work and pensions secretary, Andrew Smith.
The Tories had accused the government's policy of being in confusion just weeks before the EU expands with the entry of 10 new countries.
In prime ministers' questions over the past fortnight, Mr Blair indicated that the UK was looking at tighter controls to limit migration from the eastern European countries.
Mr Blunkett dismissed suggestions that would mean taking measures aimed at discouraging people from the new member states from coming to Britain to work, saying the government was in favour of "managed migration".
Tonight a No 10 spokesman said it would be inappropriate to announce the deal they had reached while MPs are way during the parliamentary recess.
"A package of measures was agreed. With regard to the timing of the announcement it was agreed that this should be made in the first instance to parliament.
"The details will therefore be announced on Monday by the home secretary."
The shadow home secretary, David Davis, earlier attacked what he called Mr Blair's lack of foresight.
"The enlargement of the EU has been planned for years, yet the government has decided to hold a crisis summit only nine weeks before the accession date," he said.
"They are rightly worried about benefit tourism, but that is only half the problem.
"With average wage levels in eastern Europe less than half the minimum wage, many of the 75 million citizens will wish to come to Britain irrespective of benefits.
"These crisis talks should also consider the impact on public services and whether local authorities will end up footing the bill."
Mr Davis said the government's immigration policy had been incompetent from the start and was a crisis "purely of their own making".
"Emergency meetings in Downing Street only nine weeks before the accession date shows what mess they are in," he added.
Mark Oaten, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "Blair's victory over David Blunkett surely signals the final victory for populism over principle.
"How can the prime minister call himself a true European when with these measures he has effectively created a two-tier Europe."
Earlier, John Denham, the Labour chairman of the commons home affairs select committee, said he hoped the government would take "measured steps" to prevent abuse of the benefits system.
"The danger we have got is that you don't need huge numbers of people being seen to exploit the system to create a great deal of trouble," he told BBC Radio 4's World At One programme.
He said ministers were being forced to act as a result of the restrictions imposed in other EU member states.
"If everybody in Europe had open borders from the beginning and everybody was running their work and benefits system in the same way, then any problem would be so spread around Europe it would be so small that no one would worry," he said.
"The more that other countries have decided to tighten up in one way or another, the more it was inevitable that Britain would have to do so."
An important summit Blair, Chirac, Schröder, will take place tomorrow in Berlin. Several European countries, Italy, Spain and Poland among them, are upset by the emergence of this new "directory."
After explaining the progresses made in the building of a common defense, this article taken from Le Monde sees the addition of the UK to the Franco-Germen duo as a way to appease some tensions. Their influence could be huge in many fields: commision, constitution, enlargement, etc.
It would be useful to look at how the summit is covered in different capitals and report it on the blog. Many of the issues at stake in Europe today should come up during the discussion, and in the coverage they get.
Le Monde - Un "directoire" européen à trois va s'ébaucher à Berlin
Un "directoire" européen à trois va s'ébaucher à Berlin
LE MONDE | 17.02.04 | 13h22 • MIS A JOUR LE 17.02.04 | 16h20
A quelques semaines de l'élargissement de l'Union européenne, trois de ses principaux dirigeants se réunissent à Berlin, mercredi 18 février, suscitant la rancœur de certains de leurs partenaires, inquiets de voir se mettre en place une gestion par Paris, Berlin et Londres. Officiellement rejetée par les intéressés, l'expression "directoire" ne les fait cependant pas hurler d'indignation. Refusant de limiter l'Europe à un espace de paix intérieure, les dirigeants français, allemand et britannique devraient envisager les moyens de relancer les réformes, la croissance et la politique industrielle. Ils pourraient aussi décider de réformer la Commission de Bruxelles.
A peine un an après la fameuse lettre des Huit sur l'Irak, initiée par la Grande-Bretagne et l'Espagne, qui scellait la césure entre une Europe pro-atlantiste et une Europe franco-allemande récusant la politique américaine, Tony Blair se retrouve avec le président Jacques Chirac et le chancelier Schröder, mercredi 18 février à Berlin, pour une rencontre tripartite. A deux mois de l'élargissement de l'Union, alors que la question du fonctionnement de l'Europe à 25 est loin d'être résolue, les autres Européens s'interrogent sur l'objet de cette réunion à trois, présentée comme une concertation en vue du sommet européen qui sera consacré fin mars à l'évolution économique de l'Union.
Malgré les apaisements prodigués par Tony Blair, jeudi, lors de la rencontre préparatoire qu'il a eue avec le chancelier allemand à Berlin, plusieurs capitales, notamment au sud de l'Europe, expriment quelque agacement à voir refleurir une sorte de "directoire", non plus franco-allemand, mais à trois. "Nous ne pouvons accepter les initiatives qui mettent les uns ou les autres le dos au mur", a averti le ministre italien des affaires étrangères, Franco Frattini. "Il n'est pas bon que quelques voix fassent taire toutes les autres, dont celle de l'Espagne", a estimé de son côté la ministre espagnole Ana Palacio, qui avait dénoncé avec virulence en 2003, lors de la célébration du 40e anniversaire du traité franco-allemand, la volonté d'hégémonie de Paris et de Berlin.
L'idée d'un leadership franco-germano-britannique en Europe n'est pas nouvelle. Elle avait pris corps après l'arrivée de Tony Blair aux commandes en Grande-Bretagne, le leader travailliste revendiquant ouvertement, après les années Thatcher, un retour de son pays sur la scène européenne pour y exercer son influence. M. Blair n'a pas été en mesure de tirer suffisamment son pays derrière lui pour le convaincre de rejoindre la zone euro. Il a cependant avancé sur d'autres sujets européens, notamment en relançant avec Paris, dès décembre 1998, l'idée d'une véritable défense européenne.
C'est à nouveau à propos de la défense que les "trois grands" Européens ont manifesté ces derniers mois leur volonté de tourner la page de la crise irakienne. Le 20 septembre 2003, le sommet surprise qui les a réunis, à Berlin déjà, avait esquissé un compromis sur la création d'un état-major européen autonome au sein de l'OTAN.
Ce compromis, finalement acepté par Washington, a été la base de l'accord intervenu au sommet de Bruxelles en décembre sur la future politique de défense de l'Union à 25. Il permet d'envisager de nouveaux développements à la fois en matière de projection de forces, mais aussi de coopération dans le domaine de l'armement. L'Allemagne vient de se joindre à Paris et Londres pour mettre sur pied des corps d'intervention de 1 500 hommes prêts à être déployés pour tenter d'empêcher des crises de dégénérer, comme cela a été fait en 2003 dans la province de l'Ituri en République démocratique du Congo.
UN SOUFFLE D'AIR
Cette entente à trois a aussi débouché sur la création d'une agence d'armement, qui doit permettre à l'Europe de mettre en commun son potentiel industriel. Symbole de cette avancée : la décision de la France et de la Grande-Bretagne de coopérer pour la construction de leurs nouveaux porte-avions. Des discussions sont également en cours dans le domaine des sous-marins, où le potentiel allemand est important.
Paris et Berlin avaient dû constater pendant la crise irakienne que, dans la nouvelle Europe élargie, ils ne pourraient plus à eux seuls être le moteur de l'Union. La main tendue de Tony Blair est donc pour eux bienvenue. M. Blair a donné des gages de sa fidélité aux Etats-Unis, et sa présence devrait rassurer les pays membres les plus atlantistes sur les objectifs de la rencontre de Berlin, notamment les Polonais et les Espagnols. On en espère du coup, dans les milieux européens, une décrispation qui facilite le déblocage des négociations sur la Constitution.
De même que le couple franco-allemand a été utile dans la "vieille Europe" pour cristalliser les problèmes et dégager les compromis, un trio pourrait avoir une précieuse fonction de défrichage. En Allemagne, la droite, qui a soutenu le camp atlantiste pendant la crise irakienne contre le gouvernement Schröder, milite aujourd'hui pour qu'une place soit offerte aussi à la Pologne dans ce cercle restreint.
M. Schröder, qui s'est largement inspiré du programme travailliste pour ses propres propositions de réforme en Allemagne, peut espérer, pour sa part, trouver dans ce nouveau forum un souffle d'air dans la phase difficile qu'il traverse. Une part importante des discussions de Berlin doit être consacrée à la relance de la croissance en Europe, aux réformes, à une politique industrielle commune et peut-être à une redéfinition des postes au sein de la Commission.
Il est peu probable que soient formulées de nouvelles propositions sur la Constitution européenne, pour désarmer l'opposition de l'Espagne et de la Pologne au projet qui est sur la table. Ce projet, élaboré par la Convention, est largement le résultat des compromis auxquels les trois étaient parvenus. La France, l'Allemagne et la Grande-Bretagne sont loin d'avoir sur tout des points de vue identiques, mais sur cette question ils semblent décidés à attendre que le mouvement vienne d'abord de Madrid et de Varsovie.
Henri de Bresson
This Times story goes into the shiny new threat to the diamond market. London based De Beers, the world’s largest diamond business, has finally admitted there could be a potential threat from the U.S. Late last fall Boston-based Apollo Diamond filed a patent for a nearly flawless — at least to the naked eye — synthetic diamond.
I’m fascinated by this interplay of business on the global market. Add on to it that the port of Antwerp — second largest Belgium city and major port — is where 8 out of 10 mined diamonds are handled. If the synthetic diamond takes off, this could have a great economic effect.
I think there are a lot of factors into play about identity here also — the tradition of diamonds, what could happen to the African diamond mines and miners, (where De Beers has about a $4 billion stockpile), and how a manufactured little U.S. gem could usurp all of it. This is something I’d like to pursue for my story.
De Beers plans war on synthetic gems
By John O’Donnell
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9065-995202,00.html
February 08, 2004
De Beers plans war on synthetic gems
By John O’Donnell
Oppenheimer aims to open diamond stores worldwide and launch a marketing blitz
TWICE a week an armour- plated van picks up an anonymous consignment from Heathrow airport’s cargo terminal. Its driver makes his way to the fringe of Hatton Garden, London’s jewellery district, to an imposing grey building where tall black gates open, admitting the truck to an underground complex.
It is here, in the offices of De Beers, that jewellers sort through the delivery of African gems, and where Nicky Oppenheimer, patriarch of the dynasty that controls the world’s biggest diamond mines, manages his empire.
Diamonds and their emotional value have not altered in the century since Oppenheimer’s grandfather Ernest, a German emigrant, left his homeland for South Africa and eventually won control of De Beers.
Today the family still owns 40% and has a further stake of less than 5% through a separate company. Anglo-American, the mining group, has owned 45% of the firm since it was taken private two years ago. “It hasn’t changed much,” said Oppenheimer. “Whether to mark success in the East or love in the western world, a diamond has always been the ultimate gift.”
Although the product is unaltered, the marketplace has changed. Last week De Beers announced a 7% rise in annual sales to £3 billion. But the company, once a cartel that controlled 80% of diamond supply, has seen its power dwindle in the face of competition from Australia and Canada.
Today Oppenheimer is chairman of a business that controls just over half of the world supply and one that is threatened by synthetic diamonds so sophisticated that it is impossible for the naked eye to distinguish them.
In the company’s South African home, De Beers faces the forced sale of 15% of its mining business to black workers. The sensitivities of “conflict diamonds” — sold to raise money for war — pursue the company. The British government is investigating De Beers’s alleged links with parties that bought diamonds in war-torn Congo. And Oppenheimer, who travels to work by helicopter, is unable to visit America because of an indictment, following claims that his company fixed industrial diamond prices.
Despite this, the 58-year-old king of diamonds is optimistic. “What you have seen in the 10 years to 2000 is diamonds losing out to other luxury goods,” said the Oxford- educated baron. “Now they are regaining ground.”
He credits this revival partly to an industry advertising push initiated by De Beers that aims to treble total marketing expenditure to more than $1.5 billion.
De Beers has pressured its site holders — those who buy its diamonds — to increase their contribution to the marketing budget following the introduction of its so-called “supplier of choice”, which cut the number of dealers to which the company sells. And it is recruiting retailers such as Tiffany to cover further marketing spend.
The company’s move to improve its product’s branding has been helped by a venture with the French company LVMH to open diamond stores worldwide, including a flagship site on London’s Bond Street.
Oppenheimer pledged further investment. “If you look at the new De Beers store in London, it is a step change in what jewellery stores look like. Traditionally, the bravest thing you could do was to go in the door of a jewellery store — that has to change. People have to market jewellery in a modern way.”
The brand offensive will also target one of the biggest problems faced by the industry. “Synthetic diamonds are a threat we have been aware of for some time,” said Oppenheimer. “It is much closer now than it has been before.”
De Beers’ marketing drive hopes to beat competition from the synthetic rocks with a simple message: real men give real diamonds. “Diamonds are created by nature over millions of years of volcanic activity,” said Oppenheimer. “They come from the bowels of the earth — not a laboratory.”
The company is restructuring its South African mining business ahead of the forced sale of the 15% stake. This division contributes about a quarter of the company’s diamond haul. “It has always been our attitude and something my grandfather said, ‘We operate to make money but also to make a real contribution to the country where we operate’.”
Oppenheimer defended his company’s handling of the controversial diamond buying by De Beers clients in the Congo. In a UN report being followed up by the Department of Trade and Industry, De Beers was criticised for links with a group of diamond traders who bought gems in the war-torn country. The sellers used the proceeds to fund conflict. De Beers said that after the report it had warned its buyers to stop the trade.
“We are co-operating with the DTI,” said Oppenheimer. “I am certain that De Beers’s name will be cleared. When you produce something like diamonds you have to be extremely careful that your product is untainted. That’s a matter of concern for us every day.”
With the rising demand for diamonds, he has cause for optimism. Prices are going up following the depletion of gem stockpiles. De Beers sold many of its diamonds after it was taken private to pay off debt raised to buy the company. It believes that high demand and stock shortages will lead to annual price rises of about 5%.
Taking advantage of this favourable outlook will most likely be the responsibility of his 31-year-old son Jonathan. Oppenheimer said he “certainly hoped” his son would take his place on his retirement, which he has already started planning.
With diamonds more popular than ever, it appears that human vanity — as Oppenheimer’s grandfather explained the emotional appeal of gems — is as strong today as it was a century ago. “A really beautiful diamond doesn’t do you any good,” said Oppenheimer. “But it fills a niche in the human psyche. It’s a symbol of something emotional and it has a very exciting future.”
“Can’t happen here, you say…” “America is the land of competition that generates new technology to ensure a diversity of voices…”
William Safire’s op-ed is a clear, conscious and ironic reasoning on the monopolist trend that is leading to the merge of all media giants, (Murdoch-Fox&Co, NBC-Universal-Vivendi, Time Warner-CNN-AOL, Disney-ABC-ESPN…) regardless for the basic rules of competition and free speech that are roots of the American liberal democracy.
Once again, the globalization is empowering big corporations, and reducing multiplicity and variety. It is also homogenizing the different country’s media systems, and spreading the same problems across the Oceans.
“You say that the US government would never allow that? But what of the Senate, guardian of free speech?,” asks Safire, incredulous.
But in Italy - with Berlusconi's duopoly and current monopoly - we have been asking the same questions for the last five-ten years!
"The Five Sisters", The New York Times.
www.nytimes.com/2004/02/16/opinion/16SAFI.html
Francis mentioned at last meeting that France is facing a higher education crisis that might cause technology immitation rather than innovation, while everybody in the world knows today that the economic development (and the political/military power) is based on knowledge and technology.
This is a press release from RAPID, the Press and Communication Service of the European Commission.
I found the article on Lexis-Nexis, but can't paste the link here, as it wouldn't allow direct connection.
The European Commission today presented the first NEST (New and Emerging Science and Technology) projects retained for funding for 2004. These ten projects cover issues such as bio-terrorism, obesity, atom optics and the environment. NEST is a new research activity under the EU 6th Research Framework Programme (FP6 2003-2006), designed to respond to new scientific opportunities and challenges, and promote interdisciplinary high risk research. NEST will launch more focused calls on emerging topics that will be identified through consultation with the research community. With a budget of C215 million over four years and almost 300 proposals submitted in last October's second round of calls, NEST's potential is great for further unconventional, frontier research.
"NEST is leading the way in making the most of our scientific and technological potential," says Research Commissioner, Philippe Busquin. "Through visionary projects the European Union can build on the ideas and innovations of bright and iconoclastic researchers. The new NEST projects demonstrate how the initiative is open to new ideas within a wide range of scientific fields. It also gives the perfect opportunity for up and coming researchers to expand their horizons, with the focus being on the unexpected rather than solely on existing successes and consolidated scientific dogma. Yesterday's science fiction is today's science."
Interest and competition flying high
The Commission will allocate C215 million to NEST over four years. There has been a high level of interest from researchers, with around 170 outline proposals submitted at the first deadline in April 2003, and 265 submitted at the second, in October 2003.
Going the distance
The geographical distribution of the partner countries for proposals retained is very diverse, covering 19 countries, including all EU Member states, except Ireland and Luxembourg, and including Norway, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Estonia and Cyprus. Candidate and Accession countries will receive about 9% of the total EU contribution.
Building on NEST's opportunities
The first projects demonstrate NEST's openness to a wide range of scientific fields and address both new opportunities for science and technology (ADVENTURE projects) as well as new problems and challenges (INSIGHT projects). NEST projects aim to develop new systems to immunize the human body against bio-chemical agents, to create novel coatings for materials using micro-organisms, to detect diseases from the human breath, and to develop new atomic scale manipulation and imaging methods.
These NEST projects will also strive to boost the capacity of electron microscopes, to manipulate atoms with lasers, to create new bio-materials from ionized gases for medical and surgical applications, to detect and study toxic chemicals such as Perfluorinated Hydrocarbons (PFCs), to produce new chemicals and clean fuels, and to develop policies to tackle the obesity epidemics.
Topics on the horizon
The Commission has now published the NEST calls for proposals for 2004. These include not only calls open to any kind of proposals, but also calls on three specific topics (deadline 14 April 2004):
Synthetic biology: engineering new sub-cellular modules and organisms from scratch, to develop the knowledge and European skill base for a true engineering discipline in biology, as well as to improving understanding of fundamental biological processes.
What it means to be human: highly interdisciplinary research focusing on the unique characteristics of human cognitive faculties, and their evolutionary origins.
Tackling complexity in science: the focus is on complex problems and "generalized" methods for simplifying and solving them.
For further information:
http://www.cordis.lu/fp6/nest.htm
ANNEX
First NEST projects
Biodefence
The objective of this project is to develop a completely new mechanism of rapid immunization against bio-terrorist weapons, using transformed GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe) organisms. This includes genetically engineering Lactobacilli, micro-organisms which live in the human gastrointestinal tract, to create antibodies. After ingestion, the micro-organisms will colonize the intestinal mucosa and secrete antibodies enabling rapid protection against bio-terrorism agents or emerging diseases.
EA-Biofilms
The project aims to exploit "electro active" (EA) micro-organisms that are able to form thin films and "plug themselves in" to conducting surfaces thus directly extracting electrical power from them. If successful, such micro-organisms could provide a new and revolutionary way to catalyze and control chemical reactions in diverse applications such as bio-remediation, bio-sensors, and corrosion prevention.
The Optical Nose
An on-line, non-invasive and total-profiling instrument for trace gas sensing applications in medical sciences. More than three thousand volatile organic compounds found in human breath may be markers of diseases. This project aims to develop and apply a novel type of laser-based analytical instrument, for rapid, non-invasive screening of human breath to identify specific markers related to various diseases.
INA Imaging with neutral atoms
The objective is to improve the resolution of helium atom microscopy by a factor of 50, from 1 micron to 0.02 micron. This would create a novel imaging method with unique characteristics and a wide application range (bio-physical, bio-medical, electronics, and other applications), and give European researchers a leading position in the technology of atom optics.
CHIRALTEM the next generation of electron microscopes
Using new experimental results, the aim is to develop a novel method for accurate measurement of chiral dichroism (the absorption of circular polarized photons). If successful it will provide a new analytical technique for transmission electron microscopy, allowing accurate measurement of magnetic properties below the surface and in multilayer materials at nanometer resolutions.
ATOM3D how to manipulate atoms with lasers
Advanced techniques for optical manipulation using novel 3D light field synthesis. The aim is to develop novel optical manipulation techniques, for "optical tweezers", whereby the momentum carried by the photons of an intense laser beam can be used to manipulate microscopic objects, ranging from atoms to particles in the micron size range. It opens the way for trapping and localizing tiny biological samples such as viruses and DNA, and has promising applications in fundamental science (optics, atomic physics) and technology, including micro-fluidics.
BIOPLASMA
Bio-compatible and bio-active surfaces are crucial in many areas of biotechnology and in medical applications such as bone implants. BIOPLASMA aims to develop novel techniques using low temperature plasmas (ionized gases) to bind bio-molecules in order to create low cost bio-active coatings.
PERFORCE
Perfluorinated Hydrocarbons (PFCs), presumably resulting from industrial activity, are increasingly present in the environment. The resulting health threat of such potentially toxic chemicals is a matter of growing concern but has not yet been measured. This project aims to establish means to assess both the prevalence and possible health impact of PFCs on human life throughout the EU.
ELCAT
By combining the size-selectivity of nanoporous membranes with the catalytic properties of noble metals, the objective is to realize an as-yet elusive vision: the production of chemicals from CO2 and H2 under "mild" reaction conditions. This could have enormous industrial and environmental implications ranging from the use of solar energy to produce fuels from CO2 and H2O, and the reduction of greenhouse gases, to chemical syntheses and processing.
PORGROW lean and mean research
Obesity has recently been recognized as a problem of epidemic proportions, but it is extremely difficult to address, given the range of factors at stake. The project aims to generate a novel form of systematic socio-technical intelligence based on the mapping of the problem according to different criteria, to assist policy-makers and help design a new cross-national methodology to develop more effective, forward-looking strategies.
LOAD-DATE: February 12, 2004
"I am convinced that only a transformation in the way we understand the concept of politics in relation with the idea of “power” will allow us to begin to escape the aporias affecting the notion of a “European policy,” and to give a realistic content to the notion of a “European mediation,” which combines such opposite demands as increasing Europe’s specific role in world affairs, and deconstructing the myths of European closure and exclusive identity (“Fortress Europe,” to quote its most aggressive formulation). How then both to individualize and de-substantialize Europe? Is that really possible?"
Étienne Balibar - Europe: Vanishing Mediator? Download file
"The reason anti-Europeans can't imagine a future for Europe is that they can't imagine its present. They are trapped in the contradictions of EU member nations' misunderstanding of themselves. And this false picture of Europe's present is blocking its future development.
"I think I can demonstrate that the Euroskeptics have it exactly backward. The solution to the EU's problems is not more national realism. Rather, it is more Europe, more of the reality we are already experiencing-a cosmopolitan Europe. National categories of thought have created this impasse. National irrealism is Europe's problem."
Ulrich Beck - Understanding the Real Europe Download file
This article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine (a German daily roughly similar to the Wall St. Journal, also known as the FAZ) reports on a visit by Angela Merkel, the head of the CDU, Germany’s leading conservative opposition party (the party of Helmut Kohl), to Ankara for meetings concerning Turkey’s candidacy for the EU. The meetings precede a visit to Ankara by German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder SPD party next week.
The CDU’s position is that Turkey should not be considered for EU membership at this time because of “excessive demands” placed on the union at this time because of the ten countries ready for entry. Merkel, however, suggested a “special partnership” between the EU and Turkey as a “third way” between full membership and no membership.
Turkish prime minister Recep Erdogan strongly rejected this suggestion, saying that politically and economically, Turkey has fulfilled the Copenhagen criteria of 1993 more than ten of the countries being considered for membership, and a special partnership was never part of the discussion and we’re not going to bring it into the discussion. He added further that EU is not a Christian club, but a society with the same political values. Merkel made sure to clarify that her party’s position has nothing to do with religion.
German Human Rights Commissioner Claudia Roth accused Merkel of classifying Turkey as a second-class state and warned the party not to misuse the issue of Turkey’s candidacy in the European election. The Turkish ambassador to Germany also cautioned against using the Turks and Turkey as propaganda for EU elections and stressed the importance of valuing the 40-year relationship between Turkey and the EU.
It seems to me that she is suggesting a NAFTA type agreement between the EU and Turkey, which wouldn’t be very positive for Turkey. I understand this to be a political decision to try to capitalize on negative feelings by Germans towards the large Turkish community in Germany, and that by suggesting a “special partnership”, she can sidestep the issue of German citizenships for Turks, already a hot-button issue in Germany.
In another article by the German paper Die Welt, they included a quote by Merkel in the headline saying that she doesn’t’ want 25 million more Turkish farmers in the EU. This article goes on to say that this number is vastly exaggerated and that figure is actually around 8 million. Interesting that the FAZ doesn’t include this quote and a quote by the leader of the CSU, the other conservative party, that Turkey has never been a part of Europe.
It’s important to understand that this position only comes from the conservative opposition in Germany (both the CDU and the CSU), but it would also be a mistake to underestimate their influence and strategy. I included the EU and Islam as a category, because I think Turkey's candidacy has become inextricably tied to his question that extends to things like the veil in France. I will try to find some examples from the Turkish-German press that address this theme and the what it means for Turks living in Germany.
Die Frankfurter Allgemeine - Freundlich entschieden: Merkel stößt auf Ablehnung
Die Welt - Merkel will nicht „noch 25 Millionen türkische Bauern“
Die Frankfurter Allgemeine
Freundlich entschieden: Merkel stößt auf Ablehnung
16. Februar 2004 Die Vorschläge der CDU-Vorsitzenden Merkel über das künftige Verhältnis zwischen der Türkei und der Europäischen Union sind in der Türkei auf freundliche, aber entschiedene Ablehnung gestoßen. Der türkische Ministerpräsident Erdogan widersprach Frau Merkel "in aller Offenheit": Er sagte im Anschluß an ein anderthalbstündiges Gespräch mit Merkel in Ankara, daß er eine "privilegierte Partnerschaft" strikt ablehne, wie sie die CDU der Türkei als Alternative zur vollen EU-Mitgliedschfat vorschlägt.
Merkel begann am Montag in Ankara eine zweitägige Türkei-Reise, um der dortigen islamisch-konservativen Regierung die ablehnende Haltung der Union zum EU-Beitritt der Türkei zu erklären. Begleitet wurde sie vom stellvertretenden Vorsitzenden der Unionsfraktion im Bundestag Schäuble sowie einem Vertreter der türkischstämmigen CDU-Mitglieder, Bülent Arslan, der dem Deutsch-Türkischen Forum (DTF) vorsitzt.
„Privilegierte Partnerschaft"
Die Bundesregierung bekräftigte hingegen eine Woche vor der Türkei-Reise Bundeskanzler Schröders (SPD) ihre Haltung, daß über die Aufnahme von Beitrittsverhandlungen auf der Grundlage eines Berichts der EU-Kommission Ende des Jahres entschieden werde. Berlin unterstütze die Reformen in der Türkei, die zur Erfüllung der Kopenhagener EU-Kriterien von 1993 führen sollen, sagte Regierungssprecher Anda. Die Erfüllung sei die Voraussetzung für die Vollmitgliedschaft in der EU. Der FDP-Vorsitzende Westerwelle sagte hingegen nach einer Sitzung des Parteipräsidiums in Hamburg: "Die Türkei ist derzeitig, und das meinen wir ökonomisch wie rechtsstaatlich, nicht in einer Lage, daß ihr eine Mitgliedschaft in der EU versprochen oder angekündigt werden könnte." Das habe aber nichts mit der Religion zu tun, "wie es von Konservativen erklärt wird".
Merkel und Schäuble stellten gegenüber allen wesentlichen Führungsmitgliedern der türkischen Regierung wie auch der Regierungspartei AKP - vom Innenminister über den Parlamentspräsidenten bis hin zum Ministerpräsidenten und Außenminister - die Position der Unionsparteien dar. Danach soll mit der Türkei nicht über einen Beitritt zur EU verhandelt werden, eine engere Kooperation aber auch nicht ausgeschlossen sein. CDU und CSU sehen als "dritten Weg" zwischen Voll- und Nichtmitgliedschaft eine "privilegierte Partnerschaft" zwischen EU und Türkei.
„Weder eine Montanunion noch ein Christenklub“
Erdogan widersprach entschieden. Die Türkei habe die Kopenhagener Kritrien politisch wie wirtschaftlich mehr erfüllt, als einige der zehn aktuellen Beitrittsländer. Von einer "priveligierten Partnerschaft" sei nie die Rede gewesen. "Es war nicht in der Diskussion und wir werden es auch nicht in die Diskusion bringen." Die EU sei, soweit er wisse, "weder eine Montanunion noch ein Christenklub, sondern ein Verein mit gemeinsamen politischen Werten."
Erdogan sagte, das könne die EU beweisen, indem sie die nun die Türkei "hereinnimmt". Er bitte Frau Merkel, "uns dabei zu helfen". Merkel stellte klar, daß die CDU die EU jemals als "Christenklub" gesehen habe. Sie stelle auch nicht Frage, daß die Türkei die Kopenhagener Kriterien erfülle. "Ich sehe die Probleme vielmehr bei uns in der bestehenden EU." Die Gemeinschaft sei derzeit schlicht überfordert.
Mit einer "privilegierten Partnerschaft", so argumentierten die CDU-Politiker, könnten alle Erwartungen erfüllt werden, die seit 1963 geweckt und immer wieder genährt wurden. Damals stellte ein Assoziations-Abkommen die Mitgliedschaft der Türkei in der damaligen Europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft (EWG) in Aussicht. Zwar dürfe dieses einst gegebene Wort heute nicht von der EU gebrochen werden. Aber es sei auch nicht einfach auf die aktuellen Rahmenbedingungen zu übertragen. Das Hauptargument Merkels und Schäubles ist eine drohende Überforderung der EU, die bereits in diesem Jahr zehn neue Mitglieder aufnehme und mit weiteren in Verhandlungen stehe. Es müsse gesehen werden, daß die Aufnahmefähigkeit der EU auch zu den Kopenhagener Kriterien zähle. Insofern sei die Türkei-Politik der vergangenen 40 Jahre "unehrlich" gewesen, weil falsche Hoffnungen auf türkischer Seite geschürt worden seien.
„Vorurteilsfrei und ohne unfreundliche Absichten"
Alle ihre Gastgeber reagierten verhalten auf die Vorschläge Merkels. Der Vorschlag eines "dritten Weges" sei "ziemlich neu" und nur die Meinung von Politikern der CDU und CSU, sagte Cuneyd Zapsu, Vorstandsmitglied der Regierungspartei AKP und einflußreichster außenpolitischer Berater Ministerpräsident Erdogans. Verhandlungen über eine "privilegierte Partnerschaft" seien jedoch keine offizielle Position der EU, auf die sich die Türkei einzustellen habe. Entweder gebe es Verhandlungen um eine Vollmitgliedschaft oder nicht, sagte Zapsu, aber "auf keinen Fall" um einen dritten Weg, welcher auch "von den Häuptern der Europäischen Union nicht gebilligt" werde.
Nach dem Gespräch mit den stellvertretenden Vorsitzenden der AKP sagte die CDU-Vorsitzende Merkel, sie glaube, daß es in den nächsten Jahren eine sehr gute Kooperation zwischen den beiden Parteien geben werde. Das Gespräch in der Parteizentrale der AKP sei ein "sehr guter Start für eine intensivere Kooperation" gewesen. Der programmatische Dialog werde intensiviert und auf der Ebene der beiden Generalsekretäre fortgesetzt, versprach sie. In dem Gespräch sei über die Ziele und das Programm der AKP gesprochen worden. Dabei sei für sie interessant gewesen, daß die AKP ebenfalls die Werte der Religion kenne, Religion und Politik aber als zwei sehr verschiedene Dinge betrachte, sagte Merkel. Merkel lobte auch die Reformfortschritte in der Türkei. "Wir haben festgestellt, daß es in der Türkei unglaubliche Veränderungen gegeben hat und daß diese unter Mitwirkung der AKP geschehen sind", sagte Merkel weiter.
Die Menschenrechtsbeauftragte der Bundesregierung, Claudia Roth, warf Merkel vor, die Türkei mit ihrer Haltung "in die Zweitklassigkeit zu deklassieren". Roth befand, Merkel trage eine Verantwortung dafür, daß "politische Brandstifter wie der CSU-Landesgruppenvorsitzende Michael Glos, das Thema Türkei nicht im Europawahlkampf mißbrauchen". Die Grünen-Politikerin wies darauf hin, daß Verhandlungen beginnen müßten, sobald die Türkei die Beitrittsbedingungen erfülle. Der türkische Botschafter in Deutschland rief Politiker und Medien dazu auf, "vorurteilsfrei und ohne unfreundliche Absichten" die vierzigjährigen Beziehungen zwischen der Türkei und der EU zu würdigen. Er warnte vor allem davor, im Europawahlkampf "die Türkei und die Türken als Thema für Polemik und Propaganda" zu benutzen.
Text: Her./ wus., Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17. Februar 2004, Seite 1
Bildmaterial: REUTERS
Die Welt
Merkel will nicht „noch 25 Millionen türkische Bauern“
Die Differenzen zwischen der CDU-Chefin und dem türkischen Ministerpräsidenten Erdogan bezüglich eines EU-Beitritts der Türkei bleiben
Angela Merkel
Foto: AP
Ankara - Doch angesichts des Zustandes der Europäischen Union sehe sie die Perspektive einer Vollmitgliedschaft „kritisch“. Gerade um der Türkei nicht die Tür nach Europa zu verschließen, habe sie Verhandlungen über eine besondere Partnerschaft vorgeschlagen. Die Türkei solle dadurch nicht zu einem „Mitglied zweiter Klasse“ werden.
Ihr Vorschlag für eine privilegierte Partnerschaft blieb in Ankara indes ohne Gegenliebe. Die stand auch gar nicht zu erwarten. Neben dem Regierungschef trafen Angela Merkel und Fraktionsvize Wolfgang Schäuble auch Innenminister Abdülkadir Aksu, Außenminister Abdullah Gül, Parlamentspräsident Bülent Arinc und die gesamte Führungsspitze der AKP.
Erdogans persönlicher Berater Cüneyt Zapsu sagte zu deutschen Journalisten: „Jeder Mensch braucht ein Ziel. Im Moment wollen 75 Prozent der Türken Mitglied der EU sein. Wenn wider Erwarten im Dezember nicht der Beginn der Beitrittsverhandlungen oder nur ein 'Jein' beschlossen wird, müssen wir uns ein anderes Ziel suchen.“
Die Verhandlungen würden ergebnisoffen geführt, und wenn sich nach fünf bis zehn Jahren herausstelle, dass die Türkei die Bedingungen für eine Vollmitgliedschaft nicht erfüllen könne, müsse man neu nachdenken, dann vielleicht auch über den von Merkel vorgeschlagenen dritten Weg - aber erst dann.
Zusätzlich zu der bevorstehenden Erweiterung auf 25 EU-Staaten noch ein Volk von 70 Millionen Menschen aufzunehmen, übersteige die Integrationskraft der EU, betonte Merkel. Angesichts der Haushaltsprobleme der EU und der hartleibigen deutschen Position „weiß man doch, was es bedeutet, wenn noch 25 Millionen türkische Bauern dazukommen sollen“, argumentierte sie zudem im ZDF. Die 25 Millionen Bauern wurden im übrigen in Ankara heftig dementiert - 2,3 Millionen landwirtschaftliche Betriebe und rund sechs Millionen Bauern sind die offiziellen Zahlen.
Erdogan: EU-Beitritt ist kein Wahlkampfthema
Mit Blick auf die Europawahl betonte Erdogan: „Die Türkei sollte nicht in einen politischen Machtkampf hineingezogen werden.“ Auch der Botschafter der Türkei in Deutschland, Mehmet Ali Irtemcelik, warnte davor, im Wahlkampf das Thema EU-Beitritt der Türkei in den Vordergrund zu stellen. Die Mitgliedschaft stehe derzeit nicht auf der Tagesordnung, sagte er. Daher sei es unangebracht, „die Gemüter zu verwirren“ und Polemik und Propaganda mit dem Türkei-Thema zu betreiben.
Zuvor hatte CSU-Chef Edmund Stoiber erneut deutlich gemacht, seine Partei werde das Thema EU-Beitritt der Türkei im Wahlkampf verwenden. CSU-Landesgruppenchef Michael Glos schloss einen EU-Beitritt der Türkei kategorisch aus. „Die Türkei war nie Teil Europas“, sagte er der „Schwäbischen Zeitung“. Merkel gab am Rande des Besuchs zu erkennen, dass die Union das Thema aufgreifen werde - aber „ohne Schaum vorm Mund“.
Erdogan vertrat die Auffassung, dass ein Beitritt seines Landes keine neuen Lasten für die EU bringen werde, sondern die Türkei diese mittragen wolle. Die Türkei würde die EU stärken. Hintergrund der Diskussion ist, dass Ende des Jahres die Staats- und Regierungschefs der EU über die Aufnahme formeller Beitrittsverhandlungen mit der Türkei entscheiden müssen. Zuvor muss allerdings die EU-Kommission einen Bericht über die Fortschritte des Landes bei der Übernahme der europäischen Rechtsordnung und in Hinblick auf die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung vorlegen. CDU und CSU sind derzeit nach eigener Einschätzung die einzigen Parteien in Deutschland, die einem türkischen EU-Beitritt generell ablehnend gegenüberstehen.
Der Besucherstrom in Ankara wird nicht abreißen: Für die kommende Woche hat sich Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder angesagt. Dieser gehört zu den Befürwortern eines Beitritts. WELT.de/dpa/AP
Artikel erschienen am 16. Feb 2004
Not too long ago Spain was suffering a fascist government. The extreme right is powerful, the Opus Dei is strong, the Church cannot be ignored, and still, I have found several editorial and articles recently that criticize very harshly some aspects of American puritanism, or, to be more precise, its double standards.
This editorial from El País, the most respected of Spanish newspapers, and one of the best in Europe denounces the scandal around Janet Jackson and the use some conservatives have made of the incident. It, reminds Gary Hart's problems in 1987 and Ross Perot's sentence according to which: "the one who betrays his wife might betray his company," and foresees a dirty presidential campaign. It concludes: "Continental Europe has gone beyond this form of politics long ago. One cannot consider that lying about a relationship that involves the private life of a politician is immoral while deeming acceptable a lie whose ultimate purpose is to launch a war such as the one in Iraq."
El País - Editorial: "Política puritana"
EDITORIAL
Política puritana
EL PAÍS | Opinión - 16-02-2004
El puritanismo acompañó la formación como país de Estados Unidos, pero los más ultras entre sus dirigentes actuales se han lanzado a una cruzada que impone una agenda insoportable en la nación que se reclama adalid de las libertades
. Bastó hace unos días que la cantante Janet Jackson enseñara fugazmente un pecho con el pezón cubierto por una joya, durante el descanso de la retransmisión de la Super Bowl, para que se desatara un vendaval. La cadena CBS pidió todo tipo de perdones y los ultraconservadores han aprovechado para exigir la imposición de nuevas normas de censura.
Con ser grave este retroceso, aún lo es más el uso electoral de hechos que atañen a la vida privada de algunos candidatos, manipulación que alcanza sus cimas en campañas presidenciales. La acusación de infidelidad conyugal hace temblar a cualquiera en EE UU. Ross Perot acuñó en la campaña de 1992 el principio de que "el que engaña a su mujer puede engañar a su empresa" o al país. Gary Hart tuvo que retirarse en 1987 de la campaña para la preselección demócrata a la Casa Blanca cuando se probó una relación extramatrimonial que había negado. Las mismas huestes se lanzaron contra Clinton por su relación con la becaria Lewinsky.
Ahora, ante el peligro que supone para la reelección de Bush el demócrata John Kerry -le lleva nueve puntos de ventaja en los sondeos-, la maquinaria se ha puesto de nuevo en funcionamiento. La campaña empieza a ser sucia antes de haber comenzado oficialmente. Es una forma de hacer política que en Europa continental fue superada hace tiempo. No se puede considerar inmoral mentir sobre una relación que atañe a la vida privada de un político, mientras se considera aceptable mentir con el propósito último de desencadenar una guerra como la de Irak.
A number of people have expressed interest in Immigrants in Europe. This opinion Eurozine piece (great site recommendation from Francis) says that there is in increase in the illegal trafficking of people because of the very laws set to stop it. Sasseen argues that regulations (at the borders) and Europe's political and economic participation contribute to dehumanizing individuals (and sometimes their deaths) that try to come into the countries for work. He also offers good history. The story is a bit old, but maybe could use an update from one of us?
Saskia Sassen
Is this the Way to Go?
Handling Immigration in a Global Era
http://www.eurozine.com/article/2002-09-17-sassen-en.html
Saskia Sassen
Is this the Way to Go?
Handling Immigration in a Global Era
As Europe's borders become more and more fortified against immigrants, illegal human trafficking becomes ever more common. By criminalizing immigration, Europe does not only ignore a moral problem: It hits hardest on those desperate enough to escape their homecountries and contributes to the enormous profits that smugglers make in the process. Saskia Sassen asks what price Europe is paying for these shortsighted and unsustainable policies.
Over the last decade it is estimated that more than 2,500 would-be immigrants died trying to get into Europe. That is many dead, but not many immigrants for a continent of over 350 million people. Whom is it we are determined to keep out to the point that they risk their lives to get in: an equally determined but tiny minority of men, women and children from mostly poor countries who will come no matter what in search of work or refuge. They are not criminals. Yet the result of our determination is that we are feeding a criminal trade. There has been a sharp growth in illegal trafficking of people as receiving countries have clamped down on entries and semi-militarized more and more borders.
These developments raise two issues. One concerns the old trade-off between policies that criminalize what may not intrinsically be a criminal act in the name of controlling a somewhat untenable situation; this in turn raises the incentives for genuinely criminal actors to promote the forbidden activity. A familiar instance of this trade-off concerns marihuana control policy. Does the criminalizing of marihuana in the US -and the UK- really work better as a policy to control its use than the controlled legality of marihuana in the Netherlands which leaves very little room for profit making by drugdealers and hence no incentive to expand its use?
The second policy issue raised by these developments is that the deaths of these hundreds of people attempting to enter Europe affect us all, not only those directly concerned. The fact that these people lack the proper documents for entry is easily represented in policy and media circles as exempting us from any responsibility as societies for these deaths. The lack of proper documents somehow seems to make these deaths less human and reduce whatever might be our responsibility contributing to these deaths.
I want to argue that the direction we are taking in our immigration policies towards greater police and military control and growing disregard for international human rights codes as well as our own civil liberties laws is promoting illegal trafficking and weakening our rule of law and thereby our democracies. These policies are adding to an already growing mix of what I would describe as negative incentives, or incentives with negative outcomes for significant sectors of our societies. Illegal trafficking and the deaths of men, women and children who are not criminals, and who die on our "soil" eventually touches the fabric of our societies and distorts or weakens the rule of law. In the long run it will affect us all. Yes, the central victims are the men and women who are trafficked and especially those who die. But we would be foolish to think that we can allow these abuses and deaths to happen in the name of maintaining control, and remain untouched. The growth in illegal trafficking and the sharpening of extreme anti-immigrant politics willing to sacrifice some civil liberties in the name of control are indications of this broader negative effect.
Interconnected Forms of Violence
Part of the challenge is to recognize the interconnectedness of forms of violence that we do not always recognize as being connected or for that matter, as being forms of violence. The sharp growth of government debt, poverty, unemployment, closing of traditional economic sectors in the global south, partly due to neoliberal economic globalization has created whole new migrations as well as fed an exploding illegal trade in people. We now have growing evidence that IMF policy has sharpened these conditions even as it has brought great prosperity to about 20 per cent of residents in many countries in the global south(1).
Our governments, by supporting IMF policies, are partly contributing to those conditions that are going to stimulate emigration and illegal trafficking in people. Further, as the rich economies become richer partly because of these same IMF policies, they also become more desirable destinations. This in turn creates a source for hard currency for the governments of the sending countries in a context where they face mounting debt and declines in national revenues as neoliberal globalization weakens and often destroys many of the national economic sectors in these countries. Thus these governments are not interested particularly in regulating emigration either. Finally, as these same policies have also raised inequality and unemployment inside the rich economies, the disadvantaged have become radicalized, often taking on extreme right wing politics.
The tragedy is that those most affected negatively, those to whom violence has been done both in the global south and in the rich economies, the victims of it all, now confront each other as enemies inside our countries. Anti-immigrant sentiment probably runs highest among those who have been hurt from the same policies that have hurt the poor and the middle classes (though not the upper 20 per cent) from where the immigrants and would-be immigrants come. And as the rich countries raise their walls to keep immigrants and refugees out, they feed the illegal trade in people and raise the profits to be made as despair rises in the global south and fear in the global north. This is not sound policy. This is a vicious policy cycle.
The same infrastructure, both technical and institutional that has enabled global flows of capital and goods, services and the new transnational managerial and professional class, also enables migrations and illegal trafficking. And they facilitate the flow of remittances back to sending countries, a major incentive for not doing anything on the part of these governments. These various entanglements raise the complexity of the challenge of how to regulate immigration. But these entanglements and this type of complexity are going in the wrong direction. We need to reverse this dynamic.
When globalization policies go wrong they really go very wrong for countries in the global south. Thereby these policies sharpen the incentives for both emigration and trafficking for emigrants, traffickers and governments in the global south, given growing government indebtedness and lack of opportunity for workers and would be entrepreneurs in much of the global south.
Emigrants enter the macro-level of development strategies for sending countries through their remittances. In many countries these represent a major source of foreign exchange reserves for the government. While the flows of remittances may be minor compared to the massive daily capital flows in various financial markets, they are often very significant for developing or struggling economies.
In 1998 - the last year for which comprehensive data is available - global remittances sent by immigrants to their home countries reached over US$ 70 billion. To understand the significance of this figure, it should be related to the GDP and foreign currency reserves in the specific countries involved, rather than compared to the global flow of capital. For instance, in the Philippines, a key sender of migrants generally and of women for the entertainment industry in several countries, remittances were the third largest source of foreign exchange over the last several years. In Bangladesh, another country with significant numbers of its workers in the Middle East, Japan, and several European countries, remittances represent about a third of foreign exchange. Exporting workers and remittances are means for governments of coping with unemployment and foreign debt(2).
This would also seem to be the case given the growing interdependencies brought on by globalization which also enable illegal trafficking. Cross-border business travel, global tourism, the Internet, and other conditions integral to globalization enable multiple global flows not foreseen by the framers and developers of economic globalization. This creates a difficult trade-off in a context where September 11 has further sharpened the will to control immigration and resident immigrants. Increased illegal trafficking and the reduction in civil liberties will not facilitate the need to learn how to accommodate more immigration to respond to the future demographic turn. Let me focus next with some detail on one specific flow which brings many of these issues together.
Illegal Trafficking
Trafficking in workers for both licit and illegal work (e.g. unauthorized sex work) illuminates a number of intersections between the negative conditions in the global south and some of the tensions in the immigration regime(3). Trafficking is a violation of several distinct types of rights: human, civil, political. Trafficking in people appears to be mainly related to the sex market, to labor markets, to illegal migration. Much legislative work has been done to address trafficking: international treaties and charters, UN resolutions, and various bodies and commissions. Trafficking has become sufficiently recognized as an issue that it was also addressed in the G8 meeting in Birmingham in May 1998 (IOM 1998). The heads of the eight major industrialized countries stressed the importance of cooperation against international organized crime and trafficking in persons. The US President issued a set of directives to his administration in order to strengthen and increase efforts against trafficking in women and girls. This in turn generated the legislation initiative by Senator Paul Wellstone; bill S.600 was introduced in the senate in 1999. NGO's are also playing an increasingly important role. For instance, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women has centers and representatives in Australia, Bangladesh, Europe, Latin America, North America, Africa and Asia Pacific. The Women's Rights Advocacy Program has established the Initiative Against Trafficking in Persons to combat the global trade in persons. This type of trafficking shows us one of the meanings of interdependence in the current global system. There are two distinct issues here: one is that globalization has produced new conditions and dynamics, especially the growing demand for these types of workers by the expanding high income professional workforce associated largely, though not exclusively, with globalization(4). The second issue is that globalization has enabled older trafficking networks and practices which used to be national or regional to become global.
Here I want to focus on some of the data on the trafficking of women, especially for the sex industries and the growing weight of this trafficking as a profit making option for the traffickers, especially it would seem from the global south. This, then adds to the role of emigrants' remittances generally, whether from lawful, unauthorized or trafficked immigrants in the account balance of many of the impoverished governments of sending countries. Profits and revenues are, clearly, a disincentive to attack this trade. Insofar as the countries of the global north are one of the key destinations, they do not escape the consequences of this illegal trade either.
Trafficking in migrants is a profitable business. According to a UN report, criminal organizations in the 1990s generated an estimated US$ 3.5 billion per year in profits from trafficking migrants (excluding most of the women trafficked for the sex industry). The entry of organized crime is a recent development in the case of migrant trafficking; in the past it was mostly petty criminals who engaged in this type of trafficking. The Central Intelligence Agency of the US(1999) reports that organized crime groups are creating intercontinental strategic alliances through networks of co-ethnics throughout several countries; this facilitates transport, local contact and distribution, provision of false documents, etc. The Global Survival Network (1997) reported on these practices after a two year investigation using the establishment of a dummy company to enter the illegal trade. Such networks also facilitate the organized circulation of trafficked women among third countries -not only from sending to receiving countries. Traffickers may move women from Burma, Laos, Vietnam and China to Thailand, while Thai women may have been moved to Japan and the US.
Although there is no exhaustive data, the available information suggests that trafficking in women, including minors, for the sex industry is highly profitable for those running the trade. The United Nations estimates that 4 million women were trafficked in 1998, producing a profit of US$7 billion for criminal groups. These funds include remittances from prostitutes' earnings and payments to organizers and facilitators in these countries. In Japan, where the so-called entertainment industry is legal, profits are about 4.2 trillion yen per year over the last few years; there is growing evidence that illegally trafficked women are a growing share of sex-workers. In Poland, police estimate that for each Polish woman delivered, the trafficker receives about US$700. In Australia, the Federal Police estimate that the cash flow from 200 prostitutes is up to $900,000 a week. Ukrainian and Russian women, in high demand in the sex market, earn the criminal gangs involved about US$500 to US$1000 per woman delivered. These women can be expected to service on average 15 clients a day, and each can be expected to make about $US 215,000 per month for the gang.
It is estimated that in recent years several million women and girls are trafficked within and out of Asia and the former Soviet Union, two major trafficking areas. Increases in trafficking in both these areas can be linked to women being pushed into poverty or sold to brokers due to the poverty of their households or parents. High unemployment in the former Soviet republics has been one factor promoting growth of criminal gangs as well as growth of trafficking in women. Unemployment rates among women in Armenia, Russia, Bulgaria and Croatia reached 70 per cent and in Ukraine 80 per cent with the implementation of market policies. There is some research indicating that economic need is the bottom line for entry into prostitution(5).
Some of the features of immigration policy and enforcement may well contribute to make women who are victims of trafficking even more vulnerable and to give them little recourse to the law. If they are undocumented, which they are likely to be, they will not be treated as victims of abuse but as violators of the law insofar as they have violated entry, residence and work laws. The attempt to address undocumented immigration and trafficking through greater border controls over entry, raises the likelihood that women will use traffickers to cross the border, and some of these may turn out to belong to criminal organizations linked to the sex industry.
Further, in many countries prostitution is forbidden for foreign women, which enhances the role of criminal gangs in prostitution. It also diminishes one of the survival options of foreign women who may have limited access to jobs generally. Prostitution is tolerated for foreign women in many countries while regular labor market jobs are less so-this is the case for instance in the Netherlands and in Switzerland. According to IOM data, the number of migrant women prostitutes in many EU countries is far higher than that for nationals: 75 per cent in Germany, 80 per cent in the case of Milan in Italy, etc.
While some women know that they are being trafficked for prostitution, for many the conditions of their recruitment and the extent of abuse and bondage only become evident after they arrive in the receiving country. The conditions of confinement are often extreme, akin to slavery, and so are the conditions of abuse, including rape and other forms of sexual violence, and physical punishments. They are severely underpaid, and wages are often withheld. They are prevented from using protection methods against AIDS, and typically have no right to medical treatment. If they seek police help they may be taken into detention because they are in violation of immigration laws; if they have been provided with false documents there are criminal charges(6).
As tourism has grown sharply over the last decade and become a major development strategy for cities, regions and whole countries, the entertainment sector has seen a parallel growth and recognition as a key development strategy. In many places, the sex trade is part of the entertainment industry and has similarly grown. At some point it becomes clear that the sex trade itself can become a development strategy in areas with high unemployment and poverty and governments desperate for revenue and foreign exchange reserves. When local manufacturing and agriculture can no longer function as sources of employment, of profits and of government revenue, what was once a marginal source of earnings, profits and revenues, now becomes a far more important one. The increased importance of these sectors in development generates growing tie-ins. For instance, when the IMF and the World Bank see tourism as a solution to some of the growth challenges in many poor countries and provide loans for its development or expansion, they may well be contributing to develop a broader institutional setting for the expansion of the entertainment industry and indirectly of the sex trade.
This tie-in with development strategies signals that trafficking in women may well see further expansion. It is a worrisome possibility especially in the context of growing numbers of women with few if any employment options. And such growing numbers are to be expected given high unemployment and poverty, the shrinking of a world of work opportunities that were embedded in the more traditional sectors of these economies, and the growing debt burden of governments rendering them incapable of providing social services and support to the poor. Under these conditions, women in the sex industry also can become a source of government revenue. These tie-ins are structural, not a function of conspiracies. Their weight in an economy will be raised by the absence or limitations of other sources for securing a livelihood, profits and revenues for respectively workers, enterprises and governments.
The Coming Demographic Crisis in the North
Even as the rich countries try harder and harder to keep would-be immigrants and refugees out, they face a growing demographic deficit and rapidly aging populations. According to a major study (Austrian Institute of Demography 2001), at the end of the current century and under current fertility and immigration patterns, population size in Western Europe will have shrunk by 75 milllion and almost 50 percent of the population will be over 60 years old -a first in its history(7). Europe, perhaps more so than the US given its relatively larger intake of immigrants, faces some difficult decisions. Where will they get the new young workers needed to support the growing elderly population and to do jobs considered unattractive by the native born, particularly in a context of rising educational attainment. The numbers of these jobs are not declining, even if the incidence of some of them is; one sector that is likely to add jobs is home and institutional care for the growing numbers of old people. Export of older people and of economic activities is one option being considered now. But there is a limit to how many old people and low wage jobs an economy can export and a society can tolerate. Immigration is expected to be part of the solution.
In the US, the evidence suggests a slightly different pattern. By century's end the forecasted fall for the US is 34 million people, though this represents a point in the upward slope which will not be completed until after the end of this century. The evidence is fairly clear that a significant component of population growth in the US over the last two decades as well as labor force growth is accounted for by immigrants, both second generation and foreign born. In both cases, immigrants account for a larger component of growth than their share in respectively the general population and the total labor force.
Yet the way the countries in the global north are proceeding is not preparing them to handle this future scenario. They are building walls to keep would-be immigrants out. At a time of growing refugee flows, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees faces an even greater shortage of funds than usual. Given an effective demand for immigrant workers, and indeed families for demographic purposes, both of these policy preferences are likely to have negative repercussions for Europe. They construct the immigrant and the refugee as a negative and undesirable subject, thereby encumbering integration. Further, given firms and households interested in hiring immigrants or determined to do so, for whatever reasons, restrictive policies and racialized representations of the immigrant and the refugee, can be expected to feed the already growing illegal trafficking of people.
Conclusion: The Need for a More Enlightened Immigration Policy
The large and looming issue confronting societies under the rule of law is whether policies that brutalize people - no matter what their nationality - and promote criminalized profit-making through the trade in people, are desirable and indeed sustainable if we are to keep up our systems based on the rule of law for which our forebears fought so hard and spilled so much blood.
Allowing this sort of brutalization and criminality is a very high price to pay for maintaining border control, and sooner or later it begins to tear at the fabric of the lawful state and of civil society.
The risks to our societies and to us - citizens - fully documented, are well illustrated by what is happening today in the US. The events of September 11 and the subsequent restrictions on the civil liberties of particular immigration groups in the US is tearing at, and some would say weakening the rule of law as it affects all US residents. The government in the US is granting itself more and more authority to deal directly, in an extrajudicial way, with matters that used to run through judiciaries or that would not be considered a matter for the government to get involved with. In so doing, the US government is violating basic rights not only of those it has profiled as possibly dangerous but also of its citizens, all citizens, not just those who might be suspect.
Are there ways of regulating the flow of people into our societies that could strengthen, rather than weaken, its civic fabric? The repeated incidents of would-be immigrants dying at the hands of illegal traffickers surely do not. They risk producing indifference when it happens over and over again. And they risk promoting acceptance of these deaths among ourselves and our children, all in the name of maintaining control over entry.
We are not only paying a price for those who die on our soil; we are also paying a price for those who are smuggled into our countries alive. The price we pay for allowing the abuse that is human smuggling is much higher than the "price" we pay for accommodating these people who just want a chance to work-and work they do. Indeed, much research suggests that we actually gain from the presence of these immigrants. For instance, 17 per cent of entrepreneurs in London belong to ethnic communities, a far higher share than their population share.
Continuing to use policies that make possible the brutalization of would-be migrants and the profit-making of criminal smugglers is a cancer deep inside our states and societies. It is the price we pay for criminalizing undocumented immigrants and, more generally, for resorting to policing and militarization as the way of regulating immigration. The US illustrates this to some extent. In the name of effective control, the new US 1996 Immigration Act strengthened policing by reducing judiciary review of immigration police actions. A crucial issue here is the object of the expanded policing: It is not known criminals or firms suspected of violating environmental regulations or drug dealers. It is a population sector, not even select individuals, but a fairly broad spectrum of men, women and children.
There are consequences to this tension between, on the one hand, the strenghtening of police approaches to immigrant regulation and, on the other, the strengthening of civil and human rights and the civic empowerment associated with a stronger sense of civil society. Sooner or later this policing will get caught in the expanding web of civil and human rights. And these rights will include those of citizens. Policing, when unchecked by civil review, can easily violate such rights and interfere with the functioning of civil society.
If my son decided to go write the great American novel by spending time with farm workers or in garment sweatshops, and there were an INS (Immigration and Naturalization Services) raid he could well be part of the suspects-because I know he would not be carrying his US passport with him. Or worse, if he were among the farmworkers in California running away from the INS police and pushed towards jumping in one of the water levies, as has happened a number of times over the last few years, he might have been one of those who drowned. The most dramatic account of these incidents has it that the turbulent waters seemed less threatening than the INS police with their guns and shouting, and that, indeed, these farmworkers may have been pressured in terror into the waters and drowned. After the new 1996 law, many of these INS actions can escape review and accountability in front of a judge if the persecuted were merely suspected of being undocumented. Sooner or later abusive or excess policing and the weakening of judicial review of such police actions will interfere with the aspiration towards the rule of law that is such a deep part of our inheritance and our lived reality. Sooner or later, this type of police action will touch us, the documented. We need to find another way of regulating entry: now we are strengthening modes of regulation that carry a high cost not only in immigrant deaths but also to the rule of law.
This is an iteresting overview of some of the reasons why European public broadcasting is in crisis. What is seriously lacking though is any mention of what it means, or, let's be fair, what it meant.
I see this piece as a good example of the difficulties of understanding and explaining "differences," and I would like to discuss it in class tomorrow. Think about it.
The New York Times - State-Aided Broadcasting Faces Scrutiny Across Europe
February 16, 2004
State-Aided Broadcasting Faces Scrutiny Across Europe
By ERIC PFANNER
International Herald Tribune
Like the country homes where its costume dramas are set, public broadcasting has long seemed like a fixture of the media landscape in Europe, featuring programming that is regarded by many as part of their cultural identity.
But lately, public broadcasters have been thrust into the harsh glare of their own klieg lights. At the BBC and at a French public television network, France 2, top executives have resigned after journalists were cited for mistakes in reporting. In Italy, the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has moved to increase its oversight of the public broadcaster RAI, raising concerns about independence of news and other programming.
The new concerns come at a particularly bad time for broadcasters, as regulators and competitors are gearing up for a closer look at their mission, and at the fees or taxes that sustain them.
Some viewers and private-sector competitors are complaining ever more loudly about the nearly 20 billion euros ($25.5 billion) in public financing that public television and radio receive across Europe.
"Public service broadcasting is in a struggle to remain relevant," an executive at one large European public broadcaster said, insisting on anonymity. "It will live or die based on its credibility."
Some experts say the struggle for relevance plays a part in news reporting lapses at the BBC and at France 2. Last week, as the furor over a report critical of the BBC's reporting on the British government's case for war in Iraq was easing, France 2's news director was forced to resign, and a popular anchor was suspended.
They had wrongly reported on the nightly newscast that the former prime minister, Alain Juppé, planned to resign from various political posts after being convicted on corruption charges. At the same time, Mr. Juppé was actually announcing on the rival TF1 channel, which is privately owned, that he planned to stay on.
As conspiracy theories swirled, some journalists at France 2 said there were signs of a plot by the right-leaning government of President Jacques Chirac to discredit public broadcasting - never particularly popular with conservatives - by giving France 2 a bum steer on the Juppé news. But others said the mistake probably had more to do with France 2's desperate struggle to stay competitive with TF1 despite trailing badly in ratings and resources.
The difficulty of striking a balance between quality and commercial success is an increasingly common lament among many public broadcasters in Europe.
"We're supposed to have quality programming that is up to par with Arte," a publicly financed, French-German venture that shows highbrow cultural programs, said Alban Mikoczy, a high-ranking editor at France 2.
Political interference has been more obvious in Italy, where the RAI public broadcasting system is governed by a board dominated by political appointees loyal to the prime minister. Analysts cite numerous instances in which Mr. Berlusconi has used his influence to prevent programming critical of him or his government from being aired.
Now, some executives at the BBC, long regarded as the gold standard of independence among publicly financed broadcasters, are worried that it could come under increased political pressure, after an outside report sided firmly against a BBC reporter's claims that the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair had intentionally "sexed up" reports on whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
The government is reviewing candidates for chairman of the BBC's board, after Gavyn Davies, the previous chairman, and Greg Dyke, the director general and day-to-day manager, resigned after the inquiry. Both had stood firm after the government objected to its reporting.
The BBC's setback came at an inopportune time. With a review of the broadcaster's charter due in 2006, British regulators have begun work on a broad examination of public service broadcasting; a report is to be published in April. The Times of London reported on Sunday that the government is considering a range of proposals for the BBC, including breaking it up into separate units for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Meanwhile, the BBC has delayed work on its own recommendations for the charter review, pending the appointment of a new leader.
Given the politically charged backdrop, the BBC is preparing to parry assaults on the license fee, which provides it with about £2.5 billion ($4.7 billion) a year, the majority of its revenue. Anyone in Britain with a television must pay £112 a year.
The financing and structure of public broadcasting varies widely across Europe. Some broadcasters are financed almost entirely by license fees or taxes; others, like Britain's government-chartered Channel 4, rely entirely on commercial money. Still others, particularly in southern Europe, are a hybrid, accepting financing from both sources. Germany provides the biggest amount of public financing - 6.6 billion euros ($8.4 billion) last year for the broadcasters ARD and ZDF, which also obtain some of their money from commercial means.
To some private investors who are vying with public networks for viewers, that is unfair competition.
Last year, after he assumed control of ProSiebenSat1, Germany's second-biggest commercial TV business after Bertelsmann's RTL, the American media entrepreneur Haim Saban criticized the German system in a newspaper interview.
"There's something I don't understand," Mr. Saban said. "How can public broadcasters that receive millions and millions of euros in fee revenues have the right to broadcast commercials and siphon 400 million euros to 500 million euros in advertising revenue from private broadcasters?"
But with more than 40 percent market share, public television remains popular in Germany, and proposals to overhaul the system radically have not gotten far, though there have been efforts to tinker around the edges.
In France, however, the specter of privatization has been dangled at France 2 and at Radio France, the public radio system, where journalists went back to work over the weekend after a five-week strike over pay. After all, the government sold off TF1 in 1987 - and it leads France 2 by a wide margin in the ratings race.
As in Britain, French regulators are preparing this summer to study consumer attitudes toward public service broadcasting. European Union regulators are also taking an interest. Brussels, which has taken a tough stance against government aid in other industries, has steered clear of public financing for the media because of the political and cultural sensitivities; lobbyists for public broadcasters worry privately, however, that the recent developments will embolden regulators to listen more carefully to those who would like to see such financing abolished.
Until recently, the BBC was seen by many analysts as a model of how a public broadcaster could adapt to a more competitive commercial setting. It maintains a vast production operation, employing tens of thousands of Britons and providing a counterweight to the American programming juggernaut. And the previous leadership moved to expand in areas such as children's broadcasting, digital archive services and the Internet.
While the BBC has drawn criticism for what some Britons say is a dumbing-down of the broadcaster's once-highbrow programming, others welcome the move away from what they see as a snobbish tradition of noblesse oblige, rooted in a discredited class system.
But critics of the BBC also questioned whether the broadcaster's new marketplace focus might have led it to push the envelope too far in its reporting of Blair's case for war.
Regardless of the outcome of the license fee review, commercial pressures on public broadcasters will only grow in coming years as governments manage the transition from analog to digital broadcasting. Millions of Europeans already subscribe to digital satellite services, and digital terrestrial technology is eventually intended to render analog broadcasting obsolete.
That will mean a proliferation of viewer choice, making life even more challenging for public broadcasters - even if they do not compound the damage with their own journalistic mistakes and political miscalculations.
Kevin O'Brien in Berlin, Eric Sylvers in Milan and Elisabeth Franck-Dumas in Paris contributed reporting for this article.
This is a site that deserves some attention. It is a cultural webzine made out of several European cultural sites. The level of the articles seems pretty high, and you will find great articles on some key issues like diversity and identity.
The very fact that you have participants from different countries and the use of different languages in a same virtual space gives interesting clues on some of the trasnformations of Europe
Eurozine - Changing Europe: Enlargement, Identity, Diversity
The right of center Dutch Government decided to limit the intake of migrants coming from the 10 new members of the EU. The fear of a huge flow of immigrants runs high among today's members. Some countries, like the UK and Ireland are in favor of a free flow while Finland, Belgium and others want a certain control.
In this story we learn that the right favors the free circulation of labor. 19% of the population of the Netetherlands was born elsewhere (mainly Turkey, Marocco and the Caribbean). Migrants who will be sent back to their countries of origin will receive a plane ticket and a certain amount of money.
Le Monde - Les Pays-Bas limitent l'entrée des travailleurs européens
Les Pays-Bas limitent l'entrée des travailleurs européens
LE MONDE | 27.01.04 | 13h17 • MIS A JOUR LE 27.01.04 | 13h40
Le gouvernement de centre-droit a fixé à 22 000 maximum le nombre de ressortissants des dix nouveaux Etats membres de l'UE qui seront autorisés à s'installer dans le royaume. Cette "soupape de sécurité" vise d'abord les ouvriers polonais.
Après des mois de discussions, le gouvernement néerlandais a décidé, vendredi 23 janvier, de limiter à 22 000 au maximum le nombre de travailleurs issus des dix nouveaux Etats membres de l'Union européenne (UE) qui pourront s'installer dans le royaume. "Il ne s'agit pas de poissons et nous ne parlons donc pas de quotas" a indiqué, non sans une certaine hypocrisie, Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, le ministre des affaires économiques du gouvernement de centre-droit dirigé par Jan Peter Balkenende.
M. Brinkhorst, membre du parti D 66 (libéral réformateur) affirme aussi que la libre-circulation des travailleurs, principe de base du marché intérieur européen, s'appliquera bel et bien aux ressortissants des dix pays qui intègreront l'Union le 1er mai. Le ministre était auparavant défavorable à cette mesure de limitation, réclamée en revanche par son collègue Gerrit Zalm, ministre des affaires économiques (VVD, libéral), qui avait évoqué le risque de voir les frontières néerlandaises "submergées" par un nouvel afflux de travailleurs étrangers.
Aujourd'hui le gouvernement de La Haye affirme seulement avoir installé une "soupape de sécurité" et il évite de parler ouvertement de sa véritable intention : se prémunir contre l'arrivée massive d'ouvriers polonais sur un marché de travail dont la situation s'est fortement détériorée au cours des derniers mois. Le taux de chômage atteint 5,5 % aujourd'hui alors qu'il n'a pas dépassé 3 % ces dix dernières années. Le Bureau central du Plan (CPB) a ajouté à la crainte des dirigeants en estimant que, faute de mesures de limitation, de 5 000 à 10 000 travailleurs d'Europe centrale et orientale tenteraient de s'installer chaque année aux Pays-Bas.
CONTRÔLE TEMPORAIRE
Cela a achevé de convaincre le premier ministre, qui avait rejeté antérieurement toute idée de "quotas" pour les nouveaux Etats membres de l'Union. D'abord calquée sur la position de la Grande-Bretagne, l'Irlande ou la Suède, hostiles à toute mesure de limitation, l'attitude de M. Balkenende est désormais proche de celle de la Belgique, l'Espagne, la Grèce et la Finlande, favorables à une politique temporaire de contrôle, afin de ne pas déstabiliser les marchés nationaux du travail, conformément à des dispositions négociées entre les Quinze et qui promettent d'être appliquées de manière inégale selon les pays.
La mesure décidée aux Pays-Bas sera appliquée, en principe, pendant deux ans, avant d'être éventuellement corrigée. D'ici là, les ressortissants des nouveaux Etats membres devront réclamer un permis de travail qui leur sera accordé sans condition, sauf si le quota de 22 000 travailleurs était atteint. Quelque 10 000 travailleurs saisonniers sont déjà recrutés chaque année, notamment par le secteur horticole. A l'heure actuelle, les ressortissants de pays non européens qui espèrent obtenir un permis ne se le voient octroyé que si un "besoin réel" de travailleurs étrangers est démontré.
Si le gouvernement est, comme l'opposition, divisé sur la politique à suivre, des organisations patronales se déclarent, à l'instar des courants les plus libéraux, hostiles à la mesure adoptée la semaine dernière, que l'une d'elles dépeint comme "un compromis typiquement politicien". Pour le groupement patronal VNO-NCW, la libre-circulation des travailleurs ne doit souffrir aucune restriction. "Nous avons besoin de ces travailleurs immigrés pour faire tourner l'économie", a expliqué un porte-parole de cette organisation. S'inspirant des chiffres du Bureau du plan, les patrons soulignent que l'accueil des nouveaux arrivants n'entraînera, à l'horizon 2006, qu'un surcoût annuel de 70 millions d'euros pour les dépenses publiques. Entre 2000 et 2002, les PME ont embauché plus de 60 000 travailleurs étrangers.
Le débat sur "l'immigration de travail" relance, en tout cas, la polémique sur la présence des étrangers dans le pays. Sur les 16 millions de Néerlandais quelque 19 % sont d'origine immigrée, essentiellement turque, marocaine et antillaise. Saluée récemment par une étude officielle, la capacité d'intégration de la société néerlandaise a pourtant été fortement remise en cause au cours des dernières années, notamment par le parti du tribun populiste, feu Pim Fortuyn - la LPF. Cette formation a pesé sur l'évolution politique du royaume, le gouvernement Balkenende prônant une politique plus dure en matière de droit d'asile. En même temps qu'il annonçait, la semaine dernière, sa décision pour les travailleurs des nouveaux Etats membres de l'UE, le gouvernement indiquait qu'il procèderait à l'éloignement de quelque 26 000 demandeurs d'asile d'ici à 2007. La situation de 2 300 demandeurs devrait, en revanche, être prochainement régularisée en vertu d'une mesure d'amnistie.
Les personnes devant être expulsées se verront offrir un billet d'avion et une somme d'argent, dont le montant n'est pas déterminé, pour se réinstaller dans leur pays d'origine. En l'attente, elles pourront intégrer des "centres de départ" a indiqué le ministère de l'immigration. Quelque 13 000 demandes d'asile ont été enregistrées en 2003, ce qui marque une forte diminution : 19 000 demandes avaient été introduites en 2002 et 32 000 en 2001.
Jean-Pierre Stroobants
• ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 28.01.04
Europeans seem to enjoy the many shades of "gray" which might be a very important attitude in this world. This story shows that a new form of commitment between people which is a little bit more than a fee union and less than an actual marriage is quite popular. Read it.
My main point here is that we often learn much more about different places, countries, and culture by looking at the way people live and feel rather than by only sticking to politics and business. Fiction is not bad either.
The New York Times - In Europe, Lovers Now Propose: Marry Me, a Little
February 15, 2004
In Europe, Lovers Now Propose: Marry Me, a Little
By SARAH LYALL
ARSEILLE, France — Nathalie Ramirez and Djillali Antar have been together for eight years. But like many modern couples whose relationships are shaped by practicality and logistics as much as romance, they are not sure what they want in the future. Marriage, so far, has always seemed like a goal too much.
So two years ago, they presented themselves to a court in Aix-en-Provence and signed a pacte civil de solidarité, or PACS, as they are popularly known, giving them many of the same legal rights as married people but not, Ms. Ramirez explained with some relief, committing them to be together forever.
Today they are happily, if somewhat ambivalently, "PACS'ed" in an arrangement that Ms. Ramirez, 28, and Mr. Antar, 31, say does not feel like conventional marriage, but a light approximation of it. They do not wear wedding bands. They still refer to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. When they visit her parents, Mr. Antar does not spend the night. He has not even told his parents, who are originally from Algeria, that he got PACS'ed.
"They wouldn't understand," he said. "For them, it is marriage or nothing."
Even as President Bush is proposing to spend $1.5 billion to promote marriage in the United States, European countries are moving in the opposite direction. They are granting new status to couples looking for some legal rights in the broad gray area between living together casually and "till death do us part."
What European laws have in common, said Kathleen Kiernan, a professor of social policy and demography at the London School of Economics, is that they take a pragmatic approach to their populations' changing attitudes about the role — and even the relevance — of marriage in contemporary life.
"In some ways, there has been an acceptance of cohabiting relationships in Europe," Professor Kiernan said. "There isn't a move in European countries to promote marriage — although care has also been taken not to undermine the position of marriage in formulating legislation. Europe has moved toward the idea of committed partnership and committed parenthood, and civil status is a secondary issue."
Gay groups have led the way to registered partnership laws in many European countries; nearly all governments in Western Europe have or are proposing such laws for gays. But today France and some Scandinavian countries also have similar plans for heterosexuals, and at least one other country is considering them.
The result, for the time being at least, is a legal patchwork in which rights and benefits bestowed in one country are not always recognized elsewhere.
For French heterosexuals with religious or political objections to marriage, as well as those suffering from modern angst over what kind of commitment they are prepared to make, the government-issued pacts offer the perfect halfway house.
Speaking in their small apartment here, Ms. Ramirez laughed sheepishly, trying to explain the many things they considered when they decided to get PACS'ed instead of married. Their respective parents, who come from different countries, have not yet met each other, she said. There are the geographical complications of combining her career as a journalist with his job as a secondary school administrator — not to mention her fear of a long-term commitment, and the issue of having children, which they both agree they would undertake only if they were first married.
The civil solidarity pact that they signed confers some stability and legal rights. It means, for instance, that Mr. Antar can remain in his civil service job in Marseille, living with Ms. Ramirez, secure that he will not be transferred to another area. It means that the couple share property rights and, after three years as official partners, will get the same tax breaks as married people.
But it also allows either member to dissolve the relationship, with little legal complication, on three months' notice, a source of some comfort to this skittish couple.
"At first, when we PACS'ed, we thought we would be de-PACS'ed after three years, but we changed our minds," said Ms. Ramirez.
The Scandinavian countries, where being unmarried is increasingly the norm, have long allowed such couples to register as domestic partners, mostly as a way to protect any children they have together.
Unmarried couples in Norway who live together with children make up the fastest-growing household census category, having increased to nearly 100,000 people from nearly 61,000 20 years ago, according to the national statistics office. The Norwegian Parliament is considering a proposal to increase significantly the rights of people who are living together, known by a Norwegian word that translates as cohabitants.
Under the proposal, people who have been living together for five years or more, or who have children together, would have inheritance rights like married people. Surviving partners would also be allowed to keep the house the couple lived in and its contents, regardless of what their partner's will says.
Even in Italy, where marriage is so deeply rooted as a foundation of society that it is codified in the Constitution, a proposed law would for the first time grant some legal recognition to unmarried couples.
Among other things, the proposed Italian law would allow the surviving member of a couple in which one of the partners has died the right to remain in the house they shared for a period roughly equal to the length of the relationship.
"No one wants to go against marriage," Alessandra Mussolini, a member of the Italian Parliament and one of the bill's sponsors, said in an interview with The New York Times last November. "I'm married, and I think that is an institution that needs to be respected. But there should not be discrimination against children from unmarried parents, and there still is."
For its part, however, Italy seems loath to grant comparable rights to gay couples; indeed, one of the biggest objections to the bill is that it might somehow open the door to legally recognized gay couples.
At the same time, several other European countries have taken the opposite approach, recognizing gay relationships but refusing to grant special rights to unmarried heterosexuals, on the grounds that they have marriage as an option.
A government proposal still being considered in Britain, for instance, would allow gay couples to register in civil partnerships that would give them inheritance and pension benefits, and next-of-kin rights in hospitals. But when the government announced its plan last summer, gay groups protested, saying that it discriminated against heterosexuals.
In Germany, too, the law on unmarried couples favors gays. Under the country's registered partnership program, gay couples are, among other things, allowed to choose one surname as a shared "partnership name;" they also have increased financial rights in issues like inheritance, housing and maintenance.
About 6,000 couples have registered under the plan so far, said Volker Beck, a member of the German Parliament from the Green Party and a supporter of the law.
The civil solidarity pacts in France, in fact, began as a way for gays to formalize their partnerships, but were broadened, when religious and conservative groups objected, to include heterosexuals. By the end of 2002, according to the French Justice Department, about 133,890 people had signed such pacts.
"The government is opening up to different lifestyles — although I'm not persuaded that being gay is that different from being straight," said Gilles Segrestain, the president of Gaipar, an organization for gays from different nationalities in Paris.
"I think one of the reasons why gay relationships often appeared as being short-lived is because there was no institution, no framework," he said in an interview. "And now when two gay men or lesbians say, `we're PACS'ed,' it's like a straight couple saying, `we're married.' "
Well, not always. For many, it is more like marriage training.
"It's an intermediate way between no commitment and a wedding," said Caroline Vinot, 34, a Frenchwoman who lives in Prague and recently had a baby with her Czech boyfriend. The two are now considering signing a PACS together.
"I think there will probably be one day when it will be convenient for both of us to have this situation be legalized and all the financial and property aspects to be organized between us," she said.
There is still the allure of a traditional wedding, but Ms. Vinot is not sure how ready she is. "I probably would be very excited, with the big cake and the big party and the white dress," she said. "But I'm too scared to get married."
Christian Science Monitor, Poland tightens eastern border as new outpost of EU
EU officials are nervous. They fear illegal immigrants from the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia will easily cross Poland's 800-mile border to enter Western Europe. The Monitor article underscores various challenges and changes taking place as Poland prepares for its new membership. For example, the EU is pumping millions into border security and Poland is introducing new visa policies. This story gives a good idea of the inside views as the country undergoes another major evolutiion in its turbulent history.
In essence, Poland is ditching its old best friends for a new playmate at the risk of local economies collapsing and the disruption of cross-border family relationships. I've seen few articles about the negative impacts of integration. Usually reports will focus on the benefits Poland will receive. Additionally, the border challenges add to an already tense relationship between western and eastern European member states over immigration, employment and identity issues.
Poland tightens eastern border as new outpost of EU
Poland and seven other Central European countries will join the European Union in May - and are under pressure to stem illegal immigration from their eastern neighbors
By Deborah Steinborn | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
TERESPOL, POLAND - The dense forests of this border area make a perfect cover for illegal migrants coming from the east.
Poland is bracing itself. It will soon become an outpost of the expanding European Union.
Last summer, a native American unit of the US Customs Service helped train Polish border guards to spot the telltale signs of crossings along the "green border" - broken twigs and branches, overturned rocks.
"Everyone wants to get in, legally or not," says Wojciech Woloch, an officer with the Polish Border Guard at Terespol. "A lot of people now see Poland as a stepping stone to other places in the EU. Patrolling is a lot tougher than it used to be, but I think we're ready with the equipment and increased staff."
Fortress Europe
Under pressure from current EU members to seal their eastern borders, Poland and seven other Central European countries that will join the union this May are cracking down to stem the flow of illegal migrants from Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia as well as from regions further afield.
They're rolling out high-tech border controls and strict visa requirements for neighboring lands. Otherwise, the EU says, drug, weapons and human smugglers from Central Asia and elsewhere will find an easy back door into Western Europe.
Over the past two years, the native American Shadow Wolves unit has also trained border guards in Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia in an effort to help these new EU members.
Yet as a result of the increased border vigilance, the EU newcomers are shutting out border regions that share close family and trade ties. What's more, the effort could end up encouraging would-be migrants to take an illegal route to the EU.
"I used to drive to Poland every week to make money for my family, and it was no problem," says Stanislav K. "Now I couldn't even get a visa at the embassy. There's no work for us in Belarus, so what are we to do?"
Just before Christmas, he and two friends - natives of Brest, a city across the Bug River from Terespol - raised nearly $500 from families, friends, and their own savings, and paid a smuggler to help them get across. Now the trio is working in Poland, helping to renovate a Warsaw estate.
"We realize that even with visas, the flow from the east will be difficult to stop," says Jan Wegrzyn, a director in the Polish Interior Ministry.
"Whatever visa requirement or detection device we introduce, foreigners will always find a way around it ... nevertheless, we have to meet the standards of the EU."
EU officials stress that higher standards are necessary before candidate countries can join Schengen, a security system that has lifted internal border controls throughout most of the EU. While travel within the union is mostly passport-free under the Schengen agreement, movement into the EU is strictly controlled. For new member states, tight restrictions for local cross-border trade are also mandated.
For all countries about to join, that's meant a rush to revamp equipment, retrain personnel, and introduce new rules - while struggling to maintain relations with their non-EU neighbors next door.
At Terespol, the largest passenger crossing between Poland and Belarus, border guards self-consciously display brand-new night-vision goggles, mobile heat-sensor units, machines that scan the contents of vehicles, and cameras that can detect a person hiding in a dark place or at night.
Indeed, the EU is pouring hundreds of millions of euros into bringing its new eastern frontier up to snuff, from Slovenia down south to Estonia in the north. It will spend $184 million over the next three years on Hungary alone, helping that country to tighten its borders with four countries that have been left out of the union, at least for now.
Poland, with an almost 800-mile-long eastern border lined with forests, lakes and mountains, is among the EU's greatest security concerns as May nears.
"Are we nervous? Of course we are," says an EU official, who declined to be named.
"Just look at a map," says the official. "There are hundreds of miles of unmanned territory in Poland alone, areas with dense woods to hide in. For smugglers of any kind, this is paradise. And countries to the east - Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Moldova - they have a bad reputation for illegal migration already, even before the EU expands."
Polish authorities estimate that more than a hundred thousand undocumented migrants from the two bordering former Soviet republics of Belarus and Ukraine and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad already live in Poland. Many work at undocumented menial jobs on construction sites in homes and gardens.
In search of a living
"They talk about the drug and the sex businesses being imported from Ukraine, but I just want to make an honest living," says Irina, a young Ukrainian nurse with cropped blond hair.
Irina has cleaned houses and cared for sick Ukrainians in Warsaw for the past three years. She hasn't gone home to see her daughter since August. "I don't know whether I'd get back in again, and I can't afford the risk. In Ukraine, I earned maybe $10 a week if I was lucky, and it wasn't enough to feed my family. Here I can earn four times that amount."
In Poland, all visitors from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia have had to show visas at the border since Oct. 1.
Even basic tourist visas cost 30 euros ($38) or more and are valid for just three months a year.
A smuggling ring snared
The EU's efforts to crack down on illegal migration at the soon-to-be new borders have seen some results.
In mid-November, Hungarian and Austrian border guards broke two human smuggling rings that had helped an estimated 10,000 people from southeastern Europe migrate illegally into Hungary, then on to Austria, over the past six years.
In Poland, new passport readers detected several hundred faked documents at eastern border crossings in the past 10 months.
But the measures have isolated the EU candidates' ex-Soviet neighbors. That's been particularly problematic for Poland and Hungary, which have large ethnic minorities in those neighboring countries as well as long-standing economic ties.
"All my cousins, my niece, and my nephews all live in Poland," says Helena, a seamstress from rural Belarus. She's been to the Polish Embassy five times in recent months to apply for a visa, but hasn't gotten one yet. "With these new rules, I can only get a visa for a short time, just once in a year, and I have to show I can afford the stay. I feel like this is a new wall for us, one we cannot get through."
Concerned about relations with their non-EU neighbors, Polish government officials have argued at the EU for more lenient visa requirements for local cross-border traffic. In September, the European Commission proposed a new "local visa" for residents of border areas in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus who need to travel short distances into the EU.
Flexible visas?
The new visa, if approved, would be issued for people who have relatives or property on the other side; it would also help facilitate short- distance commercial travel between countries such as Poland and Ukraine.
However, the proposal is controversial among current EU member states, all of which still need to approve the plan. Meanwhile, some analysts say a dangerous division between EU and non-EU is developing nonetheless.
"People on the other side of those borders don't see what's going on at the policy level, or what the concerns [of the EU] are," says Heather Grabbe, a researcher at the Centre for European Reform in London.
"What they care about is whether or not their daily lives have changed as a result of the EU expansion," she says. "And they have. This new border is a big deal for Russia, for Ukraine, for Belarus. It's already disrupted trade and daily cross-border traffic, and it's kept them from seeing their relatives."
Experts at Poland's Institute of Eastern Studies say the country's cross-border trade with Belarus, Ukraine, and Kaliningrad also risks collapsing under the new visa regime. Though the Polish government doesn't track this type of trade, it estimates it totaled 700 million euros in 2002.
Migrants, meanwhile, say they'll take the illegal route into "Fortress Europe" if need be. Already smugglers have set up shop in border towns like Brest to tempt locals eager to get back to the other side. The smugglers are "easy to find," says Helena.
"You just go to the market and ask around, and they appear," she says. "They ask as much as 600 euros ($760) to get just a few kilometers over [the border] in a "fool-proof" way, and about 300 euros ($380) for forged passports," she says.
"I never would have thought of doing something like that before, but if I had the money now, I'd try."
The Guardian, EU rich and poor split over budget increase
EU president Romano Prodi is having a tough time convincing some member states that the union needs a spending boost of $270bn to fund its enlargement. It seems the 'rich countries' resent financing the union whose 10 new members are the 'poor countries.' The Guardian article previews a long battle to come on this issue.
The necons don't need an alleged plot to thwart EU cohesion - member states are well on their way towards dividing themselves if the drama behind this debate isn't exaggerated. And with financial problems in their own countries, plus the debate over identities, I wonder how such an expanded patchwork of nations will come together under an EU umbrella.
It seems though that the 'rich nations' need to take financial responsibility if they also want to take the helm, which they've indicated through their trilateral meetings. That's the price.
EU rich and poor split over budget increase
Ian Black in Brussels
Wednesday February 11, 2004
Europe's richest nations last night reacted with fury to proposals that would increase Brussels' budget to €143bn, a 25% increase on current spending.
In the first round of what will be a bitter battle, Germany and the UK rounded on plans for the hike, presented by the European commission.
EC president Romano Prodi insisted the increase was vital to finance the union's historic enlargement. He said the money was needed to boost economic competitiveness, create jobs, tackle immigration and finance the union's historic enlargement.
But the chancellor Gordon Brown and finance ministers from other leading nations, including Germany and Sweden, said the EU's budget could not soar when individual countries were trying to tighten their belts.
The argument flared after Mr Prodi defended the proposed increase to €143bn by 2013, an increase of €20bn.
According to one calculation, total spending could reach a trillion euros by the end of the next seven-year budget period. "The gap between ambitious high-level political commitments and the failure to implement must not be allowed to widen further," Mr Prodi warned.
The EU executive insisted any smaller rise would mean cuts in key areas and that the higher ceiling is needed to finance the accession of 10 new and mostly poor countries in May as well as Romania and Bulgaria two years later.
The plan was welcomed by Pat Cox, the Irish president of the European parliament. "We cannot run an ambitious Europe of tomorrow on an empty fuel tank," he said
The commission ignored warnings from the "gang of six" net contributors - Germany, Britain, France, Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands -who are demanding that the budgets be capped to 1% of EU national income. Mr Prodi retorted in Strasbourg last night: "That puts numbers before the political project. It is like building a house by starting with the roof."
Yesterday's exchanges were the first shots in what promises to be a marathon struggle pitting rich against poor members, old against new and minimalists against integrationists
The showdown is not likely before next year - during the UK presidency of the EU.
The Guardian, UK to join rapid reaction force
The wheels are in motion to create small "battle groups" of German, French and British soldiers for deployment to world "hotspots" by 2007. The troops would only be sent to areas where the U.S. has "no direct interest." The plan appears heavily symbolic in the wake of EU failure to create a larger and broader defense apparatus. The Guardian piece touches on the reasons why: EU members are not spending enough to modernize their armies and they won't combine resources in order to save money.
It's clear that the EU wants to be a political and military counterweight to the US, but it won't realistically be able to compete with US funding of its armed forces, even if member states share equipment. It seems the EU will have to make a tough choice: stick closely to Nato or build its own forces at the risk of jeopardizing the Alliance and being a weak military power in the region. Can the EU be a strong institution without a joint armed forces to back its political reach? More food for an identity crisis thought.
UK to join rapid reaction force
New EU battle groups for deployment to 'failing states'
Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday February 11, 2004
The Guardian
Britain, France and Germany, are to set up a joint military force in a ground-breaking initiative expected to be approved by senior EU officials today.
Under the ambitious plan, the three countries will create battle groups of well-trained troops ready to be deployed at a moment's notice to prevent fighting or restore peace around the world.
The battle groups, each of 1,500 troops, will be capable of being deployed within 15 days. They will be active initially for 30 days, but, with a turnaround of troops, could stay at a location for up to 220 days.
Their missions are to be "appropiate for, but not limited to, use in failed or failing states (of which most are in Africa)", according to the draft proposal.
The force will operate under the mandate of chapter seven of the UN charter, which covers peacemaking and peacekeeping operations sanctioned by the UN security council. The plan is the outcome of the British-French summit, held in November, when Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac, the French president, agreed it was time the EU "pulled its weight", and bolstered its influence, by intervening early on and with force in conflicts.
British defence sources say the plan will be subject to approval by the EU's military committee and also by the union's political and security committee. It is expected to be discussed by Mr Blair, Mr Chirac, and the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, at their trilateral summit in Berlin next week.
The aim is for the the joint battle groups, capable of air, land and amphibious missions, to be ready by 2007. It is likely the troops would be used only in limited, regional, crises in which the United States had no direct interest.
The move reflects frustration at the inability of the EU to realise its original aim of setting up a rapid reaction force of 60,000 troops, and the failure of European countries to modernise their armed forces and save money by sharing equipment - failures which have been having a serious impact on Nato, as most EU members are also members of the US-led military alliance.
Nato's new secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, told an international security conference in Munich last weekend that the alliance could soon find itself unable to deploy troops to hotspots around the world unless it tackled serious shortcomings in its armed forces.
"If this shortfall is left unaddressed we will soon reach a point where our political reach goes beyond our military grasp," Mr Scheffer said.
He was referring in particular to Afghanistan. Despite the severe budgetary problems facing his department, Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, has offered British troops as leaders in an expanded Nato peacekeeping mission in northern Afghanistan.
Mr Scheffer also said Nato should not rule out a role in Iraq. "If a legitimate Iraqi government asks for our assistance, and if we have the support of the UN, Nato should not abdicate from its responsibilities."
However, Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister, expressed what he called "deep scepticism" about the US proposal for Nato to play a role in Iraq, warning that such missions could threaten the cohesion of Nato. "The risk of failure and the potentially very serious, possibly fatal consequences for the alliance, absolutely must be taken into consideration," he told the Munich conference.
Just to follow up on the class discussion, I think this op/ed in The New York Times shows a common contrast in criticism of the Bush Administration compared with the Spiegel article. In this column, the writer's tone and language are much calmer yet critical of his own administration. I think this approach is much more practical from U.S. newspapers.
"Lost in Credibility Gulch"
By Bob Herbert of The New York Times
Lost in Credibility Gulch
By BOB HERBERT
he question: What can we believe?
The president is genial enough, but it might be time for a bipartisan truth squad to follow him around, sorting out the facts from his musings, speculations, fantasies and mis-rememberings.
Iraq has shown us the trouble that can lurk in the gaps between reality and whatever it is that George W. Bush believes or says. Tim Russert, during his hourlong interview with Mr. Bush on NBC's "Meet the Press," displayed a quote from the president's address to the nation last March 17:
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
More than 500 American troops and thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed in the war that was launched on that faulty data. And the war goes on.
"I expected there to be stockpiles of weapons," Mr. Bush told Mr. Russert.
Here at home, the president has been as wrong about jobs as he was about weapons of mass destruction. More than two million jobs have vanished on Mr. Bush's watch and the recent uptick in job creation has, by all accounts, been meager.
The tax cuts signed into law by Mr. Bush in May 2003 were euphemistically dubbed the Jobs and Growth Act. Workers are still waiting for the jobs. Despite a surge in the economy, we've actually been going backward with regard to employment. There are 700,000 fewer jobs now than when the recovery from the recession began back in November 2001.
If I were advising the president, I'd suggest he form his own truth squad to vet his policies and public statements and advise him on ways to maintain a high level of credibility. That might have helped him avoid the fiasco over the cost of his recent "reform" of Medicare.
The bill, which established a prescription drug benefit, was supposed to cost no more than $400 billion over the next decade. The White House had a hard time rounding up support from conservatives who thought even that was too much. Less than two months after the bill was signed, the administration disclosed that it would actually cost an estimated $534 billion, one-third more than the original estimate.
Last week the president unveiled a $2.4 trillion budget that hardly anyone, on the left or the right, believes is credible. Among other things, it includes an increase in military spending of 7 percent, or $26.5 billion, to $401.7 billion. But it does not include the cost of continued military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan!
Those estimated costs — scores of billions of dollars — will not be made public until after the November elections.
Samuel Butler said, "I care about truth not for truth's sake but for my own."
Mr. Bush presented himself in 2000 as an honest, straight-shooting Texan, an aw-shucks kind of guy whose word, unlike that of the sitting president ("I did not have sexual relations . . ."), could always be trusted.
The credibility that he enjoyed during that campaign, and which reached a peak in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, has steadily eroded since then. He said he was a compassionate conservative, but he has hammered programs designed to assist the poorest and most vulnerable among us. His administration has taken a blowtorch to the environment. And his fiscal policies are so outlandish that liberals, moderates and conservatives are asking if he's taken leave of his senses.
During the run-up to war, the public heard ominous references to mushroom clouds and was encouraged to believe there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11.
It's time to put an end to the fantasies and the deceit, which have landed us in a quagmire overseas and the equivalent of fiscal quicksand at home.
It's not too much to ask that the president of the United States speak the clear truth about his policies and their implications. Mr. Bush would do himself and his country a favor by establishing a closer relationship with reality and a more intense commitment to the truth.
Those Americans who have put their trust in the president deserve nothing less.
This is an opinion piece from Der Tagespiegel, a daily newspaper in the Berlin area. It addresses the issue of EU countries (specifically Germany and also France and England) resisting higher contributions to EU coffers without concrete results for themselves, while still claiming to want a bigger and more powerful Europe.
The author contends that this lack of commitment towards a goal of either a more powerful Europe or a Europe with less money in the EU coffers and therefore less power, is slowing things down considerably. She says that that EU agriculture and development support for the new member states is a very realizable goal, but that first Germany has to clarify that that is indeed what it wants, and then be more involved in Brussels to identify areas where cuts can be made and then come up with a workable budget. The problem is that this may be an unpopular course to take at home, even though the long-term results are still desirable.
Here are some translated sections of the article:
“When it comes down to it, the heads of different countries always agree – we want more Europe. More Eurpope in research, more Europe in development, more Europe in foreign policy… and officially they still want more Europe, but they no one wants to pay for it.”
“In Germany at the moment it’s hard for people to accept that people should dig deeper in the pockets for more money while at the same time the EU commission is making increased demands for savings and economic reforms from the German government.”
“As a Nettozahler (disproportionally taxed country?), Germany is one of the few countries that gets less money for farmers and regions than they put in.”
“If they want to pay less, however, they have to say how the Eastern zone should instead be financed.”
“But Germany and its fellow disproportionally taxed countries lack the political courage to call for cutbacks on their own spending.”
Der Tagesspiegel - Mehr Geld fuer mehr Europa? Deutschland und die Erhoehung des EU-Haushalts
Vornehme Zurückhaltung
Mehr Geld für mehr Europa? Deutschland und die Erhöhung des EU-Haushalts
Von Flora Wisdorff
Immer, wenn es zum Schwur kommt, entscheiden die Staats- und Regierungschefs einstimmig: Wir wollen mehr Europa. Mehr Europa bei der Bildung, mehr Europa bei der Forschung, mehr Europa in der Außenpolitik, und mehr Europa für die Polizei. Weniger Europa bei der Agrar- oder Regionalpolitik kam nicht in Frage. Bisher war das kein Problem. Selbst wenn mehr Europa auch hieß: mehr Geld für Europa, und mehr Macht für Europa.
Mehr Europa wollen sie – offiziell – immer noch. Aber mehr bezahlen wollen sie dafür nicht. Das ist ein Widerspruch, denn mehr Europa für das gleiche Geld, das funktioniert nicht. In Deutschland ist es zwar im Augenblick schwer vermittelbar, dass die Menschen für Europa noch tiefer in die Tasche greifen sollen – und gleichzeitig die Europäische Kommission von der Regierung einen noch schärferen Spar- und Reformkurs fordert. Immerhin würde eine Erhöhung des EU-Haushalts auf 1,15 Prozent des Bruttonationaleinkommens, wie sie die Kommission fordert, die deutschen Steuerzahler erheblich mehr belasten. Das Budget würde zwischen 2007 und 2013 von 100 auf 143 Milliarden Euro steigen – jetzt zahlt Deutschland bereits 22 Milliarden. Als „Nettozahler“ gehört Deutschland zudem zu jenen, die weniger aus den EU-Töpfen für Bauern und Regionen zurückbekommen, als sie einzahlen.
Dennoch: Wenn die Nettozahler weniger zahlen wollen, dann müssen sie sagen, wie die Osterweiterung stattdessen finanziert werden soll. Sie alle haben zugestimmt – wohlwissend, dass die zehn Neuen mit ihren landwirtschaftlichen und wirtschaftsschwachen Strukturen die Agrar- und Regionalpolitik viel Geld kosten werden.
Sparpotenzial gibt es hier genug: Immerhin verschlingen beide Bereiche zusammen 80 Prozent des EU-Haushalts. Aber Deutschland und seinen Mitstreitern fehlt der politische Mut, im Agrarbereich oder bei der Regionalförderung zu sparen. Denn dann müssten auch die deutschen, französischen oder englischen Bauern mit Abstrichen rechnen – und die ostdeutschen Länder auch. Hier wollen Schröder oder Chirac also offensichtlich nicht weniger Europa.
Zudem haben die Staatschefs ihr Ziel, die EU bis 2010 zur wettbewerbsfähigsten Region der Erde zu werden, nicht zurückgenommen. Auch dafür plant die Kommission Milliarden für Forschung und Innovationspolitik ein, genauso wie für die Sicherung der Außengrenzen und die europäische Außenpolitik. Auch diese Pläne wurden von den Nettozahlern noch nicht zunichte gemacht.
Insgesamt gibt es also den Wunsch nach mehr Europa. Aber beim EU-Haushalt ist es wie beim nationalen Budget: Dort, wo es politisch schwierig ist, sinnlose Subventionen zu streichen, hält man sich damit zurück. Lieber unterstellt man den Bürokraten aus Brüssel überzogene Wünsche. Wenn man in beiden Bereichen an der richtigen Stelle sparen würde, wäre die EU-Finanzierung kein Problem. Die Mitgliedsländer müssen sich darüber klar werden, ob sie grundsätzlich ein anderes Europa haben wollen, eines mit weniger Geld, das dann auch weniger Macht hat. Das müssen sie dann aber auch offen sagen – und die Konsequenzen tragen.
The proposition about the veil is raising a very controversial and complex debate that goes beyond the typical black and white devide.
Surprisingly enough, even the Catholic environment is split into different positions.
According to his recent speech in Rome (January 12, 2004,) The Pope himself criticized Jacques Chirac’s government initiative.
The following article says that Pope John Paul II condemned “the secularity that becomes laicism.” In other words, the French new rule is interpreted by the Church as a deviating form of laicism: “a principle of liberty that becomes a refusal of the freedom of every single individual.”
On the other hand, the Italian newspaper “L’Avvenire” published an interview to the authoritative Islamist Samir Khalil Samir, a Jesuit, who said that the veil is part of a phenomenon of “non-integration,” that has its roots in the current European crisis.”
www.chiesa, L'Espresso, "Il velo proibito. La Francia tra laicita' e islamismo"
This "Agenda for a Growing Europe", often referred to as the "Sapir report" is a recent assessment of the EU situation today and its need for growth. Establkished on the initiative of the president of the European Commission, it assesses strengths and weaknesses and suggests an agenda to "make the EU economic system deliver." Very useful.
Just a mention because all of us should have read that in The New York Times, and two questions:
How do you value, and define the differences, if you find any, between this article coming from a prestigious German newspaper, and the stories you have read in the Times, The Washington Post, or your favorite daily?
Do you see it as a valid example of how the Europeans view the United States?
Please answer by posting comments.
The New York Times - The Debate over Responsibility for the War
The Debate over Responsibility for the War
By DER SPIEGEL
George W. Bush is on the defensive. His CIA director confirms the absence of weapons stockpiles in Iraq and the national budget is moving toward a record deficit. With the election nine months away, the opposing Democratic camp is bursting with confidence.
The President is no friend of the press. George W. Bush, notorious for linguistic gaffes and muddled logic, doesn't like spontaneous questions, and he gives fewer press conferences than most of his predecessors. Whenever he does appear before the White House press corps, the dramatics have already been worked out to the smallest detail, even though Bush likes to give the impression of camaraderie by using journalists' first names ("Your turn, John").
This made the request that US broadcast network NBC received last week all the more unusual. The President, according to the request, wanted to appear on the Sunday program "Meet the Press." Of all people, George W. Bush had chosen Tim Russert, the intellectual grand inquisitor who moderates the weekend's best political talk show, to deliver a message to his fellow Americans: I am still here, and I am still in control. The public relations offensive is necessary. In recent weeks, the man in charge at the White House has lost a great deal of his reputation and support.
His last victory, the capture of Saddam Hussein, was quickly forgotten. The carefully staged State of the Union address on Capitol Hill proved to be a propaganda flop, and even fellow Republicans criticized the Bush budget proposal for 2005 presented last Monday as an irresponsible "fantasy budget." It gets even worse: According to a Gallup poll conducted last week, the sitting president had fallen behind John F. Kerry, the current favorite of the Democratic Party, by a margin of 46 to 53 percent. And the election is only nine months away.
John Kerry, the senator from Massachusetts, celebrated his biggest victory to date in last Tuesday's primary elections. He is emerging as a competitor who, thanks to his heroic record as a Vietnam veteran, could truly pose a threat to George W. Bush. And it was precisely in this unfortunate week that the troublesome issue of the war in Iraq landed on Bush' desk once again.
It was not just anyone, but CIA Director George Tenet, a confidant of the president, who addressed the public last Thursday at Washington's Georgetown University and bluntly exposed the propagandistic trickery with which commander-in-chief George W. Bush led the American nation into the Iraq war.
The Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), chief coordinator of all US intelligence services, took matters into his own hands when it became clear that his people - and, most of all, Tenet himself - were about to be blamed for the US' costly military adventure.
The hunt had been triggered by David Kay. The former head of the Iraq Survey Group quit his job out of frustration, because his 1,400 specialists had been unable to find any nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Kay told a group of surprised senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iraq had probably not had such weapons for years.
"It looks as though we were all wrong, and that is most disturbing," complained the man who, as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq after 1991, was apparently far more effective in bringing about disarmament than Washington would like to admit. According to Kay, however, George W. Bush did not knowingly mislead the American people; instead, the intelligence services "misused" him.
The beleaguered Tenet fought back. He dutifully absolved his president of responsibility, claiming that the war was justified and, furthermore, that no one had coerced the CIA into doctoring its analyses to support a military campaign which, according to revelations by the administration's first treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, had been planned ever since Bush came into office in January 2001.
"Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful - or thoughtful - discussion of intelligence these days," the DCI complained, passing the buck on to someone else. "Our analysts were certainly of different opinions on many important aspects of this weapons program, and we believe that this debate was clearly expressed." They "never claimed that there was acute danger."
One person, in particular, is now feeling exposed: Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was first considered a voice of reason until, in late 2002, he transformed himself into the spokesman of the hawks. In a dramatic appearance on February 5, 2003, the retired general attempted to force the UN Security Council to approve military action just six weeks before the attack on Iraq. Powell had spent days at CIA headquarters collecting top-secret information to "report what the United States knows about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."
"Any statement that I issue today is based upon sources, solid sources. These are not simply claims," Powell assured the council, and then proceeded to serve up one lie after the next. He told the Security Council that the "deadly weapons programs" were a "real and present danger" and that the United States had "first-hand descriptions of mobile biological weapons laboratories."
In contrast, Kay now says: "We found information that led to entirely different conclusions." Like the UN inspectors before him, he too concludes that defectors "said what we wanted them to say." The mobile laboratories were apparently used for a highly mundane purpose: to deliver hydrogen for weather balloons.
"Saddam Hussein has never accounted for 550 artillery shells with mustard, 30,000 empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents," Powell said. Today Kay says: "There is no indication that these warheads were ever filled."
By now, almost every one of Powell's claims based on CIA information has been refuted. No wonder that Powell, to the dismay of the White House, has now come to the conclusion that his decision on the war might have been different today: "The absence of weapons of mass destruction changes the political calculation."
But if the calculation was wrong, then only one person is responsible - not Tenet, not Powell, but George W. Bush.
It is this debate over responsibility for the war that now hangs around the President's neck like a millstone. Last week in Charleston, South Carolina, he too conceded that the often-cited weapons had not been found. However, he stubbornly stuck to his justification for the preventive attack: "Based on what I knew then and based on what I know today, America did the right thing in Iraq."
Now he feels compelled to appoint a commission to determine the true reasons why the CIA supplied false information on Saddam's weapons arsenal. Bush, who can appoint the members of this body himself, asked former Democratic Senator Chuck Robb, once a conservative judge, to serve as its chairman. However, the commission will not present its findings until 2005, after the presidential election. Of course, the President is hoping to be cleared of any blame, just as Tony Blair has managed to stage his own acquittal.
These days, Bush is becoming increasingly driven by events he no longer controls. Shiite leader Ali al-Sistani apparently has more influence over the timing and course of the power transfer in Iraq than the superpower. Moreover, the occupying army continues to be powerless against devastating attacks.
Following the capture of Saddam, the United States had hoped that the attacks in Iraq would begin to subside. However, this has not proven to be the case. Last week, two suicide bombers wiped out a portion of the Kurdish elite, killing 110 people in the attacks in Arbil. Furthermore, American soldiers are killed on a daily basis - painful reminders of a military adventure that was thoughtlessly initiated by the Bush administration.
An opinion poll conducted by the Associated Press reveals just how much Bush' popularity has suffered: His job approval rating has dropped to 47 percent, which is even lower than it was prior to September 11, 2001. Contrary to expectations, Bush will not be able to simply coast toward reelection as a patriotic wartime president.
Until now, however, he has been able to rely on his luck. When his approval ratings suddenly dropped last fall, Saddam was discovered in a hole in the ground and then the economy began showing signs of recovery. Could Bush' luck return?
A healthy recovery at the right time would certainly increase his chances for reelection. This is exactly the way things seemed to be going when the economic figures for the third quarter of 2003 were released: The economy had grown by more than eight percent, a rate of growth that hadn't even occurred in the golden nineties. According to the prevailing wisdom, these conditions should have led to 150,000 new jobs in December. But then came the shocking news: only 1000 new jobs had been created. It seems that growth and employment have become disconnected.
As the months pass, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that the economy will serve as a strong argument for reelection. Absent a miracle, Bush will go down in history as the first president since Herbert Hoover who has seen more jobs lost than created during his time in office. And Hoover had to lead America through the Great Depression after 1929.
Unemployment is currently at 5.6 percent. Since 2001, the year Bush moved into the White House, more than 2.3 million additional Americans have become unemployed. This number would be even higher if many of the unemployed hadn't simply given up looking for work.
Economists believe that the reason for this "jobless recovery" is that many companies continued to behave as if there were a recession. They laid off employees and increased productivity during the crisis. Now, instead of hiring new employees as demand grows, they prefer to continue with layoffs. This is good for the bottom line - and devastating for the employment market.
And then there is the issue of the federal budget. This year's deficit is expected to reach a record 521 billion dollars. The national debt is currently 3.9 billion dollars - a sum equal to the gross national products of Germany and France combined.
Deficits of this magnitude can do serious damage to even the strongest economies over time. They stand in the way of important future investment, fuel inflation, and ultimately lead to higher interest rates, which in turn has disastrous consequences for growth and employment.
The deficit is also dangerous for the President because it undermines his credibility. He has just presented a budget that contradicts his economic theory. Not too long ago, Bush said: "We can continue with tax cuts without having to worry about debt." The Bush administration believes that the tax cuts totaling 1.3 billion dollars over a ten-year period are its crown jewel.
Apprehension is spreading, even among loyal Republicans. They see the deficit as a symptom of unbridled spending. In fact, government expenditures during the past two years have increased by an average of 8.2 percent in those areas in which the administration felt it had spending latitude. Similar spending habits could not even be attributed to Ronald Reagan. "Truly shocking," noted an indignant Wall Street Journal, usually a Bush-friendly paper.
On top of all this, the President is promising improvements. He wants to cut the budget deficit in half by 2009. In the new budget the administration submitted last Monday, many government programs were frozen, at least temporarily. Exceptions? The Pentagon budget (up 7 percent) and the budget for national security expenditures (up 9.7 percent).
This is exactly what Bush' opponents are using to attack the President during the current Democratic primaries: The fact that this country has also lost its economic balance. Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who is behind frontrunner John Kerry and could become his vice-president, talks about a two-class America. John Kerry himself, with his stentorian voice, denounces the amount of influence lobbyists have over the White House.
Nevertheless, the presidential candidates' proposed reforms are exceedingly moderate. Edwards and Kerry agree that higher taxes should only be imposed on those with incomes over 200,000 dollars
Neither of the two candidates has proposed cutbacks in spending for national security, a move that would be unpopular at this point. Even if a Democrat becomes president, the United States will not be immune against a high national debt.
Frontrunner John Kerry doesn't spend much time talking about economic policy during his campaign appearances. Foreign policy is his passion. "We are here today to introduce the end of the Bush presidency," Kerry announces in a booming voice when he approaches the podium in New Hampshire or Missouri.
It's been forgotten that the current favorite was behind his fellow Democratic candidates just a few weeks ago, that Kerry, the son of a diplomat who served as legal advisor to the US envoy to West Berlin in the 1950s, lacked just about everything: a message, a campaign song, enthusiasm and a belief in himself. But then his fellow senator, Ted Kennedy, offered Kerry the services of his capable office manager, Mary Cahill. Now, as Kerry's campaign manager, she is doing everything in her power to "tell the story of John Kerry the right way."
The new, softened image is working, with Kerry adding state after state to his list of victories. On last week's first "Super Tuesday," he won the primaries in five states across the entire country. "In American history, anyone who has won so many early contests has always ended up being his party's nominee," writes the New York Times.
Kerry is the man of the hour. Missouri and Arizona, North Dakota, Delaware and New Mexico are a microcosm of the ethic and social diversity of America. The fact that he was able to prevail in such different states makes Kerry the only candidate with national appeal.
America's Democrats are already becoming caught up in a frenzy of confidence. They are united by a will, fed by deep resentment against President Bush, not to face four more years of neoconservative dominance in America and not to become involved in any more experiments with preventive war.
Upstanding Republicans must be furious about the fact that John Kerry, a scion of the wealthy East Coast aristocracy, and John Edwards, a nouveau riche upstart, are traveling around the country and accusing the Bush administration of creating tax laws that favor the rich. Their views, programs and political carriers have turned Kerry and Edwards into prime targets for the Bush camp.
The Republican campaign is also moving full speed ahead. Weaknesses in the biographies of the competition are being researched, and potential voters are being recruited door-to-door, by telephone, and by e-mail. The objective is to register at least three million new Republican voters.
The President's schedule routinely includes galas, dinners and receptions at which guests are given the opportunity to drop off checks for the campaign, a method that has already brought the Bush campaign about 135 million dollars. That number is expected to increase to 200 million by this summer - the largest amount of money ever spent by a single candidate in an American election campaign.
But does George W. Bush also plan to change his tactics? According to a rumor that has been making the rounds in Washington for some time, most of the orchestrators of the Iraq war - from Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice - would not be part of a second Bush administration.
It may be that Americans are gradually becoming fed up with war, unilateral action and grandiloquent promises. It may be that they are thinking about trying a Democrat who has the charm of the worldly pragmatist.
That is what the President must expect. Otherwise he will succumb to the curse of the House of Bush once again: being voted out of office after a single term.
JAN FLEISCHHAUER, SIEGESMUND VON ILSEMANN, GERHARD SPÖRL
Translated by Christopher Sultan
I thought this article was interesting because it adds to a negative perception of the U.S. and Britain over the threat of Iraq's WMD's and the justification to go to war. With former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix accusing Blair and Bush of acting like salesmen who "exaggerated" intelligence, the story adds credibilty to the arguement that intelligence was exaggerated and reinforces the strong doubts and deep distrust of the Bush Administration that is apparent throughout Europe.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,1143930,00.html
Blix says war leaders acted like salesmen
Sarah Hall and Richard Norton Taylor
Monday February 9, 2004
The Guardian
The former UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, weighed into the controversy over weapons of mass destruction yesterday when he accused Tony Blair and George Bush of behaving like insincere salesmen who "exaggerated" intelligence in an attempt to win support for war.
In a carefully worded attack, Dr Blix said intelligence communities were too ready to believe the "tales" of defectors, and the British prime minister and US president, while not acting in bad faith, were too preoccupied with spin.
Referring to the government's controversial dossier, with its suggestion that WMDs could be deployed within 45 minutes, he insisted: "The intention was to dramatise it, just as the vendors of some merchandise are trying to exaggerate the importance of what they have.
"But from politicians or our leaders in the western word, I think we expect more than that. A bit more sincerity."
Dr Blix's intervention, on BBC 1's Breakfast with Frost, was immediately rejected by the government, with the leader of the Lords, Lady Amos, insisting that Lord Hutton had cleared the government of dramatising the 45-minute claim, and the secretary for constitutional affairs, Lord Falconer, urging the country to wait for the Butler inquiry, which will report in the summer.
"We shouldn't go on and on and on discussing the precise detail of this. Instead, we should let the inquiry proceed, not monster it in advance," he said.
But Robin Cook, the former leader of the Commons, ratcheted up his attack on the prime minister's credibility, and two other former ministers, the ex-defence minister Doug Henderson and former health secretary Frank Dob son, along with the Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, and the shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, called for Mr Blair to make a statement clarifying why he believed the 45-minute claim referred to long-range weapons of mass destruction when he took Britain to war.
Mr Cook repeated his allegation that the prime minister knew the intelligence only pointed to battlefield weapons when the two discussed the issue on March 5, 15 days before military action - a claim denied by Downing Street.
"I made it quite plain _ that it was obvious from the briefings that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction and had only battlefield weapons _ I could not have been more blunt," he said.
Speaking on ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby programme, Mr Cook, added that "heads should roll" on the joint intelligence committee because of their apparent failure to adequately brief the prime minister - "an appalling failure of communication".
President Bush yesterday defended the decision to go to war, arguing that although weapons of mass destruction had not been found, Saddam Hussein "had the capacity to have a weapon, make a weapon. We thought he had weapons".
"I expected to find the weapons," he acknowledged. "Sitting behind this desk making a very difficult decision on war and peace; I made the decision on the basis of the best intelligence possible."
The democratic frontrunner, John Kerry, accused Mr Bush of trying to revise his rationale for war. "This is a far cry from what the president and his administration told the American people through 2002," Mr Kerry said.
"Back then President Bush repeatedly told the American people that Saddam Hussein has got chemical weapons. They told us they could deploy these weapons within 45 minutes to injure our troops. It was on that basis that he sent America's sons and daughters off to war."
Downing Street had hoped the WMD furore would dissipate after an ICM poll suggested that 72% of people felt MPs spent too much time on the issue and should return to the domestic agenda.
But Dr Blix, who headed the UN team searching for Saddam's weapons from November 2002 until the eve of war last March, questioned the wording of the infamous September dossier: "They say some WMDs can be ready to be used within 45 minutes. Well, which ones?
"It certainly wasn't nuclear, because the report says that they were not developing nuclear, so they didn't have them. And what is meant by being ready? Is it a phial of anthrax that can be tossed at somebody? I mean, one can interpret it in different ways."
Asked about claims in the Observer that Britain had spied on UN allies in the run-up to Iraq, he said: "I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was the case _ I assumed when I was in New York that I might well have been bugged in my office."
The US Republican senator John McCain, a member of Mr Bush's inquiry into prewar intelligence, told a weekend security conference in Munich that there had been international intelligence failures, and added: "It's clear to me that the weapons of mass destruction were not there."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian
I think it's interesting that the author doesn't consider the fact that much of Europe's press has an overt political bias.
International Herald Tribune - BBC vs. Fox News: fair and balanced to you, too
BBC vs. Fox News: fair and balanced to you, too
Fletcher Crossman IHT
Monday, February 9, 2004
Media bias
MOUNT PLEASANT, South Carolina When Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, resigned last week, there must have been satisfied smirks at the offices of Fox News. After visiting the United States last year, Dyke had said that he was shocked by "the Fox News formula of gung-ho patriotism." He warned the British media: "In the area of impartiality, as in many other areas, we must ensure we don't become Americanized."
The irony will not be lost on the people at Fox News that Dyke had to step down because the BBC was found to be telling untruths that were politically damaging to the British government. The BBC has often been accused of having a liberal bias, and many interpreted its reporting of the Iraq conflict as being antiwar.
So it's official: the BBC messed up. But however much Fox News feels vindicated by the verdict, it should not ignore the fact that many foreign observers feel that the political right has taken over America's news media, and that the overt political bias of Fox News and Clear Channel Radio has become a serious obstacle to the fair workings of democracy.
The contrast between Fox News and the BBC crystallizes the difference between the cultures that gave them birth. Fox News was in many ways a brave experiment: a news channel aimed directly at a target political audience, albeit an audience that had previously been identified by Rush Limbaugh. The success of Limbaugh's conservative radio show, a daily diatribe against all that is liberal, caused a sea change in talk radio. In many parts of the United States it is now all but impossible to find a radio talk show that is not modeled on Limbaugh's pro-Republican format.
But few thought a mainstream television audience would accept the same opinionated personalities that make conservative talk radio work. The rapid growth in Fox News's audience caught other news channels off guard, and prompted a panicked shift toward the political right in cable news coverage. The buildup to war gave American networks the chance to outdo each other in patriotism and hawkish support for the administration. It was in this fevered climate that a shocked Dyke discovered the most ebullient of them all: Fox News.
If this fast-moving, money-driven change is typically American, then the monolithic introspection of the BBC scandal is typically British. The BBC, after all, was never a money-making enterprise; it was established by the government in 1922 to "inform, educate and entertain" the British people. It is paid for by an obligatory license fee. This protection from the forces of nature has allowed it to follow its own instincts in pursuing news stories and, some would say, has also allowed it to develop an institutional liberal bias.
It was not a fall in market share that finally forced the BBC to address the allegations - the corporation is immune to such things - but the Hutton inquiry. When Brian Hutton's report blamed the BBC for a series of blunders, Dyke and two other BBC employees fell on their proverbial swords in the traditional British way. The BBC can no longer assume the trust of the British people when it claims to be impartial. It must now prove itself.
In the United States such matters are handled differently. There will never be a Hutton deciding whether Fox News is politically biased. Its claim to be fair and balanced is no more than a knowing wink to its audience, and it has no higher master than the dollar. If the audience tires of the Fox News agenda then other stations will move in to fill the vacuum. If there is ever to be political balance in American news coverage it will happen by the law of the jungle, not the law of the land.
It is disconcerting to think that American opinion is being informed by such unpredictable forces. Yet in a typically American way, the political bias of its news stations is open, brash and strangely addictive. The British bias is subtle, covert and shielded by the myth of objectivity. There is no such thing. When Fox News claims to be fair and balanced, we're all in on the joke. When the BBC makes the same claim, they seem to actually believe it.
The writer, an English teacher, previously worked as a radio and television journalist in Britain.
Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune
According to this piece, it looks like even with the cooling of hostility over the war in Iraq, solidarity doesn't have a sunny forecast in 2004 for trans-Atlantic relations.
It is interesting to see the incipient divide between Germany and France regarding NATO involvement in Europe's defense. Of course the US would like to see expansion of NATO and NATO forces in Europe and Iraq, including Turkey. It still maintains US military power in the region while diffusing the interests of the EU (not to mention US military costs) and affords the US more leverage in Europe, particularly if the US endorses "fringe" candidates, like Turkey.
The German defense minister, Peter Struck, supports Brent Scowcroft's (who was actually the adviser to GHWB, not GWB himself as stated), assertion that, "unless NATO was Europe's explicit court of first resort in a crisis, 'we're on the road to destruction.'"
I find it curious that the article doesn't peek into this aspect and what may precipitate it.
In response to Roya's earlier posting about Germany and France's seemingly unavoidable involvement in Iraq, this piece speaks to that, with Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, offering the idea of a European-American plan for the Middle East. It sounds like he wants the European brain to kill Islamic fundamentalist terrorism with kindness while American brawn can strangle them with war.
But the U.S. still doesn't want its troops to die alone.
International Herald Tribune - News Analysis: For allies, well-tempered sparring
News Analysis: For allies, well-tempered sparring
John Vinocur/IHT
Monday, February 9, 2004
MUNICH A master of excess, Donald Rumsfeld sought this time to be resoundingly lukewarm. Asked just before the opening of the Munich Conference on Security Policy to describe the current state of trans-Atlantic relations, he said, smiley-faced, "fairly normal."
It was the moderate/cautious/mildly consensual public approach to Europe of the U.S. secretary of defense over the weekend. In an election year, a new round of insults and shrillness with old allies like France and Germany over Iraq and how to deal with the dangers of the world would not do the Bush administration much good with American voters, however little they may really care.
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of Germany, who emotionally battled Rumsfeld in the same hotel conference room a year ago, reciprocated with non-hysterics, saying, "We have to look forward."
Finished was the environmentalist peace-guardian binding himself to a tree of virtue. Twelve months later, for Fischer, the apparent futility of the French and German effort to turn Europe against the Americans on the Iraq war seemed to be a lesson well taken on board, if never to be acknowledged in confessional terms.
But all the willful moderation at the conference Saturday could not hide the mutual skepticism, or the degrees of mistrust and contempt, and plain disagreement running inches below the surface.
The doggedly civil exchange between security officials and experts about how the allies and NATO could combat Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and help install security and modernity in the Middle East came down to a tacit reconsecration of the Alliance's split between those who want to do and those who want to talk.
On the German side, there was an unusually open acknowledgment about "destructive jihadist terrorism with its totalitarian ideology" as the greatest global threat - but by American definition at least, no "do" on Iraq. Zero troops from us, said Fischer. After all, Germany's antiwar position, he insisted three paragraphs into a keynote speech, had been proven right by events.
Rather than offering antiterrorist fighters for the front lines, Fischer called for a joint European-American plan for the Middle East. Elevating talk to complete equality with doing, Fischer claimed that alongside security matters it was "of almost even greater importance" that "social and cultural modernization issues, as well as democracy, the rule of law, women's rights and good governance" get full attention.
Applause (moderate, in keeping with the conference tonality) and mumbling in the audience. Ulrich Weisser, a retired German vice admiral, leaned toward a neighbor and said, "That speech was from Venus," reworking the caricature of Robert Kagan's remark comparing American Martians with European Venusians.
Was Fischer prescribing a division of labor among the allies where the Americans went after the killers and the Europeans spread the peace and re-painted schoolrooms?
Former Senator William Cohen of Maine, a secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, formulated this thought more indirectly and elegantly by wondering, in a question asked of Fischer, how come Germany was not furnishing military assistance in Iraq if stabilization there was the obvious prerequisite to modernization, democracy and Mediterranean free trade zones. Another American asked rhetorically how the allies were to install dialogue and détente with a security threat that is clearly not open to them.
But the Germans were intent on appearing active and full of gabby initiative. While Rumsfeld stuck to saying that NATO showed "a good deal of life," promising that a Mediterranean dialogue would find a place high on the NATO summit meeting in Istanbul in June (and with a little more heat, remembering out loud that his audience in Munich last year included people from countries who said they did not care who won in Iraq), Defense Minister Peter Struck proposed that the Alliance commission a statement on its future at Istanbul.
He called it a "new Harmel report," a reference to a 1967 document that the then West Germany considered a legitimization of its policy of détente toward the Soviet Union. In a sense, Struck seemed to be interested in a reworked mission statement that would bring soft diplomacy an official and respectable place alongside search-and-destroy missions as NATO's zone of geographic preoccupation spread into the Middle East.
Without any elaboration, Struck also advocated "sensible complementarity" between NATO and the European Union's projected military units and coordination between the two concerning their "level of ambition."
What? For Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser to President George W. Bush, that seemed to sound like very willful ambiguity. He said that it was nice to talk about complementarity and Harmel reports, but that unless NATO was Europe's explicit court of first resort in a crisis, "we're on the road to destruction."
Struck gave Scowcroft one of the clearest responses of the weekend. It rivaled Rumsfeld's remark in response to a Palestinian's question about Israel's atomic weapons: that if the Israelis had them it was because they alone had to deal with forces in the Middle East that sought their country's extinction.
"NATO is first choice for me," Struck said. "There's no doubt that NATO is in the forefront."
But that was the German defense minister. A high NATO official said that nothing of like clarity could be expected from France. Indeed, the French defense minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, in talking about the EU's defense efforts, succeeded rhetorically and without harshness in placing a larval European notion and NATO on exactly the same plane, mighty coequals in a world known only to the imagineers, in Walt Disney's phrase, of France's security-policy think tanks.
All these exchanges - their moderation and their more jagged subtext - wound up without discussion of at least three potentially raw and critical areas of trans-Atlantic disagreement.
In recent weeks, both Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and President Jacques Chirac have said they would like to consider arms sales to China. The U.S. State Department responded disapprovingly, calling this a very poor idea. The EU will probably be asked to consider lifting a ban on weapons deals soon.
At the same time, many in Europe, including a big segment of the Bush administration's conservative friends, do not like the United States' open pressure on the EU to accept Turkey as a candidate member.
They say American involvement feeds the arguments of those who describe U.S. policy as seeking to foil European integration. And they fear that with American strategic goals in the Middle East being of greater interest than pleasing Europe, the Americans will not find a way to back off from aggressive support of the Turks.
Most important, the willful courtesies of the well-mannered sparring in Munich left out the enormous implications of the administration's $401.7 billion defense budget for next year. Senator John McCain did mention in passing that of more than two million Europeans under arms, some 5 percent of them were deployable on really tough assignments.
But this was a weekend when contentiousness was not the intent. Considering the virtually unbridgeable gap in capabilities, nobody had the heart to smudge the occasion by saying that trans-Atlantic solidarity in 2004, to use the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's words, is just no longer a given.
International Herald Tribune
The home secretary of UK, David Blunkett said that UK needs new workers to boost the economy despite strong opposition.
This is another aspect of exploring the "identies" -- the more senior members of EU seem not very enthusiastic to welcome the immigrants from the new EU members states. Is it economic or culturally or both? It's worth some thoughts.
From The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Refugees_in_Britain/Story/0,2763,1143968,00.html
The home secretary, David Blunkett, has strongly rejected calls for Britain to ban job-seekers from states that will be joining the EU in May, arguing that Britain needs new workers to boost the economy.
In a challenge to groups such as Migration Watch, which argue vehemently against any kind of migration to the UK, Mr Blunkett told the Guardian that the government will welcome those who come legally to work in Britain.
Preparations are under way, he revealed, to encourage new migrants to go to Scotland, as well London and the south-east of England.
He has joined Jack McConnell, Scotland's first minister, in arguing that Scotland requires an influx of new workers for demographic and economic reasons.
The home secretary endorsed Tony Blair's call last week for a clampdown on fraudulent welfare benefit claims. But he stressed that this did not amount to an attempt to stop willing workers from the eastern European countries joining the EU coming here.
"We need to ensure that we can meet those big areas for unskilled employment, like low level hospitality and catering. This will be partly met by a sensible approach to the accession countries from May onwards," Mr Blunkett said. "We have said that employment is welcome because it is better to have it legally than clandestinely."
Mr Blunkett also told the Guardian he believes that the government has got to get to grips with the asylum issue. He believes the public is now willing to listen to the case for legal, managed economic migration, which he argues is needed to meet the requirements of the economy, particularly London and the south-east of England.
"We are now moving to a position where that is recognised and that is possible," he said.
The death last Thursday of 19 cockle-pickers in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, at least five of whom were in the country illegally, has highlighted the terrible conditions in which many illegal migrants live and work.
Mr Blunkett said: "One of the sadnesses is that because they are illegal migrants they may have changed their names and tried to change identity in this process."
He said the tragedy reflected the importance of the steps that "have to be taken to protect these people from the risks they are forced to take to work in this country".
It is expected that one of the main tasks facing the new organised crime agency which he and Mr Blair are due to launch today will be to target the people traffickers and gangmasters who profit out of the trade in illegal migrants, who pay them thousands of dollars to get into Britain.
Mr Blunkett's emphasis on the potential benefits to the UK of legal migration from the 10 countries that will join the EU on May 1 stands in stark contrast to the policy being pursued by the other members of the union. So far only Britain and Ireland have decided not to impose any restrictions on new EU citizens arriving to seek work.
Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands say the migrants can come, but that they have first to apply for a work and/or a residence permit.
Mr Blunkett warned EU countries such as Germany, which plan to impose "transitional restrictions" for up to seven years on new workers from eastern Europe, that the move could backfire. "The countries that have said they will delay the right to work are those that are most likely to face clandestine working and entry. They have got very little way of stopping that, because people can still cross their borders and they can claim to be visitors."
He said the government had a clear position - legal working by the new EU citizens was one thing, but illegal or unjustified attempts to claim benefits was another.
"Those countries that are blocking illegal working will be just as subject as we are to fraudulent claims on benefit and we are determined to ensure that we avoid that. We will make sure that they can't."
Mr Blair sparked speculation last week that Britain was considering restricting the right to work for migrants from the new EU accession states after May, when he gave a loosely-worded reply to Michael Howard, saying the government was looking at "closing off concessions" to prevent the movement of new EU citizens to Britain.
But Downing Street later clarified the position, saying he was talking about closing down their ability to claim benefits, not restricting the right to work.
Ten countries, including Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia will join the EU on May 1.
From this conservative "intelligence gathering" news service, this view of France's diminishing influence in the world and how the government is trying to address it is a useful example of this country international standing today. It deals with the visit of Dominique de Villepin to 4 of the main Latin American countries in a effort to gather support for its world view (about the UN, and Iraq among other issues).
Comment from Strafor.com: "Confronted with the reality of its diminishing power, France had two options: accept its new second-tier status in a world dominated by U.S. economic and military might, or chart a new course to ensure Paris continues to be a force in global affairs -- at least in the eyes of the French, if not in fact."
Stratfor.com - France: Seeking Influence in Latin America
France: Seeking Influence in Latin America
Summary
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin visited Latin America as Paris is intensifying efforts to craft a new foreign policy to reverse its waning influence in global and European affairs. In practice, the new bilateral relations Paris is seeking with key countries in Latin America likely won't have any major impact on geopolitical developments there.
Analysis
Over the past year, France has seen its influence significantly diminish in the arena of global affairs and within the European Union. This has greatly upset France, which likes to think of itself as a leading voice in the world; after all, it has a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council and, with Germany, is a co-founder of the European Union.
Lately, France's perception of its place in the world has taken a beating. First the Iraq war, which Paris opposed bitterly in a joint alliance with Berlin, demonstrated that French foreign policy did not match the European Union's foreign policy. France and Germany tried to make their anti-war position the common EU foreign policy, but seven countries voted instead to back the United States. In the end, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder wound up looking to all the world like a pair of curmudgeons who the Bush administration and many of their EU peers simply ignored.
More recently, Paris has realized that the inclusion in May 2004 of 10 new EU members -- several of which also supported the Bush administration on the Iraq war and the fight against global terrorism -- will weaken French influence within the union even more. The incoming members have made it clear to Paris and Berlin that they will not let the Franco-German alliance dominate them on foreign policy or anything else.
Confronted with the reality of its diminishing power, France had two options: accept its new second-tier status in a world dominated by U.S. economic and military might, or chart a new course to ensure Paris continues to be a force in global affairs -- at least in the eyes of the French, if not in fact.
In recent months, Paris has intensified a far-reaching diplomatic offensive designed to make France a key force in a multipolar alliance of developing powers like China, Russia, India and South Africa. This week it was Latin America's turn. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin made a five-day trip to Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico from Feb. 2 through 6 to lay the foundations of a new alliance between Paris and the four countries in Latin America that France perceives as having any real importance to its interests.
From the Bush administration's perspective, the only ramification of French efforts to strengthen relations with these countries is that the new allies likely will try to speak with a more coordinated voice on Latin American foreign policy issues. This means that Paris might take positions on specific issues like Colombia, trade or Cuba that would run counter to U.S. interests.
However, Washington won't pay much attention -- just as it doesn't pay much attention to Brazil, Argentina and Mexico on these matters.
The official theme of de Villepin's visit was "Latin America and the new international order." He did not meet with Mexican President Vicente Fox, but he met with the presidents of Argentina, Brazil and Chile -- underscoring the importance these three South American countries assign to closer relations with Paris.
France clearly views Brazil as the Latin American pillar of the new alliance that would support multilateralism against U.S.
unilateralism. European diplomatic sources in Buenos Aires told Stratfor on Feb. 5 that the Chirac government views Brazilian President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva as the most credible and geopolitically relevant head of state in Latin America today.
Argentina and Chile are perceived as being pulled along in Brazil's wake. Mexico is viewed as important because of its membership in the North American Free Trade Agreement and the free trade agreement it already has with the European Union.
Although de Villepin's trip didn't produce any major political announcements or economic agreements, France's new foreign policy foundations in Latin America were laid. They include securing Latin American support for a major overhaul of the United Nations, most particularly the U.N. Security Council. Paris might not be happy about the prospect that new EU members will create a more vigorously, pugnaciously democratic union, but it does want an expanded and more democratic U.N. Security Council to prevent the United States from unilaterally imposing its will.
De Villepin also obtained an endorsement from all four governments of the French position that power in Iraq should be transferred to U.N. authority as quickly as possible. He argued that this is a necessary step toward bringing democracy to Iraq more quickly and restoring the U.N.'s credibility and authority in a multilateral world. Of course, that power transfer also would help French companies gain faster, broader access to international reconstruction contracts, and would help Paris press its claims over its existing prewar contracts with the Hussein regime in oil and other sectors of Iraq's economy.
At each stop, De Villepin pledged his support on matters specifically important to these countries. For example, in Chile he said the territorial conflict with Bolivia is strictly a bilateral matter, but added that borders between nations are "intangible." Many Chileans interpreted this statement as supporting their position against Bolivia, though in fact the Bolivians also could see it as endorsing their position against Chile.
In Argentina, he pledged French approval of the March 2004 review of Argentina's agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
Senior fund officials warned recently that Buenos Aires could face trouble with the IMF if it doesn't tangibly progress on restructuring between $88 billion and $100 billion in defaulted debt. However, the pledge suggests that Paris is willing to continue approving IMF loans to Buenos Aires even if the debt talks remain stalled, as Stratfor thinks they likely will.
In Brazil, de Villepin stroked da Silva's ego when exalting Brazil's role in the new multipolar international order -- and in Mexico, he pledged that France will help make the May 28-29 Latin American-EU summit in Guadalajara a success. In short, de Villepin didn't bind France to any entangling commitments. For example, he didn't offer to relax French opposition to liberalizing agriculture in any future trade deal between the EU and the Mercosur customs union.
Ultimately, the new relations Paris is pursuing in South America likely won't translate into a surge in French investments and aid there. Nor will France change its position on some policy positions, such as in agriculture, that are dear to South American hearts. However, the presidents de Villepin met with were happy to host him. At a time when the Bush administration isn't paying much attention to the region, de Villepin's tour probably felt like balm on a sunburn.
This is a Financial Times piece on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's eagerness for NATO to lead Polish troops in Iraq. The article briefly considers France's hesistation, as well as Germany's. They are waiting for Iraq to have some sovereign stauts.
It seems to me that NATO will readily accept a (near) future role in Iraq. I don't think France & Germany (or Belgium) are as reluctant now that the US has gone to war compared to their veto of defense for Turkey in the run up to war. Also, I think Poland's presence places pressure on France and Germany.
Rumsfeld gave the speech in Munich. He outlines a broad, and optimistic vision for NATO's future (including more expansions).
Rumsfeld attempts to draw Nato into Iraq
By Judy Dempsey and Peter Spiegel in Munich
Published: February 6 2004 22:53 | Last Updated: February 6 2004 22:53
Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, called on Nato to take over command of the Polish-led multinational force in south-central Iraq, the first public attempt by Washington to draw France and Germany into the country since the invasion.
Mr Rumsfeld was speaking on Friday after a special meeting of Nato defence ministers attended by all 19 members and the seven countries that will join the alliance in April.
Although he said there was no timetable for the Iraqi operation, Nato officials said they hoped to get agreement by the time the alliance holds its June summit in Istanbul. US officials hope that the handover can take place before sovereignty is returned to the Iraqis on July 1.
Although Nato's participation would not change the military balance in Iraq, it would have political significance, bringing recalcitrant European allies, particularly France, back into the fold.
Nato's presence would also help secure legitimacy and support in the region for the US presence in Iraq.
A move to take the Polish sector could be followed by a proposal to subsume the British-controlled southern provinces, based in Basra, creating an all-Nato flank south of Baghdad.
Jerzy Szmajdzinski, Polish defence minister, said he hoped the handover could happen this year, a view shared by other Nato members. Nato provides command-and-control assets to the Polish headquarters, but is not present on the ground.
Mr Rumsfeld was supported in the meeting by other Nato members, but declined to say who they were. Nato diplomats said backing came from several of the countries already in Iraq, including Poland, Italy and Spain.
Ministers from Germany and France did not join in the discussion, diplomats said. One said there was optimism that France may come on board "once you have a sovereign Iraqi government, things change. Things that are not possible now may be possible then".
A senior French official confirmed Paris would be ready to send troops "if the conditions were right". "It depends on how power is transferred back to the Iraqi people, what role the United Nations will have, and under what conditions the Iraqi government would invite Nato to take over the command," he said.
Germany, however, would find it hard to send troops, since Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, has promised his soldiers would not bear arms in Iraq.
Despite Mr Rumsfeld's optimism, Nato's new secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, was unwilling to re-open wounds caused by deep and bitter divisions inside Nato over Iraq.
"Let's take things step by step. Let's see the political developments inside Iraq. It will depend on what the Iraqi government would or would not like Nato to do," he said.
This four part series by National Public Radio's Sylvia Poggioli takes a look at European attitutes towards America. She visited Germany, France, Italy and Poland. The stories raise some of the themes we discussed. I thought it would be a break from all the reading.
The new Secretary General of NATO wants the organization to get involved in Iraq. Powell and Rumsfeld are very much in favor. The problem, according to this article, is to find the political will. France, Germany, and even Russia have to agree. It seems, according to a European diplomat, that it would require a special resolution from the UN.
In the mean time, Poland would like Spain to take charge of the multinational division that operates in Southern Iraq. That would imply an increase in the number of Spanish soldiers, and the public opinion might not like that. Did you know that they flew there from Santiago de Compostela, a historical Christian center, and that they wore symbols reminding the crusades? It was the source of a scandal in Spain last year, and it shows how Empires' histories can be interwoven in today's world.
El País - La OTAN desea asumir un papel relevante en Irak
La OTAN desea asumir un papel relevante en Irak
BOSCO ESTERUELAS - Bruselas
EL PAÍS | Internacional - 04-02-2004
La OTAN está preparada para, y desea, asumir un papel de gran relevancia en Irak, según señala su nuevo secretario general, el holandés Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, así como dirigentes militares y funcionarios de la organización. La Alianza, cuya prioridad se fija ahora en Afganistán, asumiría a finales de 2004 o principios de 2005 el mando de la división multinacional que dirige Polonia en el centro-sur del territorio -y que probablemente pasará a manos de España en julio-, una vez que la devolución de soberanía se completara con la celebración de elecciones.
De Hoop Scheffer, que desde que llegó al cargo en enero no ceja en insistir que la prioridad de la OTAN "ahora está en Afganistán" dirigiendo las labores de la ISAF, la fuerza multinacional de unos 5.500 soldados, ha sido mucho más explícito durante la primera visita oficial a EE UU, la semana pasada. El ex ministro de Exteriores holandés comparte la tesis de la Casa Blanca de que la OTAN "debe desempeñar una función más importante en Irak
[que la de prestar ayuda logística] si se le pide". "Podemos suministrar las capacidades necesarias si existe voluntad política", ha afirmado a Reuters el general alemán Harald Kujat, presidente del comité militar de la Alianza.
El interrogante es esclarecer si hay voluntad política para que la organización se implique en Irak como desea el Pentágono, deseoso de relevar parte de su contingente de más de 120.000 soldados. Colin Powell y Donald Rumsfeld así lo aseguraron cuando estuvieron el pasado diciembre en Bruselas. "Algunos países quieren que la organización asuma un mayor papel llegado el momento", afirmó ayer en un encuentro con la prensa una alta fuente diplomática. "Es inconcebible, no obstante, que se plantee antes de que haya un Gobierno soberano", precisó.
Bush quiere salir del avispero iraquí cuanto antes mejor para evitar dañar las esperanzas de ganar la reelección presidencial el próximo noviembre. Habrá que convencer antes a dos aliados claves, Francia y Alemania, así como a Rusia, opuestos desde el primer instante a la guerra por entender que se alejaba de los planteamientos de la ONU, y recabar más apoyo de los países árabes para poner en marcha una fuerza de estabilización aliada. "La presencia de la OTAN exigirá probablemente una resolución del Consejo de Seguridad a fin de darle mayor legitimidad", vaticina un diplomático europeo. "Estoy convencido de que la Alianza reaccionaría positivamente si el futuro Gobierno soberano iraquí presentara una petición", dijo De Hoop Scheffer en Washington.
El Pentágono baraja tres posibilidades: 1) que la OTAN asuma el mando de todo el territorio, algo que a corto o medio plazo no parece verosímil; 2) que releve a los norteamericanos en la parte norte, una opción sumamente peligrosa; o 3) que desempeñe la misión que polacos y españoles tienen en el centro-sur del país. Ésta es la hipótesis que hoy por hoy se presenta como más lógica. Washington querría que sus estrechos aliados dentro de la organización -Reino Unido, España y Polonia- presentaran sobre la mesa tal iniciativa y que fuera refrendada en la próxima cumbre atlántica, en Estambul en junio. Las autoridades militares polacas ya han manifestado que quieren pasar a España el testigo del mando de la división multinacional este verano. El ministro español Federico Trillo dijo en diciembre en la última reunión de ministros de Defensa estar preparado para asumir el mando. "Eso implicará incrementar en cerca de un millar el contingente de 1.300 soldados que España tiene en la zona, lo cual no será ciertamente fácil de vender a la opinión pública", avisa una fuente diplomática.
Europeans might be from Venus, but they are going to Mars.
The European Space Agency is planning to send a manned mission to the Moon and then to Mars. It won't happen tomorrow (2035 maybe). It won't be the first mission of this kind, and not everybody is convinced it's a good idea. Nevertheless it could be seen as a device that might contribute to the emotional constitution of a European identity.
What do you think?
Wired - Europe catches Mars fever
There have been many articles about France's proposed school ban of religious symbols like the hijab, skullcaps and crosses. This Guardian article sweeps across Europe, though, highlighting local tensions with Muslim immigrants, identity issues and subsequent political reactions.
The author writes that France and other European countries are facing the "demands of an increasingly radical Islam." This blatantly implies that the hijab is radical - a ridiculous notion in my opinion. The hijab has in modern history served as a political symbol, and many women have worn it in part as a political act; but they've done this in Egypt and Iran, not France or Belgium.
If anyone has politicized the issue of hijab in Europe now, it's the governments themselves. They have imported a debate on hijab; it's a reflection of Europe's identity crises (actually, it's paranoia) and its long-standing problem with immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East (xenophobia). Does a piece of cloth really challenge France's entire secular tradition? If so, France has some insecurity issues as well. Feel free to disagree.
Europe faces up to Islam and the veil
Muslims claim discrimination in legal battles over religious symbol
Jon Henley in Paris
Wednesday February 4, 2004
The Guardian
Spilling out of their school in Saint-Ouen, north of Paris, they are so keen to get a word in that on a bitter afternoon, they are queueing up on the pavement. Many went on the march. Most are against the law. A few are in favour, and happy to say so.
"For years we've been warning about the fundamentalists, the radical imams, the huge step backwards that they represent for women and Muslims in general in France," says Lydia, 16. "This law is really necessary. You've got no idea what pressures some girls come under."
Ratiba, 17, interrupts. "Nobody has ordered me to wear one. If I do it's because I want to. Our religion tells us to, it's part of our identity. France calls itself the cradle of human rights. Here of all places we should be able to show who and what we are." Lillia, 16, agrees. "The veil should be for us to choose. This law discriminates against us."
After weeks of heated and at times harmful debate on the street and in the national media France's national assembly yesterday began debating a bill to ban religious symbols, including Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses, from schools.
France is not the only western state to face the demands of an increasingly radical Islam, although its unique attachment to the principles of its secular republic means it is the only one so far to have proposed a legal ban on overt signs of religious faith.
Criticism But despite fierce criticism of the bill in the Arab world there appears to be a growing feeling among several of France's continental European neighbours that similar measures may, eventually, become necessary. A bill modelled on the planned French legislation has been tabled in Belgium's senate.
"In all Muslim countries women are fighting to free themselves from the veil and affirm their identity," says Anne-Marie Lizin, a socialist backing a ban. "It's not normal that in certain parts of Brussels there are more women in veils than in the streets of Algiers."
Belgian politicians are divided on the initiative, which has won the backing of the foreign and interior ministers. Generally the appetite for a ban seems greater in the French-speaking south of the country than the Dutch-speaking north, where relations between the authorities and the Muslim population are already strained. Race riots flared briefly in Antwerp in December 2002 after a mentally ill white Belgian shot his Islamic neighbour.
The port city remains a powderkeg: one in three voters supports the anti-immigration Vlaams Blok party, while many young Muslims appear attracted to a radical organisation called the Arab European League, whose leader has demanded that Arabic be recognised as the country's fourth official language.
Public distrust of the Muslim community has also been fuelled by the arrest, detention and conviction of a number of Islamist extremists on terror-related charges. In the traditionally tolerant Netherlands attitudes towards the 1 million-strong Muslim community remain influenced by Pim Fortuyn, the maverick politician shot dead in 2002 by an animal rights activist after calling Islam "backwards" and demanding that Muslim conservatism must not be allowed to dilute Dutch liberalism. Many Dutch politicians seem to be quietly edging towards some of Fortuyn's views.
New imams are being given compulsory lessons on freedom of speech and religion, euthanasia and non-discrimination and a debate about banning veils is also under way. Some schools already ban them.
As in France, an official report declared recently that the Dutch policy of integration had been a 30-year failure. Alarmed by rising Islamist fundamentalism, the Dutch lower house of parliament last year demanded an investigation into the activities of the Muslim population, particularly radical mosques.
In Germany the headscarf debate blew up last September when a Muslim teacher, Fereshta Ludin, won the right to wear a headscarf in class from Germany's highest court.
In 1998 Ms Ludin, originally from Afghanistan, was refused a teaching job in the conservative state of Baden-Württemberg. Germany's constitutional court ruled by five votes to three that she could wear a headscarf - although it also said German states had the right to pass laws banning headscarves.
A balance had to be found between religious freedoms - to include Germany's 3.5 million mainly Turkish Muslims - on the one hand, and neutrality in schools on the other, the judges added. Ms Ludin's victory turned out to be largely Pyrrhic: Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria r