Thomas wrote:My impression, from listening to Deutschlandfunk, is that the leaders of Europe have simply talked past each other. ....
My interpretation is that Blair seriously, honestly wanted the budget structure changed. His opponents, however, seem to have believed that Blair's talk about structure was just a token argument for protecting the rebate. They stuck to their misunderstandings until it was too late. Not good -- lets hope somebody learns something.
I agree. However the attempt to reduce the UK rebate has, so far, failed and Blair was at least partly successful at putting a reexamination of the budget on the table - for a later time after his term begins. Just the passage of time will reduce Schroeder's power - and Chirac's as well - while Blair's increases. I found the quoted Chirac remark about the bad behavior of certain rich EU nations quite amazing - does he now contend that France is poor? The proposals of the nations of Eastern Europe to reduce their gains inder the budget were a stark contrast to the rest.
I suppose Chirac will congratulate himself that he did succeed in changing the subject from the French rejection of the constitution. Blair can claim to have headed off a predictable act of revenge by the French. Germany is left with mounting economic strains and the unhappy status as chief donor nation for the rest of the EU. Not much to show for all the rhetoric. I do hope they can, before long, act together to deal seriously with the core issues. Today Europe has ample wealth and time with which to deal with the three challenges of development in the East, liberalization of labor and investment markets in the West and increased worldwide competition for everyone. However every year of delay adds greatly to the eventual cost of reform that must inevitably come.
HofT wrote:This hand-wringing is exaggerated at best. Postponing a decision is always preferable to rushing into a wrong decision; this constitutional / budgetary debacle will only strengthen the EU-25 in the long run.
I think you are probably correct. However neither the governments nor the electorates of the continental nations of "Old Europe" appear to be willing to face the economic, demographic, and competitive challenges before them. Understandable behavior in that most have crafted a very comfortable living environment for themselves. It cannot long be sustaind, but the illusion is very compelling. What will it take to spur action?
The EU countries, especially those using the Euro, are still paying the price for the high value of their currency in the world market place. That's not about to change any time soon just because they can come to some agreements on the constitution for some future time period. That will certainly impact their social programs in a way that will anger most citizens who now enjoy those benefits.
The new Airbus (the tiny dots in front are regular-size cars!) and other pictures from the Paris air show:
June 19, 2005
Caustic Turn Jolts Europe
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
BRUSSELS, June 18 - Something shattered in Europe Friday night.
The leaders of the 25 European Union nations went home after a failed two-day summit meeting in anger and in shame, as domestic politics and national interests defeated lofty notions of sacrifice and solidarity for the benefit of all.
The battle over money and the shelving of the bloc's historic constitution, after the crushing no votes in France and the Netherlands, stripped away all pretense of an organization with a common vision and reflected the fears of many leaders in the face of rising popular opposition to the project called Europe.
Their attacks on one another after they failed to agree on a future budget - for 2007 through 2013 - seemed destructive and unnecessary, and it is not at all clear that they will be able to repair their relationships. Even if they do, the damage to the organization is done.
Most embarrassing for the European Union was a last-minute attempt by its 10 newest members to salvage the budget agreement late Friday night. They offered to give up some of their own aid from the union so that the older and richer members could keep theirs.
For the new members, that offer was an opportunity to prove their worth. Criticizing the "egoism" of countries driven by national interests, Prime Minister Marek Belka of Poland said, "Nobody will be able to say that for Poland, the European Union is just a pile of money."
But for the older members, it was a humiliation. "When I heard one after the other, all the new member states - each poorer than the other - say that in the interest of an agreement they would be ready to renounce part of the money they are due, I was ashamed," Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's prime minister and the departing European Union president, told journalists after talks collapsed.
Even as a number of leaders stated that the European Union was in one of the worst crises of more than half a century of European integration, none of them predicted its end. Certainly, it will have to continue to negotiate over money, and it can survive without a constitution using existing treaties.
The process of European integration has faced crises in the past. In 1954, for example, the French National Assembly rejected an initiative to create a European defense community to forge closer military ties among the bloc's six founding members. In 1965, French President Charles de Gaulle refused to allow France to take its seat in the bloc's governing body to protest a switch in voting procedures.
In 1992, Danish voters rejected a treaty creating the current European Union with a single European currency. In 1996, Britain announced it would block European Union decision making after the bloc imposed a ban on British beef because of an outbreak of mad cow disease. The current crisis comes as the European Union has begun to play a much more important role in the world, most visibly in negotiations over one of the most serious global security issues: Iran's nuclear program.
President Bush will welcome Mr. Juncker, José Manuel Barroso, the head of the bloc's administrative arm, and Javier Solana, its foreign policy chief, to the White House on Monday, and he will underscore the need for a strong Europe.
Many other signs suggest that the Bush administration has sought to work more closely with the European Union. It has begun to work with France, Germany and Britain on the European Union-sponsored talks on Iran. The United States and the European Union also are jointly planning projects for Iraq's reconstruction.
Whether the crisis will affect the bloc's foreign policy in the long run remains unclear.
But the failure of the summit meeting laid bare the deep divide with the European Union between grand but competing visions of Europe.
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain leads the camp that wants a Europe with fewer trade and employment barriers and a more free-market orientation to better compete against rising giants like India and China. Yet he rejected all criticism of Britain for vetoing the final agreement on the budget, which would have required Britain to reduce the annual rebate, now $6 billion a year, that it gets back from its contribution to the European Union budget.
By contrast, Mr. Chirac and some of his allies are skeptical of what they call the "Anglo-Saxon model" and protective of the continental "social model" that offers citizens a protective economic security shield. He refused to compromise Friday night on Mr. Blair's demand that France reduce the $13 billion in farm subsidies it receives every year from the European Union.
Meanwhile, Mr. Blair, who assumes the six-month rotating European Union presidency next month, says he will use the current crisis to push for what he contends are needed reforms.
"I'm not prepared to have someone tell me there is only one view of what Europe is and that's the view expressed by certain people at certain points in time," he told reporters on Friday, clearly alluding to Mr. Chirac. "Europe isn't owned by any of them; Europe is owned by all of us."
But the feelings against Britain among some other members are so raw that even Mr. Juncker, who is passionate about collegiality, said that he would "not be listening" when Mr. Blair outlines his priorities to the European Parliament next week. He said he would hand over the presidency "without comment and without advice, because clearly my advice is not appreciated."
Lost in Friday night's turmoil over the budget debacle was a joint communiqué issued by the leaders that their constitution could one day be carried out. It did not explain how, given the French and Dutch rejections and the requirement that all 25 countries ratify it. Before the referendums in both countries, there was widespread speculation that there could be a "Plan B" either to revise the current text or salvage the parts that are not objectionable to voters.
In announcing that the constitution would be put on hold so that it could be better understood, Mr. Juncker insisted that there would be no "Plan B" Instead, he told reporters Thursday night, "there is a Plan D - for dialogue and debate."
Plan "D" fully developed: Dialogue, debate, defeat, denial, despair .... death.
(just as an aside, johnboy listens to the BBC news program that comes on at 7 am here on the east coast of the us - 11 am GMT-. I tuned in this morning expecting to hear a lot about the EU summit But it got only a bit of a mention; certainly nothing about the talks ending as acrimoniously as they evidently did. I was a bit surprised. Did it get to be a bigger story as the day wore on?)
It only got to be a bigger story in the minds of the NYTimes (where Cicerone's article came from) assorted leftists in the EU and those delusional Europeans who think the constitution text can be revived.
EU conservatives now in opposition in some big countries like Germany and Poland expect to win elections this autumn and to them the budget failure was good news. Anyway the talks concerned the 2007-2013 budget - doesn't need to be passed until December 2006, and even if it isn't passed by then 2007 will be handled via a continuing resolution with both receipts and expenditures adjusted for inflation in the EU bloc.
As to the 10 new members who "offered" to "return" extra funds promised to them - that's an extra $200 billion, which they may not get under the continuing resolution, so they didn't stand to lose anything by this generous "offer".
This is an article from today's Le Monde on Poland's situation (in French) >
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3214,36-663674@51-662200,0.html
> which includes the info summarized above.
Meanwhile on the Turkish EU application: 80% of Turks asked in a poll said they'd rather not join if admitting to the Armenian genocide was a precondition >
".. Über 80 Prozent äußerten in einer Umfrage die Ansicht, die Türkei solle auf den Beitritt verzichten, wenn damit - zum Beispiel - die Anerkennung des Völkermords an den Armeniern verbunden sei."
http://www.handelsblatt.com/pshb/fn/relhbi/sfn/buildhbi/cn/GoArt!200013,200051,894948/SH/0/depot/0/
> and upon hearing of this poll the Bundestag immediately voted (June 16) a resolution to condemn said genocide <G>
The International Herald Tribune has a hilarious article on the delusional EU "leaders" blaming the voters who rejected the text of the "constitution" >
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/18/news/assess.php
> they call it a "surreal disconnect"
Surreal indeed. The basically authoritarian and bureaucratic organs of EU governance have, so far, been successful in implementing deals worked out laboriously in treaties by the member governments. They have also added the symbols of a real government, President, Parliament, etc. , but so far these have been only impotent symbols. Now the manifest appetite on the part of the Eurocrats for real power, and the deal-making of the key governments of Old Europe, which have assumed they could contine to control things themselves, have been exposed and rejected by the voting public. Good for them.
It is understandable that these figures would be unable to express or acknowledge the evident meaning of the elections and its electrifying effect on the voters in most European countries. What remains is for them to be swept from the scene in a real democratic process. Vague concepts, such as "shared sovereignty" must now be reexamined to see what they really might mean. Europe will have to choose between a voluntary confederacy with real power residing in the national governments and a real sovereign Federal Governmentr - and abandon the illusion that it has somehow created a new third alternative.. A Confederacy is the likely outcome for at least the coming generation.
The Italians at any rate appear unflappable - of course they're used to chaotic governance - with their (conservative) prime minister defending the UK's position as "justified" >
"...la posizione della Gran Bretagna è giustificata"
http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Politica/2005/06_Giugno/18/reazionitalia.shtml
> while another wit observed: "there was a plan B after all, "B" for Blair!"
I am glad that France has now been established as being as affluent as the rest of us "rich" members.
I must admit to being very surprised at the suggestion that they were significantly poorer, as every time I am over there, I see new houses being built, new cars, nice schools and good hospitals.
I also see my brothers neighbour, who owns a medium sized farm, and receives 190,000 euros a year in EU grant. He often chats to us about how wonderful the EU is, and is considering shutting down half of his operation and letting many acres "go wild", as this will INCREASE his grant by about 10%.
Regarding Nimh's apparent "glee" at good old socialist France doing as well as the UK, if WE scrapped our so called "rebate"(3 billion?) in favour of 7 billion euros in CAP money, we would be a bit better off as well.
France has about TWICe the land mass, has a more temperate climate, can grow an infinite variety of crops, has a long Mediterranean coast line, just crying out for tourism, and has LAND borders with several EU neighbours. IT SHOULD BE RACING AHEAD, and should not need CAP to prop itself up.
Chirac has done exactly what I expected him to do. He is about the craftiest politician of his generation, but made a vital error when trying to shift the focus on to the UK.
Blair was ready for it, and was willing to put the WHOLE rebate thing into the same melting pot as CAP. There could have been a good, sensible and constructive solution, leading to the UK having no rebate at all for anyone to gripe about.
But....like I said before....the true colours of the French show vivid and clear when anything is suggested that would make them give up CAP (for CAP, simply read MONEY).
It is a ludicrously unfair budget drain, which uses a 40%+ chunk of the entire EU budget......and 70% of this "chunk" goes straight to France.
No wonder Chirac didnt want to enter into a sensible negotiation re CAP/Rebate. HE WOULD HAVE BEEN LYNCHED WHEN HE GOT HOME!
Blair made some really good suggestions IMO, re. moving away from farm subsidy and ploughing the money into technology, training and education. It will happen, but Chirac has to be deposed first.
Just a question re, Chirac by the way.....I am told by my French branch of the family, that Chirac enjoys immunity from police questioning and prosecution whilst he is President, and there are several investigations that will be immediately re-opened when he leaves office, involving MAJOR corruption on his part.
This is why he is so desperate to hang on to office. The feeling that I get is that the French people cant wait for this to happen, and will hav major street parties if he is convicted.
Anybody have any more info. on this matter?
Chirac, like most heads of state elsewhere, has got immunity.
This, what you post there, has been discussed during the "Main French-Bashing" time here on various threads.
European (= opposed the UK) newspapaers and media today report and comment especially on Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, who warned that London cannot continue to "force its path on others" in a comment on the dreadful results from the EC summit this week in Brussels.
Otherwise, there is a real danger that each member state will only fight for itself, and the concept of a united Europe will be left on the wayside, he said in an interview with Germany's public broadcaster ARD.
"It's certainly the question of the concept. The British want a different Europe. They want more a market-oriented Europe, a large market, but no deeper union," Schuessel told First German Televion (ARD).
Quo Vadis, Europe?
It seems what I posted yesterday about trying to get all 25 countries of the EU to come to any agreement is being confirmed by some recent posts from the UK and Germany.
Now that the gates of dissention has been opened, I foresee more infighting and disagreements coming to the fore.
P.S. On this very page is a link to Corriere della Sera saying Berlusconi agrees with Blair. As you know Sweden and Holland voted with Blair on the budget - so he's hardly isolated as some have represented.
