FOLLOWING THE EUROPEAN UNION

Parliament nominates press freedom group for Sakharov Prize

The European Parliament has nominated Reporters without Borders [RSF], a group defending press freedom, for its annual Sakharov Prize. [..]

The president of the Parliament's foreign affairs committee, Elmar Brok, on Tuesday (27 September) announced the three nominees for the prize, which seeks to promote freedom of thought around the globe.

The candidates who made it to the shortlist had been proposed by the socialist, conservative and liberal groups in the parliament, and the winner will be picked by the Parliament's conference of group presidents on 27 October.

The socialist PES candidate is the Nigerian female lawyer Hauwa Ibrahim, who defends women and youngsters in her country sentenced to stoning, whipping or amputation under Sharia law.

Meanwhile, the [conservative/christian-democratic] EPP's choice for the Sakharov prize is Ladies in White, a group of women which fights for the release of their husbands who are political prisoners in Cuba.

The liberal nominee, the NGO Reporters without Borders, told the EUobserver it is "very happy" with its nomination.

The group defends journalists and other media professionals around the world facing imprisonment, persecution and even torture.

But while one main focus of Reporters without Borders' work lies in autocratic countries or dictatorships like China, Belarus and Cuba, the NGO has not shed away from criticising European countries either.

Read on for examples of RSF criticism of EU countries...

EU says Croatia talks offer hope for Balkans

Tue Oct 4, 2005 8:28 PM BST

By Mark John and Marcin Grajewski

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - By launching entry talks with Croatia, the European Union has shown that it remains committed to integrating the western Balkans despite fears to the contrary in the region, the EU's enlargement chief said on Tuesday.

The former Yugoslav republic began membership negotiations in the early hours of Tuesday, shortly after U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte delivered the green light by saying Zagreb was cooperating fully with her tribunal.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said the historic event, 10 years after the region's bloodiest war ended, should encourage other Balkan nations to pursue democratic and free market reforms to fulfil their European ambitions.

"We can say that after a long night, there's a new dawn now for the Western Balkans," Rehn told a news conference.

The start of talks "erased any doubts" that the region -- which includes Serbia and Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia and Albania -- was on the road to closer European integration.

"The negotiations will be strict and fair," Rehn said, acknowledging "enlargement fatigue" in western Europe after the EU took in 10 new members, mainly east European, last year.

The launch of Croatia's talks was held up for hours on Monday until EU foreign ministers ended 40 hours of wrangling and agreed a mandate for entry negotiations with Turkey, which has become a focus of public opposition to further expansion.

The main hold-out on Turkey was Austria, which is Croatia's strongest supporter in the 25-nation bloc.

The United States, which helped rescue Turkey's EU bid, said it supported Croatia's integration with European and trans-Atlantic institutions but stressed that it wanted Zagreb to hunt down fugitive war crimes suspect Ante Gotovina.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters Washington welcomed the "agreement that anything less than full cooperation with the (Hague court) at any stage would affect the negotiation process".

SERBIA ON FIRST RUNG

Serbia will begin its journey towards EU membership next Monday when the two sides begin talks on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement that will give Serbia increased aid and trade preferences.

Similar talks with Bosnia were put on hold in September after the Bosnian Serb parliament rejected a plan to unify the police forces in the ethnically divided country.

Rehn urged the Bosnians to rise to the challenge so talks can start before the 10th anniversary in November of the Dayton peace accords that ended the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

On Croatia, Rehn said he would visit Zagreb next week to discuss technical details of the negotiations, which the country's leaders hope to complete by 2009.

They would start with "screening", assessing the compatibility of Croatian laws with EU legislation, which should last about one year, Rehn said.

He declined to speculate how long the negotiations could last. "The date is not so relevant," he said.

Croatia will still be expected to keep hunting for Gotovina, a former general indicted for alleged crimes against humanity.

Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader vowed to pursue the hunt for Gotovina, who Del Ponte believes is in Croatia or Bosnia.

Rehn said the Dutch and French voters' rejection of the EU constitution created a technical problem for Croatian accession. The charter would have replaced the Nice treaty, which allows for only 27 EU members -- the current 25 plus Bulgaria and Romania, due to join in 2007.

"We should either have the constitutional treaty in force or we should decide how we amend or develop the provisions of the current treaty," Rehn said.

There's always a lot of comparisons going on between the (high) continental European and low US unemployment rates. The difference is then used as an argument to "prove" the superiority of the US economic model.

But as you point out, the whole argument is built on quicksand, because in the US they just dont count the long-term unemployed. Hey, I can get low unemployment rates that way too: just dont count half of them.

In Holland, the unemployment rate includes all those from 15 to 64 years of age without work, or with work for less than 12 hours a week, who are actively looking for paid work for twelve hours a week or more.

In Belgium too, the definition is based on that of the International Labour Bureau (thats a translation from Dutch, may be different name in English): all persons of 15 and older who a) have no work, b) are available for work and c) are actively looking for work.

The definition is thus wider in two senses. First, there is no end in time to benefits. In Holland for example you go from unemployment benefits to welfare and on both of them you are counted in the unemployment rate, if you are looking and available for work. Secondly, even those who do not receive benefits but have registered as looking for work and currently do not have any, are counted.

So yeah, even just the difference in definition alone explains much of the variation in unemployment rates between US and continental Europe.

(In Holland the unemployment rate now is 6-7%).

So far I don't see any material difference in the definition of the unemployed that you have described, compared to the definition used in the USA.

If I am not mistaken, Germany recently began to include certain additional classes of unemployed in their rates to bring them more in compliance with those used by Britain, the U.S. and other countries.

There's always a lot of comparisons going on between the (high) continental European and low US unemployment rates. The difference is then used as an argument to "prove" the superiority of the US economic model.

But as you point out, the whole argument is built on quicksand, because in the US they just dont count the long-term unemployed. Hey, I can get low unemployment rates that way too: just dont count half of them.

georgeob1 wrote:

So far I don't see any material difference in the definition of the unemployed that you have described, compared to the definition used in the USA.

I'd always thought that the time factor was one of those.

Thanks for clearing that, George.

In 2004, Germany's unemployment rate using the U.S. measure would have been just under 9.0 percent, with the bulk of the unemployment concentrated in former East Germany. The area that used to West Germany would have an unemployment rate somewhat over 6.0 percent using the U.S. measure, not very different from the current unemployment rate in the United States. Source

Here my point re-emerges in its most basic appearance. I mean: if West-German unemployment, when using identical criteria, is a mere percentage point higher than US unemployment, what does that then say about the purported failure of the "Old Europe" economic model compared to the purportedly vibrant US model?

Again, what does that mean for the use of comparative unemployment rates as evidence for the purported superiority of the US model?

The fairest comparison I can think of is between the USA and the EU15 -- two territories that have no communist past to deal with, whose populations are large and about equally sized, providing little opportunity for cherry-picking.

So comparing one country with 15 independent countries is not comparing apples with oranges?
The difference here is what exactly?

I don't know if you addressed me with your last response, but if I ever wrote that long-term unemployed are not within the number given in Germany, I defininately made a mistake/typo/had a bad moment or similar.

It is exactly my point that these persons are within that number.

Employment:
Employed are all those, who during the reference week:
did any work at all (at least one hour) as paid employees, worked in their own business, profession, or on their own farm, or who worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of the family;
all those who were not working but who had jobs or businesses from which they were temporarily absent because of vacation, illness, bad weather, childcare problems, maternity or paternity leave, labormanagement dispute, job training, or other family or personal reasons, whether or not they were paid for the time off or were seeking other jobs.
Also included in the employed are:
persons without wage and salary work who were trying to establish their own enterprise;
full or part-time workers seeking other work during the reference week;
persons who performed some work for pay or profit during the reference week but were subject to compulsory schooling, retired and receiving a pension, registered as job seekers at an employment office or receiving unemployment benefits;
full or part-time students working full-time or part-time; e) paid apprentices and trainees;
citizens of other countries who reside in the United Sates but not on the premises of an embassy;
persons residing in the United States but working in Mexico or Canada. Excluded are persons whose only activity consisted of work around their own house (painting, repairing, or own home housework) or volunteer work for religious, charitable, and other organizations.
Unemployment:
Unemployed persons are all those who had no employment during the reference week, were available for work, except for temporarily illness, and had made specific efforts to find employment some time during the 4-week-period ending with the reference week. Persons who were waiting to be recalled to a job from which they had been laid off need not have been looking for work to be classified as unemployed. Also included in the unemployed are: a) persons on temporary lay-off without pay; b) persons who were seeking and available for work but were subject to compulsory schooling or were retired and receiving a pension; c) full or part-time students seeking full or part-time work.

You see, Thomas, you really might be correct.

However: when you look at the definition of 'Employed' - "Employed are all those, who during the reference week:
did any work at all (at least one hour) as paid employees" - well, you can work here (and in most European states) up to 15 hours per week and are still 'unemployed'.

USA > 6 months: 21.9%; USA > 12 months: 12.7%;
EU15 >6 months: 60.4%; EU15 > 12 months: 42%.

I was responding to nimh. My point is that according the BLS page he quoted, the long-term unemployed are covered by the USA's official definition too.

Walter Hinteler wrote:

I'd always thought that the time factor was one of those. [..]

Same here re: believing the time factor to be an issue. I was one of those who, as this useful page has it, erroneously believed "that [..]

I already admitted as much a page ago, before your post. I provided the link to go with the admission, as you can see: