Charming guys, both of you.
(Although Set sometimes forgets, what they taught him on the Institute de Bienséance, and George .... well, sometimes ... well, yes, ehem, ... might be, it's only and just me.)
Setanta wrote:It is precisely my point that it will be little more than a glorified customs union (with, apparently, a substantive part of the glory accruing to our friend Habibi)
<snort>
Seriously though, this kind of posts almost makes me want to do a Walter and post you a link to, say, the EC website or something. The EU has taken over, for better or for worse, a substantial part of formerly national policy and programmes when it comes to social programmes, cultural and heritage safeguards, rules on competition, mergers etc, agricultural and infrastructural policy, regional development (as outlined above), monetary policy, research, environmental standards and policy, educational funding and programmes, etc, etc, etc. But you
do know all that - you just sometimes like to pretend you don't ;-)
I used to be cj on the Livable Rotterdam forum ... <grins>
(All those posts long disappeared tho)
What the hell is up with all of the "in another life, i was" confessions going on around here?
I've been Setanta here and There (as in AFUZZ). I post occassionally at an Irish web site, where, unsurprisingly, Setanta had been taken. There, i am Bossman. And i am charming, considerate, friendly and tolerate fools gladly.
Everybody happy now?
nimh wrote:I used to be cj on the Livable Rotterdam forum ... <grins>
(All those posts long disappeared tho)
Ack, sorry ... accidentally posted in the wrong thread. Was meant for the WHO'S WHO ... thread. Pologies.
Hey Walter, did you see my thread on the German elections? Its thread # 35,000 ...
Elections in Germany: Center fails, Far Right and Left gain
I hope that all of Europe can be unified eventually, that those of us at the western end can help those from the eastern end, and that Europe can be a world power that other nations respect.
While a great deal of attention ios being given to the effects of assimilation of the 10 new member states and thise closely awaiting membership - Romaia, Bulgaria & Croatia - as well as Turkey, this aspect of the problem is not new ground for the EU. They have done it successfully before.
However, the scale of the undertaking being faced now with the 10 new members is unprecedented. I doubt the willingness of the EU to provide economic development funds to the new states at the levels previously provided to Ireland, Spain, Portugual and Greece. These transfer funds once limited the natral migration of people from the recipient states to the richer ones, enabling them to continue their growing social welfare systems and very rigid labor markets.
Now the richest states, with rconomies growing more slowly and the adverse economic effects of their generous social welfare systems beginning to manifest themselves, face some difficult choices in applying the old model to the new member states. This will likely mean limits on both the development funds provided the new members, and on the movement of people from them in search of work.
Alone this will present the EU with a difficult, but probably solvable problem. However, when combined with the inevitable new pressures for evolution in the governance of the EU, the possibility of more serious problems and divisions arises. The dominant states (France, Germany, and to lesser extents the UK and Italy, face a significant dilution of their power in all organs of EU government - Council, Commission, and Parliment. The new member states will use their collective new powes to seek their own solutions to the economic and labor migratin issues.
The facts that the most successful economies in the former Soviet Bloc are rapidly applying free market principles while the economies of 'Old Europe' are clinging to social welfare systems they no longer appear able to sustain, may be causes of continuing struggle in a political system that, itself, is changing fast.
One feature nearly all the nations of the EU, old and new, have in common is very low birth rates. Almost all are on the verge of rapidly declining populations. Female fertility for the EU states in 2003 was approximately 1.5 births/female. Moreover recent trends have been for further decline from these levels, which are only 70% of what is required for equilibrium. This can have profound economic and political effects that will add to all of the other issues noted above,
To date the EU has, in my view, exceeded reasonable expectations in this new adventure. It will be very interesting to see the degree to which the nations of Europe, old and new, will be able to sustain this remarkable success.
georgeob1 wrote: I doubt the willingness of the EU to provide economic development funds to the new states at the levels previously provided to Ireland, Spain, Portugual and Greece. These transfer funds once limited the natral migration of people from the recipient states to the richer ones, enabling them to continue their growing social welfare systems and very rigid labor markets.
The new members got quite some money already before the joined,a squoted
on Aug 14th 2003 in The Economist:
Quote:In the 1990s the central European and Baltic countries received, in all, about $18 billion in official finance from sources including the EU, the American government, the World Bank, the IMF and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
[...]
The EU has continued pumping in money. As they wait to join next May, the future new members are receiving "pre-accession" aid, worth about euro3 billion ($3.4 billion) this year alone. Once inside, they will get farm subsidies and development cash from the structural funds that the EU gives its poorer regions; the EU expects to spend about euro5 billion in the new member countries next year, though from May they will also be paying in to its general budget.
I wonder, what your sources are, George, to get your doubts?
(It least, those countries are still in e.g.
EU's regional programs.)
I don't doubt the new members will receive substantial economic aid from the other EU states (and America, according to your data.) I do, however, doubt they will get enough aid to eliminate the pressures for large scale migration of labor from the new states to the richer, extablished ones, or to eliminate the several contradictions in the economic policies they are attempting to apply.
This I suspect may cause political strains as the extablished states struggle to either change or sustain their very rigid labor markets in the face of alreadt difficult economic stresses. . Moreover we have already seen pressures for tax harmonization and other symptoms of what might be a growing struggle between new members favoring free market solutions and the old, righer members struggling to maintain social welfare systems in the face of declining economic growth and incipient declines in the working population.
I take no satisfaction in this. Indeed I wish the EU every success. However, I believe the Western European governments are clinging to policies, both domestic economic and international that they will be unable to sustain in a world still full of challenges and competition.
I agree with the above <shudder>.
When looking back in (EU's) history, you'll notice that the underdeveloped regions got from decade to decade, from year to year less money.
Which means of course that those in the oldest member states got the most.
Walter,
"Shudder" !!! -- Is it that bad to agree with me about something ?!?! Hell, I have agreed with you about several things and actually enjoyed it.
I suspect the EU will work a temporary accomodation of most of the economic aspects of these matters, However the unresolved aspects will likely manifest themselves in the continuing debate about future EU governance.
The longer term issues, of the social/economic consequences of population decline and meeting the several external challenges before both the EU and America, are far more problematic.
The U.S. is much more willing to face and atempt (however imperfectly) to deal with these challenges than are most of the principal states of Western Europe. Why some key European states have chosen to actively oppose us in this (instead of influencing a mutual effort from within) bewilders me. Eventually we will seek other alliances - with the new members of the EU, or others outside it.
I find it difficult to conceive how (say) France and Germany can see that as an advantage to themselves. (Perhaps France, with its slightly higher than EU average female fertility, greater availability of undeveloped land and natural resources, and peculiar obsessions with national grandeur and envy, still believes it can lead a triumphant Europe. Certainly France has pursued worse fantasies in recent history.) However Germany truly bewilders me. It appears to me that the same attitudes that have led to the current disaffection with the United States will also prevent the solution of the internal and EU problems before them now. Very strange.
Forgot the emoticon behind the shrudder
And ... well, I've a slightly different perspective than that of a bewilderness about Germany :wink:
Reaching consensus becomes 'nightmare' as scores are settled
BERLIN European Union foreign policy is emerging as an unexpected casualty of expansion, as new members are using their weight in the 25-nation bloc to settle scores with their non-EU neighbors, senior EU diplomats said this week..
The diplomats, who are involved in making EU foreign policy, said that trying to reach consensus has become "a nightmare.".
Some of the conflicts that have come into play since expansion in May have pitted new members against countries wishing to join: Slovenia against Croatia, Cyprus against Turkey, Hungary against Serbia..
If the EU grows further by adding Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey, it will be even more difficult to speak with one voice in the future, the diplomats warned..
"It has always been difficult reaching consensus among the old 15 countries," said one EU diplomat who asked not to be named. "But this time it is different.".
Some of the new members, he said, especially the smaller countries, hope they will have the support of other EU countries as they try to settle disputes to their advantage..
The historic expansion of the EU five months ago - which brought in Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia - was the largest to date. It was also the most difficult, coming as Europe was striving to forge a unified foreign policy..
Many of these former Communist countries had spent several decades under Moscow's sway, with no independent foreign policy of their own. After the break-up of the Soviet empire, their main goals became achieving membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the EU..
Some of these countries have begun using their EU membership as a lever in relations with their neighbors..
Last month, a bitter fight erupted between two neighbors in the former Yugoslavia over a long-standing border dispute..
The fight began when the Croatian police arrested and bundled into vans 12 Slovene citizens in the border town of Plovanija, which is claimed by both countries..
The group, which included two members of the nationalist Slovenian People's Party, had failed to pass through an official border crossing, contending that Plovanija was Slovene territory..
The dispute escalated when Anton Rop, the outgoing prime minister of Slovenia, threatened Croatia, a candidate for EU membership. "Slovenia can no longer support the entry of Croatia into the European Union," he said..
Under European Union rules, any EU member can use its veto to block another country from joining. Slovenia withdrew the threat after sharp words from the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, who said that Brussels should not be used to settle bilateral problems..
Maria Wagrowska, a foreign policy expert at the Center for International Relations in Warsaw, said Wednesday that some of the new countries were using the EU in this way because they were still trying to define their foreign-policy interests or find ways to realize them..
"Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia used to have common interests when we were trying to join the EU," she said. "Now that we are inside the EU, they no longer exist. We are divided. Instead, some countries try to use Brussels for their own foreign policy interests.".
Cyprus, meanwhile, disrupted EU foreign policy during preparations for a high-level meeting scheduled this week between the EU and the 56-member Organization of the Islamic Conference..
The joint meetings, held annually since Sept. 11, 2001, were set up to forge closer ties between the Christian and Muslim worlds..
At each gathering, Turks representing the northern part of Cyprus had a nameplate that referred to them as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus - a title not internationally recognized. Nevertheless, the Cypriot government did not object. In was still in accession talks with the EU..
On Monday, however, the EU meeting with the Islamic organization, to be hosted by Turkey in Istanbul, was abruptly canceled. Cyprus had insisted that the Turks from northern Cyprus, who this year had called themselves the "Turkish Cypriot State," remove the nameplate. Supported by Turkey, they refused to do so..
The Netherlands, the current head of the EU's rotating presidency, canceled the meeting rather than risk a big row with Cyprus and Turkey two days before the European Commission's report on Turkish membership negotiations..
Cyprus can still exercise its veto in December, when EU leaders meet to vote on the commission's recommendation for Turkey, which was favorable..
Hungary, too, has been using Brussels to mediate, in a dispute with Serbia, which has ambitions to move closer to the EU. The Hungarians say atrocities have been committed against ethnic Hungarians in the Serb-controlled province of Vojvodina. "Yes, there has been some violence, but not atrocities," said another EU diplomat. "Budapest and Belgrade have to talk to each other.".
Wagrowska, the foreign policy expert, said it would take time for the new EU countries to find a way to reconcile their national interests with broader European foreign policy objectives..
But Jiri Schneider, political director of the Czech Foreign Ministry, said in a telephone interview that the recent spate of disputes proved one thing: "The EU must have a unified foreign policy; otherwise, individual interests will prevail that will damage the EU.".
International Herald Tribune
The Berlusconi cabinet insists on provoking the rest of the members of the European Union.
Neofascist Minister Mirko Tremaglia makes Schwarzenneger look almost like a girly boy. Tremaglia declared: "Poor Europe, the faggots are majority" (in reality "culattoni" is a worse word than "faggots", since it makes reference to ample ass holes in the physical sense)
"It was a bad joke".
fbaezer,
Bad joke - agreed. But there are worse things in the world.
I find the self-righteous hypocricy of the overly inflated and abstract rhetoric of the French government offensive on a much more profound level - particularly as it contrasts with their behavior. The cardinal offense of the Italian government in this and similar instances is that they violate the contemporary orthodoxy of political correctitude in their various statements. This is the new secular religion and its doctrines are enforced with inquisitoriaql zeal.
Savonarola lives - today he is a Liberal.
European Parliament approves revised slate of Commissioners
The European Parliament voted 449-149 (with 82 abstentions) Thursday to approve the slate of incoming EU Commissioners as put forth by new Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. Barroso withdrew his original slate of commissioners from consideration by the European Parliament after Rocco Buttiglione, who was nominated for the EU justice portfolio, received harsh criticism for expressing conservative views on homosexuality and marriage during parliamentary review hearings. Barroso made several changes to the slate of Commissioners, including replacing Buttiglione with Franco Frattini, after Buttiglione withdrew his name from consideration. Earlier this week, Frattini successfully faced parliamentary review hearings of his nomination to the justice portfolio. The new Commissioners will begin work Monday.
Profiles of the new Commissioners
BBC News has more about this:
MEPs approve revamped Commission
