Category: European Union

A tale of two social and economic models

In a seven-minute televised address yesterday President Chirac responded to the people’s resounding rejection of the EU Constitution.  There are three (not unpredictable) threads to his response.

1. The direction of Europe will not be fundamentally affected by the May 29 vote.  Chirac said quite specifically, “It was not a rejection of the European ideal. It was a demand to be heard, a demand for action, a demand for results.”  The people – as all elites averr when it suits them – were not answering the question put before them.  They were voting on the French economy.

2. As a rejection of French unemployment the vote was also a rejection of the Anglo-Saxon economic model (code for market discipline) with which the Constitution was, apparently, heavily imbued.  You might consider this perverse and an egregious conflation.  But Chirac is an opportunist, like all politicians, and the referendum vote provides an opportunity to rein in British influence in Europe.

3. The French governmental predeliction for paternalism and elitism sails on unaffected.  Chirac explained his Prime Ministerial appointment of Dominique de Villepin as a response to “worries” and “expectations” about, basically, unemployment.  Quite what “action” and “results” a career diplomat, gris eminence and would-be man of letters who has never once stood for election will be able to effect (and through “The French model”) remains to be seen.

Plus ça change …

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Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, June 1, 2005 at 05:18 AM in European Union
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God bless the French

The expected good news it seems. Its not official yet but Chirac’s response suggests that he has given up hope.

Posted by Phil Peterson on Sunday, May 29, 2005 at 05:23 PM in European Union
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The Bear’s Lair: Cracks in the euro zone

At the time the Euro was introduced in 1999, its opponents prophesied a dark future of increasing currency strains within the euro zone, as disparate economies struggled together in a single currency.  Later, in 2002-03, the fears appeared to have been ill-founded, and the euro was hailed as a stunning success.  However, recent economic trends suggest that the pessimists may have been right, just a little early.

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Posted by karlmagnus on Monday, May 23, 2005 at 04:11 PM in Economics & Finance,  European Nationalism,  European Union
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Who stole the Spanish election?

National Review article—VERY interesting. Makes sense to me; the Spanish socialists are a very nasty lot.

http://www.nationalreview.com/gaffney/gaffney200505181246.asp

Posted by karlmagnus on Wednesday, May 18, 2005 at 08:43 PM in European Nationalism,  European Union,  War on Terror
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The Bear’s Lair: Do we want the Tories?

As Britain heads into a General Election May 5, the question naturally arises for supporters of the “Bear’s Lair” free market, sound economy approach: do we want the Tories (Britain’s “Conservative Party”) to win this time?  It’s a surprisingly close call.

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Posted by karlmagnus on Monday, April 11, 2005 at 08:32 AM in British Politics,  Conservatism,  Economics & Finance,  European Union
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About-turn in the Netherlands too?

Maastricht, the small Dutch town on the borders of Belgium and Germany where the treaty that gave birth to the euro was signed, displays its European credentials proudly. But, while the symbols remain in place, a strange thing is happening to the people who live here: they are starting to sound Eurosceptic. “It’s just too bureaucratic, too big. The EU and the people are too far apart,” a grey-haired woman said as she scuttled along the cobbled pedestrian streets, lined with traditional Dutch gabled houses. “It gets bigger, bigger, bigger.”

The Netherlands, one of the six founding members of the European Union and currently holder of the EU presidency, has always taken pride in being a good European, scoring higher than any other country, apart from Luxembourg, in terms of public support for the EU. It is proud to have hosted the Treaty of Maastricht, which created the last great European project, the single currency. But now, in an extraordinary about-turn, the Netherlands may scupper the next great EU project, the European constitution.

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Posted by jonjayray on Friday, March 11, 2005 at 02:01 AM in European Union
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Another one to file away til later

Around Spring 2006 British voters will be sent to the polls by the three-time election winner and Prime Minister of Smiles, Tony Blair, to vote on the proposed EU Constitution.  Opinion is settled on the matter and entirely accords with the long-established two-thirds, one-third majority for Euroscepticism.  So how will our internationalist PM and his new Master of the European Stage, that man of Brazilian passions, Peter Mandelson, ever persuade the British public to the contrary?

Well, reasoned argument is obviously out.  Something stronger is required, something befitting a desperate elite.  It has to be - can only be - threat.  And the only threat that has any purchase on the public mind is that of the lonely and dire future awaiting Little England outside the loving embrace of Europe.  There, Blair and Mandelson have a (softening) majority.  There they have an outside chance of pulling off a truly astonishing victory.

So be ready for it: a No vote will irrevocably lead to Britain having to quit the Union and, thence, walk the narrow and dark path to national failure.  That’s the line.

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Posted by Guessedworker on Monday, January 3, 2005 at 07:50 AM in European Union
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A real danger

Helmut Schmidt was a leader of the left-liberal SPD and Chancellor of Germany from 1974 to 1982. He recently gave an interview to a Hamburg newspaper in which he spoke freely about his attitudes to Turkey joining the EU.

He told the newspaper that though he supported favourable trade deals for Turkey, he opposed Turkish membership of the EU. Why? His answer was as follows:

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Posted by Guest Blogger on Saturday, December 18, 2004 at 09:40 PM in European Union
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(Money) Quote of the day

“There is a basic code from Finland to Portugal. Turkey has a different history. But this is not the largest obstacle. How much would it cost?”

Edward Stoiber, Bavarian Prime Minister and CDU leader, speaking of the 407 to 262 vote by the European Parliament to open EU entry talks with Turkey.

Turkey has won the sympathy vote.  It has won the geopolitical vote.  It has won the moral vote.  But cost conquers all.

Another summit, another   deal.  The Telegraph reports an EU diplomat lauding Mr Blair as the saviour of the summit, with the Dutch who hold the EU presidency.  “Blair played a phenomenal role … drafting the compromise text, saving the Turks from themselves.”

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Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, December 16, 2004 at 05:20 PM in European Union
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EU worker seeks female colleague, great SoH ... some SoH, then ... alright, any bloody SoH

The following is a spoof commendation of ... polygamy, what else?  I sent it to the EU Commission house organ, Commission en Direct, for reasons which will become apparent.  It appeared in the 9th November issue.  Amazingly, there are journalists at the FT who also have nothing better to do than leaf through Commission en Direct.  One of them took it upon his or, just possibly, herself to have some harmless fun at the Commission’s expense.  Or maybe polygamy is just bigger than I thought.  The full text of my missive follows.

One of our colleagues has recently proposed setting up a non-official ‘Singles Group’ in the European institutions. Alas, her project is unlikely to be successful.

The reason is as clear as daylight. There are approximately nine single women to every single man employed by the European institutions. In our august working environment, single women are as ‘thick as the autumnal leaves that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa’. A singles’ group would therefore largely consist of unmarried and divorced females pushing 40 and 50, with the occasional predatory, sociopathic or gold-digging male just to add variety. For as the old adage goes, a single woman over thirty is more likely to be hit by a terrorist’s bullet and simultaneously struck by lightning than to win the heart of an unmarried male who is non-psychotic, over four foot tall and in full-time employment. Men? The great Charles Thomson, founder of the anti-anti-art movement known as ‘stuckism’, perhaps put it best: “A Single Woman … is never more than six inches away from the nearest Rat’.

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Posted by Guest Blogger on Friday, December 3, 2004 at 01:25 PM in European Union
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Joschka Fisher on European geopolitical ambitions and you and me.

Apologies for being a day behind with this one.  But Jim Naugherty’s interview yesterday of German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fisher, is worth revisiting.  It vividly demonstrates the gulf between public discussion here about the meaning of Europe and the kind of thing that is said across the Channel.  We shouldn’t only blame Blair or Dennis McShane or, in their time, Peter Hain or Keith Vaz for this contemptuous and underhand treatment of the British public.  No one from any British political party has revealed as vividly as Fisher the driving preoccupations of the European political elite.

A while ago the always interesting if, perhaps rather client-centred George Freedman concluded an article on Iraq with the words, “geopolitics always trumps conspiracy.”  In terms of our EU debate we might well make that: geopolitics always trumps the need to explain anything to the common man.

One has the nasty suspicion that our political elite is convinced on the one hand of the absolute necessity to respond as a unified European entity to the redrawing of global power and influence beyond the reach of the nation state and, on the other, of the potential of the common man, if told of his marginalisation and impotence, to fuck it all up as fast as possible.  So we have a deeply asinine debate conducted by the elite with Straussian detachment and with the minimum ideological division.  The European project, meanwhile, just bowls along.  Oh Maggie, where art thou? 

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Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, October 21, 2004 at 06:39 AM in European Union
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A little something about Belgium

What does the English-speaking world really know about politics and Belgium?  If you register our existence at all, is it simply as a rather grey but worthy and pleasantly sensible little country.  Or do we, perhaps, seem so burdened by the tragedies of 20th century history and, these days, so communautaire that we automatically eschew anything more divisive than the Federal Government’s consumption of paperclips?

Or do you suspect that beneath all that we might be a nation of ten million Noel Godins – every one an exponent of the whacky, cream-filled theatre of the absurd?  Do you see a Belgium of uncontainable anarchism that laughs up its sleeve while consoling poor Bill Gates for his 1998 humiliation by Godin’s followers?  (Well, not poor Bill Gates, exactly.  I take that back.  And, in Godin’s mitigation, what else does one do in Brussels but eat cake?)

The truth, of course, is that there are two sides to Belgium, facing in entirely different directions.  But I shall come to that later.  For now, you should know that we are neither politically boring nor anarchist street comedians.  But our political masters, now that’s another matter.  Our political masters know precisely how to deliver a calculated public humiliation with perfect timing and with all the sang froid in the world.

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Posted by Johan Van Vlaams on Saturday, October 16, 2004 at 04:01 PM in European Union
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