Europe could soon have weaker pollution controls than the US. I’ll say that again. Europe could soon have weaker pollution controls than the US. In a surprising about turn, the European parliament voted this week to relax air quality controls.
The European Commission, the bureaucracy that comes up with the targets, was shocked. It has asked member states, who must ultimately agree them, to sharpen them again. If they refuse, the Commission could scrap its proposal altogether.

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Diana Wallis, a British MEP, had it right when she denounced the entirely unacceptable way in which the EU handled membership negotiations with Bulgaria and Romania.
She said the EU was simply "going through the motions" in negotiating with the two countries, since both already had firm guarantees they could join the club in 2007 or 2008 at the latest.
"EU membership is an attractive proposition and a sought after goal," she said. "It should not be some sort of freebie to be handed out with cornflake packets."
Bulgaria and Romania will join the EU on January 1 and we should rejoice at the fact: both countries suffered grievously under communism and their accession to the club will be of benefit both to them and to the Union as a whole.
But the conduct of the membership process has done nobody any favours.

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Those maligned servants of the European project have been much in the news since the FT revealed the astonishing incidence of mental illness and early retirement at the European institutions, principally the executive Commission.
Some maintain it is simply a way of squeezing out difficult or incompetent staff who are very difficult to fire. If not, is there something about building Europe that produces intolerable stress? Read more in the European court of auditors’report on the subject.
Certainly, working for multinational sovereign bodies brings unique difficulties. Rates of illness at the United Nations and International Labour Organisation are not much different. All have a strict hierarchy based on grades. All have some senior managers who advance thanks to political connections rather than ability. Some EU member states weigh their influence by how many of the top jobs in Brussels their nationals hold. In contrast with private employers, the Commission holds no data on ethnic minority recruitment but tries scrupulously to balance nationalities.

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Chatting with a European diplomat recently, the conversation turned to the subject of Iran’s nuclear programme. This diplomat was depressed. He thought Iran was intent on getting the bomb and couldn’t think of anything that would stop it.
(Tehran insists its intentions are purely peaceful, but most western countries think it’s at least interested in the option of developing nuclear weapons.)
I asked about sanctions. Hard to agree and unlikely to have an effect, he thought. Airstrikes? Destabilising and ultimately incapable of stopping Iran from doing what it wants. Continued negotiations? They sound nice, but during the three frustrating years since the European Union first struck a nuclear deal with a Tehran his expectations had taken a nosedive.
So what policy did he advocate, I asked. He still favoured the middle path: action at the United Nations that could lead to sanctions. He couldn’t really see such a strategy succeeding, but considered the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran so bad that the west had to give it a try.

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Relations between Microsoft and the European Commission are a bit like the weather in Brussels: sometimes better, sometimes worse, but on the whole and viewed over the year, pretty appalling.
Right now, the two sides are going through an especially dark and turbulent phase. Over the past week or so there have been public accusations, charges of foul-play, denials and other hostile activity, culminating with a harshly-worded letter by Neelie Kroes that was published in the Financial Times on Tuesday.
The trouble has all to do with Vista, Microsoft’s new personal computer operating system that is set to replace Windows at the end of this year. The Commission has voiced deep concerns, warning Microsoft repeatedly that the new system may fall foul of European competition rules.

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When I interviewed Hungary’s new prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, in 2004 his opening gambit was: "Call me Frank." Ironic, really. But Mr Gyurcsany’s admission that he won an election through bare-faced deceit - recorded on tape as he spoke to socialist MPs about the need to face up to painful reforms - has won him a surprising amount of support around Brussels.
His speech was one of the most intriguing, passionate and honest political tracts you will ever read - even if it was delivered by a serial liar. Mr Gyurcsany’s plea for reforms of the economy and public services should stand as a template for other EU countries grappling with globalisation. "Reform or fall - there is no other choice," as he put it, could be a motto for much of Europe.
With such a clear-sighted view of what needs to be done, no wonder Joaqun Almunia, the EU monetary affairs commissioner, privately hopes the Hungarian prime minister will survive politically to deliver on the rhetoric.

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Trade, apart from peace and prosperity, is always held up as the great EU success story. If only the EU could get its act together in other areas, such as foreign affairs, it would be a global power, the argument runs.
Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, an Italian member of the European Central Bank board, is suggesting that the unity on trade should be a model for countries in the eurozone to boost the currency’s political weight.
Yet in the last few weeks European solidarity on trade has been conspicuous by its absence.
Last year’s imposition of quotas on Chinese textiles angered nations of shoppers such as the UK and Sweden. They were riled again this summer when the European Commission ruled that Chinese and Vietnamese shoes were being dumped on European markets. Many are made by European companies that have outsourced production.

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Improbable as it may seem, plans to cut the prices Europeans pay to use their mobile phone while abroad could whizz into law within a year.
To recap: the European Commission in July vowed to the slash the "exorbitant" roaming fees that operators charge when customers travel elsewhere in the EU. The proposal brought howls of protest from big phone operators and triggered a fight between Brussels and many in the telecoms industry.
Since the Brussels legislative machine usually moves at a snail’s pace, many people expected a plan as controversial as this to linger for years before being passed.

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Romania and Bulgaria are almost certain to join the European Union early next year, though few in Brussels are enthusiastic about the new intake. Many governments, as well as the European Commission, worry that the two countries are not ready to join; there are widespread concerns about their records on internal security and the prospect of mass economic migration to the west.

But a small group of top Commission officials has a very special reason to dread the arrival of Romania and Bulgaria. The two countries, after all, will be able to send two new commissioners to join the current 25-strong body, which in turn means creating two new portfolios.

José Manuel Barroso, the Commission president, wants to reveal the precise nature of the new posts in the next month or so. This week, during an FT-sponsored debate with business leaders, he damped speculation that he would pull off a major reshuffle, hinting that he would make only minor changes to his line-up. All the same, the present crop of commissioners knows that Mr Barroso cannot create jobs out of thin air, but will have to tear away responsibilities from the current 25 commissioners.

Already, some of the dossiers given to smaller member states two years ago look embarrassingly thin. Jan Figel, the man in charge of Education, Training, Culture and Multilingualism, can hardly complain of having too high a profile, and neither can Joe Borg, Malta’s commissioner for fisheries and maritime affairs.

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Peter Mandelson, the European trade commissioner, prides himself on his presentational skills. And that’s not just the well-cut suits. The man who helped turn Labour into New Labour and get the leftwing party back into power in Britain after 18 years in the wilderness remains proud of his achievement.
When he arrived in Brussels in 2004 he promised a similar transformation. He would put trade at the service of development, he said, as he brandished a fair trade chocolate bar and talked of his year in Africa as a volunteer aid worker.
A year later he was chewing the fat with Bono of U2 in Brussels ahead of the Live 8 concert. In Hong Kong, as the Doha development trade talks began to come off the rails, he was sporting a white Make Poverty History wristband.

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