Monthly Archives: March 2007

Dane speaking

March 29, 2007 5:58 pm

Communication with its citizens is a key part of the European Commission’s attempt to renew the EU after a subdued 50th birthday.

Jose Manuel Barroso, the president, wants to not only achieve a “Europe of results” but to tell people about them so they will value Brussels, if not love it.

An insight into just how hard this could be comes in a candid interview with Claus Haugaard Sorensen, who runs the EU’s communications directorate, in the latest issue of Communication Director, a European mag for the PR industry.

It is a job from hell, though if every fonctionnaire was a plain-speaking Dane, it would be lot easier.

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Posted in EU Commission |

Fraud in Brussels and how not to handle it

March 28, 2007 5:40 pm by George Parker

Is fraud endemic in the European institutions? You might think so, reading the coverage of the revelations that three Italians have been arrested in a multi-milllion euro case involving bribery and forgery involving public tenders for EU buildings overseas.

The allegations of fraud lasting more than 10 years are shocking, and have been presented in some media as the latest manifestation of a sickness at the heart of the European Union. While the particulars of the case are grim, I’m not sure the problem is as chronic as some believe.

Before I’m accused of being a Brussels apologist, could I plead that I was the journalist whose interview with Marta Andreasen, the sacked EU chief accountant, put her story on the front page of the FT and helped to establish her as a eurosceptic martyr? My colleague, Tobias Buck, broke the Eurostat fraud scandal.

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Posted in EU |

EU at 50: great party without the usual hangover

March 26, 2007 3:12 pm by George Parker

José Manuel Barroso raised a few titters in Berlin at the weekend with his assertion that "size matters" – a reference to the fact that the 480m people of the European Union made it a big player in the world.

I took away from the EU summit in Berlin a different impression: the little things matter. Strip away the speechifying and the Berlin declaration – a worthy enough attempt to mark the Union’s 50th birthday – and what will linger from the summit was the fact that 27 European leaders (and their spouses) actually seemed to have a good time.

That may sound trivial, but sometimes European Union leaders spend so much time slagging off Brussels or other national leaders that they forget that they are in this together, they have things in common, and they need to make it work.

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Posted in EU |

Will the Commission go back to blocking mergers?

March 22, 2007 5:58 pm by Financial Times

The European Commission enjoys many powers, though none is quite as jaw-droppingly awesome and downright glamorous as its ability to block big, international mergers and takeovers.

Indeed, the first (and perhaps only) time that mainstream America became aware of the Commission’s  existence was when the Brussels body blocked the tie-up of General Electric and Honeywell in 2001. The ruling sparked outrage on the other side of the Atlantic, and left many commentators spluttering how a little-known institution an ocean away was in a position to thwart the marriage of two US corporate icons.

Much has changed since then. There have been fewer deals, and certainly fewer deals that were driven by corporate egos and a mindless pursuit of size (which tend to create greater competition worries than smaller acquisitions). Scarred by a string of court rulings that overturned three merger prohibitions in 2002, the Commission also became much more careful about blocking deals. Both sides, in any case, became better at putting together remedies that allowed even problematic deals to go through in exchange for asset disposals or other concessions.

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Posted in EU Commission |

Brown: he can do a budget, but can he work Brussels?

March 21, 2007 4:47 pm by George Parker

Gordon Brown knows how to deliver a budget. His last financial statement in the House of Commons on Wednesday contained the usual bullish economic optimism (of course) and a surprise: a cut in the basic rate of income tax.

So much we know. For all the criticism of Mr Brown’s personal style, his macro-economic record in the UK is envied by many in Europe. But can Mr Brown, prime minister-in-waiting, translate his economic standing into real influence in Brussels?

There are signs that Mr Brown is starting to take Europe more seriously. His lieutenant, Treasury minister Ed Balls, has been a regular visitor to Brussels projecting a less abrasive face than that usually seen from the chancellor’s camp. Read more

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Posted in EU |

Michel, the Belge

March 19, 2007 5:50 pm

Would the last commissioner to leave please turn out the lights? That’s a gross exaggeration of course, but nevertheless, news of two commissioners’ getting more involved in “the countries they know best”, as the euro-euphemism goes, gave a certain fin de regime feel on Monday halfway through the Commission’s five-year term.

Louis Michel, the development commissioner, is taking a month’s unpaid leave in May and June to stand for election in Belgium. Well, not quite: he is campaigning, running last on the list of his French-speaking Liberal party for the Senate, doubtless requiring a 50 per cent swing or something to be elected.

Margot Wallstrom, the communications commissioner, has agreed to run a strategy group for Sweden’s opposition party on Europe. It emerged yesterday that she had forgotten to tell her boss, Jose Manuel Barroso.

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Posted in EU Commission |

Airbust-up in space

March 15, 2007 6:45 pm

The European Union is boldly going…nowhere. An ambitious project to set up a rival to the US military GPS satellite navigation system, cutely named Galileo, has so far stalled at the launch pad. The idea of the EU building physical infrastructure is new, the problems bedevilling are not: national rivalries, bureaucracy, and private companies wanting a public guarantee of making a mint.

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Posted in EU |

Laws of unintended consequences

March 14, 2007 7:22 pm by Financial Times

Few would claim that lawmaking is a simple business. And it certainly does not get any easier when a piece of legislation will cover the actions and intentions of some 500m people and myriad companies and institutions in 27 countries.

A particular threat caused by the European Union’s unique set-up is that its laws have unintended consequences. An attempt to tackle market barriers in some member states may end up causing new restrictions somewhere else. What works well in one country can lead to mayhem in another.

This dilemma was once again in evidence earleir this week, when the European Parliament gave its final approval to an important change to the EU’s banking laws.

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Suspect Polish maths and a tricky summit

March 12, 2007 7:42 pm by George Parker

Poland could be about to make life much harder for Angela Merkel, German chancellor, as she tries to give the kiss of life to the EU’s comatose constitutional treaty. Warsaw is threatening to reopen one of the treaty’s most contentious issues: how much power each country should have in the Council of Ministers, the Union’s main legislative body.

"The proposed voting system in the EU constitution mostly hits Poland, according to mathematicians," said Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland’s prime minister last week. I don’t know which mathematicians he’s been speaking to, but he’s plain wrong.

The real maths behind the argument are fascinating, because they underscore a traditional Polish suspicion of their western neighbours – a factor which could make a Poland-Germany summit this week on the Baltic coast especially tricky.

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Posted in EU |

Carbon reduction begins at home

March 9, 2007 4:25 pm by Sarah Laitner

If there’s one thing that Brussels can teach the world, it’s how to move VIPs around fast.

Most days you’ll hear sirens as elite police outriders clear the roads so that motorcades of black Mercedes and Audis can whisk visiting presidents and prime ministers to meetings.

The police teams are certainly effective at sweeping through the city’s clogged streets. One diplomat told me of a hair-raising seven-minute journey in a convoy from the airport to the EU district during rush hour. Ordinarily, that car ride would take 25 minutes in light traffic.

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Posted in Environment |
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