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When politicians talk of a “European spirit” they are not usually referring to vodka. Yet the potent, clear drink is at the heart of a dispute over European values – and money – that will be played out next week in the European parliament.

MEPs will vote on what ingredients can be used to make vodka – and the signs are that those from producing countries will be defeated.

Alex Stubb, a Finnish centre-right MEP, says that would break a promise made when his country and Sweden entered the EU that the national drink would receive similar protection to wine, whisky, rum and grappa, which all have a strict limit on ingredients.

Continue reading "Vodka lovers at the last chance saloon"

To paraphrase my colleague Gideon Rachman, gay rights and green values are the motherhood and apple pie of the European Union. Yet this, along with many other things, may be changing after the influx of eight former communist countries in 2004.

Poland has led the charge against these cosy "European values". Its current populist government has talked of bringing back the death penalty and launched an all-out assault on perceived communist collaborators. Other officials have the corrupting influence of western children’s TV in their sights.

Ewa Sowinska, a children’s rights watchdog, said last week she would have psychologists investigate whether Tinky Winky, the handbag-carrying Teletubby, was gay. “I noticed [he] has a lady’s purse but I didn’t realised he’s a boy…later I learned that this may have a homosexual undertone,” she told a news magazine.

Continue reading "A handbagging from Poland"

The European Union is often compared to a bicycle: if it stops moving forwards it will fall over. The bicycle theory also applies to multilateral trade talks.

Hence negotiators keep having meeting after meeting to revive the Doha round, even if they appear only to be inching further down a cul de sac.

Trade ministers chatted in Paris early last week. Then on Thursday and Friday Peter Mandelson, the EU trade commissioner, hosted his counterparts from the US, India and Brazil in Brussels. The talks were, inevitably, “productive”, but just as inevitably did not lead to a breakthrough. You can probably write the closing statement for the next round in June yourself.

In the meantime, the EU ministers are preparing to jump out of the saddle.

Continue reading "Bicycle wobbles on the way to Doha"

Amid all the distraction of the Paul Wolfowitz affair it’s easy to forgot that life goes on – in abject poverty - for the billions earning less than a dollar a day.

Europe has been vocal in its call for the Wolf to leave his lair. It is once again burnishing its pro-development credentials. But are they all that they are cracked up to be?

Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, the German development minister, said this week that the EU was ahead of its target to dedicate 0.39 per cent of gross domestic product to aid in 2006, hitting 0.42%. The bloc already provides half of the world’s development aid. While she is not known as "Red Heide" just because of the colour of her hair, campaigners beg to differ.

Concord, the alliance of European NGOs released a damning report last week. It said around a third of aid was debt relief, housing refugees in the EU and even paying for foreigners to be educated at European universities. Belgium even tries to pretend its peacekeeping mission in Congo is aid. No doubt any Congolese chicory growers are benefiting from the troops’ presence.

In short, G8 pledges to double aid to Africa were not being met.

Continue reading "Crying Wolf over aid and trade?"

Frankenstein’s – or rather Bolkenstein’s – monster was resurrected in Brussels on Tuesday, reopening some raw wounds.

The services directive, which received its nickname from angry trade unions after it was tabled by Frits Bolkestein, the fiery liberal Dutch ex-internal market commissioner, was the hottest political potato in town last year.

It was supposed to allow plumbers, doctors, hairdressers and other to ply their trade freely across borders. Unions and Socialist parties said it would lead to social dumping and a race to the bottom for labour rights. Rightwingers said the EU’s internal market was a nonsense without it, since service trade was far bigger than that in goods.

A painfully stitched-together compromise removed health services and the idea that they should abide by the laws of their countries of origin rather than where they worked.

The European parliament patted itself on the back for coming up with the proposal and getting warring national governments to endorse it too. On Tuesday, however, dissident rightwingers in the European People’s party joined Liberals to back a surprise call for health services to be put back in.

Continue reading "Bolkestein’s ghost"

How green is the European Commission? It claimed on Thursday it was very green indeed. A leader in fighting climate change and cutting car pollution, it would now seek to become a green imperium, pushing others around the world to adopt its ways.

The European Union’s global environmental policies should become “one of the core objectives of EU external relations policy”, a mid-term review said. There should be EU-wide taxes to encourage good environmental behaviour.

After all, commissioner Stavros Dimas pointed out, much remained to be done. "Global emissions of greenhouse gases are rising, the loss of biodiversity is not yet under control, pollution is still harming public health and volumes of waste are increasing in Europe,” he said.

What was needed was more money and ensuring a green tinge to everything from energy to agriculture policy. It was a breathtaking power grab and a huge contrast to when Jose Manuel Barroso’s Commission took office.

Continue reading "People in green houses…"

The week’s parliamentary session in Strasbourg had the usual mix of the sublime, the ridiculous and a dash of unexpected drama. Above it all hung the usual question of what we were doing here by the sunsoaked Rhine. That was given added spice by the revelation by the Green party that the monthly commute to the French city gives off as much carbon as a small island state about to be drowned by global warming.

The drama came on Wednesday when Bronislaw Geremek, the Polish former dissident who has become the conscience of the parliament in the last few years. His refusal to sign a further declaration that he had not collaborated with Communist secret police draw a rare standing ovation. Party leaders rallied to his defence denouncing witch hunts and Stalinism. His 53 Polish colleagues, who have signed the declaratons, were noticeably quieter - except those from the ruling Law and Justice party who howled because the deputy speaker stopped them answering the charges. They - like Geremek - are desperate not to be seen as Euro-quislings. If he has his mandate revoked; the ex-foreign minister said, he could return to Poland and have direct contact with the people, continuing his fight at home. That day also saw a climactic vote to allow medicines derived from embryonic stem cell research on to the market, after a debate that pitched liberals against moral conservatives.

There also was interesting news for air travellers.

Continue reading "Hot air and high principle"

Not only is the European parliament’s commute to Strasbourg burning 200m euros of taxpayers’ money a year. It is also burning at least 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, a report published by the Green party on Wednesday showed.

The 785 MEPs and their baggage train spend one week a month in the French city in a spirit of European solidarity. The first serious research into their carbon footprint is released to coincide with the setting up of a temporary committee on climate change.

Claude Turmes, a ponytailed Green from Luxembourg, said MEPs take chauffeur-driven limousines from office to restaurant and yet have called on Europe to cut emissions by 25 per cent between 1990 and 2020. “This is exactly what citizens detest in politicians: saying one thing and doing another.”

Continue reading "More grey than green in parliament"

Once again the European Commission stands accused of doing something of which we are all guilty: not putting its money where its mouth is. It calls for Europe-wide smoking bans while subsidising tobacco farmers; it throws money at poor countries while reducing their chances to enrich themselves by blocking some of their products.

The latest alleged hypocrisy is giving billions in aid to recent joiners for projects that will contribute to big greenhouse gas emission rises.

Continue reading "Commission’s sins of emission?"

When it comes to dealing with the rise of China it seems Europeans are from Venus and Americans from Mars. The popular phrase of Robert Kagan, the US commentator, appears more apt than ever when talking of the rise of the potential Asian superpower.

The US has acted decisively twice in recent weeks to try to force open the doors to the workshop of the world – to a predictable howl of outrage from Beijing. For the time being, the European Union is prepared to watch from the sidelines - and perhaps even benefit as US-China relations degenerate.

Five years after it entered the World Trade Organisation, the US feels China has not lived up to its obligations. Piracy is still rampant and too many ailing state enterprises are being propped up with subsidies, Washington says.

Continue reading "Brussels and Washington’s trade imbalance with China"