What a pleasure it was to attend a conference on sovereign wealth funds today at the magnificent Palais d’Egmont in Brussels. There we were, listening to a prominent Kuwaiti banker as he described the activities of the Kuwaiti Investment Authority, often regarded as the oldest sovereign fund of them all.

All of a sudden, a French participant livened things up by asking why the Kuwaitis, when they set up shop back in the 1950s, had chosen London rather than some other foreign city as their base. Smooth as silk, the Kuwaiti replied that, well, after all, as a top banker you needed to be in a city “where you can have some fun … not like Frankfurt, for example.”

Quick as a flash the French lady retorted: “What about Paris?”

What about Paris indeed, I thought, my heart racing.

But since I was moderating the discussion, I decided to put in a word for Frankfurt, surely the most mocked financial capital in European history (mocked, of course, not as a business location but for being far too dull for energetic young bond salesmen, equity analysts and other whizz kids of our times).

I had spent four years in Frankfurt for the FT, I recalled, and there was no way I would forget all the fun I had enjoyed there. Yes, sirree. It was on April 10.

One of the big upcoming stories in EU-land is the planned expansion of the union’s passport-free zone by the year-end.

It’s a tough task for the nine (almost all ex-Communist) countries to meet the criteria to join the Schengen area. (There are no internal frontier controls between member states that sign up to Schengen). In Wednesday’s paper, we wrote about the progress of the countries vying to join. The confidential report that we saw shows that a lot of work is still needed - especially on improving visa issuance. But some countries, notably Poland, have made great strides.

Continue reading "Schengen moves"

Nicolas Sarkozy’s  proposal for a "wise men’s committee " to meditate on the European Union’s long-term future, and to report back in the first half of 2009, is ruffling all sorts of feathers around the EU. As Margot Wallström, the European Commission vice-president responsible for communication strategy, put it the other day: "Wise men? What about the wise women? And since this group is expected to work out solutions for the future of Europe, should we not involve young people?"

Continue reading "Wisdom and the Turkish question"

Poor Romania. After decades of communist dictatorship and a bloody, violent revolution the country finally managed the transition to democracy. It endured years of economic and political upheaval, rising crime and the exodus of young and talented workers to the rich countries of western Europe.
Month by month, the government inched its way towards membership of the European Union. It enacted all 85,000 pages of EU law. It rolled out the red carpet every time a lowly bureaucrat from Brussels came to visit. It sat through long nights of negotiations to sort out the country’s farm budget and clean up the state aid regime.
At last, Romanians thought they had made it. The country is now only two months away from becoming a fully paid-up member of the Union, with its own seat at the table and its very own commissioner in Brussels.

Continue reading "Romania’s less than glittering prize"

The British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Ali G) has caused a diplomatic storm with his latest film lampooning the central Asian state of Kazakhstan. His creation Borat, a fake TV reporter, was denounced by Nursultan Nazarbayev’s man in London, Erlan Idrissov  on Wednesday.
He attacks Borat for saying that in his country women are kept in cages, and that wives can be bought from their fathers for 15 gallons of insecticide.

Continue reading "Bulgaria gets its own Borat"