Tag: European Union

Sarkozy’s lecture to the Visegrad Four will fall on deaf ears

November 12, 2009 11:20 am by Tony Barber

There are all sorts of threats to the European Union’s unity, but something tells me that the biggest threat isn’t the Visegrad group. This appears to be a view not shared by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

Speaking after the October 29-30 EU summit in Brussels, Sarkozy criticised the fact that the leaders of the four Visegrad countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – had held a pre-summit meeting to co-ordinate their positions. “If they were to meet regularly before each Council, that would raise some questions,” Sarkozy said.

Would it, really? When I put this question the other day to a high-ranking official from a Visegrad country, he replied with a Sarkozy-like grimace on his face. The Visegrad group was, he said, as harmless as other EU regional subgroups, such as the Nordic trio (Denmark, Finland and Sweden), the Benelux countries (Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands), the Iberians (Portugal and Spain) and Club Aristotle (Cyprus and Greece).

In truth, the most curious thing about the Visegrad group is that it still exists. No sooner had it been set up in 1991 after the fall of communism than, like some mysterious mitteleuropäisch cell, it mutated from three members into four with the break-up of Czechoslovakia. It held together largely because of the belief that strength in solidarity would accelerate the integration of the four into western security and economic structures – the EU and Nato.

But the strains inside the group have never entirely gone away. Poland, the biggest member, tends to see itself as a kind of big brother, with a wider view on the world than the rest. The Poles no longer want to be treated in the EU as a mere regional player, a country defined by its proximity to places like Belarus and Ukraine. They want to be at the top table, next to France, Germany and the UK.

The Czech Republic tends to be regarded as the smarty-pants of the four, a perception reinforced by the Czech EU presidency in the first half of this year. The Czechs spent an awful lot of time telling everyone how they were superior to their neighbours, because their far-sighted policies had enabled them to escape the worst of the financial crisis. This know-all attitude didn’t exactly endear them to their EU partners.

Slovakia had a bad reputation in the 1990s because of the misrule of Vladimir Meciar, the former prime minister. But it then transformed itself so fast that it is now the only Visegrad country in the eurozone. However, there are continuing tensions over Slovakia’s ethnic Hungarian minority.

Hungary was hit hardest by the financial crisis. Its neighbours gave Hungary the cold shoulder in February when the government in Budapest proposed a €180bn emergency aid programme to recapitalise the banking systems of central and eastern Europe and reschedule foreign currency debt.

This in itself is proof, if any were needed, that Sarkozy’s suspicions are exaggerated. But then again, French opinions about the EU’s former communist countries have a rich history. After all, who was it who told the central and eastern Europeans at the start of the Iraq war that they had “missed a good opportunity to shut up”?

Step forward, ex-president Jacques Chirac.

Tags: Czech Republic, ethnic Hungarians, European Union, France, Hungary, Jacques Chirac, Mitteleuropa, Poland, Slovakia, Visegrad
Posted in EU | Permalink

Should we blame Eton for Conservative party’s hostility to EU?

October 8, 2009 9:34 am by Tony Barber

Every now and then, I’m asked in Brussels whether the opposition British Conservative party’s hostility to the European Union is related to the fact that so many of its top people – including David Cameron, likely to be the UK’s next prime minister – went to Eton. The theory is that they’re so snooty and cut off from the lives of ordinary Britons that they’ve lost all sense of what’s in the national interest.

Well, it’s always tempting to have a rant about privilege. But in this case, the verdict on Eton is “not proven”.

Eton is perhaps the world’s most famous elite private school, founded in 1440 under King Henry VI. Located near the town of Slough, it is sometimes mocked as ”Slough Comp” (in other words, Slough Comprehensive, like your average school in Britain’s struggling state-run education system).

Eton is notorious for a variety of savage and peculiar customs, such as the brutal bullying of children (now stopped) and something called the Wall Game, in which a goal has not been scored since 1909 (still going strong).

Eton has produced 18 British prime ministers, some brilliant (Sir Robert Walpole, William Gladstone, Lord Salisbury), some average (George Canning, the Duke of Wellington) and some mediocre (Sir Anthony Eden, Sir Alec Douglas-Home). Abhisit Vejjajiva, Thailand’s prime minister, was educated at Eton.

So why do I consider the case against Eton “not proven”? In the first place, history shows that not every British statesman who went to Eton was anti-European – or even liked the school. Take Lord Salisbury, who was prime minister for 13 years between 1885 and 1902. Born Robert Cecil, Salisbury was an astute manager of Britain’s relationship with the European powers. And he absolutely loathed Eton, especially, as his biographer Andrew Roberts writes, “after Troughton major with ten pints of beer inside him had burnt Cecil’s mouth with a candle so badly that he could not speak for the rest of the evening”.

In the second place, hostility to the EU is, quite simply, found at all levels of the British social ladder. I once lived in Kent on a street where most people had never been to a university, let alone a school like Eton. They were as rabid a bunch of anti-Europeans as any British people I’ve ever known. What’s more, they all voted Tory – and I am quite sure they will all vote Tory in next year’s UK election.

Tags: Britain, British election 2010, David Cameron, Eton, European Union
Posted in EU | Permalink

Europe too suspicious of China’s climate change policies

September 3, 2009 12:23 pm by Tony Barber

According to an opinion poll, more than half of Denmark’s population has little or no confidence that world leaders will strike an agreement on fighting climate change at December’s landmark United Nations summit in Copenhagen. It is just a hunch, but I reckon one impulse behind this pessimism is the widespread European suspicion that China, which recently overtook the US as the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, will play an unconstructive role at the talks.

What if this suspicion is unfounded?

China’s official position is that the US, Europe and other developed regions bear the primary responsibility for cutting emissions. In spite of its rapid economic growth, China regards itself as a relatively poor country that, on a per capita basis, consumes much less energy than the developed world. China had no binding emission targets under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and may well refuse to accept such targets at Copenhagen.

But too few Europeans recognise that China’s leaders know they have a climate change problem and fully intend to deal with it. According to the authoritative International Energy Agency, Chinese carbon emissions from fossil fuels soared by 129 per cent between 1990 and 2005. Coal accounts for 70 per cent of China’s energy consumption and oil for another 20 per cent. As China’s economic growth continues, so will the country’s urbanisation, a process that will greatly increase demand for energy. Curbing emissions is now a national necessity.

China’s leaders certainly do not take kindly to lectures on climate change from politicians in the developed world. However, as Duncan Freeman and Jonathan Holslag argue in a recent paper for the Brussels Institute of Contemporary Chinese Studies, this doesn’t mean the Chinese authorities haven’t given serious thought to the question. For example, the 11th Five Year Plan for 2006-2010 set a target of a 20 per cent cut in energy intensity per unit of gross domestic product by next year.

Under a 2007 initiative, China aims to increase the share of renewable energy in total primary energy consumption to 10 per cent by next year and 15 per cent by 2020. China is often portrayed in Europe as a country so hell-bent on economic growth that it is opening one new power plant every week. Less well-known is that China operates a shutdown programme that in recent years has closed more than 7,000 small and inefficient power stations.

As in Europe, Chinese leaders are trying to use their fiscal stimulus, adopted to tackle the global financial crisis and recession, as an opportunity to put a “green” accent on industrial policies. According to analysts at HSBC bank, about 38 per cent of China’s package is “green”, covering investments in railways, power grids, the environment and energy efficiency.

The European Union, which adopted a widely publicised climate change plan in December 2008, likes to portray itself as the world leader in the field. Increasingly, however, what distinguishes the EU from China is method, not content. The Europeans, multilateralists by instinct, like to set things down in binding international agreements. China, notoriously prickly about its sovereignty, is less keen on this approach.

But this doesn’t mean China isn’t determined to fight climate change. It just means China’s policies will be driven by domestic considerations rather than international pressure.

Tags: China, Copenhagen summit, Environment, European Union, global warming, Kyoto Protocol
Posted in Energy, Environment, Trade | Permalink

Swallowing snakes for the good of Europe

July 13, 2009 10:47 am by Tony Barber

The great thing about blogging is that you learn something new almost every day. This morning, while preparing a blog on the European Union’s foreign policy, I have learnt the French expression avaler des couleuvres, which translates literally as “to swallow grass snakes” and means “to believe anything you’re told”.

What a magnificent idiom! I came across it in the widely followed Coulisses de Bruxelles blog of Jean Quatremer, the Brussels correspondent of the French daily Libération. Quatremer was writing about Javier Solana’s decision to give up his job as the EU’s foreign policy high representative, a post he has held since 1999.

The sentence which contains the metaphorical grass snakes is particularly scathing about the Spanish-born Solana: ”His ability to believe anything he’s told, and his mumbo-jumbo muttered and whispered in a mixture of Spanish, English and French, contribute to his capacity to give the impression to all his interlocutors that he agrees wholeheartedly with them…”

In defence of Solana, you could say that swallowing grass snakes and muttering mumbo-jumbo will be two of the most essential qualifications for anyone applying to replace him. The post of EU foreign policy chief will acquire a bit more importance if the Lisbon treaty comes into force. But it will never be powerful enough to remove European foreign policy from the control of the largest member-states – France, Germany and the UK. Quatremer acknowledges this: “[Solana's] genius has been never to displease member-states anxious to preserve their sovereignty…”

Lacking real power, Solana has been forced all too frequently to swallow snakes and mutter mumbo-jumbo. But if he had attempted to spit out the snakes and talk in plain, robust language, the Chinese, Iranians and Russians, among others, would have soon found him out.

That said, Solana gives the impression of being an intelligent politician who has thought deeply about the changing nature of power in the modern world. In a speech in London last Friday, he put it very well: “The core dilemma of globalisation is that problems are global, but resources and legitimacy remain at the national level… In this new world, a large part of politics can only be conducted at a continental scale. For us in Europe, that means through the European Union… It really is that simple: either Europe works together or we become strategically irrelevant.”

Strategically irrelevant. That is a phrase all Europeans should reflect on. Solana’s successor may have to put up with a mouth full of snakes, but if he can cut out the mumbo-jumbo and express himself as strikingly as that, he will be doing us all a favour.

Tags: EU foreign policy, European Union, France, globalisation, Javier Solana, Lisbon Treaty
Posted in Foreign policy | Permalink

Plain-speaking Sarkozy tells Israel: Dump Lieberman

July 1, 2009 1:57 pm by Tony Barber

Say what you like about Nicolas Sarkozy, he certainly knows how to capture your attention. At a meeting in the Elysée Palace last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it appears that the French president recommended in no uncertain terms that Avigdor Lieberman, the hardline foreign minister, should be dropped from the Israeli cabinet and replaced with Tzipi Livni, the less abrasive opposition leader.

“Grave and unacceptable!” fumed Lieberman’s spokesman – how dare the leader of one democracy interfere in the internal affairs of another?

Here in Stockholm, where Sweden has just started its six-month European Union presidency, there are mixed views on Sarkozy. On the one hand, Swedish government ministers are the first to recognise that, when France held the EU presidency at a critical moment in world affairs in the second half of 2008, Sarkozy – within the limits of the EU’s possibilities – provided vigorous and effective leadership.

On the other hand, the Swedes are more than a little suspicious that Sarkozy may be trying to delay José Manuel Barroso’s reappointment as European Commission president, in order to put pressure on him to appoint a French politician to a top portfolio in the next Commission, due to be picked in a few months’ time. Whatever portfolio the French are after, goes the thinking, it is unlikely to be good news for Europe’s commitment to competition and free trade.

Well, the French aren’t the only ones playing this game. I have spoken over recent weeks with representatives from most of the 27 EU countries, and I have yet to hear anyone say the job their country wants is that of commissioner for multilingualism (held at present by, er, Romania’s Leonard Orban).

Surely the truth is that what Sarkozy said to Netanyahu about Lieberman is what most EU leaders think – but don’t have the guts to say even privately to their Israeli counterparts. Der Spiegel, the German magazine, calls Lieberman a “pragmatic thug” - and that is one of the kinder descriptions one comes across in Europe.

It strikes me as infantile to complain that Sarkozy is “interfering” in the internal affairs of another country, when every public posture the EU has struck since Lieberman’s appointment as foreign minister makes it perfectly plain that the EU thinks Livni would be infinitely preferable to Lieberman. The EU may be right or may be wrong about that – but at least with Sarkozy you know where you are.

Tags: Czech Republic, EU foreign policy, European Union, Israel, Lieberman, Middle East, Sarkozy
Posted in EU Commission, Foreign policy | Permalink

McCreevy feeds a junkie’s Lisbon treaty habit

June 30, 2009 1:39 pm by Tony Barber

I was in Stockholm this morning when the happy news arrived that Germany’s constitutional court had given the green light in principle to the European Union’s Lisbon treaty. I call the news “happy” not because I am biased in favour of Lisbon, but because it meant that for once the task of writing about the treaty fell to someone else at the Financial Times (on this occasion, my Berlin-based colleague Bertrand Benoit).

The EU’s masochistic efforts at institutional reform, encapsulated in the Lisbon treaty, were one of the first things I wrote about when I arrived in Brussels in 2007. Two years later, I find that the subject refuses to go away, seeping into my daily work like a sewage leak in a cellar (a domestic problem familiar to house-dwellers in low-lying Brussels). All the more maddening is the knowledge that almost no one in the outside world cares one stale fig about the treaty.

Still, like a junkie, I sometimes find the temptation to take one more sniff of the Lisbon glue irresistible. Today is one of those days, and I blame Charlie McCreevy, Ireland’s EU commissioner. After an EU summit on June 18-19, the Irish government announced that it would go ahead with a second referendum on the Lisbon treaty (Irish voters rejected it in a referendum in June 2008). With impeccable timing, McCreevy proceeded to offer his opinion that “95 per cent” of the EU’s member-states would have voted No if they’d been given the chance in referendums of their own.

McCreevy was, of course, the hero who boldly stated before Ireland’s first referendum that he hadn’t read the Lisbon treaty and, what’s more, he doubted that any sane person would do so. Anti-Lisbon campaigners exploited his remarks to the full. Now McCreevy seems to be saying that EU leaders are forcing the Lisbon treaty into law against the will of the overwhelming majority of the EU’s 27 countries.

On the face of it, this is a pretty astonishing statement. But will it make the slightest difference to the outcome of the second Irish referendum? I haven’t yet tested the views of my fellow-sufferers in the Lisbon junkie network, but if I did, I reckon 95 per cent would say it won’t.

Tags: European Union, Germany, Ireland, Lisbon Treaty, referendums
Posted in EU Commission | Permalink

Spanish-Belgian squabble puts EU foreign policy in a poor light

June 29, 2009 10:45 am by Tony Barber

The last time that a dispute between Madrid and Brussels seized the international spotlight was in 1568 – and boy, was it big. That was when the Spanish rulers of the Low Countries sparked the 80-year-long Dutch Revolt by executing Counts Egmont and Horne on the Grand’ Place of what is today the Belgian capital.

This month, another quarrel between Spain and Belgium broke out. Admittedly, it’s less serious, and for the moment it’s stayed behind closed doors. But in the interests of transparency, and because the squabble tells you rather a lot about the way the European Union operates, I shall share the details with you.

Karel De Gucht, Belgium’s foreign minister, has written an indignant letter to Miguel Angel Moratinos, his Spanish counterpart, complaining about a stitch-up at an EU operation known as the Union for the Mediterranean. The UfM is a pet project of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, aimed at reinvigorating relations between the 27-nation EU and its North African and Middle Eastern neighbours.

When they launched the UfM last year, the EU and its neighbours agreed that it should have a co-presidency, with one EU country and one non-EU country sharing the post. First up were France and Egypt. No problem there. But it was never officially spelled out who should represent the EU after France. Belgium, which will hold the EU’s six-month rotating presidency in the second half of 2010, thought that under EU rules it would be a logical choice.

So, not surprisingly, De Gucht was most unhappy to discover, from a letter that Moratinos had written to his French and Egyptian colleagues, that Spain and France appeared to have reached a private deal without telling anyone else in the EU (or, at least, without telling Belgium). Under this arrangement, France was to hold the job for two years and then hand over the reins to Spain, which would hold it for the following two years.

No doubt Moratinos thinks Spain is entitled to have the UfM’s co-presidency because it will hold the EU presidency in the first half of 2010. But for two years? The polite language of European diplomacy can scarcely hide De Gucht’s displeasure. “I confess that I was really amazed,” he writes in his letter to Moratinos, arguing that the Franco-Spanish deal violates fundamental EU rules that set out how the bloc must be represented on the world stage.

This incident reveals many things about the EU. It reveals how trivial squabbles constantly interfere with the efficient conduct of a common EU foreign policy. It reveals how big EU countries (France and Spain) think they have the right to push around small ones (Belgium). It reveals an EU obsession with process rather than substance.

And, lastly, it reveals how, all too often, EU governments look like mice fighting over a piece of cheese, while outside Europe the world is full of large, fierce cats.

Tags: Belgium, EU foreign policy, European Union, Sarkozy, Spain, Union for the Mediterranean
Posted in Foreign policy | Permalink

Turkey’s EU membership bid crawls a tiny step forward

June 25, 2009 3:37 pm by Tony Barber

Next Tuesday, Turkey’s bid to join the European Union will creep forward one more inch. The EU and Turkey will open formal talks on taxation, one of the 35 “chapters”, or policy areas, that a candidate for EU membership must complete before joining the bloc.

Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s chief EU negotiator, is pleased but, unsurprisingly, not overwhelmed. After the taxation talks start, only 11 of Turkey’s 35 chapters will be open. The EU froze another eight chapters in December 2006 in retaliation for Turkey’s refusal to open its ports and airports to vessels and aircraft from the Greek Cypriot-controlled government of Cyprus.

Visiting Brussels on Thursday, Bagis made it plain that he strongly favoured EU membership. “I believe that the European Union is the grandest peace project in human history, and the crown of this peace project will be Turkey’s accession,” he told me and some other Brussels-based reporters over lunch.

But entry into the EU is indisputably a long way off. Bagis recognised that Turkey would not complete all 35 chapters by 2014. Even then, there would be huge question marks over the readiness of countries such as France, Germany and the Netherlands to approve Turkish membership. Western European political parties opposed to Turkey’s accession performed strongly in the recent European Parliament elections.

Bagis made one particularly interesting point. He said he foresaw three possible scenarios in the event that Turkey were to close all 35 chapters: a) Turkey immediately joins the EU; b) Turkey, like Spain and the UK in the 1960s, is vetoed but perseveres with its application and eventually succeeds in joining; or c) Turks, like Norwegians in 1972 and 1994, turn down the chance of EU membership in a referendum, even though their country meets all the entry criteria.

Bagis says that EU membership is a goal that can unite all Turks – civilian leaders and the military, northern Turks and southern Turks, Turks and ethnic Kurds, and so on. But what if, thanks to western European opposition, Turkish society’s faith in the possibility of EU membership diminishes to the point where the goal itself no longer seems to matter?

Tags: Cyprus, Egemen Bagis, European Union, Kurds, Turkey
Posted in Enlargement | Permalink

Brussels 2009 – the same as London 1641 or Versailles 1789?

June 23, 2009 9:34 am by Tony Barber

Is José Manuel Barroso’s reappointment as European Commission president in trouble? Probably not. But the jury is still out on whether he will secure formal approval from the European Parliament as early as mid-July. If he does not, it will be difficult to dispel the clouds of doubt that will linger over his future for two months or more.

Such uncertainty is hardly what the European Union needs at a moment when its banking system faces hundreds of billions of euros in losses this year and next, and when Germany and France, the eurozone’s two biggest economies, appear utterly at odds over when and how to rebalance their public finances.

The EU’s 27 national leaders decided unanimously at a Brussels summit last week to support Barroso’s reappointment. It was not a legally binding decision. They could, in theory, change it if there were massive resistance in the European Parliament.

But that’s certainly not Plan A. Leaders such as Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden, which is about to assume the EU’s rotating presidency, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel want the European Parliament to hold a vote next month to confirm Barroso for a second five-year term.

Barroso’s centre-right allies, known as the EPP, are the legislature’s largest political group. They are happy enough to hold an early vote. But they control only 264 of the assembly’s 736 seats. Three other groups – the socialists, centrist liberals and Greens – say they would prefer to delay the Barroso vote until September or October.

Barroso correctly sees that he must win an absolute majority – 369 votes or more – if he is not to suffer serious political injury. If we assume that he will pick up every single EPP vote, where is he going to get the other 105 votes from? He knows it would be fatal to turn for backing to the far-right, nationalist and anti-EU fringe elements in the legislature.

Barroso can probably count on three sources of support. First, there is the new conservative, “anti-federalist” group led by the UK Tories. It has 55 members (or even, as of Tuesday, 56 – a politician from Lithuania’s Polish minority appears interested in joining). Secondly, up to half of the 80-strong liberal group in the European Parliament can surely be coaxed into supporting Barroso. Finally, there are even some socialists – especially in Barroso’s native Portugal as well as Spain and the UK – who are inclined to back him. All told, that should see Barroso over the 369-vote mark.

But this is not the whole story, because even some of these parliamentarians may object to holding the vote in mid-July. In the end, this whole saga is less about Barroso’s leadership qualities than it is about the European Parliament’s desire to assert itself as one of the EU’s most powerful institutions.

“Brussels 2009″ doesn’t have quite the ring of 1641 in the English House of Commons, or 1789 in Versailles. But the situation contains some interesting dramatic potential, that’s for sure.

Tags: Barroso, Elections 2009, EU Parliament, European Union, Merkel, Sarkozy, Sweden
Posted in EU Parliament | Permalink

EU enlargement falls victim to Slovenia-Croatia talks breakdown

June 19, 2009 11:32 am by Tony Barber

So exciting are European Union summits that they sometimes distract attention from developments that, though perhaps less eye-catching, tell you a lot more about what’s going on in the EU. For example, the latest two-day summit is concentrating on financial regulation, guarantees for Ireland’s sovereignty so that it can hold another referendum on the EU’s Lisbon treaty, and the nomination of José Manuel Barroso for a second term as European Commission president.

But a more interesting story was the breakdown on Thursday of EU-mediated talks between Slovenia and Croatia over their bilateral maritime border dispute. This makes it virtually certain that Croatia will not complete its EU accession negotiations by the end of this year – the goal that Barroso and Croatia’s government had originally set themselves.

Croatia has been an official candidate for EU membership since 2005. The slow pace of its accession talks is sending a very poor signal to the populations of other Balkan countries, such as Albania, the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia and Serbia. They instinctively see their future in the EU, with its implicit promises of prosperity and security.

But with Croatia’s negotiations gummed up, they are starting to wonder when they will ever get their opportunity to join. This has serious implications for the stability of the region, which was devastated by war and economic dislocation in the 1990s and is now suffering the impact of the world financial crisis and recession.

Slovenia started blocking Croatia’s accession talks last December in what looked like a blatant attempt to exploit the fact that it was already an EU member to triumph in the border dispute. Most other EU countries were unhappy with Slovenia’s tactics. Six months later, however, nothing much has changed.

Why have Slovenia’s EU partners not put Ljubljana under more pressure to find a solution? One answer is that certain countries – one thinks of France, Germany and the Netherlands – are not especially enthusiastic about enlarging the EU at the moment. At the very least, they want the Lisbon treaty to come into force before the EU admits any new members.

Given the uncertainty over the Lisbon treaty, it would seem that Slovenia has every incentive not to speed up the resolution of its border dispute with Croatia. And so it is that EU enlargement – one of the bloc’s policies that has been shown to work very effectively over the past 30 years – falls by the wayside. Not very clever.