THE HANDSTAND

august 2005
 european news
By Peter Sain ley Berry EUOBSERVER / COMMENT - Thursday morning's - 7/7 - explosions in London seem to be the act of terrorists. At this point London appears to have suffered less than Madrid did last year, but the picture is still confused. Nevertheless, for the victims and their families that is little comfort. We extend to them our sympathy and condolence.

Troubling times remind us that the values we Europeans hold in common are infinitely greater than the petty squabbles that make the small change of our daily news. And it is these values, among them democracy and the rule of law, that have always defeated evil forces, and will do so again.

Napoleon once said that the principal quality he looked for in a general was luck, or so the story goes. Politicians are much the same. It used to be said about Harold Wilson, prime minister of Britain for much of the sixties, that he owed his reputation to England winning the football World Cup in 1966 and to three of the hottest summers on record. Margaret Thatcher was lucky in 1982. Her government was roundly unpopular at the time Argentina invaded the Falklands. Success in the war that followed made her a national hero and ensured her electoral success the following year.

The rest - including the story of the British rebate from the EU budget - is history. If General Galtieri had kept his troops at home, the story might have been very different, both for Britain, the Argentines and the EU budget. A lot of lives might also have been saved.

Blair blessed with luck
Mr Blair is also blessed with luck - or so anyway it seems. He will be credited with winning the Olympic Games for London in 2012, though in fairness he did have rather more to do with this outcome than Harold Wilson had with the World Cup. He has also found himself presiding both over the G8 conference and the EU at a time when both are in flux and poised, possibly, to take grand decisions. Though what is considered grand now may not come to be seen as such in a few years, and vice versa.

My own view is that summits rarely achieve much. Officials do the real work in the months and years that precede them. That is what officials are for. But the results have to be announced by someone. Whether the officials of the European Commission will be able to come up with any workable ideas for revising the European social model, I don't know. This, in its various guises, has become the principal factor holding back economic growth in Europe. Or so the reformers say, though it's worth pointing out that the majority of social legislation is a national rather than a European responsibility.

Social summit in the UK
The commission began a study of the social model some time ago. Mr Blair has now thrown the work into sharper focus by announcing a summit of European leaders to discuss this and other sacred cows sometime in the autumn, by which time he hopes that the free market champion Angela Merkel will be chancellor of Germany.

Strictly speaking, this will be an informal summit. More importantly, it will be held in the UK. Europe's leaders will be summoned to London or some other Brittanic watering hole. 'Requests and requires' was the old eighteenth century phrase for this sort of command and it survives still on the inside cover of British Passports. Just as the entire European Commission was requested and required to decamp to London on a group Eurostar ticket last Friday. To meet its new masters, as it were. Bringing the commission across the Channel may have been administratively sensible, but it also looked like the deliberate assertion of London's authority. So does the decision to eschew Brussels and hold the informal summit in the UK.And not only that, for it seems that the European Commission's role in all this will be relegated to studying models and drafting papers, in other words to that of a European civil service. This is not quite how it was meant to be.

The commission is supposed, after all, to be the single European head that straddles the numerous torsos of the member states. Its purpose is to do the European wide thinking and to propose relevant legislation to carry forward the European project. Member states and the European Parliament are then expected to sign up, more or less obediently.That was what the founding fathers of the then European Economic Community wrote into the Treaty of Rome. That was what, give or take, was written into the late-lamented European constitution.

But listening to Messrs Blair and Barroso, speaking after their meeting on the first day of the British Presidency, it is difficult to avoid the impression of a prime minister and his permanent secretary, or 'chef de cabinet,' if you prefer. "The general task is to try to initiate in a co-operative and in an inclusive way a debate about the future direction of Europe", said Mr Blair grandly. "The commission will be happy to…..table a document on that topic", replied Mr Barroso, whose response included the observation that after the no votes in France and the Netherlands, and the rejection of the European budget, this was a "rest period" for European politics.

Crusade to reform the EU
Whether Britain will see its presidency as a rest period is doubtful. The agenda is full. Mr Blair gave us a summary worth quoting verbatim."So there will be a debate about future direction, discussions on future financing, enlargement taken forward, initiatives on better regulation, an attempt to resolve the dossiers on the services directive and working time directive and other individual pieces of legislation, there will be initiatives on justice and home affairs. And in respect of foreign policy, Africa, climate change, the Middle East, we will try to take those issues forward as well."

This isn't so much a policy for a presidency as a policy for a whole commission term. What is noticeable by its absence is any reference to the (written) EU constitution, despite attempts by Mr Barroso and Mr Blair's media interlocutors to raise it. Nevertheless, the constitution, or at least some written rules by which the union runs itself, will need to be addressed, sooner or later, and before the old order has entirely been chipped away on the Downing Street sofas.The UK prime minister's crusade to reform the EU has been likened to his successful campaign to reform the Labour Party and make it electable. This he achieved by assembling a majority for progress.

If there isn't currently a majority for reform among EU member states, then it is entirely likely that Mr Blair will shortly assemble one.But the EU cannot (yet) be reformed by majority. And finding unanimity may well prove elusive, certainly this side of a French presidential election. The grand vision may simply run on to the rocks. Will Mr Blair's luck hold, I ask myself?

The author is editor of EuropaWorld

This is the EU Commission snippet of which we need to beware:
The EU envoy Solana raised similar concerns.

"We think that Israel has a right to defend itself but we think that the fence when it is done outside the territory of Israel is not legally proper and it creates also humanitarian problems," he said after meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.
ie. a veil over the actual acceptance of Israel's Occupation of Palestine and legality, by Solana and Fischer, IN OUR NAME ??

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But....Lawyers challenge EU and UK over inaction on Palestine
One year after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that Israel's Separation Wall is illegal, the EU and UK have failed to take the action required of them under the Geneva Conventions to ensure Israeli compliance with international humanitarian law. UN Special Rapporteurs have called on the EU to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement, under which Israeli exports enjoy preferential access to EU markets, on human rights grounds.
http://www.waronwant.org/?lid=10331
However - Ha'aretz reports:In an interview with Haaretz, the French president praises Israelis as 'a great people of tradition and culture.'



Western and Southern Europe drying out

20.07.2005 - 09:56 CET | By Elitsa Vucheva

Western and Southern Europe are currently facing severe drought, with the situation being the gravest in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and Greece.

Spain and Portugal are suffering their worst droughts since the launch of record-keeping in the 1940s.EU agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel will start a two-day visit to Portugal today (20 July) to evaluate the damage caused by the drought to the country's agriculture. Brush fires have already destroyed more than three times the average annual loss for Portugal in the first half of this year, according to the BBC. In Spain, a forest blaze killed 11 fire-fighters on Monday, and on the same day in France president Jacques Chirac called for vigilance and efforts from "each person... to limit the excessive use of water". However, "there is no concern at the national level for the moment", the French president was reported as saying by Le Monde. And as temperatures threatened to rise above 30°C in some parts of France during the weekend, health minister Xavier Bertrand released funds of €26 million under a plan to help protect the elderly from the effects of the heat. In 2003, high summer temperatures (consistently around 40°C) killed 15,000 people, most of whom were elderly, in France. Greece is also going through a heat wave at the moment, with temperatures expected to reach 40°C today in some parts of the country, and 38°C in the capital Athens.

It is not clear whether the drought is due to climate change, but it is a fact that Europe is 0.95°C hotter now than it was in 1900, and experts foresee a further rise of 2 to 6.3°C by 2100, writes Le Monde.

Due to the drought in western Europe, cereal production in the EU in 2005 will be at least 28 million tonnes below last year's, which is a drop of about 10 percent, the European Commission announced on Friday.

Floods in the Northern Balkans
Meanwhile, Bulgaria and Romania are being swept by floods, which have already killed 20 people and inundated tens of thousands of homes in both countries over the last two weeks. More than 12,000 were forced to evacuate their homes in Romania, where at least 15 people have died in the floods.In Bulgaria, five people have been killed and at least 50,000 homes and buildings were destroyed across the country, Sofia News Agency reports.Both Balkan countries have called on the EU to help them recover, and the bloc has recently announced it would do so through its solidarity fund, according to the agency.