Lavengro in Spain

President of Europe

Silvio Berlusconi’s fan Henry Porter has written a particularly stupid article in today’s Observer (my comments on it). This article has attracted a number of online comments, some of which definitely appear to have been written by people with functioning brains. I particularly like the one about the job of so-called President of Europe, posted by lib410 on 8 November at 1.55 pm:

As for the so-called President of Europe, the actual title is President of the European Council.

Here's the job description as set out in the Treaty of Lisbon:

The President of the European Council:
(a) shall chair it and drive forward its work;
(b) shall ensure the preparation and continuity of the work of the European Council in cooperation with the President of the Commission, and on the basis of the work of the General Affairs Council;
(c) shall endeavour to facilitate cohesion and consensus within the European Council;
(d) shall present a report to the European Parliament after each of the meetings of the European Council.

The President of the European Council shall, at his level and in that capacity, ensure the external representation of the Union on issues concerning its common foreign and security policy, without prejudice to the powers of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

The President of the European Council shall not hold a national office.

Here's a list of things that the President of the European Council can't do (all of them are within the power of the US President):

Powers of the President of the European Council

Can sign or veto legislation? No
Commander-in-Chief of armed forces? No
Negotiates treaties with other states? No
Power to recognise governments and states? No
Can sign ?executive agreements? with other states? No
Head of the Executive Branch? No
Can appoint up to 8,000 employees? No
Appoints the EU Council? No
Appoints the EU Attorney General? NA ? no such position
Appoints Ambassadors? No
Nominates EU judges (including to the ECJ)? No
Executive privilege: can withhold information from the public on the grounds of ?national security?? No
Can grant pardons and reprieves to convicted criminals? No

Co-ordinates work of EU Council? Yes

Chairs Council meetings? Yes

Essentially the President of the European Council is a chairman who chairs meetings of the EU Prime Ministers.

That seems to dispose of that then!

Europe’s 9/11

This is one of my favourite photographs (click to enlarge). It is a very ordinary snapshot of tourists at a major European tourist attraction. Why do I like it? Because I remember the days when …

… the Brandenburg Gate looked like this, till the Wall came down on 9 November 1989.

The Gate was in the East with the main boulevard of Unter den Linden behind it. It could be seen from the West, behind the Wall, but it was not easy to get to it.

I first went to Berlin in 1966 as part of a school trip to Germany, which I repeated in 1968. I took this panoramic photo of Potsdamer Platz from an observation platform in the West overlooking the Wall

Now the Wall has come down, and its course through the city, following municipal district boundaries, is almost lost and unknown except on old maps. Potsdamer Platz now contains the Holocaust Memorial, an eerie, close-set collection of concrete slabs, not quite vertical, that instil a powerful sense of uncertainty and oppression in the visitor.

This was a strange area, close to the border where it followed the course of the river Spree for part of its path, deserted by man except for border guards. Now the Reichstag, which was largely disused in 1980 when I took this photo, …

 

… has been rehabilitated as the German Parliament building.

The dedication ‘To the German People’ (just visible in the 1980 photo above) dates from 1916. The bronzesmith who cast the letters was Jewish and was last heard of in a camp in Lithuania.

Nearby is the new Museum of German History – a significant step in Germany's progress to becoming a normal country. And what was the derelict area near the river is now the smart new government area.

Berlin has always been one of my favourite cities. Quite enough tonnes of ink have been used and heaven knows how many megapixels have been illuminated on the subject of German reunification. Let me just say that I grew up in a continent that was divided; I always assumed that I would never see it united and that the USSR would last for ever. The fall of the Wall, followed by the collapse of the USSR, was a stunning event – and not least because it was peaceful. Fortunately, Helmut Kohl, Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush Snr were up to the challenge. As we now know, Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand were not. Kohl is on record as saying that the only ally that stood firmly beside him from the beginning was the Spanish prime minister Felipe González.

Anyone looking for a readable and reliable potted history of Germany from 1899 – 1945, and especially of how the Nazis came to power, could do a lot worse than the novel Winter by Len Deighton, followed by his Bernard Samson series (Hook, Line, Sinker, etc.)

Oh Mr Porter, what shall we do?

Columnist Henry Porter writes in today’s Observer (my emphasis):

When the European Court of Human Rights announces a ban on crucifixes in Italian schools, you can either celebrate the liberal march of secularism or deplore the illiberal attack on religious expression and national tradition.

Perhaps there is a third option which is to say that this has nothing to do with rights and everything to do with the EU's manic drive to standardise behaviour and attitudes, in the same way as it regulates the transportation of livestock and the safety specifications of new mowers.

The crucifix is none of the EU's business …

Dead right Mr Porter. It is none of the EU’s business and … err … that is why the EU has nothing to do with it. Now read very carefully, I shall type this only once. The European Court of Human Rights is run by the Council of Europe (an entirely different body from the European Union) and has nothing at all to do with the EU.

That is a fact that is known to anyone with the slightest knowledge of Europe. Such a basic blunder as yours is to be expected from ignorant British Eurosceptics in saloon bar discussions of the iniquities of those funny foreign ways that those funny foreign Europeans are allegedly forcing on them. To find it in your article in the Observer merely tells me that while you may think that you love Europe, as your headline says, you don’t understand the very first thing about it and that the rest of your article can safely be ignored.

You also totally fail to understand the nature of secularism as it has been practised in Europe for 220 years or the power and influence of the Catholic church in Italy (clue: I don’t think you’d like it).

 

Another cause for serious concern is that nobody at the Observer said, ‘But look Henry. We can’t possibly publish this. It's factually incorrect in the major point on which you base your argument.’

Fort Hood

Robert Salaam, former US Marine, writes in today’s Independent about the killings at Fort Hood:

some non-Muslims still believe that an entire religious community shares responsibility for the actions of one guy that we didn’t even know existed until yesterday.

I daresay that he is right but there are also many non-Muslims, myself included, who would very much like to agree with him that the entire religious community of Muslims should not be held responsible. Unfortunately we are rather deterred from doing so by the stunning silence from the leading Muslim religious authorities in Cairo, Riyadh and Qom, who should be condemning this disgraceful abuse of the holy words Allahu Akbar. What if the perpetrator had been a Christian fundamentalist shouting ‘Long live Christ the King’? The fundamentalist atheists, never slow to be rude about Christianity, would have raised Cain of course; but the outraged statements originating from Rome, Canterbury and Jerusalem can easily be predicted, as can the condemnation by leading lay Christians.

No-one doubts that many, very many, individual Muslims are appalled by what has happened. But their religion is involved willy-nilly by the words that were used. They may not like it, they may say that the man is not a typical Muslim, but it behoves the Muslim authorities to distance themselves from this act. And they have not done so. Silence, it is said, gives consent – especially when compared with the Muslim violence that was unleashed by the perceived insult to Islam caused by the Danish cartoons – and with no clear condemnation from the top it will be ever harder for decent Muslims to distance themselves from such guilt by association.

Remembrance day

‘All this remembrance day business gets on your nerves, don’t it? It’s my belief most of us would only be too pleased to chuck these community hysterics if the beastly newspapers didn't run it for all it’s worth. However, it don’t do to say so. They’d hoof me out of the Club if I raised my voice above a whisper.’

Major Lord Peter Wimsey, DSO and two years’ shell shock.

Dorothy L. Sayers, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, 1928.

Portrait, Balliol College Oxford (168)

Madam President

Mrs Vaira Vike-Freiberga was born in Riga (Latvia) on 1st December 1937. Fleeing the Soviet occupation her family left the country in 1945 and took refuge in Germany, then Morocco where she finalised her secondary education. She finally settled in Canada where she achieved a doctorate in psychology in 1965 from the University of McGill, Montreal.

What’s more, she wants to be President of the European Council. Whether or not she should be is a matter on which I have no opinion, but I report that this is an attempt to get a woman in one of the top EU positions. There is a web site supporting her candidature,

Klaus signs

It is widely reported, and therefore widely believed, that Václav Klaus has mounted a last-ditch defence of the Czech nation against a possible claim from the Sudeten Germans. The idea of a new German take-over of Bohemia is absurd. The Czech parliament has approved the treaty; it has been agreed between Germany and the Czech Republic that the issue of the Sudeten Germans has been resolved; and it is not for the constitutional head of a European state to decide for himself which laws he will sign and which he will not. Even in the UK the idea of withholding the royal assent from the Maastricht Treaty (which was far more radical than Lisbon) got precisely nowhere. Had Klaus persisted in his refusal to sign, he would have faced a challenge in the Czech Constitutional Court that he was acting perversely. As it is, there are proposals in Prague to ensure that no future president can place the country in such an embarrassing position ever again.

Klaus has ensured that the expression of his monstrous ego has been reported worldwide. The damage to the country of which he is the physical embodiment has yet to be evaluated.

Klaus signs

Václav Klaus has finally realised that in Europe heads of state do not have executive discretion about which bits of paper they sign and has signed the Lisbon Treaty.

Now we can chuck him out of a window.

Cameron’s stance on Lisbon referendum

Air passenger duty

Every passenger departing from a British airport has to pay a tax called air passenger duty. It was introduced with the justification that air transport is bad for the environment and therefore (sic) had to be taxed. It has now gone up to £11 for a flight to Europe and will go up to £12 next year; premium tickets on long-haul flights will pay as much as £170. Despite this cosmetic attempt to make it progressive in terms of distance travelled, it is a very stupid tax.

Air transport is the preferred target of the Green Stalinists*, who like telling other people how to run their lives, and of the Green puritans**, who are appalled at the idea of people doing things that they enjoy. Needless to say, there are also Green Stalinist Puritans.

Darren Johnson, from the Green Party, said it was a good thing if people were discouraged from flying. "We need to be increasing the air passenger duty," he said. "Aviation is simply not paying its way in terms of the environmental damage it causes."

Cheap air travel has had a tremendously positive effect on mobility in Europe, enabling millions of people of all ages to travel to other countries for all sorts of reasons, not only the cliché of stag parties in Riga. Nor are these travellers the stinking rich businesspeople of popular Green mythology, jetting ceaselessly around to further their international conspiracy against the working class. They are mostly perfectly ordinary people travelling on holiday, or to meet friends or lovers, or for study, or yes indeed for professional or business purposes – and why not?

I do not deny that air transport produces greenhouse gases; it is an unarguable fact of basic chemistry that burning kerosene will do so. But the extent to which air transport is responsible for overall climate change, and the extent to which it should be taxed, is another matter. The airline industry, from plane-makers to airlines to airport management, is acutely aware of environmental matters. Modern planes, not to mention the ones that will be used in the future, are not only quieter than the older ones but they produce less greenhouse gas. As it happens, I live in a city, I work at home, I rarely travel outside the city, and when I do I use public transport as I do not own a car (or even a driving licence). When I am sternly lectured about how my occasional flights are damaging the planet, I find it rather irksome.

If air travel is to be taxed, and if everything else is there seems to be no reason to exempt it, please can we have a little common sense in the debate? The idea of taxing airline fuel is barmy and has rightly been resisted. There is one very basic fact about aeroplanes: they can move around very easily and very quickly. If the UK were to tax fuel, airlines would simply refuel their planes in airports in other countries. What should be done – and easyJet support this option – is that instead of crudely taxing passengers, the airlines should be taxed on each flight that they make, with variations in the tax for the age of the plane and the passenger load. With computer records that are kept nowadays it should be quite easy to say that a flight from Barcelona to Liverpool in a certain make of plane, of a certain age, with say a 93% passenger load, will use X tonnes of fuel. It might even be possible to include in the calculation the actual flight path distance (though a nominal one could easily be assigned for each route) or even the actual quantity of fuel used on each flight. This system would place the tax in the airline’s overall accounting system, thus getting away from the very obvious fact that the UK-origin leg of a return flight costs a lot more than the flight to the UK does (bad for the country’s image) and it would encourage airlines to be fuel efficient in their choice of aircraft and in their efforts to fill their planes. easyJet supports this because it uses new planes and manages to fill them almost to capacity on every flight. It is the less efficient airlines that oppose such a tax.

 

*It is not often realised that Stalinism is a Great British Invention, having been invented by one O. Cromwell in the mid-seventeenth century.

** “The puritan hated bear baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.” Thomas Macaulay

Blair is out

I said all along (since 12 March 2008 – sic) that Blair had no chance for President of the Council.

The Guardian and stale news

The Guardian reports today:

Europe leaders incensed by David Cameron's letter

Sarkozy, Merkel and Zapatero criticise Tories for attempt to delay treaty

• 

Conservative leader David Cameron Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

Leaders of three of the most powerful countries in Europe have strongly criticised David Cameron at the EU summit over Conservative plans to scupper the Lisbon treaty.

Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and José Luiz Rodríguez Zapatero are understood to have privately criticised the Tory leader after he sent a handwritten letter to the Czech president Vaclav Klaus, who is refusing to sign the treaty. The letter was seen as an attempt to influence the Czech Republic, the only country not to have ratified the treaty.

Well yes, but that letter was sent several weeks ago. The Tories have done nothing in the last few days to influence the ratification by Klaus of the Treaty. Would it not be better for the Guardian to be reporting the latest news, namely that Klaus has said that he will sign and that Sarkozy expects the Treaty of Lisbon to be in force on 1 December, than to keep banging on with stale facts to justify the class struggle in the UK?

Klaus ‘has no further demands’

Having had a positive response to his blackmail, Václav Klaus has announced ‘I will present no further conditions for the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon.’

Let’s hope the old bastard isn’t lying. I’ll believe it when I see his signature on the paper.

Sarkozy said earlier  this evening (several hours ago, it is now 23.36 CET*) that the treaty of Lisbon would come into effect on 1 December ‘after the agreement reached with the Czech government to lift the last obstacle to ratification.’

The BBC hasn’t noticed this rather important fact. Perhaps it is still stunned by the Foreigners’ unaccountable disinclination to have Tony Blair foisted on them.

*01.21, no change.

Speaking for Britain and the national interest

Gordon Brown says:

"We, Britain, are supporting Tony Blair's candidature," which he said would be in the "British national interest".

A PM can and should speak for his country when presenting it against other equal sovereign nations on the world stage. And when it comes to EU haggling – OK, we know that in shorthand we say that Britain is supporting this or that the Finns won’t stand for that. But in a formal statement on internal EU matters, for the PM to arrogate to himself the right to speak for Britain in expressing support for a man who quite blatantly divides Britain is absurd.

And the reference to the British national interest is unfortunate and arrogant. As Timothy Garton Ash says:

All the major states of Europe today are quite pragmatic and hard-nosed about pursuing their national interests. Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland do it through Europe and in Europe's name; Britain is just about to enter another curmudgeonly, self-defeating period of doing it at odds with Europe.

Spain, certainly, is doing everything it can to extend and increase its influence and commercial presence in Latin America – and it sees the resources and presence of the EU as an immense background against which it can act.

Plotting – the latest

El País reports that in the ‘endless labyrinth of speculation’ about the top EU jobs the only sure thing is that Blair is losing ground. The deal that the President is from the EPP and the High Representative will be a Socialist seems to be firm. Among the Socialists the Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann and the Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn have both said that Blair was too closely connected to George W. Bush and the Iraq War. Faymann said that “someone other than Blair is needed for the Presidency of the Union".

Brown is still supporting Blair tooth and nail, describing him as ‘an excellent candidate’ even though he isn't yet a candidate. It is thought that the strategy here might be to support Blair to the hilt so that when he withdraws, as he will have to do, Miliband will get through on the rebound.

All sorts of names are being mentioned – even Bertie Ahern for heaven’s sake! – and anything could happen. I think we can rule Blair out now. What about Miliband? The idea of a Brit running EU foreign policy is not one that will appeal to many Europeans.

Let plotting commence

El País is reporting a growing consensus that the President of the Council will be EPP and the High Representative will be a Socialist (succeeding the Spanish Socialist Javier Solana). Ramón Jáuregui, the European Socialist spokesman for constitutional affairs, is quoted as saying, ‘We are reaching an agreement that Blair is not a representative of the Socialist family.’

The list that the Socialists are working on, according to EP, is Frank-Walter Steinmeier, former German Foreign Minister; David Miliband, British Foreign Minister; Elisabeth Guido, former French minister of Employment and Solidarity ; Alfred Gusenbauer, former Austrian Chancellor and Adrián Severin, former Rumanian Foreign Minister. There is not complete consensus because Brown is still insisting on proposing his new best friend Blair as President.

Meanwhile in Paris, Merkel and Sarkozy are plotting for President. Merkel flew there yesterday immediately after her formal re-election in the Bundestag and cancelling the speech she was due to make there. Of course, they have rather more on their plates than just this matter. Their meeting is attended by José Manuel Durão Barroso and the prime ministers of France, François Fillon; Holland, Jean Peter Balkenende;  Luxembourg, Jean Claude Juncker; Belgium, Herman Van Rompuy; and Sweden, Fredrik Reinfeldt.

According to EP, even with Juncker declared Balkenende is still well placed. It also says that Felipe González is a possibility but has the disadvantage that Barroso is also Iberian. I think he has more disadvantages than that, but well, we will see.

As always, Timothy Garton Ash is worth reading in the Guardian.

Merkel again

Angela Merkel has been reappointed German Chancellor by the Bundestag. The BBC tells us:

Mrs Merkel was voted in by 323 MPs, with 285 against the nomination and four abstaining.

That is true. What the BBC does not tell us is that 323 votes is nine short of the combined strength of the CDU, its sister Bavarian party the CSU, and the Liberal FDP. Nine votes is not a huge number but it is a slight warning to the leader of a party that has had its worst electoral result in sixty years.

Why don’t the BBC tell us this interesting fact? Who knows? Perhaps they didn't think it was important. Or perhaps they couldn’t understand it because it was in German.

Opposition spreads

This cartoon by El Roto appears in today’s El País. It plays with the Spanish expression Ni hablar meaning No way and with Blair’s name.

Meanwhile, Germany once again has a Liberal Foreign Minister and the stars have resumed their natural places in the firmament above us. A prominent member of the FDP has said clearly that he would like to see someone from a smaller country as President. I have no doubt that Westerwelle himself doesn’t want Blair. Merkel herself will say nothing in advance but, as I have argued before, there is no apparent reason for her to favour Blair.

And, all of this must be seen in the context of the overall EU horse-trading. There is an agreement that the President will come from the EPP and that the Socialists will get the High Representative. The basis for this is that the Council and Parliament are dominated by the EPP, so it will make things a lot easier if the President (who chairs the Council and reports to the Parliament) is from the same party rather than imposing a cohabitation. This agreement rules Blair out automatically; it also, of course, gives the Socialists an excellent excuse to support another candidate without directly opposing someone from one of their own parties.

Felipe González (a Socialist anyway, and from a medium-sized country) is apparently not interested, and as he is a member of the Commission of Wise Men who are predicting the EU’s future this makes sense. Irish politics are complicated and I don’t know if Mary Robinson counts as EPP; she is not a Socialist or Liberal. Juncker and Balkenende are both solid EPP. That brings us to Belgium.

The Benelux countries have said that they want someone from a pro-European country, thereby ruling Blair out. But there is more to it than that. In 2004 the Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt (a Liberal) was in line for President of the Commission. At the last minute Blair vetoed him and proposed Chris Patten. The result was a stand-off with Barroso coming through in the middle. The Belgians have not forgotten that and they want their revenge on Blair.

In this scenario Blair will not get the presidency and Miliband has ruled himself out not only explicitly but also by a speech in which he sets out the British view of limitless enlargement. The EU knows all about enlargement at the behest of a country that then vetoes the resources necessary to make the enlargement work! Anyway, it is clear that even with Lisbon there is a need for consolidation – though that will have to manage the accession of Croatia and also of Iceland, which looks as if it might be a difficult customer for its tiny size.

Meanwhile, the British Tories have got as far as saying that they would regard Blair’s appointment as a ‘hostile act’. Does that mean getting Biggles out of retirement to fly Lancaster bombers over Brussels? And what will happen when the Tories’ mental processes finally get round to working out that if the President of the Council isn’t Blair it will almost certainly be someone from the EPP, the very party that they have jilted so spectacularly? ‘Good morning Mr President. I am David Cameron, the new British Conservative Prime Minister.’ ‘Oh, hello, good to see you. Now please excuse me, but I have an urgent meeting with the Slovenian Minister of Culture.’

Clegg opposes Blair

BBC:

… it is understood that Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg will on Wednesday publicly declare his opposition to Mr Blair's appointment. BBC political correspondent Iain Watson said Mr Clegg supports the European project but does not feel Mr Blair is the right man for the job.

Err, should that but not be and therefore?

Juncker is interested

In an interview in today’s Le Monde Jean-Claude Juncker announces his candidacy for the post of President of the EU Council. The BBC hasn’t noticed this development, perhaps because it happened in a foreign language.

Je ne distingue pas les domaines dans lesquels le Royaume-Uni aurait fait preuve d'une véritable inspiration européenne au cours des dix dernières années, hormis des avancées sur la défense.

Le parcours de certains Européens a été enrichi par leur volonté de faire avancer l'Union européenne, y compris l'union monétaire. D'autres n'ont pas su adopter ce rythme…

L'Union européenne a acquis une crédibilité internationale à travers la création de la monnaie unique.

Briefly, the UK has done nothing to help Europe except in defence, and a willingness to do things for Europe means using the euro. Which the UK has not done.