Global News Journal
Beyond the World news headlines
Volcano spews up more criticism of EU
The Icelandic volcano that has caused havoc with European travel has also spewed up more criticism of the European Union.
A travel-affected European Parliament session on Tuesday turned into a forum for bashing the EU and other European authorities over the response to the crisis.
Some members of the assembly said the EU had responded too slowly to the ash cloud by taking several days to get EU transport ministers together to discuss the crisis.
“Our reactions were late and fragmented. There was no attempt to cooperate between airlines to direct the flows of passengers and use as much as possible the still available routes,” said Marian-Jean Marinescu, a centre-right member of the assembly.
Other critics suggest European authorities were somewhat hasty in cancelling flights so quickly or should be doing more to get planes in the air again.
Philip Bradbourn, a British Conservative in the European parliament, complained of poor management of the crisis. “We … seem to have been in a position of almost licking our finger and sticking it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing,” he said.
Pat the Cope Gallagher, an Irish member of the parliament, suggested that involving all the 27 EU member states in decisions had proved a problem. “We must deal with this from the centre and agree that dealing with it from 27 perspectives or countries is not successful,” he said.
EU asks public what it thinks of CAP reform
The European Commission’s agriculture department launched a public debate this week on the future reform of Europe’s common agricultural policy (CAP) from 2014. It wants everyone – not just farmers and politicians – to have their say on how the European Union should support agricultural production.
It’s odd then that the only question that’s off limits in the debate, according to EU Farm Commissioner Dacian Ciolos, is the one on everybody’s lips: how much taxpayers’ money should the CAP get?
The bloc’s farm budget is worth about €50 billion a year, or 40 percent of the EU’s total annual spending, and the political pressure to reduce it has never been greater.
As well as the squeeze on public spending resulting from the economic crisis, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso believes his new “Europe 2020” strategy to create jobs and economic growth would be a more intelligent use of EU funds.
The Commission, the EU executive, will carry out a conceptual review of the EU budget this summer, followed by a specific spending plan for 2014-21 next summer, when its CAP reform proposals are also due. With a cut in farm spending the only likely outcome, the real question is how deep will the cut be?
In an attempt to limit the damage, Ciolos and his agriculture department want to ignore the budget issue for now and focus the debate on what the objectives of EU agricultural spending should be in the future.
It’s a clever strategy. Rather than picking a fight with his new boss over money, which he would probably lose, Ciolos wants to show how the CAP can help the EU address new challenges such as climate change, food security and rural unemployment.
Head scratching over EU plans for EMF, helping Greece
It was no great surprise that the managing director of the International Monetary Fund looked perplexed when asked during a visit to Brussels to comment on proposals to create a European monetary fund.
”I would be very happy to comment if I knew what it was,” Dominique Strauss-Kahn told a committee in the European Parliament.
He’s not the only person to find somewhat vague an idea that has been prompted by Greece’s debt problems but has come too late to help Athens.
Since German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble suggested this month creating a European monetary fund to help countries that have problems paying their debts, little flesh has been put on the bones.
Would it involve creating a separate institution? Where would the money come from? How much money would be needed to bail out struggling states? How long would it take to set up? Would it be based on a proposal last month by an economic analyst and the chief economist of Deutsche bank?
But vagueness, it seems, is very much the order of the day in Brussels. When EU finance ministers backed a standby plan for helping Greece if it needs financial aid, they refused to say what it would involve. An EU spokesman the next day did verbal aerobatics to avoid giving anything away.
Why the secrecy from an organisation that prides itself on openness and transparency? Probably to avoid giving bond traders another reason to speculate on Greece’s debt. Possibly to avoid angering German voters who oppose any bailout for Greeks.
EU to tackle gender pay inequality
By Sangeeta Shastry
Men are still paid more than women in Europe but the European Union is promising to narrow the gap.
The executive European Commission set out its plans to address the pay gap between men and women at a news conference to coincide with International Women’s Day, saying women were on average earning only 82 percent of male rates in the EU.
European Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Commissioner Viviane Reding said the Commission would work with member states to raise awareness and did not rule out using legislative measures to promote wage equality.
“We will all work together to make sure the gender dimension is visible and integrated in all policies which come out of this house,” Reding said.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said these plans were the EU’s “calling card” on gender equality for the next five years, and that they would be at the heart of the Europe 2020 strategy, a 10-year plan to boost economic growth and create jobs.
Will the EU’s new plans really make a difference for women?
These sentiments are very noble, but we’ve heard them all before. HOW is the pay gap going to be decreased? Are we to ban men from discussing business at the golf course or in the Free Masons’ hall? Are girls to be given lessons in aligning their personalities to their male managers’? How do we prevent the assumption that a female employee has caring responsibilities? Or the assumption that she is a “Young Lady” who doesn’t need the money? And if she does have caring responsibilities, how are they to be tackled? Should they be tackled?
Everyone wants more women in the workplace, but few people will ban their daughters from playing with Barbie, or tolerate their own wife or daughter working long hours in an unglamorous “man’s job.”
EU tests its vision with 2020 strategy
In 2000, the European Union set its sights on becoming the world’s most dynamic, knowledge-based economy by 2010. It failed. Economic recession hardly helped, but EU officials acknowledge its goals may have been a little too ambitious.
On Wednesday the European Commission, the EU executive, unveiled a new 10-year plan to boost economic growth and create jobs. The Europe 2020 strategy is intended to create a greener and more prosperous economy and will be the centrepiece of the EU’s efforts to emerge from financial crisis.
Can the 2020 strategy succeed where its predecessor, the Lisbon Agenda, failed?
Commission officials say it can. They say there will be fewer targets, they will be more realistic and member states’ compliance will be monitored more closely. With a bit of political will and a lot of hard effort, they say, the plan can succeed.
“I think now people are far more aware we need to work far more together. The economic governance of Europe is now taken on board much more,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told a news conference.
He said the introduction of the Lisbon reform treaty on Dec. 1 strengthened the Commission’s powers to monitor compliance with the strategy and there were now more instruments to do so.
But he acknowledged everything depended on the political will of member states.
Sniping mars EU image and unity
The European Union seems to have developed a habit of shooting itself in the foot.
The latest self-inflicted wound was an attack on Wednesday by a euro-sceptic British member of the European Parliament who dismissed Herman Van Rompuy, the new EU president, as a “damp rag” who had no legitimacy and threatened democracy.
The former Belgian prime minister sat just metres away in the assembly, fiddling awkwardly with his tie.
This unseemly scene followed an attack on EU leaders this week by Greek Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos, who is frustrated by the EU’s handling of his country’s debt crisis.
”The question is what the quality of leadership is and the quality of leadership today in the Union is very, very poor indeed,” Pangalos told BBC World Service radio.
He harked back to what he clearly regarded as better times at the EU by praising former European Commission President Jacques Delors, late French President Francois Mitterrand, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
” I don’t think the situation would be what it is today if that programme (to tackle Greece’s economic problems) had been discussed with Jacques Delors, Mitterrand, Thatcher and Kohl. This is another level of leadership which we don’t have today, most unhappily,” he said.
EU gets new Commission, but little to cheer yet
There was more a sense of relief than joy when the European Union finally got its new executive on Tuesday. These are difficult times for the EU and there is little to celebrate.
The new European Commission is taking office in a tough economic climate, with the 16-country euro zone facing its hardest test since the single currency came into being 11 years ago.
The EU’s image has taken a battering in the past few months, first as the 27-country bloc struggled to secure the approval of the Czech Republic to complete ratification of the Lisbon treaty, a charter intended to reform its institutions and make decision-making easier, and then after it chose two low-key leaders as its first full-time president and foreign policy chief.
U.S. President Barack Obama caused EU leaders further embarrassment by deciding not to attend an EU-US summit in Madrid in May, and the EU failed to force through its more radical ideas at the Copenhagen climate talks in December. An additional problem is media criticism of foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who has been under fire over the EU’s perceived slow response to the Haiti earthquake.
The European Parliament’s approval of the new Commission is just one piece in the jigsaw for rebuilding the EU’s image, but nevertheless an important one.
Its strong policy-making, regulatory and legislative powers mean it could quickly give impetus to new initiatives such as the 2020 strategy, a new 10-year plan for boosting economic growth and making the EU more competitive. EU leaders will discuss the programme on Thursday.
The Commission’s promises to reinforce the bloc’s single market are widely seen as vital to its credibility. It has long been at the vanguard of efforts to combat global climate change and it should continue to be so, despite the disappointment of Copenhagen.
Berlusconi charms Israel with EU talk
Silvio Berlusconi is seldom shy about making headlines, and he’s also known to turn on the charm when he meets foreign leaders.
So it was hardly surprising the Italian prime minister kicked off a three-day visit to Israel on Monday by declaring his hope that Israel might one day become a member of the European Union.
“My greatest dream, a
s long as I am a mover and shaker in politics, is to welcome Israel as one of the European Union’s member states,” the 73-year-old billionaire announced to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who went on to praise the shared Judeo-Christian roots of Rome and Jerusalem.
While Berlusconi’s comments made headlines, at least in Israel and Italy, it’s not the first time he’s laid out such an ambition – he said almost exactly the same thing during a visit to Croatia in January 2003, when he backed Zagreb’s bid to join the EU and said he hoped Israel, Turkey, Ukraine and Moldova would follow.
Expressing such a hope is an easy thing for Berlusconi to say and makes him look generous towards his hosts. But he also knows that Israeli EU membership is extremely unlikely any time soon, not only because of opposition among existing EU member states, but because there’s not enormous enthusiasm on Israel’s part either.
Half a dozen countries are already in preliminary or more advanced discussions with Brussels about joining the 27-nation bloc, including Iceland, Albania, Serbia, Turkey and Croatia. But even among those candidates, most of whom are geographically far closer to Europe than Israel, there is scant enthusiasm among many member states for further enlargement, especially when it comes to Turkey, a majority Muslim country that is regarded by some as lacking core Christian-European values.
And to mohammedsadevil, Tunisia, Algeria, Morroco, Lybia, and in particular Egypt were also part of the Roman empire. I guess that makes them part of Europe aswell.
I could understand that you dont like Muslims for personal reasons, but I would bet money on that the god muhammed professed is the same one you believe in, just looking at the same idea from a different angle. Do not expect to be tolerated if you don’t respect other cultures.
Does Washington care about the EU?
Try as it might, the European Union’s efforts to act like a bigger player in world affairs keep running into obstacles.
The latest setback is a report that President Barack Obama won’t be able to make it to the annual EU-U.S. summit this year, pencilled in for Madrid in May. A hectic domestic agenda and the fact the U.S. president made 10 foreign trips last year — more than any other president in his first year in office — means staying at home is the priority and the Europe Union will have to wait.
Spanish officials — Spain holds the rotating six-month presidency of the EU and is hosting the summit – say the White House has not officially withdrawn his attendance. As far as they are concerned Obama is still coming, even if the dates for the meeting have not yet been finalised.
But doubts about the trip have been sewn and soul-searching has begun in Brussels about whether Washington even cares about Europe. If Obama doesn’t come, goes the thinking, it’s a blow to those who believe the 27-country EU, with its impressive economic power, might one day stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Washington in international affairs, and act as a counterweight to a rising Beijing.
Obama may still decide to come, and even if he doesn’t, there is still the annual U.S.-EU summit in the United States, scheduled for the autumn. But rather than a ‘will-he-come-or-won’t-he?’ story, the debacle says more about the awkward institutional structure of the EU and why it’s a barrier to the region becoming more influential.
Obama was invited by Spain before it took on its six-month presidency on Jan. 1. But before that tenure began, the EU brought into force the Lisbon treaty, which reformed the bloc’s structure, creating a new president of the Council of Ministers, effectively an EU president with a renewable 2-1/2-year mandate, and a more powerful high representative for foreign affairs.
Even though Spain is hosting the EU-U.S. summit, it will be chaired by the new EU president, Herman Van Rompuy. Van Rompuy’s office knew nothing on Monday about whether Obama was attending, saying only that it had read press reports that he wasn’t coming. Officials referred calls to the Spanish rotating presidency in Brussels, which is in charge of planning summits and other meetings for the next six months.
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EU Commission nominee inspired by Rumsfeld
By David Brunnstrom
EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner designate Olli Rehn drew inspiration from former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a hearing in the European Parliament this week.
Each prospective commissioner has to endure a three-hour grilling to check their credentials.
During Rehn’s hearing , Sharon Bowles, the British head of parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, outlined three areas in which the parliament expected close cooperation with Rehn, including early delivery of documents and information.
To make life easier for Rehn , she said: “You could say yes three times.”
The Finnish EU veteran, who is known to choose his words with meticulous care, showed he was not seeking a quick rush for the exit despite the length of the hearing.
“I will keep you informed of both known knowns, unknown knowns, known unknowns, but I’m not sure if I can stretch to the unknown unknowns. Because if i don’t know what is happening on some issue how can I not reveal that? That’s going to be a major challenge,” Rehn said, prompting an outburst of laughter.
