Nosemonkey's EUtopia

In search of a European identity

February 25, 2007
by Nosemonkey
5 Comments

Blair and the EU constitution

As you may have noticed, I’ve spent a fair amount of this week highlighting the lack of British involvement in the ever-increasing moves towards reviving / revising the EU constitution. Now, via Iain Dale, it seems that the (anti-EU Rupert Murdoch tabloid) News of the World reckon they’ve uncovered what Blair’s up to:

the Prime Minister intends to rubber-stamp the European Constitution without consulting his likely successor Chancellor Gordon Brown — not to mention British voters.

Mr Blair has PERSONALLY pushed forward plans for a permanent EU President and Foreign Minister as one of his last acts before he stands down as premier.

He will travel to Berlin on March 25 to sign the 50-page agreement, Declaration on the Future of Europe.

Far from a simple “declaration”, this is a binding treaty which embodies “basic laws” for 490 million people in 27 countries.

Quite how the News of the World think they know what the final text is going to contain when it hasn’t been written yet is anyone’s guess. But, of course, although the major proposals the NOTW mentions are hardly new (an EU President, EU Foreign Minister, EU Defence Minister and greater powers for the – democratically-elected, lest we forget – European Parliament), they all, the paper claims, add up to a move towards the eurosceptic bogeyman of “federalism”.

Is this take justified? It’s impossible to say.

The News of the World asserts (with little in the way of evidence) that this Declaration on the Future of Europe will be legally binding, forcing all signatories into handing over ever more power to Brussels. But considering that this will hardly be the first such declaration (similar ones were issued in 2001 following the practically useless Treaty of Nice and the Laeken EU Council), and that its predecessors were – as the term “declaration” implies – simply declarations of the intention to find a way to move much-needed EU reforms forward, with little in the way of specifics about what those reforms might be, it seems highly unlikely that any such document is going to contain any specific promises to implement new ways of working. Instead, the likelihood is that the latest version is going to be much like its predecessors – nothing more than a public acknowledgement that the current EU system is increasingly unfit for purpose.

And in any case, as my recent run-downs of the ongoing debates about the constitution have surely made clear, there is no consensus amongst our European cousins on precisely what is the best way forward in any case. Even if Blair does sign the thing (seemingly without the promised referendum), there’s little chance that all the other nine member states yet to ratify the original constitutional treaty will do likewise.

It’s far too risky for any of the French presidential candidates to commit to at the moment, the Netherlands are likewise unlikely to ignore their referendum (especially with the Dutch government so precarious), and it’s highly likely that Denmark, the Czech Republic and Poland are also going to have a few things to say about any attempt at straight revival of the old constitution. Yet without unanimity amongst all 27 EU member states, there is no way that the constitution can come into force.

Even if Blair does sign the thing – against the wishes of a decent chunk of his cabinet, not to mention the country – and even if we take the News of the World’s word that this new declaration is somehow legally binding and going to come into force as soon as it’s signed (as they strongly suggest), there’s a very strong probability that at least one other EU country will refuse to, and the whole thing will be scuppered.

Either way, I’m intrigued to know where the News of the World got all this information from – because not only is the declaration yet to be finalised, making their claims about its content speculative at best, but also they make the bizarre claim that “Downing Street played a major role in the latest negotiations”. Because of that there is precisely no evidence whatsoever – in fact, precisely the opposite. Why else would the more enthusiastically pro-EU types across the Channel have been complaining so much about Britain’s lack of involvement over the last year or more?

February 25, 2007
by Nosemonkey
13 Comments

Deception or stupidity?

I’ve studiously avoided getting involved in recent blog flame-wars. So this post is a bit of an aberration. Sorry…

Unsurprisingly, I’m not much of a fan of anti-EU right-wing blog EU Referendum.

Aside from their constant assumptions of “liberal media bias” (which led to them accusing the Associated Press – if I recall – of faking the Israeli bombing of Lebanon last year… Yes, really…), and the fact that they increasingly seem to be drifting towards conspiracy theory explanations for every slightest cock-up – largely playing up to the maniacs that flock in their droves to their comment sections – it’s also rather depressing, as the blog’s main man, erstwhile UKIP researcher Richard North, is actually relatively intelligent, and used to be able to come up with well-considered and insanely well-researched arguments to back up his anti-EU case.

These days, the blog seems more like a random collection of unjustified ravings, occasionally interspersed with picture after picture after picture after picture after picture after picture after picture after picture after picture of military hardware (those links all just from the current front page of the blog, going back just to Monday), which North then verbally masturbates over like a cross between a caged monkey and the most deranged characature of a right-wing militaristic maniac since Dr Strangelove’s General Ripper.

Rare now is the careful dissection of Brussels policy. Rare, indeed, is any mention of Brussels or the EU beyond wild accusations and lazy references to sovereignty, bureaucrats, and socialist conspiracies. Which is a shame, as North used to be one of the better anti-EU online commentators – before his soldier-boy fetish kicked off and his “scoop” about Lebanon actually being completely fine and the whole war last year simply an anti-semitic plot between Hezbollah and the liberal media to make Israel look bad attracted attention from the nuttier, Little Green Footballs-style US right-wing blogs, boosting his visitor count beyond his wildest dreams.

Now, however, even my previous respect for North’s ability to dissect complex EU legislation has been called into question, as the boy DK highlights numerous and hard to deny cases of plagiarism by North. I’d vaguely suspected as much before, but had put it down to an inconsistent writing style. Now, however, it would appear I can safely bother not reading the thing any more – even on the increasingly rare occasions when something about the EU does crop up there, I’ll likely already have read it in the Times.

Update: Of course, this could all be part of a co-ordinated anti-UKIP movement from anti-EU types who don’t have much time for the party. North would certainly be amongst that group, following his falling our with the party a few years back. Quite what good they thing splitting the anti-EU movement even further will do them I have no idea, but still…

February 24, 2007
by Nosemonkey
1 Comment

A weekend EU constitution roundup

It’s all kicking off. Again… Ever more people are starting to come to the opinion that 2007 is going to be one of the EU’s most important years. I’m not one of them…

One of the driving forces increasingly seems to be Italy’s Romano Prodi, former President of the European Commission – who’s currently wating to see if he’s had a stay of execution following his resignation on Wednesday, with Italy’s President today asking him to stay in the job (as long as he can pass a vote of no confidence…)

First up, just over a week ago, nine member states (Italy along with Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Spain, France, Greece, Hungary and Luxembourg) made a joint declaration calling for a “social Europe”, alongside any revival of the constitution. No one knows precisely what a “social Europe” might be, but they all seem to think it sounds nice.

Then, back on Tuesday, Italy and Spain made a joint statement: “We are going to unite the efforts of two countries that have ratified the EU constitutional treaty with Germany so that this semester will be a time in which we move from thought to action, from stagnancy to initiatives”. We’ve heard all this before, of course, but they actually seem to have got a bit of momentum up this time…

At the same time, the two countries voiced their fears that Tony Blair’s exit from British politics could screw the whole project. Because – despite the fact he’s done little to prove it in recent years – Blair is the most europhile Prime Minister Britain’s had since Heath, and whoever follows him in to Number 10, it’s highly unlikely that they’re going to be as willing as Blair has been to bend over backwards to try and get the EU to work (remember Blair’s efforts to reform the Common Agricultural Policy by offering to give up Britain’s rebate? Brave stuff…)

Also on Tuesday, EU Regional Aid Commissioner Danuta Hubner (no, I’d never heard of her either) came out with a schoolmistressy warning to all 27 member states about how the EU could collapse without progress on the constituion. Possibly true – but if that’s the case, you’d think that they’d all realise that now’s the time for compromise to ensure that the most sceptical member states are happy, rather than to push ahead with the existing text in the vague hope that a sizable chunk of the continent (including Britain, France and the Netherlands) will change their minds about the thing. Ho hum…

Then, despite the surprise news about Prodi on Wednesday, on Thursday the Czech Republic (which cancelled its referendum after the Franch and Dutch votes) decided to push ahead ahyway, calling for an easier to understand version of the existing constitutional treaty. A kind of “EU Constitution for Dummies”, if you will – another lovely demonstration of one strand of thought amongst the EU’s political elites: French and Dutch voters rejected the thing because they were too stupid to understand it. (Which may be true, to be fair – the thing was so long and convoluted I doubt even the people who drafted the thing fully understood it all…) What the Czechs don’t seem to be doing (and I really wish someone would) is proposing the sensible alternative: a constitution based on that of the United States. Short, sweet and to the point.

Naturally enough, though, it can’t all run smoothly – especially with France in the middle of an election campaign that’s looking increasingly tight and unpredictable, with candidates desperate for any stick to beat their opponents with. As such, early in the week a spat about sovereignty emerged – swiftly followed by presidential hopeful Nicholas Sarkozy calling for an abridged version of the constitution. Just as some have argued that the French people used the constitutional referendum to express annoyance with their national leaders, rather than with the constitution itself, the presidential election could well see France’s next president commit to a course of action on the constitution purely to gain votes. Which is hardly ideal, but still. Such is democracy.

Next week this is all likely to continue – especially if Prodi survives and Italy gets back in the fight. This coming Wednesday ministers from Spain and Luxembourg are visiting the European Parliament’s constitutional affairs committee, discussing ways to get the remaining 9 member states (France, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Ireland, Portugal and the UK) to ratify the existing treaty. Which simply isn’t going to happen.

Meanwhile, various people are proposing alternatives – from former Convention on the Future of Europe member Hubert Haenel, French Green MEP Gerard Onesta, Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema, Italian Minister of the Interior Giuliano Amato, former French Prime minister Laurent Fabius, and countless others.

Many of the suggestions aren’t up to much, failing the fundamental test of “would every single member state be happy with this?” But at least they acknowledge that the existing text is no longer an option.

Even so, somewhere out there is a workable solution. The only question is, will the people with the power to adopt it ever be able to find the thing? There’s lot of activity at the moment, with various countries running around looking for ways to press ahead and convince others of their position. But with Britain currently stuck ostrich-like, seemingly paying no attention whatsoever to the constitutional debate on the continent, with France embroiled in tight elections for at least another couple of months, and Italy’s pro-EU Prime Minister currently blanacing on a knife edge, the chances of any meaningful agreement during the German EU Presidency of the first half of this year looks increasingly unlikely, no matter how hard some of the more enthusiastic countries to have adopted the existing text might be trying to get one. the whole thing is looking increasingly unlikely to end.

If we can’t even agree on something as fleeting and trivial as how best to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, how the hell are we going to be able to agree on something as complex and important as the blueprint for the running of the EU for the next 50 years? So, 2007 as one of the EU’s most important years? Not for any positive reasons. It could well be the year when the differences become so fundamental that the EU splits into two tiers – but even that is (sadly) unlikely. By far the most probable outcome of all these little manourverings to push forward with reform is failure and further stagnation. I can’t see any room for hope as long as Britain remains on the sidelines – and especially while the EU’s single biggest problem, the Common Agricultural Policy and its impact on the budget, remains undiscussed.

February 23, 2007
by Nosemonkey
Comments Off on Good news for Sir Patrick

Good news for Sir Patrick

After the surprising news that his local constituency association executive had decided to deselect him after 37 years as an MP – and one of the most dedicated constituency MPs in the House – it turns out that they were even more stupid than I thought:

The vote which would have ousted veteran Tory MP Sir Patrick Cormack has been declared null and void.

David Billson, chairman of Staffs South Conservatives, said there had been a “clerical error” and a fresh vote would be held in the next two or three weeks.

It follows claims there were more votes cast than people present at a meeting last week to decide the MP’s future.

February 23, 2007
by Nosemonkey
1 Comment

The French presidential race is getting even more interesting

If you haven’t been paying attention, left(ish) candidate Segolene Royal has spent much of the last few weeks making something of a tit of herself, with gaffes galore and all kinds of silly little errors that had piled up to lose her much support. Up until a couple of days ago, right(ish) candidate Nicholas Sarkozy was ahead by somewhere between 8 and 10 points in the polls, depending on who you believed.

In the last few days, however, Royal has made a remarkable recovery – back almost neck and neck with Sarkozy, with some polls even giving her the lead.

That in itself is pretty impressive – what is more so (to those of us who haven’t been paying as close attention as we would have liked) is that this is no longer a two horse race.

After the last time, when far-right nutter Jean-Marie Le Pen got through to the final round of the preseidential elections because no one reckoned a thrid party type was really a threat, or when John Kerry surged from nowhere to take the Democratic presidential nomination, you’d have thought we would have all remembered to watch the entire field rather than just the two with the shortest odds (note to self: check out US presidential candidates other than the obvious McCain / Guiliani / Clinton / Obama options).

Even so, many of us – myself included – utterly failed to spot the rise of centrist UDF candidate Francois Bayrou.

So here we have a dilemma. Who is this chap who’s come from pretty much nowhere to being a serious contender in just the last couple of weeks? He’s a centrist promising to appoint a cross-party government, so he sounds like my kind of guy – unless, of course, he’s a French equivalent of the current Lib Dems…

Thankfully, the day I start paying attention to the guy, The Times’ Charles Bremner has a handy summary of what Bayrou’s all about. I also note that I’d missed this Guardian overview from Wednesday, and now everyone seems to be on his case, with more pieces from the BBC and the International Herald Tribune (the latter having a handy overview of some of his foreign policy positions).

Then try France Decides on Bayrou entering the race (back at the start of December), and again earlier this month as Bayrou started to make gains (and again on the non-threat of Le Pen this time). You could also do far worse than checking out French Élection 2007’s Bayrou section – the most recent mentioning the surprising recent poll finding that if Bayrou made it through to the second round, he’d probably win.

Needless to say, interest in the guy is hotting up – as his mentions on Technorati can attest:

The particularly interesting thing is that that chart is out of date even now, five minutes after I did the screengrab – the last bar is now shooting up even further, with the first five pages of a Technorati search for Bayrou being posts from the last two hours. Sarkozy may be averaging over 1,000 blog mentions per day (it’s harder to check Royal due to her generic surname, but it’s likely similar), but third-party candidate Bayrou has gone from around 100 to around 750 per day in less than a month. Bloggers are obviously not representative of the wider population in any way, shape or form, but that’s not bad going.

Right – I’m off to check up more on this guy. I always prefer to back the underdog in any case – and this could be one with a chance of winning, for a change. (Of course, what’s more likely is that he’ll merely leech a few votes from Sarkozy, giving Royal a better chance, but still – it’s two months to go until the first round… Anything could happen…)

February 22, 2007
by Nosemonkey
Comments Off on A quickie / roundup

A quickie / roundup

The Times’ Anatole Kaletsky’s normally worth reading, so check out his latest on Germany and the future of the EU – I’m too busy to have had a chance yet, myself. You could probably also do worse than check out DJ Nozem’s overview of the current state of Dutch politics and European Tribune’s look at the uncertain situation with the French Presidential Elections as Sarkozy starts playing the “the EU’s mean to us” card. (The EU, mean to FRANCE, of all places? He’s getting nervous…) EurozoneWatch is also good on the French presidential candidates’ attitudes towards the EU in the campaign so far…

Update: Edward Lucas on the two-speed Europe is likely worth a gander and all…

Oh, and I’ve been asked to give The Metro’s British blogging awards a plug. So I have – largely because they said nice things about me.

February 21, 2007
by Nosemonkey
6 Comments

Romano Prodi’s resignation

So, after nine months as Prime Minister of Italy, former President of the European Commission Romano Prodi (a bit of a political hero of mine if only thanks to his refusal to ever join a political party, despite holding two such high offices) has been forced to tender his resignation after losing a key vote over The War Against Terror by just two votes. (Mr Blair? Ahem?)

Still, this is Italy – nine months as PM is actually pretty damned impressive. Ignoring the twenty-one years under Mussolini, few Italian PMs last more than a few months. Even with the gap under Il Duce, Italy’s managed no fewer than sixty Prime Ministers (some being repeats) since 1900. There have been ten since 1990 – even allowing for the strange knack Silvio Berlusconi had of holding on to power by staying in office for the best part of five years from 2001-6.

Still, Berlusconi’s first term as Prime Minister in 1994-5 only lasted eight months, so Prodi’s out-done that – if not his own first term as PM, when he managed to hold out for a whopping twenty-nine months between May 1996 and October 1998. By Italy’s standards, that’s nearly as impressive as FDR or Thatcher…

Still, with Berlusconi pretty much incapacitated through being a key defendant in a lengthy fraud trial (just one of many bits of dodginess – testified to by the fact that there’s a Wikipedia page devoted to the trials he’s been caught up in) and in rather poor health, there’s a good chance that Prodi could come back pretty swiftly, perhaps even securing a slightly more respectable win than his 49.81% to 49.74% victory in last April’s elections. (Should it end up going to an election, that is…)

But then again, making predictions about Italian politics is a mug’s game. Even if you know the way things work in Italy inside out, the complexities, alliances and resentments within the two main coalitions – Prodi’s leftish, twenty-one-party L’Unione (formerly known as L’Ulivo) and Berlusconi’s rightish, twenty-party Casa delle Libertà – are shifting so frequently that you’d pretty much need to keep tabs on every politician in the land to have any idea what’s going on. Italian politics is the butterfly effect on a national scale – there may well be some logic behind the thing, but ninty-nine times out of a hundred if someone claims they’ve worked out how it all makes sense and can work out what’s going to happen next, they’re either lying or deluded…

Update: The International Herald Tribune is (as always) rather good on this.

February 21, 2007
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments

New CIS blogroll

With Russia, like the US, in a two year electoral cycle (Parliamentary elections this year, Presidential next), I thought it was about time to beef up the Russia/CIS blogroll a bit, so have added a new section. Loads of good ones in there, including a bunch of new discoveries and a few old favourites. I’ll run the full list here as well – if I’m missing any particularly good ones, let me know, ta!

Abdymok (Ukraine)

A Step At A Time / David McDuff

br23 blog (Belarus)

Copydude

Craig Murray (esp. Uzbekistan)

Cyber Cossack

Digenis

Dykun (Ukraine)

English Russia

The Exile

Foreign Notes (Ukraine)

Johnson’s Russia List

Kiev Ukraine News Blog

KZ Blog (Kazakhstan)

La Russophobe

Languor Management

Lex Libertas

Neeka’s Backlog (mostly Ukraine)

New Eurasia (Central Asia)

Orange Ukraine

Registan (Central Asia)

Robert Amsterdam

Real Russia Project

Ruminations on Russia

Russian Dilletante

Russian Marketing Blog

Russian Kafe

Scraps of Moscow

Sean’s Russia Blog

Siberian Light

White Sun of the Desert

ZheZhe[dot]us

February 18, 2007
by Nosemonkey
1 Comment

Russia and Chechnya – deja vu…

Bit of breaking news – a bomb’s gone off in a MacDonalds in St. Petersburg about an hour or so ago.

Now I’m not much of a one for conspiracy theories, but this all sounds rather familiar…

1994 – Russian elections coming up; Chechnya unstable; terrorists attack; war with Chechnya starts; government types do well in elections

1996 – Russian elections coming up; Chechnya unstable; terrorists attack; war with Chechnya kicks up a gear; government types do well in elections

1999 – Russian elections coming up; Chechnya unstable; terrorists attack; war with Chechnya starts; government types do well in elections

2007 – Russian elections coming up; Chechnya unstable; terrorists attack…

Monday update: Maybe not.

February 14, 2007
by Nosemonkey
13 Comments

Racial representation in the European Parliament

A fascinating article in the Guardian today (not something that I’ve found myself saying much in the last few years…) – if primarily due to a statistic:

Of the European Parliament’s 785 MEPs – representing 492 million people from 27 countries – just 9 are not white.

To the UK’s credit, 5 of them are British (and one even has a blog) – but even that’s on the low side. Considering about 10% of the British population is non-white, there should be in the region of 8 non-white British MEPs (out of 78) to be representative of the population as a whole.

Now I’m not calling for affirmative action to artificially increase representation (that’d just be silly). Plus it should be noted that the new member states of Eastern Europe are generally speaking far more “white” in composition (while still being very ethnically diverse) than the former imperial powers of western Europe. On top of that, few aspiring politicians of whatever race would put the European Parliament at the top of their list of places to be elected to. Slightly above the local council, perhaps, but most politicians with ambition still aim for the national parliament (an EU issue to be discussed another day, perhaps…).

But even so – only 1.1% of MEPs being “non-white”? Though there may be no reliable figures on the racial composition of the EU (a bit of a taboo subject, it would seem), I’m pretty certain there must be more than 1% of Europeans who are “non-white”. The Guardian estimates 5% – in which case there should be 40 “non-white” MEPs (mostly, I’d guess, from Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands).

Then again, women are hardly doing much better in terms of representation, and no one has a clue about the true number of gay politicians thanks to the continued difficulty of coming out (cf. Simon Hughes). Plus this isn’t just a European Parliament issue: the representation of women and ethnic minority MPs in Westminster is still way below what it should be were the House of Commons to reflect the demographic makeup of the country as a whole.

Of course, whether or not you really need ethnic minority or female elected representatives in order to represent the views of female and ethnic minority constituents is another matter entirely. But still… Poor show.