Tag Archives: europe

It’s a draw?

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After describing some of the election fraud tactics and explaining that some local authorities seem to have pledged their allegiance to Mr (President) Yushchenko, the Ukrainian author Andrij Bondar writes in today’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (the English is my translation of the German translation of his article) -

It’a a draw. The European Union and the United States have declared the elections to have been forged, Russia has recognized Mr Yanukovich as legitimate President, Kuchma remains silent. It is not the first time in history that Ukraine is torn between East and West, between Russia and Europe, between totalitarianism and democracy. In these days, her future will be decided. More urgently than ever, we are in need of the moral and political support of the world’s democracies. If we gamble away Ukraine today, already tomorrow you will have to forget your sated and conflict-free Europe. Because Ukraine is Europe, or rather, in the words of the writer Andrzej Stasiuks: She is your European subconscious. The weather forecast is announcing snow and frost for Ukraine. But no one is willing to forcast if the blood of innocents will be shed tomorrow. We are still all alive. Still.

Autodaf

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Rocco Buttiglione, who resigned as Italian candidate for EU commissioner last week, now believes he can turn his political defeat into victory and form new religious movement in Europe (see related afoe post here). According to the Guardian -

At a debate entitled “The trial of the Catholic witch” in Milan’s Teatro Nuovo on Saturday, Mr Buttiglione said what happened to him in the EU was “a gift from God”, which he hoped would force debate over the religious discrimination in “politically correct Europe”.

He said he had received thousands of letters of support from sympathisers across Europe and from Muslim and Jewish leaders in Italy. “You can’t have a political community without a conscience and without values,” he said, inspired by the role of the Christian vote in the US election.

Very true. Let me repeat that: You can’t have a political community without a conscience and without values. It’s just that both terms are simply labels whose meanings are as individual as it gets.

And we shall keep it that way.

The Morning After in Europe

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So it’s done. We have four more years of George W Bush to look forward to. A quick tour of the American blogs shows a few trying to pull some sort of moral victory from this election, but the truth is that they’ve lost everything. Not only has the president finally won the majority denied to him in 2000, but as a reward for his mismanagement and incompetence, Democrats have actually lost seats in both houses of Congress, including losing the Senate Minority Leader. For all that the vote is close, the outcome is a stunning defeat in terms of real access to power. There is no longer a meaningful opposition in the US able to moderate the power of a president who needs no longer worry about reelection.

At best, this means that in 2008 the Republicans will have to run on a deeper quagmire in Iraq, no meaningful victories in the so-called war on terrorism, another huge hike in the American public debt and all the new messes Bush can create. But, let’s be honest. That isn’t going to happen. No one will be called to account. The American electorate, for a number of reasons, simply will not hold this administration to account. They did not do so in 2002, they haven’t this time, and there is no reason to think they will in 2008.

Reaction in the French political scene is muted, but definitely not happy.
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Turkey recommended for EU accession talks

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The European Commission has recommended that accession talks for Turkey should begin, but hasn’t laid out any dates for the process:

Commission officials are reporting on the progress Turkey has already made, along with Bulgaria and Romania.

The final decision on Turkey rests with the leaders of all 25 EU member states in December – with accession years off.

The Commission’s recommendation is a milestone in an increasingly impassioned debate.

The decision was reached by a “large consensus” among commissioners, one EU official said, but no vote was taken.

There was also no recommended date to start negotiations with Turkey.

More from The Scotsman/PA, EU Business, Reuters and EU Observer.

Update: The full text of Romano Prodi’s speech can be found here and I’ve copied it below, so you can click on the ‘continue reading’ link to see it as the English HTML link on the site doesn’t seem to be working (pdf and doc links are).
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Turkish Accession Back On The Slow Track?

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Despite the recent revival of optimism about the forthcoming Turkey negotiations following the apparent resolution of the ‘adultery ban’ issue, it is clear to everyone that significant hurdles still remain to be overcome. Among these may now need to be added a referendum on Turkish membership in France.

Turkey will not join the European Union for at least 15 years and could only do so once France had held a referendum on the issue, French Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said on Sunday.

?The membership of Turkey, in the best of cases, will not happen for 15 years,? he told LCI television. ?A decision as important as the membership of Turkey in Europe could only be taken after there had been a referendum in France.?…….

He was sceptical about the idea ?not because it is a Muslim country but because Turkey alone represents the membership of the 10 countries (mainly) from eastern Europe?, he said, referring to the countries that joined the bloc this year.

Sarkozy made his comments after French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin voiced misgivings on Thursday about Turkey joining the bloc, asking if Europe really wanted ?the river of Islam to enter the riverbed of secularism?.

Raffarin said Turkey had made progress in adjusting its laws and institutions to EU standards under Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, but queried the overwhelmingly Muslim but secular state?s ability to stay the course.
Source: Financial Times

Clearly everyone involved in the debate is aware of the problem of Turkey staying ‘on course’. Clearly also it is difficult for any democrat to object to the principle of ‘citizen consultation’ about important issues, still it is important to note the growing recourse to the referendum as the means of making such consultation (this process will probably reach a climax with next year’s votes on the proposed EU constitution). This would seem to be an additional hurdle for Turkey, given that such a procedure was not followed in the case of the recent round of accession.
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Opening the Sublime Porte just a crack

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The European Commission won’t release its report on the possibility of opening accesion talks with Turkey until 6 October. But after expansion commissioner G?nter Verheugen’s comments yesterday, the report will not be much of a surprise. ‘There are’, said Verheugen, ‘no further barriers‘ to beginning talks.

(All the links to outside sources in this post, incidentally, are to German-language sites. At the moment there’s nothing about this on the FAZ English-language site, but you might check there later in the day if you can’t read German.)

In the comments to my recent post on the NPD’s electoral gains in Brandenburg, Otto suggests that the German CDU step up its resistance to a possible Turkish entry. Apparently the Union is paying attention to Otto, for party chief Angela Merkel was prompt to announce that she will seek allies elsewhere in Europe to keep the Turks draussen vor der T?r. And taking up most of the front page of the print edition of today’s Die Welt — the reliably right-wing sister paper to the Bild-Zeitung, but unlike Bild intended for those who can read words of more than one syllable — are ‘Ten Reasons Why Turkey Should Not Be Allowed to Join’.

Strangely enough my first reaction to this all-out onslaught by the Union was one of compassion and concern. ‘Bloss keine Panik, Leute!’, I wanted to say, giving their well-coiffed heads a reassuring pat. For you see, Turkey is not about to join the EU after all. All that the Commission has done (and indeed, officially it hasn’t even done that yet) is to say it’s all right to start talking with the Turks about the possibility of an eventual accession. In those talks Europe will, among other things, negotiate with the Turks the conditions and timeline for a possible entry. There is no guarantee that Turkey will accept (or fulfil) the EU’s conditions. And accession, if it comes at all, will not be for many years.
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It’s Deficit Time Again

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There’s a fair amount of talk again this week about the various government deficits and what to do with them. Earlier in the week the FT had a piece about the current state of play with the US deficit whilst the Economist is busy musing one more time over the ongoing saga of the EU growth and stability pact.

These two situations appear, on the surface, to be somewhat similar, but in reality it may be more interesting to consider how they differ.
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Negotiations For Turkey’s Entry About To Begin?

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Not if people like single market commissioner Frits Bolkestein gets his way they aren’t. According to the FT the European Commission is expected to say on October 6 that Turkey has reformed enough for membership negotiations to begin. If this happens EU leaders will then decide in December whether to endorse those conclusions and when to start the talks with Ankara. Mr Bolkestein seems to have problems with this:

A senior European commissioner has warned against the “Islamisation” of Europe, casting doubt on Turkey’s drive to join the European Union at a crucial time for its campaign for membership.

Frits Bolkestein, the outgoing single market commissioner, made the comments as his colleague G?nter Verheugen, the enlargement commissioner, visited Turkey ahead of a key Commission report next month on the country’s preparations for joining the EU.

In his comments, circulated by the Commission yesterday, Mr Bolkestein said Europe would be “Islamised” because of demographic and migration changes. He added that if this occured, “the liberation of Vienna [from the Turks] in 1683 would have been in vain”.
Source: Financial Times

Mr Bolkestein’s problem would therefore not appear to be connected with the legitimate question as to whether Turkey is, or is not, complying with EU criteria on human rights, treatment of minorities etc, but with something which sounds remarkably like an objection in principle. In this sense it is noteworthy as it is clearly a somewhat crude expression of a much broader popular sentiment which Europe’s responsible political leaders need to do much more to combat. My interpretation of the above statement is not altered by the clarification from a spokesperson that the commissioner does “not oppose the accession of Turkey to the EU”, which I take to be spin in the face of what must otherwise be considered in Commission terms a diplomatic gaffe, since if he is not opposed to membership then what the hell is he talking about?

And, oh yes, don’t miss the point about demographic trends. I hazard to suggest that this is going to be the topic of the decade, both economically and politically.

Economic Consequences of Spain’s 11M

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Italian consumer confidence has remained near a 10-year low in March in the wake of the Madrid terrorist bombings. In fact the bombings may have hurt sentiment in Italy more than the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. according to a statement from the government-funded Isae institute. The confidence survey, which was carried out between March 1 and March 12, showed that consumers who had been growing more optimistic about the prospects for lower inflation and improvements in unemployment turned pessimistic in the two days after the bombings. In fact while the 22-year-old Italian consumer confidence index touched its all time record low of 93.7 in April 1993, March was the third month in a row that the index has been below 102, the last time it was that low being in February 1994.
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