Tag Archives: Political issues

Visca la difer?ncia

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Catalan, Basque, Valencian and Galician as EU official languages? That’s what Spanish foreign minister Moratinos proposes. You’d think the famously proud Catalans would be purring with cultural satisfaction.

You’d be wrong. Last week the Economist observed the astonishing reaction of some Catalans to this suggestion. They’re furious that Valencian might be given status equal with Catalan. One of them, Josep Lluis Carod-Rovira, is even willing to cut off Catalunya’s nose to spite Valencia’s face: if Valencian is granted official status, he says, Catalans should refuse it.1 The Economist thought the irate Catalans need to have a nice lie-down, and I agree.

In this week’s issue, though, a letter-writer from Barcelona takes up the cudgels once more. How dare those Valencians imagine they have a language of their own?

Experts unanimously recognise Valencian as a variety of Catalan (as many Valencians call their language).

Well, perhaps; though I daresay there will be some experts in Valencia who disagree.
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Mama Mia

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Here’s an audio link for a change. NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli reports on changing family patterns in Italy. The report I would suggest is pretty ‘fair and balanced’. As a side issue I think she nicely draws attention to the way ‘gender equality issues’ and unequal family caring responsibilities may impact the ability of Southern european societies to meet the ‘new’ female participation objectives I posted about yesterday.

Gloomy, or Just More Realistic?

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One of the problems of being a ‘dissenting voice’ is that it is hard for others to get a grip on a yardstick for evaluating what you are saying. Normally I am considered ‘gloomy’. But if what I am arguing against is a concoction of all the ‘best case’ scenarios rolled meticulously into one, it might be fair for me to ask, aren’t those who point the finger really guilty of presenting an excessively rosy panorama.

Latest case in point are the consensus projections for life expectancy, as highlighted by the forthcoming UK pensions Commission interim report, details of which are ‘leaked’ in today’s FT:
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Arrivederci Lisbon?

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The Financial Times reports today that the team lead by Wim Kok, set up after the March economics summit, and charged with carrying out a review of the Lisbon process, is likely to find that we are badly behind schedule. This is hardly surprising since the Lisbon agenda was rather stronger on rhetorical nicety (including the now famous objective of turning Europe into the ?most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world? by 2010) and rather weaker on concrete policies and objectives.

The intention is now to change this balance:
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German Wages War Hots Up

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While Volkswagen’s long cold summer trundles on relentlessly there is more news on the wage reduction/increasing hours front.

Following the decision by workers at Siemens and DaimlerChrysler to work longer hours announced earlier in the summer, Volkswagen itself and construction company Bilfinger are looking for similar deals. (The Economist this week has a profile of VW’s head of personnel Peter Hartz - he who gave his name to the Hartz IV law – and a summary of the background to all this).

The numbers of workers likely to be affected are now no longer small: any VW deal would involve 100,000 workers, and the Bilfinger negotiations are said to be liable to affect up to 800,000 construction workers (similar moves are also in evidence elsewhere in Europe, the case of Alitalia pilots being only the most recent).

My take on all this is that while I feel there is an inevitability about it – many EU labour markets clearly need a shake-up – I do not share the rather ‘rosy’ picture most analysts are painting of the likely short and mid term consequences. These deals are clearly deflationary in the classic sense. They will affect consumption in the short, and possibly not so short – term. So when you add the wage reduction effect to the spending reductions implied by the need to reduce government deficits, and the likely 2005 slowdown in global growth which can affect exports, it becomes hard to see where exactly growth in an economy like Germany’s will come from.

This Is One To Watch

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Jumping in feet first ahead of AFOE’s more knowledgeable German-based members (of course fools always rush in where…..), I can’t help but be concerned by reading this about the annual “Pressefest” of the National Democratic Party of Germany:

what struck the German intelligence officers who observed last month’s gathering in M?ckay, Saxony, was less the diversity than the scale of the attendance: 4,000 sympathisers had come from all over Germany and Austria, more than twice the expected number.

It had been assumed the neo-Nazi party was going through a rough patch. The 40-year-old party’s finances are depleted, it barely survived the government’s attempts to outlaw it last year, and its membership has been falling continuously since the mid-1990s.

Having altered its tactics and polished its image, however, the NPD, which has been active in east Germany since reunification, is attempting a rebirth on the back of mounting discontent and political cynicism in the economically deprived and unemployment-ridden region.
Source: Financial Times

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Outsourcing Debate Hits Germany

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Well, well, this was hardly unexpected. In fact the reality may well be that this time there is plenty of smoke but no fire, since Siemens has announced it has no concrete plans to move 10,000 jobs abroad. Indeed much of the noise at present may emanate from a threat to move as a negotiating posture in order to try and force changes. But behind this the underlying reality is that the problem is coming. Not only is Germany having a ‘job-loss’ recovery there is good reason to doubt whether it is having a recovery at all. And of course the main course may well be yet to be served since many of the jobs threatening to relocate seem to be in the industrial sector, whilst just round the corner the high-end services issue is surely coming. Still there is one difference with the US: the headlines are not being made by an opposition candidate talking about Benedict Arnold CEO’s, but by a Chamber of Commerce head who seems to be saying he’s Benedict Arnold and proud of it.
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Hyundai Goes to Slovakia

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South Korean manufacturing giant Hyundai has picked Slovakia as the site for a new $870m (?466m) car plant, one of the biggest deals in the car sector this year. The factory, which will open in 2006, is intended to produce up to 200,000 vehicles a year under Hyundai’s Kia brand. The north Slovak city of Zilina beat a Polish location in what had been a long-running contest to get the plant. Both countries offered incentives for the investment, but Slovakia boasts slightly lower costs for manufacturers. In fact Slovakia has arguably the lowest business cost base of any of this year’s new EU members, and enjoys a strategic location on the border with Austria. All of which means that it is rapidly converting itself into an auto manufacturing hub since this is the second big car project that Poland has recently lost to Slovakia: last year, France’s PSA Peugeot Citroen said labour costs had persuaded it to pick Slovakia for a new plant roughly the same size as Kia’s.

This of course is neither outsourcing, nor is it job-migration. But it certainly is a news item which doesn’t go down too well here in Spain, which feels it is rapidly losing its pride of place as the European car components centre.
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It’s expensive, but we’re rich!

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Remember this debate about the relative living standards of Sweden and Alabama? One little commented result of the euro, krona and pound?s rise against the US dollar over the last two years is that measured in current exchange rates European countries? income per head now compares rather more favourably against the United States.
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