We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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The European Union is making soothing clucking sounds to try and calm the outraged Muslim masses with plans of a ‘media code of conduct’ designed to prevent a repeat of the Jyllands-Posten incident with the ‘Satanic Cartoons’.
EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini said the charter would encourage the media to show “prudence” when covering religion.
“The press will give the Muslim world the message: We are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression,” he told the newspaper. “We can and we are ready to self-regulate that right.”
Who is this “we”? Does Frattini think he is speaking for the British and European on-line community? If so then perhaps I can spell out the “consequences of exercising the right of free expression” that “we” are aware of… it makes us free, that is the consequence of free expression. Are “we” clear now? These non-enforcible guidelines are just a worthless sop to people who need to be confronted, not treated as though they have a legitimate argument.
And yet later he seems to take a strangely different stance…
The chairman of World Islamic Call Society, Mohamed Ahmed Sherif told a press conference in Brussels on Thursday (9 February) that the cartoons of Mohammed published first in Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, fuelled extremism.
“Nobody should blame the muslims if they are unhappy about the images of the prophet Mohammed,” Sherif said coming out from a meeting with EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini in Brussels. “It’s forbidden to create a hate programme to show that the prophet is a terrorist while he’s not,” he stated, “Don’t ask us to try to make people understand that this is not a campaign of hate.”
EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini repeatedly nodded and mumbled “yes” in front of cameras and microphones during Mr Sherif’s statement.
Mr Frattini also denied wanting to create a code of conduct for journalists reporting on religious matters, as indicated by earlier media reports.
“There have never been, nor will there be any plans by the European Commission to have some sort of EU regulation, nor is there any legal basis for doing so,” the commissioner stated.
So in the space of two days, Frattini seems to have done a U-turn and stated his commitment to freedom of expression whilst simultaneously looking like an appeaser. That takes some doing!
Let’s hear it for ‘nuanced’ European diplomacy! 
The drive to revive the European Union’s Constitution, after the period of reflection, is proving rather fruitless. Since full ratification will not be forthcoming, the only outcome currently in prospect is a fudged showdown. A combination of vindaloo and Armitage Shanks. Either the Nos will be finessed with opt-outs so that the structural changes will be implemented without too much distress, or the EU will fracture with a move by an avant-garde towards a more deeply integrated European state, a la Chirac.
To avoid their nightmare of fractured EU, the Euro-MPs, Andrew Duff and Johannes Voggenhuber are preparing to fill the breach, parliamentarians riding to the rescue of the forlorn constitution. The two pour scorn on the European Council, as a tool divided and unable to provide leadership. Please note that whilst their quotes may verge on satire, they are authentic and provide a sad testament to the delusional meta-context of Brussels.
“From Europe’s leaders we have had a display of a wide range of simplistic solutions to the crisis,” Duff said on Friday.
“From President Chirac we have had a proposal for a piecemeal approach to the constitution and from Nicolas Sarkozy we have had a proposal for a restructured version.”
From [the Dutch and UK foreign ministers] Bernard Bot and Jack Straw we have confirmation that the present treaty is finished; from Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel we have him disagreeing with all of these people and then we have the president of Finland disagreeing with Schuessel.”
“All their proposals are constitutionally improper or politically quite unrealistic. Some of them are both.”
This institutional paralysis amongst the Member States provides an opportunity. The European Parliament can provide leadership and attain its place in the sun:
Both MEPs want parliament to show a clear way forward on reviving the constitution debate in Strasbourg next Wednesday and Thursday.
“We have to decide as a parliament if we are to fill the political space or to be satisfied with being supine parrots of fashion; commentators of the paralysed and confused European council,” said Duff.
Voggenhuber argued that there didn’t appear to be any serious EU leadership on the constitution.
“The crisis seems to be getting worse,” he said adding, “The question now is who is going to be able to lead us out of this crisis.”
“Someone has to take responsibility, someone has to take initiatives. If it’s not the parliament, then who is going to take the lead and stand up for the constitutional process?”
It is kind of Duff and Voggenhuber to selflessly burden themselves with this responsibility. But why not leave it to the French and Dutch people? They stood up to the constitutional process, didn’t they?
Tony Blair showed just how courageous he is… he chose to face up to an internal battle based on one idea – the European Union – rather than just doing his job as just Britain’s prime minister.
– Jacques Chirac
Pity Samizdata.net does not have a catagory for articles called “Treason & Betrayal”.
Seldom in the course of European negotiations has so much been surrendered for so little. It is amazing how the Government has moved miles while the French have barely yielded a centimetre.
– William Hague
Charles Crawford, the British ambassador to Poland, is in hot water for an e-mail which says several entire true things:
He describes the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as “the most stupid, immoral state-subsidised policy in human history, give or take Communism”.
He also ridicules French leader Jacques Chirac for “nagging the British taxpayer to bloat rich French landowners and so pump up food prices in Europe, thereby creating poverty in Africa”.
He also suggests Blair gives EU leaders one hour to make up their minds on the budget because “If anyone says no, we end the meeting. The EU will move on to a complete mess of annual budgets. Basically suits us – we’ll pay less and the rebate stays 100 percent intact”.
Oh, but he was only ‘joking’ of course. Riiiight.
Yes, this guy should indeed be fired from his job as an ambassador… he belongs in 10 Downing Street doing Tony Blair’s job!
Britain’s government surrenders billions of our money to the EU in return for… nothing much… and that has left the UK government ‘isolated’ because more was not surrendered.
The gall of the Gauls at insisting Britain’s taxpayers stump up even more when they are massively greater beneficiaries of the EU’s largess than the UK is breathtaking but far from surprising.
Britain is not even nearly isolated enough from the EU for my taste.
The US Constitution begins, famously, “We the People…”. The European Constitution begins, “His Majesty the King of the Belgians…”. That gives you a fair idea of the different spirit of each document.
– Charles Moore
(Hat tip to Taylor Dinerman for pointing out this gem)
Unbelievable. Blair is actually going to fold on the EU rebate for the UK? Why? What possible advantage could it bring him politically to give away even more of our money to the parasites in Brussels?
What ever happened to:
If we cannot get a large deal, which alters fundamentally the way the budget is spent, then we will have to have a smaller EU budget
– Tony Blair
We were told that the British rebate would only be negotiable if the monstrous EU agricultural subsidies were also negotiable. Yet France et al have give up nothing whatsoever of any consequence, and yet the halfwit in Downing Street is going to give them want they want anyway? WTF?
I must be missing something here.
Eurostat has concluded that sixteen percent of the population resides in poverty. At a first reading this appeared quite a high figure, perhaps mitigated by the enlargement process in 2004. On closer examination, this statistical sleight of hand concerned the level of social inequality in each Member State. Poverty was measured as that proportion of the population who had less than 60% of the country’s median disposable income. Hence, these startling results:
Using a set of micro-data and cross-sectional indicators from national sources, Eurostat determined the percentage of people living in households that have less than 60% of the country’s median disposable income to live on. Surprisingly, this indicator for social inclusion is best in some poorer countries, such as the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia. The Czech Republic’s leadership shows that recent policy plays a greater role in combating poverty than a country’s historical background. Slovakia, which was part of the same country as the Czech part of the former Czech Republic for more than sixty years until 1993, has the worst indicators eleven years after Czechoslovakia split.
And is there a greater absurdity than this?
Being poor does not mean the same throughout the European Union. While a four-person family with an annual purchasing power of 30,000 euro in Luxembourg is already threatened by poverty, a family with 5,000 euro a year in Lithuania or Latvia is just above the poverty line.
William Heath has another example that even when governments set out to do a Good Thing, it’s not necessarily worth it.
Europe’s governments, freaked out by how good and free Google is, have knee jerked and spent a pile of money launching an online Euro-library. “We’re engaged in a global competition for technological supremacy”, said French President Jacques Chirac about this. “In France, in Europe, it’s our power that’s at stake”. Let’s show them what an intergovernmental steering commitee can achieve, when backed up by a series of working goups.
Predictably enough this was no contest.
Well, Google print is unbelievable. I never asked for it, it cost me nothing, it works very fast and I’m delighted. Euro-lib didn’t find anything for me, just crashed my browser (Mozilla).
Euro-lib sounds a bit sleezy, doesn’t it? Anyway, William then picks on the Euro efforts to develop a search engine called Quaero widely seen as a potential competitor to Google. (!) Oh dear.
Nobody has ever heard of it (although Google turns up several Quaeros, of course). What next? EC-funded Euromaps? Euromail? Euro-Earth (perhaps just restricted to Europe, and called Euro-Euro)?
Would it be too Anglo-centric to ask: “Can I have my tax back now please?”
We hear you…
Note: William has started another Ideal Government project, this time about Europe, Ideal Government Europe. I meant to blog about it and others already beat me to it. In the sidebar blurb William asks:
Public sector computerisation will cost Europe €88bn in 2005. But did we ever say what we wanted? Are e-government projects designed for citizens? Do we use them? Will they make life easier and meet our needs? Should we trust them? Unless we ask, how can they give us what we want? Thinking and saying what we want is more fun than griping, and more constructive too.
The answer to his questions is a resounding NO from where I am standing and I am not holding my breath at William’s or anyone’s chance to affect anything to do with the EU, however, can’t blame the man for trying to voice his objections when he gets the opportunity to make them to the EU audience and add the bloggers voices to his own.
The EU Courts have just given themselves the power to impose European criminal laws, by which I mean to decide itself if an offence against an EU regulation is now a criminal matter, even against the wishes of an EU states own government and legal system. How anyone who is even a casual observer of the EU could not have predicted this was on the cards is a mystery to me.
So next time you hear someone tell you that the real power remains, and will always remain, at the national level, perhaps you might like to ask them if deciding if something is, or is not, a criminal matter is a core function of a state’s legislative and judicial structures.
If people like Tony Blair and Ken Clarke want to dismantle Britain and make it a European province, well would it not be better if they just said as much and argued why that was the best course of action?
But Foreign Office sources said that, although the judgment raised the possibility of Britain having to create new criminal offences against the wishes of the Government, in practice EU member states would never agree to such a loss of sovereignty.
Any time you hear ‘Foreign Office sources’ say something will not happen ‘in practice’, of course that means the opposite is usually true. I expect within 18 months or so Britain will indeed be enacting criminal legislation imposed by European Courts on a regular basis.
Anatole Kaletsky, the economics journalist who, despite a fondness for Keynsianism, is one of my favourite columnists, believes Italy’s departure from the euro and possible re-creation of the lira is a real possibility, one that needs to be taken with deadly seriousness by financial markets. He says the financial fallout from an Italian divorce could be disastrous:
While detailed consideration of these arguments is probably premature, the practical implication is clear: If the possibility of an Italian withdrawal were ever taken seriously by the markets, foreign holders of Italy’s €1.5 trillion public debt would face enormous losses, big enough to endanger the solvency of many non-Italian banks. In other words, the Italian Government is now in a position to kill the euro and wreck the European banking system merely by threatening to withdraw.
I think he is correct. As I said in my last posting about Hayek’s idea of competing currencies operating inside the same country, it is folly to imagine that the cult of the all-wise central banker will not come a cropper some time or later. Many Italian entrepreuneurs might be very glad indeed of an alternate store of value if that country does indeed pull the plug on the euro.
Some scare stories deserve to be ridiculed but I think Kaletsky is on to something. Between now and the Italian national polls next year, it would be smart to keep a very close eye on the euro zone financial markets indeed.
(Thanks to the Adam Smith Institute blog for the pointer. It reaches pretty similar conclusions).
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