The way the cookie crumbles
German daily die Welt reports that Germany may be willing to give up its position to reduce the spending limit of the EU budget to 1 % provided that the stability pact will be sufficiently loosened up to help Germany with its budgetary problems. (An English summary here.)
The 1 % limit was originally a joint demand from Germany, France, the UK, The Netherlands, Sweden and Austria, in other words the most important net payers to the budget of the Union. This front has already started to falter since France, at least unofficially, seems unwilling to accept the necessary reductions of expenditure. Given their own problems with the stability pact, France should have little problems with the agreement which apparently is being discussed between Germany and the Commission.
Britain has probably already been bought off in clandestine since it appears that the Commission has given up the idea of discussing the income side of the budget (the so called Own Resources System). There is little interest to stir up a discussion about the British rebate, at least before the constitution referendum in Britain. And since 2002 the net payers Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Austria only have to pay a small share of the shortfall: the rest is dished out on the other member countries, including the new member states from Eastern Europe. And in two years time also Bulgaria and Romania will have to contribute to cover what should really have been paid by Britain, had it not been for the shamelessness of Ms. Thatcher.
It does not look like the member governments and the Commission will be able to come up with a fair, balanced and robust system of financing this time either. And the level of expenditure will be determined by horse-trading with items that have very little to do with each other.
As this is supposed to be a Northern Perspective, we cannot resist pointing out that the situation is particularly awkward for Sweden, the largest or second largest net payer per capita. As the only non-Eurozone net-payer (except Britain of course) she might have to face the dissolution of the 1 % front in exchange for concessions on the stability pact, the implementation of which Sweden has no influence over due to its heroic refusal to yield to the evil forces of Frankfurt.
Final score 3 - 1
Spain voted "yes" to the EU constitution with a larger majority than expected. This will send an important signal across the Pyrenees. The turn-out was low but still slightly higher than expected and at the same level as in the elections to the European Parliament. Viva Zapatero!
Portugal gave the opposition social democrats the absolute majority. Nobody needs to be frightened of any rampant socialism, however : The political idol of the likely new Premier Mr. Sócrates (nomen est omen?) is Britain's post-Thatcherite Prime Minister, Mr. Blair. He's got cool suits, too.
We forgot to mention yesterday the election in the Northern part of Cyprus. Apparently the winning party is in favor of reunification which is important for the chances of Turkey to join the Union. But the problem with reunification in Cyprus lies rather on the Greek side.
In Schleswig-Holstein the SPD and the Greens may continue to govern with the support of the Danish Minority Party, despite heavy losses on the part of the social democrats. If this is a foreboding of a right wing Government in Germany, Europe is in for troubled times: Germany badly needs far-reaching structural reforms, not the least of the way the labor market functions. All major parties agree on this, but only a leftist government would stand a chance to carry it through without throwing the country into social chaos. Trust Euroblog: only conservative governments can nationalize with success, only left of center governments can liberalize, more or less with impunity.
Half time score
It is 2000 H, here in Vienna, Austria and concerning the elections only one result is clear (but perhaps the most significant one): the SPD failed miserably in Schleswig-Holstein and in all likelihood there will be a new CDU-FPU government. In Spain, the turn-out is bad but much better than anticipated and will be about the same as to the EU parliament elections. The "Yes" side is still expected to win a clear victory. In Portugal a high turn-out is still expected.
As Drudge would say: developing..
Election day
Three interesting elections in Europe this Sunday: In Spain, of course, the EU Constitution Treaty will be put to its first test in a referendum, in Portugal parliamentary elections will be held and in Schleswig-Holstein a new regional parliament will be elected.
Expectations are that Spain will say "yes" to the Treaty although with a very low electoral participation. In Portugal the opposition socialists may even reach the absolute majority and Schleswig-Holstein may bring embattled chancellor Schröder his first victory for a long time and deal a further blow to luckless CDU party leader Angela Merkel. (This might be a Pyrrhic victory for Mr. Schröder since it would boost his arch-rival, Mr. Stoiber of Bavaria who is an infinitely stronger opponent than Ms. Merkel.)
Voters, however, are known to have their own ideas and often do not follow the opinion polls in their actual behavior...So we have to wait until this evening or tomorrow to see if there are any general conclusions to be drawn. An outcome according to the polls, for sure, would be a blow to the conservative forces in Europe that have been used to success for quite a long time, including recent elections in Denmark.
Blogging in Brussels
A long time has passed since anything genuinely funny came from the British Isles (I would say: Fawlty Towers. I am not counting Jack Straw). Through Straight Banana I find at least this attempt: When Brussels discovered blogging which also relates to the subject of my previous posting.
Cheerio old chap, keep a stiff upper lip.
Freedom of information can be hazardous to your health
Sweden has probably the most advanced freedom of public information systems in the world - along with 'smorgasbord', 'ombudsman' and 'IKEA', Swedes believe that 'offentlighetsprincipen' is one of their gifts to the international English language.
Be that as it may, it is a good thing which BBC reporter Marin Rosenbaum also found out when he tried to get access to Mr. Blair's correspondence with the Swedish Prime Minister concerning football coach "Sven" (Göran Eriksson) or, as he is known in chummy Sweden, "Svennis". Mr. Rosenbaum was refused in London so as not to "damage our international relations" but got full access to the papers over in Stockholm.
The freedom of information rules go further than many people would imagine. So, for instance, are the history and cookie files of computer browsers used by civil servants "public documents" and must not be destroyed but kept available to any member of the public, including journalists, asking for them.
There can be unexpected consequences, however. Rightly or wrongly, Swedes pride themselves of having been instrumental in getting the EU to apply more openness and transparency. EU Commissioner Margot Wallström has just started a blog of her own. In her first entry she writes:
Have you put on weight during the Christmas holidays? I have! And I see a big problem for the future because one neglected aspect of the fact that the council works in an open and transparent way is that the really important compromises and discussions are referred to lunches or dinners or the meals that the ministers have together. So we will put on weight! The official meetings don't last that long but the lunches are three or four or even more hours from now on.
Margot is perhaps more transparent than she should be: Swedes would hardly accept people circumventing the offentlighetsprincipen in this devious way, particularly not since it may be hazardous to the health of the participants. They may come back with a proposal for a maximum allowed time for lunch breaks to be introduced in the acquis communautaire.
An experiment that failed
After some weeks of experiments with publishing Euroblog at MSN "spaces", I am now going back to the system I used before. This, after all, gives me full control of the site and its looks and styles and -as it were- content. My main dissatisfaction with "spaces" relates to the comments: you have to create a .NET account to be able to make comments. Rightly or wrongly, many users consider this as an infringement on their privacy. Furthermore, there is no way to modify the layout of the site and, of course, you cannot use your own domain name. (Some readers also raised questions about the "copyright" that MS claims at the bottom of the blog - I do not, however, consider this to be of any real concern.)
It is a pity because "spaces" also offers many nifty components. It is easy to create lists and the handling of pictures is really very handy.
I have added a function for comments and trackbacks from Haloscan. Please report any problems that you may encounter.
The postings made on "spaces" (but not the comments) have been transferred here. The Swedish language posts have all been transferred to the archive.
The blog will be published in English for reasons outlined in the first posting: An old blog in new bottles.
Just like I said: a Northern Perspective!
As I write this (around 1830) CET, all main European net papers have long articles and often comments on the results of the EP vote on accession negotiations with Turkey (notable exception: BBC News). The main Swedish new sites, Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet haven't noticed so far.
It is remarkable that the vote apparently was secret (!). Through this unprecedented (?) measure, Parliament lost a bit of the prestige it just had won through the Buttiglione affair. Why should we respect parliamentarians who don't dare to take public responsibility?
But in Sweden, at least, nobody seems interested.
For or against
The latest Eurobarometer has some interesting data about the public opinion towards a constitution (pdf-file; page 18) for the EU. According to the poll almost 70 % of the EU citizens are in favor of a constitution, a figure which is up by 5 percentage points from the beginning of the year. Except in the UK and in Denmark, a majority of the citizens are in favor of a constitution although in those countries as well as in Sweden, Denmark and Finland, the number of definite no-sayers are larger than anywhere else.
However, the poll only asks for the opinion on the idea of a constitution and not explicitly on the present proposal, which will be the subject of referenda in several countries. It is thus impossible to conclude much about the likely voting behavior from the figures in the Eurobarometer. And herein lies also the fallacy of the idea of a referendum on the proposal. As an example among many: the voters who are unhappy that many important areas will still be subject to the veto right of the smallest state and the voters who are unhappy that qualified majority voting would be introduced at all will cumulate their "no" votes, although they are in profound disagreement.
A better idea would have been to let the parliaments decide and ratify but two times and with a parliamentary election in between. That would have guaranteed a popular influence on the result but people would have voted for a general policy, not for this or the other detail in the proposal which they might like or not like.
EU plays Calvinball with Turkey
In a few days, Dec 16 - 17, the European Council will decide on the recommendation of the Commission to start membership negotiations with Turkey. A paper from the Dutch Presidency providing a basis for the decision is already well known since it was leaked to the press about a week ago.
As things stand, negotiations will have to start. The question is when and to what purpose. The Council is expected to stipulate a number of conditions, for instance a de facto recognition of Cyprus and a quasi-permanent exception from the free mobility of labor. Membership for Turkey could be achieved by 2014 at the earliest.
The most interesting idea is that negotiations could be interrupted at any time if the Commission or one third of the member states would so request. This is something entirely new in the negotiation process and it is not clear to what extent it would be in accordance with existing treaties. It would represent another threat to the position of the Commission, just a few weeks after that the Parliament made an important infringement on the independence of the Commission following the Buttiglione affair. We may thus anticipate a situation where the Council and the Parliament will be the main protagonists in the EU machinery - a development that would have far-reaching consequences.
Calvinvall is a game where you make up the rules as you go. "The only permanent rule in Calvinball is that you cannot play it the same way twice." (See this site for the informal rules). Let us see how long Turkey wants to play.
An Old Blog in New Bottles
This blog is the direct continuation of the Swedish language blog called Euroblog - Perspektiv Europa which I have published since May 2003. The idea was originally to provide some information and analysis of European issues, notably related to the EU, to Swedish readers. At the time of the Euro referendum in Sweden we had quite a good discussion and some of my writings were used in the pro-euro campaigns. Since then, however, the interest has been waning, not only in relation to my blog but to European issues in general. Political parties of all colors, public opinion and, interestingly enough, also the Swedish blogosphere tend to become more and more focussed on domestic and, indeed, on more immaterial and self-contemplatory issues. All this makes it more interesting for me to write in English, hoping to reach a somewhat broader readership while at the same time trying to keep the interest of a smaller group of faithful Swedish readers, always prepared to comment and discuss issues what they find of relevance.
The updating frequency will be rather iregular. Once a week may be fairly typical.
Although I will do my best to avoid being parochial on this blog there will be a certain bias towards Scandinavian and Swedish perspectives. Hence the tag-line.
Comments and trackbacks are extremely welcome. Although there are notable exceptions I feel that a blog worth its name should have a certain degree of two-way communication. Nevertheless, the Net being what it is, I reserve the full right to delete or reject comments which are offensive or objectionable (and I define what is meant by those words 
)
You can find some information about the author under this link.
I have added comments and trackbackfunctions from Haloscan. Kindly report any problems that you may encounter.
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