In a complete reversal of Orwell's idea, BBC has found that whereas in the UK 23 million people cast their vote in the 2002 "Big Brother" only 11 million bothered to vote in the European elections in 1999.
All-European turnout in the last election was 49.5 % to which the President of the European Parliament had the following to say:
Turnout across Europe [in 1999] was higher than in the last US presidential election, and I don't hear people questioning the legitimacy of the presidency of the United States
(Well, if he had listened a bit more carefully he may have heard one or two people questioning the electoral legitimacy of the present US President. This is, however, besides the point in the present context).
The low turnout should be seen against the backdrop of increasing authority and power for the European Parliament, a process which may become further accentuated by the ongoing Intergovernmental Conference on a new constitution for the EU. National political parties are certainly to blame to a large extent: with notable exceptions they have been inclined to nominate either people that they want to have as far away from the national capitals as possible, or politically naïve stars from other walks of life.
The Commission will support financially any political party with members and candidates in several member countries in order to enable them to free themselves from the mother parties in respective country. It is doubtful that this will have the desired effect. The democratic dilemma in the EU could presumably be solved by a fully fledged parliamentary system with an elected Commission, responsible to the Parliament. The present European Council (government ministers) could act as a kind of "Senate".
The next European elections will be held in June 2004.
Note: My attention was called to this BBC article by Desbladet.
2003 11 18
We have big problems with the Andalusian grandmother.
Leading Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter writes (Swedish only) that Swedes are particularly willing to give up voluntarily their right to speak their own mother tongue in international contexts, notably in the EU. "We take it in English, you know" appears to be the general attitude.
According to the experts interviewed this has negative consequences:
Whereas the Spanish delegate eloquently expounds on how a certain proposal will have disastrous consequences for the life of his poor grandmother, an Andalusian widow with eight children, the Swedish delegate confines him/herself to saying: " We have a big problem with this."
Possibly. But I believe that this has more to do with the fact that Swedes don't like to talk about their grandmothers in international meetings than with linguistic capabilities.
The language issue in the EU conceals, however, a much more serious problem. Swedes are not used to working in or even listening to other languages than English. This has had a negative impact on the Swedish policy in the EU. For language reasons, Swedes feel comfortable with and close to UK delegates, even though the British EU-policy in many cases runs contrary to what would be Swedish national interests. The positions of other countries like France and Germany are often dismissed as uncomfortable and delegates of those countries considered as trouble-makers: They don't spik Inglish, you now.
Against this background it is sad to see that the importance of German, French and other non-English languages becomes smaller and smaller in secondary education. With the accession of a number of Slavic language countries, a basic knowledge of Russian would be invaluable, even if actual negotiations probably should be carried out in English.
A full map of my website is now available. (See also link in the left hand column). Most of it is in Swedish but there are some scattered pages in English in addition to "Off topic"
Some readers may wonder what the topic is that I am off here, so to say. It is mainly about European integration and development economics. I have a more professional part called "Perspektiv Europa" and a light-hearted blog called "Euroblog" . Even in Swedish I had difficulties to remain within the topic so I started up a parallel blog called "När jag ändå har ordet..."("While I still have the floor...").
During the 15th meeting of the Montreal Protocol, being held in Nairobi through Friday, the United States requested not only an exemption from the phasing out of methyl bromide, an insecticide and known carcinogen, but also permission to increase production (by 30 %)
Under the Montreal Protocol, which has been ratified also by the US, the developed countries are supposed to eliminate production by 2005. This goal will not be entirely met but in all likelihood production will be curtailed to 30 % of the 1991 level - not a bad achievement after all.
Delegates meeting this week must decide on exemptions for countries that say they have a critical need for methyl bromide and have no alternatives.
And this is the case in the US says the chief negotiator. A helpful hint: The US could apply for technical assistance from the UN system to get help to reduce the need for methyl bromide - such programs are routine and have been very successful in a number of developing countries. And the US is developing. Somewhere. Rapidly.
Censorship? No, we will just kill you if you publish.
One of the nationwide TV networks in the US, CBS, has caved in to political pressure from the right and scrapped a mini-series on President Reagan and relegated it to a sub-network which has, maybe, a million subscribers or less. I have expressed my surprise that liberals in the US, including most bloggers to the left of Djingis Khan, have not reacted to this blatant political censorship but "not even ignored it" as we say in "old" Europe.
I expressed these thoughts in the comment section of one of my favorite US blogs, Peevish - I am just saying.... The blogger, Ms Anne Zook, honored me with a special and very interesting posting, analysing the background of this course of events.
If I have understood Anne right, she says that the decision by CBS to scrap the series is not the result of "censorship" but rather of a realistic assessment that the series was no longer commercially viable, due to the political opposition from the right. Companies would not like to advertise:
I promise you that the network's actual decision was made based on whether or not they thought advertisers would be willing to buy ad time during the show.
Anne, who apparently is a progressive person (and definitely on the side of the angels), goes out of her way to defend the network: they made the rational decision based on the fact that:
The USofA is not a "free" society, it's a capitalist society. That means things happen, or don't happen, in the private sector based on revenue
I may be forgiven, perhaps, for not seeing quite clearly the difference between this kind of "commercial" censorship and a more direct political one such as the one exercised, for example, in the former Soviet Union. Maybe the means are more sophisticated but the purpose and the end result are identical. Anne takes the argument one step further:
And, in fact, they did not do it as an act of censorship. They did it to avoid a situation where someone was demanding censorship rights
I am sorry, but I think this is pretty bad. And the baddest thing is that very few people, particularly in the blogosphere, have reacted. Also the very idea that a "capitalist" society (I suppose "market economy" would be a better term) would not be compatible with a "free" society is very foreign to me. It would be horrible if that were true.
And what about the producer, the director, the actors, all the stage people (as, for example, the 'dolly grip' and the 'best boy' ;-) that have worked with the show, don't they have anything to say? How do they feel when their work is being scrapped for political /commercial reasons?
No, good friends over there, I insist in thinking that this is a very bad moment for the freedom of expression in the US of A. Maybe the series would have been lousy, no one knows, but if so it should have been scrapped earlier on artistic or quality grounds not as a result of outside pressure. Or, if it had been broadcast, it could have been countered by another film or in the reviews or by press articles.
Anne is hopeful, though:
I can promise you that one day, in the not-too-distant future, a more talented filmmaker who might not otherwise have been interested in the Reagan years is going to decide to undertake a much more frank look at the Reagan Administration.
That is what we would expect from the USA as we have known and loved it. But what is there to stop Bush or Rumsfeld to clamp down on any such attempt? That talented filmmaker would need financing too.
