Monthly Archives: Sunday March 27th, 2011

EU’s new wish-fulfilment video: Commission’s endless paperwork creates scifi Utopia

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We all remember the adventures of Euro-Clooney and other assorted metrosexual Europeans in the “Innovation Union”. The good people at DG Communication have decided to top that with this video which I am almost at a loss to qualify. I can only suppose that this is what a competent video producer imagines to be a bureaucrat’s wet dream. Watch for yourself.

Done? Good.

Our frustrated Europeans are stuck in traffic, face flight delays or have to deal with late arrivals of cargo. But never fear, the Eurocracy is here! It has helpfully produced a White Paper on Transport whose endless pages fly out of the window – our Europeans gazing at the flocks of paperwork with joy and wonder – before magically turning into futuristic trains, airports and cars. And so, our Europeans were saved from wasting time due to congestion and delays. And everyone was happy. The end.

Well, if Commission officials have that kind of power and effectiveness, their job satisfaction must be off the scales.

The reason for this little indulgence in unadulterated fantasy is the recent publication of the Commission’s White Paper on Transport. Pleasantly short at 30 pages, it is your typical, run-of-the-mill, lowest common denominator non-paper, a flaccid compromise between the various conflicting and/or status quo business and governmental interests.

While it has some misleading headline-grabbing points, including a goal for no conventionally-fuelled cars in cities by 2050 (e.g. only electric, natural gas and hybrids), it is painfully thin on commitments. A very ambitious target to reduce carbon emissions in transport is quietly pushed as far into the future as possible, that is a 60% reduction by 2050 compared to 1990. Meanwhile no reduction relative to 1990 is projected even up to 2030! Environmental NGOs predictably panned the document.

The European Commission is not the Soviet Gosplan. It can’t dictate what people should do or create anything with a snap of its fingers. It can coordinate, legislate, encourage but for the most part this means just producing lots of paper and wind (hence the unselfconsciously ironic hilariousness of the video).

Ultimately the Commission, in and of itself, cannot make these things a reality and it shouldn’t pretend to. It leads to confused responsibility. The EU has a limited budget, a few tens of billions of Euros legitimately going to transport, but not much else. It is ultimately business, national governments and even regional authorities which might be able to set us on the right track (and if things go to hell in transport, we should mostly blame them). I would wish the EU could be more understated.

PS: And thanks to one particularly helpful comment on YouTube I now know what the Venus Project is.

Expensive advertising

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While the US has largely dominated the Libyan intervention in terms of cruise missiles, the number of aircraft sorties, while an absolute majority, is not overwhelming. This compares favorably with previous wars – Kuwait, the Balkans – where all but the British participation was almost entirely symbolic.

Meanwhile France, in keeping with tradition, has been eager to use its military power to greatest diplomatic and symbolic effect, notably by the first . Among the reasons for such prominence – to assert a political-military leadership in Europe (especially as Germany has been dominating the endless Euro-crisis), immigration, oil, flagging poll numbers… – I had not thought of showcasing the Rafale fighter. I wouldn’t ascribe such low motives to anyone, but it is possible that the war will help in this regard, especially as their performance has been good so far. So far the fighters, which cost over €64 million each, have never been sold abroad.

This is not the first time French planes have been used against Libya. I wrote a dissertation on how François Mitterrand used a no-fly-zone and sporadic bombing to help the Chadians destroy the Libyan army occupying their country. Back then it was Mirage fighters, Mitterrand was even more ambivalent about “war”, and Gaddafi was still a young, botox-free wild-eyed radical. That “war” last 4 years but was relatively bloodless except so far as the Libyans were concerned. Lets hope his forces last rather less long this time.

Europe as a “big Switzerland”

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It’s been a little unreal following the developments in Libya and the very ad hoc Western response to it. The whole thing is a bit of a ramshackle affair: an ever-evolving mission cobbled together by a slightly erratic French president and poor British PM, the UN mandate abused from the outset, the objectives murky. It may take historians some time to pick apart the mix of motives – fear of instability and immigration, an embattled politician’s desire for an hour of glory –  that came together to create this little war

There has been if anything more focus as on who should participate in and lead the operation as to the effect it is having in Libya itself. The “coalition of the willing” proved unsustainable: skittish post-GWOT Americans and power-averse Europeans (e.g., not British or French) preferred a transfer to collective responsibility under an international organization.

The differences between Europeans on this is interesting insofar as they all, presumably, have the same fears of immigration and instability, the same interest (or lack of) in oil and human rights. Jean Quatremer says Germany “sunk” the EU’s military ambitions in Libya. Some other French and German journalists have been similarly disappointed. Italy has been extremely hostile to any suggestion of a “war”, Berlusconi having uniquely close and affectionate ties with Gaddafi.

For Quatremer and many French foreign policy bigwigs, the use of NATO hats as against EU hats in bombing somewhere is a serious defeat for an Europe puissance. He fears Europe will remain little more than a “big Switzerland” or a “humanitarian NGO”.

Yet, is Europe’s impotence necessarily so bad? The record of “humanitarian interventions” since the 1990s is not a particularly good one. National defense is as assured as it seems it can be, there being no conventional threats to speak of, and military force being if anything counterproductive against terrorism.

Should the late United States be a model? Are Americans the better for the ability of their leaders – following a two or three decade cycle – to send their youth packing off to Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq (to cite only the big interventions)? What of  the earlier “isolationist”, civilian America?

I think of a line of a letter during the Civil War from US ambassador Charles Adam to Karl Marx’s first international which states that ”Nations do not exist for themselves alone, but to promote the welfare and happiness of mankind by benevolent intercourse and example.” For the longest time Americans had little other world ambition than being an example, a “City on a Hill”, with soldier-presidents Washington and Eisenhower making famous warnings about being seduced into being a “great power”. America, incidentally, resisted such temptation until long after it had the ability to be one.

I think the real trouble is that there’s little romance or glory to be imagined in being a “big Switzerland” or a “humanitarian NGO” (even though the Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Kristalina Georgieva has reportedly been doing quite well as far as the latter is concerned). Not enough to satisfy armchair geostrategists and politicians in pursuit of their finest hour.

PS: Incidentally, one can be a pacific Republic and still be a little evil. Switzerland has its critics, mostly to do with amorally keeping treasure on behalf of Nazis and corrupt Third World despots. Presumably the EU’s analogue is the CAP’s effect on developing countries’ agriculture.

So I’m a Journalist

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I have to apologize to the readers of this blog for being silent for a month. Partly it has to do with the incredible stream of events we’ve had regarding the Arab World and the eurozone crisis. The potential topics can pile up until you’re afraid to begin anywhere.

Partly it has to with being hired by EurActiv as a trainee journalist one month ago. Anonymous proof here or here. Needless to say I’m pretty happy to be joining one of the two or three major dedicated EU news organizations in Brussels as to live by writing is a very old dream of mine.

Armed with a press laissez-passez as against my old parliamentary badge, I can now get into the Commission, the Council and various press briefings and conferences. A bit like unlocking the new areas of a video game. My attempts to cover the last Council summit were thwarted by the fact the badge has “stagiaire” written on it in small print, but I shan’t be thwarted again.

I’ve only been there a month but already I’ve learned a great deal. First has been discovering the strange and charming complicity between journalists and their sources, whether its the source leaking documents just before a policy announcement or providing frank – almost cathartic – comments off the record information.

The most interesting meetings with EU officials and foreign diplomats are invariably the off the record (no quotes) or “background” ones (quote, but only as “senior officials” or somesuch). I don’t entirely get the point of off the record press gatherings. Presumably they’re trying to affect the news but amazingly the source can sometimes be just as diplomatic and cryptic when he’s unquoteable as in public pronouncements!

The second has been becoming fully aware of the vastness that is “EU policy”. Really most of it is the bureaucrats, politicians and lobbyists producing an endless supply text detailing a combination of noise, posing and more-or-less ineffectual cheerleading. Power and “really existing things” can be hard to detect even in national politics. It is doubly so in the EU as it essentially has no budget for anything other than agriculture or regional funds, and where responsibility for most issues is confused and/or shared by national/regional/local authorities or even the private sector. One can add the difficulty that the EU typically must pretend that it is responsible, that it is an actor (most grotesquely with foreign policy).

There are however real things happening – typically most visible during the drama of the Council summits but also slow but steady development – and I hope to develop that skill which lets one cut through the not-usually-willful unclarity.

It also means I’m hoping to find a refocus to this blog as there’s not the slightest hope of being an expert on everything going on. I may post more job-related petites histoires or simply anything of interest in the news (at the risk of it being over-analyzed and over-commented as with many recent events!). Most likely I’ll find some sort of synergy between the job and the blog. Perhaps I’ll specialize in something, Euro-American relations, for example. We shall see!

PS: I wrote in the links section listing various sources that EurActiv is “[t]he single best online resource for understanding the EU, available in 10 national editions.” I hasten to say I wrote this before I working or even thinking I might work for it. Now it looks a little slavish. Serendipity works in mysterious ways..