Business as usual
As Europe’s energy crisis grew by the moment with Russia accusing Ukraine of shutting down three gas pipelines supplying EU countries you would have thought that the Commission would have been up to speed. Not a bit of it.
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Bucking the trend
It was as though Christmas had come around again. The Café du Lac was packed on Saturday and there were parcels and shopping bags crammed in every corner. The customers were in good cheer having survived the first day of the January sales.
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Qualified New Year wishes
Slovakia has joined the euro. The event passed without any great shing-ding in Brussels. The fact is there is practically no one around. At the Café du Lac they just shrugged and opined that the euro-zone’s newest member is now in the same boat as the other fifteen.
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An EU communications failure
It is a quiet time in Brussels right now. Social traditions in Belgium are proving to be, perhaps, more resilient than in Britain. At the Café du Lac life is much the same. The ‘Bob’ syndrome is operating well with our regulars being dropped off for lunch and leaving again courtesy of chauffeurs paid or unpaid. I am called on to report the latest from radio suicide as we now call Radio 4 and especially the Today programme. ‘The pound has dropped against the euro again’, I report. ‘The euro is overpriced’, is the response. This amounts to a prescient forecast.
A manifesto of forecast
This is a long blog it contains extracts and I have been, as have many others, trying to make sense of the impact of the economic crisis in Europe. In an effort to make sense of current events I revisited Altiero Spinelli’s Ventonene Manifesto. The Italian Communist revered as the man who inspired the idea of a post war united Europe appropriately begins his treatise with the heading “The crisis of modern civilisation”
What amazes me is that no one – I mean no one – I have spoken to in the past ten years has read it.
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Super heroes fight it out
A somewhat ridiculous movie recently shown on Belgian TV featured two supermen battling it out. European politics appears to be running with the same script. The BBC had us all rolling in the aisles with a portrayal of Prime Minister Gordon Brown wearing a superman suit. This of course followed his slip in a parliamentary statement that he had saved the world.
Missing the point
Andrew Duff is a respected MEP. He is a British Liberal Europhile and works relatively quietly and seriously at his job. But both he and his leader Graham Watson MEP have, in attacking the leader of the newly launched Libertas entirely missed the point.
Money makes the world go round
At a seasonal dinner in Brussels British Conservative MEPs were bemoaning that in the next European Parliament they will be non-escrit, which means unattached to a sufficient number of national parties to form a political group. At another event European Socialists were predicting that they will form the largest “most powerful” group in the new parliament. They could well be right but it is important to remember that British Labour members of that group gear they could be virtually wiped out.
Coffee gate revealed
They are calling it ‘Coffee Gate’. Details are on the thin side at the moment but our deep throat tells us that a massive cover-up is in progress.
Apparently the European Commission, in a bid to keep its wandering officials at their desks invested an enormous sum of money, or so the story goes, installing coffee machines.
Hello…anybody there?
The British media really have lost the plot. So too has the British Conservative party. I say this because the BBC invited UKIP leader Nigel Farage onto their today show to discuss identity cards.
The Conservatives say they will save money by abandoning the governments plans to introduce electronic identity cards for all citizens. They have just introduced them for foreign visitors.
In the few minutes available Mr Farage set out the broad position extremely well. UKIP’s chances of ever forming a government are zero but that should not stop us listening to well laid out arguments.