Europe-wide 62mph limit mooted

The European Union’s energy commissioner has called for a 100kph — 62mph — speed limit to be adopted throughout Europe. Andris Piebalgs said roads in all 25 member states should be posted with a uniform limit to cut accidents and save fuel. His suggestion follows a recommendation by the International Energy Association in Paris and is seen as a quick way to cut energy consumption in response to depleted oil reserves.

“If in Germany cars are speeding at 200kph (124mph) they are using too much petrol,” said Piebalgs. He was speaking at a meeting in Germany, where motorists enjoy the only speed-limit-free roads in the EU.

A comment on the website of Der Spiegel, the German news magazine, said: “With those speed limits we would be castrated.”

Piebalgs’s proposal came as the European economic and social committee, a body that advises the European commission on drawing up new legislation, launched an initiative to create a common European highway code. Its aim is to remove the wide variations in road regulations of member states.

The committee said that in Portugal it is illegal to drive with daytime lights while in northern and eastern Europe lights cannot be switched off. Critics point out the contrasting weather conditions in Scandinavia and Portugal.

The committee wants a commission white paper, with legislation to follow.

EU moves to make speeding and parking fines Europe-wide

In February the EU council of ministers, the main decision-making body, formally adopted a decision to remove protection for drivers who commit traffic violations abroad. As a result, legislation is being drafted in Brussels for incorporation into national laws as early as 2007.

Parking and speed-camera fines higher than €70 (£48) will be passed to authorities in drivers’ home countries where, if they are not paid, prosecution will follow. The effect could be profound. French police estimate that a quarter of speed offences in their country are carried out by foreign motorists.

A spokesman for the Gendarmerie Nationale said that, because traffic fines are not currently enforceable in UK courts, it did not bother finding out addresses through the DVLA and sending tickets to UK addresses.

The new legislation is being worked out by representatives of police forces, motoring groups and vehicle licensing agencies. It could create a new bureaucracy to administer the transfer of international fines, according to Bert Morris of the AA Motoring Trust, who is a member of a working group dealing with the new law.

One central body in each EU country would be set up to liaise with its counterparts over penalties. In Britain, for instance, speed camera organisations and police forces issue their own fines. In future they would contact a national agency, which could be part of the DVLA, to pursue a fine against, say, a French motorist.

The British agency would contact its French counterpart and a fine would be issued on a standardised European penalty form.

If the French driver paid, the money would be transferred minus processing fees via the French and UK agencies to the speed camera company, police force or the Exchequer. A British driver who committed an offence on the Continent would similarly receive a fine via the UK agency on the EU penalty form.

One issue yet to be resolved concerns appeals. Brussels has not decided whether appeals should be made in the country where the offence was committed or the country of residence. Another issue on which there is no agreement yet is licence penalty points.

Get out of this drunk drivers

It is a cold wet Sunday morning and you’ve been in the pub reading the newspaper. You jump into the car to drive home for lunch. But before the ignition key will turn a beeper sounds, reminding you to blow into a tube.
You obey and a red light on the dashboard flashes to say you are over the limit. You have had only a pint of lager, but the car is immobilised and you stomp to the bus stop in the pouring rain.
The Department for Transport is already researching “alcolocks”, in-car breathalysers that prevent drivers who have imbibed much more than sherry trifle from starting their engines. Fifty volunteers in Manchester and the West Midlands have had them fitted to their cars as part of a two-year pilot study, with another 50 expected to join before the summer.
The device, which looks more like a 1970s electric razor than the latest high-technology motoring gadget, fits into the car radio slot and has a small mouthpiece that drivers must blow into before they can turn the ignition. The engine will start only if the alcohol reading is below the legal limit, and as part of the study a black-box recorder will register each time the volunteers start their cars and each time the alcolock prevents them.
The volunteers all have drink-driving convictions and were recruited through drink rehabilitation groups. The study will compare their behaviour with that of convicted drivers without alcolocks.
The results are not expected until towards the end of next year but legislation that would enable the device to be used in the sentencing of drink-drivers has been incorporated into the Road Safety Bill, which now will not be passed before the election.
“We might be able to give drink-drivers the option of reducing the length of a ban by having an alcolock fitted,” said a transport department spokesman. “Or we could make an alcolock a compulsory requirement at the end of their ban.”
Britain could soon come under pressure from the European Union to enforce the use of alcolocks more widely. European transport ministers want to halve the number of road deaths in the EU by 2010 and have said technological advances will “play an increasing role in support of enforcement”. These include “automatic speed control systems, speed warning or speed limiting devices, alcohol locks and seatbelt reminders”.
Sweden has become the first country to make it illegal to use a new car without an alcolock. Starting this year Swedish manufacturers will voluntarily fit alcolocks to new vehicles. By 2012 all new Swedish vehicles, including buses, trucks and cars, will be legally required to have the locks. The move is part of an ambitious road safety campaign known as Vision Zero that aims to halve the number of annual traffic deaths to 254 by 2007.
A horrific motorway crash last November highlighted the need to include professional drivers in the alcolock programme. A Hungarian lorry driver who had recently arrived in Sweden by ferry was so drunk that he could not remember being arrested for travelling the wrong way on the motorway, killing a family of five, including one of the country’s most prominent doctors.
On a single day of testing drivers coming off a ferry in Stockholm, 10% of foreign truckers were over the Swedish limit of 20mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood.
Claes Tingvall, director of traffic safety at Sweden’s strategic road authority, which has played a leading role in introducing the devices to the country, denies the government is behaving like a nanny state. He noted that Sweden had been the first country in Europe to introduce compulsory seatbelts, “and now they are seen as natural everywhere”, especially in Britain which, he says, has the highest rate of seatbelt compliance in the world.
Road safety campaigners have welcomed the testing of alcolocks in this country but Nigel Humphries, spokesman for the Association of British Drivers, said his organisation would strongly oppose plans for Britain to follow Sweden’s lead and install alcolocks in new cars. “That would be the nanny state at its most intrusive,” he said.
“We are against drunk driving as much as anyone but if alcolocks were to be introduced on a wider basis it would be like labelling everyone a criminal in order to catch the few who have broken the law.”
The US and Canada already use alcolocks to prevent drivers with drink-driving convictions from reoffending. The American-made locks are designed to anticipate the wiles of the thirstiest alcoholics. Convicted drink-drivers are required to blow into them at the start of their journey and at random intervals during the trip. The aim is to stop them drinking during the journey.
A number of measures have been devised to prevent other forms of cheating. On one type of alcolock the driver has to use a unique “suck, blow code”; on another model he has to hum into the mouthpiece to avoid air being piped in from a bottle or syringe. Yet another model measures the temperature of the exhaled air to ensure it equates to body temperature.
The only way a driver can get round the device is to recruit a sober friend as an accomplice, but the rationale is that few sober friends would want to be driven by a drunk.
Alcolocks are not entirely foolproof, however. In a recent test in Holland a sober researcher had to blow into the lock 75 times before he could get the car started. Researchers concluded that the locks were “not to be recommended for asthmatics”.

Interview with Andre Kuipers

Space Week The International Space Station (ISS), a collaboration between the space agencies of the US, Canada, Russia, Japan and Europe, is currently the world's most important manned space project and has been orbiting the globe 15 times a day for well over a thousand days. When completed, the 450 tonne structure will house seven crew, consist of several linked up modules designed by the varius space agencies, host a multitude of experiments in material science, fluid physics and life science under the special conditions of zero gravity, and will provide a testbed for humans living under space conditions to prepare mankind for possible longer stays on the Moon or trips to Mars.
Seen from earth, when arcing across the night sky in a journey time of ten minutes, it is is the brightest object in the heavens after the Moon. Its current location at any given time is shown at the European Space Agency's website www.esa.int
Dr Andre Kuipers, 46, was the second Dutch astronaut to go into space when he spent nine days at the ISS in April 2004. He talked to Brussels Anonymous at a recent space congress in Brussels about his experiences.

You travelled up in a Soyuz capsule... What is the difference between the US and the Russian space equipment?

Russia has been responsible for transferring all cargo and personnel up to the space station since the US space shuttle fleet was grounded two years ago after the Columbia disaster.
The US is very good at creating comfortable living conditions in space. The Russians are good at making simple, strong engineering that actually works. We travel up in the Soyuz capsule the Russians have been using since the Mir space station. It has heat shields all over and so is quite sturdy

Tell me about the events in your life leading up to your trip

After I was selected, I trained for about three years - both in the broad range of skills of basic astronaut skills, which include things like scuba diving. This was followed by a year and a half of specialist training - I was a flight engineer. To get used to to the space station, we spend part of our training in Star City in Russia, in a module mockup the international space station, as cramped as a caravan. It prepared you for the real thing.

What was lift-off like?

You are on your back, and most of the G-forces are felt through the X-axis, so the pressure is not so great. Getting into space is very quick - the ISS is in the lowest of space orbits, only 400km up - but you spend two days manoeuvring the Soyuz capsule into docking position

What was life on board like?

The toilet seat is just 15 square centimetres. You need to hold on tight to the seat and a special stream of air makes sure everything gets to its proper destination. Urine and faeces are collected and sealed in bags. They will be put in a container ship if not used for scientific research. The compounds found in this waste can tell scientists what products are lost by the body during weightlessness. We have to be careful when we eat because crumbs can easily float off the dinner table and around the station, clogging up the filters. The food you eat has to be as sticky as possible. You add water to dried original product and knead it into shape - it can typically be soup or pasta.

Doesn't sound very appetising...

Space food tastes okay.

How was sleeping?

You lie in sleeping bags strapped to the walls. There are no specific sleeping quarters, you just sleep in an airlock or a connecting module.

Has anyone had sex in space yet?

That really is a private affair - though men and women have of course been in space together! But getting pregnant in space would really pose an ethical dilemma. The effects of zero gravity could really cause problems for foetus development, even during the early stages.

What about the air you exhale? Doesn't the water drops in human breath float around the cabin?

The humidity is used and recycled - the water is broken down into oxygen and reused while the carbon dioxide is flushed out of the space station.

Did you suffer vertigo?

Yes, when you shift your head slightly under zero gravity you feel sick because you cannot recognise the new perspective. Even though "up" and "down" are colour coded, it is not much help. Also there is the vast blackness of space, compared to looking down at Earth. It makes you feel very protective of our planet.

I have heard that some astronauts go mad - or religious

Some of the American astronauts turned to religions - or drink. But no greater a proportion than the population at large. I have met Neil Armstrong and he is normal. Buzz Aldrin is very young at heart and still promoting space. He is in Brussels this week.

Did you do any space walks?

No, I wasn't trained to do that. After basic astronaut training, which takes two years, you spend a year specialising. I became a flight engineer and I also had to supervise some 21 scientific experiments.

What are the ESA requirements to become an astronaut?

Well, the right personality is of the greatest importance. You have to be extremely good at dealing with people - when you realise the cramped conditions of space you realise why. You have to have a medical, engineering or science degree and three years of professional training. You have to be between 153 and 190cm tall, and speak good English.

Is there a minimum and maximum age for becoming an astronaut?

Well - minimum age is about 27, since you need a three years of training in your profession after taking your degree. The maximum age is supposed to be 40, but they are a little bit flexible: I was 41 when I started training.

Well, John Glenn was 76 when he went into space the second time....

Yes. Nasa felt he had supported their cause in congress for forty years and they wanted to reward him. Of course he was very fit but they wanted to show old people can cope in space too.

Nine days in space after all that training is not much is it?

No, when the station is completed there will be room for seven crew. At the moment there are just two permanent crew and because of their nations' respective contributions to the ISS project, there is always one Russian and one American. Europeans have to go up for shorter durations. Every six months, the Soyuz capsule always docked at the ISS which functions as an escape vehicle has to be replaced as its batteries degrade. So a new Soyuz capsule is sent up, and the old one brought down. I went up as part of that exchange, and on my this trip there was also an exchange of crew. The Russians have been doing this replacment service free of charge as their commitment to the project, but if you pay $12m they will launch a Soyuz capsule more often.
There is a queue of European astronauts at the moment. I know the Swedish astronaut has been waiting years and understand there is some amused media coverage in his own country about his failure to go up! The Swedish government could pay $12m but I understand has been unwilling to do so.

Are you hoping to go up into space again?

Yes of course. The idea is that you pay a short visit then spend a longer period. But nothing is scheduled yet.
There are two former astronauts now sitting as MEPs in the European parliament. Would a political career appeal to you, given astronauts have to be "so good with people"?
At the moment I am an ambassador for the Space Agency - which is why I am attending this congress. But not at the moment.

The one in Turin you've never heard of

European Training Institute in Turin. No, no one one else has heard of it or knows what it does either. But could it actually be useful - and stands for a new trend? See article below

Europe's autonomous agencies

What if Europe could work better without the commission, or less of it? What if there could be a network of pan-European institutions serving the European citizen and the member states that can do what the commission can't do, or do it better? What if there could be a Europe that was more efficient, cheaper, closer to the citizen and the member state? What if there were institutions that gave a better, higher quality of information for policy-makers - and better information to the citizens - than currently provided by the civil servants working for the commission?
These are some of the questions that could be solved by the growth of a new type of European institution, the autonomous agency, usually based outside Brussels. Starting in 1994, their numbers have now grown to 32, with policy areas covering European air craft safety certification certification and European food safety, and including several foreign policy and security areas. Their cost and staff numbers are relatively low - 1 billion euros a year, more than 3,000 staff - compared to national administrations, acording to Jacqueline McGlade, the coordintaor of the agencies and the head of one, the European Environment Agency, in her own right.
At their best, as McGlade and other agency heads demonstrated at a recent Friends of Europe debate, the agencies provide a powerful tool for making Europe more efficient.
One example is the European Medicines Agency, which provides a single authorisation point for the 50 medicines brought onto the European market each year, standardising medicines across Europe, reducing costs for drugs firms and bringing medicine to the patient more quickly. The agency is based in London, since 1995, is headed by Swede Thomas Lonngren, and operates in parallel with the long extant national medcines agancies. However, if drug makers want to authorise a drug in more than one country, and chooses the national authorisation route, it must repeat the same process 27 times - often with the same dossier. It is considerably more expensive, delays drugs to market Europe-wide, gives customers with non existent or poorly qualified medicines agencies a raw deal (since they might offer a less qualified outcome)and might offer customers a bewildering variety of almost similar drugs as they travel across the continent. The EMA is arguably one EU success story.
But not all the indpendent agencies under McGlade's wing are necessarily doing a good job. For a start, as MEP John Bowis said, there are too many of them. The reason being that they have become they latest focal point in the everlasting game of national prestige. "Every country just has to have one, or if they are a big country, has to have more than one." The new member states have become just as adept at playing the game. As Bowis somewhat sourly said, one new member state was less interetsed in his mental health report than in getting a mental health agency - which had never been proposed.:
The result, often, means that new, dubious agencies with diffuse or rather pointless functions come into being, perhaps of a politically correct nature. As Bowis put it; "The European parliament finds it particularly different to say no to gender or racism issues." The full list of agencies includes the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and drugs addiction. The European Training Foundation. The European Foundation for improvement in living conditions. And of course the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia..
Even those that are doing a good job, however, face three challenges. The public's disconnect with political europe is well known. Turn-out in the 2004 European elections was 45%, a far lower figure than in national elections. And it has nearly always been so: citizens in numerous polls attest to their sense of distance from the European project, culminating in the rejection of the European constitution in 2005 by the Dutch and French electorates. This sentiment is echoed by a similar sentiment of hostility by the administrations of some member states.
Bu whle it is good perhaps that t the agencies' ostensible function to be ambassadors to the rest of the EU is probably overstated, since few have heard of the agencies even in their home city. This is the lesser problem, since the European parliament itself cannot boat of high name recognitiion. A moer important problem might be they compete with ational bureacraciesa adn the commission itself, hampering their efficiency and ultimately leading to job losses.
As someone in the aerospace industry put it: "The European Aviation safety agency is replacing 27 'cops' with one 'cop' and the national agencies are not happy because this will lead to their ultimate demise." As John Bowis said: "People ask the European parliament all the time for European authorities, for instance a single pricing authority for the pharmaceutical industry - and that might make life easier for a lot of us -- but on the other hand you have civil servants in the member states who might feel threatened. If they sit on the boards, there will be a real mismatch."
A third problem is that, while the agencies' strength is their indepedence both fom goverments and the commission, theer still has to be ultimate political accountability if they are not to become laws uunto themselves - as the commission itself is often accused of being, but with less oversight still.
The agency concept does work, and could work better still, if some agencies had sunset preview clauses, more conulation regards new agencies were establisehed, if more MEPS with specialist expertise and fewer national agency representatives sat on the overseeing boards.
Their structural advantages of the better ones are many: in management flexibility (they can take people on on contracts on demand), their partial industry rather than taxpayer funding, their lack of burueacracy and the loyalty and elan they inspire in their small staffs, and yes, their locations abroad. Who knows? A new agency system could pose questions on whether the size, structure and Brussels base of the present commission ought to be maintained

Scotland says so much hatred

GusA PS you - so much hatred. As the Black Eyed Peas put it: 'Where is the love?'

1970: Peter Preston like some other Guardian columnists objects to Scottish independence because it could lead to a Tory controlled English Parliament. That's called democracy Mr Preston. That politicians want to retain the Union solely for their own partisan interests just adds to public cynicism about them. Indeed if many English people realised we only had a Labour government because of Scottish voters' preferences there could well be an increasing demand for a separation between UK and English government. I would suggest that the present situation is only accepted due to ignorance.

1970 - you cannot be selective in your cynicism about politicians.. The SNP lot just want to snarfle at the EU trough and meet George Bush at EU-US summits before the real talent heads back north and starts to compete for place
It's the problem with the modern Europe's fragmentations...jumped up local politicians wanting to sit at the big table. It's human nature but twhere will it all end? "Today Cumbria council...tomorrow the EU heads of government banquet in Rome."

GusA - where's the love? the love will come in after a Scottish girl sits on my face. That's usually the way it works. That's how I fell for Poland.
Do you propose to demilitarise then? So, are we all going to demilitarise and let the US, the most militarist, rogue nation of all, defend us. Or you going to freeload on the rest of the EU as the Irish, disgracefully, have virtually been doing for decades.

EU: a plea for elitism

Why do the British media - specifically the London-based editors of the British media - ignore Europe when 80 percent of legislation originates from there?
John Palmer, a kind of eminence grise of foreign correspondents, ex Guardian, now European policy centre, spoke to a group of British political journalists a few weeks ago about this issue which bothers a lot of people in the EU institutions and obsesses British journalists in Brussels, who see their stuff not published or distorted when it reaches its editorial destination.
Palmer blames three things: a issued confused, and therefore not debated, in people's as well as editors' minds, as to whether Britain is in Europe or not. He blames an attachment to the heroic past - the victorious Good wars, the Empire.
Second, the increasingly aggressive commercial environment which prioritises entertainment over news in the Anglo-Saxon media.
The Express used to have 15 correspondents on the continent of Europe. Now it has none. When they do - increasingly rarely - attack the affairs of the continent's political capital, it's not based on events on the ground, but is a London imagined music hall routine. Third, the EU is hugely important but its growth in powers has not been matched by an equivalent growth in democratic culture. What goes on in Brussels is really diffuse, complex and difficult to fit into a headline. There is no political play of conflicting democratic forces through which issues can be brought out into the open and voters given a clear choice.
These factors, acting partly in conscious, partly in a preconscious, manner, all contribute to the failure of editors to commission reports from Brussels.

So how can the British media report Europe more? Well, a first solution would be the break-up of Britain, the state that represents “victory in the second world war”, “empire” and all the rest of it. Scotland has an election on May 3 and the Scottish nationalists may win and put the country down the road to independence - and if that happens, Palmer predicts, rump-UK will also shed its imperial identity and attendant froideur towards the continent and instead embrace it. Palmer secondly proposes making Europe itself more democratic, so the voters will require of the newspapers more information as to what is actually going on. There ought to be elections for a European president, and party programmes across Europe of trans national parties.

My opinion is that there's too much of an automatic assumption about the importance of mass journalism, and in the sense I include broadsheets also for reasons that will become clear, in a contribution to good governance, which is surely the desired endpoint. (Only the journalist cares about the byline count.)
The EU has always been a relatively little written about oligarchy (posh name for smoke filled rooms politics), since its early days of incredibly complex lawmaking. And it's worked: peace, free trade, labour, movement of capital. Its set the structure in place to do so for years to come, in areas such as environment where sovereignty must be pooled and free trade where standards must be common, in such a way that common prosperity and competitiveness is promoted while leaving the fundamental rights of each nation unharmed.
Palmer doesnt think so; I do.
Now, suppose you told people tomorrow that we have to have elections for pan European parties. Its cloud cuckooland to believe the British people would put with it. Or even, with respect, the English after Scottish secession. It's not going to happen.
Even if it were - it's not but if it were - it would not produce the end point of better governance.
In its areas of remit, the European parliament engages in unusually complex, expert issues. MEPs have been heard to complain that it is impossible to ascertain whether .15% of nickel is more dangerous than a concentration of 0.20% in rechargeable batteries; or whether the open skies agreement is actually any good. And they spend all their time on these issues. But they have many advisers (and lobbyists, and interest and expert organisations) There is also a system of checks and balances, with informed and highly qualified European civil servants, as well as members of national governments, examining and debating the issues in the Brussels political forums. It is a system which has evolved over fifty years, and works: There are plenty of checks and balances involved, for those concerned about the lessons of authoritarian government.
The Palmer plan for better Europe, better governance (let us charitably assume his interest in greater media coverage is incidental) presupposes several unlikely or untested eventualities. Set against this we have a Europe that is run by an expanding oligarchy if you like.
Most people's lives are centred on a few basic facts - hobbies, families, work, all the usual things, and are happy to leave a lot to trust, via a network of civil society - watchdogs, journalists, civil associations. politicians, industry to look after them; it's a network that expands outwards, like tendrils of trust that connect, in turn, from these professional, to the a network of likes, sometimes formally, sometimes not, based inside Brussels, So while it is an oligarchy, very few things happen there truly against the wishes of people.
At the moment, British satisfaction ratings with the EU are at their highest in a long time: probably because its advantages are making themselves felt – the skilled immigration, the cheap flights. And this despite coverage of EU affairs is at an all time low in the British media. How so? Because while people are happy with the EU doing these things, it doesn’t want to know how it goes about it. Most people are similarly uninterested in the mechanics of their cars as long as it conveys them from A to B. Pace John Palmer, newspapers that have to sell hundreds of thousands of copies a day have to reflect that lack of curiosity.
Becauyse most people are more interested in results than in process, for that reason the EU will continue to best run on their behalfs by the elite.

That said, some people - elite people of all types, politically highly interested people - would want an ongoing wonks' account to Brussels, understand the structure of the political process, understand the personalities at play and work, in order to exercise influence, all written in an investigative, satirical, witty, insightful and authoritative way. It will involve the best writers understand the most essential issues. That magazine is Machiavelli.

The man for whom anti-communism excuses all

Profile of the Economist's correspondent in Brussels

Edward “Murky” Lucas writes a column called the Wilder European Shores for the European Voice. Wild is apt, since Lucas is a cold war warrior with a zeal that has certainly gone out of fashion. The balding Lucas, who is apt to meet old friends wearing his cycle helmet so as not to show how far the follicular decay has gone, spent the 1990s as a correspondent in Estonia. You will know this because he mentions Estonia in every article he writes.
He was hostile to the Russians in a manner that was frankly racist. He then split from his wife, who was by all accounts a psychopath, and married the attractive half Italian Observer columnist Cristina Odone, who vied – no longer, one hopes - with David Blunkett ex-beau Kimberley Quinn as a temptress of powerful men in media London.
He has now been appointed east European correspondent for the Economist, whose writing guidelines Lucas one summarised as: “This is the Economist approach. You just simplify and exaggerate.”
When not penning his column for Dana Spinant’s rag, the 44-year-old philosophy don’s son now covers eastern Europe from London – not exactly a boots-in-the-mud approach, which makes one wonder how he would treat the latest developments in the region. Viz, the fact that the Soviet Union has collapsed.
Given that he has been flogging the dead horse of hostility to communism for 15 years, would he adapt to the new situation? That the greatest threat to Polish freedom these days comes from its new leadership – demagogic, nationalist, illiberal, surrounded by anti-semites, run by two ludicrous-looking twins – who present the most inviting target in this part of the world since a Polish cavalry charge circa 1939. Lucas, a Christian, and the Kaczynski twins, Lech and Jaroslaw, 57, worship at the same altar of anti-communism.
Conclusion: he doesn’t exonerate them completely, but is kinder to them than the rest of western media.
In a recent Economist survey of Poland he begins promisingly sceptically, that Polpand is run by some remarkably “odd” and “eccentric” politicians whose party, Law and Justice has some decidedly “rum” notions.
Politics is run by a black box with the twins inside the black box and most of the cabinet outside adding that “the new government's handling of foreign affairs has looked inept; “ adding that the twins hold “ardently pro-American views, matched by loathing of both Russia and Germany.”
He goes on to give a couple of amusing account against the Kaczynskis, of how Jaroslaw Kaczynski (the PM guy, the one who lives with his mum), in the 1990s, gave a lengthy lecture to Helmut Kohl, then chancellor of Germany, who orders him out of the his office and Bonn and tells and aide “do not let this man out of gunshot of this building”. How Lech Kaczynski (the president guy) gave an interview to one of France’s best known journalists, Vincent Hervouët, at the Polish embassy in Paris. Kaczyniski kept his interviewer waiting for hours, and when he did arrive, and the journalist failed to rise from his seat, he answered his questions while staring at his shoes. When Hervouet criticised an assistant who wanted to hurry the interview along,. Kaczynski told his distinguished guest to leave what he described as Polish territory.
But the rest of the survey is more generous.
“Raw honesty is a refreshing change in Polish politics; and it is arguable that neither Jaroslaw Kaczynski nor his government deserve the ridicule heaped on them. For a start, Poland is a strongly Roman Catholic country, where polls show clear support for socially conservative values. Regarding homosexuality, abortion and euthanasia as sinful may strike liberal-minded city-dwellers (and many foreigners) as wrong-headed. But it is not scandalous in itself that conservative Catholic politicians should represent their voters' values. Despite its dire image abroad, the government is well liked at home.”
“The double act of Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Mr Marcinkiewicz arguably works quite well: one stirs things up and plays politics, the other calms them down so that the business of government can go on.” ( Marckiewicz is the former PM. Until he “resigned”. This was written in May)
He goes on to praise the “tough anti-corruption measures and a purge of the public sector”as “Poland has been shackled by the influence-peddling of the old elite”.
“The justice and interior ministries have been notably successful of late in putting more police on the streets and bringing more criminals to justice.
Meanwhile “the defence minister has closed down the lawless military intelligence services”. (Defence minister Radek Sikorski is an old friend) He concludes respectfully, judging Jaroslaw (the one with the mole) as “the bossier and more intelligent one”.
So he thinks the fact that they are in tune with their electorate justifies their conservative populism; and that they have done some good stuff.
What about the economy? The survey is entitled – revealingly - “Cheer up”
Polish economic growth is half that of the EU new member average; so is foreign investment; wealth per capita is the lowest in Europe after Latvia. It is worrying, but Lucas doesn’t rub it in, and chooses to focus on the positive aspects of Poland’s economy, its high growth rate and low inflation. It is definitely the act of the giving the benefit of the doubt.

Once you have made your mind up, you have to stick to it – even if some leading politicians in Poland compare the Kacznyskis to the oppressive president Lukashenko in neighbouring Belarus, one of Lucas’s and the EU’s favourite pariah countries. (Lucas’s number one hate object is Russia’s Vladimir Putin.)
One correspondent wrote to Lucas’s blog, which contains all his Economist articles, pointing out that one member of staff of the Polish foreign ministry, Pawel Dobrowolski, was sacked because his department - not him personally – had not had the sycophantic foresight to halt the standard procedure of translating articles in the foreign press into Polish on the foreign ministry website when the infamous potato-head scandal blew up. To recap: in their usual illiberal mamner, the Kaczynski brothers asked the German government a month ago to apologise when Taz, a small but well-known radical German newspaper, said the brothers resembled potatoes; they do resemble potatoes. The German refused, saying the Polish leaders did not understand press freedom. Lech told Wprost that it was "an insult to a head of state is a crime and there must be consequences." …. The devil cannot bear scorn
The correspondent pointed out that this boded ill, an indication that the purges of public servants with a connection to communism which Lucas had praised earlier could be a pretext to rule the Polish public sector by fear and arbitariness, and fire anyone who wasn’t a sycophant. And that the best way to tackle corruption was deregulation, not the set up of yet another agency with the power to “tap phones and arrest” people. Indeed, one might add, Polish history is too full of them.
The blogger also questioned Lucas’s boilerplate, pro Kaczynski remark that Stanislaw Kuza, the new finance minister, was “well-respected”. Kuza, a malleable 34, is the Kaczynskis’ third finance minister in less than a month. And according to Reuters, he, too, might be just keeping the chair warm for someone else.
Lucas, stumbling, muttered something about Kluza’s “CV showing he is a respected practitioner – I didn’t say respected academic.” And admitted that he had “second thoughts” about the blunt instrument of purges. He recovered his poise though and wrote: “On the one hand, there are a lot of sleazy and incompetent people in the public service who should have been sacked a long time ago to make way for younger and better ones.”

Really? Tell us more. But he doesn’t.
One of the things about reading Lucas’s blog is that you get a bucketful of him all at once. And you realise: apart from one or two well thought out, nicely written pieces where he lengthens his stride (and are not republished, tant pis, the magazine), it is all opinion and judgement; no exposition. He loves qualifying adjectives, value judgements, as a substitute for analysis (exaggerate and simplify, remember?), and sometimes he writes in a kind of Ladybird prepschool language, as if reading a story to his young sons. “Rum”. “Silly” – and his favourite - “murky”.
.I have a suspicion: it is partly the corrupting nature of the job. As a correspondent for the Economist, he has become so full of himself he has ceased to be a reporter, carefully chronicling, analysing, thinking about the world – and then describing it to the reader
He travels around Europe, a place that is full of stupid, starstruck Economist-reading technocrats, and is displeased when his interview requests are not immediately granted. Prime ministers are queuing up to talk to me, he complains after the Hungarian one messes his schedules around.. After talking to respected “local analysts” or “commentators” – ie local journalists - he goes away and pronounces a new development “murky” or “dodgy and unattractive”, as he wrote recently about the new Slovak government .
Although if it behaves, a government can be “clean and efficient”.

Reading the archives, you sense he is living out the narrative whose parameters were set out when he was a young ma in the late eighties: setting nations free, travelling to historically preserved but little known east European cities, dodging – or drinking – with “spooks and goons”, more drinking with dissident friends, some of whom are now in power; above all, fighting the big evil.
But today, with a foot in Brussels, a base in London, a responsibility to write about half the continent, there is no sense reading him that we live in 2006,, nothing on Islam in Europe, global warming, the constitution. No understanding about the complex machinery of Brussels, without which understanding of east European political dynamic is incomplete. No self insight into the fact that half his comments about communist bureaucracy could probably apply to the EU. (well…he writes for the European Voice.). As a Christian in his twenties, he long ago in eastern Euirope found his garden of good and evil. Though his articles contain enough ambiguities and sees both sides of the argument to satisfy both sides, he has a basic attitude of forgiveness towards the Kaczynskis, for, in his eyes, they are anti communists, and on the side of good. Except the Kaczyniskis are venomously unpleasant.