The college of commissioners has a collective talent; compare them, to say a board of an international company and, to put it bluntly, whatever other merits they may have, there is if nothing else a superior distribution of expertise in relatively obscure languages; a democratic spread, all bases covered. Bar one: Arabic, a language spoken by more Europeans than the populations of seven of the ten new member states.
In post-enlargement Europe, there is therefore a glaring gap of representation and
understanding here. The Estonians (1.5m), Maltese (0.4m) and Slovenians (2.3M) - or, to take a larger example, Finland (5m) all have their spokesmen at the top table in touch with domestic opinion and insinuate their particular national perspective:
They explain why the Maltese want a reference to God in the constitution; why the Swedes have an aversion to alcohol and a fondness for the oral, flavoured tobacco that isn't-quite-snuff.
And so on.
The 6m European Arabic-speakers - whose satellite channels ironically provide the only continent-spanning common media space- do not.
Big issue, a taboo issue.
And of course bound up with the Muslims in Europe question. (There are 18m, more numerous than the Dutch.)
The issue goes beyond that of democratic representation to pragmatism, since many of the problems Europe faces today require understanding of the Arab world, within Europe as well as beyond.
The truth is, the EU is still living in the past, because of the impact of the enlargement countries and their obsession with history. .At some point you’ve got to stop hearing the words “Yalta” and “Munich” emerging from the European parliament’s east European members and engage with the 21st century.
It’s also excessive to have yet another tranche of east European commissioners.
Here is why.
Tens of thousands of Africans have crossed into the Canary islands this
year, twice as many as last year, and hundreds more have died
trying.
Obviously better relations with Morocco and Algeria are a priority. A meeting this summer in
Barcelona was regarded a success, but the question is whether the planned
razor wire and sea patrols would work; the proposed development aid to Africans to
encourage them to stay at home is far less than the remittances they send back; so the Africans will keep on coming.
More and better dialogue is required with the Maghreb countries.
A second issue. The "sharpest end" of the immigration problem is the growth in numbers and violence of young Muslims in Europe's big cities. I know this might be a difficult thing to ask of the people ensconced in the EU institutions, but if you leave this psychologically hermetic world and move in the real Brussels environment, you will realise there is a lot fear and anger towards young North Africans, not all of it unjustified.
What about having a commissioner in touch with North Africans’ urban problems in the cities of the EU?
A third issue: freedom of speech. The EU was at sea when faced with the challenge to freedom of speech posed by the hostility towards the Mohammed cartoons. The commission could so with someone who speaks Arabic, knows what the satellite channels are saying and has read the Koran.
It is probably too late to deprive the Bulgarians and Romanians of their commissioner, but why not set up an extra post? Twenty-eight is not so different from 27. An Arabic speaking commissioner with the portfolio of relations with the Maghreb, urban lack of integration and with a joint communications-media responsibility, along with Margot Wallstrom, with a special remit for the Arab world? One possible candidate: Dalil Boubakeur, president of the French council of Muslims. . It could be that he is too French, but there must be others of his ilk, elsewhere.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Abortion could give birth to EU narrative
An abortion ban near you?
The interparliamentary meeting - involving the European parliament, and national parliaments - held recently in Brussels to discuss the future of Europe was not well attended by the press. I counted five on the press gallery, nt including myself. Three of those were evidently student journalists - from Austria, perhaps? - and one slept through the entire morning, sitting at the back, until shaken awake by his eager colleagues. Even the booming voice of James Allister, who upbraided president Borelles for not letting him speak "despite the fact I have been here since five past nine" - could not awake our friend.
The main issue of the debate, on Europe day, was that of the constitution; there was little on health, but the Austrian presidency had provided a useful briefing paper which allowed one to speculate. Namely, on the following.
Judicial cooperation in civil matters would, under the constitution, work on the basis of codecision between parliament and council, where the council has to act in a qualified majority. The exception is family law where there has to be unanimity among member states. With 25 member states of widely different cultural morals on marriage, cohibitation, abortion etc this is unlikeIy to happen. As MEP and constitutional expert Richard Corbett has noted "Abortion is not in the original treaties and is unlikely to be given thelack of consensus on these issues." But it is not impossible. If the constitution ever happened, article III-69 allows nominated areas of family law to be legislated on via parliament “if there are cross border implications”
Well, abortion has cross border implications, if two estranged partners come from different countries and the woman chooses to have the abortion in a more liberal country. In fact, abortion tourism is itself a cross border activity. So will that mean a harmonisation in the abortion laws? Well, there has to be unanimity among council first, so that is unlikely to happen.
Just as well perhaps. There has been since the end of communism a surge in conservatism on abortion across the east bloc, and also in Italy.
Here are a few examples
In March, the centre right government in Slovakia collapsed after a conflict between the two major governing parties over a draft agreement with the vatican that could restrict abortions. The SKDU and the KDH, which are both parties that have the name Christian in them, had worked out a draft agreement with the Vatican that the Slovak government would not insist that hospitals run by the Catholic church has to perform artificial abortions or assisted fertilisations”.
The SKDU wanted to postpone the issue until September, but the more conservative KDH wanted a resolution immediately. New elections will be held in June.
This is a cultural sea change in Slovakia arguably related to the end of the secular communism. During that era, abortions were quite freely performed. Indeed, it used to be the main form of birth control since contraceptives were scarce. But since then the number of abortions has plummeted from 70,000 a year to about 20,000. Part of the reason is of course freer access to contraceptives: another reason could be - more church teaching, as the country turns against the loose morals of western culture that have swept through the country; and this time, unlike during communism, the church is not suppressed.
Slovak conservatives against abortion will find an ally in Poland’s ruling coalition, where the Justice and Law party’s president, the appalling Jaroslaw Kaczynski, is a staunch foe of abortion, a view shared by his twin brother president Lech. Poland has long had one of the most restrictive laws in Europe on abortion. This law will soon be examined by the European Court of Human rights, as Alicja Tysiac, a Polish mother of three who is nearly blind, has brought a suit against the Polish government - increasingly loathed across Europe - after doctors refused to terminate her third pregnancy even as they warned that giving birth would further damage her eyesight.
According to a recent report in the Associated Press, the laws could tighten even further. Both the Vatican and the US administration has given support to eastern Europe's anti abortion movements, the report says.
In Italy the recent election stirred up the abortion issue, as more and more hospitals refuse to carry out abortions for conscientious reasons. A recent documentary by the BBC said women are now having to go to Barcelona to have abortions before it is too late. Ireland and Malta have long banned abortion.
Perhaps it is just as well that these issues are legislated nationally, and set to be so for the forseeable future. But here is a thought: abortion as a pan European issue - and indeed other values - would pretty quickly create a single European political space. However unresolved and unresolvable, value politics and intese debates around it is what sets America apart from Europe. If after a serious threat to impose common abortion standards across the continent - countries agree to disagree, as the US states do - it might be unifying. Those who want a United States of Europe, for what it is worth, might start here.
The debate would be carried out a volume capable of keeping awake even student journalists.
The interparliamentary meeting - involving the European parliament, and national parliaments - held recently in Brussels to discuss the future of Europe was not well attended by the press. I counted five on the press gallery, nt including myself. Three of those were evidently student journalists - from Austria, perhaps? - and one slept through the entire morning, sitting at the back, until shaken awake by his eager colleagues. Even the booming voice of James Allister, who upbraided president Borelles for not letting him speak "despite the fact I have been here since five past nine" - could not awake our friend.
The main issue of the debate, on Europe day, was that of the constitution; there was little on health, but the Austrian presidency had provided a useful briefing paper which allowed one to speculate. Namely, on the following.
Judicial cooperation in civil matters would, under the constitution, work on the basis of codecision between parliament and council, where the council has to act in a qualified majority. The exception is family law where there has to be unanimity among member states. With 25 member states of widely different cultural morals on marriage, cohibitation, abortion etc this is unlikeIy to happen. As MEP and constitutional expert Richard Corbett has noted "Abortion is not in the original treaties and is unlikely to be given thelack of consensus on these issues." But it is not impossible. If the constitution ever happened, article III-69 allows nominated areas of family law to be legislated on via parliament “if there are cross border implications”
Well, abortion has cross border implications, if two estranged partners come from different countries and the woman chooses to have the abortion in a more liberal country. In fact, abortion tourism is itself a cross border activity. So will that mean a harmonisation in the abortion laws? Well, there has to be unanimity among council first, so that is unlikely to happen.
Just as well perhaps. There has been since the end of communism a surge in conservatism on abortion across the east bloc, and also in Italy.
Here are a few examples
In March, the centre right government in Slovakia collapsed after a conflict between the two major governing parties over a draft agreement with the vatican that could restrict abortions. The SKDU and the KDH, which are both parties that have the name Christian in them, had worked out a draft agreement with the Vatican that the Slovak government would not insist that hospitals run by the Catholic church has to perform artificial abortions or assisted fertilisations”.
The SKDU wanted to postpone the issue until September, but the more conservative KDH wanted a resolution immediately. New elections will be held in June.
This is a cultural sea change in Slovakia arguably related to the end of the secular communism. During that era, abortions were quite freely performed. Indeed, it used to be the main form of birth control since contraceptives were scarce. But since then the number of abortions has plummeted from 70,000 a year to about 20,000. Part of the reason is of course freer access to contraceptives: another reason could be - more church teaching, as the country turns against the loose morals of western culture that have swept through the country; and this time, unlike during communism, the church is not suppressed.
Slovak conservatives against abortion will find an ally in Poland’s ruling coalition, where the Justice and Law party’s president, the appalling Jaroslaw Kaczynski, is a staunch foe of abortion, a view shared by his twin brother president Lech. Poland has long had one of the most restrictive laws in Europe on abortion. This law will soon be examined by the European Court of Human rights, as Alicja Tysiac, a Polish mother of three who is nearly blind, has brought a suit against the Polish government - increasingly loathed across Europe - after doctors refused to terminate her third pregnancy even as they warned that giving birth would further damage her eyesight.
According to a recent report in the Associated Press, the laws could tighten even further. Both the Vatican and the US administration has given support to eastern Europe's anti abortion movements, the report says.
In Italy the recent election stirred up the abortion issue, as more and more hospitals refuse to carry out abortions for conscientious reasons. A recent documentary by the BBC said women are now having to go to Barcelona to have abortions before it is too late. Ireland and Malta have long banned abortion.
Perhaps it is just as well that these issues are legislated nationally, and set to be so for the forseeable future. But here is a thought: abortion as a pan European issue - and indeed other values - would pretty quickly create a single European political space. However unresolved and unresolvable, value politics and intese debates around it is what sets America apart from Europe. If after a serious threat to impose common abortion standards across the continent - countries agree to disagree, as the US states do - it might be unifying. Those who want a United States of Europe, for what it is worth, might start here.
The debate would be carried out a volume capable of keeping awake even student journalists.
Monday, July 03, 2006
Commissioner to side with drinkers in EU strategy
Calling time
As Europe dances and drinks the summer nights away, a debate is going on at Brussels’s DG Sanco, the EU’s health ministry: how far should the new alcohol strategy aimed at curbing Europeans’ drinking go?
Due to be published after the rentree in the post-summer cool of September, the strategy follows on from a hard-hitting report on Europe’s “growing alcohol problem”written in June on behalf of the commission by London’s Institute for Alcohol Studies.
Given that the IAS has close links to the temperance movement, its tough recommendations should have come as a surprise to no one, and suggests that some among the professional busybodies in the directorate who ordered the report secure in the knowledge of its perspective favour opening a broad new front in the war against unhealthy lifestyles. Perhaps EU officials are flush with a sense of success in the battle against that other addiction, tobacco. In recent years, EU law has set maximum limits on tar and nicotine yields, imposed new and larger pack warnings, and most recently, effected a tobacco ad ban in press, internet and radio across Europe. Germany, with its large tobacco industry and libertarian instincts, uniquely did hold out against the ad ban for much of this year, but in June caved in and said it would comply, having been threatened by European court of justice action by health commissioner Markos Kyprianou, who has taken up the tobacco hostility baton of his predecessor David Byrne with relish. Smokers’ stronghold Germany is also weakening under EU peer pressure to limit smoking in public places. (A great deal of the money behind smoking bans comes from major pharmaceuticals – namely Glaxo, Novartis and Pharmacia and Upjohn in Europe and Johnson & Johnson in America – all of whom want to earn much money from expensive smoking cessation products; but that is another story.)
The IAS report, by World Health Organisation stalwart Peter Anderson, notes that, while drinking has dropped greatly in southern Europe, it has grown enormously in northern Europe in the last two decades – almost doubling in the UK. Growing personal wealth is one cause. Another important factor is the freedoms of the single market to import large amounts of alcohol from cheap countries for personal use. In Scandinavia they talk of the domino effect, where each state monopoly engages in downward price competition with its neighbours who in turn are competing with low-tax Estonia and Germany.
The total health cost of alcohol to EU countries in 2003 was $125 billion, about the same amount as tobacco. There are dozens of ailments attributable to alcohol, and more are being discovered – the connections between alcohol and the transmissions of HIV for instance.
Showing clear inspiration from Nordic alcohol policy models, the report recommends a ban on alcohol advertising, warning labels on wine bottles, a minimum licensing system for alcoholic products across Europe, a minimum buying age, a standardisation of blood alcohol limits for driving, and four other recommendations.
The question to be asked now, though, is: how many of the Copenhagen-based Anderson’s recommendations will be reflected in the strategy. As silence descended on DG Sanco – there was no press release to accompany the IAS report – insiders report “strong and varied opinions” inside the DG as to how to frame the strategy.
While there are some zealots inside the DG, the boss is not one of them. During his confirmation hearings in 2004, Kyprianou made ambivalent noises about the fight against alcohol, and insiders report that he remains far less keen at pursuing drinking than smoking..
He is reportedly wary of taking on the drinks industry, which has lobbied heavily against targeting “the product instead of targeting the heavy drinkers themselves” and which questionw the scientific credibility of the report.
As the commissioner for one of the smallest and least powerful DGs, Kyprianou could also be wary of the way the report’s recommendations transgress on to the territory of other, bigger DGs, such as DG taxation, DG transport, DG internal markets, all of whom jealously guard their competences.
Several I spoke to agrees there will be something: the one that would get the biggest consensus support in the council and parliament under a Finnish presidency that is strongly pro-restrictions is reportedly a lower maximum blood alcohol concentration limit for young and public vehicle drivers; 0.2 permille, contrasting with 0.5 for other drivers. (0.8 in the UK) “This is one piece of legislation everyone could rally around,” notes Lisette Tiddens-Engwirda, head of the European doctors’ union CPME.
The alcohol strategy comes only shortly after, elsewhere in the institutions, DG agriculture’s attempts to get European producers to tear up their vineyards in return for compensation, because currently too much of the wine goes unsold and has to be turned into biofuel at great expense. In short, some restrictions, but no full-out war, as on tobacco.
As Europe dances and drinks the summer nights away, a debate is going on at Brussels’s DG Sanco, the EU’s health ministry: how far should the new alcohol strategy aimed at curbing Europeans’ drinking go?
Due to be published after the rentree in the post-summer cool of September, the strategy follows on from a hard-hitting report on Europe’s “growing alcohol problem”written in June on behalf of the commission by London’s Institute for Alcohol Studies.
Given that the IAS has close links to the temperance movement, its tough recommendations should have come as a surprise to no one, and suggests that some among the professional busybodies in the directorate who ordered the report secure in the knowledge of its perspective favour opening a broad new front in the war against unhealthy lifestyles. Perhaps EU officials are flush with a sense of success in the battle against that other addiction, tobacco. In recent years, EU law has set maximum limits on tar and nicotine yields, imposed new and larger pack warnings, and most recently, effected a tobacco ad ban in press, internet and radio across Europe. Germany, with its large tobacco industry and libertarian instincts, uniquely did hold out against the ad ban for much of this year, but in June caved in and said it would comply, having been threatened by European court of justice action by health commissioner Markos Kyprianou, who has taken up the tobacco hostility baton of his predecessor David Byrne with relish. Smokers’ stronghold Germany is also weakening under EU peer pressure to limit smoking in public places. (A great deal of the money behind smoking bans comes from major pharmaceuticals – namely Glaxo, Novartis and Pharmacia and Upjohn in Europe and Johnson & Johnson in America – all of whom want to earn much money from expensive smoking cessation products; but that is another story.)
The IAS report, by World Health Organisation stalwart Peter Anderson, notes that, while drinking has dropped greatly in southern Europe, it has grown enormously in northern Europe in the last two decades – almost doubling in the UK. Growing personal wealth is one cause. Another important factor is the freedoms of the single market to import large amounts of alcohol from cheap countries for personal use. In Scandinavia they talk of the domino effect, where each state monopoly engages in downward price competition with its neighbours who in turn are competing with low-tax Estonia and Germany.
The total health cost of alcohol to EU countries in 2003 was $125 billion, about the same amount as tobacco. There are dozens of ailments attributable to alcohol, and more are being discovered – the connections between alcohol and the transmissions of HIV for instance.
Showing clear inspiration from Nordic alcohol policy models, the report recommends a ban on alcohol advertising, warning labels on wine bottles, a minimum licensing system for alcoholic products across Europe, a minimum buying age, a standardisation of blood alcohol limits for driving, and four other recommendations.
The question to be asked now, though, is: how many of the Copenhagen-based Anderson’s recommendations will be reflected in the strategy. As silence descended on DG Sanco – there was no press release to accompany the IAS report – insiders report “strong and varied opinions” inside the DG as to how to frame the strategy.
While there are some zealots inside the DG, the boss is not one of them. During his confirmation hearings in 2004, Kyprianou made ambivalent noises about the fight against alcohol, and insiders report that he remains far less keen at pursuing drinking than smoking..
He is reportedly wary of taking on the drinks industry, which has lobbied heavily against targeting “the product instead of targeting the heavy drinkers themselves” and which questionw the scientific credibility of the report.
As the commissioner for one of the smallest and least powerful DGs, Kyprianou could also be wary of the way the report’s recommendations transgress on to the territory of other, bigger DGs, such as DG taxation, DG transport, DG internal markets, all of whom jealously guard their competences.
Several I spoke to agrees there will be something: the one that would get the biggest consensus support in the council and parliament under a Finnish presidency that is strongly pro-restrictions is reportedly a lower maximum blood alcohol concentration limit for young and public vehicle drivers; 0.2 permille, contrasting with 0.5 for other drivers. (0.8 in the UK) “This is one piece of legislation everyone could rally around,” notes Lisette Tiddens-Engwirda, head of the European doctors’ union CPME.
The alcohol strategy comes only shortly after, elsewhere in the institutions, DG agriculture’s attempts to get European producers to tear up their vineyards in return for compensation, because currently too much of the wine goes unsold and has to be turned into biofuel at great expense. In short, some restrictions, but no full-out war, as on tobacco.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Banning this vice too makes it worse
Maria Carlshamre MEP has some interesting ideas. She also keeps interesting company.
A prominent member of the women’s committee, Carlshamre was recently convicted of financial irregularities, basically declared a bankrupt, and was nudged out of her party back home, the Swedish liberals, a few weeks ago.
Having realigned herself with a new party on the Swedish scene called Feminist Initiative, the former journalist, a rather single-note politician, remains in the European parliament - against the wishes of the Folkpartiet, those Swedish liberals, who say she was elected on a mandate for them and them only. But she remains in the parliament's liberal group ALDE.
So what is her new berth like? The Swedish feminist movement is not short of firebrands, including the head of the women's shelter organisation was was secretkly filmed calling all men "walking dildos" and gthe Uppsala university academic - a professor, no less - who says there are a satanic rituals carried out in the woods by gangs of Swedish men; without providing proof.
Carlshamre's new party is led by the most successful feminist of her generation, 58-year-old Gudrun Schyman, an ex alcoholic best known for stripping off her underwear and urinating half naked over a TV star's shoes at a society cinema premiere. But before launchinng Feminist initiative, she led Sweden's communist party to record election results, combining a devil-may-care charisma with in-your-face feminism - as if Sweden wasn't already the world's most egalitarian country. Another thing she has in common with Carlshamre uis that she, too, has been convicted of financial crimes - fiddling her taxes. As the Swedish tabloids put it: "New women's party headed by Eco (economic) bandits!"
One of the party's leitmotif policies is to take a hard line on prostitution. Sweden already has the toughest laws on prostitution anywhere - men can actually go to jail for it - but Schyman wants to export the laws Europe-wide. Whether the stance is a popular or not with the cowed Swedish electorate, her attacks on Germany's liberal brothel regime expected to benefit from the world cup have earnt her plenty of publicity, Carlshamre will be doing her bit: the latest entry on her website says she is in Frankfurt talking to prostitutes organisations.
Since legal prostitution is partly an issue of political philosophy, where the continental and Swedish approaches do not meet, Carlshmre frequently argues that a ban on prostitution reduces sex trafficking - which is illegal everywhere.
As evidence, she quotes a report ordered by the parliament's women's committee, and carried out by a network of sociology researchers called Transcrime.
This argument is worth examining. In fact, her assertion might not be in the Satanic rituals league of complete bollocks, but her argument does not stand up. For the report shows that prostitutes trafficked to sweep-it-under the carpet Sweden have a worse existence than prostitutes trafficked elsewhere. According to the small print of a survey, violence levels of women trafficked to Sweden is 50% higher than those who go to Germany, and they get to keep less of their money.
Reasons? There is actually a body of literature on this, and the wisdom of reducing the wicked consequences of prostitution by illegalising it is by no means established. A Swedish female academic, Petra Ostergren, who has written extensively on prostitution, has a few suggestions why women trafficked to Sweden get a worse deal. Because prostitution has been driven off the streets,women are more dependent on pimps, who can beat women with greater impunity since they are afraid of going to the police because they will be deported. Street prostitution, for all its sordidness, at least alows trafficked women to assess the customer. When it is done over the internet or via pimps, the first she gets to see of his customer is when he has a foot in the door. Another reason is that the good hearted customer who might in other countries have warned police he suspects a woman he uses of being trafficked is to afraid of reporting to the police since he himself may be jailed.
Sweden's "success" at reducing visible trafficking is often trupted as a argument foro exporting its model elsewhere, but it ain't that simple. As the report admits, the trafficking has gone underground now, and what you don't know you don't know.
Those closer to the scene that MEPS and party leaders are in fact sceptical of a hardline prostitution aproach: prostitutes themselves. While they condemn trafficking, incidentally, many take pride in the fact that it is a profession. They are in fact rather insulted by the likes of Schyman and Carlshamre sopeaking on their behalf and saying it leads to general depravity including, ironically, alcoholism.
All this would have mattered less if it were a domestic issue only; but tyhe Swedish anti prostitution a argument has travelled well to at least one country - the UK. A white paper launched by Home Ofice Minister Fiona MacTaggart earlier this year plans to go down precisely the Swedish route, marking a turnaorund from ideas floated during the Blunkett years when liberalisation on the continental model was on the cards.
The British police would love a hardline aproach to prostitution.
Opinion in the UK has already been warmed up by a number of censorious articles in the press - ranging from the Guardian to the Telegraph - on police in the UK arresting people traffickers, the awful lives of trafficked women. The world cup could see slew of articles on Germany's depraved liberal brothel regime, which expect a boom in custom from fans - anything to get at the Germans.
But legislators should reflect on the effects of Swedish laws, and indeed those have been who pushing it. Prohibitionism in legislation seldom has the intended effect.
A prominent member of the women’s committee, Carlshamre was recently convicted of financial irregularities, basically declared a bankrupt, and was nudged out of her party back home, the Swedish liberals, a few weeks ago.
Having realigned herself with a new party on the Swedish scene called Feminist Initiative, the former journalist, a rather single-note politician, remains in the European parliament - against the wishes of the Folkpartiet, those Swedish liberals, who say she was elected on a mandate for them and them only. But she remains in the parliament's liberal group ALDE.
So what is her new berth like? The Swedish feminist movement is not short of firebrands, including the head of the women's shelter organisation was was secretkly filmed calling all men "walking dildos" and gthe Uppsala university academic - a professor, no less - who says there are a satanic rituals carried out in the woods by gangs of Swedish men; without providing proof.
Carlshamre's new party is led by the most successful feminist of her generation, 58-year-old Gudrun Schyman, an ex alcoholic best known for stripping off her underwear and urinating half naked over a TV star's shoes at a society cinema premiere. But before launchinng Feminist initiative, she led Sweden's communist party to record election results, combining a devil-may-care charisma with in-your-face feminism - as if Sweden wasn't already the world's most egalitarian country. Another thing she has in common with Carlshamre uis that she, too, has been convicted of financial crimes - fiddling her taxes. As the Swedish tabloids put it: "New women's party headed by Eco (economic) bandits!"
One of the party's leitmotif policies is to take a hard line on prostitution. Sweden already has the toughest laws on prostitution anywhere - men can actually go to jail for it - but Schyman wants to export the laws Europe-wide. Whether the stance is a popular or not with the cowed Swedish electorate, her attacks on Germany's liberal brothel regime expected to benefit from the world cup have earnt her plenty of publicity, Carlshamre will be doing her bit: the latest entry on her website says she is in Frankfurt talking to prostitutes organisations.
Since legal prostitution is partly an issue of political philosophy, where the continental and Swedish approaches do not meet, Carlshmre frequently argues that a ban on prostitution reduces sex trafficking - which is illegal everywhere.
As evidence, she quotes a report ordered by the parliament's women's committee, and carried out by a network of sociology researchers called Transcrime.
This argument is worth examining. In fact, her assertion might not be in the Satanic rituals league of complete bollocks, but her argument does not stand up. For the report shows that prostitutes trafficked to sweep-it-under the carpet Sweden have a worse existence than prostitutes trafficked elsewhere. According to the small print of a survey, violence levels of women trafficked to Sweden is 50% higher than those who go to Germany, and they get to keep less of their money.
Reasons? There is actually a body of literature on this, and the wisdom of reducing the wicked consequences of prostitution by illegalising it is by no means established. A Swedish female academic, Petra Ostergren, who has written extensively on prostitution, has a few suggestions why women trafficked to Sweden get a worse deal. Because prostitution has been driven off the streets,women are more dependent on pimps, who can beat women with greater impunity since they are afraid of going to the police because they will be deported. Street prostitution, for all its sordidness, at least alows trafficked women to assess the customer. When it is done over the internet or via pimps, the first she gets to see of his customer is when he has a foot in the door. Another reason is that the good hearted customer who might in other countries have warned police he suspects a woman he uses of being trafficked is to afraid of reporting to the police since he himself may be jailed.
Sweden's "success" at reducing visible trafficking is often trupted as a argument foro exporting its model elsewhere, but it ain't that simple. As the report admits, the trafficking has gone underground now, and what you don't know you don't know.
Those closer to the scene that MEPS and party leaders are in fact sceptical of a hardline prostitution aproach: prostitutes themselves. While they condemn trafficking, incidentally, many take pride in the fact that it is a profession. They are in fact rather insulted by the likes of Schyman and Carlshamre sopeaking on their behalf and saying it leads to general depravity including, ironically, alcoholism.
All this would have mattered less if it were a domestic issue only; but tyhe Swedish anti prostitution a argument has travelled well to at least one country - the UK. A white paper launched by Home Ofice Minister Fiona MacTaggart earlier this year plans to go down precisely the Swedish route, marking a turnaorund from ideas floated during the Blunkett years when liberalisation on the continental model was on the cards.
The British police would love a hardline aproach to prostitution.
Opinion in the UK has already been warmed up by a number of censorious articles in the press - ranging from the Guardian to the Telegraph - on police in the UK arresting people traffickers, the awful lives of trafficked women. The world cup could see slew of articles on Germany's depraved liberal brothel regime, which expect a boom in custom from fans - anything to get at the Germans.
But legislators should reflect on the effects of Swedish laws, and indeed those have been who pushing it. Prohibitionism in legislation seldom has the intended effect.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
MEPs and their non existent press attention
Today I went to the European parliament's office in London for a press briefing on needlestick injuries. The building is just off Queen Anne's gate, a very exclusive well, Queen Anne-architectured, part of town. The airport X-ray machine was set off the main entrance and rather pointlessly they gfed my bags through. (I could have concealed stuff in my coat, after al, wich they didn't check.) such small absurdities you become familiar with when dealing with the EP: just like all the unread reports in 20 languages that pile up in rows of pigeon holes outside the press centre. (How many footbal felds of paper do they use up?)
Once inside, the atmosphere was cosy if a bit seedy. An official told me that many MEPS avoided coming to London to give press briefings on their eurolegislation, because they were afraid no one would come. No one came to this press conference either, held by John Bowis MEP.
Once inside, the atmosphere was cosy if a bit seedy. An official told me that many MEPS avoided coming to London to give press briefings on their eurolegislation, because they were afraid no one would come. No one came to this press conference either, held by John Bowis MEP.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Hi Honey, I'm back
The main geopolitical event of the week is apparently the EU-Russian summit at Sochi. There have been talks on gas security, and also on easing visa restrictions.
Will travel to Russia be the same without it? Visits to that dank building in Kensington, occluded by its own private cloud, the bullet headed man who let the anticipatory queue in in groups of five, groups where camaraderie quickly grew after exchanges of nervous jokes?
No longer, apparently. So going into Russia will be easier. So will coming out of Russia.
The east Europeans must have mixed feelings about the latter. There are opportunities for greater trade, but as anyone who has spent time in the European parliament will tell you, it is clear that Russian imperalism remains a sore point.
At plenary speeches accompanying reports on human rights in Russia from the European parliament, the speeches there certainly thick with denunciation from MEPs, perhaps more than is politic. Polish MEPS spend their allowances engaging in vanity publishing projects - distributed free to parliamentarians and assistants - featuring their favoured historians to remind us of Stalin’s crimes, as if west Europeans didn’t know enough about this. (King of England in 1832, anyone?) Politicians like Toomas “My English is better than yours” Ilves, an Estonian socialist, have exhibitions on international women’s day that talk about the suffering of women under, you guessed it, Stalin.
The Balts in particular, with their large, 50 percent minorities of Russians, and which are being emptied of their professionals, their natives, going west to work, might be also ambivalent of the facilitation of family reunification that visa free travel offers. After all, if the UK cannot keep track of its illegals; why believe Estonia could be capable of doing so? And then there is Latvia, which already complains of being infiltrated by 1,000 KGB spies.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Could North Africa join the EU?
Preposterous, one might say, Morocco, Algeria and Egypt let alone Saudi Arabia are not geographically European, one of the essential criteria for joining the EU, one would have thought.
The joint national and European parliament meeting documents seems to think so .
"Any debate on further enlargement to the south appears moot: the countries of North Africa or the Middle East, while unarguably important neighbours, would have difficulties making a credible claim to European Union.*” (footnote follows, which I quote in full: because it is important; “*Morocco explored this territory with an application for membership of the EEC in 1987; it was rejected because of the Treaty provision limiting to community membership to ‘European states’. However Geography as such does not provide a sufficient basis for defining the ultimate shape of the EU either: on the one hand with Cyprus the EU includes a country that culturally clearly belongs to Europe. On the other hand Turkey (Ed’s note: a candidate) lies with the greater part of its territory outside 'geographical Europe.'"
The main text does go on to say that “ultimate limits of the EU boil down to” future membership of Ukraine, Belarus, and the Caucasus - Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan."
However the document also states that “EU enlargement could theoretically lead to expansion of greater than 35 member states”.
Now consider the next paragraph, speaking of the EU’s mediterranean neighbours: “The Euro-mediterranean partnership and Barcelona process aimed at increasing political dialogue, stepping up economic and trade relations (Creation of a Euro-Mediterranean free trade area by 2010). A document of March 2003 spoke of the EU’s neighbours as being a closer ring of friends with the prospect of economic integration with the EU, extending to the “four freedoms”, though subsequent action plans have toned down the “four freedoms”.
Finally, the document says “European neighbourhood policy” developed by the Commission in May 2004 in the EU offers its neighbours a privileged political and economic partnership, building upon a mutual commitment to common values.
So, sorted? Actually the Maghreb might be luckier than one thinks.
It is true that the document then says ultimate membership should be limited to the former Soviet republics; but the footnotes say that “geography” should not be the only definition. Indeed, if ‘mostly Asiatic’ Turkey - which would bring Europe to the borders of Iraq - or even more farflung Azerbaijan - a muslim state bordering Iran -- ever joins, then - the argument could surely be posed: why not a Europe, some may say, that ends in the Saharan desert.
The argument, when things get that far, might then be strengthened by membership, at that time, of the well established halfway house membership:
The document does not explicitly rule out offering North Africa the “four freedoms” - trade, services, movement of people - which is one of the most potent advantages of EU membership.
North Africa has friends who like all this.
The book Eurabia, by the academic Bat Ye’Or, alleges that there has been a long term conspiracy, going back decades, between elites and Arab establishments to bring about, ultimately, a single confederated entity - one powerful impetus being to shore up global French influence, whose elites have often treated Francophone North Africa as their baronial domain, with strong financial interests in the region, and for whom North Africa as part of Europe would revive Gallic dreams of a European-Mediterranean empire allowing France to play a more prominently leading role across Europe than presently. One of the aspects of the European-Arabic dialogue is the Euro-Med assembly,which meets regularly in Brussels, and whose activities might - if you are into conspiracy - be worth looking into.
The joint national and European parliament meeting documents seems to think so .
"Any debate on further enlargement to the south appears moot: the countries of North Africa or the Middle East, while unarguably important neighbours, would have difficulties making a credible claim to European Union.*” (footnote follows, which I quote in full: because it is important; “*Morocco explored this territory with an application for membership of the EEC in 1987; it was rejected because of the Treaty provision limiting to community membership to ‘European states’. However Geography as such does not provide a sufficient basis for defining the ultimate shape of the EU either: on the one hand with Cyprus the EU includes a country that culturally clearly belongs to Europe. On the other hand Turkey (Ed’s note: a candidate) lies with the greater part of its territory outside 'geographical Europe.'"
The main text does go on to say that “ultimate limits of the EU boil down to” future membership of Ukraine, Belarus, and the Caucasus - Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan."
However the document also states that “EU enlargement could theoretically lead to expansion of greater than 35 member states”.
Now consider the next paragraph, speaking of the EU’s mediterranean neighbours: “The Euro-mediterranean partnership and Barcelona process aimed at increasing political dialogue, stepping up economic and trade relations (Creation of a Euro-Mediterranean free trade area by 2010). A document of March 2003 spoke of the EU’s neighbours as being a closer ring of friends with the prospect of economic integration with the EU, extending to the “four freedoms”, though subsequent action plans have toned down the “four freedoms”.
Finally, the document says “European neighbourhood policy” developed by the Commission in May 2004 in the EU offers its neighbours a privileged political and economic partnership, building upon a mutual commitment to common values.
So, sorted? Actually the Maghreb might be luckier than one thinks.
It is true that the document then says ultimate membership should be limited to the former Soviet republics; but the footnotes say that “geography” should not be the only definition. Indeed, if ‘mostly Asiatic’ Turkey - which would bring Europe to the borders of Iraq - or even more farflung Azerbaijan - a muslim state bordering Iran -- ever joins, then - the argument could surely be posed: why not a Europe, some may say, that ends in the Saharan desert.
The argument, when things get that far, might then be strengthened by membership, at that time, of the well established halfway house membership:
The document does not explicitly rule out offering North Africa the “four freedoms” - trade, services, movement of people - which is one of the most potent advantages of EU membership.
North Africa has friends who like all this.
The book Eurabia, by the academic Bat Ye’Or, alleges that there has been a long term conspiracy, going back decades, between elites and Arab establishments to bring about, ultimately, a single confederated entity - one powerful impetus being to shore up global French influence, whose elites have often treated Francophone North Africa as their baronial domain, with strong financial interests in the region, and for whom North Africa as part of Europe would revive Gallic dreams of a European-Mediterranean empire allowing France to play a more prominently leading role across Europe than presently. One of the aspects of the European-Arabic dialogue is the Euro-Med assembly,which meets regularly in Brussels, and whose activities might - if you are into conspiracy - be worth looking into.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
No show from Falconer
What is the purpose of this?
The European parliament's briefling booklet on the constitution publishes letters to Michael Martin, the speaker of the house of commons, and to Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, inviting them to the joint parliamentary conference. Well, they didn't come.
At the risk of attracting ridicule, that they are not treated seriously by the mother of parliaments, are they trying to show up the arrogance of Britain's senior parliamentary figures?
The European parliament's briefling booklet on the constitution publishes letters to Michael Martin, the speaker of the house of commons, and to Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, inviting them to the joint parliamentary conference. Well, they didn't come.
At the risk of attracting ridicule, that they are not treated seriously by the mother of parliaments, are they trying to show up the arrogance of Britain's senior parliamentary figures?
Monday, May 22, 2006
Heathcote Amory's liquid lunch
It is May and Europe’s thoughts turn to the moribund constitution. Which is why the European parliament has been organising a get together between it - the allegedly most powerful legislature in Europe - and national parliaments.
With a maximum of 212 national parliamentarians attending, there were 70 MEPS. - including some usual British suspects as Richard Corbett, Andrew Duff and Charles Tannock - separating into four working groups: one to discuss the EU in the world and its external borders. Working group two discussing globalisation and the European economic and social model, group three discussing freedom, security and justice and group four devoted to the union’s future financial resources.
I went along to the building nicknamed caprice des dieux - after that cheese, and because of its similar ovoid shape - and sat in at the proceedings.
I was intrigued: almost everything in the new constitution would increase the areas of EU legislation subject to codecision - -ie European parliamentary, as opposed to intergovernmental, say. If every institution can be seen as organism whose sole raison d’etre is to fight for its own survival, then what interest do national parliaments have in coming to the table?
The difficulties are further compounded by the fact that the two bodies are of a different nature: one is a working legislature - ie, as alluded to an earlier entry, MEPS are having to compete with the technocrats in specialist knowledge to form judgments.
The others are material from which governments are formed, and so are expected to shut up for much of the time. As Arlene McCarthy MEP said: “If you want to do something come to the European parliament; if you want to be someone go to national legislatures.”
Given this mismatch, one can understand why senator Honorio Novo, a Portuguese leftist, and national deputy, took a truculent view of the idea of national and European parliaments being yoked together to drag the constitution back into life.
In his bluntness, he even resorted to the imagery of English humour: “This constitution is pining for the fjords.”
But he was in a minority. Several speakers noted that Finland has just become the 16th country to ratify the constitution, by parliamentary means. A majority of Europeans, headcount wise, were therefore for it - a stance known in Europe as the Juncker position, after the fanatically europhile Luxembourg prime minister who presumably has the least to lose from giving up his small nation’s national sovereignty. Here the view was forcefully argued by many deputies. “The constitution is alive and kicking,” said one Pole. “50 years after the Schuman declaration we have the same institutions for 25 nations as for six,” said Inigo Mendez de Vigo, a famous Spanish MEP. “A break in the journey is not the end.”
Moreover, a commission paper was about to be produced on the constitution and Chancellor Merkel was expected to make a statement on it.
So is the ball rolling or not? Politics is as much about creating reality as reflecting it, and both sides were trying their best.
On the anti-constutition side, David Heathcote Amory, who made a late intervention seemingly over refreshed after entering with his colleague Charles Tannock, doesn't seem to think so when he said:" No powers at all are being returned to the member states. We have to build a Europe from below up not top down." When I left, I was the only journalist in the press gallery. Only three had turned up at all.
The counterfeiters' most profitable product
Today I went to a conference on the dangers of counterfeit ink.
Printer firms are apparently reluctant to highlight the growing problem of counterfeited printer ink, which is cheap and profitable, for fear customers will use almost as expensive brand name alternative suppliers. As everyone knows, printer firms recoup the fact that they often sell the printer units at a loss by selling cartridges of ink expensively. Use has grown since the advent of digital cameras.
And therefore it is not perhaps surprising that counterfeiting too has grown fivefiold since 2001.
Perhaps 5% of ink is counterfeited, a figure that rises to half in Mexico. The advice is to avoid funny packaging, low prices, beware of ink that runs dry quickly - one way for the firms to make profits is not to fill up the cartridges to the top.
The consequences can be dire.
Here is an example. A firm called Multi Tech in the US sold cartridges at prices too good to be true via ebay in the US. Customers who initially thought they had a great deal, were soon in shock: there were illegible printouts, clogged inkjet printers that took hours to clean, or the printers just broke and had to be sold for scrap.
One person called Terry Schumacher from Mesa, Arizona, bought eight cartridges for his Stylus Epson 1280 for $150 but soon found it was a bad bargain: while packaging was a flawless copy, the ink started spitting everywherer when he tried to start making copies. Another person, a Gigi Diacomo from Minnesota, found that false ink ruined the printhead of her Epson 825 printer. They gave up after a few hours trying to repair the printer. And yet the deal had seemed so good: a third below normal price for a number of cartridges whioh were sealed and had holograms. So what to do?
Call the commission of course, which has promised to launch one of those white papers that may or may not end up as legislation.
Printer firms are apparently reluctant to highlight the growing problem of counterfeited printer ink, which is cheap and profitable, for fear customers will use almost as expensive brand name alternative suppliers. As everyone knows, printer firms recoup the fact that they often sell the printer units at a loss by selling cartridges of ink expensively. Use has grown since the advent of digital cameras.
And therefore it is not perhaps surprising that counterfeiting too has grown fivefiold since 2001.
Perhaps 5% of ink is counterfeited, a figure that rises to half in Mexico. The advice is to avoid funny packaging, low prices, beware of ink that runs dry quickly - one way for the firms to make profits is not to fill up the cartridges to the top.
The consequences can be dire.
Here is an example. A firm called Multi Tech in the US sold cartridges at prices too good to be true via ebay in the US. Customers who initially thought they had a great deal, were soon in shock: there were illegible printouts, clogged inkjet printers that took hours to clean, or the printers just broke and had to be sold for scrap.
One person called Terry Schumacher from Mesa, Arizona, bought eight cartridges for his Stylus Epson 1280 for $150 but soon found it was a bad bargain: while packaging was a flawless copy, the ink started spitting everywherer when he tried to start making copies. Another person, a Gigi Diacomo from Minnesota, found that false ink ruined the printhead of her Epson 825 printer. They gave up after a few hours trying to repair the printer. And yet the deal had seemed so good: a third below normal price for a number of cartridges whioh were sealed and had holograms. So what to do?
Call the commission of course, which has promised to launch one of those white papers that may or may not end up as legislation.
The commission could watch you everywhere
Today I am off to the World Customs organisation, near the Gare du Nord. In the bowels of this big, grey type building there is to be a conference on the dangers of counterfeit ink.
Will it be as intriguing as the last visit?
Last time I came here was on a rainswept February morning for an East West security conference featuring a lot of high level Russians, Chinese, including Gao Jian (pictured) Director-General for Security, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Peoples Republic of China, Anatoly Safonov, Russia’s special terrorism representative - but also the US ambassador to the EU, Boyden Gray. Jose Manuel Barroso, head of the commission, was there too.
I spent the lunch hour interviewing the rep for firm called SAP firm which sponsored the event who demonstrated a computer program that could link cars to people to events (such as criminal incidents) and to CCTV camera sightings. For example: type in a registration number and you could find out it was last spotted at ta CCTV camera in London, or crossing the Luxembourg border and that it was bought in 1985 by this and this credit card. All this vast hive of interconnected information on Europe’s citizens and everything they do seemed to be the ultimate instance of big brother. The problem, as always, is the vast amount of information. But the program flag up odd events, such as a person paying for his ticket five minutes before departure on several successive occasions
I looked at him as he spoke. Who was it who said that liberty dies to the sound of thunderous applause? Not necessarily. Perhaps it comes in the monotone of a man selling a vacuum cleaner.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Launch credo: elitism is good
Spring weekend in London. Whenever you come back to the real world you always think about the huge EU publicity machine you have left behind, aware of its huge communications budget. You think of a particular debate, a debate carried out among journalists, and between officials: and that is, how can the EU communicate itself to the public? The European parliament has recently relaunched its website, in an attempt to become more user friendly. (And with the new dot eu suffix). Its slogan is: 457 million people at one address. (www.europarl.europa.eu). Some wags have said: and no readers. It is still to policy-oriented, too boring.
The thing is, the EU is not supposed to be democratic. It is the old argument of whether politics is an expertise or best exercised on the democratic principle. The Eurovision song contest model - where juries produce the Finnish winner, whereas the professional judges of yesteryear came up with Abba and the surprisingly good 1975 Dutch hit ding-ding a dong - is just another instance of how the masses, I am afraid, don't always know best.
The question is as old as Plato, but it is probably more true than ever before. The rewards of modern life are convenience; the price is complexity. So we have to leave modern politics to the experts.
You won't read the above in any of MEPs' increasingly numerous blogs, because they daren't tell their electorates - they themselves are becoming moree expert to keep with the ever rmore technocratic commission.
The thing is, the EU is not supposed to be democratic. It is the old argument of whether politics is an expertise or best exercised on the democratic principle. The Eurovision song contest model - where juries produce the Finnish winner, whereas the professional judges of yesteryear came up with Abba and the surprisingly good 1975 Dutch hit ding-ding a dong - is just another instance of how the masses, I am afraid, don't always know best.
The question is as old as Plato, but it is probably more true than ever before. The rewards of modern life are convenience; the price is complexity. So we have to leave modern politics to the experts.
You won't read the above in any of MEPs' increasingly numerous blogs, because they daren't tell their electorates - they themselves are becoming moree expert to keep with the ever rmore technocratic commission.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Norway, not another oil-rich Muslim state
What is happening in Norway? The country is completely
off the EU radar.
The country has now grown the western world’s largest
anti-immigration party when no one has been looking,
that is what.
Commentators insist though that Carl Hagen’s
Fremmskrittspartiet, or Progress Party, isn’t another
European far right party, a label it rejects. It calls
itself populist.
How has it managed to secure a 34 percent support in
the latest polls, in early April, making it the
largest party in the country - and three-and-a-half
times bigger than any other opposition party?
Fewer foreigners please
For a start it wants to cut taxes as well as boost
spending. Norway has a huge amount of money from its
oil income stashed away - 200bn euros, described as
the world’s largest pension fund. The leftwing
coalition government, led by Jens Stoltenberg, says it
cannot spend this money now, since it would send
inflation soaring. Anyway the cash is needed for
leaner times, when the oil runs out.
But Hagen wants to spend the money now, on schools,
hospitals and old people’s social services. A second
reason is that he wants to limit non-western
immigration to a thousand people a year - Britain
receives 1,500 people a day. Both these - possibly
unrealistic - policies appeal to an extraordinarily
loyal and often elderly cadre of voters and helped the
dapper 62-year-old into second place in the elections
last autumn. But now the Muslim cartoons crisis has
put further wind in the party’s sails.
Wrecked embassies, wrecked reputations
Because the country is next door to Denmark, and
because a Norwegian magazine was the first in the West
to republish all 12 cartoons, in January, its Damascus
embassy, along with Denmark’s, was torched in the
protest riots three months ago. Norwegian citizens
were evacuated from Syria.
As Scandinavian products were boycotted across the
Muslim world, an Anholt national brand survey, in
which panels from dozens of countries evaluate each
nation’s image, showed that Denmark fell from a
respectable position in Egypt to bottom of the table -
far below the US. Eighty percent of Egyptians did not
agree with the statement that Danes are honest.
Norway’s results were only a little better. In other
Muslim countries the results were similar. The report
noted: “This is quite significant. People’s views of
other countries are generally quite fixed and stable,
and it takes something very serious indeed to make
them revise their views. Above all, it takes something
personal.”
“The best person is he who repents”
Damage limitation was called for - or so thought the
government.
After the fires, it moved into conciliation mode.
Velbjørn Selbekk, the editor of the tiny Christian
periodical Magazinet, who had firmly resisted pressure
by Muslim extremists and the Norwegian establishment
to retract, was cajoled into a joint press conference
at a major government building by Norway’s minister of
employment. As Selbekk apologised, flanking him was
Mohammed Hamdan, head of the Islamic council of
Norway, who accepted his contrition on behalf of 46
Muslim organisations. Hamdan said:
“You are now under our protection. The prophet
Muhammed says everyone makes mistakes, but the best
person is he who repents.”
Then, the Norwegian government sponsored a team
comprising representatives for the Islamic council of
Norway and from the Lutheran church in Oslo to tour
the Gulf on a peacemaking mission. One of the people
they visited in Qatar was top Muslim leader Dr Yusuf
al-Qaradawi, who has reportedly supported suicide
bombings, and has publicly bragged about how “Islam
will conquer Europe”. The “moderate” al-Qaradawi was
apparently not entirely satisfied with Selbekk’s
apology and told his visitors that Norway ought to
introduce Islamic blasphemy laws. "Freedom of
expression is all about expressing an opinion. In the
cartoons case, there is no opinion or
counter-opinion," he told Islam Online.
“Freedom is Norway’s fundamental value”
Back in Oslo, mainstream media were careful to be
inclusive, but hyperactive blogs said Selbekk’s
humiliating apology to the Muslim leader in return for
pardon and protection was reminiscent of the state of
dhimmitude - the submission of non Muslims living in
Muslim societies to Sharia law. According to the
website Dhimmiwatch, Dhimmis, "protected people", are
free to practise their religion in a Sharia regime,
but are made subject to a number of humiliating
regulations designed to enforce the Qur'an's command
that they "feel themselves subdued".
While opposition politicians were cautious about
criticising all this, Hagen differed; he made a clear
demarcation in favour of the right to publish. Whether
it was accompanied by the dog whistle sounds of racism
- the country has a 6 percent immigrant population -
was for his listeners to decide. “Many Imans come from
countries where freedom of speech is not a
reality...They are trying it tear down our defences
that protect freedom of speech. When they have done
this, they will always be saying: ‘Now you must
respect this.’
“The Progress Party is going to stand up for freedom
of speech as a fundamental value. The government
should not be behaving as if its regrets the fact we
have freedom of speech in Norway,” he told
Aftenposten.
In polls, the party’s popularity rose by about eight
percentage points between January and April,
overtaking Labour, the largest party in the coalition.
It now has three supporters for every two it had at
the election.
“Dialogue is not appeasement”
So what next? Hagen has always wanted to be prime
minister, but in 27 years as party leader he has
always been locked out of the mainstream, like Vlaams
Blok. (Which he distances himself from).
For him it is too late, since he is stepping down
later this year in favour of the feisty Siv Jensen;
the next election is in 2009.
There are signs the country’s establishment are taking
the party more seriously, as it tries to sanitise
parts of its manifesto, and its best hope for the top
post - unless it grows further - is probably coalition
support from the now heavily depleted Conservatives -
the right’s traditional ruling party - who are
prepared to break the cordon sanitaire imposed by the
other parties.
Things would not be easy for this new alliance as the
party, which originally grew out of a protest movement
against Scandinavian high taxes and political
conformism would have to divest itself of the
indulgent habits of perpetual opposition: Nineteen out
of 20 economic experts recently said the party’s
economic policy didn’t add up. And its integration
policy? Aftenposten - the voice of liberal Norway -
has, despite not agreeing with everything about
government’s softsoaping of the Muslim community,
repeatedly warned against going down the hardline
Danish route on integration; Harvard Narum, a
political commentator, wrote: “The Progress Party has
clearly chosen to equate dialogue with appeasement.
This does not bode well for the important integration
and immigration debate in the time ahead.”
So Stoltenberg will be torn if he takes on the
Progress Party’s populist agenda. But there are
clearly votes to be won from the pressures many
Norwegians feel their small country is subjected to
from the Muslim community abroad and at home.
Monday, April 10, 2006
The Gandhi dynasty’s $10m question
A late night conversation in a Swedish summer house between two old friends, one of whom was dying of cancer, could help solve one of the longest- burning questions in Indian politics: was the unassuming, modern and self proclaimedly honest Rajiv Gandhi, a man on the take?
Scandal of the century
The Bofors bribes affair was the Indian political scandal of the century. The scandal involved Bofors, a historic Swedish arms manufacturer, once owned by Alfred Nobel, the entrepreneur and scientist who invented dynamite and launched the prizes carrying his name. To generations of British schoolboys, the name Bofors means the 40mm AA gun that defended Britain’s skies during the War. But by the 80s, Bofors, based in western Sweden, in Karlskoga – for whose football team the young Sven-Göran Eriksson started his playing career – had fallen on hard times, and faced high unemployment.
A tender from India for 410 howitzers worth over a billion dollars could secure its future. However, a rival gun produced by the French firm Sofma was judged in Indian army gunnery competitions to be both technically superior – and it was cheaper.
But, in a surprise move in March 1987, it was announced that Bofors had won the order. A year later, after an internal enquiry by the Swedish National Bank into suspect Bofors accounting, it emerged that Bofors had paid out millions of dollars to middlemen in bank accounts in Switzerland.
Accused of being a liar
This was surprising. A few months earlier Rajiv Gandhi had publicly announced that there should be none of the customary commissions paid out in the arms industry on this deal. The youthful and idealistic prime Indian minister had been elected on a ticket as Mr Clean. When the scandal emerged, the opposition Hindu nationalists, amid angry scenes in the Indian parliament, accused Gandhi of being a liar.
The Bofors scandal became the big issue of the next election “It is shocking that politicians are, at the end of the day, all the same,” a leading commentator noted. As the cannons started to arrive, and the voting day approached, Bofors became the word even uneducated Indians could associate with Sweden, more so than Abba or Volvo. Stall holders used the word Bofors to mean rotten, as in “this is a Bofors mango”. Gandhi lost heavily in the election.
Could not be linked directly
But the bribes could never be linked to Gandhi directly. Until the day Rajiv was assassinated in 1991, by Tamil separatists, he always angrily denied any knowledge of them, and even today, his widow Sonia, today president of Congress, continues to declare his innocence. The closest link investigators could establish was that the bribes money eventually ended up in a Swiss account belonging to one Ottavio Quattrocchi, an Italian man-about-town and New Delhi based businessman who was a close friend of the Gandhis. Few believed that Quattrocchi, who was the representative of a fertiliser company, was a likely ultimate beneficiary of arms firm cash. But a financial trail from Quattrocchi himself, to Gandhi, could not be established – and when the Italian was wanted for questioning, he slipped abroad, to Malaysia and then Italy, from where the Indian FBI, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), have been fighting a long battle to extradite him.
Congress tried to quash story once and for all
Until a few weeks ago, most Indians had put Bofors at the back of their minds, enough to have re-elected Congress into government after its long spell in the doldrums in 2004. But the scandal flared up again in mid January when a Congress party law official went to London to unfreeze bank accounts held by Quattrocchi that allegedly were key pieces of evidence in the extradition case the CBI were building against him. The CBI were caught by surprise; the Indian supreme court scrambled to “refreeze the accounts”, which allegedly contained the money actually received as Quattrocchi’s middle-man’s fee. But it was too late: within days, the accounts, containing several million dollars’ worth, had been emptied, presumably by Quattrocchi himself, and the CBI executed a neat U-turn, saying it had supported the unfreezing all along. Most observers thought it was an attempt by Congress to diminish the chances of Quattrocchi ever receiving enough evidence against him to justify extradition which would once again drag the party over the coals. Does this mean the Congress party is safe from the scandal that has haunted it for two decades? Not if a sensational allegation emerging from Sweden last week can be backed up.
New development:
According to Stockholm publisher Stig Edling, speaking last week, his best friend, diplomat Gunnar Hökby, a deputy ambassador in India, told him one evening,14 years ago, when he was dying of cancer, about what had been troubling him for years, but which he had kept quiet about because of his professional pledge of silence. He had been present in a hotel room when Bofors officials handed over $10m in bribes directly, in cash, in a suitcase, to Gandhi.
Would prove beyond doubt
This allegation, if proven true, would make any testimony from Quattrocchi superfluous in proving beyond doubt that Gandhi was a corrupt man. In 1986, as deputy ambassador at Sweden’s New Delhi embassy, Hökby told Edling he had facilitated the meeting, and he was disgusted, by his boss the Swedish foreign minister’s denials that the Swedish government knew of bribes. The two plotted how to present this revelation, which would harm Congress and embarrass the Swedish government, with its squeaky clean reputation. In fact, behind its honest façade, there was a ruthless determination by the Swedish government to help its surprisingly large arms export industry. It had long looked the other way, on other arms deals, such as when Bofors issued false end user certificates to disguise illegal weapons exports to Iran and Iraq during their 1980s war. .
And now, despite Gandhi’s public disavowal of bribes, it was complicit in facilitating Bofors’s payoffs to the Indian prime minister.
Witness died before he could go public
Back in the summer house. the two friends decided to put off the revelation until another day. Sadly, a week later Hökby had a sudden fall and died. “He didn’t tell me the time or date, or name of the hotel, but I trusted my friend completely. He was an honourable man. He was my successor as the publisher of Sweden’s largest bookfirm, Prisma. He was of completely clear mind, and I rang later to reconfirm the details. He was very upset with the Swedish government.”
Lacking many details, Edling tried unsuccessfully to find confirmation elsewhere. Hökby’s wife and children didn’t know. He was worried. As a documentary maker, writer and TV channel owner, he had a reputation to protect. “The Swedish government would have slaughtered me.” To calm his mind, he put his findings into a novel; and, a few years later, wrote one article, but there was no follow-up. “I find that amazing,” he said. Then he did find the Bofors official, one Sigvard Ando, who witnessed the handover. “I asked: Were you there when Bofors handed over the money to Gandhi? He nodded.” He left it at that, sitting on his secret, until approached last week. Another source close to the Swedish foreign ministry contacted by me backed up Edling’s account that Hökby had a story to tell: the ageing ex-diplomat had told one or two close colleagues that he had “been there when Gandhi was paid” though the source says this was never followed up.
Gandhi Wanted to reduce dependence on domestic funding
Why would he do it? Investigators and observers of politics that I spoke to suggested that Gandhi wanted this one off foreign cash injection to use for his Congress party’s re-election campaign money to free his party’s humiliating financial dependence on Indian businessmen’s donations, who would then often lobby for legislation or favours. Of course, they said, they could not rule out the possibility that the money would be used for Gandhi’s own personal purposes.
Gandhi might have assuaged his conscience by arguing that, since the usual money Bofors or any other arms firm would have paid to middlemen, to be dispensed to army generals and civil servants had instead been channelled to Quattrocchi and to himself directly, he was after all true to his pledge to reduce the aggregate level of corruption in Indian society.
Congress in trouble
What would be the consequences if Gandhi’s personal receipt of bribes were proven true? While revelation about the bribes I no doubt embarrassing for the Swedish social democrats’ reputation in the world today, in Sweden itself the revelations would have had a greater impact 15 years ago: since then a number of books have been written about Bofors scandal, and the fact that Swedish government officials knew of the bribes is not exactly shocking news. “It is a long time ago, and no one in Sweden cares,” said one. The effects in India may be greater, since Rajiv’s direct involvement would come down as a bombshell. The Bofors scandal still hurts, as January’s storm over the Quattrocchi accounts shows. One source said it would implicate Sonia Gandhi as a liar and lose Congress the next election. Having been out of power so long, Bofors could put them out of power gain.
Monday, January 02, 2006
A trip across Africa
We stopped for lunch by a stream. Alex and I forded across some white stones to get to the other side. We picked up some loose branches and broke them in half. We jumped back across the stream and picked up some stones from the river. We arranged the stones in a circle, stacked the large sticks in a circle pointing inwards and put some grass on top. I lit a match.
Alex leapt up to the car and grabbed a jerry can. He poured some of its contents over the wood. Petrol.
I gave him a lighted match. he threw it into the fire it lit up with a whoosh. "Brain beats brawn. That's the fruits of a 30,000-pound education," he said. I liked him for saying that.
* * *
I sank onto Mandy's towel.
"We've come all this way to go to fucking Benidorm?"
" Alex bought a frisbee in one of the shops behind the beach He looks happy, doesn't he."
Alex's long. blond hair flowed loose over his shoulders. The muscles on his hairless torso rippled as he jumped to try and catch the frisbee. A silver cross necklace glinted in the sun. He hadn't noticed me.
She hadn't shooed me away, so I remained on her towel, sitting with my knees drawn up and squinting at the white horses on the sea.
Alex caught the frisbee. It was Willem's turn to be in the middle. Willem came up to me, kicking deep into the sand as he walked. He collapsed onto hid sand-covered towel. His black sleeveless T-shirt was drenched in sweat.
"Oh, man. Alex is too hungry for me."
"Nice map-reading. You chose the most secluded spot on the entire coast."
Willem was lying with his eyes shut.
"Give me a break, man. All the roads had signs to Benidorm. A beach's a beach." The others plodded up to us.
Alex wore cut-off jeans with fashionable tassels. Alex smiled and said "Allright. mate.". "Funny the games always end when it's Willem's turn," said Alex, spread-eagled on his towel. His hair was swept back, his eyes shut, cross heaving on his torso.
No one answered. Nikki splashed on some more Ambre Solaire onto her legs and turned onto her stomach.
Alex came back from the telephone box. He had bad news. He had retakes. He had to go back to London, but promised to return if he could in Kano. His girlfriend, went with him.
"What is the biggest difficulty?" I asked.
"Difficulties. Drunk soldiers, sandstorms, misnavigation. Breaking down. All in the desert." said Willem
"Misnavigation...getting lost, you mean. Is that a real possibility?"
"Yes, it is possible. Many people die every year in the Sahara. More than die sailing the Pacific or climbing in the Himalayas."
"We have got all the maps, I hope. And compasses?"
"You have to buy large-scale desert maps in Tamanrasset, the last town before the deep desert in Algeria. They show every sand dune. Yes, I have a compass.
"Let's go into a cafe," said Mandy. I nodded dumbly. I needed an espresso.
We went into the cafe Nacional. A talk radio programme echoed in the tal ceiling. A table fan on the bar counter blew a breeze. The barman was reading the paper, despite the semi-darkness. There was a smell of stale olive oil. There were only two other customers. An old man sipped a black coffee carefully in a corner. He wore a beret. The other customer was munching a big salami sandwich and gulping down a big coffee with milk. The clatter of the cup on the saucer echoed in the cafe.
There were crumbs on the formica table. They didn't make bars like this in Spain
anymore. All was missing was the Franco portrait, and I could see a white space on the wall up where the flies were buzzing where a portrait might once have hung. I ordered two coffees from the counter and went outside.
Mandy was sitting with her head in her hands. She had chosen I ordered two black coffees and sat down. Mandy looked up and gave me her biggest, whitest grin.
“I thought you were going to get back together,” I said. .
;
Mandy squinted and looked out on the highway. She tracked the trajectory of a
motorbike until it had weeeeeAAHHHHHHHHHOOoooeeewed past us. It was very quiet. Some coins pi inked on the counter inside. The man with beret walked out, casting aquick glance at us. I looked at my watch, 11 am. "Eso es Radio Nacional d'Espana FM. Noveinte-seis, punto uno. Peep-peep-peep. Ahora, en la guerra en Iraq..." Someone turned the radio down. The Mexican revolutionary
look-alike bar-owner came and took our coffees away. "Algo mas?"
"Dos cervezas," I said.
Before I had closed my mouth, Mandy leaned over the table and kissed me. We kissed and we kissed until I pulled tway when the waiter coughed and put two
beers' on the table. She tasted of coffee and something sweet. .
Still dizzy with Mandy's sweet taste in my mouth, I went into to pay for the beers and the coffees. The bar owner looked up from his paper and stared at me with baggy eyes. “Cinco euros."
* * *
There is a certain age when many men buy a boat and go
to sea. The desert is a kind of sea. The desert poured past, the light as blinding as
darkness, the sand as white as snowfield. Stones and gravel, gravel and sand, sand and stones.
Heat distorts perception, perhaps it was one hour or many.
It was early evening now, and dunes – huge dunes could be seen for miles away,
I was glad to see trees: when the ground is flat, thE sky sinks. Trees raise the sky by being big yet thereis so much further to go. It was an oasis – there were some berber mud houses. We parked and ate some dates off the trees.
We began to climb, at the top of the dune, we saw a quilt of dunes, set in relief by the sun, stretching to the horizon. Then the stars came out, billions of them. The stars were like green chandeliers….I switchED on the shortwave radio. Above me is a wonderful
sense of cool, listening to the rise and fall of interference, the rolling of the huge roaring breakers
of space…..I sent a text message to Brussels. There is no reply.
***
We drove all day, until there were just two things on my vision, a faint black band, which danced all the time before my eyes, and two giant spaces of blinding whiteness on either side. Three vehicles passed us, heading north. This was the motorway of the Saharan desert, the only tarmacked road in any of the Saharan countries that headed this far south. At nine, after the whiteness had dissolved into another technicolor sunset and our world had shrunk to a cone of worn asphalt in front of the headlights, the first streetlights started lining the road. There was an unbelievable sense of relief at returning to civilisation. We drove into the town, endless rows of cubes that shone ghostly white in the street lights. These were divided off by a grid of very wide streets, a nothingness of heat and space. We checked into a cheap hotel with turquoise walls and no airconditioning, and fell into a deep comatose sleep.
Tamanrasset was the last outpost. It was in the middle of nothing, thousands of kilometres either way of emptiness.
You could draw a straight line from the Atlantic ocean to the Nile and you wouldn't come across a single habitation, except this town of 15,000, marked as a black circle on the Michelin map. This was the biggest settlement between EI Golea, thousand kilometres to the north and almost in the Algerian Mediterranean, and Arlit, a Uranium-mining town in northern Niger which was our next inhabited destination. We felt as remote as a moon base
We stayed three days, filling up with food and water, petrol, and drinking beers at five pounds a bottle at the hotel Meerhaba.
Our brief rendez-vous with air-conditioning seemed like a dream. Civilisation was an abnormality, a freak, and the flatness, the eternally blue sky, and the sun seemed perfectly normal. As soon as the tarmac ended, the piste, the series of tyre racks that sprawled in every direction, like a railway station switchyard. At the Algerian border post, we said goodbye to our guide, Mohamed.
** *
The other soldiers looked on, thin, black charcoal sketches squatting silently under the wilting palm trees. They looked like famine victims in uniform. Their olive coloured tunics hung loosely over concave torsoes. Their small heads were dwarfed by the helmets which looked like enormous green cloches hovering over small globes of charred Christmas pudding. It reminded me of pictures I had seen of the south Vietnamese army, tiny orientals in GI uniforms designed for beefy
Midwesterners.
Their skin seemed to absorb the light; you couldn't make out individual features.
Except for their eyes, white slits which stared at us impassively. One of the soldiers whisked away sandflies with the palm of his hand, keeping his gaze fixed on us.
Another took a sip of his beer, looking at us down his nose as he swigged the
bottle.
The Algerians, with their generous, semitic features, rounded noses, faint body
odour and stomachs that strained against and flopped over their belts seemed like
amiable buffoons compared to this impassive concentration,
"Eh. Monsieur et madame. Qu'est-ce que vous voulez?" said the leader, standing in front of the car now and dragging on his cigarette slowly. He wore Ray Ban pilots'
shades which reflected a wide streak of blue from the car
"Nous pouvons passer la frontiere cet apres-midi?," I said.
He took another drag of his cigarette. Waiting. They had plenty of time to kill out
here. We were the only car.
"La frontiere?" .
Not understanding. As if he's been drugged or asleep and just woken up.
"Oui, la frontiere. C'est la frontiere, non?"
"Oui, C'est la frontiere."
"Voulez-vous les passports?"
He took another drag of his cigarette and threw it into the dust. The shadows were
still staring at us. They still hadn't moved, except to take the occasional swig from
their bottles, one hand on their M-Sixteens jammed in the sand.
"Oui. Tous les documents de la voiture," the boss said finally.
Mandy brought out of the glove compartment our money belt containg passports,
all documents relating to the car and vaccination certificates. She hesitated. He
waited. Then she handed it over to him.
He walked off to one of the sheds.
One of the soldiers took another swig of his beer. Mandy shielded her eyes from the sun that was saying goodbye on the horizon,
The Boss returned after twenty minutes.
"Why were you deported?" he said in French. "Deported?" I said. I didn't know what
he was on about. I had never been deported from anywhere.
He showed me. A stamp on page six said: "Departed New Zealand 12 August 1988. Auckland Airport."
"I departed not deported. Can you hear the difference. It means 'parti', not
'deporte'. "
I grabbed the passport from his limp hands.
"Look. Here it says, departed from Australia, departed from India, departed from Malaysia. You don't think I have been deported from all these countries, do you? I'm not an international criminal, you know."
He wasn't smiling. Instead he took out two more documents from under his arm. These were the international vaccination certificates, small yellow booklets with stamps of the typhoid, cholera, and other anti-tropical disease jabs we had both had.
"Vous n'avez pas ete vaccine contre la fievre jaune."
"Oh yes I have. Look here."
I showed him. It was on the last page, a stamp which said in English "Yellow Fever"
and the date.
He didn't bat an eyelid as he took out the car documents. Our laissez-passer through North Africa fell out of the plastic folder and settled in the sand. That was useless now.
"Ou est votre carnet de passage."
"Carnet de passage?"
"Can we buy one now?"
He looked away. I could see the whites in the corner of his eyes now. The light caught his skin, a
and I could see it was shiny, like polished ebony.
"A demain." In an African accent uh-de-mun.
Tomorrow.
"What time?"
He tensed his cheek muscles. He had scars on his cheek, tribal markings inscribed at puberty that make every Hausa look as if he has been in a Harlem street fight. "A demain." he said again and swung on his heels
Had I more space I would have described the roadblocks every
kilometre or so in Niger and Nigeria, which were sometimes just rope suspended
between posts, other times the whole barbed wire, burning-tyre set-up. Always they
were manned, either by men in uniforms of varying completeness, sometimes tunic
over a bare chest and shorts, or by men in full guerilla-surpression battle gear
armed with M-16s which they used to wave in our faces when they demanded our passports.
If I had more space I would have described driving on the one tarmacked road in the whole of Niger, signs showing that it was built by the European Community and a cornucopia of
road signs which were useless because there wasn't a single other motorised vehicle using the road. The Africans always seemed to be crossing the road, like ants carrying sacks and
pots and sticks between clusters of grass huts which grew out of the dust-brown,
In Cameroun, the mud tracks through the jungle
were so churned up by the monsoons that it took days to travel between
neighbouring villages, a distance of a few kilometres. At the end of each day, we'd
look like mudwrestlers after sometimes hours of digging the car out of bogged
down positions. Going up the hills, you could usually fishtail upwards, jerking the
wheel raipidly in both directions to get enough momentum to stay up and go
onwards. But when we were going on the flats, and encountered some of those
water-logged holes which were large enough to swallow a large lorry, there was no
way to go forwards but to go through, which meant a lot of digging and manouvring
with the sand ladders - here used, of course, for the same purpose. When there was a really difficult stretch, we just queued up with all the other trucks and four
wheel drives who had to be somewhere yesterday and waited for a government
owned bulldozer to arrive and tow each of us to safety. They were long waits, and
though most of the negroes took it stoically, slepping in the cabs or playing cards
on upturned sopaboxes, a few were ready to pay almost any price to get through.
Gangs of a dozen men would assemble and try to push the eager driver's car
through the mud, which sometimes worked, Sometimes didn't. At any rate it was
very dangerous because the car, which always spun dresses of mud, sometimes slipped backwards or sideways onto the pushers. Once, one of them had to be
carried away. We were told he was dead.
At one particulary intractable hill, we had waited for three days in the rain for the
bulldozer when we tried to do it ourselves. We had pushed the car half-way up,
without the help of the waiting black drivers, who sat around laughing at our efforts,
when Toyoto pickup bounded at top speed over the crest from the other side and
smashed into the side of the Landrever, throwing me harmlessly into the mud.
It took minutes for the assembled blacks to calm the man, whose facial veins were
almost bursting and eyes almost popping as he hurled abuse at us - although of
course the crash was his fault.
It took us three weeks before the car arrived in Douala, mud-spattered and slightly
battered. Up to then, we had had many chances to talk to local villagers, who took
great delight at watching the mud-crossing spectacle. One of the most intelligent
was a primary schoolteacher who looked incruously plump and out of place in his
safari suit and wire-frame glasses. He spoke fluent English; this was the English
speaking part of a country divided not only by hundreds of tribal languages but two
colonial languages too, the result of the country originally being split into French
and English rule.
"Why don't you have any tarmac roads?"
"The French-speakers dominate the government, therefore they spend all the state
money on imroving the roads in the French-speakers' sector."
"Is it a big problem for you, these mudroads?"
"It ensure that we will always remain the most backward part of the country. It's
quicker to get to Lagos than to the nearest Cameroonian village with a tarmac road
leading to the rest of the country - that village is French-speaking of course."
"Why don't you English speakers revolt, or refuse to pay your taxes."
Once or twice we would sneak into the Hilton toilets to try and wash ourselves,
stealing the complimentary soaps and making monkey faces in the life-size mirrors,
looking a bit like monkeys ourselves in our unshaven state and mudstained
clothes, until white men in suits came into pee, their faces almost a luminous white
in the fluorescent strip-lighting. They would look at us disapprovingly and we knew
then we'd spent too long in Africa.
The palm trees have gone now, to be replaced by another kind of jungle.
It ended, then it really ended. the rain pounded the terminal roof like machine-gun
fire and the baggage handlers had taken shelter under the planes, rainsodden birds, dancing to their own private gigs.
"Cheers to that most contagious of tropical diseases."
"Do you feel better?"
"Much better," she said.
"Sometimes distance is a better healer than time."
"Time, distance - two sides of the same coin.
Alex leapt up to the car and grabbed a jerry can. He poured some of its contents over the wood. Petrol.
I gave him a lighted match. he threw it into the fire it lit up with a whoosh. "Brain beats brawn. That's the fruits of a 30,000-pound education," he said. I liked him for saying that.
* * *
I sank onto Mandy's towel.
"We've come all this way to go to fucking Benidorm?"
" Alex bought a frisbee in one of the shops behind the beach He looks happy, doesn't he."
Alex's long. blond hair flowed loose over his shoulders. The muscles on his hairless torso rippled as he jumped to try and catch the frisbee. A silver cross necklace glinted in the sun. He hadn't noticed me.
She hadn't shooed me away, so I remained on her towel, sitting with my knees drawn up and squinting at the white horses on the sea.
Alex caught the frisbee. It was Willem's turn to be in the middle. Willem came up to me, kicking deep into the sand as he walked. He collapsed onto hid sand-covered towel. His black sleeveless T-shirt was drenched in sweat.
"Oh, man. Alex is too hungry for me."
"Nice map-reading. You chose the most secluded spot on the entire coast."
Willem was lying with his eyes shut.
"Give me a break, man. All the roads had signs to Benidorm. A beach's a beach." The others plodded up to us.
Alex wore cut-off jeans with fashionable tassels. Alex smiled and said "Allright. mate.". "Funny the games always end when it's Willem's turn," said Alex, spread-eagled on his towel. His hair was swept back, his eyes shut, cross heaving on his torso.
No one answered. Nikki splashed on some more Ambre Solaire onto her legs and turned onto her stomach.
Alex came back from the telephone box. He had bad news. He had retakes. He had to go back to London, but promised to return if he could in Kano. His girlfriend, went with him.
"What is the biggest difficulty?" I asked.
"Difficulties. Drunk soldiers, sandstorms, misnavigation. Breaking down. All in the desert." said Willem
"Misnavigation...getting lost, you mean. Is that a real possibility?"
"Yes, it is possible. Many people die every year in the Sahara. More than die sailing the Pacific or climbing in the Himalayas."
"We have got all the maps, I hope. And compasses?"
"You have to buy large-scale desert maps in Tamanrasset, the last town before the deep desert in Algeria. They show every sand dune. Yes, I have a compass.
"Let's go into a cafe," said Mandy. I nodded dumbly. I needed an espresso.
We went into the cafe Nacional. A talk radio programme echoed in the tal ceiling. A table fan on the bar counter blew a breeze. The barman was reading the paper, despite the semi-darkness. There was a smell of stale olive oil. There were only two other customers. An old man sipped a black coffee carefully in a corner. He wore a beret. The other customer was munching a big salami sandwich and gulping down a big coffee with milk. The clatter of the cup on the saucer echoed in the cafe.
There were crumbs on the formica table. They didn't make bars like this in Spain
anymore. All was missing was the Franco portrait, and I could see a white space on the wall up where the flies were buzzing where a portrait might once have hung. I ordered two coffees from the counter and went outside.
Mandy was sitting with her head in her hands. She had chosen I ordered two black coffees and sat down. Mandy looked up and gave me her biggest, whitest grin.
“I thought you were going to get back together,” I said. .
;
Mandy squinted and looked out on the highway. She tracked the trajectory of a
motorbike until it had weeeeeAAHHHHHHHHHOOoooeeewed past us. It was very quiet. Some coins pi inked on the counter inside. The man with beret walked out, casting aquick glance at us. I looked at my watch, 11 am. "Eso es Radio Nacional d'Espana FM. Noveinte-seis, punto uno. Peep-peep-peep. Ahora, en la guerra en Iraq..." Someone turned the radio down. The Mexican revolutionary
look-alike bar-owner came and took our coffees away. "Algo mas?"
"Dos cervezas," I said.
Before I had closed my mouth, Mandy leaned over the table and kissed me. We kissed and we kissed until I pulled tway when the waiter coughed and put two
beers' on the table. She tasted of coffee and something sweet. .
Still dizzy with Mandy's sweet taste in my mouth, I went into to pay for the beers and the coffees. The bar owner looked up from his paper and stared at me with baggy eyes. “Cinco euros."
* * *
There is a certain age when many men buy a boat and go
to sea. The desert is a kind of sea. The desert poured past, the light as blinding as
darkness, the sand as white as snowfield. Stones and gravel, gravel and sand, sand and stones.
Heat distorts perception, perhaps it was one hour or many.
It was early evening now, and dunes – huge dunes could be seen for miles away,
I was glad to see trees: when the ground is flat, thE sky sinks. Trees raise the sky by being big yet thereis so much further to go. It was an oasis – there were some berber mud houses. We parked and ate some dates off the trees.
We began to climb, at the top of the dune, we saw a quilt of dunes, set in relief by the sun, stretching to the horizon. Then the stars came out, billions of them. The stars were like green chandeliers….I switchED on the shortwave radio. Above me is a wonderful
sense of cool, listening to the rise and fall of interference, the rolling of the huge roaring breakers
of space…..I sent a text message to Brussels. There is no reply.
***
We drove all day, until there were just two things on my vision, a faint black band, which danced all the time before my eyes, and two giant spaces of blinding whiteness on either side. Three vehicles passed us, heading north. This was the motorway of the Saharan desert, the only tarmacked road in any of the Saharan countries that headed this far south. At nine, after the whiteness had dissolved into another technicolor sunset and our world had shrunk to a cone of worn asphalt in front of the headlights, the first streetlights started lining the road. There was an unbelievable sense of relief at returning to civilisation. We drove into the town, endless rows of cubes that shone ghostly white in the street lights. These were divided off by a grid of very wide streets, a nothingness of heat and space. We checked into a cheap hotel with turquoise walls and no airconditioning, and fell into a deep comatose sleep.
Tamanrasset was the last outpost. It was in the middle of nothing, thousands of kilometres either way of emptiness.
You could draw a straight line from the Atlantic ocean to the Nile and you wouldn't come across a single habitation, except this town of 15,000, marked as a black circle on the Michelin map. This was the biggest settlement between EI Golea, thousand kilometres to the north and almost in the Algerian Mediterranean, and Arlit, a Uranium-mining town in northern Niger which was our next inhabited destination. We felt as remote as a moon base
We stayed three days, filling up with food and water, petrol, and drinking beers at five pounds a bottle at the hotel Meerhaba.
Our brief rendez-vous with air-conditioning seemed like a dream. Civilisation was an abnormality, a freak, and the flatness, the eternally blue sky, and the sun seemed perfectly normal. As soon as the tarmac ended, the piste, the series of tyre racks that sprawled in every direction, like a railway station switchyard. At the Algerian border post, we said goodbye to our guide, Mohamed.
** *
The other soldiers looked on, thin, black charcoal sketches squatting silently under the wilting palm trees. They looked like famine victims in uniform. Their olive coloured tunics hung loosely over concave torsoes. Their small heads were dwarfed by the helmets which looked like enormous green cloches hovering over small globes of charred Christmas pudding. It reminded me of pictures I had seen of the south Vietnamese army, tiny orientals in GI uniforms designed for beefy
Midwesterners.
Their skin seemed to absorb the light; you couldn't make out individual features.
Except for their eyes, white slits which stared at us impassively. One of the soldiers whisked away sandflies with the palm of his hand, keeping his gaze fixed on us.
Another took a sip of his beer, looking at us down his nose as he swigged the
bottle.
The Algerians, with their generous, semitic features, rounded noses, faint body
odour and stomachs that strained against and flopped over their belts seemed like
amiable buffoons compared to this impassive concentration,
"Eh. Monsieur et madame. Qu'est-ce que vous voulez?" said the leader, standing in front of the car now and dragging on his cigarette slowly. He wore Ray Ban pilots'
shades which reflected a wide streak of blue from the car
"Nous pouvons passer la frontiere cet apres-midi?," I said.
He took another drag of his cigarette. Waiting. They had plenty of time to kill out
here. We were the only car.
"La frontiere?" .
Not understanding. As if he's been drugged or asleep and just woken up.
"Oui, la frontiere. C'est la frontiere, non?"
"Oui, C'est la frontiere."
"Voulez-vous les passports?"
He took another drag of his cigarette and threw it into the dust. The shadows were
still staring at us. They still hadn't moved, except to take the occasional swig from
their bottles, one hand on their M-Sixteens jammed in the sand.
"Oui. Tous les documents de la voiture," the boss said finally.
Mandy brought out of the glove compartment our money belt containg passports,
all documents relating to the car and vaccination certificates. She hesitated. He
waited. Then she handed it over to him.
He walked off to one of the sheds.
One of the soldiers took another swig of his beer. Mandy shielded her eyes from the sun that was saying goodbye on the horizon,
The Boss returned after twenty minutes.
"Why were you deported?" he said in French. "Deported?" I said. I didn't know what
he was on about. I had never been deported from anywhere.
He showed me. A stamp on page six said: "Departed New Zealand 12 August 1988. Auckland Airport."
"I departed not deported. Can you hear the difference. It means 'parti', not
'deporte'. "
I grabbed the passport from his limp hands.
"Look. Here it says, departed from Australia, departed from India, departed from Malaysia. You don't think I have been deported from all these countries, do you? I'm not an international criminal, you know."
He wasn't smiling. Instead he took out two more documents from under his arm. These were the international vaccination certificates, small yellow booklets with stamps of the typhoid, cholera, and other anti-tropical disease jabs we had both had.
"Vous n'avez pas ete vaccine contre la fievre jaune."
"Oh yes I have. Look here."
I showed him. It was on the last page, a stamp which said in English "Yellow Fever"
and the date.
He didn't bat an eyelid as he took out the car documents. Our laissez-passer through North Africa fell out of the plastic folder and settled in the sand. That was useless now.
"Ou est votre carnet de passage."
"Carnet de passage?"
"Can we buy one now?"
He looked away. I could see the whites in the corner of his eyes now. The light caught his skin, a
and I could see it was shiny, like polished ebony.
"A demain." In an African accent uh-de-mun.
Tomorrow.
"What time?"
He tensed his cheek muscles. He had scars on his cheek, tribal markings inscribed at puberty that make every Hausa look as if he has been in a Harlem street fight. "A demain." he said again and swung on his heels
Had I more space I would have described the roadblocks every
kilometre or so in Niger and Nigeria, which were sometimes just rope suspended
between posts, other times the whole barbed wire, burning-tyre set-up. Always they
were manned, either by men in uniforms of varying completeness, sometimes tunic
over a bare chest and shorts, or by men in full guerilla-surpression battle gear
armed with M-16s which they used to wave in our faces when they demanded our passports.
If I had more space I would have described driving on the one tarmacked road in the whole of Niger, signs showing that it was built by the European Community and a cornucopia of
road signs which were useless because there wasn't a single other motorised vehicle using the road. The Africans always seemed to be crossing the road, like ants carrying sacks and
pots and sticks between clusters of grass huts which grew out of the dust-brown,
In Cameroun, the mud tracks through the jungle
were so churned up by the monsoons that it took days to travel between
neighbouring villages, a distance of a few kilometres. At the end of each day, we'd
look like mudwrestlers after sometimes hours of digging the car out of bogged
down positions. Going up the hills, you could usually fishtail upwards, jerking the
wheel raipidly in both directions to get enough momentum to stay up and go
onwards. But when we were going on the flats, and encountered some of those
water-logged holes which were large enough to swallow a large lorry, there was no
way to go forwards but to go through, which meant a lot of digging and manouvring
with the sand ladders - here used, of course, for the same purpose. When there was a really difficult stretch, we just queued up with all the other trucks and four
wheel drives who had to be somewhere yesterday and waited for a government
owned bulldozer to arrive and tow each of us to safety. They were long waits, and
though most of the negroes took it stoically, slepping in the cabs or playing cards
on upturned sopaboxes, a few were ready to pay almost any price to get through.
Gangs of a dozen men would assemble and try to push the eager driver's car
through the mud, which sometimes worked, Sometimes didn't. At any rate it was
very dangerous because the car, which always spun dresses of mud, sometimes slipped backwards or sideways onto the pushers. Once, one of them had to be
carried away. We were told he was dead.
At one particulary intractable hill, we had waited for three days in the rain for the
bulldozer when we tried to do it ourselves. We had pushed the car half-way up,
without the help of the waiting black drivers, who sat around laughing at our efforts,
when Toyoto pickup bounded at top speed over the crest from the other side and
smashed into the side of the Landrever, throwing me harmlessly into the mud.
It took minutes for the assembled blacks to calm the man, whose facial veins were
almost bursting and eyes almost popping as he hurled abuse at us - although of
course the crash was his fault.
It took us three weeks before the car arrived in Douala, mud-spattered and slightly
battered. Up to then, we had had many chances to talk to local villagers, who took
great delight at watching the mud-crossing spectacle. One of the most intelligent
was a primary schoolteacher who looked incruously plump and out of place in his
safari suit and wire-frame glasses. He spoke fluent English; this was the English
speaking part of a country divided not only by hundreds of tribal languages but two
colonial languages too, the result of the country originally being split into French
and English rule.
"Why don't you have any tarmac roads?"
"The French-speakers dominate the government, therefore they spend all the state
money on imroving the roads in the French-speakers' sector."
"Is it a big problem for you, these mudroads?"
"It ensure that we will always remain the most backward part of the country. It's
quicker to get to Lagos than to the nearest Cameroonian village with a tarmac road
leading to the rest of the country - that village is French-speaking of course."
"Why don't you English speakers revolt, or refuse to pay your taxes."
Once or twice we would sneak into the Hilton toilets to try and wash ourselves,
stealing the complimentary soaps and making monkey faces in the life-size mirrors,
looking a bit like monkeys ourselves in our unshaven state and mudstained
clothes, until white men in suits came into pee, their faces almost a luminous white
in the fluorescent strip-lighting. They would look at us disapprovingly and we knew
then we'd spent too long in Africa.
The palm trees have gone now, to be replaced by another kind of jungle.
It ended, then it really ended. the rain pounded the terminal roof like machine-gun
fire and the baggage handlers had taken shelter under the planes, rainsodden birds, dancing to their own private gigs.
"Cheers to that most contagious of tropical diseases."
"Do you feel better?"
"Much better," she said.
"Sometimes distance is a better healer than time."
"Time, distance - two sides of the same coin.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Has Blair forgotten the European Research council?
Tony Blair is jeopardising his favourite EU projects by insisting on cuts to the EU budget.
Two months ago he very publicly gave his support to a new European Research Council, a new funding body that he hailed as the equivalent of America’s National Science Foundation.
The body aimed to help scientists wrest Nobel prizes away from the States. Britain is known to be in despair over Europe’s failure at science.
The idea was so simple it was surprising no one thought of it before: recreate the American system of science in Europe.
The means are: centralised science funding and creating a single market in research.
And lots of money. The ERC would have taken on an ossified European funding system that keeps science in separate national compartments. National research councils are Europe’s last monopolies.
The ERC would have been the first science funding body that accepted applications from all over Europe.
In the past, scientists were allowed to apply only to their national research council for money. This meant less competition as scientists researching similar things in different countries were not allowed to compete directly with each other.
The European Research council was supposed to invite scientists to compete cross border with each other and pick the best of them – awarding them with a larger sum of money than they would have received at national level.
This would have been an opportunity for east European scientists, talented yet hampered by their own cash strapped national research councils.
It would have inspired British scientists to work harder if they were invited to compete with the best of the rest of Europe, the government’s chief scientific officer told the Sprout recently. And the amount would have enabled European scientific projects to be able to compete directly with American ones.
One scientist, Jean Patrick Connerade, the chairman of Eurosciences, a lobby group, welcomed the ERC as a “chance to make Europe compete with America….It will bring the Nobel prizes back to Europe.”
Shortly after Blair’s speech, an ERC council was set up. But it has as yet no money to allocate funds. That depends on the outcome of the European budget discussions.
The portents do no look promising.
ERC’s proposed budget is 18 billion euros and was costed on the basis
that the EU’s funding would be a trillion euros over seven years. This amount was trimmed to 871 million euros by the Luxemboug presidency and 847 million euros by the British presidency.
The science budget faces the squeeze from this reduction since DG science asked for the biggest increase of all sectors. There is no money to cut from the other large sectors of EU spending. The agricultural budget is ring effectively fenced, and the east European member states want their regional development funds.
Whatever money is left over has to buy off other member states.
Everyone seems to have forgotten the ERC. There is no mention of it in the latest British budget proposal.
The British presidency published a revised budget proposal last week made up 8 billion euros a year for spending for science and economic growth.
It has included pet plans by the German chancellor and French president: a globalisation fund to help retrain workers laid of by competition from Asia.
There was also mention of getting a private financing facility assisted by the European Investment Bank to help fund research – a plan laid out by Chirac in the FT and le Figaro two months ago, to take pressure off the agricultural budget.
But no mention of the ERC. There is one other possibility.
The EU currently has an applied science budget of about five billion euros a year. – spent on development and technology.
The amount is clearly not now going to be doubled. It won’t be cut.
A source inside the commission said that ERC funding would, in extremis, be taken from this money. But it is halve spending on development and technology and that too is likely to be unacceptable
AT best it will be a very underfunded ERC.
Goodbye Nobel prizes.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
European Research Council
A Nobel cause in jeopardy
In a European Union often associated with compromise and
averageness, something else is about arise: “A very
elitist idea,” admits Prof Jean Patrick Connerade, Lockyer professor
of physics at Imperial college.
It’s the European Research council, which will bring
national teams of basic research scientists into
direct competition for the first time – to see who is
the best of the best: “A champion’s league of European
scientists,” as someone put it.
The reward is enough money to conduct top end research
to compete with the best science in the world.
At the moment Europe’s national research councils ban researchers
from foreign universities from competing for their funds,
which are allocated instead to domestic research
teams, the best of whom – like Chelsea and the league title - can take their money
for granted.
Sir David King, the government’s chief scientific
officer, said recently: “Before, British researchers
could rest on their laurels, but an ERC grant is a
prize to fight for: it is a competitive mechanism to
get the best out of British researchers.”
The problem is – it might not happen. The two billion
euro ERC is part of a package of budget demands the commission has
asked the member states to vote for; the sum is hefty,
a doubling, to 70 bn euros over seven years, of what
already was the third largest item in the EU budget
and employed the largest number of commission staff in
Brussels.
To fit that in, two possibilities are that Jacques
Chirac concedes on the agricultural policy or, Tony
Blair and some of the other richer nation states agree
to an overall EU budget increase. Whether either of
these will happen is anyone’s guess, with Jacques
Chirac giving notice on Thursday that he would veto
any WTO demands to cut agricultural subsidies.
The past achievements of European science have given
these two behemoths anything but a good reason to
support funding it at its current level – let alone
give way on their red lines to give it a boost.
When asked the biggest thing what EU science had
achieved in the last
five years, a senior commission official admitted: a
vaccine for the wrong kind of bird flu.
The ERC is about basic science – which wins prizes.
Most of what the EU has so far funded has been
applied, which leads to economic growth
It hasn’t funded it effectively, it has been said.
Anyone who has engaged in the EU’s past science
programmes, Framework 6 (FP6), framework 5 etc, knows
the
bureaucratic hassle involved. Political correctness
demands collaborative projects across countries, with
complex accounting methods, difficult intellectual
property protection issues, poor communications, bad
synergies between the small Estonian start-ups and
large French universities, say.
The programmes have been top down, or targeted, which
meant commission administrators defined what areas of
science had to be researched.
Applications for funding have been criticised for
being unrewarding – applications are cumbersome, have a high
failure rate, and feedback is brief. Chris Leaver, the head of
the biochemistry society, said, echoing sentiments of
many researchers who complained in the European
parliament’s Marimon report of last year that looked
into European science: “If the ERC is going
to be anything like previous science programmes it
will be a disaster and no one will sign up for it.”
If that were the case, there would be little reason to
deprive one controversial programme – Jacques
Chirac’s beloved Common agricultural Policy – in order
to fund another.
But the ERC’s supporters say basic science is easier than
applied science to fund from the centre; whereas
applied science is best funded locally. Moreover,
basic science needs the broadest possible talent pool
to draw on; applied science needs to be administered
close to the location of research and development. In
fact, science in Europe should be run in exactly the
opposite way than it is done now.
The agency that selects proposals will probably be
based in Brussels, but the creativity-stifling
potential of Brussels bureaucracy will be at a
minimum, because the science will be bottom up – the
scientists will choose their own research priorities.
There will not be transnational consortia, but teams
based in one place, reducing IP and communication
problems. Independent evaluators will assure the
projects chosen are not based on the principle of
juste retour – where countries get back what they pay
into the ERC – but on scientific quality. This could
open up career opportunities for east European
researchers, currently limited by the underfundedness
of their own research councils, and whopse countries
probably would not be able to pay a lot into the ERC.
IThe ERC already has the support of the British
government – Tony Blair called it last week “Europe’s
equivalent to the US national science foundation” -
and the major European science associations, including
ithe European University association and heads of
national science councils, but it is not clear everyone is on board: Jacques
Chirac is in favour of promoting European R&D. That is
pretty universal view in Brussels.
But apart from not wanting to give way on his
agricultural budget, it is not clear whether he wants.
His article in the Financial Times on Wednesday
mentioned a 10bn euro startup instrument by the
European Investment Bank which would
attract private investment to the tune of 30bn euros –
a scheme one of whose advantages is presumably that it
doesn’t touch the EU budget, and therefore threaten
the common agricultural policy.
In Le Figaro, he wrote that the EU should pursue
grand programmes along the lines of those institutes
by France and Germany on nanotechnology and biotech;
it is unclear whether this is the ERC by another name
– with a French flavour. Or whether this is the ERC at
all. Or whether he does and this is just a feint to
turn the ERC's creation into a concession he can
extract from Blair, perhaps on the famed British
budget rebate.
Facing uncertainties about budgets and political will,
ERC supporters insist the advantages are clear:
with over 270 Nobel Prizes, the US leads the
next four nations – The UK, Germany, France and Sweden
added together, and the gap is growing. Europe has
lost 400,000 researchers to the US because scientists
there compete with the best of a talent pool drawn
from a nation of 300 million, and, if they win, get a
lot of
money to pursue their research. Winning back Nobel
prizes may not be everything, but it is a start: A
beacon to keep researchers in Europe, even if few will
be competing for ERC money. The association
Euroscience says a million extra scientists are needed
in Europe by 2010.
Then, Europe can deal with other problems, such as
getting industry and universities to work better
together - where current framework programmes have
shown a way ahead, of sorts: how not to do it: on an
international scale
In a European Union often associated with compromise and
averageness, something else is about arise: “A very
elitist idea,” admits Prof Jean Patrick Connerade, Lockyer professor
of physics at Imperial college.
It’s the European Research council, which will bring
national teams of basic research scientists into
direct competition for the first time – to see who is
the best of the best: “A champion’s league of European
scientists,” as someone put it.
The reward is enough money to conduct top end research
to compete with the best science in the world.
At the moment Europe’s national research councils ban researchers
from foreign universities from competing for their funds,
which are allocated instead to domestic research
teams, the best of whom – like Chelsea and the league title - can take their money
for granted.
Sir David King, the government’s chief scientific
officer, said recently: “Before, British researchers
could rest on their laurels, but an ERC grant is a
prize to fight for: it is a competitive mechanism to
get the best out of British researchers.”
The problem is – it might not happen. The two billion
euro ERC is part of a package of budget demands the commission has
asked the member states to vote for; the sum is hefty,
a doubling, to 70 bn euros over seven years, of what
already was the third largest item in the EU budget
and employed the largest number of commission staff in
Brussels.
To fit that in, two possibilities are that Jacques
Chirac concedes on the agricultural policy or, Tony
Blair and some of the other richer nation states agree
to an overall EU budget increase. Whether either of
these will happen is anyone’s guess, with Jacques
Chirac giving notice on Thursday that he would veto
any WTO demands to cut agricultural subsidies.
The past achievements of European science have given
these two behemoths anything but a good reason to
support funding it at its current level – let alone
give way on their red lines to give it a boost.
When asked the biggest thing what EU science had
achieved in the last
five years, a senior commission official admitted: a
vaccine for the wrong kind of bird flu.
The ERC is about basic science – which wins prizes.
Most of what the EU has so far funded has been
applied, which leads to economic growth
It hasn’t funded it effectively, it has been said.
Anyone who has engaged in the EU’s past science
programmes, Framework 6 (FP6), framework 5 etc, knows
the
bureaucratic hassle involved. Political correctness
demands collaborative projects across countries, with
complex accounting methods, difficult intellectual
property protection issues, poor communications, bad
synergies between the small Estonian start-ups and
large French universities, say.
The programmes have been top down, or targeted, which
meant commission administrators defined what areas of
science had to be researched.
Applications for funding have been criticised for
being unrewarding – applications are cumbersome, have a high
failure rate, and feedback is brief. Chris Leaver, the head of
the biochemistry society, said, echoing sentiments of
many researchers who complained in the European
parliament’s Marimon report of last year that looked
into European science: “If the ERC is going
to be anything like previous science programmes it
will be a disaster and no one will sign up for it.”
If that were the case, there would be little reason to
deprive one controversial programme – Jacques
Chirac’s beloved Common agricultural Policy – in order
to fund another.
But the ERC’s supporters say basic science is easier than
applied science to fund from the centre; whereas
applied science is best funded locally. Moreover,
basic science needs the broadest possible talent pool
to draw on; applied science needs to be administered
close to the location of research and development. In
fact, science in Europe should be run in exactly the
opposite way than it is done now.
The agency that selects proposals will probably be
based in Brussels, but the creativity-stifling
potential of Brussels bureaucracy will be at a
minimum, because the science will be bottom up – the
scientists will choose their own research priorities.
There will not be transnational consortia, but teams
based in one place, reducing IP and communication
problems. Independent evaluators will assure the
projects chosen are not based on the principle of
juste retour – where countries get back what they pay
into the ERC – but on scientific quality. This could
open up career opportunities for east European
researchers, currently limited by the underfundedness
of their own research councils, and whopse countries
probably would not be able to pay a lot into the ERC.
IThe ERC already has the support of the British
government – Tony Blair called it last week “Europe’s
equivalent to the US national science foundation” -
and the major European science associations, including
ithe European University association and heads of
national science councils, but it is not clear everyone is on board: Jacques
Chirac is in favour of promoting European R&D. That is
pretty universal view in Brussels.
But apart from not wanting to give way on his
agricultural budget, it is not clear whether he wants.
His article in the Financial Times on Wednesday
mentioned a 10bn euro startup instrument by the
European Investment Bank which would
attract private investment to the tune of 30bn euros –
a scheme one of whose advantages is presumably that it
doesn’t touch the EU budget, and therefore threaten
the common agricultural policy.
In Le Figaro, he wrote that the EU should pursue
grand programmes along the lines of those institutes
by France and Germany on nanotechnology and biotech;
it is unclear whether this is the ERC by another name
– with a French flavour. Or whether this is the ERC at
all. Or whether he does and this is just a feint to
turn the ERC's creation into a concession he can
extract from Blair, perhaps on the famed British
budget rebate.
Facing uncertainties about budgets and political will,
ERC supporters insist the advantages are clear:
with over 270 Nobel Prizes, the US leads the
next four nations – The UK, Germany, France and Sweden
added together, and the gap is growing. Europe has
lost 400,000 researchers to the US because scientists
there compete with the best of a talent pool drawn
from a nation of 300 million, and, if they win, get a
lot of
money to pursue their research. Winning back Nobel
prizes may not be everything, but it is a start: A
beacon to keep researchers in Europe, even if few will
be competing for ERC money. The association
Euroscience says a million extra scientists are needed
in Europe by 2010.
Then, Europe can deal with other problems, such as
getting industry and universities to work better
together - where current framework programmes have
shown a way ahead, of sorts: how not to do it: on an
international scale
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