The EU's science ministers have decided to push for a network of virtual European Technology Institute to please the Germans - a decision that may run aground in the European parliament., where an alternative idea is circulating. Either way, it’s not clear whether the EU’s dire science reputation will be improved.
Compared to its global rivals, the EU's science output leaves a lot to be desired – many universities are too focused on teaching, too parochial to attract private research funds or to persuade private science and technology firms to set up near the universities and commercialise their output. National borders have long meant a duplication of expertise - an expertise which, due to lack of competition and funding, remains at a low level, and this is the root of Europe's failure to produce innovation compared to the US, according to those in Brussels who worry about such things.
There are only 2 European universities in the global top 20 dominated by the US, according to a survey published by the university of Shanghai.
Last year a direct European rival to one of America's premier science institutions, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was mooted; the idea was to gather all the best European scientists under one roof, allow them to compete and stimulate each other, and fund them lavishly from the Brussels budget, hoping to apply to the result MIT's well known ability to turn science into commerce. The putative name was the European Institute of Technology.
Predictable nationalistic squabbles arose as to where such a prestigious institution would be situated, and it was ultimately ditched as being too expensive and taking too long to reach MIT's standards.
So the German government, which this spring holds the EU presidency, has come up with an alternative. Keen to do something for Europe's science deficit, Berlin last week brokered an agreement between the EU-27's science ministers for the creation of a virtual European institute of technology, consisting of a number of networks, " knowledge and information communities", KICs, linking already existing faculties with their counterparts across the EU.
A virtual ETI is not new: the commission has circulated these proposals before, but on a far more ambitious scale. The German's softly-softly, gradualist plan involves a modest €300m plan involving collaboration across two popular subject areas, energy and climate change, far short of the commission's ambitious proposals of a €2.4bn, but the scheme could expand if these first two areas of collaboration are successful, German science minister Annette Schavan told reporters. With tentative approval given at Wurzburg last week, Germany hopes to have the council's orientation ready by June and the regulation in place by December, for the first virtual networks to be in place by 2009.
However, the European parliament has commissioned a report that rubbishes the whole idea. The United Nations university in Maastricht, which carried out the survey on behalf of the EP, wrote that while a virtual network would fail to give added value to already established universities; the brand badge offered by the EIT would fail to attract graduates, the small scale of the KICs would fail to impact on the culture of either university or bring them together, so failing to be a vehicle for reform for research, funding or governance; it would divert money from already existing university spending and most importantly, studies showed that innovation benefited best from a staff and students working together in a single location under a stimulating research culture.
The report writes: "Experience and bibliometrical studies suggest that a stimulating physical environment of critical mass with high quality students and staff is the best predictor for high quality research, a fact that is reflected in the hiring practices of academic departments and research institutes."
So what to do then? The EP report proposes an intermediate solution, neither a single EIT nor a series of virtual networks. Rather - a series of physically located institutions, baby EITs or you like. Not based on capability across the board MIT but on smaller high quality US institutions such as the Salk laboratory for Vaccines in California, or the Spring Harbor genomics and cancer research institute in Long Island, the report envisages 20 institutes specialising in different areas. Each would have up to 300 staff and an annual budget of up to €70m. Their locations would be geographically balanced across the continent, relying in existing expertise. Each will be called European Technology Institute for Field X. Their themes will be derived from major problems identified by industry as drivers. At the moment, each EIT would probably be based out of current university complexes, thus removing a sense of threat they pose and challenging universities to "become leaders in the global knowledge economy in the area that particular EIT represents." Though they might get their own buildings and identity eventually
If the parliament adopts the recommendations of the impact assessment, will they be able to project this idea of the EITs over the German presidency’s virtual networks? The council is mightier than the parliament, though the latter's research and industry committee has been showing some clout in recent years under the chairmanship of the politically astute former Polish prime minister Jerzy Buzek, now an MEP and champion of scientific Gaullism that stands Europe tall against America in the science world. Science and technology are codecision issues, which means that parliament has an equal say in such legislation. It’s too early to say yet, for the legislative to-and-froing already set in train between lobbyists, civil servants, MEPs and national governments work in opaque ways. But it is clear that the parliament can put a stop to the Virtual networks.
The story wouldn’t end there.
The failure of Europe to succeed in the world today is also the failure of its science base, but nothing the EU has ever done in science – a vast area of competence, the second item in the EU budget after agriculture – has ever really given value for money. The just ended Framework 6 programme – one of many projects running concurrently – was heavily criticised by heads of the national science councils for the bureaucracy it imposed on scientists demanding grants.
In fact the basic science gap with the US seems to be accelerating even as the EU science budget grows, and ever more imaginative plans such as the EIT are put forward. Will this latest imaginative plan really break the spell?
The report enthuses that Dresden and Grenoble are already centres for nanotechnology; Stockholm’s Karolinska institute is a potential world leader in medicine; make these into European institutes of technology, start attracting the best talent across Europe, inject some EU science money, and let the Nobel prizes start rolling on. The UN report reckons this, at least is both more politically viable and more effective than abstract networks connecting already established universities, with a diffuse sense of esprit de corps, no firm sense of ownership, and little chance of impacting on the already existing institutions academic culture. But will it be good enough?
If it does win over science ministers, and then has a modicum of success at improving, EU science, it will be a turn up for the books.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Europe's autonomous agencies
Introduction
What if Europe could work better without the commission, or less of it? What if there could be a network of pan-European institutions serving the European citizen and the member states that can do what the commission can't do, or do it better? What if there could be a Europe that was more efficient, cheaper, closer to the citizen and the member state? What if there were institutions that gave a better, higher quality of information for policy-makers - and better information to the citizens - than currently provided by the civil servants working for the commission?
These are some of the questions that could be solved by the growth of a new type of European institution, the autonomous agency, usually based outside Brussels. Starting in 1994, their numbers have now grown to 32, with policy areas covering European airline certification and European food safety, and including several foreign policy and security areas. Their cost and staff numbers are relatively low - 1 billion euros a year, more than 3,000 staff - compared to national administrations.
But what are their benefits? And what are the challenges to their continued effectiveness?. To discuss the autonomous agencies and related matters, Friends of Europe brought together a distinguished panel of speakers for an evening debate, "The European Agencies; Who needs them?", on Monday 29 January. The panel's members comprised Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of the European Environment Agency, John Bowis MEP, member of the committee on public health and well versed in the autonomous agencies; and Kristian Schmidt, desputy head of cabinet for commissioner Siim Kallas.
Setting the scene
According to Jacqueline McGlade, the coordinator for the European community agencies, there are a few key messages
* "It's important to take the longer term view"
The agencies have been in the EU for over a decade. They have evolved piecemeal, with their own sets of rules; but where is the EU heading, and where do the agencies fit in?
* "Perhaps functionality of the European agencies need to be looked at again"
Strategy
Three times a year the heads of the 32 agencies meet up to discuss strategy, and for this occasion they assembled a set of profiles of three of the agencies to demonstrate their capabilities. The agencies differ in size, capabilities - some executive, some advisory - and funding. Some are funded by the commission; others funded by industry. But they possess at least some of the following four advantages; they emerged in a presentation by three different agencies before the discussion panel.
One advantage is that, since the agencies are usually based in the member states - the European Medicines Agency in London, the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen - they bring Europe closer to the citizen and to the nation state. A second advantage is that they can reduce bureaucracy, since the single European agency for setting standards can replace national agencies, in effect abolishing them.
A third is flexibility in decision-making. The commission is a large bureaucracy, but in demand-led areas such as medicines authorisation, the agencies' flexible management structure makes coping with a varying workload easier. A fourth advantage is that they are independent from political pressure, providing scientific advice independent of political pressure of nation states.
One example is the European Medicines Agency, which provides a single authorisation point for the 50 medicines brought onto the European market each year, standardising medicines across Europe, reducing costs for drugs firms and bringing medicine to the patient more quickly. Other agencies have other capabilities, some advisory, some with real executive powers. Size varies, so not all the advantages apply to all of them.
Challenges
In the panel discussion, issues that emerged that might prompt the agencies to re-examine the way they operate include:
* Is Europe really being brought closer to the citizen and the member state by the agencies - or further away? Does their independence come at the expense of accountability?
* Does reducing bureaucracy cause resistance from national and the Brussels civil service, hampering their efficiency?
* What are the cost implications of the growth in agencies?
Scenarios
Turn-out in the 2004 European elections was 45%, a far lower figure than in national elections. And it has nearly always been so: citizens in numerous polls attest to their sense of distance from the European project, culminating in the rejection of the European constitution in 2005 by the Dutch and French electorates. This sentiment is echoed by a similar sentiment of hostility by the administrations of some member states.
The problem of bringing "Europe to the citizen" has been a continuous concern for this commission. Do the autonomous agencies, decentralised as they are, provide a solution to the political distance, as McGlade suggests? She said: "Based outside Brussels, we hear a lot about Europe, a lot about what citizens think. As part of the European institutional family, we want to give a good impression of what the European Union can offer its citizens."
While panellist John Bowis agreed that the institutions he dealt with had "all been excellent" he wonders whether citizens and institutions back home were as aware of this: "National agencies have a liaison problem - even with the European Environmental Agency." Kristian Schmidt also wondered whether the agencies had such a high recognition in the member states, since many did not fly the European flag, and doubted whether passers-by would recognise their European function.
A further reason for their remoteness may be, ironically, the consequence of their raison d'etre: the agency concept received a big impetus in 1999 after a series of food scandals that impugned the impartiality of national food agencies prompted the creation of the important European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). It was created to provide impartial scientific advice to states, the commission and to citizens and draws on Europe-wide expertise.
Remote and unaccountable
EFSA has been followed by other agencies; so a success the independent agency may have been, despite the commission's constant urge to interfere, but in fact their roles have changed: the original idea was to separate policy work and science, with the commission standing for policy. But, says Schmidt: "This is no longer true. As agencies have gained in expertise, they are often tempted to do policy themselves. Knowledge is power. The DGs are already crumbling under the work of making sure legislation is being implemented in member states. And the question is: who do you have that runs policy: There is a danger of duplicating the work of the parent DG."
The criticism levelled at the legitimacy of unelected Brussels bureaucrats could be aimed with greater force at the policy making of scientific experts representing even less well-known institutions. Nick Hanley of DG Environment, who was in the audience, said: "Where does the buck stop. Who are the agencies accountable to?" Created as handmaidens to an already unaccountable institution, the commission, and having since evolved real policy making power, they could in fact be unaccountyable twice over – another factor aadding to their remoteness, despite being in the member states
Bureaucracies versus each other
Apart from the merits of their unbureaucratic structure, there has been a growth of agencies for two other reasons: partly in response to the fact that, as Bowis said, there has been something of an inflation for reasons of national prestige: "Every self respecting country wants one – the bigger ones want two", and partly because they fulfil a function: Europe needs more done, but the commission is under resourced to carry out the job. But does this expansion challenge the work of the commission, the national civil services or even both?
McGlade says: "Our PR is that whatever you [the citizen] do, we work for you", implying a growing range of areas of competence - even exclusive competences. One member of the audience said of the European Aviation Safety Agency, one of the more powerful agencies: "This agency does not sit on top of national aviation safety agencies, it replaces them. Industry is happy with this, since it replaces 27 'cops', with one 'cop'. But the national agencies, who sit on the board, are not happy. Because the European Aviation Safety Agency means their ultimate demise."
One could speculate that, in the same way turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, this is the reason why national agencies do not consult their European counterparts as much as they could: they do not want to contribute to their success, despite the reduction in bureaucracy and savings in cost. As John Bowis said: "People ask the European parliament all the time for European authorities, for instance a single pricing authority for the pharmaceutical industry - and that might make life easier for a lot of us -- but on the other hand you have civil servants in the member states who might feel threatened. If they sit on the boards, there will be a real mismatch."
The commission too, might not always be happy: Schmidt, of the commission, said a euro-sceptic public would not be fooled by decentralising EU work to EU civil servants in member states, implying that it would be "more transparent" to have them under the commission, was also sceptical whether scientific dynamism could be maintained amid low staff turnover of the smaller agencies, and complained that the smaller agencies, though ostensibly independent, turned back to the commission for procurement and recruitment procedures. In response to such carping, one audience member said later: "There is a turf war going on between the organisations."
Conclusions:
So what of their future?
The question whether they should replace ossified parts of the commission, by implication being accessory to its dismantlement, provocatively implied by host Giles Merritt, the head of Friends of Europe, would have to wait for another day. Panellists also drew back from his suggestion that the agencies should be "torn apart and put together again."
The panel agreed - with qualifications - that European Agencies were a good thing. John Bowis said; "There are too many, but all those I have dealt with have been excellent." Schmidt said: "Yes, we need them. Their services are clearly useful because markets and citizens clearly need them. We need to approve drugs, plants, and make railways interoperable."
But there were several ways to deal with the challenges: a way to solve the legitimacy problem would be, says Bowis, to put MEPs on the agencies' boards "who both know how the European parliament works and know the expert subject." Perhaps by replacing board members belonging to national agencies.
One way to contain costs would be to implement e-government by use of virtual agencies creating networks of staff and buildings from already established national agencies (and thus keeping national agencies intact.)
Another way could be to bring on board industry to pay for the agency; as industry sometimes benefits most from the agencies' existence.
To fight the danger a growth of agencies merely to satisfy the national pride of 27 member states, it was noted that several of the existing agencies have regular review clauses; John Bowis said henceforth these reviews should be made by independent bodies.
Schmidt said that new agencies should only follow impact assessments, and introduced following close consultation with public and parliament
McGlade said: "We have to recognise that perhaps we haven't got it right today. Functionality needs to be looked at again, in terms of services and delivery of many things to European citizens - security, solidarity, accountability, and promotion of our values across the world - all these demand a European response because they have to be delivered to each individual, an enormous task."
What if Europe could work better without the commission, or less of it? What if there could be a network of pan-European institutions serving the European citizen and the member states that can do what the commission can't do, or do it better? What if there could be a Europe that was more efficient, cheaper, closer to the citizen and the member state? What if there were institutions that gave a better, higher quality of information for policy-makers - and better information to the citizens - than currently provided by the civil servants working for the commission?
These are some of the questions that could be solved by the growth of a new type of European institution, the autonomous agency, usually based outside Brussels. Starting in 1994, their numbers have now grown to 32, with policy areas covering European airline certification and European food safety, and including several foreign policy and security areas. Their cost and staff numbers are relatively low - 1 billion euros a year, more than 3,000 staff - compared to national administrations.
But what are their benefits? And what are the challenges to their continued effectiveness?. To discuss the autonomous agencies and related matters, Friends of Europe brought together a distinguished panel of speakers for an evening debate, "The European Agencies; Who needs them?", on Monday 29 January. The panel's members comprised Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of the European Environment Agency, John Bowis MEP, member of the committee on public health and well versed in the autonomous agencies; and Kristian Schmidt, desputy head of cabinet for commissioner Siim Kallas.
Setting the scene
According to Jacqueline McGlade, the coordinator for the European community agencies, there are a few key messages
* "It's important to take the longer term view"
The agencies have been in the EU for over a decade. They have evolved piecemeal, with their own sets of rules; but where is the EU heading, and where do the agencies fit in?
* "Perhaps functionality of the European agencies need to be looked at again"
Strategy
Three times a year the heads of the 32 agencies meet up to discuss strategy, and for this occasion they assembled a set of profiles of three of the agencies to demonstrate their capabilities. The agencies differ in size, capabilities - some executive, some advisory - and funding. Some are funded by the commission; others funded by industry. But they possess at least some of the following four advantages; they emerged in a presentation by three different agencies before the discussion panel.
One advantage is that, since the agencies are usually based in the member states - the European Medicines Agency in London, the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen - they bring Europe closer to the citizen and to the nation state. A second advantage is that they can reduce bureaucracy, since the single European agency for setting standards can replace national agencies, in effect abolishing them.
A third is flexibility in decision-making. The commission is a large bureaucracy, but in demand-led areas such as medicines authorisation, the agencies' flexible management structure makes coping with a varying workload easier. A fourth advantage is that they are independent from political pressure, providing scientific advice independent of political pressure of nation states.
One example is the European Medicines Agency, which provides a single authorisation point for the 50 medicines brought onto the European market each year, standardising medicines across Europe, reducing costs for drugs firms and bringing medicine to the patient more quickly. Other agencies have other capabilities, some advisory, some with real executive powers. Size varies, so not all the advantages apply to all of them.
Challenges
In the panel discussion, issues that emerged that might prompt the agencies to re-examine the way they operate include:
* Is Europe really being brought closer to the citizen and the member state by the agencies - or further away? Does their independence come at the expense of accountability?
* Does reducing bureaucracy cause resistance from national and the Brussels civil service, hampering their efficiency?
* What are the cost implications of the growth in agencies?
Scenarios
Turn-out in the 2004 European elections was 45%, a far lower figure than in national elections. And it has nearly always been so: citizens in numerous polls attest to their sense of distance from the European project, culminating in the rejection of the European constitution in 2005 by the Dutch and French electorates. This sentiment is echoed by a similar sentiment of hostility by the administrations of some member states.
The problem of bringing "Europe to the citizen" has been a continuous concern for this commission. Do the autonomous agencies, decentralised as they are, provide a solution to the political distance, as McGlade suggests? She said: "Based outside Brussels, we hear a lot about Europe, a lot about what citizens think. As part of the European institutional family, we want to give a good impression of what the European Union can offer its citizens."
While panellist John Bowis agreed that the institutions he dealt with had "all been excellent" he wonders whether citizens and institutions back home were as aware of this: "National agencies have a liaison problem - even with the European Environmental Agency." Kristian Schmidt also wondered whether the agencies had such a high recognition in the member states, since many did not fly the European flag, and doubted whether passers-by would recognise their European function.
A further reason for their remoteness may be, ironically, the consequence of their raison d'etre: the agency concept received a big impetus in 1999 after a series of food scandals that impugned the impartiality of national food agencies prompted the creation of the important European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). It was created to provide impartial scientific advice to states, the commission and to citizens and draws on Europe-wide expertise.
Remote and unaccountable
EFSA has been followed by other agencies; so a success the independent agency may have been, despite the commission's constant urge to interfere, but in fact their roles have changed: the original idea was to separate policy work and science, with the commission standing for policy. But, says Schmidt: "This is no longer true. As agencies have gained in expertise, they are often tempted to do policy themselves. Knowledge is power. The DGs are already crumbling under the work of making sure legislation is being implemented in member states. And the question is: who do you have that runs policy: There is a danger of duplicating the work of the parent DG."
The criticism levelled at the legitimacy of unelected Brussels bureaucrats could be aimed with greater force at the policy making of scientific experts representing even less well-known institutions. Nick Hanley of DG Environment, who was in the audience, said: "Where does the buck stop. Who are the agencies accountable to?" Created as handmaidens to an already unaccountable institution, the commission, and having since evolved real policy making power, they could in fact be unaccountyable twice over – another factor aadding to their remoteness, despite being in the member states
Bureaucracies versus each other
Apart from the merits of their unbureaucratic structure, there has been a growth of agencies for two other reasons: partly in response to the fact that, as Bowis said, there has been something of an inflation for reasons of national prestige: "Every self respecting country wants one – the bigger ones want two", and partly because they fulfil a function: Europe needs more done, but the commission is under resourced to carry out the job. But does this expansion challenge the work of the commission, the national civil services or even both?
McGlade says: "Our PR is that whatever you [the citizen] do, we work for you", implying a growing range of areas of competence - even exclusive competences. One member of the audience said of the European Aviation Safety Agency, one of the more powerful agencies: "This agency does not sit on top of national aviation safety agencies, it replaces them. Industry is happy with this, since it replaces 27 'cops', with one 'cop'. But the national agencies, who sit on the board, are not happy. Because the European Aviation Safety Agency means their ultimate demise."
One could speculate that, in the same way turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, this is the reason why national agencies do not consult their European counterparts as much as they could: they do not want to contribute to their success, despite the reduction in bureaucracy and savings in cost. As John Bowis said: "People ask the European parliament all the time for European authorities, for instance a single pricing authority for the pharmaceutical industry - and that might make life easier for a lot of us -- but on the other hand you have civil servants in the member states who might feel threatened. If they sit on the boards, there will be a real mismatch."
The commission too, might not always be happy: Schmidt, of the commission, said a euro-sceptic public would not be fooled by decentralising EU work to EU civil servants in member states, implying that it would be "more transparent" to have them under the commission, was also sceptical whether scientific dynamism could be maintained amid low staff turnover of the smaller agencies, and complained that the smaller agencies, though ostensibly independent, turned back to the commission for procurement and recruitment procedures. In response to such carping, one audience member said later: "There is a turf war going on between the organisations."
Conclusions:
So what of their future?
The question whether they should replace ossified parts of the commission, by implication being accessory to its dismantlement, provocatively implied by host Giles Merritt, the head of Friends of Europe, would have to wait for another day. Panellists also drew back from his suggestion that the agencies should be "torn apart and put together again."
The panel agreed - with qualifications - that European Agencies were a good thing. John Bowis said; "There are too many, but all those I have dealt with have been excellent." Schmidt said: "Yes, we need them. Their services are clearly useful because markets and citizens clearly need them. We need to approve drugs, plants, and make railways interoperable."
But there were several ways to deal with the challenges: a way to solve the legitimacy problem would be, says Bowis, to put MEPs on the agencies' boards "who both know how the European parliament works and know the expert subject." Perhaps by replacing board members belonging to national agencies.
One way to contain costs would be to implement e-government by use of virtual agencies creating networks of staff and buildings from already established national agencies (and thus keeping national agencies intact.)
Another way could be to bring on board industry to pay for the agency; as industry sometimes benefits most from the agencies' existence.
To fight the danger a growth of agencies merely to satisfy the national pride of 27 member states, it was noted that several of the existing agencies have regular review clauses; John Bowis said henceforth these reviews should be made by independent bodies.
Schmidt said that new agencies should only follow impact assessments, and introduced following close consultation with public and parliament
McGlade said: "We have to recognise that perhaps we haven't got it right today. Functionality needs to be looked at again, in terms of services and delivery of many things to European citizens - security, solidarity, accountability, and promotion of our values across the world - all these demand a European response because they have to be delivered to each individual, an enormous task."
Has eastern Europe too much influence?
Brussels is very anti-Russian at the moment, with opinion correspondingly pro-Baltic and pro-Polish. This stance is often reflected in the views of the local newspaper, the European Voice, which a few weeks ago ran an opinion piece by the former prime minister of Estonia, Maart Laar, saying the move of the Russian “unknown soldiers” in central Tallinn was merited.
It was pushing an open door, given the local mood. And in fact the paper
could have afforded to be a bit contrarian on this occasion, since on balance, I think, elite people in Brussels and in the UK have absorbed the Estonian (and Polish) worldview of Russia/Soviet history in general and applied this matrix of prejudice (right or wrong) to the statues issue in particular. In the EP debate which I sat through only one intervention came in favour of Russia, from a Latvian MEP whom I thought was heroic, and was almost hissed.
The newspaper, read by the Brussels elite, could have given some
highly intelligent Russian nationalist historian a platform, or failing that Anatol Lieven, who is sound on Russia, to put a cat among the pigeons.
There was no sense in the Laar article the fact that both the Estonian head of state, president
Toomas Ilves, and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt of Sweden, an important regional player, were reportedly against the move of the statue, according to Swedish press reports. As were a majority of Tallinners and a large
majority of its Russian component.
Bildt, who has many connections to eastern Europe, said something wise to the effect of letting
history lie, I can't remember, but I will state an argument which I think he'd approve if he wasn't constrained by the suffocating political correctness towards the Balts afflicting Scandinavians.
Leave the statues because we mustn’t forget, and leave the statues because we have to move on - and show ourselves superior to the regimes before us that famously tried to eradicate, manipulate, redraw the evidence of history left by others.
If Britain had moved all the statues of the murderers and rogues in its history it would start with the Marshal Haig statue in Whitehall and move on to the Cromwell statue outside the palace of Westminster.
They stay; and are part and the fabric and tapestry of the country's history.
If Estonia still exists in a 100 years time - if it hasn't been swept away by 50m British lager louts and French Moroccan unemployeds choosing to settle there under their rights as European citizens - they might regret not heeding the advice of wise old statesmen about leaving the statue in place as symbol, well to their uniqueness, their particular history, really.
Symbols are what you want them to be, and symbols change over time. What is now an unbearable still open wound can be in future a scar worn with rueful wisdom, perhaps even pride. If they were to purge every brick and stone with Estonian blood on it there wouldn't be anything left of the old town whose turrets and battlements Estonians now take pride in and attract tourists with.
But at least I have some sympathy for the Estonian position; it doesn't mean the rest of us - from bigger nations, with different perspectives - have to be led by nose by them. We are allowed to have our perspectives too.
I thought it was absolutely disgusting that Charles Tannock MEP whose countrymen benefited enormously from Russia taking on and defeating 90% of the German warmachine so that the Brits could have their little jolly-ho gentlemen's war in the western desert to suck on for sixty years couldn't bring himself to sound one note of moderation or perspective in the EP debate. An astonishing lack of graciousness towards Russia's 20m war dead.
As often, normal people, on blogs, were a bit more balanced, recognising that for Brits and French and many other Europeans the Russians *were* liberators, both directly and vicariously.
They pulled out of Austria; and would have pulled out of east Germany had they been given a guarantee of neutrality.
(When the UK was first rejected for membership of the Common Market in 1963 Ted Heath told the Macmillan Cabinet there were two main reasons for the failure.
First, De Gaulle was determined to build a French Atom Bomb, and was angry that Britain wouldn't help him with it. Second, Adenauer feared that Britain was tempted by the Soviet offer to end the Cold War - to withdraw from Eastern Europe in return for a permanently disarmed and neutral Germany. This "peace scare" was Adenauer's worst nightmare, since it would have meant his total political eclipse. He preferred Britain to be sidelined in Europe for this very reason.
I think Adenauer was absolutely right in believing that any British government guided by rational self-interest would eventually take up the Soviet offer. Amazingly, Britain never had such a government.)
So, perhaps tant pis for Estonia; not so bad for the rest of us.
One issue that hasn't been explored is that communist oppression wasn't between nations, but from a communist bureaucrat class that transcended nation - over their own peoples. It was highly convenient for these people to drape themselves in a nationalist garb when the wind changed and this became politic. Many of these these are now prominent, including the Estonian PM who moved the statue.
An issue that's really interesting is whether this stance on Russia is a sign of how the east European political class will take over the EU institutions. After all, communism schooled them to excel in a culture of bureaucratic infighting. Supported by an over represented quota of young commission staff from the new member states for whom Brussels is more of an attractive career than for nationals in countries with greater domestic career opportunities, east European ministers might see a virtue in sticking together on every issue, a sense of camaraderie based on a shared past combined with a shared appetite for west European cash handouts. Public opinion in Britain has grumbled a little and said that the reason why east Europeans win the Eurovision song contest is that they have learnt the virtues of total solidarity, voting only for each other and using their strength in nation state numbers to appoint of their members winners and pushing the paymasters of the song contest, the big EU states, take all the bottom places. There were many calls in Britain to pull out completely, since the country faces little prospect if ever asserting itself again. The new constitution gives less power to block decisions.
If EU politics comes to resemble Eurovision song contest
voting, the union’s popularity will surely sink to a new low.
It was pushing an open door, given the local mood. And in fact the paper
could have afforded to be a bit contrarian on this occasion, since on balance, I think, elite people in Brussels and in the UK have absorbed the Estonian (and Polish) worldview of Russia/Soviet history in general and applied this matrix of prejudice (right or wrong) to the statues issue in particular. In the EP debate which I sat through only one intervention came in favour of Russia, from a Latvian MEP whom I thought was heroic, and was almost hissed.
The newspaper, read by the Brussels elite, could have given some
highly intelligent Russian nationalist historian a platform, or failing that Anatol Lieven, who is sound on Russia, to put a cat among the pigeons.
There was no sense in the Laar article the fact that both the Estonian head of state, president
Toomas Ilves, and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt of Sweden, an important regional player, were reportedly against the move of the statue, according to Swedish press reports. As were a majority of Tallinners and a large
majority of its Russian component.
Bildt, who has many connections to eastern Europe, said something wise to the effect of letting
history lie, I can't remember, but I will state an argument which I think he'd approve if he wasn't constrained by the suffocating political correctness towards the Balts afflicting Scandinavians.
Leave the statues because we mustn’t forget, and leave the statues because we have to move on - and show ourselves superior to the regimes before us that famously tried to eradicate, manipulate, redraw the evidence of history left by others.
If Britain had moved all the statues of the murderers and rogues in its history it would start with the Marshal Haig statue in Whitehall and move on to the Cromwell statue outside the palace of Westminster.
They stay; and are part and the fabric and tapestry of the country's history.
If Estonia still exists in a 100 years time - if it hasn't been swept away by 50m British lager louts and French Moroccan unemployeds choosing to settle there under their rights as European citizens - they might regret not heeding the advice of wise old statesmen about leaving the statue in place as symbol, well to their uniqueness, their particular history, really.
Symbols are what you want them to be, and symbols change over time. What is now an unbearable still open wound can be in future a scar worn with rueful wisdom, perhaps even pride. If they were to purge every brick and stone with Estonian blood on it there wouldn't be anything left of the old town whose turrets and battlements Estonians now take pride in and attract tourists with.
But at least I have some sympathy for the Estonian position; it doesn't mean the rest of us - from bigger nations, with different perspectives - have to be led by nose by them. We are allowed to have our perspectives too.
I thought it was absolutely disgusting that Charles Tannock MEP whose countrymen benefited enormously from Russia taking on and defeating 90% of the German warmachine so that the Brits could have their little jolly-ho gentlemen's war in the western desert to suck on for sixty years couldn't bring himself to sound one note of moderation or perspective in the EP debate. An astonishing lack of graciousness towards Russia's 20m war dead.
As often, normal people, on blogs, were a bit more balanced, recognising that for Brits and French and many other Europeans the Russians *were* liberators, both directly and vicariously.
They pulled out of Austria; and would have pulled out of east Germany had they been given a guarantee of neutrality.
(When the UK was first rejected for membership of the Common Market in 1963 Ted Heath told the Macmillan Cabinet there were two main reasons for the failure.
First, De Gaulle was determined to build a French Atom Bomb, and was angry that Britain wouldn't help him with it. Second, Adenauer feared that Britain was tempted by the Soviet offer to end the Cold War - to withdraw from Eastern Europe in return for a permanently disarmed and neutral Germany. This "peace scare" was Adenauer's worst nightmare, since it would have meant his total political eclipse. He preferred Britain to be sidelined in Europe for this very reason.
I think Adenauer was absolutely right in believing that any British government guided by rational self-interest would eventually take up the Soviet offer. Amazingly, Britain never had such a government.)
So, perhaps tant pis for Estonia; not so bad for the rest of us.
One issue that hasn't been explored is that communist oppression wasn't between nations, but from a communist bureaucrat class that transcended nation - over their own peoples. It was highly convenient for these people to drape themselves in a nationalist garb when the wind changed and this became politic. Many of these these are now prominent, including the Estonian PM who moved the statue.
An issue that's really interesting is whether this stance on Russia is a sign of how the east European political class will take over the EU institutions. After all, communism schooled them to excel in a culture of bureaucratic infighting. Supported by an over represented quota of young commission staff from the new member states for whom Brussels is more of an attractive career than for nationals in countries with greater domestic career opportunities, east European ministers might see a virtue in sticking together on every issue, a sense of camaraderie based on a shared past combined with a shared appetite for west European cash handouts. Public opinion in Britain has grumbled a little and said that the reason why east Europeans win the Eurovision song contest is that they have learnt the virtues of total solidarity, voting only for each other and using their strength in nation state numbers to appoint of their members winners and pushing the paymasters of the song contest, the big EU states, take all the bottom places. There were many calls in Britain to pull out completely, since the country faces little prospect if ever asserting itself again. The new constitution gives less power to block decisions.
If EU politics comes to resemble Eurovision song contest
voting, the union’s popularity will surely sink to a new low.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Europe-wide 62mph limit mooted
The European Union’s energy commissioner has called for a 100kph — 62mph — speed limit to be adopted throughout Europe. Andris Piebalgs said roads in all 25 member states should be posted with a uniform limit to cut accidents and save fuel. His suggestion follows a recommendation by the International Energy Association in Paris and is seen as a quick way to cut energy consumption in response to depleted oil reserves.
“If in Germany cars are speeding at 200kph (124mph) they are using too much petrol,” said Piebalgs. He was speaking at a meeting in Germany, where motorists enjoy the only speed-limit-free roads in the EU.
A comment on the website of Der Spiegel, the German news magazine, said: “With those speed limits we would be castrated.”
Piebalgs’s proposal came as the European economic and social committee, a body that advises the European commission on drawing up new legislation, launched an initiative to create a common European highway code. Its aim is to remove the wide variations in road regulations of member states.
The committee said that in Portugal it is illegal to drive with daytime lights while in northern and eastern Europe lights cannot be switched off. Critics point out the contrasting weather conditions in Scandinavia and Portugal.
The committee wants a commission white paper, with legislation to follow.
“If in Germany cars are speeding at 200kph (124mph) they are using too much petrol,” said Piebalgs. He was speaking at a meeting in Germany, where motorists enjoy the only speed-limit-free roads in the EU.
A comment on the website of Der Spiegel, the German news magazine, said: “With those speed limits we would be castrated.”
Piebalgs’s proposal came as the European economic and social committee, a body that advises the European commission on drawing up new legislation, launched an initiative to create a common European highway code. Its aim is to remove the wide variations in road regulations of member states.
The committee said that in Portugal it is illegal to drive with daytime lights while in northern and eastern Europe lights cannot be switched off. Critics point out the contrasting weather conditions in Scandinavia and Portugal.
The committee wants a commission white paper, with legislation to follow.
EU moves to make speeding and parking fines Europe-wide
In February the EU council of ministers, the main decision-making body, formally adopted a decision to remove protection for drivers who commit traffic violations abroad. As a result, legislation is being drafted in Brussels for incorporation into national laws as early as 2007.
Parking and speed-camera fines higher than €70 (£48) will be passed to authorities in drivers’ home countries where, if they are not paid, prosecution will follow. The effect could be profound. French police estimate that a quarter of speed offences in their country are carried out by foreign motorists.
A spokesman for the Gendarmerie Nationale said that, because traffic fines are not currently enforceable in UK courts, it did not bother finding out addresses through the DVLA and sending tickets to UK addresses.
The new legislation is being worked out by representatives of police forces, motoring groups and vehicle licensing agencies. It could create a new bureaucracy to administer the transfer of international fines, according to Bert Morris of the AA Motoring Trust, who is a member of a working group dealing with the new law.
One central body in each EU country would be set up to liaise with its counterparts over penalties. In Britain, for instance, speed camera organisations and police forces issue their own fines. In future they would contact a national agency, which could be part of the DVLA, to pursue a fine against, say, a French motorist.
The British agency would contact its French counterpart and a fine would be issued on a standardised European penalty form.
If the French driver paid, the money would be transferred minus processing fees via the French and UK agencies to the speed camera company, police force or the Exchequer. A British driver who committed an offence on the Continent would similarly receive a fine via the UK agency on the EU penalty form.
One issue yet to be resolved concerns appeals. Brussels has not decided whether appeals should be made in the country where the offence was committed or the country of residence. Another issue on which there is no agreement yet is licence penalty points.
Parking and speed-camera fines higher than €70 (£48) will be passed to authorities in drivers’ home countries where, if they are not paid, prosecution will follow. The effect could be profound. French police estimate that a quarter of speed offences in their country are carried out by foreign motorists.
A spokesman for the Gendarmerie Nationale said that, because traffic fines are not currently enforceable in UK courts, it did not bother finding out addresses through the DVLA and sending tickets to UK addresses.
The new legislation is being worked out by representatives of police forces, motoring groups and vehicle licensing agencies. It could create a new bureaucracy to administer the transfer of international fines, according to Bert Morris of the AA Motoring Trust, who is a member of a working group dealing with the new law.
One central body in each EU country would be set up to liaise with its counterparts over penalties. In Britain, for instance, speed camera organisations and police forces issue their own fines. In future they would contact a national agency, which could be part of the DVLA, to pursue a fine against, say, a French motorist.
The British agency would contact its French counterpart and a fine would be issued on a standardised European penalty form.
If the French driver paid, the money would be transferred minus processing fees via the French and UK agencies to the speed camera company, police force or the Exchequer. A British driver who committed an offence on the Continent would similarly receive a fine via the UK agency on the EU penalty form.
One issue yet to be resolved concerns appeals. Brussels has not decided whether appeals should be made in the country where the offence was committed or the country of residence. Another issue on which there is no agreement yet is licence penalty points.
Get out of this drunk drivers
It is a cold wet Sunday morning and you’ve been in the pub reading the newspaper. You jump into the car to drive home for lunch. But before the ignition key will turn a beeper sounds, reminding you to blow into a tube.
You obey and a red light on the dashboard flashes to say you are over the limit. You have had only a pint of lager, but the car is immobilised and you stomp to the bus stop in the pouring rain.
The Department for Transport is already researching “alcolocks”, in-car breathalysers that prevent drivers who have imbibed much more than sherry trifle from starting their engines. Fifty volunteers in Manchester and the West Midlands have had them fitted to their cars as part of a two-year pilot study, with another 50 expected to join before the summer.
The device, which looks more like a 1970s electric razor than the latest high-technology motoring gadget, fits into the car radio slot and has a small mouthpiece that drivers must blow into before they can turn the ignition. The engine will start only if the alcohol reading is below the legal limit, and as part of the study a black-box recorder will register each time the volunteers start their cars and each time the alcolock prevents them.
The volunteers all have drink-driving convictions and were recruited through drink rehabilitation groups. The study will compare their behaviour with that of convicted drivers without alcolocks.
The results are not expected until towards the end of next year but legislation that would enable the device to be used in the sentencing of drink-drivers has been incorporated into the Road Safety Bill, which now will not be passed before the election.
“We might be able to give drink-drivers the option of reducing the length of a ban by having an alcolock fitted,” said a transport department spokesman. “Or we could make an alcolock a compulsory requirement at the end of their ban.”
Britain could soon come under pressure from the European Union to enforce the use of alcolocks more widely. European transport ministers want to halve the number of road deaths in the EU by 2010 and have said technological advances will “play an increasing role in support of enforcement”. These include “automatic speed control systems, speed warning or speed limiting devices, alcohol locks and seatbelt reminders”.
Sweden has become the first country to make it illegal to use a new car without an alcolock. Starting this year Swedish manufacturers will voluntarily fit alcolocks to new vehicles. By 2012 all new Swedish vehicles, including buses, trucks and cars, will be legally required to have the locks. The move is part of an ambitious road safety campaign known as Vision Zero that aims to halve the number of annual traffic deaths to 254 by 2007.
A horrific motorway crash last November highlighted the need to include professional drivers in the alcolock programme. A Hungarian lorry driver who had recently arrived in Sweden by ferry was so drunk that he could not remember being arrested for travelling the wrong way on the motorway, killing a family of five, including one of the country’s most prominent doctors.
On a single day of testing drivers coming off a ferry in Stockholm, 10% of foreign truckers were over the Swedish limit of 20mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood.
Claes Tingvall, director of traffic safety at Sweden’s strategic road authority, which has played a leading role in introducing the devices to the country, denies the government is behaving like a nanny state. He noted that Sweden had been the first country in Europe to introduce compulsory seatbelts, “and now they are seen as natural everywhere”, especially in Britain which, he says, has the highest rate of seatbelt compliance in the world.
Road safety campaigners have welcomed the testing of alcolocks in this country but Nigel Humphries, spokesman for the Association of British Drivers, said his organisation would strongly oppose plans for Britain to follow Sweden’s lead and install alcolocks in new cars. “That would be the nanny state at its most intrusive,” he said.
“We are against drunk driving as much as anyone but if alcolocks were to be introduced on a wider basis it would be like labelling everyone a criminal in order to catch the few who have broken the law.”
The US and Canada already use alcolocks to prevent drivers with drink-driving convictions from reoffending. The American-made locks are designed to anticipate the wiles of the thirstiest alcoholics. Convicted drink-drivers are required to blow into them at the start of their journey and at random intervals during the trip. The aim is to stop them drinking during the journey.
A number of measures have been devised to prevent other forms of cheating. On one type of alcolock the driver has to use a unique “suck, blow code”; on another model he has to hum into the mouthpiece to avoid air being piped in from a bottle or syringe. Yet another model measures the temperature of the exhaled air to ensure it equates to body temperature.
The only way a driver can get round the device is to recruit a sober friend as an accomplice, but the rationale is that few sober friends would want to be driven by a drunk.
Alcolocks are not entirely foolproof, however. In a recent test in Holland a sober researcher had to blow into the lock 75 times before he could get the car started. Researchers concluded that the locks were “not to be recommended for asthmatics”.
You obey and a red light on the dashboard flashes to say you are over the limit. You have had only a pint of lager, but the car is immobilised and you stomp to the bus stop in the pouring rain.
The Department for Transport is already researching “alcolocks”, in-car breathalysers that prevent drivers who have imbibed much more than sherry trifle from starting their engines. Fifty volunteers in Manchester and the West Midlands have had them fitted to their cars as part of a two-year pilot study, with another 50 expected to join before the summer.
The device, which looks more like a 1970s electric razor than the latest high-technology motoring gadget, fits into the car radio slot and has a small mouthpiece that drivers must blow into before they can turn the ignition. The engine will start only if the alcohol reading is below the legal limit, and as part of the study a black-box recorder will register each time the volunteers start their cars and each time the alcolock prevents them.
The volunteers all have drink-driving convictions and were recruited through drink rehabilitation groups. The study will compare their behaviour with that of convicted drivers without alcolocks.
The results are not expected until towards the end of next year but legislation that would enable the device to be used in the sentencing of drink-drivers has been incorporated into the Road Safety Bill, which now will not be passed before the election.
“We might be able to give drink-drivers the option of reducing the length of a ban by having an alcolock fitted,” said a transport department spokesman. “Or we could make an alcolock a compulsory requirement at the end of their ban.”
Britain could soon come under pressure from the European Union to enforce the use of alcolocks more widely. European transport ministers want to halve the number of road deaths in the EU by 2010 and have said technological advances will “play an increasing role in support of enforcement”. These include “automatic speed control systems, speed warning or speed limiting devices, alcohol locks and seatbelt reminders”.
Sweden has become the first country to make it illegal to use a new car without an alcolock. Starting this year Swedish manufacturers will voluntarily fit alcolocks to new vehicles. By 2012 all new Swedish vehicles, including buses, trucks and cars, will be legally required to have the locks. The move is part of an ambitious road safety campaign known as Vision Zero that aims to halve the number of annual traffic deaths to 254 by 2007.
A horrific motorway crash last November highlighted the need to include professional drivers in the alcolock programme. A Hungarian lorry driver who had recently arrived in Sweden by ferry was so drunk that he could not remember being arrested for travelling the wrong way on the motorway, killing a family of five, including one of the country’s most prominent doctors.
On a single day of testing drivers coming off a ferry in Stockholm, 10% of foreign truckers were over the Swedish limit of 20mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood.
Claes Tingvall, director of traffic safety at Sweden’s strategic road authority, which has played a leading role in introducing the devices to the country, denies the government is behaving like a nanny state. He noted that Sweden had been the first country in Europe to introduce compulsory seatbelts, “and now they are seen as natural everywhere”, especially in Britain which, he says, has the highest rate of seatbelt compliance in the world.
Road safety campaigners have welcomed the testing of alcolocks in this country but Nigel Humphries, spokesman for the Association of British Drivers, said his organisation would strongly oppose plans for Britain to follow Sweden’s lead and install alcolocks in new cars. “That would be the nanny state at its most intrusive,” he said.
“We are against drunk driving as much as anyone but if alcolocks were to be introduced on a wider basis it would be like labelling everyone a criminal in order to catch the few who have broken the law.”
The US and Canada already use alcolocks to prevent drivers with drink-driving convictions from reoffending. The American-made locks are designed to anticipate the wiles of the thirstiest alcoholics. Convicted drink-drivers are required to blow into them at the start of their journey and at random intervals during the trip. The aim is to stop them drinking during the journey.
A number of measures have been devised to prevent other forms of cheating. On one type of alcolock the driver has to use a unique “suck, blow code”; on another model he has to hum into the mouthpiece to avoid air being piped in from a bottle or syringe. Yet another model measures the temperature of the exhaled air to ensure it equates to body temperature.
The only way a driver can get round the device is to recruit a sober friend as an accomplice, but the rationale is that few sober friends would want to be driven by a drunk.
Alcolocks are not entirely foolproof, however. In a recent test in Holland a sober researcher had to blow into the lock 75 times before he could get the car started. Researchers concluded that the locks were “not to be recommended for asthmatics”.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Interview with Andre Kuipers
Space Week The International Space Station (ISS), a collaboration between the space agencies of the US, Canada, Russia, Japan and Europe, is currently the world's most important manned space project and has been orbiting the globe 15 times a day for well over a thousand days. When completed, the 450 tonne structure will house seven crew, consist of several linked up modules designed by the varius space agencies, host a multitude of experiments in material science, fluid physics and life science under the special conditions of zero gravity, and will provide a testbed for humans living under space conditions to prepare mankind for possible longer stays on the Moon or trips to Mars.
Seen from earth, when arcing across the night sky in a journey time of ten minutes, it is is the brightest object in the heavens after the Moon. Its current location at any given time is shown at the European Space Agency's website www.esa.int
Dr Andre Kuipers, 46, was the second Dutch astronaut to go into space when he spent nine days at the ISS in April 2004. He talked to Brussels Anonymous at a recent space congress in Brussels about his experiences.
You travelled up in a Soyuz capsule... What is the difference between the US and the Russian space equipment?
Russia has been responsible for transferring all cargo and personnel up to the space station since the US space shuttle fleet was grounded two years ago after the Columbia disaster.
The US is very good at creating comfortable living conditions in space. The Russians are good at making simple, strong engineering that actually works. We travel up in the Soyuz capsule the Russians have been using since the Mir space station. It has heat shields all over and so is quite sturdy
Tell me about the events in your life leading up to your trip
After I was selected, I trained for about three years - both in the broad range of skills of basic astronaut skills, which include things like scuba diving. This was followed by a year and a half of specialist training - I was a flight engineer. To get used to to the space station, we spend part of our training in Star City in Russia, in a module mockup the international space station, as cramped as a caravan. It prepared you for the real thing.
What was lift-off like?
You are on your back, and most of the G-forces are felt through the X-axis, so the pressure is not so great. Getting into space is very quick - the ISS is in the lowest of space orbits, only 400km up - but you spend two days manoeuvring the Soyuz capsule into docking position
What was life on board like?
The toilet seat is just 15 square centimetres. You need to hold on tight to the seat and a special stream of air makes sure everything gets to its proper destination. Urine and faeces are collected and sealed in bags. They will be put in a container ship if not used for scientific research. The compounds found in this waste can tell scientists what products are lost by the body during weightlessness. We have to be careful when we eat because crumbs can easily float off the dinner table and around the station, clogging up the filters. The food you eat has to be as sticky as possible. You add water to dried original product and knead it into shape - it can typically be soup or pasta.
Doesn't sound very appetising...
Space food tastes okay.
How was sleeping?
You lie in sleeping bags strapped to the walls. There are no specific sleeping quarters, you just sleep in an airlock or a connecting module.
Has anyone had sex in space yet?
That really is a private affair - though men and women have of course been in space together! But getting pregnant in space would really pose an ethical dilemma. The effects of zero gravity could really cause problems for foetus development, even during the early stages.
What about the air you exhale? Doesn't the water drops in human breath float around the cabin?
The humidity is used and recycled - the water is broken down into oxygen and reused while the carbon dioxide is flushed out of the space station.
Did you suffer vertigo?
Yes, when you shift your head slightly under zero gravity you feel sick because you cannot recognise the new perspective. Even though "up" and "down" are colour coded, it is not much help. Also there is the vast blackness of space, compared to looking down at Earth. It makes you feel very protective of our planet.
I have heard that some astronauts go mad - or religious
Some of the American astronauts turned to religions - or drink. But no greater a proportion than the population at large. I have met Neil Armstrong and he is normal. Buzz Aldrin is very young at heart and still promoting space. He is in Brussels this week.
Did you do any space walks?
No, I wasn't trained to do that. After basic astronaut training, which takes two years, you spend a year specialising. I became a flight engineer and I also had to supervise some 21 scientific experiments.
What are the ESA requirements to become an astronaut?
Well, the right personality is of the greatest importance. You have to be extremely good at dealing with people - when you realise the cramped conditions of space you realise why. You have to have a medical, engineering or science degree and three years of professional training. You have to be between 153 and 190cm tall, and speak good English.
Is there a minimum and maximum age for becoming an astronaut?
Well - minimum age is about 27, since you need a three years of training in your profession after taking your degree. The maximum age is supposed to be 40, but they are a little bit flexible: I was 41 when I started training.
Well, John Glenn was 76 when he went into space the second time....
Yes. Nasa felt he had supported their cause in congress for forty years and they wanted to reward him. Of course he was very fit but they wanted to show old people can cope in space too.
Nine days in space after all that training is not much is it?
No, when the station is completed there will be room for seven crew. At the moment there are just two permanent crew and because of their nations' respective contributions to the ISS project, there is always one Russian and one American. Europeans have to go up for shorter durations. Every six months, the Soyuz capsule always docked at the ISS which functions as an escape vehicle has to be replaced as its batteries degrade. So a new Soyuz capsule is sent up, and the old one brought down. I went up as part of that exchange, and on my this trip there was also an exchange of crew. The Russians have been doing this replacment service free of charge as their commitment to the project, but if you pay $12m they will launch a Soyuz capsule more often.
There is a queue of European astronauts at the moment. I know the Swedish astronaut has been waiting years and understand there is some amused media coverage in his own country about his failure to go up! The Swedish government could pay $12m but I understand has been unwilling to do so.
Are you hoping to go up into space again?
Yes of course. The idea is that you pay a short visit then spend a longer period. But nothing is scheduled yet.
There are two former astronauts now sitting as MEPs in the European parliament. Would a political career appeal to you, given astronauts have to be "so good with people"?
At the moment I am an ambassador for the Space Agency - which is why I am attending this congress. But not at the moment.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
The one in Turin you've never heard of
European Training Institute in Turin. No, no one one else has heard of it or knows what it does either. But could it actually be useful - and stands for a new trend? See article below
Europe's autonomous agencies
What if Europe could work better without the commission, or less of it? What if there could be a network of pan-European institutions serving the European citizen and the member states that can do what the commission can't do, or do it better? What if there could be a Europe that was more efficient, cheaper, closer to the citizen and the member state? What if there were institutions that gave a better, higher quality of information for policy-makers - and better information to the citizens - than currently provided by the civil servants working for the commission?
These are some of the questions that could be solved by the growth of a new type of European institution, the autonomous agency, usually based outside Brussels. Starting in 1994, their numbers have now grown to 32, with policy areas covering European air craft safety certification certification and European food safety, and including several foreign policy and security areas. Their cost and staff numbers are relatively low - 1 billion euros a year, more than 3,000 staff - compared to national administrations, acording to Jacqueline McGlade, the coordintaor of the agencies and the head of one, the European Environment Agency, in her own right.
At their best, as McGlade and other agency heads demonstrated at a recent Friends of Europe debate, the agencies provide a powerful tool for making Europe more efficient.
One example is the European Medicines Agency, which provides a single authorisation point for the 50 medicines brought onto the European market each year, standardising medicines across Europe, reducing costs for drugs firms and bringing medicine to the patient more quickly. The agency is based in London, since 1995, is headed by Swede Thomas Lonngren, and operates in parallel with the long extant national medcines agancies. However, if drug makers want to authorise a drug in more than one country, and chooses the national authorisation route, it must repeat the same process 27 times - often with the same dossier. It is considerably more expensive, delays drugs to market Europe-wide, gives customers with non existent or poorly qualified medicines agencies a raw deal (since they might offer a less qualified outcome)and might offer customers a bewildering variety of almost similar drugs as they travel across the continent. The EMA is arguably one EU success story.
But not all the indpendent agencies under McGlade's wing are necessarily doing a good job. For a start, as MEP John Bowis said, there are too many of them. The reason being that they have become they latest focal point in the everlasting game of national prestige. "Every country just has to have one, or if they are a big country, has to have more than one." The new member states have become just as adept at playing the game. As Bowis somewhat sourly said, one new member state was less interetsed in his mental health report than in getting a mental health agency - which had never been proposed.:
The result, often, means that new, dubious agencies with diffuse or rather pointless functions come into being, perhaps of a politically correct nature. As Bowis put it; "The European parliament finds it particularly different to say no to gender or racism issues." The full list of agencies includes the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and drugs addiction. The European Training Foundation. The European Foundation for improvement in living conditions. And of course the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia..
Even those that are doing a good job, however, face three challenges. The public's disconnect with political europe is well known. Turn-out in the 2004 European elections was 45%, a far lower figure than in national elections. And it has nearly always been so: citizens in numerous polls attest to their sense of distance from the European project, culminating in the rejection of the European constitution in 2005 by the Dutch and French electorates. This sentiment is echoed by a similar sentiment of hostility by the administrations of some member states.
Bu whle it is good perhaps that t the agencies' ostensible function to be ambassadors to the rest of the EU is probably overstated, since few have heard of the agencies even in their home city. This is the lesser problem, since the European parliament itself cannot boat of high name recognitiion. A moer important problem might be they compete with ational bureacraciesa adn the commission itself, hampering their efficiency and ultimately leading to job losses.
As someone in the aerospace industry put it: "The European Aviation safety agency is replacing 27 'cops' with one 'cop' and the national agencies are not happy because this will lead to their ultimate demise." As John Bowis said: "People ask the European parliament all the time for European authorities, for instance a single pricing authority for the pharmaceutical industry - and that might make life easier for a lot of us -- but on the other hand you have civil servants in the member states who might feel threatened. If they sit on the boards, there will be a real mismatch."
A third problem is that, while the agencies' strength is their indepedence both fom goverments and the commission, theer still has to be ultimate political accountability if they are not to become laws uunto themselves - as the commission itself is often accused of being, but with less oversight still.
The agency concept does work, and could work better still, if some agencies had sunset preview clauses, more conulation regards new agencies were establisehed, if more MEPS with specialist expertise and fewer national agency representatives sat on the overseeing boards.
Their structural advantages of the better ones are many: in management flexibility (they can take people on on contracts on demand), their partial industry rather than taxpayer funding, their lack of burueacracy and the loyalty and elan they inspire in their small staffs, and yes, their locations abroad. Who knows? A new agency system could pose questions on whether the size, structure and Brussels base of the present commission ought to be maintained
These are some of the questions that could be solved by the growth of a new type of European institution, the autonomous agency, usually based outside Brussels. Starting in 1994, their numbers have now grown to 32, with policy areas covering European air craft safety certification certification and European food safety, and including several foreign policy and security areas. Their cost and staff numbers are relatively low - 1 billion euros a year, more than 3,000 staff - compared to national administrations, acording to Jacqueline McGlade, the coordintaor of the agencies and the head of one, the European Environment Agency, in her own right.
At their best, as McGlade and other agency heads demonstrated at a recent Friends of Europe debate, the agencies provide a powerful tool for making Europe more efficient.
One example is the European Medicines Agency, which provides a single authorisation point for the 50 medicines brought onto the European market each year, standardising medicines across Europe, reducing costs for drugs firms and bringing medicine to the patient more quickly. The agency is based in London, since 1995, is headed by Swede Thomas Lonngren, and operates in parallel with the long extant national medcines agancies. However, if drug makers want to authorise a drug in more than one country, and chooses the national authorisation route, it must repeat the same process 27 times - often with the same dossier. It is considerably more expensive, delays drugs to market Europe-wide, gives customers with non existent or poorly qualified medicines agencies a raw deal (since they might offer a less qualified outcome)and might offer customers a bewildering variety of almost similar drugs as they travel across the continent. The EMA is arguably one EU success story.
But not all the indpendent agencies under McGlade's wing are necessarily doing a good job. For a start, as MEP John Bowis said, there are too many of them. The reason being that they have become they latest focal point in the everlasting game of national prestige. "Every country just has to have one, or if they are a big country, has to have more than one." The new member states have become just as adept at playing the game. As Bowis somewhat sourly said, one new member state was less interetsed in his mental health report than in getting a mental health agency - which had never been proposed.:
The result, often, means that new, dubious agencies with diffuse or rather pointless functions come into being, perhaps of a politically correct nature. As Bowis put it; "The European parliament finds it particularly different to say no to gender or racism issues." The full list of agencies includes the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and drugs addiction. The European Training Foundation. The European Foundation for improvement in living conditions. And of course the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia..
Even those that are doing a good job, however, face three challenges. The public's disconnect with political europe is well known. Turn-out in the 2004 European elections was 45%, a far lower figure than in national elections. And it has nearly always been so: citizens in numerous polls attest to their sense of distance from the European project, culminating in the rejection of the European constitution in 2005 by the Dutch and French electorates. This sentiment is echoed by a similar sentiment of hostility by the administrations of some member states.
Bu whle it is good perhaps that t the agencies' ostensible function to be ambassadors to the rest of the EU is probably overstated, since few have heard of the agencies even in their home city. This is the lesser problem, since the European parliament itself cannot boat of high name recognitiion. A moer important problem might be they compete with ational bureacraciesa adn the commission itself, hampering their efficiency and ultimately leading to job losses.
As someone in the aerospace industry put it: "The European Aviation safety agency is replacing 27 'cops' with one 'cop' and the national agencies are not happy because this will lead to their ultimate demise." As John Bowis said: "People ask the European parliament all the time for European authorities, for instance a single pricing authority for the pharmaceutical industry - and that might make life easier for a lot of us -- but on the other hand you have civil servants in the member states who might feel threatened. If they sit on the boards, there will be a real mismatch."
A third problem is that, while the agencies' strength is their indepedence both fom goverments and the commission, theer still has to be ultimate political accountability if they are not to become laws uunto themselves - as the commission itself is often accused of being, but with less oversight still.
The agency concept does work, and could work better still, if some agencies had sunset preview clauses, more conulation regards new agencies were establisehed, if more MEPS with specialist expertise and fewer national agency representatives sat on the overseeing boards.
Their structural advantages of the better ones are many: in management flexibility (they can take people on on contracts on demand), their partial industry rather than taxpayer funding, their lack of burueacracy and the loyalty and elan they inspire in their small staffs, and yes, their locations abroad. Who knows? A new agency system could pose questions on whether the size, structure and Brussels base of the present commission ought to be maintained
Monday, April 16, 2007
Scotland says so much hatred
GusA PS you - so much hatred. As the Black Eyed Peas put it: 'Where is the love?'
1970: Peter Preston like some other Guardian columnists objects to Scottish independence because it could lead to a Tory controlled English Parliament. That's called democracy Mr Preston. That politicians want to retain the Union solely for their own partisan interests just adds to public cynicism about them. Indeed if many English people realised we only had a Labour government because of Scottish voters' preferences there could well be an increasing demand for a separation between UK and English government. I would suggest that the present situation is only accepted due to ignorance.
1970 - you cannot be selective in your cynicism about politicians.. The SNP lot just want to snarfle at the EU trough and meet George Bush at EU-US summits before the real talent heads back north and starts to compete for place
It's the problem with the modern Europe's fragmentations...jumped up local politicians wanting to sit at the big table. It's human nature but twhere will it all end? "Today Cumbria council...tomorrow the EU heads of government banquet in Rome."
GusA - where's the love? the love will come in after a Scottish girl sits on my face. That's usually the way it works. That's how I fell for Poland.
Do you propose to demilitarise then? So, are we all going to demilitarise and let the US, the most militarist, rogue nation of all, defend us. Or you going to freeload on the rest of the EU as the Irish, disgracefully, have virtually been doing for decades.
1970: Peter Preston like some other Guardian columnists objects to Scottish independence because it could lead to a Tory controlled English Parliament. That's called democracy Mr Preston. That politicians want to retain the Union solely for their own partisan interests just adds to public cynicism about them. Indeed if many English people realised we only had a Labour government because of Scottish voters' preferences there could well be an increasing demand for a separation between UK and English government. I would suggest that the present situation is only accepted due to ignorance.
1970 - you cannot be selective in your cynicism about politicians.. The SNP lot just want to snarfle at the EU trough and meet George Bush at EU-US summits before the real talent heads back north and starts to compete for place
It's the problem with the modern Europe's fragmentations...jumped up local politicians wanting to sit at the big table. It's human nature but twhere will it all end? "Today Cumbria council...tomorrow the EU heads of government banquet in Rome."
GusA - where's the love? the love will come in after a Scottish girl sits on my face. That's usually the way it works. That's how I fell for Poland.
Do you propose to demilitarise then? So, are we all going to demilitarise and let the US, the most militarist, rogue nation of all, defend us. Or you going to freeload on the rest of the EU as the Irish, disgracefully, have virtually been doing for decades.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
EU: a plea for elitism
Why do the British media - specifically the London-based editors of the British media - ignore Europe when 80 percent of legislation originates from there?
John Palmer, a kind of eminence grise of foreign correspondents, ex Guardian, now European policy centre, spoke to a group of British political journalists a few weeks ago about this issue which bothers a lot of people in the EU institutions and obsesses British journalists in Brussels, who see their stuff not published or distorted when it reaches its editorial destination.
Palmer blames three things: a issued confused, and therefore not debated, in people's as well as editors' minds, as to whether Britain is in Europe or not. He blames an attachment to the heroic past - the victorious Good wars, the Empire.
Second, the increasingly aggressive commercial environment which prioritises entertainment over news in the Anglo-Saxon media.
The Express used to have 15 correspondents on the continent of Europe. Now it has none. When they do - increasingly rarely - attack the affairs of the continent's political capital, it's not based on events on the ground, but is a London imagined music hall routine. Third, the EU is hugely important but its growth in powers has not been matched by an equivalent growth in democratic culture. What goes on in Brussels is really diffuse, complex and difficult to fit into a headline. There is no political play of conflicting democratic forces through which issues can be brought out into the open and voters given a clear choice.
These factors, acting partly in conscious, partly in a preconscious, manner, all contribute to the failure of editors to commission reports from Brussels.
So how can the British media report Europe more? Well, a first solution would be the break-up of Britain, the state that represents “victory in the second world war”, “empire” and all the rest of it. Scotland has an election on May 3 and the Scottish nationalists may win and put the country down the road to independence - and if that happens, Palmer predicts, rump-UK will also shed its imperial identity and attendant froideur towards the continent and instead embrace it. Palmer secondly proposes making Europe itself more democratic, so the voters will require of the newspapers more information as to what is actually going on. There ought to be elections for a European president, and party programmes across Europe of trans national parties.
My opinion is that there's too much of an automatic assumption about the importance of mass journalism, and in the sense I include broadsheets also for reasons that will become clear, in a contribution to good governance, which is surely the desired endpoint. (Only the journalist cares about the byline count.)
The EU has always been a relatively little written about oligarchy (posh name for smoke filled rooms politics), since its early days of incredibly complex lawmaking. And it's worked: peace, free trade, labour, movement of capital. Its set the structure in place to do so for years to come, in areas such as environment where sovereignty must be pooled and free trade where standards must be common, in such a way that common prosperity and competitiveness is promoted while leaving the fundamental rights of each nation unharmed.
Palmer doesnt think so; I do.
Now, suppose you told people tomorrow that we have to have elections for pan European parties. Its cloud cuckooland to believe the British people would put with it. Or even, with respect, the English after Scottish secession. It's not going to happen.
Even if it were - it's not but if it were - it would not produce the end point of better governance.
In its areas of remit, the European parliament engages in unusually complex, expert issues. MEPs have been heard to complain that it is impossible to ascertain whether .15% of nickel is more dangerous than a concentration of 0.20% in rechargeable batteries; or whether the open skies agreement is actually any good. And they spend all their time on these issues. But they have many advisers (and lobbyists, and interest and expert organisations) There is also a system of checks and balances, with informed and highly qualified European civil servants, as well as members of national governments, examining and debating the issues in the Brussels political forums. It is a system which has evolved over fifty years, and works: There are plenty of checks and balances involved, for those concerned about the lessons of authoritarian government.
The Palmer plan for better Europe, better governance (let us charitably assume his interest in greater media coverage is incidental) presupposes several unlikely or untested eventualities. Set against this we have a Europe that is run by an expanding oligarchy if you like.
Most people's lives are centred on a few basic facts - hobbies, families, work, all the usual things, and are happy to leave a lot to trust, via a network of civil society - watchdogs, journalists, civil associations. politicians, industry to look after them; it's a network that expands outwards, like tendrils of trust that connect, in turn, from these professional, to the a network of likes, sometimes formally, sometimes not, based inside Brussels, So while it is an oligarchy, very few things happen there truly against the wishes of people.
At the moment, British satisfaction ratings with the EU are at their highest in a long time: probably because its advantages are making themselves felt – the skilled immigration, the cheap flights. And this despite coverage of EU affairs is at an all time low in the British media. How so? Because while people are happy with the EU doing these things, it doesn’t want to know how it goes about it. Most people are similarly uninterested in the mechanics of their cars as long as it conveys them from A to B. Pace John Palmer, newspapers that have to sell hundreds of thousands of copies a day have to reflect that lack of curiosity.
Becauyse most people are more interested in results than in process, for that reason the EU will continue to best run on their behalfs by the elite.
That said, some people - elite people of all types, politically highly interested people - would want an ongoing wonks' account to Brussels, understand the structure of the political process, understand the personalities at play and work, in order to exercise influence, all written in an investigative, satirical, witty, insightful and authoritative way. It will involve the best writers understand the most essential issues. That magazine is Machiavelli.
John Palmer, a kind of eminence grise of foreign correspondents, ex Guardian, now European policy centre, spoke to a group of British political journalists a few weeks ago about this issue which bothers a lot of people in the EU institutions and obsesses British journalists in Brussels, who see their stuff not published or distorted when it reaches its editorial destination.
Palmer blames three things: a issued confused, and therefore not debated, in people's as well as editors' minds, as to whether Britain is in Europe or not. He blames an attachment to the heroic past - the victorious Good wars, the Empire.
Second, the increasingly aggressive commercial environment which prioritises entertainment over news in the Anglo-Saxon media.
The Express used to have 15 correspondents on the continent of Europe. Now it has none. When they do - increasingly rarely - attack the affairs of the continent's political capital, it's not based on events on the ground, but is a London imagined music hall routine. Third, the EU is hugely important but its growth in powers has not been matched by an equivalent growth in democratic culture. What goes on in Brussels is really diffuse, complex and difficult to fit into a headline. There is no political play of conflicting democratic forces through which issues can be brought out into the open and voters given a clear choice.
These factors, acting partly in conscious, partly in a preconscious, manner, all contribute to the failure of editors to commission reports from Brussels.
So how can the British media report Europe more? Well, a first solution would be the break-up of Britain, the state that represents “victory in the second world war”, “empire” and all the rest of it. Scotland has an election on May 3 and the Scottish nationalists may win and put the country down the road to independence - and if that happens, Palmer predicts, rump-UK will also shed its imperial identity and attendant froideur towards the continent and instead embrace it. Palmer secondly proposes making Europe itself more democratic, so the voters will require of the newspapers more information as to what is actually going on. There ought to be elections for a European president, and party programmes across Europe of trans national parties.
My opinion is that there's too much of an automatic assumption about the importance of mass journalism, and in the sense I include broadsheets also for reasons that will become clear, in a contribution to good governance, which is surely the desired endpoint. (Only the journalist cares about the byline count.)
The EU has always been a relatively little written about oligarchy (posh name for smoke filled rooms politics), since its early days of incredibly complex lawmaking. And it's worked: peace, free trade, labour, movement of capital. Its set the structure in place to do so for years to come, in areas such as environment where sovereignty must be pooled and free trade where standards must be common, in such a way that common prosperity and competitiveness is promoted while leaving the fundamental rights of each nation unharmed.
Palmer doesnt think so; I do.
Now, suppose you told people tomorrow that we have to have elections for pan European parties. Its cloud cuckooland to believe the British people would put with it. Or even, with respect, the English after Scottish secession. It's not going to happen.
Even if it were - it's not but if it were - it would not produce the end point of better governance.
In its areas of remit, the European parliament engages in unusually complex, expert issues. MEPs have been heard to complain that it is impossible to ascertain whether .15% of nickel is more dangerous than a concentration of 0.20% in rechargeable batteries; or whether the open skies agreement is actually any good. And they spend all their time on these issues. But they have many advisers (and lobbyists, and interest and expert organisations) There is also a system of checks and balances, with informed and highly qualified European civil servants, as well as members of national governments, examining and debating the issues in the Brussels political forums. It is a system which has evolved over fifty years, and works: There are plenty of checks and balances involved, for those concerned about the lessons of authoritarian government.
The Palmer plan for better Europe, better governance (let us charitably assume his interest in greater media coverage is incidental) presupposes several unlikely or untested eventualities. Set against this we have a Europe that is run by an expanding oligarchy if you like.
Most people's lives are centred on a few basic facts - hobbies, families, work, all the usual things, and are happy to leave a lot to trust, via a network of civil society - watchdogs, journalists, civil associations. politicians, industry to look after them; it's a network that expands outwards, like tendrils of trust that connect, in turn, from these professional, to the a network of likes, sometimes formally, sometimes not, based inside Brussels, So while it is an oligarchy, very few things happen there truly against the wishes of people.
At the moment, British satisfaction ratings with the EU are at their highest in a long time: probably because its advantages are making themselves felt – the skilled immigration, the cheap flights. And this despite coverage of EU affairs is at an all time low in the British media. How so? Because while people are happy with the EU doing these things, it doesn’t want to know how it goes about it. Most people are similarly uninterested in the mechanics of their cars as long as it conveys them from A to B. Pace John Palmer, newspapers that have to sell hundreds of thousands of copies a day have to reflect that lack of curiosity.
Becauyse most people are more interested in results than in process, for that reason the EU will continue to best run on their behalfs by the elite.
That said, some people - elite people of all types, politically highly interested people - would want an ongoing wonks' account to Brussels, understand the structure of the political process, understand the personalities at play and work, in order to exercise influence, all written in an investigative, satirical, witty, insightful and authoritative way. It will involve the best writers understand the most essential issues. That magazine is Machiavelli.
Monday, April 02, 2007
The man for whom anti-communism excuses all
Profile of the Economist's correspondent in Brussels
Edward “Murky” Lucas writes a column called the Wilder European Shores for the European Voice. Wild is apt, since Lucas is a cold war warrior with a zeal that has certainly gone out of fashion. The balding Lucas, who is apt to meet old friends wearing his cycle helmet so as not to show how far the follicular decay has gone, spent the 1990s as a correspondent in Estonia. You will know this because he mentions Estonia in every article he writes.
He was hostile to the Russians in a manner that was frankly racist. He then split from his wife, who was by all accounts a psychopath, and married the attractive half Italian Observer columnist Cristina Odone, who vied – no longer, one hopes - with David Blunkett ex-beau Kimberley Quinn as a temptress of powerful men in media London.
He has now been appointed east European correspondent for the Economist, whose writing guidelines Lucas one summarised as: “This is the Economist approach. You just simplify and exaggerate.”
When not penning his column for Dana Spinant’s rag, the 44-year-old philosophy don’s son now covers eastern Europe from London – not exactly a boots-in-the-mud approach, which makes one wonder how he would treat the latest developments in the region. Viz, the fact that the Soviet Union has collapsed.
Given that he has been flogging the dead horse of hostility to communism for 15 years, would he adapt to the new situation? That the greatest threat to Polish freedom these days comes from its new leadership – demagogic, nationalist, illiberal, surrounded by anti-semites, run by two ludicrous-looking twins – who present the most inviting target in this part of the world since a Polish cavalry charge circa 1939. Lucas, a Christian, and the Kaczynski twins, Lech and Jaroslaw, 57, worship at the same altar of anti-communism.
Conclusion: he doesn’t exonerate them completely, but is kinder to them than the rest of western media.
In a recent Economist survey of Poland he begins promisingly sceptically, that Polpand is run by some remarkably “odd” and “eccentric” politicians whose party, Law and Justice has some decidedly “rum” notions.
Politics is run by a black box with the twins inside the black box and most of the cabinet outside adding that “the new government's handling of foreign affairs has looked inept; “ adding that the twins hold “ardently pro-American views, matched by loathing of both Russia and Germany.”
He goes on to give a couple of amusing account against the Kaczynskis, of how Jaroslaw Kaczynski (the PM guy, the one who lives with his mum), in the 1990s, gave a lengthy lecture to Helmut Kohl, then chancellor of Germany, who orders him out of the his office and Bonn and tells and aide “do not let this man out of gunshot of this building”. How Lech Kaczynski (the president guy) gave an interview to one of France’s best known journalists, Vincent Hervouët, at the Polish embassy in Paris. Kaczyniski kept his interviewer waiting for hours, and when he did arrive, and the journalist failed to rise from his seat, he answered his questions while staring at his shoes. When Hervouet criticised an assistant who wanted to hurry the interview along,. Kaczynski told his distinguished guest to leave what he described as Polish territory.
But the rest of the survey is more generous.
“Raw honesty is a refreshing change in Polish politics; and it is arguable that neither Jaroslaw Kaczynski nor his government deserve the ridicule heaped on them. For a start, Poland is a strongly Roman Catholic country, where polls show clear support for socially conservative values. Regarding homosexuality, abortion and euthanasia as sinful may strike liberal-minded city-dwellers (and many foreigners) as wrong-headed. But it is not scandalous in itself that conservative Catholic politicians should represent their voters' values. Despite its dire image abroad, the government is well liked at home.”
“The double act of Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Mr Marcinkiewicz arguably works quite well: one stirs things up and plays politics, the other calms them down so that the business of government can go on.” ( Marckiewicz is the former PM. Until he “resigned”. This was written in May)
He goes on to praise the “tough anti-corruption measures and a purge of the public sector”as “Poland has been shackled by the influence-peddling of the old elite”.
“The justice and interior ministries have been notably successful of late in putting more police on the streets and bringing more criminals to justice.
Meanwhile “the defence minister has closed down the lawless military intelligence services”. (Defence minister Radek Sikorski is an old friend) He concludes respectfully, judging Jaroslaw (the one with the mole) as “the bossier and more intelligent one”.
So he thinks the fact that they are in tune with their electorate justifies their conservative populism; and that they have done some good stuff.
What about the economy? The survey is entitled – revealingly - “Cheer up”
Polish economic growth is half that of the EU new member average; so is foreign investment; wealth per capita is the lowest in Europe after Latvia. It is worrying, but Lucas doesn’t rub it in, and chooses to focus on the positive aspects of Poland’s economy, its high growth rate and low inflation. It is definitely the act of the giving the benefit of the doubt.
Once you have made your mind up, you have to stick to it – even if some leading politicians in Poland compare the Kacznyskis to the oppressive president Lukashenko in neighbouring Belarus, one of Lucas’s and the EU’s favourite pariah countries. (Lucas’s number one hate object is Russia’s Vladimir Putin.)
One correspondent wrote to Lucas’s blog, which contains all his Economist articles, pointing out that one member of staff of the Polish foreign ministry, Pawel Dobrowolski, was sacked because his department - not him personally – had not had the sycophantic foresight to halt the standard procedure of translating articles in the foreign press into Polish on the foreign ministry website when the infamous potato-head scandal blew up. To recap: in their usual illiberal mamner, the Kaczynski brothers asked the German government a month ago to apologise when Taz, a small but well-known radical German newspaper, said the brothers resembled potatoes; they do resemble potatoes. The German refused, saying the Polish leaders did not understand press freedom. Lech told Wprost that it was "an insult to a head of state is a crime and there must be consequences." …. The devil cannot bear scorn
The correspondent pointed out that this boded ill, an indication that the purges of public servants with a connection to communism which Lucas had praised earlier could be a pretext to rule the Polish public sector by fear and arbitariness, and fire anyone who wasn’t a sycophant. And that the best way to tackle corruption was deregulation, not the set up of yet another agency with the power to “tap phones and arrest” people. Indeed, one might add, Polish history is too full of them.
The blogger also questioned Lucas’s boilerplate, pro Kaczynski remark that Stanislaw Kuza, the new finance minister, was “well-respected”. Kuza, a malleable 34, is the Kaczynskis’ third finance minister in less than a month. And according to Reuters, he, too, might be just keeping the chair warm for someone else.
Lucas, stumbling, muttered something about Kluza’s “CV showing he is a respected practitioner – I didn’t say respected academic.” And admitted that he had “second thoughts” about the blunt instrument of purges. He recovered his poise though and wrote: “On the one hand, there are a lot of sleazy and incompetent people in the public service who should have been sacked a long time ago to make way for younger and better ones.”
Really? Tell us more. But he doesn’t.
One of the things about reading Lucas’s blog is that you get a bucketful of him all at once. And you realise: apart from one or two well thought out, nicely written pieces where he lengthens his stride (and are not republished, tant pis, the magazine), it is all opinion and judgement; no exposition. He loves qualifying adjectives, value judgements, as a substitute for analysis (exaggerate and simplify, remember?), and sometimes he writes in a kind of Ladybird prepschool language, as if reading a story to his young sons. “Rum”. “Silly” – and his favourite - “murky”.
.I have a suspicion: it is partly the corrupting nature of the job. As a correspondent for the Economist, he has become so full of himself he has ceased to be a reporter, carefully chronicling, analysing, thinking about the world – and then describing it to the reader
He travels around Europe, a place that is full of stupid, starstruck Economist-reading technocrats, and is displeased when his interview requests are not immediately granted. Prime ministers are queuing up to talk to me, he complains after the Hungarian one messes his schedules around.. After talking to respected “local analysts” or “commentators” – ie local journalists - he goes away and pronounces a new development “murky” or “dodgy and unattractive”, as he wrote recently about the new Slovak government .
Although if it behaves, a government can be “clean and efficient”.
Reading the archives, you sense he is living out the narrative whose parameters were set out when he was a young ma in the late eighties: setting nations free, travelling to historically preserved but little known east European cities, dodging – or drinking – with “spooks and goons”, more drinking with dissident friends, some of whom are now in power; above all, fighting the big evil.
But today, with a foot in Brussels, a base in London, a responsibility to write about half the continent, there is no sense reading him that we live in 2006,, nothing on Islam in Europe, global warming, the constitution. No understanding about the complex machinery of Brussels, without which understanding of east European political dynamic is incomplete. No self insight into the fact that half his comments about communist bureaucracy could probably apply to the EU. (well…he writes for the European Voice.). As a Christian in his twenties, he long ago in eastern Euirope found his garden of good and evil. Though his articles contain enough ambiguities and sees both sides of the argument to satisfy both sides, he has a basic attitude of forgiveness towards the Kaczynskis, for, in his eyes, they are anti communists, and on the side of good. Except the Kaczyniskis are venomously unpleasant.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Burke and a Tory Europe
This Tory lot are said to be the most pro-European in a generation. But there are still a lot of eurosceptics in the party. There is still a fight to be fought over the party’s soul. There are philosophical questions: what does it mean to be a Tory? Is Toryism compatible with Europeanism? Are they fundamentally opposed? Let’s leave out the economics; you must be able to define conservatism without reference to capitalism. (And concomitant issues such as the single market, or excessive regulation) At least that is what a lot of Tory philosophers have done – and no one has ever complained.
Edmund Burke is one of the great Tory philosophers of course, and a Tory wet can actually mine the 18th century statesman for support for this thesis that Europe, as it has turned out, is a good thing. Burke was an aristocrat, believing in an aristocracy of merit. But what isn’t the current EU but an aristocracy – oligarchy, same thing. The commission has entry competitions; second, the European parliament isn’t beholden to its electorate; but neither was the pre-United Kingdom Irish parliament which serves as Burke’s model for the ideal legislature; in both the EP and the 18th century Dublin ideal, legislators voted with their consciences, and the party whip was weak Burke believed in the balance of power, the checks and balances of a council of 27 member states, (with veto rights), commission of 20,000 civil servants and European parliament of 732 independent MEPs, produces moderate, considered compromises – exactly the kind of “action and counteraction whose reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe” that Burke was saying the revolutionary French (his arch enemies) rejected when the National Assembly was set up comprising a swelling, singular popular will.
Burke belivges i9n an evolutionary polity; well, today the European Union turms fifty, and the whole point about Europe is that the EU builds on its own illustrious heritage, while at the same time embracing the Lisbon process to become the world’s top knowledge based economy by 2010; so the political project proceeds on the “principles of conservation and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of improvement”
He argued that revolutionary governments were simple governments, concerned about fulfilling a single agenda regardless of the neglect of the goals of the whole polity. The House of commons, drawn from people with experience of all areas of life, and the Lords, of people with vast estates and experiences of rule, was a guarantee against such a single, revolutionary agenda. He wrote in his most famous book, Reflections on the Revolution in France:
“Simple governments are fundamentally defective, to say no worse of them. If you were to contemplate society in but one point of view, all these simple modes of polity are infinitely captivating. In effect each would answer its single end much more perfectly than the more complex is able to attain all its complex purposes. But it is better that the whole should be imperfectly and anomalously answered than that, while some parts are provided for with great exactness, others might be totally neglected or perhaps materially injured by the over-care of a favourite member.”
Translated for the modern era: national governments and their acquiescent parliaments have simple agendas, taken up by national media drawn from people of the same class, upbringing and general attitudes. But these are moderated and modified in those growing areas covered by European legislation, at least, by the wills of other nation states, leading to an imperfect and anomalous pan European solution that is able to answer the whole imperfectly – but is better for it, as Burke would surely say.
And anyone who doesn’t worry about the fifty years of two steps forward and one step back would be pleased to know that Burke writes that “The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience”. He endorses muddle, multilateralism, building on success, evolutionary development, leadership of elites – and not necessarily populist democracy - all leading to general progress. Sounds like Burke, as well as describing 18th century England, was also describing the modern EU. And – Tory principle par excellence – it pasts the empirisicm test. For And who can say that Europe, which enjoys peace and prosperity, and an enviable quality of life, and is higher rated in a global poll as an enviable political entity than any single nation state - is not successful? It is a triumph both of Europe and or Burke’s ideas – and Burke was of course a European
Toriy wets have a powerful argument that modern Europe, in all its muddle and confusion, its oligarchic pretensions, is actually one of the Tory movement's idol's perfect heroes. Who would have thought that?
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Report from an EU summit
The policemen, in caps, were huddled on a hill at
the head of the valley. They were later to shoot a
handbag thief in what became briefly known on the
press center information screens as the incident de
rue saint Stevins. This caused some excitement among
the bored, waiting journalists. As one Dutch
journalist waiting with me later in the press bar
during one of the many interminable negotiating
sessions between ministers told me: "We don’t care
what happens – we don’t even care about the future
of Europe. We just want something to happen."
It was raining and the three sentinels flanked by
beetle like armoured cars stared you down as you
approached the blocked off rue de la loi, Europe’s
Whitehall, normally racing with traffic from the
rondpoint schuman, around which many Eu buildings
cluster, down towards the city centre. There was
anti riot fencing and, inside a large block of rue
de la loi in front of the Justus Lipsius building, a
sealed area accessible only to officials with their
black Mercedes and parked TV vans, with satellite
dishes on the roof and carrying the livery of
various TV stations.
You showed your special summit press pass – everyone
in the Eu always has pass around their neck, but
this was a dedicated one for the two day
intergovernment summit – and your bonjour was
greeted in kind if the policeman was a Bruxellois,
by a curt Hello in English if the policeman was
Flemish. They had brought reinforcements from afar
for this summit. In contrast, the EU buildings are
normally guarded only by an unarmed security guard
or two, who will stand in front of the apron of
steps of buildings unprotected by concrete blocks or
riot fencing. But then, it is not every day that
one of the victors of Iraq comes to pay a visit.
Then you passed through metal detectors into the
courtyard of the Justus Lipsius building, a giant
ten story marble cube devoted to where the real
power in Brussels lies: ministers f the nation
states who meet here every few months. There were
25 flags arranged in a circle today, because in six
months’ time ten new members states will join the 15
who are currently members. Clustered in small
groups, linked by shouted hellos of recognition
across the courtyard to new arrivals, carrying TV
equipment or laptop briefcases, stood men in
cashmere coats, talking into mobile phones.
You arrived inside, picked up a hundred-page
photocopies press review of pre summit articles in
the world’s press, and watched the screens
everywhere provided by the European Broadcasting
Union that monitored the various VIP areas and
summit press briefing rooms. There was nothing, and
so you repaired to your bar after reading in the
press guide booklet that refreshments and non
alcoholic drink were provided free.
Journalists privy to the secrets of the negotiations
noted that
politicians at these summits always negotiated under
signs
that said "Please do not smoke", but whose
organisers had anyway thoughtfully provided ashtrays
which were liberally used by various heads of
governments. "Which shows nation states’ attitudes
to European regulation." In the bar, the most
crowded area of the entire summit, were also signs
advising visitors not to smoke – if you could read
them through cigarette caused fug. Journalists were
taking trays with three or four coffees at a time,
piles high with baguette de fromage and croissants,
not always taken out on behalf of others.
Some journalists had already picked up their gifts
from the Italian presidency, a blue goody bag which,
it was soon revealed, contained a pannetoni cake and
a bottle of asti spumanti. "I am only taking this
because my wife wants it, "said one British hack
emerging from level 01. These bags went very
quickly, as evidenced by looking at how an edge had
been cut off journalist press cards who had already
been given their gift. In the course of about three
hours, the number of snipped cards went from none to
very high – maybe 70% - and yet you saw few hacks
actually carrying the bags. I left my pannetoni
behind the door; I drank the asti in the toilets.
Suddenly something happened: Signor Berlusconi, the
Italian president, and responsible for holding the
summit, had arrived. We crowded into the lobby, and
saw him pass: a small, grinning orange faced man
moving fast, flanked and surrounded by young
carabinieri quickstepping men in reservoir dog
suits. ("Oh, the Italians are always like that,"a
Polish stagiaire told me later.) This sense of purpose
suggested that the excitement built up in my mind, as
a first summit visitor, of seeing the policemen, the
armoured cars, the men in suits talking into mobiles,
would continue: the summit would be long, gruelling
(not a problem for me) but thrilling. One of the
shortest summits in history ended unspectacularly,
however, the next afternoon.
The British took the usual pragmatic view.
A single, unitary, closerr Europe would happen,
it would evolve - maybe, probably
perhaps over fifty years. but, with the incipient
defence treaty "Look at it!", Blair had set the ball
rolling. After they had experienced enlargement the
next step could commence. But put everything on hold.
Wait a year, for the experiences of enlargement to
happen. Above all - all of Europe moving, and
eventually coalescing, as one. And then he grinned.
And with a flash of bulbs his conference was over. You
basked in the British government's collective
sanguineness.
I waited outside the French room – attended by the
huge posse of clannish French journalists Chirac always
keeps in tow, lit in blue lights like a fashion show,
the French press conference was impossible to get
into – Katerina came out and
started talking volubly.
"He wants a two speed Europe. A closer one and an
outer one."
"Well he is not going to get it. We have got this
Nice treaty. They can’t."
"They want to and they will. They will still have
the Nice treaty but they will go beyond it."
We went to the Czech press room where I talked to
the Czech foreign minister. To my amazement he
confirmed that if a closer core Europe went ahead,
his country would be part of it.
"But what about world war 2, what about the Sudeten
Germans coming into country and chalking signs on
their old houses. ‘We are coming back’ What about
Blair saying nothing will change from Nice. Is
Chirac saying something different,. Is this a
dialogue of the deaf."
He cocked his head, smiled and nodded.
I went out to a free coffee dispenser with Katerina
who was smoking furiously.
"Why are you doing this given your history?"
"We are pro British but we have to go with the flow
because we are a small country. "
She binned her butt in the recycling receptacle for
plastic cups, which did actually look like a tall
ashtray. A caretaker of sorts who had been staring
all day in that general direction probably did his
first thing of the day – everyone in the expat
community says "Belgium is virtually communist" –
and told her not to do it, the thing could go on
fire. She apologised.
I went to the press room, milled around for an hour.
Then I looked for Katerina but she had left. I called her
number and she said she was on her way back to Prague, on
the president's plane.
I left the emptying building in the
drizzle and walked to Matonge, the African area,
where, amid shops selling yams and call shops
advertising rates to Rwanda for only 50 cents, I
dined alone.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Profile: Sandra Kalniete
52,Latvia, former foreign minister, commissioner
without portfolio
"She is, quite simply, a smashing
PR coup," says a Latvian diplomat based in Brussels.
"Everyone in Brussels will be charmed by her. Latvia
has a pearl."
Commissioners are not supposed to be non partisan in
connection with their
countries, but inevitably they come to be so - perhaps
more truly when that country is small and a new member
state, so whose governments are relatively unfamiliar
and fail to lodge themselves in the collective
Brussels memory. One wonders whether Latvia in
Brussels could become embodied in the
person of Kalniete.
Any of the three Baltic countries could have done with
someone like her. Politics in all countries is and has
been unstable. Whatever successes Lithuania and
particularly Estonia have ratcheted up in economically
in the last decade, their governments, like Latvia's,
have tended to be short-lived. The various
economically
clever moves by a succession of youth dominated,
financially literate Estonian cabinets, who have made
Estonia the most open economy in the world, and most
successful of those, has not translated into political
endurance. Estonia has had 11
governments in 11 years, more than Italy, a fact
attributed like in the other Baltic states to
inexperienced politicians and undeveloped party
systems. This chaos for some reason seems to have
reached a peak just now, for some reason, just over
two months short of enlargement. Lithuania's president
Rolandas Paksas is undergoing an impeachment process
over allegations that his aides were engaged in
influence peddling and organised crime.
Latvia itself has just been hit by a government crisis
as the burly, rather authoritarian populist prime
minister Einars resigned after his coalition parties
left him. Estonia has been more stable recently -
although its prime minister Juhan Parts doesn't really
cut much of a charismatic figure on the European
podium. But at any rate, as insurance if nothing else,
having a charismatic figure in Brussels over the
crucial bridging period of enlargement
is an advantage. Even if the commissioner's tenure at
6 months were temporary that would be a long time in
Baltic politics.
Had Lithuania and Estonia had good commissioner
designates it might have compensated for their
political weaknesses. But finance minister Dalia
Grybauskaite of Lithuania, though able, and very
clever, and looking to shadow Pedro Solbes or Michaele
Schreyer in the finance or budgetary departments,
could disappear into Brussels, and fail to be a symbol
for Lithuania. Siim Kallas of Estonia is highly
controversial. He is one of the most qualified of all
the 10 commissioner designates, having been finance
and prime minister, and governor of the central bank.
But it is not so much his past as a communist - while
working in Estonian journalism in the 70s and 80s -
that is problem despite the fact that it excites the
newspapers and makes the European People's Party pass
theatrical but phony resolutions about banning
communists from office. Rather it is a certain odour
that attaches to Kallas, made concrete by allegations
of him having squirrelled away 10 million dollars
illegally when central bank governor in 1992. The
details are a little vague, but:
"Ten million dollars went missing from the central
bank," says one Estonian commentator. "No one knows
what happened to it." The Estonians actually talk
openly about this: as the strongest political figure
in Estonia, he is, in the words of one Estonian
commentator in Brussels: "The man everyone knows made
ten million dollars vanish and who is the man who
always gets his way. Like getting this job of
commissioner."
Kallas was cleared in Estonian court back in 1993. But
the way intelligent Estonians talk about him reflects
an unease about their own post independence politics -
an unease shared to a growing extent about east
Europe's nascent democratic politics as whole by
those in the know in the commission. An unease of
which Kallas, even a cleared of crime, is a symbol:
the unstable post 1992 politics. The bickering, the
one-man parties, the public's suspicion of shady
financial deals. Despite the reformers' success at
bringing Estonia and Lithuania to relative prosperity
and EU membership, one Latvian official said that
there was a lot of bitterness about how the drastic
free market reformers - however much their reforms
were eventually to benefit the young - destroyed
people's rouble savings overnight when converted to
the new currencies at a disadvantageous rate. This
harmed pensioners, and the move came to stand as a
symbol for all the costs that had to be paid with
reform, and the fact that there were a lot of losers
too. There is a feeling that a lot of these
technocrats benefited from exchange rate deals.
Rumours had it that some political figures shipped all
the roubles they had accumulated back to Russia and
spent them there, on cheap raw materials which they
then exported at hard currency prices - just like
Russia's notorious oligarchs, albeit on a smaller
scale.
While this has never been proved, and while arguably a
stronger figure than his Lithuanian counterpart, as
Estonia's most talented politician, Kallas could
certainly compensate for the anonymity of the always
youthful cabinet back home as representing Estonia in
Brussels. But it might not be a representation
Estonians are proud of, or even feel reflect their
image, projected with assiduousness, of Eastern
Europe's golden boys. There is too much about Kallas
that intimates either the compromises that had to be
made in the name of post independence development, or
an aura of sleaze of a country with neophyte political
traditions and a small talent pool of politicians.
Whatever good he did for Estonia, he is seen as a man
of the past. "We would like to shake his hand and see
him go. He has done his work, made our mistakes for
us, helped us, harmed us" said one Estonian
journalist.
But Kalniete is different. It is not so much
the fact that she is a woman that sets her apart -
Latvia incidentally, has the world's best statistics
on women employed in the labour force, women employed
as professionals, and where gender income differences
are lowest. (It is also the country with the highest
ratio of women to men!.) Rather, for one, she is
untouched by domestic politics, having spent the
crucially incriminating years of the 1990s abroad:
first as the ambassador to the United Nations in
Geneva, then as ambassador to France - she is
francophile and francophone - before becoming foreign
minister in 2002. "She is untainted," said one
official. "She is above politics." She is also
separate, as an artist, from technocratic tradition:
chairwoman of the Latvian artist's union
and the author of several books an award-winning book
published in French about her parents' deportation to
Siberia and their return to Latvia, a experience
shared by tens of thousands of countrymen who were
victims of Stalins's attempts to wipe out the Latvian
nation by removing all Latvians of ability,
repopulating the country with Russians, and
extirpating all traces of Latvian culture.
The moral of her book echoes the theme of anti
totalitarianism of many of her speeches, which gives,
some say, her almost an authority of a female Havel.
"I never underestimate the evil of totalitarianism,
because in closed systems you never know what is going
on inside the country. It is much worse than you
think," she said in an interview on why she supported
the war in Iraq. "I had to really work hard to extract
the stories from my parents."
The book's last lines are: "The old lady wakes up
often and "she contemplates at length the emptiness of
the night, the time to calm herself and to understand
that she is at home. Latvia."
The French awarded her the Legion of Honour. Those who
know her says the 51 year old divorced brunette is
sensitive but made of tensile steel, with a dry sense
of humour. When the Eurovision song contest came to
Latvia last year she said dryly - not willing to show
people whether she was tongue in cheek: "I prefer the
EU".
She could be good for Europe and, compared her fellow
baltic commissioners, a good
representative for the Baltics, the least likely
figure to be just an "intern with Mercedes", as unkind
wags have called this interim team of commissioners
without portfolio. Above all, she could be a god
figure for Latvia, the languishing orphan of the
Baltics, bringing the country finally back into view.
Writing a comment on her Siberian book she notes:
"This sad exploration of the past restores life to
this little country “erased from the map and minds”.
The path that led it into nothingness belongs to our
memory from now on." ¨Latvia will soon be be emerging
finally out of its nothingness, not least with her
help, to a higher profile, as if restoring life to a
country is a task she has extended from the writer's
role to that of a
politician.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Interview with David Irving
David Irving is, as I write, right now at a place where the authorities absolutely don’t want him to be.
He is shunned everywhere in Europe, and banned from several countries, including Germany, but I can reveal that he at least is not in the country that most detests him: Austria – where, if he returned, he would face a compulsory thirty year prison sentence. In December the controversial 68-year-old historian was released from 400 days in solitary confinement in a Vienna prison after serving a year of a three year sentence for holocaust denial.
Life has been hard on what the world calls holocaust deniers recently. There was the jailing of Irving in December 2005, for a speech he made to students in 1989 in which he disputed the existence of the gas chambers at Auschwitz. He had returned, incognito, across a land border, to make a speech to another group of students, the powerful Vienna Burschenschaft, one of whose members apparently tipped off the police. They arrested him, and he was convicted in February 2006 under the Verbotsgesetz law 3g, an allied wartime regulation, somewhat vague, that imposes harsh penalties for Nazi thought crimes.
Just in January , the French nationalist MEP Bruno Gollnisch was sentenced to three months of probation and fined for “verbal contestation of the crimes against humanity” in Lyon. In February, Ernst Zundel, who wrote “Did Six Million Really Die”, was sentenced to five years in a German prison. To drive the victory home, the German justice ministry has just asked its EU counterparts to ban holocaust denial throughout the EU.
When I sent Irving a first draft of this interview he asked me to leave out details of his travel plans in March. Exposing them, he said, could put him in trouble. He was going to a continental European country where, if not as hated as much as in Austria, he would certainly attract the attention of the police.
When we met at a hotel in London’s Victoria. (he has no problems with the British government) he had just experienced a double disaster. The day before, 27 January, International Holocaust Memorial Day, two bad things had happened: his website was closed down, without explanation, by his San Diego ISP; nine years of work, 150 megabytes, thousands of pages of revisionism, his and others, plus downloads of his books. On the same day his laptop hard drive broke, and this contained all the back up material for his website.
“I fear the worst, it's all gone. And, you know, it happened on Holocaust Day.”
“The website - do you think it was an international conspiracy?” I joked
“Maybe, maybe,” he said pensively as we sat down in the hotel lobby. (His Mayfair house was repossessed after the Lipstadt libel trial in 2000, where he disputed a historian's assessment of him as a denier and lost.)
He was limping slightly; still big and imposing, but his clothes, black sweater and corduroys were slightly rumpled and his eyes had a rheumy sadness.
“The four hundred days in solitary confinement ruined my health.”
“What is your take on Auschwitz these days?”
“The gas chamber at Auschwitz is a fake. I said so in 1993, was fined thirty thousand deutsche marks in absentia in Germany for doing so, in Germany you are
guilty until proven innocent – in England it is the other way round of course. Then three years later the Poles come around and admitted it was a fake, it was
built in 1948; it’s for tourist consumption. But telling this truth got me banned from Germany.”
“You're talking about the gas chamber at Auschwitz I, the army casern.”
“That's right.”
“What about the gas chamber at Auschwitz Birkenau, Auschwitz II. That was the controversial one. You have said there was no evidence that the chimneys through
which the zyklon B gas could be inducted ever existed.
I saw that bit of your trial and thought it convincing. And the Poles themselves couldn't seem to make up their minds: in a diorama at Auschwitz I,
there were two chimneys; on a sign outside the Leichenkeller, it said there were four chimneys...and the fact that as you say no one has taken up your challenge to do a X-ray analysis of the supposedly filled in hack holes in the reinforced concrete roof, next to the support columns, to pour in the cyanide
that would explain their absence in the spot suggested by photos you said were
doctored...what does that mean?”
“The Germans are serious, serious people, and they had
built this as a state-of-the-art mortuary – the project was headed by Hans Kammler, chief construction engineer of the SS. They are not suddenly going to build this and hack chimney holes; the Leuchter report established that there were no significant traces of hydrogen cyanide in the walls; in a fumigation chamber used for
delousing clothes used elsewhere at Auschwitz where the concentrations used were much lower, the walls are stained right through the brickwork with Prussian blue, or cyanide. You see no such thing at the Leichenkeller.”
“So this was the epicentre of evil, and it was fake, was just used as a mortuary. Are you saying there were no gassings at Auschwitz?”
“Yes there were, in farm houses
outside the camp perimeter. The evidence is in a little known report from the deputy commandant at Auschwitz, found at the public records office.”
“How many people died at Auschwitz? Didn't you once say that more people died at Chappaquiddick than at the gas chamber in Auschwitz?”
“That was the fake gas chamber in Auschwitz I was referring to. Three hundred thousand people were gassed at Auschwitz.”
“That's a lot short of the million currently touted.”
“Oh statistics, they have a habit of ballooning.”
“How many Jews died in the holocaust?”
“Around four million. I have always maintained that substantial numbers died.”
“Why do people call you a holocaust denier if you are not denying the holocaust?”
“This is how my enemies have me boxed in. It's impossible to escape the label; I gave an interview to Italian television where I explained the four million and what is the headline? 'Holocaust Denier.' It not only makes me look extremely stupid, as it is very obvious that there was mass murder of the Jews, but it makes me look complicit. Because ‘holocaust denier’ reminds you of ‘he denied the murder’, so it sounds as if I am denying that I carried out the holocaust myself.”
“But you did make mistakes on your assessments of Auschwitz, because you once said there were no gas chambers at all.”
“Everyone makes mistakes. The Auschwitz authorities have dug themselves into a hole over the Leichenkeller; it's too late for them to admit it. Robert Faurisson, a very nice man, is an extreme revisionist whom I don't always agree with. He has painted himself into a corner.
He says no Jews died – not even in shootings in Russia. The difference is I own up to my mistakes. I am constantly learning and adapting my views."
“Where did the other Jews die?”
“The big source of deaths was gassing at the operation Reinhardt camps – Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec. But the Germans were so efficient at removing all signs of those death camps the Poles had to erect this tourist attraction at Auschwitz.”
“You had supporters at the Lipstadt trial. Why did you have to subpoena them to get them to testify on your behalf?”
“Because people like John Keegan knew they would get in trouble, because of my reputation and his known support for me. In the 1980s he wrote: you only need to read two books on the second world war, one is Chester Wilmot, the other is Irving's Hitler's war.
Another testimony came from Donald Cameron Watt who said no historian could withstand the scrutiny I was subjected to. The opposition spent 20 man-years combing my work, and found a dozen mistakes. Kate Connolly, incidentally, of the Daily Telegraph read my book on Hitler's war and said, on reaching the end, 'I honestly
can't understand why this man is seen as a holocaust denier', since I do write extensively of atrocities.”
“The one who really ruined your reputation was Richard
Evans, the professor of history at Cambridge, who examined your work in detail for Hitler sympathies and falsifications that would favour the Nazi cause. He said you could not be trusted to tell the truth.”
“Evans was a historian I had never heard of. He has an unfortunate under bite that make him look perpetually pugnacious. He was paid 250,000 dollars by the
defence, so bear that in mind. He perjured himself because I asked him if he hated me – which in a later book he admitted doing - but of course had he admitted
that his testimony would have been thrown out. So he lied when he said he didn't hate me, because he did. He almost had his back turned to me throughout
questioning.”
“But he did say that 30,000 only were killed in the allied air raids on Dresden. You say 100,000.”
“I still say 100,000 and I can prove it.”
“What do you think of the holocaust conference in Iran?”
“I think it was a big mistake to mix up revisionism with the Middle East problem. The Iranians did a lot of harm to their reputation by holding it, as indeed I told Iranian television.”
“How are you going to salvage your reputation?”
“Not in my lifetime, but in my children's lifetime perhaps. When I am dead my books will still be out there for people to judge.”
“Are you going to write any more books?”
“William Manchester decided that he could never complete the third volume of Churchill, he was too old and it was too hard work."
We talked about how he took his 12-year-old daughter Jessica to Oxford Street (“sheer hell”). Of how awareness of the Israeli lobby’s influence on US politics has become almost mainstream in the British media. Of his friends, such as American – and Jewish - writer Norman Finkelstein who, while equally not denying the holocaust, argues that Jewish organisations have used it to extort unjustly huge reparations payments, and that the holocaust is used by Israel to deflect criticism of the treatment of the Palestinians; even Finkelstein refuses to link to Irving’s website.
Finally he told a joke about the Rudolf Hess Platz
signs he had manufactured, adhesive over normal German street signs; he handed these out to his German supporters, who caused havoc with the traffic system and got in trouble with the police. He grinned and for a moment, a younger, trouble-making Irving is back We shook hands, and I walked out into the January evening.
I liked Irving. The devil is always charming or he wouldn’t be the devil, some would say. To a talent of exposition, add a talent for projecting a weary understanding of the world-as-is. There were many other questions I would have liked to have asked him. What does he think about the EU? Could the EU have existed without the holocaust? Is the holocaust the father of European unity?
Did he think there were two Europes – the centralising, authoritarian centre group of countries which ban holocaust denial and incidentally tend to be in favour of the European project. And the peripheral, liberal oriented countries where questioning the holocaust is permitted? Is it a coincidence that the countries that have passed holocaust denial laws are also those which have ratified the European constitution? Do historians have a responsibility or are they allowed to cause all kinds of trouble? Was he able to operate alone or only as a necessary irritant in the greater endeavour of history-writing, in which he is just an obstacle who throws up minor arguments that just have to be overcome? Is holocaust denial in Europe what the abortion issue is to the United States, a polarising issue around which parties would group if there ever were a united Europe. Wouldn’t the revisionist approach be appropriate for all historiography; indeed what we know of the past is based on very shaky foundations? How is he able to combine right and intense scepticism of the holocaust – from which the theory emerges stronger - with an acceptance of other historical phenomena, most riddled by error, as the epistemological basis for all other history writing?.
These questions, which went through my mind, as they do, as I sat on the train to Brussels, basically presupposed Irving’s capacities as a proper historian – an accolade the Lipstadt judgment famously denied him.
It’s never simple with Irving, and Evans’s low opinion of him came back to me, interestingly when, afterwards, I found this line from his prison diary, available on his website:
“The British embassy had insisted I should get a cell to myself, which might be called solitary confinement, I suppose, but it suited me.” And then I thought back to the impression Irving had given, in the interview, of an involuntary and cruel incarceration in an isolation cell. This appeared to be a falsification of his own personal experience, not the uncovering of inconvenient secondary resources; this irritated me, and if I were so disposed I guess I had a scoop on my hands: part of Irving’s game is to be damagingly self revelatory (although perhaps in the greater service of self promotion), and the authorities would really be very unhappy if they found out where he is going, but it’s not worth it. The jury might be out on his reputation – and my feelings about him see-saw - but the issue as far as prison is concerned is surely determined. No cell is a pleasure to occupy, which is why it is probably a good idea for Irving to be allowed to continue to travel incognito.
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