The Malta Independent on Sunday
Malta`s difficulty to break into the EU bears an uncanny resemblance to the EU`s own difficulty to break into the rest of the globalised world.
The summit of last weekend ended in failure, thankfully, as UK Prime Minister Tony Blair would have no more fudges with so much waste of resources going to subsidise so few farmers to detriment of the EU consumer and the under-developed world, that gets very restricted access to sell its competitive agricultural produce, including sugar, on EU markets.
Thankfully this crisis has raised awareness among European consumers on the need to re-assess the logic of continuing to allocate so much resources to keep internal EU food products so unnecessarily expensive rather than channel these resources to finance educational development, innovation and research which could help the EU economy to restructure and remain competitive even if most of its manufacturing base will have to migrate to lower cost locations.
While The French, with the complicity of the Germans, did their best to isolate Blair and pin on him the responsibility for failure to reach agreement over the budget for 2007-2013, post-summit events are proving that Blair`s policies have more support among European consumers rather than among the old guard of Europe`s political bodies.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Blair`s policy for the UK rebate to remain a red line non-negotiable area until the EU redesigns its wasteful Common Agriculture Policy (CAP)` to phase out expensive subsidies by the mid-term of the budget period, somewhere around 2010,` has the sympathy of the governments of Sweden, Netherlands, Austria and many of the new members from Eastern Europe. It also has the sympathy of the government in waiting in Germany and if this government can sit around the EU table following next September`s election, then France alone would have difficulty in defending what is shamefully indefensible.
Europe`s old guard tried to play a dirty trick on Blair.` This has backfired and they will probably have to pay for it with their own political skin. Chirac and Schroeder never took seriously Tony Blair`s repeated assertions that the British rebate was a red line area not available for negotiation in the context of an unreformed EU budget.` With the British elections out of the way and with Blair re-mandated as Prime Minister for a third consecutive term, with the EU badly needing a show of unity following the debacle of the French and Dutch rebuff in popular referenda for the EU Constitutional Treaty,` Chirac and Schroeder were confident that Blair would crack under their joint pressure. They were positive that French farmers could continue to enjoy their subsidies for another seven years while Germany would shift the additional cost of structural aid to new member states onto the British by taking away their rebate through, as Chirac put it, a gesture for Europe.
In this ploy Chirac and Schroeder found the support of the Luxembourg presidency who rather than act as an honest deal broker as small country presidency normally do quite effectively,` clearly sided against the British and joined ranks with France and Germany to force Blair to give in. The calculations were that as the next president of the EU council Blair would not dare to veto the financial package proposed by the Luxembourg`s Presidency thus inheriting an EU in double crisis, institutional and financial.
Blair`s strong leadership called their bluff and now the tables are turning. Not that it is reasonable to expect that a budget deal could be struck under the British EU Presidency of July to December 2005. French pride would not permit the necessary concessions to make a deal which would glorify Blair`s stature. But agreement on the EU budget which could eventually lead to some sort of way out of the institutional crisis, is a process which was thankfully started by Blair under the Luxembourg presidency, will be shaped under Blair`s own presidency and probably concluded under the Austrian presidency by this time next year.
The end result would hopefully be a short and clear period of dismantling of most CAP subsidies, much lower food prices for the EU consumer, and more funds available for development and research which is the basis for achieving the Lisbon agenda by making the EU more competitive in the globalised world.
Only when the EU consumer starts feeling that the EU institutions are delivering a better quality of life and not merely taxing him to enlarge and protect the inefficient, will the approval nod from the electorate be given in` popular referenda for reform of the institutions developing the EU into an ever closer Europe.
I am confident that history will regard the current EU double crisis as a turning point for reconnecting the EU with the electorates and for identifying a more sustainable way forward for development and enlargement by enhancing the policy of subsidiarity and opting for flexibility rather than rigidity. Blair will be regarded as the person in contemporary history that breath new life into project Europe easing his eventual migration to EU Commission president as his third term as UK Prime Minister and the term of the Barroso presidency come to their common expiry date.
On the local front we continue to expose inability to understand what really needs to be done to restructure our economy in order to make success of EU membership, indeed to earn our way in a fiercely competitive world.` We still seem to wrongly believe that the solution lies in the type of relationship with the EU rather than accept that the real solution lies inside us.
Whilst every sector jealously guards its patch and is not ready to appear weak by making any concessions, whilst every sector regularly preaches to others what they have to do to achieve competitiveness and expects all else to change whilst it stands guarding its past acquisitions, our country is continuing to fall back as competitors keep` pacing or racing forward.`
GDP figures for the first quarter of 2005 show that in real terms our economy has contracted when the US grew by 3.5%, China by some 9%, Japan and EU by nearly 2% whilst the new EU members are registering growth of 4%. What will happen to us when and if the global economy cools down as is being indicated by the fall in long term interest rates and behaviour of the bond markets`
Where is our Tony Blair`
Malta`s difficulty to break into the EU bears an uncanny resemblance to the EU`s own difficulty to break into the rest of the globalised world.
The summit of last weekend ended in failure, thankfully, as UK Prime Minister Tony Blair would have no more fudges with so much waste of resources going to subsidise so few farmers to detriment of the EU consumer and the under-developed world, that gets very restricted access to sell its competitive agricultural produce, including sugar, on EU markets.
Thankfully this crisis has raised awareness among European consumers on the need to re-assess the logic of continuing to allocate so much resources to keep internal EU food products so unnecessarily expensive rather than channel these resources to finance educational development, innovation and research which could help the EU economy to restructure and remain competitive even if most of its manufacturing base will have to migrate to lower cost locations.
While The French, with the complicity of the Germans, did their best to isolate Blair and pin on him the responsibility for failure to reach agreement over the budget for 2007-2013, post-summit events are proving that Blair`s policies have more support among European consumers rather than among the old guard of Europe`s political bodies.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Blair`s policy for the UK rebate to remain a red line non-negotiable area until the EU redesigns its wasteful Common Agriculture Policy (CAP)` to phase out expensive subsidies by the mid-term of the budget period, somewhere around 2010,` has the sympathy of the governments of Sweden, Netherlands, Austria and many of the new members from Eastern Europe. It also has the sympathy of the government in waiting in Germany and if this government can sit around the EU table following next September`s election, then France alone would have difficulty in defending what is shamefully indefensible.
Europe`s old guard tried to play a dirty trick on Blair.` This has backfired and they will probably have to pay for it with their own political skin. Chirac and Schroeder never took seriously Tony Blair`s repeated assertions that the British rebate was a red line area not available for negotiation in the context of an unreformed EU budget.` With the British elections out of the way and with Blair re-mandated as Prime Minister for a third consecutive term, with the EU badly needing a show of unity following the debacle of the French and Dutch rebuff in popular referenda for the EU Constitutional Treaty,` Chirac and Schroeder were confident that Blair would crack under their joint pressure. They were positive that French farmers could continue to enjoy their subsidies for another seven years while Germany would shift the additional cost of structural aid to new member states onto the British by taking away their rebate through, as Chirac put it, a gesture for Europe.
In this ploy Chirac and Schroeder found the support of the Luxembourg presidency who rather than act as an honest deal broker as small country presidency normally do quite effectively,` clearly sided against the British and joined ranks with France and Germany to force Blair to give in. The calculations were that as the next president of the EU council Blair would not dare to veto the financial package proposed by the Luxembourg`s Presidency thus inheriting an EU in double crisis, institutional and financial.
Blair`s strong leadership called their bluff and now the tables are turning. Not that it is reasonable to expect that a budget deal could be struck under the British EU Presidency of July to December 2005. French pride would not permit the necessary concessions to make a deal which would glorify Blair`s stature. But agreement on the EU budget which could eventually lead to some sort of way out of the institutional crisis, is a process which was thankfully started by Blair under the Luxembourg presidency, will be shaped under Blair`s own presidency and probably concluded under the Austrian presidency by this time next year.
The end result would hopefully be a short and clear period of dismantling of most CAP subsidies, much lower food prices for the EU consumer, and more funds available for development and research which is the basis for achieving the Lisbon agenda by making the EU more competitive in the globalised world.
Only when the EU consumer starts feeling that the EU institutions are delivering a better quality of life and not merely taxing him to enlarge and protect the inefficient, will the approval nod from the electorate be given in` popular referenda for reform of the institutions developing the EU into an ever closer Europe.
I am confident that history will regard the current EU double crisis as a turning point for reconnecting the EU with the electorates and for identifying a more sustainable way forward for development and enlargement by enhancing the policy of subsidiarity and opting for flexibility rather than rigidity. Blair will be regarded as the person in contemporary history that breath new life into project Europe easing his eventual migration to EU Commission president as his third term as UK Prime Minister and the term of the Barroso presidency come to their common expiry date.
On the local front we continue to expose inability to understand what really needs to be done to restructure our economy in order to make success of EU membership, indeed to earn our way in a fiercely competitive world.` We still seem to wrongly believe that the solution lies in the type of relationship with the EU rather than accept that the real solution lies inside us.
Whilst every sector jealously guards its patch and is not ready to appear weak by making any concessions, whilst every sector regularly preaches to others what they have to do to achieve competitiveness and expects all else to change whilst it stands guarding its past acquisitions, our country is continuing to fall back as competitors keep` pacing or racing forward.`
GDP figures for the first quarter of 2005 show that in real terms our economy has contracted when the US grew by 3.5%, China by some 9%, Japan and EU by nearly 2% whilst the new EU members are registering growth of 4%. What will happen to us when and if the global economy cools down as is being indicated by the fall in long term interest rates and behaviour of the bond markets`
Where is our Tony Blair`
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