And the Liberals will inherit the earth, or at least a lot of EU Commissions

For reasons too dull to divulge, I have been mulling on the EU's Commissars and noted that there are rather a lot of Liberals among them.  Commissioners take a vow of political celibacy -

"Having been appointed as a Member of the European Commission by the European Council, following the vote of consent by the European Parliament I solemnly undertake: to respect the Treaties and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in the fulfilment of all my duties; to be completely independent in carrying out my responsibilities, in the general interest of the Union; in the performance of my tasks, neither to seek nor to take instructions from any Government or from any other institution, body, office or entity; to refrain from any action incompatible with my duties or the performance of my tasks.

I formally note the undertaking of each Member State to respect this principle and not to seek to influence Members of the Commission in the performance of their tasks. I further undertake to respect, both during and after my term of office, the obligation arising therefrom, and in particular the duty to behave with integrity and discretion as regards the acceptance, after I have ceased to hold office, of certain appointments or benefits". 

To which I would retort, go tell it to the marines....

Anyway, back at the plot, the current 27 break down thus - nine ALDE (Liberals to you and me) aligned at nomination, Six PES (Socialists), nine EPP (Christian Democrats) and three apparently unaffiliated.

A pie-chart of which looks like this:

That's a lot of Liberals, isn't it?

What would a Commission based on populations currently ruled by each party look like? 

Like this:

The PEL (blow-dried Bolsheviks) rule Cyprus, but the good people of Cyprus fail to reach 1/27th of  the population of the EU by, oh, about 17.8 million so no sinecure for the PEL.

The AECR is the Euro grouping cobbled together by our own dear PM, and those four Commissariats represent the population of these parts plus the Czech Republic.

The PES would get one seat - losing five - based on the populations of Austria, Denmark and Belgium all of which are currently groaning under the red wheel.

The ALDE slides from nine to two, courtesy of Romania, the Netherlands and Estonia.

The technocrat governments of Greece and Italy are taken to be neutral.

And the big, big winner is the European People's Party, which jumps from nine to 16, aided by France, Spain and Germany.

Would you dig down the back of your sofa for £3.86 bn?

Tough call isn't it?

This, from the EUPravda, more specifically the European Court of auditors:

"The ECA concludes that the 2010 accounts present fairly the financial position of the European Union and the results of its operations and its cash flows for the year. However, the payments underlying these accounts were still affected by material error, with an estimated error rate of 3.7 % for the €122.2 billion of EU spending. The error rate is not an estimate of fraud but reflects the ECA’s estimation of the degree of non-compliance with the rules governing the spending, such as breaches of public procurement rules, ineligible or incorrect calculation of costs claimed to EU co-financed projects, or over-declaration of land by farmers. The control systems tested across the EU budget were still only partially effective in ensuring the regularity of payments". 

I make 3.7% of €122.2 €4.52 bn, or £3.86bn. Or not a million miles away from what we have budgeted for the prison service next year - £4.6 bn.  And more than we will be spending on foreign military aid, a surprisingly high £3.6 bn.

What - Me Worry?

(With apologies to Alfred E.Neuman)

I have just laid eyes on a eurobarometer survey about global warming, climate change, a new ice age or whatever they are calling it this week, which - in the main - is a dull as one would expect.  However, there are some broader questions involving what folk regard as the leading threats to humanity, and it is with this that I will attempt to make hay.

So, guess which country's population has the highest percentage considering international terrorism to be 'the single most serious problem facing the world as a whole'?

Well, Bulgaria - obviously.  Doubtless Al Qaeda, Continuity IRA, the Sendero Luminoso, Al Shabbab and the Red Army Faction are all planning on unpleasantness in Plovdiv even as we speak.  Alternatively, maybe the Bulgars think that little bit bigger than certain other countries - I'm talking about you, Hungary and Greece.  Adjusting my liberal hat, perhaps the Greeks have other things to worry about.  Anyway, the figure for Bulgaria is 53%,  21% for Greece and 19% for Hungary.  We are third behind the Czechs, at 46% and 47% respectively.  A paper published in 2003 has this to say 'The Republic of Bulgaria...has little experience with terrorist acts. During the past 20 years, only nine terrorism-related events have been recorded in Bulgaria, and no unconventional weapons have been use'.  Let us hope that the Bulgars, and the rest of us, stay safe.

Here's a chart of the findings:

(The first 'SL' above should be 'SK') 

Another possibility is 'the increasing global population', and what a miserable bunch of neo-Malthusians the Swedes turn out to be - 45% cited it.  The Dutch are not much better at 39%, and the 30% + club is entirely made up of Northern countries.  At the other end of the scale, the Bulgarians are fairly sanguine at 8%, likewise the Italians, while Malta (6%), Portugal and Poland (both 5%) are doing the Pope proud.  

Elsewhere, the Greeks are most worried (or were, the research dates to June) about the economy, and the Swedes the least, while the Swedes buy into global warming the most and the Portuguese the least.  We are the least worried about the spread of disease and the Czechs and the Slovaks the most.  Being of a cynical bent, I imagine that alarmist TV documentaries do rather a lot to skew these figures.  

Helpful photo caption o' the day

Found at EuroPravda:

Good job they cleared that one up, eh?

And then this:

In this photo it looks to me as though the 'Baroness' is soliciting with the classic "ten pee for a cuppa tea,  guv" approach.  However, maybe I am being A - uncharitable and B - ungentlmanly.

Brace yourselves for Monday

For it will be, get this, the 10th European Day of Languages.

The highlight would appear to be this:

"Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, will sign a joint declaration with Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, to re-affirm their commitment to multilingualism".

I think I might have to ask the long-suffering Mrs QG to wave the smelling salts somewhere near my nose.

Other details are far too dull to focus on, but there are some moderately interesting factlets in the footnotes to the press release.

EU translating / interpreting costs €1bn a year, or about 1% of the total budget.  Fairly alarming, frankly.

The least multilingual EU countries are Ireland (34%) and the UK (38%).  That comes as a surprise, given that our 'pupils are obliged to take Irish to Leaving Certificate level' .  (Source)  An Irishman of my acquaintance swore by the utility of the language for holding loud but private conversations while abroad.
 

Quote o' the day

I advise that this should not be read unless sitting down, or if the reader has a heart condition:

Viviane Reding, EU Commissar for Justice:

"The European Union is a beacon of inspiration and a source of encouragement to all nations struggling to come to terms with the sufferings of their past. It is an example for any reconciliation process founded on the respect for fundamental rights".

The talk on street corners in Juba and elsewhere in South Sudan is of little else.

She has a track record of saying and doing rather silly things, so this comes as no great surprise.  The rather broad statement was occasioned by today being 'Europe-wide Day of Remembrance of the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes', but then you all already knew that.

Just what is it with the youth of Romania?

A pertinent question, I think, given that according to a Eurobarometer poll of Euro Yoof (15-24 year olds) on the subject of drugs and the like, some 15% would like to ban alcohol.  Yes, really.  (There's a whole lot of other interesting stuff in the survey, but time is tight.  I might return to this next week).  I can't say I've ever had any Romanian booze, so perhaps a reader with experience of it could point out whether this is a sane reaction to Wallachian riesling on the part of the Dacian Generation Y.

While the Romanians do the most to appal, the EU average for banning is 7%, with this topped in Belgium, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Sweden (surprise x2), France (yes, really), Lithuania, Spain and Italy (Good grief, Carlo Bruno).  Some 4% of British youth agree, while the Danes and Dutch are bottom at 3%.

That man Delors makes a comeback.

Despite a truckload of garlic being tipped in his general vicinity, he's back - after some 16 years.  That it was part of his being a loyal father is perhaps to his credit, as it is at the behest of Martine Aubry that he is sounding off:

"Open your eyes:  the Euro and Europe (1) are on the edge of a precipice"

(Be still my beating heart...)  

"And in order not to fall off , the choice appears simple to me - either Member States accept the closer economic cooperation that I have always demanded, or they transfer more powers to the Union".

More at Le Parisien here.  The original is behind a pay wall at two other websites.

Doubtless he is holed up in his equivalent of Colombey-les-Deux-Églises awaiting the call from a stricken EU for him to come to its aid.



(1) I think he means the European Union.  The Russian Federation, Norway, Serbia etc all seem happy to sit this one out.  

Are you one in 79,000?

Only I ask, because of this:

"Europe's citizens are showing an ever greater interest in Commission activities, over a growing number of policy areas. That's the conclusion of the latest annual report on public access to documents, which shows an 18% increase in the number of requests for documents in 2010".

Must be pretty big numbers by now, eh?

Or maybe not:

In total, the Commission received 6,361 requests for access to documents in 2010.

With an EU population of about 501 million, that's one request for every 79,000 odd people, so I'm not sure I would say that that demonstrated 'an ever greater interest in Commission activities'.

However, onwards:


"In certain limited circumstances defined by the legislation (Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001), the Commission can refuse to supply a document".

Fancy that.

And how often is that get out exercised?: "full access was granted in more than four out of five cases".

Hurrah for open government.

What a way to run a railway

While my attention has been elsewhere, those lovely people at Eurobarometer have been surveying Euroman and woman on railways, the results are in and the time has come to make mock.

Firstly, my fellow South Easterners / Londoners will be a little surprised that a mere 12% of train trips were commutes and a further 12% business travel (I imagine the tube was not counted) with nigh on two thirds leisure trips. (Edit - rather than total journeys, these figures refer to respondents.  Which is rather more credible).  Which does rather make one wonder whether the prospective Lon-Brum-Manchester high speed rail link will do anything much more than whisk shoppers to and fro. Leisure travel peaked in Finland at 76% and bottomed out at 35% in Hungary, then again 47% of our Magyar friends answered other rather than commuting, business or leisure.  Suggestions as to what they were up to on an e-mail please.

Given our status as a nation of moaners, note that 87% of us were satisfied with the ease of buying tickets.  Clearly most Britons have never been at a London terminal at rush hour.  And despite the supposed efficiency of Deutsche Bahn, Germans were the least satisfied on this measure, with 42% dissatisfied.  Then again, maybe they have higher standards.

Some 85% of us were satisfied with platform / schedule information (and presumably have never used Clapham Junction....) while 46% of Poles were unhappy with Lodz Parkway, Warsaw Novy Street etc.  Elsewhere, we were third behind the Finns and Irish for station personal security, with Poland and Bulgaria the worst.  Admittedly there are fewer scammers trying on the 'lend me a fiver to get home, I've lost my wallet / handbag' trick than a few years ago.  60% of us are happy with transport connections, so maybe there is a joined up transport policy after all.  The top figure is 80% in Luxembourg, then again the lazy blighters should not bother with trains but try walking.  Here's a list of stations in Luxembourg. 

Moving swiftly on, 79% of us are happy with station cleanliness and 71% with facilities / services.  Poland and other Eastern European countries are bottom of the heap.  In terms of the best scores for rail, we give 88% for personal security, 87% for ticket buying and 85% for provision of information.  At the other end of the scale, the top moan is 28% griping about parking.  Or perhaps the length of walk from the station car park to the station.  Contrast that with the 71% of Poles unhappy with station cleanliness.  Maybe they should try using the bins....      
       
And so the trains themselves.  A mere 13% of us are dissatisfied with service frequency.  Surprising, no?  And 6% were unhappy about journey time.  Polish services were the worst, or Poles the biggest whiners.  However, here's the one we've all been waiting for:  asked about satisfaction with punctuality and reliability, 63% of Italians were satisfied and the rest dissatisfied.Whereas 46% of Germans and 52% of Poles did not find that their trains ran on time.  Portuguese trains sound rather comfy in that 95% were very / satisfied.  We managed 84%, and the Poles 48%.  61% of Britons have never tried rush hour in the commuter belt, it would seem, as they are satisfied with capacity for passengers in rail coaches.   

A discovery it would be selfish not to share....

Over at EU HQ, there is a page with this piece of text:

"If you want to know more, please read our fact sheet "Managing the agriculture budget wisely" [pdf available in ]. This fact sheet provides an overview of the systems for the management and checking of agricultural expenditure, both at national and EU level, and describes the roles and responsibilities of the different actors".

(The boxed language links above are clickable)

'Managing the agriculture budget wisely', eh?  Sounds interesting and ripe for mockery, no?

However, it turns out to be along the lines of those books of blank pages with titles like 'All that men know about women', 'The wit of Gordon Brown' etc, as clicking on the English pdf takes you precisely nowhere.   However, and here the plot thickens considerably, clicking on 'de', 'fr' or 'it' takes one to an explanation in one of those languages.  Could it be that I've stumbled upon the biggest plot of the lot, or is it just that there some lousy html use going on?

EU enthusiasm in an unexpected place - Gibraltar

EURid (crazy name, crazy guys...) has been kind enough to publish stats for registrations to date of the .eu top level domain by country / territory, and Germany emerges a clear leader based on raw volume - 1,041,614 so far.  Bottom of the heap is French Guiana at 59, although it is possible that there are other special cases where no registrations have been made - St Pierre & Miquelon for example.  We've managed just shy of a third of a million.

Anyway, so far so not very interesting.  I have had a go at charting .eu registrations relative to population, and it is Gibraltar which emerges as by far the most enthusiastic, with 3,370 registrations for a population of 31,000.  This, I would imagine is down to UK entities with a Gib presence preferring .eu to .gi, thinking it less likely to scare the horses.  Of the EU 27, Cyprus leads from Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

(click chart for legible version).

At the other end of the scale, of the sovereign states it is the Spanish, Portuguese and the Romanians who have the lowest level of registrations per capita.  However, it is France's Dom-Toms - the recipients of quite phenomenal levels of EU largesse - that are the least enthused.  Still more hopeless stattos can find figures for net donors and recipients per capita here.

We have ways of making you walk. Or at least of making you take the train.

Found at EuTube:


As some wag points out in the comments, "This video gives us a fascinating insight into the mentality that drives the European Commission, implying that policy papers will help to bring about a better world by some kind of magical transformation".

Further excavation shows what manner of schemes are being cooked up:

By 2050, key goals will include:

• No more conventionally-fuelled cars in cities.
• 40% use of sustainable low carbon fuels in aviation; at least 40% cut in shipping emissions.
• A 50% shift of medium distance intercity passenger and freight journeys from road to rail and waterborne transport.
• All of which will contribute to a 60% cut in transport emissions by the middle of the century.

If I make it to 2050 I'll be a fair vintage, and thus will be especially well placed to be spectacularly grumpy about all this

Why EU foreign policy and 'Baroness' Ashton are laughable - a small object lesson

Exhibit A:

 

And Exhibit B:

And yes, I appreciate that Ashton does not write, let alone proofread this stuff.  These two items appear next to each other on the press room index page.

The Common Agricultural Policy - a lesson in how it works.

This, from the EU's site:

The Spanish delegation briefed the ministers about the current difficult market situation facing the olive oil sector. Prices for olive oil were at their lowest level for several years and there were still many stocks present on the market at the beginning of this marketing year. This was leading to losses for producers in several member states. The Spanish request to the Commission to activate the optional aid for the private storage of olive oil (article 31 of regulation 1234/2007) is supported by several other member states, in particular those producing olive oil.

Well knock me down with the proverbial - producer special pleading followed by a demand that someone else should bail them out.  


And the CAP ain't going away any time soon:

The Presidency conclusions are the result of a detailed analysis by the member states of the policy orientations outlined in the Commission communication as part of the institutional debate on the CAP towards 2020. In short they.....make clear that the CAP should remain a strong common policy in the future, and acknowledge that the future CAP budget will be established by the European Council.

And this delightful little nugget too:

[it] note[d] significant opposition to the possibility of an upper ceiling for large individual farms.

The Arab Spring - what Europe thinks

A French paper has commissioned a poll on the Arab Spring, with the details here at Ifop. Questions were asked in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.   The findings do not suggest that there is very much cheering on of our neighbours from the sidelines going on.

Asked whether the events inspired fear or hope, the Italians split 76% afraid to 21% hopeful.  The most enthusiastic were the Germans - 48%/45%.  We emerge as Europe's mouth breathers with 22% being unable to muster an opinion (it was 8% in France, the next worst) with 53% scared and 25% hopeful.  Right wingers were more likely to opt for fear over hope in all five countries.

Asked the likely consequences, thee numbe one response was more emigration to Europe, followed by Islamist takeovers.  The Spanish mustered 61% for the arrival of democracy in the region to our 50%  Mind you, perhaps the Spanish have rather more recent memories of strong men running the show and what came afterwards.  Again, right wingers in all countries were the most likely to think an Islamist takeover likely.  Asked where EU money should go, the better off opt for development aid, and the less so for tighter immigration controls.

The post would be incomplete without showing what Ifop does with the Union flag in all the 13 opportunities it had:

Maybe Ifop is a den of Irish nationalists which refuses to accept the 1800 Act of Union.

A law we *really* do not need in these parts.

From the frequently diverting Croatian Times:

"The 25-year-old T.S. is suspected of setting the European Union flag on fire during anti-government protests in Croatia's capital Zagreb.  He has been accused of damaging the reputation of an international organization, which is considered a criminal offense".

(See interesting, and frankly downright terrifying additional information in the comment by Furor Teutonicus)

Puts me in mind of an old Soviet Union era joke:

An American and a Russian are arguig the merits of their respective nations, and the American avers that he can stand in Times Square and declare the President is an idiot and go unpunished.  To which the Russian rebutts - "If I stand in Red Square and say your President is an idiot they will make me a Hero of the Soviet Union!"

Decorum and basic humanity - the EU shows how not to do it.

And a sense of proportion too:

The opening line of the statement from the Hungarian presidency runs thus: "To the best of our knowledge, the natural disaster in Japan have (sic) no effect on Europe's population whatsoever said Minister for Rural Development, Sándor Fazekas".  Granted there is a note about previous expression of sympathies, but even so....

Mind you, over at the Korean Central News Agency, the earthquake / tsunami are noted, the Chairman of the DPRK Red Cross Society extends sympathies to the President of the Japanese Red Cross Society but room is still found to run an item about 'domestic violence [being] rampant in Japan'.

 

Gadaffi's loyal old friends.

This, from the EU press office:

""EU governments need to stand ready for a decision in the UN Security Council on further measures, including the possibility of a no-fly zone", in compliance with a UN mandate and coordination with the Arab League and the African Union stressed MEPs in a widely-backed resolution (584 in favour, 18 against, 18 abstentions). During the debate, only the GUE/NGL group was against this idea".

And what is GUE/NGL, or Gwengle as I am calling it, when it is at home?  The European United Left–Nordic Green Left, which in its own words claims 'We want to see a different Europe, without the democratic deficit which the Treaty of Maastricht served to confirm and free from the neo-liberal monetarist policies that go with it....In order to deepen its ties of friendship, solidarity and cooperation with the other countries of Europe, the Union should strive to strengthen the OSCE, where instruments should be developed capable of addressing problems of joint security, while disbanding all those structures which, like NATO and the WEU, are a hangover from the political blocs of the Cold War".

Members using the 'C' word include the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, the Communist Party of Greece and French Communist Party.  From these parts, we have Sinn Fein, in the person of Bairbre de Brún.

Those with long memories might recall this:

"...early Libyan arms shipments furnished the IRA with its first RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and that Gaddafi also donated three to five million US dollars at this time...In the 1980s, the IRA secured larger quantities of weapons and explosives from Gaddafi's Libya — enough to supply at least two infantry battalions".

Going backwards - at speed.

Our friends in Brussels have just published the first, ahem, 'Parlemeter' of 2011, which looks at awareness levels and the image of the EU 'Parliament' across the 27.

One of the questions is whether MEPs sit by nationality or political allegiance.  Overall awareness that it is the latter is a less than brilliant 42%.  I will grant that it is not wholly ridiculous to think that MEPs might cluster by nationality, but what is unexpected are the changes in level of awareness over the course of last year:

 
So, 18 countries saw a higher level of incorrect answers than at the start of the year.  I would suggest that +/- 2% represents a fair margin of error, but that still leaves 14 countries with drops of 3%-10%.  So, just what happened in Finland that some 10% of the population saw its awareness going backwards?  Maybe knowledge of the EU 'Parliament' is not the most mission critical item of information in the mind of the average sane person, but I am bewildered by the degree to which knowledge has been lost.  Have evil trolls been spreading disinformation on the streets of Helsinki, perchance?   Mind you, our figure is down 4% on the year too.  At the other end of the scal, something must have stirred up our Portuguese chums as their awareness climbed 12%.  Looking at overall figures, the Dutch are the most up to speed on these things, with 61% knowing it is political allegiance, whereas only 26% of Czechs know that.  Going off at a tangent, it might add to the gaiety of the nation if Westminster MPs sat geographically - Bercow surrounded by Tories, the Ulster MPs sharing bench space, Wirral West's Esther McVey in a sea of red etc etc.

Elsewhere, I am delighted that we Britons are least likely to think that 'democratic' describes the 'parliament' well.