Brussels briefing
France, now under the rule of François Hollande is doing its bit to help European integration. For the first time, the 160,000 French citizens living in Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands are electing their own representative to the National Assembly in Paris this month.
French nationals resident abroad have been electing 12 senators to represent the 2m of them living outside the country for some years. Their demands are for greater EU integration — pushing for schools in their native language, to recognise their professional qualifications, and to smooth the differences when it comes to tax, family law, and inheritances.
Irish citizens, on the other hand, don’t have a vote if they are outside the country (other than diplomats, gardaí, and army on official duty), which might not be a mistake now the Government is selling passports again.
It’s often said the language of Europe is translation. There are 22 official languages and regular rows that one — English — gets too much attention.
Dr Séan Ó Riain, who translates EU material into Irish, promotes the use of Esperanto, pointing out that since almost everybody has to learn it from scratch, everybody is at the same (dis)advantage.
But his idea to put words to the EU national anthem, Ode To Joy, in Esperanto has not met with the kind of success he had hoped for.
The commission rejected it as a subject for a citizens’ initiative which, with the support of a million signatures, they would have to consider as a request. They say putting words to an EU anthem would mean changing the EU treaties. That would be a fun referendum.
Spain’s massive unemployment problem is causing a lot of soul- searching in Brussels.
Everyone knows that disgruntled, increasingly hard-pressed people are not just an indication of the failure of society, but a threat to social order.
Part of the problem is that 5m people flooded into Spain from South America, from their neighbours in north Africa and from the newer EU members.
Some of these have very little education or skills, and some are challenged linguistically.
Now look north, to Germany. Its unemployment rate is very low and its labour shortages are severe, climbing to 10% recently. “We need German language lessons to solve the problems in these two countries,” said an EU official during the week — only half-joking.
It was “pick your fable” time at the Brussels Economic Forum during the week.
The head of the German finance ministry, Thomas Steffen, advised countries to become more like ants than grasshoppers.
He likened Germany to the ant, not enjoying the summer but preparing for winter, while others (he didn’t say who) were like the grasshopper, enjoying the summer, spending lots of money and not worrying about the winter.
It was left to a French economist to counter this with another fable from his countryman La Fountaine — that of the Oak and the Reed. During a storm the oak breaks but the reed simply bends.
Very upset Italian and Greeks present pointed out that the 17th century fable was a bit simplistic. Lenders cannot just pile up food and sit on it until the winter — they need to lend too.
Three of four committees in the European Parliament rejected the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, with just the Trade Committee left to vote now.
Those against this strange, so-called treaty are jubilant and believe the MEPs will finally kill off this evil document next month.
The Dutch parliament added a nail to the coffin during the week when it rejected it, calling it a deal made in secret by big multinationals to protect their interests, riding roughshod over the rights of individuals to privacy, and using governments to implement and police it.
Some of the civil society organisations objecting to it see the rejection as the start of a trend against such intellectual property deals.
We will see.
Two of the European parliament committee votes were very close and the Socialists are organising a day of action all over Europe on June 9.
Watch this space.
The Irish start smoking at a younger age than most others in the EU according to the latest survey. The numbers trying to give up and failing are high also.
Ireland is good to the tobacco companies in other ways too. The State’s minimum pricing policy guarantees the companies a minimum price for their products. Brussels has been pushing for a change to this.
A survey of governments by the anti-smoking European Network showed that 84% of politicians from 25 countries meet the industry regularly.
Almost three quarters of adverts for home mortgages were misleading, according to a recent EU survey.
But despite property bubbles bursting, new rules to ensure the same mistakes are not repeated are having a difficult time getting through the European Parliament.
Consumer groups and many MEPs want to make sure people know what they are getting, can change mortgage if they get a better deal, can pay off early without penalty and are given information.
The industry fears it will lose profits and strangely, MEPs in the consumer protection committee seem to be siding with that view, while those in the economics committee are split. It looks like the battle will continue for some time.
