Brussels briefing
EU doctrine says that Germany and France united are the engine of the union. So there is always an arranged marriage between the leaders of the two countries and great things have been done when the couple get along.
But it has not been a marriage made in heaven for German chancellor Angela Merkel’s and her two French partners so far. And this week we had her and president Françoise Hollande getting back together again.
This time the baby will be a full-time euro boss, they say. However everyone knows they have very different views on how the baby should be reared —
In the meantime chancellor Angela appears to be making eyes at China.
One wonders if she is contemplating divorce.
The European Humanist Federation has accused the Irish EU council presidency of being biased in favour of churches, contrary to Article 17 of the Treaty on the functioning of the EU.
Presidencies have been meeting both church representatives and humanists representing non-believers for the past three years — with the exception of the Danes who met neither.
They wrote pointing this out to Taoiseach Enda Kenny last year, who “noted it”, and they wrote again after he met a delegation from the Catholic Church’s EU office in March. Two months later they got a reply saying it was too late to arrange a meeting with Mr Kenny and offered them a senior official.
Easter next year should see the end of mobile phone roaming charges throughout the EU, Commissioner Neelie Kroes has announced. The EU has been gradually forcing telecom companies to reduce these charges on text, call and data.
MEP Marian Harkin points out that this will be particularly welcome for those living in border areas throughout the EU, and the border along her constituency of Ireland north and west.
Kroes is hoping it will be her going-away gift as her term comes to an end next year. But let’s see if the telecoms industry goes away quietly too.
Technical defects cause about 8% of all accidents involving motorcycles and scooters, more than the 6% for vehicles in general.
So it’s all the more strange that EU member states and the parliament’s transport committee voted against a proposal to introduce vehicle testing for them.
Eleven EU countries decided there was no way they would adopt mandatory minimum standards and they defeated the proposal to have annual tests for cars older than six years. They also exempted tractors used for agricultural work and rejected a risk rating system for companies whose vehicles do poorly in inspections.
Germany’s European commissioner for energy, Gunther Oettinger, raised more than a few eyebrows when he announced that Italy, Bulgaria and Romania were “ungovernable”.
The best response came from the Austrian socialist president in the European Parliament, Hannes Swoboda.
“Commissioner Oettinger seems to lack a core quality for holding such a high European office: The knowledge that different countries have different histories, go through different developments and have different cultures.
“The three countries Mr Oettinger singled out are not ‘ungovernable’, they were just unfortunate enough to be governed by his trio of EPP friends — Berlusconi, Basescu and Borisov — for many years,” he said.
What do gravestones and railway tracks have in common? Both are targeted by criminal gangs who steal the metal from them — mostly copper.
Metal theft has now become so rampant that Europol launched a major action involving 17 EU countries last week, including Ireland. Often, stolen metal is transported across borders and sold as scrap a long way from the crime scene.
A big number of arrests were made including 37 people in Bulgaria and in Italy police recovered a 120-tonne copper haul. More arrests of thieves and ‘fences’ who buy the metal are expected.
Hundreds of lawyers specialising in social and labour law in the EU have signed a petition protesting against what they see as systematic attacks on social dialogue and social justice which they believe will bury the European Social Model.
Social and wage inequalities are increasing between member states and within individual countries and they warn that austerity measures enforced by the European Commission will sacrifice 60 million workers.
With the drive towards competitiveness prioritising lower labour costs and taxes and less job security, they argue this is turning people against the EU, dooming the union on which future prosperity is banking.
READING YOUR WAY OUT OF POVERTY
More than 73 million adults and 20% of pupils in Europe have problems reading and writing — but that is minuscule compared to illiteracy in the rest of the world, according to Fine Gael MEP Gay Mitchell.
With the Millennium Development Goals high on the EU’s agenda, he is pushing for €2.5 billion of the development aid budget to go to education.
It is estimated that if all children in low-income countries could read, global poverty would fall by 12% while a child born to a mother who can read is 50% more likely to survive past the age of five.
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