Further to my report in October it seems that the luminaries of the Baltic states are still living in cloud cuckoo land.

In Estonia Finance Minister Aiver Sõerd says in today’s Äripäev: “Both, the state as well as private business must continue with the aim to be fully prepared to adopt the euro from the beginning of 2007.” The hectoring tone might be understandable when you remember that the latest opinion polls put opposition to the Euro at 48% and support at 47%. As Matthew Lynn at Bloomberg states:

In Estonia, a poll showed more than half the population opposed euro membership, according to an AFP report last week. And only 38 percent of people in the 10 new countries expect “positive consequences” from the euro, down 6 points from last year, according to a European Commission report last week.

Quite reasonably, many analysts have concluded that eastern European leaders aren’t planning to walk up this particular aisle. “The EU attracted accession states on account of the relative prosperity it enjoyed through the 1990s,” said Stephen Lewis, chief economist at Monument Securities Ltd. in London, in a note to investors. “More recently, the euro zone has, rightly or wrongly, become a byword for economic stagnation. It is not surprising, therefore, that the forward momentum of European integration has been lost.”

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European Commissioner for Institutional Relations and Communication Margot Wallström seems to be faltering. Last night she gave an interview to Swedish TV (SVT’s Agenda Europa program) in which she calls for the “period of reflection” over the European Constitution to be extended for several years. Hitherto her plans had been for the rejected Constitution to be discussed at the final summit of the Austrian Presidency in June of next year.

This wobble in the headlights of public opinion will not go down well in the European Parliament, where they are building up to vote on the Duffenhuber report, which calls for the initiative to be given to the Parliament, as the only institution so cut off from reality that it believes that it can force the Constitution through, without reference to public opinion.

De Juristenkrant (23 november) interviewde Xavier Verboven, secretaris-generaal van het ABVV, over het stakingsrecht, rechtspersoonlijkheid van vakbonden, over recht en vakbond en de moeilijke relatie daartussen.

Over de discussie of de rechtbank mag tussenkomen n.a.v. een staking antwoordt Xavier Verboven dat het stakingsrecht het “enige middel [is] waarover de arbeiders beschikken” en dat “het stakingsrecht absoluut overeind [moet] blijven”.

Mijn commentaar: Is dat werkelijk het “enige middel”? En ik die dacht dat er een alom geprezen model van sociaal overleg was, dat weliswaar in de toekomst moet aangepast worden, maar dat dus alleszins een staking zeker niet “het enige middel” is waarover men vandaag beschikt.

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The Finnish Government are in a quandry. Not wanting to stick their necks out and ratify the EU Constitution, after all that would be rude to the people of France and Holland, but at the same time wanting to prove their faith in the Euro religion. The Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, has mooted that the Finnish parliament’s approval in 2006 could have a positive effect on the atmosphere over the constitution. He went on to muse generally about the “right political momentum,” without defining what on earth this “momentum” could be.

The poor fellow is at sixes and sevens it seems. Finland will be taking over the Presidency of the Union in 2007 when everybody in Brussels hopes that that awkward bugger Chirac is out of the way and the French can have another chance. The last thing that the Finns want is not to have at the very least “politically approved” the document by then.

Belgium has not yet ratified the European constitutional treaty. The Belgian federal parliament as well as the regional parliaments in Brussels and Wallonia have approved it, but the regional parliament in Flanders has not. In the Flemish parliament the Flemish-secessionist and Eurosceptic Vlaams Belang (VB) is the largest party. The VB demands that the EU Constitution be submitted to a referendum.

Belgium’s federal Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt is pressuring the Flemish Parliament to ratify the EU Constitution before the end of this year. However, the VB will be able to stop the Flemish Parliament from taking a decision before at least the Spring of 2006. This is an embarrassment for Verhofstadt. He has just authored a book The United States of Europe in which he proposes the establishment of a federal Europe. If this should prove impossible with all 25 EU members, Verhofstadt insists that a “hard core” proceed with the federalist agenda. He sees Belgium as a leading member of this group, which must also include France and Germany. If Belgium does not get the EU Constitution ratified, because of the VB’s refusal to cooperate, Verhofstadt’s plan will be a non-starter.

Car dealers importing American cars in Belgium are on the brink of bankruptcy. For the past three months the Belgian government has been refusing to deliver the required safety certificates for the cars. Since 1 September companies importing non-European cars must be able to show European certificates guaranteeing the safety of the cars.

The Belgian authorities are making no problems for Japanese, Korean or other non-American cars, but are refusing to give safety certificates for Dodges, GMCs, Chevrolets, Chryslers, Lincolns and other American car brands. Belgian dealers can import the cars via Germany, where the certificates are delivered without any fuss, but this costs them up to an additional 3,000 euros per car – a surplus which they do not like to inflict on their customers.

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One hallmark of professional journalists is their claim to at least get the facts straight. Don’t expect as much from Spiegel’s online international edition. In Spiegel’s latest addition of its “America = Bad” series, this one deals with those alleged secret CIA prisons in Europe, the following is offered:

In Germany, there is at least one documented case of the CIA abducting a German citizen – Khaled el-Masri from the southern city of Neu-Ulm.

The CIA is sneaking around Europe itself kidnapping people off the streets of the southern German city of Neu-Ulm. Right? Wrong. From Spiegel’s previous story on the very same case:

El-Masri, namely, is part of one of the most unusual criminal cases in recent years. The father of four claims he was kidnapped by United States agents one year ago in Macedonia, carted off to a prison in Afghanistan, and accused of being an al-Qaida terrorist.

This story is bad enough with mistakes made by the US. Is it too much to ask that Spiegel at least check their own archives and be consistent with their own “facts”?

One wonders, what else in the article is untrue?

Since the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva in 2003, many in the United Nations and in the European Union have created the impression that a struggle of epic proportions was at hand with the aim of depriving the United States of its control over the Internet. However, two weeks ago, at the WSIS meeting in Tunis, a compromise was reached.

For the time being, the management of the Internet will not be taken away from
the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and transferred to the United Nations. A new Internet Governance Forum, made up of governments as well as private organisations, will be installed next year. Though its purpose is to strengthen the input of governments on internet policy issues, including the domain name system, it will not act as an oversight body for ICANN. All governments have agreed to work within existing organisations, i.e. within the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) of ICANN. The latter is an American organization, over which the US Department of Commerce has vetoing power, but it was created to ensure that there will be no government control of the Internet.

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