European Foundation Intelligence Digest

Issue No. 132                                                                                                        		                              12th December 2001
As Downloaded from: www.SilentMajority.co.UK
I.  Spotlight on Italy

Fog in Mediterranean, Italy isolated
The Italian government is standing alone against the other 14 member states in refusing to agree to the European arrest warrant which Belgium wants to have signed and sealed at the Laeken summit this weekend.  Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, has demanded that various crimes, especially on fraud and corruption, be removed from the arrest warrant, which currently covers a whole host of crimes apart from terrorism.  Mr. Berlusconi wants many of these to be removed from the text of the warrant, especially those concerning financial questions.  Mr. Berlusconi is an outspoken critic of politically motivated magistrates whom he accuses, in Italy, of being part of a left-wing conspiracy against him.  He has reason to fear a European arrest warrant:  the Madrid Judge Balthasar Garzón has been trying to have Mr. Berlusconi arrested for some months now, even though an Italian court recently confirmed his acquittal on corruption charges and even though none of the cases brought against him have ever succeeded.
	As ever when there is a crisis brewing in Europe, the other 14 have threatened to go ahead without Italy, on the basis of the principle of “reinforced co-operation”.  Various ministers – the Belgian prime minister, the French foreign minister, the Spanish justice minister – have suggested that the agreement be adopted even without Italy.  Unfortunately, “reinforced co-operation” exists only in the Nice treaty which has not been ratified because Ireland rejected it in a referendum in June.
	The Germans have been particularly aggressive towards Mr. Berlusconi:  the German Interior Minister, Otto Schily, a former terrorist sympathiser himself, has said that the Italian prime minister’s behaviour is “unacceptable”.
	It is also noteworthy that the Belgians are saying more or less openly that they are exploiting the events of 11th September to achieve the result they desire, that of creating a single European judicial and criminal system.  A Belgian diplomat said that a decision had to be reached on the arrest warrant at Laeken because in 6 months’ time (when the next big summit comes around) the memories of the terrorist attacks will have faded and it will be even more difficult to reach agreement.
	This is not the first time that Mr. Berlusconi has irritated the euro-cognoscenti.  At Gothenburg in Sweden in June, he made anti-communist remarks which irritated the French prime minister, Lionel Jospin, a former Trotskyite, and anti-Socialist remarks which irritated the German Chancellor.  Then in September he outraged politically correct opinion all over Europe by referring to the “superiority” of Western civilisation over Islam.  [Arnaud Leparmentier & Rafaële Rivais, Le Monde, 10th December 2001; La Repubblica, 9th December 2001]  The crisis follows the resignation of a minister in the Italian government following statements he made attacking Italy’s left-wing judges whom he accused of being politically motivated.  Now there is a distinct possibility that Berlusconi’s attempts to bring Italian magistrates under some kind of political accountability will be regarded as an attack on human rights.  Sanctions against Italy, similar to those imposed on Austria in February 2000, are already being whispered about under people’s breath.

Northern League denounces “European judges”
Umberto Bossi, the leader of the separatist Northern League, a coalition partner in the Berlusconi government, has lashed out at the prospect of having a European arrest warrant.  “The very thought!” he said in Milan on 9th December.  “It is impossible to hand over a citizen of Treviso … to a judicial system run by ex-communists and the secret services.  Europe,” he went on, “will have a judicial system only when a European constitution, approved by the people, comes into being.  Mr. Berlusconi should bear this in mind when he meets the Belgian prime minister.”  And, in a barely disguised allusion to the Dutroux affair in Belgium – Marc Dutroux, a pornographer and child-murderer, has still not been brought to trial even though he was arrested over five years ago – Bossi referred to “the meeting to discuss a European judicial area was discussed, at which there were persons present who in a way have tried to protect paedophilia.”  Meanwhile, another League politician, the Justice Minister, Roberto Castelli, has presented himself as the saviour of the citizen against the overweening power of Europe by saying, “If I had not opposed the European arrest warrant, you would all be in danger of being arrested by some leftie European magistrate – and I assure you there are many of those – simply because you are here to demonstrate against illegal immigration.  [Danielle Rouard, Le Monde, 10th December 2001]
English as she is spoke
Poor Silvio Berlusconi.  The 14th richest man in the world has always been regarded as a bit naff by the professional power-mongers of Europe’s politico-media class.  Now he is in trouble with them again.  Having declared at the beginning of his term in office that he wanted Italian to concentrate on the three I’s – English, Internet and Enterprise (inglese, internet, impresa) – it turns out that his web master has not been following his boss’ advice.  The web site of the Italian government is supposed to be in Italian and English.  There is an English translation, to be sure, but it has evidently been done by one of those software programmes which translate text word by word.  The ministerial biographies come out as hilarious and unintelligible garbage.  The Minister of the Interior becomes “Minister of the Inside” while the Minister of the Environment (Ambiente) has become “Minister of the Atmosphere.”  The Youth Front becomes “The Forehead of Youth”, while the programme has even translated proper names.  For instance, the eminent Italian historian whose disciple, Rocco Buttiglione, is now a minister, Professor Augusto del Noce, comes out on the web page as “August of the Walnut”.  One minister, Lucio Stanca, studied at a business school in Milan named after its founder, Luigi Bocconi.  This is translated as “University Mouthfuls” because mangiare un boccone  does indeed mean “to have a bite to eat”.  From the same page, we learn that Minister Stanca is “Conjugated and it has two daughters.”  Using a different pronoun, the text goes on, “In 1965 one has graduated in Economy near the University Mouthfuls of Milan. Subsequently it has been name, in 1978 and until 1980, director of branch (office) great customers to Rome … etc. etc.” One woman minister becomes “Lady Joy Brichetto” and the head of the Northern League (‘Lega’ for league is translated as “alloy”) finds his home town of Varese, abbreviation Va., translated as “Goes”.  The top prizes must, however, go to the positively Swiftian translation of “Fund,” as in the International Monetary Fund for which the Italian Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero worked:  it comes out as “bottom”.  Meanwhile, the prime minister’s spokesman becomes, aptly enough, “the megaphone of the president”.  [La Repubblica, 8th December 2001]  

II.	Other European News

Eurosceptic Polish politician sacked
The leading Eurosceptic in Poland, Andrzej Lepper, has been evicted from his post as deputy speaker of the Polish parliament, the Sejm.  This comes only weeks after his surprise election to that post, following his strong showing in September’s parliamentary elections.  Those elections were won by the re-named Communist Party which is obviously now up to its old tricks.  The ostensible reason for Lepper’s removal is that he has been rude about Communist ministers, in particular by accusing them of corruption.  Lepper had called the Polish foreign minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, “a scoundrel”.  He also accused the government of “selling off national property” and said it was incapable of improving the economic situation in Poland.  Finally, he also accused ministers of taking bribes.  [Handelsblatt, 29th November 2001]  In response to these terrible crimes, the youth wing of the governing Democratic Left Alliance – the former Komsomol – as well as other “youth groups” have called on journalists to “isolate” Lepper, saying that he is a threat to Polish democracy.  [RFE Newsline 3rd December 2001]

Pensez-y toujours;  n’en parlez jamais
Poland is becoming something of a taboo subject when the delicate question of EU enlargement comes up.  No one speaks openly about Poland but everyone thinks about it.  The fact is that Europe is not ready to admit Poland and is not ready either to admit this simple truth, for to do so would be to admit that ten years have gone by while all the big issues, especially agriculture, have been simply ignored.  Of course the Poles themselves will get the blame – which is odd since they have done everything their Western masters have told them to do for the last decade.  Poland has apparently closed only 19 of its negotiating “chapters” while Hungary and Cyprus have closed 23 and 29 respectively.  All this is bureaucratic waffle, of course, because the fact that Cyprus has “closed” a certain number of chapters is effectively irrelevant for as long as there is no solution to that island’s fundamental problems.  But now it is being openly admitted that, horror of horrors, political considerations – and not just technical ones – are being allowed to influence the choice of Eastern and Central European states.  For the “closure” of a chapter simply means the transposition of the relevant bits of the 80,000 pages of EU law onto the national law books.  In reality, of course, few of the candidate states (or the present members, for that matter) have the wherewithal actually to administer these laws which therefore languish unenforced on the statute book.  Hubert Védrine, the French foreign minister, brought all these unsaid things slightly into the open recently when he expressed the political view that Romania and Bulgaria should be admitted as soon as possible even though they are not usually considered to belong to the 10 states which the EU pretends it will admit in one go.  He also hinted that there might be some countries among the 10 who may not be ready either – a clear reference to Poland.  Suspicions have also been aroused in Prague, Warsaw and Budapest that Védrine’s reference to the political need to integrate Romania and Bulgaria, as a way of stabilising South-Eastern Europe, may also be a pretext for delaying the whole process.  Védrine’s remarks go against an earlier statement made by Günther Verheugen, the Commissar for enlargement, that under no circumstances would Romania or Bulgaria be admitted in the first wave. [Pierre Bocev, Le Figaro, 29th November 2001]

Europe to hold its own “loya jirga”
There is no sign of any letup in the move towards a European constitution.  Naturally, it is all being sold on the basis that any future document will make the division of powers clearer between the EU and its member states:  this, however, is merely confirmation that the document will be quite literally federalist.  The argument is also being used that this constitution is essential for an enlarged EU.  Oddly enough, the same argument was used to the single currency and the Nice treaty, neither of which seems to have brought enlargement any closer.  Indeed, the chaos of the Nice treaty itself is adduced as an argument for more integration because – so runs the argument – that treaty’s absurd complexity proves that governments are not yet capable of taking proper decisions.  A formal proposal is to be made by the Belgian presidency at the Laeken summit on 14th and 15th September that a Convention be created with 15 representatives of the EU member states, one representative of the Commission, 16 MEPs and 30 national members of parliament.  There are also to be representatives from the applicant countries. The Belgians are going to have another go at finally destroying all traces of national sovereignty by abolishing all vetoes;  they are also going to propose that the Commission president be elected by the European Parliament.  The Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, also wants to call the 6-month rotating presidency into question.  A Convention was of course the method used to concoct the “Charter on Fundamental Rights and Freedoms”;  it is likely that it will be used again for the remaining half of what will then become the European constitution.  The chairman (or president) of the Convention could be a time-serving governmental hack like Maati Ahtisaari of Finland or Wim Kok of the Netherlands or even Jacques “pousse-café” Santer.  The most likely candidates for the post are, however, those towering euro-grandees, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Jacques Delors.  [Michael Mönninger, Die Welt, 5th December 2001]

Russian central bank:  “Don’t buy euros”
The Russian central bank has warned its citizens against acquiring euros.  “We have data that criminal clans may throw onto the market a large amount of false bank notes, and are asking the population to refrain from buying euros,” Central Bank spokesman Aleksandr Yurov said.  Russian citizens are desperately trying to get rid of their $2.5 billion worth of Deutsche Marks and criminal gangs will no doubt wish to exploit their need to dump the old currency.  Yurov said that most Russians understood the dangers and were therefore buying dollars instead of euros because “they understand the U.S. is politically more stable than the 12 states of the European Union.” [Radio Free Europe Newsline, 5th December 2001]

Germany in trouble over debt
Germany’s finance minister, Hans Eichel, has come under fire from his EU colleagues for failing to respect the “Stability Pact” which coordinates tax and spending policy within the euro-zone.  The Austrian finance minister, Karl-Heinz Grasser, said that many of Germany’s euro-zone partners were worried about the rising debt in Germany.  His Dutch colleague said that the 3% ceiling had to be respected and it was better if government borrowing was well below this.  Grasser recalled that Austria had been criticised last year because its deficit was just under 2%:  big countries must respect the same standards as little ones, he said.  The European Commission, indeed, is worried that the Germany budget deficit will be 2.7% of GDP in 2002 even though it was supposed to be only 1.2%.  The Commission also expects growth in Germany to be the lowest in the euro zone at 0.7%.  [Handelsblatt, 3rd December 2001]  Germany is therefore now considered to be the main obstacle to growth in the euro zone.   Responding to the criticism of his colleagues, Mr. Eichel apparently admitted that Germany was unlikely to achieve its target of balancing its budget by 2004.  He said that this goal would very probably be achieved in 2006, although there was some confusion over whether the Portuguese delegate who reported this had understood the translation properly.

Schröder wants German troops in Afghanistan
Not surprisingly, the key outcome of the talks near Bonn on the future of Afghanistan is that the deal will be overseen by a United Nations “peacekeeping force”.  This means that the Petersberg conference is doomed to become like the Dayton talks which put an end to the war in Bosnia and introduced an international protectorate there in spite of all the talk about building democracy.  The German Chancellor, who attended the signing ceremony which concluded the talks, lost no time therefore in putting Germany’s name down to play a role in the UN force.  He said he wanted Germany to participate in a “European force” but said that the UN would have to address a formal request to Europe before this could happen.  [Handelsblatt, 5th December 2001]

Is Nato dead, Mr. Robertson?
The Nato Secretary-General, Lord Robertson, has not been in the news much recently, the Atlantic alliance having taken something of a back seat in the present “war on terrorism” even though it invoked Article 5 of its treaty after 11th September.  Robertson responds to the question whether Nato is still relevant by saying that the invocation of Article 5 had “an electrifying political effect”, especially on the terrorists.  He also claimed that Nato was helping out operationally with the war on terror.  He said that the structures in Brussels might be used for humanitarian operations but it all seems a bit of a let-down after the attacks on Yugoslavia.  When pressed on the Balkans, Lord Robertson said, “Nato is responsible for the security of the Euro-Atlantic area” which he presumably thinks does not include Afghanistan.  The interviewer presses him:  surely the new Nato strategic concept was specifically extended in April 1999 to include responses to terrorist attacks, so why has Article 5 not been used?  Robertson says that the Americans were attacked and they had the means to create a coalition.  Robertson said that under these circumstances, there is no need for Nato.  In any case, he goes on, Nato was already occupied in Afghanistan.  He insisted that between the European intervention force and ad hoc coalition built by America, Nato would still have a role.  The interviewer also pointed out that France and Germany has said they did not want to limit the remit of the European army to the so-called Petersberg tasks (essentially “humanitarian intervention”).  Robertson left open the possibility that Article 5 might be invoked to justify an attack on Iraq.  He reassured his interviewers that Russia would not be given a veto over Nato’s decisions, even though the Alliance was seeking to co-operate more closely with Moscow.  [Die Welt, 8th December 2001]

Single market still not “perfect”
A headline in Le Monde inadvertently illustrates the extraordinary presuppositions underlying the introduction of the euro:  “The euro is still a long way off from unifying prices.”  The headline refers to a report by the European Commission which has found that prices are still different for the same products in different parts of the euro zone.  Its authors have evidently not noticed that a bunch of carrots in Paris is, and probably always has been, more expensive than a bunch of carrots in Rouen.  But, in the mind of the technocrat, these differences are regrettable.  By studying some 81 products, the report finds that the highest prices are in Germany, where 46 out of the 81 are 20% more expensive than the prices in at least one other euro zone country.  For cars, Greece is the cheapest country,  the UK – outside the euro zone, of course – is the country where cars are the most expensive.  These differences are largely a result of tax policy in the different countries.  [Le Monde, 4th December 2001]

The Great Game
A senior US State Department official, Justin Friedmen, visited President Shevardnadze of Georgia on 3rd December, as well as Georgia energy ministers, to discuss how to protect the planned Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline which will carry Caspian oil through Georgia to the South coast of Turkey.  The concern is that the pipeline may be vulnerable to terrorist attack.  [RFE Newsline, 5th December 2001]
	Meanwhile, US and French military officials have obtained from President Akaev of Kyrgyzstan his agreement to use the Manas international airport near the capital Bishkek to wage the war on Afghanistan.  Earlier, use of this airbase had been ruled out in favour of other airports in the country but they proved to be unsuitable.   [RFE Newsline, 5th December 2001]

Aznár tells Slovaks how to vote
The prime minister of Spain, José-Maria Aznár, a former phalangist, has told the Slovaks that their chances of being admitted to the EU will be badly damaged if they elect Vladimir Mečiar back to office next year.  Mečiar, who created the independent state of Slovakia in 1992 when the country split from the Czech Republic, has always been hated by the West.  European officials regularly make it clear that he cannot come back to power, even though his party has always been the most popular political formation in the country.  Speaking in Bratislava on 4th December, Aznár said, “Slovakia will not return to the past.  Hesitating signals sent by Slovakia between 1995 and 1998 cannot be repeated.”  [RFE Newsline, 5th December 2001]  Spain holds the presidency of the EU from 1st January for six months.

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