Singing the EU's praises
Every February le tout Bruxelles packs into the Albert Hall - a rather more modest venue than its London namesake - for the annual press revue. Devised by Geoff Meade - the doyen of the British press corps, who arrived in Brussels in 1979 and has somehow never got round to leaving - the revue is a series of skits and comic songs on EU themes and draws heavily on the usual influences: Monty Python, music hall, painful memories of boarding school. Yet despite its extremely British nature, the press revue has proved mysteriously popular with other nationalities. The theatre was packed this year, with a particularly strong German representation. Perhaps there is a certain anthropological interest in watching the British at play. Commission officials also seem to feel obliged to turn up and watch themselves being lampooned. In fact, the whole thing is faintly reminiscent of those war films in which the prisoners of Stalag Luft 17 put on a comic revue, while the guards laugh good-naturedly from the stalls.
The revue probably sounds fairly grisly to outsiders, who may not fully grasp the pleasures of watching an impersonation of the spokesman for the director general of agriculture. Indeed, your correspondent snobbishly stayed away for the first couple of years of his period in Brussels, since attendance at the revue is a sure sign of having gone native. But I am now so far gone that this year I found tears of mirth rolling down my face during a comic song about the stability and growth pact. Not everyone in the audience was amused, mind you. A great many of the jokes were about what a disaster the enlargement of the EU is going to be. At the interval, the Polish ambassador had a slightly worried frown on his face. But his press secretary said brightly, "It's important that we show that we can take a joke."
Romano Prodi's press man, the magnificently slobbish Marco Vignudelli (think stained T-shirt, paunch and fag hanging out of the corner of his mouth), was also less rapturous than the rest of the audience about the musical performance of Enrico Brivio, the bureau chief for Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian business newspaper. Brivio, who has crashed the Brits' party by virtue of his magnificent singing voice, belted out a ditty called "Romano" to the tune of "Volare." Its general thrust was that Romano had been a bit of a disappointment and is now destined to be crushed by Berlusconi in the next Italian election. Still, perhaps it is better to be mocked than ignored. Anne Anderson, the Irish ambassador, took time off from chairing the EU to watch from the stalls. At the end of the performance, she remarked rather anxiously, "We got off very lightly. Perhaps the British haven't noticed us."
EU takes up Prospect's challenge
The debate in Prospect's pages about the relationship between immigration and the willingness of citizens to pay for the welfare state will be tested in practice, thanks to the enlargement of the EU on 1st May. The union is equally committed to two key principles that potentially conflict: non-discrimination between EU citizens and generous national welfare states. So far the flow of migrants within the EU has been pretty small and largely restricted to groups who do not place a great strain on Britain's welfare state - professionals, wealthy retirees and students. But the tabloids are now in full scare mode about a flood of indigent east Europeans heading to Britain in search of work and benefits. The best hope is that the migrants who come in will quickly find work and assimilate easily. But the question of access to the benefit system is tricky. When the Swedes announced recently that they were going to join the EU majority and demand work permits for east Europeans for a transitional period, Goran Persson, the prime minister, said in justification that the country's welfare system would be vulnerable to abuse - after only a few weeks' work, somebody in Sweden becomes eligible for a whole panoply of benefits. The situation in Britain is murkier. It appears that even quite short periods of part-time work may make you eligible for the jobseekers' allowance. The question of how much work you need to do before you become eligible for work-related benefits is shortly to be tested in a case before the European court of justice.
But the issue may turn out to be a red herring. Even without the right to work, all EU citizens have the right to travel to another country in the union. Even if they do not find work and are ineligible for benefits, they cannot be deported. European law does allow an EU country to deny residence permits to the citizens of another EU country if they have no means to support themselves. But they can only be asked to leave if they constitute a threat to public order. Unemployment is ruled out as grounds for deportation. All of this means that even if the tabloid nightmare of the Roma communities of Slovakia and the Czech Republic moving west en masse comes true, countries like Sweden that demand work permits will not necessarily shield themselves from any resultant problems. Even if indigent immigrants are denied benefits, they cannot be deported. And a liberal society such as Sweden - or indeed Britain - is not going to leave them to starve.
