National interest in Brussels
It is always interesting in Brussels when national tensions come bubbling to the surface. The narrow defeat of the EU's takeover directive-which was meant to establish a single European code for company mergers-has led to a bout of German-bashing. The German government, alone among the EU-15, opposed the directive; and the fact that German MEPs voted almost en bloc against it in the parliament secured the necessary votes to ditch 12 years' work.
At a hastily-called press conference afterwards, Frits Bolkestein, the EU's internal market commissioner, talked bitterly about pressure from corporate Germany. As he was talking, he was interrupted by a German MEP, who accused the commissioner of anti-German sentiment, but was then howled down by a pack of watching journalists. As for the ever-courteous Bolkestein, it is hard to imagine that prejudice could enter into his thinking-on the other hand he is 67, and Dutch.
The battle over the takeover directive also raises interesting questions about the national balance within the European parliament. At the Nice summit, France fought tooth and nail to keep voting parity with the Germans in the council of ministers, where governments are represented. In return they conceded that German numerical weight will be better reflected in the European parliament. Could this be why the Germans are now so keen to increase the powers of the parliament at the expense of the council?
How Andalucia soaks up EU cash
A visit by your diarist to Andalucia provided a graphic reminder of why the Spanish will fight, fight and fight again to prevent EU enlargement leading to a sharp cut in regional aid to Spain. Almost every road and construction project you pass seems to have the EU flag fluttering over it. Indeed so much funding is pouring into southern Spain that some of these good works are cancelling each other out. The olive farmers of Spain receive a cool $1 billion in EU agricultural subsidies each year (that is not a misprint). But the intensive olive production that is being encouraged is causing soil erosion and other environmental damage-cue a large EU grant to restore the marsh-lands of the Donana national park in Andalucia. But the people working at Donana are still not entirely happy. For yet another EU programme-this one to upgrade rural infrastructure-has just put a smart new tarmac road straight through the national park. Over-excited local drivers now keep running over the protected lynxes. So the EU is paying for lynx-tunnels to be built under the roads.
Prodi: no improvement in sight
I'm afraid it's getting worse. Optimists claimed that once Romano Prodi settled into his job, people might warm to his idiosyncratic style. No such luck. Where once they doubted the hapless head of the commission, now they just laugh openly. Over at the council of ministers they have taken to referring to him as "the great communicator." This sarcasm seemed amply justified after the Prodi visit to Ireland, in which he put his foot in it by acknowledging what the Irish No campaign had always said-that, strictly speaking, the passage of the Nice treaty is not legally necessary for EU enlargement. Prodi's dwindling band of defenders say that this "gaffe" was a mark of their man's intrinsic honesty, his straight-talking nature and so on... The trouble is that straight-talkers usually have the virtue of being readily comprehensible. But people listening to Prodi can often not understand what he's saying, even in his native Italian. Your correspondent recently encountered a group of industrialists who had just met "the president." Asked how it had gone, the leader of the group sniggered. "He talked a lot about the 15th century," he replied.
On riots and restaurants
The EU is often referred to as a gravy train. But at EU summits, gravy is the least of it. Mass rioting at Gothenburg meant that the thousands of journalists were even more inclined than usual to stay in the press centre and wolf down the free grub. The general feeling was that Swedish cuisine-although not bad-was inevitably not quite as fine as that on offer at the Nice summit in December. Many talked regretfully of the absence of that delicious pear sorbet which made Nice so memorable. The hacks are less excited about the prospect of the six-month Belgian presidency. This is not because the cuisine will not come up to scratch. Au contraire. The large number of people with expense accounts in Brussels ensures that there is an ample supply of Michelin-starred restaurants and celebrity chefs. But the hack pack enjoy their trips abroad-and a 30-minute drive down the motorway to Ghent doesn't quite cut it. Still, they will have to get used to it. One of the little noticed deals, struck in the early hours of the Nice negotiations last December, was that from the second half of 2002, all EU summits will be held in Brussels. This was a concession to the Belgians to persuade them to accept one less vote than the Dutch in the council of ministers (don't you love rational decision making?). The Belgians were pretty pleased at the time. Now it appears that each EU summit will come with its very own quota of anarchist rioters, it is looking less like a smart move. n
