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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 3rd, 2008 ALDE Conference “Religiosity and Secularism vis-à-vis fundamentalist violence” 27/08/2008, 15:30 - 18:30, 28/08/2008, 9:00 - 18:30, 29/08/2008, To register please contact marco.pannella at europarl.europa.eu and visit our Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 28th, 2008 This WEEK in the European Union by Leigh Phillips for the EUobserver. 27.06.2008 On 1 July France takes over chairmanship of the six-month rotating presidency of the council of the European Union from the out-going EU presidency, Slovenia. On Tuesday, there will be a working meeting concerning the programme of the French Presidency between the members of the European Commission and the French president, prime minister and members of the French government. But the French presidency really kicks off with its first major event, tackling one of the biggest issues on its plate, the food crisis. Skyrocketing food prices have produced waves of riots in the poorest countries of the world in recent months, but it is not only the third world that has been affected. Consumers throughout Europe go to the supermarket and week after week they see the price of everyday items eating further and further into their budget. The conference aims to take on the triple-headed policy challenge – food, energy and the environment - and discuss the challenges facing agriculture in this unprecedented period, including the question of the future of agriculture in developing countries. The former may on the face of things seem harmless enough, but the devil, as ever, is in the details, and some member states worry about potential additional stresses to public health-care systems. Anti-discrimination is an equally hot-button issue, with some in a number of the new member states and social conservatives across the union alarmed at the possible consequences of legislation if it includes the measures to prevent discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. A number of businesses too are not particularly enthusiastic about what they say are the additional costs involved with protecting against age discrimination. A working paper on the situation of the Roma in Europe, some of the most actively discriminated against on the continent – and the subject of violent attacks by racists in Italy in recent weeks, is to address the difficulties faced by this community and focus on mechanisms for inclusion. The package will also look at the promotion of cross-border youth volunteering and include a green paper on the challenges of immigration in the educational context. A recent commission study found that the children of migrants tend to do poorly at school. The green paper will look at options for overcoming such problems. Elsewhere next week, European environment ministers are to meet informally on Thursday and Friday in the Domain of Saint Cloud, France. An informal meeting of energy ministers will also meet there on the Friday and Saturday. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 28th, 2008 EUobserver.com - 28.06.2008 Liberals and Democrats launched a comprehensive climate change campaign to For more information please visit http://www.thechangers.eu or ———————– Connecting citizens to combat climate change: Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), The European Parliament, launches ambitious community website www.theChangers.eu On May 21, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe launched theChangers.eu, a comprehensive climate change campaign to encourage people to take action to reduce their environmental impact. The Changers campaign is multi-channel, including an interactive website www.thechangers.eu, a European on-line bannering campaign and a wide range of offline posters and promotional material. www.thechangers.eu This ALDE campaign goes further than other climate change campaigns. TheChangers.eu is a fun and educational website that inspires and stimulates behavioural change around the issues of climate change and sustainable behaviour. Climate change is a top priority for ALDE, as shown by the group’s legislative work in the European Parliament. The ALDE group calls on all Europeans to make a personal contribution to the global ecosystem by reducing their energy consumption, CO2 emissions and use of natural resources. TheChangers.eu stimulates citizens to take action and also to change the consumption behaviour of theirs friends and families. ALDE will use the power of on-line communities and the digital possibilities available today to influence the actions of young people and through them the wider European community. The story behind the website theChangers.eu is a virtual reflection of the real world. In this virtual world there are people who are already aware of the risks of climate change and are adapting their behaviour to combat climate change, and others who harm the environment and eco-systems around them through their unconscious actions. By engaging in games and community activities to restore and maintain healthy eco-systems, the ‘Changers’ counter the damage caused by the behaviour of others and actively encourage them to take action by joining the Changers themselves. TheChangers.eu is built around simple every day actions that anyone can choose to take and thereby reduce their negative environmental impact. Each action is represented by an item which is part of an eco-system. Players interact within these eco-systems by creating their own virtual character or an avatar. By doing so, players can better understand how climate change affects the eco-system and the wildlife within it. By becoming a tree, a butterfly or a polar bear, or even a cloud, Changers learn how these eco-systems are affected by climate change and how their own behaviour can cause or combat this change. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 25th, 2008 EU fails to convince OPEC to boost oil production writes Renata Goldirova from Brusells for the EUobserver. 24.06.2008 - The group of major oil-exporting countries, OPEC, has ruled out a further increase in oil production, saying there is sufficient supply to the market and that other factors, including US foreign and economic policies, are to blame for record price hikes. “All you need to do is look at the data to be convinced that the market is well-supplied in oil, that we have enough surplus capacity and we have enough stocks in the market,” Chakib Khelil, the president of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), said on Tuesday (24 June).
The price of petrol has passed from ten dollars in 1999 to 95 dollars last year. Speaking after discussion with the European Union in Brussels, Mr Khelil cited the recent US sub-prime mortgage crisis, financial market speculation, the weak US currency and worsening geopolitical situation as main factors behind the high prices. When asked about how much the price will jump over the summer holiday season, Mr Khelil replied: “It is the sixty-billion dollar question”. “The market is waiting to see how the dollar is to evolve in July, how the geopolitical situation is going to evolve with the threats made to Iran. So if you can answer those questions, I can answer the question concerning the price,” he said. The EU, for its part, insists that the oil price is to large extent driven by fast growing energy consumption in China and India. It has repeatedly called for supplies to be boosted. EU energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs urged OPEC to scrap the production ceiling in order to provide relief for the market. “In my opinion, there is no reason to keep ceilings on production,” he said. “If there are no ceilings, markets will adapt much faster,” he added. “In this respect we could expect prices to go down, not to go up as the tendency has been till now.” “We need to work much closer to discover what action should be taken because investments take billions and to change consumer behaviour also takes time,” the commissioner added. He also suggested stronger supervision of activities in financial markets and reiterated the EU’s intention to decrease oil import dependency through its energy-climate change package. Under the package, the EU has committed itself to boosting renewable energy production and cutting energy consumption. In response to the EU’s plans, the OPEC president said: “All of this of course is going to lower the demand, but I think it is a good thing to lower the demand. We just have some more supplies and maybe some lower prices.” “The EU is doing a very good job and should continue this way,” Mr Khelil added, underlining the potential benefits for OPEC members of having new technologies linked to energy efficiency and CO2 emission cuts. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 24th, 2008 nbsp;http://www.theparliament.com/policy-focu… Recycling is crucial first step in reducing emissions, says former London mayor Ken Livingston in a visit to an EU Parliament Committee in Brusells: An economic perspective on climate change can convince people to reduce their carbon footprint, the former mayor of London has said. “We need to get across to people that almost everything we do can save money,” he told theparliament.com. “Basically, it’s all about being more careful and not wasting things.” Livingstone said that there was a lot to learn from attitudes that prevailed half a century ago. “If you look at my parents’ generation, this approach was their whole ethos,” he said.
The project was given a boost in August 2006 following a joint partnership between the C40 and the Clinton climate initiative, a business-focused project founded by former US president Bill Clinton. One initiative under the scheme, the congestion charge in London, has reduced CO2 emissions in the city by 16 per cent. New York has implemented diesel-electric hybrid buses, and the city authorities in Berlin have developed a project aiming to achieve a 26 per cent reduction (on average) of CO2 emissions for buildings that undergo retrofit tenders. Livingstone said that getting cities on board was vital to support and encourage the innovative technology aimed at tackling global warming. “The technology already exists; the next generation of energy efficient tools are already here. What they need is large cities to come and give them the support they need,” he said. Irish GUE/NGL deputy Bairbre de Brún added that it was important to learn from those cities which had adopted energy-saving policies. “Initiatives taken at the local level can have an impact on national policy,” she said. “Foresight, imagination and political will are what is needed.” Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 19th, 2008 The Transatlantic Institute has a panel debate on - ‘How Europe sees the Middle East’
17.30 – 19.00 At the: Guest Speakers: Dr. Mark Heller has been affiliated with the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, now incorporated into the Institute for National Security Studies, since 1979. He was Coordinator of Research at the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security in 1991, Visiting Professor of Government at Harvard University in 1992, and Research Associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in 1999. Robin Shepherd is a Senior Research Fellow Europe at Chatham House in London. His area of expertise include European foreign policy, Transatlantic relations, Prospects for the European Union and European relations with Israel. Mr Shepherd’s forthcoming publication on EU attitudes towards Israel, called ‘A State Beyond the Pale’, will be published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, in early 2009. Wolfgang Barwinkel is based in the Middle East/Mediterranean Region Unit at the Council of the European Union. He is active in areas including WMD non-proliferation and the Middle East peace process. Moderator: Emanuele Ottolenghi To participate, please contact the Transatlantic Institute at +32 2 500 72 85 Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 19th, 2008 Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko visits Brussels today, June 19, 2008 for talks with European commission chiefs, Javier Solana ( the EU’s High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the designated EU’s Minister for Foreign Affairs), Günter Verheugen (Vice-President of the European Commission, responsible for enterprise and industry), and Andris Piebalgs (Commissioner for Energy at the European Commission). So, it seems quite obvious that the reason for her visit to Brusells is Energy for Europe. We assume that it is the Russian gas pipelines. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 19th, 2008 The referendum: populism vs democracy: The idea of the referendum as an instrument of the people’s will rests on pre-democratic foundations, says George Schöpflin on www.OpenDemocracy.net 16 - 06 - 2008
These propositions - which can be summarised as the seduction of direct democracy - are misconceived. The championing of referenda they embody proceeds from a series of four untenable assumptions, which are worth itemising in some detail. George Schőpflin is a member of the European parliament for Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Union) and was Jean Monnet professor of politics at University College London. An unsafe vehicle: First, in complex modern societies there is no such thing as “the people”. The concept is a leftover from the time when democracy had to be legitimated in the eyes of anti-democrats; its residue today leaves it open to political manipulation. The homogeneity it implies can hardly be reconciled with the reality of an enormously varied modern society composed of millions of members with multiple motivations and choices, used to exercising individual rationality in the marketplace. How can they be compressed into something with a single voice, namely “the people”? In too many cases - European integration among them - referenda function as an instrument not of democracy, but of populism. They can assist democracy only in a few special circumstances: for example, to resolve an issue that is more ethical than political (legalising divorce or abortion, say); or to unblock a political system (offering autonomy or independence to the population of a particular region and thus perhaps helping to avoid civil war or ameliorate division). An example of the latter is when the populations of the various republics of the Soviet Union voted for or against declaring their sovereignty, which led to their independence as states. Another case where the referendum was a legitimate use of the instrument was the votes in 1997 on devolution for Scotland and Wales within the United Kingdom. The referendum held on 9 March 2008 in Hungary was ostensibly about the government’s health-reform project; in reality it was about a means to articulate the deep disquiet in society about the refusal of the Hungarian government to listen to that disquiet. Second, referenda are profoundly unsuitable ways of addressing complex issues, because they offer the illusion of a simple answer to complexity. In this sense, they pull the voters into the pre-political stance that lies at the heart of populism. Modern politics is about weighing various options, in circumstances where issues only very seldom appear in stark, good-vs-bad form. Referenda have an implicit, contextual message that says the opposite, something along the lines of “vote no” or “vote yes” and all your problems will be solved; as Tøger Seidenfaden has pointed out, referenda reduce highly complex issues to a simple yes/no answer. In a cultural sense, they “dumb down” the voters. Moreover, voting “yes” often means accepting the word of the political elite’s saying, in effect, “trust us”. If voters wish to send a message to the elite that they are dissatisfied - for whatever reason, even one wholly distinct from the issue at stake - voting “no” is a convenient and simplistic solution. So the illusion of expressing the popular will is just that, an illusion. Third, referenda reintroduce the tyranny of the majority, the very thing that modern democracies have sought to dilute by, for example, upgrading the role of civil society. Here again, careful analysis is needed. A great deal of politics is about making matters relatively easily intelligible, but this can readily cross the line into oversimplification, especially when sections of society will be clamouring for just that. The erosion of trust between political elites and society is also about the reluctance of the latter to come to terms with political complexity and the way in which both elites and media pander to the outdated desire for a golden age when choices were simple. The trouble with that supposed golden age is that - whenever those who invoke it can be persuaded to identify it in terms of a definite period - majorities had no trouble in imposing their views on a minority. The evolution of various forms of lobbying, advocacy and pressure groups, and radical movements since the 1960s and 1970s is precisely about giving otherwise silent groups a voice. Referenda suppress that. It is quite plausible that a referendum on, say, recriminalising homosexuality or reintroducing the death penalty would gain a majority in several European nation-states. It is unlikely that the more vocal protagonists of “the people” expressing its view in this way would approve. Indeed, supporters of referenda as the articulation of the popular will are seldom if ever called upon to define what is a proper topic to be decided by “the people” and what is not. That too is a part of the easy ride the referendum receives in modern democracy (or, to be more precise, in a surrogate for democracy). Fourth, referenda offer power without responsibility, in that voters can confront elites without having to face the consequences of their action. At their heart, referenda provide an opportunity for ad hoc coalitions that never have to worry about the outcome. The far left and far right coming together in France in the May 2005 referendum on the European Union’s constitutional treaty was a case in point; the two sides could never have governed together, but they could operate as a spoiler. Something similar was in evidence in Ireland in the Lisbon-treaty vote, where rightwing Catholics made common cause with leftwingers suspicious of Europe. The irony of this is that an ad hoc coalition of this kind can focus on a single issue and need never on any single occasion assume responsibility for the power that it wields. Referenda have unintended consequences in that they introduce new political actors into the system together with fresh lines of polarisation, often around issues that (regardless of the new actors’ demands) have no straightforward solution. This can also introduce and legitimate potentially destructive discourses - accusations of “sell-out” and “betrayal”, for example - that gain credibility through being voiced by these “untainted” political actors. Besides, the task of the negative campaigners tends to be simpler than that of the supporters - they only have to argue: “if in doubt, say no”. This was much in evidence in Ireland’s referendum campaign. For all practical purposes it left the supporters of the “yes” camp having to prove their credibility, if not actually their innocence. And once a “no” campaign has won, it cannot be blamed, as it immediately evaporates, once again leaving the (elected) elite with the problem of what to do next. The organisers of “no” campaigns themselves never have to face an election. When referenda are held on questions to do with the future of Europe, there is a further generally unidentified twist to the story. European integration operates simultaneously with three different sets of actors - the European Union, its institutions and elites; the national elites; and the supposed European demos. These three do not really connect very much. There is some connection between the EU and the national elites, but the linkage between the EU and its demos is very weak and is generally felt to be weak. It is this political gap that provides the opportunity for negative campaigners in European matters - they believe that they can hold “their own” national political elites to account for European commitments, something not possible at the European level, largely because identification with that level does not exist. This is the democratic deficit that must be addressed. But referenda, far from overcoming that deficit, actually intensify it. Accountability and responsibility, after all, have to be a two-way process to work at all. Referenda operate only in one direction and, for that reason, are not an appropriate or a democratically sustainable instrument in European matters. “Israel-Lebanon: a battle over modernity” (8 August 2005) “Putin’s anti-globalisation strategy” (10 July 2006) “Hungary: country without consequences” (22 September 2006) “Hungary’s cold civil war (14 November 2006) “The European Union’s troubled birthday” (23 March 2007) Russia’s reinvented empire (3 May 2007) Turkey’s crisis and the European Union (23 July 2007) The new Russia: a model state (27 February 2008) Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 13th, 2008 From: press at alde.eu Distribution: immediate - June 13, 2008 [ Final results announced just after 1700hrs local time put the no side at 53.4 per cent and the yes at 46.6 per cent, with an average turnout of around 54 per cent, higher than that polled during the defeat of the Nice treaty in 2001, and also more than turned out to vote when Nice was put to a vote the second time in 2002. What is not clear is how the eight EU member states that have not yet ratified the treaty will proceed, and what, if any, measures will be taken to broker a compromise with the Irish. ] The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats note the outcome of the Irish referendum with deep regret. “If the rejection is confirmed today the incoming French Presidency should convene a special summit of EU leaders with only this one item on the agenda. All 27 Member States must decide a course of action on the fate of the Treaty and its proposed reforms and commit themselves to a concerted campaign to explain what the European Union is, why and how it works and why it deserves their support - the Alliance of EU Parliament Liberals and Democrats say. If there is one clear lesson from Ireland it is that too few people know what the EU is about or how it is adapting to a changing global environment.” “This is a tragic outcome for Ireland, for the EU and for Europe’s place in the world. The problems that the Treaty of Lisbon addressed remain: “Brian Cowen, Irish Taoiseach, will have some tough explaining to do next week in the European Council on 19-20 June. “I urge the heads of government to show strong leadership. They should not delay a decision about how to tackle the problem nor propose any new ‘period of reflection’. If a solution is to be found it needs to be done soon.” “It is a very disappointing result. It was an extremely difficult campaign, much of the time was spent trying to counteract the misinformation being put out by the very well resourced “no” camp. Ireland became the battlefield of Europe and unfortunately this particular battle was lost. I am hoping that the Council meeting next week will give the necessary leadership to put the EU reform process back on track.” ———- In effect, www.SustainabiliTank.info is at a loss to understand how a country like Ireland, that started out as if they belonged to the third world - an underdeveloped country that modernized and became an economic leader with the help of the main countries of the EU, is now so ingrate as to believe that they will be better off without a strong EU entity. Ireland does not have oil like Norway, the best they can dream of becoming is another Switzerland, but then they are geographically not at the center of the world like the Swiss were, so - why do not the rest of the EU simply decide that for the good of the 26 they just put the Irish membership on hold, until the country reapplies, when the people get to their senses. Anything less then that just is not in Europe’s self interest - and the geopolitical structure of the 21st century needs a strong and united Europe in order to be at the table with China, India and the US. The days that Europe got two memberships at the Security Council (the UK and France) are over. The real Global Security is now a deal that will involve one seat for the EU, and US, China, India, and Russia. Not even Japan, and not yet Brazil, can undo this reality. The individual France and UK, are already overshadowed by Germany, and without being united, Japan is ahead. Permalink | |