New Justice Commissioner has corruption conviction
28 April 2008
Bruno Waterfield reports on his Telegraph blog that Jacques Barrot, the new EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner, received an 8 months suspended jail sentence in 2000 for corruption. Barrot was convicted by a French court of “abuse of confidence” in a party funding case involving the Centre des democrates sociaux (CDS), an organisation he headed. The CDS was a precursor to Jacques Chirac’s, and now Nicolas Sarkozy’s, Union pour un Mouvement Populaire – and Mr Barrot remains close to the Elysee Palace.
Junior doctors to lose right to free hospital accommodation due to EU working time rules
The front page of Saturday’s Telegraph reported that junior doctors are “angry, disillusioned and upset” because they are set to lose their right to free hospital accommodation when EU laws limiting them to a 48-hour working week are introduced. They say they will be almost £5,000 a year worse off, suffering from an effective 20 per cent pay cut.
EU ministers plan travel ban on protestors
EU interior ministries, including the UK Home Office, are planning to create a Europe-wide database of 'troublemakers' to stop them travelling to protests. People on the register would not need to have been convicted of any offence and could include sit-down protesters. Germany, anxious to avoid a repeat of protests that occurred at the G8 summit last year, is behind the initiative.
Britain would send 'alerts' to other European countries on people campaigning against the expansion of Heathrow or the war in Iraq. According to EU documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday, the list is designed to stop 'troublemakers' travelling to demos abroad.
Labour referendum rebels face possible party discipline action
The Sunday Express reported that Labour MPs Frank Field and Kate Hoey could face party discipline for showing "disloyalty" by supporting the I Want a Referendum campaign. Gary Titley, the leader of the party's MEPs, called for them to be expelled from the party at a meeting of its National Executive Committee last month. Neil O'Brien is quoted arguing, "If Labour MPs campaign for a referendum that was promised in the Labour manifesto and is backed by the whole trade union movement and by nine out of ten Labour voters, then they can hardly be accused of disloyalty."
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Support for
According to a Sunday Business Post/Red C poll, support for the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland has fallen from 43 per cent in February to 35 per cent today. Those opposed to the Treaty have increased from 24 per cent to 31 per cent, while the number of undecided voters remains almost unchanged, at 34 per cent.
The Irish Times reports that Bertie Ahern responded to the poll findings, saying that a ‘no’ vote in the upcoming referendum would be a "disaster for the country" and would have "repercussions that would do immense damage to
In the Sunday Business Post, Tom McGurk argued, “If you thought the Maastricht and Nice masterpieces needed a whole afternoon in a political seminar to understand, then try Lisbon. It is the Finnegans Wake of EU treaties, a masterclass in confusion and obscurity. It would be funny if it weren’t so serious; indeed, were any student in
He concluded, “As we ponder this truly unreadable document, why should we be treated with contempt by some Europeans for even pondering it? And, most importantly of all, could voting No to it be our attempt to save
Sunday Business Post Sunday Business Post 2 Irish Times Irish Times 2 Sunday Business Post 3 EUobserver
French Agriculture Minister sees CAP as a model for dealing with food shortages – EU should help Africa,
The FT reports that French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier has said that the CAP should be looked at as a model to deal with global spikes in commodity prices. He blamed “too much free-market liberalism” for the current food crisis and said, “I think [the CAP] is a good model. It is a policy that allows us to produce to feed ourselves. We pool our resources to support production. West Africa, East Africa, Latin America and the southern shore of the Mediterranean all need regional common agriculture policies.” He added that the EU should provide these regions with assistance in setting up their own versions of the CAP, and said that he was “not sure” that the WTO is “the right place to discuss the relationship between food and agriculture”.
A leader in the FT argues that Barnier’s idea “is not just a bad idea, it is a potentially lethal one”.
FT FT-leader Forbes EUobserver
Clegg: rejection of Lisbon wouldn’t have mattered
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg was interviewed on the BBC Today programme, calling for a “Significant change in the way politics is done”. He rejected the idea of a “narrow referendum” on the EU Lisbon Treaty, claiming that if this had been held, and the Treaty was rejected “it wouldn’t have changed a thing to the way in which the European Union is presently organised”. Of the Lib Dem proposal for a referendum on EU membership, he said that “we were thwarted in our attempt to even have that debate in the House of Commons”.
He concluded that the UK has the “most grotesquely over-centralised system of Government anywhere in the western world”, and said that the Lib Dems wanted to give “families and communities more power over the way they run their own things”.
Comment: it was a shame that Nick Clegg was not asked about the Lib Dems' decision to change their policy again and vote against an in-out referendum in the Lords.
Anderson: Cameron should have a “monumental row” with EU
Writing in the Independent, Bruce Anderson suggests that if elected David Cameron should “re-commission” Margaret Thatcher’s handbag for his dealings with the EU. He writes: “Mr Cameron knows what sort of
EU blames American - Stern attacks biofuels
The FT reports that US biofuels could in effect be shut out of Europe under plans being discussed in Brussels. Anxious to distance itself from charges that its push for biofuels is creating hunger round the world, the EU is considering stringent social and environmental criteria for imports that the US and some other big biofuel producers would not meet. The sustainability criteria under discussion would in effect bypass World Trade Organisation rules forbidding biofuel bans. By excluding those products not meeting the criteria from its biofuels target of a 10 per cent contribution to the fuel mix by 2010, the EU would deprive those products of government support, removing incentives to import them.
Separately, the EU and US face a trade spat after EU biodiesel producers on Friday asked the Commission to investigate subsidised US imports they said were driving them out of business. Saturday’s Guardian reported that the European Biodiesel Board (EBB) said it had lodged a complaint with the European Commission over competition from the US that was putting EU producers out of business. It wants duties on "B99" biodiesel exports (biodiesel with 1% petroleum diesel), claiming they are unfairly subsidised and then dumped in the EU, where they can win new subsidies.
Meanwhile the weekend FT looked at the “acrimonious spat” surrounding the biofuels debate. It quoted Lord Stern, author of the UK Government's influential review of the economics of climate change and former World Bank chief economist, saying that the use of biofuels was "very worrying, particularly the grain-based [fuels]", which compete with food. French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier, while defending his own country's support for biofuels, criticised the US and Brazil for unilaterally stepping up production. "It is the Americas' biofuel targets that are destabilising the world," he told the FT.
Crains Manchester Business reports that new EU regulations on security for importers and exporters could severely delay the movement of goods in and out of the country.
Crains Manchester Business News
In the Sunday Telegraph, Christopher Booker looked at a small chemical company in Oldham, which estimated that the EU’s Biocidal Products directive would cost the them £6.5 million if they wanted to go on to sell their present product, despite the company’s annual turnover being £2 million.
The EU and Serbia may sign a Stabilisation and Association Agreement, which is considered a stepping stone to EU membership, in June as part of an agreement designed to placate Dutch and Belgian concerns on cooperation over war crimes issues.
Le Figaro reports that Nicolas Sarkozy today begins a two-day visit to Tunisia to discuss his idea for a Mediterranean Union. The paper notes that the future secretariat of the Mediterranean Union could be based in Tunis.
In Saturday’s Guardian Denis Macshane reviewed Sir Stephen Wall’s book “A Stranger in Europe: Britain and the EU from Thatcher to Blair”. MacShane argues that the Foreign Office and the Guardian are eurosceptic.