German business magazine welcomes OE initiative: “Finally - protests from business!”

Leading German journalist and author Bettina Röhl has written a long op-ed for Germany's leading financial magazine Wirtschafts Woche, welcoming the new Open Europe initiative that sees businesspeople across Sweden, Britain and Germany unite for the first time to call for bold EU reform.

In her piece entitled, Finally - protests from business! Röhl commends business leaders for addressing "the blind alley the EU is in.”:

"Now business leaders have spoken up -- some of them for the first time. This is not only good, but it is long overdue. All too often, business leaders find it too difficult to become involved in the political debate....It is not that initiatives were surprising in their substance, and neither are they new. But what is new, is that business itself is speaking. It is formulating its own needs, which are also the needs of the economy of a whole.”

Röhl concludes:

"Anyone who wants to rob Europe of its diversity and drown it in Brussels fatuity, and all of this under the roof of a single currency, has failed splendidly in their rigidity. By throwing their gaze inwards rather than towards to world markets, they either do not care about European competitiveness, or, they have not understood the global economy."

So, we've mostly had positive responses across the board to our joint-initiative - with the odd exception. A leader in the Swedish regional paper Göteborgs-Posten, for example, thinks it has cleverly spotted two “contradictions” in the article signed by some of Sweden's top business people in Dagens Industri.

Firstly, the leader argues that it is inconsistent to call (as we do), for less EU regulation and more services liberalisation – because the latter would require “common rules.” That argument doesn't cut the mustard, we're afraid.

As we’ve pointed out many times before, it's of course fully possible to be in favour of “more Europe” in areas like services liberalisation, and less EU regulation in other fields where it makes less sense for Brussels to be involved. Or is the paper really suggesting that the EU regulatory framework is pareto optimal at the moment and that there's no room for a reform package whose net effect is less but better EU regulation? To bring it closer to home, it's fully consistent to support an ambitious services directive while opposing, say, heavy-handed EU regulation on snus (a variant of dry sniff which is close to religion in Sweden - but a sales ban exists in the rest of the EU).  Also, in theory, under our preferred option – mutual recognition or a “passport” – you wouldn’t actually need more EU harmonisation, but let’s not split hairs. (Suggested reading: Open Europe: Services report, Open Europe blog: Services liberalisation ).

Secondly, the Göteborgs-Posten's leader claims that to in order to "give citizens a stronger say over EU, more EU decisions needs to be made by directly election institutions – like the EU Parliament. Which in turn means more supra-nationalism [or federalism]”.

Yes, that’s the purist, federalist version of how to close the EU's democratic deficit - transfer ultimate democratic accountability to the EP. However, where the leader finds its “contradiction” in the business article is hard to see. This federalist theory is a perfectly respectable one but it reached its prime about a decade ago. To some, the EP might still be part of the answer, but the debate has now self-evidently moved on to other ways in which to strengthen democratic legitimacy, including boosting the roles of national parliaments (where the Dutch – not the British – are leading the way). Göteborgs-Posten is about ten years late to this debate.

Nice try though.

Bottom line: In order for the EU to truly compete in the global economy, it needs to reform. It needs to be more flexible.  It needs fewer rules with a sharper focus. It needs to give  entrepreneurs the space to do what they do best: generate wealth and opportunity. With the right reforms, Europe totally has the potential to rise to the challenges of the 21st century.

 
To find out more about our initiative to ensure that Europe makes the reforms it needs order to be able to compete in the 21st century, click here.

He started strong but ran out of steam...

As you're aware, "the EU" has a range of different Presidents - a frequent source of confusion for both citizens in Europe and partners from abroad. Socialist MEP Martin Schulz is one of them, being the President of the European Parliament. While Schultz has somewhat of a marmite personality, he does have some interesting to say - unlike many of his predecessors. Yesterday's interview with FAZ is a good example.

He starts off strongly:

“People do not agree with the EU in its present form… people feel that the idea has become a bureaucracy and they reject it…As a young man I've always fought for the United States of Europe. Today I know that this is not possible. We will not turn Germany and France into California and Florida.”

He continues even stronger:

“The EU must focus on the essentials and the leave the labelling of Hessian apple wine to the Hessians.”

Hear hear.

He also proposes a move towards a free trade area in the Mediterranean - which we also have argued for:

“In the 21st century the population of North Africa will exceed 300 million people who need infrastructure, education, hospitals and sustainable agriculture...Why do not we create an economic area in the Mediterranean? Instead, we'd rather bicker about what fertilizer for farmers to deploy.”

But from there he starts to go downhill, and fast and steep at that:

“The euro is one of the greatest icons [of an integrated Europe] which expresses the economic strength of the still richest continent through a common currency… .”

Right...

Continuing downhill he argues that thr EU budget ought to be spared the kind of austerity that member states are having to implement, saying:

“when it comes to growth, the [structural and cohesion funds] are the most successful project of the EU. There are certainly some highways built incorrectly, but the cohesion policy has recently led to enormous economic growth in Eastern Europe and before that in the South.”

It seems that Schulz must have mislaid his copy of our recent report on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the structural funds. He's right that the funds should be focussed on the EU's new memebr states, but totally wrong that the funds have categorically have had a positive impact in Europe's south - there's no conclusive evidence for that.

Schulz also includes a tongue in cheek defence of Chancellor Angela Merkel - showing that despite presiding over a rather dull institution, he can afford a joke or two:

“I must acknowledge [Merkel’s crisis management] without envy, it's a great achievement. It's like in football. The game lasts ninety minutes and the end Germany always wins, as they say in England, even if this is not true. In the European Council, it is usually 26 against one. In the end, however everyone agrees with Mrs. Merkel.”

Bild proudly embraces its 'European Thistle' award

More news from Germany this morning. Over the weekend, Europe-Union Deutschland (EUD) - a German EU federalist pressure group which argues for more EU integration - handed out its yearly prizes: a 'Europe Lily' for outstanding achievements in European policy, and a corresponding 'Europe Thistle' for those, who in the view of EUD, are responsible for the biggest blunder in the same area. The event was well attended, with former EU Commissioner Günther Verheugen and senior CDU politican Peter Altmaier among the guests.

Incidentally it is worth briefly mentioning here that EUD has in the past received direct EU funding for some of its activities, so it is not exactly an impartial organisation.

Lilies were won by a German couple who have done much work for special schools and disabled children in Germany and Slovakia, two students who have helped develop youth centres in the Balkans, and Professor Beatrice Weder di Mauro from the University of Mainz.

Bild won some notoriety for its headline last years calling on Greece to sell its islands in order to pay off its budget deficit. At the event, Bild's reporting was criticised for being "too emotional", and creating divisions amongst European citizens in its labelling of 'good' and 'bad' EU member states.

While similar awards (think Hollywood's Razzies) are usually boycotted by embarrassed recipients, Bild's Deputy Editor Nikolaus Blome actually showed up to collect the award (pictured) and moreover, he took the opportunity to deliver a speech in which he defended the paper's stance and argued that while he supported the euro, the current rescue package is deeply flawed. Blome also has a piece in today's edition entitled: "Despite our joke-prize this is why we stand by our views", in which he argues that Bild's coverage has been justified, pointing out that:

We said: "Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks", and as promised this is what is happening; 70,000 state-owned properties are available for sale in Greece, including a complete peninsula and a small mountain.

Blome points out that where Bild has led others have followed. It has also set the parameters of the debate in the German media; it points out that its descriptions of Greece as a land where no-one pays their taxes, or its calls for Greece to be thrown out of the euro altogether were subsequently picked up by more 'respectable' publications such as Suddeutsche, FAZ and Der Spiegel. Furthermore Blome points out that the possibility of a Greek exit from the euro was recently acknowledged by Angela Merkel - 18 months after Bild first raised it. Blome concludes by saying:

"We are proud of this award...Would Greece really be in a better state if we had kept our mouths shut?...Beheading the messenger is a well established tradition, however this will not bring back the old order of the European elites… the word 'thistle' derives from the old Indo-Germanic language and means 'spiky' and 'pungent': That is what we want to be. Be glad that we exist!"

We doubt this is the last we hear from this paper...

"Euro-realism" on the march...even in Belgium

In De Standaard, Bart De Wever (photo), leader of Flemish nationalist party N-VA - Belgium's biggest party – has defended his decision to give an introduction to a speech made by Czech President Václav Klaus during a Belgian state visit. Klaus, as you know, isn't exactly the most popular head of state in Brussels circles.

But De Wever writes:

"Whoever expresses criticism of the europhile mentaility of the political elite is being labelled an ideological ally of the far right.

In an infamous speech at the European Parliament in 2009, Klaus committed the cardinal sin by sharply criticising the lack of democracy at the EU level, even comparing the EU to the Soviet Union. When someone who has physically experienced the struggle for political freedom and sovereignty of the people, speaks about Europe in such a way, we should at least be expected to take his criticism seriously. Instead of taking advantage of an opportunity to engage in a big debate on the European project, Klaus was being dismissed as a political pariah."

De Wever concludes:

"whoever honestly believes in European integration, will need to learn to listen to its critics. Lashing out at anyone who doesn't believe in the europhile dream of a United States of Europe, advocated by smooth statesmen and journalists, really doesn't cut it any longer if we wish to convince public opinion. In order to counter the opinion of Klaus and to avoid the European project from turning into something resembling not much more than a free trade area, we need euro-realist answers. And we need grands messieurs et mesdames willing to sell those ideas."

Not the usual stuff coming out of Belgium, to say at least.