UK ‘Not Interested’ In European Network Agency

The European Commission has recently adopted a Communication
– Evaluation of the European Network and Information Security
Agency. The European Network and Information Security Agency
(ENISA) was created in 2004 for a period of five years with the task
of “ensuring a high and effective level of network and information
security within the Community … in order to develop a culture of
network and information security for the benefit of the citizens,
consumers, enterprises and public sector organisations of the European
Union, thus contributing to the smooth functioning of the
internal market.” Their recent Communication presents the
conclusions of an external panel of experts that carried out an
assessment of the Agency and the recommendations of the ENISA
Management Board (comprising of Member State, Commission
and stakeholder representatives) with regards to the ENISA
Regulation.

The report says that the “Agency’s activities appear insufficient to
achieve the high level of impacts and value added hoped for, and its
visibility is below expectations.” Moreover, there are several
problems that affect the capacity of the Agency to perform at its
best, such as its “organisational structure, the skills mix and the size of
its operational staff, the remote location, and the lack of focus on
impacts rather than on deliverables.”

In the Communication, the Commission summarises, rather
positively, the recommendations of the Evaluation Panel on the
future of ENISA after 2009. They recommend: the extension of the
Agency’s mandate, maintaining its original chief objectives but
taking into account the current experience. They also believe that
the Agency’s size and resources should be increased. The Panel has
also suggested moving the Agency to Athens or another city with a
greater international environment.

The European Scrutiny Committee is not pleased with the
Explanatory Memorandum from the Minister of State for Industry
and the Regions, Margaret Hodge. According to the Committee, the
Commission Communication “suggests that this agency was created
on an unsound basis, which was compounded by it then being sited in
the wrong place for the wrong reasons.” The Committee has
considered Margaret Hodge’s response very disappointing – “it is as
if the UK had no interest in the question, but was content to let the
Commission and others take the lead and then react, notwithstanding
the present unsatisfactory state of affairs.” Therefore, the Committee
has demanded further explanation on this issue from the
government.

Europe Harmonizes Road Transport

The EU is currently hoping to introduce extensive regulations on
road transport. The European Commission recently adopted a road
transport package which supposedly aims to reduce distortion of
competition within the EU as well as enforce the compliance of
social legislation and road safety rules onto transport operators.
The Commission’s proposals also aim to harmonise the rules
governing access to the profession and access to the road transport
market.

The legislative package contains three proposals for regulations:
the first (replacing Directive 96/26/EC) is on admitting staff as road
transport operators, the second (amending Regulations 881/92 and
3118/93) lays down the precise EU conditions governing access to
the Community road haulage market and the final one (amending
Regulations 684/92 and 12/98) state the governing conditions for
companies to gain access to the Community coach and bus
transport market.

The UK government seems generally content with the introduction
of the regulations:

• The House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee has been
analysing the Commission proposals.
• At the time, Minister of State, Department for Transport, Stephen
Ladyman said that the Commission proposals were generally
consistent with the government’s view.
• Although the government is not keen that companies may be
required to employ a transport manager who must attend a
compulsory 140 hours of training and an examination or with the
costs, particularly for small companies, it believes that apparently
the Commission’s proposed definition of road cabotage will create
greater clarity for the industry and will not create further
administrative burden for companies or enforcement authorities.
• With regards to the harmonisation of administrative procedures
for the development of European coach services between Member
States and a single Community licence “in principle the Government
welcomes such simplification”
• The Commission proposal will include local bus services which
cross international borders in its authorisation.
• The UK government believes that it “is reasonable to have a
standardised format of the certified copy of the Community
authorisation or licence.”
• By 2010, National licensing authorities would have to establish
interoperable electronic registers all over the EU. They would have
to withdraw the licences of transport operators convicted of serious
offences. Hence, it recognises that any serious offences identified
will be mutually recognised between Member States.
• While the Government has been in favour of a more broad
information exchange “if monitoring and enforcement are to be
improved on a Community wide basis” it believes that 2010 as a
target date to establish an interoperable electronic register all over
the EU may be too ambitious.
• UK drivers would no longer be able to call upon the services of a
transport manager of a company for which they work as subcontractors.
According to the Minister, this will have “implications
for UK companies which have an exclusive contract with self
employed drivers, with each having their own operator’s licence, but
with the company providing each with a vehicle (with company livery)
and a transport manager for professional competence purposes.”
• What has the government said of finance? Regarding the financial
implications of the Commission’s proposals “the Government
is generally satisfied with the Commission’s assessment that more
harmonised measures will lead to possible reductions in administrative
costs of €190 million per annum overall across Member
States in the longer term.”

It is likely that such proposals will add huge costs to road
transport companies. Neither is the European Scrutiny Committee
convinced that it is appropriate to prescribe rules on the degree of
seriousness of criminal offences which are to lead to a loss of ‘good
repute’ under a measure adopted under Article 71EC. Moreover
they have asked the Minister “if it is appropriate for the degree of
seriousness to be left to the Commission to determine by comitology
decision under the regulatory procedure.”

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Harmonising Retail Financial Services

The European Commission is eager to fully harmonise the retail
financial services industry. Last April, the European Commission
adopted a Green Paper “on Retail Financial Services in the Single
Market.” The Commission’s vision for future EU policy on retail
financial services (bank accounts, loans, investments and insurance
provided to consumers) has been expressed in the Green Paper. It
aims at deepening the Commission regulation of consumer and
industry policy in the area of retail financial services and
identifying the possibilities for further initiatives. The government
has already said that “many of the barriers that obstruct retail
markets are not regulatory” – such as language barriers and cultural
practices. Therefore, according to Ed Balls “a legislative approach
will often be less likely to be effective in removing many of the barriers
present in retail markets.” It remains to be seen what will come out
from the consultation. It seems certain that any Commission
proposal on the matter will have a huge impact on retail financial
services.

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Costs of EU agencies go through the roof

The EU has created a number of agencies for various apparently worthy causes. Not surprisingly, however, the budgets of these agencies have gone through the roof – so much so, indeed, that the European Parliament has started to raise concerns and has criticised the European Commission sharply. The Chairman of the Budget Control Commission of the European Parliament, the Austrian Social Democrat, Herbert Bösch, has said, “The agency-itis in the EU is gobbling up our money and it operates in a control-free space.” EU agencies are usually free-standing authorities which deal with specific subjects like professional training or drug addiction. They are financed by taxpayers’ money. There are currently twenty-three EU agencies and they consume a billion euros a year, according to Bösch. The last seven years the number of employees in these agencies has risen from 166 to 3,737. Bösch says, “The number of EU agencies has risen dramatically in recent years. There is no proper control over whether all these agencies are really necessary.” He cites the new agency for fundamental rights in Vienna, which has started off with 100 employees. It is supposed to oversee the protection of human rights in the EU but this is already done by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and the Council of Europe to which it belongs. Bösch says, “A culture of irresponsibility is gaining ground. I really cannot see anyone who is taking responsibility for this.” No one knows who is in control of what. Bösch says, “There is hardly a European Council any more at which a new agency is not created.”

This is not the only aspect of the Commission’s policy which has attracted the attention and criticism of the Parliament committee. The number of permanent employees at the European Commission has increased by 16 per cent in the last seven years and now stands at 19,004. “The need for the majority of the new jobs is unproven,” according to the speaker of the European People’s Party parliamentary group in the European Parliament, Inge Gräßle. There are now fewer than 1,200 employees of the Commission who are responsible for “communication”. Yet the Commission’s image is worse than ever. When Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU at the beginning of this year, the Commission recruited 741 new employees, supposedly to enforce the single market. Mrs Gräßle, however, says that this means that the pension costs of the Commission will go through the roof, becoming a huge burden for taxpayers. “In 2008 alone, the cost of pension payments has risen by more than 10 per cent.” [Handelsblatt, 19 July 2007]

---- An excerpt from John Laughland's Intelligence Digest. For a free e-mail subscription to the Intelligence Digest, please click here ----

Lukashenko goes on the attack

In an interview with Le Monde, the Belarusian President, Alexander Lukashenko, has sought to rebut many of the allegations made him since he was elected in 1994. He emphasised Belarus’ continuing astonishing economic growth (9 per cent in the first six months of this year) and said that his country was not diplomatically isolated. He said there was just as much political freedom in Belarus as in France and dismissed the demands made on him by the EU as “risible”. He vehemently denied being a dictator, he said that people lived without fear and that Belarus had excellent relations with its neighbours. “We are not one of those aggressive states which sends its troops abroad to kill old people and children.” He said that opposition demonstrations were not suppressed with tear gas or rubber bullets (as has happened in Europe) and that everyone can watch opposition or foreign TV stations. Anti-Presidential and anti-government newspapers were freely on sale. He said that his policy was not one of dictatorship but of national independence. “One Belarusian out of three died in the Second World War and we did a huge amount to save the world from Nazism. We deserve respect for it but the Europeans have forgotten it. Not us. We are proud, we do not like to be pushed around or told what to do. We do not live off the loans that you give to others. Our external debt is less than 2 per cent of GDP. So what is our fault? If the hawks in Europe want chaos and instability to reign here, we will not accept that.” He said that the Belarusian people would never accept a dictatorship, as history had shown. “Perhaps there are elements of rigidity or authoritarianism in Belarus, but that is all within the framework of the constitution, adopted by referendum.” He said that people had supported him because in the early 1990s the country had been plunged into chaos, as in Ukraine, and the Belarusians had wanted to get out of that situation. He rejected the need for any “dialogue” with the opposition, saying that it was interested only in taking foreign money and not in helping the population. He said that he had no intention of creating a political party because he was elected by the people and, in any case, a party should come from below. He criticised the sharp increase in gas prices from Russia, saying that one could hardly speak of market prices when Belarus depended on a single supplier, Gazprom. He said that Belarus was one of the countries which had created Gazprom within the Soviet Union and that other countries were negatively affected by its aggressive pricing. For this reason, he said, Belarus ought to have the same gas prices as Russia. He said that Russia had destroyed the agreement on creating a union state uniting Belarus and Russia, and that this meant that there was now no chance of getting internal prices for gas. “But our economy and our state are strong enough to resist this, as the situation over the last six months shows.” He said that Gazprom had taken its decision on the basis of instructions from the Russian government. He attacked the plan to build a pipeline under the Baltic Sea (linking Russia directly to Germany) as “stupid”. “It is rather like choosing to walk on one’s knees in the mud rather than with shoes on a carpet. Those who invented this project have probably got money to waste.” He said that it was much cheaper for Russian gas to transit through Belarus. He said that the project of a union state remained on the agenda, although Russia had killed off the agreement, but that Belarus would never accept to become part of Russia. Instead, any union state would be a partnership of equals. Lukashenko said that President Putin well understood the need for a union with Belarus. “Vladimir Putin is a Soviet,” he said, “and he will remain one even if he had – let us say – changed his suit.” He said that Putin was his friend, that he had a direct line to Moscow, and that their relationship was based on respective national interests. He said that relations with his Western neighbours (Lithuania and Poland) were characterised by a high degree of economic exchange and that this would dictate the terms of relations in the future. He attacked, however, NATO, saying, “We consider it to be an illegal organisation.” He said that the Warsaw Pact had been dissolved on the basis of an agreement with the US but that, far from NATO being dissolved, it had been strengthened. He said that Europeans were wrong to remain silent in view of the American plan to station new missile launchers in Europe – “we learned the costs of silence in World War Two” – and that the US military expansion in Europe was a security problem for the whole continent. He said it could escalate into a global conflict. He also said that Belarus was intending to build a nuclear power station and that France would be invited to tender. “The objective is to reduce our energy dependence on Russia.” [Le Monde, 20 July 2007]

---- An excerpt from John Laughland's Intelligence Digest. For a free e-mail subscription to the Intelligence Digest, please click here ----

Russian officer predicts war with America

Military experts in Moscow are making plans for a scenario in which Russia is attacked by the United States of America in the medium term. The reason for such an attack would be to obtain control of Russia’s oil reserves in Siberia. Major-General Alexander Vladimirov has said, “A war between Russia in the next ten or fifteen years is quite possible.” Vladimirov says that the reason why Russia might be a target is that it is “the most powerful geopolitical opponent of America and it has the power to extinguish the USA in 30 minutes.” Apart from gaining control of the oil, America would also want to attack Russia in order to demonstrate its military power to the rest of the world. General Vladimirov is Vice President of the College of Military Experts in Russia and he and other strategists aired their thoughts on war with America in an interview with the newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda. One of the other experts was the former Chief of Staff of the Russian Army, General Leonid Ivashov who is now President of the Academy for Geopolitics; General Victor Yessin, first Vice-President of the Academy for Security Problems, Defence and Law; and Alexander Shavarin, Director of the Institute for Political and Military Analysis. Their general view was that the US does not like Russia, and that a confrontation is inevitable. Of the experts, only Yessin thought war with the US was unlikely because the consequences – “a worldwide apocalypse” – were in the interests of neither state. Ivashov said that the Americans wanted to realise their “century-old dream of world domination and the removal of Russia as the main obstacle to their gaining complete control of Eurasia.” The experts all said they thought that America was capable of going to war with Russia over natural resources. The experts discussed what ultimatums they thought the US might issue against Russia. They suggested that they might demand a change in the domestic political situation in Russia on the pretext that human rights were being violated there and in order to obtain access for Western companies to oil and gas resources. They might demand the stationing of NATO peacekeepers in Russia or the secession of Kaliningrad or parts of the North Caucasus and the Caspian. Ivashov said the Americans might demand international control of Russia’s gas and oil and some sort of NATO inspection regime for Russia’s nuclear forces. According to the strategists, the only thing which will prevent such a war is rearmament. The experts differed, however, on the outcome of such a putative war. Yessin said it would lead to a nuclear winter while Vladimirov said that it would lead to a complete victory for Russia and to “the national collapse of the North American state”. [Komsomolskaya Pravda, 17 July 2007]

---- An excerpt from John Laughland's Intelligence Digest. For a free e-mail subscription to the Intelligence Digest, please click here ----

Russia and West disagree on Kosovo

On 16 July, Russia again opposed a draft United Nations Security Council Resolution on Kosovo which had been proposed by the Western powers. Russia did this on the basis that the draft opens the prospect of independence for this Southern province of Serbia and that the Security Council cannot vote to amputate the territory of one of its member state. The Russian rejection came in spite of the fact that the Western powers backing the resolution had removed from the draft any reference to the automaticity of Kosovo independence, which had previously been provided for after a period of 120 days of further negotiations between Serbs and Albanians. The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, has said that the chances that the draft would be accepted were “equal to zero”. He said that the resolution in fact applies the solution to the Kosovo issue proposed by Martti Ahtisaari, which Russia rejects.

Indeed, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, has attacked Ahtisaari. On 13 July, and responding to reported remarks by Ahtisaari that Russia would reduce her international status if she vetoed his plan, Lavrov said that such remarks would be “out of place”: “If such an announcement lowers anyone’s international status, it is not Russia’s," he told reporters. Lavrov added, “If one side ... cannot accept these proposals, it is necessary to continue the negotiations and it is probably necessary to have an impartial international mediator foster these negotiations.” The implication was clearly that Ahtisaari was not impartial.

Ahtisaari’s plan provided for independence for Kosovo “under international supervision”. Since 2006, Russia has argued that it is inconsistent for the West to push through independence for Kosovo while denying independence to Transnistria (officially part of Moldova) and to South Ossetia and Abkhazia (officially part of Georgia).

The Russian rejection of the proposal is also nourished by a conviction in some circles in the Kremlin that the West is trying to encircle Russia and, in particular, to drive it out of the Black Sea. The Kosovo issue is part of this plan, to the extent that independence for that province would put a permanent end to any Russian presence in the Balkans.

The Russians are therefore planning to react in kind if the Western states go ahead and recognise Kosovo anyway, which would represent a breach with the terms of the province’s current UN-approved status as a part of Serbia under UN administration. Moscow would be likely to recognise South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria in return. These territories might well then apply to join the Russian Federation. A Russian foothold in Abkhazia would strengthen, not weaken, Russia’s presence in the Black Sea, since the province is contiguous with Russia’s own border on the Black Sea. This in turn would make the NATO accession of Georgia, to which Abkhazia currently belongs, extremely confrontational since Tbilisi would obviously then have a territorial dispute with Russia herself.

The geopolitical tensions are not going likely to abate any time soon. The Russian Black Se fleet is to relocate to Novorossiysk in 2017 when its lease runs out in Sebastopol in the Crimea, part of Ukraine. The Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi, incidentally, is to host the Olympics in 2014.
Some Western diplomats have concluded that there is no possibility of any progress on Kosovo until the Russian Presidential elections of 2008. That is not soon enough for the West, even though it has been forced by Moscow now to put the whole issue on ice for a further six months. [Natalie Nougayrède, Le Monde, 18 July 2007]

The latest move by the West has been to try to supplant the UN Security Council and get another ad hoc international body to proclaim Kosovo independent instead. The German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, has said that it might be “sensible” to give the mediating role in the negotiations between Belgrade and Priština to a “troika” composed of the EU, the US and Russia. “If Russia and the US both side down at the table, then at least there is the possibility that Serbia and Kosovo will move in the right way.” He said that he had already spoken about this possibility with the Russian and American governments. [Der Spiegel, 23 July 2007] Meanwhile, the Serbian Prime Minister, Vojislav Koštunica, said that the West’s plans for Kosovo had collapsed thanks to the principled stand taken by Serbia and Russia. The Serbian President, Boris Tadić, has rejected the right of another ad hoc group, the “Contact Group” (Russia, USA, France, UK, Germany and Italy) to mediate in the dispute, and said that new negotiations in 120 days’ time will give Serbia another chance to defend its territorial integrity. [Handelsblatt, 21 July 2007]


---- An excerpt from John Laughland's Intelligence Digest. For a free e-mail subscription to the Intelligence Digest, please click here ----

France’s ‘general attack on the euro’

EU Finance Ministers have backed off from a confrontation with the new French President. They had wanted to force France to balance its budget by 2010 but they have been palmed off with an empty promise that the country will do all it can to reduce it borrowing providing that the economy grows. This means that France will continue to borrow until 2012, in spite of earlier undertakings to the contrary. But this is no ordinary wrangle within the Council of Ministers. Sarkozy’s disagreement with the euro-zone Finance Ministers goes to the heart of the Stability Pact and its philosophy. Sarkozy’s decision to attend the meeting of finances uninvited is being seen (at least in the German press) as a wholesale attack on the very fundamentals of the monetary union. For the Germans, the whole EMU structure is based on the independence of the European Central Bank; control over budgets and borrowing; undistorted competition within the euro zone; and benign neglect of the euro exchange rate, the control of inflation being the single priority for the ECB.

Sarkozy, it is alleged, is attacking all four of these pillars of the euro regime. He wants to undermine the Stability Pact (which governs borrowing) and change its rules. He wants to limit the independence of the ECB by requiring it to pursue an exchange rate policy: in particular, he wants the euro to weaken on the foreign exchanges, since thinks that too high a rate damages exports and growth. He wants monetary policy and budgetary policy to be closely coordinated. And he has attacked the principle of undistorted competition by having the reference to it removed from the new treaty which the EU is now drawing up to replace the defunct constitution. Jürgen Stark, the Chief Economist of the ECB, has attacked these proposals and said that they will damage the climate in which the ECB operates, threatening its independence. [‘General attack on the euro,’ Patrick Welter, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 11 July 2007]

---- An excerpt from John Laughland's Intelligence Digest. For a free e-mail subscription to the Intelligence Digest, please click here ----

European Parliament criticises flight data deal

In a strongly worded resolution, the European Parliament has attacked the transfer of passenger details on trans-Atlantic flights to the American authorities. The agreement was reached in the final days of the German Presidency of the EU, and the Parliament has now said that it contains “significant mistakes” and failings for the data protection of EU citizens. It says that many of these data have been sent too soon and saved for too long. Many MEPs expressed their anger at a meeting with the EU Justice commissar, Franco Frattini. The EU was accused of having sold the pass to the Americans. The issue dates from 9-11 when the Americans asked for access to the reservation systems of airlines bringing in passengers from abroad. The goal was to have access to information about credit cards and so on. The idea was to filter out terrorists. Chosen people were then detained on arrival and questioned.

In May 2004, the EU agreed with Washington on certain minimum standards to protect this data. But the European Parliament was strongly opposed to this agreement and it took the case to the European Court of Justice and won. In May 2006, the ECJ said that the agreement violated EU law, although it did this on procedural issues and not on the substantive questions of data protection and privacy. So the Council of Ministers continued to use the agreement as a framework for future negotiations. The Council and the Commission came to an interim agreement with the Americans which, in the eyes of MEPs was even worse than the original deal. According to the agreement, the American authorities could take the data and pass it onto other authorities like the FBI and the CIA, essentially without restriction. The Americans threatened to withdraw landing rights from airlines if they did not comply, and this put them in a strong position vis-à-vis the EU, which knew that the data protection would be even less if there was no agreement governing it. The new resolution, essentially voted by Social Democrats, Greens, Liberals and other left-wingers, said that the new agreement is based on non-binding reassurances by the Americans. Right-wing MEPs, by contrast, have congratulated the Commission on the agreement. [Stefan Tomik, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 12 July 2007]

---- An excerpt from John Laughland's Intelligence Digest. For a free e-mail subscription to the Intelligence Digest, please click here. ----

Now French EU Accession Talks Resume with Turkey

On 26th June, accession talks resumed with Turkey. The process, which began in October 2005, was partially suspended in December 2006 after Ankara refused to open its ports and airports to aeroplanes and ships from Cyprus.

The EU decided to suspend discussion on eight of the thirty-five “chapters” in the accession talks. Before the partial suspension, talks had been concluded on one “chapter”, on science and technology, while another, on enterprise and industrial policy, was opened in March 2007 but not completed.

France, however, has ensured that there will be no discussions on economic and monetary policy with Turkey. France opposes the entry of Turkey into the EU and has said that there is therefore no point talking about the euro. The other chapters, Paris says, might form the basis for a “privileged partnership” with Turkey which, it hopes, will be adopted instead of full membership.

Meanwhile, negotiations are continuing with Croatia: six “chapters” have been opened and two completed (science & research; education & culture). [Thomas Ferenczi, Le Monde, 26 June 2007]

---- An excerpt from John Laughland's Intelligence Digest. For a free e-mail subscription to the Intelligence Digest, please click here. ----

Euro-politicians upset with Summit?

Some supporters of European federalism and supranationalism came away disappointed by the Brussels summit. The Belgians, for instance, did little to hide their dissatisfaction. Karel de Gucht, the Belgian Foreign Minister, said that he and the Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt, had managed to preserve the essential points of the old constitution but that “The aim of the constitutional treaty was to be more comprehensible; the aim of this treaty is to be incomprehensible.” Mr De Gucht dismissed the treaty as “a treaty of footnotes”.

The Belgians are convinced that they owe the fact that there was a deal at all to the brokerage of Jean-Claude Juncker, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, and not to the new French President. However, even Mr Juncker was clearly not very happy with the outcome. Speaking on the Saturday morning after the summit, he said that it had produced “a very complicated simplified treaty”. (A “simplified treaty” was what Nicolas Sarkozy had said he wanted.)

The Belgians and the Luxembourgers warned, however, that the deal at the summit did not mean that the new treaty would succeed either. A coalition of socialists and conservatives in the Netherlands quickly denounced the new treaty and demanded a referendum on it as well.

The German Green MEP, Daniel Cohn-Bendit (the leader of the May 1968 revolution in France), also attacked the new treaty, saying that it would not give Europe the ability to speak with one voice. He particularly criticised the opt-outs from foreign policy obtained by the United Kingdom. Cohn-Bendit attacked the British and the Poles, saying that they were quite capable of going back on their word. “I would remind you that they both signed the Charter of Fundamental Rights” from which Britain has now obtained an opt-out.
[Jean-Jacques Bozonnet, Rafaële Rivais, Jean-Pierre Stroobants, Le Monde, 26 June 2007]

---- An excerpt from John Laughland's Intelligence Digest. For a free e-mail subscription to the Intelligence Digest, please click here. ----

European Court of Justice Demands Trade Union Law

In 2004, a Latvian construction company, Laval, placed a number of workers on Swedish building sites. The Swedish trade unions demanded Laval to sign a collective agreement with the same conditions that Swedish construction companies usually sign up to. Obviously, Laval refused to sign such agreement arguing that its workers were working under Latvian conditions and therefore the workers were subject to Latvian pay agreements. Furthermore, the Swedish legislation implementing the posted workers Directive was silent on whether collective agreements on wages should be extended to such workers. Consequently, the Swedish trade unions took collective action against the company, forming a blockade of work at all Laval construction sites. The so called “Vaxholm case” was brought by the Latvian company, Laval, which challenged the legality of a collective action in the Swedish courts.

The Arbetsdomstolen, the Swedish Court, referred the matter to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling as the examination of the legality of the collective action raised issues of interpretation of Community law. On 23 May, the ECJ’s Advocate General, Paolo Mengozzi, gave his opinion in this case that is set to clarify several issues in regards to worker rights. The Advocate General supported the Swedish trade unions.

Moreover, he takes the view that when the Swedish Union attempted to oblige Laval to sign a collective agreement in Sweden, it did not breach EU law. Therefore, according to the Advocate General, in cases where the national laws do not provide expressly that collective agreements are of universal application, trade unions cannot be prevented from attempting “by means of collective action in the form of a blockade and solidarity action, to compel a service provider of another Member State to subscribe to the rate of pay determined in accordance with a collective agreement which is applicable in practice to domestic undertakings in the same sector that are in a similar situation and was concluded in the first Member State, to whose territory workers of the other Member State are temporarily posted.” However, the collective action must be motivated “by public-interest objectives, such as the protection of workers and the fight against social dumping, and is not carried out in a manner that is disproportionate to the attainment of those objectives.”[1]

It should be borne in mind that the Advocate General’s opinion is not binding but if the ECJ decide to follow this opinion, such a ruling would have serious implications in the internal market, leading to more protectionist measures. It is well known that ECJ has been taking the view that the EU stands for a community of values, a social and political community and not solely an internal market. According to the EUobserver, Richard Ashworth, MEP, said that “the court must not allow trade union blockades to dictate the terms of the EU single market.” He said “if we are to achieve our goals of more jobs and higher economic growth, we need to encourage competition, not force foreign companies to agree to collective agreements they never actually agreed to.” [2]

The Advocate General refers to the right to collective action, the right to negotiate and conclude collective agreements, recognised as fundamental rights in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. At the time, he said that “the Charter of Fundamental Rights, although not binding, is principally intended to reaffirm the rights resulting in particular from those traditions.” More importantly, he considers “that the right to resort to collective action to defend trade union members’ interests is a fundamental right. It is therefore not merely a ‘general principle of labour law’,… but rather a general principle of Community law, within the meaning of Article 6(2) EU. That right must therefore be protected in the Community.” It is clear that this case will have several implications if the Court follows the Advocate General’s opinion.

---- Margarida Vasconcelos of the European Foundation recently reported on this case at the ECJ – the opinion in Laval un Partneri Ltd v Svenska Byggnadsarbetareförbundet and others (C-341/05). For a regular subscription to The European Journal, please click here ----

[1] Opinion of Advocate General Mengozzi, Case C 341/05, Laval un Partneri Ltd. V Svenska Byggnadsarbetareförbundet and Others, delivered on 23 May 2007. See: http://curia.europa.eu/jurisp/cgi-bin/form.pl?lang=EN&Submit=Rechercher$docrequire=alldocs&numaff=C-341/05&datefs=&datefe=&nomusuel=&domaine=&mots=&resmax=100

[2] Honor Mahony. ‘EU court upholds trade unions’ rights’, 23 May 2007. See: http://euobserver.com/851/24116

Prodi says countries have lost Euro-faith

The Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, a former President of the European Commission, returned from the Brussels summit saying that, as a politician, he was happy with the outcome but that, as a European, he felt bitter about the spectacle he had witnessed. Speaking in Bologna the afternoon after the summit finished (in the early hours of Saturday morning, 23 June), Prodi attacked the Eurosceptic countries, by which he meant Poland and Britain. “Some people came to Brussels with a political mandate to put a brake on European integration and they fulfilled their mission,” he said. He added that he had never seen such an explicit and pre-meditated Euroscepticism. He said that in the past there had been foot-dragging on specific technical questions but that now hostility to integration had become “a doctrine”. “Many countries have lost the spirit of working together, they have lost the European spirit,” he said. Prodi said that Italy had been able to retain its own “red lines”, basic demands for further integration on which it was not prepared to compromise, but he said that he felt bitter that he had had to push this through in the teeth of opposition from countries which were against integration, led by Britain. These countries, said Prodi, “put forward a different conception of Europe with clarity and intellectual honesty” but that, while he did not regret EU enlargement, he felt that the time was coming when it would no longer be possible to allow countries to prevent others from going ahead further if they wanted. (This argument, in fact, is not new: Chancellor Kohl in the early 1990s, was always saying that the speed of the convoy should not be determined by the slowest.) [La Repubblica, Corriere della sera, 24 June 2007]

Prodi said that he greatly regretted the fact that some countries had attacked the EU anthem and flag, saying that these same governments – Britain, Poland, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands – were also complaining that Europe was too far removed from its citizens. Evidently Mr Prodi thinks that the flag and the anthem can stir people’s pro-European emotions.

However, the thing which annoyed the Italians most was the removal from the reference to “free competition” from the first part of the treaty. “The main responsibility for this lies with Nicolas Sarkozy,” bemoaned an editorial in Corriere della sera entitled “Sarko retro” (Sarko reactionary). The newspaper said that the decision to remove the reference to free markets was “absurd” and that it demonstrated once again “the protectionist DNA of the French”.
Prodi therefore said that he was in favour of a two-speed Europe (which the old constitution in any case provided for), which would allow some countries to integrate more quickly than others. The Foreign Minister, Massimo D’Alema, said that Italy would put forward its vision at the intergovernmental conference which would open shortly to draw up the revised treaty. But he anticipated success. “We will have stronger institutions from 2009 and not 2017,” he said. [La Repubblica, 23 June 2007]

---- An excerpt from John Laughland's Intelligence Digest. For a free e-mail subscription to the Intelligence Digest, please click here. ----

German federalists are pleased with summit outcome

The President of the European Parliament and veteran federalist, Hans-Georg Pöttering, has said that the new treaty has ensured that the President of the European Commission will be elected by the European Parliament, and that this will therefore strengthen the role of the Parliament.

Pöttering said everyone had been very shocked when Jaroslaw Kaczynski put Poland’s war dead into the equation and that it would take a long time for the German-Polish relationship to recover from this episode.

Pöttering rejected complaints that the new treaty was difficult to understand. “The essence of the constitution has been preserved,” he said. [Handelsblatt, 23 June 2007]

---- An excerpt from John Laughland's Intelligence Digest. For a free e-mail subscription to the Intelligence Digest, please click here. ----

Oh! What a lovely Warsaw!

The Intelligence Digest has been reporting for over a year now on the dire state of German-Polish relations: they reached a new low at the Brussels summit in June 2007 which produced agreement on the new treaty to replace the defunct constitution. If the German press is any indication, however, the Germans are furious at way the Poles behaved. Polophobia has broken out everywhere. Commentators have praised to the heights the way the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, dealt with the recalcitrant twins from Warsaw – Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the President and Prime Minister of Poland. One newspaper denounced the way the summit went as “a farce” while another referred to “The Polish patient”, a variation of the film title, “The English patient” which expresses, for Germans, all that is wrong with the English attitude towards Europe. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that, all in all, European integration would continue thanks to the new treaty, in spite of the rejectionist votes in France and the Netherlands and in spite of the demands of the United Kingdom: Poland, however, had behaved in a totally different way from the other Eurosceptic nations, and the Polish government had brought a “hitherto unknown, destructive style” into European politics. The Kaczynski brothers, the newspaper said, had tried to isolate Germany in the EU but that in fact their actions were purely self-serving. Poland, the paper says, is happy to take EU money – a sum approximately equivalent to Germany’s own net contribution – and she is happy to accept other financial support from Germany directly but the Poles behave as if Germany owed them even more. The paper said that Lech Kacyznski had now made it possible to continue his “destructive” polities for the coming years. “This is the demon of an age which many had thought past, whose poisonous breath is now blowing through the glass palaces of modern Europe.” [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 24 June 2007]

The Handelsblatt, meanwhile, called the Poles’ behaviour “a farce” because Lech Kaczynski, the President, was in Brussels, while his brother, Jaroslaw, the Prime Minister, was in fact in the driving seat back in Warsaw. While the President was having dinner with the other EU leaders on Friday night, 22nd June 2007, Jaroslaw Kacyznski was denouncing the German proposals on TV in Poland. The worst moment – which the paper called “absurd” – came when Jaroslaw Kacyznski said that if there had not been the Second World War, then the Polish population would be 60 million and therefore, for that reason, Poland deserved more votes in the Council of Ministers. It was only after massive intervention with Jaroslaw Kacyznski – phone calls to Warsaw from Tony Blair, Nicolas Sarkozy, the Luxembourg premier, José Luis Zapatero of Spain – that the Poles were brought round. [Handelsblatt, 24 June 2007]

The Polish press have returned the compliments, venting their spleen against the Germans in general and Frau Merkel in particular. The conservative magazine, Wprost, caricatured her as “Europe’s stepmother” suckling the Kaczynski twins at her ample breasts. The newspaper said that Germany had shown its “post-colonial reflexes” in its dealings with Poland. Sixty years after the war, it said, Germany was still unable to treat Poland as a partner. German politicians and the media had launched a “frontal assault” on Poland. Germany had gone from being Poland’s advocate to its adversary. Meanwhile the daily paper, Rzeczpospolita, commented, “One has the impression that German politicians have lost the ability to distinguish the German interest from the European interest.”

---- An excerpt from John Laughland's Intelligence Digest. For a free e-mail subscription to the Intelligence Digest, please click here. ----