Posted on 06/17/2005 8:05:55 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -
Talks on the European Union's budget collapsed in acrimony Friday, abruptly ending a summit that diplomats had hoped would pull the EU out of its constitutional dilemma. Top European leaders blamed each other for the breakdown but agreed the bloc was "in a deep crisis."
The failure to agree on a budget for 2007-2013 reinforced impressions that the 50-year process of EU integration has lost direction after the French and Dutch referendums in which voters rejected a proposed EU constitution. Leaders of the bloc's member states failed to resolve strident disputes over spending and did not present a clear plan to save the constitution.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said early Saturday that in coming weeks EU diplomats and others "will tell you that Europe is not in crisis. It is in a deep crisis," he said after the two-day summit.
European leaders did agree Thursday to postpone the November 2006 deadline by which all members were to have ratified the charter, a roadmap to further the political and economic integration of Europe. They said the extra time would be used to digest the French and Dutch referendums nearly three weeks ago.
But on Friday, Britain refused to surrender its annual rebate and several other nations demanded financial relief. French President Jacque Chirac said he "deplored" Britain's attitude during the tense negotiations.
"It's a bad result for Europe," Chirac said.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said, "We are in one of the worst political crises Europe has ever seen. We could not get an agreement because of the stubbornness of Great Britain and the Netherlands."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair dismissed suggestions that Britain was the main cause of the summit's collapse, insisting four other countries also were unable to reach agreement.
In what appeared to be a veiled reference to Chirac, Blair said: "I'm not prepared to have someone tell me there is only one view of what Europe is."
"Europe isn't owned by any of them, Europe is owned by all of us."
Blair had said he would only consider changes to the rebate - worth about $5.5 billion annually - if the European Union agreed to overhaul agricultural subsidies, which account for more than 40 percent of the EU's budget. The Netherlands and Sweden also demanded relief, complaining their annual payments to the bloc were too high.
Blair argued it is necessary to balance the outsized agricultural subsidies that flow far more generously to France and other continental countries than to Britain. France in particular insisted that Britain's rebate - won two decades ago by Margaret Thatcher - should be eliminated.
In a sign of how much the EU's new members were prepared to go to clinch a deal, Poland, the Czech Republic and eight other eastern nations offered funds destined for them to their rich western partners.
Chirac praised the 10 nations that joined the EU last year, saying their offer to give up money to get Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland and Britain to agree to a budget deal contrasted with "the selfishness of two or three rich states."
Czech Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek said most countries reacted by "telling us that it's unacceptable."
Juncker said he was "ashamed" that poor EU nations had to offer to cut their funding to please the rich.
The budget dispute soured the second day of summit negotiations, pitting Britain against France.
Blair rejected a plan floated by Juncker, the summit host, calling it too ambiguous regarding reforms of farm subsidies.
Juncker had suggested raising the rebate to $6.7 billion, then freezing it until 2013, but Blair's spokesman said he did not offer enough in exchange.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso had warned earlier this week that the European Union would face "paralysis" if it failed to restore momentum to its bid to adopt a constitution.
Britain currently contributes $14.9 billion annually - or 12.1 percent of the EU budget - but receives $5.5 billion of that amount back in the rebate - a privilege other EU leaders say is outdated and unfair.
Failure to agree on the EU budget, worth some $120 billion annually, deepened the sense of crisis.
Barroso had said it was vital for leaders to reach agreement - even an imperfect one - to show that Europe is working despite the constitution rejections and news that two more countries will put ratification on hold. All 25 EU nations must approve the charter before it can take effect.
The Netherlands, Germany, France, Austria, Sweden, and Britain all contribute more to the EU budget than they get back in benefits. They want spending in 2007-2013 capped at 1 percent of the EU's annual gross national income.
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Associated Press writer Constant Brand contributed to this report.
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IF this were just about throwing good money down the drain for a cause that will not see positive result since accountability isn't at the heart of the relief, I'd agree with you.
IF a little money gives Blair the ability to Leverage Chirac and Schroeder out of determining the direction of the European Union....possibly leading to their replacement by people that favor strong Trans Atlantic ties rather than enemy combat, I consider the investment of the money to be worth the end result. As it will benefit not only our national security but economy to not be in a stage of friction with them 24/7.
People gripe about our budgets and then I see things like this and I just shake my head.. Italy has deficits that are more than 200% of their gross national product and they're a net giver to the EU?
Just insane.
That is insane!
Do they have any accountants over there that can deal with Facts?
Europe is not in a crisis. All that has happened is that French and German influence has been greatly reduced in the political and economic affairs of Europe.
And that piece of trash was written by a bunch of unelected, unaccountable elitists many of whom prefer to speak french. The irony is that the French rejected this marxist trash because it was not leftist enough to convince them that they could manipulate Brussels enough to protect their socialist preferments when they are threatened by globalization. The preferment du jure are the preferments in the form of agricultural subsidies which unequally favor the French over the Brits and which subsidize a sector which accounts for only 2% of employment while sucking down 40% of the EU budget.
Without the farm susidies, the rebate to the British would be unecessary, certainly negotiable. But, like most budget squabbles, this quarrel is really over values and power or rather the budget battles reflect the reality below and supply the language and metaphor for those stuggles.
In this budget battle, Chirac wants the political process to select a favored class (in this case French farmers) and to redistribute to them wealth taxed from a less favored group (in this case British and Dutch mercantile class). Blair is tacitly (one must guard one's speech in socialist Europe) saying that it is the market and not a parliament which should determine the prosperity of these groups.
To us Americans this is a no-brainer: Of course the market must allocate resources. In the age of globalization, there is no option but to keep the economy as lean and mean as possible or the Asians will be redistributing our wealth for us. So we say that with this philosophy, Chirac is courting a crack-up in the real world of international competition. Let us acknowledge a caveat before we choke on our own righteousness, America is not without sin in this temptation to jigger market allocations with class politics, witness Bush's own recent farm subsidies. Bush is our conservative champion, the good guy, but his administration has abandoned any restraints of States' Rights in granting federal subsidies to local education; it has endorsed the New Deal/Great Socity conception of Federal activism with its Prescription Drug program, creating a new entitlement for a class (the elderly) without even a means test. In doing so, God knows how much we will have distorted the market for pharmecuticals.
So in making our judgments about European socialism, we Americans must be circumspect and more than a little humble lest we be dismissed for hypocracy. The best we can say is that we are talking about differences of degree here. We tend to be less socialistic and more free market oriented than the French, and the Brits tend to fall in between.
But just because our virtue is not entirely pristine does not mean we cannot make some valid judgments against French gamesmanship. In essence we and the French are playing a different game but we don't get the rules.
To a Frenchman, the game is not to be won within the rules, the game is to write the rules. We like to think we share with the British a sentiment and a committment to the addage that, "it is not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game." To a Frenchman the notion of "sportsmanship" is naive and dangerous. The world is rigged against him and all games, (read, all endeavors,) are inherently unfair. Only a sheep would submit to a shearing. A Frenchman is no fool and he will never conscent to be manipulated by a system which, no doubt, has already been manipulated by an Englishman.
In this cynacism, the Frenchman is really only a figure for the whole of the Left. In countless examples from the French Revolution through the absuridites of feminism, the Kafkaesque Cultural Revolution, and even to the EU Constitution, the Left has invariably sought to have its way with the world by changing the rules of the game. Again, we Americans are not without sin.
Consider, as one example, how the Left has changed the rules of the game at home by distorting the Constitution, the document which codifies those rules, and standing it on its head. To do this, the Left forum shops, seeking liberal judges. Liberal judges in turn, abandon origonal intent and invent meanings like privacy and wilfully ignore the plain language, like reservations of rights to the people and the states. Worse, liberal judges go beyond the written set of rules and expand the Constitution to include new rules called foreign laws. The document, and therefore the rules which govern us, has been rendered so plastic and malleable that the commerce clause can now be invoked to justify any federal activity, as Justice Thomas has recently despairingly concluded in dissent. The process has gone so far that the left has not just suceeded in overcoming the Constitution when it rules act as a shield against their schemes but now they have suceeded in perverting it and using it as a sword to achieve their ends in legalising universal, unfettered abortion. Truly, the game was to write the rules of the game.
In repudiating the EU constitution, the French socialists and fellow travelers have made a tactical error, perhaps a strategic error, in misjudging the potential offered in such a ponderous document for rule jiggering and other mischief. But the game is not over. The Left in Europe cannot alter its behavior any more than Hillary can become a patriot Unless God in his misterous ways visits an epiphany upon the lot of them the French and Hillary will keep on doing what they do.
Round two is about to begin and now the Germans will step on stage and they will tip this affair one way or the other.
It's worse than it looks.
Europe divided by two opposing philosophies
18.06.2005 - 08:20 CET | By Honor Mahony
http://www.euobserver.com/?sid=9&aid=19363
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Following a bitter and failed summit on the future funding of the EU, veteran politician and current head of the EU Jean-Claude Juncker has concluded that Europe is divided into two opposing camps - a free trade camp and a political Europe camp.
[heh... but I thought "social" and "economic" and "political" were interchangeable?]
EU braces itself for tough and acrimonious summit
16.06.2005 - 09:46 CET | By Honor Mahony
http://www.euobserver.com/?sid=9&aid=19338
EU fails to agree its budget
18.06.2005 - 02:23 CET | By Lucia Kubosova
http://www.euobserver.com/?sid=9&aid=19361
Juncker doubts agreement on EU budget is possible
15.06.2005 - 14:26 CET | By Elitsa Vucheva
http://www.euobserver.com/?sid=9&aid=19333
Leaders express doubt about final budget deal
16.06.2005 - 17:44 CET | By Lucia Kubosova
http://www.euobserver.com/?sid=9&aid=19346
Sweden ready to veto EU budget
16.06.2005 - 22:47 CET | By Lisbeth Kirk
http://www.euobserver.com/?sid=9&aid=19352
Chirac questions EUs ability to expand further
17.06.2005 - 09:16 CET | By Elitsa Vucheva
http://www.euobserver.com/?sid=9&aid=19353
EU at a crossroads, says Barroso
15.06.2005 - 17:35 CET | By Honor Mahony
http://www.euobserver.com/?sid=9&aid=19334
EU constitution ratification delayed in Germany
16.06.2005 - 08:36 CET | By Honor Mahony
http://www.euobserver.com/?sid=9&aid=19340
EU leaders abandon constitution deadline
17.06.2005 - 01:04 CET | By Honor Mahony
http://www.euobserver.com/?sid=9&aid=19349
I meant to point out that all of those EU Observer articles were linked from the EU Observer homepage, IOW, those are almost the entire set of stories linked there. There is nearly nothing that isn't about the various crises.
I don't know how you can say that the constitution is a piece of Marxist trash, when nobody, not even the experts can understand the consitution in the first place. For all we know, it could be far worse...
The French said NON because it wasn't Marxist enough. If they start over they'll need to make it even worse by our standards to get Francois and Pepe Lepeu to like it.
It is Chirac himself who has brought on this "crisis," and for this we should be grateful. He arrogantly insisted on a referendum wrongly thinking that it would easily pass, and it was he who insisted on making an issue of Britain's "rebate," forgetting that the Brits who are no fools would counter by putting France's cherished "Common Agricultural Policy" on the table. French newspapers are now saying that Chirac is in a daze, not realizing what is happening to him.
Germany gets the shaft on the EU budget by an order of several magnitudes. You have to wonder why they're such big supporters of the EU.
Really good post nathan.
Thank you.
France and Germany want to rule Europe - thus to gather strength and manpower to overtake the US...
ain't gonna happen.
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