*** GERMAN UNEMPLOYMENT OVER 5 MILLION The number of German uemployed has risen by 408,000 to over 5 million in January, pushing up the unemployment rate by 1 point to 12.1 percent. So much for the job-generating powers of the euro-currency in Europe's bigest economy.
Filed under: EU Economy | Tagged: Germany | Leave a comment »
Open Letter from Anthony Coughlan __________________________ TO: Ms Aine Lawlor Morning Ireland, RTE, Dublin 4 Wednesday, 14 December 2005 Dear Aine Lawlor, I was amused to hear you interview ICTU's David Begg on "Morning Ireland" today re the Irish Ferries dispute and to hear him expatiating on what he termed the problems that arise from merging an Irish labour force of 2 million with an East European labour force of 70 million. The thought crossed my mind that maybe you would suggest that David Begg was encouraging "racism" and "racist" sentiment by drawing attention to such problems. I remember well your putting this suggestion to me when I tried to draw attention to exactly this situation in an interview with you on the same programme at the time of the second Nice Treaty referendum in 2002. I sought to point out on that occasion that merging a labour market of 2 million with one of 70 million would lead to significant immigration to Ireland from the poorer countries of Eastern Europe, that this would inevitably have a downward effect on Irish workers' wage-rates and working conditions, and would make it difficult to maintain even the minimum wage rate for many people working here. During the Nice referendum I also remember David Begg implying that it was encouraging "racism" to suggest that it would be difficult to maintain high-quality wage and working conditions in face of significant immigration, when he and I spoke together at the Magill Summer School in Donegal. Mr Begg and such other Yes-side worthies as Proinsias de Rossa and Minister for Europe Dick Roche produced ludicrously low estimates at that time of how many workers would come to this country if we were one of only a handful of EU States to operate an "open door" policy from Day One of EU enlargement. See some of their estimates below. They threw insults about "racism" and "racist" at anyone who questioned their dogmatic assurance that no serious problems could arise. The problems arising from Gama, Irish Ferries, the widespread violation of our minimum wage laws in the construction and some service trades etc., are occurring in a context where Ireland has an economic boom and there are plenty of jobs available. Can you imagine how hard it would be to maintain Irish workers' wages and standards in the event of an economic downturn? Being unable to prevent downward pressure on Irish workers' wages and working conditions due to their uncritical embrace of uncontrolled EU immigration, David Begg and others will now fall back on seeking to maintain the Irish minimum wage level, even though many immigrants are willing to work for less than that. Trying to maintain different national minimum wage-levels in a 25-Member EU in which there is total free movement of labour is a bit like trying to enforce one minimum wage rate in Kerry, but a different one in Limerick next door, and a different one again in Tipperary and the other Irish counties. One can attempt it with an army of Labour Inspectors, but widespread evasion is inevitable. I can imagine the day will come when some attractive Czech and Polish radio presenters, as articulate as your good self but willing to work for less money, will appear on RTE's current affairs programmes as a result of the station being affected by "the bracing winds of competition" in the labour market which David Begg and others have helped let Irish workers in for. In late 2002 I was present at the National Forum in Europe in Dublin Castle when David Begg told those present that he supported the proposed EU Constitution. This was before that Constitution had even been signed and when its final provisions were not yet publicly known. Mr Begg's commitment of support was given without any policy discussion on the matter in ICTU's affiliated trade unions. If the French had voted Yes to the EU Constitution last summer and we had had the referendum on it that was planned for here in October, one can be confident that Mr Begg would have been urging Irish workers to vote for it, with much fatuous talk about the "European social model", only for them to regret bitterly doing that later when it was too late. I am sending copies of this letter for their information to David Begg, Cathal Goan, the producer of "Morning Ireland" and various other trade union and media people who will remember the shameful way some elements of the Yes-side behaved in discussing migration during the 2002 Nice Treaty referendum. Yours sincerely Anthony Coughlan Secretary P.S. In today's "Irish Independent"(p.14) economics correspondent Brendan Keenan, writing under the heading "Amazing immigration flow poses challenge", states that 66,000 foreigners applied for Personal Public Service Numbers to work in this State between May and October this year, an average of 11,000 per month, nearly all of them citizens of the new EU States. _______ QUOTES ON EAST EUROPEAN IMMIGRATION FROM THE 2002 NICE TREATY REFERENDUM: " There is no reason to believe ... that large numbers of workers will wish to come" [Minister for Europe Dick Roche, I.T. Letters, 12/7/2002 ] _______ "Mr. X also repeats the line propagated by the No to Nice campaign that only four countries are to permit immigration after enlargement. This statement grossly misrepresents the position of the other member states." [Dick Roche, I.T.Letters, Aug/Sept. 2002] _______ "Ireland will be in precisely the same position as all other member states on the question of free movement following any enlargement of the Community." [Dick Roche, as reported in the Irish Times, September 2002) __________ "It is the view of the Irish Government and a number of other governments that this idea that there is going to be a huge influx of immigrants is just not supported. The evidence is just not there for it. They are not going to flood to the west. The same rules are going to apply in all 15 states. There is no evidence to suggest that the people of the Czech Republic or Poland are less anxious to stay in their home as (sic) we are. [ Dick Roche, transcript of interview with The Irish Catholic, 19/9/2002.] ___________ " It is a deliberate misrepresentation to suggest that tens of thousands will suddenly descend en masse on Ireland." [Proinsias De Rossa, I.T. Letters, 20/8/2002 ] ____________ " The expected trickle of immigration to Ireland will on balance benefit the Irish economy." [P. De Rossa, I.T. Letters,20/8/2002 ___________ " I estimate that fewer than 2,000 will choose our distant shores each year." [P.De Rossa, I.T. Letters, 20/8/2002 ] ____________ "There is no evidence there would be a problem with free movement of workers on accession." [Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, Dail Eireann,10/9/2002 ] ____________ "Efforts have been made to foment fears that migrants from the new member states could flock to Ireland. This is not only unpleasant but plainly wrong." [Brian Cowen, Sunday Business Post, 7/7/2002 ] ____________ "Ireland is already benefiting from the skills and energy of workers from the applicant states, about 7,000 of whom received work permits last year. There is no basis whatever for expecting a huge upsurge in these numbers." [Brian Cowen, Sunday Business Post, 7/7/2002 ] ------------------- " The second myth is that the Nice Treaty will mean mass immigration from the new EU member countries in Eastern Europe. This is probably the most odious of the myths propagated by some in the "No" campaign." [Minister Willie O'Dea, Sunday Independent,Summer 2002] ___________
Filed under: EU Economy, EU Enlargement & Integration | Tagged: immigration, labour, workers | Leave a comment »
HOW ABOUT THE TRUCK DRIVERS? by Dr Richard North from EU REFERENDUM blog, 22 August 2005 Well, if the accountants won't do it, and the farmers are too busy to get on their tractors and drive to Brussels, how about the truck (or lorry, as we used to say) drivers? Having had to weather the increased fuel costs and the insanity of the working time directive, they are, according to the Transport News Network, now bitching about foreign truck drivers. More specifically, they have noted that EU enlargement has created a "bonanza" for Eastern European lorries on UK Roads. Lorry operators from the ten accession states joining in May 2004 have doubled their traffic volumes in the UK, says the Department for Transport. Of the new EU member states, 31 percent of the traffic from the new member states is from Poland - up 36 percent in the last year. Czechoslovakia and Hungary account for 25 percent each - up 23 percent and 87 percent respectively since Q2 2004. Overall traffic volume from accession states has increased 3.5 times since 2003. The figures also confirm that the dwindling share of traffic undertaken by UK-based international hauliers has stabilised. In 1996, UK hauliers accounted for half of all international traffic. However, the combination of growing low cost foreign competition from Eastern Europe, and Sterling's appreciation in value against the Euro, meant that by 2004 the market share of UK-based hauliers had fallen to 25 per cent. Foreign trucks now represent some ten per cent of the maximum weight vehicles operating on UK roads - there are around 10,000 foreign lorries on UK roads every day of the week. The point, of course, is that while UK operators pay through the nose for road tax and bear some of the highest diesel costs in Europe, none of these vehicles - or the almost ten percent from outside of the EU - make any payment to operate on UK roads. Simon Chapman, Chief Economist of the Freight Transport Association says "International road haulage is an extremely tough environment for UK hauliers. No sooner had the problems created by Sterling's exchange rates begun to abate then lower cost competition from Eastern Europe put further downward pressure on rates. UK operators cannot operate indefinitely on wafer thin margins just to keep the wheels of their truck fleets turning." If we were an independent nation, we could perhaps levy a charge on every foreign vehicle entering the country - as do some other countries - but this is regarded as "discriminatory" by the EU and thus prohibited. In an attempt to level the playing field, the government did attempt to bring in a lorry road user charging scheme, based on satellite monitoring, applicable to both domestic and foreign lorries, but this ran into technical problems and was abandoned, leaving no solution to an obviously unfair situation. Perhaps, therefore, the lorry drivers can be prevailed to rise up. They could give lifts to the accountants, and bankers, and could be joined by the farmers in their tractors, to say nothing of the slaughterhouse owners, the fishermen, the airline pilots, the junior doctors (who cannot now get training places because of the working time directive), the electrical and electronic manufacturers, the garment retailers, chemical manufacturers, the military, taxpayers, consumersŠ Come to think of it, it there anyone left? Why don't we all rise up?
Filed under: EU Economy, EU Enlargement & Integration | Tagged: truck drivers | Leave a comment »
THE TIMES, London, Thursday 25 August 2005 A hard truth: the future of the single currency is now far beyond our Ken Anatole Kaletsky (Economics Correspondent) THERE WAS a time when Kenneth Clarke's admission that "the euro has been a failure" might have dominated the headlines for weeks. It might even have changed the course of Britain's history. Had Mr Clarke been prescient enough 15 years ago to recognise the fatal flaws in the single currency project, the Tories might have been spared the humiliation of Black Wednesday and the suicidal infighting over the Maastricht treaty; they might still be governing the country. If the ex-Chancellor had humbly admitted five years ago that he had been wrong about the euro, he would surely now be the Leader of the Opposition and the Conservatives might be vying for power with Labour in a hung parliament. By this week, however, Mr Clarke's public confession about the failure of the euro was as irrelevant to the future as Macbeth's final soliloquy comparing himself to "a walking shadow, a poor player who that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more". But while Mr Clarke's regrets about the euro may no longer be of any interest in Britain, they remind us of something extremely significant about the wider world beyond. The euro has been enjoying a political honeymoon in the four years since it was introduced. While the Europe's economic performance has gone from bad to worse almost since the day when the euro was launched in January 1999, no respectable politician has ever dared to blame the euro or criticise the single currency project in any way. This taboo has now been lifted. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi has consciously encouraged an anti-euro movement designed to blame Italy's problems on Romano Prodi, the man who took Italy into the single currency, who happens to be his main political opponent in the forthcoming general elections. In the Netherlands, France and Germany, the euro has started to be blamed for inflation, economic instability and unemployment - and while some of these charges may not be intellectually sustainable, nobody can dispute that the European Central Bank has performed poorly, certainly in comparison with the US Federal Reserve Board, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan or the emasculated German Bundesbank. Why does all this matter? Because the euro, like any other paper currency, is just an illusion; its power to command people's lives and motivate effort depends entirely on a suspension of disbelief. People must not only think that these elaborately printed but worthless bits of paper will be exchangeable for valuable goods and services. They must also believe that their intrinsically worthless paper money will continue to be honoured for the indefinite future by the whole world. That belief, in turn, rests ultimately on the faith that the value of paper money will be upheld by a government with the right and the ability to levy taxes on a wealthy nation. But if the EU is not going to evolve towards a full-scale political union who exactly is going to guarantee the value of the euro? And if the membership of the eurozone is never even going to be equivalent to membership of the EU, with Britain, Sweden, Denmark and other EU countries remaining outside, then why should a government, whether it is Italy or Germany, that finds it inconvenient to use the euro not simply opt out and re-create its own national currency? The sudden emergence of questions such as this does not necessarily mean that the eurozone will fall apart or even that the euro will completely cease to exist, but it does mean that such possibilities may soon be seriously considered. And if investors ever start to worry about the long-term viability of the single currency project, scenarios for the total collapse of the euro will suddenly come into view. The most plausible such scenario is Italy withdrawing from the euro, under pressure from mounting unemployment, a weak economy and imploding public finances, exactly the same combination of pressures that forced Italy out of the ERM in 1992. If the possibility of Italian withdrawal were ever taken seriously by the markets, foreign holders of Italy's E:1,500 billion public debt would face enormous losses, since the Italian Government would simply convert its bonds into "new lire" and would legally get away with this conversion. In fact, such are the financial risks of Italian withdrawal to the European financial system, that the Italian Government may now be in a position to blackmail the European Central Bank into reducing interest rates and devaluing the euro simply by threatening to withdraw. Such an easing by the ECB would actually be a rational response to the present economic problems throughout the eurozone. But this is where a multinational monetary institution would face a fatal problem. If the ECB were seen as capitulating to Italian blackmail, the euro's survival would face a new and even more serious threat: a collapse of public confidence in Germany and the Netherlands, where populist politicians would start blaming their countries' economic problems on the weakness of the ECB. Right-wing German and Dutch politicians might well start demanding a stronger currency - and threaten to leave the euro if the ECB continued to accommodate Italy's "inflationary" demands. It is possible to imagine a situation where the Germans and Dutch were demanding a tighter policy to punish Italy while Italians were demanded an easier policy to keep their economy afloat - with both sides threatening to leave the euro if their demands were not met. The game would then really be up for the euro and the ECB. A break-up of the euro seems highly improbable in the next year or two. But anybody who still believes that such a break-up is impossible should bear in mind the lessons from the break-up of the ERM, the sterling, franc and lira devaluations of the 1960s, the collapse of the dollar-based Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s and the prewar abandonment of the gold standard. In confrontations between politics and financial markets, events can move straight from "impossible" to "inevitable" without ever passing through improbable.
Filed under: EU Economy, EU Enlargement & Integration, Euro / Monetary Union | Tagged: break up, erm | Leave a comment »
COMMENT: The first article below is the measure of how the EU distorts world trade and beggars poorer nations. It is not subsidies TO farmers that are the problem but EXPORT subsidies of EU produce. In this the EU accounts for the vast majority of such subsidies. _______ EU FARMERS THE BEST PROTECTED IN THE WORLD By Lisbeth Kirk, from EU OBSERVER, Wednesday 24 August 2005 The EU is the world's largest provider of export subsidies by far, providing 85 percent to 90 percent of the world's total, according to a new report from the US Congressional Budget Office. The report is published as work intensifies ahead of a crucial World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Hong Kong in December. Developing nations are accusing the rich of using subsidies to lower international prices and hurt farmers in poor countries. In total, 64 out of 76 countries have reported to the WTO that they granted subsidies of some kind to farmers in at least one of the years from 1998 through 2004, the report said. But a few countries dominate the total dollar value of subsidies granted. The EU and the US each grant about one-third of the world's total - the EU a little more than the US because its agricultural sector is a little larger. The countries with the highest rates of total subsidy - that is, total subsidies as a percentage of agricultural output - are almost entirely high-income countries. Members of the European Free Trade Association (Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland-Liechtenstein) top the list, followed by Japan, the US, and the EU at substantially lower but still sizeable rates. Australia and New Zealand have very low rates of total subsidy. A substantial portion of agricultural production is protected from international competition by extreme tariffs - tariffs of over 100 percent. This holds true for 50 percent of eastern European production, 39 percent of EU production and 26 percent of US production, the report revealed. The EU provides over half of the world's most trade-distorting category of domestic support (so-called amber-box support), according to the American analysts. Amber-box support can be limited and reduced by the WTO's agriculture agreement. In contrast roughly 70 percent of US subsidies fall into the so-called green box, which is exempted from reduction requirements. The green box is for measures that were deemed to have little or no distorting effects on trade or production, such as income support that is decoupled from production. The EU has also pushed through reforms of its Common Agricultural Policy in recent years, aiming to decouple farm subsidies from production. The US report is mainly based on statistics from 2002 or earlier, so that enlargement of the EU and the 2002 US farm bill might have changed the picture. The Congressional Budget Office assists the US House and Senate Budget Committees, and the Congress more generally, by preparing reports and[] analyses.
Filed under: EU & Environment, EU Economy, EU Foreign Policy | Tagged: trade | Leave a comment »
EUobserver.com EUbusiness.com Euractiv.com
NationalPlatform.Org 