21st Year of Publication number 1037 30 June - 6 JulY, 2013 € 3.50

“The proposal of the revision of the OLAF regulation which will be brought to the Parliament next week is the result of a lengthy and fruitful trialogue among the three institu-tions which has lasted years,” Gio-vanni Kessler the Director General of the European Anti-Fraud Office – OLAF told New Europe in a tete-a-tete interview.

Following months of back and forth the review is welcome Kesller says as, “We considered all the pos-sible options on how to improve the legislative framework of OLAF which dates back to the foundation of OLAF in 1999 and which is to a certain extent outdated,” he admits.

The OLAF regulation revision will bring more procedural rights, strengthen the role of the supervi-sory committee, and protect funda-mental further he underlines.

“It is the result of a compromise of the three institutions,” the Direc-tor General says.

It has been approved unani-mously by the CONT (Budgetary Control) committee of the Parlia-ment, but now the some MEPS have put forward amendments, to change the text that they them-selves had approved Kessler has told New Europe.

“The best is the enemy of the good. We could get finally, next week, a good reform of OLAF ap-proved by all the institutions.

So if there are now second thoughts for better provisions, I

think it would be better to leave them for the near future. Nothing prevents us, and the Commission has already said that after the ap-proval of these reforms, after one or two years, one could consider with the benefit of experience, further steps,” the Director General said.

Ingeborg Grassle, has very vo-cally expressed concerns about Kes-sler personally and called for his resignation. But Kessler heistates at saying that this is the reason behind her call for amendments.

“I am a person who looks at facts. I am reluctant to go into the

intentions behind actions,” Kessler said.

Grassle seems to have amassed the support of the EPP Group on a request that Kessler step down but at this scenario on the ammendments Kessler responds adamantly saying that what is in play is the reform of OLAF which is a long standing is-sue of over 7 years that the three in-stitutions are dealing with. “I think it would be wrong if this issue was to be spoiled for reasons related to a person, no matter who he is, or a specific investigation,” Kessler said.

EU’s agreement on bail-ins and its exceptions

Giovanni Kessler the DIrector General of OLAF | EPA/WOLFGANG KUMM

After years of negotiations, consulta-tions, and informal meetings, European leaders agreed on Wednesday 26 Julyon a draft directive establishing a frame-work for dealing with credit institutions and investment firms in difficulty. The procedure is far from being over, as it’s now up to the presidency to start nego-tiations with the European Parliament in order to adopt the directive before the end of 2013. The agreement is mostly based on the controversial bail-in model applied in Cyprus earlier this year, which left thousand depositors with heavy loss-es on their deposits exceeding €100,000.

Syria Page 07

Korea Page 06

eXCLUSiVe iNTerVieW

Page 05

'Rally' for youthWhile EU leaders rallied last week to combat youth unemployment in Europe, the United Nations, the Director General of DG Culture and a researcher at Gerogetown University penned their thoughts on how youth unem-ployment in Europe is affecting education, the G20 and the world.

Pages 10,11

Italy: enforcing sustainability and savings

What’s the cost of food in the EU?

Shah Deniz picks TaP for azeri gas

interview: Moroccan solar agency

iNNoVaTioN Page 21

CoNSUMerS Page 08

PeNSioN rePorT Page 04

eNerGy PaGeS 12,13,24,28

OLAF reform awaited

(Continued on Page 03)

Kessler talks next steps forward

02 ANALYSIS NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

30 June - 6 July, 2013

Australia $3.4, Austria EURO 1.81, Balkans EURO 4,

Belgium EURO 3.50, Holland EURO 2.69, Central Asia

USD7.5, Central Europe USD5, Canada $5, Denmark:

DKK 19,95, Eastern Europe USD7.5, France EURO 3.04,

Germany EURO 3.57, Greece EURO 4, Hungary

HUF400, Japan Y900, Italy EURO 3.62, Nordic countries

USD7, Pacific Rim USD8.5, Russia USD 4, Switzerland

SFr4, UK GBP 4.5, USA $2.95, all other countries EURO

Consumers get options

The debate on "to allow or not to allow"is reaching a crescendo as Europeanconsumers join in expressing strongopposition to the introduction of geneti-cally modified foods to their supermar-ket shelves. editorial p. 2

Investing in Malaysia

French President Jacques Chirac wasin Malaysia for his first official visit tothe country. For some, the visit wasseen as an opportunity to encourageFrench companies to invest in theAsian state. p. 5

A room with a view in Spain

Imagine a hotel overlooking an entirecity, perched upon a mountain, itselfdominated by a prehistoric amusementpark and a 19th century basilica, whichitself is dominated by a statue of Jesusand the only thing taller than Jesus is atelevision tower. p. 11

Some Swisslike it hot

Arid is not a word used often in Switzer-land, but the last six months have provedto be trying times for the country. TheAlpine state faced its longest-everdrought in the first half of 2003. p. 13

Gazprom in new deal

Russian gas giant Gazprom and Ger-many's Wintershall signed a frameworkagreement and founding documents inMoscow on the establishment of thejoint venture Achimgaz. p. 23

EU asks for concrete actions from Iran

NOTEBOOK

EU examines brain drain waveThe phenomenon of brain drain is hittingEurope as Europe's best scientists are aban-doning their careers in Europe in favour ofmore lucrative opportunities in the UnitedStates and elsewhere. Based on a thoroughanalysis of career prospects in the EU, theCommunication "Researchers in the Euro-pean Research Area: one profession, multi-ple careers," the European Commissiondecided to propose concrete steps to encour-age and structure improved dialogue andinformation exchange with researchers, andto establish a genuinely competitive researchlabour market at a European level.

One man who knows best the phenomenonand is striving to halt the outflow of grey mat-ter, European Research CommissionerPhilippe Busquin aptly summed it up saying:"Building on recent developments aimed atenhancing the mobility of researchers, suchas the European Researcher's mobility por-tal, the Communication represents anotherimportant step forward in improving the

EU's attractiveness for research talent acrossthe world. It is essential that we encouragemore young people to embark on scientificcareers and ensure that we keep hold of ourexisting talent."

According to the Commission findings in rel-ative terms the EU produces more sciencegraduates (PhDs) than the United States buthas fewer researchers (5.36 per thousand ofthe working population in the EU comparedwith 8.66 in the US and 9.72 in Japan).

The Commission's efforts to get extra atten-tion about mobility across the diverse Euro-pean Union by harmonising initial training,recruitment methods, salaries, evaluationmechanisms and career prospects, will go along way to stop the brain drain and enhancethe Union's capacity to attract world classresearchers, on the willingness of young peo-ple to embark on research careers and on theoverall perception of researchers by publicopinion.

IIn a sign of a new and moreassertive EU policy, the Euro-pean foreign ministers warnedthere would be no bilateral trade

pact with Iran unless the countrychanged its stance on human rights andnuclear non-proliferation.

"More intense economic relationscan be achieved only if progress isreached in the four areas of concern,namely human rights, terrorism, nonproliferation and the Middle Eastprocess," said an EU statement issued byministers. This would be a sign of thecountry's commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, it added.

Ministers expressed "deep shock" atthe violent death of Canadian photo-journalist Zahra Kazemi and said theywere also worried at the recent arrest ofstudents and journalists during pro-democracy demonstrations.

Moreover, the EU voiced its readi-ness to participate in a multilateral TrustFund for Iraq's post-war reconstruction.Diplomats said the Trust Fund would beestablished under the aegis of the WorldBank and United Nations agencies, andwould work independently of the devel-opment fund for Iraq, which is managedby coalition forces. EU governments,

especially those like Germany, Franceand Belgium, which opposed the US-ledIraq war, are believed to be especiallyinsistent that Europe's aid for Iraqireconstruction must not be channelled

to the country through the coalition.However, exact figures for EU aid toIraq will be released once the WorldBank conducts a needs-assessment mis-sion later this year.

www.new-europe.info11th Year, Number 531

THE EUROPEAN WEEKLY

July 27 - August 2, 2003

New EuropeNew Europe Interview

Mykola Kostenko,head of State Committee ofUkraine on Physical Culture

and Sportsp. 18

Berlusconi meetsBush Italian Prime Minister SilvioBerlusconi met US PresidentGeorge W. Bush at the Texasranch last week. Berlusconi'sgovernment began a rotating,six-month term in the presi-dency of the European Unionin July. Bush thanked Italy's primeminister for his support of theIraq war and said he was gladSilvio Berlusconi now holdsthe rotating presidency of theEuropean Union.The US leader said, "I ampleased that Prime MinisterBerlusconi is now serving asthe president of the Euro-pean Union." Neither touched on the con-troversy over the flawedreport Bush used in his Janu-ary State of the Unionaddress alleging SaddamHussein tried to buy uraniumin Africa for his arms pro-gramme. On transatlantic relations,Berlusconi said: "Selfishness,narcissism and division shallnever win. We need to revivethe huge sense of cohesion ...And this is a message whichI'm going to bring back to myEuropean allies as presidentof the European Union."

cyanmageyelloblack

Iranians protesting for human rights

European governments go for pragmatic Iraq policy

NATO urges Albania to

accelerate reformsNATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson and

NATO ambassadors completed their two-day visit toTirana for talks on Albania's efforts to join NATO anddefence reform. The North Atlantic Council is NATO'ssenior decision-making body. The council met with top offi-cials, including senior NATO representative in Albania Gen-eral Tozzi, President Alfied Moisiu, Prime Minister FatosNano, ministers, parliamentarians and representatives ofthe international community. Discussions focused on Alba-nia's desire to join the Alliance. The council reiterated themessage that NATO's door remained open and Albania"remains under consideration, but that it must press on withkey reforms." Ambassadors praised the progress made sofar, yet pointed out that certain issues still needed to beaddressed. These include key non-military areas such as thefight against corruption, organised crime, and judiciaryreforms. "The council visit is not only a proof of NATO'scommitment to Albania reform and defence programme butalso a way to get a better understanding of progress and dif-ficulties being faced in this process," said Robertson. p. 21

The Shooting Gallery

Ashton and Van Rompuy react to the news that the council’s new seating arrangement means they can spend the evening together. |BELGA PHOTO POOL DENIS CLOSON

MANAGING EdItor

A lia Papageorgiou alia@neurope.eu

SENIor EdItorIAl tEAM

K ostis Geropoulos (Energy & Russian Affairs) kgeropoulos@neurope.eu

C illian Donnelly (EU Affairs) cdonnelly@neurope.eu

A ndy Carling (EU Affairs) acarling@neurope.eu

A riti Alamanou (Legal Affairs) aalamanou@neurope.eu

L ouise Kissa (Fashion) lkissa@neurope.eu

A lexandra Coronakis (Columnist) acoronaki@neurope.eu

dIrEctor

A lexandros Koronakis akoronakis@neurope.eu

ExEcutIvE lAyout producEr

S uman Haque suman@neurope.eu

SubScrIptIoNS & dIStrIbutIoN

subscriptions@neurope.euSubscriptions are available worldwide

INdEpENdENcE

New Europe is a privately owned independent publication, and is not subsidised or financed in any way by any EU institution or other entity.

bruSSElS hEAdquArtErS

Av. de Tervuren/Tervurenlaan 96, 1040 Brussels, BelgiumTel. +32 2 5390039 Fax +32 2 5390339info@neurope.eu

publIShErS bruSSElS NEwS AGENcy Sprl

Avenue de Tervueren 96 1040 Etterbeek BelgiumTel. +32 2 5390039info@neurope.eu

ExtErNAl coNtrIbutIoNS

Signed Contributions express solely the views of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the newspaper. NE is printed on recycled paper.

© 2013 New Europe all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or otherwise, without express permission. The Publishers accept no liability for third party views published, nor damage caused by reading, viewing or using our content. All information is correct at the time of going to print, we accept no liabilities for consequent changes.N

EW E

URO

PE

ISSN

Nu

mb

er: 1

106-

8299

Echoing the current situation in Syria and the Mid-dle East, the European Union was debating the region a decade ago, with leaders seeking to push the post-war Iraqi regime into easing up on human rights abuses, following reported arrests of young demonstrators, as well as demanding a change of policy on the non-proliferation of nuclear weap-ons. EU leaders threatened an end to trade deals with the crisis-hit country if requests were not met. Elsewhere, Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusco-ni, whose country had just taken over the presiden-cy of the European Council, was visiting US Presi-dent, George Bush; a scenario that has now been rendered impossible, due to Berlusconi’s lifetime ban from holding public office after he was found guilty on 24 July of soliciting underage sex.

ne 10 YeARS

AGO

MMWith tensions between the European Commission and the French government not exactly at their best, it is perhaps unsurprising that the former has been accused by the latter of being guilty of wider political crimes in the EU, namely of being responsible for unleash-ing the far right.Specifically, European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso has been accused by the French Industry Minister, Arnaud Monte-bourg of being “the fuel of the French National Front,” and other populist movements, such as Bepe Grillo’s Five Star Movement in Italy, which scored around 25% of the vote in recent national elec-tions. According to Montebourg, the European Union “does not respond to any of people’s aspirations…and provides a cause to the anti-European parties.” He said the EU was “paralysed.”He was speaking after the by-election in Villeneuve-sur-Lot, once a left-wing stronghold and now the scene of the latest Socialist Party defeat since the ascension to power of Françoise Hollande, whose popularity continues to slide. Indeed, it now seems compulsory to routinely describe the president as “beleaguered.” The socialists may still have a majority in parliament; but at only three seats, that feeling of security is surely far from strong.More worryingly, and the source of Montebourg’s ire, was the elec-toral success of the far-right national Front in Villeneuve-sur-Lot. Having already beaten off the socialists in the first round, the party faced a runoff with the conservative UMP. In a repeat of the 2002 presidential election, the socialist had to adopt a position of urging support for the far-right, that option being the lesser of two evils. The UMP candidate, Jean-Louis Costes, to the right of the party, scored 53% in the runoff to the National Front’s 46%. The National Front by-election candidate, Etienne Bousquet-Cassagne, has been nicknamed “Ken” after Barbie’s playmate. Of course, the National Front already has a Barbie, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen. It is with such twee epithets that the party hopes to gain electorally; its popularity is on the up, and a softer image being cultivated. It sees it future in disaffected youth. Moves are already afoot to draw the party into a political group in the European Par-liament, which would give it a greater level of respectability than at present, while predictions are that the make-up of MEPs will look very different after the 2014 European elections.While it is correct to say that populism is on the rise across Eu-rope, to suggest that it is largely the fault of the commission, or its president, is somewhat stretching it. The Villeneuve-sur-Lot by-election was caused by the resignation of former Budget Minister Jérôme Cahuzac, who admitted to having a cache of offshore bank accounts. At a time when the effectiveness of mainstream politics is being questioned at both EU and national level, this seemed to typify all that is wrong with the current political establishment, hypocritical and run on knowing nods and winks.Europe does have a part to play in combatting the rise of populism in conjunction with national governments and parties, but as the French government looks set to continue its declining relations with the commission over fiscal, budgetary and social policies, citizens are being left out of the debate. A spat with Brussels may grab some headlines – and, maybe, even win a few votes – but he truer fight is at home.

The home front

03ANALYSISNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu30 June - 6 July, 2013

Giovanni Kessler sat down with New Europe last week to discuss the upcoming OLAF regulation review, calls for his departure, Dalli and the European Commission. The Interview follows below.

Next week there is an important meeting in the European Parliament concerning the approval of the revision of the OLAF regulation. There are a series of amendments that have been brought forward, and there is fear that the reform will not get past the European Council as a result. What is the situation?

The proposal of the revision of the OLAF regulation which will be brought to the Parliament next week is the result of a lengthy and fruitful trialogue among the three institutions which has lasted years. We considered all the possible options on how to improve the legislative framework of OLAF which dates back to the foundation of OLAF in 1999 and which is to a certain extent outdated.

The OLAF regulation revision will bring more procedural rights, strengthen the role of the supervisory committee, and protect fundamental rights even more.

It’s the result of a compromise of the three institutions.

It has been approved unanimously by the CONT (Budgetary Control) committee of the Parliament.

Now the some MEPS have put forward amendments, to change the text that they themselves had approved.

The best is the enemy of the good. We could get finally, next week, a good reform of OLAF approved by all the institutions.

So if there are now second thoughts for better provisions, I think it would be better to leave them for the near future. Nothing prevents us, and the Commission has already said that after the approval of these reforms, after one or two years, one could consider with the benefit of experience, further steps.

The Member of Parliament in question, Ingeborg Grassle, has very vocally expressed concerns about you personally and called for your resignation. Do you think that the reason she has called for amendments is related?

I am a person who looks at facts. I am reluctant to go into the intentions behind actions.

Do you feel you are the target of Ingeborg Grassle MEP which has seemingly gotten the support of the EPP Group, and that these amendments are being done so that they can have more power to remove you?

We are talking about a reform of OLAF which is a long standing issue of over seven years that the three institutions are dealing with. I think it would be wrong if this issue was to be spoiled for reasons related to a person, no matter who he is, or a specific investigation.

I would like to touch on the Dalli case. We

have seen a commissioner removed by the President of the European commission. Did you recommend the removal of John Dalli?

OLAF is an investigative body, and that’s what we did, an investigation. We received information on serious allegations which had to be checked, and so we did our duty.

We did a good and swift investigation . Our job is to collect evidence, to check facts, events, and to put them together in a report for the relevant competent authorities. We are not a prosecution body or judges. We put together the evidence which went beyond the initial allegations and filed a report to the institution concerned, the European Commission, for its consideration and possible political decisions. Then we sent the same report to the competent Maltese judicial authorities for their consideration and possible judicial decisions on the criminal responsibility.

My job finished after I handed over the report to the European Commission and to competent authorities in Malta.

What did your investigation reveal?OLAF gathered evidence showing that

irregular meetings of the former Commissioner Dalli took

place with representatives of the tobacco industry with the irregular involvement of a person, a Maltese entrepreneur close to him. These events have also been recognised by Mr Dalli in the course of the investigation.

The OLAF Report also presented evidence that the Maltese entrepreneur close to the former Commissioner subsequently asked for a bribe in order to influence the EU legislative process, using the name of the Commissioner.

Furthermore, the OLAF investigation gathered circumstantial evidence on the possible involvement of the former Commissioner in the request for a bribe made by the Maltese entrepreneur. The OLAF Report stated that there is no conclusive evidence that former Commissioner Dalli was either the mastermind or an accomplice to this criminal activity. This is up to the competent judicial authorities to check.

The Maltese authorities carried out their own criminal investigation and by the end of last year.The person who allegedly requested the bribe has been indicted by a judge.

On the former Commissioner no final formal decision has been taken yet. A timely decision by the judiciary in Malta has been prevented by his illness, which has lasted several months.

Is OLAF following the Tobacco Products Directive to its completion to see whether stakeholders are trying to contaminate this legislation?

This is not my job. I am looking after facts and events on specific allegations. The European Commission has duly approved the directive and sent it forward. I would say that the content of the directive that has been put forward by the Commission, is quite a tough piece of legislation on tobacco control and restrictions.

An attempt was made from outside to

pollute this process through the request for a bribe. This attempt has been detected, reported, and rejected. This speaks in favor of the well functioning machinery of the EU Institutions.

There has been a lot of fallout both on the side of the European Parliament and the media on the Dalli case. Do you feel that OLAF in the future will be able to take on high profile cases like this?

OLAF is an independent investigative body and has to carry out these independent investigations in all cases whether they are high or low profile. We have to show our independence and the same capacity in investigating.

You as Director-General of OLAF had a very active involvement in the investigation of Dalli. I am not sure if this is common practice. Can you comment on this?

There have been instances in the past as well, but there is nothing strange that the head of the investigators participates in some investigative acts. I participated in some interviews. I did so, and I think it is just a matter of taking responsibility and not just delegating to your subordinates, especially when on the other side you have a Commissioner. It’s also a matter of respect. I think I had the duty to do so and I do not see the reason for worry.

The European parliament has asked a series of questions of varying detail, not all of which have been responded to by OLAF. Can you tell us why that is?

There is nothing hidden in this case. We have addressed all the issues. Some questions of the Parliament couldn’t be answered by us or the Commission because they went into legal details that we cannot discuss because there are ongoing legal proceedings on the very same details.

We have to avoid transforming a Parliamentary committee into a court.

There is a great effort to force you to resign from certain quarters in the European Parliament. Why?

I don’t want to engage in a “procès à intention”. Comments have been made recently on the alleged lack of prosecution of the case in Malta. The factual basis for these comments does not exist. In fact, the Maltese authorities have indicted a person and the criminal investigation into the other persons is on-going. Reference has also been made to alleged failings in the investigative process. However, no competent body has established any breach of any right in the OLAF investigation.

OLAF has been condemned in two cases before the European Courts many years ago. This is something that occasionally happens to investigative services, not only to OLAF. Although the investigations were high-profile ones, this has in the past not led to calls for resignation, neither before nor after the unfavourable rulings. Today, some political actors risk to condemn OLAF even before any Court established any breach of any right.

Do you think this whole case will bare any importance and impact on the EU elections next year?

My ideas on this are not relevant.

How do you feel about the media attention of the Dalli case?

There has been a biased media campaign. Furthermore, facts created out of ‘Chinese whispers’ were copied and republished. At the end, the stories are completely different from reality. When the OLAF Report has been made public, it became clear that those accusations against OLAF were false.

As the summer season begins, New Europe will be not shutting down this year but focusing on bringing you a digital project that aims at facilitating the European Affairs transparency process. To be kept up to date continue to visit our global news service at www.neurope.eu. The print edition will return in September. Best for your travels and be safe.

INTERVIEW: GIOVANNI KESSLER

Kessler talks

Giovanni Kessler the DIrector General of OLAF | EPA/MICHAEL REYNOLDS

04 PENSION REPORT NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

30 June - 6 July, 2013

Italy: in with the new

One of Italy’s responses to the dam-aging effects of the financial crises on their economy has been to make

fundamental changes to its pension system, that it hopes will enforce future sustainabil-ity, and more importantly make savings on future costs.

As one of the more vulnerable countries in the EU after the downturn, in 2011 the then Italian prime minister Mario Monti, in the attempt to control the country’s mount-ing debts, carried through a €30 billion aus-terity package, with pension reforms a signif-icant part of the cutback programme.

Sustainability of the pension system, alongside greater flexibility, increased trans-parency, plus a linkage between contributory periods and the length of life expectancy, were the key principles of the reforms.

The key changes were raising retirement age, that came into effect on 1 January 2012, that increased the statutory pension age from 65 to 66, this applies to all male employees and self employed, and women who work in the public sector.

In 2018 the 66 years of age retirement ceiling will apply to all women workers, to harmonise the pension system alongside men, in a stage by stage process over six years.

An increased contribution period to qualify for early retirement also featured in the pension reforms, by 2014 for men pen-sion payments will have to be over 42 years and three months, and 41 years and three months for women.

To incentivise remaining in the labour market for longer, there will be punitive measures introduced for those who choose to retire before the age of 62, who will have to face reductions in their pension, the amount will be dependent on what age re-tirement was taken before they reached 62 years of age.

As part of an austerity package, it was estimated two years ago that cumulative sav-ings from pensions would reach €8.5 billion in 2014 , increasing to €22 billion by 2020.

These figures were reached taking into account €4.9 billion in index savings in 2014 for those benefits that are twice the mini-mum provision; and higher contribution rates from farmers, and the self employed, that were projected in 2014 to bring an extra €3.2 billion into the treasury.

The changes predictably resulted in street protests led by several trade union leaders, as the higher retirement age many workers argued left them without support over the period when they stopped working to when payments begin.

Protests have continued into this year, af-ter Prime Minister Enrico Letta was asked to form a left-right coalition government, follow-ing the inconclusive general election in Feb-ruary. Where the centre-left bloc led by the Democratic Party received 29.5% of the votes, and Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right bloc, who were just 0.3% behind in the ballot.

Italy’s pension system consists of the atyp-ical three pillars in a modern day retirement structure, with the state run pay-as-you-go first pillar the base of pension provision.

The second pillar is a private, voluntary, and collective system, in that funds can be di-rected into ‘contractual’ accounts, which are created by employers’ associations as well as trade unions.

These are organised on the basis of oc-cupational schemes, geographic areas, or in-dividual big companies. Although there can be agreements between the employees and ‘open’ funds, that are operated by banks, in-surance companies, and savings management companies, but it’s the contractual method that is the most widely used.

Competition is more fierce in the volun-tary third pillar, between the financial prod-ucts on offer, the packages on the table for those who partake comprise of more tradi-tional social security assets offered by insur-ance companies, and other financial outlets.

According to figures from the Italian government, the participation rate of supple-mentary pensions to employees in the public, private sector, and self employed amounts to 25.5% of the total workforce.

The investment patterns in Italian pen-sions are relatively conservative, with just over 62% being invested in the safer bond markets. Official figures reveal that 26% of pensions are invested in simple bonds, just under 14% in guarantees bonds, and 21.7% placed into ‘mixed’ bonds. Only 10.4% is in-vested in the more volatile equities market, although this is customary in uncertain times where risks have to be more calculated.

Peering into the future, pensions may face choppy waters, as Italy is currently in the midst of the worst recession for decades,

with the government finances in a parlous state.

The latest Eurostat figures place Italy’s public debt at a staggering 127% of GDP, only Greece is currently in a worse position. Economic growth was posted at -0.5% for the first quarter of this year, 2.3% down when compared to the first quarter of last year. Unemployment has reached 12%, although slightly below the EU average, youth unem-ployment is at a chronic level.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of La-bour and Social Policies explained: “The recent pension reform has anticipated the measures indicated in the White Book on pensions, issued on February 2012, which, in order to ensure adequate benefits within a sustainable system, identifies the actions to be taken in the social security reform. These include the measures implemented in the 2011 reforms such as linking pensionable age to the increase in life expectancy, encourag-ing longer labour market participation, and limiting the access to early retirement.”

RGS data reveals that the ratio of reduc-tions in pension expenditure to GNP last year was 0.2%, which is scheduled to escalate to 1.4% in 2020, and then be reduced to 0.9% % in 2030, with no more reductions begin-ning in 2045.

Italy is a country well versed in political upheaval and drastic actions being taken, it remains to be seen what kind of action En-rico Letta’s government will take to sure up the country’s finances, however in pensions the moves that have been made to keep the system going look to be the right ones.

By Peter Taberner

A closer look at the Classical Mama Roma and the Italian pension system. |AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS

05ANALYSISNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu30 June - 6 July, 2013

On Democracy

By Jimmy Jamar

I participated last week in a three-day conference in Athens on the oc-casion of the 50th anniversary of the Europa Nostra Foundation. The occasion allowed participants to recall a few truths about Greece and Europe. As Kostas Karras, the main organiser of the event, elegantly stated : “The main legacy of Greece to philosophy is … philosophy, and the main legacy of Greece to Europe is … Europe !”. Several participants interpreted, however, the many references to lega-cies and values as means to ward off the growing threats that could very well affect the entire European project. The most important of these values is undoubtedly democracy. And it’s precisely our conception of democracy that could be threatened in the times ahead. One of these threats has actually already materialised in certain parts of the Greek capital, and I can see its sprawling sym-bolic impact during each one of my visits. It appears on the balconies and the façades of a number of buildings occupied by a new political party, which chose black as its reference colour and a geometric form, recalling frightening memories, as its symbol. According to the latest polls, the movement could represent currently up to 15 % of the votes. It reminds us ironically that in the next European Parliament, which will be installed in the spring of 2014, at least two countries will send members from parties who combat our very vision of democracy. If I dare speak openly about these risks, it’s because they have become tangible; and because I would like to spare for myself the dismayed looks of our political leaders, when they will pretend to discover the scope of the disaster. While everyone knows that these things are hap-pening. Everyone. And they are happening NOW. The problem with democracy, is that it is often ill-equipped to face ris-ing threats. The conviction of its natural superiority over other forms of power, and its wait-and-see attitude which often accompanies its tradition of tolerance – the confidence in the intelligence of the peo-ple, the conviction that things will turn out ultimately for the better -, sometimes enabled other forms of power to take over, not rarely (ironically again, on the occasion of democratic elections!) A short flashback through European history reminds us exactly of what we are talking about. One of the founding principles of the European project was, precisely, the establishment of a system based on joint decision-making, in order to prevent any form of deviance and ensure the supremacy of the com-mon interest. This acknowledgement was repeated at every step of Eu-ropean integration : after the War, among the six founding Members; with Greece, Spain and Portugal, at the fall of their respective dictator-ships; and more recently with the accession, of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, after the fall of another form of dictatorship which devastated that part of the continent for over 40 years. Today, however, it is time to recall Socrates’ admonishing during his trial, namely that the new system created on the Pnyx, the small hill surmounting the Acropolis, was not irrevocable. The system needs be protected, its principles constantly improved. As Commissioner Vassiliou recalled during the Europa Nostra Award ceremony in Ath-ens: “Democracy, as culture, is not a fossilised concept. It must be con-quered in permanence”. At a moment when adverse winds are battering our economies, and doubts are mounting about the ability of the European process to ad-dress the continent’s ailments, it is high time to question the percep-tion of our values and their appropriateness as regards the evolution of our societies. We have a unique opportunity to do so, on the occa-sion of the European Year of Citizens. Because citizens are intrinsically linked to the concept of democracy : they represent its main actors; it is for them that the concept was created in the first place; but is also them who, in case of disillusionment, will not hesitate to surrender to other forms of power, often at their own expense. Some people are waiting exactly for this moment, and among them the men in black T-shirts on the balconies of Golden Dawn. I saw them. They are waiting for their moment. The vision reminds us of the need not only to remain vigilant (because vigilance as such is not enough when these people engage in action); they remind us that we must also act. We must learn to call things by their name. We must learn to de-nounce their views and their practices. We must take responsibility, in order to protect our future. And to ensure that never again, entangled in our wait-and-see policies, will a new generation scream in our faces: “Why haven’t you done anything ? “.

Jimmy Jamar, Head of the European Commission Representation in Belgium All views expressed are personal

A member of New Europe’s Knowledge Network

Words of a European

After years of negotiations, con-sultations, and informal meet-ings, European leaders agreed

on Wednesday on a draft directive es-tablishing a framework for dealing with credit institutions and investment firms in difficulty. The procedure is far from being over, as it’s now up to the presi-dency to start negotiations with the Eu-ropean Parliament in order to adopt the directive before the end of 2013.

The agreement is mostly based on the controversial bail-in model ap-plied in Cyprus earlier this year, which left thousand depositors with heavy losses on their deposits exceeding EUR 100,000. The main logic of the agree-ment is to place the burden of saving an ailing institution on its shareholders, creditors (meaning: bondholders), and if necessary depositors, and to avoid the rise of national debt due to failure of national banks. However, as was the cae in Cyprus, insured deposits under EUR 100,000 would be excluded, as would liabilities to employees of collapsed in-stitutions.

EU Member States will have to set up national resolution funds to reach, within 10 years, a target level of at least 0.8 per cent of covered deposits of all the credit institutions authorised in their country. However, before resolu-tion funds can be used, a minimum bail-in from shareholders and credi-tors amounting to 8 per cent of total liabilities is required. Under certain cir-cumstances, and after getting a formal approval from Brussels, member states could use the funds to protect certain creditors or to recapitalize banks, with intervention capped at 5 per cent of the bank‘s total liabilities.

Looking into the agreement, we can see in some detail the methods adopted for dealing with bank failures. Accord-ing to the Council’s press release, “The

proposed directive is aimed at provid-ing national authorities with common powers and instruments to preempt bank crises and to resolve any financial institution in an orderly manner in the event of failure, whilst preserving es-sential bank operations and minimising taxpayers‘ exposure to losses.”

Recognizing the fact that each case is different, the directive requires each financial institution to draw up recov-ery plans and update them annually, setting out the measures to be taken in order to restore their financial position in case of major problem. Additionally, resolution authorities are also required to prepare adequate plans to deal with the event of default of each financial in-stitution under their supervision.

In case of resolution, the common model adopted is based on two pillars: i) the separation of assets and their transfer to “bridge” entities (i.e. the principle of good bank, bad bank), and ii) a bail-in “tool”, that is: the imposition of losses, with an order of seniority, on shareholders. The bail-in tool will ena-ble resolution authorities to write down or convert into equity the claims of the shareholders and creditors of institu-tions which are failing or likely to fail.

Regarding the order of seniority of claims, it has been agreed that depos-its from private persons and small and medium-sized enterprises, would have preference over the claims of ordinary unsecured, non-preferred creditors and depositors from large corporations. It is understood that deposits below EUR 100,000, will always have a higher rank-ing than the above mentioned deposits.

However, national resolution au-thorities will keep the power to exclude liabilities on a discretionary basis, un-der certain circumstances, such as: if they cannot be bailed in within a rea-sonable time; to ensure continuity of critical functions; to avoid contagion;

and finally, to avoid value destruction that would raise losses suffered by other creditors. Moreover, resolution author-ities will have the right to compensate for the discretionary exclusion of some liabilities by passing these losses on to other creditors, “as long as no creditor is worse off than under normal insol-vency proceedings.” In other terms, national authorities have, under this directive, a large discretionary power as to who will incur losses and who will be effectively compensated. This is proba-bly the single most important aspect of this agreement, and reveals the extent of compromises made in order to reach the agreement.

Another point is the requirement for member states to set up ex ante resolution funds (meaning: before a financial problem occurs), and to capi-talize them within 10 years through an-nual contributions from credit institu-tions, but an exception to this rule rule would allow member states to establish their national financing arrangement through mandatory contributions without setting up a separate fund – an-other compromise at the basis of this agreement. It is also said that this “flex-ibility” (in fact – “exception”) would only be available after a minimum level of losses equal to 8% of total liabilities financing arrangement has at its dispos-al ex ante contributions which amount to at least 3% of covered deposits.

All this leads to the conclusion that although Europe has made a signifi-cant step forward to the direction of a unified banking system (the ‘banking union”), a large part of the methods and decisions to take is delegated to the member states, either as formal excep-tions, or as discretionary decisions of each national authority. Let’s hope it’ll work.

Christos Kissas, PhD Financial Economist

By Christos Kissas

EU’s agreement on bail-ins and its exceptions

06 ANALYSIS NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

30 June - 6 July, 2013

On 25 June, 2013, Professor Vladko Panayotov MEP received the MEP award of Parliament Magazine for 2013 in the category “Environ-ment”. The ceremony took place in the Con-cert Noble where for the ninth year in a row The Parliament Magazine rewarded 18 MEPs with prizes in different categories as recogni-tion for their significant contribution through their work in the EP in their respective fields of action, be it agriculture and rural affairs, em-ployment and social affairs, environment, en-ergy, transport, economic and monetary affairs, health, regional development, trade, research and innovation, justice and civil liberties, etc.

Prof. Vladko Panayotov was elected by his colleagues in the European Parliament who had to choose between three final candi-dates nominated from among all the MEPs by

trade and professional associations and inter-est groups active in sector-specific areas from across Europe.

“This award is a great honour for me as a Bulgarian and as a European,” said Prof. Pa-nayotov. “I am deeply touched and I feel very proud because this award is a contribution and reward not only for me and my humble work as an MEP so far, but most of all it is recognition for Bulgaria. This award gives me the inspira-tion and courage to continue my work in this field of crucial importance to all of us, where MEPs have more and more influence in shap-ing EU environmental policies and the oppor-tunity to make a strong positive impact on the future of Bulgaria and the EU.”

“From shale gas to nanotechnology, waste management to the battery directive – Vladko

Panayotov is a key player in some of parlia-ment’s most pressing environmental dossiers,” noted The Parliament Magazine about Prof. Panayotov’s nomination. The Bulgarian MEP was also described by the organisations that nominated him as “a great political talent” and he was “praised for promoting science and innovation-based technology” by putting his scientific background and experience to good use in the European Parliament.

The other two nominees in the category “Environment” were Sandrine Belier (Green Party, France) for her contribution to biodi-versity and her active role in protecting the environment, and Julie Gerling (Conserva-tive Party, UK) for her contribution to a healthy lifestyle, animal welfare and rural development.

Prof. Vladko Panayotov awarded MEP of the Year 2013

Having seen ‘Neo-Seoul’ in the film Cloud Atlas you might think that Korea is something up in the sky, and

not really in heaven. But the recent road-maps of European enterprises increasingly include concrete routes leading their growing exports to that country of the Morning Calm without the nightmare action scenes of Tom Tykwer’s movie.

In the first year since the EU enforced the Free Trade Agreement with South Korea in mid-2011 our exports to the still divided pen-insula surged by 37%. On top, one should won-der about the Korean Won, although this year the Japanese Yen (or rather “enyasu“) receives the blame of market intervention, while hith-erto the Chinese Yuan Renmimbi had made the headlines.

In Korea most European imports still are expensive, like they were in the past and they now again become costly in Japan. That is the self-declared beautiful country (“utsukushii kuni“) of Abenomics, which risks to bubble up into “Awanomics“ (“awa“ meaning foam...) ac-cording to serious economists. Prime Minister Abe’s beauty of the probable bubble of quantita-tive easing and his cheap Yen hardly render his islands more attractive for European export-ers. However, his neighbours on the peninsula with their dynamics of ’Gangnam Style’ and through their earlier FTAs with the EU and the USA stole Japan the show, although Abenom-ics might bite their exporters for the time being. Thus the Koreans together with the Chinese have become leaders in the chorus against in-terventionist Abenomics. In particular the Ko-reans’ strong car sales in Europe with an equally weak Won might face not only growing compe-tition in our terms, but fierce rivalry in the Asian sense of the word. Korean financial services al-ready come under distress and some banks went bust recently. Their leading IT industry with the world’s largest smartphone maker nevertheless seems to withstand the threat coming from its insular neighbour that is still suffering from its Galapagos Syndrome of claimed “unique-sa”.

Anyway, smartphones nowadays have crossed borders --notably in Asia’s value chains of pro-duction-- up to a hundred times before they hit their final market here.

These west-ward trade currents flow faster and thicker with the East’s undervalued curren-cies. Our European ’PIGS’ in the South of the Euro-zone might be jealous of the Far East’s ar-bitrary monetary devaluations, but these Euro-peans in the sun for years already have enjoyed lower transaction costs and a steady pace of Common Market growth. They optimistically can look forward to long-term stability in peace that insular nationalisms and continuing rival-ries in East Asia do not yet guarantee. North of the Alps in the colder climes of earlier reforms and austerity, brands for the nouveau-riches in the East still make higher profits, but for how long? After the next election there, also the selection of imports elsewhere might change gradually, away from gas-guzzling imagery to green and clean efficiency.

While European car-dealerships in Seoul’s upmarket Gangnam district quadrupled their sales for „indescribable driving experience and iconic engine sound“ helped by the EU-Korea FTA, the obligations of regulatory harmonisa-tion of safety and environmental standards part-ly yet wait to be fulfilled in the country. Korean consumers, however, have adapted faster. With the fuel price on the rise, for instance, they in-creasingly choose more efficient diesel engines, where imports from Europe have the edge and dominate the market. If politicians’ slogans have a real value, there ought to be a ’Chinese Dream’ fulfilled, Japan after Fukushima beautified and South Korea endowed with ’economic democ-racy’. Korea for real would hence mean that the large majority of economic actors from consum-ers to small entrepreneurs would have more of a say than the big business of the few but powerful ’chaebols’. In fair competition the latter are not necessarily better, as they have been strategi-cally supported since the 1960’s when the father of the current President Park much started Five-Year Plans for industrialisation under his less democratic military government. He likewise

turned commercial banks into de facto public enterprises by limiting private voting rights. The banks are now in crisis, and his daughter is in power. She has to prove that the generational change towards ’economic democracy’ is really happening in Korea.

In East Asia with limited liberalisation, trade only slowly moves beyond the Ricardian model of favouring exporters and reciprocity. Though the region gradually advances towards the Schumpeterian concept, where opening up to imports serves as a tool to increase competitive-ness at home through the incentives it provides for the domestic industries to innovate and restructure. Under Schumpeter’s verdict, the argument counts that, if opening to the outside does not kill import-competing sectors, they only get stronger. This lesson is still to be learnt by most in the region and historical rivalry to be turned into competition and cooperation, also at political level.

After half a century of EU-Korea relations this year its celebrations and our FTA fortu-nately are leading to more learning about the country. For Europeans South Korea is now for real, whereas the North still remains a myth, not only for Europeans. However, if and when one day there is jubilation over unification, ‘juche’ will be the slogan at the core of a united Ko-rea and thus “it would be strongly nationalist”, not only according to the Financial Times. It will have some 70 million citizens, low labour costs, a potentially successful economy and per-haps nuclear weapons. Traders’ road maps will change again then, notably by its neighbours. Congratulations on 50 years of EU-Korea rela-tions and Carpe Diem with a real Korea!

(This article complements a comprehensive es-say on East Asia that Wolfgang Pape has recently published at http://www.ceps.eu/book/evolving-integration-east-asia-too-many-reservations . He can be reached at wolfgang.pape@gmail.com)

Korea for real?By Wolfgang Pape

Stacks of containers seen at Sinseondae Pier in Busan, South Korea’s largest port, 05 December 2011. The Knowledge Economy Ministry said the same day that South Korea’s trade volume has surpassed the US$1 trillion mark on a customs-cleared basis for the first time in its history this year, making it the ninth country to break the mark. |EPA/YONHAP

07OPINIONNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu30 June - 6 July, 2013

The West plays with fire in Syria Propaganda is easy. Use touchy-

feely words like “human rights” to sell wars. Claim to cherish “val-

ues”. Demonise your enemies; ignore the crimes of your allies. Don’t be afraid to lie.

The greatest innovation that William Hague has brought to the dark art of spin is that he has mastered it in a Yorkshire accent. The West must “be prepared to do more to save lives” in Syria, Britain’s foreign secretary said recently. Hague’s preferred method of saving lives is to arm one side in a civil war.

Why should be we sceptical of the erudite statesman? In 1916, Britain and France negotiated a secret deal on carv-ing up the Middle East between them. Splotches of blue and red were applied to a map, designating which territories should “belong” to each power. “In the blue area France, and in the red area Great Britain, shall be allowed to estab-lish such direct or indirect administra-tion or control as they desire,” stated the Sykes-Picot accord - as the deal became known.

Almost a century later Hague and his French counterpart Laurent Fabius appear determined to oust Bashar al-As-sad. There can be little doubt that Assad is responsible for atrocities. But is that really why strategists in London, Paris and Washington want him removed?

One year after Sykes-Picot, the US President Woodrow Wilson declared that a war was necessary for the world to be “made safe for democracy”.

Ordinary Syrians know a thing or two about the West’s commitment to de-mocracy. Syria achieved independence in 1946; it was supposed to be a parlia-mentary republic. In 1949, the CIA or-chestrated a coup in order to put Husni al-Zaim in power. Declassified docu-ments indicate that the US regarded the colonel as a “likeable rogue”.

Bashar al-Assad was also viewed as a likeable rogue by some Western elitists. In February 2011, Vogue magazine pub-lished a feature eulogising Bashar and his wife Asma. As well as leading the “safest country in the Middle East”, the couple wanted Syria to be treated as a brand, the feature informed us.

Assad had spent much of the preced-ing decade undergoing a makeover to woo foreign multinationals. His Baath party had been in favour of central plan-ning but in 2005 it decided to move to-wards a “social market economy”, a eu-phemism for letting major corporations run the show. To stress its approval for this neoliberal shift, most EU govern-

ments were prepared to overlook Assad’s penchant for imprisoning opponents and conclude a “free trade” deal with him. (The accord didn’t come into ef-fect, mainly because of opposition from the Netherlands).

The EU was more favourably dis-posed towards Assad than the US. While George W Bush was initially able to co-opt Assad for the “war on terror”, the White House eventually succumbed to pressure from Congress and signed a bill imposing economic sanctions on Syria in 2003.

The editors at Vogue may have for-gotten to consult their in-house astrolo-gers before publishing that inauspicious article. Soon after it hit the shelves, As-sad’s forces were suppressing popular protests against him. Brand Syria had turned toxic.

Assad is now clearly perceived as a li-ability by Britain, France and the US. So much so that they are preparing to arm groups which we are enjoined to call “re-bels”. Under different circumstances, the “rebels” would be labelled “terrorists”.

The Free Syrian Army has report-edly opened fire inside a hospital serving Yarmouk, a camp for Palestinian refu-gees in Damascus. These “rebels” are the most probable recipients of Western weapons. Indeed, they are already well-armed, thanks largely to Saudi Arabia. The Saudi royal family is a client state of the US and a prized customer of Britain’s war industry. Could that explain why the West is happy to tacitly applaud the Sau-dis for abetting war crimes?

Susan Rice, the outgoing American ambassador to the UN, described the Security Council’s “inaction” on Syria as

“a moral and strategic disgrace”. Her at-tempt to put a moral gloss on American foreign policy was risible. The same Su-san Rice acted as Israel’s lapdog. Among those attacked by Israel in November last year were Palestinian refugees who had fled from Syria to Gaza. Rice sup-ported that patently immoral attack.

As it happens, the permanent mem-bers of the Security Council have not been guilty of inaction. One of them, Russia, has shamefully kept on sending arms to Assad. Three others, Britain, France and the US, have been training Syrian “rebels” in Jordan.

NATO, for its part, has provocatively placed a number of missile interceptors near Turkey’s border with Syria. These are in addition to the military bases that America, the dominant country in NATO, has established in Turkey.

For all their talk about wanting to protect lives, the imperial powers’ only real objective in Syria is protecting their interests. Not for the first time, they are determined to ensure that Damascus is ruled by someone who answers to West-ern orders.

There is a nasty sectarian aspect to Syria’s civil war. Like the invasion of Iraq, it has exacerbated tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

Moreover, the conflict has not stayed within Syria; it has spilled over into Leb-anon. Israel has got involved, perhaps as a test run for an attack on Iran.

Shovelling fresh weapons into this civil war is flagrantly irresponsible. In their arrogance, the West’s imperialists are prepared to play with fire, if it means that they can keep the Middle East un-der their control.

Syrians walk down a destroyed street in the centre of Syria’s northeastern city of Deir Ezzor on 27 June, 2013. More than 100,000 people have been killed in Syria’s uprising, a watchdog said, as a proposed Geneva peace conference looked set to be delayed, dimming hopes for an end to the bloodshed. |AFP PHOTO / AHMAD ABOUD

Croatia’s human rights burden

By Nicolas Beger

Monday 1 July is the day Croatia becomes the European Union’s 28th member. And there are certainly good things to celebrate, not least the improvements to the national justice system that accession has triggered. But Croatia still labours under a heavy human rights burden. Why is this? Essentially it’s because so many war crimes from the country’s recent past have been left unresolved. In theory, the EU ought to have been strongly placed to confront Croatia’s troubled past when the country sought to join. After all, wasn’t the Union founded on the principles of peace and justice in reaction to the horrors of the Second World War? However, despite the EU’s robust benchmarks and the Croatian justice system’s marked improvement during the accession process, there’s been scant progress in granting the victims of war crimes real access to justice. In fact, the people who have tried to discuss war crimes have risked their lives in the attempt. For example, Milan Levar, an activist who collected evidence on war crimes was killed in 2000 before he could testify before the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). His murder remains unsolved. Croatia still has much to do to tackle its past. After all, what progress can we expect when the Croatian courts only manage to prosecute about 20 war crimes cases a year? At that rate, the hundreds of untried cases will take decades to resolve. Long before that many witnesses will have died and evidence lost for good. Many victims will never receive justice, meaning the perpetrators escape scot-free.For Croatia truly to confront its past, real political willpower is crucial. But this a rare commodity. Unlike its predecessor, today’s Croatian Government has avoided openly supporting people implicated in war crimes. But it has also failed to act forcefully. Allegations against various senior figures are freely available. For example, the courts have named Vladimir Šeks (the Croatian parliament’s former speaker) as having commanded troops who committed war crimes in Eastern Slavonia. His alleged role has never been investigated and he is still a serving MP. As Croatia joins the EU, how can we be sure Brussels won’t simply prefer to forget sticky issues like these? The way the Union has handled the Croatian war crimes issue will inevitably define other Balkan countries’ expectations as they discuss accession. If they feel the bar was set low for Croatia, will Montenegro or Serbia be held to higher standards without accusing the EU of bias? Although Brussels has already begun discussions with Montenegro, it’s hard to find any mention of the issue in the negotiating framework. The EU will shortly agree to open negotiations with Serbia, and it’s vital it learns lessons from its Croatian and Montenegrin ex-periences. Discussion of impunity for war crimes and reform of the domestic justice system need to start on day one, and high standards agreed and respected. Above all, the EU must have the honesty and integrity to admit that this process doesn’t simply grind to a halt once a country joins the Union. Progress on war crimes in Croatia should be constantly monitored. And on a broader plain, the EU must find the political courage to tackle justice and human rights issues within all EU countries, whether or not they are long-standing members. If it doesn’t dig its heels in, and lets established mem-ber states flout human rights without challenge, the EU risks compromising its claim to be a moral force.

Nicolas Beger, Director, European Institutions Office, Amnesty International

By David Cronin

A member of New Europe’s Knowledge Network

08 ANALYSIS NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

30 June - 6 July, 2013

By Peter Taberner

The business challenge

By Francisco Jaime Quesado

Michael Porter, the famous Harvard Professor expert in Strate-gy presented recently some ideas about the role that the “Busi-ness Challenge” has in the organizations of the future. That´s a new collaborative platform between the different actors, with the strategic challenge of reinforcing the central competences of society and qualifying them as the unique ways of creation of value and modernity. Europe is facing also a unique oppor-tunity. There is more and more a sense of “Business Challenge” in the new time that all of us want for Europe in the future.The “Business Challenge” demands an effective Partnership Contract between all the actors (States, Universities, Compa-nies, Civil Society), in order to build a real Strategy of Con-fidence in the implementation of the different policies. The focus on Innovation and Knowledge as the drivers of creating added value with international dissemination is a unique chal-lenge that may be the answer to a new way of interaction be-tween those who have the responsibility of thinking and those that have the responsibility of producing goods and services.The “Business Challenge” demands for an active entrepre-neurial culture and attitude - “social active classes” in Europe have most of the times an effective negative attitude towards the financial risk, the focus on innovation and the share of a culture of positive dynamic. We need Europe to have a new challenge. Europe must be able to be the real Platform of a more Entrepreneurial Society, centered in new areas of knowl-edge and new sectors of value. In a “Business Challenge” Soci-ety, the key word is Co-creation. To promote a dynamic and active creation process involving each citizen is the big chal-lenge for the next years in Europe.A “Business Challenge” Europe must be the most complete example of positive attitude towards the future. The Talents must be the new competitive advantage of this new “Business Challenge” Europe pushed by the “enablers” of Modernity, Added Value and Excellence. A very clear idea that suits the big challenge that our society really faces and that requires new answers for different questions. The act of global participation in such a demanding society is an exercise of commitment be-tween the individual creativity and the collective cooperation. This is the key for the right future for Europe.It´ s time to believe in a new cycle for Europe. These are in fact the “drivers of change” for Europe and civil society must be able to understand this new challenge and address effective answers to the different stakeholders of the system. The “Busi-ness Challenge” is in a large sense giving a new opportunity to the reinvention of Europe. The Reinvention of Europe is the reinvention of its people and institutions. It ´s the conviction that in fact we have a future as individuals and society.

Francisco Jaime Quesado is the General Manager of the Innovation and Knowledge Society in Portugal, a public agency with the mission of coordinating the policies for Information Society and mobilizing it through dissemination, qualification and research activities. It operates within the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education

Research conducted by Eurostat has revealed that there were ma-jor price disparities in selected

foods and non-alcoholic beverages dur-ing 2012 across the EU, with Denmark being more than twice as expensive as Poland.

At 143% over the EU average, Den-mark had the highest prices for foods that included: bread and cereals, meat, milk cheese and eggs, and the non-alco-holic drinks categories.

They were joined by other Scan-dinavian countries Sweden , who were 124% over the EU average, and Fin-land whose prices were slightly lower at 119% above average.

In central Europe Austria were high on the list of the most expensive coun-tries with prices pegged at 120% over the EU median price, alongside Luxem-bourg on 116%, with Ireland also con-sidered to be expensive as their prices reached 118%.

The lowest prices were found pri-marily across eastern European coun-tries, with Poland the cheapest country to live in with prices in the food and non-alcoholic beverage groups on 61% of the EU average.

Next came the two countries to ac-ceded into the EU in 2007 Romania and Bulgaria, who were the next most economical countries where prices were 67% and 68% of the EU average respectively.

The Baltic states were calculated as

the second most economic area of the EU, with Lithuania’s prices for food and non-alcoholic drink’s the lowest in the area on 77% of the EU average, fol-lowed by Latvia and Estonia both on 87% compared to prices across the 27 nations.

Europe’s traditionally more influ-ential countries were found to be above average in prices, with France on 109%, Germany 106%, the UK on 104%, and Italy the most costly out of the strongest economic nations, with their food and non-alcoholic beverage prices on 111%.

If you were in the mood for a strong-er alcoholic drink, then Finland would be the dearest place, as their prices reached 175% of the EU average, with Scandinavia again expensive as Sweden’s alcohol prices were 161% of the mode price, with Denmark again featuring on 140%.

Alcohol was also expensive in parts of northern Europe, 43% over the nor-mal price in the EU in the UK, and in Ireland alcohol was 62% above average price.

In these two countries the price of tobacco products was also very high, in Ireland nearly twice the EU average on 199%, slightly more expensive in the UK , where tobacco was 194% over the EU price.

In eastern Europe tobacco prices were almost four time lower than the most expensive countries, with Hun-gary the cheapest at just 52% of the EU average, Lithuania on 55%, followed by Bulgaria on 57%, and Poland 58%.

An EU official said: “The Commis-sion does not set prices for foods or non-alcoholic beverages so in that re-spect we have no comments to make on price differences.”

“On the tax side, we have minimum rates in place for alcohol and tobacco to avoid distortions of competition in the internal market. However, above these minimum rates member states are free to align their tax policies to for example address budgetary needs or health con-cerns as this is a national competence.”

“At EU level, we do have health pol-icy initiatives aimed at discouraging the consumption of tobacco products such as for example the revised Tobacco Di-rective which is currently discussed by Council and the European Parliament.”

All of the totals were arrived at using the Eurostat-OECD Purchasing Power Parities Programme, that surveyed 500 comparable products; which enabled a system that would have a sufficient number of products to review, in work-ing out consumption patterns in each individual country.

The results were then expressed in a price level indices (PLIs), where the EU average was equal to 100, and then countries were then rated over or below the median price for the EU.

The main categories that were cho-sen in the survey: food, non-alcoholic beverages, alcoholic beverages and to-bacco, represent on average 16%, 2%, 3% and 3% of yearly household expend-iture respectively, according to the Euro-pean Commission.

What’s the cost of food in the EU?Disparities in food prices up to 143%

The euro is accused of covering hikes across the 12-nation euro zone with consumer associations claiming the single currency’s launch boosted prices for household items, food, drinks, dry cleaning and oil changes. | EPA PHOTO AFP FILES-PHILIPPE DESMAZES-lc-amd

09ANALYSISNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu30 June - 6 July, 2013

Changing the system

In 1962, Nelson Mandela was sen-tenced to life imprisonment for his part in attempting to overthrow

the apartheid regime in South Africa. Mandela, who has moved through a succession of left-wing groups aimed at disrupting the regime, which was based on an extreme position of racial segregation, was convicted of sedition, sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government. He would eventually serve 20 years in prison, most famous-ly at Robben Island, eventually being granted release in 1990.

Subsequently, he would go on to be-come South Africa’s first post-apartheid president, and an elder statesman of renown, coming to symbolise, perhaps more than any, including Martin Luther King, the defiant voice speaking for the repressed minority.

During his time in prison, he had be-come a cause célèbre, with international pressure and sanctions directed against the apartheid system, the defiance of which he so dramatically represented. Musicians wrote songs about him, most notably, ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ by the Special AKA; and when Paul Simon re-corded his Graceland album with South African musicians in direct contraven-tion of international sanctions, there was a huge backlash.

Indeed, when the rock band Queen agreed to play in South Africa’s Sun City in return for a huge fee, so enraged was guitarist Steven Van Zandt that he re-corded the protest song ‘Sun City’ in 1985 and formed an artists collective aimed at drawing international atten-tion to the situation named Artists Against Apartheid, which included

such notable members as George Clin-ton, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Herbie Hancock, Gil-Scott Heron, Lou Reed and Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones amongst others.

By the mid-1980s, the situation in South Africa has become global news and pressure on the government of PW Botha from Europe and elsewhere was mounting.

In Ireland, for example, when a 21 year-old cashier named Mary Manning who worked for the retail outlet Dunnes Stores refused to handle any South Af-rican produce, notably oranges, it trig-gered a three-year strike by workers who wanted shops to cease dealing with South Africa; given Ireland’s chronic unemployment situation at the time, it was an incredibly brave decision by the trade unions. The Irish government relented and agreed not to import any fruit or vegetables from South Africa until apartheid was abolished. Mary Maning has a street named after her in Johannesburg. In 2008, the South Af-rican government paid for a memorial plaque, which is displayed on the site of the Henry Street branch of the shop where the protest took hold.

Prior to that, in Bill Forsyth’s other-wise whimsical 1983 film Local Hero, set in the Scottish highlands, in one scene one of the characters refuses to eat an orange that has been washed-up on the remote shoreline after discover-ing it was from South Africa; the issue had firmly infiltrated the mainstream. The satirical puppet show in the UK, Spitting Image, routinely mocked Botha and his regime – who boasted Margaret Thatcher as a friend – while in London on 11 June 1988, Wembley Stadium in London hosted a gala 70th birthday

musical tribute to the still-incarcerated Mandela, an event screened to an esti-mated worldwide audience of 600 mil-lion. In response to the concert, mem-bers of Thatcher’s ruling Conservative Party introduced a motion in parlia-ment condemning the UK’s national broadcaster, the BBC, in the enterprise, for apparently encouraging terrorist ac-tivities.

Apartheid, is an Afrikaner word, meaning “the state of being apart.” In South Africa that meant a system of en-forced racial segregation, which lasted for around 45 years. It preached white supremacy, and denied the indigenous African majority their rights. The policy of segregation was formally introduced after the 1948 election, and classified South African citizens into four distinct groups, ‘white,’ ‘native’, ‘coloured’ and ‘Asian’. In 1970, political representation was abolished to all but whites.

As well as resistance within South Africa, led by the African National Con-gress (ANC) and often violent, interna-tional sanctions, including a UN trade embargo supported by 130 countries, against the Afrikaner regimes, were mounting.

In 1989 the ailing Botha was re-placed as leader of the National Party by FW de Klerk. In February 1990, de Klerk, now president, and with some opposition within his own political ranks, agreed to the release of Mandela and the legalisation of the ANC, then a proscribed organisation.

On 11 February1990, in an event immortalised through worldwide me-dia coverage, Nelson Mandela walked out of Victor Verster prison a free man. In May 1994, he became president of South Africa.

Digital chumps

By Andy Carling

Constructive Ambiguity

With Europe’s digital dreams fading to dust, it is time for a radical action and that’s why we should soon see British born John McAffe made one of Neelie ‘Nearly closed’ Kroes’ digital champions.There’s nowhere else to go.The digital agenda is dead, partially killed off by Council, to save money. They didn’t go for all that ‘sustainable growth’ it was hyped as offering. The agenda was, the commissioner said, “our strategy for making every European “digital”.” As be-fore, 25% of Europeans are not online.Telecoms? A friend tried snapping one of the QR codes that the commission splash about on the walls of Berlaymont, in the manner of a geography teacher trying to look all modern, but couldn’t decipher it as the data signal in Brussels has de-teriorated to the point where it hardly works. 4G? Brussels is heading back to analogue.What else? Ah yes, the ‘right to be forgotten.’That campaign is going to go down in European history as the political ambition that got crushed the most by the real world. In a world where not only the US but an EU member state is hovering up everything, all data and doing Lord knows what with it.There is a myth that all this data slurping is to do with ter-rorism prevention. However, for decades now, the major part of espionage has been industrial and commercial espionage. Connect that to electronic profiling, the sort of activity that Facebook and Google do and you can see the potential for a government to seek an advantage for their own customers.Kroes is pushing cloud computing, essentially a strategy for getting as many EU companies to store their data where cer-tain foreign intelligence services can help themselves to it.There is no single market in telecoms, cable, internet or for such things as buying music online, as copyright remains a Gordian knot. The best they can claim is that phone roaming charges went from completely extortionate to extortionate.In the real world, there is nothing but ashes left of the digital agenda. The problem is that this is one of the most functional parts of the commission. This is what success looks like in Brussels.This is not to blame Kroes, it would have been this way with any commissioner because it is about the priorities of Bar-roso’s bonfire of the vanities.Basically, business good, people… less so. This is why the digital agenda is impotent in the face of real challenges against privacy, and indeed security.This is an institution that preaches the citizen, proclaims hu-man rights, yet does nothing, nothing at all when, say a dozen members are caught operating secret prisons, torturing sus-pects and so in, in defiance of international law.Now, we are in the Twilight Zone, where the commissioners are busy looking for a new job, MEPs are psyching themselves up for the elections and Council is doing nothing until Ger-many chooses a new leader.So, in the meantime, let’s have a break and let’s put Mr McAffe in charge of the digital agenda. He’s a business man, has inno-vative ideas about software removal and a drug crazed, booze raddled sex fiend isn’t going to be any worse, or less successful that what we’ve had so far.

By Cillian Donnelly

Pictures of former South African President Nelson Mandela are hung up at a mass prayer meeting, at Luhlaza High School in Khayelitsha in Cape Town. The former ANC leader and symbol of anti-apartheid expression is gravely ill in South Africa.. |AFP PHOTO/ STRINGER

10 ANALYSIS NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

30 June - 6 July, 2013

The crisis should not distract us from the urgent need to reform Europe’s education systems. As the Com-

mission will highlight on 10 July in a Com-munication from Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou on European higher education in the world, international trends in education show that globalisation and technology have no respect for traditions or reputation: the massive increase in the global supply of highly skilled people over the past decade, and more focused investment on quality and access to education by emerging economies, has put Europe to the test.

Of course the mission of education is not to feed the labour market but to transform an empty mind into an open one, to enhance active citizenship, and to help personal devel-opment. But an open mind does not need to be unemployed: against the backdrop of slow economic growth and an ageing and shrinking workforce, the most pressing challenge for Eu-rope is to address the needs of the knowledge economy and focus on solutions to extraordi-nary levels of youth unemployment. And in this respect, the potential contribution of edu-cation systems to Europe’s prosperity remains under-exploited.

Spending on education is an investment in the future, not a cost. In the first years of the crisis, the education sector was largely spared from budget cuts – but more recent data from the Commission’s Eurydice network show that a significant number of EU countries have reduced education expenditure.

Yet effective education systems depend on appropriate funding, and while it is indeed a challenge to consolidate public budgets and maintain investment in growth-enhancing policies, the low or decreasing level of invest-ment in education is a source of concern.

While the main responsibility for educa-tion rests at national and regional level, the ambitious reforms needed call for a strong response from both the EU and its Member countries.

EU policies and financial instruments can

help by providing guidance and incentives for modernisation and internationalisation strat-egies: to increase the attractiveness of Euro-pean education systems by improving quality and transparency, and to increase coopera-tion for innovation and development through partnerships, dialogue and capacity building.

On funding, Erasmus+, the new single programme for EU cooperation and mobility in education, training, youth and sports for 2014-2020, demonstrates the Union’s com-mitment to education even in times of overall

budget constraints: the budget for the new programme will increase by approximately 40%, to more than €14 billion for the seven years. Our task will be to make sure that these funds have systemic impact, and this will only happen if countries design a strategy for edu-cation with clear, concrete and measurable tar-gets, milestones for each education level and age-group;, and time-frames for implementa-tion, with tools for monitoring progress.

On policy, EU cooperation has already enhanced comparability and exchange among universities.

Vocational education and training, and especially apprenticeships, boost youth em-ployability and should also be significantly reinforced in vocational programmes. The Commission will launch the European Alli-ance for Apprenticeships on 2 July at World-Skills Leipzig, aiming at strengthening the quality, supply and image of apprenticeships and vocational education across Member States.

This will offer opportunities for young people to acquire the skills they need for to-day’s jobs, and will thus contribute to fighting the current unacceptable levels of youth un-employment. Technology is also a key driver of innovation in education. This is why, in September, the Commission will present an initiative, Opening up Education, to provide guidance for a better use of ICTs in all levels of education.

It is in these times of fiscal constraints that we should bear in mind a simple truth: the cost of a poor education is unaffordable.

The U.N. Secretary General’s Special Envoy on Youth hopes European offi-cials, instead of implementing austerity

measures, will invest in education and job crea-tion to solve youth unemployment.

Appointed in January to address the needs of the largest generation of youth the world has yet known, Ahmad Alhendawi made his first visit to Brussels to advocate for youth around the globe.

At the same time leaders of Europe’s na-tions meet for the European Summit, having promised to put youth unemployment at the top of their agenda and seek “tangible meas-ures” to reduce unemployment levels, includ-ing provisions in the EU budget agreement.

More than 22 percent of the labor force under the age of 25 is jobless, according to Eu-rostat. Of the about 5.6 million European un-employed, Greece and Spain, where more than half of the population between 18 and 25 have no jobs and governments are forced to imple-ment severe austerity measures, are in particu-larly dire situations.

“Austerity measures are important now for the crisis, but we need to make sure we’re not losing a generation in the middle of this and young people are still getting more support with education and finding opportunities,” he said. European investment in education has de-creased from €7,200 per student to €6,900 per student, continuing a trend of cuts and reduc-tions, Alhendawi said. He thinks the opposite needs to occur.

“We need to increase investments for young people and increase the allocation for education, which is a cornerstone for economic growth to happen, but also to create new job opportunities,” he said. “We need to increase young people’s access to services that are youth friendly.”

These services are particularly needed for young entrepreneurs. Training, coaching, tech-nical support and financial services that are youth-friendly will help startups grow and cre-ate more jobs.

“It’s not only about young people as job-seekers, but we need to help them become job-innovators and invent their own jobs,” Alhendawi said. The root of the unemploy-

ment issue is the mismatch between edu-cational levels and the needs of the labour market, he said, made more difficult in light of the debt crisis that constricts job creation. The problems in Europe, the world’s largest economy, impact the rest of the world.“Young people are not the cause of this, but they suf-fer the most because many jobs are not avail-able,” Alhendawi said, mentioning a friend of his who completed graduate school with him and still can’t find a job.

“When you wake up everyday full of ener-gy, and you know that you don’t have a place to go to and contribute, it’s psychological damag-ing,” he said. “It’s difficult for a young person. The number one thing is not to lose hope.”

Alhendawi is pleased that youth unem-ployment tops the European Council’s priori-ties and hopes Europe’s leaders end the summit with a message of hope for its youth.

“I’m impressed when I look at young Eu-ropeans,” he said. “With their level of educa-tion and with their talents they can be asset to humanity, not only to Europe. This gen-eration is very inspiring, it’s just time to give them the tools and means to lead Europe to a

brighter future.”Impending elections provide further incen-

tive for European officials to address the needs of youth.

“If you look today to the protests around the world, you realize that young people can no longer wait to comment on things,” Alhendawi said. “For them, democracy is not about voting every four or five years - they want to be con-stantly involved, they want their voices to be heard.” Governments need to engage in more structured dialogue with youth, he said.

“Young people are voters. They need to ask politicians how they are going to solve this, how they are going to respond to this challenge. If candidates really want to win elections, they better have good answers.”

All of this makes investment more impor-tant than austerity to Alhendawi.

“The position of the U.N. is clear, we’re in favor of a people-centered approach to devel-opment. It’s not just about abstract economic figures - it’s about putting people at the center. The goal of any development plan is to make life better for people. I urge officials, when they think of policies, to think of people.”

By Xavier Prats Monné

Xavier Prats Monné is the European Commis-sion’s Deputy Director-General for Education

By Nassim Benchaabane

Spending on education in Europe is an investment, not a cost

UN special envoy calls on EU to invest in youth

Students shout slogans during a students’ protest against education reforms in Athens, Greece, 20 September 2011. |EPA/ALKIS KONSTANTINIDIS

11EU-WORLDNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu30 June - 6 July, 2013

Making predictions can be risky. Models fail, experts disagree, and externalities abound. There were

people who claimed unrest in Tunisia would have minimal impact in the wider region. How many hats have been eaten in the last year? That said, if terrorism was the defining international issue of the first decade of the twenty-first century, youth unemployment is becoming the global crisis of the second decade.

This is not a prediction or speculation. It is happening now—among both the G20 na-tions and in the developing world. How the international community responds will be critical.

At a recent short-term outlook for the G20 Labor and Employment Ministers, the International Labour Organization (ILO) and Organization for Economic Coopera-tion and Development (OECD) noted that despite an overall 1.5 percent increase in the average employment rate, youth unem-ployment, which is often twice the overall unemployment rate or higher, is leading to a “scarred generation.” Put more bluntly by those outside of rarefied international con-ferences, young people born after 1980 are “the screwed generation.” For this genera-tion, long-term unemployment or underem-ployment threatens to become structural. However one chooses to characterize it, this generation is dealing with too few job op-tions and weaker social protection systems to help ease the pain.Seventy-five million unemployed young people in the G20, an in-crease in temporary employment, and as the ILO and OECD report puts it, the “duality of workers in decent work and those who are not” are a threat to aggregate growth, security, and future stability. Despite the seemingly insurmountable demographic debacle, steps are being taken to address these problems.

France and Germany recently announced an initiative to ease access to credit for small businesses, a major employer of people 18-25. In the United Kingdom, the government is paying wage incentives to employers who hire young job seekers. With a youth unem-ployment rate of 16.2 percent in the United States, the Department of Labor launched the Summer Jobs+ Initiative, which created more than 300,000 summer jobs for low-income youth. No single program will turn the tide of youth unemployment in the G20, but leaders in the EU and US are actively en-gaging the issue and need to think about both short-term and systemic solutions. What is less clear is how the developing world will deal with this crisis.

Africa has the largest youth population in the world and it is set to double in the next thirty years. In the last four years, the con-tinent as a whole has seen relatively steady GDP growth of around 3 percent, and in some areas, such as Ethiopia and Burkina Faso, it has been approximately 9 and 5 per-

cent respectively. Yet, as The Guardian has noted, almost 60 percent of the continent’s unemployed are between the ages of 15 and 24. With an expected 17-point increase in the number of youth in secondary education in Africa by 2030, the need to increase employ-ment opportunities is dire.

The consequences of unemployment in any country can be long lasting and per-sonally detrimental. Deterioration of skills, depression, and economic stagnation are all very real concerns but the stakes are even higher for many governments in Africa. The World Bank found that nearly half of the young people involved in rebel movements were motivated by continual unemployment. In Ghana, where it is estimated that fewer than half of the 20,000 annual college gradu-ates will find work, youth unemployment has been deemed a security threat.

For governments trying to ingratiate themselves with their citizens, unyielding youth unemployment poses a threat to ac-countability. The chief economist for the African Development Bank, Mthuli Ncube, observed that youth unemployment “raises profound policy implications for African governments in terms of economic inclusion, social cohesion, and global competitiveness.”

The African Economic Outlook (AEO), a network of NGOs and think tanks, has made some constructive recommendations to address youth unemployment through-out Africa. Their advice included increasing productivity-enhancing foreign direct in-vestment as well as better integrating labor and education to ensure students are learn-ing skills relevant to the market. Addition-ally, AEO suggested increasing labor market flexibility by decoupling social services from employment, so that people are willing to risk changing jobs without giving up healthcare, childcare, or educational opportunities.

To progress further, government, private, and non-profit organizations should cooper-ate to set standards and help products find markets in a way that recognizes that “the in-

formal is normal.” For example, Building Mar-kets, a New York-based nonprofit, is working with young, small-scale carpenters in Liberia to help them find buyers for their wares. The World Bank’s Shanta Devarajan has written that the challenge in Africa is “to increase the productivity, and hence earnings, of the ma-jority of young people who will be employed in informal farms and household enterprises.” Apprenticeships, mentoring programs, and skills training would help young people grow or move beyond the informal work of their parents.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Susan Lund and Arend Van Wamelen of McKinsey & Co. proclaimed: “Africa needs a job strategy, not just a growth strategy.” By focusing on exist-ing informal markets and the skills associated with them, such as agriculture, sewing, basic finance, small two- or three-person business-es, and construction, governments in Africa can facilitate an increased demand for human capital, especially among youth. Policy that opens trade and supports young people by increasing their skills will begin to address the jobs crisis and lend some stability to the bur-geoning youth population in Africa.

In the aftermath of deposed dictators and with the daily reporting of rebels fight-ing for democracy, it is easy to forget that it was disgruntled youth who initiated the Arab Spring. Whether in Spain or Senegal, youth unemployment is a truly global challenge. A serious effort to combat youth un- and underemployment will require individual governments, bilateral organizations, and in-ternational bodies to work with private and informal sectors. The issue of the next ten years could last for decades more without concerted and immediate action.

The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance Youth Unemployment in the G20 and Africa is the Next Global ChallengeBy Jacob Patterson-Stein

Teachers jump rope during a protest against the government’s education reform on 20 June, 2013, Valladolid, Spain. On 17 May an emergency reform of the crisis hit education sector was approved, hoping to reduce the number of school dropouts and curb the soaring youth unemployment rate.|AFP PHOTO / CESAR MANSO

Jacob Patterson-Stein is Executive Online Editor for the Georgetown Public Policy Review and a second year Master of International Development Policy student at Georgetown University. A version of this piece originally appeared on the Georgetown Public Policy Review’s website.

What’s in a name?Croatia is already geared up for a fight with the Euro-pean Commission. The EU’s newest member is up in arms about booze; there are fears that the prized prosek wine will be eradicated, or, even worse, renamed.After 1 July, the powers-that-be in Brussels have said that prosek, a sweet wine, will no longer be allowed to be sold, either in Croatia or elsewhere. Apparently, it is too similar sounding to prosecco, the fizzy Italian stuff that has protected status in the EU. Winemakers are mumbling that the government has not done enough to protect the status of prosek or similar local produce; ministers differ, and say the fight is still on. For those that doubt, Croatia has indeed registered a product for EU protection - prsut ham, a similar product to Italian prosciutto. But, having recently seen Slovenia, which has already having battled with Croatia over a strip if coastline, register their own teran wine for EU protec-tion, makers of Croatian tearn must now be wondering if their own particular red wine is in in jeopardy. In a country that right now has declining support for membership of the European Union; something that follows on from its initial 66% support for EU acces-sion in a referendum held in January 2012, which represented a good result at the time until one takes into account the drop in support since then; a decline that needs to factor in the wider decline in support or respect for mainstream political parties across Europe and elsewhere. Croatia’s Agriculture Minister, Tihomir Jakovina, pos-sibly geed-up by an aggressive upswing against EU membership by the country’s population, and, to a lesser extent, by the business sector, has decided to fight on. “We will find the best solution to make up in some way for what wasn’t done in 2008, 2009 and later,” he has defiantly said; although the depth of this defiance is still open to question; the new deal on the common agricultural policy (CAP) will have been os-tensibly concluded before Croatia’s belated entry into talks.Of course, these sorts of arguments should not be dis-missed so readily. In addition to Croatian concerns, France is also concerned about cultural erosion. The country has asked for audiovisual and film sectors to be taken out of the transatlantic trade deal negotia-tions. The argument being that by preserving cultural expression in this way, Europe can uphold its tradition of linguistic and cultural diversity, and in the process, stem the insidious liberalisation of the audiovisual sector. Oddly, rather than seek to defend this posi-tion, European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso has suggested that the removal of the cultural exception is still on the table; just one of the niggling little things that is adding up to tensions between the French government and the commission.The question is; how do we define culture as compared to other commodities? Cinema, for example, clearly has a tangible, commercial quality, which puts films on a par with other products, but if these films are linguis-tically disinfected, as it were, does that not amount to an attack on the indefinable heart part of that product, itself an important component of the whole. Europe has a duty protect its culture, instead of cheapening its heritage by reducing it to just one more component of an increasingly liberalised economy. Concordia

TRANS-EUROPE EXCESS

12 EnErgy & climatE NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

30 June - 6 July, 2013

Shah Deniz’s pipeline of choice is TAP On 28 June, the Shah Deniz Consor-

tium - BP, Azeri state oil company SOCAR, Norway’s Statoil and

France’s Total - confirmed at a press confer-ence in Baku that the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) has been selected to transport gas from Azerbaijan’s massive Shah Deniz II field to Europe. TAP defeated the rival Nabucco West project.

TAP is expected to pump 10 billion cubic metres per year from Turkey through Greece and Albania and then under the Adriatic Sea to south-eastern Italy. The 800-kilometre TAP pipeline is being developed by Swiss AXPO (42.5%), Statoil (42.5%) and Ger-many’s E.ON Ruhrgas (15%).

First quantities from Shah Deniz will get in the Southern Gas Corridor in 2019.

“I am very pleased that the selection to transport Shah Deniz II gas to Europe has been made in favour of the TAP pipeline,” TAP Managing Director Kjetil Tungland said in a statement, adding that this is the first and important step in opening up the Southern Gas Corridor.

The Shah Deniz consortium said in a statement the selection of TAP to complete the first phase of the Southern Corridor fol-lowed an intensive evaluation period during which experts from the Shah Deniz consor-tium evaluated the alternative export routes using their previously announced selection criteria, namely: commerciality, project de-liverability, financial deliverability, engineer-ing design, alignment and transparency, safe and efficient operability, scalability and pub-lic policy considerations.

Nabucco Gas Pipeline International said in a statement on 28 June that it acknowl-edges the decision by Shah Deniz to select TAP. “The shareholders of Nabucco will now discuss the next steps for Nabucco,” the state-ment said. Nabucco said it is confident of de-veloping the Central and South Eastern Eu-rope market based on alternative gas sources.

The European Union is looking at the Southern Gas Corridor as a way to boost Europe’s energy security and ensuring the diversification of gas supplies to Western and South Eastern European markets.

On 26 June, leaders from Shah Deniz and Azerbaijani state energy company SOCAR visited Athens to directly inform Greece’s Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of Azer-baijan’s final choice. The signing of the Host Government Agreement (HGA) for the TAP project by Greece’s Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras, Deputy Energy Minister Asimakis Papageorgiou and TAP Managing Director Kjetil Tungland took place later in the day.

On 28 June, Tungland noted that over the next few months, TAP will continue to work hard with the Shah Deniz Consortium

“to ensure that they are able to take a suc-cessful final investment decision (FID) later this year”.

The Shah Deniz consortium said it has agreed terms with a number of companies in Italy and Greece for its gas sales. In addition, negotiations are underway to make gas sales in Bulgaria, and Shah Deniz plans to make an expression of interest to take pipeline capac-ity to that country.

Furthermore, Shah Deniz said it sup-ports the inter-governmental memorandum of understanding of 23 May supporting the realisation of TAP and the Ionian-Adriatic Pipeline (IAP), signed by Croatia, Montene-gro, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Albania and recognised by the Adriatic and Ionic Council on 27 May.

The next stage is for Shah Deniz consor-tium members to make a final investment decision on the full Shah Deniz stage two development, the consortium said. “Today’s decision is also an important step in the con-sortium’s plans for a final investment deci-sion on Shah Deniz II. This project, with its associated pipelines, will cost over $40 bil-lion and will bring over 16 billion cubic me-tres a year of Azerbaijani gas to market,” the consortium said.

SOCAR President Rovnag Abdullayev said they are delighted that Azerbaijani gas will be transported to Europe, enabling the

implementation of the Southern Gas Cor-ridor. “This will be made possible through development of the South Caucasus Pipeline Expansion, Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TAN-AP) and Trans Adriatic Pipeline,” he said. “We are also pleased that the Shah Deniz Consortium has plans to work with Euro-pean interconnector projects to deliver gas to multiple countries across Southeast Europe. We look forward to the co-ventures making their final investment decision on the Shah Deniz stage II project later this year,” he said.

Abdullayev said more gas would be avail-able in the future. “Beyond Shah Deniz, we are confident that Azerbaijan’s gas exports will increase dramatically as fields like ACG Deep, Absheron, Umid and Shafag-Asiman are developed, and we see the pipeline route towards Austria as a natural market for this gas. The development planning of both pipe-line routes lays the foundation for future growth and we appreciate the support of the European Commission throughout this pro-cess,” the SOCAR president said.

Gordon Birrell, regional president for BP in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, said choosing Italian and Southeast European markets for delivery of gas from Shah Deniz stage two is a major step forward for the de-velopment of their project.

“We are very pleased that the com-prehensive and very competitive pipeline

selection process has concluded, so that we can move forward with the Southern Gas Corridor. This will bring gas from the Caspian Sea directly to Europe for the first time. We would like to take this opportu-nity to thank both the Nabucco West and TAP teams for the high quality of their of-fers and for the outstanding cooperation that they have offered to the Shah Deniz consortium,” Birrell said.

Shah Deniz said the second stage of the project will bring gas from the Caspian Sea to markets in Turkey and Europe, opening up the Southern Gas Corridor. Shah Deniz Stage II is expected to add a further 16 bil-lion cubic metres per year of gas production to the approximately 9 cubic metres per year from Shah Deniz Stage I.

The Shah Deniz consortium said this Stage II development of the Shah Deniz field, which lies some 70 kilometres offshore in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea, is expected to include two new bridge-linked production platforms; 26 subsea wells to be drilled with two semi-submersible rigs; 500 kilometres of subsea pipelines built at up to 550 metres of water depth; a 16 billion cu-bic meters per year upgrade for the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP); and expansion of the Sangachal Terminal. Further pipelines will be built and expanded to transport Shah Deniz gas through Turkey and Europe.

By Kostis Geropoulos

Trans-Adriatic Pipeline’s Managing Director Kjetil Tungland speaks in Baku, Azerbaijan, 28 June 2013. The Shah Deniz II consortium of Brit-ain’s BP, Azerbaijan’s SOCAR, Norway’s Statoil and France’s Total developing an immense new Azeri gas field, part of European efforts to reduce dependence on Russia, said on 28 June it had chosen the shorter, cheaper Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) over the rival Nabucco project. |AFP PHOTO/

TOFIK BABAYEV

13EnErgy & climatENEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu30 June - 6 July, 2013

ASTANA - Speaking at the Third Interna-tional Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibi-tion Caspian Offshore Development on 19 June in Atyrau, Deputy Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, Rich-ard Jones, announced that the first produc-tion at Kashagan would start in 2014.

After the first section of the confer-ence, the reporters requested clarification from Jones. Officially, the date of first pro-duction at Kashagan had been set up for October 2013.

There had been no official announce-ment of the new, 2014, date for Kashagan’s first oil before Jones’ statement.

“As far as I know, the first production at Kashagan will start in 2014,” Jones said, then added hastily: “It will not be a big de-lay, just a few months”.

The reporters, however, asked ques-tions about this key project on the Cas-pian shelf. In particular, they asked Jones’ opinion as to who could be the most likely buyer of ConocoPhillips’ share in the pro-ject. It had been speculated that the largest national companies of China and India would be among the bidders.

“Both China and India need oil, and they must ensure stable supply of hydro-carbons. To-date, China has been more successful in Kazakhstan – it is its nearest neighbour. I can suppose that China is

prepared to pay a premium for Conoco-Phillips’ share in Kashagan. Let us see what India will propose in its turn,” Jones said.

He added that ConocoPhillips was selling its assets not only in Kazakhstan, but also in the other countries of the world, to focus on the new projects in Northern America and to use the new opportunities to expand its asset portfolio.

“The situation around the sale of ConocoPhillips’ share is that the highest bidder will win. Judging from my experi-ence, China will most likely be willing to pay more for the assets that are close to home, in Kazakhstan,” he said.

According to Jones, from the point of view of the International Energy Agency, it does not matter for global energy security where oil comes from as long as there is a stable supply.

“When we speak about Kashagan, we should keep in mind that it is a huge pro-ject that requires presence of a large num-ber of companies from different countries to make the sharing of all the risks easier,” Jones said.

He added that China owns 25% of all oil and gas assets in Kazakhstan.

“China has already established itself as a powerful player in this region. And it is quite possible that China will find Cono-coPhillips’ share in Kashagan very attrac-tive, since this asset, as I have already said, is in the close proximity,” Jones said.

Another participant of the conference, the vice-president for development of the Norwegian company Statoil, added that the Chinese companies were also present in Norway.

“China is a very strong competitor in Norway and Europe, but we have strict rules for foreign companies desiring to be in the Norway area. The main thing is the ecology,” he said.

Russian and Kazakhstan experts had commented earlier that it was China that would be most likely to join the Northern Caspian (Kashagan) project.

For example, a Central Asia analyst from the Russian magazine Oil and Gas of Russia, Igor Ivahnenko, said in an in-terview earlier that many factors were in China’s favour. Most importantly, there is a pipeline towards China that goes through the territory of Kazakhstan itself. Hence no dependence on a third party for Ka-zakhstan to transit and deliver its oil to the customer.

A Kazakh political analyst, Dosym Sat-paev, agrees that China has more chances to join Kashagan than India. So, more and more experts lean to this possible scenario of future developments. And the answer to this intriguing question will be known very soon. The government of Kazakhstan is to announce its decision as to who will have ConocoPhillips’ share in Kashagan at the beginning of July, i.e. in a couple of weeks.

Nokak calls for energy reformsR ussia’s Energy Minister Al-

exander Novak has said he believes that energy reforms

would boost the economy. He noted the government needed to introduce regulations and incentives to encour-age companies to become more energy efficient.

“We should not be afraid of [do-ing] that,” Novak told a panel of ex-perts and business leaders speaking at the St Petersburg International Eco-nomic Forum. He denied that Russian energy companies might be reluctant to invest in modernising, but added: “Strict standards and rules are needed, as well as motivation.”

Energy efficient technology would help Russia better compete in the global market. While Russia is the leader in shale oil reserves, technologi-cal innovations by US companies has made America the leader in shale gas reserves. This represents competition to Russia in the natural gas sector espe-cially in Europe where it dominates the market. Nonetheless, oil and gas still account for a large and increasing share of Russian exports, making up around two-thirds of total exports in 2012.

According to Fitch Ratings, Rus-sia is the most oil-dependent of the world’s 10 largest economies, with oil

and gas accounting for 50% of federal government revenues and up to 20% of gross domestic product.

Speaking at the Forum, Russia’s

Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said Russia’s dependency on oil and gas revenues was massive, and that this needed to change.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin speaks at Energy Club Summit during an Inter-national Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, 21 June 2013. | AFP PHOTO/RIA-NOVOSTI/POOL/

MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV

Nabucco: The Fat Lady Has Sung

By Kostis Geropoulos

Energy Insider

After more than a decade of political and commercial wran-gling, the Shah Deniz consortium announced on 28 June it has selected the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) to deliver gas vol-umes from Azerbaijan to customers in Greece, Italy and South Eastern Europe. “I think the decision on a route to carry Azerbaijan’s gas on-wards from western Turkey into Europe is based on a combina-tion of sales prices for the gas and transport tariffs through the delivery pipeline,” Julian Lee, senior energy analyst at London’s Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES) told New Europe. “The route offering the best combination of those two factors has won the contest,” Lee added.For the Nabucco supporters, it became clear they backed the wrong horse out of the gate as it was a no-starter from Day One. Its shareholders later opted for Nabucco West, a short-cut ver-sion of the Nabucco project, which envisaged construction of a pipeline from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to Austria. They hoped that it would connect to the planned Trans Anatolian Pipeline or TANAP, which will bring gas from Azerbaijan to the European edge of Turkey. However, Shah Deniz decided on 28 June to connect TANAP with TAP, leaving Nabucco com-pletely out of the equation.“The Nabucco project is over for us,” Gerhard Roiss, CEO of Austria’s OMV, the leading company in Nabucco West, told a news conference on 26 June, dismissing the suggestion that Nabucco could also be built eventually. But Nabucco Gas Pipe-line International said in a statement on 28 June its sharehold-ers will now discuss the next steps and are confident of devel-oping the Central and South Eastern Europe market based on alternative gas sources.OMV said it was told higher gas prices in Greece and Italy tipped decision in favour of TAP. Indeed, gas prices are higher in Greece and Italy, making the project more commercially attractive. Also, Russian gas monopoly Gazprom reportedly promised “Nabucco countries,” including Bulgaria, lower pric-es through the Moscow-backed South Stream gas pipeline.Lee said Russia has long opposed Nabucco when it was envis-aged as a 30 billion cubic metre gas transit corridor for Azerbai-jan, Turkmenistan and the Middle East. However, he noted that “the Nabucco project is now a shadow of its former self ”.Nevertheless, the selection of TAP by Shah Deniz is probably a welcomed development for Moscow since TAP’s southern sup-ply route doesn’t seriously affect Russia’s interests in Central and South Eastern Europe.Lee noted that there will be room for Nabucco in the future. “Europe still wants to boost its pipeline gas imports from new suppliers. If, or when, volumes increase from Azerbaijan, or Iraq, or even Iran in a new political era, more pipelines will be needed. Nabucco could then deliver ‘new’ gas to south-eastern Europe, where dependence on a single supplier (Gazprom) re-mains worryingly high,” the CGES energy analyst said.However, it is unlikely that Nabucco shareholders will wait that long. As an industry executive told New Europe earlier last week, “As the saying goes, it ain’t over until the fat lady sings”. Well, it looks like an appropriate ending for Nabucco, an opera, because the fat lady is going to sing.

KGeropoulos@NEurope.eu Follow on twitter @energyinsider

First Kashagan oil may be delayed till 2014By Kulpash Konyrova

14 EU-WORLD NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

30 June - 6 July, 2013

Continued investment by interna-tional public finance institutions in traditional energy projects are hin-

dering the chances of countries in the west-ern Balkans to comply with EU accession requirements, according to a new report.

According to the report, Invest in Haste, Repent at Leisure, international finance in-stitutions (IFIs) continue to invest in large-scale, fossil-fuel reliant infrastructure pro-jects at the expense of smaller projects that promote energy efficiency and savings.

As Croatia joins the European Union on 1 July, the report is calling for an end to the public financing of fossil fuels, and for a renewed effort in funding for energy effi-ciency projects.

The report, published on 25 June and complied by civil society organisations CEE Bankwatch Network, South East Europe Change Network (SEE Change Net) and WWF focuses on the activities of the Euro-pean Bank for Reconstruction and Develop-ment (ERBD), The European Investment Bank (EIB), the EU’s instrument for pre-accession (EU-IPA) and the World Bank in the western Balkans and Albania.

From 2006-2012, a total of €1.68 bil-lion was invested in energy infrastructure in the region, with fossil fuels receiving 32 times more financing than non-hydropower renewables. Fossil fuels received €597.3 million of the total IFI energy financing, while hydropower received €301.1 million, and renewables received €18.5 million in financing. Investment in energy efficiency amounted to €288.8 million.

According to report co-author, Pippa Gallop, this is down to the “volume-led psy-chology” of the financial institutions.

“Although they are public institutions, they think like traditional banks, always try-ing to attract business. Their perception of sustainability and knowledge of the ground

is very different from ours,” she says.Speaking at the launch of the report in

Brussels on 25 June, she said that as public intuitions, the banks “are not supposed to invest in any old project that comes along,” but effectively that is how business is carried out. “They are not doing enough to help the Balkan countries meet their EU objectives,” she says, including working towards decar-bonisation of the energy sector by 2015.

In addition to Croatia, which joins the EU on 1 July, at present the Former Yugo-slav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) is engaged in accession talks with Brussels, while Serbia and Kosovo have come to an

agreement that could pave the way for their own EU membership. But, says Gallop, “it is business as usual when the institutions should be steering the countries towards clean energy.” The EU, she adds, should be working with the banks to lead the transi-tion to greener and more efficient energy.

Investments, she continues, last for “a minimum of 40 years”. It is, she says, “the public who pay for these mistakes.” In order to “make space for other kinds of invest-ments, the IFI’s need to use the power that they have; the power to say ‘no’. They really need to prioritise energy efficiency, espe-cially in the residential sector, which has

hardly been touched.”Also speaking at the launch of the re-

port, Garret Tankosić-Kelly, of SEE Change Network, said that the EU’s accession gaols need to be “more energy-orientated.”

“Banks owned and controlled by the EU are making the kinds of investments that are going to make it harder, not easier, to join the EU.” Currently, he says, investments in energy in the region shows “no relation at all” to the EU’s energy ambitions, such as the 2050 targets.

“It will be the European Union, and its citizens, that is going to foot the bill to undo these mistakes.”

Environmentalists have reacted angrily to the European Investment Bank (EIB)’s draft ener-gy lending policy, the result of a review process launched last year.

The EIB announced on 24 June the con-tents of its draft policy, which will be put to shareholders next month.

According to a press statement, the EIB’s new lending policy aims to align the institution with “relevant EU sector policies,” and “are fully aligned with EU policy priorities to deliver eco-nomic growth, energy security and sustainable development.”

The announcement comes as the bank,

along with other financial institutions, has come under fire from NGOs over its contin-ued policy of lending to large-scale energy in-frastructure projects in the western Balkans, rather than promote energy efficiency, which, according to campaigners, is damaging the EU accession ambitions of these countries.

According to the environmental NGO WWF, the draft lending policy is a clear sign that the EIB “does not see stopping investment in unsustainable fuels like fossil fuels or nuclear energy as a priority.” In a statement, the organi-sation said that “the EIB needs to change its focus immediately and support only renewable

energy and energy conservation, to reach cli-mate change target.” The WWF has expressed concerns that with this policy review, the bank do not support a 2°C climate change limit in Europe by 20150.

Jason Anderson, head of European climate and energy policy at WWF said that the NGO is “disappointed that the EIB still doesn’t accept renewables as the new norm in energy produc-tion.” He said that WWF will continue to pres-sure the EIB though its Seize Your Power cam-paign, aimed at alerting financial institutions to the consequences of their lending policies.

According to Anna Roggenbuck from

Bankwatch, the new EIB policy represents a missed opportunity. “Reading the draft en-ergy policy proposed by the EIB, I was left to wonder whether the bank has grasped the full extent of the evidence provided by climate sci-ence,” she said.

“The proposed draft would allow the EIB to finance new coal units in Poland or the S lignite plant in Bosnia and Herzegovina and potentially other similar projects around the Balkans. This is absolutely not the type of pro-jects the bank of the European Union should be endorsing if it is to further the EU’s long term climate objectives.” CD

By Cillian Donnelly

Energy investments in the Balkans damaging EU prospects – report

According to a report published on 25 July, “where [EU] member states aim for totally decarbonised electricity systems by 2050...plans for the western Balakn countries are heading in exactly the opposite direction.” |EPA/VASSIL DONEV

New EIB policy against EU principles, say climate activists

15SOCIETYNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu30 June - 6 July, 2013

The ‘50 Shades of Grey’ phenomenonWhy has BDSM become so mainstream?

In 2011, the first part of the ‘50 shades of grey’ trilogy came out and became a world bestsell-er; it brought BDSM (bondage/domination, sadism/masochism) from being marginal to fashionable, targeting women between 25 and 60 years of age. A few months ago, I was asked to write the analysis of the memoires of a dominatrix mistress called Maitresse Diane who is now 64. This was very interesting to me as it gave me insight into a world I did not know.

After being abandoned, betrayed and sex-ually abused Diane could no longer trust peo-ple and had difficulty interacting socially on an equal footing. Love and pain had become intertwined and almost synonymous. The way she found to interact with men in a secure way was by escaping her vulnerable self and becoming a dominatrix mistress. She then felt secure and in control in the role where she be-came the master/aggressor and men became her slaves. She interpreted their suffering for her as signs of love as she had always experi-enced love with suffering. She re-enacted her traumatic life experiences as the aggressor which made her feel secure in the short-term but would maintain and keep her traumatic experiences in the present.

Understanding the life of Maitresse Di-ane and of her clients also gave me insight on today’s society. Why has BDSM become so mainstream and popular?

Lately, countless articles on the subject have appeared in the media. Some even stat-ing that people who practice BDSM are hap-pier and more intelligent, which I believe is completely false.

Firstly, these articles do not make a very important distinction. There is a wide spec-trum in BDSM ranging from playful blindfold-ing to sowing lips and stapling one’s testicles to the table. Being playful in the bedroom is good, but punishment and humiliation is not.

Why would someone put themselves through this hard BDSM? In the hard form of BDSM, there is no sex, only pain and humili-ation. Who would want to do this to them-selves? Usually, in the S&M world, there is a master slave relationship. The aim is to al-leviate client’s tension through overcompen-sation, to create a balance between control and responsibility that offers security as well as the evacuation of tension through physical pain which would give a sense of relief. The problem with this overcompensation is that it is an escape from reality and that the correc-tion is never made in real life. This results in

the sensitization to the real life situation which becomes even more unbearable over time. In addition, BDSM usually sets the stage in a way that ends up confirming and feeding one’s negative beliefs which distorts perception in a negative way as well as damaging self worth and self confidence.

Men who seek the services of a dominatrix mistress are usually men with power and au-thority. The mistress’s role is to stage a situ-ation that will allow escape and relief. They pay her to become her slaves. By becoming slaves and suffering for her, they abdicate any responsibility that comes with the authority they hold. This gives them momentary relief in the short-term. The problem in the long-term is that it becomes harder to reach this re-lief as they habituate and get used to the abuse. This leads to an escalation of the intensity of the domination. On the other hand, people with low authority who are bullied and co-erced by rigid rules and ruthless bosses reas-sure themselves by seeking to dominate and abuse in their intimate relations by taking on the master/aggressor role.

Does this mean that all people on the ex-tremities of the authority spectrum will devi-ate into hard BDSM practices? luckily not, people will tend to seek this compensation when they are unable to accept their real life situation. When one does not accept the facts of their reality, they will try to escape their re-ality somehow. Over time, escaping becomes more difficult as the reality becomes more painful to see.

I believe that BDSM has become more common today because of the highly demand-ing and stressful environment we live in. Sex was always a powerful way or relieving tension and stress, but this was a side effect, not the aim. When the function of intimacy is to man-age stress, then one gets an escalation and de-viation of the behaviour which allows them to

reach the goal, which is relief through escaping reality. Being with one’s partner is no longer about unity or about sharing and caring. The partner becomes instrumental in a desperate attempt to secure one’s self.

50 Shades of Grey, which is destined to ap-peal to women, became a bestseller because of its timing. Should it have come out 20 years ago, you would have never heard of it. Women today are in an even more difficult situation than men. They need to perform like men at the work place and to be good mothers and wives at home. Society has evolved faster than evolution. Men want and have the need to protect their women and women want and need to feel protected and secured by their man. Unfortunately in our society, this has been frowned upon and has created insecurity in both sexes, which leads both sexes to des-perately try to find security in different ways.

This is why, I believe, 50 shades of Grey has appealed to women today, it has allowed them in an ‘acceptable/fashionable’ way to ex-perience the comfort and relief of delegating control and responsibility by being submissive and dominated.

I believe that mutual support and trust is key in a relationship but introducing S&M practices to your relationship is not necessary and could become more harmful then helpful should it escalate. It’s important to under-stand that security and control do not need to come from domination.

By Alexander Anghelou

Alexander Anghelou is a psychologist specialised in cognitive behaviour therapy

16 ARTS & CULTURE NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

30 June - 6 July, 2013

Cold and wet Brussels seems a long way from the reggae drenched streets of Kingston, Jamaica, but one of the

city’s leading venues is going to bring a taste of Trenchtown to Anspach.

The Ancienne Belgique is holding a series of events, ‘Dub Be Good To Me’ about the offshoot of the Caribbean’s more famous export, reggae.

Dub started off 45 years ago, when Osbourne Ruddock, in his home built recording studio was making some remixes and somehow forgot to add the vocal track to the eccentric mix. This was a popular error and so the remix became the ‘dub’ or double, meaning an extra version often used by local sound systems and DJ’s to show off their own talents by singing, or ‘toasting’ over the records.

Kurt Overbergh, Artistic Director of the AB explained why they were getting back to bass, if not basics. “It all comes down to having the right room,” he says, saying that the venue opened up a new space that they now use for

acoustic sets, music lectures and more.It may seem unusual for a music lover to

go to a venue to hear about music, rather than music, but Overbergh has a theory, “Rock and roll music has been around for a few decades now and it’s all been categorised, but even in a small category there is so much music that it’s hard to know where to start.”

He adds, “We’re also in a very fast moving world, and we’re got instant communication, but it’s good to have a space where you can sit down and take time to think about music. We’re trying to do both with our series of events on dub.”

Typifying Overbergh’s approach is the mixture of lectures and concerts. “We’ve got Matthew Veal coming from the States to give a lecture on King Tubby. He’ll be explaining his production methods and playing examples.”

Veal will be giving a primer, an introduction to Tubby and his craft, also giving people a ‘way in’ to the dub sound, explaining enough for people to feel confident about explaining further, and putting the music into context. Veal is professor of ‘Music and African–

American Studies’ at Yale university, writer of ‘Dub: soundscapes And Shattered Songs In Jamaican’ Reggae’ a very highly regarded publication.

Earlier, Matthew E White will explain his love for the music, how it inspired him and his founding of a record label and will also talk about producing a dub version of his debut, ‘Big Inner.’

Overbergh stresses that one thing he enjoys, like the audience, is learning new things about music and musicians. He’s also interested in having his ears opened to old and new sounds.

What is he hoping for? “I want people to appreciate that dub has been around for 40 years and hope that they will dig into the dub heritage and listen to the music’s roots.”

The series also shows where the sound has been taken to, with concerts from Tikiman and Mark Ernestus or a night of dub djs at Bozar.

They will also host an evening from Manchester (UK) dubby electronic label, Modern Love. Another evening brings dubstep into Brussels with the slightly mysterious and scary Noisa and Foreign Beggars.

But the main event is the return to Brussels of one of the pioneers of modern music and a man who also brought dub to a new audience, John Lydon. The former Sex Pistol will be bringing Public Image Ltd to the AB.

John Lydon is a huge admirer of dub, “After the Sex Pistols split, “ says Overgergh, “he asked Virgin if he could go to Jamaica and look for artists. We’re so pleased to have him back, dub is a huge part of their sound and the last time they played here they were…” and the promoter gesticulates, looking around for a suitable word, “… just incredible. Fantastic!”

He’s right, they were and the venue is too. No longer a mere concert, they are branching out and trying new things, including listening

sessions, where people gather to listen to an album, perhaps a classic, sometimes less well known but musically significant.

It’s a chance not just to hear music, but to listen to it, making new discoveries in old favourites.

ADVERTISEMENT

Brussels venue host music, lectures on bass cultureBy Andy Carling

Listen and learn to dub reggae

17fashion & styleNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu30 June - 6 July, 2013

A fter London, the fashion pack cheerfully headed to Milan to discover the Italian designers’

take on menswear for next spring. Escapism was certainly on the Milanese agenda this season, as collections ‘breathed’ exoticism and travel.

In this light, Kean Etro designed a styl-ish all-Mexican collection of dandy suits with a New World aristocratic touch for audacious Zoro admirers. The three-piece beige and white suits, jodhpurs, jeans and el-

egant trousers, cowboy boots, buckled belts, colourful scarves, sun coloured shirts and straw sombreros should all make up an ideal wardrobe for sexy handsome men.

Dolce & Gabbana presented a beauti-ful collection inspired by Sicily’s Ancient Greek history. Following the previous sea-son’s mosaic-themed female designs, 19th Century architectural engraving offered decorative motifs to this menswear collec-tion: shirts and shorts with trompe-l’oeil effects, gold and silvery printed temples, columns, statues and sculpted medallions paired with faded beige and brown stripes. Shapes were comfortable as loose-fitting, ample-sized tops discreetly winked at both tourist T-shirts with printed Parthenons and ancient robes, while avoiding tackiness. The Spartan-like sandals, which were worn with several looks also offered an elegant alterna-tive to the comfy but awful-looking tourist back strap summer shoes. Evening outfits also included silky unicoloured classic suits in shiny Sicilian black, passion red and sky blue but also earthly tones, for tanned but classy gentlemen of all ages.

Angela Missoni’s designs were inspired both by the fearless wanderer style à la Hem-ingway, and the 50s firebrand look à la Mar-lon Brando. The high-waist pants, striped retro short-sleeved polo shirts, safari prints, typical globetrotting jackets and holiday shoes should all give a scent of excitement and adventure to energetic men on the go.

Silvia Fendi presented a very young and

trendy collection of brightly coloured lei-surewear and refined evening suits in luxuri-ous fabrics. The outfits mainly consisted of light, perfectly tailored geometrical, raglan jackets and straight pants in a palette of sun-set orange, raspberry, purple-blue and earth-ly tones. For soirées, Fendi proposed satin tuxedo-like jackets with rolled up sleeves, worn over casual shirts with equally silky pants and sophisticated bi-coloured trainers for an infinitely chic sporty allure.

As for Miuccia Prada, her collection was filled with exotic Asian imagery, wild flow-

ers, pastels combined with deep reds, greens and yellows, Chinese silk, Japanese rising sun printed paintings and Hawaii shirts. The joy-ful combination of colours recalled Vietnam and Singapore in American 40s films. The pants’ cut and the long, double-breasted jack-ets also referred to the interwar period.

All in all, Italian brands succeeded in presenting thematic menswear collections that were both creatively daring and classi-cally wearable: il tono giusto!!

Louise Kissa lkissa@neurope.eu

Summer WanderlustMenswear spring 2014 ColleCtions: Milan

MISSONI© AFP/Giuseppe Cacace

ETRO© AFP/Giuseppe Cacace

FENDI© AFP/Gabriel Bouys

PRADA© AFP/Giuseppe Cacace

DOLCE & GABBANA© AFP/Giuseppe Cacace

18 BRUSSELS AGENDA NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

30 June - 6 July, 2013

Klee Club! Bozar Summer Camp One week courses, from 1/7 to 30/8

The Bozar Studios are holding another series of summer camps for cultural kiddies. The one week long courses are set up for kids of different ages, 6-7, 8-9 and 10-12. For €132 the little darlings will be whisked away

of a cultural treat. They visit all the current exhibitions, explore the fantastic building, accurately described as a masterpiece by Vic-tor Horta, getting the great Bozar vibe.

Most of the week is spent letting children create art of their own, through painting, draw-ing, photography, video and much more.

The week ends up on Friday, when par-ents are invited to the opening of the chil-dren’s first exhibition at the end of the sum-mer course.

Kid or Klimt?|BozarOMG Ommegang! |BELGA PHOTO NICOLAS MAETERLINCK

Little Asia8 rue Sainte Catherine, Brusselstel 02 502 8836www.littleasia.be littleasia@skynet.be If you´re looking for some of the best Asian cuisine in town then look no further than this wonderful restau-rant in downtown Brussels.Run by Vietnamese Truong Thi Quyen, with a little help from her sister and oth-er family members, it offers sophisticated food in a wonderfully-atmospheric setting.She opened it several years ago when it was a modest eatery, seating 30 and closing at 8pm.But in 2004, the restaurant was “reinvented” and now you´d be lucky to find a seat before 10pm at weekends.Top EU politicians like European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and ALDE leader Guy Verhofstadt are among its customers. Try the delicious fresh Vietnamese carpaccio served with mint, peanuts and onion. It is lighter and more flavoursome than the better-known Italian version. The Vietnamese beef/noodle soup, mixed with basilic lettuce, lime and soya sprouts, is fantastic.Little Asia also offers a very affordable special lunch menu.The ever-popular Quyen also writes a popular cookbook, including many of the recipes of dishes she serves, and has appeared on TV.The food here,like the prices, are great. Highly recommended.

Resto Bites

Upcoming EvEnts

Let’s get medieval Ommegang

2-4 July, Brussels

Brussels goes back to 1549 for three days with a series of events that will not only enter-tain but show you that Brussels has been able to put on a good show for several centuries.

It marks the visit of the most powerful man in Europe, Emperor Charles V, now hon-oured with not only a recreation of his show stopping visit, but he’s also had that most noble of honours, having a beer named after him. It doesn’t get more prestigious that that in Brussels!

To mark the occasion there will be a medi-

eval village in the centre of the magnificent Sa-blon, and knights displaying their skills, with jousting, falconry and many other treats.

There’s also a procession through the city, which is where the word Ommegang derives, from old Flemish words “omme” (around) and “gang” (walk).

But this is not just play acting. The Om-megang is an expression of one of the great days in Brussels’ history, when a city mak-ing a name for itself could put on the best of welcomes, and today it is not a pastiche but a continuation of centuries old traditions, when the history of the tradesmen’s guilds and the ancient offices that shaped the city (especially the Grand Place) come out to remind people that they are still an important part of this great city.

19ARTS & CULTURENEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu30 June - 6 July, 2013

Centered in the 2000 year old city of Guima-rães in Portugal, three renowned directors, Jean-Luc Godard, Peter Greenway and Ed-gar Pêra, explore 3D and its evolution in the world of cinema. The movie, which closed the prestigious Critics’ Week during the Cannes film Festival, is composed by 3 short movies by: the “ Father“ of the nouvel vague, the multifaceted British artist and movie director and by the rigorous and unconven-tional Portuguese filmmaker .

New Europe’s Federico Grandesso had the chance to speak to Pera and Greenaway about new technologies being used in cinema.

EDGar PEraas a filmmaker, what appears to be the fu-

ture of 3D?I don’t know about the future of 3D but I know

about the utopia of 3D to get rid of the glasses, and when it will be the case I think that it will not be noticed by the public, for example, kids today are playing with 3D games and they are used to this technology. The main challenge is the glasses, if we will still have to wear the glasses, 3D will never be the first option for a film or a viewer because the spectator doesn’t like to make this effort; the future

of 3D I think that this is more in the hand of the engineers than the filmmakers.

Do you see other technologies that could be developed in cinema today? Is 3D still an important tool for a movie director ?

In my film I tried to talk a bit about hologram movies, as far as I know there are already holo-grams films and advertising in the Lafayette Gal-leries in Paris. Then you have to move towards the places where money is not a problem, like ad-vertising, military and investigation, that’s where you have to move for the future of cinema. In US they recently did a study about 3D in schools, they discovered that the attention to 3D movies by the students it’s 60-70% so it’s a very powerful tool.

After that, it’s the same with advertising, you have more memory of an ad if it’s in 3D.I would like to work more with 3D because I think it’s the right time to do it but it’s difficult because you have to find the market. Another problem is that it’s not only more expensive but the post-production is more complex and you have to spend more time.

What are the main challenges in working with 3D?

I think any subject can be shot in 3D but you can’t shoot in the same way as in 2D, you have to place things carefully things and per-sons on the set and you have a more complex situation with the images. Sometimes it takes

me one hour to fix the lenses and the conver-gences then you have to think carefully what to do also because you don’t have much time.

PETEr GrEEnWayHow did you approach the digital revolu-

tion and the new visual tools for filmmakers?In 1990 I virtually gave up with cinema be-

cause I thought it was so boring and so archaic that there wasn’t really much to do or say with it. But there were also other reasons why I got rather tired of making narrative movies. Gradually I started to work in association with other activities like the theater and a lot of installations. In that period I started to understand how extraordinary the new “toys” were and all the new abilities to manufac-

ture imagery. I was trained as a painter and I was painting for 10 years before I was a filmmaker, I still think that painting is the supreme cutting edge visual excitement, the upper G of notions of visual literacy. I began to realise the manipulation of imagery, I’m trained as a film editor inside the film industry, which was indeed extraordinarily ex-citing. Then I began to learn more and more, I’m computer friendly enough and I know enough to get by, in this process I started working with a huge number of young people who knew all the new gears. After that you have to know that .

I live in Amsterdam and just down the road you have Rotterdam which gave birth to best VJ’s in the world and they are very on top of the excitement about everything has to do with visual technology. I have lots of friends and programmers who are preparing for me various tools and I have a producer looks after at most of my film activity so it’s a sort of very local phenomenon for me.

At a certain moment we stated making, I sup-pose, even alternatives ways of 3Ds by putting frames on frames and doing experiments of multi-ple framing. That was only the beginning, now we have multiple projects with different descriptions, for example, I became VJ artist and I traveled the world with 300 screens and 6000 loops. I’m fas-cinated by the notion of physicality which comes back to the cinema and I alight myself to all mod-ern technology. At the end the ability to reinvent and think outside the box, which was represented by the digital revolution, encouraged me again to plunge back in, and here I am...

Fellini – The Exhibition, is accompanied by a retrospective film programme All is Fellini, 30 June – 22 September 2013 in EYE, IJpromenade 1, Amsterdam, eyefilm.nl.

From 30 June to 22 September, EYE Museum in Amsterdam presents a major exhibition on Federico Fellini, one of the most image-defin-ing masters of post-war Italian cinema. ‘Fellini – The Exhibition’ unravels the filmmaker’s uni-verse, taps into the sources of his fertile imagi-nation and brings the vital power of his work into the limelight. 20 years after his death, large projected film fragments, photographs, archive documents and posters – from the EYE collec-tion among others – provide insight into the obsessions and motivations of the man behind La strada, La dolce vita and 8½.The exhibition is made possible with collaboration and support from Fondation Fellini pour le Cinéma (Sion, Switzerland)

Fellini - The Exhibition, arranged as a visual laboratory, reveals the sources of Fellini’s fertile imagination and shows how Fellini created a mythical image of himself and of Italian life both in his films and in the world at large. Moreover, the exhibition sheds light on the way in which he was able to break with the accepted linear narrative structure in his films, and how he ad-dressed existential questions in a playful man-ner. Out of the film fragments, drawings and photographs, an image emerges of a man who constantly gave new interpretations to his youth, his dreams and the unconsciously evoked im-ages and stories. The exhibition includes frag-ments from the films, drawings made by Fellini, Fellini’s advertising films and the countless im-ages from his dreams that inspired him – on the

advice of psychoanalyst Ernest Bernhard, these were compiled into the texts and sketches of the ‘dream books’ (also on display).Furthermore, the exhibition brings together never previously-shown pictures by photographers such as Gide-on Bachmann, Deborah Beer and Paul Ronald. Their behind-the-scenes photos illuminate the fantasy world of Cinecittà, the studio where Fellini shot virtually all his later films. An inter-national selection of posters shows how Fellini himself tried to influence the public reception of his films over the years. Also on display are an array of magazines from the period 1960-1985 (Domenica and L’Espresso), which played an key role in forming the public image of the di-rector, his films and the actors.

Stefane Marti, President of the Fellini Foun-dation for Cinema in Sion (CH) comments “This is another important exhibition that testi-fies the worldwide interests on Federico Fellini, our Foundation will continue more and more to promote Fellini and I hope that our consolidate experience in organizing various exhibitions all over the world we will help us to expand our open platform of cultural partners” The exhibi-tion places Fellini’s work in a broader perspec-tive: the era in which he lived and worked. From the end of the 1950s, particularly in Italy, the mass media films, press, television and advertis-ing were quick to win over the general public, which eagerly gorged on the all-pervading im-age. Fellini – not for nothing the deviser of the term ‘paparazzi’ in La dolce vita – anticipated at an early stage the influence that the media would exert on people’s behaviour and referred to this in his films (such as the enormous bill-board with Anita Ekberg coming to life in the anthology film Boccacio ’70).

3x3D, 2013By Federico Grandesso

English Director Peter Greenway poses | EPA/

DAVID CROSLING

Development andCooperation -EuropeAid

2013CHARITY ARTAUCTIONTUESDAY, 2nd JULY 2013AT 13:30ON THE TERRACE, EUROPEAIDRUE DE LA LOI 41, BRUSSELS

INTRODUCTION BY KLAUS RUDISCHHAUSERHOSTS: ANA MARTINEZ ALONSO & MARK PRESCOTT

BUY ART AND HELP 5 VILLAGES IN ANDHRA PRADESH, INDIA.ALL FUNDS RAISED WILL GO TO EU CAN AID’S EFFORTS TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO SAFE AND CLEAN DRINKING WATER FOR 5 VILLAGES IN ANDHRA PRADESH, INDIA. THE PROJECT WAS CHOSEN BY THE TRAINEES’ SOLIDARITY SUB-COMMITTEE.

REGISTER TO: ANAIS.NIKOLIAN@EXT.EC.EUROPA.EU

ADVERTISEMENT

20 TECHNOLOGY NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

30 June - 6 July, 2013

The Chinese company Huawei is helping to drive Europe towards the 5G wireless future, which will emerge between 2020 and 2030 in order to support industry’s response to the ‘Big Data’ challenge.

According to Huawei, over the next dec-ade the world will witness a 1,000-times in-crease in the demand for wireless capacity, and radio access capability will allow every person to access the wireless network at a speed of 10Gbit per second.

Dr. Wen Tong, Huawei Fellow and the head of Huawei Communications Technolo-gies Labs believes that “5G wireless will, first of all, open the frontiers of a new end-user experience.” He explained that, for instance, visual communication will become the main-stream, and people will use wireless devices to interact instantly with people remotely.

“In combination with cloud computing

and Big Data technologies, we can essentially automate the entire society,” Tong added.

“There are a lot of innovations that need to be created and a lot of technology challenges need to be overcome to create 5G solutions,” he said.

Currently, Huawei is participating in dif-ferent 5G projects, such as METIS, which is co-funded by the European Commission. With this programme, the ICT solutions pro-vider is playing the leading role in the Radio Link Technology stream.

“At Huawei, our researchers are studying the new radio link technologies and new ra-dio access network architecture. We are also working on prototyping and have conducted field trials on cloud-based radio access net-works (so called Cloud-RAN). We are play-ing a leading role in 5G wireless technology development”.

Huawei, the driving force in developing 5G connections

EPO adds six languages to Patent Translate

Microsoft to update Windows 8

The European Patent Office (EPO) has added six more languages to its free machine translation service Patent

Translate, Bulgarian, Czech, Icelandic, Roma-nian, Slovak and Slovenian.

With the addition of the new languages, the EPO aims to improve multilingual access to information contained in patent documents. Therefore, from now on, the service will offer on-the-fly-translation from and into English for 21 speeches.

“Patent Translate removes the language barrier from patent documentation, giving European inventors and businesses easier ac-cess to state-of-the-art technologies,” said EPO President Benoît Battistelli.

“We are very pleased to offer users in this new group of countries better access to patent documents from all over the world, while mak-ing information about their inventions readily available in English to a very large number of users. This contributes to patent quality and helps to strengthen the competitiveness of Eu-ropean enterprises,” he added.

The EPO launched Patent Translate in February 2012 to provide multilingual ac-cess to its 80 million patent documents from

around the world. EPO worked together with Google, national patent offices of member states, and other major patent offices world-wide to create the service.

Recently, Japanese and Chinese were add-ed to the system, which is expected to cover 28 lamguages by the end of 2014. By then, the service will constitute the world’s most com-prehensive multilingual platform for patent information.

Last year, Microsoft launched its Windows 8 touch-enabled Operating System, aiming to bridge the gap between personal computers and tablets. However, users’ reactions were not as positive as the company expected, and it’s plan-ning an update for 2013, which will be named Windows 8.1.

The preview version of Windows 8.1 is available from 26 June and, despite any one beeing able to download it, it’s meant for Micro-soft’s partners and developers. The final version, will come out for the general public later this year, the company said.

The free update will address some of the problems people are having when using Win-dows 8. Many of the new features will be an-nounced during a three-day Build conference, which starts today and where developers will have the possibility of learning more about the OS and trying it out.

A common complaint among users is the lack of a Start button on the lower left corner of the screen. With this button, users had ac-cess to programs, settings and other tasks, but Windows 8 deleted this option and replaced it with a tablet-style, full-screen start page. Conse-quently, extra steps were needed to access less-used programs.

According to the preview version, Windows 8.1 will make easier for users to shut down their devices. “On the PC’s Start screen, simply right-

click on the new Start button to display the familiar pop-up menu. You’ll now find a shut down command at the bottom of the menu, which lets you turn off or restart your device,” explains the tech site CNET.

Other new features include more options to determine how much of the screen each app takes while showing up to four different pro-grams. Besides, the updated OS will offer more integrated search results, showing users pre-views of websites, apps and documents that are on the device.

During the event, Microsoft is also expected to present a new, smaller version of its Surface tablet computers, as one of the new features in Windows 8.1 is the ability to work well on small-er-screen devices.

Windows 8.1 launch will be key for Micro-soft, which is also facing PC’s shipments drop, due to the increasing popularity of tablets.

By Nerea Rial

EPA PHOTO DPA FILES/STEPHAN JANSEN/jan/mr/kr

FP PHOTO / Mandy CHENG

Tumblr founder David Karp and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer | MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES/AFP

11_Say_No-UNiTE_Poster_Eng_Hi.pdf 1 11/15/11 3:38 PM

21TECHNOLOGYNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu30 June - 6 July, 2013

What does the photovoltaic dis-pute look like to you in Morocco?

I think there is a crisis from the

financial point of view which had an impact on different sectors like the PV one because this sector was de-veloped, and it continues to be devel-oped, thanks to public interventions. In this scenario I see also something positive because this situation has obliged everybody to start talking about some strategic issues. The de-velopment of this sector has to go to-gether with an industrial and energetic vision in the long term which can give the possibility to better evaluate the subsidies and allow a better accept-ability of the public opinion.

Many other players like China are considering Morocco at the moment, what do you think about foreign investments?

The Chinese are exploring every market but Morocco is trying to de-velop a global strategy where we try not only to produce electricity but we want also to promote the devel-opment of industrial and service ac-tivities in the framework of the solar plants. In this case our door is open to international actors only if they come to invest and make the economy func-tion from a global point of view, this is an important condition to have the

green light of the public opinion on the long term regarding the renewable energies. As I said before It’s impor-tant to put in place a competitive plan to develop also the industrial activi-ties.

Which strategic projects and transnational contacts are you de-veloping at the moment?

We launched at the end of 2009 a big solar plan with important capaci-ties till 2020, we want solar energy to become a structural element of the Moroccan energy mix, with the put in place of a institutional adapted frame-work and with some dedicated actors like my agency. Now we started with some projects and our objective is to manage the costs, to promote the idea of an eco-system around the solar concept. The key points are: develop-ment of industrial activities, services, research and development, education and special attention to the develop-ment of certain areas which are not so dynamic from an infrastructure point of view, and about basic services to the population. We have a good collabora-tion with Europe on the financing part of these projects and through some joint-ventures.

As regards our tender we see a good share of competences. On our research we have good agreements with certain German, French and Spanish centres.

We then focus a lot on the ex-

change of experience to better suc-ceed in our projects.

With Italy we have interesting contacts and we had some Italian companies who were candidates in our tenders like Enel then the have some contacts with Japanese and Americans. With China we had some meetings more towards a commercial direction while we are searching deep-er contact enabling us to create a true exchange.

We received recently a very diver-sified Chinese delegation, thanks to the World Bank, maybe in the future we will see some results but for now we don’t want to have only commer-cial relations.

How can the northern part of Africa offer a contribution to PV development?

Most of these countries have strong potential in this field and we have to spread this idea at a maximum because only in this way are entre-preneurs going to be able to lower the prices; because PV must become competitive vis-a-vis fossil fuels. This is the key problem. Cooperation with Europe but also with the other Mah-greb countries is another priority, we are very well connected with Spain and Algeria but for example we should do more to connect Tunisia and Libya.

Mustapha Bakkoury is the President of the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy

Interview: Moroccan agency for solar energy

By Federico Grandesso

Your printer is spying on you

By Jennifer Baker

On Thursday the European Court of Justice ruled that member states can, if they want, reduce the amount of compensation paid to authors of printed material if they don’t take steps to protect their copyrighted material.The decision was part of a ruling on whether member states could charge levies on printer manufacturers in order to give ‘fair compensa-tion’ to rights holders for unauthorised reproduction of their work.VG Wort, the authorised copyright collecting society representing au-thors and publishers of literary works in Germany had requested that Kyocera, Epson and Xerox should be ordered to pay it remuneration. So far, so usual.But the interesting part of the ruling came at the end when the ECJ said that member states should make efforts to encourage copyright holders to use technical blocking measures such as the EURion Constellation. The EURion Constellation is a pattern of dots, invisible to the naked eye, that will cause all modern colour copiers to lock up when they de-tect it. The code to detect it exists in Photoshop too, and the dots are printed on (among other things) euro banknotes. No one would seri-ously argue against making money more difficult to counterfeit, but concerns about civil liberties pop up when you realise that most color printers these days also print a pattern of tiny yellow dots on every single page they produce allowing easy identification of the printer from which any given document came.This is not new news, but many hundreds of thousands of people world-wide concerned about their privacy following the Prism scandal, it’s worth remembering that even old-fashioned paper print-outs are trace-able. Well, perhaps not very old-fashioned - pages printed in black-and-white mode are not tagged.The dots that encode the serial number of the printer and the time and date that a page was printed cover less than one-thousandth of the page, and are almost impossible to see. The best way to see them is by using an intense blue LED in a darkened room. Dotspotter.ultrasec.deis a website that allows users up upload scanned pages to search for the dots.Seeingyellow.com is a page that was set up to encourage individuals to complain to their printer manufacturers. According to the website, so far, 31714 people have complained.The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is also involved in the fight against secret tagging of documents. “Anonymous self-publication and distribution have been, and remain, a vital political communication channel in many countries. A telltale pattern readable by government officials is a tool that oppressive states everywhere would love to have - not to mention the general threat to individual privacy,” says the or-ganisation in a statement.“The only thing worse than tracking dots in people’s printouts are track-ing dots in their printouts that they don’t even know about it. It’s not fair to ask people to have to choose between color printing and their privacy, but it’s better that they make the correct choice than to assume that they have privacy when they don’t,” said the EFF.The EFF says that the tagging systems appears to be a U.S. government policy and has published a full list on its website. Some of the entries date back as far as 2008 when the EFF first raised the issue. Just think how many documents have been printed since then.So if you’re planning to become the next NSA whistleblower and need to print out incriminating evidence, do it on a B&W printer. Even anon-ymous letters aren’t so anonymous anymore.

Brussels Geek

22 EUROPEAN UNION NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

30 June - 6 July, 2013

ESTONIA | EUROPE

No need for further Hungarian deficit monitoring?The Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip confirmed at his meeting on 20 June with Hungarian president János Áder that Estonia supports the termination of excessive deficit proceedings in regard to Hungary, since the coun-try has fulfilled all of the necessary criteria. Arriving in Estonia last week, President Áder discussed a number of issues with Prime Minister Ansip, including Hungary’s economic indicators, and made reference to the meeting of European finance ministers to be held tomorrow, at which it will be decided whether to terminate excessive deficit monitoring in regard to Hungary. The monitoring has been ongoing since 2004. During the meeting Prime Minister Ansip said that Hungary could count on Estonia’s support, since the country had fulfilled all of the neces-sary criteria for the monitoring to be terminated. Also dis-cussed at the meeting was security. Prime Minister Ansip said that Estonia placed high value on Hungary’s desire to contribute to the Baltic States’ air security mission starting from 2015.

CZECH REPUBLIC | AUTOMOBILE

Škoda Octavia to begin Russian production ŠKODA, an automobile manufacturer based in the Czech Republic which became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group in 2000, on 21 June launched produc-tion of the new ŠKODA Octavia at GAZ Group’s factory in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. The ŠKODA Octavia is by far the brand’s bestselling car in Russia. “We are aiming for strong growth in Russia in the years ahead, and the start of production of the new ŠKODA Octavia is avery impor-tant step in this direction,“ says ŠKODA CEO Prof. Dr. h.c. Winfried Vahland. “Russia has become our third-most important sales market worldwide and our number two in Europe. The Octavia currently accounts for more than half of ŠKODA’s sales in Russia. In launching the third Octavia generation, we are aiming to extend the great success story this bestseller of ours has been writing and permanently boost our brand’s growth in Russia,” says Vahland. Produc-tion in Nizhny Novgorod is in cooperation with Volkswa-gen Group Russia (VGR) and Russian automobile manu-facturer GAZ. “Producing the new Octavia in country will provide important momentum for our brand in Russia and thus strengthen our corporate strategy,” says Michael Oeljeklaus, ŠKODA board member for production and logistics. Production in Russia involves the entire vehicle manufacturing process including body production, paint-ing and assembly.

SWEDEN | BUSINESS

IKEA founder moving back to Sweden Ingvar Kamprad, founder of home furnishings company IKEA, is moving back to Swedenafter more than 30 years in Switzerland. Family spokesman Per Heggenes told The Associated Press last week that the 87-year-old will move “before the end of the year” to a farmhouse near his native Almhult, in southern Sweden. Heggenes said Kamprad started thinking about moving when his wife died in 2011, and “decided to go back to Sweden to spend more time with his friends and his family.” He said Kamprad’s three sons don’t live in Sweden but spend their summer and Christmas vacations there.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the Anglo Irish Bank tapes revelations indicated an attitude across all banks which is damaging to democ-racy. Merkel was asked by reporters before the European Union summit in Brussels about the Anglo Irish Bank disclosures. The German Chancellor said, “i have nothing but contempt for this,” she said. “The tone seems to be similar across all banks. It is for us a huge challenge to convince people who get up every day and every day do their work and always pay their taxes, do everything, even show solidarity

with other people who are weaker. All of this is destroyed by that and so I have nothing but contempt for that,” she stressed and added. “For people who go to work every day and earn their money, it is very, very difficult to understand, if at all.”

The Irish Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar said he largely agreed with Merkel’s comments. “What these tapes have done is reminded the world of the culture and the banking system that existed under that last Fianna Fail government.

I don’t think people are all that

surprised by the content of the tapes. Most people have suspected for a very long time that the bankers in Anglo Irish bank deceived and fooled the government. I think was has been re-ally gut-wrenching and which has re-ally turned stomachs has been the tone of the tapes, the arrogance, the avarice and just the absolute disregard for the public.”

The comments of the German Chancellor about the Anglo Irish Bank are significant since they move away scandal’s political rhetoric from any populist nationalistic tendencies.

Anglo Irish Bank conversations similar across all banks

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the banker’s attitude

According to Czech Prime Minister Petr Nečas, a free trade agreement between the European Union and Japan can re-sult in growth of gross domestic prod-uct. “The Czech Republic is strongly in favour of a free trade agreement between Japan and the EU in view of its high po-tential. The signing of the agreement alone would translate into a GDP rise by as much as 0.8%,” said the Czech prime minister after a meeting with the Japa-nese prime minister following a Visegrad countries summit in Warsaw, Poland last week.

Apart from political issues, eco-nomic cooperation was the main topic of today’s meeting. The prime ministers focused on discussing ways of promoting

cooperation on trade and investments, which is exceptionally important during the current period of economic stagna-tion.

Japan considers Visegrad countries to have high potential: “V4 countries have a high potential for Japanese invest-ments. We are an area with favourable prospects for future development, and economic cooperation between the V4 and Japan can have a positive effect on our region and its economic growth,” added the prime minister.

According to Premier Nečas, Japan is one of the biggest foreign investors in the Czech Republic, and Japanese com-panies account for a significant share of employment opportunities on the Czech

market. “As many as 237 Japanese cor-porations conduct business in the Czech Republic; 94 of them are manufactur-ing firms. To date, these businesses have invested some USD 3.1 billion and cre-ated about 45 thousand jobs. We want to build on the success of our cooperation up to now,” explained the prime minister.

From the viewpoint of the Czech Republic, the Visegrad Four, and Europe as a whole, Japan is an important partner as regards science, research and develop-ment, and use of modern technologies. For instance, the Czech Republic and Ja-pan have a productive partnership in the area of information technologies. Other high-potential areas include the space industry and environmental protection.

Czech Premier calls for EU-Japan free tradeCZECH REPUBLIC |COMMERCE

GERMANY |BANKING

23EUROPEAN UNIONNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu30 June - 6 July, 2013

FRANCE | AVIATION

Air France, KLM finalise 25 Airbus A350 orderAir France-KLM, the French-Dutch airline holding company, finalised a firm order with the European manufacturer Airbus for 25 A350-900 plus a further 25 on option the company said last week. The signing took place at the 50th Interna-tional Air Show at Le Bourget near Paris. The A350-900 will be equipped with Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engines, the only engine offered for this aircraft by the manufacturer. With the latest technology, the Trent XWB engine will significantly contribute to the performance of the Airbus A350. The air-craft will reduce fuel consumption by over 15% compared to current aircraft and will also significantly reduce noise and gas emissions, confirming the Group's commitment to the environment and sustainable development. Air France-KLM has been included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index since 2004, where it has been industry leader in the "Transport and Leisure" sector for the past four years.

BELGIUM | ECONOMY

Federal government debt at €375 billion The Belgian federal government debt amounted to €375.79 billion as of 31 May. Debt issued or taken over by the federal government amounted to €375.44 billion, and the institutions for which the federal government supports the debt service, reg-istered a debt of €0.35 billion, the Belgian Debt Agency reported at the end of last week. In net terms (i.e. deducting financial de-posits and investments, as well as securities owned by the Treas-ury), the federal government debt amounted to €364.50 billion.

BELGIUM | ECONOMY

Business confidence slightly down in JuneAfter having risen in the previous month, the National Bank of Belgium's business barometer has dropped a little in June. Business confidence declined slightly in the manufacturing industry and in the building industry the Bank commented in a statement late last week. Following its recovery in the previous month, the business environment has deteriorated slightly in business-related services. The recent level of activ-ity and the expectations about future business were estimated more negatively. On the other hand, the general market de-mand outlook turned more positive. Having declined for four months in a row, confidence picked up again in the trade sec-tor, mainly due to improved demand prospects.

AUSTRIA | INTERFAITH

US cardinal nixes Austrian priest's talk at parish Cardinal Sean O'Malley banned an Austrian priest from speaking at a parish because the priest advocates ordaining woman and making celibacy for priests optional. The Rev. Helmut Schuller was scheduled to speak at Saint Susanna Parish in Dedham on July 17 as part of 15-city US tour. His talk has been moved to a nearby Unitarian Universal-ist church, The Boston Globe reported last week. Terry Donilon, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said in a statement that the archdiocese's policy is "not to permit individuals to conduct speaking engagements in Catholic parishes or at church events when those individuals promote positions that are contrary to Catholic teachings."

The international Belgian chemical and pharmaceutical Group, Solvay Polyam-ide & Intermediates is investing in the adipic acid production line at its indus-trial plant in Chalampé, France. The intended capital investment aims at re-inforcing cost leadership by significantly reducing the site’s energy consumption the company said last week.

The investment will result in a fur-ther improvement of the Adipic Acid manufacturing process contributing to

Polyamide & Intermediates’ strategic positioning. It demonstrates the Group’s commitment to operational excellence through energy efficiency programs and carbon footprint reduction initiatives.

“This new process will result in an 8MW reduction of energy consumption per year as well as 11,000-ton reduction in CO2 emissions,” points out Chris-tophe Bertrand, Industrial Director of Polyamide & Intermediates. The inter-vention, which will require a complete

shutdown of the manufacturing process, will take place in the fourth quarter of 2013 and will last about one month.

This project is part of Solvay Group’s initiative to achieve a 100 million euro REBITDA improvement of its polyam-ide business by 2014. It marks the first major investment in productivity and efficiency, targeting business leadership and profitability as well as Sustainable development in line with the Group Solvay Way target.

Solvay's Chalampé plant in France energy efficient

French businessman Jean-Pierre Clamadieu (R), Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Rhodia, a French chemical company acquired and integrated into the Belgian group Solvay, arrives at the Elysee Palace for a dinner organized with the World Economic Forum in Davos and French President at the Elysee Palace in Paris on 25 June, 2013. |AFP PHOTO / MIGUEL MEDINA

With the aim of supporting teaching and research in legislative issues in the field of telecommunications, Paris-Sud Univer-sity and Orange, a French multinational telecommunications corporation, an-nounced the creation of the International Chair of Space and Telecommunications Law last week.

The chair will be attached to the spe-cialist Master's degree "Space Activities and Telecommunications Law" and the Institut du Droit de l’Espace et des Télé-communications (IDEST; Institute of Space and Telecommunications Law), which was founded 11 years ago at Paris-Sud University at the request of profes-sionals in the fields.

With this new chair, the university—through the Paris-Sud University Foun-dation—and Orange are taking decisive action to help structure and strengthen

teaching and research in the field of space and telecommunications law. The chair is the fruit of existing collaborations within the Institut du Droit de l’Espace et des Télécommunications at the university's Collège d’Etudes Interdisciplinaires (Col-lege of Interdisciplinary Studies). Other partners from the space sector will also become involved over time.

On 21 June 2013, the agreement for-mally establishing the International Chair of Space and Telecommunications Law was signed in the presence of the Presi-dent of Paris-Sud University, Jacques Bit-toun; the Deputy Chief Executive Officer and General Secretary of Orange, Pierre Louette; the Dean of the Jean Monnet Faculty, Jérôme Fromageau; and Orange's Legal Director, Nicolas Guérin a state-ment released by the University and Tel-ecoms giant said.

Paris-Sud University and Orange firmly believe that developments in the digital world are opening up a whole range of opportunities and questions regarding legal security and regulatory decision-making in a sector that is chang-ing the daily lives of millions of people worldwide.

The chair will fund study days, inter-national conferences, scientific publica-tions and PhD positions. The first PhD position will be awarded on a competitive basis and will focus on the development of the European electronic communica-tions market. The chair will also support the specialist Master's degree in "Space Activities and Telecommunications Law", which has attracted students from 57 dif-ferent countries since 2002, improving graduate integration in the labour market in every country where Orange operates.

Paris-Sud University, Orange launch Chair of space and telecoms law

BELGIUM | CHEMICALS

FRANCE |TECHNOLOGY

24 EUROPEAN UNION NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

30 June - 6 July, 2013

On 26 June, Cyprus signed a Memo-randum of Understanding (MoU) with three energy companies, leading to detailed negotiations for the construc-tion of a natural gas terminal and a liq-uefaction natural gas plant (LNG) on the eastern Mediterranean island. The LNG plant and associated projects, pos-sibly involving a gas pipe to Europe, will set the ground for Cyprus to become a major energy supplier.

The terminal, with an estimated cost of $6 billion, will process the vast

natural gas reserves off the east Mediter-ranean island. Based on its current time-frame, Cyprus hopes to start exports by 2020. “Completion of this project is an important step toward the realization of our energy strategy, with the ultimate objective [being] the establishment of Cyprus as a regional energy hub,” Cy-prus’ Energy Minister Giorgos Lakkot-rypis said at a ceremony where a project memorandum of understanding was signed.

US company Noble Energy and

Israeli companies Delek Drilling and Avner Oil Exploration, which are the dominant players in both the Cypriot and Israeli projects, will over the next six months discuss the technical and commercial details of any eventual deal on an LNG terminal. The sides hope to conclude talks by 31 December.

Cyprus is looking to jump-start its economy after it secured a €10-billion bailout in emergency loans from inter-national lenders in April to avoid bank-ruptcy.

Nicosia inks LNG plant memorandum with energy companies

On 26 June, Greece’s Prime Minister and New Democracy Conservative leader Antonis Samaras had good news for his new coalition government with the signing of a deal that sees Greece as a transit country for EU gas, and the Chinese company COSCO inaugurat-ing a new container terminal at Piraeus.

On 26 June, Greece and the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) consortium officially signed the Host Government Agreement initialled two weeks ago, at an official ceremony held in Athens.

In statements after the ceremony, Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras emphasised the investments and jobs that the construction of the pipeline will create, as well as Greece’s future position as an energy hub for the re-gion. “I believe this will bring jobs to Greece … it will help Greece become an energy hub in the wider area,” Stour-naras said.

TAP starts on the Greek-Turkish border and goes to Italy via Albania and an underwater section in the Adriatic Sea. Greece’s Deputy Environment, Energy and Climate Change Minis-ter Assimakis Papageorgiou said the construction of the pipeline will place Greece on the international energy map and bring benefits on a geopoliti-cal level, creating a positive investment climate and boosting competition for the benefit of consumers.

TAP Managing Director Kjetil Tungland thanked the government for its co-operation and the support given by Samaras, the Parliament and the ministries involved. He said the agree-ment was a firm basis for carrying out the €1.5-billion investment for the con-struction of the Greek portion of the pipeline, noting that he looked forward to long-term co-operation with Greek authorities.

TAP’s Country Director for Greece Rikard Scoufias said the agreement was an important component for securing Greece’s and TAP’s bid for the South-ern Gas Corridor, but also constitutes an international benchmark for expedi-ency in terms of establishing a positive investment climate. In Piraeus, Samaras said Greece could be a hub for trade be-tween Europe and China as he joined Captain Wei Jiafu of COSCO to cut the red ribbon on the new container termi-nal at the port. Samaras called on the Chinese group to deepen its involve-ment in Greece.

“We invite you to more successful co-operation in transport, trains, ports and ship repair,” said Samaras, adding that further development of the port by COSCO would create 500 new jobs, ultimately making Piraeus one of the five biggest cargo ports in Europe, and employ about 3,000 people.

PORTUGAL|ENERGY

Galp Energia sells its 5% shareholding in CLHThrough its affiliate Galp Energia Espana, Portuguese en-ergy company Galp Energia said on 25 June it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its 5% stake in Compania Logística de Hidrocarburos to British Columbia Investment Management Corporation at an agreed price of €111 mil-lion. Financial close is expected to take place within the next four weeks. A capital gain of €50 million will be booked as a non-recurrent gain in Galp Energia’s results. bcIMC is one of the largest institutional investors in Canada with assets under management of over 100 billion Canadian dollars. bcIMC is a long term investor with an active direct infrastructure investment programme. This transaction falls within Galp Energia’s objective to monetise non-core assets and to focus on the development of its Exploration & Production portfo-lio, supported by the contribution of its downstream and gas businesses, the Portuguese company said in a statement. Galp Energia said it remains fully committed to its downstream business in the Spanish market and will continue to be a key client of CLH with whom it enjoys an excellent operating and institutional relationship.

ITALY|ENERGY

ENI, Gazprom reach gas supply price agreementOn 21 June, Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller and ENI CEO Paolo Scaroni reached an agreement for the reduction of Rus-sian gas supply prices for 2013. They met on the sidelines of the International Economic Forum in St Petersburg. The Russian gas monopoly and the Italian energy major have also committed to complete renegotiations on prices and volumes of gas supplies for 2014 and beyond by the end of 2013. The parties also discussed the progress of the South Stream pro-ject, confirming the aim of starting-up the pipeline’s construc-tion by the second quarter of 2014 and first gas by 2015. The economic and trade relations between Eni and Russia date back to the early fifties. ENI entered the upstream segment of the country in 2007 and today it currently produces 15,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day from the Samburskoye field in Western Siberia.

SPAIN|TOURISM

Spain records best ever May figures According to the Frontier Tourist Movement Survey (FRONTUR) drafted by the Institute for Tourism Studies of the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism, Spain was visited by a total of 5.8 million inbound tourists in May 2013. This is an increase of 7.4% on the same month in 2012. This figure sets a new all-time record for the FRONTUR survey when compared with the figures for May in other years. In ab-solute terms, tourists visiting from the UK and Germany were the main cause of this growth. The largest contribution to this monthly growth was made by the United Kingdom and Germany. Between January and May, the arrival of inbound tourists rose by 3.9% to 19.8 million. The Balearic Islands, Catalonia and the Region of Valencia were the destinations to most benefit. The Russian market also posted a large increase. To date this year, a total of 19.8 million inbound tourists have visited Spain. This is an increase of 3.9% on the same period last year. The countries making the largest contribution to this growth were France and the United Kingdom, while the tourist destinations to most benefit were the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and the Region of Valencia.

Greece’s Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras, centre, TAP Managing Director Kjetil Tungland, centre left, and Greece’s Deputy Minister of Environment Energy and Climate Change Asimakis Papageorgiou join their hands after the signing of a host government agreement in Athens, 26 June 2013.| AFP PHOTO/LOUISA GOULIAMAKI

CYPRUS|ENERGY

GREECE|ECONOMY

TAP and COSCO give Greek government a boost

25ENLARGEMENTNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu30 June - 6 July, 2013

TURKEY | DEFENCE

FM to meet UN chemical weapons expertThe head of a UN investigation team will meet Turkey’s for-eign minister for talks expected to center on Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said Swedish chemical weapons expert Ake Sellstrom is meeting Ahmet Davutoglu in Ankara last week. Syria has refused to allow the team into the country to investigate the allegations. A UN diplomat told the AP in New York that Sellstrom was in Turkey, reportedly talking to doctors who treated victims of chemical use, and is expected to produce an interim report on his findings. The diplomat also said Britain and the Unit-ed States have notified the United Nations of 10 incidents of alleged chemical weapons use by the Syrian government.

TURKEY | MIGRATION

Denmark: 11 charged with financing Kurdish group A Danish prosecutor has charged 11 men with terror financ-ing for providing money to a Kurdish separatist group. Pros-ecutor Lise-Lotte Nilas said Thursday the men were respon-sible for collecting and transferring 130 million kroner ($23 million) to the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party. The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union. The men, who are of Kurdish origin, have rejected the charges. They could face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty. Tens of thousands of people have been killed since the PKK took up arms in 1984 in its fight for Kurdish autonomy in southeast Turkey. The group’s jailed leader has been holding talks with Turkish authorities in an attempt to end their armed struggle.

TURKEY | EU

EU seeks to look beyond Turkey protests RAF CASERT,Associated PressLUXEMBOURG (AP) — Turkey’s hope of moving to the next stage of negotiations to join the European Union was kept alive Monday after Germany proposed a compromise that would bind the bloc to expanded talks, but only once it approved Ankara’s latest reforms. With the hedged proposal, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said he want-ed to make sure the impact of the protests that have rocked the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the past weeks would be taken into account without endangering the long-term strategy to draw Turkey closer. A progress report on Turkey’s ability to fit within the EU is expected mid-October. Westerwelle’s proposal is ex-pected to be discussed by EU ministers on Tuesday and any EU decision on Turkey talks needs unanimity among the 27 member states. “On the one hand we cannot pretend as if these talks here were happening without any context, as if the past days hadn’t existed,” Westerwelle said. “On the other hand we also have to see that our joint, general, strategic and long-term interests are upheld.” Germany, which has a size-able Turkish population, had initially blocked the next step in membership talks last week. In Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel also sounded more conciliatory as she underlined Germany’s commitment to continuing with the talks. She called the development of a strong civil society in Turkey very important and added that “it should not be viewed as a threat, but perceived as an enrichment.” Ministers from countries including Sweden and Belgium agreed that long-er term considerations beyond the current political strife should be central to discussions.

Turkish authorities are investigating peo-ple who allegedly insulted state officials or incited riots on social media, country’s Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said on 27 June, in a sign the government is trying to punish people particupating in the protests that are taking place since the beginning of the month.

According to Bozdag, the govern-ment will also submit to Parliament a proposal to further limit the military’s powers, in an attempt to reaffirm Turkey’s democratic values, which have been dam-aged by the protests as he claimed.

The Aksam newspaper reported that local authorities provided Istanbul pros-ecutors with a list of more than thirty names of people who allegedly posted insults mentioning Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Bozdag didn’t reveal the content of the posts and claimed that “crimes determined as such by the law don’t change if they are carried out through Facebook, Twitter or through other electronic means.” “No one has the right to commit crimes under the rule of law,” he added.

Anti-government demonstrations began this month, after the Turkish gov-ernment announced plans to redevelop one of the last remaining central public parks in Istanbul on 31 May. But the pa-cific protest was transformed into violent riots, where tear gas and water cannons

were used against citizens.Erdogan blamed Twitter and social

networks for spreading rumours and lies during the clashes in Istanbul. According to him, “social media are a menace for so-cieties” and, two weeks ago, he stated that a “plot” was behind the protests.

Government investigates social media amid protests

The conservative prime minister who has dominated post-communist politics in Albania conceded election defeat late last week taking personal responsibility for the heavy loss to the rival Socialists after losing the support of fed-up voters reports Llazar Semini of the Associated Press.

Sali Berisha, who had been seeking a third straight term as prime minister in Sunday’s general election, also an-nounced to party supporters he would step down as leader of his center-right Democratic Party.

The 68-year-old’s party was beaten handily. With all of the votes counted, Socialist Edi Rama was ahead with 53 percent, compared to just 36 percent for the Democrats. “We have lost these elec-tions. Believe me, the responsibility for this falls on one person — on me, Sali Berisha,” he said, wiping sweat from his brow.

“I stand in front of you to say that the election result is clear. Of course I accept it and the Democratic Party accepts it.”

Albania, once one of the world’s most reclusive countries during its com-munist years, became a NATO member

in 2009 and has applied for European Union candidate status. But so far that has been denied over criticism it has not done enough to fight corruption and push through democratic reforms.

Berisha is a divisive figure, praised by supporters as the politician who sta-bilized post-Communist Albania, but branded by opponents as a populist who tolerated corruption. Many voters are also frustrated as they try to weather the effects of recessions in nearby Greece and Italy, where many Albanian migrants work to provide remittances back to their impoverished country. Berisha, a cardiol-ogist, was Albania’s first post-communist president from 1992 until 1997, but his reputation was tarnished by the collapse of a pyramid banking schemes that saw many Albanians lose their savings and triggered violence that required an inter-national peacekeeping force to quell. He came back in 2005, insisting he could run the government with clean hands. Rama, the winner, gained popularity as mayor of the capital Tirana for more than a decade. He campaigned on an ambitious pledge to earn Albania candidate status within a year to eventually join the EU.

“This victory is ... only the start. That change will not come overnight and eas-ily. All together we should work and sac-rifice to make it happen,” the 48-year-old Rama said, also addressing his party sup-porters late Tuesday.

International election monitors said the Balkan country had made signifi-cant improvements in the June 23 vote, despite a fatal shooting that occurred on voting day outside a polling station in northern Albania. Improving the elec-tion process was a central condition set by the EU to advance negotiations aimed at the country’s eventual membership.

Berisha’s remarks eased tension over the country’s Central Election Commis-sion which has yet to officially certify the results. The parties were at odds over the commission’s membership ahead of the vote.

Three opposition members had pulled out of the body in April in a dis-pute over Berisha’s replacement of a commission member. But with Berisha conceding, officials among the Socialist Party have said they will almost certainly return to the commission to certify the vote.

Berisha concedes election defeatALBANIA | ELECTION

TURKEY |SOCIET Y

Protesters take cover from water cannon during clashes with police at a demonstration in Ankara on 25 June, 2013. | TOPSHOTS AFP PHOTO / ADEM ALTAN

By Nerea Rial

26 ENLARGEMENT NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

30 June - 6 July, 2013

BOSNIA|BUSINESS

Walschot Bioenergy breaks ground for pellet plantDutch firm Walschot Bioenergy launched the con-struction of an €11 million pellet plant in Bosnia’s Serb Republic, SeeNews reported, citing local media. The 2,500-square metre plant in the municipality of Ribnik will create 50 jobs, news portal Indikator.ba reported on 25 June, following the cornerstone laying ceremony. The facility will have a storage space for finished goods with a capacity of 5,000 tonnes, as annual production is seen at 40,000 tonnes of pellets. The construction works are planned to be completed at the end of next year, the news portal quoted Ribnik mayor Goran Savic as saying. Ribnik is located in the northwest of the Serb Republic, one of the two entities that make up Bosnia and Herzegovina. The other is the Muslim-Croat Federation.

KOSOVO|ENERGY

Power output falls 1.1% year-on-year in Q1 Kosovo generated 1.730 gigawatthours (GWh) of elec-tricity in the first quarter of the year, down 1.1% from the first quarter of 2012, the Kosovo statistics agency said on 24 June, SeeNews reported. As much as 99% of the pro-duced electricity in the three-month period was generated by thermal power plants and 1.0% by hydropower plants, the statistics agency said in a quarterly report published on its website. In the first quarter of 2013 Kosovo imported 229.7 GWh of electricity and exported 100.4 GWh. Ko-sovo produced 1.96 million tonnes of coal in the January-March period, a decrease by 11.6% from the first quarter of 2012.

CROATIA|DIPLOMACY

Berlin to ask Zagreb to extradite alleged ex-spyGermany will ask Croatia to extradite an alleged ex-spy sought over a communist-era assassination when the former Yugoslav republic joins the European Union next week, officials said 27 June, AP reported. Josip Perko-vic is wanted in connection with the killing 20 years ago of Stjepan Djurekovic, an exiled Croatian dissident, a spokeswoman for the German Federal Prosecutors Office said. Perkovic, 68, is alleged to have worked for the Yugo-slav secret service when Djurekovic was killed in 1983 in what was then West Germany. Earlier this week, German police raised a reward for Perkovic’s arrest to 12,000 eu-ros ($15,630) from 5,000 euros; officials haven’t specified what role they believe Perkovic played in the killing. “We will seek his extradition,” federal prosecutors’ spokeswom-an Frauke Koehler told The Associated Press, adding that the request would be made “in accordance with the law”. What exactly the law will be when Croatia joins the EU on July 1 is still unclear, however. German police first issued a warrant for Perkovic’s arrest in 2005, but Croatia refused at the time to extradite its own citizens. As part of Croatia’s membership of the EU, starting on 1 July the Balkan coun-try would normally be required to surrender all suspects sought by fellow member states — including those with Croatian citizenship. But word of the German extradition plan has triggered last-minute efforts in Croatia to pass a bill that would prevent Perkovic’s handover, straining re-lations between Berlin and Zagreb that have traditionally been good since Germany became the first country to rec-ognize Croatia’s independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.

When Croatia joins the European Union on July 1 it will be at the bottom of the rankings in average GDP per capita and the member country with the third high-est jobless rate, according to recent re-ports. At the time of its entry into the EU, Croatia’s per-capita GDP is 61% of the EU average, which places the country at the bottom of the ranking, above Roma-nia and Bulgaria which stand at 49% and 47% of the EU27 average respectively. Immediately preceding Croatia are Cy-prus (62%), Hungary and Poland (both 66%). Luxembourg tops the rankings

with 271% of the EU average.In 2012, GDP in EU27 contracted

0.3%, as against 2% in Croatia.Unlike its former-communist peers

that became EU members last decade, Croatia is entering a bloc in the midst of its longest recession. Croatia’s $63 billion economy hasn’t grown since 2008 as the crisis in Europe caused foreign direct in-vestment to plummet to almost one fifth of the $4.2 billion in the last pre-crisis year. GDP fell 1.5% from a year earlier between January and March, government data show. Croatian unit labour costs rose

7.5% over the past four years even as the economy shrank by a combined 10.9%, according to Eurostat data compiled by Bloomberg. This compares with a 6.1% increase for the 27-member EU, where output dropped 1% in the period, the data show.

“Croatia has been in recession since 2009, and its GDP has fallen by 11 per cent. Public debt has almost doubled and is expected to hit 60% of GDP in 2013. And two of the three major rating agen-cies classify the country’s bonds as junk,” writes Die Welt.

Croatia enters EU in midst of longest recession

A woman rides a bicycle in downtown Zagreb, 22 June 2013. Croatia will become the 28th country to enter the European Union on 1 July.| AFP PHOTO/DIMITAR DILKOFF

On 25 June, Bosnia’s utility EPBiH said has short-listed Japan’s Hitachi, a Spanish-led group and a Chinese consortium to build a 450 MW coal-fired unit at its Tuzla plant.

EPBiH chose the three bidders out of 11 international firms and consortia which had applied to build the unit at the

Tuzla plant, at an estimated cost of around 1.65 billion Bosnian marka ($1.1 billion), an EPBiH spokeswoman said.

The project will be one of the largest investments in the Balkan country’s age-ing energy infrastructure, where outdated coal-fired plants face rising consumption.

EPBiH, the biggest of Bosnia’s three

power utilities, operates two coal-fired plants and three hydro power plants with a combined capacity of 1,165 megawatts (MW) and 517 MW, respectively.

The company plans to invest around 390 million marka in 2013 in three hydro plant projects and the modernisation of its coal mines.

EPBiH short-lists 3 bidders for coal unit

The European Union has announced that it is to start negotiations to accept Serbia as a member. The 27-nation bloc said that its Council of Minister has giv-en its unanimous recommendation to open the accession negotiations. The ne-gotiations were due to formally open on 28 June. According to a statement of the

EU’s Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule, the EU will give priority to issues of judiciary and fundamental rights, justice, freedom and security.

In the case of Serbia he said that em-phasis will also be given during the ne-gotiations - which will comprise of 35 chapters – to the further normalisation

of relations with Kosovo.On Kosovo, the EU ministers have

agreed to open negotiations on a Sta-bilisation and Association Agreement with Kosovo. The mandate for the nego-tiations was also expected to be formally adopted on 28 June by the European Council.

EU opens accession talks with SerbiaSERBIA| EU AFFAIRS

CROATIA|ECONOMY

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA|ENERGY

27PARTNERSNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu30 June - 6 July, 2013

UBS France is being fined €10 million ($13 million) after French authorities found the bank delayed tightening up controls to curb money laundering and cross-border fiscal fraud.

The French banking regulator, ACP, said Wednesday that UBS France was warned by autumn 2007 about inadequate procedures and did nothing for 18 months. The statement did not specify whether there had been any illicit activity.

French prosecutors are separately in-vestigating UBS France — and three exec-utives — for complicity in illegal business dealings.

In a statement, the Swiss bank said its French subsidiary has been under new leadership since 2012 “and has continu-ously strengthened its rules and processes.”

The bank said it was considering ap-pealing the decision and has denied wrong-doing in the investigation.

The fine on UBS France comes amid heightened efforts by officials to crack down on tax evaders across Europe as the

region’s governments struggle to cut debt and emerge from economic recession.

The head of Europe’s central bank un-derlined this effort last week, saying after a hearing in the French parliament that there could be “no complacency” for tax cheats.

“I think there should be no doubt that tax evasion should be...a fight that should be fought at all costs and won,” ECB Presi-dent Mario Draghi said.

The European Union is leading a charge to crack down on secret accounts that hide money from governments, and the Group of 20 leading industrial and de-veloping nations has pledged to rein in tax avoidance by multinational companies.

Switzerland’s banks, known for their secrecy, have long been suspected of being used to hide money from tax authorities. The Alpine country has been pressured in recent years, however, into negotiating some tax treaties with the U.S., Germany and others.

UBS, in particular, was in the spotlight earlier this year as one of the banks where

France’s then-budget minister hid funds from tax authorities. Jerome Cahuzac, who stepped down amid the scandal, confessed earlier this year that he hid hundreds of thousands of euros in Swiss and Singapo-rean banks for decades.

In 2009, UBS paid $780 million to U.S. authorities as part of a deal to end a tax evasion probe in which it stood accused of helping Americans hide billions of dollars in secret accounts.

The bank was also the subject of a book published last year — allegedly based on accounts of disgruntled former employees — that accused the bank of systematically helping French customers dodge taxes. The bank has flatly denied the allegations in the book “Ces 600 milliards qui man-quent a la France” — “The 600 billion missing from France.”

But the book appears to have sparked — or perhaps spurred on — the investiga-tion in France. The UBS executives were put under formal investigation shortly after it came out last spring.

UBS France fined $13 mln over control failures

NORWAY | ECONOMY

Key rate held despite economy fears Norway’s central bank kept its key interest rate at 1.5% even though it warned of an economic slowdown. Though the decision was widely anticipated, the bank indicated that it may cut the rate again later this year. Norges Bank Governor Oeystein Olsen said last week that the possibil-ity of a rate cut this year had increased recently. “There is a 50% chance of a rate cut in September,” Olsen said. “In March, the likelihood was 40%.” Norway’s key rate has remained at 1.5% since March 2012. Speaking after the bank’s announcement, Prime Minister Jens Stolten-berg said the country’s economy was being buffeted by the ongoing recession across large parts of Europe. He said there were no guarantees Norway would continue to perform as well as it has done recently and noted ris-ing unemployment and lower industrial investments and exports to other European countries. “I strongly recom-mend that we continue to promote stability and predict-ability in the economy,” Stoltenberg told reporters in Oslo. “We will continue with responsible spending which will secure jobs.” Stoltenberg’s comments came as world stock markets fell sharply after the US Federal Reserve hinted it might scale back a stimulus program later this year.

SWITZERLAND | FINANCE

Pardoned financier, Marc Rich dies in Switzerland He was a wheeler-dealer pardoned by another consum-mate dealmaker, a working-class Jewish boy who left Belgium to escape the Nazis and rose to become the bil-lionaire “King of Commodities.” Marc Rich’s connections to the rich and powerful not only made him fabulously wealthy but when he was indicted for fraud, racketeering and tax evasion on a grand scale, they helped secure him a pardon from Bill Clinton, hours before the US president left office. That triggered a political firestorm from critics who alleged Rich bought his pardon through donations that his ex-wife had made to the Democratic Party. Rich died last week on 26 June of a stroke at a hospital in Lu-cerne, near his home for decades. He was 78, and his Isra-el-based spokesman Avner Azulay said he would be buried Thursday in a kibbutz in Israel. Throughout his storied career at the pinnacle of high finance, Rich was known as a man who could deliver the big deals thanks to personal relationships he had forged with powerful figures around the world. In a rare 1992 interview with NBC, Rich said that in his business, “we’re not political...That’s just the philosophy of our company.” Yet Rich cultivated contacts with powerful politicians — in the Middle East as well as the United States — and used those ties to make billions, often when it seemed all doors were closed.

NORWAY | ENERGY

Telenor, Ooredoo win Myanmar telecom licenses Myanmar granted licenses last week to Norway’s Telenor and Ooredoo of Qatar to set up the country’s first foreign-owned mobile phone networks. Currently less than 6 mil-lion of country’s 60 million people have mobile phones, one of the lowest connectivity rates in the world. Hoping to spur economic growth, the government is trying to push penetration rates to 80 percent by 2016. The licenses were awarded despite an eleventh hour push by lawmakers to de-lay a decision until a new telecommunications law is passed.

Civilians in hospitals, schools, churches and mosques are increasingly put in harm’s way in armed conflicts around the world, including in Syria, the head of the Red Cross said last week as reported by John Heilprin and the Associated Press. Peter Maurer, president of the Interna-tional Committee of the Red Cross, said his organization is gravely worried about the rising misuse of medical facilities and educational and religious centers in armed conflicts in Syria and other nations.

Along with the “weaponisation of medical facilities” is a similar misuse of schools, churches and mosques that is one of the most worrisome trends during the past year, Maurer told reporters at Red Cross’ headquarters. “Hospitals, but also schools, churches, mosques are attacked and some groups and fighters misuse hospitals, schools, mosques and churches and other religious installations to bring arms into those installations, which make them again susceptible to military attack,” he said. Armed forces and rebels in Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Mali and other nations have been bringing arms into such places, making them susceptible to military at-tack. Maurer said the organisation has compiled data on “a relatively big sample of cases” involving attacks on medical fa-cilities, which are among the most serious patterns of violations of international hu-manitarian law in the conflict zones. “I am not of the opinion that these patterns are

happening by chance,” said Maurer, who attributed the patterns to all sides gaining more encouragement to win rather than to reach a political settlement.

National security forces and armed re-bels were the biggest culprits, according to Red Cross data. In 2012, the organization documented 921 violent incidents involv-ing attacks or threats against health care workers, wounded and sick people, and medical facilities and vehicles.

About 60 percent were directed against doctors, nurses and paramedics, and the Red Cross found two more wor-

risome trends: “follow-up attacks” on first aid providers and violent disruption of vaccination campaigns. More than nine of every 10 such cases involved local health care providers; most of the other cases were directed against international health care providers. Maurer emphasized that the global humanitarian organization’s annual report for 2012, which focuses on the millions of people it assisted, shows an alarming and widening gap between the staggering needs of millions of people suf-fering from Syria’s civil war, and the world’s ability to help them.

Red Cross says civilian centers abused in conflict

Syria’s main opposition group has welcomed a decision by Arab and Western govern-ments to boost their assistance to rebel fighters but said more such moves were needed to end the 27-month conflict. |AFP PHOTO/DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS

SWITZERLAND | CONFLICT

SWITZERLAND | BANKING

28 EASTERN PARTNERSHIP NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

30 June - 6 July, 2013

AZERBAIJAN|DIPLOMACY

Azerbaijan, Vietnam discuss agriculture, tourism tiesMembers of the Azerbaijan parliament’s committee for inter-national relations and inter-parliamentary ties met a delega-tion of Vietnam headed by deputy chairman of the National Assembly, Uonq Chu Lu, to discuss prospects for develop-ment of Azerbaijan-Vietnam relationship, AzerTAc reported. A member of the committee, Azer Kerimli, said Baku places special emphasis on development of relationship with Vi-etnam. According to him, there is great potential to deepen co-operation between the two countries in agricultural and tourism spheres. “It is necessary to use this potential for de-velopment of bilateral relationship,” he said. Touching upon Azerbaijan-Vietnam relations, the Vietnamese official said trade turnover between the two countries makes up $29 mil-lion. “But this figure is not satisfactory and bilateral economic co-operation should be expanded.” He also spoke of activities of the Vietnamese National Assembly.

GEORGIA|TRANSPORT

First coupling on Baku- Tbilisi-Kars rails A ceremony of first coupling works on rail lines under the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) project was held in the Turk-ish province of Kars on June 27, Anadolu news agency reported. Azerbaijani, Turkish and Georgian transport ministers met in Kars to discuss the implementation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway project on 26-28 June. Turkish Minister of Transport Binali Yildirim, Azerbaijani Minister of Transport Ziya Mammadov, and Georgian Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development Giorgi Kvirikash-vili attended the ceremony. According to Yildirim, after the BTK project is realised, it will be open to all, including the European Union countries. “This project is not only a pro-ject of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, but also a project of Central Asian countries, China, the Balkans, the Middle East and even the EU. Well-being of countries and the re-gion will increase further,” he said. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia are three strategic partners and this project makes people of the three countries closer, Kvirikashvili said. It is planned to construct a new 105 kilometre branch railway as part of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project. In addition, the sec-tion of the Akhalkalaki-Tbilisi-Marabda railway will be re-constructed in Georgia, which will increase its capacity to 15 million tons of cargo per year.

GEORGIA|HEALTH

Tbilisi, Kiev sign healthcare agreementOn 25 June, Ukraine and Georgia signed an agreement on co-operation in the field of health, as well as a memoran-dum on enhancing relations between the two countries in the field of investment. The documents were signed dur-ing the eighth meeting of the joint Ukrainian-Georgian In-tergovernmental Commission on Issues of Economic Co-operation. The meeting was held under the chairmanship of the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Oleksandr Vilkul and his Georgian colleague Kakha Kaladze, Trend and the Messenger reported. “The achievements of the commis-sion must bring concrete economic results for Ukraine and Georgia. This includes the development of tourism, attraction of investment as well as activation of implemen-tation of modern technologies in Ukraine. The country is using Georgian experience in the implementation of this project,” Vilkul said.

The European Union welcomed the selec-tion of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) to ship Azerbaijani gas through the South-ern Gas Corridor on 28 June.

EU Energy Commissioner Guen-ther Oettinger said TAP would boost the bloc’s security of supply. “We have a defi-nite commitment from Azerbaijan that gas will be directly delivered to Europe through a new dedicated gas pipeline system. Whether the system consists of two gas pipelines - TANAP and TAP - or one single pipeline as earlier projects had foreseen - does not make any difference in terms of energy security. We now have a new partner for gas, and I am confident that we will receive more gas in the future,” Oettinger said.

The consortium developing Azerbai-jan’s Shah Deniz gas field announced on 28 June it had chosen TAP, which links to the TANAP route across Turkey, to ship natural gas to the EU.

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso also welcomed the deci-sion by the Shah Deniz II Consortium se-lecting TAP as the European route of the Southern Gas Corridor. “This is a shared success for Europe and a milestone in strengthening the energy security of our Union. I am confident that today’s deci-sion, which builds on the strategic Joint Declaration I signed with President Aliyev of Azerbaijan in January 2011, will pro-vide further momentum to the full and rapid realization of the entire Southern Gas Corridor as a direct and dedicated link from the Caspian Sea to the European Union, which should be expanded over time,” Barroso said.

TANAP is another gas infrastructure aiming to directly link the Caspian Sea to Europe.

The Shaz Deniz II Consortium, in-cludes the energy companies BP, Total and Azerbaijani state-owned SOCAR.

The Shah Deniz II field in the Caspian Sea is set to provide an estimated 16 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year when it comes online around 2017 or 2018.

In addition, TAP will bring the gas from the Turkish border via Greece and Albania to Italy.

The EU has been looking at Azerbai-jan as a way to reduce Europe’s reliance on Russian gas supplies. Azerbaijan plays an essential role as an oil supplier and the country is expected to play a similar lead-ing role in gas supplies to Europe, Oet-tinger said earlier in a message sent to the participants of the Caspian Oil and Gas 2013 conference in Baku.

The Shah Deniz field, which is one of the world’s largest gas-condensate fields, was discovered in 1999. Its reserves are es-timated at 1.2 trillion cubic metres of gas. Overall, the field has proved to be a secure and reliable supplier of gas to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey as well as Europe.

“We see the Southern Gas Corridor as a multistage project,” Oettinger’s mes-sage said. “The EU expects more gas from other sources like Turkmenistan to be transported through this corridor. In this regard, we will continue the negotiations with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan on the Trans-Caspian pipeline. We expect agree-ment to be reached in the nearest future.”

The Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline run-ning around 300 kilometres will be laid from the Turkmen coast of the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan, where it will be linked to the Southern Gas Corridor. The pipe-line’s capacity is 30-40 billion cubic metres of gas per year. But the disputed status of the Caspian makes the project uncertain.

The message also emphasized that Azerbaijan is a partner of the EU not only in the energy sector but also is one of its key partners in the Eastern Partnership programme.

Two weeks ago, Barroso met with

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev. “Azerbaijan is a very important partner for us – we have achieved a reliable partner-ship in the energy field. We want to build on this, moving to a long-term associa-tion grounded in democracy and shared values, in particular human rights and fundamental freedoms. I stressed today my personal commitment to supporting Azerbaijan in this path.

A word on our strategic energy coop-eration: We did of course discuss the way ahead on the Southern Gas Corridor in detail,” Barroso said.

“We are both extremely pleased with the progress achieved on the Southern Gas Corridor since our Joint Declaration of 2011. We have both worked hard for the realisation of this strategic project for both Azerbaijan and for Europe. I wish to thank President Aliyev for his strong and continued commitment. I remember well our discussions when we met in Baku and, in fact, Azerbaijan has been delivering all the commitments that were taken at that time. And I’m proud that this declara-tion that I signed together with President Aliyev was at the basis of all these develop-ments,” he added.

“The most important message today is the following: the Southern Gas Cor-ridor is not a theoretical project on the drawing board. It is about to be realised, to the benefit of all involved. It will bring initially 10 billion cubic meters to Europe by 2019, but we will not stop here. The Corridor could in the medium term cover more than 10% of our annual needs in Europe and thus contribute to our energy security, price stability, growth and jobs,” Barroso said. “This is our common vision as President Aliyev and I agreed in 2011. This is what we will keep working for, to enhance our mutual security of supply. We believe this is in the best interest of Europe and Azerbaijan.”

EU hails Shah Deniz II choice for TAP

EU Energy Commissioner Gunter Oettinger said TAP would boost the bloc’s security of supply.|AFP PHOTO/JOHN THYS

AZERBAIJAN|ENERGY

29EASTERN PARTNERSHIPNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu30 June - 6 July, 2013

UKRAINE|TRANSPORT

Alstom signs deal for tram production in UkraineAlstom, a large French multinational conglomerate, and its Russian joint-venture, TramRus, have concluded an agreement with City Transport Group, a filial of the LAZ Group and the main bus manufacturer in Ukraine, to produce modern high speed tramways for the Ukrainian market. The agreement was signed in view of the fact that 80% of the trams currently in op-eration in Ukraine (2,500 15-metre long trams) are obsolete. The replacement of the fleet will enable urban rail transport efficiency and passenger comfort to be increased. The agree-ment was signed in presence of Ukrainian Prime-Minister, Nikolay Azarov. The objectives of this partnership are to or-ganise manufacturing, operation and maintenance of modern tramways by City Transport Group in Ukraine under licence from TramRus. Based on Alstom’s flagship model Citadis, this tramway was specially designed for the CIS market. Suited to the 1524 mm gauge of the region, the Citadis CIS is winterised to withstand temperatures as low as -40°C. It is equipped with new innovative pivoting bogies to fit the existing rail networks, thus reducing implementation time and infrastructure related costs. This new tramway model features state-of-the-art engi-neering solutions such as composite materials reducing energy consumption by 10%. Modular sections ensure easier repair and lower maintenance costs. The lifetime of the Citadis CIS is 30 years, compared with 18 years for the present Ukrainian trams. Designed for maximum speed of 75 km/h, it can run at an average speed of 25 km/h depending on existing infrastruc-ture and signalling systems, compared to 11 km/h for the exist-ing fleet. Ukraine’s tramway is a full low-floor 25 to 35-metre long vehicle. It can transport up to 255 passengers and provide easy access to people with reduced mobility.

BELARUS|DEFENCE

Russia to open airbase in Belarus soonRussia is opening an airbase in northwestern Belarus, near the Polish and Lithuanian borders, within just a few months, a Rus-sian Air Force general said on 26 June, RIA Novosti reported. The airbase, modern Russia’s first on Belarusian soil, will con-solidate bilateral defence collaboration as part of the Union State of Russia and Belarus, Russian Air Force chief Lieutenant General Viktor Bondarev told reporters. Located in Lida, a city of nearly 100,000, the base will be an important element in the “strategic defense of the Union State,” the general said, adding that Russian Su-27SM3 fighter jets would be stationed there.

BELARUS|DIPLOMACY

Minsk seeks stronger ties with Kiev, says LukashenkoBelarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko has confirmed Minsk’s strong commitment to deepening cooperation with Ukraine. Lukashenko made this statement as he received credentials from Ambassador of Ukraine to Belarus Mikhail Yezhel on 27 June, BelTA reported. “First of all, I would like to emphasise our strong determination to strengthen ties with Ukraine, our nearest neighbour and a most reliable partner. My recent official visit to Ukraine was another testimony to our mutual engagement and commitment of our governments to a constructive approach to the bilateral agenda,” Lukashenko said. “We agree with each other that we need to foster the po-litical dialogue, boost economic ties and intensify the entire spectrum of the interstate co-operation. We should take into consideration new large-scale integration processes going on in the former Soviet Union republics,” he said.

On 26 June, Russian gas monopoly Gazprom said it will pay Ukraine state en-ergy firm Naftogaz an advance of $1 bil-lion in transit fees for gas, Gazprom. “The funds are earmarked for the Ukrainian company to purchase gas from Gazprom to pump into its underground gas-storage facilities. The timely execution of plans to fill the storage facilities with gas is es-sential for Naftogaz to fulfil its obligations to trans-ship gas to Europe in the winter period without interruption,” Gazprom said in a statement, following a meeting between the heads of the two firms.

Ukraine is the main route for ship-ments of Russian gas to Europe, its most lucrative market. Gazprom ships more than half of its gas to Europe via Ukraine. This year it aims to increase exports to Europe, where it provides a quarter of gas needs, to 150 billion cubic metres from 138 billion cubic metres last year.

Gazprom said it had paid a total of $5.15 billion in advance payments for transit since the start of 2012. Those pay-ments cover shipments of gas via Ukraine

up to the start of 2015, Gazprom said.Meanwhile, Ukrainian Energy and

Coal Industry Minister Eduard Stavytsky claimed that there is some truth to reports that Gazprom is working to block ship-ments of gas to Ukraine from Slovakia. “I will not comment conclusively, but the information is correct to some extent,” Stavytsky told journalists in Luxembourg on 25 June, when asked about reports that Gazprom is hindering the shipments.

Due to a reduction in transit of Rus-sian gas for export and a failure to negoti-ate a lower price for Russian gas, Ukraine has begun importing gas from European countries, operating pipelines in the re-verse direction.

Ukraine began importing gas from Germany through Poland in November 2012 under an agreement with Ger-many's RWE Supply & Trading GmbH. It began importing gas from Hungary in April 2013 and is negotiating deliveries from Romania. In addition, it has twice scheduled pilot shipments of gas from Slovakia, but both times the deliveries did

not take place. The cause of the failures has not been disclosed.

Moreover, Ukraine wants to increase shale gas exploration to boost energy independence and national security for Kiev. A group of 10 officials from Ukraine visited the shale oil-rich state of Pennsyl-vania last week to learn about shale gas extraction, the office of Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Murphy, who hosted the delegation, said on 26 June, Ria Novosti reported.

The main reason for the trip to Penn-sylvania “was to learn about technology, about environmental problems,” related to shale gas extraction using the contro-versial method of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, lawmaker Sergey Klyuiev, who led the Ukrainian delegation, said in a statement.

Ukraine signed a $10 billion, 50-year production sharing deal with Royal Dutch Shell in January to extract natural gas from shale rock, and is in negotiations with Chevron on a second shale gas pro-ject, but the start of production is thought to be several years away.

Gazprom to pay Naftogaz $1 billion in advance

A Gazprom employee works at the gas measuring station Sudzha, just 200 metres from the Ukrainian border, Kursk region, Russia, 13 January 2009.|EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV

Moldova has signed a contract with the European Investment Bank (EIB) for €150 million loan to finance the reha-bilitation and upgrading of the country's key national road sections, news agencies reported on 25 June.

Moldova’s Prime Minister Iurie Le-anca signed the loan agreement on behalf of his country during a visit to the EIB in Brussels on 25 June. EIB Vice-President Wilhelm Molterer signed the document

for his organisation.“The project signed today has signifi-

cant cross-border and multi-modal im-plications and will contribute to better integration of Moldova with the EU by supporting the increased connectivity of the country with Romania and improv-ing transport links to Moldova's only international port of Giurgiulesti on the Danube river,” Molterer said.

“This operation represents a contin-

uation of the successful cooperation with the Moldovan State Roads Administra-tion. The Bank has previously provided two loans amounting to €105 million, which are being deployed by this author-ity. The Republic of Moldova is the most important EIB customer in the Eastern Neighbours Region in terms of loans per capita. EIB lending in this country to-tals €432 million, including the current loan,” the EIB press release read.

Moldova to get €150 million EIB loanMOLDOVA|LOAN

UKRAINE|ENERGY

30 EURASIA NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

30 June - 6 July, 2013

The Romanian Prime Minister, Victor Ponta, arrived in Astana on June 27 for talks with Prime Minister Serik Akhme-tov. It was the first time that Mr Ponta or any of his predecessors in the post had visited Kazakhstan, although the Presi-dents of each country have made official visits on a number of occasions.

Relations between Kazakhstan and Romania have developed on a sound footing since diplomatic relations were established in 1992. The countries have been mutually supportive of each other in international arenas, such as at the UN and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Romania was one of the EU countries to support Astana’s successful bid to hold EXPO-2017.

Trade between Kazakhstan and Ro-mania has been healthy. The turnover in 2012 was over USD 3 billion, with the bulk of that being exports from Kazakh-stan to Romania. Nevertheless, Kazakh-stan imported over USD 65.5 million worth of goods from Romania.

This showed a rise in total trade of some 30% on 2011, and was more than twice the turnover for 2010.

The main areas of cooperation be-tween the two countries in business are in the energy fi eld; machine-building; metals; transport and logistics; and light industry.

There are 13 Romanian-Kazakhstani joint ventures in Romania, engaged in trade; furnituremaking; making clothes and shoes; and medicines. In Kazakhstan there are 32 joint ventures, mainly work-ing in the oil and gas sector. Business re-lations are particularly strong in Aktau,

where there are companies such as Delta Spetsroi in the construction industry; the KazRom trading house; Imsat-Ka-zakhstan, making electrical equipment; and Energosmart Kazakhstan, an electri-cal engineering fi rm.

By far the biggest business venture between Kazakhstan and Romania, though, was completed in July 2009, when the Kazakhstan oil and gas com-pany, KazMunaiGas, completed the total purchase of the Romanian oil company, Rompetrol. (KazMunaiGas had already purchased 75% of the company in 2007.) In fact, this is the biggest foreign acquisi-tion ever made by a company from Ka-zakhstan. Rompetrol is engaged in oil refi ning; chemical production; the sale of oil products on markets and to consumers;

and trades oil and oil products on world markets. The Rompetrol Group now has 42 judicially recognized companies and is registered in 13 countries. Rompetrol refi nes over fi ve million tons of oil a year and distributes over seven million tons of oil products.

The Rompetrol Group is cur-rently constructing 350 petrol stations throughout the Balkans, of which 150 are in Romania itself.

In 2008, the Group built and now runs a sea terminal at the port of Con-stanta on the Black Sea, which exports between 90,000 and 165,000 tons of oil each year. The KazMunaiGas-Rompet-rol story is certainly one to bring a smile to the faces of the Prime Ministers of both Kazakhstan and Romania.

Romania, Kazakhstan discuss Rompetrol refinery

TAJIKISTAN | TELECOMS

Tcell cuts roaming rate in TurkeyTajikistan mobile operator Tcell announced that it has reduced its roaming rates in Turkey under the Real Roaming offer. The price of incoming calls is now TJS 0.66 per minute. Calls to Tajikistan and other coun-tries cost TJS 3.58 per minute under the offer, the rate for outgoing calls is TJS 1.65 per minute in Turkey and an SMS message costs TJS 0.44. The promotional rates are available on the Turkcell network until 30 Septem-ber. Roaming services from the operator are available providing customers have a balance of at least TJS 5 balance.

KYRGYZSTAN | TELECOMS

Megacom expands retail chain in regionsKyrgyzstan mobile operator Megacom has opened three new retail outlets. New shops were launched in Aravan village in the Osh region, as well as in Balykchy and Bosteri agglomerations in the Issyk-Kul region. All services from the operator, including payments for ser-vices without commission, are accessible in new shops. The operator currently runs 18 branded retail outlets in regions across the country.

UZBEKISTAN | TELECOMS

Ucell offers Click mobile bankingUzbekistan mobile operator Ucell has introduced the Click mobile banking system to subscribers. Both mo-bile and online payments for services from mobile op-erators and ISPs, money transfers, payments for goods and services in supermarkets, restaurants and other en-tities, as well as on online shops are available from the bank account under the service. Registering at a bank outlet is necessary in order to access the Click system.

TAJIKISTAN | ECONOMY

National Bank sees growth of loan balance volume At the end of May of the current year, according to the banking system of the country, the total volume of loan balance in the republic in comparison with the similar period of last year has increased to 39,9%. In the struc-ture of loan balance for five months of the current year has made 64,1% (TJS 4'025,4 million), the volume of short-term loans has made 35,9% (TJS 2'249,8million) and the volume of long-term loans has made 24,2%. For reporting period the weighted average rate on loans in banking system by national currency has made 24, 58 %, in foreign currency 21, 05% annual. In May, in view of high demand continued the growth trend of micro loans and in comparison with the similar period of last year has increased to 49,5%.Including, micro-loans which are issued to the remote mountain regions on TJS 375,6 million that in comparison with the same pe-riod of last year has increased to 46,1%.

Rompetrol and Kazakhstan in talks. (c) Romania INsider

The OSCE Senior Adviser on Gender Issues, Miroslava Beham, concluded a four-day visit to Tajikistan on 27 June where she discussed with representatives of government and civil society measures to implement the new law on preventing domestic violence and to encourage a greater role for women in public and po-litical life.

"It is encouraging to see that the Gov-ernment is taking the issues pertaining to violence in the family seriously and pass-ing a law to this effect. Now comes the difficult task of translating the law into practice and setting up structures to en-sure that it is implemented in a way that makes a difference to the lives of women in Tajikistan".

Beham met with the First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Major-Gener-al Nurullu Oripov and the Ministry’s ex-pert group on gender aspects of police re-form. She also visited a special police unit in Kurgan-tyube, established and trained as a joint initiative of the Ministry and the OSCE Office in Tajikistan, to work with victims of domestic violence.

With the deputy chairperson of the State Committee on Women and Fam-ily Affairs, Beham discussed progress to date in implementing Tajikistan’s Na-tional Strategy on Enhancing the Role of Women in Tajikistan 2011-2020. She also made a presentation at the Foreign Minis-try on the role of UNSCR 1325 on Wom-en, Peace and Security in the diplomatic

service. The Senior Adviser supports the work of the OSCE Office in Tajikistan in its efforts to assist the Tajik authorities with the development and implementa-tion of gender equality policy, ensuring the inclusion of gender considerations in police reform and border management as well as providing legal and psychosocial counselling through the 12 Women’s Re-source Centres established with OSCE assistance.

“I am pleased by the constructive dis-cussions I have had here and I reiterate the OSCE’s readiness to assist the authorities in their efforts to promote gender equal-ity and to ensure that safety, security and opportunity is attainable for all citizens in Tajikistan,” Beham said.

OSCE adviser talks combating domestic violenceTAJIKISTAN |GENDER

KAZAKHSTAN |DIPLOMACY

31RUSSIANEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu30 June - 6 July, 2013

On 24 June, Russia strongly criticised the decision by Western and Arab na-tions in the Friends of Syria group to supply weapons to the rebel forces fighting the Bashar Assad regime in Syria.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that these plans are “completely at odds” with the goal of a political settlement in Syria.

On 24 June, Syrian Foreign Min-ister Walid Muallem said the decision will do nothing to resolve the conflict and only lead to more bloodshed and violence.

On 22 June, following talks in Qa-tar, ministers from the 11 main coun-

tries in the group agreed “to provide urgently all the necessary material and equipment to the opposition on the ground”. The participant nations will each deliver supplies and support to the rebels independently as they see fit, but all assistance will be channelled through the Free Syrian Army headed by General Salim Idriss, said the group, which includes Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the US, and Turkey.

Russia has consistently opposed al-lowing arms to reach the rebels, claim-ing they could fall into the hands of ex-tremists and terrorists.

Earlier, Russia’s EU Ambassador Vladimir Chizhov told New Europe in an interview that sending arms to the opposition sends a bad signal.

“They say that this was intended to send a signal to Damascus and make the Assad government more flexible. But I’m asking myself whether those who are saying this have thought through the essence of the signal this is sending to the opposition, because that signal seems to be quite simple: ‘You guys just need to hold out a few weeks, and then you’ll get the weapons and you will be able to win’. That’s not only a bad sig-nal. It’s a very dangerous one,” Chizhov said.

Russia: Arms supplies to Syrian rebels sends bad signal

RUSSIA|DIPLOMACY

Moscow to co-operate with Lithuanian EU PresidencyRussia does not expect problems from Lithuania when Vil-nius undertakes the EU Presidency on 1 July, Russia’s EU Ambassador Vladimir Chizhov told New Europe in an in-terview. “First of all I wouldn’t overdramatize the possible differences that exist in Russian- Lithuanian relations. At least on the humanitarian side, we don’t have problems with Lithuania like we have with other two Baltic countries where Russian-speaking minorities have been accorded a peculiar status of non-citizens – that’s not the case in Lithuania. But we have issues that we have to face together. One is geo-graphic – transit to Kaliningrad through Lithuanian territo-ry, but also energy,” Chizhov said. Relations between Russia and Lithuania are not the best. Vilnius has complained that they pay much higher prices for it than other EU countries. “This brings us back to the Third Energy Package with its provisions. The Third Energy Package did not have an easy life to begin with – some of its provisions were restated to provide individual countries with a series of options to choose from. The three Baltic countries in terms of energy supply are in a unique position because their whole energy supply comes from one source which is Russia. That is the way things developed over the decades, and that gives them the possibility to ask for exemptions from the Third Energy Package, something which both Latvia and Estonia did, and they got them. Whereas the Lithuanian government chose the most restrictive option of Third Energy Package imple-mentation of all, which resulted in de-facto nationalisation of an existing gas pipeline which was owned by a Russian-German joint venture, something I would call forced na-tionalisation.

RUSSIA|ECONOMY

Putin appoints Belousov as his top economic adviserOn 24 June, Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed Andrei Belousov as his top economic adviser. As economy minister, Belousov came under fire from Russia’s liberal policy establishment by calling for the state to determine bank lending rates, which he argues would unblock the flow of affordable credit to the economy. Belousov will be replaced by Alexei Ulyukayev, who is moving from the central bank after being beaten to the top job there by El-vira Nabiullina, who formally assumed her role on 24 June after a year as the Kremlin’s chief economist.

RUSSIA|ENERGY

Gazprom considers LNG plant on Gulf of FinlandRussian gas monopoly Gazprom has announced plans to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in the Leningrad region on the coast of the Gulf of Finland. The facility is intended to process 10 million tonnes of LNG per day. Gazprom’s twin Nord Stream pipeline runs from the Gulf of Finland through the Baltic Sea to the coast of Germany. Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller and Leningrad Region Gov-ernor Alexander Drozdenko signed a memorandum on cooperation with regard to the LNG plant project. The signing ceremony took place in the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of the St Petersburg In-ternational Economic Forum 2013. Under the memoran-dum, the parties will use their best endeavours to prepare and implement the LNG plant project to be deployed on the coast of the Gulf of Finland.

On 25 June, US-Russian relations seemed to take another turn for the worse as Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to rule out American requests for the extradition of whistle-blower Edward Snowden to the United States.

Speaking at a news conference while on an official visit to Finland, Putin said Snowden had broken no Russian laws. The Kremlin leader offered no new in-formation on where Snowden might be headed from the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. “Mr Snowden is a free man,” Putin said. “The faster he chooses his ultimate destination, the bet-ter for us and for him.”

He also said that Russia’s special security services “are not engaged with him and will not be engaged,” despite Snowden’s trove of American intelli-gence documents.

“On the territory of the Russian Fed-eration, Mr Snowden, thank God, did not commit any crime,” Putin said. “As for the issue of the possibility of extradition,” Pu-tin said, “we can only send back some for-eign nationals to the countries with which we have the relevant international agree-ments on extradition. With the United States we have no such agreement.”

Hours earlier, Russian Foreign Min-ister Sergey Lavrov scowled Washington for its demands regarding Snowden.

For their part, American officials, in-cluding US Secretary of State John Ker-ry, lashed out on 24 June against Russia for reportedly permitting Snowden safe transit.

On 24 June, White House Press Sec-

retary Jay Carney urged Moscow “to look at all the options available ... to expel Mr Snowden back to the United States”.

Dmitri Trenin from the Carnegie Foundation in Moscow twitted on 24 June about Snowden, writing that “Rus-sia is turning into a haven for those who have an axe to grind with the West”.

Asked how Moscow’s refusal to ex-tradite Snowden may affect US-Russian relations, Kurt Volker, the executive director of the McCain Institute for In-ternational Leadership, part of Arizona State University, and former US ambas-sador to NATO, told New Europe on 25 June that he thinks it’s a mistake to use the concept of US-Russia “relations” as a benchmark.

“There’s no sentimentality on the Russian side -- the small group of self-interested people who run Russia care about power, money and exercising influence, and they are willing to do a

lot to advance their perceived interests: send arms to Syria, shut down human rights NGO’s and beat their leaders, ar-rest potential political opponents, in-vade a small neighbouring country, shut off energy supplies to other neighbours, etc,” Volker said.

The ambassador urged Washington to take a tough stance when dealing with Russia on all issues, including Snowden. “The United States needs to understand that this is the Russia we live with, and deal with it as such. We need to know ourselves -- our own interests, our own sources of power and influence -- and be willing to pursue our interests. Do that and we have something to talk about with Russia. Indeed, Russia understands strength. But if we try to avoid contre-temps with Russia in the name of ‘rela-tions,’ we will find that Russia sees that we are weak, and will just keep eating our lunch,” Volker said.

Snowden freezes US-Russia ties

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives at the airport in Turku, Finland, 25 June 2013. Putin said whistleblower Edward Snowden had broken no Russian laws.| AFP

PHOTO/LEHTIKUVA/ANTII AIMO-KOIVISTO

RUSSIA|POLITICS

RUSSIA|DIPLOMACY

By Kostis Geropoulos

KASSANDRA32

Kassandra@NEurope.eu

NEWEUROPE

Follow me on twitter @Kassandra_NE

As the situation in Bulgaria tends to normali-zation, a few issues deserve to be considered and discussed.

Demonstrations began to decline in numbers which means that sooner or later the situation will be normalized. As the so-cialist coalition has a fresh popular mandate, it would be difficult to expect that the out-going political powers, which were defeated at the polls, would be able to overturn the government by demonstrations, unless they provoked a civil war. And Bulgaria is not will-ing to do such a thing.

In the recent past, Greece faced daily demonstrations for months amounting to hundreds of thousands of participants, not a few hundred like in Bulgaria. The Greek demonstrators had very good reasons to ex-press their anger, among them curtailing of salaries and pensions, dismissals, severe cut-ting of social security and health services and many others. In Bulgaria the main anger was

directed against the previous government.The entire Bulgarian setup brought to

mind many of the communist practices, in particular the methods of “active measures” and “disinformazia” which are well known to certain politicians, like Boyko Borisov who begun his career as a member of the inner team of the late Todor Zhivkov.

As our new web platform system was fixed, we started publishing comments. After our first article on Bulgaria was pub-lished, some ten days ago, we received a number of positive and negative comments which were not published due to technical problems.

After the second article was published, the problem was resolved and we received about 30 comments. We decided to publish only the negative comments, about ten, as we wanted our readers, mostly people with no communist culture, to understand the kind of political struggle taking place in Bulgaria and the arguments of those at-tempting to bloc the legitimately elected

coalition from ruling.Among the various accusations against

New Europe, were two which require an answer:

As is common practice, when New Eu-rope writes a story by “New Europe Team” it means that the management of the news-paper and not an individual writer takes re-sponsibly, and this is enough. Probably our commentators forget that when Pravda was publishing an article without a byline, the article was attributed to the newspaper and more precisely to the communist party of the Soviet Union which was in control of Pravda (the other famous newspaper at that place and time was Izvestia and was reflecting the government’s opinion).

A second remark: We have no rela-tion with Dellian Peevski or his businesses and,coincidentally, no member of our group, from to bottom has ever met Mr. Peevski.

Last but not least: The Commissioner from Bulgaria, Krystallina Georgieva, in her blog is clearly and directly encouraging the

protestors. She describes the demonstrations as “unexpectedly strong positive effect on the processes in the Bulgarian society”, not-ing that “"This is great”.

This is interference of the European Commission in the internal affairs of a mem-ber state and stands against European Law and against the principles of the Code of Conduct. Georgieva would be allowed to do so if she was actively involved in politics in Bulgaria but she cannot encourage demon-strators to protest as the aim of these actions on the part of the organizers are either to force the freshly elected government coali-tion to resign or to lead Bulgaria to a civil was so as to avoid prosecutions.

Indeed, think what the responsibilities of the European Commission under the Treaty on Omissions and Commissions of European functionaries and commission-ers (non contractual obligations) would be if one of these demonstrations, encouraged by a member of the College, turned into bloodshed.

30 June - 6 July, 2013Once upon a time in Brussels...Serbia gets welcomed as new EU candidate last Friday. Five days later, Croatia joins the European Union...with full powers of veto on foreign affairs matters. Good luck with that application, Belgrade!

Bulgaria gradually returns to normalIn spite of Bulgarian Commissioner encouraging protests

Back me up…so I can hide behind youHave you noticed that over the past years, and certainly since the George W Bush admin-istration in the US, that there are seemingly loads of people hanging around behind politi-cians when they give out a televised statement to the press?

I can remember the days before 2000 - at least in Europe, in the US the change took place earlier - where politicians, if they had anything to say, would go up to a podium, stand behind a mostly wobbly and too-small stand and deliver a speech or statement. The speech or statement might have been good or bad, but at least it was always attributable to the one person in view; the actual politician that delivered the statement.

This is no longer the case. In the US for a long time you will find, for example, that the Mayor of New York, or any other dignitary, who has something to say, for instance about the sewage system, would be backed up by multiple, sometimes dozens, of people - most-ly men - in uniform who would just stand on the rostrum to be seen.

The idea behind this was surely that the politicians are backed up by the people who actually knew what the subject up for discus-sion was all about.

Over the past decade or so, this has changed a bit, and at the same time made the leap across the Atlantic Ocean. Ever since 9/11 the USA has become very patriotic, and certainly under the presidency of Bush junior you could not see a politician speaking to a crowd if he or she was not surrounded by at least 100 full-size Stars and Stripes. Now also

President Obama can only be seen in front of a multitude of US standards.

In Europe we have caught up to this. There are indeed 27, pretty soon 28 European flags (the blue ones with the twelve yellow stars) flying in front of the European Commission's Berlaymont building. In front of the European Council it is only three flags, for no obvious reason, but still three.

No European politician will be delivering a press conference or a televised speech nowa-days if their country's flag was not plainly in vision right beside him or her. But normally only one, and quite often only by one, this flag is accompanied by the European flag. But up

until very recently we differed from our Amer-ican friends in that you could still see that the person talking is actually the one that is politi-cally responsible.

Those days are over alas. Now we see, apart from a multitude of flags, banners and what not, at least a dozen people standing be-hind the person, the politician, who is deliver-ing the speech.

The idea behind this, I am sure, is to give some credit to these people, since they have contributed in one way or another in either the writing of the law and/or proposal under discussion or in the upcoming implementa-tion of it.

And this is where the problems, democrat-ic problems, start. Politicians do politics, they vote laws, they oversee the implementation of laws, and they make sure that those who do not abide by them will get their proper pun-ishment. They do this in public so that when the next election comes along we can either support them, by giving them our vote or punish them by not doing so. The presump-tion is always that we know what they have done, what they stand for and, yes, what they promise, although this last point is somewhat academic.

But now what do we see? We see a politi-cian in front of a dozen or so often physically imposing-looking people, such as policemen or fire fighters. And these people are– why would they be there otherwise – supposedly backing up the truth of whatever this politi-cian says.

But there is no way of knowing if these people agree with what the speaker says. They never open their mouths, and they cannot be questioned by the press as they are loyal civil servants Their presence only serves as a safe-guard for cowardly politicians who are afraid to take the credit or blame for the political de-cision they are about to sell.

It would be good if we were to go back to the good old days of having one person on the stage, so we know who to credit or blame, and it would also help those people that want to throw eggs or other missiles at speakers to not be responsible for "collateral damage" by those sanctioned bystanders being hit by the projectiles.

That awful moment when Enda Kenny suddenly realised his entourage didn't get the email | AFP PHOTO/Georges Gobet

By New Europe Team

| 1037