EU Referendum

There was something particularly revealing about Javier Solana’s comments (recorded in this Blog) that "the US must treat the European Union as a full partner in an effective and balanced partnership", and "The European Union has to show the US that it is worthy of that title."

This yet again illustrates a mindset in the EU – despite its inherent anti-Americanism –the intense jealousy of the US. And the outward manifestation is an almost child-like determination to prove that "Europe" is at least as good as, if not better than, the US, in every possible way.

It is that ethos, as much as anything, that has driven the EU to commit £3 billion or more to the Galileo satellite navigation and positioning system – despite the provision by the US of their "free-to-all" GPS system. Much the same thinking drives the determination of the EU to maintain its own space programme, and to fund Airbus with such generous subsidies.

But this thinking is also driving the EU military procurement programme, to the extent that anything the US has, the EU must have too. This is most obvious in the pursuit of the A400M large military transport aircraft, despite the availability of proven US designs, which are undoubtedly cheaper and in many respects better.

However, this drive to match the US now seems to be pushing the EU – and the UK in particular - into making another blunder in military procurement, of Eurofighter proportions in expenditure terms, and drive UK defence up a cul-de-sac from which it may never recover.  That "blunder" is called FRES, standing for "Future Rapid Effects System".

Nevertheless, although it seems to have formed the centrepiece of defence minister Geoff Hoon’s recently announced Strategic Defence Review, very few people know anything about FRES. All we know is that Hoon is relying on it as the technological fix that will enable him to cut back on human resources – like soldiers. By this means, he thinks he will have bundles of cash left to give Gordon, to spend on the bureaucrats running schools 'n' hospitals, to say nothing of the 3,500 office chairs in the Department of Defence, at a cool £1,000 each.

That so few people are aware of what FRES actually is can hardly be surprising. Two years ago, Gregory Fetter, a senior land-warfare analyst at Forecast International/DMS, observed that it was "too early to try to figure out what FRES will look like …It's like trying to grab a cloud of smoke."

And, as late as March of this year, Nicholas Soames, shadow defence secretary – in a debate in the Commons on defence policy - noted that defence contractors had been "anxiously awaiting a decision from the Government on the future rapid effects system battlefield vehicle that the Chief of the General Staff requires to be in service by 2009, but for which there is not yet even a drawing".

Small wonder that, in the report of the defence select committee published today, the committee expressed concern that the proposed in-service date of 2009 "will not be met".

So what is FRES?

The quote from Soames actually give some clue. He calls it a "battlefield vehicle", but it is more than that. It is a whole family of vehicles which are intended for the Army of the 21st Century, equipping it for its role as a rapid reaction force. It will enable it to deal quickly and effectively with trouble spots around the world, with maximum efficiency and the minimum expenditure of manpower. At least, that is how the propaganda goes.

For that, the government is preparing to sink around £6 billion into buying 900 vehicles, with an estimated budget for the total costs of ownership over the expected 30-year service life of almost £50 billion. That is a staggering £6.7 million average cost to buy each vehicle and an unbelievable life-time cost per vehicle – yes, each vehicle - of £55.5 million. To say that it would be cheaper to drive our troops into battle in a fleet of top-of-the-range Rolls-Royces hardly begins to illustrate the extravagance.

Whatever the merits of the vehicles – and these will be discussed shortly – the point is that FRES is not a British, or even European idea. It is copied from a US military programme known as FCS, or "Future Combat System". This is an armoured vehicle family designed as a "system of systems", operating in a network, fully equipped with the latest in electronics, combat systems and weapons, all inter-linked through satellite communications. And because the Americans are having it, "Europe" must have it as well.

Furthermore, although Hoon is highlighting it in his own defence review, FRES has very much become a "European" project. Such are the vast development costs that no single European nation can afford them, so it has become another of those joint programmes of which the Eurofighter project is the model.

Already, the European skills at designing just what is needed are coming to the fore. A fore-runner of FRES was the tri-nation programme to develop what was known as the MRAV – the " multi-role armoured vehicle", funded by the UK, German and Dutch governments and managed by the European armaments agency, OCCAR (Organization for Joint Armament Cooperation).

In a mirror image of the Eurofighter project, the French were also originally involved, but they pulled out to produce their own vehicle called the VBCI. Perhaps this was just as well for, after the expenditure of untold millions, the tri-nation consortium produced a prototype which they named the Boxer, only to find that at 33 tons, it was too heavy for airborne rapid deployment.

But the European involvement has not yet ended – not by any means. Despite honeyed words from the DoD to UK manufacturers, the leading contender for building FRES is a German firm, Rheinmetall DeTec. Should its designs be accepted, the outcome will undoubtedly be the formation of another European consortium to build it, as national sensibilities would not allow British forces to be equipped with German-built machines. And, with costs already escalating, we have another Eurofighter in the making.

So where does this leave us?

Here the political element comes in. Effectively, we are committing ourselves to enormous expenditure to buy "state of the art" but wholly unproven equipment, primarily to allow British armed forces to take part in what will almost certainly be an EU "rapid reaction force". The bulk of our new spending on procurement for the Army is being designated to that end. Effectively, to play a leading role in this force, we must have FRES. That is solely because FRES is what the US "rapid reaction force" will have and if the Americans have it, we (the Europeans) must have it too.

However, no one seems to be addressing the question as to whether FRES is actually a good idea – or necessary. Certainly, it may be suitable for the US, which is wealthier and can afford both new technology and maintain its existing force levels. Here, if we have to cut back out forces, in order to buy the technology – as Hoon is doing – we may have the worst end of the deal.

But even in the US, there are serious voices being raised, warning against the over-reliance on military technology in battle zones, noting that doctrine and tactics are equally important, if not more so, and that the human element is the vital factor.

On the UK front, we are getting into an even more serious situation where the costs of military "assets" is now so huge that we cannot afford to use them in combat zones where their loss might be threatened. Where an Iraqi insurgent can buy an RPG7 in a Baghdad bazaar for $20, it is a brave military commander that will risk a machine worth nearly £8 million, when it can be taken out with one round loosed off by a teenager.

Not for nothing, it should be noted, are US forces now patrolling the streets of Baghdad in Vietnam-era M113 armoured personnel carriers. They might not afford as good protection as the proposed FRES – or its US-equivalent – (although neither will protect from an RPG7) but at least they are affordable, and available.

Whether the Europeans will learn this lesson is debatable, and unlikely. Certainly, it looks like Hoon has bought into the European dream – that anything the US has, we must have too. Furthermore, he seems willing to bankrupt our forces to pay for it. There seems nothing now that can stop us lurching into another blunder of Eurofighter proportions.

In The Times today there is a ghastly story about foreign home owners in Valenca. They are being systematically ripped-off by developers who are exploiting new property laws which enable them to expropriate land and charge for the privilege.

But what caught our eye was the comment of Charles Svoboda, a former head of intelligence for the Canadian Government, who has made his home in Valencia and is fighting to protect his property from what he calls "a form of legalised or semi-legalised theft".  "The Spanish", he declares, "don’t respect any laws until they get caught, and they do anything they can to wriggle out".

Enter right on cue, the EU commission with its 2004 "Fisheries compliance scoreboard", reporting – as the title would indicate – on the degree of compliance (or non-compliance) – with CFP rules over the preceding year.

And heading of the list for non-compliance are three countries, Belgium, the Netherlands and… you guessed it: Spain. All three were slapped down for having breached quotas in 2003 and other fisheries rules in practices which, the commission says, are threatening some species altogether. In some cases, the breaches of quotas ran to 76 percent.

Commenting on the result, fisheries commissioner Franz Fischler said: "Despite some progress, much remains to be done. Member states committed themselves to ensuring more equitable, effective and uniform enforcement. They must now deliver."

Now, is this the same France Fischler who in January of this year announced the award of the EU Fisheries Control Agency to the Spanish, to be located in Vigo, known informally as the European centre of illegal fishing? And is this the same Franz Fischler who proudly declared that the location of the agency in Vigo would "boost enforcement"?

We are not sure quite which planet Fischler was speaking from, but sure as hell, it wasn’t this one.

Not content with its so far limited military adventures, the EU must look further afield. So said Javier Solana, the EU foreign minister, speaking in Rome yesterday to an annual conference of Italy's 140 ambassadors at the invitation of Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini.

The EU must be able to act outside its borders if it is to ensure the security of its 450 million citizens, he told the diplomats. Europe was "confronted with a situation in which the security of our citizens requires that we act outside our borders". And, of course, to do so, it needed to re-examine its institutional framework.

"The Constitution seeks to answer this demand," said Solana, adding in impenetrable "Eurospeak" that the document reflected agreement on "a higher level of ambition the EU should have as an international actor".

What this presumably boils down to is that the EU should have a fully-fledged foreign policy, backed by its own military forces, but the real objective is similarly coded. Europe's partnership with the United States was "irreplaceable", said Solana, but "The US must treat the European Union as a full partner in an effective and balanced partnership. The European Union has to show the US that it is worthy of that title."

There you have it. The EU "level of ambition" is to match the US as an "international actor". Some target. But here in Yorkshire, we would say that Solana’s appetite is bigger than his belly.

It is interesting that very few Europhiles run their own Blogs. But one who does is the press officer for Richard Corbett, labour MEP and former political assistant to Alterio Spinelli. The man goes by the name of "Toby" and is particularly keen on exposing Eurosceptic "myths", hence the name of his site, straight banana.

But unlike his master, who has a reputation for being highly knowledgeable about the EU parliament, our Toby sometimes gets a little confused.

In one of his more recent Blogs, he notes a Huddersfield Daily Examiner report that the BNP is "considering taking legal action after Barclays froze up to six of its bank accounts… BNP chairman Nick Griffin said the bank's move broke European human rights laws".

"I'm sorry? Excuse me? It broke what?!", splutters our Toby. "Isn't Mr Griffin aware of his own party's uncompromising policy on Europe? How on earth can he demand British withdrawal from EU if he's happy to appeal to legal rights that come from Britain's membership of the EU?"

Er… sorry Toby. European human rights laws derive from the European Convention of Human Rights, signed on 4 November 1950 under the aegis of the Council of Europe. It is enforced by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

As such, it has nothing directly to do with the EU and our adoption of certain parts of the convention does not depend on our membership of the EU, and nor would we need to be a member of the EU to subscribe to it. In fact, as can be seen from the date of signing, the convention predates the EEC by seven years.

According to the Wall Street Journal Europe "[t]he EU head office withdrew a proposal for a regionwide compulsory ‘Made in the European Union’ label, on lack of interest".

How very interesting. Several points occur to us immediately. The obvious first one is that there has been a certain dearth of information in the UK about the fact that this 'Made in the European Union' label was going to be compulsory. No, of course, they do not want to turn it into a state (let’s not get hung up on the 'super' part of it). They are just making every possibly effort to make it appear as such.

Secondly, there is the rather curious reference to the European Commission as head office. The WSJE, together with large chunks of the British media, seems reluctant to accept that what the Commission is and wants to have confirmed is a government.

On the other hand, the WSJE is right in a somewhat unexpected fashion. There is no doubt but that the EU, just as New Labour, wants to take politics out of politics. The aim, already achieved to a very great extent by the EU, is to make government managerial rather than political.

Politics is really rather messy, and involves the question of accountability and democratic responsibility; management, on the other hand, is, at least in theory, straightforward and needs little account of popular opinion. Since this business is envisaged in the light of a complete and single corporation with no outside shareholders, management is perceived to be fairly easy. Head office may not be a bad way of describing this particular form of government.

But the most interesting part of that comment is "the lack of interest". Businesses are not there for their health and they are not to be won over by spurious semi-political arguments. They know that 'Made in the European Union' signifies dross produce that no country wants to claim. They do not want the label except when they are trying to sell dross. Presumably, no Canadian or American firm would want 'Made in the Americas' stamped all over its produce.

Our guess is that the Commission or "head office" will be back with that proposal. It is very important to them that production in the EU should be noticeably labelled as such.

Despite media speculation that Kilroy-Silk will be the UKIP candidate for the Hartlepool by-election, it is now almost certain that he will not be standing. Party officials are already looking for another “high profile” candidate to front their campaign.

What is not certain is whether Kilroy-Silk jumped or was pushed, although it is known that Party leaders were reluctant to call on the charismatic former TV presenter, for the very reason that he might win. Kilroy-Silk as UKIP's first MP would be in such a powerful position that he would be able to dominate the Party and sideline its present leadership.

If there had been a serious expectation that he would stand, the Party in any event did not seek to encourage him. Already, the core of the campaign team has been set up in Hartlepool, without consulting Kilroy-Silk, who is currently "on holiday" in his Spanish home. Yet it has already been reported that Kilroy would have made choosing his own team a condition of his candidature.

Furthermore, it is not exactly a coincidence that, while the assembled media were – and still are - waiting for a statement from UKIP on its candidate for the Hartlepool by-election, the Party should come storming out with a statement... about its strategy for the general election.

Writ large in The Times today, and followed up by the BBC, was a story headed "UKIP will not stand against anti-EU Tories" describing how UKIP had promised to give a clear run at the next election to Conservative candidates who back withdrawal from the EU. All they have to do is sign a letter supporting the UKIP's policy of pulling Britain out. "We are going to give Michael Howard one hell of a headache," said Nigel Farage, leader of the Party's EU parliamentary group.

This demonstrates clearly that the Party focus is not – and never has been - on Hartlepool, but is set on more distant objectives. In fact, in the absence of Kilroy-Silk at the helm, senior party officials have already abandoned any ambitions of winning the Hartlepool seat.

The lack of enthusiasm for staging a high profile fight also reflects the fact that Hartlepool is traditionally a Labour seat, where the Conservatives would expect a poor showing. For, while UKIP presents itself as anti-EU, it is, as this Blog has previously observed, primarily an anti-Tory grouping. With no Tory "scalp" to win, the party is more interested - using its own terms – in "making mischief" in the Tory Party.

It also explains why the Party was reluctant to fight the recent by-elections at Hodge Hill and Nottingham South, which were also held by Labour.  Even the chance of a Westminster seat, giving UKIP and the Eurosceptic movement a voice in Parliament, holds little appeal, especially when its representative would be difficult to control.

Not for the first time, therefore, UKIP seems to be putting its own internal party interests above those of the cause it purports to represent.

On this Blog, on 22 July 2004, I drew attention to the EU's new law, rejoicing under the title "The Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive", which required, as of 21 July, impact assessments for every type project listed in the directive.

What I found most disturbing about this directive, and hence the reason for writing the Blog, was the fact that it gave gives special status to what are termed NGOs – Non-Governmental Organisations, more familiarly known as pressure groups. They have to be allowed actively to participate in the SEA process and public authorities are obliged to take their views into account.

I ventured the opinion that this might be good for Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, et al, but it is actually very bad for representative democracy. There is no similar provision for either local elected councils or even parliament to be consulted, so these bodies are effectively marginalised. Officials speak directly unto the people, and are effectively represented by the unelected NGOs.

This particular piece of legislation, however, is only one indication of how influential NGOs have become, and to what extent they are shaping and even controlling the political agenda. Another indication is their active role in the WTO talks currently in progress in Geneva, where they are highly active in promoting their views.

It is timely, therefore, that Tech Central Station should have produced on article by Alan Oxley, former Ambassador of Australia to the GATT (the predecessor of the WTO), entitled "Song of the Idle Rich", excerpts from which are reproduced here with the permission of TCS.

In his piece, Oxley examines the role of NGOs more closely. He notes that "among the more noticeable developments" since the failed Seattle WTO meeting has been "the significant increase in activity by the NGOs that have consistently opposed the WTO and the idea of development through free trade".

"Even more noticeable", he writes, "has been the emergence of NGOs claiming to speak as third world voices. Both Western and 'third world' NGOs actively agitated last year at Cancun to stall the WTO".

What Oxley then does is pick up on the work of independent Washington-based economic analyst Greg Rushford, who has revealed that these "third world" NGOs have received significant funding from US foundations.

With an element of understatement, he observes that the source of funding of the Western NGOs has not always been clear. In fact, their funding is notoriously opaque. Some of it comes from North American foundations, from organised labour and (paradoxically in Europe and Canada), official aid agencies.

Rushford, Oxley says, has found that all of the major "third world" groups - Martin Khor's Third World Network headquartered in Penang, Vandana Shiva's Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in New Delhi, Waldon Bellow's Focus on the Global South in Bangkok and Yash Tandon's SEATINI in Zimbabwe - receive significant funding from US Foundations.

He gives other examples of Rushford's findings, all pointing to a shadowy network of financing that comes significant political strings, with such organisations as the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Development Foundation heavily involved.

With a US slant to the article, however, Oxley does not look at the European dimension, but it has long been known that a number of environmental NGOs receive money directly or indirectly from EU funds. The WWF, for instance, receives some finance through participation in EU-funded programmes, although it is highly reticent about declaring just how much it receives. But it is also obvious that, in much of its rhetoric, it and the EU commission are singing from the same hymn sheet.

Oxley rails against those who argue fair trade means rich countries cut trade barriers, not poor countries. He writes that they seem unconcerned that they are also giving gravitas to the position of the Western NGOs that poor countries should also have higher (and more expensive labour standards). These, he says, are recipes for continuing poverty in developing countries. The cashed-up foundations are calling the tune. "It is the song of the idle rich", he writes.

But, despite the merit of Oxley's work, he is only presenting half the picture. In that the NGOs are assuming a more authoritative voice in political affairs, yet are wholly without an electoral mandate, they represent an attack on the very fabric of democracy. Furthermore, in EU affairs, they seem to be being used as a Trojan Horse to undermine traditional representative structures in pursuit of the more general agenda of European political integration.

Altogether, they are a very dangerous development.

In an entirely predictable development, yesterday the assembled foreign ministers of the EU tried and failed to present a united front for today's WTO talks in Geneva, on what is hoped to be the decisive stage of the Doha round - see previous Blog.

They managed to cobble together something of a statement "endorsing" Lamy's negotiating position, but so bland was it that leaves him with no firm instructions on which to operate.

And while France continues to be the major blockage, she has attracted the support of Italy, Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Poland, all countries wedded to protectionist agricultural policies, who have lined up against Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, countries which, to a greater or lesser extent, are more disposed towards free trade.

Time will have to be made, however, for a further round of talks between the ministers of EU countries, who want to meet on Friday to discuss any deal before Lamy is allowed to close.

Under such a tight leash, he will find it difficult to make any concessions on agriculture that would need any fundamental changes to the CAP. Much, therefore, depends on how the US will react and, in particular, whether it will agree to throw its food aid programme into the ring, as being equivalent to the EU's export subsidies.

Everyone, therefore, is banking on the appearance of a new draft agreement which will be published tomorrow, following which there will be round-the-clock negotiations until the "drop-dead" deadline for agreement of midnight on Friday.

Meanwhile, pressure groups defending poor countries are displaying their unease at what appears to be a stitch-up in the making between the EU and the US. Oxfam has been particularly critical, its spokesman saying demanding that the rich countries "get their heads out of the sand and fulfil their promises", while the British-based group Action Aid has accused rich countries of "continuing to bribe, bully and threaten developing countries".

On the other hand, farmers groups from the EU, Japan and Canada are demanding that a level of protection is maintained, to allow farmers "to meet society's food security and rural concerns for sensitive products", and protection for farmers who incur high costs in order to meet society's concerns about food safety, the environment and animal welfare. They do not want their trade to be "undermined by imports which do not meet the same standards."

Whether all these disparate views can be reconciled by Friday is very much in the balance but the signs are not good. The EU's main emphasis seems to be how to blame the collapse of the talks on the US, while American negotiators will be considering the same strategy. All in all, the talks seem set to go round and round in ever decreasing circles. We all know what happens then.

Today’s Northern Echo offers a story headed: "Abandoned vehicles continue to increase", in which it lists some of the areas in the North East that are affected by this new epidemic.

Chester-le-Street registered a 400 per cent increase in the number of vehicles abandoned last year. Derwentshire, a neighbouring council, registered a 148.3 per cent rise. Hartlepool recorded a 164.4 per cent rise, Middlesbrough 96 per cent and Richmondshire 157.6 percent. Sedgefield, in County Durham, recorded an 11.1 percent rise, while Stockton recorded a 378 per cent rise.

Yet this is not solely a Northern problem. The story is replicated up and down the country, as local newspapers pick up on the consequences of yet another disastrous EU policy.

But what is fascinating is the way that the issue has been picked up by the Europhile Lib-Dems, with its environment spokesman, Norman Baker, claiming that the scourge is "a direct consequence of the absurd decision to make the final owner of the car foot the bill for its disposal, rather than the manufacturer, as is standard practice throughout the EU''.

This rather typifies the way that the Europhiles, on being confronted with an EU-made disaster, still can see no wrong in their beloved Union. Instead, they adopt two stratagems: first they blame the inadequacy of their own government, and then praise European countries, who always seem to get it so, so right.

But, as one might expect from a Europhile – and a Lib-Dem to boot – the situation is not as simple as Norman Baker makes out. For a start, it is by no means common in the rest of Europe for manufacturers to pay the bill for the disposal of their cars. In "green" Germany, for instance – according to the Lib-Dems’ favourite newspaper, the Guardian:

…car makers were so opposed to the idea of adding to the price of new cars to pay for the scrapping of old ones that the idea was abandoned. As in Britain, the government forces the last owner to be responsible and, if necessary, pay a dealer to take it away. But Germany avoids most of the problem of the 2m cars their owners no longer want by exporting them to eastern Europe or other parts of the world, such as Africa, where old cars still find a ready buyer. So instead of millions of cars to be scrapped, Germany has to dispose of around 200,000 a year - less than are dumped at the roadside in Britain.

So Germany dumps its old, polluting cars on the third world, and under-developed eastern Europe, leaving some of the poorest communities on the planet eventually to dispose of the wrecks. So much for Mr Norman Baker’s grasp of the realities.

But if Germany has rather neatly got round the problem, that still leaves other countries dealing with a messy and somewhat intractable problem, which is indeed one of the EU's making.

The proximate cause is being blamed on the End of Life Vehicle Directive (2000/53/EC), the so-called "ELV". This has two main aims: the prevention of waste arising from motor vehicles and vehicle components that have reached the end of their life-cycle; and the promotion of reuse, recycling and recovery of ELVs and their components. In addition, the Directive seeks to improve the environmental performance of all 'economic operators' involved in the life cycle of vehicles, particularly those involved in the treatment of ELVs.

According to the Directive, from 1 July 2002, producers of vehicles had to meet all, or a 'significant' part of the cost of scrapping and recycling for vehicles put on the market after this date, and should meet all the costs for all vehicles from 1 January 2007. However, the UK – together with other member states – have found it extremely difficult to implement the precise terms of the Directive.

As a result, the UK, as well as France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Finland, which all failed to meet the deadline, were referred to the ECJ by the commission on 8 April 2003. To avoid a court hearing, the government rushed out the End of Life Vehicles Regulations 2003, which came into force in November 2003.

Although the law now applies to new cars (i.e., those produced after 1 July 2002) these form only a tiny percentage of vehicles currently scrapped, so the Directive can hardly be responsible for the current disaster. In fact, on the face of it, there should not be a problem at all: current prices for scrap steel are at an all-time high owing to enormous demand from China. Some countries are even making laws prohibiting the export of scrap steel, to protect their domestic industries.

What is happening, therefore, is something different. The core of the problems is that steel in cars is being progressively replaced by other materials – particularly plastic – which dramatically increases the costs of dismantling, and thereby reducing the margins of scrap handlers. This means that car wreckers are producing material for which there is no market for recycling, and which must be disposed of separately.

Here, our old friend the Waste Framework Directive comes in to play, which we have highlighted earlier on the Blog click here and here.

It is that which is responsible for shutting down a massive number of landfill sites, and for increasing the costs of landfill, as well as creating uncertainty as to whether the waste will be classified as "hazardous". All of which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to dispose of surplus material and makes scrapping cars prohibitively expensive.

When the ELV Directive does come fully into force, it will make life inestimably worse. At the moment, two million cars are scrapped each year in the UK and, currently 72 percent of cars, measured by weight, are either reused or recycled. Under the directive, the minimum percentages to be reached from 2006 onwards are 80 percent for reuse and recycling and 85 percent for reuse and recovery. By 2007, the recovery rate will have to rise to 85 per cent.

Thus, even more plastic will have to be salvaged from the old wrecks because most of the metal, the majority of the weight, is already recovered. Yet no one has created a market system that values the plastic greater than the cost of recovering it.

The result will be that costs will rise even further, and a new mountain of unwanted plastics and other materials will be created. Nor will it be possible to incinerate the surplus – the other permitted option - as the capacity simply does not exist. And with more stringent "environmental" requirements, combined with onerous licensing and recording requirements, only a few vehicle dismantlers will survive. These will have to charge substantial sums before they can accept scrap cars.

Those costs will fall on the least wealthy fifth of the population, who own one third of all the cars that are over ten years old – i.e., of an age at which they are likely to have to be scrapped in the coming years.

The results are only too predictable. Three years ago, some 350,000 cars were abandoned each year and, as the Northern Echo story indicates, the number is already spiralling upwards. At a conservative estimate, some authorities are predicting the number will rise to 500,000. At the moment, it is already left to local authorities to clear up the mess, at an average cost of £350, which comes out of the taxpayers’ pockets. The problem can only get worse.

As this Blog has observed before, how lucky we are to have the benefits of EU membership.

After initially promising a referendum in November, the Spanish government is now planning on February for the event. It proposes to ask the question, "Do you approve the treaty instituting a constitution for the European Union?", and expects a resounding "aye".

This might be helped by the fact that both the governing Socialist Party (PSOE) and the main opposition Popular Party (PP) are behind the constitution.

Whether the Spanish population will be so keen, there is no clue, although the government probably needs to get the referendum out of the way before its people realise how much money they are going to lose when structural funds are cut as a result of enlargement.

As with many net recipient countries, pro-EU sentiment tends to dominate but, in a country known for its mercenary attitude to cash handouts from Brussels, this may be more a matter of "cupboard love" than enthusiasm for political integration. An early referendum, therefore, may be the only chance the government has of winning the vote.

I do not as a rule take much notice of Rachel Sylvester’s column in The Daily Telegraph. Known as a New Labour "luvvy", she was appointed by Charles Moore in the expectation that she could provide an insight into the doings of the Blair camp. In fact, she has proved more of a kite-flyer for Blair, either testing out the latest "spin" or floating ideas to see the reaction from the natural right-wing Telegraph readers.

In her latest missive from No. 10, therefore, headed "Mandelson's mission is to put the PM at the heart of Europe", one must wonder whether indeed she is kite-flying, or is on to something more substantial.

Her thesis is that the Mandelson’s appointment is part of a "hidden message". Blair intends to make "Europe" the major theme of his presidency for the next five years. So, while his ministers may be unveiling their five-year plans for health, education, crime and transport, Blair's "unpublished plan" is to mount an all-out campaign to persuade the British public to love their continental neighbours.

It is for that reason he is sending his most trusted ally to Brussels, to prepare the ground for a third term that will, in his view, be dominated by a battle over Europe, starting with Britain's presidency of the EU next summer.

In this scenario, it seems Blair is looking at the referendum as a springboard for a much wider fight about the nature of Britain's relationship with the rest of the world. So forget public services. After the election, he hopes to capitalise on a new bout of Conservative in-fighting, mounting a crusade to persuade the British people to love Europe and thus cementing his place in the history books.

If this is indeed Blair’s strategy, then many in the Eurosceptic movement will welcome a "full frontal" on "Europe", but before Blair commits himself – if he has not done so already, he had better read Rees-Mogg’s column in The Times.

This one, headed "Third time unlucky with Peter Mandelson" has me worried – as I always worry if I agree with him, so consistent is his reputation for getting things wrong.

But Rees Mogg does do us a service in reminding us of the state of play in Hartlepool, where the by-election will prove to be of more than marginal interest. He points to the UKIP result in the Euro-elections, where Labour did come first, but with only 32.5 percent of the vote, compared with the 59.2 percent of the vote in the 2001 general.

But UKIP came second, with 19.8 per cent; Hartlepool was its best result for in any of the three regions of the North of England, leaving the Conservatives trailing in third place with 17.0 percent of the vote, and the Liberal Democrats in a poor fourth place, with 13.4 percent.

Most of UKIP’s support came not from the Tories but from previous Labour voters and Rees-Mogg believes that this must be attributed partly to Mandelson’s role as the leading Labour advocate of European integration. If Kilroy-Silk stands in the by-election, he could draw further support away from Labour, and possibly win. That would be a disaster for Labour, which could open the gate of the next general election to UKIP and to the Conservatives.

Whether it is possible to reconcile the disparate strands of these two articles is a moot point. From within the Sylvester "bubble", one gets the sense that Blair feels that all he needs to do to win the "Europe" argument – not least the referendum - is to apply himself to it, with the support of his mate Mandy on the inside. From the Rees-Mogg "bubble", UKIP – and in particular Kilroy Silk – represents a powerful force which could grind the Blair dream into the dust.

Whoever is right, it suggests that this Blog’s prediction that the by-election in Hartlepool will be pivotal is close to the mark. But that depends on whether UKIP can get its act together. And, in the longer term, what will also be crucial is whether the Tories can confront the "Europe" issue head on, or whether they will continue to duck it and leave the ground to UKIP.

Foreign ministers of the 25 EU member states meet in Brussels today in a last-ditch attempt to finalise their "common position" on WTO negotiations.  These enter their final phase when 147 ambassadors meet for talks in Geneva on Tuesday.

The WTO meeting is scheduled for completion by Friday and is part of the so-called "Doha round" of talks, launched in the Qatari capital in late 2001 in the hope of kick-starting the world economy, reeling from the 9/11 suicide attacks. The idea was to give a multibillion-dollar boost to global commerce and lift millions out of poverty.

The talks already have a chequered history, having collapsed last September in Cancun, Mexico, when a number of EU member states, led by France, refused to allow the commission negotiator, Pascal Lamy, to make concessions on farming subsidies, which would have cemented a deal.

And once again, we are re-visiting old ground. In the run-up to the talks, the Robert Zoellick, US trade representative, is accusing Chirac of again blocking a deal. The French president is claiming that the draft agreement on the table is "profoundly unbalanced and contrary to EU (i.e., French) interests". He will not even accept the proposal as a basis for negotiation.

The draft, drawn up by Supachai and General Council Chairman Shotaro Oshima of Japan, includes the total elimination of farm export subsidies, although it makes no firm proposals on other aspects of farm support, particularly on U.S. programmes.

Also in the draft is a proposal to allow market access for certain sensitive products – such as sugar and cotton - produced by developed countries. Additionally, it attempt to draw up an "equivalence" between EU export subsidies and other support mechanism, such as food aid, which the US more commonly relies on. It is this areas that Chirac claims is "unbalanced".

Other countries, and particularly the developing countries such as India, are also unhappy about the draft, but are prepared to do a deal. But France is expected to veto any attempt by the EU to reach an accord that will enable negotiations to continue. Even though France is isolated in its stance, it is pressuring Lamy – who is also a French commissioner – to follow the French line.

This leaves the EU in "game-playing" mode, making a conditional offer to eliminate its export subsidies on agriculture products, but only if all other countries do the same. This is seen as a tactical manoeuvre which will enable it to duck the blame if the talks fail.

Zoellick is worried about failure and sees the Geneva talks as the last chance. Their collapse would create "a serious question about when or how or if one would be able to get the Doha negotiations revived", he says. WTO director-general Supachai Panitchpakdi echoes that sentiment, saying that failure could lead to a stalemate that could last for years.

As for the British interest, ours are best served by trade liberalisation, enabling us to buy cheaper agricultural products from many of our Commonwealth partners – including Australia and India – without the swingeing tariffs and quota restrictions imposed by the EU.

But, as always, since the UK has handed over its trade policy to Brussels, we will find ourselves falling into line with France – which traditionally dominates the EU negotiations - and paying more for our food, all the interests of protecting French farmers. How lucky we are to have the benefits of EU membership.

It is quite remarkable how the BBC insists on trotting out Michael Heseltine as the great sage, whenever it feels that the Conservative Party needs help on how to win elections.

But in a week when Hoon’s defence cuts have dominated the headlines, it is also remarkable that no one seems to be putting two and two together, and apportioning the blame for the financial disasters that are besetting the Department of Defence. And that blame, as we pointed out in an earlier Blog, lies to an enormous degree with Michael Heseltine and his enthusiasm for that disastrous European project, the Eurofighter.

That the Eurofighter is at the heart of our problems is at least acknowledged by that other "great sage", the former Europhile Max Hastings, who in an article in the Sunday Telegraph calls for boots rather than bombers.

However, instead of focusing on the progenitor of the project, the egregious Heseltine, Hastings picks on Hoon, noting that in the defence debate last Wednesday, he "dragged a cloud of obfuscation over the greatest scandal of all - the continuation of the £18 billion Eurofighter programme". "Ministers", Hastings writes:

…say there is no escape from this nonsense. Britain is supposed to buy 232 copies of an aircraft less relevant to the nation's modern defence needs than HMS Victory. Job losses would be frightful if the programme was scrapped, they claim; British Aerospace would be ruined; the bills would have to be paid anyway. Yet what a shocking commentary it is upon our procurement policies, that 14 years after the Berlin Wall came down, it is deemed unavoidable to persist with this wholly redundant programme, while infantry numbers are cut.

But it is not our procurement policies that are primarily at fault. The fault lies with the deal Heseltine signed with our European "partners" which makes it impossible to pull out of the project without incurring massive financial penalties. Cancellation would mean that we would end up paying almost as much as we are doing, but we would have no aeroplanes at all to show for the expenditure.

Thus, it was all very well for shadow defence secretary Nicholas Soames to describe the defence spending review as a "moral and political betrayal", but the actual betrayal came 14 years earlier when Heseltine locked us into an insane contract, and all because of his enthusiasm for all things European.

Yet this is the man, according to the BBC, that is best equipped to tell the Conservatives what they need to be doing. So, while Heseltine preens and pontificates, it is the Poor Bloody Infantry that are going to pay the cost of his obsession. It is a pity that media and other commentators do not point the finger at their real betrayer.

In today’s Sunday Telegraph column, Booker offers three stories, all of which have EU associations.

The first is a report that a press conference will be held tomorrow morning at Conservative Central Office. There, standing alongside conservationist Professor David Bellamy, Tory leader Michael Howard will announce a dramatic policy shift by his party on the increasingly contentious issue of wind energy.

This has been triggered by a huge wind farm proposal for Romney Marsh in his own Kent constituency, Mr Howard will come out with all guns blazing against the Government’s plans to cover vast areas of Britain in giant wind turbines, as the centrepiece of its energy policy.

That policy, of course, is dictated by the Labour government’s determination to keep to the Kyoto protocols on reducing CO2 emissions, to which it has signed up us part of the European Union delegation.

But there is also a UK "twist". The plan is the first test of a new government policy which, for wind farms above 50 megawatts, allows the DTI to override all normal planning procedures by holding its own public inquiry, under its own inspector, then deciding whether a wind farm can be built regardless of the views of residents or local councils. Little by little, this government is destroying every semblance of democracy.

There is also a Focus piece on wind farms in the Sunday Times.

For his second story, Booker also returns to the story about Ross Donovan, the Bedfordshire engineer who has spent seven years developing an ingenious solution to the problem posed by the 9 million tons of cardboard and paper we generate each year which cannot be recycled.

In response to an adjournment debate initiated by Alistair Burt, Donovan’s MP, Elliott Morley, aka Morally, has simply answered criticism from this column by claiming that Booker had got something "completely wrong". Needless to say, Booker has got it absolutely right – and has the ECJ judgments to prove it. Writes Booker,

All this bluster and duplicity is adopted to defend a crazy decision, sabotaging an invention which could save this country many millions of pounds a year (and a decision which it seems does not even now have the backing of EC law) – leaving Mr Donovan destitute, and having to take employment as a baker’s roundsman to stay alive.

So bizarre was this decision that even Mr Morley admits Mr Donovan’s system would be perfectly acceptable if it used ‘virgin cardboard’ as a fuel. It only becomes unviable because it burns cardboard used first for another purpose, millions of tons of which Mr Morley would therefore prefer to see chucked away uselessly into landfill.

In his third story, Booker notes that Keith Vaz, our former Europe minister, was burbling on the BBC about how Peter Mandelson, as an EU Commissioner, would be in a good position to "protect this country’s interests".

"Clearly", Booker writes,

Mr Vaz has never read the article in the Treaty of Rome, amplified in the commissioners’ code of conduct, which lays down that commissioners must act, not in the interests of their own country, but "in the general interests of the Community". If Mr Mandelson was to act as Mr Vaz hopes he will, in protecting Britain’s national interest, he would be in breach of a central principle of the Treaty.

Admittedly this has not prevented commissioners acting in such a manner in the past (one thinks of the time when a Spanish commissioner succeeded in arranging for the Danish official at the head of the fisheries directorate to be sacked for failing to bow to Spanish wishes on the future of the fisheries policy). But it is still a trifle odd to hear one disgraced former Labour minister exhorting another so blatantly to break the law.

To read the full Booker column, click here.

In a testament to the utter powerlessness of British fisheries ministers, and the vacuity of the media, the Western Morning News was yesterday claiming "a major victory". It had secured a commitment from fisheries minister Ben Bradshaw that he would "press the EU commission to implement an emergency closure of the winter bass fishery off the West Country coast".

The action is urgently needed to prevent pair trawlers (mostly French) continuing the carnage of porpoises and dolphins – estimated at 2-4,5000 a year - after government trials of so-called "dolphin-friendly" nets had failed to halt the killing.

Concern has centred on pair trawling, in which two powerful trawlers tow a giant net between them in the lucrative hunt for bass. Ministers had hoped to avoid a ban by encouraging fishermen to use new nets incorporating an "escape hatch" that would allow dolphins to swim free.

Observers watching trials of the nets off the West Country coast last winter were horrified to see that at least 169 dolphins were caught by just two pairsof Scottish boats using them - a figure Bradshaw described as "unacceptable".

But the central point – which seems to have escaped campaigners - is that this fishery is in British waters and, had we still power over our own fishery, Bradshaw could simply have issued the order and the waters would have been closed. But, as it is, all he can do is go bleating to Brussels, in the hope that the 24 other ministers on the Fisheries Council will listen to him, and the commission will agree to come up with some proposals.  That will be in September at the earliest.

To underline Bradshaw’s lack of power, he indicated yesterday that he would take unilateral action if the Commission failed to agree a ban but, under EU law, he only has powers to ban the small number of Scottish boats that take part in the fishery and to close it within the UK's coastal limits. The bulk of the fishery is outside these waters, but still in the British EEZ, but it is dominated by the French and Danish fleets, which Bradshaw cannot touch.

Despite this, "conservationists", are hailing Bradshaw’s pathetic non-move as "a major step forward". Lindy Hingley, founder of the conservation group Brixham Seawatch, welcomed Bradshaw’s non-action, saying "It is a major step in the right direction and a victory for everyone who cares about these beautiful creatures."

Furthermore, Bradshaw’s lack of action follows in a long line of inaction by Labour fisheries ministers. As early as June 2000, Elliot Morley, aka Morally, speaking on Newsnight, admitted to "breakthrough" evidence of dolphins being killed. He told the programme "What we have got as far as I am concerned is enough to take action and we intend to do that."

No action followed and, four years later, there is still no action.  Yet the "conservationists" are still hailing their "victory". What is wrong with these people?

Numerous academic papers have been written on attitudes towards European integration, many offering differing theories as to what will influence people most when it comes to voting on the EU constitution.

However, one Dutch academic, Claes H. de Vreese, has attempted to impose a rigid scientific discipline on studies, and has carried out a complex statistical analysis of existing data, in order to isolate the most important determinants.

In his paper, published by the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, he concludes that there are three key variables which influence voting behaviour. These are: attitudes on immigration; economic outlook; and sentiments towards the national government.

Basically, those who express negative views on immigration; who are pessimistic about economic prospects; and/or do not support their current government, are more likely to vote "no" in the referendum. Of the three issues, it seems that "immigration" is the most important.

Putting these factors together, de Vreese writes that the constitutional referendums "will result in a ‘no’ outcome under conditions of high levels of anti-immigration sentiments, pessimistic economic outlooks, and/or unpopularity of a government".

He concludes than any government calling for a referendum "must be very popular to compensate for the negative impact of economic pessimism and anti-immigration sentiments" in order to win the vote.

Although the findings have their limitations, in focusing in data obtained in Holland and Denmark, they would seem to have some resonance in the UK. The paper, therefore, is essential reading for referendum campaigners.

It is a measure of the extraordinary persona of Peter Mandelson that he has managed to get The Daily Telegraph and the Independent agreeing with each other. Both, in their leaders, have decided that his appointment to Brussels is good for the Eurosceptics. In fact, not just good, but "excellent", as the Telegraph declares in its headline, noting:

He is seen as disreputable, disdainful of open government and addicted to intrigue - perfectly suited, one might almost say, to his new job. Every time he appears on television, with his careful phrases, his anguished attempts at self-justification, he will remind people of all that they dislike about Brussels.

The Independent, looks further ahead, to the constitution, and calls in aid Labour MPs to warn that Mandelson’s appointment could cost Blair the referendum. It seems already to have discounted the loss of "the safe Labour seat in Hartlepool" in the forthcoming by-election.

As a test of Eurosceptic sentiment, Hartlepool, rather than Brussels is, in fact, going to be the next major battlefield, with the local daily, the Hartlepool Mail, suggesting – as do many other newspapers – that UKIP star Robert Kilroy-Silk may stand for the vacated seat.

This could be a winner. In an iconoclastic town that voted a "monkey" as its mayor, "housewife's favourite" Kilroy-Silk would put Hartlepool on the map, and ensure a high-profile campaign.
However, elements in the hierarchy of UKIP think otherwise. Kilroy-Silk is not proving to be a team player, and is already causing ructions within the party by withholding his and his running-mates MEPs expenses, upon which the Party has hitherto relied to fund its own structures.

The fear is that the mega-star status of becoming UKIP’s first MP would make Kilroy-Silk uncontrollable, and present a real threat to the current leadership. Efforts are being made, therefore, to find another "high profile" candidate to spike his guns. As a result, internal politics, and personal jealousies could wreck the chances of the Eurosceptic movement securing its first MP.

Add to that the recent "bloomer" by Godfrey Bloom in Strasbourg, when the Yorkshire MEP pronounced that the role of women was to "clean behind the ‘fridges", and UKIP’s stock could be on the wane.

Rapid damage limitation by the Party managed to refocus Bloom’s Neanderthal mutterings, and present them as a protest against over-regulation in the employment field. But it now transpires that when Bloom made his first statements, he was still "tired and emotional" after a night out on the tiles, and had not managed any serious sleep between imbibing quantities of Alsace ale and presenting himself to the womens’ rights committee.

Given that Bloom is a self-declared champion of the laddish, hard-drinking culture that sees nothing wrong with being poured into a taxi after a good night out, his potential to spark off an epidemic of "foot in mouth disease" – to the delight of the waiting media – is as yet untapped.

Then there is the Ashley Mote affair: with his membership of UKIP being "temporarily suspended" for failing to declare to the Party a little matter of an impending prosecution for what is reputed to be £70,000 fraud, he has upped sticks and applied to join Le Pen's group in the EU parliament - a claim which Mote has subsequently denied.  Nevertheless, when he comes to court, no amount of damage limitation is going to be able completely to distance him from the Party that selected him as an MEP candidate.

Furthermore, with Mote out of the Party, he takes with him his "dowry" of £105,000 in MEP secretarial expenses, which would otherwise have been available to the Party.  With Kilroy-Silk holding on to his money, party planners have something over £300,000 annually less than they anticipated.  Plans for increasing staff posts are already being cut back, and election plans are being reviewed.

Nor is this the full extent of UKIP's woes.  The Bloom debacle, on top of factional in-fighting and an inability to develop a strategic direction, has had the "money men" tearing their hair out in frustration, as they begin to realise that the party is a hollow shell, all set up to win seats in the Euro-elections but with very little idea of what to do with them.  Money in the future may not be so easily forthcoming.

All this means that UKIP, rather than developing strength and credibility, may deliver increasingly lacklustre and dysfunctional performances, dragging down the Eurosceptic movement with it.  As the constitutional debate picks up, there is thus an increasing possibility that UKIP - as predicted by that self-confessed "gung-ho pro-European", Irishman Adrian Langan (see earlier post) - "may end up as the best thing that could happen to the ‘yes’ camp".

Yesterday’s development may therefore be the catalyst that presages a decline in the fortunes of UKIP, making it far from "excellent news for Eurosceptics", and the "no" campaign in general.

Several problems, in fact. His coalition allies the Northern League and the Christian Democrats are squabbling over the proposed federalist reform. Political scientists like Giovanni Sartori are witing his political obituary and, on top of everything, he is being pushed into appointing a nominee of the Christian Democrats for the Commission post that is being vacated by Mario Monti.

Rocco Buttiglione, the one proposed by Marco Follini, CD leader, is at present Minister for European Affairs. It is not yet clear what position the Italians will want for Signor Buttiglione, should he become the Commissioner. He is unlikely to follow Signor Monti as the powerful Competition Commissioner, that portfolio possibly ending up with Britain or Germany, though France has apparently expressed an interest in it.

Well, if Germany gets the Economic super-Kommissariat, why not let the French, who are more than any other member state guilty of subsidizing weak and failing companies, have competition? Really, this is beginning to resemble that old joke about the EU, in which the British are put in charge of transport,  the Italians are given defence and so on.

Meanwhile, Romano Prodi, the only man ever to beat Berlusconi in a general election(in 1996) has announced that he will start campaigning in Italy the day after his term as President of Commission expires. This surprised a number of interested spectators, who were all under the impression that Prodi started campaigning months ago.

Never trust a politician – at least, if his name is Pedro Santana Lopes. This is the new prime minister of Portugal and, not a month in office, is backing away from his predecessor’s "firm commitment to hold a referendum on the EU constitution".

Lopes’s programme for the next two years, presented to parliament yesterday, referred only to "educating the public about the constitution and its implications", "with a view to a possible referendum on the issue".

According to Agence France Presse, referendums in Portugal traditionally suffer from extremely low voter turnout, which may have influenced Lopes. In the most recent referendum held in 1998, only 31 percent of all eligible voters participated, voting by a slim margin to keep the nation's highly restrictive abortion laws in place.

A referendum, even if in favour of the constitution, with such a small turnout, could, in the government’s view, do more harm than good. But, perhaps, this is a shot across the bows of former Maoist student, Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, now installed as head honcho of the commission, warning him that he cannot take his home country for granted.

They don’t make them like this over here – not like the 27-year-old Adrian Langan, PR executive and self-confessed "gung-ho pro-European".

Last year’s winner and first Irish recipient on the Young European of the Year award, he was credited with a leading role in winning the Nice referendum, arising from his outstanding ability to promote the "European idea".

Now, in the Irish Times (no link - subscription only), he has offered his opinions on the UK referendum, calling it a "huge gamble". Nevertheless, he feels that Blair can "still win the day".

To win, Langan argues, the "yes" side will need to meet the challenge full on and turn the referendum on the constitution into what it really is: a referendum on UK membership of the EU. In this context, UKIP, "may end up as the best thing that could happen to the ‘yes’ camp".

Their extremism about leaving the EU, he suggests, "could well be the key to convince moderates in British society (pro-Europe but unsure about the constitution) about the potential fall-out from a rejection and of the need to come out and vote for it".

But if he regards UKIP as an ally, not so the UK mass media (by which Langan means newspapers). "The proliferation of UK mass media opposed to the EU has produced two outcomes in the UK.

First, a deeply ingrained latent hostility to the EU among a wide section of the population; and, second, the masking of the reality that British society is littered with extremely powerful and significant pro-Europe voices". He continues:

The extent and scale of the media opposition in the UK to the EU is quite incredible. Coverage in such papers as the Daily Telegraph, the Sun, and the Express, and the openly anti-European xenophobia of the Daily Mail can literally amaze the reasonably well-informed reader of British newspapers.

The extent of the problem this creates for the "yes" side cannot be underestimated. The editors and owners of these papers have decided they want to either get the UK out of the EU or keep the EU weak by defeating the constitution (so that it won't trouble their interests), and they have therefore either directly interfered in editorial decisions or allowed editors to have free rein openly and actively to lie about the EU in their papers.

Many times in Ireland things are written by journalists about the EU that are inaccurate or simply wrong - but it is done for the most part because of a faulty understanding or misinterpretation. Not so in the UK. Lies are consciously written and published in both tabloid and broadsheet papers with no concern for the facts, let alone balance. The treatment of the EU in the UK media is the equivalent of the longest assassination attempt in history.

Langan’s answer to this is for the "yes" campaign "to step away from print media to make its case directly to the British people". They should "use other communication methods - huge volumes of advertising and direct mail techniques, as well as a heavy on-the-ground campaigning presence".

Interestingly, for all his youth and supposed PR experience, Langan does not mention the internet. But he might be right in one thing: "Mobilisation of resources, organisations, and people is the key, and it had better start soon if the ‘yes’ side is to have a chance".

The admirable website Tech Central Station has published an article on global warming by Dr H H J Labohm, a senior visiting fellow at the Nederlands Instituut voor Internationale Betrekkingen Clingendael.

"Time is running out to beat about the bush. The man-made global warming paradigm is about to collapse", Dr Labohm writes. "In its wake the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) process will have to change tack. In the mean time, the Kyoto Treaty seems to be moribund".

Interestingly, Labohm quotes the economic adviser of President Putin, Andrei Illarionov, to whom this Blog has referred in a similar context.

One of the fascinating insights offered was Illarionov’s complaint about the behaviour of the British delegation, headed by Sir David King, who - unsuccessfully – had tried to exclude certain 'undesirable' scientists from taking the floor. This is the same David King, who with Prof. Anderson, masterminded the destruction of an estimated 11 million animals during the food and mouth epidemic.

But, while King has completely bought into the global warming paradigm and Kyoto, Illarionov criticised "the ideological and philosophical basis on which the Kyoto Protocol is built", arguing:

That ideological base can be juxtaposed and compared with man-hating totalitarian ideology with which we had the bad fortune to deal during the 20th century, such as National Socialism, Marxism, Eugenics, Lysenkoism and so on. All methods of distorting information existing in the world have been committed to prove the alleged validity of these theories. Misinformation, falsification, fabrication, mythology, propaganda. Because what is offered cannot be qualified in any other way than myth, nonsense and absurdity.

And that is from a Russian.

This is but a taste of Dr Labohm's article, who concludes with the that "The dénouement is imminent". The full article is well worth a read.

Little Mandy might get a whacking £194,500 a year for going to Brussels – on which he will pay tax at a much reduced rate, owing to a comfortable deal with the Belgian government – but that may be chicken feed compared with what he is getting already.

According to his entry in the House of Commons Register of Interests, he has a number of money-spinning ventures on the go, not least a directorship with the Clemmow Hornby Inge; advertising agency, and a pile of other remunerated activities.

These include writing a monthly column for GQ Magazine, for which he gets paid £10,000-£15,000 a year. He is also a member of International Advisory Board of Independent News and Media PLC and an adviser to AM Conseil, an "industrial consultancy on strategic development". He is an occasional contributor to Daily Mirror, for which he gets paid up to £5,000, and likewise for the Financial Times, which also generously doshes him another five grand.

Our Mandy also takes full advantage of the lucrative conference circuit, getting paid to speak at venues arranged by, amongst others, the Investment Property Databank, RBS Advanta, Ernst & Young, the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, and the ISPCC. On top of that, he gets free trips, all-expenses paid, to numerous exotic places, such as Russia, New York, Houston, Johannesburg, Israel, Korea, Berlin, Vienna, Cape Town, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.

Should he join the commission, however, he is prohibited from engaging in any other professional activity, whether paid or unpaid. Even writing a regular column is regarded as a professional activity – although readers will be pleased to know that giving courses free of charge in the interests of European integration is permitted.  It is not clear, however, whether a continued relationship with Hartlepool FC is permitted.

That apart, if Mandy so much as thinks about writing a book, he has to notify the President and any royalties earned must be paid over to a charity of their choice. And he cannot accept any form of payment for delivering speeches or taking part in conferences.

Given all those restrictions, one wonders whether the man can actually afford to go. But then, he does have his pension to think of.

According to The Daily Telegraph today, even the drugs companies are getting sick of regulation in EU countries. Sir Tom McKillop, chief executive of Astra Zeneca, has issued "a stark warning" to European governments: "improve the business environment, or we'll take our investment elsewhere".

McKillop adds: "If you look at the history of industry, where it is not welcome and does not have a receptive market, there will be a loss of competitiveness… It is for Europe to decide whether it wants to be in the high technology business or not."

He was speaking in response to questions over an interview given by his research and development head Martin Nicklassen to Swedish radio this week. Nicklassen appeared to hint that the company would move its business from Sweden, where it has about 5,000 researchers.

And Astra Zeneca is not the only company that is having problems. Hank McKinnell, chairman of Pfizer, is another executive who has blamed European healthcare regulators for killing the industry in Europe. He blamed price controls and restrictions placed on producers. Many others have threatened to move research from Europe if the environment does not improve.

The crucial thing about these statements, however, is that drug companies, as a rule, actually favour tight regulation. At a certain level, the tight restrictions on marketing new drugs make it too expensive and difficult for medium-sized and small companies to gain entry to the market, and thus serve to reinforce their market dominance.

Furthermore, the "market authorisation" granted by the European Medicines Evaluation Agency, which certifies the safety of products, effectively insulates drug producers from claims by users who have been harmed by their products – as anyone who has tried to sue a drug company will readily attest.

On that basis, if the drugs companies are ganging up to complain about the poor trading environment, things really must be bad.

Perhaps the most revealing comment about Meddlesome's impending appointment as "Britain's" EU commissioner came from Keith Vaz MP – former Europe minister.

Warbling happily on Radio 4's nine o' clock news this morning, he lauded the appointment on the basis that the man would be in a good position “to protect the country’s interests”.

We assume he meant this country, in which case what is so revealing is that this Europhile – in common with so many of his brethren – seems so abysmally ignorant of the rules of the European Union that he so adores.

Vaz – and his fellow-travellers – would do well to visit the commission website and read up on the code of conduct for commissioners. In particular, they should note the injunction that commissioners

...are required to discharge their duties in the general interest of the Community. In the performance of their duties they must neither seek nor take instructions from any government or from any other body.

If Meddlesome did represent the interests of this country – not that he has done so in the past – he would be in breach of Community law. Yet the pathetic little Vaz is quite happy that "his" man should go over to Brussels to do precisely that.

What do these people do for brains?

A potentially explosive situation is developing as the German federal government yesterday officially rejected an ultimatum from the EU commission to amend legislation protecting Volkswagen from hostile take-overs. See previous Blog.

The commission had set a deadline for last Tuesday, to make the legislation compatible with EU law covering the free movement of capital, failing which it had warned that the issue would be referred to the ECJ.

In fact, there was very little the federal government could do. The Länder are totally opposed to this law, which would undermine their financial autonomy and thus their political independence. And, under the Basic Law (Article 50), they have a say in adopting EU law.

Had the federal government sought to introduce the law, the Länder almost certainly would have blocked it in the Bundesrat (upper house). Effectively, the government is between a rock and a hard place.

Furthermore, the timing of what could be a highly damaging dispute is less than helpful to the commission – and Schröder – both of whom want a quick ratification of the EU constitution, the latter being determined to take through the parliamentary route rather than submit it to a popular plebiscite.

Yet, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, more than 75 percent of the German population, led by Edmund Stoiber, the premier of Bavaria and leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), want a referendum.

Schröder has stressed that the German constitution makes no provision for referendums. And a change in the constitution requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament, which according to analysts, is unlikely to be achieved.

But a deputy chairman of Schröder’s own party has been quoted in Die Welt, saying the party would "put the question of a referendum and a petition for a referendum on the agenda in the autumn and then we'll see if it could lead to a change in the constitution."

Some German politicians already fear a referendum could be used by voters to send a message of discontent about the current ruling government, as they did in the Euro-elections, and the "Volkswagen Law" dispute could surface in the ECJ at the same time the German people are being asked to approve the constitution.

Although the British media have failed to grasp the importance of this issue, it could well escalate to a point where it puts the whole of the EU under intolerable strain. This is definitely one to watch.

So Jose Manuel Durao Barroso got approved by the EU parliament as the new commission presidente.  Now there is a real surprise.
 
What is something of a surprise, however, is the Agence France Presse release, announcing the news.  It states that "Barrosso vows to bolster EU role with more women".  If read the wrong way, this could have interesting implications.  Nevertheless, one can safely assume that he will not be asking them to clean behind the ‘fridges.
 
Apart from doing it with more women, Barroso has also pledged (not the furniture polish) to work with a "coalition of the willing" to further European integration.  Blair must be feeling sick as a parrot if he thought he was rooting for an non-integrationalist presidente.
 
The only people he could not work with, Barroso says, are those who opposed the EU per se. Now there’s another surprise.

While such attention as is given to the EU is focused on the circus in Strasbourg, it is as well to remember that the commission fonctionnaires continue labouring at the coal face in Brussels, churning out their never-ending stream of legislative proposals.

One of the latest models to come into force is the directive setting out new environmental impact assessment rules herald new era in public planning. This directive in the words of a briefing put out by Euractiv.com, will "force" national and local authorities "to take environmental considerations into account for all major public projects from agriculture to transport, industry, energy or tourism."

Note the use of the word "force". Perhaps Mr Jim Dougal would again like to reconsider his comments about the commission not being a government.

Anyhow, this new bit of law rejoices under the title "The Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive" and, as of 21 July, impact assessments will formally be required for every project listed in the directive.

At first sight, the directive might seem unexceptional, requiring information on proposed schemes which, in normal democratic governance, should be made available to people who might be affected by them.

But, as with everything to do with the EU, nothing is quite what is seems. The directive gives special status to what are termed NGOs – otherwise known as Non-Governmental Organisations or more familiarly known as pressure groups. They must be allowed actively to participate in the SEA process., and public authorities are obliged to take their views into account. 

This might be good for Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, et al, but it is actually very bad for representative democracy. There is no similar provision for either local elected councils or even parliament to be consulted, so these bodies are effectively marginalised. Officials speak directly unto the people, and are effectively represented by the unelected NGOs. No wonder people see their elected officials as less and less relevant.

Thus, what looks good in principle, is in fact another attack on representative democracy. This is very much part of the broader Commission plan. It sees national and local elected representatives as barriers to integration and has been subtly undermining them, in preference to a Europe-wide network of NGOs, which its euphemistically calls "civil society".

Its objective is to replace "representative democracy" with "participatory democracy", with the participants approved and organised on a EU-wide basis. So subtly is this happening that very few people even begin to understand what is going on so.  Thus, while this directive hammers another nail in the coffin of our democracy, many activists will laud it as another benign measure from the commission, promoting consultation.

He hasn’t even been appointed yet but he is already sounding as if he has been in post years. EU commission presidente-designate, Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, has been up in front of the EU parliament, promising to open a "new chapter in EU integration".

"Europe needs a strong, credible and independent Commission," he told the assembled MEPs. "I pledge to work actively for a Europe which is much more than only a market: I want Europe which is also social and cultural ... Let us together open a new chapter in European integration," he added.

Despite, or more likely because of this, the expectation is that his coronation will be affirmed by a vote today, although he has not been without his critics.

Some socialists and greens have sniped at him over his policies as Portuguese prime minister and for his support for the US-led in the war in Iraq. Liberal Democrat leader Graham Watson also recalled that Durao Barroso had once likened the EU to an aircraft with no-one in the cockpit. "We want a hands-on pilot at the controls of the European Union," he said.

But pride of place for the stupidest comment in the new session of parliament – so far – goes to Daniel Cohn-Bendit, former terrorist sympathiser and now leader of the Greens.

Attacking Barroso for possibly being "too susceptible to persuasion by his former counterparts", Bandit declared that he was in favour of a pilot. "But is this pilot going to change direction every time he is asked by one of his passengers or the control tower?" he asked.

Well, I don’t know about the passengers – although one hopes he will go in the direction they want (first time for everything). But, as to the control tower… does Bandit really want a pilot who ignores instructions from that source? Are the Greens really that stupid?