Blogs?

Our blogroll is meant to be a sort of mini-directory of good european blogs. I’m always looking for blogs to add, so I thought I’d ask for sugggestions. I’m especially interested in blogs with an European perspective and ones covering the politics of a European country or region, but any good blogs are of interest, even non-europeans.

Trying Times

Missed most of the first half of Milosevic’s trial?

Since the case began in February 2002, a tangle of bureaucratic setbacks has mired the trial in costly delays. Milosevic is accused of 66 counts of human rights abuses, from violations of the “customs of war” to genocide. After 298 witnesses, 30,000 pages of documents and millions of dollars, the case will reach its halfway point this week ? a level of inefficiency that has strained the patience of even the trial’s most ardent defenders.

When the trial resumes July 5, its credibility will face even greater strains. Milosevic has announced his intent to call a staggering 1,631 witnesses, including U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former President Clinton, in his defense.

To finish in the 150 days he has been allotted, Milosevic would need to question 10 witnesses a day, a pace that would turn the courtroom into a revolving door of diplomats, dignitaries and press.

The trial of Saddam Hussein is likely to cause just as many headaches.

Of course art was there long ago. In 1992, Julian Barnes wrote about the trial of the former Communist dictator of a fictional country that bears a strong resemblance to Bulgaria. The book, The Porcupine, covers the whole territory of trying former heads of state. Read the novel, skip the newspaper reports.

49 Great Ones and a Stinker

Not too long ago, I noted that the Sueddeutsche Zeitung was publishing a set of 50 great novels of the twentieth century. I got into the game a little bit late, but since then I have been more-or-less keeping up with their pace of one a week, largely by the not terribly edifying expedient of sticking to the shorter ones. It’s been a delight.

Despite their no doubt monumental efforts, the Sueddeutsche editors let a stinker through. Lucky number 13 on the list, Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Keeper’s Fear of the Penalty). The novel purports to show a man’s disintegration, before and after he commits a senseless crime. Trouble is, the crime really is senseless, making it beyond the author’s capability of approaching with his art. The book turns on the sentence, “Suddenly he strangled her.” Snoopy could write as well.

As the jacket copy says, the narrator wanders aimlessly through Vienna and everything irritates him. Most everything about the book irritates the reader as the story wanders aimlessly through the pages. Most irritating were the typographic tricks toward the end that were supposed to simulate the narrator’s almost completed disintegration. Maybe this sort of thing was daring or something similar when the book was published in 1970, but now it just looks silly.

There are 49 other books in the series, no need to bother with this one.

All over

Well, Greece are the European Champions for the first time. The side that had never won a match in a major tournament before this year beat Portugal 1-0 in Lisbon to take the title. Expect wild party in Athens for the next few days.

Commiserations to Portugal - if it’s any consolation to Portuguese fans, you hosted a fantastic tournament that will be remembered for a long time.

Update: Reuters have a report on the start of the celebrations in Athens and elsewhere around the world.

Politics?

First this

then this

then this

quite apart from the possibility that a moose will fall on your car, or that an elk will steal your bicycle.

Will Europe ever get back to politics? Or away from its televisions? Or its large ruminants?

Norwegian Humor

Flying moose lands on car’s roof

A leisurely Sunday drive came to an abrupt halt for a couple in southern Norway over the weekend, when a fully grown moose suddenly landed on the roof of their car.

No really, it’s in the newspaper.

Thanks, Kenneth!

Kenneth Rogoff, economics professor at Harvard University apparently felt that Europe needed a pat on the back…

“Today, if you really want to get a rise out of top European policymakers and business leaders, don’t berate them about Europe’s well-known economic ills. Don’t mention the rigid labor markets, the aging population, or the weak state-run university systems. Instead, tell them that there is a one in three chance that the world’s leading economic superpower in 2050 will not be the United States or China, but Europe. They’ll stand and stare at you, waiting for the punch line.

The truth is that Europe’s economy is far from hopeless. First, the notion that European firms and workers are much less productive than those in the United States is simply uninformed. The main reason why Europe’s output per capita stands at only 70 percent of U.S. levels is that Europeans work less than Americans—a lot less. Europeans work fewer hours per week, take longer vacations, and retire earlier. When it comes to leisure, it is the Americans, Japanese, and even the Chinese who have plenty of catching up to do. And as they and others start “consuming” more leisure over the next 50 years, Europe’s relative economic size will expand. Second, Europe still has a spectacularly well-educated and versatile work force, even if dubious labor legislation holds it back, particularly in Germany. Third, recent empirical studies have convincingly shown that strong political and legal institutions drive economic growth. Say what you want about Italian politicians and the EU’s new draft constitution, but European institutions remain models of honesty and transparency compared to those in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.”

His entire column for Foreign Policy is available online. Not that we haven’t talked about these issues here before, but it’s nice to hear it from someone like Mr Rogoff. On the other hand, I think Europe’s odds are far better than one-in-three.

Freedom of religion; freedom of speech.

Just saw this. A Swedish priest was sentenced to a month in jail for a sermon where he donounced homosexuality in fairly offensive terms, - said homosexuality had caused aids, but without calling for violence or anything like that.

This is so wrong. So very wrong. There’s little very little debate, little attention piaid to this.

I think the french anti-scarves/turbans/etc laws weren’t primarily about islamophobia, and that that issue is very much related to this one. Which brings us to another piece of depressing news:
Banning Muslim headscarves in state schools does not violate the freedom of religion and is a valid way to counter Islamic fundamentalism, the European Court of Human Rights says.

”In what could be a precedent-setting decision, the Strasbourg-based court rejected appeals by a Turkish student who was barred from attending Istanbul University medical school because her headscarf violated the official dress code.

The court decision, which takes precedence over national court rulings, could help the French government face court cases it expects to be filed in September against a headscarf ban it plans to impose in state high schools.”

Barroso new EC head.

As you may have heard by now, Portuguese prime minister José Manuel Durão Barroso will be the new president of the European commission. He’s a compromise candidate, after Verhofstadt, Patten and like a dozen others were rejected. Some say that’s bad, diminishing his authority, but really the only of his predecessors that weren’t a compromise was Prodi, and that went real well didn’t it?

Another national high level politician, not a commissioner as some had speculated and/or wished for. Prodi’s initial problems had a lot to do with a lack of knowledge of how things worked in Brussels, but Delors and Juncker, also without Brussels experience. didn’t have that problem IIRC, and Prodi were both mediocre for all of his term (Juncker too.)

He’s quite rightwing, a departure from a a quarter century of center-leftists, which will probably make a difference. But the EC is a collective, and the president is under a lot of other constraints, so don’t know how significant. But a deemphasizing of some parts of the agenda in favor of others, certainly.

Atlanticist, was at the Azores with Bush, Blair and Aznar. Has attracted a lot of commentary, but the president has little influence there. I think if anything it illustrates that the transatlantic relationsship is not that important a issue for the EU, and doesn’t drive conflicts. Americans persist in viewing Euro politics in in terms of who’s ’pro-US’, ’anti-US’. Am still glad it wasn’t Verhostadt.

CW is that he’s made a good job as PM. Budget rot, avoided the usual Eurozone deficit rot. (Actually it’s only the big countries.)

“Gradual federalist.” Not as ardent as Verhofstadt thankfully. I do want someone who represents his institution forcefully, though maybe not as succesfully as Delors.

“Tenacity, not charisma” says FT. Seems fine for this job. “Unbending reputation” says AP, ie consistently budget hawk and pro-Iraq war in the face of much opposition. Good I guess?

Will Barroso do a better job? Will he even take back some of the authority the EC has lost ocver the last decade? From what little i know, cautious optimism may be justified. But really, no idea. Prodi’s personal qualities that served him well as PM turned out to be the wrong ones for this job. Barroso is much less known than Prodi was then, so how would I know?

Re the last question the weakening of the commission is due to larger forces than Prodi and Juncker’s various failings, and Delors success was really mostly Kohl and Mitterand’s success, so you can argue the’yve gotten a bum rap, but I think they were fairly unimpressive regardless of that, so here’s hoping Barroso will be an improveement.

Finalité

How many members will the European Union have by, say, the year 2020?

With the latest round of enlargement not yet two months old, the exertions of the constitutional debate still straining the dedicated Europeanists, and prospective members largely a collection of the poor, ill-governed and recently-at-war, it would be reckless indeed to speculate about the who and when of future enlargements.

That’s exactly what blogs are for.

Having said as far back as 1994 that the EU would probably admit formerly communist countries when at least one of them could be a net contributor to the budget (Slovenia), I’m feeling good about this particular type of recklessness.

Under the fold, the EU’s path to 39 members (40 if Serbia and Montenegro divorce), along with the first European Parliament elections that I expect their citizens to be able to vote in.