Irish commissioner says EU Treaty would be rejected in most countries

Irish commissioner says EU Treaty would be rejected in most countries

(Source EUObserver) Ireland's EU commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, has said that the Lisbon Treaty would be rejected by most member states if put to a referendum.
With just a few months to go before his own country's second referendum on the document, the plain-speaking former finance minister said 95 percent of the 27 member states would have said "no" to the new institutional rules if it had been put to a vote.
The commissioner, in charge of the internal market, reckons all leaders know this and it is only officials working in the EU institutions who have unrealistic expectations about the popularity of the treaty, designed to streamline how the EU functions and removing the unanimity requirement for decision-making in most policy areas.

"When Irish people rejected the Lisbon Treaty a year ago, the initial reaction ranged from shock to horror to temper to vexation. That would be the view of a lot of the people who live in the Brussels beltway," he told the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ireland on Friday (26 June), reports the Irish Times.

"On the other hand, all of the [political leaders] know quite well that if the similar question was put to their electorate by a referendum the answer in 95 per cent of the countries would probably have been 'No' as well."

"I have always divided the reaction between those two forces: those within the beltway, the 'fonctionnaires', those who gasp with horror [on the one hand] and the heads of state, who are far more realistic. They are glad they didn't have to put the question themselves to their people."

Ireland rejected the Lisbon Treaty in a referendum a year ago. In the run up to that vote, Mr McCreevy stole the headlines by saying he had not read the treaty from cover to cover and that no "sane" person had done so. Read Article... http://euobserver.com/843/28382

Bathing water quality improving in the EU

IP/09/903 Press Release, European Commission, Environment
Brussels, 11 June 2009

Bathing water quality improving in the EU

The annual bathing water report presented today by the European Commission and the European Environment Agency reveals that the large majority of bathing sites across the European Union met EU hygiene standards in 2008. During that bathing season some 96% of coastal bathing areas and 92% of bathing sites in rivers and lakes complied with minimum standards. The report provides useful water quality information for the millions of people who visit Europe's beaches every summer.
Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas said: "High quality bathing water is essential for the well-being of European citizens and the environment – and this goes for all other bodies of water too. I am pleased to see that the overall quality of water in bathing areas is improving throughout the Union."
Professor Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director of the European Environment Agency, added, “Information sources like this report and our web-based viewing tools enable citizens not only to check the quality of the bathing water in their local community or holiday destination, but also to allow them to get more actively involved in the protection of their environment.”
Bathing water quality shows a long-term upward trend
Every summer millions of Europeans head for the beach to enjoy the sun and to cool down in refreshing clean water. To allow Europeans to make an informed choice on which beach to choose, the Commission publishes a yearly report on the quality of coastal and freshwater bathing areas as reported by Member States for the beaches located within their territory. This year the report was prepared by the European Environment Agency (EEA), which is also making available on its website maps and tables with detailed information on specific bathing areas.
In 2008 the number of bathing waters monitored increased by some 75 sites. Of the 21,400 bathing areas monitored throughout the European Union in 2008 two thirds were on the coast and the rest were along rivers and lakes. The largest number of coastal bathing waters can be found in Italy, Greece, France, Spain and Denmark while Germany and France have the highest number of inland bathing waters.
The overall quality of bathing waters in the EU has markedly improved since 1990. Compliance with mandatory values (minimum quality requirements) increased over the 1990 to 2008 period from 80% to 96% and from 52% to 92% in coastal and inland waters respectively. From 2007 to 2008 compliance increased both for inland and coastal waters (1.1 and 3.3 percentage points respectively).
Twelve Member States monitoring under the new bathing directive
Bathing areas are zones where bathing is explicitly authorised or where bathing is traditionally practised by a large number of bathers and is not prohibited.
To determine their quality bathing waters are tested against a number of physical, chemical and microbiological parameters for which the Bathing Water Directive sets out mandatory values. Member States must comply with the mandatory values but may adopt the stricter standards and non-binding guide values.
In 2006 a new bathing water directive took effect which updated the parameters and monitoring provisions in line with the latest scientific knowledge. The new Directive places greater emphasis on providing information to the public on the quality of bathing areas. Member States have until 2015 to fully implement the new Directive but twelve Member States (Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden) already monitored their bathing areas during the 2008 bathing season according to the parameters of the new Directive.

The report
A summary of the report and detailed country reports are available in English on the Commission’s bathing water website at:
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/water-bathing/report_2009.html
Zoomable maps of all European bathing areas can be viewed on the EEA website:
http://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/water/status-and-monitoring/state-of-bathing-water

Voorlopige indeling EU parlement. EU voters shift to the right

Voorlopige indeling Europees parlement

Dominantie Christendemocraten, EVP wint.

EU Voters Shift to the Right
Conservative and Far-Right Parties Notch Up Wins; Socialists Lose Seats

(Source Wall Street Journal)
Europeans punished their governments and boosted conservative and far-right parties, as voters spooked by the economic downturn registered their unhappiness in European parliamentary and local elections across the Continent.

Elections to the 736-seat body were a mishmash of local political needs and lofty debates over the future and purpose of the European Union. But one thread was clear. It was a "very sad evening for socialists in Europe," said Martin Schulz, a German who is president of the Socialist group in the European Parliament. "In most countries we did very badly."
Voters voiced their unease by sending record numbers of far-right candidates to Brussels -- or by staying home. Turnout fell for the seventh straight time, to a record low of 43.4%, according to preliminary estimates.

When the EU's founders set up the first elections to the parliament in 1979, they hoped the institution would become a guarantor of popular support for the union. Instead, national governments have handcuffed the chamber, so that it can hold up and occasionally tweak EU legislation, but can't propose laws of its own. Elections to the parliament "have always been an opportunity for Europeans to register a protest vote," says Julia De Clerck-Sachsse, an analyst with the Centre for European Policy Studies, a Brussels-based think tank.

In the United Kingdom, Gordon Brown's Labour Party was emblematic of the whiplash -- pre-election polls projected it would finish third, and early results confirmed that grim diagnosis.

News was grim for Socialists in recession-ravaged Hungary, where they lost ground to the right-leaning Fidesz party; in Spain, where the center-right People's Party pulled ahead of the ruling Socialists; and in the Netherlands, where socialist support fell from 24% in the last go-round in 2004 to just 12%. Read on...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124440214685092083.html

Driverless cars on the horizon

Driverless cars on the horizon
(02:22) Rough Cut Reuters Video

May 26 - Driverless cars -- using technology similar to that used for cruise missiles, but more advanced -- are showing firsthand what public transportation could look like in the near future, through the European Union's vehicle program CyberCar.

The emphasis is on navigation, programming and communication which can make anything with an engine and wheels move safely down a desired route.

The cars are automatic but a manual overdrive is also possible by entering a special code into the system. The cars can also be navigated from a mobile phone.

The current CyberCar prototypes, on show at the recent Future Mobility Solutions Conference in Helsinki, look like golf carts and have no suspension but under the hood hides high-tech lasers and Global Positioning System (GPS) units.

The car follows a path programmed by the GPS using a touchscreen and laser is used to avoid crashes. There are some similarities with the technology involved in constructing cruise missiles although the companies developing the cars have had no access to military technology.

The touch-screen operated computer system is responsible for the requested journey, while an automated voice is giving information to the passengers.

Driverless CyberCars are already in operation at London's Heathrow airport, but it will take several years before the cars will be seen driving around towns.

But the current economical downturn could speed-up projects like this as in the long run they offer lower costs and an environmental friendly solution to urban transport problems.

Vantaa, just outside the Finnish capital Helsinki, is currently building up a new eco-friendly district for 30,000 people. The plan is to implement the latest technology wherever possible and the CyberCar idea fits perfectly.

Cities and companies willing to participate in the EU CyberCar program need to finance a certain amount of the total costs.

Gilbert Koskela who is the CyberCar project manager in Vantaa City said that apart from the environmental benefits, the driver-less car would make the streets safer as there would be less human factors involved.

(SOUNDBITE)(English) RESEARCHER LAURENT BOURAOUI:

Global Migration Flows Reverse for the First Time Since the Depression as Work in the Rich World Dries Up

The Great U-Turn
Global Migration Flows Reverse for the First Time Since the Depression as Work in the Rich World Dries Up

(Source Wall Street Journal)
The developed world, which for decades has offered a difficult but promising path to upward mobility, appears to be losing its allure. Unemployment is rising, and backlashes against foreign workers are mounting.

The result is potentially the biggest turnaround in migration flows since the Great Depression, economists say.
Full migration numbers for most countries are only available after a long lag, and so don't yet capture all the effects of today's economic crisis. But anecdotal reports and data from government ministries and outside organizations indicate that the flow of immigrants from poor to wealthier countries is slowing significantly for the first time in decades while more people are returning home. Among the returnees: road builders from Bangladesh, domestic servants from the Philippines, factory workers from Indonesia and Vietnam, construction workers from Mexico, as well as bankers, lawyers and real-estate professionals from around the world who were working in Singapore and Dubai.

Emigration from Mexico to the U.S. dropped 13% in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period last year, with more Mexicans leaving the U.S. than coming in. Indonesian authorities expect 60,000 or more citizens to be sent home from Malaysia, South Korea and other wealthy neighbors this year, as immigrant workers lose their jobs. Tens of thousands of Indians are washing their hands of Dubai as jobs there dry up and work permits expire. And in the U.K., the number of registered workers coming from new European Union member nations like Poland and the Czech Republic dropped 55% in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same quarter a year earlier.
A growing number of migrants are returning home to places as diverse as Nepal and Tajikistan, while many are deciding not to emigrate to begin with, says Dilip Ratha, an economist and migration expert at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., citing reports from ministries and embassies. Mr. Ratha calls this reverse migration "very new" and "unprecedented."
Read Article...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124424701106590613.html

Fringe Gains Four EU Seats In Dutch Vote

Fringe Gains Four EU Seats In Dutch Vote

(Source Wall Street Journal) Dutch voters gave a populist, anti-immigrant party its first four seats ever in the European Parliament, sending a warning to incumbent European governments, according to exit polls.

The triumph for the Party for Freedom and its leader Geert Wilders kicked off four days of European Union-wide elections involving more than 12,000 candidates competing for more than 730 seats.
Mr. Wilders's party was expected to win four of the 25 seats allocated to the Netherlands, according to exit polls by Dutch news agency ANP.
EU leaders fear nationalist parties are gaining ground by exploiting anxieties over job losses brought on by the financial crisis. Nationalist fringe parties are expected to pick up seats in the U.K., France, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Austria and Belgium. Other groups fear they could form a disruptive alliance. Still, such parties are unlikely to tip the balance of power in Brussels.

U.K. voters also went to the polls Thursday to elect European and local representatives, but full results weren't immediately available. The Czech Republic and Ireland vote Friday, and the rest of the 27-nation bloc goes to the polls this weekend.

The European Parliament has little power, and turnout is expected to be low. But mainstream politicians and analysts have cast these elections -- the first since the onset of the recession -- as a political bellwether.
No politician exemplifies establishment fears more than Mr. Wilders, a charismatic orator whose platinum-blond hair has been compared to Mozart's wig. He is a polarizing figure in European politics who has been banned from entering the U.K. under hate-speech laws. He travels with bodyguards and keeps where he sleeps a secret.
Mr. Wilders, 45 years old, has sat in the Dutch Parliament since 1998. In 2004, he left the conservative People's Party over a dispute about whether Turkey should be allowed to join the EU. (It isn't a member but has applied to join.) He founded the Party for Freedom and discovered a knack for tapping into Dutch xenophobia.

The Netherlands has 800,000 Muslims, mostly Turks and Moroccans, in a population of 17 million. Mr. Wilders has progressively ramped up his anti-Islamic rhetoric, calling the Koran a "fascist book" and making a movie depicting Islam as inherently violent. The British government cited the movie, "Fitna," as grounds to ban Mr. Wilders from visiting the U.K. earlier this year. Read Article...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124415574886086871.html