EU chokes on Greek debt moussaka

Poland's banks are not saddled with Greek's increasingly toxic debt, like Germany's are – but the eurozone crisis has thrown plans for Poland to adopt the euro and drop the zloty into the deep freeze. (pictured: German Chancellor Angela Merkel)

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou played his final card when he announced that the EU bailout plan – which would write off 50 percent of its debt in return for savage public spending cuts, that would make what the IMF used to ask of borrowing nations look like  proverbial peanuts – to a referendum in January.

Cue outrage and panic among eurocrats and the markets, who thought they had managed to solve the whole thing at the summit last week in Brussels. Stocks tumbled and the euro currency bombed on Tuesday.

It's hard to find much support for letting the Greek people have a say on how they are going to get out of the mess they are in. Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney was a lone wolf when he said that Greece's bailout commitments need broad democratic support if they are to work. He said it was up to Greece to determine how to achieve public support for what the country needed to do going forward.

I think that's correct - although a delay until January will not calm jittery nerves. The EU bailout package with strings attached would mean even deeper cuts into Greek living standards than the already eye-watering austerity measures being carried out by the government in Athens are currently doing. More unrest and general strikes would follow. Anger at the political class would boil over.

Leader of Poland's opposition Law and Justice party, the eurosceptic (ish) Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said last week that he thought Greece should find a way to drop the euro and readopt the drachma, without causing a “financial shock” to the eurozone – which would be a tricky thing to pull off, to say the least.

Poland's finance minister Jacek Rostowski retorted that for Athens to drop out of the eurozone would require changes in EU treaties, which “is a long process” and would do nothing to restore confidence in the European single currency or the European economy in general.

There has been a good deal of smugness among the Polish government that Poland has not turned into the once Celtic tiger, now Celtic pussy-cat, Ireland … or Spain, or Greece. PM Donald Tusk never gets tired of trying to claim that Poland is a “green island” of calm surrounded by choppy and shark-infested seas. Admiral Tusk has steered the Good Ship Poland to the island through those rocky waters, with able-seaman (finance minister) Jacek Rostowski's firm hands on the tiller.

Poland, if I remeber correctly, would now be set to adopt the single currency if the Civic Platform government had kept to its schedule drawn up in 2007. It was only the finance crisis that sunk those plans - the same finance crisis that is torpedoing the eurozone, with Greece in particular taking one amidships (That's the end of the nautical metaphors.)

President Komorowski said this week that Poland still intends to enter the eurozone but only someone “not in his right mind” would ditch the zloty today.

Poland shouldn't feel so smug that it is not up to its knees in debt-doo doo, however. With Germany shelling out the largest share to bail out Greece, Berlin and Paris are going to be even more resolved to insist on even deeper cuts to future EU budgets. And as up to 2 percent of Poland's annual GDP growth comes, directly or indirectly, from funds from Brussels, that could leave Tusk et al with a moribund economy.

That's why even someone like the conservative Jaroslaw Kaczynski will only ever sound lukewarm about his EU scepticism – all Polish politicians know which side the bread is buttered.

They also all should realise the Greek tragedy could turn everyone's economies into a moussaka.

Merkel, Hitler – same difference?

Every time Giertych senior opens his mouth something nasty comes out of it.

“Germans have been trying to dominate Europe for a thousand years”, Maciej Giertych, MEP told a Polish TV channel. He believes the present German chancellor is “trying to do the same, but using different methods".

Bad hair cut Merkel an equivalent to Hitler? Surly some mistake?

“Hitler’s methods were completely different, but I’m talking about a chain of actions taken by Germany over decades”, he explains.

Whereas Hitler used the Luftwaffe, Merkel is using the EU to bulldoze its way through Europe to dominate the continent in a demonstration of the Nietzschian will to power, perhaps?

“Mr. Giertych badly needs medical help. Germany has been implementing the democratic state principle for 40 years and we have a great chance for an advantageous alliance with them, yet such comments may destroy everything,” says MEP Dariusz Rosati.

Besides Giertych is not really being a threat to anything – the guy is increasingly an isolated eccentric on his last legs as a politician - may be medical help wouldn’t actually help him much at all. Giertych’s is an ideological sickness, a virus caused by his determination, as I have pointed out before, to live in the time of the great Polish nationalists such as his hero Roman Dmowski – way back in the 1930s. He loved the guy so much he named his son after him.

Sign the Geremek petition

Update, May 3: The much respected and award winning British blogger, Clive Matthews, aka Nosemonkey, at the Europhobia blog joins the Geremek campaign.

Update: British historian Norman Davies (who has been sent a lustration questionnaire!!!) in an interview with the Daily Telegraph on the new law: "This is either going to end in farce or coercion, and that would be the step from democracy to authoritarian rule. Academics and journalists are in the firing line. This is nothing to do with winkling out collaborators. This is about showing loyalty to the Kaczynskis."

A Polish European member of parliament (MEP) is in danger of losing his seat. In danger, that is, not from the European Parliament, or the voters that put him there in the first place, but from the Polish government. This is not democracy as we know it in Europe.

Bronislaw Geremek was one of the leaders of Solidarity through the 1980s. Later he served in several governments after 1989, and eventually was elected by Poles as a Member of the European Parliament.

After the latest ‘Lustration Law’ came into force earlier this year – which forces every public person to sign a declaration saying that they had not consciously collaborated with the communist secret services – Geremek has refused to sign.

He has signed similar declarations three times before, but being asked to do so for a forth time is, for him, ‘humiliating’.

The Polish government has decided that if he does not sign then they can dismiss him as an MEP.

But as EJP reports:

The European parliament has supported Polish MEP Bronislaw Geremek over his refusal to comply with a new Polish national law to weed out communist-era secret police informers.

Poland’s electoral commission has announced that Geremek was disqualified from being an MEP after he refused to submit a declaration saying that he had not cooperated with communist-era services.

Bronislaw Geremek "is a political personality of the highest esteem who has always stood up for democracy in his country and for European unification," said Parliament president Hans-Gert Poettering, Thursday in Strasbourg.

"We will examine all legal possibilities that he can continue his work," he added.
Five groups of the parliament – the centre-right, socialist, liberal, green and extreme-left- have pledged to defend Geremek against attempts to strip him of his mandate.

The interference by Warsaw into affairs that are between the elected MEP and his voters contravenes the usual standards of democracy. Aside from whether you think that he should sign the vetting document, or not, the principle of an elected official being answerable to the people who elected him is a vital one and must be respected by the Polish government.

There is a petition in support of Bronislaw Geremek. It says:

We, European citizens, are deeply concerned by the principles of democracy and human rights and give our full support to Mr. Bronislaw Geremek. The Polish law of lustration, which threatens him of dismissal from his mandate of Member of European Parliament, directly breaks the rules and values to which Poland solemnly adhered, while becoming a Member State of the European Union.
We firmly urge for the Polish law of lustration to be repealed. Otherwise, we ask our European governments to consider the application of all the provisions of article 7 of the Treaty.

Please show your support for democracy by signing the petition here.

More?
bloggers for Bronislaw, foe
Euro Parliament discussion of mandate of Polish MEP Bronisław Geremek

p.s. Milan Kundera signed it!

Go Barroso!

On the 50th anniversary of the EU, I should admit I am not a big fan of Eurocrats. But Barroso is a star. Kind of.

As pointed out at the EU Referendum blog, it’s a weird world when EU bonkers-crats like the President of the European Commission (or something), Jose Barroso, starts saying something sensible.

But it’s happened.

Look what he has to say about the UK’s New Labour plans to (green) tax cheap airlines, so the (Polish) masses travel less, just as they have got out of the habit of going everywhere by horse and cart.

EU Ref writes:

He …hails cheap air travel as "a great thing for our civilisation" and expresses grave concerns over fashionable plans, floated by [New Labour], for personal carbon rationing and suspects that proposals to restrict CO2 emissions from an individual's activities will lead to intrusive surveillance into private lives.

"I do not see any need to establish these intrusive approaches that may reduce the freedom of our societies," he says. "We have to find the right balance and I believe the right balance is not found if we start giving these kind of personal good or bad behaviour certificates to people."

What next? Brussels decides to end the obscenity of CAP agricultural subsidies?

Nah...I was just dreaming.

Via Baltica: humans versus the environment

Stop Press!!! the beatroot agrees with Polish prime minister...shock!!!...well, there is a first time for everything!!!...

Euro-green protestors get upset about a planned bypass around the Polish town of Augustow.

Greens are campaigning about a planned bypass around the northeastern town which will cut through the wetland area of Rospuda Valley. As usual, Greens turn to the EU for help. Environmental Data Interactive reports:

In December 2006 the European Commission launched legal procedures against the Polish government for consenting to a series of eight road developments along the Via Baltica route which are likely to damage important and protected sites.

The road developments as they are currently proposed run through the Augustow and Knyszyn primeval forests and the Biebrza Marshes National Park.

These areas contain a broad array of threatened wildlife including wolf, lynx and white-tailed eagles.

The road - part of the E67, or Via Baltica - will form a major link from Helsinki to Prague and greatly increase trade in the area.

I was talking to Kasia today, who is from Augustow. She says that most people in the town are for the bypass. Currently around one and a half million trucks rumble through the town every year, causing traffic accidents and casualties, damage and congestion. Ironically, Augustow is known as a health resort – the pollution caused by the traffic is damaging that reputation and the tourism that it attracts.

The EU has many designated protected sites in Poland, mostly in the east of country – an area of economic underdevelopment. Of course, nobody would casually want to damage areas of beauty. But sometimes humans, and economic development, have to come first.

I think this is one of those times. Poland badly needs better road transport, which at the moment is the most under constructed in Europe.

We are getting to the stage where an abstract idea such as to what constitutes what ‘natural’ is is taking precedence over human development. What Poland needs more than anything is economic growth. The Eurocrats in Brusesels, and Green NGOs from all over Europe (mostly city dwellers who have a romantic, yet detached idea of what ‘natural is) are trying to slow down economic progress here.

I think its time they were told that birds and wetlands come second; humans come first.

The EU, God and Poland...

...here we go again.

As Richard at EU Referendum notes, Angela Merkel is not just putting the blessed EU Constitution back on the agenda (big, wide-mouthed yawn!) but she is putting GOD back on the negotiating table., too.

Please….have mercy!

EU Referendum blog says Merkel regrets the big ‘C’ was not specifically identified in the original EU Constitution document as, "...[I] would have liked to have seen a clearer declaration on the Christian roots (of Europe) … No one doubts that they significantly shape our life, our society."

Richard then goes on to speculate that this is, “…primarily a [German?] ploy to exclude Turkey from the EU, or make it feel unwelcome – in the hope that this Muslim country would be dissuaded from joining.”

Well, maybe – although Merkel is chairwoman of the German Christian Democrat Union…

But putting God back in the ‘Constitution’ (Zzzzzz) is that rare thing: an issue that unites Warsaw and Berlin.

The Kaczynski brothers would gladly throw off that chip on their shoulder about being called a ‘potato’ by a German newspaper if they could join hands with Merkel over getting Christianity into the resurrected EU (yawn!) Constitution.

The previous (yawn, Zzzzz, snore!) constitution mentioned Europe’s ‘religious and humanist’ traditions.

Personally, I don’t see why we have to have any mention of this kind of thing at all. Basically, the treaty is going to be about how to manage an EU with 27 members in it. It should not be about forcing a collective value system on what it means to be ‘European’.

Richard at the EU Referendum blog concludes on the whole sorry non-debate:

Politics and religion, of course, is a dangerous mix but, when an idea is floated in the European Union, it does seen that you simply cannot say no. Like a recalcitrant child refusing to eat its breakfast being re-presented with the same meal again and again, the people of Europe, it seems, are to have God thrust into their lives – and a Christian God at that - whether they like it or not.

Amen.

Saddam dangles, EU divides

Poland supports hanging Hussein.

President Lech Kaczynski has said that the death penalty for the ex-Iraqi dictator was the ‘only possible outcome’ once he was found guilty in court of ‘crimes against humanity’.

But the killing of Hussein is being used by nations and organizations like the EU to underline their attitude to the death penalty. Even in death Saddam has managed to divide the ‘international community’.

Some of the new members such as Poland have welcomed the execution. The Czech Republic's Prime Minister, Mirek Topolanek, welcomed the hanging, describing it as "an act of justice", whereas the British government has said, “We advocate an end to the death penalty worldwide, regardless of the individual or the crime. We have made our position very clear to the Iraqi authorities, but we respect their decision as that of a sovereign nation."

Opposition to the execution has also come from within the EU in Denmark, France, Portugal, Spain and Germany.

Lech Kacynski has annoyed the EU with calls for a reinstatement of the death penalty in Poland – although one of the conditions of membership is that countries drop execution as a form of punishment.

But Kaczynski does seem to be in line with the people of the EU, in this case at least.

In a survey of 12,570 people in six countries by the new French international broadcaster France 24 and Novartis/Harris Interactive, most participants favored the death sentence for Saddam. With the exception of Italians, participants from Britain, France, Germany and Spain supported the execution.

I have no sympathy at all for the old shitbag, but to me the hanging seems like a symbolic form of revenge (as all capital punishment ultimatly is) and will do nothing to stop the violence in Iraq, which has been caused by the invasion and the subsequent and disastrous occupation. Hanging Saddam will do nothing to stop that.

More...
Check out Uruknet.info, a strange pro-Saddam web site

President Kaczynski goes to London

He’s met with Tony Blair and my dear Queen, Lizzie II.

It's part of a three day visit ending Thursday. But how’s the visit going? Well here are two reports.

The first is from Radio Polonia:

The London visit of the Polish head of state has been seen as a very fruitful and friendly one...In fact it is said that Lech Kaczynski did not have such friendly talks with any other officials during his foreign trips as he did with PM Tony Blair. Both politicians underlined they shared common opinions and stand on matters concerning the EU and NATO as well as energy security.

And now look at this report from thisislondon.co.uk. Notice any difference?

‘Thousands of 'feckless' Poles are raking in unemployment benefits back home while doing 'very nicely' out of the British economy, according to the Polish President [!!?].

Lech Kaczynski also said Britain has become the 'destination of choice' for many of his countrymen, who have ended up jobless and homeless here.

He was flanked by Tony Blair as he made the remarks, which had to be translated into English before the Prime Minister realised he had been acutely embarrassed on his own doorstep.

Er...eh? Must be two different visits they are reporting. Or maybe Blair was being friendly when he was being embarrassed?

The full transcript of the press conference at Number 10 shows that Kaczynski was responding to a question from the press about what to do with the number of homeless and jobless Poles in Britain. He was also asked if he enjoyed his English Breakfast:

I did enjoy the English breakfast very much, yes, although it was a bit too hearty for me, a bit copious. The hotel is also exquisite, very well located in a wonderful part of London, close to Buckingham Palace. As regards unemployed Poles and homeless Poles in London and the UK, I believe that there are a number of people, not only from Poland but from other countries from the new European Union who are helpless or feckless naturally, but they seek a better life, they go abroad and currently the UK has become a destination of choice for such individuals. Poland does not shirk responsibility for its own citizens. We are aware that this problem exists, we are aware that there are people who aren't doing very well in life but this is something you find in all society. Poland does not seek to avoid its share of the responsibility. We know that there are those who have succeeded in the UK, who have jobs, who are doing very well thank you considering especially the differences between the wages in the UK and in Poland. But these people are registered as unemployed in Poland, so they are living a fiction and they are raising the unemployment figures in Poland while they are doing very nicely here in the UK and their unemployment benefits should rightly be sent to London. And this is something that we would like to do without, but like I said Poland is not avoiding its share of the burden.

Not so unreasonable. Blair responded:

...the vast majority of Polish people that come and work here are working very hard, they are very well regarded and on the whole as I find, and as I think most people do certainly in a city like London, they are both well respected and well liked.

The first report may have dodged the issue altogether, but the other reports are politically motivated, by the usual suspects in the British press, who are trying to stir it up all they can.

More?
Polish president blasts 'feckless' countrymen who flock to UK, Yorkshire Post
Leader in Poles Rap, Daily Mirror

The Sun really is going for it...

Brits are told to get ready for a tidal wave of Romanian gangsters:

ROMANIAN gangs commit 80 to 85 per cent of all cashpoint crime in Britain, The Sun can reveal.

The staggering figure is contained in a secret Cabinet memo which warns the crooks will be joined by a wave of new recruits after Romania and Bulgaria join the EU in January.

The classified document, seen by The Sun, predicts a devastating rise in street violence, people-trafficking, prostitution, tax dodges and cash card fraud.

Gasp! The government memo, apparently written by EU minister Geoff Hoon warns that Romanian and Bulgarian women will be trafficked into the country. Aggressive beggars will threaten money out of the British in the streets. They will steal your mobile, pick your pocket, will smuggle cigarettes and contraband in to the country.

I have no idea how the British government thinks it knows all this. It’s seems incredible. Literally. But Sun readers don’t care: they see an Eastern European apocalypse coming round the corner. In the comments section at the Sun’s web page MarcCoden says:

‘Why have we lost our National identity? Why are we the Country that these people will choose to come to? We are a joke under this Government? Blair is to blame for this and his ridiculous policies.’

Don’t think so, Marc. Actually, more Poles have gone to live and work in Germany than they have to the UK (the figure in the link should read 250,000 by the way). But I am not hearing the same level of screaming about this issue there, even though Poles do not have full rights to work in Germany! And Romanians will probably be joining the 500,000 Romanians already in Italy.

Still, whatever – Eastern Europeans are now well and truly a political issue in Britain. Shame. Immigration is an issue again. And I thought Britain had got rid of this kind of crap years ago.

Now let's watch the left spring into action to defend Eastern Europeans. They have not done much up until now. The silence on the lefty blogs has been deafening.

Waiting...

More?
Eastern Europeans: the new 'white niggers', Spiked, November 3

Fear of the Polish Plumber, part 333

Has the Head of Britain’s Commission for Racial Equality got an Eastern European problem?

Here are words of deep wisdom from Trevor Phillips of the CRE, on the BBC this week. He said that the new wave of Poles etc to Britain are, “frankly with attitudes towards black people which date back to the 1950s. That is unacceptable.”

The remarks come the same week as the UK announced that it will not be accepting workers from Romania and Bulgaria when they join the EU next year.

Poles, of course, don’t have the same experience of having a significant number of immigrants come to Poland from their recently collapsed empire (coincidentally, in the photo above, Trevor Phillips is holding up his semi-prestigious OBE – Order of the British Empire, awarded to him by the Queen. I bet he'is now a proud member of the New Labour Establishment). Some may be a bit naive but Poles aren’t a threat to the national way of life in the UK, as that idiot Phillips seems to suggest.

What is shocking is that nobody has complained about his remarks. It seems that it’s true: PC speech code means that the only types of people you can say negative things about these days are central and eastern Europeans and the white working classes.

Nobody has complained apart, that is, from Mick Hume in the Times, who, after comparing the Head of the Commission for Racial Equality unfavorably to Borat writes:

Phillips’s veiled warning that Eastern Europeans could cause a “conflict of diversity” reveals what today’s elite think of the white working classes — as an ignorant ethnic pogrom waiting to happen.

Like Borat’s joke, the furore over Eastern Europeans is really about us rather than them. The way we look at immigrants reflects how we see ourselves. In a more self-confident moment, the British authorities would not be worrying about whether a few thousand hard-working Bulgars might tear apart the fabric of society.

Polish plumber revisited

An article I wrote turns up in some weird and wonderful places.

The term the 'Polish plumber' was first used by French politician Philippe de Villiers (although this is disputed - see comment) to explain the fear that French voters felt about an expanded EU during the time of the referenda in May. I wrote an article about it called Polish plumber puts a spanner in the works.

Since then it has turned up in all sorts of places, such as freerepublic.com etc, UK Ratifiers for Democracy and even a blog with the title fuckfrance.com!

So it is with delight then that I learn that a political article such as that one about the EU has turned up in...Daily Plumbling News - a blog for plumbers!!!

Polish plumber puts a spanner in the works

A new spectre is haunting Europe. He’s called the Polish plumber. He’s not necessarily Polish, and he isn’t even necessarily a plumber. But, if some commentators are to be believed, he has been endowed with almost supernatural powers.

If you thought that a plumber was just someone who, at enormous cost, comes to your home and bleeds your radiator and fiddles with your ball-cock, then think again. The Polish plumber will fix your tap, for sure, but then he charges you less than the normal price!

“What’s his phone number”, I hear you cry. But that’s not all the Polish plumber can do. He can also affect the result of referendums on the EU constitutional treaty. He can persuade French people in particular to throw a bucket cold water over the EU political elite. He can make voters say “non” when the Eurocrats want them to say “Oui”.

A remarkable chap is the Polish plumber. But he is not actually a person at all. He is more a symbol of a European Union that has, for some, got out of control.

The Polish plumber is what many in the suddenly eurosceptic French media call the influx of goods, services and labour that have entered western Europe from the east since the expansion of the EU last May.

With 10% unemployment and almost zero percent growth the Polish plumber has come to be a figure to be feared in France. He is working harder, for longer and cheaper than many of his western European counterparts.

When the French voted ‘no’ on Sunday few were directly reacting to something that is in the 250 pages or so of legalistic and technical language that makes up the proposed – and now terminally ill – EU constitution. What the French were saying no to was not the constitution itself. They were saying no to what they are calling the ‘anglo-saxon model’ of what the EU has become.

And that’s a model that Poland has been moving towards – albeit slowly and painfully at times – ever since the fall of communism sixteen years ago.

The model that the Polish economy is working towards is the one they have in Britain. During the general election there a few weeks ago the New Labour government loved to trumpet the talents of their finance minister, Gordon Brown, as the reason for the UK’s uninterrupted and healthy level of economic growth and low level of unemployment.

But the real reason why the British economy is out performing the German and French is that these are structurally different economies, and have been since the reforms forced through by the Margaret Thatcher governments of the 1980’s.

Britain, unlike France, has comparatively low levels of tax; it has a comparatively flexible and mobile work force; it has comparatively high levels of home ownership. It also helps that the UK, many argue, has not adopted the Euro as its currency.

But the French do not like this model. They wave a derisive baguette in the direction of the UK and point to the fact that British employees work longer hours than anyone in Europe. They snigger at Britain’s second class and under invested public services. The French like their 35-hour week and they like their joy de vivre and that’s the way they want to keep things. They do not want the anglo-saxon model that most in the ex-communist countries, including Poland, are trying to adopt.

And they do have something to fear. The change is painful. I have experienced the transformation from a regulated economy to a freer one twice now. Once in the 1980’s in Britain – and it wasn’t pretty – and now again in Poland. And it is still pretty ugly.

You get mass unemployment, a widening gap between rich and poor, rising crime, homelessness, and public services, such as the health system, that are starved of funds and in need of intensive care.

Reforming Poles, on the other hand, point to the fact that the British economy is thriving at the moment and the French and the German economies have all but stagnated. And this leaves them vulnerable to the influx of cheaper labour and services epitomised by the Polish plumber.

It’s no coincidence that the British and the Irish are the only countries to have opened their arms without restrictions to Polish and other workers from the accession nations. Those two countries have the strength of economy to take the new competition from the Polish plumber. The French economy, like much of the Euro-zone, is weak and can’t react flexibly to the new circumstances that EU expansion has brought about.

Hence the no vote on Sunday.

Many Polish politicians here are quite pleased with the French voters. They didn’t want to have a referendum on the constitution anyway. One of things that the treaty is trying to change is the relative voting rights of each country. The way things are at the moment gives Poland more clout than if the constitution was voted through by all 25 members.

But it doesn’t seem now that this will be the case. The EU constitution as written at the moment is like a burst water pipe, with EU politicians desperately trying to stop the water from ruining their best carpet. What will happen in the future is uncertain.

But what is certain is that the Polish plumber has apparently put a spanner well and truly in the works.


Read on:
Polish plumber, Tony Blair and job fears unite to spell ‘Non’ The Herald, UK May 30

Polish plumber symbolic of all French fear about constitution Financial Times, UK May 27
‘Plumber’ image takes both sides in EU constitution debate
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, IN - May 24,

This article originally was published on the Radio Polonia web site