Europe

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

A debt-filled New Year

The Spectator is out today, with a cover story that I would commend to CoffeeHousers. Failure to learn from history usually condemns a nation to repeating its mistakes. That’s why we should be nervous that no one seems to have worked out what caused the crash. Little wonder: the guys doing the analysis are the same guys who failed to spot the crisis building up, so it suits everyone to blame the banks. “How was I to know,” says everyone from Gordon Brown to Joe the Pundit, “that they were doing all these complex debt swap thingies? They deceived everyone, the bounders.” There is another analysis – and it’s our

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

This year’s biggest story

This year was so rich in stories – Expensesgate, the election and historic coalition, the Icelandic volcano, General McChrystal’s dismissal, the Pakistani floods, Haiti’s earthquake, Greece’s near-collapse, the Will n’ Kate engagement, Wikileaks, the Chilean miners and so on – that it is hard to pick just one story. Looking back over the year, however, I think two stories stand out – because they may herald a seismic change.  The first is, of course, the establishment of coalition. By now, the novelty of government by cross-party compromise has worn off. But, despite the gossipy complaints of a few Lib Dem ministers, a new kind of politics is being forged. It may not

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Caught between two great evils

David Brooks, the great New York Times columnist, recommends the best essays of the year every Christmas. His selection this year includes a brilliant essay by Anne Applebaum, of this parish, on Hitler, Stalin and Eastern Europe. It makes you realise quite how bloody the Eastern Front was—‘On any given day in the autumn of 1941, as many Soviet POWs died as did British and American POWs during the entire war’—and think about the effect on these societies of being caught in the middle of these two extremist ideologies. There is always a tendency for us to discuss how the crimes of Hitler and Stalin compare. But I think Applebaum

Friday

Peter Hoskin

The final sting

It’s Christmas Eve, and the Daily Telegraph have wrapped up their sting operation in time for tomorrow. The final victims are the Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne and the children’s minister Sarah Teather. As it happens, Teather gets off without blemishing her copybook: her greatest indiscretion is to claim that Michael Gove is “deeply relieved” to be in coalition, as it means more funding for schools. Browne, though, is a touch more forthright: he says that Tory immigration policy is “harsh” and “uncharitable,” but that Lib Dem involvement will provoke a “more enlightened” outcome. He adds that the Tories’ EU grouping contains parties that “are quite nutty and that’s an

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

Grim parallels with Germany for Nick Clegg?

Germany is one of the few countries that Nick Clegg has been able to look to for tips on how to be a successful Liberal party in coalition with a larger Conservative party. In 2006, Guido Westerwelle even took a delegation of Free Democrats to a Lib Dem frontbench meeting. Coffee House once predicted that, if the AV referendum was won, Clegg could one day become Britain’s Hans-Dietrich Genscher, a permanent powerbroker. The parties are of course different in many ways. The Free Democrats are decidedly more pro-market and pro-business than the Liberal Democrats. They also have a lot more experience of government. Before the last election, the Free Democrats

Saturday

Daniel Korski

Kosovo deserves better

Dick Marty’s report on Kosovo leader Hashim Thaci has rightly caused quite a storm. Accusing the recently re-elected Kosovo prime minister of running a mafia-like state, and even controlling a organ-trafficking ring, has not only led to condemnation but is being used by some as an excuse to re-tell conspiracy theories about what actually happened in the 1990s. First things first. The CoE report’s accusations should be investigated by at least two courts: ICTY in the Hague and the Kosovo courts (the latter with the help of the 1800-strong EU police-and-justice mission). If any of these fail to take up the task, a court in an EU member-state should take

Friday

Daniel Korski

Europe keeps vexing the coalition

That the Conservatives and the Lib Dems disagree fundamentally on Europe is a well-known fact. But how much they disagree is rarely put on display as clearly as in today’s European Voice. Andrew Duff, Liberal Democrat MEP and president of the Union of European Federalists, argues that the coalition’s European Union bill – David Lidington’s masterpiece – amounts to “legal pedantry” and will make the UK an “untrustworthy negotiating partner, particularly in matters of treaty amendment, which is such an important driver of European integration.” ‘At home, referenda will unleash the forces of populist nationalism. Facile coalitions of nay-sayers will form to block Britain’s progress in Europe. Regular referenda on

Mats Persson

What Cameron should push for in Brussels

As David Cameron stays in Brussels for his third European summit as PM, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the EU’s approach to the eurozone crisis – put up short-term cash and pray – isn’t convincing anyone.   On Wednesday, Moody’s threatened to downgrade Spanish government bonds another notch, citing the fact that, between them, the country’s government and banks have to raise €290bn next year to keep the party going. And, across the eurozone, banks and governments face daunting refinancing targets in 2011, which begs the questions: at what cost? And what happens if they fail to meet them?   Taking into account the countries that themselves have received support

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

A “two stone” solution to the Euro crisis will unbalance the coalition

Whatever the British government wants, moves are now afoot on the Continent to address some of the structural problem with the Euro. They may in the end lead to some form of fiscal federalism. So far they are not supported by Angela Merkel, the key decision-maker, who worries constantly about the court in Karlsruhe, which has set clear limits on further European integration. But they are said to be supported, at least in part, by Finance Minister Wolfgang Shauble. Writing in the Financial Times, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Peer Steinbrück argue that the EU needs “a more radical, targeted effort to end the current uncertainty, and provide stronger support for the

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Rome smoulders

I’m visiting a stylish but tense Rome today, just as the Italian legislature has voted down a non-confidence vote in Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s mogul-cum-leader. “Rome is at war” my taxi driver told me and numerous demonstrations are going on. Ill Cavaliere, as Berlusconi is sometimes known, put in a strong defence of his record in the Senate and managed to coax, cajole and, some claim, bribe enough parliamentarians in the Chamber of Deputies to secure a small victory. He pulled not a Full Monty but a “Full Andreotti”, using every trick and tactic in the book (and some scribbled in the margin too). For now, Berlusconi survives and can resume

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Cameron must head for the common ground

All the attention last week was on the Lib Dem split – but what about the division within the Conservatives? This is the greater threat to the coalition, and while there is not likely to be an earthquake soon, one can discern the outlines of the tectonic plates. Ladbrokes has odds of 5-2 of an election next year, and these don’t seem so short when one considers the short life of coalitions in British peacetime history. So where might the tension lie? A while ago, I referred to the bulk of the party as “mainstream Conservatism,” as a more useful phrase than the tautological “Tory right”. Tim Montgomerie last week

Friday

Daniel Korski

Serbia’s Nobel U-turn

Yesterday, I blogged that Serbia’s decision not to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony because of Chinese pressure was a shameful stance for the Balkan would-be EU member to take. Many others felt the same. Now, feeling the international pressure, it seems that Serbia’s government has decided that the country’s Ombudsman, Sasa Jankovic, will attend the event as special representative of Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic. A good outcome, and a sensible decision, which will hopefully be followed by a reprimand to Serbia’s calculating Foreign Minister, Vuk Jeremić, who originally decided that Serbia would not attend the ceremony.

Thursday

Daniel Korski

China’s new BFF: Serbia

China is doing what it can do to scupper the forthcoming Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo. Their Foreign Ministry has now said that countries who decided to attend event would be showing disrespect to China: “We hope those countries that have received the invitation can tell right from wrong,” the ministry’s spokeswoman told journalists. Many of the world’s human-rights abusers have been only too happy to oblige, including Pakistan, Iran and so on. They want to keep friendly with China and share Beijing’s anti-democratic agenda. But, oddly enough, Serbia, a would-be EU member, is said to have chosen to boycott the Norwegian event. Keen to get Chinese financial assistance

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Brit-free EU diplomacy takes shape

After months of behind-the-scenes work, the shape of the European External Action Service – the EU’s diplomatic corps – is now coming into view. The Bruxelles2 blog has obtained a version of its structure with some of the key names penciled in. You can find it here.      The top three jobs in the EU’s diplomatic headquarters will go to a Frenchman, a Pole and a German. The only senior UK official, besides Catherine Ashton (and her personal aides) is long-serving diplomat and geo-strategist Robert Cooper. But his name, rather mysteriously, is followed by a question mark. Of the EU “ambassadors” that have been appointed until now, there is

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Tax cuts: a Swedish recession remedy

I travelled in from frozen Stockholm this morning. My colleague Mary Wakefield set out from County Durham. No prizes for guessing whose journey took more time due to snow. When my £38 norewgian.com flight arrived at Gatwick, the captain said: “Sorry, we’re going to be delayed. They can’t seem to find people to open the gate, they say they are short staffed.” The Swedes on the flight burst out laughing: welcome to Britain. Mary’s £107 train was two hours late arriving to the station, and spent a further two hours stuck in the snow. That the Swedes do better at us in the snow is no great surprise, but it’s

Saturday

Laura Gascoigne

At the heart of Europe

The historic centre of Bruges has 16 museums, enough to cater for every touristic taste. There’s a Diamond Museum, a Lace Centre, a Choco-Story (the narrative element distinguishes it from the 50 chocolate shops) and a Friet Museum — or ‘Belgian Fries Museum’, for English-speakers under the misapprehension that fries are French. But the main focus of the city’s five-yearly festival, now in full swing, is on a local product the French cannot lay claim to: the Flemish painting tradition founded by Jan van Eyck, who died in Bruges in 1441. The historic centre of Bruges has 16 museums, enough to cater for every touristic taste. There’s a Diamond Museum,

Daniel Korski

A more German Europe?

Timothy Garton Ash asked an important question in the Guardian recenty – is Europe becoming more German? Or, to put it more accurately, does the EU have to become more German to survive? “If the eurozone falls apart, it will be because Germany did not do enough to save it. If the eurozone is saved, it will be thanks to Germany. This is the greatest challenge to German statecraft since the country was peacefully united 20 years ago.” “Yet here is another horn of Germany’s dilemma. For half a century, German politicians have repeated, like a mantra, Thomas Mann’s call for “a European Germany, not a German Europe”. It was in

Friday

Daniel Korski

Iberian blues

I’m finishing a two-day trip to Spain and am about to board a plane, just as the bond markets turn their attention to the Iberian Peninsula. As James wrote yesterday, the gap between Spanish 10-year government bonds and those of Germany has widened to as much as 2.59 percentage points – the biggest gap since the introduction of the euro. For its part, the Portuguese government said it was under no pressure from the European Central Bank or other Eurozone member-states to accept financial aid to ease its debt and deficit problems. That sounds like the noise before the defeat. Portugal was brought to a halt yesterday by a strike

Thursday

James Forsyth

Why Spain matters to Britain

So far Ireland and Greece have been bailed out with relative ease. If Portugal required external assistance, Europe could run to that too. But bailing out Spain would be another matter entirely. As The New York Times points out today, the Spanish economy is twice as big as the Irish, Greek and Portuguese ones combined. Spain’s situation is not yet critical. But as the NYT piece sets out very clearly, there are some extremely worrying signs. The gap between Spanish and German gilt yields is now at the biggest point it has been since the introduction of the euro. Spanish banks are also heavily exposed to Portuguese debt. Compounding these

David Blackburn

The strange case of Turkey, Islamic history and V.S. Naipaul

Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul has pulled out of the European Writers’ Parliament in Istanbul, following pressure from Turkish writers who felt ‘uneasy’ about comments he had made about Islam in 2001. Naipaul compared Islam to colonialism, arguing that both had had ‘a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say ‘my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn’t matter.’ Naipaul’s comments concern the factual context of Islam’s expansion between the 7th and 17th centuries, hence the comparison with colonialism. (He continued his diatribe on Indian history by saying: ‘We should face