By David Cronin
BRUSSELS, Sep 27 2010 (IPS)

A casual visit to any of Europe’s major supermarkets could leave a shopper with the impression that there is a boundless supply of fish in the continent’s waters. The true picture is far less rosy. With about 88 percent of the European Union’s fish stocks overexploited, EU vessels are travelling increasingly longer distances before bringing home their catches.

Maria Damanaki Credit: European Commission

Maria Damanaki, the EU’s fisheries commissioner, will next year present proposals for reforming the Union’s four-decades-old common fisheries policy (CFP). She is promising that Europe’s fishermen will be obliged to respect higher standards of environmental protection when operating in the EU’s own seas and that fisheries agreements signed between the EU and Africa will pay greater attention to the needs of the world’s poor.

Q: How should fish be managed: as an economic resource or as an environmental question? A: I was born on an island — Crete. There it was very natural to have fish and eat fish. When I came here (to Brussels) I realised people want to eat more and more fish and the fish is getting less and less, so now my first priority is to be sure that the resources will survive. My first priority is to be sure that my children can also eat fish and not see fish only in pictures in the newspapers.

I have ordered a scientific study by the (European) Commission to have some clear figures about the future. This study says that by 2022 only six of the 136 species for which we have policies will be healthy. So I had to realise that I do not have a choice between the environmental aspect and the financial aspect (of fisheries). If we do not change the policy, we will have no fish and we will have no fishermen.

Q: Are your efforts to reform fisheries policy likely to be thwarted by EU governments? A: We have to decide together. If they (the governments) see these figures, they have to realise they do not have any other options. I’m not sure it will be a successful exercise but at least we have to try. It would be very easy to do nothing.

Q: Bluefin tuna is known to be at particular risk and the surrounding issues will be discussed shortly by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). What will you be asking ICCAT to do? A: We have to decide what to do. Are we going to have a new quota at ICCAT or are we going to have an international ban (on bluefin tuna fishing)? We will see. It depends on the scientific advice (to be given to the European Commission in October).

One thing is sure: we will do the best we can. With bluefin tuna, we are not sure if we will still have it after two or three years. Maybe five years.

Q: The EU’s fisheries agreement with Morocco will expire next year. Controversially, this accord gives European vessels the opportunity to fish off western Sahara — occupied by Morocco since 1975 — on the condition that their operations bring tangible benefits to the indigenous Sahrawi people. Have you any evidence that the Sahrawis have actually derived any benefit from the agreement? A: When I came here, I inherited these fisheries partnership agreements. And I’m afraid to say that the framework (under which the agreements were signed) permitted us to sign this agreement without having a human rights clause. With the CFP reform, we will have humanitarian and human rights clauses inside the agreements.

With the Morocco agreement, there is a clause about giving added value to the local people. So I have gone to the Moroccan government and said: “This is what we have signed; inform me what is the added-value given to them.” They (the Moroccans) did answer but I have to say they are not very willing to cooperate on this issue.

We have to decide now in the two months ahead of us what we are going to do. If we are not going to renew the protocol, that means that our vessels cannot fish any more. What I can say is that I am not persuaded about the added value for the local people. And I will not be until the Moroccan government gives me data about this.

Q: You will also have to decide about whether several fisheries agreements with other African states should be renewed in the coming years. Some environmental and anti-poverty campaigners argue that these agreements are about ensuring profits for a relatively small number of European fishermen than about helping Africa. Do you agree? A: What I have decided is that I am not going to sign new agreements until I have this new framework that I have told you about. Until then I am going to respect the agreements signed by my predecessor (Joe Borg) with Mauritania and other countries. But I am going to see if the beneficiaries of these agreements are local people.

What I have to do is try to be sure that the money we give goes to the local people. In this new framework, the fishing industry is going to have to pay for access (to African waters) and the European Commission is going to pay for the benefits of the local people. We are not going to pay any more for the access. Industry has to pay for their own burdens.

Q: You are perhaps the most left-wing member of the European Commission. Are you concerned that the largely right-leaning governments in the EU are using the economic crisis in your native Greece and other countries as a pretext for pushing through a regressive ideologically driven programme of cutbacks to social protection programmes? A: Greece has such a great debt, that we cannot say that cuts even in pensions are against the social security system. We have to be sure that our economy will survive this turmoil.

Austerity measures have to be combined with measures for growth and employment and the competitiveness of the European economy. This is the way out. I cannot see any other way. I am trying to find other recipes. But there are none. We cannot ignore the debt, even if we are left or right.

Excerpt:

Strategists with NATO are eager to maintain the strong bonds they have developed with Israel in recent times, even though its forces last week attacked a ship flagged in Turkey, a steadfast member of the alliance.

Ever since its inception in 1949, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) has legally been dedicated to the principle of mutual defence. According to this principle, an attack on any one country in the alliance is considered an attack on all of its member states.

Analysts readily concur that Israel posed a fundamental challenge to NATO by storming the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish vessel participating in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, killing nine peace activists. But while Turkey’s government responded swiftly to the assault by convening an emergency meeting in NATO’s Brussels headquarters, realpolitik has prevented Ankara from demanding a robust response from its allies.

NATO sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, say there are no discussions foreseen about whether it should review the basis of the cooperation arrangements made between it and Israel over the past few years.

In 2008, Israel’s then foreign minister Tzipi Livni secured an upgrade in the country’s relations with NATO. As part of an “individual cooperation programme”, Israel was given a higher level of access to the computer networks run by the alliance, as well as a greater role in sharing intelligence. It was formally accepted, too, that Israel should take part in some of NATO’s military missions.

Before last week’s attacks, NATO planners had been examining how Israel can be more involved in Operation Active Endeavour, under which ships in the Mediterranean are monitored to detect if they are carrying illegal weapons. One NATO source said that a “lot has been invested” in the past decade in building up closer links with Israel. Among the manifestations of such links were a 2007 exercise, in which six warships – hailing from Germany, Greece, Spain, Turkey and Italy – docked in the Red Sea port of Eilat for joint drills with the Israeli military.

Although top-level Turkish politicians have intimated that the damage caused to their bilateral ties with Israel by the flotilla massacre could be irreparable, a Turkish diplomat said “there is a chance” that Israel’s ties with NATO will remain sturdy.

“NATO finds Israel useful,” Jeff Halper from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, a human rights organisation, told IPS. “Israel has a tremendous role in patrolling the whole Mediterranean and in gathering intelligence.”

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s secretary-general, said Jun. 7 that he would be opposed to any reduction of contact between the alliance and Israel. According to Rasmussen, dialogue with Israel is necessary to help ensure peace in the Middle East. “We owe it to the Palestinian people and we owe it to all the people in the Middle East to facilitate the peace process,” he said.

He did not mention that Israel has become an important supplier of the high- tech weaponry – principally pilotless drones – use by the alliance in the war it is fighting in Afghanistan.

Rasmussen also spoke of his ambitions to develop a new missile defence system that, he claimed, would bring greater protection to the 900 million people living in the countries that comprise the alliance. His statement followed the publication of a strategic document by NATO last month, which indicated that Iran’s nuclear programme could present NATO with a major security threat within the coming 10 years. Also last month, senior NATO official Alan Berry confirmed that the alliance had been examining how missile interceptors already developed in Israel could be incorporated into a NATO defence system.

In yet another development during May, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the allocation of 205 million dollars in finance for Israel’s Iron Dome project. Designed by the Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, the project is said to intercept short-range rockets.

John Jennings, a researcher on how Israel’s occupation of Palestine breaches international law, said there is a “parallel mentality” behind the deepening relationship with Israel and NATO, on one hand, and Israel and the European Union on the other. These moves are “going to be to the detriment of the Palestinians,” he added.

Despite identifying Iran’s uranium enrichment efforts as a threat, NATO has been silent about Israel’s own nuclear programme, with which it is widely believed to have developed up to 300 nuclear bombs. The programme has been developed in secret but a new book by the journalist Sasha Polakow- Suransky ‘The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with South Africa’ gives details of documents which appear to prove the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons.

Jennings argued that NATO is “singing Israeli tunes” by issuing stern warnings against Iran. “Israel chose who the next enemy is,” he said. “Then the U.S. cottoned on to this, then the EU. Everything about this policy against Iran originally came from Israel. This obsession with Israel has gone too far.”

Within three days of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Monday, the pro-Israel lobby in Brussels was already seeking to deflect attention from the killing of nine peace activists in international waters.

The European Friends of Israel, a grouping of parliamentarians, issued a statement Jun 3, which made no reference to the assault earlier in the week. Instead it highlighted the findings of a survey published by the Institute for Management Development in Switzerland, which named Israel as the economy most resilient to variations in the global economy and as a top spender on scientific research and innovation.

These findings might help explain why the collective response of the European Union’s 27 member states to the attacks has been weak. For despite growing revulsion at Israel’s occupation of Palestine among ordinary people throughout the world, the EU has been so impressed with the robust performance of the Israeli economy that it has integrated it into many of its activities in recent years.

While some individual EU governments made plain their displeasure with the attacks by summoning Israeli ambassadors to an urgent meeting, the Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton merely described the attacks as a “tragedy”, a term usually reserved for accidents. Initially Ashton called on Israel to conduct its own investigations. When she released a subsequent statement – during a visit to Russia – urging a “full and impartial enquiry of the events and circumstances”, she did not specify if this should be undertaken by Israel or by a United Nations-appointed team.

Over the past decade Israel has been integrated into several EU programmes, ranging from satellite navigation to business promotion. The European Commission, the EU’s executive, administers many of these programmes. Yet José Manuel Barroso, the Commission’s president, would not comment when asked if he would be seeking a review of Israeli participation in the EU’s activities. “I fully agree with the position taken by the EU High Representative Cathy Ashton,” he told IPS, declining to elaborate.

Barroso is one of several top-level politicians in Brussels to have cultivated strong links with the pro-Israel lobby. Last year, he was guest of honour at the opening of a new EU affairs office for the European Jewish Congress (EJC), where he praised the organisation for “being fully committed to the resumption of the peace process” in the Middle East.

The EJC has subsequently mounted an intense campaign designed to convince the European Parliament not to approve motions critical of Israel’s conduct in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The EJC responded to Monday’s massacre perpetrated by Israeli troops on board the Turkish-owned vessel the Mavi Marvara by calling on the EU to officially declare one of the key groups in the Free Gaza campaign as a terrorist organisation. Moshe Kantor, the EJC’s president, accused the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (known by the acronym IHH) as having links to al Qaeda. The Israeli government has made similar claims recently, but these have been fiercely contested by international peace activists and supporters of the Palestinian solidarity movement, who insist the allegations are baseless.

Scientific research has been among the largest areas of cooperation between the EU and Israel. The EU has become a major provider of research grants to Israeli firms and research institutes over the past decade, thanks to Israel’s status as the main foreign partner for the EU’s multi-annual research programme, which has been allocated 53 billion euros (64 billion dollars) for the 2007-13 period. Companies such as Motorola Israel, Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries are taking part in the programme’s activities.

Although these companies have manufactured weapons and components used in attacks on Palestinian civilians, Israel’s war against Lebanon in 2006 and by the US-led alliance in Afghanistan, Janez Potocnik, the EU’s research commissioner between 2004 and 2009, expressed no regrets about the firms’ involvement in a programme financed by the European taxpayer. “What we have tried to provide is something that is of benefit of European partners,” he told IPS. “We are talking about research itself and nothing more than research.”

The EU, meanwhile, would not support a motion brought before the United Nations Human Rights Council Jun 3 condemning Israel’s attacks. Most European states on the council abstained from the vote, with Italy and the Netherlands siding with the US in voting against the resolution, which was carried by 32 votes to 3. The resolution demanded that Israel lift the blockade of Gaza and that it immediately allow food, medicine and other essential supplies to be delivered there.

Maysa Zorob, Brussels representative with the Palestinian human rights group Al Haq, said she was a “bit sick” of how the EU has been willing to call for Israel to conduct its own investigations into human rights abuses by its armed forces. “This whole ‘let’s ask for investigations’ approach is getting us nowhere,” she added. “Nothing concrete is being done by the EU or anyone else.”

By David Cronin
BRUSSELS, May 3 2010 (IPS)

The intimate relationship between Europe’s top policy-makers and major corporations has been underscored once more in recent days. Barely six months after they ceased being members of the European Commission, Germany’s Günter Verheugen and Ireland’s Charlie McCreevy have been handed lucrative posts with the Royal Bank of Scotland and the no-frills airline Ryanair.

Olivier Hoedeman Credit: Olivier Hoedeman

‘Bursting the Brussels Bubble’, a newly-published book, draws attention to how a pin-striped army of lobbyists are shaping the European Union’s economic, social and environmental laws. One of its authors – Olivier Hoedeman, research coordinator with Corporate Europe Observatory – has been campaigning for 15 years to ensure that this increasingly powerful army is subject to the rules of engagement.

Q: Why does your book describe Brussels as a paradise for corporate lobbyists? A: There are a lot of lobbyists in Brussels. Nobody knows how many but you can safely say that it is the world’s second capital in terms of lobbying and has become a real hotspot. So after Washington DC, Brussels is the place where you find the heaviest concentration of lobbyists.

That is because there really is something to gain for lobbyists. Lobbying has become a rather central part of EU decision-making.

Another reason why it’s a paradise is that lobbying is seriously under-regulated on the EU level. Five years ago the European Transparency Initiative was launched; the first time that the European Commission acknowledged that there was a problem around lobbying. Now, five years later, the progress has really been minimal.

Q: Are corporate lobbyists a threat to democracy? A: It’s safe to say that it cannot continue like this: a growing stranglehold by commercial lobbyists on the decision-making process, where they in virtually all cases have a foot on the brake. That’s deeply undemocratic and it will alienate Europeans even more than is the case today.

Q: The centre-piece of the European Transparency Initiative was the introduction of a register for lobbyists. Has it made lobbyists more accountable? A: The European Transparency Initiative promised to create a visibility about who is lobbying on whose behalf, on which issues and with what budgets. That’s really what is needed to give citizens, parliamentarians and the media the real picture of who is influencing EU decision-making. If you look at what the transparency initiative has achieved, it’s very far from achieving that level of visibility.

At the moment it’s still a voluntary register. It only captures a minority of those who should be in the register. There’s a very widespread boycott of the register. There are no sanctions for those who opt to stay out. And for those who are in, the information that they are obliged to disclose is very limited.

Although consultancies in principle have to list all their clients, they do not have to disclose what they are doing for these clients. And the financial reporting in the register is so limited, there are so many loopholes, you actually cannot see whether being a consultancy for a large company is a minor job or a major lobbying campaign. This really creates a false impression that there is transparency around lobbying.

Q: Neelie Kroes, one of the European commissioners, has argued that it is essential for her to have first-hand knowledge of how companies operate. When she was in charge of competition policy, she likened herself to a referee in a football match and claimed it is necessary to understand the rules of the game. A: It’s true that they need to understand the sector that they are regulating. But it’s very wrong to allow a situation where that sector can have undue influence on decisions. So the Commission needs to move to a different model of consulting with industry and with others, much more formalised. A model that does not allow those with money and opportunities privileged access to gain advantages.

The “revolving door” problem is part of this. If you as a company are able to nurture relations with a commissioner and then the moment this person leaves the Commission, he or she moves into a job with your company, it really raises question marks about what the relation was like before and when the agreement about future employment was made. At the moment, the Commission seems to simply rubber-stamp all applications or notifications for commissioners and high-level officials who want to go into the private sector, including into direct lobbying jobs. There is no cooling-off period whatsoever. Really, the credibility of the Commission is at stake here.

Q: The influence of corporations on European trade policy is especially pronounced. How do you respond to the case made by David O’Sullivan, a leading EU trade official, that it his job to help European companies find business abroad? A: It is based on very flawed ideological assumptions: that trade policy should primarily serve the expansion of EU-based corporations across the world and that other concerns are far less important. DG Trade (the Commission’s trade division) has a very explicit ideological justification for giving big business privileged access. Big business is seen inherently as a force of good, as the ones who are bringing economic development.

This will have to change. There will have to be a stronger challenge against this very simplistic and, I would say, dangerous ideology-based approach before we really tackle the excessive influence of big business.

Q: Has José-Manuel Barroso, the Commission’s president, fallen under the spell of big business? A: One of the flagship policies of the European Commission in the last term (2004-09) was the Lisbon Agenda (a programme aimed at transforming the EU into the world’s economic powerhouse). Although it originally contained different priorities, it became – under Barroso – an attempt to make international competitiveness and economic growth the overarching priority for all policy areas.

When Corporate Europe Observatory complained to the European Commission that its advisory group on the use of research funding for biofuels was almost exclusively composed of representatives of industries who themselves had a commercial interest in biofuels, the response was that this was exactly the way it is supposed to be because the Lisbon Agenda defines international competitiveness as the overarching priority.

Q: Your book highlights how companies routinely succeed in altering legislative proposals by alleging that jobs would otherwise be lost. How can you counter this argument? A: The way to counter it is to look at whether those job claims are true. In some cases, they might be true in the short term. But by trying to block a transformation of the economy, for example, towards a greener model of production, you may save jobs in the short term but you are definitely losing them in the medium and long term.

There are so many examples of companies or sectors claiming that a policy is unacceptable because it would force them to close down – sometimes they even mention specific plants. And then it emerges that the company – even if they have won that particular lobbying battle – are still leaving because they have a medium-term strategy of relocating to countries where they can produce slightly cheaper.

One very illuminating example was in the second half of the 1990s, British American Tobacco was campaigning against restrictions on smoking and on advertising for smoking. And they used a job argument, also pointing to a specific plant in the UK that they would have to close down if this would go ahead. Soon after it was revealed that BAT used these specific plants but long before had decided to close them down and move them to Eastern Europe. It was simply an argument of convenience.

The Commission has gone along very far in appeasing the corporate sector. They have introduced, for example, this elaborate circus of business impact assessment, which all new policy initiatives have to go through. Already at that early stage, businesses put forward assessments of job consequences that really are not checked for their accuracy. You cannot rely on these data; they are used as a political tool – for lobbying, basically.

Q: One of the largest ever mobilisations of corporate power seen here was during the debate over REACH, a law on registering chemicals. Since that directive came into effect in 2007, EU officials have not proposed that a single hazardous chemical should be phased out. Is this the kind of consequence we should expect when vested interests manage to twist the arms of legislators? A: The lesson from the REACH battle was that there was a massive lobbying offensive to generally water down the proposal and the scope: the amount of substances that would be covered. And then in the last phase, when most maybe thought that the main battle was over, there was a successful attempt to complicate the actual procedures. That shows indeed how obstructive the results of industry lobbying can be.

Since then there have been a number of other lobbying battles. What seems to be the biggest lobbying battle at one point is then overtaken by the next one. At the moment, the lobbying that goes on around the proposals to re-regulate financial markets is also of an unprecedented scale. Here you see – even more than in the case of REACH – the very serious imbalance between the ability of industry to mobilise both in numbers and in spending power to influence in this case the European parliamentarians and the weakness of civil society and trade unions on the European level.

There are 13 pieces of legislation going through now, all very complex but all crucially important: ranging from capital requirements for banks to the role of hedge funds and private equity investors.

With REACH, you had these figures of the numbers of amendments that were proposed to the legislation, which is an indicator of the size of the lobbying battle. With REACH, it was around 1,500 amendments. And it was observed at the time that a lot of those amendments were written by industry lobbyists (though formally put forward by MEPs, members of the European Parliament).

With some of these battles, the share of amendments written by industry is actually higher than the share of amendments written by parliamentarians. With the hedge fund directive, the latest figure I heard is that 900 out of 1,600 amendments that were voted on in the economic affairs committee (in the European Parliament) were written by the hedge fund lobby. The figures are really mind-blowing; those that the regulation are supposed to regulate are writing the regulation with the help of some MEPs, who really are too close to industry. And you can really wonder if this is a healthy situation.

Q: In the 1990s, you documented how the blueprint for the euro currency was written by only a handful of corporations. Is the crisis in Greece an example of what occurs when big business calls the shots? A: It’s an example of what happens when you give corporations far too big a role on the political drawing board. Corporations are not able to see the whole picture, to develop proposals for the economy or for society that are in the public interest.

For a very long time, corporations were given that role. There was almost a fetishism around the role of the CEO (chief executive officer) of large companies. They were treated as a kind of superhero in the 1990s. That was the phase in which the European Round Table of Industrialists developed this very strong agenda-setting role. Of course, today after all the various scandals there have been around CEOs of large companies and the financial crisis itself, there are the beginnings of a more realistic assessment. But still this tradition of giving large corporations a strong and direct political role has developed very strong roots in the way the European Commission does things. It’s really something that has to be thoroughly reassessed.

Excerpt:

One topic regularly addressed by the public relations industry is how to turn a crisis into an opportunity. Dominique Straus–Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, might offer a case study on rising to this challenge.

Under his leadership, the Washington–based institution has skilfully exploited Europe’s economic woes in order to give it a greater role in this continent’s affairs than it has enjoyed for several decades. By proving he is on top of his brief, Straus-Kahn, a Socialist, is now widely tipped as the most likely victor of a 2012 presidential election in his native France.

Although this speculation could turn out too premature, it is nonetheless rich with irony: many pundits believe that Nicolas Sarkozy, the current French president, proposed Straus-Kahn for the IMF job in 2007 in order to remove his biggest rival from the domestic political scene.

This week an IMF team is scheduled to arrive in Athens for discussions on the precise details of the financial package it has agreed to provide for the ailing Greek economy (the team has had to revise its travel plans because most flights to and from European airports have been cancelled following the volcanic eruption in Iceland). The talks will follow a deal reached earlier this month, whereby countries belonging to the single currency euro-zone would release 30 billion euros (41 billion dollars) in the first year of a multi-annual plan for Greece and the IMF would give a further 10-15 billion euros in loans.

Will Hutton, a British economist who heads the Work Foundation think-tank, says that Greece’s economic perils had been a “happy coincidence” for Straus-Kahn. The Fund’s willingness to provide finance had been pivotal in convincing German Chancellor Angela Merkel that her government should contribute to the bail-out plan for Greece, despite the large-scale public opposition to it in Germany, according to Hutton.

“Straus-Kahn has broadly enabled a European solution,” Hutton told IPS. “He opened the way from Merkel to go from ‘nein’ to ‘ja’.”

The IMF’s support for Greece will almost certainly not be pain-free, judging by agreements it has struck elsewhere in Europe.

Such arrangements have generally been flanked by austerity measures that have meant increased hardship for huge numbers of ordinary people. In December last, Latvia approved a 40 percent reduction in public sector wages in order to secure a 7.5 billion euros package from the EU, World Bank and IMF. A few months earlier, the same three groupings suspended a bailout plan for Romania after the Bucharest government collapsed because it failed to win parliamentary backing for spending cuts. More recently, a new Romanian government has pledged to scrap 100,000 public sector jobs and raise the retirement age in order to placate the IMF.

Similarly, the IMF has demanded that Serbia keep its public sector wage and pension bill frozen this year to qualify for a 3 billion euros loan. And the Fund has withheld some of the funds earmarked for Ukraine to pressure the former Soviet country into reducing public expenditure.

Earlier this month, a senior economist in the Czech Republic alleged that the IMF had deliberately exaggerated the risks faced by Western banks doing business with Eastern Europe. Mojmir Hampl, deputy governor of the central bank in Prague, said that the IMF had ignored how the loans of international banks’ subsidiaries were frequently covered by local deposits.

“Before this crisis, (the IMF had) virtually no clients,” Hampl told Austrian newspaper Der Standard. “With this crisis and the new leadership under Dominique Straus-Kahn, the Fund found a new job and got more funds.”

Peter Chowla from the Bretton Woods Project, an anti-poverty group in London, said that Hampl’s comments should be treated with circumspection.

“The Czech central banker has a very interesting perspective but I would hesitate to think that they (the IMF) are that Machiavellian,” Chowla said. “Everybody I ever met from the Fund had good intentions. But the crisis has shown that their ideology is incorrect. You have to wonder why they stick to that failed ideology.”

Critics of the IMF acknowledge that there is much debate internally among the IMF’s staff about whether it should alter the rigid “free market” thinking that has pervaded the Fund, at least since the 1980s, when many of its most influential figures were acolytes of the right-wing economist Milton Friedman.

Olivier Blanchard, the IMF’s chief economist, issued a paper in February which queried if the institution had been right to advocate that all central banks should strive to keep inflation rates below 2 percent. And another document under discussion in the Fund argues that the IMF’s policies on capital controls should be re-evaluated. During the 1990s the IMF was blamed for fuelling a crisis in Asia after it put pressure on several countries in that continent to remove restrictions on inflows of capital.

But the Fund continues to face allegations of hypocrisy. While it has approved fiscal stimulus measures – including massive injections of public cash into the economy – designed to help the U.S. cope with recession, it has prescribed austerity measures for many countries with lower incomes. A study by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research in Washington examined the 41 countries receiving financial support from the IMF in 2009; in 31 of those cases the Fund had demanded a tightening of spending or monetary policies during a downturn in their economies.

“The Fund appears to be rethinking some of its ideologically driven mistakes,” Mark Weisbrot, the CEPR director, wrote recently in The Guardian. “But the problem is that it is still run by special interests. First, it is controlled by the finance ministries of the high-income countries, principally the U.S. Treasury department. The borrowing countries have practically no say in decision- making; the 2006 changes in voting shares lowered the rich countries’ majority from 52.7 percent to 52.3 percent and proposed changes will take it to 50.9 percent. No significant change there since 1944.”

The world’s poor appear to have become pawns in a political battle over the European Union’s (EU) new diplomatic corps.

Catherine Ashton, foreign policy chief for the 27-country bloc, is urging that responsibility for development aid should fall within the scope of the European External Action Service (EEAS) that she is in the process of establishing.

In recent statements, Ashton has argued that if the EU is to have a successful development policy, it must be compatible with its broader strategies on issues such as security.

Yet many observers of European politics suspect that the British baroness is more concerned with seizing control of a sizeable budget than in ensuring that development aid brings tangible benefits to the poor. At 15 billion dollars per year, development aid represents one of the top five areas of spending administered by the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission.

Plans for how the service should operate have been drafted in secretive meetings between some of the most powerful behind-the-scenes men and women in Brussels. They include Robert Cooper, a British diplomat whose 2004 book The Breaking of Nations advocates that a new form of imperialism should be devised for the twenty-first century, veteran French official Pierre de Boissieu and Ireland’s Catherine Day, the Commission’s secretary-general.

According to anti-poverty campaigners, there has been no substantial consultation with outside analysts. Some campaigners allege, too, that Ashton’s proposals constitute an effort to give her greater powers than those provided for the foreign policy chief in the EU’s core rulebooks. The Lisbon treaty, which came into effect last year and created the post awarded to Ashton, says nothing about giving the foreign policy chief responsibility for development aid, the campaigners say.

Although the EU has a separate commissioner for development policy – now Latvia’s Andris Piebalgs – fears are being expressed that he will be something of a vassal to Ashton and her advisers. This could have profound implications for the effectiveness of development aid.

Under its treaties, the Union is legally obliged to ensure that such aid contributes to the reduction and ultimately the eradication of poverty. Yet the top figures mapping out the structure of the new diplomatic service generally lack expertise on poverty-related issues; instead, they have spent most of their careers working on more hard-headed economic and military strategies. Cooper, for example, has written numerous pamphlets for think-tanks close to the political and defence establishment in Washington.

Simon Stocker, director of the anti-poverty organisation Eurostep, noted that the principal objective of the new diplomatic service is “safeguarding the interests of European citizens.”

“Where does the eradication of poverty fit into that?” he told IPS. “Ultimately if you mix development – which after all is about promoting the interests of people in developing countries – with political objectives designed to safeguard the interests of European citizens, then you basically undermine both policies. The end result is that instead of the European Union having a stronger voice in the world, it will have the opposite. It will lose the ability to work potentially as a partner with the developing world.”

Tensions have surfaced between the EU’s main political bodies on several development aid dossiers since the Union decided to pay greater attention to security issues following the Sep. 11, 2001 atrocities in the U.S. In 2005, the European Parliament decided to initiate court proceedings against a five million euro (6.7 million dollar) aid scheme designed to help the Philippines participate in the “war on terror” declared by former U.S. president George W. Bush. Members of the parliament (MEPs) argued that there was no legal justification for using development aid for projects with a security dimension.

MEPs are now seeking assurances from Ashton that the fight against poverty will not be subservient to narrower strategic or economic considerations. Hannes Swoboda, a long-standing MEP from Austria, said that “clarification is necessary” to ensure that Piebalgs, the development commissioner, rather than Ashton, will be in charge of formulating policies on how aid should be allocated.

Swoboda added, however, that there is “no basic contradiction” between the fight against poverty and other policy goals. “The different aims (of foreign and development policies) can be brought together only if the development commissioner is strong enough,” he said. “We want to work together with Cathy Aston to find a solution where all these concerns are met.”

A source close to Piebalgs said that he is satisfied with the broad thrust of Ashton’s proposals. As both Ashton and Piebalgs will be given joint responsibility for presenting plans relating to development aid before their fellow commissioners “there cannot be a conflict” between them once the outlines of those plans have been decided, according to the source.

But Nuria Molina, spokeswoman for the European Network on Debt and Development, was less positive. She said that the development aid policies of individual EU governments tended to be more successful in alleviating poverty in cases – such as in Britain – where the development ministry enjoys considerable autonomy from the foreign ministry. “There is no magic bullet in how you set up the governance,” she added. “But it can be safely said that this (the Ashton proposal) is not the right move.

By David Cronin
BRUSSELS, Mar 8 2010 (IPS)

For the first time since September 2006, Mahmoud Abu Rahma, a leading figure in the Palestinian human rights group Al Mezan, has been granted permission to travel outside Gaza.

Mahmoud Abu Rahma Credit: Mahmoud Abu Rahma

More than 30 applications to leave the strip had previously been turned down by the Israeli authorities and it was not until German diplomats made representations on his behalf that he was finally allowed to visit Europe.

Rahma has been calling on European Union (EU) diplomats to hold Israel accountable for its attacks on innocent Gazans during the war it waged in late 2008 and early 2009. Yet convincing the EU to take a more robust line against Israel is an arduous task; only five of the Union’s 27 countries have supported the report on the Gaza war by a United Nations investigative team led by Richard Goldstone, a retired South African judge. The report found that there was no justifiable military objective for Israel’s targeting of civilians in that offensive.

Q: Why have you been prevented from leaving Gaza for three-and-a-half years? A: There was one occasion when we had a meeting with the [Belgian] ministry of foreign affairs here. The Belgian ambassador intervened and the Israelis informed him that the director of my organisation and myself would be allowed to cross Erez [the crossing between Gaza and Israel]. And the next day they cancelled the papers. But other than that, we usually hear words like “rejected” without any explanations. Or “rejected for security reasons”. More recently, we starting hearing the term “no sufficient grounds to grant a permit”.

The Israeli policy now is that movement is allowed only for humanitarian reasons. They have this definition about minimum humanitarian needs, which is not in international law, but it has been adopted by the Israeli high court. And it is being implemented everywhere.

But this time the German embassy and many other embassies intervened and I managed to leave – eight days late.

Q: Do you have any criminal convictions or are there any other reasons why Israel would consider you a security threat? A: One of the very problematic developments since the siege started in Gaza in 2007 has been the rulings by the Israeli high court of justice. First, Israel declared Gaza as a hostile entity, which is a novelty in international law. There are enemy countries, enemy states; these terms are familiar. We don’t know what the Israelis meant by this but the Israeli high court of justice accepted the Israeli government’s opinion that Gaza was a hostile entity and Israel had no legal responsibilities towards Gaza, except for the minimum humanitarian needs. After that – and more worrying still – the Israeli government declared before the high court that every Palestinian qualifies as a potential terrorist, a threat towards Israel’s security. And the court accepted that. This is very, very problematic. So it’s not just me, nobody is allowed to leave unless they qualify as a humanitarian case. I’m a human rights worker and don’t qualify as such. If I have meetings in Europe, I will not die if I don’t do that [attend them]. That’s the logic behind this.

I am not aware of any problems that would qualify me as a security threat except for the fact that when I was sixteen, I was injured by the Israeli army when I was throwing stones at the Israeli soldiers during the first intifada [Palestinian uprising]. I was injured another time, allegedly – the Israelis said – because I was masked. I was taken into prison then for two months. I was seventeen then.

Q: Your website describes recent Israeli attacks on Gaza that have gone largely unreported on news bulletins in Europe. Do you think the situation could easily explode into one of more serious violence? A: Of course, it could explode at any time. There is so much anger among the population in Gaza. Israel’s reactions to any attacks emanating from Gaza are really harsh. The last press release we issued described a missile attack [by Israel] on a house, where three children were injured. This is commonplace.

That’s why we focus more and more on accountability because there is a possibility the conflict will erupt another time. And we want to be sure that all the parties comply with the rules of international law. If the conflict erupts again, civilians must be protected. What has happened to civilians for decades is more than enough. Without accountability, civilians will continue to be harmed.

During the years of intifada, we could see the policy of home demolitions or extralegal assassinations. On the border of Rafah [the crossing between Gaza and Egypt], houses were systematically destroyed, row by row by row, creating thousands of families who are still homeless to this day – most of them.

You can also find cases where a person who is wanted by Israel is assassinated by means of missiles from an aeroplane. And the missile hits maybe a car so the person is already dead. And then two or three minutes later, people would try to put the fire out and the medics come and the Israelis can see clearly what is going on the ground. And then they fire another missile. This is completely not acceptable.

We could see many other systematic violations of human rights. I have visited many places in Gaza. I couldn’t understand why hundreds of homes in one neighbourhood were destroyed a couple of days after the Israeli army took full control of the area. There was no fighting whatsoever in the area. And then bulldozers were sent in and engineering teams were taking their time to bring down homes with explosives. I don’t know why the East Gaza industrial zone was completely destroyed. Not one single industrial plant has been left standing.

These are violations of human rights and international law that cannot be tolerated. Israel has security concerns and interests that emanate from the fact it is occupying the occupied territories. International law allows Israel to take actions to ensure its security. However, these actions must be in line with international law.

People can live without peace for another 50 years. It will be devastating, it will not be what everyone wants but they can live. However, they cannot live with these kinds of policies where there is no respect whatsoever for human life and human wellbeing and where suffering is imposed intentionally on people as a means to put pressure or achieve political gains.

Q: You have been drawing attention to paragraph 75 of the Goldstone report, which says that treatment of Gazans could amount to persecution. Why is this so significant? A: Most people think that the siege of Gaza, the blockade, started in June 2007. But I would say that the blockade started in June 1967. The first Israeli military order after the Six-Day War announced that the Gaza Strip was a unit and the West Bank was another unit and that they were two closed military zones. No one was allowed to leave or to enter these zones without a special permit from the Israeli military authorities. Now, this has not changed. I came here, with a special permit from the Israeli authorities. So it still applies.

It is true that in June 2007, Israel announced that Gaza was a hostile entity. They cancelled what is known as the custom code, so no imports can go directly to Gaza. We don’t exist anymore on the economic map. The siege has been stepped up since then and it is hitting the population very hard.

This paragraph [in the Goldstone report] took note of the consequences of the Israeli policy of siege and blockade on Gaza. It particularly found that there are a series of violations of economic, social, cultural and political rights that are very complex, that do not allow people to move freely but also not to access life-saving services or goods. This has created a very complex situation for the entire population. People who were hit by it were not allowed proper legal remedy in Israel. If a state has a policy and civilians are affected, there should be some kind of recourse for these people. But this has been denied as the Israeli high court has tended to take the side of the Israeli government. The report found that the massive human rights violations, together with the denial to civilians of any legal remedy, amount to persecution. Persecution is a war against humanity. Goldstone went even farther than that and said this could warrant forming a special tribunal to investigate this particular issue.

What is unfortunate is that most of the United Nations and human rights organisations have not focused on this, although the siege on Gaza is a very immediate priority.

Q: Only five EU countries voted in favour of Goldstone when it was discussed by the UN general assembly last year. What message do you have for the other 22 EU governments who either opposed the report or abstained? A: We view the Goldstone report as more or less balanced. It’s not perfect but it’s one of the most important reports. It tells Israel what international law obliges it to do. And it tells the Palestinians also what international law obliges them to do.

What is important is that accountability can be ensured so that we make sure that these inhuman violations of international law do not happen again. Eighty-three percent of the people killed [in the 2008-09 war] were civilians and non-combatants, people who should be protected by international law and not targeted directly. This is why the Israeli high court’s ruling that accepted the view that any Palestinian could be a suspected terrorist is too dangerous because it could allow this way of thinking where conflict occurs.

Q: Some EU countries are major customers of the Israeli arms industry. Does that make them complicit in crimes perpetrated by the state of Israel? A: I don’t want to say that the EU has been complicit but what I can say is that the EU has not done enough when it could have. Logic from a human rights point of view is based on the ethical rule that says if you can, you ought to. So if you can practice influence and change the situation to the good, then you have an obligation, moral as well as legal, to do something about the situation. And from our point of view, the EU has not done enough.

Q: Passports from several European countries are known to have been used in the killing of a senior Hamas figure in Dubai recently, allegedly by Mossad, the Israeli secret service. And yet the official European response to this abuse of passports seems to be quite weak. Would you agree? A: First, as a human rights organisation we condemn all acts of assassination, whether it be by Palestinians or by Israel. So this extra-legal killing was a crime. There has been some kind of a strong response on the part of Interpol. However, I agree with you that the diplomatic response from the states that have been involved [in the passport affair] has been pretty weak. There has been some summoning of ambassadors for explanations. And that’s it.

Q: Have there been any improvements in the living conditions in Gaza over the past year? Or is the situation getting worse? A: Much worse, I would say. What we see in Gaza is a continuous process of de-development. All the sectors are going backwards. The economy is in its worst situation ever. The environment is in a very bad shape because the sanitation system has not been rehabilitated for a long time. Pollution is leaking into the aquifer because of the kind of weapons that have been used. Poverty is increasing, so is unemployment. And the siege continues. So the situation is dramatically worse than it was last year.

Q: You have been documenting the use of pilotless drones – also known as unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) – by Israel. Is there a case for banning these weapons? A: Based on our documentation on the number of drone attacks on Gaza during last winter’s war and based on the number of victims that have been documented and based on how most of these victims were actually civilians – many of them were children – the weapons that killed most civilians last winter were drones. They failed with excellence between distinguishing civilians and combatants. They are precision weapons but they are operated by one person who is sitting behind a computer and seeing a small screen. Sometimes decisions have to be made with haste so with the very open rules that the Israeli army operated under during the war, these weapons have caused too much damage to civilians. And I think you can make a case that this documentation and other documentation coming from Afghanistan and other places where this terrible weapon has been used deserve a serious concentration by the international community to see what can be done about this weapon. Our documentation takes me to only one direction: this is a cruel weapon that must not be used in wars where civilians are involved.

Q: You have been monitoring human rights abuses by Hamas in Gaza. Does that work distract you from the bigger issue of the Israeli occupation? A: All the duty-holders have obligations. We document human rights abuses by all duty-holders, regardless of their identity.

The situation is too complex in Gaza. I can hold the Gaza government directly responsible for the torture of a prisoner by its police. It’s their choice: to torture or not to torture. Nobody else is interfering. But when it comes, for example, to the right to education, why construction materials are not allowed into Gaza by Israel, how can I blame the local authorities for not respecting the right to education?

Palestinian human rights organisations have a clear vision. They want a Palestine that is independent, where people enjoy its self-determination and live in a democracy, and where Palestinians respect the dignity of Palestinians. So even if we have a Palestinian state tomorrow, we will not quit our work.

Excerpt:

For 329 million, people shopping with the euro is a part of everyday life. Since its notes and coins were introduced on New Year’s Day 2002, this single currency has made it possible to travel across a 16-country zone stretching from Cyprus to Ireland without having to change the money in one’s pocket or handbag.

Yet while it may sound like a dream for holiday-makers, the economic crisis in Greece has illustrated that there is a flipside to Europe’s experiment in monetary union. In order to guarantee the ‘stability’ of the currency, participating governments have signed up to rules stipulating that their budget deficits should be no more than 3 percent of their gross domestic product.

After Greece admitted its deficit stood at 12.7 percent, it has undertaken to slash it to 2.8 percent by 2012; the measures envisaged to achieve this drastic reduction include cutbacks in public sector pay and spending on education and an increase in the retirement age.

The irony of how these measures will hurt Greeks on low-income far more than the politicians and business elite widely blamed for causing the crisis has not been lost on some commentators. Costas Douzinas, a law professor at Birkbeck College in London, says that the euro-zone’s economic affairs are being run “according to a kind of witchdoctor theory.”

“It is not Greece that is suffering but the Greek working people, the people who are always at the bottom of the pile,” he told IPS. “If you want to have a reduction of the deficit, the first thing to do should not be to hit the most vulnerable parts of society, the low-paid civil servants and the working class. You should hit big capital, the people who profited out of the extreme neo- liberal organisation of the markets.”

The idea of building a single currency was originally hatched by just five companies involved in selling cars (Fiat), oil (Total), chemicals (Solvay), electronic goods (Philips) and pharmaceuticals (Rhône-Poulenc). In 1987 they formed the Association for the Monetary Union of Europe (AMUE), which argued that the patchwork of different currencies then in use in Europe prevented it from competing with Japan or the U.S.

Upon its inception, the grouping decided to exclude trade unions and other public interest advocates from its membership. Etienne Davignon, the AMUE president, argued that the single currency could “only be effective if it was proposed by the people who were in favour without the necessity to compromise between themselves.”

David Boyle from the New Economics Institute, a Massachusetts-based body that challenges conventional thinking on financial management, said that while there is a need for “big reference currencies”, it is wrong to believe that the euro and its common interest rates can bring equal benefits to all areas where it is used. “Interest rates don’t suit every country in the EU at the same time,” he said. “How can they? In times of hardship, a single currency will benefit those at the heart of Europe – maybe Paris and Frankfurt – but it will damage the outlying areas. Single currencies are blunt instruments and will tend to increase poverty around the edges.”

Unlike the dollar or the yen, the euro has been introduced in a situation where its participating countries apply considerably different policies on other key economic questions. Efforts by France, for example, to introduce common rules on taxation have been resisted by other euro-zone members such as Ireland, which has been fearful that higher corporate taxes would act as a disincentive to foreign investment.

Roland Kulke, a researcher with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, a left-wing German think-tank, said the economic crisis in Greece has highlighted the intrinsic design flaws in the euro. “You can’t have a common currency without at least a certain kind of coordination on budgetary and financial policies.”

The euro, coupled with the absence of any increase in real wage levels over a two-decade period, has enabled Germany to become a top exporter, Kulke added. More peripheral countries such as Greece, on the other hand, have been unable to devalue their currencies to sell goods abroad at a competitive price.

One of the murkier aspects of the Greek crisis is that opaque transactions by Wall Street firms appear to have contributed significantly to it. Goldman Sachs and other top investment banks are known to have sent high-level delegations to Athens in the recent past, fuelling allegations that they were betting against the euro and helping to falsify the real economic picture in the country by using complex financial instruments to conceal the true nature of the Greek debt.

Susan George, a leading member in the French anti-poverty group ATTAC, called on the European Central Bank (ECB) and other euro-zone institutions to consider a tax on transactions of a high-risk nature. “An international currency tax would help stop speculation against the euro,” she said. “But unfortunately I don’t think the ECB is going to move on this.”

By David Cronin
BRUSSELS, Feb 8 2010 (IPS)

The perilous state of the world’s fish stocks has received less media attention than the more visible, palpable environmental problems like air pollution. Isabella Lövin is seeking to redress that balance. Her 2007 book ‘Tyst hav’ (Silent Seas) hit the best-seller list in her native Sweden, garnering her three awards, including the title of ‘Journalist of the Year’.

Isabella Lövin Credit: Fredrik Hjerling

Blending the techniques of investigative journalism with the style of a crime thriller, the book is still awaiting publication in the English language. But it has helped introduce Lövin to an international audience. Elected last year as a Green member of European Parliament, she has a new platform to push for a fundamental rethink of the European Union’s (EU) 40-year-old common fisheries policy.

Q: Why did you decide to write a book on fisheries? A: In the autumn of 2002, there was an election campaign in Sweden. For the first time, there was a discussion about Swedish cod declining. It came to everyone’s knowledge because the Green Party of Sweden demanded that there should be a complete fishing ban [for cod] for one year since cod in Swedish waters was acutely depleted. At that time I was working for a food magazine and we were discussing if we should stop printing cod recipes or not. We decided that I should do an article and investigate what the status of Swedish cod was.

Sweden eventually decided on a cod moratorium of one year. But the European Commission said we couldn’t have this as it was against the common fisheries policy. It said it would be discrimination against Swedish fishermen if they wouldn’t be allowed to fish, when [other] European fishermen would be allowed to fish for the same stock in the same waters.

This was a mystery to me. We wanted to save a wild resource but on the other hand the European Commission told us we can’t do this. I could not understand who is wrong here and who is crazy here.

As a Swede, I was brought up in what I thought was the most environmentally conscious country in the world. But I found out that there wasn’t even 1 cu m in our waters that was protected from fishing, while on land we have had national parks where there has been no hunting for 100 years.

What was going on in the seas was about zero in the order of public opinion, while if you talked to scientists, they would all say the same thing [about stock depletion]. It was not just cod. All stocks were declining. The European eel has declined by 99 percent since the end of the 1980s. The spur dog – a small shark that lives in Sweden – has declined by 95 percent in 20 years.

All of this has been going on without any protection for these species. I couldn’t believe it. I had never written a book before but I realised it would take a book to put all this together. Whose interests are governing this? Why don’t normal environmental laws apply to this? Why do we not protect species that are acutely and obviously endangered?

Q: You described the EU’s policy as a mystery. Did writing the book help you to solve the mystery? A.: I realised you can’t just single out one thing and say this is the explanation. The idea of the 1970s and 1980s was the more you invest in this industry, the more you will gain. The more boats you build, you will get much larger catches. Of course, this was true for the first five years. Then all of a sudden the fish disappears.

One very important thing is that what was happening was under the surface. This leads to a large disinterest from the general public. It is much easier to make people angry and engaged if there is the destruction of wolves, something you can see, than something that is under the surface.

It is difficult for politicians to stand up for something if they don’t get encouragement from their voters to do so. Fishermen, on the other hand, are very efficient lobbyists, they have a very strong voice. Every time a politician tries to reduce quotas or diminish fishing areas, there is always a big outcry from fishermen. That is hard for politicians to handle because they think of their electorates in coastal communities.

When most people think of decline of the marine environment, they think of toxic substances, climate change, eutrophication [an increase of chemical nutrients that stimulates the growth of plants on water] – all these environmental factors. But the fact is that the overwhelming threat towards marine life is fishing.

In the Baltic Sea, we have a body called Helcom (the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission). For fifteen years now, all the countries in the Baltic get together to talk about dangerous oil transports, eutrophication, they talk about everything, but not about fisheries. That is very strange.

The FAO [the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation] has brought out a major report called Blue Carbon about the role of oceans in capturing carbon dioxide. Oceans cover 71 percent of the planet. They have a stabilising effect on the climate. Ecosystems that have evolved over four billion years have dramatically changed in the past 50 years.

Q: Every December, the EU’s marine ministers set quotas limiting the amount of fish that may be caught over the following year. Given that they are under intense pressure from fishermen to set those catch levels above what scientists recommend, do you think this procedure needs to be stopped? A: I don’t think ministers should be the ones to set quotas. We should have long-term management plans, instead of setting quotas year by year. We should not have the kind of circus, where everyone tries to grab the biggest bit of the cake every December.

The ministers should agree on principles: to follow the precautionary approach principle, the ecosystem approach, best practice etc. Then the figures on quotas and kilowatts and days at sea, I don’t think the ministers should set those. They should be set at a lower administrative level, using the best data available.

The cardinal problem is that we let ministers who haggle for the highest quotas come home as heroes.

When we think of marine resources, we can’t really continue to think in terms of traditional market-capitalist thinking. In the oceans, there is a limit to how much they can reproduce and how much you can harvest. This doesn’t fit in with industrial thinking.

Q: You have studied the effects of the EU’s fisheries agreements with Africa. What would be the main recommendations you would make to ensure that the payments that the EU makes to fish in African waters genuinely benefit Africans? A: Fisheries, as well as agriculture, should be a major focus of development policy. But the EU’s fisheries policy has nothing to do with development.

I asked [Andris] Piebalgs, the new [European] commissioner-designate for development, recently: ‘’ Do you think aid to the fisheries sector [in Africa] should only be given if European vessels have access to fish in [African] waters?” He said: ‘‘I think one should not be linked to each other.” But the case is that they are. We do not have a coherent European development policy.

The fishing fleet should pay for its own access. Taxpayers should not have to pay for that. I don’t think the Swedish and Danish and British should pay so that Spanish and Portuguese vessel owners have access to African waters.

Q: You have queried the legality of the EU’s fisheries agreement with Morocco because it allows European vessels to operate off the coast of Western Sahara, which is under occupation. What is the latest state of play on that issue? A: The [European] Commission is clinging to the position that if it [the agreement] goes to benefit the occupied people, then it could be allowed. That was [the position in] 2005. Now we’re in 2010. Who has presented any evidence that the money from the agreement goes to the Sahrawi people?

We asked the European Parliament legal service if with the facts at hand now, it would consider the fisheries agreement with Morocco as legal. We have a legal opinion in the [Parliament’s] development committee since the autumn. It concluded that ‘no we can’t find any evidence’ [that the agreement benefited the Sahrawi people].

It has been proven that European vessels are fishing in the waters of Western Sahara. We have a list of boats and nationalities fishing there. Now that it has been proven they are fishing there, the next question is whether or not this is in line with international law. The European Parliament’s legal service can’t see how this has come to benefit the Sahrawi people. So the agreement should be renegotiated and it should exclude Western Saharan waters.

Q: What is the status of the EU’s fisheries agreement with Guinea-Conakry, following the coup that occurred there in late 2008? A: This is a fantastic example of how the EU does one thing with one hand and completely the other thing with the other hand. When the massacre happened in Conakry [in September 2009], the aid from the EU was automatically stopped and [European Commission President José Manuel] Barroso came out with a very strong statement. But two days later, we were going to agree to pay one million euros (1.36 million dollars) [under the fisheries agreement]. This would have been paid directly into the pockets of the same man [Guinean military leader Moussa Dadis Camara] who had ordered that fire should be opened on innocent people in a football stadium, killing 153 people. Everybody knew there was no way that this money was going to hospitals or schools.

Until the [European Parliament’s] fisheries committee voted ‘no’, nobody was taking any initiative with regard to the fisheries agreement [with Guinea]. From the beginning, the Commission was coming to the committee and talking about the employment of European fishermen [off the Guinean coast]. But the agreement only covers 24 boats so the number of European fishermen who get employment is not many more than the number of people killed in the stadium in Conakry. It is not decent that we kind of close our eyes to a country like that because we think that maybe 100 European citizens might have some small economic benefit or loss because of what they are doing there.

Q: Do you eat fish? And should there be an international campaign encouraging people to eat less fish? A: I eat some fish but only the ones that are not threatened. You are supposed to be wiser if you eat lots of Omega-3. So I hope people eat some fish and this will give them a good idea of how to manage the planet in a sustainable way. Joking apart, we could eat fish to a certain limit but we can’t increase our intake of fish forever and ever. It will be a problem if there are nine billion people on the planet by 2050. Europe’s own catches have gone down by 25 percent in the last ten years. At the same time, Europe has increased consumption [of fish] by 20 percent. It’s an equation that doesn’t add up.

Excerpt:

Israel’s relations with the European Union were tense for most of 2009 – if newspaper headlines are to be believed. In the past week, a British court drew fierce criticism from Israeli politicians after it issued an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister, following a complaint that she had authorised war crimes in Gaza.

A few months earlier, Ikea, Volvo and other firms from Sweden, the current holder of the EU’s presidency, found themselves the target of a consumer boycott campaign in Israel because of an article in a Stockholm tabloid on the alleged theft of organs from Palestinians killed by Israeli troops. And several of the Union’s foreign ministers, such as France’s Bernard Kouchner and Ireland’s Micheál Martin, have been denied permission to enter Gaza by the Israeli authorities.

In reality, however, the tension has been superficial. While there may have been the occasional angry word exchanged on the diplomatic front, the EU’s political and economic ties with Israel have been strengthened over the past few years to such an extent that Javier Solana, who stepped down as the Union’s foreign policy chief in late November, has remarked that Israel is an EU member state in all but name.

Perhaps the most tangible illustration of this enhanced relationship was the sealing of an accord on agriculture last month, under which 80 percent of Israel’s fresh produce and 95 percent of its processed foods can be exported to the EU without incurring any trade taxes. A cooperation accord between Europol, the EU’s police office, and Israel has also been finalised (though still awaits a formal rubber-stamp from the Union’s governments). This is despite numerous reports from human rights organisations that detainees in Israel are routinely tortured and despite rules in force since 1998 that oblige Europol not to process evidence obtained by cruel methods.

Israel’s effective integration into the EU has coincided with a marked reluctance on the part of the Union to denounce acts of aggression against the Palestinians. Although some individual EU representatives have described the blockade of Gaza as an act of “collective punishment” against 1.5 million civilians, no statement criticising the blockade as contrary to international humanitarian law has been issued by the 27-member bloc in its entirety.

Furthermore, all of the EU’s most populous countries – Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain and Poland – either opposed the Goldstone report or abstained when it was considered by the UN’s General Assembly in November. (In that report, the retired South African judge Richard Goldstone and his fellow investigators found there was no justifiable military objective behind almost every attack on Gaza’s civilians undertaken by Israel in late 2008 and the beginning of this year).

Leila Shahid, the Palestinian Authority’s envoy to Brussels, says that the EU’s largest countries are “accomplices by their silence” in Israel’s misdeeds. “The raison d’être of the bigger states – including France and Spain and Great Britain – is to be guarantors of international law,” she told IPS. “To be silent is to be part of the crime.”

Dries Van Agt, prime minister of the Netherlands from 1977 to 1982, said this week that he was “ashamed” of what he called Europe’s “shocking disservice to international law.” Under an “association agreement” which came into effect in 2000, all trade preferences granted to Israel by the EU are nominally conditional on respect for human rights. Yet Van Agt expressed frustration that the Union, Israel’s main trading partner, is unwilling to revoke those preferences to insist on an improvement in the treatment of the Palestinians.

“Europe is failing miserably in its Israel-Palestine policy,” he said. “It is so vitally important to the economy of Israel that it has access to this big open market. Why does the EU not even consider bringing this power to bear on Israel?” Van Agt was speaking at a meeting of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine Thursday. Inspired by a probe into the Vietnam war launched by the British intellectual Bertrand Russell in the 1960s, this tribunal is exploring the conduct of Israel’s most recent offensive against Gaza.

Maysa Zorob from the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq said that the EU’s “business as usual approach amounts to disregarding Israel’s policies in the Gaza Strip.” She noted that the Union has not even brought Israel to book for the damage inflicted on Palestinian infrastructure built or maintained with EU aid. Damage to EU-financed projects during Israeli bombing of Gaza about a year ago has been calculated at more than 12 million euros (17 million dollars).

One explanation put forward by EU diplomats for their refusal to hold Israel to account is that doing so could put efforts to initiate new peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in jeopardy. Nathalie Stanus from the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network said that this attitude is shortsighted as basic tenets of justice must be respected if a durable peace can be achieved. “Without accountability, we don’t believe there will be a viable peace process,” she said.

By David Cronin
BRUSSELS, Jul 30 2009 (IPS)

Israel enjoys closer relations with the European Union than almost any other foreign country – and work on deepening ties with Israel continues, even as its oppression of the Palestinian people worsens.

European Commissioner for External Relations BENITA FERRERO-WALDNER Credit:

Israel was the first of the EU’s neighbours to take part in the bloc’s multi-billion euro programmes dedicated to scientific research and enterprise development, and has been intimately involved in the Galileo satellite navigation scheme.

In December 2008, EU governments unanimously agreed to further upgrade their ties with Israel by paving the way for its integration into the EU’s single market for goods and services, as well as strengthening its bonds with the EU’s political and military structures. The decision was taken even though Israel had broken a ceasefire with Hamas a month earlier – on the day Barack Obama was elected U.S. president – by launching an attack on Gaza.

Initially, both sides had agreed that the upgrade should take effect in summer 2009. But the Israeli offensive against Gaza in December and January meant that other issues had to be prioritised. As a result, the upgrade process has been temporarily delayed.

Excerpts from the interview with Ferrero-Waldner on where relations now stand:

IPS: During a recent visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, I met some human rights activists who were sharply critical of the European Union’s decision last year to ‘upgrade’ its relations with Israel. The activists felt that the EU was treating Israel as a ‘normal’ industrialised country and not as one state that is illegally occupying the land of another people. What is your response to that criticism? Benita Ferrero-Waldner: The EU has made it clear, on a number of occasions, that the upgrade is not taking place in a vacuum, irrespective of the situation on the ground. The recent decision not to pursue the upgrading at the current point in time, in view of the political environment, bears witness to this. However, this has not changed the commitment of the EU to strengthen bilateral relations with Israel in principle.

IPS: I’ve also heard it said that one of Tzipi Livni’s intentions in pursuing the upgrade when she was Israel’s foreign minister was to make it more difficult for the EU to criticise Israel’s behaviour in the Palestinian territories, at least in public. Her rationale, according to several sources I’ve spoken to in both Brussels and the Middle East, was to create a formal alliance with the EU on the understanding that one friend does not embarrass another friend. Do you agree with this view? BFW: If you had an issue of concern, who would you rather discuss it with, a friend or a person you barely know? The closer a relationship is, the more frequently the parties meet, and the more occasions there are to discuss also themes where you do not see eye to eye. I personally see to it that these occasions for dialogue are well used to relay our most important points of preoccupation.

IPS: You have spoken on a number of occasions about how Israel has impeded delivery of EU-funded aid to the Palestinian territory. Why have you never asked Israel to pay the bill for damage that its defence force has caused to EU-funded projects in the West Bank or Gaza? Do you not have a duty to European taxpayers to seek compensation? BFW: The question of compensation is legally a very complex one. Besides, the records show that the majority of damage was to projects financed by the EU member states, in which case it is up to the member states to decide what legal action to take. The European Commission has sought, and will continue to seek, explanations from the Israeli authorities whenever there are Commission-funded projects which have been destroyed or damaged. But to halt the cycle of destruction and reconstruction, we need progress towards the creation of the future Palestinian state and thus peace in the Middle East.

IPS: It is no secret that EU aid to the Palestinian territories is paying for many things that, under international law, are the responsibility of the occupying power. Do you have any suggestions about how this situation can be rectified? Can the EU help to meet the basic needs of the Palestinians in a way that doesn’t help perpetuate the occupation? BFW: The best suggestion is to achieve a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians which would end the occupation. This is the overall aim of EU policy towards the occupied Palestinian territory. This is the main rationale behind our institution-building activities: to prepare the Palestinians to run a state and, finally, take their destiny into their own hands and so to realise their legitimate aspirations.

In the meanwhile, our humanitarian and emergency assistance does not perpetuate the occupation, but rather provides help to the ailing population. This year, for example, we provided more than 200 million euros to contribute to salaries of Palestinian Authority employees, to the fuel costs of the Gaza power plant and to vulnerable families. We gave more than 100 million euros for humanitarian and food aid. Overall, since 2007 the European Commission has been providing approximately 500 million euros to the Palestinians every year.

IPS: Do you accept that the EU’s decision not to deal directly with Hamas has been a mistake and that it may have contributed to widening the divisions between it and its rival Fatah? BFW: I personally don’t think that the growing divisions between Fatah and Hamas, which I am following with great concern, are a result of EU policy. But now we have to focus on the future and find ways to mend this rift. This is why I fully support Egypt’s efforts to achieve (Palestinian) national reconciliation, which will hopefully succeed in the not too distant future.

Excerpt:

By David Cronin
BRUSSELS, Jul 29 2009 (IPS)

Israel enjoys closer relations with the European Union than almost any other foreign country – and work on deepening ties with Israel continues, even as its oppression of the Palestinian people worsens.

Israel was the first of the EU’s neighbours to take part in the bloc’s multi-billion euro programmes dedicated to scientific research and enterprise development, and has been intimately involved in the Galileo satellite navigation scheme.

In December 2008, EU governments unanimously agreed to further upgrade their ties with Israel by paving the way for its integration into the EU’s single market for goods and services, as well as strengthening its bonds with the EU’s political and military structures. The decision was taken even though Israel had broken a ceasefire with Hamas a month earlier – on the day Barack Obama was elected U.S. president – by launching an attack on Gaza.

Initially, both sides had agreed that the upgrade should take effect in summer 2009. But the Israeli offensive against Gaza in December and January meant that other issues had to be prioritised. As a result, the upgrade process has been temporarily delayed.

Excerpts from the interview with Ferrero-Waldner on where relations now stand:

IPS: During a recent visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, I met some human rights activists who were sharply critical of the European Union’s decision last year to ‘upgrade’ its relations with Israel. The activists felt that the EU was treating Israel as a ‘normal’ industrialised country and not as one state that is illegally occupying the land of another people. What is your response to that criticism?

Benita Ferrero-Waldner: The EU has made it clear, on a number of occasions, that the upgrade is not taking place in a vacuum, irrespective of the situation on the ground. The recent decision not to pursue the upgrading at the current point in time, in view of the political environment, bears witness to this. However, this has not changed the commitment of the EU to strengthen bilateral relations with Israel in principle.

IPS: I’ve also heard it said that one of Tzipi Livni’s intentions in pursuing the upgrade when she was Israel’s foreign minister was to make it more difficult for the EU to criticise Israel’s behaviour in the Palestinian territories, at least in public. Her rationale, according to several sources I’ve spoken to in both Brussels and the Middle East, was to create a formal alliance with the EU on the understanding that one friend does not embarrass another friend. Do you agree with this view?

BFW: If you had an issue of concern, who would you rather discuss it with, a friend or a person you barely know? The closer a relationship is, the more frequently the parties meet, and the more occasions there are to discuss also themes where you do not see eye to eye. I personally see to it that these occasions for dialogue are well used to relay our most important points of preoccupation.

IPS: You have spoken on a number of occasions about how Israel has impeded delivery of EU-funded aid to the Palestinian territory. Why have you never asked Israel to pay the bill for damage that its defence force has caused to EU-funded projects in the West Bank or Gaza? Do you not have a duty to European taxpayers to seek compensation?

BFW: The question of compensation is legally a very complex one. Besides, the records show that the majority of damage was to projects financed by the EU member states, in which case it is up to the member states to decide what legal action to take. The European Commission has sought, and will continue to seek, explanations from the Israeli authorities whenever there are Commission-funded projects which have been destroyed or damaged. But to halt the cycle of destruction and reconstruction, we need progress towards the creation of the future Palestinian state and thus peace in the Middle East.

IPS: It is no secret that EU aid to the Palestinian territories is paying for many things that, under international law, are the responsibility of the occupying power. Do you have any suggestions about how this situation can be rectified? Can the EU help to meet the basic needs of the Palestinians in a way that doesn’t help perpetuate the occupation?

BFW: The best suggestion is to achieve a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians which would end the occupation. This is the overall aim of EU policy towards the occupied Palestinian territory. This is the main rationale behind our institution-building activities: to prepare the Palestinians to run a state and, finally, take their destiny into their own hands and so to realise their legitimate aspirations.

In the meanwhile, our humanitarian and emergency assistance does not perpetuate the occupation, but rather provides help to the ailing population. This year, for example, we provided more than 200 million euros to contribute to salaries of Palestinian Authority employees, to the fuel costs of the Gaza power plant and to vulnerable families. We gave more than 100 million euros for humanitarian and food aid. Overall, since 2007 the European Commission has been providing approximately 500 million euros to the Palestinians every year.

IPS: Do you accept that the EU’s decision not to deal directly with Hamas has been a mistake and that it may have contributed to widening the divisions between it and its rival Fatah?

BFW: I personally don’t think that the growing divisions between Fatah and Hamas, which I am following with great concern, are a result of EU policy. But now we have to focus on the future and find ways to mend this rift. This is why I fully support Egypt’s efforts to achieve (Palestinian) national reconciliation, which will hopefully succeed in the not too distant future.

Excerpt:

By David Cronin
BRUSSELS, Mar 18 2009 (IPS)

Citing human rights concerns, members of the U.S. Congress have blocked approval of a free trade accord negotiated between the Bush administration and Colombia. Yet on the other side of the Atlantic, European Union officials have expressed their determination to proceed with talks aimed at striking a deal with the right-wing government.

Norberto Rios Credit:

Earlier this year EU ambassador to Colombia Fernando Cardesa Garcia said that human rights will not be covered by the negotiations, suggesting that they will focus purely on commercial matters. His statement appears to be at variance with a policy followed by the EU since the 1990s of systematically including a clause in all accords signed with foreign countries stipulating that they are conditional to respect for elementary rights.

Trade unionists in Colombia fear that Brussels has ignored the violence with which they are frequently confronted. Taking a stance on labour rights in the Latin American country is hazardous. More than 2,500 trade unionists have been murdered there in the past quarter century. An estimated 49 such murders occurred in 2008 alone, 25 percent more than in the previous year.

Excerpts from an interview with Norberto Rios, director of Colombia’s National Trade Union School:

IPS: What do you feel about the signal from the EU that human rights will not be addressed in its trade talks with Colombia? Norberto Rios: This kind of declaration is unwise. It is surprising that it has been made by the EU, when the U.S. – which supposedly is less inclined to protect human rights – has its free trade agreement with Colombia under reservation precisely because it is asking for an improvement in the human rights situation and specifically with regard to labour standards and the situation facing trade unionists.

IPS: Separate from the current negotiations, the EU decided in late 2008 to renew a series of trade preferences to Colombia. This was despite how these preferences are at least nominally conditional on respect for labour rights. Do you think that Brussels officials ignored the voluminous evidence that was given to them by organisations both in Europe and in Colombia about the murders of trade unionists. NR: We are quite alarmed by the off-hand way in which EU-Colombia affairs are dealt with. It’s like (Colombian President Alvaro) Uribe has a magic spell.

Although the EU knows about the restrictions on the exercise of trade union rights, it is putting less pressure on Colombia than other governments. Last year there were 20 visits from (U.S.) Congress and institutions dealing with labour issues to Colombia. Hilary Clinton (the U.S. secretary of state) has said to the Colombian government that until it shows a clear improvement in standards, the Obama administration will take no initiative to get the free trade agreement moving again in Congress.

IPS: What do you mean when you talk about Uribe’s magic spell? NR: It is true that Uribe’s government is democratically elected and it enjoys high levels of popularity in the country. In a certain sense, it has reduced incidents of violence generally.

The business climate and the fact that it is open to investment makes the country look well to Europe. Yet day by day there is more evidence of anti- democratic behaviour. We see the executive taking actions to control some very key state institutions such as the high court and the constitutional court. Uribe’s idea is to get all of the state machinery to adopt his political thinking and ideology.

It is evident that the EU is much more influenced by positive developments than by the negative things the government has done. The EU needs to better address the equation from the perspective of democracy.

IPS: Do you think that the EU officials handling relations with Colombia are only really interested in prising open the country further for western companies? NR: That is very clear. Investors enjoy good security, both physical and legal security. The conditions are very favourable to companies in terms of taxation and a low cost of labour.

IPS: Colombia has become an important producer of biofuels. Does this also explain the eagerness of the EU to boost trade with your country? NR: Yes, that’s very clear. The Uribe government regards biofuels as one of the most important economic activities to promote. There are favourable conditions for investors especially in two areas of production: sugarcane and palm oil.

In the sugarcane sector, 70 percent of workers are not hired directly by the major firms but through contracts with companies that have been created just to recruit people. As a result, they do not have labour rights. In the palm oil sector, the proportion of workers affected by this phenomenon could be 90 percent.

It is estimated that there are 20,000 of these front companies, hiring four million workers.

What happened in the palm oil sector is that investors were not happy with pressure that they faced to commit to basic labour standards, mostly regarding social security. So investors have been promoting front companies. They ask two or three workers to register a front company with a chamber of commerce. Then the investor can hire them almost as if on a service contract for cleaning or working on trees or whatever. These companies are not bound to meet minimum standards in national law. They define their own standards for labour conditions.

IPS: What is the function of your school? NR: The school was created in the 1980s for the education of workers, to strengthen their capacity to negotiate and be able to defend themselves.

IPS: Have you personally or your colleagues been victims of human rights violations. NR: Yes, of course. Recently we participated in a session of the U.S. House of Representatives. The person who prepared the report we submitted there was threatened.

We are doing important work and getting information into the press. We have been very much criticised for this by Uribe. He argues that we are anti- patriotic and creating a bad image for the country.

IPS: Uribe has been known to equate human rights workers with terrorists. Does this contribute to a situation which makes attacks on such activists more likely? NR: Every time there is a discourse different from his political discourse Uribe calls people terrorists. This encourages paramilitary groups to target these people because they are seen basically as guerrillas dressed as civilians.

Excerpt:

The global recession has exposed the ideological fissures at the highest level of officialdom in the European Union.

Joaquin Almunia, the European commissioner for economic affairs, expressed a widely held view Feb. 11 when he declared a “need for more ambitious regulation” of financial services, implying that the way this sector has largely been exempt from stringent rules has contributed to the near collapse of the international banking system.

But Almunia, a Spanish Socialist, does not hold the portfolio in the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, which would enable him to come forward with the kind of proposals he deems necessary. Instead, responsibility for this area belongs to Charlie McCreevy, the single market commissioner, who has emphasised his antipathy to far-reaching regulation.

Since taking up his current post in 2004, McCreevy has repeatedly recited the mantra ‘less is more’. “For far too long the EU has been adopting rules at EU level, simply for the sake of having rules at that level,” he told a conference in Cape Town during 2007. “Once adopted the rules have been left to gather dust on the statute book. My approach is a different one. We should adopt fewer, better quality rules and then devote our energy to making sure they are properly enforced.”

Irishman McCreevy is studying a range of options for how hedge funds should be regulated, and has been tasked by the Commission with presenting a plan for doing so before elections to the European Parliament this coming summer. Yet while he has invited comments from all interested parties as part of a ‘public consultation’ exercise, he has maintained that he would prefer to see these investment funds subject to voluntary codes of conduct, rather than binding laws.

Some economic analysts have contended that hedge funds are at least partly culpable for creating the sub-prime crisis in the U.S. and for endangering banks on this side of the Atlantic by engaging in a highly speculative activity known as short-selling. Nonetheless, McCreevy said in late 2008 that hedge funds generally play a positive role in modern finance.

“I think he is finding it very hard to accept that his beloved unregulated market has failed,” said Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister and now a Socialist member of the European Parliament. “He has certainly been trying to delay and where possible avoid regulation on hedge funds and private equity. I can’t say what lessons he has learned from the crisis but he does not seem to have changed his dislike of market regulation, which is a pity because practically everyone else has realised that better regulation is unavoidable and necessary. I suspect we will encounter further efforts by him to put off regulation.”

Although hedge funds were banned in Germany until 2004 because they were considered too risky, McCreevy encouraged their development in Ireland, where he was finance minister from 1997 to 2004. And by the time their global value was estimated at 2.5 trillion dollars in the summer of 2008, the International Financial Services Centre in Dublin stood alongside London and New York as one of the major onshore centres of hedge funds in the world.

“Mr McCreevy behaves like a lobbyist for the hedge fund industry,” says Peter Wahl from World Economy, Ecology and Development (WEED), a German anti- poverty group. “He has an extremist position and is a full believer in the casino style of capitalism that has now collapsed.”

In recent years, McCreevy has publicly identified with the chief architects of market fundamentalism. In December 2005, he praised Margaret Thatcher for how she had “economically transformed” Britain as its prime minister in the 1980s. And he quoted Milton Friedman, intellectual guru to the late U.S. president Ronald Reagan, as well as to the Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet, to support his contention that tax competition between nations is healthy.

In December last year, a United Nations conference in the Qatari capital Doha recognised the kind of tax competition McCreevy favours as a major contributor to global poverty. U.S. President Barack Obama has also promised to crack down on tax havens.

According to the World Bank, up to 800 billion dollars in untaxed capital leaves poor countries or economies in transition each year, frequently because multinational firms have received tax breaks from the host countries. This dwarfs the 100 billion dollars that such countries receive in annual development aid.

Accountancy firms have been accused of providing invaluable advice to companies about how they can conceal their profits and thereby evade tax. The four biggest firms with global reach – PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Ernst & Young and Deloitte – have all paid huge settlements in recent times after they were sued for breaching financial rules. Yet McCreevy, himself an accountant by training, has recommended that the four (joined together in the International Accounting Standards Board) should effectively set the rules that companies listed on the EU’s stock exchanges should follow. This has thwarted moves to introduce the kind of international system deemed vital by anti-poverty campaigners to tackle tax evasion: one where every multinational firm has to state what profits it makes and what taxes it pays in every country where it operates.

“Published accounts will always be like bikinis – much more interesting for what they conceal than for what they reveal,” McCreevy has said. “The view that more frequent reporting by companies increases transparency is one about which I am deeply sceptical.”

John Christensen from the Tax Justice Network differs: “The IASB is a private company. By and large, it is manned by and controlled by the big four accounting firms and their clients. It doesn’t generally consult outside the four. McCreevy is very closely connected to the four, he comes out of that background. And he doesn’t buy into the idea that there is a legitimate interest in corporate information outside the investor community.

“There is not necessarily any financial conflicts of interests. But I’m afraid McCreevy is seen as representing the interests of the International Financial Services Centre in Dublin. Dublin is competing with other tax havens like the Isle of Man and Jersey. It is pushing lax regulation and McCreevy is seen as part of that problem of lax regulation.”

Extreme poverty will continue to blight sub-Saharan Africa for another 200 years unless action to overcome it is intensified, a new report has suggested.

Social Watch, a network of campaigning groups, has devised a measure known as the “basic capabilities index” to assess the level of hardship throughout the world.

Its latest report finds that 80 countries – home to half the world’s population – fare badly when three criteria are examined: the number of children who die before their fifth birthday, the proportion of children who complete primary education, and the proportion of births that are attended by trained midwives or other medical professionals.

Only 16 of these countries have registered considerable improvement since 2000. Although the countries making progress include India, home to 1.6 billion, regression has been recorded in others with a combined population of 150 million. The latter category includes Chad, Niger, Malawi, Benin and Yemen, while Bangladesh, Uganda, Nigeria, Madagascar and Ghana have been listed as stagnant.

While much of sub-Saharan Africa has recorded strong economic growth in recent years, this has not translated into a major drop in poverty levels. As things stand, the basic needs of millions of Africans will not be met until the 23rd century, with many governments struggling to fulfil pledges they have made. Zambia, for example, has undertaken to provide free basic health care for all citizens, yet continues to have one of the lowest rates of life expectancy on the planet.

Roberto Bissio, coordinator of Social Watch, predicted that the crisis which gripped international capitalism during 2008 will complicate matters further. “Poor countries are very likely going to suffer quite heavily from a crisis which they did not at all create,” he said, indicating that crucial sources of money such as remittances from migrants overseas will probably decline.

Bissio argued that one of the most appropriate responses of governments would be to develop a more coherent response to the fulfilment of human rights, particularly those with an economic and social dimension.

Over the past twenty years, he said, international bodies have been eager to promote the ‘rights’ of corporations to establish themselves anywhere in the world, forbidding poor countries to “impose on them conditions that contribute to the development of host countries.”

Lax investment rules have often meant that major companies pay little tax to the authorities in countries where they operate.

According to the World Bank up to 800 billion dollars in untaxed capital leaves poor countries or economies in transition each year. This dwarfs the 100 billion dollars that such countries receive in annual development aid.

The Tax Justice Network has argued that an international system for exchanging information on how much tax is paid by corporations should be established. The European Union already has such a scheme in place for its 27 member states, but with significant loopholes. Europeans wishing to hide money from the tax authorities can simply hide it in such havens as Singapore, for example.

Ana Gomes, a Portuguese Socialist member of the European Parliament, complained that Britain’s centre-left government has been resisting efforts to crack down on tax havens in order to protect the City of London, the financial district of London. She argued that forthcoming discussions on reforming the world economy, such as meetings of the G20 group of the world’s leading economies, must grapple with the surrounding problems.

“Tax havens are a source of inequality,” she added. “There is no way that the rules (of international finance) are going to be rewritten in a sensible way if tax havens are not banished.”

Reed Brody, a campaigner with Human Rights Watch, said it was “astounding” that 60 percent of the world’s countries have made no progress in recent years in expanding female access to education. He called for increased investment in the realisation of basic entitlements as part of a “human rights stimulus package”.

“When you free women from the discrimination and poor health that they face in their daily lives, you unleash the powers of half of humanity to contribute to economic growth,” he said.

Simon Stocker from Eurostep, an alliance of anti-poverty groups, said that the EU’s development aid activities pay greater heed to investment opportunities for western firms in poor countries than to health and education needs. Of 70 aid plans drawn up by EU officials for Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, health and education have been identified as priorities in less than 10 cases each.

“Partly because the European Union is itself built around an economically liberalised approach to development, this is automatically being exported (in its aid activities),” he said. “It looks more as if the European Union is promoting its own trade interests rather than the economic development of (aid recipient) countries themselves.”

In carefully crafted official statements, diplomats have portrayed the European Union as something of an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet even though almost all of the people killed over the past fortnight have been Palestinians, some top-ranking leaders in the 27-country bloc have tacitly offered their support for Israel’s bombing and invasion of Gaza.

Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, the Union’s largest country, has stated that Hamas “clearly and exclusively” bore responsibility for the fighting because it had fired Qassam rockets on Israel.

The Czech Republic, which took over the EU’s rotating presidency Jan. 1, described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “more defensive than offensive.” Prague subsequently retracted that remark after it emerged that France, the previous holder of the presidency, had a more nuanced position.

But while Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has spent much of this week seeking to secure a truce between Hamas and Israel, he too has been eager to develop closer political and economic ties with the Israeli government.

In December, the EU’s foreign ministers decided to plough ahead with plans to develop a ‘privileged partnership’ with Israel, allowing that country to take part in a wide range of the Union’s programmes and holding out the possibility that Israel could be integrated into its single market. France held the Union’s presidency at that time.

This decision was taken despite pleas by Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, that the Union should avoid upgrading relations with Israel until the latter stopped building new settlements in the occupied territories.

Max Wieselmann, campaigner with European Jews for a Just Peace, an organisation critical of Israeli policy, urged the EU to make the partnership conditional on respect for human rights.

He contrasted how the Union’s governments have been willing to turn a blind eye to Israel’s denial of elementary rights to the Palestinians with the meticulous attention the bloc has shown to questions of free expression in Turkey, a candidate for EU membership.

There is “always a big fuss,” he said, if Turkish authorities are found wanting in applying European standards on human rights and democracy. Yet the Union has not taken any robust action against Israel for its economic blockade of Gaza – in contravention of the 1949 Geneva Convention, which forbids “collective punishment” of a civilian population.

Ran Curiel, Israel’s ambassador to Brussels, is hoping that the deepening of relations will not be affected by the events in Gaza. Israel has launched its offensive “reluctantly and without a choice,” he said, because “our citizens are daily exposed to a sort of game of Russian roulette from the Hamas rockets.”

The European Parliament could hold off on approving the partnership plan for some time, possibly until after elections to the institution in June.

The assembly has been heavily lobbied by supporters of Israel in recent years. A cross-party grouping allied to the European Friends of Israel has been set up within the parliament.

Nonetheless, the assembly decided in December to postpone a vote endorsing the partnership, and many of its members have condemned the often indiscriminate nature of Israel’s attacks. Francis Wurtz, leader of an alliance of left-wing members of Parliament, argued Jan. 7 that the EU has “made itself an accessory” to Israel’s attacks by seeking closer ties with it.

Human rights and anti-poverty campaigners have also called on the EU to apply the brakes to the partnership.

Daleep Mukarji, director of Christian Aid in Britain and Ireland, noted that Israel had refused to accept calls for an immediate ceasefire made by an EU delegation to the Middle East earlier this week. “The EU’s credibility is now at stake,” Mukarji added. “It is inconceivable that we should extend further benefits of European partnership to a government that violates international humanitarian law and refuses negotiation in favour of continued violence.”

Souhayr Belhassen, president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) concurred. “This is not the time to be awarding benefits to a party to the conflict,” he said. “The civilian casualties and destruction of homes, schools and basic infrastructure in Gaza are shocking, and increasing every day. The EU cannot proceed with upgrading our relations with Israel while such violations are talking place.”

On a wet afternoon in Brussels, a dishevelled man shelters from the elements in a side entrance to the city’s main railway station. Beside his feet a green canvas bag carries all his worldly possessions. He has been homeless for a decade now; he has asked several times to be given accommodation by the Belgian authorities, but his request has never been granted. Often he sleeps rough.

“It is very hard, especially in the winter,” he says. “I survive, but only just.”

Next month, this man will turn 51. Many in a similar situation have not made it to that age. Thirty-one people are known to have died in Brussels during 2007 because they had nowhere to live other than the streets. Their average age was 46.

“The most trying times for us can be when someone that we have been treating dies,” says Emilie Meessen, founder of Street Nurses, a team of young women who provide care to the homeless.

“In such cases we help organise funeral ceremonies and bring together the people that knew the deceased. If there is somebody who dies on the street that we and other organisations do not know, we still go to the morgue with flowers and try to organise something. Every year we have a tribute for people who have died. More and more people are added to the list every year but that does not necessarily mean that more people are dying on the street. It just means we are aware of more cases.”

In Belgium, as in many European countries, issues relating to homelessness are rarely discussed in the media, except around Christmas. Yet deaths among rough sleepers have taken place all year.

“During the summer festival season, for example, we often meet homeless people who have been assaulted by youths,” Meessen added. “Rain is a persistent problem as it destroys the cardboard that people use to try to keep warm. In this country, it can rain at any time of year.”

Reliable data on Belgium’s problem of homelessness is hard to come by, as the only exact records kept are of those who seek refuge in overnight shelters. Data provided by the Belgian government based on a study by an anti-poverty group puts the number of homeless in the country at 17,000, and the number for Brussels at 2,000. But it is widely assumed that the true figure is considerably higher.

“People do not choose to be homeless, they find themselves in that situation,” said Meessen. “It is very easy to say that these people don’t want to live in a house, but there are studies that suggest otherwise. There is not enough affordable social housing in this country. It really is a problem.”

Even though the right to shelter is enshrined in Belgium’s national constitution, social accommodation comprises just 6 percent of all housing in the country. According to the ministry for social integration in Brussels, this is the lowest proportion in the European Union.

A spokeswoman for the ministry said that efforts to address homelessness have been hampered by the fragmented nature in which the country is governed. Belgium is split between its two main provinces: the predominantly Dutch-speaking Flanders and the Francophone Wallonia. Both enjoy a large degree of autonomy from the federal administration in Brussels, including over financial and housing matters. “There are good things happening on both sides,” the spokeswoman said. “But like with most things in Belgium, they don’t talk to each other enough.”

The Belgian federal government has promised to hold a conference in the near future to assess how this lack of coordination can be overcome.

A recent report by a Brussels-based association of reception centres for the homeless (known by its French acronym AMA) stated that Brussels had about 38,000 apartments or houses reserved for people on low income in 2007. More than 25,000 families or individuals were on a waiting list for this accommodation. Sometimes it can take up to six years before a needy family is housed, the report found, citing a similar waiting period for Wallonia. In Flanders, the average waiting period is just over two years.

Vinciane Lenoir, author of the AMA report, suggests that those who have to rent their accommodation are at a considerably higher risk of hardship – including the possibility of being left without access to permanent shelter – than those who can afford to own their home.

“The fight against poverty and social exclusion must take account of the availability of good quality accommodation and its affordability. It seems that in Belgium the fact of being a tenant increases the likelihood of poverty. If we compare with those who are property owners we find that 29 percent of tenants are poor, while just 9 percent of owners fall into that category.”

Lenoir added: “More and more, families and individuals in a precarious situation because of their low income encounter difficulties in having proper accommodation. The question regularly comes down to what you do when rent exceeds half of a family’s income. Everyone with a low income is especially vulnerable to financial problems when faced with unexpected costs such as a fine or a medical bill. If a rent is strangling someone, you can bet that they won’t pay it for a long time, with the result that they will accumulate debts.”