Posts Tagged ‘Brussels’
Greece checkmates the European Union

Syriza has said Greece will continue to make payments on the country’s massive debt, but will also negotiate relief. Most important, the Syriza programme is unmistakably left wing and will lead to a head-on collision with the EU institutions and big business. Image: Cartoon Movement / Gatis Sluka (Latvia, Riga)
The victory of Syriza in the 25 January 2015 general election in Greece has triggered off genuine hope in Europe that changes for the better are possible. There was, for the world to witness through television cameras and to read via social media channels, an outpouring of joy on the streets of Athens when the Coalition of the Radical Left (which is what the acronym ‘syriza’ stands for) won 37.5% of the votes polled and 146 seats in the parliament.
The Syriza that has now formed the new government brings together a group of 13 radical and left-wing political groups and factions ranging from democratic socialist and green-oriented to communist, trotskyist and maoist leftists and even some anti-European groups. Regardless of their often divergent political trajectories, their joint solidarity is a remarkable achievement, not only for Greece but for Europe.
Already, the new Greek government is stamping upon Euro-politics a new voice. Syriza has spoken out against the EU partners over the statement that blames Russia for the recent attack on the Ukrainian city of Mariupol (Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria had voiced similar objections earlier). The new government, headed by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, said bluntly that “… it is underlined that Greece does not consent to this statement”. The decisive ‘no’ from Syriza could inspire other countries to follow suit and oppose Brussels’ policies towards Russia on the Ukrainian crisis. Before the remarkable result in Greece, it was considered difficult in the EU to break ranks but now it is not unlikely that Hungary, Slovakia and Cyprus will find the courage to also say ‘no’ to the diktat from Brussels.
And that is one reason why Europe’s parties — conservative or socialist or some muddled admixture thereof – have become anxious at the electoral success of a genuine leftist party in one of the countries of the European Union. They see the success of Syriza as encouraging and emboldening growing leftist movements in larger countries, including Italy, Spain, France, Portugal and elsewhere, all countries whose citizens have been hurt by the iron heel of selective ‘austerity’ imposed by the European Parliament (in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund and Europe’s central banks). As does Syriza, these new movements in Europe reject the jaded and morally compromised parties that have been taking turns running European countries as adjuncts to the dictates of trans-national capital and the networks of global financiers.
The resounding victory in Greece has halted in its tracks the prevailing neo-liberal consensus in Europe that the way to ‘reform’ economies is to impose ‘austerity’, slash social programmes, hammer down wages, boost unemployment, and privatise functions that have long been public like transit, education, roads and and health care. This is after all a coalition whose manifesto stated, “The national debt is first and foremost a product of class relations, and is inhumane in its very essence. It is produced by the tax evasion of the wealthy, the looting of public funds, and the exorbitant procurement of military weapons and equipment.” Greece has spoken and all of Europe is changed.
Lured by dirty GM, Europe’s politicians betray public
Feckless EU politicians – the shallow brats of Brussels – have struck a deal between themselves and the agri-bio-technology corporations to sweep away the obstacles to genetically engineered crops in the European Union. This group, greasy fingers firmly in each other’s pocketbooks, want to allow (under limited circumstances, they say) individual EU member states to prohibit the growing of GMO crops on their territory, but to boost GMO crops in the EU overall.
The so-called “compromise pact” is likely to make it easier for the manufacturers of GM crops to win approval while allowing some countries to ban them. Not surprisingly, as the British government slavishly follows the White House line on every matter (except fish-and-chips), the deal was welcomed by Britain, which in a typically obsequious statement said it hoped the pact would allow for more rapid approval of GM crops in the EU.
Oddly, France’s agriculture ministry welcomed the “good news”, which coincided with a decision by the French constitutional court to uphold a domestic ban on GM maize. Just as oddly, Germany praised the deal for allowing “opt-outs”, saying it opened the way for a formal ban in Germany.
This pact came following what is called an indicative vote of EU Member State representatives – taken in a closed meeting (obviously). A formal vote will take place at a meeting of Environment Ministers on June 12 and if agreed – very likely it will be – it will then go to the European Parliament for approval.
That approval (or not) may come in an environment riven by weaknesses in the EU’s GMO assessment and approval system and pro-GMO bias at the centre of the European Food safety Agency (EFSA). There has also been chronic failure to implement an EU-wide and rigorous co-existence and liability regime – to date the EU has only produced non-legally binding recommendations for co-existence (of GM and non-GM crops).
The significance of all this is that it breaks the political stalemate that has largely prevented GMO crops from being grown in the EU. The proposal is based on the deceit that both pro- and anti-GMO countries can have want they want, and the unity of the EU Single Market can remain intact.
This is nonsense because under the proposed terms:
* Before banning an approved GMO crop EU Member States have to seek agreement from GMO companies to having their product excluded from a specific territory.
* If the companies refuse, Member States can proceed with the ban but only on grounds that to do not go against the EU approval and assessment of health and environmental risk – which means that if the EU-wide assessment gives the nod to GM, the country must concur despite its own assessment and public opinion.
* EU Member States nevertheless still have specific grounds for a ban which can include aspects like protection of nature reserves, areas vulnerable to contamination, and socio-economic impacts. So EU ‘unity’ can be overridden, provided smaller and weaker EU members states assert that right.
Monsanto drops GM crop plans in Europe

‘Monsanocchio’, by Raymond Burki, a Swiss cartoonist whose works are published in the Lausanne daily 24 heures. Courtesy: Presseurop
The signs have been gaining substance over the last two years. In western Europe (Britain excluded), citizens and independent researchers have demanded and end to GM food products. The support given to the seed-biotech-fertiliser conglomerates of the USA and Europe, by their governments has been well met by organised consumer awareness and resistance. It is no wonder then that these cartels have shifted the use of their tactics to Asia, where political establishments can be more easily influenced and where consumer awareness about the dreadful dangers of GM is generally lower than in western Europe.
Europe’s press is reporting that Monsanto, the fertiliser and biotechnology company, is withdrawing all permits requested to the European Commission to grow genetically modified corn, soy and sugar beet because it does not see “a commercial outlook” for these products (that’s what the public relations scoundrels call what we know and practice as informed consumer awareness).
German daily Die Welt reported that only a request to grow genetically modified corn (of the MON810 type) will be renewed. For the moment, this type of corn is the only genetically modified organism commercially cultivated in Europe, said Die Welt. While MON810 corn type is admitted into the EU, several countries including France, Germany and Italy have banned it at the national level, following citizen initiatives. Last year, German chemical firm BASF threw in the towel and relocated its biotechnology centre to the USA because genetic engineering is so strongly contested in Europe.
Monsanto has loudly insisted that its genetically modified products, including maize MON810, which is authorised in Europe, are safe for humans. It has an army of compromised ‘scientists’ on its payroll in every single country where it wants to push its GM products, and using its public relations agents has infiltrated media in every country that it sees as a market. But the evidence that GM is dangerous for humans and animals, for insects and plants alike grows by the day. A study conducted on rats for two years by a team of French researchers on Monsanto NK 603 corn revealed an abnormally high tumour and death rate – Monsanto’s own in-house studies, pushed out as counter-evidence by mercenary accomplices, were conducted for no more than three months!

Roadside shacks of people whose land has been taken over for soy fields in Alto Parana, Paraguay, which is among the South American countries with the most unequal land distribution. Paraguay has seen this situation escalate to the point where today, 2% of owners control 85% of the farmland. The regional situation is worse when one considers that the neighbouring countries – Brazil especially but also Argentina – are also experiencing land concentration for transgenic soybeans. Photo: Grain / Glyn Thomas / FoE
Greenpeace noted the company will also seek to continue sales of its controversial MON810 maize, which was already approved in Europe and is the last remaining GM crop grown there. “The EU-wide authorisation for the cultivation of MON810 is expiring at the end of a ten-year period and the safety of the crop is due to be reassessed. The company is permitted to continue to use MON810 in Europe until the European Commission announces its decision,” stated Greenpeace.
The GM Freeze campaign welcomed Monsanto’s announcement that it is withdrawing pending applications to cultivate GM crops in the European Union but said this is not the end of Europe’s GM story. GM Freeze pointed out that Monsanto’s GM crops will still be imported into the EU, primarily for use in animal feed and biofuels, so the damage to ecosystems and human health caused by GM will continue elsewhere. The lack of labels on meat, eggs, dairy products and fish produced using GM feed means that Europe’s reliance on GM is hidden from consumers so they cannot easily avoid buying GM-fed products. Food companies should meet the clear demand for entirely non-GM foods by labelling those produced without GM, as is done successfully by many companies in Germany, Austria and France.
In tiresomely typical contrast, the government of the United Kingdom is to push the European Union to ease restrictions limiting the use of GM crops in the human food chain, reported The Independent. Britain’s Environment Secretary Owen Paterson is next week due to announce a UK government drive to increase Britain’s cultivation of GM foods! The newspaper said Britain’s ministers are hopeful of building support in Brussels for a change of heart on GM, with Germany seen as a key swing voter. The government of Britain’s craven attempts to relax the rules will face opposition from countries like Poland which in April became the eighth EU member state to ban the cultivation of GM crops.
Forgetting their ‘commitments’ to get GM out of their supply chains, big British food retailers – Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer and Tesco – have gone in the opposite direction. Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer have joined Monsanto, Cargill and Nestle on the absurd Roundtable on Responsible Soy, a group that has been condemned by organisations around the world as a greenwash of existing bad practice in industrial soya monoculture. The Roundtable ‘certifies’ (judge and jury) GM soya as “responsible” despite growing evidence of adverse health, environmental and socioeconomic impacts in producer countries. Tesco is now backing GM soya production in South America, where it is grown in huge monocultures sprayed frequently with Roundup to the detriment of people and ecosystems there.
Occupy the EU, and merry christmas
Let’s look at a few, very few, trifling almost, pieces of evidence. As austerity cuts swept Europe, the numbers of the wealthy in Europe with more than US$1 million (€772,000) in cash rose from 2.6 million in 2008 to 3.2 million people in 2011. Together they were worth US$10.1 trillion (€7.8 trillion) in 2011.
Don’t look away yet. The five biggest banks in Europe made profits of €34 billion in 2011. Executive pay for the CEOs of the 100 largest companies on the London stock exchange rose by 49% in 2010, compared with 2.7% for the average employee.
Yes, I’m coming to the Occupy anthem, but first: there are between 15,000 and 30,000 estimated lobbyists in Brussels – more than in Washington. Some operate as “professional consultants” and under other titles and relatively few have registered with the EC voluntary lobbyist register. 68% of European lobby groups represent business interests. Trade unions make up 1-2%.
This is courtesy the very excellent and incendiary update to the EU Crisis Pocket Guide, first brought out by the Transnational Institute. [The update is in English, and the pocket guide is also available in Italian and in Spanish.)
TNI’s EU Crisis Pocket Guide tells us: how a private debt crisis was turned into a public debt crisis and an excuse for austerity; the way the rich and bankers benefited while the vast majority lost out; the devastating social consequences of austerity; the European Union’s response to the crisis: more austerity, more privatisation, less democracy; and contains ten alternatives put forward by civil society groups to put people and the environment before corporate greed.
Indeed, as Triple Crisis has warned, the GDP figures published in the Eurostat press release on the 15th of November 2012 for the Economic and Monetary Union (euro area) marked the confirmation of a double-dipped recession (with negative growth in quarters 2 and 3 of 2012). Gross domestic product was 0.6 per cent lower in the third quarter of 2012 compared with 12 months earlier. The return of recession is symbolic of the failure of the austerity programmes, which have been striking down economic activity throughout the EU and EMU. It should give rise to some thoughts as to why the austerity programmes are not working to bring down budget deficits without damaging economic activity.
But back to TNI and the Pocket Guide, which has said that in spite of the crippling costs of bailing out the banks, the EU still has not agreed, let alone put into operation, any major bank reforms. Four years on, only a few new rules to reduce some particularly risky practices by banks and financial markets, exposed by the financial crisis, have become operational.
What’s the remedy? There are a goodly number and here are but a few, as offered by the TNI’s very competent heads: (1) Bring the financial sector back under public control and do this by banning speculative financial instruments like Credit Default Swaps and food speculation, reintroduce rules that separate retail/utility banking from investment banking, impose size limits on banks so none can become “too big to fail”, stop new financial products unless proved safe and socially useful, ban hedge funds and other risky speculators who only make money from money, re-introduce controls on capital flows. (2) Tax the rich, the speculators and the polluters, impose tax on international financial transactions, increase taxes on the rich to at least the same as pre-1980 levels, end subsidies for fossil fuel industries, close down tax havens, establish a maximum pay ceiling and ban bonuses, introduce a Basic Income available to all.
For more background, there is the book, ‘Crisis in the Eurozone’ (Verso), and this has described the credit crunch, which led (coaxed or demanded) that governments around the world step in to bail out the banks. “The sequel to that debacle is the sovereign debt crisis, which has hit the eurozone hard. The hour has come to pay the piper, and ordinary citizens across Europe are growing to realize that socialism for the wealthy means punching a few new holes in their already-tightened belts.”
In this book, a leading member of the Research on Money and Finance group, Costas Lapavitsas argues that European austerity is counterproductive. The book shows that cutbacks in public spending will mean a longer, deeper recession, worsen the burden of debt, further imperil banks, and may soon spell the end of monetary union itself.
How the EU Commission backed business interests in the EU-India trade talks
Legal action has been taken against the EU Commission, suing the EU’s executive in the EU General Court for withholding documents related to the EU’s free trade talks with India. The Commission is accused by Corporate Europe Observatory of discriminating in favour of corporate lobby groups and of violating the EU’s transparency rules.

Former EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson (centre) with former Indian Commerce and Industry Minister, Kamal Nath (right), former CII President Sunil Bharti Mittal (left) and BusinessEurope’s Philippe de Buck
The case concerns 17 documents including meeting reports, emails and a letter, which the Commission’s trade department (DG Trade) sent to industry associations including BusinessEurope and the Confederation of the European Food and Drink Industry (CIAA). While these corporate lobby groups received full versions of the documents, the Commission only released censored versions to Corporate Europe Observatory, arguing that full disclosure would undermine the EU’s international relations. The censored sections relate to allegedly sensitive information about priorities and strategies in the ongoing trade talks with India including issues such as tariff cuts, services, investment and government procurement liberalisation and health standards.
You can read background documents on the matter and on the legal action here.
You can read Corporate Europe Observatory’s assessment of the EU-India FTA and its implications here.
(Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) is a research and campaign group working to expose and challenge the privileged access and influence enjoyed by corporations and their lobby groups in EU policy making. This corporate capture of EU decision-making leads to policies that exacerbate social injustice and accelerate environmental destruction across the world.)
What is at stake is whether the Commission can continue its practice of granting big business privileged access to its trade policy-making process by sharing information that is withheld from the public. This practice not only hampers well-informed and meaningful public participation in EU trade policy-making, it also leads to a trade policy that, while catering for big business needs, is harmful to people and the environment in the EU and the world.
The efforts to gain access to the information began on 5 June 2009. Corporate Europe Observatory filed an access to documents request for correspondence and reports from meetings between the Commission and corporate lobby groups, in which the ongoing free trade talks with India had been discussed. The purpose of the request was to monitor whether the Commission was shaping its negotiating position based on the public interest or only on the demands of large corporations. Previous research had shown that DG Trade had disregarded the concerns of small enterprises, trade unions and NGOs when it drew up the EU’s 2006 Global Europe trade strategy.
So, there was every reason to monitor the involvement of big business in the trade negotiations with India. After multiple deadline extensions and a complaint to the Commission’s General Secretary, DG Trade finally responded on 29 April 2010 – nine months after the statutory deadline. The response contained a list of more than 170 documents from 2008 and 2009 identified by DG Trade: meeting reports, emails and letters. Out of these, 50 documents were only partially released. More than 30 documents were withheld in their entirety, including email exchanges and reports about meetings with pharmaceutical companies Sanofi-Aventis, Eli Lili and GlaxoSmithKline, as well as pharma lobby group EFPIA. They were involved in lobbying the Commission for tightened intellectual property rights in the future EU-India deal, which public health groups have slammed as a threat to India’s position as the pharmacy of the global South.
Twelve of the censored documents at the core of the lawsuit are meeting reports from the EU’s Market Access Advisory Committee (MAAC) and its working groups. They operate in the context of the EU’s Market Access Strategy and bring together Commission officials, EU member state representatives and corporate lobbyists who discuss regulatory barriers in key markets, developing joint strategies to get rid of them. Market access in India ranks high on the agenda in the groups dealing with postal and distribution services, cars, tyres, textiles, food safety and animal health measures.
Several of the issues raised by these groups have made it onto the EU’s list of the top priority barriers which prevent access to the Indian market. This means that they have been jointly challenged by the EU Commission in Brussels, its delegation in Delhi and by EU member states: in the free trade talks with India, at the multilateral level in the WTO and in all kinds of ‘dialogues’ with the Indian authorities, sometimes with the support of other trading power-hubs like the US or Japan.