new europe print edition issue 1015

19th Year of Publication number 1015 27 JanuarY - 2 februarY, 2013 € 3.50

NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

franco frattini, the chairman of the european People’s Party (ePP) ad hoc group

on foreign policy, has said that the urgent situation in mali will be the main focus of their meeting in brussels on 28-29 January.

Developments in mali continue to escalate after islamist rebels advanced from the northern part of the former french colony, from positions that it took control of last year in a rebellion. islamic maghreb, the north african wing of the al- Qaeda, are alongside three other rebel groups, the ansar Dine, movement for unity and Jihad in West africa , and the Signed-in-blood battalion, who are attempting to take over the country to impose islamic law.

this provoked a military intervention from france on the 11 January to protect mali from the threat of being turned into a terrorist led state. frattini said: “there are urgent resolutions about mali that are to be adopted by the group, these will be submitted for the approval of the ePP president. the militant forces represent danger to their neighbouring countries and european states if they become dominant in mali, as they will be nearer to europe than even afghanistan.”

as for the reaction to the french deploying forces in north africa, the former italian foreign minister believes its time to show solidarity

with them. “this is why i proposed to the italian government to send a logistic mission of support, and this succeeded as the council of ministers decided to allow logistic support through italian training with air operations.”

“there has been a limited number of member states offering support for france in the eu, although it was decided by the european council of foreign ministers to support a

training mission in mali, and the decision was taken in a unified spirit offering support for france.”

“the idea from us is we would like to establish a collective european defence capacity and the mali situation is an example why, this would allow europe to intervene quickly in situations in countries who need it. We would also like to see more integration and cooperation with nato.”

“Lucy, You Got a Lot of `Splainin’ to Do...”

EPP focus on Mali

A convoy of the French army coming from Bamako and going to Daibali in Segou, Mali, 24 January 2013. | AFP/PHOTO ERIC FEFERBERG

in our newspaper last week, we claimed that inaction and the influence of the ship owners lobby inside the european com-mission had led to a decade long delay in introducing a carbon tax on shipping, a greater carbon polluter than aviation, which is subject to a tax.

furthermore, we claimed that this de-lay had cost the european union ‘several billions of euros.’ We wish to apologise for these remarks as they only reflected a partial truth and we need to rectify them.

according to further information, the delay in imo discussions has, in fact, been going on for fifteen years, instead of ten that we have reported. Protracted dis-cussions mean, in practical terms, losing years of revenue for the eu.

referenDum Page 06

human rightS Page 09

Page 03

militants threaten region, eu states

china-euroPe: 2013 insidePage 32

commission gives €1.1bn to Portugese banif

for a Visa-free europe

obama goes green

italy goes to the polls

economY Page 04

KASSanDRA 2

euroPean union Page 05

PoliticS Pages 14, 24

02 ANALYSIS NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

27 January - 2 February, 2013

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www.new-europe.info11th Year, Number 505

THE EUROPEAN WEEKLY

January 26 - February 1, 2003

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The Shooting Gallery

The hew head of the Eurogroup reminded us of someone...

MANAGING EdItor

A lia Papageorgiou [email protected]

SENIor EdItorIAl tEAM

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A riti Alamanou (Legal Affairs) [email protected]

L ouise Kissa (Fashion) [email protected]

A lexandra Coronakis (Columnist) [email protected]

dIrEctor

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Before the European Union was blessed with the Lis-bon Treaty, the External Action Service and Cathy Ashton, external relations were confused and occasi-onally incoherent. This was the case in the issue that dominated for a decade, the Iraq war. Donald Rums-feld decided to approach the issue with his customary charm and tact, by splitting Europe into two, old and new. The British also decided to go their seperate way, into the conflict alongside George Bush, destroying any hope of a unified response from Europe. Some feel that, ten years later, the British tactic of going it alone hasn’t changed. Agriculture was also in the news, with the Commissioner complaining that every time they solved one problem another one appeared. He pledged to get CAP working in the new member states, even though it wasn‘t exactly working in the old member states. This was the week of dividing Europe into old and new.

ne 10 YeARS

AGO

MMOn the day that David Cameron held his long-awaited speech on Eu-rope, and calling for an in-out referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union, there was a protest by European trade unionists in Brussels. They weren’t all from the EU, some, like the Norwegian contingent, a country that has all the access it wants to the European single market, were also in attendance. They had there problems with the way the market is being run, certainly, seeing it as a race to the bot-tom. They were fighting to preserve the rights of workers.David Cameron, as he continually stressed during his big speech on 23 January, is a staunch defender of a strong single market, although not in the same way that the Norwegian and other European trade unio-nists seem to be; Cameron wants an unvarnished EU, one stripped to its trading essentials. Of course, the prime minister’s speech, and in-deed European policy, is a mite more complicated; he wants to claw back powers for Brussels and offer the British people a referendum on a supposed new relationship. If it fails, and he has said he will campaign “body and soul” for a yes vote, then his country will withdraw from the EU.He hasn’t exactly been explicit about which particular powers he wants to repatriate – he says everything in on the table – but he does have a particular need, it seems, to win back social legislation, such as the long-time bête noire, the working time directive, which sets compulso-ry holiday time and restricts excessive working hours.He did drop a big hint at what he wants from a European future. “As Chancellor Merkel has said; if Europe today accounts for just over 7% of the world’s population, produces around 25% of global GDP and has to finance 50% of global social spending, then it’s obvious that it will have to work very hard to maintain its prosperity and way of life.”His is a Europe stripped of its social protections, one at the mercy of big business. As he believes, “it is neither right nor necessary to claim that the integrity of the single market, or full membership of the Euro-pean Union, requires the working hours of British hospital doctors to be set in Brussels”.He is also not a fan of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) or the Euro-pean Court of Human Rights (another bugbear, but not actually an EU institution, and one that the British people seem oddly against, largely owing to hostile media coverage).Predictably, he has come under fire from various EU politicians and heads of state. He is playing a dangerous game, a high-risk strategy, they say. Both the Irish and Swedish prime ministers, Enda Kenny and Fredrik Reinfeldt, have suggested that the UK can discretely alter the policies of the EU in the usual manner, by diplomacy at council level – indeed, Reinfeldt has said that, in this way, EU laws are effectively in a constant state of evolution. Much has been made in the UK media, correctly, that his speech is in large part about routing the Eurosceptic opposition in his own Con-servative Party, as well as those right-wing Eurosceptics without. This is true. But is only a part of it; he is solidifying a potentially fractured party ahead of the next general election (he has promised a referen-dum if the Conservatives win,to be held in late 2017), where they will nave to be united on Europe (he has just made it an election issue), but beyond the domestic infighting, Cameron has offered a genuine vision for what he wants Europe to be; a low-wage competitor to India and China, a Europe of no solidarity, of benefit cuts and social drudgery. And he wants to start at home. The rest can follow.

Today the UK, tomorrow the EU

03EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu27 January - 2 February, 2013

Franco Frattini, the chairman of the Euro-pean People’s Party (EPP) ad hoc group on foreign policy, has said that the urgent

situation in Mali will be the main focus of their meeting in Brussels on 28-29 January.

Developments in Mali continue to escalate after Islamist rebels advanced from the northern part of the former French colony, from positions that it took control of last year in a rebellion.

Islamic Maghreb, the North African wing of the Al- Qaeda, are alongside three other rebel groups, the Ansar Dine, Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa , and the Signed-in-Blood Battalion, who are attempting to take over the country to impose Islamic Law.

This provoked a military intervention from France on the 11 January to protect Mali from the threat of being turned into a terrorist led state.

Frattini said: “There are urgent resolutions about Mali that are to be adopted by the group, these will be submitted for the approval of the EPP president. The militant forces represent dan-ger to their neighbouring countries and Europe-an states if the become dominant in Mali, as they will be nearer to Europe than even Afghanistan.”

As for then reaction to the French deploying forces in North Africa, the former Italian foreign minister believes its time to show solidarity with them.

“This is why I proposed to the Italian gov-ernment to send a logistic mission of support, and this succeeded as the council of ministers decided to allow logistic support through Italian training with air operations.”

“There has been a limited number of mem-ber states offering support for France in the EU,

although it was decided by the European Coun-cil of Foreign Ministers to support a training mis-sion in Mali, and the decision was taken in a uni-fied spirit offering support for France.”

“The idea from us is we would like to estab-lish a collective European defence capacity and the Mali situation is an example why, this would allow Europe to intervene quickly in situations in countries who need it. We would also like to see more integration and cooperation with Nato.”

Following the hostage situation at the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria where 37 foreigners were killed in a siege instigated by a new Islamist splinter group, is North Africa now a new breed-ing ground for terrorist groups?

“Its is very concerning.” Frattini reflected. “And I believe that there should be support from the Italian government and to contribute in the whole of the Sahara where there are terrorist threats.”

“If you look at some countries such as Niger there are uranium mines there, imagine what would happen if terrorists took over that area. Algeria and Libya are both energy producers and we have a strong national interest there, as Italy has nationals living in both these countries and we have investments there as well.”

“The way to approach the area is to have a quick intervention from the UN Security Council, and to decide what the principle of ownership in Africa is.

However European intervention should only be about support, and it is for Arica in terms of military intervention and education to step up and take control of threatening circumstance, that would be the best option for the African region.”

Rising levels of EU scepticism will be in-tensely discussed, a topic that will be fuelled by

UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s speech on the 23 January that pledged a referendum by on Britain’s EU membership by the end of 2017, that is if he wins a second term in power in two years time, something that is seen as a clear shift in the UK over their future political direction.

Italy is also about to go to the polls on 24 February where euroscepticism has been a major part of the election debate, this will be followed by the German national elections in the Autumn where the European question will rear its head, as many German citizens are angry over the bailouts to problem countries such as Greece.

“Unfortunately in Italy there are many who see Europe as a problem rather than an opportu-nity, the Eurozone crises means that people have questioned the participation of Italy, coupled with the bureaucracy of the EU they are issues in the election campaign, but not the main issue. Although some would want to see a referendum submitted over the participation of the Euro-Zone, and that of course is a sign of euroscepti-cism.” Frattini added.

“As for Cameron’s speech it still lacks detail to make a full comment on, but to pull out of the EU would leave questions on borders, customs, on how this would effect commerce and trade. If the package that he brings forward, if he is re- elected in 2015, strengthens the EU democratic institu-tions then there will be a positive reaction to that.”

European enlargement will also be on the agenda as Frattini believes that progress has to ac-cession stalled especially in the Western Balkans.

“Due to the difficult situations that govern-ments in Europe are going through in the eco-nomic crises, we need to revitalise the enthusiasm of being a full member of the European Union. There are member state countries that are trying to slow down the process to accession.”

“I would like also revitalise the EU perspec-tive in the populations of the Western Balkan countries, also to find solutions to some of the problems such as the name of Macedonia and to continue the negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo, its time to re-launch the European per-spective in this region.”

The final word was left for the biggest foreign policy event in recent months, the re-election of Barack Obama for a second term in power in the White House.

“ Our reaction is a positive one to his re-election and we wish to continue cooperation between the EPP and the Obama administration. We hope there is progress with negotiations that are on the table over Iran and their use of nuclear power, and also to find an equilibrium between the US, the EU and Nato, to find a balanced posi-tion that involves Russia being around the table where decisions are taken in the defence strategy of Nato.”

By Peter Taberner

ITALIAN ELECTION POLLS As of 25 January Electionista has put together the following polls on the upcoming election on February 23:

ITALy AVERAgE oF poLLS:

PD 31.6%(-0.63) PDL 18.42%(+0.36) M5S 13.57%(+0.09) MONTI 9.29%(+0.73) LEGA 5.26%(+0.15) RIv. CIvILE 4.56%(+0.27)SEL 4.37%(-0.49) UDC 3.97%(-0.46) DESTRA 1.72%(+0.1) FD’I 1.51%(-0.02)FLI 1.16%(-0.16) FID 1.01%(+0.06)

RADICALI 0.99%(+0.04)

By CoALITIoN

CENTRE-LEFT 37%(-1.3), CENTRE-RIGHT 29.2%(+0.48), CENTRE 14.42%(+0.11), M5S 13.57%(+0.09), RIv. CIvILE 4.56%(+0.26)

MAIN ChANgES ANd TRENdS SINCE LAST WEEk:

The gap between the centre-left and the centre-right has narrowed further and is now 7.8 points. Yet, while the centre-left has dropped over a point, growth among other coalitions is fairly evenly distributed.As hinted last week, the fall in support for the Five Star Movement seems to have now stabilised. If sustained this is an important trend as it will limit the growth of the centre-right.While it’s worth noting the growth in support for Monti’s list, the majority of this, once again, seems to come from other parties in the centrist coalition. Undecided voters remain on 10-15%: if the polls narrow further, where these vo-tes go will matter. In terms of election outcome, the narrowing of polls will have the greatest impact in the Senate - Lombardy and Sicily are now both leaning to the centre-right, which would mean no majority emerging from the polls in February and the need for the centre-left to seek an alliance with others in order to govern.Based on current polling data and with four weeks to election day (i.e. if data chan-ges and as election nears, the probability changes too): Probability of a centre-left majority in the lower house: 89%(-5) Probability of no majority in the Senate: 57%(+2).

Franco Frattini, Foreign Minister of Italy

Frattini talks Mali, Italian elections

Following the European People‘s Party Assembly in December with the ambiguous shifts bet-ween Italian Prime Minister, at the time Mario Monti, being present as well as the Italian Mem-ber Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi we spent some time interviewing Former Minsiter Franco Frattini on the upcoming Foreign Affairs agenda and the elections in Italy.



Commission gives €1.1bn to Portugese Banif

The European Commission has tem-porarily approved of a €1.1 billion recapitalisation grant to Portuguese

bank Banco Internacional do Funchal S.A. (Banif), as permitted under EU state rules re-garding aid for financial stability.

It’s planned that the grant will allow the bank to meet regulatory capital ratios that have been set by Portugal’s banking regula-tors, and will be handled by the Directorate General of Competition, as state aid rules fall outside the €78 billion Economic Adjustment Programme agreed for Portugal in 2011 to en-sure its financial stability.

As part of the deal Portugal have also agreed to a far reaching restructuring plan for Banif that is to be completed by the 31 March, the Commission will then take a look at the proposals of the restructuring and make a full assessment of them.

An EU Official said: “As Commissioner Almunia indicated, the Commission expects Banif, following the recapitalisation, to pre-sent an in-depth restructuring plan by 31 March 2013, that is supposed to include a si-gnificant downsizing of the bank with a focus on Madeira and the Azores aimed at mitiga-ting distortions of competition in view of the amount of aid, as well as establishing long term viability.”

Two weeks ago Portugal notified the re-capitalisation measures, that included €700 million worth of shares to be issued by Banif, and a further €400 million in hybrid securities

to meet capital requirements. “We have already been devising a restruc-

turing plan for the last six months, and have been negotiating terms with the Portuguese government.” Explained a spokesperson for Banif. “Of course we have been doing some internal restructuring in order to receive pu-blic funds, the group was led by a holding company and recapitalisation can only occur

in purely a bank, so had to merger the holding company with the bank to ensure further pu-blic investment.”

He added: “We are still working on the final details of the restructuring plan in many areas but this will be completed by the 31 March deadline. We are in constant discussion with the government over our plans to create a clear and stable pathway for the group in the

future. Negotiations are also ongoing on some parts of the terms to receive the funding, and we expect to finalise these terms for this to happen very soon.”

After the financial crash of 2008 the Com-mission adopted special state rules that allo-wed all member states to support their own banking systems, to ensures financial stability as long as competition is not distorted.

So far the crises rules are thought to be a success by the Commission as its has forced banks to restructure in order to change their business models to achieve long term viabili-ty, especially if banks and financial institutions have been reliant on risky investments.

From 1 January last year the Commission adopted a communication on state aid rules to support banks, that kept in place the four previous communications which set in place support in the form of funding guarantees, recapitalisation and asset relief, and the re-quirements for a restructuring or viability plan.

Crises rules were also updated at the end of 2011 to assess public support to financial institutions in troubled times, with the main stipulations explaining how the state is rem-unerated if member states decide to recapi-talise their banks using such instruments as ordinary shares, where the there are no fixed dividends in place.

Banif is the eighth largest commercial bank in Portugal when measured by assets, where it was estimated at the end of 2011 that those assets combined totalled €15.8 billion.

European finance ministers have paved the way for the EU to introduce a financial trans-action tax (FTT) through the process of en-hanced co-operation.

The tax was agreed by 11member states during a meeting of the economic and finan-cial affairs council in Brussels on 22 January.

The member sates that agreed to the tax are Austria, Belgium, Estonia, France, Germa-ny, Greece, Italy Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia and Spain. It is strongly opposed by the UK, as well as Ireland, which currently holds the six-month presidency of the EU.

Other member states are free to join the FTT if they please.

The FTT proposes a harmonised tax rate of 0.1% on transactions on all types of finan-cial instruments, excluding derivatives, which will be taxed at 0.01%.

According to a council statement, the tax will allow the financial industry “to make a fair contribution to tax revenues, whilst also creating a disincentive for transactions that do not enhance the efficiency of financial markets”.

The tax was widely welcomed by Euro-pean politicians, although, as media reports suggest, a European Commission proposal

on the tax will drag the debate out longer, as countries haggle over the precise technical details. However, a positive note was struck by European Commissioner for Taxation, Al-girdas Šemeta, who called the agreement “a milestone”.

The German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble said “the financial sector should sha-re the burden of costs of the financial crisis in an appropriate way” adding “we have come a good way closer to this goal”.

The President of the Party of European Socialists (PES), Sergei Stanishev also said that financial institutions should be the ones to aid European economic recovery, saying all member states “should take note of this posi-tive step and remember that ordinary citizens still expect those who caused the crisis to be-come significant financial contributors to the solution”.

In the European Parliament, which voted for the introduction of an FTT last year, will be involved in the consultation process with council and will vote on the tax, most likely during the June plenary session.

Meanwhile, development NGO, Oxfam have called for the FTT to be a ‘Robin Hood’ tax by devoting large sections of its garnered

revenue to the world’s poor. According to Ni-colas Mombrial, Oxfam’s EU policy adviser, “by tackling the worst excesses of casino ca-pitalism, the FTT can stem the tide of grow-ing inequality and make the financial system work for the whole of humanity rather that a

global elite. But it will only be a Robin Hood Tax if a big chunk of the estimated €37 billion annual revenue is used to help poor people at home and abroad who have been hit hardest by the economic crisis and climate change”.

CD

Eleven member states sign-up to FTT

By Peter Taberner

European Central Bank head of mission, Rasmus Ruffer (L), and Juergen Kroeger, head of mission for the European Commission (EC), during a press conference, in Lisbon, Portugal, 16 November 2011 | EPA/MARIO CRUZ

AFP PHOTO / GEORGES GOBET

05ANALYSISNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu27 January - 2 February, 2013

9th of January marked the fourth year of my tenure as the Minister for EU Affairs in Tur-key. Thanks to the determination of our Go-vernment, we have taken many steps to bring Turkey closer to the EU. Yet, there is one issue that has been on top of our agenda still pen-ding to be resolved: Schengen visa before free travel of Turkish citizens.

Facts and figures of today indicate that the visa against Turkish citizens is not legal, fair and rational.

It is not legal since Turkey has legal rights derived from the Ankara Agreement signed back in 1963. In simplest terms, the “standstill provision” laid down in the Additional Proto-col of the Ankara Agreement requires member states to refrain from introducing any new re-strictions and thus, prohibits the visa require-ment for Turkish citizens for a number of EU member states. Since, 11 of today‘s member states had not had a visa requirement for Tur-kish nationals at the time when the Protocol entered into force back in 1973, they shall not require visa from Turkish citizens.

In fact, the legal rights of Turks have been recognized by the Court of Justice of the Eu-ropean Union and the national courts of some member states including Germany and Ne-therlands. However, such decisions are not put into practice, which is a clear breach of the “rule of law”.

It is not fair. Turkey is the only candidate country, whose citizens are still subject to visas. Let alone the citizens of Western Bal-kans, around 200 million Brazilians and 120 million Mexicans are exempt from the visa requirement. Turkey is the only country that had formed a Customs Union with the EU without becoming a member. The products of Turkish businessmen can freely flow in the Union but the owner of those products can-not freely travel.

Finally, it is not rational. Recent studies in-dicate that the argument that large number of Turks would be flowing into European coun-tries in case visas are lifted is invalid. Within the last decade Turkey has achieved remar-kable economic growth. Turks leaving Euro-pean countries to return their homeland has been outnumbering those moving into EU. Reverse-migration is already happening. The middle-class of Turkey is steadily growing. Turks simply want to travel, spend, invest and do business in European countries.

EU countries, which are going through an economic crisis would in fact benefit from the increasing commercial, cultural, educational and touristic visits of Turkish citizens. In fact, shop owners in Greek islands last summer asked from their Government to lift visas for

Turkish tourists who have been a source of in-come in the midst of the economic crisis.

Let me tell an anecdote that is perhaps stronger than any argument. On our trip back to Turkey from one of our recent official vi-sits in a European capital, close to the end of the boarding of Turkish passengers, the staff of the shops and the bar & café of the Gate, started to close their stores. Asking why they were closing since it was only 7 pm and there were other flights in line, one of the salesman replied; “Turkish passengers are gone, it’s not worth to wait the passengers of other planes to Europe. People don’t spend money as they used to”.

Last year, the EU Council gave the Euro-pean Commission a mandate to take steps to-wards visa liberalization for Turkish citizens. The EU has been preparing a Road Map to-wards visa free regime with Turkey. We expect this Road Map to be an objective, fair and a well-defined technical document, aiming to prepare the conditions for visa-free travel of Turkish citizens. Hopefully, it should not take long before Turkish citizens are granted visa free travel.

Many European politicians and statesmen are aware of the fact that visa free travel of Tur-kish citizens would not have any negative so-cio-economic consequences for the EU coun-tries; rather it would contribute in a myriad ways. Yet, any issue related to Turkey turns out to be a political issue used and abused in domestic politics in some member states. I hope common sense would prevail and this outdated and problematic visa issue would be resolved in the near future. Visa free travel would only contribute to a more prosperous, more dynamic and richer Europe.

For a Visa-Free EuropeBy Egemen Bağış

Egemen Bağış, Minister for EU Affairs and Chief Negotiator of Turkey

Pointing to a common future? European Union foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton (L) and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu | EPA/TOLGA BOZOGLU

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GLOBAL CYBER SECURITY CONFERENCE30th January 2013

Résidence Palace, Brussels

The upcoming Global Cyber Security Conference, organised by the European Security Round Ta-ble (ESRT) together with the Estonian Ministry of Defence, will provide an inclusive forum and give representatives from more than 30 key countries an opportunity to meet and exchange views in an informal but highly political forum. High-level governmental representatives will participate such as Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission who will provide a keynote speech, as well as representatives of international organisations like NATO, UN and Interpol. Taking place in the con-text of the issuance of the EU Cyber Security Strategy, the Conference is focusing on issues of internati-onal coordination in cyber security and aims to convey the need for enhanced international coordinated action on cyber security. The Irish Presidency to the Council of the European Union is associated to the conference which will be sponsored by Microsoft.

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try, Government of Japan• Craig Mundie - Chief research and Strategy officer at Microsoft• Marietje Schaake - Member of the European Parliament • Martin Fleischer - Head of the International Cyber Policy Coordination Staff, Federal Foreign Of-

fice of Germany• Steve Purser - Head of the Technical Department at ENISA

The conference will be chaired by Tunne Kelam - Member of the European Parliament. If you have any questions concerning the Global Cyber Security Conference, please contact the ESRT Project Manager:Raül Hernández i Sagrera+32(0) 2 733 33 [email protected]

In association with the Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union



Cameron offers referendum on EU membership

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has said he will offer his country a referendum on EU membership in a

speech in London on 21 January.Cameron has said that he will offer the

British people a referendum on membership of the EU in the next five years, assuming his Conservative party is returned at the next ge-neral election, scheduled for 2015.

He said that the 2015 party manifesto “will ask for a mandate from the British people for a Conservative government to negotiate a new settlement with our European partners in the next Parliament”. He said it will a settlement “with the single market at its heart”.

“And when we have negotiated that new settlement, we will give the British people a re-ferendum with a very simple in or out choice. To stay in the EU on these new terms; or come out altogether”.

“It will be an in-out referendum”, he em-phasised, adding that legislation will be draf-ted before the next election. Is the Conserva-tives are returned to government, he said, that legislation will be passed by the end of 2015, and that “we will complete this negotiation and hold this referendum within the first half of the next parliament”.

“It is time for the British people to have their say. It is time to settle this European que-stion in British politics”.

The long-awaited speech had twice been postponed. It was originally scheduled for 22 January, but had to be rearranged to avoid a di-plomatic spat with France and Germany, the date being the anniversary of the Elysée Trea-ty which paved the way for European unity. It was then changed again from its rescheduled date owing to the hostage crisis in Algeria. It was originally supposed to be delivered in the Netherlands.

The prime minister has said that he wants to renegotiate the terms of the UK’s treaty with the EU, repatriating certain powers form Brussels to London. He says he wants this new relationship to be put to the British people in

the next five years, most likely the end of 2017. if it is rejected, then the UK will withdraw from the EU.

His position has drawn much criticism from European politicians.

Cameron said that the European Union needs “fundamental, far-reaching change”. He said the foundation of Europe “should be the single market, not the single currency”.

He offered a vision of a “flexible union of free member states who share treaties and institutions and pursue together the ideal of co-operation”, and “to advance our shared in-terests by using our collective power to open markets. And to build a strong economic base across the whole of Europe”.

He said that his vision was based on five principle; competitiveness and the completi-on of the single market, flexibility for member state to act together I various ways, that power

must flow back to member states in areas of legislation such as the environment and social affairs, democratic accountability and fairness.

He said in the minds of the British people a question mark hangs over EU membership, and that “by ignoring it will not make it go away”.

He said that while he favours a referen-dum, it should not be taken straight away. He insisted than it was in his government’s powers to reclaim powers form Brussels, and that a referendum should be put on this “new settlement”.

“But I don’t believe that to make a decision at this moment is the right way forward, either for Britain or for Europe as a whole”, he said. “A vote today between the status quo and lea-ving would be an entirely false choice”.

The EU, he said, is “in flux”, and that now “is not the right time to make such a momen-

tous decision about the future of our country. It is wrong to ask people whether to stay or go before we have had a chance to put the relati-onship right”.

Cameron insisted that his argument is “more practical than emotional”, and that “I never want us to pull up the drawbridge. I am not a British isolationist. I want a better deal fro Britain and a better deal for Europe”.

He said that he believed that a renegotia-ted settlement would be accepted by the pu-blic, and that he would be campaigning for this outcome. “When the referendum comes let me say now that if we can negotiate such an arrangement, I will campaign for it with all my heart and soul”, he said.

“Britain’s national interest is best served in a flexible, adaptable and open European Union and that such a European Union is best with Britain in it”, he said.

After David Cameron‘s speech promising an in-out referendum, the question is how im-portant is Europe to UK voters?

A poll by Ipsos MORI ahead of Cameron‘s speech Ben Paige, their Chief Executive told French press, “When asked ‘What is the most important issue the country is facing?’, only 6% of Britons give the spontaneous response of ‘Europe’.”

Anti-EU feeling has stablised, but is down from earlier polls he added, “In our most re-cent poll 48% of Britons said they wanted the UK to leave, while 44% believed we should stay. The current figures are similar to those seen in 2000, when 46% wanted to leave the EU. While support for remaining in Europe has dropped from the record high of 63%, seen in 1991, the numbers wishing to leave the EU are, more importantly, far from the peak

seen in the early 1980s, when 65% of Britons favoured leaving.” The top pollster is also un-convinced by support for a referendum, “But respondents are always in favour of a referen-dum in principle, even if the issue in question is the price of cheese.”

Price has some thoughts on the increased support for Eurosceptics. “There are a myri-ad of reasons – the immigration bureaucracy imposed by Brussels; the fact that many Bri-tons still maintain an ‘island mentality’; even the belief still held by many that the European Union is a peaceful way for Germany to con-trol the continent. There is also an important element of the anti-Europe right having seized the opportunity created by the euro crisis.”

He observes, “UKIP supporters are much more worried about immigration than they are about Europe. The increase in support for UKIP can be explained by the defection of

disappointed Conservative party voters and a general disillusionment with mainstream po-litical parties.”

He also points a finger at the UK class sys-tem, “The degree of Euroscepticism is a func-tion of education and social class. In the most privileged social categories, 59% of people want Britain to stay in the European Union. This figure decreases to 31% for the poorest social classes. On average, the Eurosceptics are older and less likely to live in the city centre.”

These thoughts were supported by Tom Mludzinski is Deputy Head of Politics for Ipsos MORI, who explained in the centre-right blog, Conservative Home that “the European Union is, in fact, only fifth on the list of UKIP suppor-ters’ concerns; a fifth (18%) saw it as among the most important issues facing Britain in 2012.”

He elaborated, “UKIP supporters were more concerned about the economy than any

other issue. Six in ten (59%) UKIP supporters placed it among the most important issues in 2012. However, unlike the public on average, the second issue of concern for UKIP suppor-ters was race relations and immigration; 51% of them mentioned it compared with just a fifth (21%) of Britons overall.”

Former Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party, Lord Ashcroft says his research and pol-ling agrees, “Europe is not much of a priority even for those who say they might vote UKIP; the EU is just one of the (many) things they are cross about. For that reason, we should not ne-cessarily expect a big fall in the UKIP vote as a result of The Speech. I still expect Nigel Farage’s party to do well in the European elections, as people take an early opportunity to cast what they regard as a cost-free vote against Brussels, register their mid-term disgruntlement, and re-mind the Tories of their promise.”

But what do the British public think of Europe?By Andy Carling

By Cillan Donnelly

British Prime Minister David Cameron delivers a speech on ‘the future of the European Union and Britain’s role within it’, in central London, on 23 January. Cameron promised to hold a referendum by 2017 giving British people the choice of staying in or leaving the European Union if his party wins the next election.| AFP PHOTO / BEN STANSALL


Can interculturalism succeed where multiculturalism has failed?At the beginning of this century, Barcelo-na was home to some 40,000 immigrants, attracted by the economic opportunities available in a city transformed in the after-glow of the 1992 Olympic Games.

Fast forward eight years and that number had jumped to 300,000, with the city’s new-comers drawn from Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. The growth was so rapid that it confronted local authorities and politicians with an array of challenges that had vexed other more mature multi-ethnic and religi-ous societies for decades.

“Intense” and “chaos” are the words used by Daniel de Torres, to describe the impact on Catalan public officials. As the city’s for-mer Commissioner for Integration, de Tor-res is well placed to provide insight into the dynamics and outlook of a local authority experiencing unprecedented demographic change.

“The reality was changing so fast every week,” he says. “As we didn’t have models – the multicultural model or the assimilati-onist model, we tried to invent something new, taking into account our history and our reality.”

Current migration patterns, Europe’s ag-eing and declining population and the reali-ties of urban security have combined to make integration policies as essential as education programmes, children’s crèches and elderly care services for public officials working in Europe’s migration ‘gateway’ cities and set-tlement destinations.

Yet this urgency at local level is not al-ways reflected in the tone and rhetoric of na-tional politics.

The symbiotic relationship between de-mography, immigration and Europe’s future prosperity is rarely explained. Celebrations of diversity’s economic and cultural dividen-ds are drowned in the derision that awaits any public expression deemed to be “politi-cally-correct.”

Calls for serious and frank conversa-tions with electorates about the realities of Europe’s demographic social time-bomb fail the political reality test too.

That leaves extremists and single-issue fanatics free to make the running on matters of national security, immigration and “cultu-ral compatibility.”

From the right, large-scale immigration is seen as a threat to public order and a curse on social policy.

From the left comes the complaint that immigrants are the pawns of the privileged, a means of holding down the wages and condi-tions of the lower paid.

Post-11 September 2001, as the noise and rancour surrounding immigration incre-ased in decibels, so Europe’s identity crisis

has deepened, amid concerns about the state of community relations.

Comments from German Chancellor Merkel, British Prime Minister Cameron and former French President Sarkozy pointing to the failures of multiculturalism, were high-profile testimonies to native worries about the existence of parallel communities, the rejection by some minorities of ‘European values’ and the presence of “home-grown” terrorists

In a new Council of Europe video, Ox-ford University’s Professor of European Stu-dies Timothy Garton-Ash, adds his voice to the criticism of multiculturalism.

“In some British cities, multiculturalism meant a retreat from the basic fundamental principles of a free and open society,” he says.

The British writer and broadcaster Keen-an Malik goes further.

He describes multi-culturalism as a poli-tical process “the aim of which is to manage and institutionalize diversity by putting peo-ple into ethnic and cultural boxes, defining individual needs and rights by virtue of the boxes into which people are put, and using those boxes to shape public policy.

“It is a case, not for open borders and minds, but for the policing of borders, whether physical, cultural or imaginative.”

With multiculturalism in the political crosshairs, the way is now open for a new approach to the integration of people from different ethnic, cultural and religious back-grounds.

Many of the ideas that will inform this new framework are due to be discussed at an Intercultural Cities conference in Dublin (6-8 February).

The conference, organised as part of Ireland’s EU presidency and Andorra’s chair-manship of the Council of Europe’s Commit-tee of Ministers, will bring to the Irish capi-tal experts and local authority officials from Europe, north America, Mexico, China and Japan.

“Migrants are an opportunity,” says Irena Guidikova, the Council of Europe’s manager of the Intercultural Cities programme. “They bring benefits to society and this has been proven.

“If you see integration and diversity as a zero-sum game, you will get nowhere. What we are trying to put forward is that diversity is a win-win for everybody. But it will only be win-win, if we create the right conditions.”

Intercultural integration encourages the view that diversity is an asset and fights discrimination with the active support of public authorities, business, civil society and the media. The intercultural city is anchored by the principles and standards of democra-cy and human rights and dismisses cultural relativism, its sponsors committed to the im-portance of a rights-based approach to diver-sity management.

Bespoke intercultural strategies for the local management of diverse populations, the prompt advice of experienced professio-nals and the sharing of best practices have en-

couraged some 60 local authorities to join or associate themselves with the Intercultural Cities network, a joint venture of the Coun-cil of Europe and the European Commission.

Dr Robin Wilson, a Belfast-based consul-tant to the project, understands its appeal to city technocrats.

“What is very useful about the Intercul-tural Cities project is that it has taken in-tercultural dialogue, which might seem ab-stract, and shown on the ground, in practice what it means positively, in terms of making a city that embraces the diversity advantage, a really attractive place to live,” he says

Critics cast doubt on the substantive dif-ferences between interculturalism and multi-culturalism and challenge the view that inter-culturalism is better placed to deliver equal opportunities, political representation and social inclusion to Europe’s minorities.

Yet buoyed by Europe’s current integra-tion policy vacuum and five years of rising local authority membership, the focus of the Intercultural Cities project is now shifting north towards national governments. The hope is that interculturalism becomes the 21st century natural successor to multicul-turalism.

“The Intercultural Cities approach addresses the issue of how to create cohesive societies that are diverse, that hold together and are resilient in the face of extremist dis-course and acts,” Guidikova adds. “We hope national authorities will notice and we hope they will embrace the approach.”

A participant poses for a photograph during Belfast Lord Mayor’s Show in Belfast, 18 June 2011, that saw the inclusion of a mixture of multicultural participants, including a troupe of Jai Ho Indian dancers, Eastern European dancers in traditional costume, Bollywood dancers, African drummers, Chinese lions and dragons, and Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh talent. “Diversity is a win-win for everybody. But it will only be win-win, if we create the right conditions”. |EPA/PAUL MCERLANE

By Gutenberg



The society of tolerance

By Francisco Jaime Quesado

The world is facing a time of change. When Bill Gates spoke about this special global capacity of creating a new commit-ment between the citizens toward the challenge of the econo-my, he was in fact speaking about this commitment with the Society of Tolerance in a global and complex world. Based in new standards of Law and Democracy, this Society of Tole-rance is above all the confirmation that in this new world the adequate use of the resousces and dynamic capabilities is the best way to construct solis solutions to the future.This Society of Tolerance allows people to know who they are and have a strong commitment with the values of freedom, so-cial justice and development. This is the reason to believe that a new standard of Democracy, more than a possibility, is an individual and collective necessity for all of us, effective global citizens. Habermas is more than ever present – the difference of this new world will be in the exercise of the capacity of the individual participation as the central contribution to the rein-vention of the collective society. In times of Change and Uncertainty, the World must regain its Strategic Competitive Advantage but at the same time must be able to reinforce its Social Dimension. In this way it´s es-sential to learn the lessons that more than ever emerge from a world that is trying to rebuild its competitive advantage and to reinvent its effective place in a complex and global network of relations. In the New Global Economy and Innovation So-ciety, people and companies have a central role to play towards a new attitude connected with the creation of value and focus on creativity. In a time of change, the world can´t wait. The world must con-firm itself as an “enabler actor” in a very demanding world, in-troducing in the society and in the economy a capital of trust and innovation that is essential to ensure a central leadership in the future relations betwen the different social and econo-mic players. These new actors should be more and more glo-bal, capable of driving to the social matrix a unique dynamic of knowledge building and selling it as a mobile asset on the global market. This New Contract of trust between the different actors must be supported by some strategic proposals that demand for a new operational agenda. The world must know how to inte-grate in a positive way most of the citizens that want to deve-lop new ideas. Social cohesion is done with the constructive participation of the citizens and it is more and more necessary an effective attitude of mobilization for this effort. A positive integrative policy is a signal that the different actors have a common road to follow in the future.

Francisco Jaime Quesado is the General Manager of the Inno-vation and Knowledge Society in Portugal, a public agency wi-th the mission of coordinating the policies for Information So-ciety and mobilizing it through dissemination, qualification and research activities. It operates within the Ministry of Science, Te-chnology and Higher Education

Cyprus: bailout not expected before February’s elections

Cypriot presidential candidate Ni-cos Anastasiades received clear support from the island’s main EU

partners in begin January during an extra-ordinary EPP (European People’s Party) Summit in Limassol. He said Cyprus was determined to implement all measures required for the consolidation of its eco-nomy and the creation of prospects of re-covery and growth. Anastasiades, who had a private meeting with the German chan-cellor Angela Merkel, underlined Cyprus, was “not asking for any special treatment and that we will be consistent with all our obligations”.

Nicos Anastasiades of DISY (Chri-stian-democrats) leads Phileleftheros, the top- selling newspaper of Cyprus, latest poll on the 17 February presidential elec-tion with 40.3%, compared to AKEL‘s (communists) candidate Stavros Malas at 20.5% and socialist party EDEK-backed George Lillikas at 17.9%. If no candidate obtains 50% of the vote from the first round, a second round would follow on 24 February. In a second round between Anastasiades and Malas, 50.1% will vote Anastasiades and 28.3% Malas. A second round between Anastasiades and Lillikas reveals the following results: Anastasiades gets 45.7%, Lillikas 30.4%.

The DISY leader was one the most fervent supporters of the Annan Plan for Cyprus, the UN proposal to resolve the Cyprus dispute back in 2004, even though a majority of his party voted it down. On his official website, he underlines his sup-port for Cyprus to accede to the NATO’s Partnership for Peace, a program of bilate-ral and security cooperation between indi-vidual countries and NATO.

In February 2011, the House of Re-presentatives voted to join the Partnership for Peace, the final step for Cyprus to join NATO. Anastasiades warmly supported the resolution, in hopes of giving Cyprus a bigger role in EU-NATO co-operation, thus boosting efforts to reunify the island. However, current president Christofias ve-toed it, stating that such membership was not in line with his vow to achieve a peace deal with Turkish Cypriots.

Nevertheless, Turkey, a full member of NATO, is likely to veto any attempt by Cyprus to engage with NATO. The Turks do not recognize Cyprus as a member of the EU. Ankara prevents high-level for-mal meetings between NATO and EU’s Political and Security Committee (PSC) by stating that Cyprus does not have any security clearance from NATO. Because each NATO member has a veto, Turkey can stop discussions between NATO and

the EU over military operations and intel-ligence issues.

Ankara is systematically vetoing Cypri-ot membership in international organiza-tions like for example: the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC); the European Centre for Medium – Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF); the Euro-pean Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT); the International Transport Forum (ITF); the International Renewable Energy Agen-cy (IRENA).

Before his election, current president Demetris Christofias said he would be a one-term president, unless a solution to the island’s decades-old conflict was in sight. Fresh reunification talks between the two sides were launched after his election in 2008, but have failed to break the impas-se in place for decades.

His proposals for a federal state in-cluded the rotation of the presidency between the two communities on the island. The negotiations made slow pro-gress over property rights and territorial limits, then stalled after the April 2010 elections in the northern occupied part of Cyprus, in which Dervis Eroglu of the pro-independence National Unity Party was elected.

During a meeting with Barroso in June 2012, Anastasiades said that negotiations between Greek Cypriots and Turk Cypri-ots need to find a way out from the dead-lock. The DISY leader noted that the ne-gotiating process needs to be enlarged and include the EU and Turkey. Anastasiades added that Ankara will then assume its re-sponsibilities and contribute in a construc-tive way to a Cyprus solution.

Christofias, once the island’s most po-pular politician, announced that he will not be seeking reelection. He has seen his ra-tings plunge on the back of the worst reces-sion in 40 years, and the bungled handling of Cyprus’s worst peace-time disaster when nearly 100 containers of confiscated Iranian explosives accidentally blew up the island’s largest power station at Mari in July 2011.

Some months later the results of an official investigation were released to the public, placing the blame for the incident mainly on president Christofias, holding him “personally and institutionally respon-sible” for the blast that killed 13 people. Christofias rejected the results of the inve-stigation and denied any personal respon-sibility for the tragedy. The economic im-pact of the explosion was estimated at € 2.4 billion, representing 13.8% of the Cyprus GDP, according to estimates by Credit

Suisse. After Nicosia‘s access to internatio-nal capital markets was cut off because of high yields on its traded debt, the Cypriot president turned to Russia for help. Mos-cow gave Cyprus a € 2.5 billion loan in late 2011. For the Russians, it was probably a way to stabilise a country with millions of Euros in Russian bank deposits and real estate investments. For Christofias, it was a way to get funds and avoid having a Greek style bailout with Troika supervision. A se-cond Cypriot request for a € 5 billion loan from Russia has so far gone unanswered.

Nicosia sought financial aid from the Troika (EC, ECB, IMF) in June 2012 after its banks were battered by their exposure to the Greek crisis and the destruction a year earlier of its most important power station. Begin December, Nicosia and the Troika have agreed on the terms of a bai-lout estimated at around € 17 billion. Up to 10 billion could be allocated for the recapitalisation of the banks, 6 billion for debt refinancing, and 1 billion to cover go-vernment spending. President Christofias defended his economic policy and blamed banks and the capitalist system for the glo-bal crisis.

During the meeting of 21 January, euro group finance ministers decided that the bailout of Cyprus - originally expected to lead the agenda - must wait until the spring following concerns about the size of the rescue package. Jean-Claude Juncker, the outgoing head of the group, said a de-cision on a package would be left until at least March because “negotiations are on-going” German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble even questioned whether any bailout should even take place. “We have to examine whether the problems in Cyprus represent a danger for the eurozone as a whole,” he told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. But without financial assistance the coun-try could face bankruptcy within months, possibly forcing it to leave the eurozone.

In absolute terms, € 17 billion is not so much compared to the bailouts for Greece, Portugal and Ireland. But in re-lation to Cyprus‘ economic output, it is a considerable amount, equal to its annual GDP. However, the economic adjustment programme and banking sector reforms should be seen as a catalyst that will rein-force macroeconomic and financial stabi-lity in the country. Over the longer term, the exploitation of natural gas discoveries should substantially boost growth pro-spects and help lower debt. With the US estimating the region holds about 122 trillion cubic feet of gas, Nicosia would be able to repay the Troika quite smoothly. Petroleum wealth could even change the political picture on the island in the years to come.

By Stavros Papagianneas


Italy turns its back on children seeking refuge

Every year, hundreds of boys travel alone, at great risk, from Afgha-nistan to Italy. They‘re looking

for refuge, for an education, for an op-portunity to escape the war zone in their country. And yet Italy turns away many of them, barring their entrance and taking no steps for their protection or care.

I met one such boy, “Ahmed S.,” last summer, as we did research on the topic. Ahmed said he fled his home in Afgha-nistan in 2011, fearing for his life. Only 17 years old, he traveled alone to Greece, where he made his way to the port city of Patras. Ahmed managed to hide under-neath a truck that boarded a boat headed for an Italian port. He lay wedged on top of a box between axles for 18 hours whi-le the boat crossed the Adriatic Sea. On arrival, Ahmed was met by Italian police, who promptly detained him.

“I told them the whole story [of what happened in Afghanistan], showed the scar,” he said, saying that men associa-ted with the Taliban had attacked him near his home. Ahmed wanted to apply for asylum, but he never had a chance to speak with a lawyer or meet a representa-tive of nongovernmental groups that are supposed to help boys like him in Italy. No one told him his rights. Instead, just four hours after his arrival, Italian port officials sent him back to Greece on the same ship he had come on. This time, he traveled in a cell in the ship’s machine room, with only bread and butter to eat and no access to a bathroom.

Instead of offering protection to children who make these treacherous journeys, Italy is sending them back to face horrible risks. In Greece, migrant children face destitution, law enforce-ment abuse, and appalling detention conditions. The situation is so bad that the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Greece is not a safe country of asylum. Greece’s dysfunctional asylum system leaves children, like all asylum seekers, without a fair chance to receive protection.

Without asylum in Greece, they may be deported back to Afghanistan, where they face risks of recruitment to become child soldiers, violence, and lack of access to basic needs including shelter and food. And if children try to leave Greece again to reach Italy—as the majority will do—they will face once more the risk of police abuse in Greek ports and the risks of the journey itself, including loss of limbs or death, while hanging underneath a com-mercial truck or hiding inside refrigerated containers or fuel tanks.

You would think Italy would help children at risk—yet none of the boys we interviewed for the report were given adequate assistance upon arrival in Italy. Ali M., for example, said: “I hadn’t eaten in two days. As soon as the truck arrived in Italy, I was very hungry so I got out and I took only a few steps and the police caught me.…They asked me, I said I was 15. They talked to the Greek authorities and put me on a boat back to [the Greek port city of] Igoumenitsa.” None of the boys we talked to were allowed into Italy;

all were turned around within hours.Italy has agreed to standards that re-

quire unaccompanied migrant children like Ahmed and Ali be granted access to Italy to determine what next steps are in their best interests.

But our research shows that Italian authorities send children back to Gree-ce summarily or following a cursory, in-complete age determination process that doesn’t meet international standards. If authorities question whether an indi-vidual is a child, that person should be admitted to the country pending a mul-tidisciplinary age determination process. Yet, Italian port officials do not heed the boys’ claims that they are children – at least not consistently – and refuse them access to the country and to guardians or others who could help them understand their rights.

Ali, Ahmed, and boys like them have escaped a war-torn country and traveled a treacherous route for months to reach Ita-ly. Surely they deserve a better welcome from “Italiani brava gente.” At a mini-mum, Italy should respect its obligations to admit these unaccompanied children to its territory, and give them a chance to establish their age and apply for asylum. Returning them to the risks from which they have come is little more than callous disregard for children‘s welfare.

An immigrant shows a travel document at the railway station of the Italian border town of Ventimiglia, Italy, 18 April 2011.| EPA/

LUCA ZENNARO

Making plans for Nigel

By Andy Carling

Constructive Ambiguity

The Eurosceptic party has become a thorn in the side of pro-Europeans, even though their membership is tiny and, apart from their MEPs, they have only won a couple of local council elections, never coming close to being elected to the London parliament.Their brand of ‘Yah Boo!’ politics, of shouting, with varying levels of coherence, from the sidelines is viewed as childish as the insults they launch in the parliament’s chamber. They rarely turn up, do little in Committees or anything that most deputies would regard as ‘work.’The British Prime minister has called them “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.” If that is true, then one dreads to think what Number 10 would think of the EFD Group, home to UFO lover and burner of immigrants, Mario Borghezio and similar.They are trying to reinvent themselves, from a single issue pressure group to a fully fledged political party, of the Libertarian kind. Not so much the Tea Party as the Tea and Biscuits Party.They appear to be riding a wave, pressurizing David Cameron and claiming to have overtaken the Liberals as Britain’s third most popular party, although this is disputed by polling figures and that the Liberals are facing the electoral equivalent of a trip to Dignitas at the next election. But what do the Eurosceptics really want? More importantly, what do their voters really want?The answer is not the UK leaving Europe.A recent poll showed that only 20% of potential UKIP voters thought the EU was an issue. The big issue is immigration.Although twice as many declared Conservative supporters as Labour say they would seriously consider switching to UKIP, the party has also been picking up support from the collapse of the British far right, whose representative in Brussels is Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party, it would be wrong to apply the ill-fitting description of the skeptics being ‘the BNP in blazers’ as it neglects major differences between the two parties.The BNP is a fundamentally racist party and UKIP is not. Nick Griffin is a racist and Nigel Farage is not. The BNP has a reputation for violence and thuggery, UKIP has not. Although UKIP certainly has racists and bigots in its ranks, hardly a week goes by without one of their members or candidates being caught out saying or doing something offensive, the difference between the two parties is clear.However, UKIP has had a policy of banning the burka, even in private places, one that went even further than the BNP. They’ve made contact with far-right extremists, such as Vlaams Belang, Swedish Democrats and the Front National in a pan European party.It is UKIP that is benefitting from public fears over immigration. The Pro-EU side need to recognize this.The skeptics have it easy, decrying immigration, free of the baggage of the BNP and no prospect of forming a government that would have to implement their entirely unrealistic proposals.There are questions for Farage, which have not been put. He’s asking for a referendum on British membership of the EU. What happens if he wins one? Would UKIP disband, their job done?What if he lost? Would UKIP accept the verdict of the public and close down?If UKIPs policies were ever enacted, what other organizations would the UK have to leave? These questions will start to be asked, will UKIP survive the harsh gaze of the press and public opinion?

By Alice Farmer

Alice Farmer is a children’s rights re-searcher for Europe at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report “Turned Away: Summary returns of unaccompanied migrant children and adult asylum seekers from Italy to Greece.”



Turkey our neighbourTurkey’s relationship with Europe is at

best uneasy but at other times has been fraught with conflict and hostility. Ot-

toman expansion was stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683 and in the Mediterranean at the battle of Lepanto in 1571. Turkey’s insistence on maintaining a foothold in Cyprus is also a legacy of the Ottoman occupation. Turkey has since 1952 been a loyal member of NATO as witnessed by Turkey’s contribution to peace-keeping in Bosnia-Herzogovina, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

However, when it came to the stationing of NATO’s early warning radar in Turkey,

Turkey objected to Iran being named as the target and to sharing data with third parties i.e. Israel. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, who is regarded as the architect of Turkey’s present foreign policy, banged home the point by clai-ming that Turkey was not a NATO partner but “an owner”.

Turkey’s long road to EU membership be-gan with the Ankara Association Agreement in 1963 and was confirmed by the recognition of Turkey as a candidate country at the EU summit in Helsinki in 1999. It is ironic that Prime Mini-ster Bülent Ecevit, who secured Turkey’s candi-dacy, was also responsible for rejecting the offer of membership together with Greece in 1981.

In its invitation to Turkey the European

Council underlined that candidate countries must share the values and objectives of the Eu-ropean Union and, in Turkey’s case, with par-ticular reference to the issue of human rights. This decision led to a flurry of reforms initiated by Ecevit’s coalition in 2000 and, when this fell in 2002, by the present AKP (Justice and Deve-lopment Party) government. Nevertheless, the EU Commission’s recommendation in October

2004 that Turkey had “sufficiently” fulfilled the political criteria to start accession talks was based more on Turkey’s strategic importance than a re-alistic assessment of the reform process.

As Naz Masraff from Eurasia Group argues in her PhD thesis, the AKP government made strategic use of EU conditionality to present itself as a Western, reformist, neo-liberal and se-cular party until it became clear that there was a contradiction between the AKP’s discourse and policies. Nonetheless, in the last couple of years there have been testimonials in the Financial Times, New York Times and EU Observer by various EU foreign ministers to Turkey’s strate-gic and economic value.

At the end of June 16 EU foreign ministers had termed Turkey “an inspirational example of a secular and democratic country”. But this was countered in a letter from the deputy chairman of the CHP (Republican People’s Party), Faruk Loğoğlu, who stated that their perception of the state of affairs in Turkey was “sadly out of focus”. In Loğoğlu’s view the AKP government pursues an authoritarian policy of incremental Islamiza-tion, so that democracy in Turkey exists largely in the abstract.

The overwhelming number of applications to the European Court of Human Rights bears witness to this fact – in June there were 19,373 pending applications – and, as the EU Commis-sion pointed out in its 2012 Progress Report, the increase in violations of freedom of expression raises serious concerns. 71 journalists are still in prison, more than in Iran and China combined, and at a recent meeting a spokesman for the Tur-kish Freedom for Journalists Platform said the speed of Turkey’s democratization had slowed down.

The TurkISh vIew

The picture would not be complete without the Turkish view of Turkey’s relations with the EU and the West. There has been much talk of Turkey’s ‘axis shift’ and in Foreign Minister Davutoğlu’s own words, “we formulate our po-

licies through a solid and rational judgment of the long-term historical trends and an under-standing of where we are situated in the greater trajectory of world history.”

In his Sarajevo speech in 2009 Davutoğlu made it clear that the goal of Turkish foreign policy was to place Turkey at the centre of an Ottoman renaissance and in his Konya speech in April the Foreign Minister laid out the AKP’s mission to create a new Islamic world order. A fortnight later Davutoğlu told the Turkish parlia-ment that Turkey would be “the owner, pioneer and servant” of the new Middle East.

At the AKP’s congress at the end of Septem-ber Prime Minister Erdoğan declared that the government was following the path of the Otto-man sultans Mehmet II and Selim I but made no mention of Turkey’s European future. Erdogan was also hailed by the leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, as “not just the leader of Turkey but also the leader of the Islamic world”.

The next day at the opening of the Turkish parliament President Abdullah Gül spoke of a country where its writers, thinkers and opini-on leaders are able to share their views without fear. Prime Minister Erdoğan’s clear intention is for a new constitution to establish him as exe-cutive president in 2014 but the open question is whether Gül is prepared to run against him. According to a recent poll 50.9 percent would prefer Gül and 22.7 percent Erdoğan.

In 1995 Turkey became a full member of the OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation). The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Is-lam limits the expression of opinion to a manner that would not be contrary to the Shari’ah, but Turkey is also a signatory to the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights as well as the European Human Rights Convention.

In a keynote speech at the Istanbul Forum in October Prime Minister Erdoğan’s chief adviser Ibrahim Kalın spoke of “a mental gap” between Islamic and Western notions of what constitutes sacred, religious rights and freedom of expressi-on. The question is whether this gap is too wide to be breached.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses members of the parliament in Ankara | AFP PHOTO / ADEM ALTAN

By Robert Ellis

Robert Ellis is a regular commentator on Turk-ish affairs in the Danish and international press

11EU-WORLDNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu27 January - 2 February, 2013

No serendipity for Sri Lanka

The recent impeachment of Sri Lanka’s Chief Justice, Shirani Bandaranayake, has re-focused international attention

on the country. Catherine Ashton, head of the EU’s External Action Service, has expressed “considerable concern”. However, the problem with Sri Lanka runs deeper than any single case. Despite the Sri Lankan Government’s claims of progress on human rights since the conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as the ‘Tamil Tigers’, en-ded in 2009, the reality is very different.

For 30 years Sri Lanka was ravaged by civil war between the government and the LTTE, during which tens of thousands of civilians may have been killed. The war is over, but human rights violations persist. In 2011, the govern-ment lifted its state of emergency, but retained the repressive Prevention of Terrorism Act. The authorities also introduced new regulati-ons, which maintain detention of LTTE sus-pects without charge or trial. And political ac-tivists, journalists, human rights defenders and others who criticise the government still face intimidation and smear campaigns, and some have been subjected to enforced disappearance.

The Sri Lankan Government has also failed to ensure accountability for alleged crimes un-der international law committed by its armed forces during the conflict. Allegations inclu-de indiscriminate attacks, some with heavy weapons, which resulted in civilian deaths, enforced disappearances, torture and extra-judicial executions. The LTTE, too, allegedly committed crimes under international law, in-

cluding forcibly recruiting adults and children as combatants and using civilians as human shields. This goes beyond war crimes: in 2011, the report of the UN Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka, sta-ted that credible allegations supported a finding that various crimes against humanity had been committed by both sides during and after the conflict’s final stages. The country’s Lessons Learnt & Reconciliation Commission recom-mended independent investigation and pro-secution of these violations. The government responded with a National Plan of Action, but its proposed actions often mention existing mechanisms or procedures that we consider ineffective. It also asks agencies associated with violations to investigate and police themselves. This fails to meet international legal standards. How can anyone expect perpetrators of human rights violations to investigate themselves pro-perly?

Here in Brussels, certain MEPs seem stran-gely determined to ignore the truth. At a hea-ring of Parliament’s human rights sub-commit-tee last November, the ‘Friends of Sri Lanka’ group said the EU should offer a message of “sympathy and good will” to the Sri Lankan Government, and casually dismissed abuses as “mistakes”. Yet these MEPs have been con-fronted with evidence of arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearance, extrajudicial execution and other human rights violations. The Friends of Sri Lanka consistently deflects any criticism of the country’s human rights record, effectively acting as the Sri Lankan Government’s mouthpiece in Brussels. Why do they continue to defend the indefensible?

Fortunately, this group is heavily outnumbered by other MEPs who aren’t wil-ling to ignore ample evidence of alleged viola-tions. But overall the EU must be more vocal about the human rights situation in Sri Lanka. With the Sri Lankan Government continu-

ing to commit grave human rights violations and refusing to ensure accountability for past crimes, the country is heading in diametrically the wrong direction.

The EU must extend its scrutiny and criti-cism of Sri Lanka beyond individual cases like

the Chief Justice’s and focus on widespread vi-olations of human rights. It must use all its in-fluence with Sri Lanka to ensure justice for past violations and an end to the many present ones so that the people of Sri Lanka can enjoy the fu-ture that they deserve.

By Nicolas Beger

Nicolas Beger, Director, European Institutions Office

Catherine Ashton: The EU has shown “considerable concern” about the situation in Sri Lanka. |AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYS

Anti-torture body recommends new prison in Greenland Greenlandic prisoners currently being held in Denmark should be given the opportu-nity to be moved back to their own country, if only prison facilities were available, a new report has said.

The report, published by the Council of Europe’s committee for the prevention of torture and inhumane and degrading treat-ment (CPT) has said that, while prison con-ditions in Greenland, an autonomous north Atlantic island under the Danish crown, are “adequate”, more facilities need to be built to accommodate the possible repatriation of Greenlandic prisoners currently being housed in Denmark.

The CPT, which has the authority to carry out inspections of detention facilities in any of the Council of Europe’s member states, visited Greenland over the period 25-

27 September 2012.The CPT report recommends that a new

prison facility be built on the island (which has a population of about 56,000), which would then allow for the repatriation of Greenlandic prisoners currently being held in Denmark.

While the report was not harsh on pri-son conditions in the capital, Nuurk, it did recommend construction of a new facility, as well as the improvement of the facilities at the current Nurrk site,and the introduction of a comprehensive drug and alcohol addicti-on recovery programme be introduced.

The report also recommended impro-vements on the detention of psychiatric patients, and for a better communication of detainees’ right.

CD

12 EnErgy & climatE NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu


Alaska seeks energy solutions as Obama goes green

In Fairbanks, Alaska, where nobody blinks at temperatures of -50C, Art Nash and Brent Sheets are more concerned about finding

energy solutions for their local villages than fol-lowing closely the nuances and the changes that go on within the Washington Beltway.

“In 1961, my father-in-law reminds me, for 60 days the temperature did not get above -50C,” Nash, an energy specialist of the Cooperative Extension Service (CES) at University of Alas-ka Fairbanks told New Europe by phone on 22 January, adding that in the summer, it can get up to 37C. “Certainly extreme weather in general,” he said. He was joined at his office by Sheets, a research manager for Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP).

“Most of the issues that we are dealing with are more about bringing the high cost of power in our villages down,” Sheets explained.

A day earlier, US President Barack Obama pledged during his inaugural address to tackle energy efficiency and create a greener America. Obama said in Washington on 21 January that, while the road toward a low-carbon economy may be difficult, the United States must take the lead in green initiatives.

“We cannot cede to other nations the tech-nology that will power new jobs and new indus-tries, we must claim its promise,” Obama said.

Obama last year opened doors for wind en-ergy development in the United States.

Obama also vowed to respond to the threat of climate change, “knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future ge-nerations”.

Sheets reminded that going green has been a priority for the Obama administration. “If you go back at the budgets of the US Department of Energy they really have been focused on the

renewables technologies – solar and wind in par-ticular,” he said.

Sheets explained, however, that most of the issues that they are dealing with in Alaska are more about bringing the high cost of power in the villages down than climate change. “Climate change is out there and it is an issue for us, but we are looking at green technologies like wind as an opportunity to lower the high cost of energy in our villages which is three or four times higher than in the rest of the United States. So our fo-cus is more economic than it is on the climate although the climate is definitely important. It is about making life in the villages in Alaska an affordable place to live,” he told New Europe.

Nash, however, noted that Alaska is sensitive to climate change issues. “Being a polar state we have been put out there as kind of a barometer

for different biological changes they are trying to research,” he said.

But Alaska residents have to deal with day-to-day energy issues. Sheets noted that in most of the villages right now there is no transmission system giving them electricity. They are not part of a grid system. Each community has a diesel generator and that diesel generator provides the overwhelming majority of electricity that community consumes so it’s very expensive, he said. “The question is what do you do to lower the cost of that diesel? One of the ways of doing that is by introducing wind systems and having wind turbines to generate that power. But brin-ging a wind turbine out to a community is also very expensive,” he said, adding that there is not heavy equipment like cranes necessarily to erect the wind turbine towers. “But overcoming those

difficulties, the state has invested millions suc-cessfully in introducing turbines in many of the villages,” he said.

“The question is how you integrate an in-termittent supply of power to a diesel-fed com-munity. Because wind could be 50% of the community’s power sources but it’s intermittent - it goes back and forth,” Sheets said. “Getting the two systems to work together is a challenge.”

Nash said that ACEP is also looking at hot pockets for geothermal energy. “We also have debates going on within our state about pipe-lines for natural gas,” he said.

Commenting on Obama’s inauguration pledge to support alternative energy, Nash no-ted that “as far as the impetus to go through with these projects certainly Department of Energy Federal dollars do help, which are tied to the desires to some extent of the Obama administra-tion. But a lot of the impetus is from the State of Alaska, seen as community development. We would probably be doing this anyway under anyone’s administration,” Nash said.

The state has to keep these communities alive. “When Brent talks about villages that have their power system based on a diesel generator, some of these communities maybe as large as couple of thousand people. But many of them will be under a 1,000. But they are people who want to stay where they are - if they can,” Nash said.

“Many of the tribes will go to Department of Energy and get assistance on different projects. But some of them – the Indian tribes and the Es-kimo tribes – because they do have some capital themselves or they have a Co Op that will help them – they are going forward. And I don’t know that it really would matter to them as to what the President said in his speech or not about backing it in the next term as far as them having the moti-vation to do it,” Nash concluded.

The Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) and its share-holders – Swiss Axpo, Norway’s Statoil and Germany’s E.ON – have concluded a Sharehol-der Agreement with three members of the Shah Deniz Consortium: Azerbaijan’s SOCAR, Bri-tish Petroleum and France’s Total, TAP said in a press release on 22 January.

The Shareholder Agreement, finalised and initialled by all parties, stipulates how the TAP Joint Venture will be governed by an enlarged shareholder group comprising of Statoil, E.ON, Axpo, SOCAR, BP and Total as shareholders.

The Shareholder Agreement will take effect once SOCAR, BP and Total decide to exercise their options to join the TAP Joint Venture, ta-king a combined stake of up to 50% in TAP AG.

“I am pleased that members of the Shah De-niz Consortium, TAP and its shareholders were able to agree on the principles of a future Joint Venture,” TAP Managing Director Kjetil Tung-land said. “Having SOCAR, BP and Total ente-ring the TAP Joint Venture would considerably strengthen the shareholder constellation of our pipeline project and I look forward to this be-coming a reality in the future. The Shareholder Agreement is yet another important milestone demonstrating TAP’s relative advanced position compared to alternative pipeline routes, follow-ing the signing of the Cooperation Agreement, Option and Funding Agreements, in June and August 2012 respectively. I look forward to continuing the same close cooperation with the Shah Deniz Consortium throughout the course

of 2013,” Tungland added.Meanwhile, on 21 January, TAP officially

submitted its Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) for the Albanian section of the proposed natural gas pipeline to the National Licensing Centre in Albania.

TAP with a group of Albanian and internati-onal experts developed the comprehensive ESIA report in accordance with the Albanian law and in compliance with the Environmental and So-cial Policy of the European Bank for Reconstruc-tion and Development (EBRD), TAP said in a press release on 23 January.

The objective of the ESIA is to assess poten-tial impacts of the pipeline project on the envi-ronment, cultural heritage and socio-economic development and to propose measures in order

to avoid, reduce or mitigate negative impacts.Albert Haak, TAP’s Country Office Director

for Albania, said: “The submission of the ESIA to the government of Albania is a great achieve-ment for TAP. Several years of hard work on the pipeline route refinement and analysis resulted in this comprehensive and detailed ESIA report of about 4000 pages. We are now making every effort to present the it to the local communities and request their opinion. So far, the feedback has been very constructive and the project en-joys wide support.”

Once TAP’s ESIA application has been disc-losed and discussed, TAP expects to receive ap-proval of the ESIA and respective environmental permit from the Albanian government in the next few months.

TAP concludes Shareholder Agreement with SOCAR, BP and Total

By Kostis Geropoulos

US President Barack Obama waves after finishing his inauguration speech in Washington, DC, 21 January 2013. Obama also vowed to respond to the threat of climate change, “knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations”. |AFP PHOTO/EMMANUEL DUNAND

13EnErgy & climatENEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu27 January - 2 February, 2013

Shah Deniz deal levels playing field between Nabucco, TAP

Nabucco shareholders have si-gned a Co-operation Agree-ment and an Equity Option &

Funding Agreement with Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz Phase 2 project, which levels the playing field once again between Na-bucco and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), competing to carry Caspian gas to Europe.

“The agreement signed between the Nabucco shareholders and the Shah De-niz partners is similar to an earlier agree-ment signed between Shah Deniz part-ners and the TAP shareholders,” Julian Lee, Senior Energy Analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES) told New Europe on 22 January. “The agree-ment with Nabucco levels the playing field once again between the two lines competing to carry Azerbaijan‘s gas from Turkey‘s western border into Europe. Without the agreement, Nabucco would have been at a huge disadvantage to TAP; the agreement has allowed it to catch up,“ Lee added.

The Nabucco agreements signed on 18 January envisage close co-operation to align the time schedule and project development of Nabucco West and Shah Deniz Stage 2 projects, joint funding of the costs of Nabucco West’s further de-velopment up to Shah Deniz’s European pipeline selection decision, and granting to Azeri state oil and gas company SO-CAR, British Petroleum, Norway’s Sta-toil and France’s Total options to take up to a total of 50% equity in the project and to participate in a new NIC shareholder structure, following a positive selection of the Nabucco West pipeline by the Shah Deniz Consortium, Nabucco said in a press release.

In August 2012, TAP and the part-ners on the Shah Deniz field develop-ment, signed an agreement to secure fun-

ding for the TAP project. The agreement also includes an option for the Shah De-niz shareholders to take up to 50% equity in TAP.

But this January, Nabucco caught up with its competitor. The Nabucco share-holders called the agreements a “miles-tone” in the development of the project. “The shareholders welcome this agree-ment, and fully support the ongoing co-operation with Shah Deniz II. Nabuc-co is a multi-sourcing and scalable pro-ject further contributing to supply and transport diversification integrating the southern corridor into the European gas grid. Upstream and midstream projects are both integral parts of the value chain for Azeri gas and we are confident that Nabucco provides a win-win scenario for all parties involved,” Nabucco Steering Committee Chairman Hans-Peter Flo-ren said.

Nabucco Gas Pipeline International CEO Reinhard Mitschek hailed the con-clusion of the agreements. “Nabucco has been in close negotiations with the Shah Deniz partners since the designation in June 2012 of Nabucco West as the Cen-tral European delivery option. Today’s important achievement is a clear indica-tor of the potential success of this pro-cess and of the commerciality and com-petitiveness of Nabucco West in offering convincing business opportunities in the promising market area of South East Eu-rope and Central Europe,” Mitschek said.

Nabucco Gas Pipeline International CFO Frank Siebert called these agree-ments an essential step forward. “The signing of the equity option and funding agreement, in particular, is a mark of the producers’ confidence in Nabucco West. This goes a long way towards miti-gating risk for our investors and allows us to move forward on a sound and stable fi-

nancial footing. We look forward to wor-king with the Shah Deniz partners and remain confident that Nabucco West can provide the best option for all parties,” Siebert said.

Nabucco West plans to take Caspian region gas from the Turkish-Bulgarian border via Bulgaria, Romania and Hun-gary to the Central European Gas Hub at Baumgarten. Nabucco shareholders are Austria’s OMV, Hungary’s FGSZ, Romania’s Transgaz, Bulgarian Energy Holding, Turkey’s Botas and Germany’s RWE. It is the shareholders who are responsible for the negotiation of gas contracts.

TAP project is designed to transport gas from the Caspian region via Greece and Albania and across the Adriatic Sea to southern Italy and further into We-stern Europe. TAP‘s initial pipeline ca-pacity will be 10 billion cubic metres per year, but it can expand to 20 billion cu-bic metres per year. TAP‘s shareholders are Swiss AXPO, Norway‘s Statoil and Germany’s E.ON Ruhrgas.

The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the EU‘s priority energy projects aimed at diversifying the routes and sources of energy supply, thereby reducing the 27-country’s bloc reliance on Russia.

The consortium of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas field development plans to make its selection on the gas supply route to European markets between Nabucco West and TAP in 2013.

Asked if the 10 billion cubic metres from Shah Deniz would be enough to fill Nabucco, a senior consultant of the project told New Europe on 21 January that “one of Nabucco’s great advantages making it an extremely competitive pro-ject is that it is scalable between 10 and 23 billion cubic metres per year to adapt to market offer and demand”.

The gas hub in Austria’s Baumgarten. Nabucco West plans to take Caspian region gas from the Turkish-Bulgarian border via Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to the Central European gas hub. |NABUCCO

Companies to stay in Algeria despite hostage crisis

By Kostis Geropoulos

Energyinsider

In the wake of the recent Al-Qaida attack on an Algerian natu-ral gas facility and the subsequent hostage situation, security at such facilities will be increased, but most international oil and gas companies will continue their operations in the African country.Militants stormed the Tigantourine natural gas facility near In Amenas two weeks ago in eastern Algeria. Dozens of people were killed when Algerian military forces retook the facility.“The oil companies operating internationally are well accusto-med to these risks and problems,” Manouchehr Takin, senior petroleum upstream analyst with the Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES) in London, told New Europe on 24 January.Takin noted that the dramatic hostage siege earlier this month in Algeria has prompted some “knee-jerk reaction” by all com-panies, prompting them to review the situation and consider safer areas.The natural gas project is a joint venture between BP, Norway’s biggest energy explorer, Statoil, and state oil and natural gas company Sonatrach.Statoil could accelerate a shift toward US shale investments and Brazil after the attack in Algeria. But Statoil probably won’t withdraw from Algeria or other countries in the region based on the In Amenas attack. “We neither will nor can let terrorism dictate our strategy or our choices,” CEO Helge Lund told a press conference in Stavanger on 21 January. “We have a re-sponsibility to run our business and support daily operations.”Takin noted that because Norway is a neutral country, they had the impression Statoil should not be attacked or taken hostage. So probably the shock is greatest to the Norwegian company because they didn’t expect this. “Norwegians are doing a lot of good work in the developing countries,” Takin said. “When unfortunately these tragedies and extremism issues occur, they don’t look to see who is from where,” he said. “But I think most international companies will continue in Algeria,” he said, ad-ding that they will put much more emphasis on security and they might require further support for security from the Algeri-an government. “But I think they will remain there and they will continue - Statoil maybe a little less,” the CGES analyst said.BP said in a statement that “it remains committed to operating in Algeria where it has high quality assets and has been present for over 60 years”.Takin explained that international oil companies have worked in areas where there is risk all over the world - weather, financi-al, climatic, geological, government and security risks. “I don’t think it will cause a paradigm shift, the beginning of a new pha-se of the industry because these things are there,” Takin said.Two days after the end of the hostage crisis at the natural gas plant, the Algerian Parliament approved amendments to its hydrocarbons law that will offer foreign energy firms easier tax terms and other incentives. The amendments offer incentives to foreign companies that want to invest in shale gas and sha-le oil. For their part, EU countries, which will need expanded access to natural gas to offset the decline of their indigenous reserves and lessen their dependence on Russia, are looking at developing Algeria as a major natural gas exporter.

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David Cameron’s Euro-Nemesis

LONDON – Unlike some in Britain’s Conser-vative Party, Prime Minister David Cameron has not previously given the impression of being obsessed with Europe. He demonstrated no enthusiasm for the Eu-ropean Union, but he appeared clearly less ex-ercised by its supposed iniquities than many Tories are.

This view of Cameron’s position is now difficult to sustain. His long-gestating speech on Europe, although containing elements that many might share, also sows the seeds for a prolonged and acrimonious debate – and not just in Britain. Conservatives in the House of Commons (and in the wider party) want to be reassured that their leader shares their antago-nism for the entire European integration pro-cess. They have not forgotten or pardoned his “treachery” in refusing to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, signed by his predeces-sor, Gordon Brown. With his speech, that re-assurance may now have been given.

Cameron, of course, faced a difficult task with his party, which required a statement from him of his European policy. Cameron then had to find something appropriate to say. He needed to placate Tories and his domestic critics while avoiding the economic and poli-tical havoc that would be caused by announ-cing an imminent referendum that might lead to the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU. The time that he took to decide what he would say attests to the difficulty of squaring that circle.

In fact, as Cameron’s speech made clear, his solution to his dilemma – to buy himself

short-term peace from his critics at the ex-pense of potentially making his (and Britain’s) problems more intractable in the long term – is hardly new.

It was already clear that Cameron wanted to push any possibility of a referendum into the most distant possible future. The idea that he would seek to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s EU membership is also familiar from his earlier speeches and interviews.

Now that position has been bluntly and uncompromisingly expressed. The demand for far-reaching change in the structure and functioning of the EU, including repatriation of powers to Britain, is a major new demarche at a difficult time for Europe.

Cameron has said on several occasions that he wishes to avoid a referendum revolving around the simple choice of continued EU membership on the basis of the current terms of membership. Already some are claiming to discern in his European policy the makings of an heir to Harold Wilson, another famous “re-negotiator” of Britain’s terms of membership in the then-European Community who went on to win a referendum on Europe.

Britain’s relationship with European inte-gration has been a difficult one, regardless of which party has been in power (Wilson, after all, was a Labour prime minister). This was inevitable from the outset, owing to Britain’s deep and irreconcilable disagreement with virtually all other EU member states on the fundamental issue of pooling sovereignty.

Essentially, the British point of view has been that a loose confederation of nation-

states cooperating on trade is as much Europe as the UK needs. But Britain joined the Euro-pean Community, not just the free-trade area that Cameron now apparently wants.

Nonetheless, the undertow of Euro-skep-ticism in British politics has never diminished and was evident in Cameron’s speech. Even the supremacy of European law in defined areas was accepted only reluctantly by Britain, and long after many others had done so. Inde-ed, in his speech, Cameron could not resist a passing shot at the European Court of Justice.

Britain has made major positive contribu-tions to Europe, particularly with respect to the single market. But it is no exaggeration to state that whenever Britain has perceived an opportunity to wage a war of attrition against the European supranational project, it has done so, opposing any substantial increase in the EU’s competences or resources. Given that this position reflects the British public’s attitude toward the EU, it is not surprising. But it nonetheless distresses other member states, particularly those, like Germany, that recognize the great benefit of having a coun-try with a strongly pro-free trade position and a deep commitment to the rule of law play an important role in the EU.

The prolonged period of renegotiation now proposed by Cameron implies high costs for both sides. For starters, it creates a source of deep and prolonged uncertainty at a time when the eurozone crisis already has called into question the EU’s long-term health, if not its survival.

Moreover, Cameron’s strategy seems un-

likely to lead to an outcome that satisfies an-yone. If it is intended to be a negotiation that takes place in the context of broader treaty talks, it may not happen in the foreseeable future. European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, among others, seems to doubt the need for a new treaty, which would require the unanimous support of the member states – some of which are sharply opposed – to enter into force. Indeed, Cameron recognized this explicitly in his speech, so the new treaty to embody a “new settlement” for Britain may have to be negotiated with all member states as a separate exercise.

Part of this negotiation apparently would entail a repatriation of powers, requiring the consent of all EU members – and making the conditions under which Cameron’s renegotia-tion is supposed to take place both legally and politically uncertain. Many European politi-cians would view a member state’s repatriation of competences as a totally destructive prece-dent, and thus would oppose it resolutely.

The net result is that it seems highly pro-bable that any attempted achievement of a “new settlement,” including repatriation of competences, will make it much more difficu-lt for Britain to remain in the EU than would be the case if a straightforward “in/out” refe-rendum were held now. So, far from reassu-ring anyone (including Tory Euro-skeptics), Cameron’s stance heralds a new era of turbu-lence and uncertainty for Britain and its Euro-pean partners.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2013. www.project-syndicate.org

Cameron is accused of putting party interests ahead fo his nation’s. | AFP PHOTO / BEN STANSALL

Britain joined the European Community, not just the free-trade area that Cameron now apparently wants.

By Peter Sutherland

Peter Sutherland is a former European Commissioner and Director General of the World Trade Organisation.

15EU-WORLDNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu27 January - 2 February, 2013

‘We shall overcome poverty’ says UNDP

A s the US celebrates Martin Luther King Jr, the UN Under-Secretary-General and UNDP Associate Ad-

ministrator, Rebeca Grynspan used the slo-gan of the civil rights movement, led by the preacher, to declare that “We shall overcome poverty” and build on the momentum of the Millennium Goals.

Speaking to New Europe Ms Grynspan, an economist and former Vice President of Costa Rica, said that there was hope of those trapped in poverty. “I really believe that our aspirations are realistic and the only way for these aims to become reality is by mobilizing the citizens of the world.”

She continues, “Pessimism is one of the main obstacles that we have to overcome.” She insists that there is evidence that eliminating extreme poverty, for example, is achievable. “Look at the Millennium Development Goals, we have achieved quite a lot and we are now discussing what will follow after 2015.”

Quoting the World Bank’s measure of ex-treme poverty threshold, a mere $1.25 per day, she says, “We have already achieved the goal of halving extreme poverty. It’s 50% less! This is a huge achievement. The challenge is that this

hasn’t happened everywhere, in the same way.”“Some areas, like Latin America, China,

even Africa have reduced extreme poverty. But we still have 50% to go and that is simp-ly unacceptable. There is still so much to be done. There people have been in poverty for

generations. With the growth levels in the developing countries, we can realistically set ourselves the goal of completely eradicating poverty in the next decades.”

The MDGs have beaten the expectations of cynics and shown the use, if not need for hard targets, but there are lessons to be lear-ned says Grynspan, “There were some things that didn’t bring results, that we need to chan-ge. On the positive side, when we focus the world on an accountable goal, that is monito-red, we can achieve a lot.”

The ambitious MDGs have shown them-selves to be useful for future planning, “We have learned that we need to pay more atten-tion to inequality, not only to averages. We know that in highly unequal societies, the average doesn’t reflect the reality. I’m sure that inequality fill figure highly in the next frame-work. The second thing we learned is that the environment goal was very weak. Now we know that you need to put more effort into this as water scarcity, land degradation and so on are drivers of poverty. Thirdly, access to en-ergy is also an important enabler in the fight against poverty. “

We will be looking at how we can put to-gether fighting poverty with people centered development.

Remembering that $3 billion of the $9 billion donated to Haiti came from private personal donations, Grynspan said, “For a long time one of the assumptions in econo-mic theory was that people will pursue their own interests. All the research has shown that this is not true. We as humans, need to care for others, it’s part of what has made us so success-ful as a species. It’s solidarity, and this is one of the things that will keep development coope-ration alive and can influence the politics of it.”

“For us, goodwill is not enough, it has to be matched to good results!” She states.

Grynspan is proud of the UNDP, “We brought about the human development pa-radigm, to challenge the orthodoxy. We have shown how economies that have moderate growth have brought about more for their people than some that have grown much fa-ster, but that growth is more concentrated.”

Elaborating, the UNDP expert says, “Co-ming from UNDP, today the human develop-ment paradigm is more alive than ever and it has made a huge difference in the way people are thinking. The world has to change the way we think about growth, to include the envi-ronment, progess in people’s lives. We have to think about a new way of measuring growth and wellbeing.”

By Andy Carling

Development after the Millennium Goals needs new thinking

Post-2015 development policy must put people at its centre

Civic “ownership” of the development agenda post-2015 is essential for en-suring that people in the developing

world can lift themselves out of poverty and hunger, a leading development figure has said. Speaking in the European Parliament on 22 January, Rebeca Grynpsan, UN under-se-cretary-general and UNDP associate admini-strator, said that the current UN millennium development goals (MDGs) are largely, “still a success, despite uneven progress”. However, she said that “what is today a success, could be a failure in three years time”.

The MDGs are a set of eight goals aimed at eradicating hunger, poverty and ill health in the developing world, as well as ending discrimination and ensuring more girls recei-ve primary education by the end of 2015.

As the deadline for completion continues, the European Commission, as well as other global players, are already in the process of creating a post-MDG framework for develop-ment policy, which should, according to MEP Keith Taylor, “reflect the changes in global politics and the economy”. He admits that some “compromises” in ambition are probab-ly needed post 2015.

Despite the economic crisis, polls con-tinually show public support for the MDGs and in maintaining a strong development policy. The European Commission is already

working on its post-MDG policy. Develop-ment Commissioner, Andris Piebalgs, will attend a high-level UN meeting in Monrovia in the near future that will begin the process of outlining the principles of future deve-lopment policy, which are likely to be based around increasing education and healthcare standards, and creating more economic op-portunities, as well as focussing on equity, security and justice.

Pibalgs has said that, from the EU end, the

focus should be on updating and modernising the MDGs to ensure a minimum living stan-dard for all by 2030, a focus on jobs, equality, human rights and justice, and sustainability. Special attention should be paid to the very poor, women, who continue to face discrimi-nation in many parts of the world, and those in remote areas.

The commission is set to release a com-munication on the subject at the end of Fe-bruary, which will in one paper, outline the

EU’s post-MDG agenda, and it 2015 Rio follow-up sustainability agenda.

Rebeca Grynspan agrees that develop-ment policy and sustainability should b dealt with as one global issue (“we need to protect people from external shocks”, she says), and remains optimistic that the MDGs represent a success in policy terms.

“They have really succeeded in defining a human development aspect of policy”, she says, adding it is important that development “is addressed in terms of people’s needs. We need to keep that in the post-2015 agenda”.

The MDGs, she says, “gave civil society a tool for advocacy”, and a way to hold a “diffe-rent dialogue” with policymakers. “Society’s ownership of the MDGs is essential”, she says in ensuring their success.

However, she says that post 2015, certain aspects of policy need to be improved. She says that the ability of partner countries to de-velop their own financial and organisational resources needs to be “scaled-up”, and adds that the issues of equality and discrimination also need to be given higher priority.

Finally, she says, the current top-down policy approach needs to be reversed, and that results monitoring, traditionally based on finding a median, is revised so as not to disproportionately leave-out the needs of those in the least developed countries. “We need to get over the dictatorship of averages”, she says.

By Cillian Donnelly

PHOTO CREDIT: EPA/KIM LUDBROOK

16 fashion & style NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu

27 January - 2 february, 2013

JEAN PAUL GAULTIERphoto: pierre Verdy/AFp

CHRISTIAN DIOR© ChristiAn dior

VALENTINOphoto: pAtriCk koVArik/AFp

GIAMBATTISTA VALLI© GiAmbAttistA VAlli

FRANCK SORBIERphoto: piero biAsion

JULIEN FOURNIEphoto: pAtriCk koVArik/AFp

ALEXANDRE VAUTHIERphoto: FrAnCois Guillot/AFp

ATELIER VERSACE© VersACe

GEORGES CHAKRA© GeorGes ChAkrA

17fashion & styleNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu27 January - 2 february, 2013

W hat’s new on the Paris Couture scene? Collections for next spring seemed un-ostentatious; all the luster could be

found in the minute intricate details that sparkled under the photographers’ flashes and amazed the viewers upon close inspection. Indeed, the taffetas, organzas and laser-cut embellishments were over-crafty this season, as the ‘arts and crafts’ trend prevailed and acted as an ode to Couture itself. Thus, each Maison was incited to take on new technical challenges, like the ever-so-tiny details that are often invisible to the naked eye, but nevertheless give a garment the perfect fit that Couture clients seek.

Black and white, which enhance cut, embroidery and beading, made up the better part most collections, although almost every Maison gave in to the 2013 pantone colour trend, with a rare African violet, aquatic emerald and light green, and confectionary candy wrapper tones, like the popular lemon zest or neon yellow, lollipop pink and poppy red.

Some Maisons, however, remained faithful to the classic pastel palette which, when combined with lace and tulle, is the quintessential ‘spring indicator’. Generally speaking, there were very few ethnic references, as Haute Couture slowly returns to traditional Western values of pure, toned-down tailoring and style.

As part of ‘the eternal feminine’, refined romanticism is an all-time favourite style, which gave designers the opportunity to find ever-more creative ways of using embroidered or printed floral motifs, diaphanous ethereal silk, crystal beading (sumptuously interpreted by Elie Saab,

Christophe Josse and Georges Hobeika) and sunray pleated skirts and tulle bows (Alexis Mabille, who rightfully earned the official Haute Couture status this year).

A very British ‘art and craft’ daisy motif appeared in both the Chanel and Valentino collections, offering a more stylized and refreshed version of the interior decoration print trend.

Stéphane Rolland, who presented an almost all-white collection of impressive ‘women-column’ silhouettes or ‘statues’ that seemed to be carved in marble, brilliantly re-interpreted the minimal sculptural trend, with gorgeous cutouts and stunning silicone embroidery.

Giambattista Valli also offered a mainly white and black collection, with occasional touches of grey and pink that seemed to be inspired by graffiti, photography, and fashion illustration. Valli’s confident classic cuts have earned him a clientele that remains faithful to his style, season after season.

Raf Simons’ collection for Christian Dior had several minor themes. Among them, a few orange and electric blue minutely embroidered flower dresses and minimal geometric outfits in vivid primary colours, notably a red pantsuit and an acid yellow ‘tube dress’, as Simons works towards combining Dior’s classic tradition with his own modern twist.

Super sexiness, as expected, was found at Versace, where neon colours and a metallic gleam merged to express a style that was typical of the Maison’s ‘antique’ tradition (as illustrated by their Medusa logo), all the while including humorous sci-fi hints, like rainbow coloured fur, for contemporary seductive Cleopatras.

This trend went even further in Lebanese Couturier Georges Chakra’s collection which featured black goddess-like sublime cutout gowns and numerous neon fuchsia, lemon zest and electric blue ones, crowned by Amazon-like hairstyles and makeup, for a Pop Art glossy aesthetic.

Similarly faithful to the sexy vibe was Alexandre Vauthier who seems to find endless new ways to beautifully cover and reveal the body with his famous LBDs (little black dresses) each season – a definite wardrobe essential for special nights out.

Equally talented is young designer Julien

Fournié who experimented with his own beautiful bicolour dyed fabrics, black embroidery and sexy, curved silhouettes for ‘fantastic’ mermaids.

Last but not least, Jean Paul Gaultier and Franck Sorbier represented the arty trend. Gaultier opened his show with this season’s new maxi stripes, his typical mermaid gowns with long veils, patchwork dresses, his very own black evening dresses and the usual surprise at the end of the show, which was a huge bride’s dress with panniers, large enough to hide a group of toddlers who ran across the runway, to the audience’s great surprise.

Sorbier was, as every season, influenced by painting, possibly Mirò or Delaunay, and Africa, notably masks and dance, for a collection dedicated to the late art collector Peggy Guggenheim. Sorbier’s presentation was indeed the charmingly poetic theatrical performance that all his fans look forward to every season.

Louise Kissa [email protected]

HAUTE COUTURE SPRING/SUMMER 2013

GEORGES HOBEIKA© GeorGes Hobeika

ALEXIS MABILLE© alexis Mabille

CHANELpHoto: patrick kovarik/aFp

STEPHANE ROLLANDpHoto: Francois Guillot/aFp

ELIE SAAB© elie saab

CHRISTOPHE JOSSE© cHristopHe Josse

Louise Kissa with Lebanese Couturier Georges Chakra after his show

Hot spring

18 BRUSSELS AGENDA NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu


Monday 28.01 – Thursday 23.05.2013, Bozar

Shortly before the emergence of the Rococo artis-tic styling in the early eighteenth century, Antoine Watteau’s brief career spurred uproar across Paris for his sensual paintings. His work revived an interest in color, toned down severity, naturalistic scenes and a theatrical charm.Bozar has collaborated with the Palais des Beaux-Arts Lille the Centre for Fine Arts to bring Watteau’s work to Brussels from all over the world.

The exposition focuses on Watteau’s artwork, but also holds music as a central theme. William Chris-tie, a renowned conductor and musician, is the gre-atest curator of this exhibit and will perform eight concerts over the upcoming months. Other special events include a Meet and Greet with author Pierre Michon, whose novella Masters and Servants is in-tegrated into the expo, in addition to family days and operatic concerts. This combined experience of art, music, literature and learning is open from Monday 28 January throu-gh 23 May 2013.

An initiative of the Foundation for the Arts, Brussels

LAST MINUTE TICKETS FOR SHOWS & CONCERTS AT -50%

Avec le soutien de LA COMMISSION COMMUNAUTAIRE FRANÇAISE

Tickets for half price for performances and concerts on the same day. Arsène 50 offers you every day a wide range of performances, advises you in your choices and takes care of your reservation.

www.arsene50.be

Ticket sale: - At BIP, 2-4 rue Royale (Place Royale) 1000 BruxellesTuesday to Saturday, from 12.30 pm to 5.30 pm- Online on www.arsene50.beTuesday to Saturday, from 2 pm to 5.30 pm

FPA076-NewEurope 84x255.indd 1 8/09/11 12:35

Watteau Extravaganza Question time

Torres scores… music!ToMaTiTo 20:00, 31 January, ancienne Belgique Josè Fernàndez Torres, better known as Tomatito, is a celebrated flamenco guitarist. Tomatito and his traditional Spanish, yet jazz infused Latin ensem-ble is a must see at Ancienne Belgique. Tomatito was born in 1958 to a musical family in Almeria. His grandfather and father both earned fame as “El Tomate,” playing traditional flamen-co guitar throughout Spain. Soon popular musi-

cian Pacio de Lucia discovered his talent and To-matito took form. He had immense success working alongside Ca-maron de la Isla for nearly 20 years. Tomatito has produced six solo albums, 10 in total. Most nota-bly, he has received a Cèsar for his written music in the 2001 film Vengo and two Latin Grammys for his albums Aguadulce and Sonanta Suite.Tomatito continues to produce music that varies across the flamenco style spectrum, appropriate both for relaxed, easy listening and lively dancing.

BeaTs, rhyMes & life: The Travels of a TriBe called quesT 18:00, 3 feBruary, ancienne Belgique The Ancienne Belgique is more than a music venue. The living room atmosphere of their Huis 23 broa-dens the concert experience to intimate acoustic ses-sions, readings, workshops and film screenings. This screening is one of several they have held; past events include a Bob Marley “Exodus” listening session and a Cold Specks acoustic performance.Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Cal-led Quest is a 2011 documentary directed by Mi-chael Rapport. An American actor and comedian, Rapport is best known for his work in the television series Prison Break and The War at Home. The film follows the four members of ATCQ - MC Q-Tip, MC Phife Dawg, producer Ali Shaheed Mu-hammad and rapper Jarobi White – through their transformation into one of the biggest hip-hop ban-ds of the 1990s. It is a highly personal look at the relationships betwe-en band members as well as memorable concerts and rehearsals for their 2010 reunion tour. Intervi-

ews from big names in the hip-hop world like the Beastie Boys and Questlove reveal how the band’s greatest hits (“Bonita Applebum,” Can I Kick It?” “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo”) have significant re-levance and influence in modern music.

GarudaAv Adolphe Buyl 25 BrusselsTel 02 513 0592www.garudabrussels.eu There’s plenty across the border in Holland and even a handful in Antwerp but there‘s still only one Indonesian restaurant in Brussels and Garuda is it.Named after a mythical bird, it’s run by Sydney Houyoux, more than ably assisted by his very-pleasant MD Bernard Frisque and his team.Decorated in authentic Indonesian artwork, the speciality is the delicious ‚rice table‘ containing several delicious dishes, priced from €29-€55.The mouth-wateringly good menu has been freshened up by Yudi Yahya, Garuda’s very own Jakarta-born chef and genuinely reflects the hugely diverse nature of Indonesian cuisine.Yudi says the emphasis is on serving “authentic and traditional” Indonesian food and, after 18 months in Brussels, his ambition is to try to promote the cuisine of his homeland.This intimate and atmospheric restaurant, which seats 50 with an outdoor terrace, has recently started producing its own chili and peanut sauces for sale in selected shops in Ixelles and Wa-terloo. They use natural ingredients only and,like the restaurant food, it’s absolute delicious. You can download the menu via the website. Closed Sundays. Highly recommended.

resto Bites

19ARTS & CULTURENEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu27 January - 2 February, 2013

How many Facebook friends do you have? How many of them are real friends? Would you miss them?

It was questions like this that prompted British artist Brian Lobel, in his performance, ‘Purge.’

Lobel introduces the audience to his Face-book friends, giving a one minute introduction to each, after which the audience votes if Lo-bel should keep or delete the friend. Visiting Brussels, where Belgian artist, Isabelle Bats was reproducing his experiment, Lobel talked to New Europe.

“Consequences. That’s what I’ve learned from this,” he says. “My relationships have changed because of this. Some people were de-lighted they were kept, others were offended to have been voted out by the panel,” he adds.

He mentions one deleted friend, “One girl was a very unpopular at school who was being bullied and I didn’t feel it right to say that and I felt very uncomfortable when I had to delete her. She emailed me saying she knew she was going to be cut because we hadn’t talked for so long, and then she told me how things were going and she was happy and we reconnected. She was a different person, this picture I had of a fragile person was not the person she is now.”

What did the young artist get out of the project – he finished Purge on his 30th birth-day? “I think the project wasn’t great for men-tal health, some were legitimately angry with me, but all the emails I got were about conse-quences from being unfriended by someone.”

It is an uncomfortable experience, being asked to decide the fate of a stranger’s friends, but Lobel has tried to be considerate. Before the event he emailed all his friends explaining what he was doing, many unfruiended him at that point, but he also set up a live feed, just for his friends, “so they could see the process and I wasn’t being bitchy or rude about anyone.”

He says that the performance is a way of building up an autobiography, now that others are replicating his experiment, “I’m never do-ing it again,” he insists. But this is a game you can play at home, simply going through your own friends list and talking about each person for a minute often brings out aspects that may not have been considered.

“Everyone understands their Facebook as an objective space, but they don’t realize how subjective it is,” Lobel says, “Slowly it builds a bigger picture, but sometimes a minute is 59 more seconds that we need.”

“Our friends become our own little cele-brities, I don’t know about Anne Hathaway, but I follow her on Twitter, so I get bits of news every day, and Facebook is a bit like that, just getting tidbits from people,” he observes.

“Human friendships are incredibly compli-cated and this is a modern problem that didn’t exist 15 years ago, how to we organize our net-work of relationships. I want to blow up this tiny problem into something we have to deal with right now. I want people to go home after the show and just look at it with a different en-ergy, to think this is more complicated than I thought,” hopes the artist.

“What has social media done? It’s brought

people into my life that wouldn’t have happe-ned and that’s a beautiful thing,” he says.

It certainly is more complex, introducing a new set of unformed rules and protocol, “When do you ask to be friends?” asks Lobel as an example. It’s also made friendship into a binary option; you’re friends or not and there is a fixed point at which Facebook friendships start, and sometimes end.

This is not like real life. Or death.There are an increasing number of ghosts

on Facebook; the profile pages that linger on

after their owner has passed away.It isn’t just our relationships with the li-

ving that are changing with the arrival of social media. Lobel began Purge after he found that the person he described as his first love, now passed away, had once unfriended him from Friendster, a pre-runner to Facebook.

This dislocation, which can never be re-paired, got Lobel thinking, and being thought provoking. Facebook isn’t just changing how we view friendship, but is beginning to affect how we remember those who have died.

ADVERTISEMENT

Poking the notion of friendshipIs Facebook unfriending human relations?By Andy Carling

By Clare Murphy

A UK arts organization called Artangel and BBC 4 Radio are calling British artists of every medium to share proposals for groundbrea-king artwork in exchange for a commission of £1 million. The initiative called Open is me-ant to transform the UK’s cultural landscape through these site-specific pieces of art. Pro-posals from writers, filmmakers, composers, choreographers, producers and artists working in the digital world are accepted.

Beginning on 28 January in London, 12 Open Platforms will be held across the UK for artists to interact with producers of the project and learn more about the initiative.

The production of art in exchange for such a large sum proves to be historically ironic in the UK. In 1994 the K Foundation, the art duo Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, burned £1 million in cash. The money was the accumu-

lation of all the funds Drummond and Cauty earned as The KLF, one of the UK’s most suc-cessful pop groups. The burning was meant as an artistic reflection of the value of money, yet nearly a decade later an equal amount is being offered for the same level of artistic expression.

Previous Open projects include a radiant blue-jeweled London flat, a reenactment of the 1984 Miners’ Strike between police and colliery workers and Clio Barnard’s award-winning film The Arbor.

Various influential art figures, including Andrea Arnold, Tacita Dean, Rachel Whi-teread, will work as Open Mentors. They will help develop a select number of artists’ propo-sals. Open 2013 submissions will be accepted through Monday 29 April. Winners will be an-nounced in June and put on display between 2014 and 2015.

Will Drummond and co apply?

£1 Million for art in the UK

Man’s best friend? |AFP PHOTO / DENIS CHARLET

20 TECHNOLOGY NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu


EDPS’ new Strategy for 2013-2014, which was presented on 22

January, outlines the different action plans and guidance the European Commission has to follow in order to protect citizens’ private information.

“Through an extensive process of consultation with our various stakeholders we have developed a strategy which will enable us to fulfil our commitments towards citizens and the EU institu-tions in a continuously evol-ving environment”, explained EDPS Peter Hustinx to the audience at the European Commission.

In July 2011, the EDPS launched a Strategic Review to identify priorities and re-spond to the increasing work and broader range of activi-ties that the he will face in the coming years. The new stra-tegy its part of the review and shows that, due to new tech-nologies, data protection’s visibility and relevance are more important than ever.

Since the European Com-mission proposed its data protection legal framework one year ago, the EDPS has to face new challenges, in-cluding the budget restraint across Europe.

Therefore, the new stra-tegy will maximise the im-

pact of the EDPS‘ work at EU level and increase efficiency by making the best use of re-sources.

“To meet our objectives, we have assessed and priori-tised our activities to reflect the review’s internal and external results”, says the re-port, which identifies five ob-jectives in its action plan.

Among these objectives we can find the promotion of a ‘data protection culture’ wi-thin the EU institutions and bodies, the develop of a cre-ative and effective commu-nication strategy and ensure that the EU legislator is aware of data protection require-ments and integrates data protection in new legislation.

Giovanni Buttarelli, As-sistant EDPS, explained that their “aim is to give a proac-tive, consistent and reliable support to all EU institutions and bodies in implementing data protection principles.”

EDPS’ main objective is to build awareness of data protection as a fundamental right and as a vital part of good public policy and admi-nistration for EU institutions. Besides, he wants to ensure that data protection will be an integral part of policy-making and legislation, in all areas where the EU has com-petence. NR

EDPS launches new strategy on data protection

Apps, two sides of the same coin

Due to the increasing number of smartphone and tablets in the market, predictions say that

in 2014 more than 76.9 billion mobile applications will be downloaded. These tools can make users‘ lives easier, but not everything is positive and people is star-ting to worry about their privacy.

To gain users‘ trust, the European Commission is working on its Data Pro-tection Regulation, which regulates the processing of personal data regardless of whether such processing is automated or not.

During a conference celebrated at the “Reloading Data Protection” event in Brussels, Commission‘s representative explained that a useful regulation is nee-ded, as well as transparency and users‘ control over their personal information in order to ensure a safe and fair system.

Over 92% of European users are worried about apps, and both policyma-ers and businesses have to create trust in an age of complexity, explained Pat Walshe, Director of Privacy at GSMA UK. He added that this complexity is composed, among others, by applica-tions, search browsers, OS and social networks, where people is facilitating their personal data.

According to Gwendal le Grand, Head of CNIL‘s IT experts department, apps are increasing privacy risks, and users can‘t do anything but uninstall them.

“The only thing you can turn off is your geolocation”, he explained.

He highlighted the importance of inform developers about data protection rules and give them information to cre-ate privacy-friendly apps.

Besides, as le Grand explained, this

should be done because when uninstal-ling a tool there‘s no system that advises developers to stop collecting data.

When users install an application, there are no details of which personal information will be collected and analy-sed. In addition, in many cases this data is sent to other developers who will use it. The only thing users can do is “to trust Apple or Google”, said Frank Dumortier, from the University of Namur.

In the other hand, Nokia‘s represen-tative emphasized that, despite all these risks, applications have benefits and can be used to make our lives easier.

People can find nearby restaurants, send emails, talk with people, know when the next bus will come, etc.

“We are living in a great time”, he said, and added that the market can have good apps and, at the same time, good privacy rules.

The Nordic-Baltic region is known as a competitive and in-novative area in Europe, where

the ICT sector has became the corner-stone for its economic and social deve-lopment success. Therefore, what can other countries learn from Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Estonia to create their own ICT powerhouse?

A big percentage of Estonian citi-zens use ICT technologies and online services in their daily life. For instance, 21% of them buy goods online, 91% of country‘s businesses use e-government facilities and 35% of the total business expenditure on R&D is dedicated to ICT services.

These figures are possible because there is a combination of private and public sectors, besides a “political will among these countries to go further”, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of Es-

tonia, explained during the conference “Challenging the Nordic and Baltic ICT Powerhouse” on 23 January in Brussels.

“What we need to do, if we want Eu-rope to move ahead, is to create positive examples of international, or intra-Euro-pean use of IT services. If we can achie-ve a level of integration of our services, both private and governmental, I think the rest of Europe will begin to see the benefits of it, but we need these positive examples”, said Hendrik Ilves.

In May 2011, Microsoft acquired the Estonian software Skype for $8,500 millions, an action that highlighted the quality and importance of European in-novations. The tech giant is valuing the potential of Nordic and Baltic products and also the people behind them.

“If you look at Microsoft’s investment since the year 2000, the company has spent more in the Baltic Sea region than

in any other part of the world. In fact we have spent almost as much in the Baltic Sea region in terms of investments as we have in the United States itself “, explained Brad Smith, Microsoft‘s General Counsel and Executive Vice President.

“We found a great reserve of talent, where technical and entrepreneurial skills are combined”, he said, and em-phasised that Europe is still not reali-sing about the importance of computer science and that “we can do a lot if we connect more with each other.”

In addition, different experts from the Nordic-Baltic region and govern-mental institutions gave advices to in-spire Europe. All of them agreed on the importance of ICT education at schools and universities, and Natasha Friis Sax-berg, CEO of Gignal, explained that governments should create a good eco-system for new start-ups. NR

Nordic-Baltic ICT, Europe’s inspiration

By Nerea Rial

European Data Protection supervisor Peter Hustinx | BELGA

PHOTO FRANCOIS WALSCHAERTS

21TECHNOLOGYNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu27 January - 2 February, 2013

North Korea allows tourists to use their mobiles

North Korea has a new policy. From now on, foreign visitors to the country can use their own mobile phones and don‘t

have to leave them at the borders. For years, N. Korea required visitors to leave their handsets at the border and collect them when they left. This regulation left most tourists without a way to communicate with their homes, hotels or even embassies. Now, visitors can bring their devices into the country and buy a Korean SIM card at the airport, or rent a handset with a SIM card. This policy changes, which had been in place since 7 January according to state news agen-cy, allows them to call most foreign countries, foreign embassies in Pyongyang and internatio-nal hotels. However, they can‘t call local North Koreans, whose handsets operate on a separate network, or go online. Besides, they can call Japan and the US, but not South Korea. Accor-ding to an employee from the Egyptian compa-ny Koryolink, which works in partnership with N. Korea‘s mobile network, the new policy was a result of talks between both partners. The same source said internet services would soon be made available to foreign visitors. Neverthe-less, he denied speculations that connected the changes with the visit of Google‘s executive Eric Schmidt weeks ago. During its humanitarian visit, Schmidt, who also had to leave his mobi-le phone to cross country‘s borders, urged N. Korea to allow more open Internet access and cellphones to benefit its citizens. More than a million people use mobile phones in the Asian country, but only the elite have access to the in-ternet. In addition, the majority of those who have access can only visit state-run Rodong Sin-mun newspaper, but not to the global internet. NR

The Chinese ICT services provider Hua-wei disclosed on 21 January a net profit of CNY 15.4 billion from 2012, a 33% in-

crease from the previous year. The company aims to grow 10-12% in 2013.

Cathy Meng, Huawei Chief Financial Offi-cer (CFO), said the company achieved effective growth during the last year by focusing on custo-mers, streamlining management and improving efficiency.

Besides, Huawei expects its 2012 global sales revenues to reach CNY 220.2 billion, an 8% year-on-year increase. These results will be defined in the company‘s annual report, which will be out in three months.

“We insist on strictly controlling G&A (Ge-neral & Administrative) expenses and allocate more resources to bolster the front line and en-sure continuous improvements on customer de-livery and service quality,” said Meng.

Over the past ten years, Huawei has invested CNY 120 billion in R&D, including a CNY 29.9 billion investment in 2012, accounting for more than 13% of the year‘s revenue.

To achieve this success and provide the best services to its consumers, the Chinese firm has invested in and developed its Carrier Network, Enterprise and Consumer businesses. In addi-tion, about 70% of Huawei‘s revenue was gene-rated from serving leading telecommunications

operators. Huawei‘s Carrier Network is still a lea-der in the industry, with sales revenues of CNY 160.3 billion; Consumer’s business group recor-ded a CNY 48.4 billion revenue; and the Enter-prise ‚s services generated CNY 11.5 billion.

It’s important to highlight that 66% of Huawei‘s overall revenue came from outside Chi-na. CNY 77.4 billion profits came from Europe, Middle East and Africa region, while CNY 73.6 billion were from China and CNY 31.8 from America.

Because the increasing number of smart-phones, tablets, computer and other digital devices will generate more data in the coming years, Huawei believes that its ICT services are the key to addressing these challenges and also company‘s key growth driver in the future. NR

Huawei announces record profits

Huawei CFO Cathy Meng

ICT skills to boost youth employment

European citizens need an upgrade in their skills | ATC21S

“I n many countries in the European Uni-on, one out of five under the age of 25 is unemployed; in some countries over

half cannot find work”, stated Androulla Vassi-liou, European Commissioner responsible for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, at Microsoft’s event “Youth, the key to Europe‘s future” on 22 January in Brussels.

Today‘s young people are the most educated in the whole of European history, however is still difficult for them to find a job after graduation, commissioner explained.

Therefore, European citizens need an up-grade in their skills to address the new challenges the world is facing and to be prepared for what companies are demanding.

“Europe’s future economic success must be based on ground-breaking Research & Develop-ment, innovative products, cutting-edge techno-logy and a well-trained and highly-productive workforce”, said Vassiliou.

One technology company that is working on different projects to change the way studen-ts learn, communicate and decide their future jobs is Microsoft. According to Brad Smith, company‘s General Counsel and Executive Vice President, millions of young people around the world are unemployed and there are millions of jobs to be covered.

How can this happen? “Because the world has changed and more skills are needed”, Smith explained, adding that what people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg had in common is that all of them studied computer sci-ence when they were teenagers.

To offer youth this possibility, Microsoft launched in September 2012 its YouthSpark

programme, which aims to promote skills and training people in order to create more than 300 million jobs during the next three years.

As part of this plan, the tech giant signed on 22 January a partnership with three pan-Europe-an organisations; the European Youth Forum, Telecentre Europe and Junior Achievement - Young Enterprise.

“Young people in Europe are facing an op-portunity divide – a gap between those who have the access, skills, and opportunities to be success-ful and those who do not”, explained Brad Smith, who highlighted the importance of bridging this gap and collaborate with government leaders to “unlock the full potential of youth as a key driver of the region’s economic growth.”

By working together with these organisa-tions, Microsoft will develop creative classrooms, teach the right skills for the jobs of the future,

offer better apprenticeship and non-formal trai-ning, and foster entrepreneurial spirit. Moham-med Rohim, founder of Extra Thinking Capacity and member of UK Youth, made clear that edu-cation doesn‘t happen just inside a classroom, it also happens around the world, and that‘s why local projects to improve youth‘s skills are a must in today‘s education.

Furthermore, Intel and Cisco are working with Microsoft on the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21S) programme, created to bridge the disconnection between skills demanded by companies and students‘ skills. Their goal is to create an assessment frame-work through new technologies. NR

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22 EUROPEAN UNION NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu


FINLAND | MINING

Outotec wins €140 mln copper contractOutotec has agreed a six year-plus service contract with ZAO Mikheevsky GOK, a subsidiary of Russian Copper Company, for the operation and maintenance of the Mikheevsky copper concentrator which is being built near Chelyabinsk, Russia, it was reported on 22 January. The contract is worth more than €140 million. Once operational at the end of 2013, the con-centrator is expected to treat 18 million tonnes of copper ore annually. The services will be provided by approximately 100 operation and maintenance personnel located at the Mikhe-evsky site and Outotec’s Yekaterinburg and St. Petersburg ser-vice centres, supported by Outotec’s global organisation. Ou-totec will also supply spare parts, grinding media and reagents for the equipment under its scope of delivery. In addition, Ou-totec will provide operation and maintenance management systems for the concentrator. Over the years we have learnt to trust Outotec’s technologies and expertise in metallurgical pro-cesses and equipment said Vsevolod V Levin, President of Rus-sian Copper Company. The operation and maintenance con-tract follows Outotec’s earlier contracts from 2011, worth mo-re than €60 million.These included the process design and en-gineering for the entire Mikheevsky concentrator and the deli-very of the main process equipment for flotation and dewate-ring, process automation, instrumentation and electrification.

SWEDEN | RETAIL

India set to open Ikea stores Swedish furniture retailer Ikea has received recommendati-on from India’s foreign investment agency to open outlets in the country, which has recently opened up its retail sector for foreign investment, it was reported on 22 January. Being the first single-brand foreign company to open stores in the coun-try, Ikea plans to open as many as 25 stores with an investment of about $ 2 billion (£ 1.3 billion, € 1.5 billion) over the next 15 to 20 years. The amount would be the largest committed by a foreign company in India since it allowed 100% foreign ownership in single-brand retail stores. India’s Foreign Invest-ment Promotion Board (FIPB) would forward the proposal to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, which is wi-dely expected to approve the plan. Ikea’s entry into India ca-me as the government is trying to boost the economy by libe-ralising investment rules for foreigners. In 2012, India chan-ged its policies to allow more foreign direct investment in its $ 500 billion retail sector. The new laws provides for 100% fo-reign investment in single-brand retail stores and up to 51% foreign investment in supermarkets. This would allow global retailers such as Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Tesco to expand in the country. In connection with the policy change, industry body Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of In-dia and Yes Bank projected that India’s retail sector will double to $ 874 billion in 2017.

DENMARK | BANKING

Danske Bank changes banking feesStarting 21 January the nation’s largest bank will begin the pro-cess of replacing its various banking fees with a flat quarterly fee that will see customers pay up to 120 Danish crowns per quar-ter by the end of the year, Copenhagen Post reported. Tonny Thiery Andersen, the head of retail banking – the bank’s lar-gest division – said previous Friday customers would be pla-ced in one of six groups based on the size of their accounts, and that those with the least amount of activity would pay most.

The final results in Lower Saxony will determine whether the SPD and Greens will be able to form a majority in Berlin’s upper house of Parliament (Bundesrat), which could be used against legislations promoted by Christian Democrats. Vol-ker Kauder, leader of CDU in parliament, confirmed the new legislation obstacles for CDU. “I assume it won‘t be possible to push anything through the Bundesrat that the SPD doesn‘t want,” Kauder told German public television on Monday morning.

Christian Democrats (CDU), the German party led by Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel, lost the key state of Lower Saxony, according to the preliminary offi-cial election results.

The new SPD (Social Democrats) – Green coalition won a single-seat majo-rity in the Lower Saxony state legislature. On 20 January, SPD and Greens won a combined 46.3 per cent of the vote. On the other hand, the Christian Democrats-liberal Free Democrats (FDP) centre-right coalition gathered 45.9 per cent. Stephen Weil, member of the SPD will

take over as a premier in the Lower Sa-xony state, which is a major agricultural and industrial region. Before the election results, Weil has underlined that a victory in the state polls could be seen as a sign that the Social Democrats may have high chances to win the federal elections.

Conservative daily Die Welt wrote

on Monday, “the state election in Lower Saxony should be a warning for Ange-la Merkel for the federal election in the autumn.” However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel still enjoys record levels of support as most of the German citizens are approving her handling of the Euro-zone crisis.

Christian Democrats lose control of Lower Saxony

Kalmar, a subsidiary of Finnish cargo handling equipment maker Cargotec, has won an order for 12 all-electric rub-ber tyred gantry cranes (RTGs) for the Piraeus Container Terminal (PCT) in Greece, it was reported on 21 January.

The cranes, scheduled for delivery in late 2013, will facilitate the port‘s conti-nued expansion, with capacities planned to increase from 2.6 million TEU to 3.1 million TEU per year.

PCT, which has been operating in

Greece since 2009, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chinese port operator, Cosco Pacific, headquartered in Hong Kong.

Once we install the 12 RTGs from Kalmar, the stacking capacity of our ter-minal will increase by 30 per cent, said Li, Deputy General Manager of PCT.

The Kalmar E-One2 RTG has a 41 ton safe working load (SWL) capacity and is powered by a cable reel which eli-minates diesel emissions, engine noise

and the use of hydraulic oils. Kalmar has not disclosed the value of the order which consolidates the company’s long term partnership with the terminal.

The latest Kalmar E-One2 Zero Emission RTGs, fitted with SmartRail an automatic gantry steering system, of-fer an exceptional solution to our strin-gent requirements for higher capacity, reduced carbon emissions, lower costs of ownership and safer operation around the yard.

Kalmar RTGs ready for Piraeus port

The Lithuanian Government on 21 Ja-nuary launched a comprehensive and ambitious agenda to stimulate economy and to generate productivity and emplo-yment. In Lithuania fiscal and budgetary discipline will be strongly observed and upheld. We will ensure that conditions for the introduction of the single Eu-ropean currency, the Euro, are met as soon as possible. It was announced by the Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius at the meeting with the Vil-nius Diplomatic Corps in Vilnius on 21 January.

The main objective of this Govern-ment is to create the environment for economic recovery and new jobs. This is

very much in line with the efforts of the entire European community. We need a strong and competitive Europe to play a leading role on the World stage. This can be achieved only if each and every member state acts responsibly and keeps public finances in good shape.

Outlining the few essential elements in the ‘Program’ of this Government, Algirdas Butkevičius pointed out that to facilitate competitiveness, the Govern-ment will improve conditions for the development of new innovative tech-nologies and promotion of cooperation between science and business.

The government also plans to revise its national strategy for higher education

and science, outlining objectives, prio-rities, and achievable outcomes of the Lithuanian science, R&D, innovations, studies, science, and business clusters. The aim is to create equal opportunities for all who seek higher education.

Considering that that austerity measures which played an important role in avoiding financial meltdown, is no longer sufficient, the government aims at the comprehensive review of the tax system. We need. More efficient tax regime should ensure better collection of taxes. At the same time we will give extra attention to combating smuggling and shadow economy. We will step up the fight against corruption, he noted.

Fiscal and budgetary discipline programme LITHUANIA | ECONOMY

FINLAND | EUROPE

GERMANY | LOCAL ELECTIONS

23EUROPEAN UNIONNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu27 January - 2 February, 2013

AUSTRIA | CONSTRUCTION

GriffnerHaus-bankruptcy hits 700 contractorsThe GriffnerHaus bankruptcy has had a knock on effect in the industry with up to 150 contractors reporting losses from the firm’s failure,Austrian Independent reported on 22 Janu-ary. The problem is so severe that not all of them will survive the bad debt losses – one construction company has already declared bankruptcy. Construction firms, craftsmen, printing companies and one waste disposal firm have open claims that they haven’t been paid in the last months. Nobody knows or wishes to say what the total amount of these claims could be – the figure is however sure to reach into the millions according to insiders. The roofing company Feldkirchner Dachdecke-rei Leopold is one of the affected companies. The firm has be-en covering roofs for GriffnerHaus for 16 years, manager Ale-xander Leopold said. He said that up to a few years ago, it wor-ked fine, bar a few small problems. The company is said to ha-ve roofed some 130 houses in Austria for GriffnerHaus. A con-siderable sum has added up, but GriffnerHaus has failed to act upon the reminders. The partnership had to be stopped on-ce the debt started to build up. Several thousand euro are still in question. Leopold said the firm will cope with the financi-al losses and that he is still standing on firm ground. He added he feels sorry for the other companies who have worked wi-th GriffnerHaus.

FRANCE | EUROPE

France, Germany celebrate 50th anniversary of Elysée TreatyLaurent Fabius, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bernard Cazeneu-ve, Minister Delegate for European Affairs, Pascal Canfin, Mi-nister Delegate for Development, and Hélène Conway-Mou-ret, Minister Delegate for French Nationals Abroad, will visit Berlin on 22 January 2013 to take part in the celebrations or-ganized to mark the 50th anniversary of the signature of the Elysée Treaty. In a Joint contribution on the occasion of 50th anniversary of the signature of the Elysée Treaty, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius and The German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on January 21 that the text of the treaty is short and compact, but its content is al-most revolutionary: in it, Germany and France commit them-selves to nothing more and nothing less than “arriving, inso-far as possible, at a similar position” on all the important eco-nomic, political and cultural issues.

HUNGARY | E-TOLLS

Getronics pulls out of Hungary’s e-toll projectIT company Getronics has withdrawn from an electronic toll road tender it won last year, the State Motorway Manager (AAK) announced previous Saturday, Portfolio Hungary re-ported on 21 January. The pullout of the winning bidder ma-kes it almost 100% certain that the government will have to do without the HUF 75 billion it hoped to collect from the new e-toll system this year. At the same time, the government spo-kesman said last Monday that the departure of Getronics will have no meaningful impact on the introduction of the system in 2013. Getronics Magyarorszag Kft said previous Saturday that it chose to back out of the project because „the unprece-dented degree and form of pressure created such an uncerta-in business and legal situation” that forced the company not to sign the e-toll contract and start the related works „until the legal situation is cleared up”. The company said it was mulling taking legal steps in this matter.

The International Federation of Journa-lists (IJF) has commented on the case against the editor-in-chief of the Belgian De Morgen newspaper, calling it ‘simply baffling’. A Belgian court ruled on 15 Ja-nuary against Yves Desmet, editor of the daily De Morgen, in alibel suit. The court found that that he expressed “wrong” views about a dispute between two judi-cial officials in a January 2012 editorial. The article was published on 12 Janua-ry last year on the opinion page of the paper and dealt with a dispute between two members of the prosecutor’s office in nearby Antwerp over an investigation into tax fraud on an alleged gigantic scale in the local diamond sector. The judge in charge of the investigation, Peter Van Calster, wanted to prosecute diamond dealers suspected of evading nearly 300 million euro in taxes, while his superior, prosecutor-general Yves Liégeois, was reportedly pressing Van Calster to let the tax department and diamond dealers re-ach an agreement.

In his opinion piece, Desmet accused the prosecutor-general of being more in-terested in combatting moonlight than in pursuing white-collar criminals. He concluded: “You could say there seems to have been partiality. Or, if the term were not outmoded, class justice pure and simple.” Claiming that the family’s honour had been besmirched, Liégeois’ wife, who is also an Antwerp judge, brought a lawsuit against Desmet de-manding 19,000 euros in damages. The court in the city of Mechelen awarded in

its 15 January ruling only symbolic da-mages of one euro. However, the court found that “the suggestion of apparent partiality and the use of the term ‘class justice’ were based on a personal percep-tion” and that Desmet’s comments were “wrong from the point of view of objec-tive information.” According to Ernest Sagaga, head of IFJ’s Human Rights and Safety division, the decision of the court in the city of Mechelen caused bewil-derment because ‘the claimant was not even named in the impugned piece’.

Sagaga further commented that it beggared belief ‘how the defamation case was brought in the first place’. In his opinion, ‘The court may consider that view expressed by the journalist was wrong, which would be a matter of the judges’ opinion’. However, ‘it is very dou-btful whether this is actionable in law and likely to support a conviction against

a journalist in the context of free speech.’ The court decision against the edi-

tor of De Morgen was criticised also by Reporters without Borders (RWB) who called it ‘absurd as it is outrageous’. The organisation further explained ‘An edi-torial is not an exercise in investigative journalism or a factual report that has to be objective. It is by definition the free expression of an opinion, a series of ideas deriving solely from freedom of expres-sion.’ In addition, RWB raised the que-stion of ‘How can an opinion, which is by definition subjective, be expected to satisfy criteria of objectivity? ’

Last but not least, the organisation said that ‘regardless of the resulting ridi-cule and despite its essentially symbolic nature, the Mechelen court’s ruling must be combatted firmly for the sake of the right to freely and publicly express views on the ways our institutions function.’

IFJ: court decision against De Morgen editor ‘baffling’

De Morgen political editor Yves Desmet pictured during a debate entitled ‘Crisis in the Media?’ (Les medias en crise? - Crisis in de media?), at the Theatre National in Brussels. |BELGA PHOTO DIDIER JOURET

Turkey and Belgium held a bilateral ministerial meeting in Brussels on 22 January.

The aim of this meeting which is the second one at the ministerial level, (the first one was held in Istanbul in October 2008) is to promote end enhance a dialo-gue between the two countries on issues of common interest: the fight against ter-rorism, police and judicial cooperation, as well as the cooperation on consular matters and migration management.

The Belgian delegation was compo-sed of Didier Reynders, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and European Affairs, Joëlle Milquet, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior and Equal Op-portunities, Annemie Turtelboom, Mi-nister of Justice, and Maggie De Block,

Secretary of State for Asylum and Mi-gration, Social Integration and the Fight against Poverty. The Turkish delegation was consisted of Ahmet Davutoglu , Mi-nister of Foreign Affairs, Sadullah Ergin, Minister of Justice and İdris Naim Şahin, Minister of Interior.

The diplomatic officials in a joint press statement expressed their will to fight terrorism and to further develop their cooperation in this field. Concre-tely, they outlined that they will follow the international laws in order to prevent and suppress terrorism, and to protect human rights and refugees. Furthermore, the Ministers welcomed the ongoing dia-logue between Turkey and the European Union in fighting terrorism.

Moreover, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs discussed about the situation in

Middle East, human rights issues and the relations between Turkey and the Euro-pean Union. Also they spoke about con-sular and visa issues.

The Ministers of the Interior signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Police Cooperation. Through this Me-morandum Turkey and Belgium can ex-change their experiences and practices in fighting terrorism, organized crime, human trafficking, illegal trafficking of drugs and money laundering.

The Ministers of Justice signed a Joint Statement on Judiciary Coopera-tion. “Direct communication channels will be established between the central authorities in order to increase the ef-fectiveness of cooperation and improve mutual comprehension of national pro-cedures and legislation”.

Belgium-Turkey bilateral ministerial meeting

BELGIUM | MEDICINE

BELGIUM | TURKISH RELATIONS

By Stanislava Gaydazhieva

24 EUROPEAN UNION NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu


ITALY|DEFENCE

Terzi: No mission in MaliOn 22 January, Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi said Mali risks being precipitated into a crisis “worse than Somalia and Afghanistan” and “Italy cannot take part in the EU training operation” in view of its commitment to combating terrorism. In his briefing to the Foreign Affairs and Defence joint com-mittees at the Chamber of Deputies said Italy is engaged “not just in combating terrorism, but in fostering stability and deve-lopment in the Sahel region. “We cannot not take part – even if only to a limited extent – in this EU operation,” Terzi said.

SPAIN|ENERGY

Iberdrola wind farms in USIberdrola, the Spanish private multinational electric utility company, has commissioned three new wind farms in the Uni-ted States, where it is already the second operator in the Rene-wables sector in terms of installed capacity, with over 5,700 me-gawatts (MW), the company said in a press release. Iberdrola is a key energy operator in the United States, where it is now the second wind power company in terms of installed capacity, at over 5,700 megawatts. The new wind power facilities are: Manzana (California), Groton (New Hampshire) and Hoosac (Massachusetts) and their combined capacity is over 265 MW.

CYPRUS|AIRLINES INDUSTRY

Hermes Airports gets awardThe Cypriot airport Hermes Airports has been accredited wi-th the Investors in People Standard. The “Investors In People” accreditation is the only internationally recognised quality eva-luation programme in the field of human resources develop-ment and management, it was announced on 22 January. Her-mes Airports CEO Alfred van der Meer said that “obtaining this accreditation reflects Hermes Airports’ firm commitment to continually improving and upgrading the level of the Com-pany through its employees”.

PORTUGAL|BANKING

Banif recapitalisation Banif - Banco Internacional do Funchal announced that the Eu-ropean Commission has temporarily approved, under EU sta-te aid rules, a recapitalisation totalling €1.1 billion granted by Portugal to Banif for reasons of financial stability. The appro-val follows the notification, by the Portuguese authorities, of the recapitalisation measures, consisting in a subscription of shares issued by Banif in the amount of €700 million and in hybrid securities in the amount of €400 million. On 16 Janu-ary, the General Meeting of Banif ’s Board of Directors held at Funchal, approved Banif ’s recapitalisation plan.

GREECE|ENERGY

Gazprom in the race for DEPARussian gas monopoly Gazprom is willing to pay €19 billion for the Greek state gas company DEPA, RIA Novosti reported on 20 January, citing information published in the Greek edi-tion Imerisia. The publication says that the offer of Gazprom is slightly above the other candidates’ proposal. Other non-bidding offers for natural gas company DEPA and DESFA ha-ve come from Russian energy firm Sintez Group, which par-ticipates through its subsidiary Negusmeft, Azerbaijani state oil and gas company SOCAR, as well as two Greek consor-tiums comprising M&M GasCo, Mytilineos Holdings, Mo-tor Oil Hellas Corinth Refineries and a joint bid by PPF and GEK Terna Holding Real Estate Construction.

ITALY|ELECTORATE

New Europe spoke to Lorenzo Fontana MEP, head of the Lega Nord delegation in the European Parliament to discuss the upcoming Italian elections, and issues such as taxation and immigration.

Mr.Fontana, what are the most important points of your party’s program that you would like to underline?

The first initiative in our program is to give the possibility to the regions to keep 75 % of the taxes they send to the central government, because in Italy we have regions in the north that are paying much more of what they receive back, in some cases they take back only 30% . I think It’s a question of equity and justice because with the actual economic crisis these northern regions must have the conditions to remain the economic engine of the country. Then at the same time we have the elections in Lombardy region, which is among the richest and developed regions in Europe, and if we are going to win our plan is to create, with Piedmont and Veneto, a big macro-region that will be able to play an important role at European level. Another important point for us is the fight to the illegal immigration because we noticed a growth of the criminality in our cities during this crisis.

About immigration; there are some stereotypes in Europe about your party. Recently you supported an Italian movie about immigration that won the European Parliament’s Lux prize.

Yes, In this case I supported this Italian film a lot. I sent a mail first to all the Italian MEPs, and then another one to every foreign MEP. After the award I had a constructive meeting with the movie director who is from Veneto Region. Then someone from his team, who was victim of prejudice, was not happy for political reasons about my impartial support and I was sad about this behaviour.

Why were you against the Government of Mario Monti?

Our criticism of Monti is based on the fact that his government increased the taxes in a exaggerated way; now after one year all the economic parameters and indicators are worse apart from the spread and we know that the spread is not only a consequence of factors of internal politics. Then he should have

reduced the public expenditures and he didn’t do it; it’s clear that there are some single measure of his government that were positive for the country but general picture is negative.

There is no way out, the real problem in Italy is the state. We have to cut the number of public officers and invest more on other fields, like research for example. Then I’m in favour of cutting the number of national members of parliament, of which there are, by the way, more than MEPs. We should finally change the constitution and stop this two chamber decision process and go in a more federalist direction. In the northern regions but not only, we had various cases of suicides among the entrepreneurs because this negative tax scheme is, at the end of the day, destroys the entrepreneurship and doesn’t provide the services the citizen deserves. The solution is a fair taxation, surely, not like the one against the rich that was recently introduced by Mr Hollande.

Mr Monti reintroduced a controversial tax on properties. What’s your position on that?

We were against this tax from the beginning, and in the Italian parliament we always voted no. It’s a negative tax

because the houses where we are all living are not producing any income so if we would not be able to pay this tax we should sell the house. It’s a sort of expropriation that hits the honest citizen who registered his house.

Do you think the centre-left candidate, Mr Bersani, will have a majority in parliament?

At the moment in the senate our coalition in leading in Veneto and Lombardy, so it’s possible to foresee that Bersani will not have the majority while at the Chamber there are still seven point of difference. We saw in the last month a strong growth in the polls and it’s also difficult but possible that in last month we could fill this gap. Then I think that Bersani will make a compromise with Monti but they will have a really difficult task.

Are you in favour of the creation an EU rating agency?

It’s a good idea because they are all private and have a big power on the markets, then they are all American which is not a guarantee of impartiality. China recently opened its own rating agency and Europe should also open a non-private body under public control; this is essential in a free market

INTERVIEW: LORENZO FONTANA

Taxing issues for the electorateBy Federico Grandesso

25ENLARGEMENTNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu27 January - 2 February, 2013

TURKEY | BUSINESS

Airbus plane order discussions begin French Trade Minister Nicole Bricq recently paid a visit to Istan-bul to meet Temel Kotil, the head of Turkish Airlines to discuss a possible order for almost 15 long-range A330 Airbus passen-ger jets. Such a move is part of effort to soften commercial ties between the two countries, Zaman reported. Bricq’s visit came amid improvement of trade ties after a freeze early in 2011 after the French parliament approved a law to punish those who de-nied an Armenian genocide by Ottoman forces in 1915. Tur-key fiercely denies that such a genocide took place, and the law was overturned in March by France’s Constitutional Council. Consultations between Turkish Airlines and Airbus, the Euro-pean aircraft manufacturer, revolve around the purchase of al-most 150 aircraft, notably the A380 super jumbo jet. Airbus re-fused to disclose any details while Turkish Airlines remained si-lent. Airbus plans to equipTurkey’s flag carrier as it prepares to substantially expand its fleet amid a scenario when several Eu-ropean airlines are cutting back. It was recalled that in Decem-ber, Turkish Airlines ordered 15 Airbus jets in a deal that had a catalogue price of $3.5 billion. The Turkish carrier had already acquired 15 comparable Boeing 777-300ER plans, which wo-uld have a list price of $4.7 billion. Meanwhile, Turkish Airlines has floated the possibility of an order for 15 A380 super jumbo jets, the world’s biggest passenger airliner. On the other hand, it can also opt for Boeing’s 747-8 jumbo jet. Bricq also met Ali Sabanci, head of the Turkish airline Pegasus, which ordered 75 medium-range Airbus A320 planes in December.

FYROM | REGIONAL SCOPE

Bulgaria FYROM partner up Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov in a recent intervi-ew told FYROMn Dnevnik daily that FYROMs are the most brotherly and closest nation to the Bulgarians,. “They are our most brotherly and closes nation and this was a great gesture towards them. I am sorry that there are politicians in FYROM, who forget and do not appreciate this. They are a different na-tion because they are a different country,” the Bulgarian pri-me minister remarked. Borisov said that although Bulgaria was not pleased with FYROM’s policy but added it was not a mistake that Bulgarian recognised FYROM under its consti-tutional name. To avoid any speculations, Borisov refused to comment on the name issue between FYROM and Bulgaria.

TURKEY | ECONOMY

S&P fails to reach contract to rate sovereignFollowing months of complaints from Turkey that the ratings agencies are in the vanguard of a conspiracy of international bankers, Standard & Poor’s the only major agency would no longer offer a full rating service for Turkey, ditching much of its work with the economically booming country eight months following a scuffle over a negative report. The agency infor-med that it has failed to agree a new contract with Ankara to rate the sovereign. S&P said in a statement that it has conver-ted its issuer credit and issue ratings on the Republic of Tur-key to „unsolicited,” but added it will still offer assessments on the fast-growing economy to meet investors needs. The agen-cy said in a statement, “We are converting our issuer credit ra-tings on Turkey to „unsolicited” as we no longer have a rating agreement with this sovereign. We plan to nonetheless conti-nue to rate Turkey on an unsolicited basis because we believe that we have access to sufficient public information of reliable quality to support our analysis and ongoing surveillance, and because we believe there is significant market interest in this unsolicited rating.” &P rates Turkey at BB, two rungs below in-

Baskent Gas set to strike deal with Iran|(c) Nevin Donat

National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) recently announced plans to bid for a Turkish natural gas distributor Baskent Gaz and has sought the preliminary do-cuments in the privatisation tender, Za-man reported. Despite Western sanctions against Iran for its nuclear programme, a successful bid by the National Iranian Gas Company for 100% of Ankara’s Gas Distributor would further boost Iran and Turkish energy ties. It was reported that the National Iranian Gas Company was among the 10-plus bidders who were in-terested in the latest attempt to sell off the gas supplier, which is Turkey‘s second lar-gest with nearly 1.4 million subscribers. It was reported that Baskent sale has faced a series of delays and cancellations in recent years.

Iran is Turkey’s second-biggest sup-plier of natural gas after Russia. Turkey has won exemptions from the United States to import Iranian fuel after it sharply redu-ced the amount of oil it buys from the Isla-mic Republic. Ankara is required to think about its people, consider its needs for en-

ergy, natural gas and crude oil in order to meet its requirements. In December, Tur-kish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz stressed that Ankara opposes unilateral sanctions against Iran and will not implement them, adding that his country is in dire need of Iran‘s natural gas and will continue im-ports from its neighbor. Yildiz stressed that Ankara is against unilateral embargos against Tehran. He said that Turkish offi-cials addressing US counterpart said that a sanction against the import of natural gas from Iran is in fact imposing sanction onTurkey. He added that the way Ankara would pay the price of imported natural gas from Iran is something related to the Ankara government‘s economic manage-ment. Turkey‘s Energy and Natural Sour-ces Ministry will continue to buy natural gas from Iran and find their own way for transfer of money for imported natural gas from Iran. Meantime, Iranian Ambassador to Turkey Bahman Hosseinpour said that trade ties between Iran and Turkey re-main unaffected by US and EU sanctions. On the contrary, he stressed that mutual

trade cooperation between the two coun-tries is on the rise. “We have come up with ways to increase the volume of trade co-operation with Turkeydespite the West‘s pressure on Turkey to reduce its trade ties with Iran,” Hosseinpour said. Early this month, Yildiz expressed readiness of An-kara to boost economic ties with Iran, and called for stronger efforts by both sides‘ officials to expand economic and trade ties between the two neighboring nations. Yilmaz said he is ready to pay a visit to Iran to take part in the 24th Iran-Turkey Joint Economic Commission Meeting due to be held later this winter.

Pleased with the expansion of econo-mic cooperation between Iran and Turkey, Yilmaz said that trade exchanges between the two neighboring countries have ex-ceeded $22 billion in the first 11 months of 2012. Last month, Turkish Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan stressed that the US-led western sanctions against Iran and Washington‘s efforts to prevent Ankara’s gold sales to Tehran will not affect ties with Iran.

Iran to bid for Turkish Gas Distributor

After in October the Bulgarian Foreign Minister, Nikolay Mladenov, said that his country was not blocking the EU integra-tion of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), on 28 November he has sent a letter to his FYROM coun-terpart, laying down three conditions for Skopje to receive the support of its neighbour for a future European Union membership.

According to Mladenov, the bilate-ral relations over the past five years have not been at a level appropriate for two so ‘close and interdependent countries’. He expressed concern about the ‘consistent

strengthening of anti-Bulgarian rheto-ric and actions’ in FYROM designed to emphasise what divided the two nations, rather than what has always united them. In addition, Mladenov noted the grow-ing number of reports of discrimination against FYROM citizens who have kept their Bulgarian identity.

For these reasons, and in order to ‘to reverse current negative trends’, the Bul-garian foreign minister said that the way to FYROM’s EU membership included three consecutive steps, namely signing of an agreement on good neighbourly relations and cooperation with Bulgaria;

building infrastructure for enhanced co-operation through establishing working groups to strengthen relations in key areas; as well as creation of a high-level Council in the form of annual intergo-vernmental meetings.

Mladenov concluded his letter em-phasising that his country’s intention was to develop good neighbourly rela-tions with its neighbour and the executi-on of the three steps will move FYROM closer to the desired membership, as well as provide the support of Bulgaria for the integration of FYROM to the European Union.

FYROM EU integration subject to conditionsFYROM | EU MEMBERShIP

TURKEY | ENERGY

26 ENLARGEMENT NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu


CROATIA|EU AFFAIRS

France to ratify treatyCroatian Parliament Speaker Josip Leko recently paid a visit to Paris to meet French National Assembly Speaker Claude Bar-tolone and Senate President Jean-Pierre Bel. Croatian Parlia-ment said in a report that France will be the first country to ra-tify Croatia’s Treaty of Accession with the European Union in 2013 and agenda of the National Assembly revolves round de-bate and voting, Javno reported. Leko was present at the de-bate and ratification in the French parliament. France will be the 21st country to ratify Croatia’s Accession Treaty. Moreo-ver, this would be the last time the French parliament would decide on a country’s EU accession by a simple majority as amendments to the constitution from 2008 envisage that fu-ture EU enlargements must be decided whether in a referen-dum or in parliament by a qualified majority.

CROATIA|ENERGY

INA eyes operation modelsOfficials of Croatian oil company INA recently stated that they were eyeing several models of business operations for its retail ne-twork but no final decision has been reached yet, Javno reported. The statement was made when the Zagreb Stock Exchange called on the company to comment on an article published in a Croatian daily and headlined “INA wants to separate its petrol stations into a new company, unions against it.” INA has slouched talks with its social partners discussing ways to boost efficiency of its retail ac-tivities. INA officials suggested that to develop the retail market in the oil industry, companies must adjust quickly in order to ena-ble long-term sustainable business activities in that sector. It was reported that INA had launched a significant investment project to modernise its retail network which will help it to maintain its dominating in position on the market. The company told Zagreb stock exchange that the company also must maintain and incre-ase its competitiveness and improve the costs structure of its re-tail operations.

MONTENEGRO|DIPLOMACY

Serbia, Montenegro tiesPresidents of Serbia and Montenergo, Tomislav Nikolic and Filip Vujanovic recently had a meeting in Cetinje. Both resi-dents stressed that the two countries will benefit if they deve-lop best possible ties adding that a lot of effort should be in-vested in elevating the cooperation between the two fraternal countries to the highest level, Beta news agency reported. Vu-janovic expressed Montenegro’s support for Serbia in striving to have the date of negotiations with the EU set as soon as pos-sible. He pointed out that relations between Serbia and Monte-negro should be an example for the rest of the region and glo-bally as well. Nikolic in turn said that both countries share si-milar common values and goals, with lot of common features.

SERBIA|INVESTMENT

Belgrade eyes €2bnSerbia Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SIEPA) re-cently announced that the country can expect this year over €2 billion investments, Beta news agency reported. SIPA also said that the growing interest from United Arab Emirates is the most important development in recent years. The agency predicted that investments would be seen in energy, automobile and light indus-tries - such as textile, confectioneries, shoes and leather products and the IT sector. According to SIEPA, most of Serbia’s foreign in-vestments come from EU member countries, where in addition to the Austrians, Italians and Slovenians Germany is also show-ing an increased interest along with the United States and Russia and some new countries such as the UAE.

Serbia’s energy regulator set higher natural gas prices for households and business consumers. As of February 1, homes will pay 8.6% more on average, or 44.4 dinars ($0.53) per cubic metre of gas, while a 9.5% increase for small and medium-sized businesses brings their average price to 40.42 dinars per cubic metre, the Belgrade-based Energy Agen-cy, Bloomberg reported.

Large industrial consumers pay 39.13 dinars per cubic meter following a 10% price increase on 15 January.

The regulator allowed price incre-ases following evidence that Srbijagas JP, the sole importer and main local gas supplier, was selling gas below the cost of imports.

Meanwhile, Serbian Energy Minister Zorana Mihajlovic has reiterated that the price of imported Russian natural gas was too high considering the level of friendly relations between the two countries. Mihajlovic said that the price of the Russian gas is an important para-meter for Serbia, RIA Novosti reported.

„Its current price for the Serbian market is too high considering the economic situation in our country and friendly re-lations between Russia and Serbia, she said. Russia is the main supplier of na-tural gas to Serbia. Russia‘s energy giant Gazprom delivered 1.4 billion cubic me-tres of gas to Serbia in 2011. Under the current contract between Serbia‘s state-run Srbijagas and YugoRosGaz, a Gaz-prom subsidiary in Serbia, the Balkan republic currently pays 470 per 1,000 cubic metres for Russian gas supplies.

Serbia raises gas prices

Serbia has complained that the price of imported Russian natural gas is too high. |AFP PHOTO / MICHAL CIZEK

Montenegro’s Prime Minister Milo Du-kanovic recently had a meeting with Am-bassador of Azerbaijan Eldar Hasanov. In course of talks, the sides were plea-sed with immense progress in relations between Montenegro and Azerbaijan within a short duration. They are keen to further deepen mutual co-operation, Montenegro Times reported.

With the current joint projects and investments, both countries have also an-nounced projects in port economy and transport infrastructure in Montenegro. The sides stressed the need to expedite the activities related to the long-term lease of the “Orijen Battalion” barracks in Kumbor, Montenegro, for a period of 90 years by Azerbaijan’s state oil and gas

company SOCAR.Dukanovic expressed the readiness

of the government to work hard on strengthening the two countries’ part-nership, especially in economic field. He also spoke on Azerbaijan’s offer of €2 million for the reconstruction and ex-pansion of the kindergarten in the muni-cipality of Bijelo Polje.

Montenegro, Azerbaijan to improve economic co-operation

Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milano-vic recently paid a visit to Belgrade to at-tend a working meeting with his Serbian counterpart Ivica Dacic, Beta news agen-cy reported. It is the first working mee-ting between the two prime ministers since May 2011 when Tomislav Nikolic was elected President of Serbia and Da-

cic became Prime Minister.Dacic denied media reports that

their meeting had been scheduled at the insistence of the European Commissi-on. He underlined that meeting was his and Milanovic‘s joint initiative which came as a surprise to Brussels. The main topics at the meeting include bilateral

co-operation, including refugee returns, tenancy rights, the prosecution of war crimes, the border demarcation and the genocide lawsuits the two countries filed against each other before the Internatio-nal Court of Justice as well as economic co-operation, regional issues and Euro-pean integration processes.

Zagreb, Belgrade strive to thaw relations

SERBIA|ENERGY

CROATIA|DIPLOMACY

MONTENEGRO|DIPLOMACY

27PARTNERSNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu27 January - 2 February, 2013

SWITZERLAND | JEWELERY

Chow Tai Fook, Richemont join forcesGeneva-based luxury goods group Richemont and the world’s largest jewellery chain, Chinese Chow Tai Fook, have agreed to create a joint venture, The Local reported on 20 January. According to sources, Richemont said that the two luxury brands would each control 50% of the new company, which would distribute watches made by Riche-mont luxury watch making brand Baume & Mercier in mainland China. It will be tasked with boosting the Geneva brand’s sales in China, the world’s second largest market for luxury goods, Le Temps reported. Chow Tai Fook, which was founded more than 80 years ago and went public in late 2011, meanwhile views the deal as a way to accelerate its watch distribution business, according to the report. The Chinese company already distributes a long line of Swiss brands, several of them owned by Richemont, including Cartier, Piaget and Jaeger-LeCoultre. No financial details of the deal were revealed.

NORWAY | ENERGY

Tullow completes Spring deal in NorwayTullow Oil has completed a deal to buy Spring Energy Nor-way. The deal was first announced in December, RTE Ire-land reported on 22 January. The company said the acquisi-tion has already brought it success. Spring was awarded 13 licenses in the previous week, of which four are operated, in Norway’s competitive 2012 awards in predefined areas licensing round. Tullow said the new licences are ‚’highly complementary and mostly adjacent to current acreage held’’. The new acreage is located in all three areas of the highly prospective Norwegian Continental Shelf - North Sea, Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. “I am delighted to welcome our new colleagues to Tullow and I look forward to working with them. The quality of their business and staff has been underlined by their exceptional performance in Norway’s most recent licensing round in which over 40 Norwegian and international companies participated,’’ commented Tullow’s chief executive Aidan Heavey.

NORWAY | DEFENCE

Conference: Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear weaponsNorway will host an international conference on the hu-manitarian impact of nuclear weapons in Oslo 4–5 March 2013. A nuclear weapon detonation, whether intentional or accidental, could cause catastrophic short- and long-term humanitarian, economic, developmental and envi-ronmental effects. Such a detonation could have global implications. Although there is wide recognition of the importance of the humanitarian consequences of a nuclear weapon detonation, as demonstrated by the outcome do-cument of the last Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, direct consideration of these issues has so far been limited. The conference programme includes presentations by experts and discussions around three key aspects: first, the immediate humanitarian impact of a nu-clear detonation; second, the possible wider developmen-tal, economic and environmental consequences; and third, preparedness, including plans and existing capacity to re-spond to this type of disaster. The conference provides an arena for a fact-based discussion of the humanitarian and developmental consequences associated with a nuclear we-apon detonation.

The Land of ‘Giants’

The Architecture firm of Choi + Shine has come up with an innovative idea for electrical towers in Iceland

Norway‘s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide took part in the Arctic Frontiers con-ference in Tromsø on 21 January. On the same day, Eide also signed the Host Coun-try Agreement between Norway and the Arctic Council, which will now have a per-manent secretariat in Tromsø.

The Arctic Council is the most im-

portant arena for discussing common challenges in the Arctic. It will now have a permanent secretariat in Tromsø. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and Canadian Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq will also took part in the event and the subsequent press conference. The venue was the Fram Centre in Tromsø.

During his visit to Tromsø, Eide will addressed the Arctic Frontiers conference at the University of Tromsø and visit the Port of Tromsø.

The Arctic Frontiers conference took place between 20 - 25 January. This year’s theme was “Geopolitics and Marine Pro-duction in a Changing Arctic”.

Eide signs Arctic Council agreement

Basel-based pharmaceutical group Novar-tis reported on 23 January a net profit of $ 9.6 billion for 2012, up four per cent from the previous year, but posted slightly low-er sales amid stronger competition from generic drugs, The Local reported.

The company, which also announced that its chairman of 17 years, Daniel Vasel-la, was leaving, said in a statement it had achieved net sales of $ 56.7 billion.

That was a three per cent drop from 2011, but still narrowly beat the expec-tations of analysts polled by the AWP fi-nancial agency, who anticipated sales of $

56.5 billion. Novartis‘s important Pharma division, meanwhile, saw sales slip one per cent to $ 32.1 billion amid swelling com-petition from generic drugs.

Like the rest of the pharmaceutical in-dustry, the company has also had to deal with growing pricing pressure at a time when crisis-hit countries are increasingly being forced to slash health expenditures.

Company chief executive Joseph Ji-menez meanwhile insisted that „Novartis maintained strong momentum in innova-tion in 2012,“ pointing out that the Basel-based company had secured 17 major ap-

provals in 2012.“Our pipeline is expected to deliver

a record number of near-term approvals and filings, and . . . we anticipate 14 pro-ducts to reach blockbuster status by 2017, up from eight in 2012,” he said.

For 2013, Novartis said it expected to see sales in line with last year in constant currencies, despite an impact of up to $ 3.5 billion from generic competition.

Novartis also announced that chair-man Vasella had decided not to stand for re-election at the next annual meeting, on 22 February.

Novartis profits rise, chairman to step down

The Minister for European Affairs, Lucin-da Creighton TD, was in Iceland last week for talks on the country’s EU accession negotiations. During her visit the Minister will convey the message that the European Union remains committed to the negoti-ations and discussions will focus on how the Irish Presidency can best support the process up to and after elections which are scheduled for April.

Speaking in Reykjavik the Minister

said:“I am delighted to be visiting for a se-

cond time, this time as EU Presidency. This is part of a planned programme of visits to all the candidate countries. Good progress has been made on the negotiations with Iceland, and I commend the work of all in-volved, Iceland, the Commission, and the Cypriot Presidency. Work will continue on the accession process under the Irish Pre-sidency and we look forward to renewed

vigour in the process after the elections have taken place. We hope to open and clo-se some negotiation Chapters towards the end of Ireland’s EU Presidency in June.”

Last night Minister Creighton held ex-tensive talks with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Össur Skarphéðinsson. Today she will meet the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Icelandic Parliament and Bjarni Be-nediktsson, leader of the opposition Inde-pendence Party.

Irish Presidency continues accession progress

NORWAY | ARCTIC AFFAIRS

ICELAND | EUROPEAN AFFAIRS

ICELAND | ARCHITECTURE

SWITZERLAND | PHARMACEUTICALS

28 EASTERN PARTNERSHIP NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu


AZERBAIJAN|FOREIGN POLICY

Aliyev hails policyAt a recent cabinet meeting held under his aegis, President Ilham Aliyev announced that the government has expan-ded out foreign activity, attaining the fulfilment of tasks set in international organizations, news agencies reported. He stressed that for first time in history, last year Azerbai-jan presided over the UN Security Council. He recalled that election of Azerbaijan in the Security Council in late 2011 was a very big historical event and recognition of Azerbaijan’s influence in the global scale. In 2012, Azer-baijan has presided over the leading world body and has increased its international influence, added Aliyev. He stressed, “I can say that last year we managed to strengthen our positions. I am happy that Azerbaijan could justify the trust shown to us by the world community in 2011 and I consider that this trust further grew within a year.”

AZERBAIJAN|DIPLOMACY

Baku, Rabat boost tiesAzerbaijani Ambassador to Morocco Tarik Aliyev on his re-cent appointment as Ambassador of Azerbaijan to Portugal, recently submitted his credentials to Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva, the Azerbaijani Embassy in Morocco said. The president met with the Azerbaijani envoy. Aliyev noted that both Azerbaijani and Portugal enjoy good op-portunities for development of bilateral relations in politics, economy and cultural sectors, noting successful co-operati-on of the two countries within international organisations. The Portuguese president was briefed with the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and socio-political achievements of Azerbaijan. In turn, Cavaco Silva said there are big and several opportunities for development of rela-tions and asked the ambassador to extend his warm gree-tings and best wishes to President Ilham Aliyev.

GEORGIA|ECONOMY

Budget revenues lowSecretary General of the United National Movement Vano Merabishvili recently spoke on the main factors responsi-ble for the financial crisis in Georgia. He stressed that the financial crisis in the country entailed a reduction in the economic activity as evident n export and imports decline and the reduced production and trade in the country, The Messenger reported. The minister singled out a decline in budget revenues as the main reason for the financial crisis. According to him, there are three major factors of crisis. Firstly is the pressure on business. Second is the halted construction, which was reason for the increased unem-ployment rate. Third and the main reason is that the new government lacks a clear, united economic action plan.

GEORGIA|DIPLOMACY

Georgia releases RussiansAs part of a broad amnesty in Georgia, the government has recently released 190 inmates from jails who were accused as political prisoners by the Parliament. Previous Georgi-an administration had accused some prisoners of spying in favour of Russia, including three Russian citizens. Rus-sia welcomed release of its three citizens from Georgia. On Russian Foreign ministry website, Russian Foreign Ministry’s special envoy for human rights Konstantin Dolgov said that steps directed towards rectifying those illegalities, which were carried out by Saakashvili’s re-gime can only be welcomed. Dolgov also urged Georgian authorities to release other Russian citizens serving prison terms under “fabricated” charges, Civil Georgia reported.

A meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers on outcomes of socio-economic deve-lopment in 2012 and tasks for 2013 was recently held under the chairmanship of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, news agencies reported.

Speaking at the meeting, minister of Economic Development Shahin Mustafayev said that in 2012 just as pre-vious year, GDP growth in Azerbaijan was solely provided by the non-oil sector and was at 2.2%. Last year the growth of non-oil sector stood at 9.7% and it con-tributed to 52.7% in GDP.

“The volume of information and communication services grew by 15.9%, transportation by 3.5%, including the non-oil cargo by 3.5%, retail trade by 9.6%. Inflation rate was at 1.1%,” the mi-nister said.

In January-November 2012, foreign trade turnover with 152 countries total-led $39.5 billion, the foreign trade balan-ce was positive and amounted to $22.6 billion, non-oil exports grew by 11.2%, strategic currency reserves amounted to $46 billion surpassing the size of the ex-ternal debt 10 times.

Mustafayev said that revenues of consolidated budget were executed at 101% and amounted to 22.1 billion ma-nat, expenses were at 93.9% amounting to and totalled 19.6 billion manat and the surplus exceeded 2.4 billion manat. The budget revenues were executed at

101.4% totalling 17.3 billion manat. The minister also said that the level

of investments in the economy of the country amounted to 22.1 billion manat of which 13.3 billion manat covered do-mestic investment and 8.8 billion manat went into external investment.

Economy up by 2.2% in 2012

View of downtown Baku. The level of investments in the economy of the country amounted to 22.1 billion manat. |NEW EUROPE

French ambassador to Azerbaijan Pas-cal Meunier recently met with Azerbai-jani Minister of Communications and Information Technologies Ali Abbasov in Baku, news agencies reported. In course of talks, the ambassador said he was pleased to see the growing partici-pation of French firms in launching of Azerbaijan`s first satellite into geostati-onary orbit in February this year from space centre Kuru in French Quiana, South America via French rocket carri-er Ariane Space. Meunier assured that France will continue to contribute in the development of space industry in Azer-baijan, stressing the crucial role of tele-communications satellite in the future development of Azerbaijan.

The ambassador paid special em-phasis on the expansion of cooperation between Azerbaijan and France in ICT sector. He informed that French compa-nies would represent their country with a national pavilion in the International Telecommunications and Information Technologies Exhibition and Confe-rence - BakuTel 2013. In addition, France will also take part in a seminar entitled “Europe-2020 - Azerbaijan-2020” which is scheduled to take place in Brussels in June this year.

The event will be held amid occasi-on of new stage of relations between the European Union and Azerbaijan. For his part, Abbasov stressed that Azerbaijan will improve cooperation with French

companies in the future adding that this cooperation will be fruitful for both countries. He added that cooperation between the two countries in the ICT sector will also play a vital role in ele-vating political ties.

Meanwhile, at a Cabinet of Mini-sters meeting chaired by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Abbasov said the growth rate of the Azerbaijani informa-tion and communication technologies (ICT) sector for 2012 was 18%. Abba-sov dedicated the meeting to the results socio-economic development in 2012 and the upcoming challenges in 2013. He said that the country experiences a twofold increase in its ICT sector every three years, a trend which began in 2004.

Baku, Paris will expand cooperation in ICT field

Speaking at a meeting dedicated to de-velopment plans for 2013, Georgian Re-gional Development and Infrastructure Minister David Narmania announced launch of another tender for the construc-tion of the Tbilisi-Rustavi highway, The Messenger reported. In response to the President Mikheil Saakashvili‘s remarks on the new government’s suspension of the construction of the highway, the mi-nister said that a company called New Energy was expected to implement the

project. However, the company failed to fulfil its obligations. After finding some criminal activities, the government had decided to announce a new tender and the company who offers the best con-ditions will be declared as winner of the tender. The minister affirmed that construction of the highway will defi-nitely continue. Construction works on the first and third sections of the Tbilisi-Rustavi highway will complete this year. Work is underway on the second section,

scheduled to complete this year. Compared to 2012, this year Georgia

will spend 180 million lari more on infra-structure projects. The ministry plans to continue the construction of highways as well as internal roads and 250 kilometres of new road will open. For this year, wa-ter supply system repairs for 50 munici-palities are planned. In addition, rehabi-litation of tourist infrastructure and the process of managing regional landfills in Kakheti and Imereti were also launched.

Govt plans new tender for Tbilisi-Rustavi highwayGEORGIA|TRANSPORT

AZERBAIJAN|ICT

AZERBAIJAN|ECONOMY

29EASTERN PARTNERSHIPNEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu27 January - 2 February, 2013

MOLDOVA|AGRICULTURE

Apple exports fallMoldova has lost its leading position in exporting apples to the Russian market. According to Russian media, since last year, from July to November, the leading provider of apples in Russia was Moldova, but in 2012, after Russia's accession to World Trade Organization (WTO), Poland became leader. According to the Russian Ministry of Agriculture, from July to November, the import of apples from Moldova was abo-ut 100,000 tonnes, or 26% less than the same period last year, when 135,000 tonnes were imported.

UKRAINE|EU AFFAIRS

Agreement seen in NovemberEU Delegation to Ukraine head Jan Tombinski hopes that the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement will be signed at the Eas-tern Partnership Summit in Vilnius in November 2013. "We hope this will be done in Vilnius in November and possibly la-ter on, from January 1 next year, [the part of the agreement on] the free trade agreement (FTA) will take effect," Interfax quo-ted Tombinski in an interview. He also rejected reports from some media saying that the part of the agreement on the FTA could be signed separately, before the signature of the Asso-ciation Agreement as a whole. "The FTA is part of the entire Association Agreement. It cannot be signed separately. It is a single agreement," Tombinski said.

BELARUS|DEFENCE

Lukashenko eyes global marketNew trends should be explored by the Belarusian defence in-dustry and weapons that sell on the global market should be designed, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko told a go-vernment session on 24 January to discuss the development of the Belarusian defence industry, BelTA reported. “We are going to talk about the security of our country, our army and its weaponry,” he said. “The defence sector of the economy has always been the flagship of cutting-edge technologies and innovations. Every army wants the most reliable and best pro-ducts. And we must not fall behind in this matter.” “Therefore, today I’d like to hear what products are being worked on and what we plan to design in the near future, what areas of rele-vant efforts we will focus on,” he said.

BELARUS|LOANS

Minsk repays IMF loanHonouring its obligation to repay a standby loan taken from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Belarus has transferred 54.7 million SDR as the next instalment to repay the principal debt, or the equivalent of $84.1 million, representatives of the Belarusian Finance Ministry said, BelTA reported. It was the seventh instal-ment to repay the principal debt of the IMF standby loan. Five of the instalments to the tune of 303.5 million SDR (the equivalent of $465.2 million) were transferred in 2012.

BELARUS|ENERGY

Export duties on oil products In 2012 Belarus transferred as much as $3.8 billion in export customs duties on oil products made from Russian oil to the state budget of Russia, said Alexander Valiyev, head of the Ta-riff Regulation and Customs Charges Office of the State Cus-toms Committee of Belarus on 23 January. “We secured the payment and transfer of $3.8 billion from the export of oil pro-ducts to the Russian budget in 2012,” he said. In 2011 Belarus transferred $3.07 billion in export customs duties on oil pro-ducts shipped to third countries to Russia’s budget.

On 24 January, Ukraine signed a $10 billion shale gas deal with Royal Dutch Shell at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanu-kovich met Shell Chief Executive Peter Voser in Davos and oversaw the signing of the production-sharing deal.

Ukraine chose Shell last May as a part-ner to develop the Yuzivska field in the east of the country and regional councils there approved the deal two weeks ago, re-moving the last obstacle to signature.

Ukraine is said to have Europe's third-largest shale gas reserves at 1.2 trillion cubic metres, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

The Yuzivska shale gas field could be producing 20 billion cubic metres of gas in 2018, Eduard Stavitsky, Ukraine’s newly appointed energy minister, said on 24 January. "We can only forecast at the moment. According to Shell's optimistic scenario about 20 billion cubic metres could be extracted annually, according to the pessimistic, one at the very least 7-8 billion," Stavitsky said in Davos.

If the top forecast were fulfilled, "this will completely solve the problem of the (gas) shortfall in Ukraine," he said.

Chevron won a second tender last year to explore shale gas opportunities in western Ukraine, though it faces much stronger local opposition. Ukraine has also chosen an ExxonMobil-led consorti-um to explore for offshore gas in the Black Sea and is seeking foreign partners to help

it build a liquefied natural gas terminal.Kiev is eager to decrease its reliance

on costly imports from Russian gas mo-nopoly Gazprom. Russia has twice since 2006 cut off gas to Ukraine in midwinter as the result of pricing disputes, causing disruption to onward supplies to Europe.

Though Ukraine will remain depen-dent on Gazprom for some years, the prospective shale gas production will strengthen its hand in ongoing efforts to renegotiate a 10-year supply contract with Gazprom signed in 2009 by then-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, which Ukra-ine views as unfair.

But Moscow has set Ukraine's mem-bership in the Russian-led Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan as a precon-

dition and also wants partial ownership of Ukraine gas pipeline and distribution net-work currently owned by Naftogaz.

On 22 January, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Yuriy Boiko and Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller met in Moscow, their first meeting this year, Boiko's press ser-vice said. "During the meeting the parties discussed the prospects for bilateral stra-tegic co-operation between Ukraine and Russia," the press service said. The last time the two met, Boiko had been energy and coal industry minister.

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said two weeks ago that Ukraine is already planning to cut gas imports from Russia in 2013 by boosting its own pro-duction and importing gas from Germany.

Ukraine, Shell ink key shale gas deal

(L-R) Ukrainian Energy Minister Eduard Stavitsky, Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanu-kovych, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Shell CEO Peter Voser shake hands as Ukraine and Shell signed a shale deal in Davos, 24 January 2013. AFP PHOTO ERIC PIERMONT

The Belarusian Agriculture and Food Ministry is working on the projects to set up joint production facilities with Viet-nam, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Iran, Agriculture and Food Minister Leonid Zayats said, BelTA reported.

In 2013 the merchandise export by the Agriculture and Food Ministry is supposed to rise by 16%. The Ministry has plans for working on tr

aditional markets and plans to push

products to other markets as well. “Bela-rus intends to promote cooperation in agriculture with Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Iran and other countries. Projects with these countries are being worked on, including projects to set up joint manufacturing facilities,” said the press service of the Belarusian govern-ment.

Zayats informed about plans to up-grade agricultural enterprises. The plans

provide for concrete measures to retool existing production facilities and create new ones as well as master new kinds of products. The Minister also informed about m

ajor investment projects, which are earmarked for implementation in agricu-lture. The number includes the construc-tion of modern enterprises to make dairy products, process turkey meat, pig-bree-ding farms, and broiler farms.

Minsk plans JVs with Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Iran

The new country strategy for Belarus will be considered by the Board of Directors of the World Bank in spring 2013, In-ternational Finance Corporation (IFC) Country Manager for Ukraine and Bela-rus Rufat Alimardanov told reporters, BelTA reported. “We are now at the stage of consultations with the government of Belarus on the strategy of partnership with the World Bank, including the IFC

and the Multilateral Investment Guaran-tee Agency,” he said.

The previous country strategy for Belarus ended in July 2011. A year later at a meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Myasnikovich, the World Bank Country Director for Ukraine, Belarus and Mol-dova Qimiao Fan said that prospects for approval of the new World Bank country strategy for Belarus, which suggests allo-

cation of credit resources to Minsk, de-pends on the major shareholders of the Bank. The premier asked the Regional Director to intensify the process of pre-paring the strategy.

Belarus joined the World Bank in 1992. Since then the Bank’s lending com-mitments in Belarus have reached $900 million for 13 projects in power enginee-ring, forestry, road infrastructure.

World Bank to consider new country strategy in spring

BELARUS|AGRICULTURE

BELARUS|LOANS

UKRAINE|ENERGY

30 EURASIA NEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu


KYRGYZSTAN | TRADE

US, Kyrgyzstan discuss extension of “Manas”United States Department representative Robert Blake re-cently paid a visit to Kyrgyzstan to attend bilateral Kyrgyz-US consultations, Irinnews.org reported. The main aim of the visit of Blake was to discuss extension of lease of the „Manas” air base. It was recalled that Blake visited Kyrgyzstan in Decem-ber 2011 and April 2012. Blake said, “As for logistics, Manas plays significant role for USA, this is transit centre for almost all our military forces sent to Afghanistan.” “All Central Asian countries wanted the United States to play a bigger role in this region. They sympathise with the United States that actively boosts trade development and stability” added the US envoy. Blake mentioned that composition of the Kyrgyz delegation is currently being specified and several issues are also listed. The Kyrgyz leadership has no plans of extending an agreement on the stationing of the US Transit Centre at Manas in the coun-try after 2014, Kyrgyz presidential press secretary Kadyr Tok-togulov said. President of Kyrgyzstan Almazbek Atambayev has reiterated that Transit Centre at Manas will be closed after the lease expires in 2014, Toktogulov said in commenting on press reports suggesting that the U.S. still expects to reach an understanding with the Kyrgyz leadership on extending the Transit Centre’s presence in the country past 2014.

TAJIKISTAN | ENERGY

BHEL commissions hydro power plant in TajikistanBharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL) recently announced that it has achieved a major milestone in the CIS region as renova-ted hydro power plant project with enhanced generation ca-pacity has been commissioned in Tajikistan, Asia-Plus repor-ted. BHEL had undertaken the contract for renovation, mo-dernisation and uprating of the existing 2 units of 3.67 MW ea-ch to 4.75 MW each at the Varjob Hydro Power Plant, where-in BHEL had supplied the complete electro-mechanical pac-kage for the project. The first unit of the project was synchro-nized earlier in November, 2012. Both the units have achie-ved uprated full load and are running successfully following the RMU job. The project is funded by the Govt. of India. The plant was inaugurated by Tajik minister of energy & industry Gul Sherali, Govt. of Tajikistan and H.E. Ambassador of India in Tajikistan, Asith Bhattacharjee. Completion of the project by BHEL will help in strengthening business ties between In-dia and Tajikistan and open a new market for India in Tajikis-tan, said BHEL in a statement. It also reflects BHEL’s continu-ed support to Tajikistan’s vision to develop its Hydro Energy sector which constitutes 4% of the total Hydro resources of the World and reemphasises the Government of Tajikistan’s faith in the capability of BHEL which has a strong presence in the Central Asia and CIS region with references in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine besides Tajikistan.

KAZAKHSTAN | DIPLOMACY

German experts review “Kazakhstan-2050” StrategyNew “Kazakhstan-2050” Strategy: new political course of a successful country” was the focus of a meeting at JSC „Samruk-Kazyna” National Welfare Fund. The event was attended by re-presentatives of the local maslikhat and the ‚Nur Otan’ People’s Democratic Party, Gazeta.kz reported. The participants no-ted the party should use available resources to solve problems of the population. Kazakhstanpresident Nazarbayev in his address to the nation, presented the Kazakhstan-2050 stra-tegy which was discussed by German politicians.

During 2012 three investors informed on their withdrawal of the project in the Caspian Sea, reports the Kazakh edition of Petroleum citing anonymous sources. “In spring 2012, the French Total formal-ly notified the Ministry of Oil and Gas of Kazakhstan that they refuse to deve-lop Zhenis site. In September, the Italian company ENI officially informed in writ-ten statement of rejection of the site of Chagala, says the publication.As stated in the material, rejection of this project could have a negative impact on a number of infrastructure projects on joint projects of KMG and ENI in Karachaga-nak (construction of a gas processing plant) and reconstruction of Pavlodar refinery, so called “Directions of objects under construction”. Implementation of these infrastructure projects were directly linked to development of Caspian regions “Isatay-Chagala”.“By rejection of the site of Chagala, ENI effectively rejected their commitments in the framework of the “Direction” projects led by an influential oilman Nurlan Bal-gimbayev... However, Italians have not yet rejected the interest in development of the site of Isatay, said the publication.But the loudest “notification” on the shelf came from ConocoPhillips. “Last sum-mer the company re-notified Kazakhstan and their partners, that they do not pre-

clude sale of their stake in the projects of Kashagan and “H”, said the publication with reference to the sources. Recall that once Kazakh authorities chose Conoco-Phillips in “H” project, when the choice was between “H” and Shell, and, accor-ding to the sources of Petroleum in KMG, now they regret.As previously reported, possibility that Kazakhstan will be able to buy a share part of ConocoPhillips in the North-Cas-pian project is not excluded. But the Chi-nese and Indian companies have already expressed interest their interest.

“In the opinion of anonymous employees of “Shell Kazakhstan”, there are a few re-asons for decline in investors’ interest in the shelf. The authorities, acting in line with a “po-licy of creeping nationalization”, having radically revised the legislation on subsoil use and changed the investment climate in the country, have forgotten to take into account the “golden rule” of the oil com-panies in investigations - “every fifth ex-ploration well must pay off and give profit after four unsuccessful exploration wells”, emphasized the material of Petroleum.

Total, ENI, ConocoPhillips reject some Kazakh projects

Major foreign firms reject some of Kazakhstan’s energy projects.

Turkish company Polimeks recently won a contract to build an international airport in Ashgabat with a capacity of 1600 passen-gers per hour in Ashgabat by August 2016. The State National Service Turkmenistan Airlines (Turkmenistan Hava Yollari) awarded the contract to the Turkish firm, Turkmenistan.ru learnt from the official Turkmen source.

The project is scheduled to start this month with an estimated cost at $2.2 billi-

on. Results of an international tender were announced at the recent expanded mee-ting of the Turkmen Cabinet of Ministers. It was reported that so far Polimeks com-pleted about 120 construction projects in Turkmenistan, including an airport in the Caspian city of Turkmenbashi.

In September 2103 German Airport Consulting Partners / ILF Consulting Engineers, won an international tender to operate as a consulting company control-

ling construction of new international air-ports in Turkmenistan.

Six months back a Turkmen delegation paid a business visit to Munich, Germany to evaluate issues related to the construc-tion and maintenance of major interna-tional airports. German EWC Hoshtief, French Bouygues and VINCI Construc-tion companies earlier participated in the international tender for construction of Ashgabat’s airport.

Turkish company will build international airport in Ashgabat

As stated in the Country Development Strategy till 2017, Kyrgyzstan needs $141.3 million for investment projects in agriculture, Irinnews.org reported. The strategy which was approved by the National Council for Sustainable Deve-lopment, envisaged that as of this year 24

projects will be launched in the agroin-dustrial complex. Six projects will be im-plemented if money is found by Decem-ber. They include the establishment of 14 seed farms which need $ 8.5 million, equipping of 300 artificial insemination points requiring $ 0.5 million), the de-

livery of 225 units of leased agricultural machinery ($ 5 million). The Depart-ment of Water Resources and Land Re-clamation with construction machinery need $10 million. $1.7 million are nee-ded to restore a head water intake struc-ture in Ak-Tala district.

Investment projects in agriculture require $141.3 mlnKYRGYZSTAN | AGRICULTURE

KAZAKHSTAN | ENERGY

TURKMENISTAN | EU AFFAIRS

By Kulpash Konyrova

31RUSSIANEWEUROPEwww.neurope.eu27 January - 2 February, 2013

RUSSIA|ENERGY

Gazprom may lose monopolyRussian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said his country’s gas giant Gazprom may lose its monopoly on natural gas ex-ports to domestic competitors as long as the move doesn’t cut prices and damage Russia’s economic interests. “It is possible, because there are other, independent gas producers,” Bloom-berg Television quoted Medvedev in an interview in Davos. “But we mustn’t lose money, that’s the most important thing. Money comes first.” Lifting Gazprom’s monopoly may be pos-sible only “after considering all the consequences with the ut-most thoroughness,” Medvedev said.

RUSSIA|DEFENCE

Arms export surgeRussian military sales to foreign clients have expanded despi-te past concerns about the quality of defence equipment, said Alexander Fomin, director of Russia’s Federal Military-Tech-nical Cooperation Service. Military sales by Russian compa-nies surpassed 2011 figures of $13.2 billion, when Russia was the No. 2 arms exporter after the United States.“The volume of arms exports has reached $15.16 billion, according to pre-liminary calculations,” Fomin said. The Russian armed ser-vices have seen exports triple in revenue since 2003, he added.

RUSSIA|HUMAN RIGHTS

Pussy Riot: No regretsNadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, the impriso-ned members of the Pussy Riot feminist punk band say they fe-el no regrets about the irreverent “punk prayer” against Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow’s main cathedral that lan-ded them behind bars for two years, Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported. They said they don’t expect clemency from autho-rities. Three members of Pussy Riot were found guilty of ho-oliganism motivated by religious hatred in August after they raucously prayed to the Virgin Mary for the deliverance from Putin at Christ the Savior Cathedral. One of them, Yekateri-na Samutsevich, was later released on appeal, but Tolokon-nikova and Alekhina were sent to prison colonies last fall. To-lokonnikova argued that their protest wasn’t aimed at religi-on. “It was an ironic, cheerful and bold act, a political outcry, so to speak,” she said.

RUSSIA|PRESIDENCY

Medvedev reveals plansRussian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said he won’t run against President Vladimir Putin in the next presidential elec-tion. “I believe this wouldn’t be correct, I think this would be impossible,” Bloomberg Television quoted Medvedev in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “We are part of one political force, why would we compete against ea-ch other?” Medvedev, 47, stepped aside last year as president to allow the return of Putin, 60, who held power as prime mi-nister for four years after completing the maximum two conse-cutive terms allowed by the constitution. Putin is eligible for a second six- year term at the next presidential election in 2018.

RUSSIA|COMPUTERS

Fighting hackersRussian President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian autho-rities to protect state computers from hacking attacks, the Kremlin said after an Internet security firm said a spy network had infiltrated government and embassy computers across the former Soviet bloc, news agencies reported.

On 23 January, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said at an interna-tional economic forum that Russia is a strong economy that is open to those who are ready to be partners and invest in his country.

“Russia is an open country, whatever they might think or say,” he said. Russia’s unemployment rate, at a little over 5%, is the lowest among developed countries, he said, and it also has an extremely low level of foreign debt. “We need to see in-vestment growing by 10% annually,” he said. “Therefore we are interested in at-tracting large-scale foreign investment.” That amount of investment expansion is needed to push Russia‘s economy be-yond 4% growth, he said.

But Medvedev acknowledged that Russia needs to do a much better job of attracting foreign direct investment. He said his government‘s priority is to im-prove public governance. But, he said, this is not a problem unique to Russia. “It‘s nothing new --- humanity has been facing these problems for centuries, if not millennia,” he said. “The more law and order, the more thieves and robbers. In that sense, little has changed.”

Medvedev stressed that Russia is an open market now and pointed to mem-bership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) as an indication of that. The country‘s next priority is to gain mem-bership of the Organisation for Econo-mic Cooperation and Development, composed of the world‘s industrialised nations, he said.

He also spoke of the need to create

an equal playing field for all businesses and to create a single economic space with Russia‘s neighbours, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Medvedev slammed European ener-gy regulations and visa policies It is „very sad“ that Europe and Russia are fighting over energy regulations.

The Russian premier also critici-sed European leaders for „not hearing“ Russia‘s arguments for visa-free travel in Europe — obtaining visas is a big hurdle for Russians doing business. He said visa-free travel would bring untold benefits to both sides, making them part of a single market and a single eco-

nomic area.Medvedev also stressed that Russia

has a global outlook and will continue dialogue with its European friends and partners. “We are building our coopera-tion,” he said, acknowledging that unila-teral action could have dire implications.

Medvedev said the G-20, which brings together the world‘s major eco-nomies, is becoming increasingly effi-cient and that this has helped limit the extent of the global economic crisis. “We need to use modern technologies, crowd sourcing,” he said. “Those technologies change the status and enhance the legiti-macy of decisions made in government.

Medvedev tries to lure investors to Russia

Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, right, speaks with Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller during their visit to the recently built Adler thermal power plant in the Rus-sian Black Sea resort of Sochi, 21 January 2013. Medvedev wants to attract foreign investors to Russia. |AFP PHOTO/RIA-NOVOSTI/POOL/MIKHAIL MOKRUSHIN

On 23 January, Russian President Vladi-mir Putin offered to host an internatio-nal conference in Moscow on the refugee crisis in Syria.

“We will do our utmost to ... sponsor the organisation of an international con-ference on the refugee problem,” Putin said during talks with Lebanese Presi-dent Michel Sleiman. “If the interested nations agree to this, we will be ready to propose Moscow as the venue,” Putin said.

Putin also promised Lebanon finan-cial assistance to help deal with the Syri-an refugees on its territory. He told Slei-man that Russia is ready to help Lebanon solve humanitarian issues. “We will ask

our specialists to determine the size of this assistance,” Putin said. “It could be made along several different channels - through direct financing ... and assi-stance associated with refugee support.”

On 11 January, the Office of the Uni-ted Nations High Commissioner for Re-fugees (UNHCR) said the total number of Syrians who left the country has top-ped the 600,000 mark.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011, and many people, in-cluding large numbers of security forces, have been killed in the turmoil.

On 23 January, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the main obstacle to peace in Syria is the

opposition’s “obsession with the idea of toppling the Bashar al-Assad regime.” He also said the Kremlin’s Emergency Mi-nistry flights that removed 77 Russians from the conflict zone early on 23 Janu-ary did not signal the start of an evacua-tion. Lavrov told an annual news confe-rence that Russia was unlikely to alter the position it had staked out in Syria.

He said Russia’s Foreign Ministry proceeds from the notion that there should be no nonessential employees in the Russian Embassy in Damascus, and that the families of Russian diplomats were sent home “long ago, because it is not very calm to work there, and that’s correct.”

Putin offers to host Syria refugee conferenceRUSSIA|DIPLOMACY

RUSSIA|INVESTMENT

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27 January - 2 February, 2013Once upon a time in Brussels...Mario Monti is coming to Brussels, to promo-te his book,‘Democracy in Europe.’ Chapter One: How to get yourself appointed to run a country without all those tiresome elections...

Edging awayIt’s not only David Cameron who is ba-

cking away from a political union. Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conser-

vatives, wants their marriage to the London based party to be more of a loose, open rela-tionship.

She is saying that the Tories poor show-ing north of the border is because the Scot-tish electorate “see us as London’s party in Scotland not Scotland’s party in London. When it comes to elections to the Scottish Parliament, they want to vote for a party that

will put Scotland first, and too few truly be-lieve that of us.”

Perhaps emboldened by Cameron’s repa-triation of powers, the new Caledonian Con-servative is looking to get more power for the Scottish parliament, including tax raising.

Davidson beat Murdo Fraser for the lea-dership, by 2,983 votes to 2,417. The party had around 8,500 members north of the bor-der at the time. Fraser was campaigning on killing off the Scottish Conservative party and rebranding as Scotland First or similar.

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TwiTTer exchange of The week

Between hardline Eurosceptic MEP, Dan Hannan and the legendary Berlaymonster

The Spookiest intern

“Lucy, You Got a Lot of `Splainin’ to Do...”

“The name‘s Bond, James Bond, licensed to do photocopying and make coffee for visi-tors.”While many are puzzling over David Cameron‘s speech, our British chums may be up to something in the background.After hearing reports of a life sized Daniel Craig in UK PERMREP, we received an email from a top secret contact (cleverly disguised as an email newsletter) from deep inside The British Council.“The British Council Brussels is looking for a new intern to work with the EU team,” they announce, for 6 months and it will be a paid position.The notice also says the duties will include “intelligence work.”Has MI6 become MIStagiere?

From wine lake to wine lackThere has been considerable disquiet among the eurocrats (though absolutely definitely not from journalists) over some inflationary price rises in the many bars in the EU institutions.There have been a range of price increases, mainly in non-alcoholic drinks. The price of coffee has gone up by almost 400% to an alarming €2 a cup in some of the taxpayer subsidized bars. A bottle of wine can cost as much as €8 or even €10 a bottle.The European Central Bank is looking for a 2% inflation limit.Europe, once again is leading by example!

In our newspaper last week, we claimed that inaction and the influence of the ship owners lobby inside the European Com-mission had led to a decade long delay in introducing a carbon tax on shipping, a gre-ater carbon polluter than aviation, which is subject to a tax.Furthermore, we claimed that this delay had cost the European Union ‘several billi-ons of euros.’We wish to apologise for these remarks as they only reflected a partial truth and we need to rectify them.According to further information, the de-lay in IMO discussions has, in fact, been going on for fifteen years, instead of ten that we have reported. Protracted discussions mean, in practical terms, losing years of re-venue for the EU. We discovered this too late to be included last week and we apolo-gise for any confusion.From Lloyd’s List in June 2011, we see that the Director of the European Commission‘s carbon markets programme, Ms. Mary Ve-ronic Tovsac Pleterski, being quoted as sa-ying, “Clearly we want a global solution, but we have wanted a global solution since we started talking about this in the IMO back in 1997 - and we are still yet to see any action.”The article goes on to say, “Mrs Tovsak Ple-

terski has made clear she believes regional dis-cussions often accelerate global progress. She also suggests if a regional policy is recommen-ded to the Council of Ministers next year, the Commission will continue to pursue a parallel discussion within the IMO in the hope an in-ternational agreement could also be reached. Commission officials have been gathering data and market opinion for some time now and are expected to make a formal recommendation to the Council of Ministers by the end of the year.”From this statement it seems that the Com-mission services were indeed prepared to make a formal proposal not by mid-2012 as we erroneously reported in our previous edition, but is should already have been done, by the end of year(ie 2011).”The question is now, who stopped the services from proceeding? How, why and, most importantly who benefits from this unprecedented “omerta.” In this matter, Commissioner in charge Connie Hedeg-aard has the political, moral and administra-tive obligation to explain.To show our newspaper’s contrition, we have vowed to substantially increase the re-sources devoted to shipping, including ma-ritime safety and pollution liability besides carbon taxes and will make more regular updates to the story in future.

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