New Europe Print Edition Issue 975

In the long run, welfare state is dead|Page 8

NEWEUROPE19th Year of Publication | Number 975| 26 February - 3 March, 2012 | € 3.50 www.neurope.eu

IN THIS ISSUE EU Policy

Eurozone: Recession

or growth in 2012| Page 7

Arts for our sake| Page 14

EU-World

Getting to the heart of

the Republican party| Page 10

The guardian of the

world’s oceans | Page 11

Energy & Climate

Gazprom raises gas volume

to EU via Belarus | Page 28

Iran worries push oil near $123|Page 13

Country news

France Telecom cuts dividend | Page 18

Egyptian FM pledges to protect

Italian investments | Page 19

Belgrade-Pristina negotiations

saved by a footnote | Page 26

Ankara, Beijing

hail trade ties | Page 27

Eurasian Union 'not dependent

on Russian elections' | Page 31

Editorial & Opinion

Another financial crisis beckons? | Page 4

Lowering the bar in Yemen | Page 5

“Humanitarian intervention” in Syria would

make matters worse | Page 7

In the long run, welfare state is dead | Page 8

EU pipeline projects competing in the so-called Southern Gas Corridor are battling tothe end. Italy and Greece will build a projectto import natural gas into the EuropeanUnion with or without gas from Azerbaijan,Elio Ruggeri, CEO of IGI Poseidon andhead of international gas infrastructures forEdison, told New Europe on 22 February,two days after he was informed that theInterconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy (ITGI)project, a venture of Greece’s DEPA andItaly’s Edison, was excluded. “Both withAzeri gas or without Azeri gas, ITGI willplay a key role,” Ruggeri said.

On 20 February, the consortium that isdeveloping the natural gas field Shah Deniz

located offshore Azerbaijan said it selectedthe Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) projectfor the Italian pipeline option. Northernroutes - Nabucco and the South-EastEurope Pipeline (SEEP) - also remain in thegame for now.

Asked if ITGI could become the southernbranch of Russian-backed South Stream gaspipeline, Ruggeri said: “ITGI is a pipelineproject and we are looking at all sources ofgas; that’s all I can say.”

Following the latest developments in theSouthern Gas Corridor pipeline competition,TAP Managing Director Kjetil Tunglandsaid in an e-mailed statement on 20 Februarythat TAP firmly believes that it remains a

strong contender to win the bid to transportShah Deniz II gas to Europe. “We are alsoconfident that the TAP route to Italy offersthe Shah Deniz consortium the most attrac-tive market and the most advanced evacua-tion route. No further comment,” he said.

Meanwhile, European Investment Bank(EIB) Vice President Plutarchos Sakellaristold New Europe on 23 February in Athensthat the Southern Corridor is central in EUenergy security. “There is the Southern gascorridor which is important also from thatpoint of view. There is ITGI, there is TAPand there is the potential of Nabucco. All ofthese are big question marks,” he said.

TAP, Nabucco, SEEP battle for Azeri gas; ITGI hits back

·Pages 12, 13, 24

There can be only one

EUROZONEThe Greek deal that was inked last weekhad an immediate and positive effect onthe debt markets. It also helped the eurogain some more ground on the dollar

·Page 4

New York in narrative modePage 15

SCIENCENE speaks with Professor Anne Glover,who was appointed as the EU’s first chiefscientific advisor in late 2011, and sharesher passion for her mission with the citi-zens of Europe

·Page 6

RUSSIAThe project of the creation of theEurasian Union does not depend on theoutcome of the upcoming presidentialelections in Russia to be held on 4March, Russian experts say ·Page 31

HUMAN RIGHTSSexual violence in conflict is affecting mil-lions of people around the world. Endingsexual violence as a tactic of war remainsone of the greatest challenges

·Page 5

Originally there were four options to carry Azeri gas to Europe: Tran-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), Interconnector-Turkey-Greece Italy (ITGI), South-East Europe

Pipeline (SEEP) and Nabucco. Now there are three. |EPA/ROBERT SCHLESINGER

FASHION & STYLE

ANALYSIS Page 2 | New Europe NEW EUROPE26 February - 3 March, 2012

NE 15 YEARS AGO

"We've also been having problems with pirates" |AFP PHOTO GEORGES GOBET

The Shooting Gallery

The disintegration of the USSR also had devastating effects on the military. The melt down of the structures of the state machin-ery, the destruction of the economy and the ideological disillusionment about the patriotic rhetoric, deprived the armed forces oftheir priority position. The looting of the state sector above and below ground by the oligarchs, took a different form in the army.The generals and the admirals start selling on the black market entire warehouses with military equipment. Even nuclear mate-rial was offered for dollars to merchants of death. Despite all that however, the huge size of the armed forces and their preroga-tive on resources during the Soviet time had made the Russian military machine so powerful that even in the post communistera it had to be reckoned with.

National ‘disgrace’ awarning for Europe?

Angela Merkel has asked for forgiveness from the relativesof Turkish and Greek men murdered by neo-Nazi gang, theNational Socialist Underground, in Germany. The group,which have carried out the killings of nine immigrants andone police officer, were finally uncovered in November lastyear, after 11 years on the run. They have also carried outnumerous robberies and some nail bomb attacks. The chancellor, during a memorial service for the victimson 23 February, said that the inadequate, decade-longinvestigations into the group amounted to a “disgrace”, and“an attack on our country”. Strong words, certainly, andwelcome in a situation that saw members of the murderedmen’s families inexplicably coming under suspicion, andwhich also saw the whole affair dubbed the ‘doner mur-ders’, a crass epithet replete with it’s own suggestions ofxenophobia and national stereotypes. But further to MrsMerkel’s condemnation of the group’s activities, and suse-quent police investigation, in which she said that “somerelatives were, for years, unjustly under suspicion. That isparticularly difficult and I ask forgiveness for this”, was thetacit admission that something more unsettling lies cur-rently in German society; namely the “creeping, disastrouseffect of apathy”. Germany, she appeared to be saying, isindifferent. But, of course, indifference can not be specifically associat-ed with an individual member state, and apathy towardspublic engagement, which, at its worst, can manifest itselfinto violent extremism and a closed-minded clinging tothe past, can never serve the wider good. By drawing atten-tion to the perceived apathy in Germany towards theplight of immigrants Merkel was not only taking to taskher own country, but also, although not explicitly meant assuch, drawing attention to a wider European problem;indifference slowly turning into ignorance.Angela Merkel is a committed European, intent on keep-ing the EU and the single currency together. In this, sheis not universally popular, but however one wishes toprotest the actions of the German or French governments,or dispute the policies of the ECB or IMF, it is a democ-ratic right to do so within normal legal boundaries. Somemay dispute one or other definition of European solidari-ty, but the very fact that solidarity is being strived for inthese difficult times is a testament to the better nature ofthe European spirit. And, of course, it highlights howdeeply rooted in the past groups like the NationalSocialist Underground are. If the European Union is tohave any values at all, they should be the values of toler-ance and solidarity.It is perhaps understandable for citizens who fear econom-ic meltdown to remain sceptical about the interference ofbodies such as the Troika into their domestic affairs. Andin this politicians have a duty to keep those citizensinvolved, informed and be less bullish in their defence ofpolicy. Continued austerity might not prove be the way ofenduring the European political class to the people in thelong run, but, at a base level at least, it remains a politicalresponse to political events, and as such ripe for a politicalcounter attack. But that is not the same as thuggish behav-iour; that is not the same as a murderous desire to cling tothe past.There is a new confluence of political and social forces atwork in Europe right now. It’s leaders need to be moreengaged than ever.

EDITOR

Cillian [email protected]

SENIOR EDITORIAL TEAM

Kostis Geropoulos (Energy & Russian Affairs)

[email protected]

Andy Carling (EU Affairs)

[email protected]

James Drew (On Line)

[email protected]

Ivan Delibasic (EU Affairs)

[email protected]

Ariti Alamanou (Legal Affairs)

[email protected]

Stratis Camatsos (EU Affairs)

[email protected]

Louise Kissa (Fashion)

[email protected]

Alexandra Coronakis (Columnist)

[email protected]

DIRECTOR

Alexandros [email protected]

MARKETING & ADVERTISING

Panos Katsampanis

[email protected]

EXECUTIVE LAYOUT PRODUCER

Suman Haque

[email protected]

SUBSCRIPTIONS & DISTRIBUTION

[email protected]

Subscriptions are available worldwide

INDEPENDENCE

New Europe is a privately owned independent

publication, and is not subsidised or financed in

any way by any EU institution or other entity.

BRUSSELS HEADQUARTERS

Av. de Tervuren/Tervurenlaan 96, 1040 Brussels, BelgiumTel. +32 2 5390039 Fax +32 2 [email protected]

PUBLISHERS

BRUSSELS NEWS AGENCY SPRL

Avenue de Tervueren 96 1040 Etterbeek BelgiumTel. +32 2 [email protected]

EXTERNAL CONTRIBUTIONS

Signed Contributions express solely theviews of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of thenewspaper.NE is printed on recycled paper.

NEWEUROPE

© 2012 New Europe all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or otherwise, without the permission of New Europe.

ISSN number: 1106-8299

Governments and specialised Companies from more than 100 countries are meeting in Brussels (Belgium) for the Crans Montana Forum on South-South Cooperation.

Africa - key partner of world Security with NSAs and specialised Ministries Meeting of the "African Ports Club" The future of the Arab Spring and of Syria Meeting of African and other national Anti-Corruption Agencies The African Energy Agenda with the cooperation of SOCAR and PETROCI Arab investment in Africa with major Sovereign Funds (Saudi Fund, OFID,

Kuwait Fund, etc.) Forum of the New Leaders for Tomorrow

General)

Information & Registration : [email protected]

www.cmf.ch

Brussels (Belgium) - Hotel Le Plaza March 7 to 10, 2012

AFRICA, CROSSROADS

OF THE

SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION

Mr. Daniel Gnangni Director General, PETROCI

Mr. Kalaa Mpinga CEO, Mwana Africa

Mr. Jean-Louis Billon President, CCI of Côte d'Ivoire

Mr. Aliko Dangote Chairman, Dangote Group, Nigeria

Mr. Raila Amollo Odinga Prime Minister, Kenya

Mr. Didier Reynders Dep. Prime Minister

Minister of Foreign Affairs, Belgium

Mr. Faustin Archange Touadéra Prime Minister, Central African Republic

Mrs. Maria Adiato Djaló Nandigna Prime Minister, Guinea-Bissau

Mr. Daniel Kablan Duncan Minister of Foreign Affairs

Mr. Célestin Mbuyu Kabango Minister of Hydrocarbons, DR of Congo

ADVERTISEMENT

Page 4| New Europe NEW EUROPE

ANALYSIS26 February - 3 March, 2012

The Greek deal that was inked thisweek has had an immediate, and pos-itive effect on the debt markets. It alsohelped the euro gain some moreground on the dollar, and has furtherpressed down the spreads for Italianand Spanish debts (the difference inyields between those countries' bondsand the benchmark German debtpaper). The stock markets, which hadbeing gaining a lot of grounds in an-ticipation of the Greek deal during re-cent weeks, fell on the announcement,as is usual in bourses.

However, what is of primary impor-tance, and will determine the future ofthe Eurozone as we know it, has to dowith the fundamentals of the ‘sinner’countries, which are considered to bethe weak links of the European singlecurrency area.

Let take one thing at a time.

The Greek potentialThe new deal for Greece, which was

finalised this week in Brussels, remainsa huge financial exercise on paper.Athens must undertake morepainstaking measures in order to makeit work, and all that after two yearstough austerity. So the whole issue willdepend on the country’s endurance re-serves.

The Greek party political system’spotential and willingness to work to-wards the creation of a more compet-itive economic environment, thecohesion potential of the society to en-dure and promote the structuralchanges and the ability of the Greekeconomy to react positively to subver-sive restructuring measures, will all de-termine the final outcome. In short,this is the substance of the Memoran-dum of Understanding (MoU) be-tween Greece and the rest of theEurozone.

The political landscapeOn the political front, the Greek

landscape is now considering whetherAthens remains in the Eurozone ornot. The two largest parties, the so-cialist PASOK and the centre-rightNew Democracy, and their leadersGeorge Papandreou and AntonisSamaras, have already shown theirstrong determination to do whateverit takes to keep the country in the sin-gle currency.

They have jointly backed the Pa-pademos government, and all the un-popular austerity measures, with thepolitical cost great to both leaders.

Each of them had to oust from theirparliamentary groups 20 deputies (ina house of 300) for not voting infavour of the new austerity package on12 February, which was an integralpart of the new package of soft loans

to save the country from bankruptcy.The cost in the opinion polls is

much larger for PASOK and Papan-dreou, who governed the countryfrom November 2009 until Novem-ber 2011.

According to the worst-case sce-nario, those two parties will form agovernment under Antonis Samarasafter the next election, reportedly totake place in April.

New Democracy is expected tocome first, with around 30% of thevotes and 120-140 deputies. PASOKis listed third in the opinion polls, with13% of the votes and 45-55 deputies.In this way, they will both gain a freshmandate from the Greek citizens tocontinue their co-operation in sup-porting a government that will workto keep the country in the Eurozoneand do whatever it takes to do so. Thisnew government could also gain sup-port from the Democratic Allianceparty formed recently by Dora Bako-giannis.

In short, Greece’s major politicalforces will continue to decisively backthe country being in both the Euro-zone and the European Union. Con-sequently, even if the Greek economydoes not achieve large productivitygains over the next years and fallsshort of the programmed targets, therewill be no danger of the country will-ingly leaving the single currency.

But, given that there is no way tothrow a member state out of the Eu-rozone, Athens runs no danger ofabandoning it.

Not to forget, however, the last para-graph of the Eurogroup Statement of21 February clearly states: “We (theEurogroup) reiterate our commitmentto provide adequate support to Greeceduring the life of the programme andbeyond until it has regained market

access, provided that Greece fullycomplies with the requirements andobjectives of the adjustment pro-gramme.”

But what about the other ‘sinner’countries?

The other ‘sinners’Coming to the other 'sinner' coun-

tries that have asked for Eurozone'ssupport, namely Portugal and Ireland,we observe that the latter produced apositive trade balance in goods of€40.5 billion during the period of Jan-uary- November 2011.

Given also that Dublin is preparinga generous reduction of the country’ssovereign debt, Ireland is bound to re-turn soon to the markets and nolonger require the Eurozone's support– this will probably happen during2012. As for Portugal, the country isunfortunately following Greece’s badexample, but the tiny weight of itseconomy and the expressed decisive-ness of its government not to ask for asecond package, do not pose major fu-ture threats to the Eurozone.

This brings us to the other realproblems of the Eurozone, namelyItaly and Spain, its third- and fourth-largest economies. Incidentally, theGreek deal had impressively positiveresults for them both, suppressing theinterest rates that they have to pay fortheir debts.

Even before the Greek deal wasconcluded, the two countries had noproblem in refinancing a large part oftheir 2012 sovereign obligationsthrough regular capital markets. Lastbut not least, if the European centralbank (ECB) expands its liquidity sup-ply programme to the Eurozonebanks, there will be no problem what-soever to refinance the sovereign debtof the single currency.

ECONOMY

The real potential of the Greek deal

EU commissioner Economic and Monetary Affairs Olli Rehn gives a press conference on in-terim economic forecast on 23 February in Brussels.|AFP PHOTO/GEORGES GOBET

Another financial crisis beckons?

On 25-26 February, central bankers and G20 finance minis-ters met in Mexico City and asked Eurozone to increase its ef-forts to convince global investors that it can effectively copewith potential problems that may arise in refinancing the sov-ereign debt of countries such as Italy and Spain.Despite the Eurozone agreement this week to refinanceGreece with €130 billion, the Americans and a number of de-veloping members of the G20 want to see the surplus EUcountries create a stronger firewall to make sure that Italy andSpain will be able to go on borrowing at sustainable interestrates, so that there will be no contagion effect to world mar-kets from Eurozone problems.However the ability of the Eurozone to refinance its sovereigndebts in a long-term, sustainable fashion brings us to the newrole that the European Central Bank (ECB) is now playing.Despite German objections, ECB Governor Mario Draghihas already made his presence felt in the Eurozone financialmarkets. ECB's bold move to distribute €500bn to 500 Eu-rozone banks in December 2011, under three-year loan con-tracts at an interest rate of 1%, is not only opening the way tothose banks to refinance their country's sovereign debts, butalso helps them make huge profits out of this operation.

In this way, these banks will not only back their governments’financial position at a large profit, but will also strengthen theirincomes and thus their ability to raise more tier-1 capital to re-capitalise themselves and meet the Basel criteria.The ECB is to repeat this operation on 29 February withprobably another half-trillion euro, thus putting a definite stopto the danger that some Eurozone countries may not be ableto refinance their sovereign debt. This bold move will also si-lence American criticism that Europe is ‘not doing enough’ tosupport the Atlantic economic system. The €1 trillion maycreate long-term inflationary pressures, but it seems that evenGermany must have been convinced that there is no otherway out.There is no reason why Europe should not do what theAmericans are doing, with the Fed distributing its newlyprinted money to all and every bank of the US banking sys-tem at zero interest rate and at the same time covering all theneeds of the Washington government with this kind of end-less money printing.Who cares about what may happen after five years? Life isnot for ever, like money. In any case, it seems that all the prob-lems of the Atlantic financial system, while not solved, are atleast they are pushed to the future. And, at the end of the day,the banks are the only entities that profit from this money-printing bonanza, not the real economy – hardworking peo-ple in the US and Eurozone must learn to do with less.Given all that, the ECB is expected on 29 February to againraise the stakes in supplying every Eurozone bank with al-most zero cost (charging 1% interest rate) liquidity, underthree-year loan agreements, on top of the €500bn released inDecember 2011. For one thing though this uniform andacross the board generosity of ECB distorts competition inthe banking industry and ignores the increased cost for themore reserves held by prudent lenders and levels out qualitydifferences in this sector.On top of this, the widely different criteria adopted vis-à-visthe quality of collaterals accepted by ECB's constituent 17national central banks where commercial lenders refinancethemselves, create an additional confusion factor in the euroarea capital markets.In this way, the Atlantic financial volume becomes more proneto accident and a new crisis seems closer, not forgetting thatthe Americans have openly based the foreign value of the dol-lar on political manoeuvrings rather than on macroeconomicfundamentals.

Note BookNE

ANALYSISNew Europe |Page 5NEW EUROPE

26 February - 3 March, 2012

The new governor of the European Central Bank (ECB)Mario Draghi, nicknamed Super-Mario by commercialbankers probably because he is championing their inter-ests, has introduced new ethics to the Eurozone’s mone-tary affairs.

Now, he’s going beyond that. On 24 February he warned“beleaguered Eurozone countries that there is no escapefrom tough austerity measures”, speaking in an interviewwith Wall Street Journal Europe.

This is a direct threat and major economic policy linebeing recommended by Super Mario, that is to be followedby the governments of Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ire-land and probably Belgium, namely all the Eurozone coun-tries that are at present running unsustainable fiscal deficits.

He fails to understand that European wages are very rigiddownwards. By the same token, labour productivity in Eu-

ropean is much higher than in China and India. Low wagecosts has never been the strong point of European exportsof goods and services – German industrial workers andGreek sailors were and will continue to be very well paid,not forgetting that today's Eurozone is a net exporter ofgoods and services. So, it is a lie that the Eurozone is notcompetitive – the facts demonstrate the exact opposite.

When it comes to banks however the head of the ECBdid not hesitate to distribute half a trillion euro to Euro-zone's banks last December, and he is preparing a similarexercise for 29 February. The cost of this money bonanzawas almost zero for the banks – the ECB charges them only1% in interest, while they can easily lend it for anythingaround 11% and make a hefty gain of €50bn per year – whata wonderful way for the banks to recapitalise themselves atthe expense of ordinary taxpayers.

ECONOMY

ECB and banks having it their own way

Sexual violence in conflict is a serious,present-day crisis affecting millions ofpeople around the world. Ending sex-ual violence as a tactic of war remainsone of the greatest challenges to theprotection of human rights. The UNSecretary-General’s annual report thisweek is the first to contain a list of‘named and shamed’ for crimes of con-flict-related sexual violence. The list isthe Security Council’s most recent toolin the fight against impunity and sendsa strong signal to those who toleratesexual violence that they do so in defi-ance of international law.

Some of the individual stories in-cluded in the report are nothing butheart wrenching. In Syria, testi-monies were received from men whostated they had been abused sexuallyand had witnessed teenage boysbeing raped. And in Libya, womenwere abducted from their homes,from cars or from the streets and wereraped in places unknown to them,while men were sodomized in pris-ons and in places of detention as ameans to obtain intelligence.

It is positive and encouraging that theSecurity Council continues to be seizedof the issue of sexual violence in conflict.I am, however, gravely alarmed about theincessant violations of human rights, in-cluding the high rate of conflict-relatedrape, across the globe. Of particular con-cern is the fact that many of the reportedcases of sexual violence seem to havebeen perpetrated by national securityforces – the very same people who havea mandate to protect their own citizens.Whereas the uniform should symbolizesecurity, discipline and public service, intoo many places it instead represents

rape, pillage and terror.Another concern is the use of sexual

violence, or the threat thereof, as a toolof political repression in the context ofelections and civil unrest.

We also know of examples of differ-ent forms of sexual violence being em-ployed in detention centres and atborder crossings in several conflict situ-ations.

Conflict-related sexual violence isused by political and military leaders toachieve political, military and economicends, destroying the very fabric of soci-ety. It is a silent, cheap and effectiveweapon with serious and long-lastingeffects, affecting both the individual andthe chances of building a sustainablepeace. There is a lingering myth thatrape is inevitable in times of war. But ifsexual violence can be planned, it can bepunished; if it can be commanded, itcan be condemned.

Impunity remains a major concern in

many countries. That is why I havemade fighting impunity for crimes ofconflict-related sexual violence a prior-ity. We have seen that this is starting toyield results, for example in the Demo-cratic Republic of Congo (DRC): Inless than a year, more than 250 trials ofelements of national security forces wereheld with the assistance of the UnitedNations. This resulted in more than 150individuals being sentenced for rape andother forms of sexual violence.

Much still remains to be done in thefight against rape as a tactic of war.Withthe help of the Security Council, I willcontinue to push for an end to impunityand ensure that perpetrators are broughtto justice. In this fight, I count on theSecurity Council’s willingness to be pre-pared to use all means available.

Margot Wallström is the UN SpecialRepresentative of the Secretary-Gen-eral on Sexual Violence in Conflict

Survivors of sexual violence receive treatment at the Hospital of Panzi, a non-profit health centre

focusing on improving the quality of medical care for the population, reducing the maternal and

infant death rate, and providing treatment for the victims of sexual violence, South Kivu, Demo-

cratic Republic of the Congo, 6 September 2007. | UN Photo/Marie Frechon

By Margot Wallström

ANNUAL REPORT

Time to stop war rapeI will name and shame the perpetrators of this crime

US president Barak Obama has recently expressed his optimismabout Yemen emerging as a model for how a peaceful transitionin the Middle East can occur. But is a single candidate electionbrokered by outside powers more concerned about stability thanreform and force-fed by the UN a model to be replicated? Is a onecandidate, one party election something the international com-munity should advocate?Despite the undemocratic nature of the affair, voter turnout hasbeen high in areas where it was actually possible to vote. But ratherthan an endorsement of the political agreement that the US andthe EU were looking for, the vote should be read as a vote for theend of the Saleh era. Even if the arrangement, driven by the GulfCooperation Council with European and US endorsement, fellshort of expectations Yemenis were keen enough to get rid of Salehto give it the go ahead.One could forgive the Yemenis for showing trepidation aboutthe future. The removal of Saleh is unlikely to dismantle thestructures of power and will not necessarily lead to significantchanges. A military autocracy is likely to continue to oversee asystem of tribal power sharing and patronage rife with corrup-tion and nepotism. Saleh remains the chairman of the GeneralPeople’s Congress (GPC), his sons and nephew commandbranches of the military and the main forces in parliament areentwined in the tribal oligarchy. Meanwhile newly ‘elected’ Pres-ident Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi has no independent powerbase, which will make it difficult if not impossible for him to re-place Saleh’s allies and relatives. The youth movement whichhas been camping out for the past year, the aggrieved south-erners and the rebelling Houthis have yet to be offered a seat atthe table. They were excluded from the agreement and theircalls for a transitional council of technocrats were ignored,which could provide incentives for them to act as spoilers. Theyare already inflamed by an agreement that, illegally, grants im-munity to the president and his close circle. There will be noprosecution, no freezing of stolen funds, no embargoes or exilefor Saleh. The plan foresees the newly-elected president forming a consti-tutional committee to prepare a new constitution to be put to ref-erendum, but details are scarce and many important issues are stillto be determined. Should the form of government be presidentialor parliamentary? Does the parliamentary electoral system need tobe changed to a proportional system? Should a women’s quota beadopted? Technicalities ignored for this vote such as the voter reg-istration update, required changes to the electoral law, constituencyboundaries and electoral procedures will also have to be addressed.Most important will be the restructuring of the military. A National Dialogue Conference is expected to address these sortsof issues. Hopefully those excluded will be able to participate andthe conference will bring about many required changes. A broadlyinclusive government where no one faction dominates and stronginstitutions are not subservient to powerful personalities might re-quire further decentralisation as a post-Saleh state might have tobe more federal in order to hold together. A flexible state and po-litical system where power is distributed horizontally and verti-cally will be the most sustainable in the long run. The odds are against those that want genuine change. The cardshave been stacked in favour of nominal reform. But if the Yeme-nis are able to harness the power that has helped them get rid ofSaleh, perhaps there is hope for the future. The international com-munity must demand the same democratic rights and guaranteesthat are expected of other countries: transparency, accountability,a free press. Lessons from the Arab spring are still to be learnt inYemen and stability continues to be prized over reform. Let’s hopethat despite international political appeasement, the end of Saleh’sreign will spell actual change.

Ana Echagüe is senior researcher at FRIDE.

New Europe content partner

Lowering the bar in Yemen

By Ana Echagüe

Page 6 | New Europe NEW EUROPE


New Europe speaks with ProfessorAnne Glover, who was appointed asthe EU’s first chief scientific advisorin late 2011, and who is very enthu-siastic about sharing her passion forher mission with the citizens of Eu-rope.

In late 2011, Professor AnneGlover, who is the chairwoman ofthe Molecular and Cell Biology atthe University of Aberdeen, anelected Fellow of the Royal Societyof Edinburgh, a member of the Nat-ural Environment Research Counciland a Fellow of the American Acad-emy of Microbiology, was the firstChief Scientific Adviser (CSA) forScotland between August 2006 andDecember 2011. Now, she has beenappointed as the EU’s chief scientificadvisor, to work, according to the of-ficial announcement “closely withCommission President José ManuelBarroso…to provide high-level, in-dependent and timely scientific ad-vice at every stage of policydevelopment and delivery”.

It took considerable time and ef-fort for New Europe to land an inter-view with Professor Glover – hervery demanding new role is puttingher under considerable pressure todeliver during the remainder ofBarosso’s term, and there are manydemands being made to speak withher, but she nevertheless emerged asengaging, committed and passionateabout her cause.

Given the huge responsibility ofher position, does Professor Gloverfeel qualified to educate EU citizenson what may be gained from newtechnologies?

“Now, I am certainly not advocat-

ing a ‘this is new, let’s just try it, let’s

not think about it’, but I feel that we

definitely have to balance risk and re-

ward when it comes to the benefits

of science – EU citizens are risk

averse in comparison with American

citizens, and this does have an impact

on how European citizens accept

new technology, and embrace those

different processes and procedures.

Can I say categorically that there is

no risk from eating genetically mod-

ified food? Well, as a scientist, I can’t

say ‘no, there is no risk’ because there

is a risk associated with everything. I

can, however, categorically say that

there is risk associated with eating

conventionally farmed produce –

there is risk associated with every-

thing.

“For me, for example, there are

enormous opportunities on the hori-

zon with the advent of nanotechnol-

ogy – people’s immediate reaction

seems to be ‘ooh, new technology,

that sounds risky’, but nanotechnol-

ogy needs to be talked about, and this

is part of my role – I certainly want to

engage widely with the media, so that

we can talk about the absolutely ex-

cellent science that’s being delivered

in Europe, it’s world-beating stuff,

and I think that the EU’s citizens are

not really aware of the brilliance that

is being generated on their own

doorstep.

“Now, if that brilliance can be

translated into the economy, into

health, into looking after the envi-

ronment, our transport systems and

so on, then we have a very rosy future

indeed, as long as we don’t think ‘oh

no, it’s new, it’s different, it’s not what

I’m used to, therefore I don’t want to

hear about it’.

“Nanotechnology, for example, can

give us excellent options for our

health –for example, when I take a

pill for a headache, then there might

be an option in the future for me to

take a ‘nanopill’, which would solve

my headache but would also, while

the ingredients for the pill were in my

body, might also be examining what

else was going on in my body, and be

able to transmit to my computer

some information that might say ‘ac-

tually, Anne’s arteries are looking a

touch furry’, or whatever. People

might say ‘oh, I don’t know if I would

like that’, but it’s a bit like science fic-

tion, and we’re living through it, and

how lucky can we be, living in the 21st

century, where so much of the

knowledge that we have now is being

developed into new technology and

new devices.

“Concerning people taking control

of their own health, if I was able to

give you a little ‘laboratory in a pill’,

and you swallowed it, and it reported

back that, say, you had permanent

liver damage, and that in a couple of

years you will have a real problem,

you would be far more willing to

change your diet and drink intake,

that you could attend to your prob-

lem with a simple lifestyle change –

simply think that this would be mar-

vellous, and society as a whole would

benefit, because you probably would-

n’t need to be hospitalised later on, no

insurance policy would be necessary,

so the economy would benefit hugely

as well.

“This is why I feel it is so impor-

tant to talk to people about risk ver-

sus reward, but also to expose them

to some of the excitement, because

there has to be a reason why I am so

excited about it, and yet the man or

woman in the street is less engaged.”

Do you therefore feel that anti-sci-

ence propaganda is always mis-

placed?

“Such propaganda is often mis-

placed, because not everyone has the

right quality of information, or is ex-

posed to the right level of debate. If

someone says something to you, or

you get a little snippet or read a

headline, and it says something

quite negative and you’re not going

to pay any more attention, you’re still

going to have in your mind that it

doesn’t sound like a good thing, and

if someone asks you’ll say you’re

probably not going to go for that.

But I believe that we have an obli-

gation to open our minds a bit more,

and that’s not just an obligation of

citizens, but also of politicians and

policymakers. However, politicians

and policymakers are also very

aware of public opinion, so I see my

role as not being to browbeat politi-

cians, but rather to try to guide them

towards the evidence. If I can get

citizens to say ‘that’s interesting, let’s

talk more about that, let’s have a de-

bate about that’, and the media join

in, then I feel this would be a real

achievement in my role, to empower

politicians and policymakers to ex-

plore nanotechnology further.”

By James Drew

INTERVIEW|ANNE GLOVER

Talking risk and benefits with EU’s ‘First Lady’ of science

In order to assess whether the Anti-Coun-terfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is fullycompatible with EU fundamental rights, theEuropean Commission is sending the legis-lation to the European Court of Justice(ECJ), Trade Commissioner Karel DeGucht said on 22 Feb.Such a referral will allow the EU's top courtto independently clarify the legality of thetrade agreement.Matthew Newman, spokesperson for Com-mission Vice President responsible for Jus-tice and Citizenship Viviane Reding, toldNew Europe that it is up to the ECJ to de-

cide if the legislation complies with funda-mental rights, balancing the freedom of ex-pression and the protection of the intellectualproperty rights.Reding said that intellectual property is afundamental right recognised by the EU butis not an absolute fundamental right. Thus,European policy should aim at balancing therespect for both intellectual property rightsand freedom of information. British Member of the European Parlia-ment,David Martin who is Parliament'snewly appointed Parliament's rapporteur onACTA dossier, supported the Commission’s

decision to refer the legislation to theECJ."The Parliament has been calling formore clarity for a long time, and we alreadyrequested legal opinions from several com-mittees in the European Parliament. Nowthis ruling will be a good guarantee for theimpact on fundamental rights,” he said.De Gucht refuted rumours that ACTAwould not censor websites nor shut themdown, and the legislation will not hinderfreedom of the internet or freedom ofspeech. “I believe that putting ACTA beforethe European Court of Justice is a neededstep. This debate must be based upon facts

and not upon the misinformation or rumourthat has dominated social media sites andblogs in recent weeks,” he said. The EU has adopted ACTA in December2011, and has authorised member states tosign it.However, following a series of demonstra-tions against the act ratification has beenhalted. The European Parliament, too, underpublic pressure decided to take additionaltime to assess the treaty.The ECJ ruling, regardless of its content,should bring more clarity to the potentialscope and impact of ACTA.

European Commission sends ACTA to ECJ

Professor Anne Glover, EU’s first chief scientific advisor.

“Out of her depth” is a phrase that Ihave heard applied more than once toCatherine Ashton. Yet I don’t believethe EU foreign policy chief is floun-dering about in the way her (usuallymale) detractors would have us believe.On the contrary, she has acquired theone skill that seems indispensable for amodern political leader: a fluent com-mand of hypocrisy.

On her latest trip to Washington,Ashton was “absolutely clear” thatBashar Assad should “step aside” be-cause “you cannot kill your own peo-ple”. Ashton conveniently neglected torecall how she had pledged not longago to fully support “rebels” in Libyawho, according to human rights inves-tigators, committed war crimes. Hasshe told them “you cannot kill yourown people”?

Ashton’s impudence was rivalled ear-lier this month by Susan Rice, Amer-ica’s ambassador to the UN. WhenRussia and China vetoed a motioncondemning Syria at the UN SecurityCouncil, Rice was “disgusted” at howthe duo “remain steadfast in their will-ingness to sell out the Syrian peopleand shield a craven tyrant”. Her soundbites glossed over her nation’s densehistory of selling out entire peoples(the Palestinians, Timorese,Nicaraguans) and shielding craventyrants (the names Hosni Mubarakand Augusto Pinochet spring to mind).

Like many leaders in his region andbeyond, Assad is ruthless and author-itarian. Calls by Navi Pillay, the UN’shuman rights commissioner, for theAssad regime to be brought before theInternational Criminal Court must betaken seriously. Calls for “humanitar-ian intervention” by Angelina Jolieand other affluent “do-gooders”should, on the other hand, be vigor-ously opposed.

From Serbia in 1999 to Libya in2011, humanitarian intervention hasbeen a euphemism for wars of aggres-sion. No matter how much those advo-cating it may boast about the surgicalprecision of Western firepower andhow “collateral damage” can be min-imised, the far more probable scenariois that “humanitarian intervention”would only increase the suffering ofSyrian civilians. To get a taste of theproblems it would cause, one shouldlook at neighbouring Iraq, where thedeath toll is still climbing thanks to aninvasion backed enthusiastically byTony Blair, that unerring champion of“humanitarian intervention”, nine yearsago. A total of 138 Iraqi civilians werekilled in the first three weeks of Feb-

ruary alone.Indeed, it is no coincidence that

some of the cheerleaders for the Iraqwar have long had Syria in their sights,too. In 1996, the neo-conservative in-tellectual Richard Perle produced a re-port for Benjamin Netanyahu duringthe latter’s first stint as Israel’s primeminister. Perle recommended that Is-rael attack Hezbollah and Syrian forcesthen stationed in Lebanon and – as anoptional extra – targets within Syria it-self as part of a strategy to weakenAssad.

Moreover, there are good reasons tobelieve that the US has been consider-ing an assault against Syria for sometime. In 2007, the former military gen-eral Wesley Clark revealed planshatched during George W Bush’s firstpresidential term to “take out” sevencountries within five years: Iraq, Syria,Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan andIran (in that order). Apart from Sudan,all of those countries have been hit orthreatened by US weapons (some ofthem fired by its client state, Israel)since then.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’ssecretary-general, has insisted recentlythat the alliance has “no intentionwhatsoever” of bombing Syria. His as-surance is about as bankable as a Zim-babwean dollar. Didn’t Rasmussen usealmost identical words about Libya inFebruary last year? By the end of thefollowing month, his words had beeneaten, digested and forgotten and hewas at war.

With the US bogged down inAfghanistan and a war with Iran to allintents and purposes already declared,the Obama administration might balkat attacking Syria for logistical reasons

in the short term. Yet it’s entirely con-ceivable that US cruise missiles will beeventually be aimed at Syria or that itwill arm one side in a civil war.

No matter how many crocodile tearsare shed by Susan Rice, history shouldteach us that the only reason the Westgoes to war is to advance or copperfas-ten its interests. In 1925, France as-serted its control over Syria bysuppressing an uprising there, with aconsiderable loss of civilian life. In2008 and 2009, the French oil firmTotal signed contracts for exploitingthree Syrian oil fields. Only the naivecould view the EU’s decision to imposean oil embargo on Syria as a selfless act;more probably, it’s part of a ploy to en-sure control of Syria’s energy reservesonce Assad relinquishes power.

For all their invective against Assadnow, it’s important to underline thatmost EU countries were courting himuntil recently. Over the past few yearsabout 30% of all Syria’s imports camefrom the Union, making it the coun-try’s largest trading partner. In 2008,the Union sought to boost its businesswith Syria further when an economicand political “association agreement”was initialled between the two sides.That step was taken despite how Assadhad preserved a 45-year state of emer-gency, giving the security forces enor-mous powers to muzzle his opponentsby throwing them in prison.

Regrettably, I don’t have a clear ideaabout how the bloodshed in Syria canbe stopped. But I do believe that a warwaged by Western hypocrites wouldexacerbate the problem. Humanitarianintervention is the last thing that gen-uine humanitarians should be de-manding.

ANALYSIS

New Europe | Page 7NEW EUROPE


EU FOREIGN POLICY

“Humanitarian intervention” inSyria would make matters worse

By David Cronin

Eurozone: Recession or growth in 2012

If the interim forecast report from the European Commis-sion, published on 23 February, concerning the overallgrowth potential of the Eurozone for this year proves rightin predicting that the French economy will slightly declineby -0.1%, and Germany’s will grow by only 0.6%, then the17-country monetary zone will undergo a ‘mild’ recession in2012.But if those predictions prove to underestimate the reality,then the Eurozone will in fact remain this year on thegrowth path, albeit with restricted potential; Germany andFrance account for over half the Eurozone economy, andeconomists do tend to underestimate growth.At this point it must be remembered that the Eurozone'sgrowth rate kept sliding last year. During the first quarter of2011, the single currency zone grew at the robust rate of2.4%. During the second quarter, growth was 1.6%, in thethird 1.3%, and only 0.7% in the last three months of theyear, on a year-to-year base. Obviously, if the same tendencycontinues. the arithmetic sequence will lead to negativegrowth, that is, recession. Towards the end of last year, how-ever, the French and German economies gave better resultsthan most of the economic commentators predicted. Thegood news was that the two largest economies of the Euro-zone escaped somewhat the strong downward trend, not inspectacular style, but in a noticeable way. Last week, most were saying that France had retreated dur-ing the last quarter of 2011, but the real numbers showed theopposite. In more detail, the preliminary fourth-quarter datapublished by the French statistics office INSEE shows thatFrance’s GDP managed to remain in the black during thelast quarter. Preliminary estimations now put French GDPgrowth in the fourth quarter at 0.2% and at 1.7% for all of2011; again economists had predicted a negative perform-ance for the French economy during the last three-monthperiod of the year.This was good news for the French government, as itmatched their forecasts and somewhat offset the bleak pre-dictions that were based on the Eurozone debt crisis. More-over, the growth in the final three months of 2011 raisedhopes that France may be able to comfortably surpass thethreat of recession.The French performance, which outshone Germany for thefirst time since 2009, came as a result of better investmentlevels coupled with improved consumer spending. The Ger-man economy contracted 0.2% in the fourth quarter.Most experts agreed that the fourth-quarter performanceshould give the French economy the required impetus to ef-fectively avoid recession while at the same time enhancingthe chances of Nicolas Sarkozy in the first round of presi-dential elections in late April. Though there have been con-cerns over traces of contraction visible in the first quarter ofthis year, experts pointed out that the strong foothold givenby the last quarter of 2011 would eventually lead to a recov-ery before too much damage is done. In short, there is a pos-sibility that Eurozone avoids recession this year.Unfortunately the EU Commission believes otherwise.According to a commission statement “The unexpectedstalling of the recovery in late 2011 is set to extend into thefirst two quarters of 2012. However, modest growth is pre-dicted to return in the second half of the year. On an annualbasis, real GDP in 2012 is now forecast to remain un-changed in the EU (0.0%) and to contract by 0.3% in theeuro area. Uncertainty remains high and developmentsacross countries are uneven. The inflation forecast for 2012has been revised slightly upwards compared with the au-tumn, due to persistently high energy prices and increases inindirect taxes. It now stands at 2.3% in the EU and 2.1% inthe euro area.”

Economics

A Syrian Kurdish man holds an image of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a sit-in or-

ganised by Lebanese and Syrian nationals to show their support for the Syrian people, and to call

for an end to the regime of the president, in Beirut on 22 February, 2012. |AFP PHOTO/JOSEPH EID



Many economists have argued that theEuropean welfare system, especially thepension system, has long surpassed itsexpiration date, and it now seems as ifthe political tide is also turning. Withthe sovereign debt crisis hitting Europe,many are arguing that systematicreforms of the welfare system arenecessary, not only in countries mostseverely stricken by debt, but also on awider scale.

Recently, several high profilepoliticians, including the primeministers of the UK and Sweden, DavidCameron and Fredrik Reinfeldt, havespoken in favour of increasing theretirement age, while the EuropeanCommission has also published its ownplan on “adequate, safe and sustainablepensions”, outlining the challenges ofageing society and offering somepossible solutions.

Though pensions present the largestand most obvious budgetary challengein years to come, with pensioners alreadyrepresenting 24% of population in theEU, the issue cannot be regarded andaddressed without taking intoconsideration other interlinked areas,such as employment, the labour marketand taxation.

Economist Milton Friedman oncesaid that “if you pay people not to workand tax them when they do, don't besurprised if you get unemployment”.While that might look like anoversimplification, the roots of some ofthe problems we face today may befound there; namely, that state budgetscannot bare the pressure of the growingnumber of pensioners and unemployed,since incomes from the shrinkingworkforce cannot sustain the pay-as-you-go pension system.

At the same time, prolongingcompulsory the working age couldfurther increase unemployment,especially among the youth, who arecurrently the most vulnerable groupwhen it comes to employment, unlesssupported by measures facilitating job-creation. Budgetary net balance of thatmove could bring marginal benefits tofiscus, simply because the sheer numberof those above 65, with an increased lifeexpectancy, outweigh the numbers ofyoung people entering labour market.

In addition, small- and medium-sizedenterprises (SMEs), have often voicedconcerns about the impact of the welfaresystem on employment capability. It hasbeen repeated that current labourlegislation throughout the continent,while nominally protecting andbenefiting those employed, creates a

barrier of non-viability for futureemployment and some political leaders,at least those in power, have realised thatchanges are necessary.

The issue seems clear, then; it is nota question of whether we shouldfundamentally reform our welfaresystem, but how to sell it to generalpublic?

Riots in Greece and protests in Italyand Spain amount to a mixture of thepreservation of trade union interests andopposition populism, while thesituation is not much different inFrance, Romania or Portugal, whereselling an unsustainable ‘free lunch’ isused as a campaigning tool for theopposition.

With the average EU indebtedness toGDP ratio reaching 82.5% in 2011, andestimated to further climb to nearly 85%in 2012, with the situation even worsein the Eurozone, where numbers lingeraround 90% (with several countries evensurpassing 100% and Greeceapproaching 200%), which is 150% ofthe EU allowed benchmark of 60%, itseems obvious that measures to cut statespending are much needed.

Considering that Europeansnowadays live much longer than theydid when the pension and welfaresystems as we know them were initiallyintroduced, as well as the fact thatretirement constitutes up to 15% ofbudgetary expenses of some countries,working longer seems as an obviousthing to insist on.

At the same time, unemploymentremains stable at around 10% both inthe EU as a whole and in theEurozone. However, discrepancies arehuge among member states, with onein five being unemployed in Greeceand Spain, which also has a half of itsyouth unemployed. Yet, the verymention of changing the current

system brought tens of thousands tostreets of Madrid and other Spanishcities. Slovenian voters rejected in June2011 a government plan to raise theage of retirement from 60 to 65. TheFrench socialist presidential candidatepromised to reverse retirement policiesaimed to keep citizens in the workforcein their 60s.

So, can some form of compromise bereached?

Delaying retirement might not solveit fully, although, according to a recentEurobarometer study, 61% ofEuropeans would not mind workingafter their prescribed pension age, buteven suggestions by the EuropeanCommission to [re]develop privatepension schemes, ensuring their safety,and adapting labour markets toaccommodate older workers falls shortof addressing all issues.

A much wider reform of labourlegislation is needed to ensuresustainable, job-friendly growth. Thatwould mean that the job market havingto be overhauled to accommodate morepart-time workers, lowering theminimum wage and compulsory welfareconcessions and expenses for employers,lowering income taxes and reducingstate guaranteed pensions. Educationsystems, too, would have to undergocertain adjustments to better equipyoung people to use the advantages ofthe common market, and properlycompete for jobs across the EU.

The status quo must change, andmember states, which havecompetences in terms of pensionpolicy, labour law and education,would have to start implementingnecessary reforms and co-ordinatetheir efforts in order to avoid aneconomic meltdown. And politicianswill need courage to face their voters,and tell them the sobering truth.

European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, Laszlo Andor, during

the launch of a white paper on the future of pensions in Europe, 16 February 2012 at the EU

Headquarters in Brussels. According to the commissioner, "Ensuring adequate pensions for the

future is possible if we follow through on our commitments to reform". |AFP PHOTO GEORGES GOBET

WELFARE

In the long run, welfare state is dead

By Ivan Delibasic

The Employment Society

The numbers of Unemployment in Europe are be-

coming out of control. Every man has the right to have

a job and to give to society its best in terms on indi-

vidual and collective contribution. We need to be more

than ever an Employment Society. In the Employment

Society, where the role of the talents as the drivers of

Innovation and Creativity in economy is the key solu-

tion, every citizen is an effective part of a whole of pos-

itive engagement with the future. In the Employment

Society, the man lives!

The Employment Society must be centered in an ac-

tive entrepreneurial culture and attitude - people have

most of the times an effective negative attitude towards

the financial risk, the focus on innovation and the share

of a culture of positive dynamic. We need society to

have a new challenge. Society must be able to be the

real Platform of a more Entrepreneurial Society, cen-

tered in new areas of knowledge and new sectors of

value. In a Modern and Active Society, the key word is

Co-creation. To promote a dynamic and active creation

process involving each citizen is the big challenge for

the next years in society.

The Employment Society is the bridge between those

that believe in the power of people in creating new solu-

tions with new ideas to more complex problems that are

arising in society and those that want innovation and cre-

ativity to be the platform of creation of value in a global

competitive economy.The New Capital is the confirma-

tion of a process of evolution of the integration of people

in society – the individual contribution must be a case of

commitment with the organization of society and its

main elements.

The Employment Society must be the most complete

example of positive attitude towards the future. The Tal-

ents must be the new competitive advantage of this new

Society of the Ideas pushed by the “enablers” of Moder-

nity, Added Value and Excellence. A very clear idea that

suits the big challenge that our society really faces and

that requires new answers for different questions. The act

of global participation in such a demanding society is an

exercise of commitment between the individual creativ-

ity and the collective cooperation. This is the key for the

right future for society.

The Employment Society is the future. We must under-

stand that in the Employment Society, where the inte-

gration of people is a signal of a positive contribution to

the future, the ambition of excellence is essential. We

need to believe in the capacity of people giving society a

strategic capability essencial to the challenges of the fu-

ture. This is the message of the New Capital. This is the

message of a new challenge for people and for society.

This is the answer of a new generation of talents that

know that the key for success is based on the contribution

with freedom and equality.

Francisco Jaime Quesado is the General Manager of the

Innovation and Knowledge Society in Portugal, a public

agency with the mission of coordinating the policies for

Information Society and mobilizing it through dissemi-

nation, qualification and research activities. It operates

within the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher

Education

New Europe content partner

By Francisco Jaime Quesado

Although living on its doorstep, artists canseem disconnected from the Europe thatregulates and affects them, as well as the so-ciety they live in; European politics to artistssometimes seems to be a illusion. However,Jonathan Sullam is not one of these. He heknows who his neighbours are. An upcom-ing artist in Brussels, his outlook is morethan just a localised one. He uses his work topush the boundaries of the notions of poli-tics, society, and art.

New Europe sat down with him to explorethese ideas.

New Europe: Can you tell us a little bit aboutyourself? Are you a product of the Belgianart scene or have you been influenced bysomething else?Jonathan Sullam: I’m half a product of theBelgian scene, as I lived in Brussels most ofmy life. I have also studied art in London,at the UCL’s Slade School of Fine Arts. So,I would say that my influences are multiple. I grew up here in Brussels; my mum isBritish and my dad is an outcast of thenorthern African colonial history. I defi-nitely have some influences from my fatherand uncle since they loved all forms of art,including music. Nevertheless, my background as an artist ismainly related to my travel experiences, andmy appreciation of film, arts, video and alltypes of new technologies and media alsocomes from the many encounters I’ve hadon these journeys.

Do you usually have particular themes thatyou focus on, like politics, and do they tran-scend your personal life?There is a dual and controversial way ofworking, which I find it in myself. One ofthem has a political stance to it, and this inturn has two parts to it. One is the politicsof oneself and the other is politics of the en-vironment. The politics of oneself is the idea of relatingthe artwork somehow to yourself, in a moreintrospective way. For me, it is a moment ofperception. It is a perception and a per-spective, and most of all, it is a kind of ac-ceptance and understanding of what one’sway of being and moving in society. Most

of all, it is a kind of truth about one’s self. The second part I mentioned was the pol-itics of the environment, which is less of aperception of an individual through his owneyes onto the world, but it is a rather a globalway of working.Politics for me is more about the conceptsgiven to the mass to believe in. In a certainway, you ask people to believe in whateverthe rhetoric and the discourse is being con-veyed. Politics is like a magic trick; it is sus-taining a kind of reality that you have tobelieve in for which we agree on this to adegree. Thus, if I can put a bridge between art andpolitics, then art does not work in the waypolitics do. Art does not ask you believe insomething and preach something. Artseeks truth and points towards somethingunderlying in a message - sometimes un-derlying something that is impossible. Artis a way to attempt on something but does-n’t conclude on anything. As politics seek to sustain a system, art isflexible enough to it to places where no oneknows. However, for the artist, the questionbecomes how do you choose to embody thistruth in your work and how to convey it tospectators.

Living in Brussels, in the heart of Europe,where European policy is being createdeveryday, do politics or the idea of a Unionwith different cultural identities influenceyour work? You talk about Europe as being multi-cul-

tural and a series of countries being broughttogether, but the history of Europe showsthat the countries were not brought togetheron an ideological basis but from an eco-nomic consensus. That is why things areupside down. If the economy would fail us, the ideologyshould prevail, but this is not the case rightnow. We are living in times where the cri-sis proves to us that there is no ideologicalEurope. Nevertheless, is my art work for the inter-national individual? Of course it is. BeingEuropean, and more importantly, feelingEuropean, my art pieces do have a Euro-pean characteristic to them. Wherever I goin the world, I am European and perhapsthis is portrayed in the aesthetics in thepieces themselves.

You are one of the founding members ofthe Mobile Institute. How did this beginand what is it all about?I started out about 4 years ago with the Mo-bile Institute. The Mobile Institute is agroup of friends and artists who had justgotten out of university, and we reallywanted to take control and re-appropriateourselves. We wanted to be culturalists. Wealso wanted to be curators and producers forartists in finding money for artists, but beingartists as well. All these intertwined to formthe foundation of Mobile Institute – wewere an institution of artists but geograph-ically mobile and also conceptually in thespace of the various artists.

ANALYSIS

New Europe | Page 9NEW EUROPE26 February - 3 March, 2012

Jonathan Sullam

The computer-hacking group Anonymous has attacked theofficial website of the Greek justice ministry for a second time,demanding the release of three Greek teenagers accused ofhaving brought down the site earlier this month.

The group hacked into the justice ministry site on 3 Februaryas part of a day of action against the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement(ACTA), which Greece wasintending to sign.

In their message, Anonymous claim that the three arrested

boys had nothing to do with the attack on the website andshould be released. The ‘hacktivists’ warned the government tonot vote for the bill offering a new ‘loan’ in exchange for furthersevere austerity measures and demanded that the IMF leave thecountry.“Democracy in Greece is dying. It died the samemoment a government that had not been elected by the Greekpeople took office,” Anonymous stated.

“There are millions of us and you are only 300. In this war,tear-gas will not be of any use for you,” the group added.

INTERNET

Anonymous mounts further attack on Greek justice ministry

INTERVIEW | JONATHAN SULLAM

The politics of artBy Stratis G. Camatsos

The art of politics

A few days ago, a group of the most senior members of theEuropean Parliament sat down, in secret, to do what theymost enjoy, dividing up a huge pile of cash between them,courtesy of the European taxpayer. How huge? Why, over€30 million for 2012 alone.This is of course, the old scam for financing pan-europeanparties and of course, the think tanks and foundations thatgo along with them. We’re told that “They contribute toforming a European awareness and to expressing the polit-ical will of the citizens of the Union." In reality, they are taxpayer financed jobs for the boys, athrowback to the golden age of political corruption, wherethe favoured were bribed with well paid positions, thebaubles of power. Of course, nobody has ever asked a singlecitizen if they want their taxes poured into this particulartrough. Essentially, the EU has co-opted and formalized thiscorruption of the body politic.The most important point to make is that only the parlia-ment can carry some sort of democratic accountability canrepresent the citizens and it is right that their role is ex-panded. But.But, they’ve got to halt the habits of a lifetime and stop bug-gering about, stop putting their selfish interests first, stop thestitch ups and start to be something we all need; a real par-liament. With debate.However, this time they have been so keen to lick the troughclean that they took decisions that will horrify even the mostjaded citizens and the memory of millions more. They’vedecided to fund pretty much every far right and neo-naziparty in Europe.Really, they have. Two new euro-parties got the nod from theparliament’s Bureau, the recipients include the French andBelgian Front National, Hungary’s Jobbik, Tricolour Flameof Italy, who boast that they embody the ideals of the BlackShirts, Sweden’s National Democrats and Swedish Democ-rats, Austria’s Freedom Party, Vlaams Belang, LithuanianOrder and Justice, the British National Party and for rea-sons that will escape most EU citizens, the Ukrainian Free-dom Party.Well, we were all wondering what a parliament led by Mar-tin Schulz would be like, but nobody guessed this approach!I’m sure that the Greek citizens, faced with ten years of bru-tal austerity will appreciate the parliamentarians taking pre-cious time out of their busy lives to bung a million eurostowards the right of sensible.Apart from anything else, why should any sane person handtaxpayers money over to the BNP leader, who is Vice pres-ident (or Semi-fuhrer) of one of these shoddy outfits? Justlook at his and his party’s track record in financial propriety,never mind the legally required financial reporting. TheBNP hasn’t filed any accounts with the UK Electoral Com-mission since 2009 and have no less than four splinter par-ties of disaffected former members. Perhaps this is going tomake us all better Europeans, the excuse for lining this par-ticular trough, or perhaps is shows just how far away from re-ality the hallowed ground of the plenary can be.The other parties are no less shameful. Isn’t it funny how thethose who believe in market forces, suddenly develop aphilosophical blind spot when it comes to the sharing of thegravy train spoils.If political parties were any good, people would jointhem and pay for them. They are not, so people don’tand this is exactly why the taxpayer should not be ‘thewallet of last resort’.

[email protected]

Constructive Ambiguity

By Andy Carling



It has often been said that the current Re-publican primaries are more than just arace to determine who is going to be pres-idential candidate to face Barack Obamain November; instead it is a fight for the‘soul of the Grand Old Party’. But the factthat this might actually turn out to be thetruth, and that the outcome might not nec-essarily be favourable, has started soundingalarms throughout the GOP.

After two terms in office for George W.Bush, and the defeat of John McCain in2008, accompanied by landslide victoriesby the Democrats in congressional andsenate races, many doubted the future ofthe GOP, and called for some changewithin. However, the Tea Party movement,stemming from objections to presidentObama’s healthcare reform, reinvigoratedparts of the Republican base and led theparty to an upset in midterm elections in2010.

Grassroot movements such as Tea Partyare perfect for congressional races inmidterm elections, where the enthusiasmof local activists counts. However, to win aSenate seat, a gubernatorial race and, es-pecially, the presidency, a lot more isneeded.

American voters, and the general publicas a whole, have been consistently dividedbetween Republicans, Democrats and in-dependents, who tend to be very centristin their political views. With centrist, mid-dle-ground, moderate independents effec-tively deciding major races, especially thepresidential one, it is literally impossible tobuild a campaign strategy for general elec-tions based on either of the extremes, ultra

conservative or super liberal.And that is where the 21st century

caught the Republicans off guard. With alarge portion of their membership andelectorate consisting of social conservativesand Evangelical Christians (who were thefounders of religious Christian fundamen-talism in late 19th and early 20th century),it was always important for any presiden-tial hopeful to appeal to those groups inthe primaries to clinch the nomination.However, in earlier days it was possible torun two somewhat different campaigns forprimaries and presidential campaigns,wooing the Republican base first and thenslowly moving towards the centre as theelection day approaches.

With the traditional format of choosingparty nominees through primaries and,mostly, party caucuses, where members casttheir ballots, Republican candidates needto appease social conservatives and Evan-gelicals to get nominated, at the same timealienating moderates and independents. Itis the proverbial Catch 22 – to win theelections, a Republican must clinch theGOP nomination and to clinch the GOPnomination, he needs to alienate moder-ates and independents who would get himelected.

In 2008, Arkansas governor and protes-tant pastor Mike Huckabee proved thattalking about Christian values and sociallyconservative issues can get you far in theRepublican primaries, and force other can-didates, with more moderate views on so-cial issues into this debate, eventuallycosting the nominee a defeat in presiden-tial election.

The current round of primaries has re-inforced this, seeing former PennsylvaniaSenator Rick Santorum surging from po-litical oblivion to the position of GOPfrontrunner merely on his often-extremepositions on social issues, which remain sodear to Evangelicals. Santorum's success,regardless of how he will finish the race,have seemingly came from nothing but hisviews on issues such as abortion, gay rights,

the role of women in society and, most ofall, religion.

Throughout the campaign, he hasproved to be far from an expert on theeconomy, which, according to polls, is themain concern of the majority of Ameri-cans, and yet he found himself for the firsttime the leader of the Republican pack.

Santorum went as far as virtually pro-claiming a war on secularism – the verything in which the proud founding fathersof the US, which all Republicans invokewhenever convenient, believed in sostrongly. And it has worked for him so far,making other candidates address those is-sues which, are actually of primary concernto less than a fifth of all voters in the US.

Moreover, issues which proved to matterthe most in Republican primaries on thoseissues that seem to yield the results amongsocial-conservatives and Evangelicals areeither of no significance to mainstream in-dependent voters or goes directly againsttheir views.

An easy way to see this is by followinghow the independents voted so far in Re-publican primaries; a negligible portion ofvotes went to two hardcore socially con-servative candidates and most of them sup-ported a candidate who is personallypro-life, does not oppose same-sex mar-riages and the decriminalisation of mari-juana, but, most importantly, who believesthat the federal government should notdeal with any aspect of an individual’s pri-vate life.

The GOP establishment seems wellaware of the fact that this trends threatensto drive the party into the obscurity of re-ligious extremism, and may severely aggra-vate any prospects of not only seriouslychallenging Obama in November, but alsoof producing a viable mainstream candi-date who can appeal to the political centrein the future.

The decision of a former Louisiana gov-ernor, Buddy Roemer, a man who switchedfrom the Democrats to the Republicans 20years ago, and a typical example of the tar-get audience Republicans need to be ad-dressing to win the presidency, to run as anindependent candidate of the Reformparty, and repeated calls on Ron Paul torun (again) on the Libertarian party ticketare blunt examples that GOP has a majorproblem in connecting with the socialmainstream.

Facing a situation in which the currentprimaries could lead to a brokered nationalconvention for the first time since 1976when incumbent president Gerald Fordwon ahead of Ronald Reagan only to bedefeated by Jimmy Carter who was laterwhitewashed by Reagan in 1980, and theprospect of primaries either yielding can-didates who cannot win, or rendering theplausible ones unelectable, the GOPsurely has plenty to think about in the ninemonths prior to the elections, as well as inthe period to come.

POLITICS

Getting to the heart of the Republican partyBy Ivan Delibasic

Republican presidential candidates L-R: Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich de-bate on 22 February in Mesa, Arizona.|AFP PHOTO/DON EMMER

www.greenpowerconferences.com+44 (0)20 7099 0600

��

��

� ��

�� !��" �� "��#��$# ��##%&��''#%

�(��)�*��+,�*�&-�./&�,�0�+1

-��#�'��2��!"�#��$�%��"&��##"%��3-�3� "��#�

0��4�� ##�4�%��!�"� ��3��5� "��

� �%�6��'��"��'"�"�(�)�&"��*��&"�� "��

��5�* 4�##��!"�#��$�%��"&��##"%��3 ��

�� %�0��'� ��"��+"%��,��"��6 �#��#��4

*#��6 �� +"%��,��"��*�!

-��#�''��4��"��%��#��"�#��*��-��"��)��

.#��+"%��,��"��3 ��$��4�,�4��

+��/ ��7��)��!��$%�� %

8��.��$�%��"&��"��%��)9"�� !��

/ ��:�#��!"�#�� %"��##"%��7��

��$��8�$��4��"��%��#��.��"�-��/��)�#

��#�&��-"�-��"��%��+��3��5

+�!�4�3��%��0��,��8#�$��'��

��5�/��;��)&"��"��/�%"��"��&�8�4��#��!�� 4��

�� / ��$��)��"��"��%��,�� #��' ��

1�(��"��'(��&"�"��,��2��"��6��%�-�9��

�"�!��3��%��#��%��4

,��"�� /��4

,�"�%"/��/��4�

�-��"��'(4 ##"%"��##��,��4

,��#��!�4

222<2 �#4�� "��#��5��<� �

WORLD BIOFUELSMARKETSGLOBAL SERIES

,��5��

��2�� '�3!��

��-"��"�-

ADVERTISEMENT

Captain Paul Watson is the founder ofthe Sea Shepherd Conservation Soci-ety and the Co-Founding Director ofGreenpeace Foundation. Watson hasserved as Master and Commander onseven different Sea Shepherd ships. Heis currently leading the Society’s whaledefence campaign on the Antarcticdocumented on Animal Planet’s seriesWhale Wars.New Europe caught up with him to dis-cuss marine conservation and EU fish-ing policy.

New Europe: Can you give a small in-troduction of yourself and the back-ground on the Sea ShepherdConservation Society? What are yourobjectives and mission(s)?Captain Paul Watson: I established theSea Shepherd Conservation Society(SSCS) in 1977. I had been one of theco-founders of Greenpeace up untilthen, and I left then to set up the SSCS.We are different; we are not a protestorganisation but an interventionist so-ciety. We do not engage in illegal ac-tivities, but we are really ananti-poaching organisation. We havenow been doing this for 35 years.

Can you describe how you first got intothis project, and how this dream wasrealised? You cannot really protest against illegal

activity. We are dealing with criminaland they are going to do what they aregoing to do. Thus, protest is not goingto work, so we decided to intervenephysically.This dream was realised because, whileI was at Greenpeace, all we were doingis hanging up banners, watching whalesand seals die, and not gaining groundto stop the killings. However, I couldnot watch whales being slaughteredand just hold up banners.

Can you say a little about your currentmission to protect whales from theJapanese whaling fleets?Japan is targeting endangered and pro-tected whales in an established inter-national whale sanctuary called theSouthern Ocean Whale Sanctuary,and violating the global moratorium oncommercial whaling. So, we comedown here to physically block them.Last year, they only took 17% of theirquota and they left a month and halfearly.This year, though, it has been a littlemore difficult for two reasons. One isan allocated $30m to the TsunamiEconomic Relief Fund. The whalingindustry and fleets have used this fundto come after us to provide security fortheir fleets, they use PR companiesagainst us, and also take legal actionagainst us.Second, our scout vessel, the BrigitteBardot was damaged, and this is a

handicap for us.However, we are still keeping the whal-ing fleet on the run. We have nowchased them for 14,000 miles over thelast two months.

The EU’s fishing policy has its ups anddowns in its recent past. One of theproblems that the European Com-mission faces is ‘over-fishing and de-pleting stocks’. The bluefin tuna is aperfect example of this. Do you thinkthe EU fishing policy is successful inprotecting fish species and againstover-fishing?The policy on fishing is basically to givethe fishermen everything they want.When it comes to the bluefin tuna,fishermen are taking over their quotaevery single year and no-one is reallydoing anything about it.So, it seems to be that the courts andthe governments are more interested inprotecting the interests of the illegalfishermen than to help conservation-ists to protect that species.What is happening with Malta is thatthere is a whole illegal enterprise goingon there with the full support of thepoliticians who are being bribed bythese tuna fishermen. These practiceswill seriously contribute to wiping outthe bluefin tuna and will make a lot ofpeople rich in the process.The EU has all the rules and regula-tions that protect our oceans, however,what they do not have is enforcement.

We have a lack of will on the part ofgovernments to enforce internationalconservation law. They need to getout there and arrest the bastards. But,they are doing this because too muchmoney is passing hands under thetable going to many politicians in Eu-rope, just like in Malta; there is noquestion that Maltese politicians areon the take.

Another recent step that the Commis-sion has taken recently was to close theloopholes in the prohibition of shark-finning aboard vessels. What moreneeds to be done to protect all sharkspecies in its seas, especially in theMediterranean?They have to outlaw shark-finningeverywhere. We are killing 75-90msharks a year. This is a sole reproducingfish and it is being wiped out; its pop-ulation is being severely diminished.What we should have in the Mediter-ranean is to declare the whole sea as

taboo, the same way that the Tahitiansand the Polynesians used to deal withsomething like this. They would de-clare a whole area taboo; no fishing for20 or 30 years. The reason for that isbecause if they didn’t control it in thatway, the fish would have been wipedout.We have no taboo areas left on theplanet. We are simply eradicating fishspecies out of our oceans.Europe certainly has the means to ad-dress the issue of fisheries. Let the en-forcement people get out there and dotheir job. That is what I’m finding allover the world. Many people come tothe SSCS who were agents with theEnvironmental Protection Agency -one of their agents works with us now– former coast-guard members andformer policemen. They come to usbecause they could no longer do theirjob when they were in those positions,because their hands were tied by theirown governments.

EU WORLD

New Europe | Page 11NEW EUROPE26 February - 3 March, 2012

By Stratis G. Camatsos

INTERVIEW|PAUL WATSON

The guardian of the world’s oceans

Captain Paul Watson standing on the dock next to the Canadian flagged vessel

Farley Mowat. |EPA/NIC BOTHMA

29 – 31/03/2012, New Stuttgart Trade Fair Centerwww.cep-expo.com

International Trade Fair for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficient Buildings

Your entry to the German market for renewable energy » Up-to-date Information for Energy Efficiency » Decentralized & Renewable Energy » Energy Efficient Buildings

Improve your competitive edge » 4th International Symposium Solar and Renewable Cooling » 6th International Conference on Application of Biomass Gasification

CEP® CLEAN ENERGY & PASSIVEHOUSE

Conference DiscountWith Online-Registration, Code CEP12NEU

ADVERTISEMENT

On 20 February Shah Deniz, the consortium de-

veloping the field in the Azerbaijani area of the

Caspian basin, excluded the Interconnector

Turkey-Greece-Italy (ITGI) project from those

being considered to carry its gas to Europe, BP

said.

“Originally there were four options to carry

Shah Deniz gas to Europe: TAP [Tran-Adriatic

Pipeline], ITGI, SEEP [South-East Europe

Pipeline] and Nabucco and now there are three.

ITGI is out basically,” BP spokesman Toby

Odone told New Europe.

Shah Deniz II, an important project for Eu-

rope's strategy of diversifying energy supplies, is

expected to add roughly 16bn cubic metres of an-

nual production as early as 2018, 10bn cubic me-

tres of which would be ready for export to the

European Union. BP holds a 25.5% stake, as does

Statoil. The rest is divided between Azeri state oil

company SOCAR, Russia’s LUKoil, Iran’s

NICO, Norway’s Total and Turkey’s TPAO.

As far as the southern option is concerned, the

Shah Deniz consortium picked TAP, ending dis-

cussions with ITGI. TAP will be negotiating ex-

clusively to transit the gas from the Caspian to

Italy. The next decision concerns the northern op-

tion and will be between Nabucco and SEEP,

which is partially supported by BP. Odone said

that a decision between Nabucco and SEEP will

be made “in the next few months. I would say

mid-summerish”.

It will then ultimately come down to a decision

between TAP and whichever pipeline is chosen

for the northern route, depending on the final

market: Italy or Baumgarten in Austria. Odone

said that it is unlikely that Shah Deniz would go

with both the southern and northern routes. “The

way things are at the moment, they are all com-

peting with each other, so I don’t see how that

could be. I don’t think so,” the BP-spokesman said.

Following the latest developments in the

Southern Gas Corridor pipeline competition,

TAP Managing Director Kjetil Tungland said in

an e-mailed statement on 20 February that “we

are pleased to confirm that TAP has been selected

by Shah Deniz as the pipeline route to Italy. We

will now enter into exclusive negotiations with

them on progressing the project. We look forward

to progressing the TAP project together with the

Shah Deniz Consortium and the Italian, Alban-

ian and Greek governments,” Tungland said.

TAP firmly believes that it remains a strong

contender to win the bid to transport Shah Deniz

II gas to Europe. “We are also confident that the

TAP route to Italy offers the Shah Deniz consor-

tium the most attractive market and the most ad-

vanced evacuation route. No further comment,”

he added.

As far as debt-stricken Greece and the South-

ern Corridor are concerned, this is good news for

Athens because it confirms international investor

confidence in the Mediterranean country and

confirms TAP and Greek route as a strong option

in the Southern Corridor, Rikard Scoufias, Coun-

try Manager TAP, Greece, said in an emailed

statement.

"We are obviously pleased with the decision by

Shah Deniz. It is a win for Greece and confirms

TAP and the Greek Route as a strong option in

the Southern Gas Corridor. As I have said many

times, our commitment to Greece stands firm and

I believe this also sends a positive signal of inter-

national investor confidence in the country,"

Scoufias said, adding that TAP will now continue

co-operation with the government and the Greek

authorities.

TAP aims to become operational in 2017 and

would carry 10bn cubic metres of Caspian gas a year

and be scalable to a maximum capacity of 20bn cubic

metres. TAP's partners are Norway’s Statoil, Swiss

EGL and Germany's E.ON Ruhrgas.

Meanwhile, Nabucco is reportedly proceeding

with a smaller more flexible route. Odone told

New Europe that Nabucco has “revised their offer

to basically make the route start from the Turkish-

Bulgarian border and go up to Austria.”

A spokesman for the Nabucco consortium said

in an emailed statement on 17 February that it is

“currently calculating different scenarios in order

to find the best solution for suppliers and trans-

portation customers. The Nabucco concept,

whereby the pipeline travels from the eastern bor-

ders of Turkey to Baumgarten in Austria, contin-

ues to be our preferred option as it is a compre-

hensive solution for all parties involved.

Negotiations between our shareholders and the

Shah Deniz consortium are ongoing”. Nabucco

was initially set to carry up to 31bn cubic metres

of natural gas per year from the Caspian region

and the Middle East to Europe. The construc-

tion of the 4,000-kilometre pipeline was set to

start in 2013 and the first gas is to flow in 2017.

The Vienna-based consortium's main sharehold-

ers are Austrian energy company OMV, German

utility RWE, Hungary's MOL, Romania's

Transgaz, Bulgaria's Bulgargaz and Turkey's

Botas.

But Turkey reportedly will no longer lend full

support to Nabucco and will shift its priority to its

own Azerbaijan-Turkey project, the Trans-Ana-

tolia Gas Pipeline (TAGP; Turkish acronym

TANAP).

Meanwhile, an industry source, talking on con-

dition of anonymity, told New Europe that the

decision to eliminate ITGI shows “that Nabucco

is not dead. It’s not going to be the behemoth, the

giant that has been going on for so long, but Brus-

sels is still strongly pushing for Nabucco. There

are a lot of politicians who have invested a lot of

political capital in Nabucco and it’s very, very hard

for them to let go. And they won’t let go easily,

just as the Italians and the Greeks didn’t want to

let go of ITGI.”

The ITGI would have been an upgrade and

extension of existing gas connections between

Turkey and Greece. Italy's Edison, Greece's gov-

ernment-controlled DEPA and Turkey's Botas

are among ITGI's partners.

On 20 February, Greece and Italy reminded

that the two countries have signed an inter-gov-

ernmental agreement, noting that ITGI is better

than its rivals, despite an announcement it has

been excluded. In a joint statement the Greece’s

Energy, Environment and Climate Change Min-

istry and Italy’s Industry Ministry reiterated their

support for ITGI.

Following "recent reports of the state of devel-

opments on the negotiations" on the matter, the

ministries said ITGI is more "advanced and ma-

ture," and that it can greatly contribute to open-

ing a gas route in the southern part of the EU.

ENERGY & CLIMATEPage 12 |New Europe NEW EUROPE26 February - 3 March, 2012

Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz II gas field consortium has excluded the Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy (ITGI) pipeline project from those being considered to transport the gas to

Europe, saying it would prefer the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) as its partner should it decide to send the gas through Turkey to Italy. The next decision concerns the northern

option and will be between Nabucco and south-eastern Europe Pipeline (SEEP).|EPA/OLIVER KILLIG

ENERGY|GAS

TAP, Nabucco and SEEP still in EU pipeline raceBy Kostis Geropoulos

ADVERTISEMENT

ENERGY & CLIMATENew Europe|Page 13NEW EUROPE


On 22 February, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that hiscountry’s state-controlled natural gas monopoly PGNiG has achance to be charged less for gas supplies from Russian gas mo-nopoly Gazprom through the arbitration process between thetwo companies. He described the arbitration as "routine".

On 21 February, PGNiG said it had filed an arbitration claimagainst Gazprom and its exporting subsidiary. The company did-n't disclose its exact price demands, saying the arbitration pro-ceedings in Stockholm weren't public.

PGNiG, which controls production, transmission and distri-bution of gas in Poland, is struggling to make profit, squeezed

both by its contract with Gazprom and by regulator URE, whichsets prices on the domestic market. The price in PGNiG's dealwith Gazprom is linked to oil prices.

In early November last year PGNiG launched arbitration pro-ceedings against Gazprom, demanding lower prices for naturalgas. PGNiG said in October it would start arbitration if the Russ-ian gas monopoly did not agree to cut its prices for natural gas bythe end of October.

Poland relies heavily on Russia to cover its gas needs, import-ing about two-thirds of its annual gas consumption fromGazprom.

ENERGY|GAS

Polish PGNiG tries to get Gazprom to lower price

On 24 February, the Brent oil pricerose towards $124 a barrel and washeading for a fifth straight weeklygain driven by concern over cuts inIranian supply.

On 19 February, Iran halted oilshipments to Britain and France, asretaliatory measure against fresh EUsanctions levied against the MiddleEast country. In January, the EU de-cided to stop importing crude fromIran from 1 July over its nuclear pro-gramme. “The fear of the sanctionsimposed by the European ministershas affected the price already. It ishigher than it should have been,”Manouchehr Takin, Senior Petro-leum Upstream Analyst with theCentre for Global Energy Studies(CGES), told New Europe by phone.“If the Europeans say: ‘Oh in sixmonths from now we’re going to stopbuying from you because you’re a badboy.’ They (Iranians) will say: ‘Well,we’ll give you six months to find sub-stitute for our oil very nicely and eas-ily and then boycott us? We will tryto pre-empt you and teach you a les-son.’ It is a reaction along that,”Takin said.

The EU imports some 600,000 bar-rels of oil a day from Iran. But he

pointed out that the National IranianOil Co (NIOC) did not cut suppliesto its good customers such as Spain,Italy and Greece, which are sufferingfrom the financial crisis. Tehran ac-knowledged that countries like Greeceare under pressure from other EUcountries and within the 27-nationbloc they want to delay or get excep-tions, Takin said. “I think this is a com-promise. In fact it doesn’t really matterthat much because France and the UKare not importing that much. I think itis more an indication that Iran is notjust sitting passively when the Euro-peans are openly trying to put Iran inthe corner and boycott buying its oil,”the CGES analyst said.

He also noted that stopping oil ex-ports to the EU by Iran would deal aheavy blow to European refineries.“The economics of refineries in Eu-rope are not in a good shape,” Takinsaid. “The refineries have a weaken-ing market in Europe for their cus-tomers. The price of petroleumproducts has gone down. On theother hand, the price of crude oil hasgone up. The more they do with thesesanctions on Iran the price of oil willgo even higher,” Takin said.

Technically the refineries will also

suffer. The analyst explained that foryears the Greek and Italian refinerieshave all adjusted their equipment torefine Iranian oil. “Now to get crudeoil from somewhere else they willhave to readjust and modify their re-fineries. It will require some invest-ment but more importantly they willlose operations,” he said. “If there ismore production from Saudi Arabiait will be the heavier rather than thelighter oil,” he added.

Regarding oil prices in the comingmonths, Takin said that the outlookfor demand in Europe and Americais low or even coming down. And therest of the world - China, India, LatinAmerica - is not growing that much.“Even there we have slowdown in theeconomy so outlook for demand isweak. Supply is alright. Investmentsfrom oil companies around the worldare coming to fruition; there is moreoil coming. Because of this, supply-demand outlook for the next sixmonths should lead to a low oilprice,” Takin said. The fact that ishigh is because of fear. Because peo-ple think there might be war in Iran.In Nigeria there are clashes. All thesetensions have caused the price of oilto go up.”

Iranians line up at a petrol station to fuel their motorcycles in central Tehran, 18 February, 2012. Iran has halted its limited oil sales to France and Britain in re-taliation for a phased EU ban on Iranian oil that is yet to take full effect.|AFP PHOTO/BEHROUZ MEHRI

ENERGY|OIL PRICES

Iran worries push oil near $124 ITGI DiesHard With aVengeance

Italy and Greece will build a project to import naturalgas into the European Union with or without gas fromAzerbaijan, Elio Ruggeri, CEO of IGI Poseidon andhead of international gas infrastructures for Edison,told New Europe on 22 February, two days after hewas informed that the Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy (ITGI) project, a venture of Greece’s DEPA andItaly’s Edison, was excluded. “Both with Azeri gas orwithout Azeri gas, ITGI will play a key role because itis a project that will be developed by buyers of gas andnot by producers,” Ruggeri said by phone.On 20 February, the consortium that is developingthe natural gas field Shah Deniz located offshoreAzerbaijan said it selected the Trans-AdriaticPipeline (TAP) project for the Italian pipeline op-tion. Northern routes - Nabucco and the South-EastEurope Pipeline (SEEP) - also remain in the gamefor now.Yannis Maniatis, Greece’s Deputy Minister of En-vironment, Energy and Climate Change, called thedecision “unfortunate.” Responding to a questionfrom New Europe, he told a press conference inAthens on 23 February that the Greek and Italiangovernments have given full support to ITGI since2002. “For us, Greece and Italy, the issue of ITGI isnot closed,” he said.Asked if ITGI is still in talks with Azerbaijan, Ruggerisaid pointedly: “We take a break every now and then.Obviously Azerbaijan is now discussing with TAP anddiscussions with ITGI are suspended but this does notimpact our development activities that keep on goingjust as previously”.The CEO of IGI Poseidon said Azerbaijan is still apossible supplier because ITGI is more mature anddeveloped. “We don’t believe TAP can succeed withinthe time schedule,” he said. “If Azerbaijan wants totake its final investment decision by next year, we arethe only project ready to support that.”At the same time, he said that ITGI is a multi-sourceproject and is accessing other gas options in the re-gion. Asked if ITGI could become the southernbranch of Russian-backed South Stream gas pipeline,Ruggeri said: “ITGI is a pipeline project and we arelooking at all sources of gas; that’s all I can say.” Hewould not say that Russian gas is a possible sourcefor ITGI. “In the region there are many, many play-ers ... There are plenty of potential sources in the re-gion that are developing gas in a credible supply tothe European Union in the timeframe consistentwith Shah Deniz. To pick one out of the basketwould have no value.”Ruggeri shrugged off reports that the financial crisis inGreece and Italy has affected ITGI’s plans. “We don’tthink that the financial crisis is an issue for a sound,bankable project like ITGI,” he told New Europe.He said the recent cold weather that affected Italyshowed that more gas and more import capacity toItaly would be beneficial to manage peak requirement.“However, all these import projects should not look atthe Italian market on isolation but should be targetedto the wider European market because Italy has theambition and the possibility of developing as a Euro-pean hub in the very short term,” Ruggeri said.

[email protected] on twitter @energyinsider

Energy Insider

By Kostis Geropoulos

IN THE BLOGSPage 14 | New Europe | NEW EUROPE26 February - 3 March, 2012

A round-up of interesting blog posts ofthe past week, because bloggers deservetheir voice.

Read a blog post that you want to suggestfor our new ‘In The Blogs’ section? Send us an email: [email protected]

This weekend, the EU published itspublic draft of its Business Vocabulary(along with Person and Location), tohelp make it easier for organisationswithin Europe, including govern-ments themselves, to exchange infor-mation relating to companies.Now if I haven’t already lost yourattention, I think this is pretty impor-tant, and not just those who handlecorporate data, but to also to all thoseinterested in openness in general, forthree reasons:The vocabulary democratises the abil-ity to share this important informa-tion, removing the need for restrictivecentral registers, which are inevitablytied up with process, governance andaccess issues;The results are free of IP restrictions;The fast, lightweight process was anexample of a huge organisation (theEuropean Commission) for oncebeing focused on solving immediateproblems rather than grandiose unde-liverable: in short the EC went for aMinimum Viable Product.I think it’s worth tackling these in alittle more detail, but feel free to skipthe first or second and skip to theprocess bit, if that’s what floats yourboat.[I should also state thatOpenCorporates was a member of the

Working Group that put the vocabularytogether and was fairly heavily involvedin the Business Vocabulary discussions,having arguably done more to open com-pany information than any other organ-isation in the recent history. It’s alsoworth saying that this process wouldn’thave achieved anything had it not be forthe excellent work of the W3c’s PhilArcher and the EC’s PiotrMadziar and Vassilios Peristeras]

1 The Business VocabularyLike including mathematical equa-tions in a book, the phrase ‘businessvocabulary’ is an excellent way ofputting off any ‘normal’ people whomight otherwise be interested. Yet likethe protocols that underlie the inter-net, getting this sort of thing rightmatters, and really all we really meanby business vocabulary is not someheavyweight XML schema, but alightweight set of agreed terms andprinciples that remove the barriers forcommunication.In this case it’s very lightweight, asthere as there’s only really one criticalpart: what is a company, and how dowe identify it? Despite the simplicityof the question, this is an area inwhich it’s easy to tie yourself into

knots, should you want to. Countrieshave very different ways of thinking ofcompanies (are partnerships or soletraders companies, for example?), anddifferent ways of creating them too,sometimes handling them centrally, orgiving the job to regional registers orcourts.The Business Vocabulary neatly side-steps this, instead focusing on twocore elements: a Legal Entity and aFormal Identifier. If you’re going toexchange information about a compa-ny it needs to be a legal entity, and itneeds to have a (single) formal identi-fier. And that’s pretty much it. Theonly thing to add is that the formalidentifier is made up of two parts: theidentifier (e.g. a ‘company number’)and an issuing authority (e.g. a com-pany register), which would ideally beidentified by a URI.

See that wasn’t so bad was it ..There are a handful of other proper-ties that are listed, including the dateof issue of the identifier, the registeredaddress, company type, some of whichare more clearly defined than others,but really that’s it. But already, itallows company registers aroundEurope to start publishing their data,and consuming other company regis-ters’ data (for example, to understandthe status of home companies for for-eign branches they have registered)without the need for a highly cen-tralised clearing house with its ownclosed system of data exchange.It’s also worth stressing that this solu-tion is not tied to any particular repre-sentation. It could be turned into astring identifier, linked data, or XMLof some sort. Whichever is used,transformation from one to the othershould be easy.

2. Open data and open standardsOne of the best outcomes of the

process, is that the resultant BusinessVocabulary is genuinely open, unen-cumbered by IP restrictions. Morethan this, however, the whole processwas focused on this outcome, with allagreeing this from the start. (In fact allparticipants were required to explicitlyagree that their contributions would befree of IP restrictions, meaning the con-tributed use cases and discussions on themcan also be openly published.)This means, for example, that the listof identifying authorities also needs tobe free of IP restrictions, and it’s thissort of detail which really matterswhen we’re talking about open stan-dards – one solution, particularly if thevocabulary is to be used outside theEU (which it certainly could be)would be for the W3c to maintainand publish this list, given its interestin the semantic web and IP-free solu-tions.

3. Minimum Viable Product processAlthough it was never called this, theconcept of a Minimum ViableProduct seemed embedded in theprocess from the start, and it took avery different route to other govern-mental ones I’ve been involved with.Contributions were encouraged tomade on a wiki, conference calls wereheld weekly with a strict one hourlimit, and we were given a targetdeadline of the end of January (westarted in November). No long meet-ings. No backroom deals. Admittedlyby technology startup standards thismay be slow, but for governmentbureaucracy standards this was defi-nitely agile, and the tight timings real-ly focused people’s minds on results.So congratulations Phil & co and let’shope we not just get some useful feed-back on the vocabulary, but that othergovernmental organisations can learnfrom the process too.

3 reasons why the EU’s new BusinessVocabulary is so important

From:http://tinyurl.com/neweurope600

Arts forour sake

Film festival season begins in Brussels in earnest in

the next week or so – Offscreen (www.offscreen.be)

the fest that celebrates avant-garde, bizarre and

downright weird cinema, is about to launch its fifth

edition, which will run from 7-29 March, while the

30th Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival

(BIFFF, www.bifff.org) opens its doors on the mar-

vellous and macabre from 5-17 April.

And it’s interesting to ponder, as the worst econom-

ic crisis to yet hit the Eurozone continues to ravage

the economies of Greece and elsewhere, how culture

and the arts might offer us a way out of the crisis –

as Danish Culture Minister Uffe Elbæk, and

Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth

Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou told

Euractiv.com in Brussels recently: “It is…clear that

Europe has many reasons for optimism and hope.

What we are proposing –as European politicians

and individuals with a passion for art and culture –

is that we start looking at our cultural sector as a

reservoir of hope, ideas and new economic growth

that can lead us out of the crisis.”

And just how might this be achieved? Well, while it

may have the feel of being merely a sound bite, there

is definitely much to be said for not allowing the

past to kidnap the future, and the Arab Spring

uprising of 2011 saw peaceful but passionate artists

playing a major role in the protests.

There is no doubting that a vibrant cultural life pro-

duces cities that in turn bring in ever-more creative

workers. Brussels, and not just with its film festivals,

is a leading example of how this may be achieved,

while regions that have been hit hard by the depar-

ture of young talent can still rediscover vibrancy

through culture. European cities have huge poten-

tial, taking into account their rich historical heritage

and cosmopolitan mixture of diverse cultures and

languages. If culture is developed a much broader

level in city planning, city design and business

development, the result will be ever-more sustain-

able and attractive cities – in short, places that are a

pleasure in which to live.

But the EU institutions must provide more than

mere words – European Commission President José

Manuel Barroso may well have expressed interest in

putting more focus on the cultural field, but recent

decisions made in the name of the Culture

Programme 2007-13 have sparked controversy, as

has the European Parliament’s seeming blithe

acceptance of ACTA, of which I spoke in my previ-

ous column.

Of course, such cultural ambitions as stated by

Vassiliou and Elbæk take time and dedication to

achieve, but there is no doubt in the mind of this

columnist that the push for cultural progress is very

much the right direction to follow in the EU. In the

meantime, enjoy the film festivals!

A Union of Culture

By James Drew

FASHION & STYLENew Europe | Page 15

NEW EUROPE26 February - 3 March, 2012

New York designers

were undoubtedly in

the mood for story-

telling this season.

Indeed, their collections for next

fall were refreshingly thematic and

Couture-inspired, inviting women

to step into character.

To begin with, Prabal Gurungpresented a new version of the

power-woman. In a more subtly

seductive but all the while ‘impos-

ing’ spirit, his collection was all

about strict straight cuts, with

skirts and dresses just above the

knee, in other words: elegance be-

yond scrutiny. Proper and to-the-

point practicality ruled, while

fantasy frills and golden coating

added femininity where needed.

Gurung’s contemporary woman

avoids tackiness and asserts her

place as a hard-to-get seductress.

As geometric and covered up

was Thakoon Panichgul’s collec-

tion, but this time in imprudent

flashy colours: erotic red and

black, vibrant yellow and fuschia

for a dressy-but-contemporary ef-

fect.

For Rodarte, Kate and Laura

Mulleavy maintained their ‘his-

tory of the New World’ references.

Eternally nostalgic and costume-

inspired, the sisters took us on a

trip to colonial Australia: an im-

pressive collection reserved to tall-

tower ladies with romantic

physiques.

Joseph Altuzarra claimed that

he was inspired by the exotic ad-

ventures of Corto Maltese, the

70’s cult Italian comic strip char-

acter: stories of sailors, pirates,

gypsies and brave outlaws on trips

to Andalusia, India or South

America. Knee-high equestrian

boots, slanted skirts, buttoned-up

English uniforms in navy colours

and military tailoring all coexisted

on the catwalk.

Luchino Visconti’s 1963 film,

‘The Leopard’ inspired Florence-

born Sofia Sizzi when designing

her collection for the brand Giuli-etta. Oversized collars, and shoul-

ders, large skirts, brocades,

precious belts and buckles, and

frivolous ball dresses, conveyed the

nostalgic ‘classicism’ of a long-

gone, antiqued world.

This time, Proenza Schoulerpaid tribute to Japanese culture.

White martial art uniforms, satin-

printed kimono-inspired dresses

with traditional peach tree flowers

and exotic birds, black bordering,

fan prints, layered Samurai tailor-

ing, lacquered textures and geo-

metric patterns, for the ethnic

scent that is always true to the

duo’s work.

Johnson Hartig for Libertinekept his promise of eternal youth

with the brand’s signature graffiti

patchwork dresses and coats: dots,

checkers, stripes, flowers and glit-

ter for a profusion of prints, that

reminds us of the stories found in

teenagers’ personal scribbling and

drawing notebooks.

Louise Kissa [email protected]

ALTUZARRA© Altuzarra

LIBERTINE© Libertine

GIULIETTA© Giulietta

PROENZA SCHOULERphoto: Edward James

© WireImage/Getty Images

RODARTE© Rodarte

THAKOONphoto: Chris Moore/Catwalking

© Getty Images

PRABAL GURUNG© Prabal Gurung

NEW YORK FASHION WEEK: FALL/WINTER 2012-2013

New York in narrative mode

BRUSSELS AGENDA Page 16 | New Europe | NEW EUROPE26 February - 3 March, 2012

BRUSSELS AGENDA New Europe | Page 17

NEW EUROPE26 February - 3 March, 2012Welcome to NE’s Brussels Agenda. All you

need to know for a complete professionaland personal life in Brussels.

Would you like to advertise in New Europe’s BrusselsAgenda? Ask for more info [email protected] ordon’t hesitate to call us at +32(0)2 5390039

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

Salle à l’étage ● Banquets - réunions - Terrase en été

Cosmo Cuisine

Av. de Tervueren,1051040 Etterbeek - Bruxelles

Tel: 02/ 732 43 31Fax: 02/ 733 61 17

RESTO BITES

The worldwide success story that is Cirquedu Soleil is always a ´must see´ on the city´sartistic calendar, with shows regularly sellingout fast.Now the Canadian-based entertainmentcompany has come up with a brand newshow which is expected to prove as popularas its past performances.According to the show´s director FrancoDragone, an ´adopted Belgian´, the show,called "Alegria" is "a mood, a state ofmind."He says there are many themes to the show,whose name means "jubilation" in Spanish. "Power and the handing down of powerover time, the evolution from ancientmonarchies to modern democracies, oldage, youth - it is against this backdrop thatthe characters of Alegría play out theirlives.Kings' fools, minstrels, beggars, oldaristocrats and children make up Alegria´suniverse, along with the clowns, who aloneare able to resist the passing of time and thesocial transformations that accompany it."Since it was founded in 1984, Cirque duSoleil has attracted some of the best artistsfrom all over the world so it is reassuring toreport at least one Belgian connection toAlegria.A native of Italy, Dragone grew up in LaLouvière, an industrial community inBelgium where he learned the tricks of histrade.Dragone has had a major hand in creating

the amalgam of cultures and artistic disci-plines that characterizes many of Cirque duSoleil´s productions, including Alegria.Before embarking on a lengthy partnershipwith Cirque du Soleil in 1985, he workedwith a number of theatre companies inEurope.Cirque du Soleil has come a long way sinceit was founded by two former street per-formers, Guy Laliberté and Daniel GauthierInitially named Les Échassiers, it touredQuebec in 1980 as a performing troupe andencountered financial hardship that wasonly relieved by a government grant.After securing further funding, Laliberté re-created it as a "proper circus". Its theatrical, character-driven approach andthe absence of performing animals helpeddefine Cirque du Soleil as the contemporarycircus that it remains today.Each show is a synthesis of circus styles fromaround the world, with its own central themeand storyline. They draw the audience intothe performance through continuous livemusic, with performers rather than stage-hands changing the props.Reviews of its latest production auger well,with one reviewer describing it as "a night ofadventure, joy and peerless beauty" whileanother hailed Alegria "a soaring triumph."You can catch the latest Cirque du Soleiloffering at Brussels Expo from March 28 toApril 1. Ticket info at www.cirquedusoleil.com

It´s big, it´s brash and it´scoming to Brussels

Midi Station, Brussels

If you thought music and food don’t mix this terrific restaurant

happily bucks the trend.

You really can enjoy a fantastic choice of dishes while listening

to some of the best jazz and funk tunes in town.

Pride of place on the impressive menu goes to the delicious

Hereford free range beef supplied by Jack O’Shea, the famous

award-winning Brussels butcher. The choice of meats span the

continent: there’s French Charolais beef, ‘little ham’ from the

Belgian Ardennes, braised Iberico pork and Scottish Angus rib

eye. But there’s plenty on offer for non-meat eaters, including

Scottish salmon and cod ‘Rossini’ monkfish.There’s also an

oyster bar with mouth-watering oysters from Zeeland, Ireland

and Normandy. All dishes are lovingly prepared in an open-plan

kitchen. The restaurant, which as the name suggests is located

adjacent to Midi Station, features a 35 euro ‘menu of the month’,

a cigar lounge and, for those wishing to sample some cracking

cocktails, a happy hour, from 5-6pm,from Thursday-Friday.

The service is as great as the setting and dining out here really

is a genuine treat.Check the excellent website for updates on the

musicians appearing there. Highly recommended.

Midi Station

Place Victor Horta, 26

1060 Bruxelles

+32 2.526 88 00

[email protected]

TAKE A LOOK

Traveling through Europe takes timeand money that many cannot spare,but the mini-Europe exhibit at theAtomium gives Belgians and visitorsthe chance to see Europe in only a day.The exhibit features models of monu-ments from countries throughout theEuropean Union, including Big Ben inLondon, the Eiffel Tower in Paris andGrand Place here in Brussels.

Lessons learned from the Banking cri-sis in Belgium: What is the way forwardwith the Basel III Regulation

01 March – CEPS Annual Conference201209:00 – 16:00, Residence Palace, PolakRoom, 155 Rue de la Loi, Brussels The CEPS Annual Conference is themain event in the CEPS calendar. Itregularly attracts a senior cross-sectionof the Brussels and European policycircles, including officials from the EUand the member states, Members of theEuropean Parliament, diplomats, acad-emics, and members of the press.

06 March – V-Day EuropeanParliament 2012: The VaginaMonologues18:30, European Parliament, YehudiMenuhin Space, BrusselsV-Day cordially invites you to join EveEnsler and Members of the EuropeanParliament to a cross-party call toaction to end violence against womenand girls featuring a very special per-formance of THE VAGINA MONO-LOGUES. Followed by a reception

08-09 March Climate Change at aRegional and Local Level: InitiativesFor and Beyond EU LegislationCEN/CENELEC Meeting Centre, DaVinci Room, Avenue Marnix 17,BrusselsIn recent years, more and more regionaland local authorities are becomingactive with regard to climate changeissues. They are creating renewableenergy areas, implementing low-carbonprojects, as well as investing in researchand innovation in new technologies.Since climate change issues differ fromregion to region, it has become clearthat these local and regional initiativesand actions are vital for the success ofeffective climate change policies. Theaim of the seminar is to give anoverview of what can be done at thelocal and regional level, as well as thepossibilities for these authorities toinfluence European decision-making.

27 Feb – Rethinking European Identityin the Age of Immigration 16:30 -18:00 Science 14 Atrium, 14bRue de la Science, BrusselsThis discussion, which serves as the for-mal launch of Migration PolicyInstitute Europe, will explore what isdriving societal discontent in Europe,the role immigration plays in this, andwhy there is a growing perception thatimmigrant integration efforts are fail-ing. Registration begins at 16:00 and adrinks reception follows from 18:00-19:00.

28 Feb – Raising Awareness ofChildren as Hidden Victims ofDomestic Violence and Abuse inEurope 09:15 – 17:00 Silken Berlaymont Hotel,11-19, Boulevard Charlemagne,BrusselsViolence in the home is one of the mostpervasive human rights challenges ofour time. It remains a largely hiddenproblem that few countries, communi-ties or families openly confront. Seekingto address the problem, the EuropeanCommission is in its third phase of theDaphne Programme aiming to preventand combat all forms of violence

towards children and women.

28 Feb. - European Beer Pledge: foster-ing best practice in addressing alcoholmisuse.12:30 – 14:30 European Parliament,Room A1H1, BrusselsThe Parliament Magazine in associa-tion with The Brewers of Europe andthe EP Beer Club invites you to aroundtable lunch event on the launch ofEurope's brewers Beer Pledge initiative.The Beer Pledge is a voluntary initiativeby Europe's brewers to support EUmember states in reducing alcohol relat-ed harm and is a direct response toCommissioner John Dalli's message atthe last Alcohol & Health Forum for itsmembers to take further action. At thismeeting, Commissioner Dalli encour-aged

29 Feb – Lessons Learned From TheBanking Crisis In Belgium: What IsThe Way Forward With the Basel IIIRegulation12:30 – 14:00 British Chamber ofCommerce, Boul. Bischoffsheim 11,Brussels

For more events see www.agenda.be

28 Feb – Rise Against19:00, Ancienne Belgique Rise Against is a melodic hardcore/punkrock band from Chicago, Illinois.Formed in 1999, and originally perform-ing under the name Transistor Revolt,they released a self-produced demo enti-tled Transistor Revolt in 2000, a yearbefore signing with Fat Wreck Chordsto release their first two albums, TheUnraveling in 2001, and Revolutions PerMinute in 2003. They later switched toDreamworks Records and recorded theiralbum Siren Song of the CounterCulture.

03 March – Wilco20:00 Ancienne Belgique Wilco is an American rock band basedin Chicago, Illinois. The band wasformed in 1994 by the remaining mem-bers of alternative country group UncleTupelo following singer Jay Farrar'sdeparture from that group. Wilco's line-up has changed frequently, with onlysinger Jeff Tweedy and bassist JohnStirratt remaining from the originalincarnation. The other current membersare guitarist Nels Cline, multi-instru-mentalists Pat Sansone and Mikael

Jorgensen, and drummer Glenn Kotche.

04 March – Zita Swoon Group20:00 Ancienne Belgique Zita Swoon Group has been presentingitself as a changeable collective of musi-cians lately. The most recent outing ofwhich is the project

‘Wait For Me’, a collaboration withmusicians from Burkina Faso. ‘Wait ForMe’ situates itself at the meeting pointof African rhythms and Western blues.Mamadou Diabaté Kibié (grandmasterof the balaphone) and excellent singerAwa Démé (with her raw timbre) pro-vided the African input. The CD of thesame name is to appear in early 2012and, to celebrate, the magical Zitafricawill play ‘Wait For Me’ in AB. Theshows in 2011 were a success. Full hallsand highly commending reviews like‘****’ in De Standaard or this one inFocus Knack: ‘Wait For Me’ was a hit inevery sense: an organic project withdepth, one with which Stef KamilCarlens yet again indicates that he stillseeks the artistic challenge.”.

27 Feb- 09 MarchBrussels Agenda

WORKsuggest your event for our agenda: [email protected]

PLAYsuggest your event for our agenda: [email protected]

Wilco – 20:00, 3 March, Ancienne

Belgique

They may have changed band members

several times over the years since they

became a band in 1994, but Wilco's

music and popularity have not suffered

for it. The band was formed in Chicago

and has found great success as a alterna-

tive band since it's creation.

It was with the band's fourth album,

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, that the band

found their beginnings of fame. The

album reached number thirteen on the

Billboard 200 and was named one of the

100 greatest albums of all time by Q

Magazine.

Wilco's next album, A Ghost is Born,

won them two Grammy Awards in 2005

for Best Alternative Music Album and

Best Recording Package. The band

remained a staple of the Chicago music

scene even as they gained national

renown, performing and recording in

local theaters and television shows.

FRANCE · GERMANY· SPAIN · PORTUGAL

New Europe | Page 18 THE EUROPEAN UNION26 February - 3 March, 2012

SPAIN|TOURISM

Spain-Azerbaijan to boost tourism co-operationA recent informal meeting between the Spanish and Azer-baijani officials made way for a new agreement betweenthe sides focused on the tourism sector. Spanish ForeignMinister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo met with his Azer-baijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov within an in-formal meeting of the G20 foreign ministers last week.Citing a statement from the Azerbaijani ministry local re-ports later informed that during the meeting, the sides ex-changed views on the state of bilateral relationshipsbetween the two countries, stressed the importance of co-operation in energy, tourism and trade, and noted the greatpotential for expanding co-operation between the twocountries. At the end of the meeting the parties reached anagreement on mutual promotion of participation of repre-sentatives of both countries’ relevant institutions in touristexhibitions organised in Azerbaijan and Spain and ex-change of visits and business forums.

PORTUGAL|LABOUR

More Portuguese out of job, data showsThe worsening European economy recently confrontedwith a fresh bad news as official data confirmed that un-employment number of Portugal experienced a significantleap in the last three months of 2011. According to the datafrom the country’s national statistics bureau, Portugal's un-employment rate jumped to 14% in the final quarter of lastyear tautening speculations of a section of the economiststhat the austerity bites are actually eroding off the economicbase of the country. The major dent in the job market left771,000 people without jobs in the three months to De-cember, up from 12.4% reported for the preceding quarter.Earlier, data from the EU’s statistical office Eurostat esti-mated the jobless rate at 13.6% in December, the same rateEU officials estimated for the whole of 2012. In sectorialbreakdowns, the figures showed that the number of peopleseeking jobs increased across all sectors. One of the worstaffected was the construction sector where there had beenan almost freeze in activities last year as the governmenthad halted infrastructure projects across the country.

PORTUGAL|ECONOMY

Minister rules out option of getting out of euroPortugal is doing these reforms not because they are beingdictated to it, but because Lisbon believes in them, CNBCtelevision quoted Minister of Economy and EmploymentAlvaro Santos Pereira in an interview. "Way before we hadto ask for external help, the parties in power now supportedreforms. All those reforms have been advocated by myselfand my colleagues in the government," Santos Pereira said."We have to" convince the markets that Portugal is differ-ent from Greece. "And we will", he said, the governmentpress reported. He also ruled out the option of getting outof euro. "It doesn't make sense at all to get out of the euro,"he said. "With a strong currency, managers and entrepre-neurs have to restructure. They have to become more pro-ductive. And this is exactly what our exporting companieshave done," he said. "Why should we get out of the euro?It doesn't make sense at all. For us, it's out of the questionto get out of the euro." He would like to see a decrease inEuropean Union bureaucracy, with a reduction in complexlegislation that is being introduced almost every day whichhe argues is "asphyxiating companies". "We have to re-in-dustrialize Europe. We have to provide a level playing fieldfor our companies that are competing with companies out-side Europe," Santos Pereira said.

The ongoing economic turmoil is visiblyweighing heavy on France Telecom SA(FT). An announcement made by lastweek by the French telecommunicationsmajor that it was cutting down its divi-dend forecast somewhat upset the mar-ket. Alongside cutting the dividendestimate, the company has also backedoff from a promise to buy back shares.FT’s Chief Financial Officer GervaisPellissier said.

The 2012 payout would be in a rangeof €1.21 to €1.35 a share scrapping aprevious projection for €1.40 a share.Operating cash flow now is expected tobe about €8 billion ($10.6 billion) thisyear, declining from €9.3bn in 2011.“The economy is worse than we had ex-pected last year. “French sovereign debtwas downgraded,” Pellissier noted at aconference call on 22 February, stressingthat a strong balance sheet “is key in thiscontext”.

In line with Telefonica SA andTelekom Austria AG, the Paris- basedoperator of the Orange mobile-phonenetwork became the latest phonecompany to back away from dividendforecasts. France was among Euro-pean countries whose AAA ratingswere cut by Standard & Poor’s in Jan-uary, leaving Germany the euro-area’sonly stable AAA.

Deutsche Telekom AG was sched-uled to report earnings shortly, fol-lowed by Telefonica of Spain.Observers however welcomed theFT’s move noting that the company

still continues to be very attractive forinvestors compared with companiesfrom other industries.

The French operator had a dividendyield of 12.2% based on 21 February’sclosing price, compared with a Euro-pean industry average of 7.8%. TheFrench telco said it had pushed back aplan to use proceeds from recent assetsales to repurchase stock. As it refocusesbusiness on emerging markets, the com-pany began a review of its Europeanportfolio last year and has agreed to sellunits in Austria and Switzerland in thepast months.

“The financial circumstances are suchthat we cannot afford it today,” Pellisiersaid, adding: “It doesn’t mean there won’tbe a share buyback. It just means there

won’t be one in 2012.” The French com-pany expects pricing pressure will con-tinue in 2012 in its home market, whereit generates almost half of total sales,after Iliad SA began a discount service inJanuary under the Free brand.

The company’s fourth-quarter earn-ings before interest, taxes, depreciationand amortization (EBITDA) fell 3.9%in 2011 to €3.47bn. Sales slipped 2.6%to €11.43bn. France Telecom now ex-pects its footprint in the Middle-Eastand Africa should generate growthcomparable to the 6.8% reported in2011, excluding Egypt and IvoryCoast. “This year the growth inemerging markets was erased by thepolitical turmoil in Egypt and IvoryCoast,” Pellissier noted.

France Telecom cuts dividend

FRANCETELECOMS

Germany chemical giant BASF hasopened a new white biotechnologyand microbiology research centre inTarrytown, New York. In the labora-tory, biologists and biotechnologistswill work to develop more efficientbiotechnological production processesand – together with material re-

searchers – develop new antimicrobialproducts for medical technology, hy-giene and health care, The Companyreported on 22 February.

“The investment again demon-strates BASF’s commitment towhite biotechnology, one of thiscentury’s key technologies with vast

potential for innovation. Further-more the new lab is an importantstep on the way to an even moreglobally organized research, and avery good base for successful newalliances in North America,” saidHarald Lauke, Head of Biological& Effect Systems Research.

BASF launches US white biotechnology research lab

GERMANYCHEMICALS

Bayer CropScience and Texas AgriLife Research, a part of theTexas A&M University System, College Station, Texas, USAhave signed a multi-year agreement to develop and commer-cialise improved wheat varieties, The Company reported on 17February. Utilising Texas AgriLife Research’s extensive collec-tion of wheat cultivars and germplasm and Bayer’s expertise inboth classical and molecular plant breeding, the collaborationaims to bolster current development efforts and expedite thedelivery of higher yielding wheat varieties to market. Financialdetails of the collaboration were not released.

In particular, researchers and breeders at both institutionswill focus on developing wheat lines that offer improved

yields, as well as regionally important characteristics such asdrought resistance, disease resistance and improved quality.Texas AgriLife Research is a leading provider of Hard RedWinter Wheat germplasm for the Southern Great Plains re-gion of the US, and its collection will serve as a strong basisfor developing these new lines.

Additionally, the collaboration will focus on the developmentof molecular breeding tools to facilitate the rapid genetic im-provement of wheat. Combining both classical and modernbreeding techniques is expected to increase the rate of wheatyield improvement and allow wheat to thrive in areas with con-ditions which are unfavourable currently for wheat production.

Bayer CropScience, Texas AgriLife Research ink deal

GERMANYAGRICULTURE

A France Telecom Agency in Paris France. The French telecommunications major that it was cuttingdown its dividend forecast. |EPA/LUCAS DOLEGA

AUSTRIA · SLOVENIA · ITALY · MALTA

New Europe| Page 19

THE EUROPEAN UNION26 February - 3 March, 2012

ITALY|ECONOMY

No new cuts needed: Italy PMThe recessionary tail will not be fearsome for Italy and thecountry will not need to introduce new cuts to pull thestrings in order, Prime Minister Mario Monti last weekclaimed. In his comments which some observers saw as aneffort to assure the market, Monti asserted that the auster-ity measures already in place are sufficient to tackle the loom-ing economic challenges. However, he stressed on theimportance of improvement in the real economy. Accord-ing to the austerity budget approved in December, the Ital-ian government aims to restore a balanced public budget by2013. “We have been prudent,” Monti said, adding thatgrowth figures incorporated into this plan were “very mod-est” and borrowing costs were “very high” even though thejitters on financial markets have since fallen. Monti said therewould also be extra revenue flowing into state coffers from acrackdown on tax evasion which had not been included inthe budget.

MALTA|HEALTH

Malta signs MoU on health with LibyaMalta last week inked a memorandum of understandingwith Libya aimed at increasing bilateral cooperation in thehealth sector. Maltese Health Minister Joe Cassar co-signedan agreement along with his Libyan counterpart FatmaHamroush. Hamroush said after the signing ceremony thatshe was proud to be visiting Malta because the decisionstaken by the Maltese government saved the lives of thou-sands of people, during the time when the Libyan conflictwas at its worst. She also praised Malta’s decision to give po-litical exile to the two Libyan pilots who defected to Maltathis time last year to avoid bombing a village full of civilians.

AUSTRIA|EUROZONE

Escrow account for Greece can be the right optionMaria Fekter, the finance minister of Austria, last weeksupported the idea of creating a special account that wouldensure that Greece repays its debts. Fekter stressed thatGreece must be shadowed on its reform path so that themoney arrives where it is meant to. An escrow account toring-fence monies due to be repaid to governmental cred-itors "is currently being prepared at technical level, and the(Eurozone) finance ministers will discuss this intensivelyin their meeting," she said ahead of talks in Brussels on anew bailout to avert default. "I welcome such a special ac-count ... I think it is necessary to shadow the Greeks' re-form path on the one hand through technical support butalso through checks on how the money is spent, withoutinterfering in (Greece's) democratic rights," the Austrianminister explained. Fekter also said that the rest of the Eu-rozone would continue to support Greece "as long as itsticks to this painful reform path."

SLOVENIA|AGRICULTURE

Slovenia, FYROM in agricultural co-operationFYR Macedonia's Minister of Agriculture, Forestry andWater Economy Ljupco Dimovski met with Slovenian Am-bassador Alain Brian Bergant, referring to bilateral cooper-ation in the field of agriculture, with emphasis onpurchase-distribution centres, Balkans reported. MinisterDimovski briefed the ambassador that firms keen on in-vesting in purchase-distribution centres have the opportunityto get state-owned agriculture land, along with numeroustax benefits and swift company registration.

Setting aside the media speculationsand the contentions thereto, AustrianFinance Minister Maria Fekter re-cently confirmed that that talks withSwitzerland on bilateral tax agree-ment would start in April. Earlier re-ports citing the Austrian authority onsuch talks were turned down by theSwiss authority.

However, in her latest comment,Fekter said that a meeting with herSwiss counterpart Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf was expected to take placein April. The EU executive remainsopposed to such a bilateral tax deal.The Austrian authority aims to re-solve the issue of undeclared assetsheld in Switzerland by Austrian na-tionals though the deal.

Regarding the concern of the EC,Fekter stressed that she was confidentthat the government would be able toiron out any concerns that the com-mission may have. Last year, similaraffray were initiated after bilateral taxdeals were concluded betweenSwitzerland and the UK and Switzer-land and Germany.

These deals were pertaining to thetaxation of savings held by British andGerman investors in Swiss bank ac-counts. Undermining Switzerland’shopes of negotiating further bilateraltax agreements with individual Euro-pean Union member states, the Com-mission recently asserted that thetreaties are not compatible in theircurrent form with European law.

At issue are the longstanding dis-putes regarding undeclared assets heldin Switzerland by EU nationals. Thecommission argues that the tax dealsundermine the objective of the SavingsTax Directive, a mechanism which al-lows member states to tax certain in-vestments held by residents in othermember states and certain third coun-tries, including Switzerland.

The EU is proposing an automaticexchange of tax information to resolvesuch issues. Commissioner AlgirdasSemeta recently insisted that any bi-lateral agreement that violates the EUSavings Tax Directive or EU agree-

ments with third states is simply “notacceptable.” Banking secrecy must notbe allowed to protect tax evaders, hestressed.

The Austrian finance minister hasalso revealed plans to implement a re-form of the country’s current systemof taxation before autumn 2013. Thecentral aspect of the reform would bea planned simplification of the exist-ing tax system, a reduction in theentry rate of income tax, the intro-duction of a tax deduction for al-imony payments, and additional taxrelief measures for families, the min-ister explained.

AUSTRIA

FINANCE

The Slovenian civil engineering company Riko will build a€100 million complex featuring a five-star Kempinski Hotel,apartments and offices in the Belarus capital Minsk, InvestSlovenia reported. The complex was designed by the Moscow-based studio SPEECH LCC, while investor Elite EstateJLCC set the deadline for the construction of Kempinski atthe end of 2013 and for the entire compound in 2014.

Elite Estate will secure more than half of the money from itsown resources, while the rest will be funded from a loan takenwith an international consortium of banks.

The business daily Finance reported that the banks, headedby Slovenia's No 1 bank NLB, will extend a €48 million loanto the bank Sberbank Belorusija.

According to the daily, Slovenian companies will be able toget 40% of the business regarding the construction of the hotel,15% will go to Belarus companies and the rest to companiesfrom other countries.

Riko, which has a strong presence in countries of the formerSoviet Union, in particular in Russia, has been active in Belarusfor over a decade.

SLOVENIA BUSINESS

Riko wins Minsk construction deal

Egyptian Foreign Minister Moham-mad Amr was on an official tour toItaly last week wherein he partici-pated in talks with the Italian leader-ship on various bilateral andinternational issues.

The Egyptian minister was in theItalian capital primarily to attendthe 5+5 Dialogue and Mediter-ranean Forum (FOROMED) meet-ings. While addressing the journalistsin Rome, Amr said Italian invest-

ments in Egypt are witnessing a hugerise, vowing that Cairo is determinedto protect foreign investments in thecountry.

He said he was impressed by Italy'sconfidence in his country's nationaleconomy. Speaking at a meeting withhis Italian counterpart Giulio Terzi,Amr appreciated the role of Italian in-vestments in Egypt as reflecting theconfidence of Italian investors inEgypt's economic future.

Amr noted that there has been a re-cent influx of Italian investments inseveral production sectors in Egypt,together with Italian interest in devel-oping the sector of small andmedium-sized enterprises.

The minister asserted that hiscountry's foreign policy and diplo-macy attach much attention towestern and southern countries alikein which Italy retains a significantposition.

Egyptian FM pledges to protect Italian investments

ITALYINVESTMENT

Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter announced that discussion for a bilateral tax agree-

ment with Switzerland will start in April. |EPA/ALESSANDRO DELLA BELLA

Talks on Swiss tax deal

UK · BELGIUM · NETHERLANDS · LUXEMBOURGPage 20 |New Europe THE EUROPEAN UNION26 February - 3 March, 2012

NETHERLANDS|INVESTMENT

Private sector investments up 3%In December 2011, the volume of private sector invest-ments in tangible fixed assets was nearly 3% up on De-cember 2010. The increase was somewhat more substantialthan in November, when private sector investments wereover 2% up on one year previously, Statistics Netherlandsreported. The slightly larger growth in December can beattributed entirely to higher investments in the construc-tion sector. This is partly due to the working-day pattern.The number of working days in manufacturing industrywas down on one year previously, but the number of work-ing days in the construction sector was higher, because theChristmas holiday for construction workers started later.Weather conditions also played an important part. Theproduction process in the construction sector was ob-structed as working days were lost due to the severe weatherconditions in December 2010. In December 2011, weatherconditions were more favourable. Private sector invest-ments continue to be at a very low level.

BELGIUM|ECONOMY

Consumer confidence declinesfurther in FebruaryThe consumer confidence indicator fell further back inFebruary, bringing it down to its lowest level since April2009. The drop in the indicator is mainly the consequenceof greatly increased pessimism on the part of consumerswith regard to the unemployment outlook. Besides, theyexpect the general economic climate to decline further, theNational Bank of Belgium (BNB) reported. As far as theirown personal situation is concerned, households are ex-pecting a deterioration in their finances. In contrast, theirfuture saving capacity is estimated to be a little morefavourable than a month ago.

UK|FINANCE

Santander fined by UK's FSABritain's Financial Services Authority has fined Spanishbank Santander £ 1.5 million for failing to clarify a com-pensation procedure on some of its products, RTE Irelandreported on 20 February. The FSA said the Santander finerelated to "failing to confirm under which circumstancesits structured products would be covered by the FinancialServices Compensation Scheme (FSCS)." The FSA saidSantander had sold around £ 2.7 billion worth of struc-tured products - which are often complex savings products- between 2008 and the start of 2010 but had not ade-quately informed customers over the extent to which theycould be compensated on them. "Considering that sales ofthese products took place between 2008 and 2009, a timeof financial uncertainty, Santander should have movedmore quickly to confirm under which circumstances FSCScover would be available," Tracey McDermott, acting di-rector of enforcement and financial crime at the FSA, said.

LUXEMBOURG|GOVERNMENT

ALFI recruits new Comms DirectorThe Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry(ALFI) on February 16 announced the recruitment of MsAnouk Agnes as new Director for Communications andBusiness Development. Ms Agnes currently works as anAdvisor at the Ministry of Finance, with her main respon-sibilities related to the Government’s policy in favour ofthe development of the financial sector.

According to the Prof. Dr. K. Knot, thePresident of Dutch Central Bank, vande Nederlandsche Bank, to solve Euro-pean debt crisis and to bring debt ratioswell below the ceiling of 60%, a politi-cally independent European authority is“essential” that can enforce and anchorthe European fiscal rules in national leg-islation.

“This lower debt ratio can only be re-alised and maintained through inde-pendent enforcement of the Europeanfiscal rules and by anchoring these rulesin national legislation. A politically in-dependent European authority that canincreasingly intervene in the fiscal policyof countries breaking the agreements isessential here,” said Mr. Knot, who was

speaking at OMFIF (Official Monetaryand Financial Institutions Forum) at theArmourer’s Hall in London on the topic‘The Future of EMU and the Nether-lands' place in Europe’ on 17 February.

To find a structural way out of the cri-sis, he suggested strengthening ofmacroeconomic imbalances procedure,by increasing its focus and enforceabil-ity. This could be done, for instance, byintroducing more reversed QualitativeMajority Voting in these areas. “Anotherway would be to introduce minimumstandards or best practices in policy areaswhere spillovers have turned out to beespecially high, such as labour marketpolicies. Importantly, what should beavoided is harmonisation towards some

kind of EMU average, as this wouldforce strong countries to reduce theircompetitiveness,” the president elabo-rated.

Mr. Knot further explained that giventhe spillover effects of postponed struc-tural reforms on the functioning ofEMU, these reforms cannot be the soleresponsibility of the governments con-cerned, but should also have a “Euro-pean” dimension.

He also suggested that eurobondscould be a serious option. “Eurobondscould enhance the stability of EMU inseveral ways. They would prevent a liq-uidity problem in one euro area countryfrom needlessly transforming into a sol-vency problem.

Central Bank president advocates ‘politicallyindependent European authority’

NETHERLANDS FINANCE

HSBC is to overhaul the way it paysbonuses to UK staff following pres-sure from regulators to hold ontomore of its profits, Breaking Newsreported on 21 February.

The bank is to fund the cash partof any bonuses greater than £ 50,000by issuing new shares and sellingthem to raise money, meaning thatits capital reserves will not be de-pleted by the payments, according to

Sky News.The bank, which will report full-

year results this Monday, is to issuetens of millions of pounds worth ofnew shares, which will allow it tomake pay-outs to UK staff withoutjeopardising its financial security.

Bank of England governorMervyn King and Financial ServicesAuthority chief executive HectorSants have recently called on banks

to reduce the cash they pay out tostaff and investors.

Instead, they want banks to holdon to their money to help shorethem up against any future financialcrises.

Similarly, leading shareholdergroups such as the Association ofBritish Insurers have urged banks torebalance the sums paid to bank em-ployees and owners.

HSBC to rejig bonus payoutsUNITED KINGDOMBUSINESS

Partner Microcredit Foundation (MCF) and the EuropeanFund for Southeast Europe (EFSE) Development Facility,the technical assistance arm of Luxembourg-based EFSE(European Fund for Southeast Europe), have successfullycompleted a project on building awareness and raising thelevel of financial literacy for clients of the microcredit sectorin Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As part of this project, Partner MCF has created a brochureentitled "Guide to smart borrowing", which covers 12 indi-vidual topics related to finance. The EFSE Development Fa-cility supported the project by financing 50% of the printingcosts. The brochure provides answers to questions on doingbusiness with financial institutions and also to the various sit-uations in which any person who wishes to raise a loan or be

a guarantor for a loan can find themselves.A total of 100,000 brochures was printed and distributed

within the scope of the project. They will contribute to mak-ing the target population aware of all available funding pos-sibilities, understanding the responsibility they areundertaking when they decide to be guarantors and learningabout the best ways to successfully manage one’s own finances.

Particular emphasis is placed, in brochure, on all the im-portant details that require attention during the process of ap-plying for a loan or providing a guarantee for a loan.

The brochure provides relevant information on acceptableand unacceptable steps during the process of taking out a loanand on the provision of funds for financing business activitiesand other household needs.

MCF and EFSE raise financial literacy in BosniaBELGIUMEDUCATION

Klaas Knot, president of The Dutch Central Bank, pushed for a independent European organization to monitor and enforce fiscal rules as the way to solvethe European debt crisis and ensure that today's problems are solved for the future. |DNB.NL

POLAND · HUNGARY · CZECH REPUBLIC THE EUROPEAN UNION

New Europe | Page 21


POLAND|ENERGY

Helium generation facilityin Odolanów completedOn February 22nd 2012, an official celebration was held atPGNiG SA's Odolanów Branch to mark the completionof the modernisation process of helium facility inOdolanów. The reconstruction of the EU's only helium re-covery, purification and liquefaction facility commenced inMarch 2010 and ended in January 2012 with the launch ofa new hydrogen removal unit, helium liquefactor and liq-uefied helium storage facility, the Polish Oil and Gas Com-pany ‘Polskie Górnictwo Naftowe i Gazownictwo SA’(PGNiG SA) reported. Currently, the modernised plant isundergoing final tests as part of its commissioning. Totalcost of the modernisation work amounted to 27,734 thou-sand Polish zloty. The modernisation work has improvedthe plant's purification and liquefaction capacities. "Effi-cient and reliable work of our modernised helium facilityhas been a source of prestige to the entire PGNiG Group.The Odolanów Branch has been a reliable supplier of he-lium since its inception. Undoubtedly, the plant's location,relatively near to its customers, has been one of its major ad-vantages," said Marek Karabuła, Vice-President of theManagement Board of PGNiG SA, Petroleum Mining."The advanced helium liquefaction unit not only allows usto process a nearly 30% larger stream of helium, but willalso considerably reduce the amount of electricity neededto purify and liquefy the gas," Marek Karabuła added.Poland is one of the six countries in the world which sup-ply pure helium. PGNiG SA sells helium to Germany,France, the United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland, theBalkan states and Turkey, as well as to other countries.

HUNGARY|HEALTH

Debrecen inaugurates EU-funded health centreA HUF 10.6 billion development at a health centre in De-brecen, Hungary's second-biggest city, was inauguratedprevious Saturday, Budapest Business Journal reported on20 February. The Debrecen Health Centre developmentproject was inaugurated by National Resources MinisterMiklós Réthelyi, Hajdú-Bihari County government com-missioner Robert Racz and Debrecen Mayor Lajos Kosa. The health centre's director, Gyorgy Paragh, said the de-velopment involved the construction of a laboratory diag-nostic centre, as well as a central emergency, intensive careand internal medicine block. Several clinics were renovatedand the conditions for live donor transplantation were alsocreated, he added. The development was supported withEuropean Union funding.

HUNGARY|BUSINESS

Govt discuss consolidationof troubled sausage makerGovernment officials have met to discuss the situation oftroubled meat company Gyulai Huskombinat with a viewto supporting the sausage maker's more than century oftradition, the Rural Development Ministry said previousFriday, Budapest Business Journal reported on 20 Febru-ary. Rural Development Minister Sandor Fazekas, parlia-mentary group leader of governing Fidesz Janos Lazar andthe city of Gyula's MP Jozsef Kovacs met at the Rural De-velopment Ministry to discuss the company's consolida-tion, the ministry said. "The dialogue initiated in theinterest of the future of Gyulai Húskombinát is part of astrategy that makes state support available to traditionalcompanies that supply high-quality products," the min-istry said.Gyulai Huskombinat, established in 1868, is oneof Hungary's most famous sausage makers. It turns out12,000 tonnes of meat products a year.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Georgian coun-terpart Nika Gilauri agreed on the importance of estab-lishing a pipeline that will transport liquefied natural gas(LNG) from Azerbaijan to Central Europe via the BlackSea and Romania, Prime Minister's spokesman Peter Sz-ijjarto said on 17 February, Budapest Business Journalreported.

The state-owned Hungarian Electricity Works (MVM)became a shareholder in AGRI LNG, the project companyfor the pipeline, a year ago.

MVM shares ownership of the company with Romania's

ROMGAZ, the Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation(GOGC) and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Re-public (SOCAR).

The pipeline is expected to cost €4 billion - 6 billion tobuild. It will have annual capacity of 7 billion cubic meters.

The National Economy Ministry said previous Thursdaythat Hungarian and Georgian business representatives helda forum during Gilauri's visit to Budapest.

National Economy Minister Gyorgy Matolcsy and hisGeorgian counterpart Dimitri Gvindadze signed a doubletaxation avoidance agreement on 16 February.

Hungarian, Georgian PMs agree on importance of AGRI pipeline

HUNGARYENERGY

Czech CSSD split over presidential candidate

The Czech centre left social democratsremain divided over the issue of settlingtheir candidate for the impending pres-idential election. The leadership of theparty finally devised last week that theywould make both the aspiring candi-dates meet their members to ease theprocess of decision.

An internal debate will decidewhether the biggest Czech oppositionwill put up its own candidate SenatorJiri Dienstbier, the deputy chairman ofthe party, as their candidate or they willback independent candidate Jan Svej-nar. The final decision will be taken bythe party’s central executive committeein late May or early June. Now, bothcandidates would take part in meetingswith CSSD members and with “thepublic in all regions of the Czech Re-public” to reach a decisive stage, CSSDsaid.

Svejnar, a Czech-born professor ofeconomics known for his works in theUS, initially received backing fromCSSD during his affray with currentpresident Vaclav Klaus in the 2008presidential election. However, he is nota member of CSSD and many of his

views contradict that of the party asnone of them are left aligned.

That indeed stands as the principlenegative point for the presidential aspi-rant as many CSSD members are visi-bly sceptical on backing him onapprehension that the policy views ofSvejnar, if elected, would affect theparty’s left aligned support base.

In comparison, Dienstbier stands outas a strong contender. He is the son of aformer dissident and first foreign min-ister of former Czechoslovakia follow-ing the collapse of the Communistregime in 1989.

Dienstbier has long been a CSSDparty member and is riding high in thepopularity polls. He became a memberof the upper house of parliament, thesenate, in March 2011 with 65% of thevote in the second round run-off.

Meanwhile, local reports indicatedthat Svejnar might not stand in the firstdirect elections to be Czech head ofstate. Business daily Hospodarskenoviny reported on 20 February thatSvejnar has recently taken up a newprestige position at Columbia Univer-sity, New York, as professor of interna-

tional and public affairs.That had left him sceptical about the

option of joining the presidential fray,according to the report. Svejnar tooconfirmed that he had not decided yetwhether he would stand a second timeto be Czech president.

Some reports also indicated thatCSSD might opt to finally back neitherSvejnar nor Dienstbier but insteadthrow their weight behind the formernon-affiliated caretaker Prime MinisterJan Fischer. Fischer had already con-firmed he would run for the presidency.

Beside the centre left, the centre rightparty ODS also was facing dilemmaover fixing their candidate for the im-pending election. The names floatedthus far included the former head of theupper house, Premysl Sobotka, and thecurrent speaker of the lower house,Miroslava Nemcova.

Both already indicated that theywould want the party’s endorsement forthe presidential race. A constitutionalchange was passed by the senate earlierin February paving the way for directelections of the president for the firsttime.

CZECH REPUBLICELECTIONS

The Czech social democrats continue to debate over their candidate in the next presidential election who may next occupy Prague Castle as the

leader of the nation.| DEAN AYRES

SWEDEN · DENMARK · FINLAND· IRELANDPage 22 | New Europe THE EUROPEAN UNION26 February - 3 March, 2012

FINLAND|RELATIONS

Finland and Greece sign dealThe agreement, a condition for Finland's participationin the new €130 billion bailout package for Athens,stated that leading Greek banks will provide collateral incash and highly rated assets. Finnish Finance MinisterJutta Urpilainen and her Greek counterpart, EvangelosVenizelos, signed the deal in Brussels behind closeddoors on 20 February, YLE News reported. The loanguarantees cover 40% of Finland's share of the bailoutpackage. Under the deal, Greece will transfer one bil-lion euro in bonds into an escrow account. ShouldGreece default on its loan, Finland will see its money in15 to 30 years. Eurozone finance ministers were ex-pected to approve a second financing package for Greecelast Monday, which aims to reduce Greek debt towards120% of gross domestic product by 2020 from 160%now. Approval of the new, € 130-billion financing pack-age, which will come on top of a € 110-billion bailoutgranted in May 2010, will set in motion a debt restruc-turing that aims to halve Greece's privately held debt.Loan guarantees, spearheaded by Urpilainen's SocialDemocrats, became a key theme in last spring's parlia-mentary elections, which were characterised by wide-spread anti-EU sentiment. The bilateral accord has beena point of contention among other eurozone states.

DENMARK|BUSINESS

Carlsberg profits fall onweaker Russian salesCarlsberg, the world’s fourth-largest brewer, said on 21February that full-year profit declined 4.2% because ofa weaker Russian market and forecast no improvementthis year as sales fall in northern and Western Europe,Irish Times reported. Operating profit excluding someitems fell to 9.8 billion Danish crowns last year, theCopenhagen-based company said, adding that earningson that basis this year will be “at the level of 2011”.Carlsberg also said it plans to acquire the minority sharesin its Russian Baltika unit at a maximum cost of 4.4 bil-lion crowns. Carlsberg rose as much as 3.7% in Copen-hagen trading after “it took the market some time torealise that guidance was just cautious and that there wasnothing nasty lurking in the background”, said TrevorStirling, an analyst at Sanford C Bernstein in London.Buying the rest of Baltika will be “immediately earningsenhanc- ing” and provide “greater operational flexibil-ity”, the firm said. Carlsberg owns 85% of Baltika, Rus-sia’s biggest brewer, which has struggled with increasedlevies on beer and more stringent regulation of alcoholsales in Russia. The brewer said it expects “modestgrowth” in the Russian market this year, while northernand Western Europe will show low single-digit declines,and Asian markets will probably grow.

SWEDEN|HEALTH

India, Sweden to collaborate in health sectorIndia and Sweden will strengthen their collaboration inthe health sector during Swedish Health Minister GoranHagglund three-day visit to India that began on 20 Feb-ruary, an official said last Monday, it was reported. Theminister arrived here with a delegation comprising offi-cials of public agencies and Swedish companies active inthe field of healthcare and medical technology. Hag-glund would call on Health Minister Ghulam NabiAzad and take part in a number of seminars and visit anumber of public agencies and healthcare facilities, to ex-plore further potentials for India-Sweden collaborations.

It has been confirmed that the US company PayPal is to cre-ate 1,000 jobs, which will be based at a new centre in Dundalk,RTE Ireland reported.

200 jobs will be created immediately with the remaindercoming on stream over the next four years.

PayPal processess online payments and is a subsidiary of theonline auction site, EBay. The company already employs 1,000people in Blanchardstown.

The news has been warmly welcomed throughout the

north-east. The deputy chairman of Louth County Council,Michael O'Dowd, said the announcement was the culmina-tion of a lot of work while the County Manager Conn Mur-phy said it showed the area had much to offer.

Recruitment is expected to begin this summer.The PayPal operation will be involved in account manage-

ment and risk management, and will also provide customersupport for PayPal's operations in Europe, the Middle Eastand Africa.

1,000 jobs for PayPal centreIRELANDECONOMY

Drinks group Britvic Ireland has said it isplanning a number of cost-cutting meas-ures, including a reduction in staffingnumbers, as it continues to deal with a dif-ficult trading environment, RTE Irelandreported.

The company briefed staff on its plansearlier, though a figure has not yet beengiven on the size of the workforce reduc-tion sought.

Britvic announced plans to shed 100positions early last year, however the sizeof the latest reduction is understood to be

considerably lower than this.In a statement the company said the

measures were designed to restore com-petitiveness against the backdrop of amarket "undergoing a structural shift andsustained revenue contraction."

However the company also said it re-mains fully committed to the Irish marketand continues to manufacture the vastmajority of the soft drinks it sells in Ire-land.

At the end of January the group re-ported a 10% decline in revenue in its lat-

est quarter, compared with the same pe-riod a year earlier.

At the time Britvic said half of the rev-enue decline was due to third-partybrands, largely alcohol, which the com-pany distributes through the licensedwholesale business.

Britvic brands include Robinsons,Tango and MiWadi as well as PepsiCobrands such as Pepsi, 7Up and MountainDew Energy, which Britvic produces andsells in Britain and Ireland under exclu-sive agreements.

Britvic Ireland plans further cost reductionIRELANDJOBS

Youngman makes new Saab offer

Chinese company Youngman has made anew offer for Saab to the administratorsfor the bankrupt Swedish car-maker,confirmed the founder and owner of theYoungman concern Pang Qingnian on20 February, The Local reported.

He also said that he is ready to put in12 million Swedish crowns ($1.79 mil-lion) to develop new Saab models andthat cars would still be manufactured inTrollhattan in five years time.

“That's a condition,” he said addingthat rich Chinese consumers prefer to

buy cars manufactured in the west.However, he also said that Saab is tech-

nology and not just a brand.“We don't have the capacity to develop

the cars. And I would really want to keepmany from the old management group.”

According to Pang Qingnian, the massflight of the redundant workers is a prob-lem. “Without the employees it will beimpossible. It will have to move fast now,”Pang Qingnian added. He was not will-ing to elaborate on the bid, which was puton the table previous week, but previous

information has mentioned two billioncrowns. However, according to PangQingnian, the bid could go up should theadministrators be able to show the “rightevidence” that it is worth it, he said.

According to news agency TT, PangQingnian has long wanted a piece of theSwedish automaker, trying to buy intothe company as early as 2008, long beforeVictor Muller was involved. However, atthe time, General Motors turned himdown on the basis that they already hadtwo Chinese partners.

TRANSPORT SWEDEN

Chinese company Youngman has made an offer to Saab administrators. | EPA/Robin Utrecht

LATVIA · LITHUANIA · ESTONIA · SLOVAKIA

New Europe | Page 23THE EUROPEAN UNION26 February - 3 March, 2012

SLOVAKIA|ECONOMY

Minister: Downgrade not close to reality The recent warnings from ratings agency Moody's re-garding the fiscal health of Slovakia were not reallyaligned to the real settings as the country is firm on trackto achieve its target of cutting the deficit to less than 3%of GDP in 2013, Slovak Finance Minister Ivan Miklosrecently indicated. "I think that cutting deficit to under3% of GDP next year is realistic," Miklos emphasisedbefore journalists in Bratislava. "The new governmentwill have to cut the deficit from 4.6% this year to 2.9%next year," he said. European Union rules require thebloc's members to keep their public deficits -- the short-fall between state spending and revenue -- below 3% ofgross domestic product. Few nations in the 27-memberEU have thus far maintained the ceiling as many haveovershot the threshold by miles. Moody's recently cutSlovakia's rating by one notch to A2 and changed its out-look to negative, citing the country's exposure to weak-ening external demand, the key engine for itsexports-based economy. It also said a recent collapse ofthe centre-right government led by Prime Minister IvetaRadicova will challenge the country's fiscal consolidationtargets. Slovakia holds a snap election in March.

SLOVAKIA|POLITICS

Official pre-election campaign startsThe pre-election campaigns of 26 political parties regis-tered by the Central Election Committee of Slovakia forthe upcoming parliamentary elections took off recently. Theofficial go-ahead made way for them to present their goalsin the broadcast media. According to the Slovak ElectionLaw, the official campaign in the broadcast media starts 21days before the parliamentary elections. The public broad-caster, Radio and Television of Slovakia (RTVS), has to al-locate 30 minutes for each political party, with no morethan ten hours of broadcasting time in total. Another tenhours are set aside for discussion programmes. Moreover,RTVS is obliged to broadcast a message before airing thespots of political parties in order to distinguish them clearlyfrom other programmes. Because an election moratoriumdoes not apply to parliamentary elections in Slovakia, cam-paigning will continue up to and throughout the day ofelection. But the results of opinion polls taken during elec-tion day may not be published during the day.

LATVIA|BANKING

Latvian bonds rated BBB by FitchLatvia's $1bn bond issue received BBB rating from FitchRatings in line with the country’s long-term foreign cur-rency issuer default rating which has a stable outlook,local reports revealed last week. The international ratingsagency affirmed Latvia's foreign currency and local cur-rency long-term IDRs at BBB- and BBB, respectively,in December. Also Fitch had revised the outlook to sta-ble from positive. The latest bond issue was organisedbased on investors' interest in Latvian bonds and in ac-cordance with the government's borrowing strategy forrefinancing the international loan programme. Thebonds have been bought by investors from the UnitedStates, Europe and Asia, ensuring significant investor di-versification, the finance ministry emphasised. The bondissue was organised via HSBC, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan. Finance Minister Andris Vilks said that thebond issue was successful and it demonstrated interna-tional financial market participants' high opinion of theeconomic reforms in Latvia.

Lithuanian is keen to address the con-cerns of its internet users regarding thenew EU agreement designed to eradi-cate counterfeit practices, the govern-ment confirmed last week. Becomingthe latest in line, the Lithuanian gov-ernment recently made their way ontothe list of EU nations to suspend ratifi-cation of the controversial Anti-Coun-terfeiting Trade Agreement. They fearthe agreement, if is enacted, could hitInternet freedom.

"It was agreed that ACTA will not beput for ratification in the short run.There will be consultations," JusticeMinister Remigijus Simasius informedofficially after a government meeting."After the escalation of debate, a need todiscuss this issue seriously among insti-tutions and the public became evident,"he added. Earlier in his personal blog,Simasius had said that some provisionsof the treaty "raise serious questions" andhe "did not like it that the treaty was

signed while skillfully avoiding discus-sions in the EU and Lithuania."

Lithuania was among the 22 Euro-pean countries that signed the accord ata ceremony in Japan in January. Butfears that ACTA may curtail onlinefreedoms in the guise of attacking illegaldownloading and file-sharing havesparked angry protests from Internetusers across Europe. Recently, a six hun-dred strong rally took to the streets ofVilnius to protest against ACTA.

Vilnius halts ratification of ACTA

LITHUANIAINTERNET

About 75% of those taking part in thepoll on making Russian a second officiallanguage in the country voted againstthe idea on a 70% turnout. The referen-dum outcome thus ascertained that thestatus of Russian continues unchangedin the Baltic country where a major partof the population comprises of ethnicRussians. Ethnic Russian make upabout one-third of Latvia's 2.1 millionpopulation. Many of them have Latviancitizenship as decedents of the commu-nity from the pre-war republic whilemany others have adopted Latvian cit-izenship enthusiastically. Some othersare bilingual but refuse to consider ap-plying for citizenship. The non-citizenRussian speakers have restricted votingrights and are barred from some jobs.The referendum pushed the issue upthe political agenda, and entrenchedLatvian fears of assimilation and intim-idation by the big eastern neighbour.They fear that the local Russians (andRussia itself ) regards Latvian inde-pendence as a temporary aberration.Meanwhile, Russia claimed Latvia had"breached its international obligations"after the Baltic state declined to allow aRussian observer mission at the refer-endum. Latvia's decision caused "bewil-

derment," Russian foreign ministryspokesman Alexander Lukashevich saidin a statement.

"What we are talking about here isthat Riga ignored its international obli-gations. We demand an explanation,"Lukashevich said. The official claimedthat the ballot, called by the Russian-speakers' movement, Native Tongue,"did not fully reflect the mood in the

country." The Russian stance regardingthe referendum results met with criti-cism in the neighbouring Baltic Statesalso. Estonian MP Marko Mihkelsonsaid Russia's official position, in which itdid not recognise the results of the ref-erendum as fair, “unfortunately con-vinces us that polarisation anddeepening of internal tension in Latviaare in Moscow's interests."

Russian not an official language of Latvia

LATVIA HUMAN RIGHTS

The Estonian government looks poised to push forth withnew rules that would restrict providers of critically importantservices such as banking and telecom services from movingtheir servers abroad. According to local media reports, the Es-tonian interior ministry has already drafted amendments tothe Emergency

Act that would make it hard for banks to move their com-puter infrastructure completely off Estonian soil. The move,backed by Estonia’s Minister of the Interior Ken-Marti Vaher,is believed to be targeted against largely Swedish-ownedbanks centralising operations in their home country, includ-ing Swedbank that has already indicated it may move itsbanking data operations to its native Sweden by 2015.

According to the Estonian ministry, the amendment is nec-essary to ensure that banks, for instance, ensure provision ofcritical services, such as cash circulation and functioning of

domestic payments. The new amendment bill, as cited in thelocal media, argues that if information systems that are usedto provide critically important services such as card paymentsare physically located abroad, “there could be major problemsin ensuring their operability, in case of a breakdown of elec-tronic communication network that links Estonia with a for-eign country.”

The government considers the banks -- which in Estoniacan even issue PIN codes for electronic use of the primarynational identity document -- a vital public utility. Ministryundersecretary Erkki Koort stressed that the state needs theleverage to keep banks from repatriating the parts of theirservers that ensure that money is available from ATMs andbank branches. According to statistics, about half a millioncard payments are made in Estonia every day and it accountsfor 62% of all national payments in Estonia.

ESTONIATELECOMS

Banks and telcos may be forced to keep servers

People prepare to cast their ballots at a polling station as EU member Latvia holds a controversialreferendum on whether to make Russian its second official language, an issue that highlights eth-nic fault-lines in the ex-Soviet republic, Riga, 18 February 2012. |AFP PHOTO/ILMARS ZNOTINS

GREECE · CYPRUS · BULGARIA · ROMANIA

Page 24 | New Europe THE EUROPEAN UNION26 February - 3 March, 2012

ATHENS - If Greece implements theeconomic programme that has beenagreed, it will encourage investors to fi-nance projects and make the most of theMediterranean country’s unrealised po-tential in the renewable sector, EuropeanInvestment Bank (EIB) Vice PresidentPlutarchos Sakellaris told New Europeon 23 February. “The problem is funda-mental. The key issue is to implementthe economic programme that has beenagreed and that will definitely put awayany danger of disorderly default and is-sues about the eurozone. For me that’sthe most important thing and certainlythis agreement of last Monday-Tuesday(20-21 February) is a great step in thatdirection,” he said on the sidelines of aconference in Athens organised by theEIB titled “Tackling Climate Change:Making Green Growth a Reality”.

Also in Athens, EIB President WernerHoyer and Greek Environment, Energyand Climate Change Minister GeorgePapaconstantinou discussed Greece's€20-billion Helios solar energy project.Hoyer called Athens “his favourite city,”noting that the EIB has been very activelast year in Greece by dispersing morethan €2bn particularly for small andmedium industry and for infrastructureprojects. “We want to be very ambitious

again in the year 2012. Among theseprojects that we are interested in, are par-ticularly projects in the field of environ-ment, climate and energy. We have set upa conference today (23 February), here inAthens dealing with renewable energies,dealing with energy efficiency and simi-lar issues. I think this not a luxury issue;it is something that is very important alsoin view of the growth projects forGreece,” Hoyer said. “Among the bigones, in this context, we have talkedabout Project ‘Helios’ and I hope we aregoing to make progress in this issue todayin our talks, as well as I hope that we canmake progress on the agreements on themedium size industry, the systems for2012 just as well as for the big infra-structure programmes which are pend-ing in Greece and which we would liketo move forward,” he added.

Meanwhile, European ParliamentVice President Anni Podimata fromGreece told a conference in Brussels on24 February that “undoubtedly Europeneeds stability and growth to come outof crisis and the renewable energysources could open the way for improv-ing the European economy.”

In Athens, Sakellaris acknowledgedthat ‘Helios’ would help Greece attractmuch-needed foreign investment butcautioned that renewables alone is notthe way out of the crisis. “Renewables is

not the way out. But it’s one of the in-vestments that could enhance growthand productivity in Greece,” he toldNew Europe on 23 February.

He also said that the cold weather andpower shortages this month in Europeshowed that “there is a great need forinter-linkages, interconnectors and gridsin the region and this will be really im-portant”.

Regarding gas pipelines, Sakellarissaid the Southern Corridor is central inEU energy security. “There is the South-ern gas corridor which is important alsofrom that point of view. There is ITGI[Interconnector Greece-Italy], there isTAP [Trans-Adriatic Pipeline] andthere is the potential of Nabucco. All ofthese are big question marks” he said.

On 23 February, Yannis Maniatis,Deputy Minister of Environment, En-ergy and Climate Change, reiteratedGreece’s support for ITGI, despite anannouncement it has been excludedfrom negotiations with the Shah Denizconsortium developing the gas field off-shore Azerbaijan. He noted, however,that Greece as an EU member statewould ensure transparent co-operationin the framework of European rules.Maniatis was speaking at press confer-ence, presenting Greece’s plans to exploitits mineral wealth and especially exploreits oil and gas reserves.

GREECEENERGY

On 23 February, Greece's biggest refiner, Hellenic Petroleumsaid net profit, adjusted for the value of the company's oil in-ventory, stood at €17m, compared with analysts' average esti-mate of a €1.3m loss. Hellenic Petroleum said it reported apositive set of results, despite the challenging conditions forEuropean refiners, a difficult Greek market and shut-downsfor maintenance and upgrades.

Commenting on the results, Hellenic Petroleum’s CEO,John Costopoulos, stated: “2011 was a challenging year due tothe weak international refining environment and the on-going

recession in Greece. Within this background our performanceremains positive. Our focus on strengthening competitivenessthrough reorganisation, cost control, optimisation, risk man-agement and asset upgrades is yielding substantial benefits tothe business, that will become more visible in 2H12 as our re-fineries upgrade execution is on track. 2012 will be a positiveturning point for the Group’s earnings generation capabilityand shareholder value creation. Timely and flawless start–up ofthe upgraded Elefsina refinery remains our top priority for thenext few months.”

Hellenic Petroleum posts profit in Q4

GREECEENERGY

BULGARIA|BANKING

Russian VTB Bank to open office in Sofia VTB Bank, Russia’s second largest Russian bank, will offi-cially open an office in Sofia, news agencies reported. This ispart of the planned expansion of VTB Bank’s presenceabroad. VTB Bank had notified the Bulgarian NationalBank (BNB) that it would begin activity in Bulgaria throughits subsidiary investment company registered in the UK -VTB Capital thus avoiding the necessity to receive a licensefrom the central bank.

BULGARIA|TRADE

River, sea freight traffic declines in Q4Bulgaria's maritime and river freight trade saw a 33.7% year-on-year decline in the last quarter of 2011, according to datafrom the National Statistical Institute published on 24 Feb-ruary. The decline is massive in both maritime and riverfreight traffic: the freight volume of Bulgaria's sea trade de-clined by 43.2% in Q4 2011, while the Danube River freightquantity went down by 21%. At the same time, the numberof passengers who used Bulgaria's Black Sea transport linesdeclined by 2.3% year-on-year, even though their total exactnumber was not released.

ROMANIA|MINING

EU approves aid for closure of 3 coal minesThe European Commission has authorised 1169 millionRomanian lei (approximately €270 million) of publicfunding for the closure of three uncompetitive coal min-ing units owned by National Hard Coal Company JSCPetrosani (CNH SA). The Commission said it found themeasure to be in line with EU state aid rules because pro-duction aid will decrease over time and Romania com-mitted to carry out accompanying measures to mitigatethe social and environmental impact of the closure.Na-tional Hard Coal Company JSC Petrosani is a publiclyowned company and the only company producing coal inRomania. It currently owns seven coal production unitsand Romania has decided to close three of them, which areconsidered uncompetitive. One of the mines would closeby the end of 2015 (Petrila Colliery) and the other two bythe end of 2017 (Uricani and Paroseni Collieries). Theclosure plan notified by Romania results in a gradual de-crease of the overall amount of aid granted to cover pro-duction costs, in line with the Council Decision. Moreover,the plan includes measures to mitigate the environmentalimpact of the production of coal.

CYPRUS|DIPLOMACY

Samaras: Cyprus problem a top priority for GreeceThe Cyprus problem remains a top priority for the Greekgovernment – despite its financial woes - Greek NewDemocracy party leader Antonis Samaras said on 20 Feb-ruary. Speaking after a meeting with President DemetrisChristofias, Samaras said: “Cyprus and Greece are two in-dependent states, however the two countries belong to thesame nation.” He underlined the need for a solution to theCyprus problem that will be viable and just and will end theisland’s Turkish occupation. Samaras also said that duringthe meeting with President Christofias, they discussed thelatest developments regarding hydrocarbon exploration inCyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and that the nat-ural wealth in both Cyprus and Greece can lead to a jointstrategy in economic matters.

The European Investment Bank said that renewables is one of the investments that could enhance growth and productivity in Greece. |EPA/INGO WAGNER

By Kostis Geropoulos

Greek renewables: If you built it, investors will come

NORWAY · ICELAND · SWITZERLAND

New Europe | Page 25PARTNERS26 February - 3 March, 2012

Statoil confirms indications of gas offshore TanzaniaNorway's Statoil and partner ExxonMobil have con-firmed that the Zafarani-1 well in Block 2 offshoreTanzania has encountered indications of natural gas ina good quality reservoir, Norway Post reported on 18February.

They said in a press release that drilling operationsare still on-going and it is too early to give any indica-tion of size and commerciality.

The well was spudded in early January 2012 anddrilling operations are expected to take up to a total of3 months to complete.

The well is being drilled by the drill ship Ocean RigPoseidon and is located some 80 kilometres off main-land Tanzania.

It is the first exploration well that has been drilled inthe licence, which covers an area of approximately5,500 square kilometers. The water depth at the welllocation is 2,582 meters and the well itself is plannedto reach a total depth of 5,150 meters.

Statoil operates the licence on Block 2 on behalf ofTanzania Petroleum Development Corporation(TPDC) and has a 65% working interest with Exxon-Mobil Exploration and Production Tanzania Ltd.holding the remaining 35%.

Statoil has been in Tanzania since 2007 when it wasawarded the licence for Block 2.

NORWAYOIL

Canadian company acquire major mineral rights in NorwayThe Canadian exploration companyDalradian Resources Inc has an-nounced that it has entered into anagreement with a group of private ven-dors to acquire approximately 1.7 mil-lion hectares of mineral rights inNorway, Norway Post reported on 17February.

In a press release Dalradian said it has

indirectly acquired approximately 1.7million hectares of mineral rights overfour greenstone belts and a historic sil-ver mining camp in Norway.

The properties comprise more thanfive per cent of the aggregate landmassof Norway, and include both the his-toric Kongsberg silver mining districtand the Norwegian extension of the

greenstone belt which hosts Agnico-Eagle Mines Limited's Kittila produc-ing gold mine and Anglo American'srecently announced Sakattilampinickel-copper discovery, both in Fin-land. Dalradian is a Canadian-based ex-ploration company engaged in theacquisition, exploration and develop-ment of mineral properties.

NORWAYBUSINESS

Chocs away in 2011During 2011, the Swiss chocolate industry was unableto maintain intact the promising gentle upswing seen in2010. Although the quantities sold remained more or lessthe same, the turnover across the industry fell by 3.1% to1,690 million Swiss francs. The decrease in turnover in the export business can beattributed largely to the strength of the Swiss franc. Thepricing pressure in the retail trade and the consumer con-fidence left their traces on the domestic market. Of totalproduction, 60.7% was sold abroad (previous year:60.4%).

NS. Switzerland's 18 chocolate manufacturers weremore or less able in 2011 to sustain the positive result of2010 in terms of quantity with 176,332 tonnes (- 0.1%).They fared less well in terms of value, however.

The reduced sales could also have been influenced bythe exceedingly warm spring and the on the whole ab-normally warm summer and autumn of 2011. The de-cline in tourist numbers compared with the previous yearhas also had a negative effect on sales. Sales on the do-mestic market by Swiss manufacturing companies

amounted to 69,281 tonnes, or 0.8% less than in the pre-vious year. The highest rates of growth were achievedwith chocolate mini-formats (15.4%), and with festivearticles (12.7%). Turnover on the domestic market fell by3.2% to 870 million franc. This disproportionate declineis explained partly by the pressure on prices from thetrade.

The share of imported chocolates consumed on thedomestic market increased again slightly, after havingdipped in the previous year for the first time in nine years.This amounted to 34.0% (previous year 33.2%).

In 2011, the Swiss chocolate industry was able toachieve a further slight increase in volume in the exportbusiness. Foreign sales reached 107,051 tonnes, repre-senting growth of 0.4%. At the same time, turnover invalue terms fell by 2.9% as a result of the continuingstrength of the Swiss franc and the weakening economyin the euro area. It amounted to CHF 820 million. Thelargest growth in manufactured products was achievedwith chocolate mini-formats (29.7%) and with bars andsticks (18.1%).

SWITZERLANDINDUSTRY

SWITZERLAND|TELECOMS

French sell Swiss Orange to UKThe Swiss Competition Commission (Comco) saidon 17 February that it had approved British buyoutfirm Apax's purchase of Orange Switzerland fromFrance Telecom, Swiss Info reported. It was an-nounced in December 2011 that the number three inthe Swiss telecoms market would be sold to Apax for2 billion Swiss Francs ($2.2 billion). However, themove was subject to the go-ahead from the Swiss au-thorities. In a statement, Comco said that it had noobjections to the deal. “The preliminary check has notfound any evidence that the planned purchase wouldcreate or reinforce a market dominant position,” itsaid. The French telecom firm's original plan, tomerge Orange Switzerland with Sunrise to bettercompete with market leader Swisscom, was blockedby the competition body in 2010. Founded in 1999,Orange Switzerland had 1.6 million customers as ofthe end of September 2011. It employs around 1,200people. Its turnover was 1.3 billion Francs in 2010.

ICELAND|COMMUNICATIONS

Reykjavík to host internetmarketing conferenceIceland’s capital, Reykjavík, is to host the 9th annualReykjavík Internet Marketing Conference (RIMC),at the Hilton Nordica in Reykjavík on 9th March. Therenowned online communications event is set to fea-ture presentations from well-respected marketingleaders from stakeholders such as Facebook, BBC,Adobe, and Microsoft, IceNews reported. Accordingto the conference chair, and founder of Nordic eMar-keting, Kristján Már Hauksson, RIMC 2012 will befocusing on two tracks; one focusing on internet com-munication and marketing, and the other on bestpractice tips and Social Marketing. For the first time,the internet marketing conference will also be holdingthe miscellaneous ‘Dark Sessions’, featuring MikkelDeMib, Peter Van Der Graaf, and Fantomaster. Thissession will be focusing on the ‘darker side’ of internetmarketing. Amongst the speakers already confirmedfor RIMC 2012 include: Eli Pariser, The Filter Bub-ble; Bill Hunt, Back Azimuth; Ben Chapman, BBC;Charles Dowd, Facebook; Brent D. Payne, Trib-une/BaldSEO; Motoko Hunt, Adobe; Phil Green-wood, Microsoft; and Matt Neal, Bright Sparx.RIMC is an essential networking tool for marketingand advertising people, web editors, sales and market-ing managers, as well as directors of small and largebusinesses. The conference is also ideal for anyonewho is interested in business on the Internet.

SWITZLERLAND|TOURISM

Decline of 2% in overnightstays in 2011According to final results from the Federal StatisticalOffice (FSO), the number of overnight stays regis-tered in the Swiss hotel industry in 2011 was 35.5million, Federal Statistical Office reported. This rep-resents a fall of 2% (-722,000 overnight stays) com-pared with 2010. Domestic visitors generated 15.8million overnight stays, which represents a slight de-crease of 0.1% (-13,000 overnight stays). Foreign de-mand registered 19.7 million overnight stays, i.e. adecline of 3.5% (-709,000 units). However, only theovernight stays by visitors from the European conti-nent (excluding Switzerland) showed a decrease,which amounted to 7.3% (-1.1 million units).

Statoil and ExxonMobil have confirmed a well in offshore Tanzania hasencountered indications of natural gas in a good quality reservoir. |CREDIT:

EPA/ERIK JOHANSEN NORWAY OUT

CROATIA · ALBANIA · SERBIA · BiH

Page 26|New Europe CANDIDATES26 February - 3 March, 2012

CROATIA|BUDGET

Government introduce 2012 budget proposalDuring a recent Cabinet meeting, Croatian Prime MinisterZoran Milanović stated that the government had introduceda budget proposal for this year. The budget proposal envis-age expenditures at HRK 118.84 billion, HRK 3.4 billionless than last year and revenues at HRK 108.95bn which isrise by 1.4% than in 2011, Javno reported. Commenting onthe budget proposal, the premier said that the budget is re-alistic and geared towards development and protecting thosegravely affected by the crisis. He is confident that the afore-said measures will stimulate growth and development in thecountry. The budget deficit is planned at HRK 9.9bn, or2.8% of GDP. It was also noted that the government hadreduced expenditure on public-sector employees by HRK1.95bn. Meantime, material expenditure got a cut by HRK317 million and expenditure on subsidies reduced by HRK1.2bn (subsidies to agriculture were reduced by 817m andthe Croatian Rail (HZ) company by 543m). The govern-ment prognosis claims that that the economic growth forthis year will be 0.8% and inflation at 2,4%.

BiH|INFRASTRUCTURE

EBRD approves loan for roadThe European Bank for Reconstruction and Developmentapproved a €28.5 million sovereign loan to Brčko town innorthern Bosnia and Herzegovina to support road construc-tion, reads a press release. The 15-year loan, with a three-yeargrace period, will be used to build a 19 km circular road aroundthe town and connect the main east-west route in northernBosnia currently passing through the town centre, the Lon-don-based lender said on its website. The project will help easethe traffic congestion in the town and will bring environmen-tal benefits by reducing the flow of traffic in the town centre.The EBRD investment will contribute to strengtheningBrčko District’s development and economic growth. The totalcost of the project is estimated at €45m. Local authorities willprovide €16m and the EBRD will add a €500,000 grant fromthe Western Balkans Investment Framework as technical as-sistance for the project. “The EBRD is a key investor inBosnia’s infrastructure. This latest project is the Bank’s firstcollaboration with Brčko District and we are pleased to sup-port its development. The new bypass will provide the townand the District with better and safer transport links, will cutair pollution, bringing considerable benefits to the District’sresidents and businesses, and to the country’s economy over-all”, said Libor Krkoska, Head of EBRD Resident Office inBosnia and Herzegovina. Miroslav Gavrić, mayor of BrčkoDistrict said that the Brčko Bypass project is the largest in-vestment so far in Brčko District BiH.

ALBANIA|BANKING

Albania, WB sign loan agreementThe Albanian government and the World Bank recently inkedan agreement for the additional financing loan of EnergyCommunity of South East Europe APL Programme – APL5 for Albania Dam Safety Project, AENews reported. Over-all cost of the project is $21.6 million. The pact was signed bythe Republic of Albania by Minister of Finance Ridvan Bodeand Albanian Energy Corporation (KESH) was representedby its Director Engjell Zeqo while Country Manager KseniyaLvovsky signed on behalf of the World Bank. The extra loancomplements the original loan of $35.3m and will protectthree major hydropower plants on the River Drin cascade inorder to prevent flooding. Besides, the loan will also improvethe operational efficiency and enhance the stability of powersupply for the regional electricity market.

The long and tough dialogue betweenSerbia and Kosovo yielded results on 24February, after nearly 30 hours of nego-tiations in Brussels stretching over threedays. Representatives of Belgrade andPristina agreed on paramount issues ofKosovo's regional representation and in-tegrated management of borders.

The solution was eventually found ina footnote next to Kosovo's name whichrefers to the UN Resolution 1244 from1999 on Kosovo, and the opinion of theInternational Court of Justice (ICJ) onKosovo's independence.

The footnote explains that the nameKosovo does not imply or prejudicatethe status of Kosovo and that it is in linewith UN Resolution 1244 and the deci-sion of the ICJ on Kosovo's declarationof independence.

In essence, the Serbian delegation in-sisted on a reference to resolution 1244,which Belgrade perceives as a confirma-tion of its territorial integrity, whileKosovo's representatives demanded theinclusion of the ICJ opinion, which theyperceive as a source of legitimacy for in-dependence.

Representatives of the EU welcomedthe agreement as a major step forward.The EU High Representative for For-eign Affairs and Security Policy, Cather-ine Ashton, congratulated both partieson substantial agreements. She stressedthat these agreement put into effect theagreement on integrated managementof crossing points and consolidate re-gional cooperation and representation ofall parties, which were major prerequi-sites for European integrations.

Enlargement Commissioner ŠtefanFüle stressed that the deal reached be-tween Belgrade and Pristina “reinforces

regional cooperation, good neighbourlyrelations and the Enlargement agendain the Western Balkans region” anddemonstrates mutual commitment toEuropean future of both parties.

This agreement was widely regardedas all or nothing for Serbia’s chances ofcandidate status for the EU member-ship during the Council session on 28February, with failure to reach an agree-ment meaning almost certain rejectionof candidacy once more.

Other issues that were also discussedduring the European Council session on9 December, which initially rejectedSerbia's candidacy as necessary for beinggranted the status, including completeabolishment of all institutions of theSerbian state in Kosovo.

It was a request strongly defended byGermany, but Serbs from Kosovo or-ganised a referendum on this issue on 15and 16 February, and rejected it withoverwhelming majority of over 99%.However, authorities in Belgrade de-nounced the referendum as unconstitu-tional and announced that for theupcoming general elections there wouldbe no polling stations in Kosovo despiteconstitutional obligations “due to tech-nical difficulties” relating to co-ordina-tion with representatives of theinternational community.

Kosovo’s Prime Minister HashimThaci said on 23 February that theagreement means that “Serbia will berecognising the independence ofKosovo”, which would facilitate bothcountries' path towards EU integration.Thaci also reiterated he was prepared toaccept that Kosovo would be repre-sented at regional fora with a referenceto the UN Resolution 1244.

Kosovo assistant foreign ministerPetrit Selimi said on 24 February thatthe agreement would lead to Kosovo’smembership in 36 regional organisa-tions and pave a way to opening an of-fice in Belgrade. “Kosovo and Serbia willsit at the same table,” Selimi said, andadded that Pristina had rejected theasymmetric representation which im-plied that Kosovo could only be an ob-server because it wanted to be afull-fledged member of the regional ini-tiatives.

The negotiations in Brussels and wereaccompanied by a flurry of diplomaticactivity. Allegedly, earlier in the weekKosovo's authorities send a letter to theheads of the EU member states, de-manding that Serbia's candidacy bepostponed again. As a response, Serbialaunched a diplomatic counter-offen-sive, including a phone conversation be-tween the country's president BorisTadić and the EU High RepresentativeCatherine Ashton on 23 February.

Additionally, following pressure fromthe French, Italian and Austrian foreignministers to grant Serbia candidate sta-tus, the German foreign minister GuidoWesterwelle suddenly decided to visitBelgrade on 23 February. He recognisedand encouraged the progress Serbiamade in relationship-building withKosovo, and efforts put into the imple-mentation of agreements reached inDecember 2011.

However, in addition to integratedborder management, Belgrade andPristina have also reached deals on trade,freedom of movement, cadastral registryand mutual recognition of universitydiplomas, although none of which havebeen ratified as yet.

Belgrade-Pristina negotiationssaved by a footnote

SERBIADIPLOMACY

Agreement between Belgrade and Pristina was reached under the watchful eye of the EU. |Credit: the Council of the European Union

Turkish and Chinese companies havesigned deals worth $1.4bn during a visitto Istanbul by Chinese Vice PresidentXi Jinping, news agencies reported. On22 February, Xi attended a businessforum in Istanbul after meeting withTurkish officials in the capital, Ankara.Turkey’s Economy Minister ZaferCaglayan said that in addition to thenew deals the governments are study-ing ways to facilitate trade.

Trade relations between China and

Turkey will deepen in the coming years."Trade frictions between China andTurkey are inevitable as bilateral tradevolume expands and the global eco-nomic slowdown intensifies exportcompetition between the two fast-growing economies," China Dailyquoted Li Guofu, director of the Cen-ter of Middle East Studies in China In-stitute of International Studies, assaying. "But the bilateral trade prospectsare broad and will not be affected by

trade frictions as China's fast develop-ment also benefits Turkey," Li said.

China is the third-biggest trade part-ner of Turkey, according to the TurkishStatistical Institute. Trade volume be-tween China and Turkey surged by 24percent year-on-year to $24.2bn lastyear. Trade is expected to reach $50bnin 2015 and $100bn in 2020, a goal setby Premier Wen Jiabao and his Turkishcounterpart Recep Erdogan during hisvisit to Turkey in October 2010.

TURKEY · FYROM · MONTENEGRO

New Europe |Page 27CANDIDATES26 February - 3 March, 2012

MONTENEGRO|METALS

Government to gain control over KAPMontenegro’s government recently announced that it wouldgain full control over the indebted aluminium plant Kombi-nat Aluminijuma Podgorica (KAP). The decision was takenfew weeks back when it was forced to assume a big debt(nearly €132mn) that KAP owed to foreign creditors, Mon-tenegro Times reported. Presently Montenegro and theRussian conglomerate EN+ own a controlling stake in KAP.The EN+ Group owns 29.7% (the company gave the Mon-tenegrin government half of its 58% stake in the plant in2010). The remaining stake is owned by several small share-holders. Since it is the only aluminium plant in the country,KAP is an important factor for the economy. The fall inmetal prices have entailed loss for KAP since 2009. MiloradKatnic, Finance Minister said the government is trying togain more control over the situation in KAP and define poli-cies and procedures related to aluminium production. Hehowever refused to comment whether the takeover meantan immediate breach of the EN+ contract.

MONTENEGRO|TRADE

Liechtenstein ratifies EFTA deal with MontenegroThe government of Leichetsein recently ratified EFTA freetrade agreement with Montenegro. Similar report and ap-plication related to the agreement to parliament was alsosubmitted, Montenegro Times reported. Regarding theEFTA FTA with Montenegro, signed in Geneva on 14 No-vember 2011, the government underlined that Montenegrocurrently has significant growth potential.

FYROM|DEFENCE

FYROM accelerates NATO membership effortsFormer Ambassador to FYROM Risto Nikovski recentlystated that FYROM is adopting a diplomatic offensive toattain NATO as well as EU membership at the upcomingChicago summit in May, MRTOnline reported. But hestressed that FYROM is not married to NATO or EU andnoted that many countries are not even members of the al-liances yet they are prosperous and successful. Meantime, theopposition has slammed the government for sending mixedmessages to Brussels while announcing it pursues a diplo-matic offensive for Chicago. Social Democratic Union VicePresident Gordan Georgiev said they have questioning thePremier whether FYROM has other alternatives as withoutNATO the road is very steep and tough. Opposition LiberalDemocratic Party representative Nano Ruzhin blames thegovernment's strategy for diminishing FYROM's Euro-At-lantic prospects long-term.

FYROM|ENERGY

ELEM power plantsto import electricityThe FYROM Power Plants (ELEM) recently announcedplans to purchase the required quantities of electricity for pe-riod 16-29 February from four selected companies. The elec-tricity would be acquired at average prices of €155.75 perMWh, MRTOnline reported. A decision regarding the pur-chase or annulment of the procedure for period March 1-15will be passed in due time. ELEM said in a statement thatconsidering the average procurement price which is lowerthan the one produced in thermal power plant Negotino,this capacity remains at disposal as “cold reserve”. The aver-age price of produced electricity from the Negotino plant isabout €160 per MWh.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, with China's Vice-President Xi Jinping before their meeting at Erdogan's office in Istanbul, 21,February 2012. |AFP PHOTO/TURKISH PRIME MINISTER OFFICE/KAYHAN OZER

Turkey's Interior Minister Idris NaimSahin and visiting Mauritania's Interiorand Decentralisation Mohamed OuldBoilil recently inked a security co-op-eration agreement in Ankara, Zamanreported. After the inking of the agree-ment, Sahin said that Turkey and Mau-ritania were determined to boost their

relations especially in security, popula-tion, local administration and similarareas. He said that the agreement en-visages co-operation against terrorism,organised crime, cyber-crimes, histori-cal artefact trafficking, illicit drug traf-ficking, human trafficking, illegalmigration, and illegal arms trade. He

also stated that Turkey is willing toshare expertise with Mauritania aboutpopulation and citizenship regulationand local administrations. Citing sig-nificant economic co-operation be-tween Turkey and Mauritania, Boililsaid that Turkish businessmen are al-ways welcome in Mauritania.

Turkey, Mauritania sign pact on security co-operation

TURKEYDIPLOMACY

GE has reinforced its position as a major supplier to Turkey’srising private sector. The company secured contracts to sup-ply equipment and services for a new gas-fired power plantin the Erzin district of southern Turkey, Zaman reported. TheEgemer Elektrik Uretim A.S. (Egemer) Erzin combined-cycle gas turbine power plant will generate 900 megawatts,enough to meet 2.6% of Turkey's current electricity require-ments. The power plant will add an incremental 1.6 percentto Turkey's installed generation capacity of 53 gigawatts. Itshould be noted that Egemer is owned and operated by oneof Turkey's leading energy investors, Akenerji.

GE will supply two Frame 9FB Gas Turbines and threegenerators to the Egemer Elektrik Uretim A.S. - Erzin gas-fired power plant. GE has also inked a 12-year service agree-ment to provide planned and unplanned maintenanceservices to help ensure the long-term, reliable operation of

the equipment. The plant will generate highly flexible andefficient electric power with the use of advanced technology.The plant will be equipped with an advanced combustionsystem to help maintain compliance with environmentalemissions criteria to meet European standards. The new Ak-enerji project is designed to provide greater levels of efficiencyand flexibility while maintaining excellent environmental per-formance. Ahmet Dansman, CEO of Akenerji said that thebooming Turkish economy is increasing the need for moreelectricity which is met through the private sector.

To attain success in this sector, he stressed the relevance ofcollaborating with GE as it can provide proven, reliable andefficient power generation technology. "This combined-cyclepower plant will be one of the most efficient power stationsin the region," said Ricardo Cordoba, regional president ofGE Energy.

GE-Powered Plant to help meet electricity demand

TURKEYENERGY

Ankara, Beijing hail trade ties

TURKEYDIPLOMACY

UKRAINE · MOLDOVA · BELARUS

Page 28 |New Europe NEIGHBOURHOOD26 February - 3 March, 2012

BELARUS|TRANSPORT

Transport Ministry to increase export of services Companies of the Transport and Communications Ministryof Belarus plan to increase the export of services by 18% thisyear, Transport and Communications Minister IvanShcherbo said. “Transport companies are set to increase theexport of their services by 18% and make up trade surplus atleast at $955 million to meet the plan confirmed by the na-tional export development program for 2011-2015,” theminister said. Special attention in 2012 will be put on im-provement of the technology of rail freight traffic by directspecialized and high-speed trains. To develop freight trafficincluding transit from China to Western Europe the Be-larusian Railways will continue the implementation of thejoint action plan with the Kazakhstan Railways, strengthen-ing of bilateral and multilateral relations with the railways ofthe CIS and Baltic. Work will be intensified on the agree-ment to develop freight transportation on the Baltic Sea-Black Sea route and on the project to transport goods bycontainer trains “Viking” and “Zubr” attracting additionalcargo flows to the port of Illichevsk (Ukraine). The Belaru-sian Railways together with the German Railways will con-tinue the project to transport Volkswagen spare parts to/fromKaluga through Brest on the existing routes and set up a newroute to Nizhny Novgorod. In addition, in 2012 containertrains will continue transporting BMW spare parts fromLeipzig (Germany) to Shenyang (China), and also HewlettPackard products from Chun-Qin (China) to Duisburg(Germany). In the field of air transport, the new regular flightMinsk-Moscow-Minsk will be opened; flights Minsk-Kaliningrad-Minsk will be made more frequent.

BELARUS|DIPLOMACY

UAE-Belarus discuss bilateral relations Bilateral relations between the UAE and Belarus and waysto enhance co-operation between them were discussed byDirector of Europe at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs SheikhAbdullah Bin Mohammed Bin Butti Al Hamed and Am-bassador of Belarus Alexander Semeshko. Co-operation be-tween the UAE and Belarus was discussed at the meeting inlight of the recent visit by Belarusian Prime Minister to theUAE where he met with Vice President and Prime Minis-ter and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid AlMaktoum. The two countries established ambassador-leveldiplomatic relations in 1992. The three flights a week toMinsk from the UAE reflect the growing relations betweenthe two countries. Belarus is a member of the UAE-basedInternational Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

MOLDOVA|AGRICULTURE

Moldova to harvest a 30% smaller milling wheat cropMoldova’s 2012 milling wheat crop is expected at some 240KMT, i.e. about 100 KMT, or 30% less than in 2011, saidthe Agriculture Minister. Winter crops in Moldova wereimpacted by a drought in 2011, a soil moisture deficit, andthis winter’s severe frost, news agencies reported. About 340KMT of milling wheat is needed to meet the country’s do-mestic demand. About 50 KMT of milling wheat is avail-able in the state reserves and it is planned to purchaseanother 10 KMT by the end of February 2012. In addition,Moldova imports 2-3 KMT of flour a month. According toofficial information, winter crops were planted on more than345 Th ha this year, including 272 Th ha of wheat, 50 Thha of barley and 23 Th ha of rape. The Agriculture Ministrypreliminarily estimates that frost killed over two thirds ofrape plantings and damaged at least a third of wheat andbarley crops.

The daughter of former prime ministerand her colleagues continue to fight forthe liberation of the Ukrainian opposi-tion leader. Yevheniya Tymoshenko, thedaughter of Yulia Tymoshenko, hasasked the Organisation for Securityand Cooperation (OSCE) to investi-gate the facts of abuse of the legal sys-tem of the regime of UkrainianPresident Viktor Yanukovych.

"The OSCE can use its investigatorypowers to examine the human rights sit-uation in my country. Under your rule oflaw initiative, you can examine howUkraine's legal system is being system-atically twisted to conform to PresidentYanukovych's will," she said at a meet-ing of the Committee on Democracy,Human Rights and HumanitarianQuestions of the OSCE ParliamentaryAssembly, according to a statementposted on Tymoshenko's Web site.

Tymoshenko's daughter also saidthat the international community

should demonstrate solidarity withthose defending democratic values inUkraine.

"It is not too late for my mother. Andit is not too late for Ukraine. But thedarkness is gathering. Demonstrateyour resolve and solidarity for the sakeof our common democratic future! Doit for freedom in Europe," she said.

"We can and will defend our free-doms, and I believe that there are prac-tical steps to help us that you can take,not for my mother’s sake, but for thesake of all Ukrainians who look to youwith hope," she said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Parliament'sCommissioner for Human RightsNina Karpachova spoke on Yulia Ty-moshenko’s case at a special meeting ofthe European Parliament's committeeon cooperation with Ukraine in Stras-bourg. The head of the committeePawel Kowal (Group of the EuropeanConservatives and Reformists, Poland)

told Interfax after the meeting that themembers of the committee decided toinvite Karpachova in order to obtain"objective and politically unbiased in-formation about the situation withYulia Tymoshenko and other formermembers of the government who arecurrently under arrest." "Today, Karpa-chova has informed us about her workas the Ukrainian ombudsman, spokeabout her meetings with representa-tives of major political groups," saidElmar Brok (Group of the EuropeanPeople's Party, Germany), and LiborRoucek (Group of the Progressive Al-liance of Socialists and Democrats inthe European Parliament, the CzechRepublic). "She said that she was inregular contact with Tymoshenko, toldus about her visit to the prison andmuch more," the MEP said. Accord-ing Kowal, Tymoshenko's case is stillamong the most important political is-sues for the European Parliament.

Tymoshenko complains about Yanukovych to the OSCE

UKRAINEHUMAN RIGHT

Russian gas monopoly Gazprom Chief Executive AlexeiMiller said that the company would raise the volume of gas tothe EU via Belarus to 4bn cubic metres in 2012. Transit ofRussian gas to Europe through Ukraine has been about 17%lower for almost a week than in January.

The Nord Stream pipeline was introduced three monthsago. Until recently, any change in pressure in the pipeline hascaused some decrease in loading Yamal-Europe pipeline,which goes to Germany via Belarus and Poland. It’s turnedout that Gazprom was giving some space for the Ukrainiangas corridor in Yamal-Europe pipeline, Korrespondent.net re-ported. Given the Nord Stream previous loading volumes, thepumping through Yamal-Europe has grown up to its maxi-mum levels since the middle of last week, informed a sourcein the industry. Currently, two gas lines pump more than114m cubic metres of gas per day, which is 50 million cubic

meters more than the volumes, transported through Yamalpipe over the same period last year, news agencies reported.

Gazprom said that slated pipeline projects, such as seabedlines directly to the European Union, will eliminate reliance onUkraine to transit the fuel to Europe. “South Stream to fullcapacity, Nord Stream with additional lines and our existingcapacity through Belarus and the Black Sea will reduceUkraine’s importance for transit to zero,” Gazpromspokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said in statement. kraine shipsas much as 80 percent of Russia’s Europe- bound gas throughits Soviet-era pipeline network.

Miller accused Ukraine of siphoning gas destined for Eu-rope during a cold snap in February in a briefing with Russ-ian President Dimitry Medvedev, according to a statement onthe Kremlin website. Ukraine’s state-run energy companyNAK Naftogaz Ukrainy denied the allegation in a statement.

BELARUSENERGY

Russian gas monopoly Gazprom Chief Executive Alexei Miller said that the company would raise the volume of gas to the EU via Belarus to4bn cubic metres in 2012. |EPA/MATTHIAS HIEKEL

Gazprom raises gas volume to EU via Belarus

KAZAKHSTAN · TAJIKISTAN · TURKMENISTANNew Europe | Page 29NEIGHBOURHOOD


Visiting German Ambassador to Tajik-istan, Doris Hertrampf recently metwith Tajikistan’s Minister of EconomicDevelopment and Trade Sharif Rahim-zoda.

In the course of talks both sides dis-cussed state and prospects of further ex-pansion of bilateral cooperation betweenTajikistan and Germany in various sec-

tors, Asia-Plus learnt from an officialsource at the Ministry of Economic De-velopment and Trade (MoEDT).

They also discussed issues related toreparations for the Fifth Regional Eco-nomic Cooperation Conference onAfghanistan (RECCA V) that is sched-uled to take place in Dushanbe nextmonth, the source added.

The Tajik minister expressed thereadiness of Tajikistan to expand bilat-eral trade and economic cooperationwith advanced countries of the world,including Germany. He informed thatTajikistan is ready to cooperate withGermany in the implementation of jointprojects that would promote creation ofnew jobs in the republic.

Tajik-German cooperation prospects discussed in DushanbeTAJIKISTANTRADE RELATIONS

A grand ceremony for the inaugurationof the elected Turkmen President Gur-banguly Berdymukhamedov was re-cently held in Ashgabat, an anonymousgovernment source announced, Turk-menistan.ru reported.

Inaugurated for a second term, thepresident won 97.14% of the vote inpolls against seven rivals who were allloyal members of the elite and nonemade the attempt to slam his record.Close competitor of Berdymukhame-dov gathered barely over one percent ofthe vote. The president in his first termembarked on cautious reforms to dis-mantle the bizarre legacy of his eccen-tric predecessor Saparmurat Niyazovwho died in 2006. Turkmenistan hasshrugged off Western scepticism overthe polls, which were not monitored byany full-scale Western observer mission.

After a thorirgh evaluation, it wasnoted that the elections has gone downin history as the culmination of the eraof great changes started five years ago,saying Turkmenistan had voted for its"leader-creator". In reply to commentspublished by the government mouth-piece newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan,Berdymukhamedov appeared to rejectany pressure for faster change in the ex-Soviet state. He said that Turkmen gov-ernment has no habit of accelerating andit will not artificially form and acceleratesocial-economic processes in society justfor the sake of other’s interests.

Turkmen President received congrat-ulatory messages from his foreign coun-terparts. According to the officialwebsite of the President of Belarus, inhis message to the Turkmen leader

Alexander Lukashenko said that Minskand Ashgabat are bound by true part-nership and constructive cooperation onbasis of trust and mutual respect.

Lukashenko stressed that Belarus islooking forward to continuing the tra-ditionally rich and multifaceted Belaru-sian-Turkmen dialogue. Tajik PresidentEmomali Rahmon also sent a congrat-ulatory message to Berdimuhamedov onhis victory in elections. The messagereads: “Your reelection to this highestpost is evidence of a wide support of thepeople of Turkmenistan for your policyaimed at promoting further develop-ment of the country and improvementof wellbeing of the people."

Rahmonov is confident that multifac-eted cooperation and friendly relationsbetween two states will meet the na-tional interests of the two nations and

become a major factor of peace and sta-bility in the region. He wished his Turk-men counterpart “health, success andachievements as President of Turk-menistan, as well as stability, develop-ment and prosperity to the fraternalpeople of Turkmenistan."

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyevalso sent his congratulations to thePresident of Turkmenistan. He alsostated that traditionally friendly andgood-neighborly and partnership rela-tions between Baku and Ashgabat willcontinue to develop and expand in ac-cordance with the will of the peoples ofboth countries. Aliyev wished Gurban-guly Berdimuhamedov good health,happiness and continued success in hisstate activities as well as welfare andprosperity to the friendly people ofTurkmenistan.

President set for 'swift inauguration'TURKMENISTAN POLITICS

Head of the Kazakhstan Travel Association Rashida Shaiken-ova recently announced that last summer Kazakhstan wit-nessed a rise in domestic tourism.

During one year, the number in Kazakhstan who enjoyKazakhstan resorts increased by 5%, mainly due to an increasein demand for weekend holidays and a more civilized approachto leisure, Gazeta.kz reported. In his address, Shaikenova spokeabout the priority of tourism.

He noted that today Kazakhstan has great informationabout the allocation of large amounts of money from the state

budget for the development of rural areas, which will createjobs and develop travel services.

According to the association, Turkey, Thailand, Egypt andthe countries of Eastern Europe continue to entice Kazakhstantourists.

According to Shaikenova, last year was a difficult year, theyear after the crisis but now the situation is growing stable.With the launch of new travel routes, foreign tourism is de-veloping at a rapid pace in Kazakhstan while incoming tourismis developing more slowly.

Kazakhstan develops domestic tourismKAZAKHSTAN TOURISM

KAZAKHSTAN|ENERGY

Kazakhstan to expand nuclearcooperation with IndiaKazakhstan's ambassador Doulat Kuanyshev recently statedthat Kazakhstan is keen to expand civil nuclear ties with India,Gazeta.kz reported. He urged that both strategic partnersshould look beyond and enhance ties in the nuclear sector,and let Kazakhstan's atomic power company Kazakhpromand Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited expand co-operation. “We should look beyond. Kazakhstan is amongmain exporters of natural uranium in the world and India hasthe potential to increase its nuclear power capacity,” Kuany-shev said. He added that agreement between Kazakhpromand NPCIL is on and it is going quite successfully. He saidthe next scheduled delivery of fuel for India's nuclear powerplants was next year and the process according to him will betill 2014. Asked if Kazakhstan was ready to meet India's oilneeds, if it reduces its fuel dependency on Iran in the wake ofUS and EU sanction, the envoy said, “There is potential forsoft operations with Iran.... We can do soft operations, and itcan find benefits with countries like India.” Maintaining thatno discussion has taken place in this regard, the ambassadorsaid, "We can supply oil to refineries in Northern Iran, whilewe can accept our oil from the Gulf ports of Iran. But thereare no specific discussions of these matters, they are unfortu-nately covered by sanctions."

TAJIKISTAN|TRADE

Trade between Tajikistan,Russia declinesLast year total bilateral trade between the Russian Federationand Tajikistan went down by 8.6% compared to 2010, Asia-Plus learnt from Russia’s Ministry of Economic Develop-ment. It was reported that the slump in bilateral trade betweenthe two countries stems from decrease in Russia’s importsfrom Tajikistan. Compared to 2010, Russia’s imports fromTajikistan last year fell 58%. Textile goods and food productsaccounted for more than 90% of Russia’s imports from Tajik-istan. On the other hand, Russia’s exports to Tajikistan in-creased by 7% last year. The export items include mineralproducts (more than 40%), food products and farm produce(17%), and lumber (16%). According to Russia media reports,Tajikistan’s rich harvests of cotton, fruits and vegetable provedto be unclaimed in Russia last year for undisclosed reasonsand were sold to consumers in Turkey and China.

TAJIKISTAN|RESOURCES

UNDP organise water conferenceThe UNDP Country Office in Tajikistan in collaboration withthe Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Resources ofTajikistan (LRWR), Agency for State Financial Control andCombating Corruption and civil society organisations, has or-ganised a conference entitled “Assessing the Integrity in WaterSector of the Republic of Tajikistan” which concluded inDushanbe, Asia-Plus reported. The conference was attendedby representatives from international agencies, government in-stitutions, civil society, individual experts, as well as represen-tatives of local and private mass media, Asia-Plus reported.The conferences aimed to present the results and findings ofthe Water Sector Integrity Risk Assessment in Tajikistan andoffer a platform to debate and exchange views and lessonslearnt on how to develop the road map for implementation ofrecommendations related to reducing corruption risks in watersector. The conference also reviewed and addressed humanrights based approach towards the water governance whichwill impact the level of corruption risks and practices. It waslearnt at the vent that water is a very finite and vulnerable re-source. Corruption in the water sector places the lives andlivelihoods of billions of people worldwide at great risk.

Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov is inaugurated for a second term in the

capital Ashgabat, on 17 February. Berdymukhamedov was inaugurated today for a second term in a

lavish ceremony, less than a week after garnering over 97% of the vote in elections. |AFP PHOTO / IGOR SASIN

AZERBAIJAN · KYRGYZSTAN· UZBEKISTAN

Page 30| New EuropeNEIGHBOURHOOD


UN to continue to provide assistance to KyrgyzstanUN Secretary General Ban Ki-moonhad talks with Kyrgyzstan’s ForeignMinister Ruslan Kazakbaev at a recentmeeting in Vienna where Ban said thatUN will continue to assist Kyrgyzstanunder the UN Peacebuilding Fund.

Kazakbaev and Ban also discussed thereconciliation process in Kyrgyzstan, co-operation against drug trafficking andpeace efforts in Afghanistan, political de-velopment, ethnic reconciliation and theimportance of the adoption of the con-cept in this area, continuing reconstruc-tion in the south, Irinnews.org learntfrom the press service of the Ministry ofForeign Affairs of Kyrgyzstan. Timelyrelease of funds from the UN Peace-building Fund for the construction ofnew homes in the southern regions ofthe country affected by the events of June2010 was stressed.

Kazakbaev said that Kyrgyzstan iswilling to participate in all international,regional and country-level initiatives andprogrammes related to the economic re-covery of Afghanistan's infrastructure.Ban said that the Central Asian coun-

try's "peaceful transfer of power" consol-idated Kyrgyz democracy and set an ex-ample for other countries in the region.He said that UN is willing to furtherpromote the development and strength-

ening of democratic processes in Kyr-gyzstan. The parties expressed their in-tention to continue and intensifycooperation on various issues of mutualinterest.

KYRGYZSTANAIDCENTRAL ASIA| ENVIRONMENT

Water scarcity seen in 2 decades, predict experts

Rivers crossing the territories of several countries must be-come a source of peace rather than discord, experts said,adding that countries in the region can use the experienceof the EU in order to solve disputes involving of water con-sumption. At present, the problem of water consumptionis not as acute for the countries of the Central Asian regionas it is, for example, in Africa, according to the RegionalAdviser of the project Water Management in Central Asia,Iskandar Abdullayev. “Today, about 60m people live in ourregion of Central Asia. By 2030, when the populationreaches more than 80m, we can face the problem of waterscarcity,” he said.There are a few factors for such a course of events. First ofall, Central Asia already has an environmental problemwith the shrinking of the Aral Sea. Secondly, it is also a re-gion of potential economic growth, with the availability ofrich mineral deposits. Thirdly, there are also active devel-opments of oil and gas projects. All this will require largeconsumption of water. “Water withdrawals per capita in Central Asian countriesare more than three thousand cubic meters. The lowest fig-ure in Kazakhstan is about 2,383 cubic meters of water”,Abdullaev said. According to him, in 20 years issue of waterconsumption from transboundary rivers in Central Asiawill be acute, and European countries that have alreadygained experience in resolving such issues, are ready to helpCentral Asia. For the third year, the foreign ministry ofGermany, with financial support of the European Union,provides advice to those skilled in this area from CentralAsian republics. “Our initiative is a project, Managementof Border Rivers in Central Asia, aimed at use of the al-ready gained experience in Europe for water managementin the region,” said the director of the project, Volker Fro-bat. According to him, there are three important compo-nents of the program proposed by Germany.“The first is to promote regional co-operation. The sec-ond is strengthening of transboundary river resources man-agement. The third is implementation of national pilotprojects related to improving the management of water re-sources”, he said. But the question of whether or not Kaza-khstan can apply international laws, developed byEuropean experts for China, to resolve water disputes.China has long stated its plans to build a dam on the Ir-tysh River. In this regard, both Kazakhstan and Russiathrough which the river flows, may be fully water-depen-dent on China.But China has not joined the international convention onthe cross-border use of rivers, which is why European lawscannot be applied. Negotiations between Kazakhstan,Russia and China have already been ongoing for manyyears. “Although negotiations are slow, they are still going.And we hope that China will take into account the wishesof their neighbours, and will adhere to the principle of goodneighbourliness,” Abdullayev said.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev re-cently met Secretary General of NATOAnders Fogh Rasmussen in Brussels atNATO headquarters and addressed theNorth Atlantic Council, news agenciesreported.

Rasmussen said he is pleased to wel-come President Aliyev at NATO Head-quarters. He highly appreciatedAzerbaijani-NATO partnership andcongratulated the Azerbaijani leader onthe election of Azerbaijan as a non-per-manent member of the UN SecurityCouncil. Rasmussen also praised Azer-baijan's involvement in peacekeepingoperations in Afghanistan as part of the

International Security Assistance Force.He added, “We share many political pri-orities and security interests. And wehave built up our cooperation and dia-logue over many years. Our relationshipcontributes to regional and Euro-At-lantic security and we wish to take it for-ward in that way.” The Secretary Generalthanked Aliyev for the offer to con-tribute to a trust fund in support of theAfghan National Security Forces.

In turn, Aliyev stressed that Azerbai-jan will continue to contribute actively toEuro-Atlantic security by supportingNATO-led peace-support operations.The Azerbaijani leader said Azerbaijan

is seeking to achieve Euro-Atlantic stan-dards and to draw closer to Euro-At-lantic institutions. Aliyev also dwelled onAzerbaijan's contribution to the Inter-national Security Assistance Force inAfghanistan. He insisted Azerbaijan'sco-operation with NATO will improvefurther. NATO allies and Aliyev also dis-cussed how co-operation in the frame-work of NATO’s partnership withAzerbaijan can be further enhanced.NATO and Azerbaijan agreed in De-cember a new Individual PartnershipAction Plan that will provide the basisfor practical co-operation in the next twoyears.

Baku to improve ties with NATO

AZERBAIJANDEFENCE

Asian Development Bank (ADB) President HaruhikoKuroda recently inaugurated a new solar energy research fa-cility in Tashkent. The new facility will help Uzbekistan to be-come an international knowledge hub and solar technologyexporter, Uzbekreport.com reported. Speaking at the inaugu-ral ceremony of the facility, Kuroda said that solar has beenshown to provide the most renewable potential for Uzbek-istan. He stressed that utilising solar to fuel development isnow a necessity and not only an option. Kuroda went on tosay that ADB supports Uzbekistan’s commitment to buildingexpertise, research, innovation and manufacturing capacity, andto making cost-effective investments in clean energy infra-

structure, technologies and practices. It should be noted thatthe International Solar Energy Institute (ISEI) is envisionedto become an internationally recognized source of expertisefor solar energy education, training and technology. Its appliedresearch will yield innovation, promote technology transferand also encourage efficient and economic solar technologyuse. Although Uzbekistan has abundant supplies of coal, gasand oil but those resources are finite and reducing. Solar energyis one of the most promising alternatives, but the country needsto build its expertise in electricity generation from both pho-tovoltaic and solar thermal systems. In this regard, it should bementioned that ISEI aims to bridge this knowledge gap.

ADB helps Uzbekistan develop regional solar initiative

UZBEKISTANENERGY

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is welcomed by Kyrgyz women upon his arrival in Bishkek,

Kyrgyzstan, 3 April 2010. At a recent meeting in Vienna with Kyrgyzstan’s Foreign Minister Ruslan

Kazakbaev, Ban said that UN will continue to assist the former Soviet republic. |EPA/IGOR KOVALENKO

The water of the Caspian Sea shore some 50 kilometres north of

Azerbaijan's capital Baku. |EPA/ZURAB KURTSIKIDZE

By Kulpash Konyrova

RUSSIA · GEORGIA · ARMENIA

New Europe |Page 31NEIGHBOURHOOD26 February - 3 March, 2012

The project of the creation of theEurasian Union does not depend onthe outcome of the upcoming presi-dential elections in Russia to be heldon 4 March, Russian experts said dur-ing discussions within the frameworkof the video link Astana – Moscow onthe topic 'The Future of the Eurasianproject through the perspective ofRussian elections'.

Besides, they are of opinion thatneither Ukraine nor Kyrgyzstanshould be expected in this union inthe coming years.

“Everyone says that EurasianUnion is not the empire and the re-vival of the Soviet Union. In this case,what exactly should be the EurasianUnion, how Kazakhstan sees theUnion?” asked Alexey Vlasov, the di-rector of information-analytical cen-tre for the study of socio-politicalprocesses in the post-Soviet area ofthe Lomonosov Moscow State Uni-versity, at the opening of the discus-sion. According to him, following thearticle by current Prime MinisterVladimir Putin on the EurasianUnion, there are fears in Russian so-ciety that this idea has an element ofthe election campaign.

Share this storyThe CEO of the political conjunc-

ture Sergei Mikheyev expressed anopposite opinion, namely that it is

primitive to consider the Eurasianproject within the election campaignin Russia.

"Today, in the context of globalisa-tion, the main issue for many coun-tries is the question of survival. Statecan become an appendage to the de-velopment of a stronger state or be-come a center of development. In thissituation, for member states of formerUSSR, there is a chance to become acenter of economic and geopoliticalinfluence in Eurasia," said Mikheyev.

In his opinion, the Eurasian projecthas no relation to specific individuals,and therefore cannot depend on theoutcome of the forthcoming presi-dential elections in Russia.

People's Democratic Partyspokesman Nur Otan of Kazakhstan,Bolat Baikadamov, said that the Russ-ian presidential election and regionalintegration should be considered sep-arately. "We are destined to unite byvirtue of the historical, economic andpolitical reasons. Neighbouring coun-tries must now develop harmoniouslyin their own interest. These are globaltrends today."

According to opinion poll, 65-70%of Kazakhs said that they are infavour of the Eurasian Union.Baikadamov said that the EurasianUnion should incorporate the best ofwhat was produced during the Unionand all that is best in the EuropeanUnion.

Experts believe that the process ofjoining the Eurasian Union in threecountries - Russia, Belarus and Kaza-khstan - should begin by holding ref-erendums and gthat it isimportantthat it should be a collective decision.

As for the entry of Ukraine and Kyr-gyzstan in the Eurasian Union, then thisshould not be expected in the near fu-ture, Kazakhstan and Russia, experts say."Kiev does not want to choose either theEU or Eurasian Union.

"To Kiev, it is advantageous to bewith anyone to get the preferencesfrom both sides. The same can beseen in politics in Kyrgyzstan: ma-noeuvring between China, Russia andKazakhstan," Vlasov said. He addedthat so far, except for Kazakhstan, Be-larus and Russia, no one from the for-mer Soviet Union will enter theEurasian Union in the next few years.Mikheyev added: "I am against theforced extension of the EurasianUnion, because the situation is com-plicated in Kyrgyzstan, in Tajikistanis even harder. We must take into ac-count the drug traffic, which passesthrough these two countries and thatno border will stop it."

According to him, it is hardly worthwaiting for Ukraine to enter in theEurasian Union in the coming years."Yes, Ukraine intends to continue tosit on two chairs and receive a divi-dend on the confrontation betweenRussia and Europe," he concluded.

Russia's Prime Minister and presidential candidate Vladimir Putin (R) visits Interior Ministry Academy in the Siberian city of Barnaul, 21

February 2012. Putin offered his proposal to create a Eurasian Economic Union in an article “New Integration Project for Russia: Future

Born Today” published in Russian daily newspaper Izvestia on 3 October, before he announced his bid for the third term of presidency

swapping his post with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. |AFP PHOTO/RIA-NOVOSTI POOL/ALEXEY DRUZHINI

RUSSIAPOLITICS

GEORGIA|DIPLOMACY

Tbilisi, Riga discuss security issuesA delegation of Latvian lawmakers led by speaker of theLatvian Saeima Solvita Aboltina recently paid an official visitto Tbilisi. The delegation met Georgian President MikheilSaakashvili in Tbilisi to discuss regional security issues, CivilGeorgia learnt from Georgian presidential administration.The parties expressed strong interest to strengthen friendlyties and political co-operation between the two countries. Inthe course of talks, Aboltina said Latvia supports Georgiaintegration into European and Euro-Atlantic structures. Hesaid that Latvia commends the importance of successful re-forms and infrastructure projects implemented in Georgia.In addition, the delegation also said that Latvia strongly sup-ports Georgia in international organisations.

GEORGIA|DEFENCE

US Defence envoyvisits TbilisiGeorgia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Nino Kalandadze re-cently announced that US Deputy Assistant Secretary ofDefence for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, Celeste A. Wal-lander, paid a visit to Tbilisi on 22-24 February, Civil Geor-gia reported. The visit aims to put the agreement into phaseof technical implementation. Kalandadze said that US hasexpressed interest to increase Georgia’s self-defence capabil-ities. The delegation had meetings mainly in the GeorgianMinistry of Defence to plan and identify concrete directionsin which the defence co-operation will proceed. The visit bythe US delegation was a follow up to “an agreement reachedduring a meeting between the Georgian and US Presidentsin Washington on January 30 on “deepening cooperation inthe field of defence.”

ARMENIA|AID

US seeks further aid cut for ArmeniaThe draft budget for fiscal year 2013 was recently unveiledby US administration of President Barack Obama. The draftbudget envisages 18% cut in annual US government assis-tance to Armenia which has steadily decreased over the pastdecade, Armenia Liberty.org reported. According to thebudget, $32.5m would be allotted as economic aid and$3.3m in separate military funding to the country, downfrom a total of $43.5m that was approved by the US Con-gress for this year. A further cut in overall US aid to Europe,the South Caucasus and Central Asia sought by the ad-ministration triggered the planned reduction. The budgetproposal attributes that to the “achievement of a number ofassistance goals” in the region. Two main Armenian-Amer-ican advocacy groups slammed the proposed aid cut for Ar-menia, suggesting that they will lobby Congress to reject it.

ARMENIA|BUSINESS

Armenia has serious potential to develop SMEUSAID, the Armenian Ministry of Economy and Pragmacorporation implemented a project “Business development:Boosting market competition” which was recently presentedin Yerevan, Armenia Liberty.org reported. At the opening ofhis speech, the Armenian Minister of Economy, TigranDavtyan stressed the importance of this project, saying it dif-fers from previously implemented ones. With regard to theincreased rating of Armenia’s economy according to WorldBank’s Doing Business criteria, he expressed hope for a tan-gible outcome as a firm basis for SME development is formed.For her part, head of the USAID Armenia Office JatinderChima said this is the first project of its kind in the region.

Eurasian Union 'not dependenton Russian elections'

By Kulpash Konyrova

KASSANDRANot every former Commissioner jumpsinto bed with lobbyists. Margot Wallstromhas pushed through a real change in herrole at the UN

Page 32 | New Europe


[email protected]

Once Upon A Time in New York ...

Follow me on twitter @Kassandra_NE

ADVERTISEMENT

The West coined the term ‘pow-der keg of Europe’ for the Balkansin the early 20th century, but sincethen little has been done to un-derstand the potential fuses, lead-ing western leaders to a series ofpolicy mistakes.

The total confusion and inertiaof the EU in its transition betweenCommunity and Union underJacques Delors, resulted in theworst bloodshed on Europe’s soilsince WWII, the deaths of hun-dreds of thousands of people andthe eventual dissolution of the for-mer Yugoslavia.

Furthermore, the same lack ofunderstanding led to the Daytonpeace accord, which renderedBosnia and Herzegovina virtuallyungovernable and unsustainablewithout the presence of interna-tional peace-keepers.

Those were monumental mis-takes with catastrophic conse-quences, but the persistence ofpolitical mistakes seems most ap-parent in the case of Serbia. Notonly that no support was providedfor the hundreds of thousands ofcitizens who spent three monthsprotesting against the regime ofSlobodan Milošević in the winterof 1996/97, which, arguably, couldhave led to a democratic change,and possibly prevent war in

Kosovo, western powers tran-scended their lack of understand-ing of Serbian society and politicsinto a new set of mistakes afterdemocratic change in 2000.

Belief that the ‘carrot and stick’approach would yield desired re-sults (presumably a sustainablenormalisation of relations betweenSerbia and Kosovo, stability of theregion and eventually integrationto the EU) is fundamentallyflawed.

Conditioning Serbia’s EU can-didacy with de facto recognition ofKosovo’s independence is likely tobackfire and bring further desta-bilisation to both countries. It isnot hard to see how this kind of

policy could reinvigorate national-ist forces in Serbia and prolongtheir political life beyond the gen-eral elections scheduled for spring,especially if not followed by somepositive sign from the EU.

Denying Serbia candidacy afterdoing everything within its consti-tutional boundaries (and beyond) toreach an agreement with Kosovocould bring about some drasticchanges in Belgrade. Yet, even afterthe agreement with Pristina wasreached,the foreign ministers ofFrance, Italy and Austria urgedtheir EU colleagues to grant thecandidate status and a positive tonescoming from Berlin, Serbia's candi-dacy is still under question.

Romania threatened to blockthe candidacy over position ofVlah minority in Serbia, Lithua-nia pressured Serbia over the UNGeneral Assembly chairmanshippost, also threatening veto and theusual suspects when it comes toblocking the enlargementprocesses remained suspiciouslyquiet.

Serbia, certainly, is not a specialcase and as any other country as-piring for membership should ful-fil all of criteria. However,granting candidate status is a per-fect moment to acknowledge re-forms in one country and its levelof political commitment to Euro-pean integration, a symbolic tokenof recognition of fulfilment ofbasic prerequisites.

From the opening of negotia-tions to each further step andcompleted chapter, those are themoments where a country's readi-ness to join the European clubshould be tested with rigour andthoroughness and real condition-ing should start. It would givemore time for proper, viablechanges and reforms, but also forthe positive effects of the EU in-tegrations to take place, releasingpressure from citizens and provingthe true value of the Europeanpath.

Stop playing with fireMaking theEU fun!Those fun loving commis-

sioners really know how to

get people’s interest and

spread the word about all the

fantastic achievements of

theirs.

Last week, László Andor,

Commissioner for Employ-

ment, Social Affairs and In-

clusion dipped into the prize

fund and launched a new

competition, although we

don’t know if he checked

with his colleagues on com-

petition policy. On his web-

site, he announced:

QUIZ: Win a booklet on the

EU’s Employment Policy

Sounds tempting, and all you

have to do is answer 5 ques-

tions correctly and “you will

receive a hard copy of the So-

cial Guide – Employment

Policy in your mailbox.”

It seems like somebody hasn’t

been too good with maths as

there are actually 6 questions

in the quiz!

Still, if you can’t find the an-

swers, why not go to the EU

Bookshop and order a paper

copy free of charge.

Serbian President Boris Tadic (R) welcoming German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle

prior to their meeting in Belgrade on 23 February.|AFP PHOTO / SERBIA PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE

Documents

New Europe Print Edition Issue 975