After a long summer break I am returning back to this EU-CO-LOGIC blog with the prospect of having more to write about in the next months when the Portuguese Presidency will start new debates on the “Reform Treaty” [see EurActiv LinksDossier].
Not that I have many illusions though. The kind of fundamental changes that I am advocating (in search of an Eco-Europe) will for sure not get that much attention but I hope we can help with this blog at least to stir up the debate a bit. But to do this, I will need the help of anyone who believes to EU should re-engineer itself.
For those still not convinced of the need for serious EU reform, read the interview EurActiv did with Martin Konečný of CEE Bankwatch Network. The EU’s structural funds programmes are actually contributing to “unsustainable development”, says Konečný, and some projects are in clear contradiction with the EU’s climate change policies.

In November 2007, the European Commission is due to present its first ideas on what has been called the 2008 “health check” of the EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP).

The phrase “health check” has been carefully chosen to prevent any fears that the Commission will start a new “review” of its most controversial policy area. According to CAP commissioner Fischer Boel, the main elements of the health check will be:

• to look at how well the Single Payment Scheme (SPS) is working
• to propose further moves towards more decoupling
• to propose a higher level of compulsory modulation
• to continue the work on cross-compliance

.

Say what? Maybe the Commission should start with a communication check of its farm policy first? Who the hell, except for some CAP experts and consultants, understands what all this lingo really means?

Having said this, this communication deficit of CAP is not the only problem. There is, of course, the scandal that the CAP still takes up over 40% of the EU’s budget, although the importance of the sector for our economy has gone down dramatically. In the EU’s post-2013 budget review (also foreseen for 2008), this issue will surely become one of the hottest debates.

On the other hand, what the EU’s farm policy REALLY needs is an “ecological sustainability check”. What effects will climate change and the new “energy scarcity” (peak oil, resource wars, energy nationalism) have on the EU-27’s farm policies? How will these new challenges affect the future of the EU’s CAP?

Not being a CAP expert myself, I would welcome any ideas and recommendations from my readers. How can we push for the “ecological modernisation” of the EU’s most comprehensive common policy?

Further reading:

• There are two excellent blogs dealing with the EU’s CAP (although not from an ecological angle): CAP Health Check and the Common Agricultural Policy blog.
• For a “sustainability” view on global agricultural policy, read Richard Heinberg’s lecture for the Schumacher society in October 2006.

Do we need a new European treaty in order to save our climate? EU President Barroso certainly seems to think so.
According to today’s Financial Times, the Commission President has warned future UK prime minister Gordon Brown not to block a compromise deal on a watered-down European treaty. If the UK would fail to agree to the new compromise, it might undermine efforts to fight climate change and reach a Doha trade deal. With this threat, Barrosos is putting pressure on Mr Brown, according to the FT.
Well, I am sure that Blair’s successor is not that dumb
There was nothing in the old, failed draft Constitution, nor in the current compromise which, in any way, would make a big difference as to Europe’s ability to tackle global warming. Suddenly now for the Commission President any reference to climate change seems a good argument to use to win his power fights. What happened to the Lisbon agenda, Mr President? Where did you forget your old battlehorse?

It is amazing what media attention can do. Now that all of them have seen the green light (or is it the “inconventient truth”?), politicians are trying to compete for becoming the climate champion of the year, the “EU Al Gore”. If ever the thesis about our “spectacle” democracy needed any confirmation, we can find it in the “spectacular” way climate change (an issue known since the beginning of the 90s) has fired itself onto the political agenda.

Who would have thought one year ago that new French President Sarkozy would have a superminister for ecology? Why is even Brown becoming green?

And of course, our respected members of the European Parliament just had to wake up to the climate heat too. So, let’s create a 60-members big special committee which is going to find THE solution by travelling around the world to talk to other parliaments.

Ah, and another good idea: let’s make the European Parliament “carbon-neutral”, that will show them. So the EP Bureau is to decide on 18 June to commission some “independent external experts” to evaluate the Parliament’s carbon footprint in order to later define an action plan to reduce greenhouse gas reductions of the Brussels and Strasbourg activities.

Oops, but small problem there. The issue of the two seats is kind of a taboo and, for sure, not the competence of the MEPs themselves but of the 27 governments of the EU. So we will not measure the carbon footprint of the fact of having two seats (a study by the way which was commissioned by Green MEPs Caroline Lucas and Jean Lambert last month).

My recommendation to all my dear MEP friends: maybe the next European Parliament (the one chosen by probably one third of our voters in 2009) should declare a five-year moratorium on its normal activities and focus itself on defining a new European eco-vision? Now, wouldn’t that be something?

In a comment to the first post of this blog, Raymond van Ermen wrote the following:
“The Berlin Declaration celebrating the EU’s 50th anniversary is very disappointing for two reasons :
o In January 2007, President Barroso named sustainability as one of the EU’s five key values, to be enshrined in the Berlin Declaration celebrating the EU’s 50th anniversary. However, the reference was restricted to figthing climate change.
o The Declaration has not been signed by all the Member States.

Today the risks have for name resource scarcity and war for resources. The opportunities have for name a resource efficient and low carbon economy and a well being society for all. The challenge is also to be sure that this vision is shared by the EU 27 Member States.
Contrary to what thinks the Czech President these new urgencies are neither a “Western” or a “Green” agenda against the rights to development of “new member states” and “developing countries or against “business” nor “a communist plot cooked up by the losers of the cold war”. It is a mankind imperative shared at global level by public authorities, the religious, scientific, business communities, It is – as any crisis – a risk and an opportunity (including to make profit and enhance competitiveness). It it the necessary path to help emerging economies and developing countries to “leapfrog”.

I could not agree more with Raymond. The Berlin Declaration is no more and no less than the failure of the old European elite, which is not able and willing to define the real risks to global and European prosperity.