Wrong

As I have repeatedly argued that the Lisbon Treaty was unlikely to pass a second Irish referendum, its entry into force earlier this month inspires me to admit that I was... wrong!

Need to get better at making those predictions.

There are two reasons that I can give:

- The Irish were more comfortable than I expected with being asked to vote again after being given some of the things they wanted. It's not the first time they did this! A pragmatic rather than a stubborn people. I miscalculated because of the stubborn sentiment I perceived among my fellow Dutchmen and extrapolated from there.
- There's nothing like a financial crisis to remind people who has buttered their bread, is buttering their bread, and would be able to bail them out of future fuckups.

The amended treaties are better organised and easier to understand than what we had since Nice, and contain some useful innovations, so it's a good thing that Lisbon passed even if the process of drafting, signing and ratifying was intentionally obscure.

Vote

If you're in the UK, today, you should of course vote for the Liberal Democrats. Graham Watson might become President of the European Parliament! That's the highest position a Briton will get in Europe -- barring the awful prospect of Blair as future President of the European Council in case the Lisbon Treaty ever gets through. But anyway... show Watson some love.

For the Dutch, you can vote for two good parties, D66 and GroenLinks. Both are deserving.

Most importantly, get out and vote. Most people won't so your vote will probably count more...

Reaching out and reaching in

Some clippings:

• I wrote about love on the Atlantic Review and got a comment thread from hell
• The campaign for the European Parliament elections is finally getting started. Such as it is. Here's a mini-roundup on the th!nk about it community site.
• Something on small windmills will be coming up soon on eurotrib... in the mean while, read afew's piece on a 'Europe Ecologie' meet. Europa natuurlijk of natürlich Europa? It might go somewhere...

More in due time.

On Hiatus, Again

As I'm now an editor on two widely read blogs, the Atlantic Review and the European Tribune (and I can put my snark up on twitter), this crappy-looking blog will likely see even less frequent posting.

Some service announcements will still be made when I follow up on old requests. Still one coming for Mr. Grahn and one for metatone.

See you all on the other side.

Libertas FAIL

EUbusiness announces the end of a rather strange campaign by the Irish anti-Lisbon Treaty party Libertas to be recognised as a European political party. The question remains why it tried to take this avenue in the first place. Does being a European political party automatically put you on the ballot everywhere? I've seen nothing to indicate that. Getting on the ballot is the most difficult part for new parties. Otherwise, the 200,000 euros wouldn't have been worth the weird candidates. What was Ganley thinking?

(via Kosmopolit on twitter)

What Carbon Blindness Hath Wrought

SPIEGEL: Wind Turbines in Europe Do Nothing for Emissions-Reduction Goals

To be uncharitable: SPIEGEL continues its anti-wind campaign and displays the stupidity of our current discourse on climate change policy, which is staring itself blind on the evil of carbon dioxide emissions instead of looking at the necessity and opportunity of transformation to a sustainable economy.

One has to read between the lines to get at the truth, at the end of the report:

There were discussions about such a system under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who governed in a coalition with the Green Party. At the time, Minister of the Environment Jürgen Tritten wanted to exclude the amounts of energy covered by the EEG from the calculations used in the carbon-trading scheme. Instead, the industry-friendly regulations currently in effect were pushed through. Major energy corporations, which had claimed as many CO2 certificates as they possibly could, lobbied heavily.

So why has nothing changed? According to experts, one reason has to do with technical problems. In the course of an ongoing trading period, they claim, adjusting the volume of CO2 certificates is no easy task.

Still, an SPD insider provides yet another explanation: "Politicians just have to resign themselves to certain things." As he sees it, if the state went back to the companies and took away the certificates they had been allotted, the result would be an uproar. "What do you think the companies would say to us?" he asks. "As a politician, there are certain storms that you simply can't weather."

In other words, this is not about the inefficacy of wind power as a tool against climate change, but about the inability of the German government to make its utilities pay for their share of greenhouse gas reductions. This situation will be exacerbated in the next phase of emissions trading, which is going to be one big present to the energy sector, paid out of your pocket.

Investigate, Confiscate, Imprison

Like Jerome says on eurotrib, the long term solution for this crisis involves taking back the money showered on bankers for feeding a bubble.

Here's non-crazy guess on how to proceed with this: due to an actively pursued lack of oversight, there has probably been quite a bit of white collar crime in the banking sector over the past decade. Madoff is just the tip of an iceberg and we'll have similar stuff in Europe. Perhaps the majority of the crazy stuff going on was legal, and we'll have to change the rules to avert systemic risk. And increase taxes on wealth and high incomes. But the return on investment for money spent on investigators (and spies to: Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Isle of Man, etc.) is looking good.

Just a throwaway idea for governments facing tax shortfalls over the coming years.

Renewal Postponed

The EUobserver has a very good report that I think supports my take on this first round of stimulus bills in Europe. No direction whatsoever in them. A few quotes:

"Much more could be done in the areas of energy- and climate," said Jakob von Weizsäker from Bruegel to the Danish weekly.

The financial aid packages reflect a traditional and outdated way of thinking by European governments, he pointed out.

[...]

"The picture is the same everywhere. Rescue packages are designed to give us our old lives back", said Staffan Laestadius, professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. "It is all about saving jobs in the car industry".

Now Keynes once proposed that it'd make sense to pay people to bury printed money and then dig it up again. But I'm not sure we're in an entirely identical situation. We don't have a gold standard and haven't crossed into deflation, yet. And there are limits to our resource use that played a role in bringing us to the current crisis. This makes it more palatable that we are spending only half of what the US will spend this year. We might spend the next half, which we will come around to, in a less foolish manner.

The next round of stimulus plans needs to be European, and green.

(hat-tip to Fran at eurotrib)