EU Referendum

Showing posts with label Hungary. Show all posts

Gyurcsany_Medvedev[i-Gyurcsany_Medvedev]The Hungarian news agency, MTI, has reported that Hungary is now committed to the Nabucco project and the EU energy policy, whose purpose, more or less, if the story of it possibly taking gas from Gazprom is accurate and, more to the point, will be accurate in a year’s time when Russia’s gas production might change.

According to the MTI report:

Ministers Kinga Goncz of foreign affairs, Csaba Kakosy of economy and Janos Veres of finance met reporters after informing the EU and NATO member states' ambassadors about Hungary's energy policy.

Both Kakosy and Goncz emphasised that Hungary would provide "active support" for Nabucco.

Goncz said the Foreign Ministry would set up a post of roving ambassador who will act as a liaison to the countries involved in Nabucco, and promote the implementation of the project.

Which sounds good if we really want to reach a stage when European countries no longer rely exclusively or near-exclusively on Russia for their energy. How does this square with Hungary’s earlier decision to stay as close as possible to Russia economically and, particularly, to Gazprom.

At the time the Budapest Business Journal (BBJ) expressed some scepticism about the decision being a sensible one.

With no shortage of drama, political grandstanding, and perhaps hyperbole, Orbán sought to attack his incumbent opponent Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány where he felt he had the most leverage - the government’s decision to back the pipeline to bring Russian gas under the Black Sea through to Turkey (the Blue Stream extension) - a move which dealt a lethal blow to the rival Nabucco project which would ease energy dependence on Russia.

For countries that have only recently escaped the clutches of Soviet rule (the last Russian soldiers left Hungary in 1991), their hard-earned sovereignty is highly treasured, and for this reason Orbán’s exaggerated characterization of Gyurcsány’s energy policy decisions as a renewed surrender to communism gained so much traction.

But did Gyurcsány’s strategy to earn favor with the Kremlin get Hungary any relief? Or is the country headed toward a new version of Goulash State Corporatism no matter what? Indications point to the latter, as the latest protectionist move by the Hungarian government to allow its largest energy firm, MOL, to block unwelcome foreign bids via „Lex MOL” legislation is raising some eyebrows - illustrating at once a failed energy strategy and Gazprom’s tactics of disaggregation.

Move forward to last week and what do we see in the International Herald Tribune?

Hungary's government on Thursday signed an agreement joining a natural gas pipeline project anchored by Russia — amid calls at home for greater transparency in the deal and worries about Russia's growing influence.

Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany was in Moscow on Thursday to attend the signing of the deal with Gazprom, Russia's natural gas monopoly, on a joint venture to build the Hungarian section of the South Stream gas pipeline. The pipeline would bring Russian gas under the Black Sea to Bulgaria before splitting into several branches to Western Europe.

Understandably, there are worries in Hungary about this deal. The opposition party FIDESZ and the Socialists’ coalition partners, the Free Democrats have raised concerns about the way the deal was negotiated with minimum transparency and about the damage it might do to Hungary’s standing in the EU and the Western alliance, in general.

As in Bulgaria, a deal of this kind raises the spectre of economic over-dependence on Russia in countries that have only recently regained their political (and economic) independence.

US Deputy Secretary of State urged Hungary to put the Nabucco project first and that may account for those pious statements I started this posting with.

Analysts are now putting their money on the South Stream pipeline as opposed to Nabucco, though neither has been built.

"The momentum is really with the South Stream pipeline now," said Andrew Neff, an energy analyst with Global Insight in Ankara, Turkey.

While South Stream and Nabucco could be complementary, "the onus is really going to be on the EU, because we may see some of the commercial support for Nabucco evaporate" as the South Stream project goes forward, Neff said.

The EU has seen efforts to coordinate the political and commercial sides of Nabucco slowed by having to deal simultaneously with the many countries and interests in the 27-member bloc, a complication Russia and Gazprom do not have.

"Gazprom's strategy is to have bilateral agreements with each country separately," said Gergely Boszormenyi Nagy, an analyst at the Perspective Institute in Budapest. "This is one of the most important obstacles to the development of a common EU energy policy, which Russia is knowingly using."

Then again, reliance on Russia producing enough gas and building those pipelines in time may be a little premature. One must recall that production of both gas and oil has fallen sharply in that country in the last couple of years and future extraction is likely to be more difficult both for reasons of geography and because of the gradual exclusion of western partners from major projects.

Also, Russia is a huge consumer of energy as well as exporter and if production falls, decisions will have to be taken as to what comes first: internal or external customers. That famed Putinite “peace and stability” depends on keeping both happy.

As for Hungary and its Prime Minister and his many opponents, we need to keep watching those revolving doors. Who will come out first?

tokaji1[i-tokaji1]Well, I don’t know about song, though music is rarely absent from any story to do with Italy or Hungary, but wine and women definitely turn up in this one.

The wine is spelled variously as Tokay or Tocai and has been a problem for some time. Tokay or, in its correct spelling, Tokaji, that is of the place called Tokaj, is the famous dessert wine of Hungary. Grown and produced for a number of centuries, it is highly valued and, in my own perhaps not unbiased opinion, is the best of that breed, far outranking the French ones. (But I am prepared to listen to alternative points of view on this.)

So proud of this wine are the Hungarians that there is a reference to it in verse 3 of the National Anthem, the words being written by the well-known poet and litterateur of the early nineteenth century, Ferenc Kölcsey. (Hey, you have to keep up on this blog, you know.)

Other wines have been named Tokay as well, including one in Alsace, but the one that has been a particular problem is the Italian Tocai, a medium-bodied, very pleasant, dry white wine from the Friuliano region. Pleasant it may be but it is not a patch on the real Tokaji though it, too, seems to have existed from 1700.

The fact is, however, that French and Italian food and wine producers have benefited from the pernicious EU system of name protection. Now the decision has gone against them and they do not like it much. “Under the terms of Hungary's EU accession, it was agreed that winegrowers in Italy and France, which also had a wine called Tokay d'Alsace, should relinquish the name.”

The story as published on Buzzle.com quotes the Guardian from 2006 and shows that the Italian wine producers were all set either to challenge or to circumvent the decision, whichever came easier. Sadly, they found just as many non-French and non-Italian producers have found in the past that it is not so easy and having produced a wine called Tocai since 1700 is not going to save you from the ECJ deciding who can and who cannot use certain labels.

An appeal by the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region of Italy to the European Court has been turned down, with the judges ruling that Italian Tocai “does not qualify as a geographical indication” because “it has no special quality, reputation or characteristic that is attributable to its geographic origin”.

Gianola Nonino, whose family has been making wine at Udine in Friuli for generations, called the decision “appalling”.

“They have stolen a part of our history,” she said, adding that the new name, Friulano, was "terrible”, since it was simply an adjective describing anything that comes from Friuli.

Marco Felluga, another leading Friuli wine producer, said that the loss of the Tocai brand was “incredible . . . Italy has lost its wine war with Hungary. It’s like saying that from tomorrow Italians cannot call pizza pizza any more.”

Signor Pizzul said that the row was “particularly absurd because the Italian and Hungarian versions of Tocai are quite different”. Italian Tocai is an aromatic dry white made entirely from the Tocai grape (known as Sauvignon Vert in France), whereas Hungarian Tokai or Tokaji is a sweet dessert wine made using Furmint and Haréslvelü grapes.

The latest news is that nothing much has changed. The ECJ maintains that Hungary alone has the right to use the name Tokaji or any version thereof and the Italian wine makers who will now have to call their Friuliano are worried that they will lose sales.

“It would almost be comical if it were not so serious,” the association said. “Chambers of commerce that have to register Friuli wine for 2008 cannot because they don’t know what to call it.”

Indeed, one could say that about almost anything to do with EU regulation that it would be comical if it were not so serious.

Sadly, this victory (if it ever materializes, that is) does not seem to make the Hungarians any happier, perhaps because they are largely unaware of the battle. The Courrier International.com quotes from an article published in the well-known Hungarian weekly, Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature):

Surveys show that the EU has lost popularity in Hungary in 2007. That's because the EU is seen as an elitist theme, suggests sociologist Pál Tamás. "Gradually, the relationship between Hungary and the EU has changed. True, the EU is still seen as connected with Brussels, officials and regulations ? though in day to day talk the term EU is increasingly used to mean just that - all of the Union. ... At the same time, however, there is a widely accepted view that we are second-class EU citizens. In other words, EU acceptance was their decision, not ours. This notion can only be overcome through demonstrations of our own interests, perhaps through independent decisions on specific issues."

Actually, as we wrote at the time, the support for EU membership was lukewarm at best in most East European countries, particularly Hungary. The turn-out for those referendums was very low, not even reaching 50 per cent in Hungary. The reason was clear: few people wanted to vote for the parties that opposed membership, which were either rather unpleasant, archaic, inward looking nationalists or unreconstructed communists but there was no great enthusiasm for the actual project either.

The article itself (for those who read Hungarian) is considerably longer but the summary is fair. EU membership is perceived as an elite project, which has given little to the people of Hungary. Ah well, we did warn them but they wouldn’t listen.

link[i-link]Wait a minute, I hear you cry. What happened to the women? We have had the wine and there will be no song but women?

For that we have to go back to Italy’s rows with the world, it sometimes seems, about its alcoholic production. Paris Hilton, the heiress to a somewhat decreasing number of millions if gossip columns are to be believed, has been hired to advertise something called Rich Prosecco.

The tussle with Paris Hilton, meanwhile, is over a drink called Rich Prosecco and its advertising campaign featuring the heiress wearing nothing but a coating of gold paint, in imitation of the actress Shirley Eaton in the James Bond film Goldfinger.

On the whole Italians do not object to seeing Ms Hilton in the nude. What has caused anger is that she has not only used the name “prosecco”, which Italians regard as their copyright, but also — sacrilegiously — put the drink in a can and mixed it with fruit juice.

The defence offered by Ms Hilton’s publicity machine is that Rich Prosecco is not being marketed in Italy. It was launched last year at a typically extravagant “mega-party” in the Austrian Alps. Ms Hilton, who emerged from a helicopter in a glittering dress, declared the drink to be “yummy”.

Günther Aloys, the businessman who created Rich Prosecco, said that she was “pleasant and uncomplicated. Nobody embodies carefree lust for life as convincingly and glamorously as Paris Hilton.”

However, in Treviso, one of the centres of Italian prosecco production, winemakers are not amused. Fulvio Brunetta, head of the Treviso branch of Coldiretti, the farmers’ union, said that Ms Hilton’s drink was an insult. He said Italian producers would meet this month to consider their response, “up to and including legal action”. Mr Brunetta said that he had nothing against Ms Hilton. “But she is . . . creating a generation of consumers who will forever associate the name of prosecco with something similar to an alcoholic fruit drink.”

It seems to me (and I am not a prosecco drinker nor somebody who would buy a disgusting sounding canned drink because Ms Hilton has painted herself gold) that people who “will forever associate the name of prosecco with something similar to an alcoholic fruit drink” are unlikely to buy the real stuff, anyway. It all adds to the gaiety of nations and the bank accounts of lawyers.

Puskas[i-Puskas]Sorry, couldn’t resist that one, even though this is not a posting about football. For those misguided readers of this blog who made ironic comments on the forum some time ago about my alleged ignorance about matters footballic, allow me to point out that the title is the Hungarian shout that urges the team forward. The Italian equivalent is Forza Italia! The English one is something along the lines of Ingeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerlaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand.

Enough of that frivolity. Let us turn to other, equally frivolous matters – the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty. It seems that Hungary, which no longer manages to put up a good football team, at any rate manages to be the first country to ratify the treaty.

How they did it with such speed is a little hard to work out – must have been debating round the clock. Either that or the whole thing was passed on the nod, it being nearly Christmas and the complaints will start later when the people will realize what the parliamentarians nodded through “on their behalf”.

This wonderful piece of news was reported on EUObserver and EUbusiness. The latter explains what happened:

There were three separate votes on the treaty, including an amendment to the Hungarian constitution, all of which overwhelmingly carried the two-thirds majority needed for ratification.

A slightly muddled way of putting it but we get the gist of it. Yes, the treaty went through on the nod and the Hungarian people are unlikely even to know what was decided.

EUObserver points out that

In taking the ratification step so quickly, Budapest has stolen the crown from Poland and France, both of whom had indicated they were aiming to be the first. French president Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country rejected the original EU constitution in 2005, had suggested that France should be among the first to prove that the country is back on track in Europe.

All this competitiveness – don’t they know that it is bad for children? Apparently, President Sarkozy has come up with an interesting excuse for not putting the slightly longer treaty to the French people. No, it is not because they might come up with the wrong answer.

Mr Sarkozy has sidestepped the awkward question of why French voters will not be having a second say on the treaty by suggesting that if France had a referendum then the British government would be forced to follow suit, resulting in a probable rejection of the document.

Not us, guv, it’s them.

The Hungarian News Service (MTI) writes about Commissar-in-Chief Barroso congratulating the Hungarian parliament at overfulfilling the plan. Some Hungarians with long memories might feel a little uneasy but most, I imagine, will shrug the whole story away.

Hungarian_NBH+03[i-Hungarian_NBH+03]Another scandal seems to be brewing in Hungary though this one may be low-key at the moment and grist to FIDESZ’s mill later on. This story is to do with the new Director-General of the Hungarian National Security Office (NBH – Nemzetbiztonsági Hivatal, since you ask).

The new DG is Colonel Sándor Laborc, who spent six years in the bad old days being educated in the KGB’s Dzerzhinzky Academy in Moscow. On the official website there is a brief biography, which tells us that he was born in Budapest in 1958, has a degree in international relations, is an expert on the Far East, speaks Russian and Japanese and has served in the Ministry of Interior since 1978 one way or another (presumably. firstly as part of his compulsory military service). Nothing about the Moscow sojourn.

From 2000 to 2004 he was deputy director in the criminal investigations branch of the Hungarian tax authority, returning to the NBH as departmental head, becoming deputy director-general (operations) in February, acting DG on June 1 and now fully fledged DG.

This rapid promotion was made possible partly because of the resignation under thunderstorm-sized cloud by his predecessor, Dr Lajos Galambos, when it was alleged that he had sent national intelligence service agents to the home of a journalist who was working for the right-wing newspaper Magyar Nemzet (the one whose journalistic credentials were seriously doubted by at least one of our readers), investigating alleged corruption among senior members of the administration.

The idea was to scare the journalist in question into abandoning his search. It did not work out quite the way it was intended and Dr Galambos was persuaded to resign with Colonel Laborc becoming his successor.

Magyar Hírlap put it rather neatly (well, as neatly as the long-winded Hungarian journalistic style allows it):

This story is proof that we really do live in a post-communist system, with the emphasis on 'post'. As long as secret service members trained by the KGB are able to obtain top posts in Hungary, communism, which is supposed to have beenrelegated to the past, will live on. Haven't the 17 years that have passed since the fall of communism been long enough for leaders to be trained who are free of the Soviet legacy and compatible with NATO and the EU?

Ah yes, while we are on the subject, what has been the reaction of the EU, that bulwark of freedom, democracy and European values? Apparently none [scroll down for story]. There is a rumour, according to this report that there were protests from NATO ambassadors:

The dailies Magyar Nemzet and Magyar Hírlap reported earlier that the US's NATO ambassador had informed our NATO ambassador that they considered a graduate of the KGB academy an unacceptable head for the security services of an ally. The US also complained that the version of Laborc's CV received by a NATO special committee did not refer to Laborc's studies in Moscow and did not give the name of the college in question.

Heti Világgazdaság [a weekly] has learned that is quite possible that US security services objected to Laborc's imminent appointment. It is the first time since the regime change that such a high position has been entrusted to somebody who not only studied in the Soviet Union, but who studied at the KGB college - something that clearly poses a heightened security risk.

The Hungarian response was to deny any protests and remind everyone that this was an internal matter, which is questionable as Hungary is now in NATO and the EU.

We hear a great deal from the EU about the need to extirpate neo-nazism although the chances of anybody who had been trained by the Gestapo being appointed to an important post or even being alive are slim. Yet, KGB falcons (to use a well-known Soviet phrase) in high security positions do not disturb anyone in Brussels.

Of course one could argue that those famous European values have included various rather nasty forms of secret police and, thus, not worrying about it is not a contradiction for the EU. Also, there is a problem with cadres that are the right age to take on the position of security DG. Inevitably, they would have served under the old regime though not all of them would have been well enough regarded to be sent to Moscow.

That might disturb Hungarians at the next election, though, if FIDESZ plays it right.

COMMENT THREAD

Gyurcsany+02[i-Gyurcsany+02]After my last posting on Eastern Europe (not just Hungary, please note) I was called to order by various people. It seems that when I was quoting another article I was guilty of agreeing with it. Equally, I appear not to have made it clear that Magyar Nemzet (a right-wing newspaper) is really just a racist rag.

I did, however, make it quite clear, before branching off to other East European countries that I thought political tensions were high in Hungary, that there was a great deal of polarization and that, in my opinion, most people would probably prefer both political sides to butt out of their lives.

Nothing in the comments and criticisms inspired me to change any of that.

I suspect, furthermore, though at present I have no direct evidence, having not been in that country since the beginning of 2005, that most people are a tad fed up with the way the various political parties and groupings are kicking the 1956 Revolution around like the proverbial political football.

Enough already. The country has moved on. Many things have happened since those memorable days. It is true, that there has not been a rigorous and unbiased history of the events but one lives in hope.

For myself, I do not think I need to write about it again, having covered the Revolution at some length at the time of the fiftieth anniversary, having predicted correctly before the anniversary that there would be trouble on the day and having subsequently written several times about the riots and the bloody suppression. In the course of one piece I wrote:

We are not seeing another uprising, which is just as well, since a good deal of it was very nasty, indeed, even before the Soviet tanks rolled back and it was put down with great brutality. There were many scores settled in an unpleasant fashion and the overwhelming majority of people hid in shelters, hoping that there would be no searches for those who had any kind of an official job, however lowly.

Those who have real memories of those events may well find that these are somewhat more ambivalent than present accounts are to be believed, though the astonishing courage and achievement of those almost insanely brave men and women does need to be saluted.

History matters. It matters particularly in the East European countries where recent history has been convoluted, nasty and brutish. The EU is beginning to get the measure of those problems but, frankly, if they had listened to me they would have known all this was coming.

On Friday the International Herald Tribune decided to ignore those events of 1956 and concentrate on the present situation by publishing a reasonably friendly interview with the Prime Minister. Ferenc Gyurcsány.

I have to admit that I am not a fan of the man, who became a successful businessman in Hungary in the nineties, a rather dubious distinction. The rest of the country was going through an appalling inflation and huge economic upheavals.

Before that he had started his political career in the Young Communist Alliance (KISZ) and there have always been serious doubts about his real ideology. For a while he kept Hungary economically close to Russia but that may be changing and when he announced that the Nabucco pipeline, a possible alternative to reliance on Russia for energy supplies, was not being built fast enough, one had to sigh in agreement.

For all of that, his manoeuvrings to be as close as possible to Gazprom is not seen as a sensible solution by everybody

But did Gyurcsány’s strategy to earn favor with the Kremlin get Hungary any relief? Or is the country headed toward a new version of Goulash State Corporatism no matter what?

Indications point to the latter, as the latest protectionist move by the Hungarian government to allow its largest energy firm, MOL, to block unwelcome foreign bids via „Lex MOL” legislation is raising some eyebrows - illustrating at once a failed energy strategy and Gazprom’s tactics of disaggregation.

Gyurcsány’s argument is that his country as most of Eastern Europe relies heavily on Russia and that is the political reality. His task is to manoeuvre so that Hungary is a partner rather than a subservient of Gazprom and the Russian government though whether discarding being part of Nabucco as a possibility is a sensible way of negotiating remains questionable.

The interview in the Trib concentrates on domestic economic matters in which the Socialist government has proved itself to be less socialist than expected and has advanced ideas that are less socialist than those of the right wing opposition FIDESZ. One could call this the normal topsy-turveydom of East European politics if one did not see certain similarities with West European, specifically British, politics.

Gyurcsány is entertainingly honest (famously so, if people will recall his most unpolitician-like admission of lying all the time) and agrees that if there is an election tomorrow his party will lose. As a matter of fact it will probably lose next week as well.

On the other hand, the high taxation and certain austerity measures that he has introduced were dictated by the shockingly high budget deficit he inherited from his predecessor, the Socialist Péter Medgyessy, he, who had worked for the secret police, reporting on his colleagues, and, before that from the FIDESZ government.

The year Gyurcsany took office, the budget deficit looked likely to surpass 11 percent of GDP. In the end, it came in at 9.2 percent as the government raised taxes substantially: Corporate tax rates were pushed up to 20 percent from 16 percent, the value-added tax on basic items rose to 20 percent from 15 percent, and payroll taxes rose to 17 percent from 13.5 percent. The highest rate of income tax is 36 percent, but when other taxes are added in, the de facto marginal tax rate becomes 57 percent on the highest earners.

Those hefty rises, arguably necessary at a time of crisis, are leading to a budget deficit that is forecast to be 6.1 percent of GDP this year.

The taxes have also dampened growth considerably. "We have had to sacrifice a significant part of our growth potential during this period," Gyurcsany acknowledged.

Goodness, you mean higher taxes stifles growth? Who would have thunk it? Quick, somebody tell Prime Minister Brown.

Seriously, though, that lack of growth will probably cause problems in the future. As Gyurcsány explains, there is a limit to what he can do in cutting government spending.

Government spending as a proportion of GDP was almost 53 percent in 2006. It is forecast to fall to 51 percent in 2007, according to the rating agency Standard & Poor's. But the prime minister, who studied economics in his university days, said there were limits to cutting spending.

"Ordinary Hungarians are complaining, saying that we have done too many things and made life much more insecure, saying we cut back spending significantly," he said.

Undoubtedly true, but what will happen when the state will no longer be able to afford to spend what it spends now, because of the low economic growth? Will he start using nationalist rhetoric? I wouldn't put it past him. After all, he did try to hijack the fiftieth anniversary of the 1956 Revolution.

COMMENT THREAD

karman01[i-karman01]According to the Hungarian news agency MTI, Irén Kármán, an investigative journalist, film maker and blogger (in Hungarian) on the site of the leading Hungarian newspaper, Népszabadság, was found by some fishermen on Friday on the banks of the Danube, tied and badly beaten.

She was taken to hospital in Budapest and, according to the latest reports, her condition has stabilized. For some reason the police is aware of the fact that the attack occurred elsewhere and Ms Kármán was taken to the place where she was found.

Among the many protests and demands for a swift investigation one came from Miklós Haraszti, erstwhile dissident writer and poet, erstwhile member of the Hungarian parliament, now lecturer on democratization and the media and, somewhat ironically, the OSCE representative on freedom of the media.

Irén Kármán is known for her investigation of the oil scam in Hungary, whereby a certain dye was bleached from the state subsidized heating oil in order for the material to be sold as diesel. Her investigations seem to have indicated, not surprisingly, that this sort of a large mafia-type exercise could not have been carried out without involvement on the part of politicians, high-ranking civil servants and the police.

She has had important material stolen from her before and, as she said on her blog, has had threatening e-mails in connection with her work.

Merkel,+Kaczynski[i-Merkel,+Kaczynski]Two of the new member states of the European Union are in the news: Poland because of Chancellor Merkel's visit, which seems to have yielded some reward for her and because of a new piece of lustration legislation; and Hungary because there have been riots in Budapest again on a national holiday.

A long piece that tries to summarize most of what might be happening in those countries is here.

COMMENT THREAD