EU Referendum

Showing posts with label Ryanair. Show all posts

ryanair-ibiza[i-ryanair-ibiza]According to Euronews, Europe's biggest budget airline, Ryanair, has "climbed on board the campaign to give the Lisbon Treaty wings."

We are told that the airline's chief executive Michael O'Leary has "dismissed what he called a lot of mumbo-jumbo in it" – whatever that means. But, for him, the "clincher" is concern over Ireland's economy. Presumably, he thinks that ratifying the treaty is going to make Ireland's economic woes evaporate.

More detail, however, comes from the Irish Times which tells us that Ryanair is to spend €500,000 on advertising and cheaper airline seats in its campaign for a Yes vote.

O'Leary says that "Ireland's (i.e., his airline's) future success depends on being at the heart of Europe and our membership of the euro." His company plans to spend €200,000 on newspaper and internet advertising and posters, and €300,000 on "deeply discounted seats", to emphasise that "the EU'’s policy on lower air fares was one of the reasons for Ryanair's existence."

This is the man, of course, who in October 2005 was telling us "We should shoot EU regulators…", an instruction with which we would be happy to comply.

But, when the chips are down, self-interest prevails and O'Leary has thrown in his lot with the "colleagues". But, of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with Ryanair's long-standing bid to take over Aer Lingus. It is thus a complete coincidence that the ailing airline is softening its stance towards a possible deal with Ryanair, having already rejected two bids.

Ryanair, in fact, is barred by EU takeover rules from making another bid for Aer Lingus until January but O'Leary's current enthusiasm for the project will surely do no harm when the EU commission comes to consider whether it approves the bid. Then, as they say, money talks.

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Robert Matthews, prospective Conservative MEP, is asking what should be in the Conservative manifesto for the European elections, over at Centre Right. Amid the flights of fancy, we decided to offer our own, slightly more realistic suggestions:

Lets keep this simple ... we are talking about policies which MEPs have to remember.

1. Slogan: "In Europe and run by Europe".
2. All expenses to be paid in euros, except when dollar rate is higher, when dollar payments shall be made.
3. To encourage more employment, chauffeur-driven cars to be cleaned more often. Twice a day is not enough.
4. New laws for approval by the EP to be printed in Braille.
5. MEP assistants to be taught Braille so they can tell their MEPs what's in the new laws.
6. No voting sessions to extend into lunch period. They must, therefore, terminate at 11.30.
7. Ryanair to provide club class seats.
8. MEP separate channels in airports to be screened off to stop plebs gawking.
9. More facilities for guide dogs in the EP.
10. Plebs required to doff caps when MEPs pass in chauffeur-driven cars (see above) - introduce cap subsidy to enable plebs to wear caps.
11. That's enough laws - ed (until after lunch).

We suspect that not all of these will appear in the official manifesto.

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Sligo[i-Sligo]A report has found its way into the Washington Post recently, interesting not only for its own merits but for the fact that it appeared in a major American newspaper – as the issue related to a very local problem in Ireland, with a major EU dimension.

The actual story is headed, "Not Local, Not Welcome," with the strap-line, "Irish Authorities Challenged on Home-Building Rules," and it leads in with a "teaser", declaring that, "P J McGoldrick can't live on land he owns five miles from his birthplace in County Sligo in the west of Ireland. He isn't local enough."

P J McGoldrick, in case you did not know, is the former chief executive of Ryanair Holdings, and he has been denied permission to build a seafront cottage in Carrowdough. Local planners, we are told, favour farmers from the immediate area when granting permits, thwarting McGoldrick's dream of retiring to the place where he swam as a boy.

But, as we delve further through the prose, we find that this is an issue that is of major significance to the UK as well. It concerns the continued problem of "gentrification" of the countryside, with outsiders moving in to rural areas and buying up the housing. They drive up the prices to a level where the local inhabitants cannot afford to buy their houses and, since so many are second homes, leave the villages as deserts during the weekdays, destroying the communities and local economies.

Twenty-three authorities in rural Ireland have attempted to address this problem by limiting who can buy houses in remote areas, requiring potential new-home buyers to have jobs in the area or even be fluent in Gaelic.

This may be cack-handed – and the paper gives some examples - but at least it is an attempt to deal with the problem, something of which the UK authorities cannot be accused. And that is perhaps just as well. The Irish authorities have now fallen foul of the EU commission which is examining the new rules to determine whether they breach treaty obligations, in which member states are obliged to give "freedom of establishment" to citizens of all EU nations.

The perverse thing about this is that the Irish government could restrict its own citizens from moving into these areas but the commission is exploring the argument that the rules discriminate against non-Irish citizens. And, if the EU forces the issue, it drives a coach and horse through any local restrictions. The Irish government could not allow in foreigners but exclude its own people.

Nor is this the first time the EU has intervened on such an issue. In 1995, Austria was forced to change its property laws. Prior to its accession to the EU, foreigners had been prohibited from buying homes in the western region Tirol unless it was their main residence.

In this case, all EU citizens, including Austrians, were banned from buying or building new holiday homes in Tirol, an option which would hardly assist the Irish.

However, there is an added twist to this story, which makes it something of a cautionary tale. The treaty of which the Irish may have fallen foul is not any recent construct – but the original 1957 Treaty of Rome. Even now, we are learning of more and more impositions that were devised 50 years ago.

Had, in the arguments on whether to join the (then) EEC in the 1970s, the "no" campaign warned that the treaty would affect rural housing policies, this would no doubt have been dismissed as scare-mongering. But such is the reach of the treaty system that, decades later, we can find applications of which no one dreamed.

And here we go now, with Brown preparing to sign up to another treaty, the implications and effects of which we may not fully appreciate for some many more decades.

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NFU+logo[i-NFU+logo]It is not often that this blog pays too much attention to the NFU (known in the business as No F***ing Use) but this delightful little item has caught my attention.

The NFU eschews pronouncements by people who might know something such as Van Jolissaint of DaimlerChrysler, who, as my colleague points out, did not say any of the things that were attributed to him, or Michael O'Leary of Ryanair, who most certainly did say all the things he is supposed to have said about the unknown minister of aviation.

The NFU, as ever, supports the European Commission, in the vain hope that next time round, the Union’s members might benefit from something that comes out of the European Union.

In particular, it supports the “package of proposals on energy and climate change published” yesterday. Well, supports it up to a point. For it does not go far enough.

However, while the NFU welcomes what is an ambitious programme, we are disappointed that it has taken the form of a white paper rather than draft legal texts. The Commission will be seeking endorsement from the spring EU Council meeting and will come forwards with draft legislation beyond that. We share the Commission’s view that “concrete action is required urgently”.

Well, I wouldn’t be too despondent if I were the NFU. Given that there is evidence for the climate-changing propensities of cows when they perform certain bodily functions, given that the NFU persisted in supporting DEFRA's insane policy of slaughtering millions of healthy animals rather than vaccinating them during the foot and mouth epidemic, one could argue that the bods at Stoneleigh have already carried out very concrete actions in the cause of climate change.

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