EU Referendum

Showing posts with label Switzerland. Show all posts

link[i-link]It is, perhaps, just as well for my peace of mind that the transnational organizations, its members and supporters, collectively known as tranzis are really quite as ghastly as they are. Otherwise, I may well find myself supporting one or more of them, particularly after reading yet another rant by a soi-disant eurosceptic in favour of such freedom loving states as Russia or China.

The problem, as I see it, is lack of real political principles. Just as the europhiliacs rant about the beauty of integration and transnational governance, for want of any ideas, so many eurosceptics (well, soi-disant ones, as I mentioned above) go on about the nation state as some sort of a holy entity, regardless of whether it is a nation, or how the state came about.

What that leads to is a support for any state that is in existence at the moment of discussion. Not a happy thought for those of us who envisage the European Union becoming a state to all intents and purposes very soon. After that Britain’s desire to free herself from the shackles will be internal EU matter, according to this argument, not to be interfered with or mentioned by outsiders.

Luckily, most Americans have a slightly different view of the world, as do committed Anglospherists in other lands.

Equally luckily, whenever thoughts of that kind enter my head I come across a few stories about those wonderful tranzis and recover my equanimity.

Let us start with an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, written by Roger Köppel, who is owner and chief editor of the Swiss weekly, Die Weltwoche, the only eurosceptic publication in the German language, as I was once told by one of its editors. It is an unusual publication in its political orientation and courage in breaking away from the herd.

It is, therefore, not surprising that Roger Köppel is less than impressed by the Social-Democratic Foreign Minister of Switzerland, Micheline Calmy-Rey. Mme Clamy-Rey has decided to break with the Swiss tradition of neutrality and try to turn the country into “a moral superpower”.

Like many politicians, when she discusses morality, she really means the trendy political and social views of the left-leaning, unaccountable and unbalanced tranzis. Mr Köppel puts it more politely:

It is a morality, however, that is firmly anchored in the left-liberal mainstream that seems to have lost its moral compass. She shares the aversion of Europe's general public toward the U.S. and Israel. There is an emotional resentment of globalization and a belief against all evidence that, in the end, only broad-based development aid can improve the lives of the poor.

Among her other achievements is the nomination of the old Marxist, friend of Fidel Castro and co-founder of the Muammar Qaddafi Human Rights Prize (I wonder why Peter Simple never thought of that one), Jean Ziegler to be an adviser on human rights to the UN.

Her other actions include marching across the North Korean border in red sneakers (I missed this one) “to make a statement that no one understood” and generally make a nuisance herself whenever an American politician was around.

Recently she managed to photograph herself with Iranian President Ahmadinejad as she visited the country, allegedly to discuss transparency in Iranian nuclear development. In fact, she undermined the West’s rather feeble attempts to have some kind of sanctions against that country and handed the Iranian leader a propaganda coup.

Although Ms. Calmy-Rey claims she harshly criticized the president for his policies, such as stoning adulterers, the prevailing impression was that she let herself be manipulated as a useful idiot by a brutal regime.

Mr Köppel is concerned, rightly, with the harm this slightly batty female does to Switzerland’s image and reality. One cannot help feeling, however, that another tranzi nutter is not quite what the world needs.

So it is once again time to have a look at that untalented circus, the tranzi to end all tranzis, the UN, the organization that some eurosceptics set up as the arbiter of international law. Thanks to a posting on Little Green Footballs, entitled “UN Human Rights Council: Officially a Self-Mocking Joke”, we find this:

Islamic countries have succeeded in hijacking the United Nations Human Rights Council and perverting its intent (even more than it was already perverted).

I am glad Charles Johnson added that last bit in brackets. Otherwise I might have had a serious fit from all the laughing the comment would have generated.

He links to an article in the International Herald Tribune, entitled “Arabs, Muslims battle US, Europeans over free speech at UN”.

Arab and Muslim countries defended Tuesday a resolution they pushed through at the United Nations to have the body's expert on free speech police individuals and news media for negative comments on Islam.

In itself this is not much of a story. The UN can do no policing because, contrary to some opinions, it has no rights to do so. Of course, it can make grand pronouncements as Ban Ki-Moon did, when he denounced Geert Wilders’s film “Fitna” that remains widely available on Youtube.

Of course, as Claudia Rossett points out, the SecGen’s condemnation and efforts to censor internet films are selective. We have heard nothing from him on the subject of the psychotic mouse, Farfur, or his pathological cousin, the Nahoul, the killer bee, or any others of that delightful cohort that is Hamas’s answer to Blue Peter. (One of the most recent films shows a little darling boy killing President Bush and announcing that the White House has become a mosque.)

One cannot help being amused in a rather grim way by the genuinely Orwellian task given to the UN’s expert on free speech to police negative comments on anything at all. But that’s the UN for you. They probably use the word Orwellian without ever understanding what it means.

The expert in question is a Kenyan, Ambeyi Ligabo and his job is to report to the UN about suppression of free speech by dictatorships and repressive governments. One can’t help feeling that the man has his work cut out. It hardly seems fair that there should be this resolution that adds to his burdens.

Not only must he report on curtailment of free speech now but also on the exercise of free speech if it is done to criticize Islam.

The resolution was introduced by Egypt and Pakistan, two countries well known for the freedom of expression they allow, to that wondrous body about which we have written on numerous occasions, the UN Human Rights Council and was passed 32 - 0.

Ahem, one says to oneself. Whatever happened to the Western countries who maintain that freedom of speech is a value to be cherished? The United States has, quite rightly, refused to be a member of this farcical body. But what of the European countries?

Well, they seem to have abstained. One would not want to be seen to be too extreme in defending the idea of freedom, would one?

Slovenia's ambassador, Andrej Logar, speaking on behalf of the European Union, warned that Ligabo's role as an independent expert was shifting from protecting free speech toward limiting it.

Yes, well, that’s the way it crumbles, cookie-wise, as they kept saying in that wonderful film, “The Apartment”. After all, Slovenia, too, condemned Geert Wilders’s film.

Just for the record, these countries represent Europe and the West in general on the UNHRC: Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom, as well as the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.

One can understand why Russia thought it was best not to interfere with other people’s censorship of expression. But what were the others thinking of? Wringing one’s hands after the resolution had gone through is hardly sensible.

Oh yes, and, naturally enough, we are paying large amounts of money for this bizarre show to go on.

Emile+Lahoud[i-Emile+Lahoud]First the country that has postponed a vote yet again although it needs one rather badly. Rick Moran reports in American Thinker that

Unable to achieve a consensus on which Christian politician should serve as president, both pro and anti-government forces agreed to delay the vote in Parliament to choose a successor to current pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud.

The story is based on a Reuters report, which adds a European dimension:

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, and his Spanish and Italian counterparts Miguel Moratinos and Massimo D'Alema, urged rival factions to reach a swift deal during a visit to Lebanon last week.

"The ministers reiterated the urgency of an inter-Lebanese accord in terms of this crucial election, and our availability to continue working towards that end," deputy French Foreign Ministry spokesman Frederic Desagneaux said on Monday.

That ought to do it, I expect. Hezbollah will, undoubtedly, see the light and negotiate with the Maronites.

On to the elections that did happen. First off, Switzerland, to whose electoral campaign we have referred to before.

Spp-poster[i-Spp-poster]The Swiss People’s Party, described by such wonderfully democratic institutions as the UN Human Rights Commission as being extremist and right-wing but, in actual fact, the party that held the largest number of seats even before the election, has won handsomely, getting 29 per cent of the vote and 62 seats out of 200 in the Lower House, the National Council.

Although many saw the campaign as tainted by racism or xenophobia, the Swiss elected their first black parliament member Sunday — Ricardo Lumengo of the Social Democrats, an Angolan who arrived in Switzerland as an asylum seeker the 1980s and subsequently became a legal expert.

Well, go figure, as they say on the other side of the Pond.

Of course, this election is important in symbolism more than in reality. Because of the complicated electoral system, the Swiss government will go on being a coalition of four parties and the cantons will carry on being far more important than said government.

For all of that the Swiss have shown their mettle. They want to be ruled in the way they decide and they do not want to have their very special culture destroyed. In my opinion they made a serious mistake when they decided to join the UN in 2002 after keeping out of that corrupt tranzi organization for decades, but they are making up for that.

We can be reasonably certain that there will be little talk of Switzerland joining the EU or, even, the EEA for some time to come.

Donald+Tusk[i-Donald+Tusk]On to the next election that took place this Sunday. Yes, folks its Polish politics time again. It seems that Prime Minister Kaczynsky managed to annoy the Polish electorate to such an extent that they actually turned out to vote in larger numbers than before to trounce him and his party. Well, by larger than before numbers we mean 54 per cent.

The Polish pro-business party, Civic Platform, today took a strong position as a result of the parliamentary elections Sunday, winning 41.4 percent of the total vote with 99 percent of returns counted.

Donald Tusk will now start negotiations to form the new coalition government, in the first place with the Polish Peasants’ Party, in the somewhat uncomfortable knowledge that the good twin, Lech Kaczynski will still be President and in position to veto legislation.

As ever, it is impossible to predict what will happen on the international front. At the moment the EU leaders are pleased because Donald Tusk is known as a supporter of the EU and its rather elusive “values” while Kaczynski was known as a troublemaker.

On the other hand, as we have pointed out on numerous occasions on this blog, Jaroslaw Kaczynski may have yapped loudly but found himself in agreement with whatever was being proposed as soon as some kind of a bribe, however indefinable, materialized. One suspects, Donald Tusk will have quite similar policies.

Another issue will be the American alliance. The Kaczynskis have tended to be staunchly pro-American and anti-Russian …. rather like all their predecessors in post-Communist Polish governments.

The New York Times, who had not been happy at so much European support for the United States in Iraq, preferring to think of Bush as someone who isolated the country, is clutching at what might be described as straws:

Mr. Tusk said during the campaign that he would have driven a harder bargain over support of plans to place missile interceptors on Polish soil and that, if elected, he would try to bring home the 900 Polish troops in Iraq.

Not much in that, really. I can’t help feeling that Poland will continue to proved us with some entertainment on the political scene.

COMMENT THREAD

link[i-link]Everyone seems to have forgotten about the Belgian constitutional crisis, even though it might make the signing of that treaty in December a little difficult. If no government, then who will sign? And Belgium has not had a government for 120 days. Could we possibly achieve that state of affairs?

Of course, this has not affected domestic matters as the separate regional government run their own affairs and have done for several years. The question, I suppose, is how will Wallonia manage without government jobs and hand-outs?

Dan Bilefsky of the International Herald Tribune sees light on the horizon, though he may not consider it to be that. Actually, one does have to wonder about the political acumen of a journalist who starts his article thus:

This 177-year-old nation came a step closer Tuesday to averting breakup after its squabbling linguistic communities managed to agree on the one issue that increasingly unites them: fear of immigrants.

By and large one would question the idea that Belgium is a nation. The people who question it most are the citizens of that country, known colloquially as Belgians. Nor am I terribly impressed by the fact that those who make up this “nation” are described as “squabbling linguistic communities”. Mr Bilefsky might like to think less about his own superiority and find out more about the country he is writing about, even if it is only Belgium. He might like to know that Flanders is Flemish-speaking, not Dutch-speaking. They are close but not the same. (No, he is not American but one of ours.)

What is this political idea that has united the squabbling politicos? Apparently, they all agree on the need for tougher immigration rules, though, we suspect that the reasons might be different for the Flamands and the Walloons.

Despite this agreement, political analysts stressed that the crisis was far from over with the important issue of how to grant more autonomy to Flanders and Wallonia still hanging in the balance. They underlined, however, that the deal illustrated how immigration had become a unifying issue in a country where the prime minister-in-waiting recently publicly fumbled the words of the national anthem and where the unifying force for Belgians of all linguistic stripes is a love of the country's 400 kinds of beer.

"A toughening stance on immigration has overtaken politics in Belgium and made immigration a swing issue, and we are seeing this across Europe," said Pierre Blaise, secretary general of Crisp, a sociopolitical research organization in Brussels. "It is not that Belgians are intolerant in general,
but rather that the radicalization of the right has pushed mainstream parties to adopt a tougher approach when it comes to immigration and attitudes toward Islam in particular."

That last statement raises some interesting points about problems that Belgium has faced recently (see our repeated postings about the banned demonstration in Brussels on 9/11) but we would argue that it is not the radicalization of the right but the popularity of their ideas that “pushed mainstream parties to adopt a tougher approach”. Could the socialist mayor of Brussels have overplayed his hand?

Under the agreement, migrants from outside the European Union will be able to come to fill jobs only if there are not enough EU candidates. The parties agreed to stricter rules for immigrants who want to join family members in Belgium, including proof that they have sufficient income. The accord also would reserve Belgian citizenship to those who have spent five years uninterrupted in the country and who speak one of Belgium's three official languages - French, Dutch or German.

This agreement, though it seems to raise Mr Bilefsky’s hackles, does not sound all that tough. It is, as he points out, in line with a number of other countries, specifically Switzerland, which, not being part of the EU, can pass its own laws on all matters.

An increasingly strident stance toward immigration has been seen across Europe, where a get-tough approach to immigrants has been winning votes. In Switzerland, where voters go to the polls in national elections on Oct. 21, the Swiss People's Party, the most powerful party in Parliament, has in recent days been distributing posters showing three white sheep standing in the Swiss flag, as one of them kicks a single black sheep away. The implicit message: Foreigners are not welcome in one of the world's oldest democracies.

It is worth noting that in Switzerland it is not a fringe right-wing party that is advocating the tough stance but a main-stream one that is “the most powerful party in Parliament”, though the Swiss Parliament is less powerful than many others because of the country being a confederacy.

Spp-poster[i-Spp-poster]It is, of course, possible that even politicians have realized that their voters are tired of the sort of clever-dick argument that Mr Bilefsky is indulging in. Being the world’s oldest democracy has nothing to do with welcoming foreigners, particularly those that do not accept the rules of that oldest democracy. I think we may assume that Swiss People’s Party has no particular objections to the large international business community of Zürich or Geneva or to the various British shooting clubs that now have to practice in Switzerland because of our own insane gun laws (that have been so spectacularly successful in curbing gun crime).

The other possibility is that the Swiss do not take kindly to the UN interfering in their election and their political parties. After all, they are the oldest democracy and the UN cannot be said to be a democracy of any kind. And perhaps, just perhaps, they are not happy about the violence that has been developing in their peaceful society on both sides of the divide.

William+tell[i-William+tell]Well, OK, maybe he shoots apples again. Whatever it is, the Swiss are once again proclaiming their right to run their own country as they see fit, which includes the various cantons setting their own tax levels. And guess who does not like it. Yes, that's right the EU Commission.

We have followed the saga of the Commission's spat with Switzerland about those taxes and have noted that a number of firms have decided to move to Zürich to take advantage of the fiscal atmosphere.

As the BBC reports, the Commission (for some reason, with a small ‘c’) has decided to get tough.

The commission said the tax breaks were "unfair" as they differentiated between domestic and foreign income sources.

However, Switzerland said the argument was "unfounded".

There were no regulations between Switzerland and the EU on harmonising tax arrangements, so it was impossible to infringe rules, the Swiss government said.

Well, of course, it's unfair. I mean, here are the Swiss, letting their cantons decide on levels of taxation, exercising local democracy rather than subsidiarity; and here are the cantons setting tax levels that would be attractive to businesses. Sheesh! How unfair can you get?

"Switzerland enjoys the benefits of privileged access to the internal market and must accept the responsibilities that go along with this," said EU external relations commissioner, Benita Ferro-Waldner.

"The decision the commission has taken is not about tax competition, but about the state aid undermining the level playing field necessary for partnership and trade relations between Switzerland and the EU."

Actually, she is wrong. This is about tax competition – an unfair concept for the EU.

Swiss+scene[i-Swiss+scene]The Commission has warned Switzerland to stop undermining the EU's own high-tax economy (as if it needed outsiders to undermine it) and stop cantons from setting their own, advantageous levels. It is not, however, clear what the Commission will do, if Switzerland refuses to comply with these demands.

Will the European Rapid Reaction Force invade the country? I wouldn't advise it. Despite falling off Machiavelli's standards a bit, they remain "armatissimi e liberissimi" – most armed and most free.

COMMENT THREAD

johnny-halliday[i-johnny-halliday]Those French Socialists have a way with words. Particularly political terminology. An article in the Times that has come my way via the Freedom and Prosperity blog (well, one can dream) describes the slow but sure move of American firms from EU capitals to Switzerland.

In particular, there is a move from London, the latest one of those voting with their feet is the food producer Kraft, which “has taken a lease on a building in Zurich and will transfer staff from Vienna and from Kraft’s UK headquarters in Kew, southwest London”.

Obviously, it is not the fact that the UK has not joined the single currency that is the problem but the fact that the UK is an important part of the high tax, high regulation European economic disease. (Not to mention such peculiarly London problems as appalling transport.)

Some 200 UK jobs will be affected by the move to Zurich, Kraft said yesterday, suggesting that tax was just one of the factors that drew the company away from London. Other issues, including public transport, lifestyle, quality and the cost of accommodation were equally important.

France is not happy either.

Biogen Idec, a US pharmaceutical company, recently decamped from Paris to Zug, a canton which boasts nil corporate tax. The knife was twisted further when Johnny Hallyday, the French rock star, revealed that he would move his residence to Gstaad because he was “fed up” with French taxes.

Supporters of the French Socialist presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal, accused Hallyday of treachery and called for European action against Swiss “tax banditry”. However, President Chirac said that France must reduce its corporate tax rate if it is to remain competitive, calling for a reduction of the rate from 33 per cent to 20 per cent within five years.

Well, one does rather wonder where l’escroc has been all this time. Has he not been the President of that country for a little while? Easy for him to say tax competition now. But, clearly, competition is not a word that comes easily to our Ségo and her supporters. Tax banditry, eh? You can see the woman is set to be a success in France.