Agenda
This WEEK in the European Union
The next seven days are a big week for Brussels with the premiers and presidents of the European Union member states gathering in the EU capital for their spring summit where they are meant to hammer out a unified position to take to the upcoming G20 talks at the beginning of April.
While crisis headlines worsen with every passing week, expectations are high, but drafts seen ahead of the meeting suggest EU leaders will disappoint their counterpart across the Atlantic. The US is pushing for a bigger cash stimulus, but France and Germany have this week said they feel Europe has spent enough and the focus should instead be on tougher international regulation of the financial sector.
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They argue that Europe has much stronger welfare provisions - the so-called automatic stabilisers - that are already flooding the economy with additional cash, and thus the US larger fiscal stimulus should only be compared with the EU stimulus together with its welfare spending.
The leaders are nonetheless expected to endorse a doubling of International Monetary Fund resources to $500 billion, of which the EU could immediately but temporarily lend to the IMF an extra $75-100 billion. Japan meanwhile has already pledged the fund an additional $100 billion. The US for its part wants a commitment of a fresh $500 billion atop its existing monies, rather than a simple doubling.
The draft suggest the EU is at the same time willing to back a change in the leadership of international financial institutions to more accurately represent the new balance of economic forces in the world and drop the tradition of the IMF being headed by a European and the World Bank by an American. This is widely interpreted as the bargain on offer to China: greater representation for Beijing in return for a commitment of funds from the Communist state.
At the spring summit, EU leaders will also be apprised by the Irish leader of the state of play of preparations for the autumn second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
Hopes are also high from development organisations and green groups that Europe will commit substantial funds for carbon emissions reduction and climate adaptation measures for the third world.
Recognising that northern industrialised nations are responsible for 75 percent of global warming, these countries have committed to making the bulk of CO2 reductions.
But the EU also wants developing countries, particularly emerging nations such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia, to also commit to reductions, and so the expected grand bargain at December's UN conference on climate change in Copenhagen would be that if the EU and US stump up significant chunks of cash for cutting emissions and climate adaptation, developing countries will commit to considerable CO2 reductions in return.
However, recent councils of EU environment and finance ministers have repeated the line that it is too soon to put their cards on the table when the US has yet to announce what funds it will commit to developing country climate measures. The tardiness of EU leaders in this realm led environmental group Greenpeace this week to step up its activism and attempt an unprecedented blockade of the council building in Brussels during a meeting of finance ministers.
Despite news from a meeting of the world's top climate scientists this week that warned that earlier estimates of climate change have been woefully overoptimistic, and the world is facing the likelihood of much higher sea-level rises and steadily acidifying oceans, NGOs are prepared to be disappointed.
Specifically, the EU is hoping for a commitment from the global south - with the exception of the least developed countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa - of CO2 reductions of between 15 and 30 percent on 1990 levels.
Foreign ministers on Monday and Tuesday meet in Brussels. Relations with Belarus is on the agenda. Here, the conflict between a desire to pull the authoritarian state out of Russia's orbit by offering concessions and Europe's headline commitment to human rights are at play once again. The ministers will also likely tussle over the provision of some €5 billion to new energy projects, but almost certainly without any concrete result.
Separately, the European Commission will discuss a simplification of the Common Agricultural Policy and development commissioner Louis Michel will visit Cuba, the first visit by a commissioner to the Stalinist-controlled island since aging revolutionary Fidel Castro stepped down to make way for his slightly younger brother, Raul.
Elsewhere, on Tuesday, Nobel-prize-winning liberal (in the anglophone sense, i.e. centre-left and Keynesian) economist Paul Krugman visits the European capital, where he will give the keynote address during a discussion on the crisis alongside commission President (and liberal in the continental sense, i.e. centre-right and laissez faire) Jose Manuel Barroso.
Finally, MEPs in the environment committee of the European Parliament will have a look at food labelling. While deputies are broadly supportive of moves to more frankly inform citizens about the fat and salt content of food, fears that cheese - infamously both substantially fatty and salty - would be unfairly labelled not especially healthy will concentrate minds on the subject.