The blessings of inter-state duty-free shopping

On my way home for Christmas I felt like doing my old man a favour and by him a bottle of Chivas Regal, his favourit whisky. In the airport shop the whisky shelf is filled with tempting goods, but no Chivas. I lift my head to see if there's more whisky to be found and in a distance, at the very far end of the liquor store at Brussels National Airport, hanging from the celing there's a sign with a Norwegian flag and a message stating, in Norwegian, that those flying to Norway still can enjoy duty-free shopping. Embarressed and with my head down in shame I walked over, picked up my father's whisky and got in line.
We're part of Schengen and we're part of the EU Inner Market, but we still have our own shelves at the airports equipped with big signs and arrows pointing us in the right direction.

Reflections on extra-brugoise vacation

I'm FREE! Finally FREE! The last exam is over, it's holiday and I feel soo... ...empty? I've got two weeks away from Bruges infront of me, two weeks without articles to read, papers to write, presentations to prepare and notes to revise. I've got two weeks with friends and family awaiting and yet there's a certain emptyness. Two weeks of holiday is also two weeks away from the people I've learned to know as friends over the last moths. It's two weeks without communal breakfast, lunch and dinner. Two weeks without coffee&cigarette breaks in the courtyard. Two weeks without nerdy Community-jokes, late night drinks at 't Potersgat, Bruges Zot, good and warm hugs from cute College-girls, linguistic schzophrenia and long days in the library. Luckily it's only two weeks. Come Monday 5 and everything will be back to normal. How I can't wait for that day to come!

Pre-holiday stress syndrome

It is (fairly) early in the morning of December 18th and in five hours I'll be outside some naked classroom waiting for the professor to invite me in for my final exam. With institutional community law, EU politics and policy and EU political economy off the way the only thing that separates me from two weeks of vacation is a 25m chat about how a/the european identity has been born, baptised and shaped throughout the last 7-800 years. Well, a short-version of the class is Europe from Plato to NATO so I'll probably have to say a word or two about Athens and Rome and how the Holy Roman Empire (which, according to Voltaire, was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire) was a continuation of the Roman Empire, and then a phrase or two about Westphalia and the creation of the modern nation state.

The pre-holiday stress syndrome isn't caused by my fear for the exam. I know my stuff, it's general knowledge and then some. What stresses me is the hours I have to kill before the exam. What to do? What to do?

Me vs. Insomnia

It's 05.43 and I've been up for an hour and awake for some more. I fell asleep probably about half-an-hour after midnight and found myself wide awake at 03.30. What to do? What to do? I've got nothing to read (except my economics syllabus). Had I had a place of my own instead of a single room in a student residence I could have made myself coffee, watched some CNN and been properly productive, but here, as I care about my neighbourghs, I'm confined to my 10m2 room with no water boiler, no TV, no nothing. An hour and fourty minutes from now I can get breakfast, but until then it'll be just me, my computer and Sir Humphrey Appleby, I'm afraid.

42

No, it's not about Douglas Adams and the answer to life, the universe and everything, although for some it may seem like it. 42 is the number of votes, out of a grand total of 233.000, that seperated Ms Martie Aubry, the new leader of the French Socialist Party (PS) and the 2007 PS candidate for the French precidecy, Ms Ségolène Royal. With a leadership battle won with 50,02 to 49,98 precent, Ms Aubry, daughter of former European Commission President Jaques Delores, will find it hard to lead an equally divided party allready struggeling in its opposition to President Sarkozy and his UMP commanding a comfortable majority in the National Assembly.

From an outsider perspective I'm a bit ambivilent towards the PS' new president. While Ms Royal was accused for leading the party to the right during her presidential candidacy Ms Aubry is said to have the right ideology and a guarantee towards any centrist tendencies. Being neither French nor socialist but with an affection for France and with respect and recognition for France's importance, both i Europe and on the world stage, I'm not certain as to how to react. On the one hand the political operator in me, supporting UMP, in the lack of a better choice, sees a leader stearing PS to the left as even more centrist voters for Mr Sarkozy in 2012. On the other hand, it is not good for a country if the same people govern for too long (just look at France...) and so an alternation between UMP and a 21st century, social-democratic PS would be desirable. In this respect I'd prefer if they had chosen a different leader. Nevertheless, Ms Royal is not the moderate moderniser the PS needs. Thanks to President Sarkozy he left French politics in favour of New York and the IMF, namely Mr Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

The Lisbon Treaty moves on

Yesterday evening the Swedish parliament, Riksdagen, ratified the Lisbon Treaty, with the centre-right government coalition parties together with the Social Democrats voting in favour. It is not that long since the Irish population voted no in a referendum, but still the Swedish government decided not to put the process to a halt. I'm glad to see that responsible and euro-friendly governments haven't given up and hopefully we'll see a second, this time successfull, referendum in Ireland soon, so the Treaty may be implemented by January 1st 2010.

A story from everyday life

One of the things I like best about Bruges (together with Bruge Zot) is the pathway around the inner city, perfectly made for late night walks. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the hour-and-a-half I spend doing the tour of the town three to four times a week helps keep me sane. On these late night walk I've been accompagnied by my beloved iPod Shuffle. 1Gb, 250 songs and little to no intervention on the order of the songs. A gift from my sister and one I cherish very high. However, as I was about two thirds of the round the other day, while changing the volume, I discovered to my surprise and dispear that the protectiv silicon cover had fallen off. Let it be noted that these covers cost little to nothing but it's still enoying. Knowing that to walk back, in the dark, hoping to recover the cover would be useless I decided to contitue, angry with myself. As I for the n-te time walked the round today I thought it couldn't harm to keep an eye out for the cover, being perfectly aware that the chances of finding it would be next to nothing. As an observent reader you've probably deduced the continuation, but I will nevertheless procede with the end. Half the way through the round I'm at the crossing next to the train station. While standing there, waiting for the light to turn green it comes to be that two days ago, as I was standing at the precise same spot I skipped a track, and it was thus possible that this was the place the cover fell off. I look down, and there, halfway covered in dust, I see it, the cover. On a day that otherwise looked to be a gray one, with a cold holding a tight grip on my body, exams approaching and otherwise just too much on my mind, this was exactly the sort of tiny, insignificant thing that lifed my spirit just that small bit over the edge.

- The EU was not responsible for the post-war peace and prosperity in Western Europe

A century ago Alfred Nobel, when establishing a set of prices in his name, decided that the Peace Price should be decided by a Norwegian committee whose member where elected by the Norwegian parliament. Hundred-and-some years later Mr Torbjorn Jagland, amongst other things former Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs and currently Labour MP and President of the Parliament, is set to be the next leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. As Mr Jagland is a staunch supporter for Norwegian membership to the EU and has publicly stated that the EU, because of its role in preserving and consolidating peace in Europe after World War 2, deserves the Peace Price sparks have begun to fly within the Socialis Left Party (SV) and the No to EU-movement. Mr Heming Olaussen, leader of No to EU and former member of the Central Committee of SV, demands that anti-EU hard-liners are appointed from his party, as he fears that Mr Jagland, together with the majority of the committee, who are also pro-Europeans, will push through the price being given to the Beast from Brussels. He argues that crediting the EU for post-war peace in Western Europe has no more value than crediting NATO and that arguing that the peace between Germany and France was secured by the EU is to argue that two NATO-members would have attacked each other without the EU, which he sees as unthinkable. Mr Olaussen, together with large parts of the Norwegian far-left-wing intelligensia sees the EU as the Beast in Revelations, and giving credits this beast for anything is thus unthinkable. However, at times, even if they see the EU as the Beast and market liberation as the work of the Devil, it would be nice if they'd recognize the role the integration of the French and German coal- and steel industries played in the years of reconstruction. Is it unthinkable for two NATO-powers to go to war with one-another? Seeing first of all the centuries of conflicts and wars between France and Germany/the German states and secondly the everlasting conflicts between Turkey and Greece, beliving that NATO-membership is enough to make arch-enemies friendly towards each-other is overly optimistic. No, I'm afraid Mr Olaussen knows perfectly well the importance of European economic integration to the peace and prosperity in Western Europe, but that he takes every oppertunity he has to talk down on the European project.

How to buy yourself a government

That the connection between the labour movement and social democratic parties were strong in the past has always been known. That the labour unions poured money into these parties was a part of the game, in the same way as the confederations of entreprises funded the conservative parties. However, placing conditionalities on these fondings were never an issue, as these parties were seen as promoting the interests of their financial contriubtors even if they differed on some issues. In Norway this was the case until the 1990s when NHO, the Norwegian Commerce Organisation, decided to no longer be a partisan actor and stopped sending cheques to the Conservative Party. Soon after followed LO, the main labour union, who ended its century-old partnership with Labour. This however, seems like nothing but a short intermission today.

In 2004, well before the 2005 general elections, Gerd-Liv Valla, then head of LO, pumped vast sums of mony into the Labour election machine and initiated "The Long Campaign" desitned to (succesfully) replace the then centre-right governing coalition with today's so-called red-green centre-left government. As a "thank you" for the support Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg made labour union membership tax deductable. It is now under a year left to the next general elections, due to take place in September 2009, an the debate over financial support has once again been revitalised. As I've mentionned in an earlier post Ms Liv Signe Navarsete, cabinet minister and leader of the Centre Party, as threatened to oppose the implementation of the Services Directive in Norway. She has now a mighty ally. Leading figures in LO agitate that unless PM Jens Stoltenberg (who is a staunch pro-European and who's spine reflex is economic liberal) and his Labour, who holds 10 out of 19 ministerial posts, vetos the directive they can forget funding for next year.

Allow me to repeate and rephrase that last part: LO, the main financial contributor to Labour, threatens to withdraw its support unless the Government does a certain thing. Or in other words, if Labour do oppose the directive, they will then gain the financial and moral backing of LO. In my eyes this looks very much like buying and selling of votes, or corruption as some might call it.

Merkel vs. Leterme

Who are these two? The first one is obvious. Angela Merkel is chancellor of the Federal German Republic and one of the most prominent politiciens in today's Europe. The second is perhaps a bit harder. Would you like to guess? No clue? Let me give you a hint; his name is Yves Leterme. Did that help you? No? Well, he is actually the current Prime minister of the Kingdom of Belgium. Yes, Belgium does have a government and a Prime minister at the moment, but he's not much to brag about. Belgium isn't what it used to be, with strong tensions between the two main communities and ever-reoccuring government crises. On top of this the PM knows neither why they celebrate their national holiday noor their national anthem - he thinks its La Marseillaise.

So why do I even bother to compare the wannebe-head of government of a country falling apart with the leader of the economic engine of Europe? As mentioned in earlier posts, Merkel was to hold the opening speech her at the College of Europe some weeks ago, but the financial crisis forced her to cancel. The other day her replacement was announced. The official opening of the academic year will take place on the 18th of November, just a week before the exams start, and the opening speech will be held by no-one but...Yves Leterme.

Fall in Bruges

It hit me the moment I step out on the street this morning, fall has finally arrived in Bruges. The sky was clear-clear blue and the air crisp. A slight morning fog was still hanging on, with the tower on Markt, the main square, being a bit unclear. The canals still hold a decent temperature, with vapour playing over the surface and rising to the sky. It was, in all, a pleasent October morning.

McCain and the hockey mom

A week from now it will all be over. After two years of campaigning, some billion dollars spent and quite a few egoes crushed, the next American president will be chosen. Initially I hoped for Mitt Romney, a good old fashion fiscal conservative. His mormon background was perhaps not perfect, but he had shown pragmatism earlier and seemed like the best of the bunch. When it finally came down to McCain vs Obama, the choice for me was easy. Usually an Ivy league liberal elitist would knock out an ex-fighter pilot, but had I been American I would have voted for the Arizona senator. On the one side was an Illinois junior senator with only a very few years in national politics. He talked about change, but as a cynic I found it hard to believe him. He preaches bipartisanship but has the most left-wing voting track record in the Senate. I simply can't believe him. On the other side was the Republican mavrick. The Straight Talk Express. A long time senator how had demonstrated the need for international cooperation, who from his own experience knew torture and therefor strongly opposed it, who had shown a realistic and responsible view on US foreign policy and who was known for his bipartisanship in the US Senate. Easy choice. Easy choice until either McCain (A) showed a complete lack of judgement or(/and) (B) gave in to the fundamentalist Christian right in his party and chose the novice Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. There's a Facebook group called I have more Foreign Policy Experience than Sarah Palin and it has currently over 250.000 members. Although I have some doubts with regards to all 250.000 being more experienced with foreign policy than Ms Palin, I doubt it would be hard to find 250.000 who actually does.
As I said in the beguinning, the choice was simple at first, but the thought of the Alaskan born-again hockey mom as leader of the Free World has led me to reconsider.

My civic student duty

In a country far away from civilization, between mountains and fjords, cursed with everlasting autumn rain there is a polity, a cité, a town, no, a city, a compressed continental urbanity in the middle of the widerness. This becon of light in the night of barbarity has a name, and its name is Bergen, and in Bergen there's a hill and on the hill there is an ivory tower and the tower has a name and its name is the University of Bergen.
Until only a few months ago I myself spent most of my days in this ivory tower, and among my many activities where also an active participation in the governing of the tower. In other words, I was a conservative student politician.
When I first came to the University three years ago the Student Council was run by a radical left-wing coalition, and so it lasted for my first two years until finally a year ago a pragmatic centre-right coalition won a majority and came to power. Why this history lecture? Today, not long ago, I preformed my civic student duty and once again vote for the conservative Blue List for the Student Council. My hopes are with them and I feel confident that they again will remain in office.

- English is enough!

The Norwegian government, it all its wisdom and understanding of tomorrow's challenges has come to the conclusion that pupils in secondary education only need to learn one foreign language, english. The fact that our economy relies heavily on trade and that our major trading partners are not english speaking countries, but the European mainland is of cource irrelevant in this context. After all, being able to speak the mother tounge of your partner has never been an adventage in business. Further more, as we all know, for Norwegian interest groups going to Brussels speaking mediocre english is all you need to convince an Austrian or Italian or Slovak or Portugese eurocrat. No, I'm truly glad to see that my beloved government has realised the uselessness of learning german, the language of our main trading partner on the Continent and the language of the country from which most of our cultural impulses has come from. I'm glad today's teenagers and tomorrow's leaders, workers, whitecollars, don't have to learn french, the language of international politics, the language of reason and the language of love. It thrills me to learn that twenty years from now the fight for lingual pluralism will be over and all we'll have left are business executives speaking like Thor Heyerdal and only like Thor Heyerdal.

Negociating, or the art of insulting politely

In these days norwegian negociators sit in Brussels face to face with their EU counterparts to renegociate the EEA-treaty that gives Norway (and other major EFTA-countries such as Iceland and Lichtenstein) access to the European inner market. Also today here in Bruges is a workshop in negociation skills organised by the College. Apart from the obvious one, what do these two events have in common? Allow me to put it like this: All english-native speakers or at native level were told they didn't have to participate. The workshop wasn't about negociation techniques, but about language, or in other words who to insult without being insulting, which is pretty much what goes on between the norwegian and EU negociators in Brussels. There the EU wants Norway to pay some extra billion euros a year into the EU financial chest, knowing very well that no matter what sum they may propose, even in these days, the money exists and Norway won't suffer, whilst the norwegians have to make it sound plausable that Norway pays enough already and that there are limits for a what is reasonable to ask for. To summerize, the EU negociators have to tell the norwegians that they're not showing solidarity with the poor eastern-european countries and that they're nothing but a bunch of over-wealthy hillbillies that where soo lucky that they happened to find oil, whilst the norwegians have to explain that the people on the Continent have themselves to thank and that eastern Europe's poverty is non of our responsibility. And whilst doing this, both parties have to remain polite. Hence, the art of negociating.

Norwegian cabinet minister threatens to veto Bolkestein

Ms Liv Signe Navarsete, leader of the Norwegian agrarian Centre Party and cabinet minister in Norway's centre-left government, threatens to use Norway's veto power against the Bolkestein directive. Apparently meassures that would make it easier for businesses to survive and for workers to find jobs are not what we need at this point in the middle of the financial crisis. The fear of so-called social dumping and the threat of the Polish plumber are too big. However, Mr Jonas Gahr Store (Labour), the Minister of foreign affairs, is a fairly wise man who understands the implications of Norway refusing to implement the aqui communautaire, so it'll probably be with the big words from Ms Navarsete. Nevertheless, why not veto and see what happenes? If the EU is clever they'll severly sanction Norway and the Norwegian population will finally understand the implications of being on the outside.

Friday night blues

It's Friday night and the we the poor students of the College are about to switch over to week-end mode. For most others that means sleeping until mid-day, having looooong breakfasts and generally relaxing before a new week beguins on monday. For us, however, it just means a bit fewer classes, partying, essay writing and researching for whatever presentation or debate we might have in one of the following days. It's 7.30 pm and I've just come from dinner. Some will spend their night working while others having slightly more time, myself included, will actually relax tonight. It's Friday night and tomorrow's a day like every other day in the week.

Bodies moving in harmony

There's nothing as beautiful as two bodies moving in harmony. However, when some 40 twentysomethings from all over Europe, some of them from unrythmic countries like Germany, Belgium or Norway, try to learn how to dance salsa, bodies moving in harmony isn't the first things that would strike your mind. You take a look at the southerners and you see that the rythm comes to them automatically. They don't care that much about having the right posture or doing the right steps. After all, it looks good anyway. Then you look at the northeners. They have no rythm at all, they suffer from permanent body stiffness and they do their absolute best to follow the steps of the instructor, but quite frankly a cow moving sideways is more gracious.
It's tempting to draw lines to behaviour in general, with germanics obsessed with doing things correctly whilst the romanics care more about appearens and thus slides through. However, such generalisations are not very polite, and thus I will not.
On the other hand, as we supposedly are destined to govern Brussels in twenty years time, hopefully having seen oneanother trip in our own legs will make us more sympathetic when we make gaffes in real life. If our bodies can't move in harmony, let's hope the same won't be the case for our minds and hearts.

The financal crises as we experience it in Bruges

We read about the financial crisis here, we discuss it, we laugh about it, and between us the Norvegians we joke about buying Iceland, but all in all it doesn't have much of an inpact on our lifes. That is, it didn't until last week. Last week we were supposed to have the grand opening here at the college, with prominent guests including ambassadors, ministers and not at least the German chancelor Angela Merkel as our opening speaker. Those who have an acceptable amount of understanding of international politics know that Germany is a fairly important country, especially when it comes to European economics, and that the German chancellor has a bit of a saying in Germany. With this as our foundations, we all looked forward to listen to Ms Merkel holding the opening speech. Alas, our optimism was ruined. On Tuesday morning, as we enjoyed a cup of coffee between our readings, the message came that the opening the same night was cancelled. Reason: Ms Merkel had to attend an extra-ordinary session in the Bundestag because of the crisis. Jean Monnet, François Mitterand, Juan Carlos, Jaque Delors, Margeret Thatcher, they are but a few of the prominent personalities who have held the opening speech, but Angela Merkel, because the Dow Jones, the CAC 40 and the DAX all fell a few points, decided to prioritize German domestic politicians over the future leaders in Brussels. I guess that's the price we pay for being otherwise untouched. However, Ms Merkel, 20 years from now, it's payback time, and it's your country who'll pay.