WESTERN EUROPEAN NEWS DIGEST
Labor Ferment Expanding Across Europe
Labor ferment was expanding in France and Britain last week, as workers in Italy moved from strikes to political protests. Both the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) and other individual unions, especially in the public sector, have declared full support for Britain's striking firemen against the government. This convinced numerous cities that it is better to negotiate with the firemen on the basis of their call for a 16% wage increase, rather than oppose them.
Even Britain's Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has expressed sympathy with the firemen's cause. But Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown intervened, arguing that if the municipalities were allowed to negotiate with the firemen, public-sector budgets would be burdened with an extra 700 million pounds sterling. The firemen should leave the past for the future, Blair said, and open themselves up to more labor flexibility.
In response, teachers staged protests and strikes, so that more than 1,000 schools were closed in London Nov. 26. Meanwhile, several labor unions have warned Prime Minister Tony Blair that they will cut off all funding to the Labour Party, if he persists in his hard line against the firemen. One of the union leaders, John Edmonds of the GMB union, is quoted as saying: "This is no longer just a dispute between the Fire Brigades Union and the governmentit has descended into a fight between the government and the whole of the union movement."
In France Nov. 25, riot police removed some of the 30 road blocks set up by striking truckers, and arrested severalactions which will not calm the waters. Other labor unions are joining the strike front: On Nov. 26, tens of thousands of workers of the railways, Air France, France Telecom, Poste de France, EDF and GDF (electricity and gas), as well as urban transport, staged strikes and protests, including a rally of 60,000 in Paris, in a day of action against the government's plans for privatizations. The teachers of France have announced a national day of action for Dec. 8. In addition, striking air controllers Nov. 26 caused the cancellation of up to 90% of all flights at the two major Parisian airports of Paris, as well as other airports in France.
In Italy, the wave of Fiat protest actions and strikes was followed by a general labor/left-wing rally of 300,000 in Milan on Nov. 23. The rally was addressed by CGIL union chairman Cofferatithis going against the "labor reforms" policy of the Silvio Berlusconi government.
In Germany, the police trade union GdPwhich does not have the full freedom of strike because of its special public servant statushas, however, threatened to begin work-on-schedule and no overtime work, which would be equivalent to a constant warning strike pattern. This is unprecedented in postwar German history, as have been various warning strikes and protest marches by policemen in Berlin and other German cities in recent weeks.
German Government Announces 'Mittelstand Offensive'
The German government as of the end of November was announcing a "Mittelstand offensive" as the mood of the country's businesses collapsed. (The Mittelstand is Germany's small and medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs, the backbone of her economy.)
At the annual gathering of German craftsmen's associations in Leipzig, German Economics Minister Wolfgang Clement said the government recognizes the rapidly deteriorating mood in the population and among business leaders. Trying to turn this around, Clement announced a "Mittelstand offensive," including new credit mechanisms, a downsizing of the bureaucracy overload at smaller and medium-sized companies, and certain additional rules for the Mittelstand in the German East. A crucial part of the initiative is the establishment of the "Mittelstandsbank," by merging and somewhat upgrading the Mittelstand activities at the Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau (KfW) and the Deutsche Ausgleichsbankstate-run, like the KfW.
At the same Leipzig event, the president of the Central Association of German Craftsmen (ZDH), Dieter Philipp, emphasized that throughout the entire postwar period, economic conditions for craftsmen in Germany have never been as bad as they are now. There is an enormous amount of rage and frustration; consumption is shrinking, due to higher taxes and social security fees; and this year, 300,000 jobs will disappear from the sector, with perhaps another 300,000 vanishing next year. The total craftsmen workforce in Germany has plunged by 19.1% in the last six years.
Meanwhile, the market research agency GfK announced last week that its consumer climate index in November crashed to -55,4 points, the lowest level since the index was established 22 years ago. Likewise, the European Central Bank's consumer confidence index in November fell to a five-year low. The president of the German Retail Association, Hermann Franzen, described the year 2002 as "the bleakest day in the history of the retail sector."
German Government in Logjam: Budget Reform Package Voted Down
In its session Nov. 30, the majority in the Bundesrat, Germany's upper house, voted against the Schroeder government's budget reform plan on various counts: 1) the planned increase of citizens' payments into the state pension fund from 19.1 to 19.5% (of average income); 2) the planned ceiling on government co-funding of public health insurance companies; 3) all components of the "Hartz" labor market reform plan that have to be approved by the 16 German states.
As a result, discussion of potential corrections or even alternatives to the government package will take weeks, if not several months, to iron outprobably until next March. It is also expected that neither side really wants a decision on the package, before early-February state elections in Lower Saxony and Hesse.
The government had viewed this package as essential in its policy outline from January onward. The Bundesrat setback is even worse for Schroeder, because three states governed by his own Social Democratic Party voted with the opposition against the government, on the "Hartz" package. This leaves the government more or less paralyzed, and what keeps it in power is mostly the fact that the opposition is not seriously trying to force it out through a no-confidence voteprobably because the opposition does not want to be in the government, in view of all the economic, financial and geopolitical turbulence now erupting.
Germany and China Envision Intensified Relations
Travelling from Moscow to Berlin Nov. 28, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Xiajuan met with German President Johannes Rau, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. Issues related to the UN Security Council, which the Germans will join as a rotating member in February, were on the agenda (China also supports Germany's becoming a permanent UNSC member).
The official context of the talks was the 30th anniversary of Chinese-German relations, and the next phase of relations, which is to be inaugurated during Schroeder's visit to China at the end of the year. One feature of that visit will be a joint Schroeder-Jiang ride on the just-completed Transrapid maglev track between Shanghai and Pudong on Dec. 31.
Leaving Germany on Dec. 30, Schroeder will be accompanied by Economics Minister Wolfgang Clementwhich indicates that more economic cooperation deals are in the making.
Rumsfeld Apparently Favors 'Regime Change' in Berlin
During a joint Nov. 26 press conference with Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Myers, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made clear, according to defenselink.mil Nov. 27, that he has no use for the current German government of Gerhard Schroeder.
Rumsfeld was asked by a German journalist, "What would it take for you to describe relations with Germany with a more friendly term than 'unpolluted'?" After Myers wisecracked, "That's pretty friendly," Rumsfeld answered. First he said it was the State Department that is charged with dealing with diplomacy, then added that it wasn't "a good idea" to start the day asking what the temperature of relations was. So, "I respectfully decline" to answer, he said.
The journalist persisted: "But would anything short of participation in a military operation against Iraq be sufficient?" (He meant, sufficient to thaw out German-American relations, which went into the deep freeze when Chancellor Schroeder emphasized, in his reelection campaign, Germany's refusal to have anything to do with an American war on Iraqand when a member of Schroeder's Cabinet reportedly compared President Bush's tactics to those of Adolf Hitler.)
Rumsfeld's answer: "I don't know that that [participation against Iraq] would do it. We don't get up in the morning and say that what we think about other countries is dependent upon whether or not they agree with us on Iraq. We've got lots of friends around the world who have different views. That is a misunderstanding of what took place in the last election campaign in Germany, it seems to me. To think that it's correctable by something involving Iraqit just isn't. It isthat has never been the litmus test, and it isn't today."
Calls on Schroeder To Deny U.S. Use of Their German Bases in Case of Iraq War
Three leading members of the German Green Party, which is the government coalition partner with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats, have gone public with statements against even "passive" German support for an Iraq war. The three are Christian Stroebele and Winfried Nachtwei (both members of the national Parliament), and Angelika Beer (former member of the national Parliament, and longtime Green Party defense policy spokeswoman).
Both Beer and Stroebele pointed to Article 26 of the German Constitution, which bans wars of aggression and a participation of Germany in these kinds of wars, as ruling out America's full use of their military facilities in Germany, for a war on Iraq. Stroebele also cited the two precedent cases in which German governments had kept to principles and denied the U.S. the use of facilities: In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, and in 1986, during the U.S. air raids against Libya. The Chancellors of what was then West Germany were at those times Social Democrat Willy Brandt and Christian Democrat Helmut Kohl, respectively.
Stroebele has also mooted a legal case against the German government in the Constitutional court, if the U.S. is granted a free hand for the use of their facilities in Germany.
A Franco-German Initiative on European Defense
A Franco-German initiative on European defense was made public on the sidelines of last week's Prague NATO summit.
Europe was the "forgotten man" at the Prague summit, wrote Jean-Dominique Merchet in the French publication Liberation. He reported that the social climate at the summit was disastrous, with everybody wondering whether French President Jacques "Chirac and [British PM Tony] Blair would exchange more than just a 'good morning' after their fights over European financial matters, or whether Bush would accept shaking hands with Schroeder, object of rage because of his pacifism."
Also bad for Europe, insisted Merchet, was the decision to create a NATO rapid reaction force for out-of-area (anti-terror) deployments; this, he said, will create problems for the European rapid reaction forces, whose aims are similar.
It is in this context that the French and the Germans decided, on the sidelines of the Prague summit, to made public their new European defense initiative. The two countries are demanding that a European Union for Security and Defense be adopted "institutionally" within the new Convention for Europe, presided over by former French President Giscard d'Estaing. The Union call for the launching of "reinforced collaboration," meaning that a group of countries which wish more intense collaboration on defense issues can be created within the EU, not involving the rest of the Union. The reinforced cooperation on defense would involve such things as the creation of a European weapons industry, joint interventions in the field, and similar such projects. The Union would also call for a mutual defense pact, similar to the one existing in NATO, and while its activities are placed officially within the realm of the NATO Alliance, it is also stated that it can act independently.
"France and Germany are now ready for combat," stated a German diplomat happily, noting that such an initiative "should provoke fear in the British, who are no longer used to seeing the two functioning" appropriately together. Indeed, at the Nice EU summit, the British had refused to permit defense to be among the portfolios around which reinforced cooperation could be created. They were furious at the very idea, and part of American officialdom is known to be extremely wary of any such independent force.
Once launched, the Franco-German mechanism could prove extremely powerful, commented Merchet, recalling how, at the Brussels summit in October, everyone, including Britain, had to endorse the Franco-German solution to the agricultural policy problem.
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