Western European News Digest
Tremonti Discusses Infrastructure While LaRouche Youth Demand New Bretton Woods
Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti addressed a conference organized by the Industrial Association of Lombardy in Milan Nov. 3, as did the head of the association, Michele Perini, and the President of the Milan Chamber of Commerce, Carlo Sangalli. As Tremonti was explaining the difficulties his Infrastructural Plan had met within the European Union (particularly from the British), LaRouche Youth organizers leafletted with the Movimento Solidarieta statement on the "Tremonti Plan and the New Bretton Woods" outside the event, and had a book table nearby organizing around LaRouche's Plan and the New Bretton Woods. The university will host Civil Rights veteran Amelia Boynton Robinson on Nov. 13.
No question and answer session followed Tremonti's presentation, so two representatives of the Italian Movimento Solidarieta spoke briefly with Ministers Tremonti, Sangalli, and Perini, giving them the New Bretton Woods report and the latest issue of Nuova Solidarieta, with its headline, "Cheney Must Resign." This created quite a stir among the industrialists, who surrounded the guest speakers as they were taking EIR. Tremonti remarked, as he took the Italian EIR New Bretton Woods report, "I am very familiar with it."
European Union, China Summit Concludes With 3 Strategic Accords
Following joint press conferences Oct. 30-31, the European Union (EU) and China signed cooperation treaties on China's participation in the EU Galileo satellite GPS, which liberalized visits between China's scientists and experts to the EU, and on industrial cooperation. The two-day summit in Beijing ended Nov. 2. At the joint press conference, EU Commission President Romano Prodi stressed that Europe and China "are the two regions that can contribute most to changing the world. We must become the main partners in trade and investments." EU Council of Ministers chairman and Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said, "The EU and China can be protagonists in the world for well-being and peace."
On the second day of the summit, there was an Italy-China bilateral summit, in which the two discussed initiatives such as a Foreign Ministers' committee to study the opportunities for broadening trade relations. Responding to journalists' questions, Berlusconi said that the issue of protective tariffs against Chinese imports was not discussed and is not on the EU agenda.
Making his best salesman's pitch, Berlusconi said, "Italian entrepreneurs must work to establish a stronger presence in the Chinese market and promote their quality products, by creating the opportune structures and an adequate commercial network. We do not envisage restrictive rules or legislation to prevent the sale of such products. Simply, Italian entrepreneurs must have more confidence in this market; a market which presently does not have a high level of average purchase power, but can count on a population of more than 1.3 billion, of whom at least 100-150 million are wealthy." He neglected, however, to mention a government commitment to support Italian small and medium enterprises, and an approach towards technology sharing as suggested by Lyndon LaRouche.
Comments on Chinese Yuan By EU President Prodi
In a Nov. 1 interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, European Union President Romano Prodi said that he had had discussion with Chinese Premier Wen Jibao on the currency issue. "I reminded him that his country nowadays has a global responsibility," said Prodi, adding "Do you know what he answered? Today, he said, we have a large trade surplus, but in the long term we want a balance, we cannot and do not want to be an unbalancing force in the world. We are not interested in that."
Asked whether he sees the danger of a speculative bubble in China, Prodi said: "It is difficult to see a bubble in China. Here there is real agriculture production, real investments, the fundamentals are good, they produce twice as much as the Americans." Then Prodi added that the banking system is "fragile" and "primitive" and should be modernized, for instance, by opening up to "foreign banks."
German Chancellor To Visit China, Kazakhstan In December
Chancellor Schroeder will make his second trip to China, including a visit to Canton, between Dec. 1-3. A visit to Kazakhstan in Central Asia will follow, on Dec. 4-5.
"An important emphasis of this visit," German government spokesman Bela Anda said in Berlin, Nov. 3, "will be the development of the already very, very good economic relations. As you know, Germany is the most important trade partner of China in Europe, and China is Germany's most important trade partner in Asia. The aim of the visit is to further enhance these relations, good as they may already be."
Anda also explained that the Chancellor's planned trip to Canton is to reflect the fact that "there are economically very interesting regions that have so far not been at the center of German attention in China."
German, European Investors Avoid Anti-Putin Campaign
Andrea von Knoop, the chief representative of German industry in Russia, said that the firms she represents in Moscow mostly medium-sized firms welcomed the Russian law enforcement moves against Yukos. (See InDepth and Russia Digest for the story on the arrest and resignation of Yukos' chief Khodorkovsky).
Von Knoop said the arrest indicates that finally, the big firms also are being forced to stick to procedures and pay taxes in Russia. Many German investors see the move as a step towards an improved legal system in Russia.
Other German firms involved in Russia, have stated they will, as before, orient towards long-term involvement, and not be influenced by political events of the day. For example, Ruhrgas, Metro, Siemens, Obi, a home improvements retailer, Knauf, a building materials and construction technologies firm, and Deutsche Bank want to keep to their investment policies as designed before the Khodorkovsky arrest.
A spokesman for Merrill Lynch and British Petroleum CEO Lord Brown also said that their firms are engaged in Russia for the long term.
Germany's Graf Lambsdorff Throws Fit Over Yukos Seizure
German Trilateraloid Otto Graf Lambsdorff demanded Russia be expelled from the G-8 because of the Russian government's seizure of aspects of the oil giant, Yukos. Lambsdorff has already joined former U.S. Undersecretary of State Stu Eizenstat in a desperate effort to get some legal action on behalf of Mikhail Khodorkovsky underway, and force the Russian law enforcement authorities to unfreeze the sequestered Yukos Oil stocks.
Lambsdorff told the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily Nov. 4, that if Russia argues that its raw materials belong to its own people, negating the existence of private sector industries, then Russia no longer has a place at the table of the World Economic Summit. If EU leaders meet Putin for their joint summit in Rome, Nov. 6, they should bring the issue up, Lambsdorff demanded. He spoke in his function as member of the advisory board of Khodorkovsky's Menatep bank.
Europe Requires Massive Investment In Energy Supply
EU Commissioner for Energy Loyola de Palacio said in a speech in Paris Nov. 4, that "Europe needs to build one new power plant every week," to meet its energy needs. She said that in 2007, at latest, a critical phase in the energy supply begins, because from then on, there would be the threat of bottlenecks.
German Chancellor Provokes First-Ever Protest Rally By Mayors
The accelerating austerity policies and numerous tricks which the German finance ministry has tried to pull on municipalities, have triggered a major backlash among the traditionally reserved city officials. On Nov. 6, 196 mayors from throughout Germany staged the first ever such municipal protest action in the 54 years of existence of the post-war German republic.
While the mayors were protesting, the red-green parliamentary majority went on the record with another "first-ever," by voting up a freeze on pensions for 2004, and a new rule that pensions be paid only at the end of a month, from 2004 on. This is the first real net pension cut in Germany, since the 1957 pension reform legislation.
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