PDF je dostopen tukaj.

PDF je dostopen tukaj.

Marko

In any case, I hope to be back one day. Until then enjoy reading others…

Marko

Let us also be honest from the start. My heart does not fall apart when reading the news about the financial crisis. While feeling compassion for those hard-working people now losing their jobs, I think it can only do us good. We have seen such extremes in wealth distribution that the situation needed corrections. Plus, we have seen the financial sector being expanded progressively to rule above anything else. Which would have been OK, if people would not lose compass and understanding of what the financial sector was there to do: service the demand for money. It has long passed that function…the Madoff case in the US just proves how greedy and unscrupulous people have become. And how little the state did to protect the economy and the people from them.

Then I’ve seen the riots in Greece. I still fail to see the point of destroying private property like mad, but I guess some extremists see this as a method of settling the bill. However, pointless violence apart -I was really happy to see people on the streets peacefully protesting about dire life conditions. And Greece is an EU member state – with 20% unemployment, with 20% of people living below the poverty line, with a seriously deteriorated educational system and little optimism left. All this after the bling-bling of the Olympics in 2004. I’m actually surprised there are no more riots…

So, long live the Lisbon Strategy.

To put in perspective the Greek riots. Madoff rips off some 50 billion dollars, but no one goes to the streets. Have you also noted that no one was protesting on Wall Street when Lehman Brothers went bust and when investment banks massively laid off their workers…? Let’s see if there will be people on the streets once Ford, GM and Chrysler go bust.

I bet you they will show up in masses.

First, the “conflict over the 25km on the sea” as recently described by Kouchner, has been around since the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Two bordering former republics suddenly realised that the border among them is not fixed in stone and so remains today.  I will completely ignore the arguments of both sides, these are enough to write something longer than Marx ever did. Bottom line: well used 17 years.

Secondly, in 17 years Slovenia and Croatia never managed to really isolate the problem of the border from other. It remains linked to the unsolved issue of the old Ljubljanska Banka (see short news from BIRN) and the co-ownership of the nuclear power plant in Krško. The first prohibits the Slovenian bank to operate in Croatia and gives rise to some anti-Slovenian slogans around Croatia, the second ends sometime in courts, while the nuclear waste continues to be deposited in Slovenia only. Bottom line: again, well used 17 years.

Thirdly, the issue is now being blow out of proportions. Kouchner’s comment was of course out of place and explains why Sarkozy took him on board – they’re personally compatible. Both ideologically flexible and loose cannons – first shoot and then think. But in its essence, it cannot be so complex to drag on for 17 years and not to see any progress. Mind you, both countries claim they’re modern western democracies…There are international legal experts, courts…you name it! Bottom line: 17 years passed and the only result is that the situation is getting worse.

Now, I’m not objective on the issue. I think Slovenia would have a good case if the issue is brought to arbitration or a court. Our diplomacy should have been more forceful and more decisive on the matter and should have stopped the spiraling of the dispute by advocating international arbitration. We are now entering a lose-lose situation: Slovenia losing credibility and Croatia losing time on its progress towards the EU. On the top, bilateral relations will be severely damaged for a long time.

What I’m quite happy about is that 1 million Slovenian (out of 2) go to the Croatian coast every year in the summer and have tremendous time. Shows how little people care about politics – good in this case. Hope they will do so for the next 17 years.

P.S.: I can also not refrain to add a comment on our former Foreign Minister’s performance. Dimitrij Rupel has been heading slovenian diplomacy for 10 years all together. Almost nothing to reproach on the multilateral level (EU, NATO, UN…), but bilaterally he has been a big disappointment. Slovenians have good relations and substantial relations on the state level only with Hungary. All others (Austria, Italy and Croatia) are not really what you would call “friends”.

Dr Dimitrij Rupel became almost part of the furniture at the Slovenian Foreign Office in the last 2 decades. He has basically been Foreign Minister since I started following politics, which goes a while ago. On and off he has been Foreign Minister for some 10 years. An impressive resume, on paper. However, some of us will also remember some of his less prominent intellectual escapades…He very often proved to be unsuitable for the job because of his temper. Some people think twice before speaking, Rupel would speak twice before thinking. However, all this should be placed aside.

The new Prime Minister, Borut Pahor, had therefore all the best preconditions to push “reset” on the Foreign Ministry and put the house in order. And it all started well – he appointed Samuel Zbogar as Foreign Minister. As a long-serving diplomat, Zbogar was already State Secretary under Rupel and lately Ambassador to the US. He’s young, mild-spoken and intelligent. People seem to like him and the appointment was well received by the electorate. (see vest.si for a nice conversation with the guy, in Slovenian)

It got even better. The President of Slovenia, Danilo Türk, rejected Rupel’s self-application for the post of Ambassador to Austria, stating that he doesn’t trust him. That had to be a severe blow to Rupel’s ego. And there it goes all wrong, Rupel goes to the court and sues Slovenia for not appointing him…

And Pahor takes him into his Cabinet, as special envoy for foreign policy?! Where did Pahor got this idea, I would have problems even guessing. The public went mad, the news was all over the place and his coalition partners all had lemon faces. Rupel now sits again close to the government, in the front line we could say. After changing parties 4-5 times (lost the count…), he now seems to be close to the Social Democrats…

But even strategically, why did Pahor do it? Let’s pause for a moment and think. He might have thought “better to have him inside the tent pissing out, then outside pissing in” - but that doesn’t really apply, since Rupel does not have any legitimacy or credibility left and would be harmless in few months’ time. He also does not excel in foreign policy analysis plus he does not bring any votes. So?

Let’s leave it some time and see. Pahor should explain it one day.

Well…ergh, little one would say. The 2009 will see the European Parliament elections and even before the campaign really heats up we already ended with a single candidate. The current President of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, got the backing from nearly everyone and opposition from few. Consensual politics, some might say, rubbish might say others.

The European Conservatives (=European People’s Party) have not surprisingly backed Barroso. But some of us might have expected at least the Socialists to try and gather support for an alternative (many have been floated: Pascal Lamy being a strong contender). However, with the Party of European Socialists meeting in Madrid these days, little agreement is to be found. Actually, on the most important issue – because politics in the end are about personalities – there was none. Recently even Socrates and Zapatero have supposedly expressed their support to Barroso – the first probably for domestic reasons (=keep Barroso away from Portugal), the second for pragmatic ones (=weak Commission is less annoying for Spain facing the breach of the Stability and Growth Pact). The Socialists will thus leave Madrid without a single candidate from the European left and therefore open the doors wide open to Barroso for a second term.

Others have criticised Barroso’s performance at the helm of the Commission, but this is not the point here. He might be good or bad, difficult to tell in European politics and certainly subject to a lengthy debate. But the fact that in 2008, after 50 years of existence, the EU politics are not able to face serious political confrontation, is rather disappointing.

Why should Europeans bother to vote, if there is no choice?

For those that care, visit http://who-is-your-candidate.eu/ – the campaign for a proper political contest.

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P.S.: In a more radical form Jon has materialised his objections to Barroso, Jean Quatremer also writes similarly here.

But to the weekend. All the participants from the various Summer Schools, New Faces Conferences and people that have spent working at the DGAP, are tied into the Alumni Network that is being supported by the DGAP’s International Forum on Strategic Thinking. And we had a great Alumni meeting in 2005, now followed this weekend with its 2nd Edition. The concept is good and it provides both a bit of intellectual stimulus and some fun.

On Friday we had a nice dinner at the headquarters of EADS, one of the sponsors of the Alumni network. After a pleasant evening in the lobby of the hotel, catching up with all the colleagues, we then moved on Saturday into the conference part of the weekend. 4 panels with interesting speakers, but somehow not particularly coherent combination of topics. However, always good to hear opinions on climate change for example, from people with very diverse backgrounds – defence studies, business, EU specialists…Was good to see that the EU legislation in this field indeed receives a lot of attention. We finished the Saturday with a nice dinner and party. Sunday was reserved for the planning of the future Alumni activities. I got a nice responsibility – setting up the organisational page of the Alumni network on Facebook.

We also got the first snow, both in Berlin and Brussels. Winter, welcome.

This comes at least to me as a surprise, but on a second thought – was there any way out? In the last 17 years both NATO and the EU have tried to steer away from this issue, saying it was not related to the memebership in the two organisations. NATO was to fall first at the Summit in Bucharest this April, EU followed suit with the European Council meeting in June (PDF).

The EU was, to use a nice metaphor that Jon really likes, “the straw that broke the camel’s back”. In addition to the June European Council, the elections in Macedonia just before didn’t go very smooth (see news here). The long awaited invitation to start accession negotiations with the EU therefore didn’t follow with the Progress Reports on the 5th November.

But let’s speculate on the reasons why Macedonia made this move:

1) To set the issue aside of any pending membership applications: this would be smart, if it wasn’t for one detail = they did so unilaterally. It would have been better of course to agree with Greece to submit the issue of the name as such to the court, instead of waiting for the “mediators” to suggest a solution. Now the suit is only about the Greeks’ role, not about the name issue

2) It was done for domestic political reasons: after the less-than-perfect elections and the negative response from the EU, both the Government and the President (although less-than-friends) were perhaps happy to distract the public.

3) There is nothing they can lose: any move towards the EU will not come in the foreseeable future, unless the name is settled. After the offer of candidate status was made to Serbia (=that would put Macedonia and Serbia at the same stage in the enlargement process), the Macedonian authorities simply let it go.

Probably it was a combination of all three. Let’s see how it goes…Bear in mind Macedonia still has some internal issues to solve.