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How the world sees Greece
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Greece's creditors close to writing off some of its debt
IMF chief and head of Eurogroup drop hints that international community may consider lightening nation's debt load Greece's international creditors are edging closer to accepting that they will have to lighten the country's monumental debt burden if its shattered economy is ever to be fully rehabilitated. In an implicit recognition that the eurozone's weakest member state will never recover ...
Greece: the next steps
The staggering financial meltdown that Greece has endured since the financial crash has left many of its citizens badly bruised, and pensions has been an area that has damaged many.
Passionate protests over pension cuts have continued to pepper the streets of Athens, exclaiming that the cuts in retirement benefits have left them poverty stricken, and firmly on the bread line.
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Greece's creditors close to writing off some of its debt
IMF chief and head of Eurogroup drop hints that international community may consider lightening nation's debt load Greece's international creditors are edging closer to accepting that they will have to lighten the country's monumental debt burden if its shattered economy is ever to be fully rehabilitated. In an implicit recognition that the eurozone's weakest member state will never recover ...
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Britain's economic recovery depends on working with Europe
Instead of obsessing about our relationship with the EU, we should be using our membership to rebuild our economy
David Cameron's pre-election instruction to the Conservative party "not to bang on about Europe" has been well and truly trashed. These days, when not taking advantage of the easy access to Spanish holiday resorts resulting from EU membership, he's at it himself. Meanwhile, the British economy is flatlining, jobs are less and less secure, and family budgets are squeezed as real wages fall for the third year in succession.
The right wing of the Conservative party, and the monkey on their back that is Ukip, prefer to blame Europe for all of Britain's ills. And a weakened prime minister has little choice but to fall in behind them.
Foreign Office minister David Lidington told a City audience recently: "What Europe needs is not … years of discussion about the intricacies of how decisions are taken in Brussels. What it needs is growth." But the government that he belongs to has condemned us to years of just such pointless discussion about Europe's rules without any real debate about its purpose, let alone the interests of the people it is supposed to be there to serve.
Instead of obsessing about our relationship with the EU, we should be using our membership to rebuild and rebalance our economy, tackle the crisis in living standards and give our young people a future. Last week, the European commission finally began to admit that the grand experiment of cutting our way to growth has failed, and failed young people in particular. It issued explicit recommendations to the British government to tackle the housing shortage, family poverty and youth unemployment.
The European austerity consensus may be beginning to crumble but the UK government seems determined to plough on regardless. What's more, the chancellor George Osborne's resistance to sensible EU measures like a financial transaction tax and a cap on bankers' bonuses is presented as a form of patriotism. Equally, the bid to back out of European legislation that has given us all rights to paid holidays and equal treatment for part-time and agency workers is portrayed as a way of standing up for Britain when the real purpose is attacking workers' rights.
This week, I will be in Dublin with colleagues from the European Trade Union Confederation. Ireland was the first European country to feel the brutal impact of the global financial crisis and it is an appropriate place for us to work out what we need to do to repair the damage. For starters, we should be developing a youth guarantee (a commitment to getting every young person into a job, an internship or training within four months of their becoming unemployed) worthy of the name, as the French and German governments were discussing last week.
High youth unemployment, including worries about the risk of consequent social disorder, is a Europe-wide problem. We are returning to the days when vast numbers of qualified young people had to emigrate to find work, leaving their native economies short of the skills and talent needed to build recovery. Irish youth were the first to pack their suitcases but now the Greeks, Portuguese and Spanish are too. How long before graduates in the UK join them?
We should be developing a European recovery programme that creates good jobs, builds affordable homes and stimulates research and technology. Europe can be a world leader in the design, development and production of green industries, as well as its biggest consumer. No one country can do that alone – not even Germany. The government talks a good talk about investment in infrastructure but its capital investment cuts tell a different story.
And we need to work together with our European partners to take back control of the finance sector from the professional gamblers who treated the real economy like their personal roulette wheel.
Britain should join the 11 EU member states that are negotiating the implementation of a Robin Hood tax, not taking them to court as Osborne is doing, having comprehensively lost the vote.
And trade should be on the agenda too. Some argue that Europe has somehow stopped Britain from making its way in the world outside the EU. But EU membership doesn't explain why Germany is trading more with China than we do, or Belgium trading more with India.
Last week, I was discussing the forthcoming EU trade deal with the US – the snappily named Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – with my opposite number in the US trade union movement, Rich Trumka.
Our unions are working together to press for a trade deal that puts decent jobs and employment rights at the heart of the agenda on both sides of the north Atlantic. This is a markedly different approach from those in the British government who want a deal that aims for the lowest common denominator of deregulation – a free-for-all that could offer US corporations open season on the NHS and the welfare state.
It's up to us as citizens to demand a say over what goes on in boardrooms and at the workplace, in trade negotiations and our health service. We should have a right to good jobs, good wages and a good life. And the political class, whether in Westminster or Brussels, would do well to listen.
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Acropolis Rally Latvala is Great in Greece
Volkswagen Polo R driver Jari-Matti Latvala claimed victory at the Acropolis Rally in Greece on Sunday. Latvala’s win was relatively comfortable in the end, as he made the most of problems suffered by both world championship leader Sebastien Ogier and Ford Fiesta RS’ Evgeny Novikov during the weekend to notch his first triumph of the season. Latvala, who made his debut at the Greek ...
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Greece to be forgiven some of its debt
The Guardian | Greece to be forgiven some of its debt The Guardian Greece's international creditors are edging closer to accepting that they will have to lighten the country's monumental debt load if its shattered economy is ever to be fully rehabilitated. In an implicit recognition that the eurozone's weakest member ... |
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The week ahead: Bilderberg 2013 comes to ? the Grove hotel, Watford
The Bilderberg group's meeting will receive greater scrutiny than usual as journalists and bloggers converge on Watford
When you're picking a spot to hold the world's most powerful policy summit, there's really only one place that will do: Watford. I guess the Seychelles must have been booked up.
On Thursday afternoon, a heady mix of politicians, bank bosses, billionaires, chief executives and European royalty will swoop up the elegant drive of the Grove hotel, north of Watford, to begin the annual Bilderberg conference.
It's a remarkable spectacle – one of nature's wonders – and the most exciting thing to happen to Watford since that roundabout on the A412 got traffic lights. The area round the hotel is in lockdown: locals are having to show their passports to get to their homes. It's exciting too for the delegates. The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell will hop from his limo, delighted to be spending three solid days in policy talks with the head of HSBC, the president of Dow Chemical, his favourite European finance ministers and US intelligence chiefs. The conference is the highlight of every plutocrat's year and has been since 1954. The only time Bilderberg skipped a year was 1976, after the group's founding chairman, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, was caught taking bribes from Lockheed Martin.
It may seem odd, as our own lobbying scandal unfolds, amid calls for a statutory register of lobbyists, that a bunch of our senior politicians will be holed up for three days in luxurious privacy with the chairmen and CEOs of hedge funds, tech corporations and vast multinational holding companies, with zero press oversight. "It runs contrary to [George] Osborne's public commitment in 2010 to 'the most radical transparency agenda the country has ever seen'," says Michael Meacher MP. Meacher describes the conference as "an anti-democratic cabal of the leaders of western market capitalism meeting in private to maintain their own power and influence outside the reach of public scrutiny".
But, to be fair, is "public scrutiny" really necessary when our politicians are tucked safely away with so many responsible members of JP Morgan's international advisory board? There's always the group chief executive of BP on hand to make sure they do not get unduly lobbied. And if he is not in the room, keeping an eye out, then at least one of the chairmen of Novartis, Zurich Insurance, Fiat or Goldman Sachs International will be around.
This year, there will be a great deal more "public scrutiny" of Bilderberg. Pressure from journalists and activists has won concessions from the venue: for the first time in 59 years there will be an unofficial press office, staffed by volunteers, on the grounds. Several thousand activists and bloggers are expected, along with photographers and journalists from around the world.
Back in 2009 there were barely a dozen witnesses – harassed and arrested by heavy-handed Greek police. This year there is a press zone, police liaison, portable toilets, a snack van, a speakers' corner – all the ingredients for a different Bilderberg. A "festival feel" has been promised. If you are concerned about transparency or lobbying, Watford is the place to be next weekend. Whether the delegates reach out to the press and public remains to be seen. Don't forget, they've got their hands full carrying out the good works of Bilderberg. The conference is, after all, run as a charity.
If you've been wondering who picks up the tab for this gigantic conference and security operation, the answer arrived last week, on a pdf file sent round by Anonymous. It showed that the Bilderberg conference is paid for, in the UK, by an officially registered charity: the Bilderberg Association (charity number 272706).
According to its Charity Commission accounts, the association meets the "considerable costs" of the conference when it is held in the UK, which include hospitality costs and the travel costs of some delegates. Presumably the charity is also covering the massive G4S security contract. Fortunately, the charity receives regular five-figure sums from two kindly supporters of its benevolent aims: Goldman Sachs and BP. The most recent documentary proof of this is from 2008 (pdf), since when the charity has omitted its donors' names (pdf) from its accounts.
The charity's goal is "public education". And how does it go about educating the public? "In furtherance of these objectives the International Steering Committee organises conferences and meetings in the UK and elsewhere and disseminates the results thereof by preparing and publishing reports of such conferences and meetings and by other means." Cleverly, it disseminates the results by resolutely keeping them away from the public and press.
The charity is overseen by its three trustees (pdf): Bilderberg steering committee member and serving minister Kenneth Clarke MP; Lord Kerr of Kinlochard; and Marcus Agius, the former chairman of Barclays who resigned over the Libor scandal.
Labour MP Tom Watson remarks: "If the allegations that a cabinet minister sits on the board of a charity that discreetly funds a secretive conference of elites are true then I hope the prime minister was informed. It was David Cameron who heralded the new age of transparency. I hope he asks Kenneth Clarke to adhere to these principles in future." At the very least, George Osborne and Clarke may consider adhering to the ministerial code when it comes to Bilderberg and declare it in their list of "meetings with proprietors, editors and senior media executives" as they've failed to do in the past. Of course, with the lobbying scandal in full spate it's possible our ministers will steer clear of such a major corporate lobbying event. We'll find out on Thursday.
• Charlie Skelton is the script editor of 10 O'Clock Live, a writer on Have I Got News for You and a fan of Bilderberg since 2009. He'll be tweeting from Bilderberg Watford from @deYook
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