Euro-Blogging at New Atlanticist
I’ve got two new pieces up at my day blog, both involving the EU.
“Obstacles to a European Foreign Policy” riffs off Charlemagne‘s suggestion that “most EU countries do not really have foreign policies. They have neighbourhood policies, which may or may not drag them into some nasty spats that make little sense to outsiders.” I argue that,
While the lastest Pew poll on the subject shows American isolationist sentiment at its highest level in four decades, the fact remains that Americans really do think globally. The notion that something “bad” going on halfway around the world is none of our business is an almost alien concept. Not so for the average Swede or Irishman.
Additionally,
The fact that there are two EU countries (France and the UK) that still think of themselves as great powers, another (Germany) that is a major economic power but with an ambivalence toward out-of-area military operations, and twenty-four that think “foreign policy” and “EU policy” are one and the same is a steep challenge, indeed.
Then, in “Europe’s Long Banana Nightmare Ending,” I poke some fun at reports that, after an epic 16-year battle, the EU has agreed to stop fighting to keep banana prices for its citizens artificially high. Money ‘graph:
EU has spent the last sixteen years — enough time that a child born when the suit was filed could have attained its drivers license or a child starting 1st grade could have finished medical school — fighting to keep the prices of bananas high? Better yet, this wasn’t even done to protect domestic industry but colonies that it shed five decades ago? And, not only could WTO not issue a binding ruling in all that time but the end result is a mere 35 percent reduction in the illegal tariff in eight years — a quarter century after the grievance was first filed? That’s not exactly a model of efficiency.
More at the links.
Have you ever looked at the EU standards for bananas? It’s a sight to behold.