Opel Gliwice

De splinternieuwe fabriek ging open toen GM bessloot om Opel Antwerpen te sluiten.
Vlak voor de deur staat een groot bord met de Poolse en de EU vlag, waarop trots is aangekondigd dat de fabriek tot stand kwam met 35 miljoen euro subsidie van de Europese Unie.
Of hoe Europa geld geeft aan een Amerikaans bedrijf om een fabriek uit België weg te halen.

De Morgen 15/12/12

Belgian government formation

It's almost two years now that Belgium tries to form a government without success. Even the previous government, with prime minister Leterme,  was not fully baked and disintegrated quickly.
Why is is so hard to make a government in Belgium?
For each political family (basically one left, one center, one right) you have two parties: one Flemish an one French.
This means you need 4 to 6 parties to make a government (this gets worse if you need a 2/3 majority).
The linguistic split of the parties happened in the seventies. Originally these sister parties were closely linked. Making a government still fealt as dealing with the political family. Over the years they started to diverge. Nowadays, for example, the Christian center parties (CD&V and CDH) are very different and are no longer logical allies.
You can not manage any  business or a country well with so many different parties is nearly impossible.
So while the focus in this crisis is on topics - basically regional resopsibilities and tackling debt - the problem is a structural one. Next time we will have a different topic, but we will always have the same complexity.
Once you accept this as the problem, the possible solutions are clear. You need political parties that are scoped to the territory that is governed. Either you reunite the parties to match the country of you split the country to match the parties. 
The regional split of the parties is stimulated by the election system. Politicians for parliament are elected in provincial circles. This means that they do not have any interest in being popular in another region and that they benefit from defending the interests of that region.
One of the proposals in current negotiations was to have some politicians elected in nation wide circles. This would surely bring political families closer again.

The problems in Europe are not different from the problems in Belgium. Currently Europe is governed by representatives from each country, each defending his interest. If European political families do not unite and Europe is not governed through the representatives in parliament, Europe will disintegrate.

De gucht against carbon emmission import tax

At the hearing of EU trade commissioner-to-be Karel De gucht he rejected the idea of a carbon emission import tax for goods originating from countries that pollute the planet with carbon.
The disadvantage of these protectionist measures is that they quickly result in trade wars, which would not be a good start for a trade commissionar (who was already involved in a quarrel with Congo last week).
This tax has been proposed by Sarkozy to enable europe to go forward with carbon emission cutting measures without putting our industry at a disadvantage on the internal market. It could well be the only means to go ahead with carbon cutting measures after the failure to find a world wilde consensus at the Kopenhagen climate summit.
Import taxes are a good means to protect internal market restrictions that are not applied elsewhere.
They might also be used to counter the disadvantages of our social system for the industry against countries that do not protect their working class.

Greenpeace action at European Parliament

On december 11th greenpeace deployed some climate slogans at the european summit in Brussels. They managed to get at the entrance with all the European presidents.
Greenpeace says all it took were some fake badges (with Greenpeace logo), business suits and a rented expensive car.
Reaction of the Brussels City Police: " If we had imagined that someone would be so stupid to do such dangerous actions, this would never have happened. Security has not failed. If people use heavy infrastructure to imitate police cars and access badges anybody can get in there."
This is what you get if you give security European security into the hands of a small city police force. Additionally in Brussels is composed of 19 municipalities and the police force is fractured over 6 regions.