Two news have come from the Czech Republic.

The first one on November 26th, announced that The Czech Constitutional Court has ruled that the European Union's reform treaty conforms with Czech law, allowing parliament to proceed with ratification.

The second one on November 27th informed that the upper chamber of the Czech Parliament on Thursday approved a deal with Washington to accept a U.S. missile defense installation. The deal still needs approval by the lower chamber, where the vote is expected to be close because the governing coalition has too few seats to guarantee passage. That vote is not expected before the end of the year.

"It is good news for us, Europe and our NATO allies," Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said. This comment is emblematical of the present European situation. A situation in which the national governments, parliaments and political classes believe they can indefinitely go on running with the hare (the reform of the European Union) and hunting with the hounds (the US missiles). How long can this contradictory policy last?

Pan-European referendum 'impossible,' expert says.
Well, it is not a matter of being or not being an expert to say this, but simply a matter of common sense!

Dans Le Monde du 7 novembre 2008, Thomas Ferenczi s’interroge sur le futur de "Le couple franco-allemand", et réfléchit sur une étude pour la nouvelle Fondation européenne d'études progressistes, affiliée au Parti socialiste européen, où l'historien Jacques-Pierre Gougeon s'inquiète du " dynamisme perdu " de la relation entre les deux pays. M. Gougeon estime que les difficultés du couple franco-allemand ne sont pas un " phénomène sporadique ", mais témoignent d'un " processus d'éloignement " engagé au lendemain de la réunification allemande et nettement visible au sommet de Nice en décembre 2000. Même si les disputes se terminent par des compromis, elles ne peuvent pas rester sans effet sur le fonctionnement de l'Union européenne, l'ensemble franco-allemand constituant une " masse critique ", avec 48,8 % du produit intérieur brut de la zone euro, 36 % du financement du budget européen, 33 % de la population.
Les malentendus entre la France et l’Allemagne sont sans doute profonds. Ils tiennent, selon M. Gougeon, à la modification du rapport de force entre la France et l'Allemagne depuis la réunification. Selon Thomas Ferenczi, à just titre, ce climat de suspicion pèse sur les politiques européennes et il considère que l'Europe franco-allemande appartient au passé. Si on pense l'Union à vingt-sept, Thomas Ferenczi a raison. Mais quand on considère la necessité de bâtir un premier noyau d'Etat fédéral, l’action et l’initiative communs de la couple franco-allemande demeurent essentiels. C'est pour ça qu'il faut toujours rappeler les responsabilités politiques et historiques de l'Allemagne et de la France pour creér une véritable Fédération européenne à partir d’un noyau des pays. Mais qui, en dehors des fédéralistes européens, peut faire cela?

“As European leaders gather next week in a crescendo of meetings ahead of a Nov. 15 global financial summit – a "Bretton Woods II" in Washington – they face an old problem: unity.” This is how the Christian Science Monitor (30-10-08) starts commenting the European position in view of the Washington meeting. As Jacques Mistral, director of economic studies at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris admits, "The challenge is to give reality to the abstract idea of a world going multi-polar… For the US, China, Europe, globalization has produced some good things,.. It would be unfortunate to have this derailed. We need to come together. And we need to have France and Germany together to do it." But how Europeans are approaching to the event? The Christian Science Monitor ironically recalls the plethora of European summits before November 15th. On Nov. 3, the 15 finance ministers of countries in the eurozone meet in Brussels; on Nov. 4, economic heads of all the EU's 27 members will convene. On Nov. 7, an extraordinary EU summit will hammer out positions ahead of a G-20 meeting of industrialized and emerging countries in São Paulo, Brazil, Nov. 8 – itself a stage-setter for Washington. Just to water down the enthusiasms about a new Bretton Woods, after the Asia-Europe summit in Beijing, columnist Philip Bowring pointed out in the International Herald Tribune that the original Bretton Woods "was designed not in a panic but very deliberately at a time when America's relative economic power was at a peak."
It is useful to recall that the Nov. 15 summit will include: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, European Union. The membership of the G20 comprises the finance ministers and central bank governors of the G7, 12 other key countries, and the European Union Presidency (if not a G7 member); the European Central Bank; the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund; the Chairman of the IMFC; the President of the World Bank; and the Chairman of the Development Committee. Who is going to represent the European interests there?

L'ancien Premier ministre Edouard Balladur a approuvé lundi la proposition du président Nicolas Sarkozy de créer un "gouvernement économique" de la zone euro.

"Grâce à Nicolas Sarkozy, il a été démontré que l'Europe peut faire quelque chose dans les cas graves. C'est une démonstration qu'il ne faudra pas laisser sans lendemain et je pense qu'il est temps que nous ayons un gouvernement économique de l'Europe, de la zone euro en tout cas, qui soit plus efficace qu'il n'a été aujourd'hui", a déclaré M. Balladur sur Europe 1.

Selon M. Balladur, chargé par le chef de l'Etat de piloter la réforme des collectivités locales, "le moment est venu maintenant de s'organiser différemment".

"De toute manière le temps des conciliabules interminables est passé", a-t-il poursuivi, "il faut décider et décider vite et si on ne peut pas décider à 27, moi j'approuverais tout à fait qu'on décide à moins de 27".

"Si tout le monde ne veut pas y participer, il faut absolument sauver l'essentiel", a aussi déclaré M. Balladur, jugeant qu'"une entente forte franco-allemande" était "un objectif essentiel" (AFP, 28-10-08)

In an article published by Ralph Atkins in The Financial Times (Euro stability helps to forge common goal, October 17 2008) the Eurozone’s lights and shadows have been clearly described. Let’s have a look at them

Lights ……..
“The safety offered by the euro has given a small country such as Belgium, hit by the crisis over Fortis, the Belgian-Dutch finance group, not to see a foreign exchange crisis.
“Probably it would have been a bit like Iceland, with a big currency depreciation,” said Peter Höller, head of the eurozone desk at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, based in Paris.
Brian Cowen, Ireland’s premier, struck a similar chord on Thursday, saying his country “would have been in a far worse position had it not been for our membership of the EU, the euro and the role the European Central Bank played”.
It is little wonder that support for eurozone membership has grown across eastern Europe, including Poland. The 15-country eurozone has proved itself in other ways: last Sunday’s summit of eurozone leaders in Paris, which thrashed out a common approach to bank bail-outs, showed that a united sense of purpose could be created among its politicians, albeit after some dithering.
In one respect life may also have become easier for eurozone policymakers. Until recently different countries performed differently: Spain was hit by a collapsing property market while Germany benefited from industrial exports.”

…… Shadows
“Now, argues Holger Schmieding, economist at Bank of America, the threats to real economies are common – making it easier, for instance, for the European Central Bank to follow a one-size-fits-all interest rate policy. “For the internal cohesion of the eurozone it has not been bad,” he said.
It is also not surprising that financial markets have become more fearful about problems ahead for Europe’s monetary union, as shown in the diverging risk premiums demanded on government bonds. As the region slides into what could be a prolonged recession, tensions between countries might emerge to hinder recovery.
Particularly at risk are the fiscal rules that are meant to be followed by eurozone governments. The European Union’s stability and growth pact, which sets limits on public sector deficits and debt, was intended to compensate for the lack of a political union in the eurozone. But the rapidly worsening economic situation could throw public finances out of kilter.
“This crisis will be a test of credibility for the stability and growth pact. Governments are under pressure to do something to avert recession,” said Mr Höller.
Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France, has made it clear that he intends to push for more leeway. Ireland said this week it would abandon the EU rules next year and projected its largest budget deficit in 20 years.
Charles Goodhart, emeritus professor of banking at the London School of Economics, puts the chance of the eurozone breaking up at 10-20 per cent. He argues that events, such as the scramble to put in place bank rescue plans, highlighted the inconsistency of having interest rates set by the ECB at the federal level while other economic levers, including fiscal policy, were in the hands of 15 national governments.
The danger is that the economic downswing will see the euro and ECB being used as a scapegoat by politicians. Economists argue about the effects of a monetary union when economies are required to react to changed circumstances. But it is clear that having ceded control over interest rates and the currency to Frankfurt, countries will have to rebuild lost competitiveness largely through labour markets.”
Why all these experts do not start thinking about how to overcome the contradiction of having established a European Monetary Union without building a European federal State? On this issue the federalists might have something to say.

National conjectures …….
The Chatham House Commission on Europe After Fifty concludes in this new report that Britain's ability to deal with the principal external challenges of the 21st century will depend on its active participation in effective EU policies. Is Great Britain going to change its attitude towards the European political project? If one reads the introduction of the report A British Agenda for Europe, it seems that it is not the case. Let’s read some excerpts from it:

<Driven, therefore, both by the awareness of this rare moment to redefine Britain’s relationship with Europe and by our frustration with the sterility of the current national debate, we suggest a different way of approaching the vexed question of Britain’s relationship with the European Union. We examine a set of policy areas vital to Britain and ask not how Britain can accommodate them to the European Union but how, to what extent and, indeed, whether the European Union can help Britain to pursue itsnational interests in these areas, however defined…..
In coming years, therefore, British governments can no longer assume that their international policies should be coordinated first in Washington and then sold to their European partners. Nor should Britain start by trying to serve as a bridge between differing US and European approaches. It should treat the need to develop a common approach with key European partners on major foreign or security policy challenges as, at the very least, an equal priority to that of engaging the United States, if necessary, on joint or coordinated EU–US action….
The adjustment to its relationship with the United States raises the question of how Britain should approach the future development of foreign and security policy-making within the EU. The central question is this: even if Britain is dealing with equals in the European Union and even if it shares the bulk of external challenges with them, can the EU emerge as a serious player on the international stage and so further the collective interests of its members?.....

Therefore, the fact that the EU is not always as united or strong as it needs to be should serve as an incentive for Britain to try to strengthen EU external policy-making and make it more agile and coherent, not to complain that it is intrinsically ineffective. Members of this Commission do not envisage achieving this by transferring foreign policy-making of the type concerned with major questions of international security from the intergovernmental to the Community method of decision making, with its provisions for qualified majority voting, the right of initiative for the Commission, co-decision with the European Parliament and jurisdiction by the European Court of Justice. This is not politically feasible in an EU of nationally elected governments, all of which wish to retain sovereign choices in matters that affect national security. But scepticism about an expansion of ‘Community competence’ in this field does not preclude Britain from helping to strengthen the processes that will enable it and its EU partners to work more effectively together on the international stage.>>

…… and federalists’ refutations
That’s the point! “To work more effectively together on the international stage” doesn’t mean to build an effective European political power which is impossible, as the report points out, in the European Union. If the EU is not always as united or strong as it needs to be that’s because the EU is an oganization of cooperating sovereign nation States in the crucial fields of defence, security, fiscality and even economy in spite of the existence of a European Monetary Union. The British agenda for Europe is not so new as it would like to be. It doesn’t provide any new political receipt to emancipate the Europeans from their national divisions. Indeed it cannot, because it confirms the British opposition to any perspective to build an effective European federal State.

Invité d'Ulysse Gosset pour le Talk de Paris sur FRANCE 24 (Vendredi 03 octobre 2008), Jean-Claude Trichet, président de la Banque centrale européenne (BCE), évoque la crise financière qui secoue les marchés mondiaux et les risques de récession dans la zone euro.
Malgré les risques que représentent une telle divergence de décision - un euro trop fort et un ralentissement de la croissance -, Jean-Claude Trichet estime que "chacun doit faire face à une économie qui a ses propres problèmes".
"Dire que nous devons imiter les Etats-Unis est naïf. Nous ne sommes pas les Etats-Unis", a-t-il ajouté balayant du même coup l’hypothèse d’avoir recours en Europe à un plan de sauvetage du système bancaire similaire à celui adopté la nuit dernière par le Sénat américain.
Rappelant que l’Europe n’est pas une fédération politique et qu’elle n’a pas de budget fédéral, le grand patron de la BCE a appelé à trouver des solutions propres au Vieux Continent. "J'ai confiance dans les gouvernements et j'ai confiance dans la Commission pour que nous trouvions ce qui est adapté à l'Europe", a-t-il dit.
En effet M. Trichet n’a pas changé d’avis: pour lui “la construction européenne conduisait probablement moins à la création d'un Etat fédéral "de facto" qu'à une organisation originale confiant au collège des gouvernements de l'Union des pouvoirs importants et qu'il ne fallait pas sous-estimer l'efficacité de la construction institutionnelle sans précédent que les Européens s'étaient donnée” (SENAT - AUDITION DE M. JEAN-CLAUDE TRICHET, GOUVERNEUR DE LA BANQUE DE FRANCE, 1999). Oui M. Trichet, c’est sans précédent avoir creé une monnaie sans Etat et sans gouvernment politique, economique fiscal. C'est pour cela qu'il faut faire un Etat fédéral européen et cesser de jouer avec les mots et avec le destin de l’Europe.

According to The Chosun Ilbo, Korea Takes Initiative for Asian Crisis Fund.
The government wants to take the initiative in forming an “Asian Fund” with US$80 billion to tackle the global economic crisis. Members of ASEAN plus China, Japan and Korea are to participate. The plan to form a fund of this kind was originally agreed in May 2006 to prevent another Asia-wide crisis like the one in 1997, but negotiations stalled over the contribution to be made by each country.
Shin Je-Yoon, deputy minister for international affairs at the Strategy and Finance Ministry, Sunday told reporters vice ministers from China, Japan and Korea will meet on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund annual meeting in Washington D.C. next Monday and discuss the Asian Fund. “We also plan to discuss ways to build a cooperative system for the financial policies of the three countries because Chinese financial policies heavily influence the Northeast Asian economy, especially Korea’s export sector,” he added. The meeting follows a suggestion President Lee Myung-bak made on Friday.
“The countries have not agreed on how to share the financing and how to structure the decision-making process. But the fact that the negotiation is speeding up helps prevent further chaos in the exchange currency market,” Shin added.
However, since the Chinese and the Japanese governments are fighting over the leadership of the Asian Fund, it is uncertain whether the negotiations will go smoothly as Korea hopes. If Korea’s mediation fails, it could harm Korea’s credit rating and foreign exchange rate.

Le président Nicolas Sarkozy a déclaré lundi 6 octobre qu'il voulait désormais convaincre les 23 autres pays de l'Union européenne "d'adopter les mêmes décisions" face à la crise financière que celles des quatre Européens membres du G8.
"Mon travail maintenant, c'est de faire en sorte que les 23 autres pays adoptent les mêmes décisions que celles que nous avons adopté à sept. Il nous faut une réponse coordonnée", a déclaré le président de République à la presse en marge d'un déplacement à l'usine Renault de Sandouville (Seine-Maritime). Bravo!

Mais ils faudrait qu’il travail d’abord pour convaincre l’Allemagne, l’Italie et la Grand Bretagne qu’ils ont pris des véritables decisions!
Il s'est en en effet refusé a commenter les propos du chef du gouvernement italien Silvio Berlusconi, cité par l'agence italienne Ansa, indiquant dimanche soir que son ministre de l'Economie Giulio Tremonti proposerait lundi à ses homologues européens la création "d'un fonds commun égal à 3% du PIB". M. Berlusconi a assuré que la France ferait la même proposition."Chacun peut avoir ses positions, ce qui est exact c'est que j'essaie de coordonner tout le monde," s'est borné à répondre le chef de l'Etat, interrogé sur ces affirmations.

"Chaque jour il y a des bonnes ou moins bonnes nouvelles, il faut garder le cap et rester calme, avoir du sang-froid. S'agissant de la France, les choses se passent le plus calmement du monde", a-t-il dit: l'indice CAC 40 à Paris ait lui répondu en cédent 9,04%, le plus fort recul en une séance depuis sa création en 1988. Bravo!

Entretemps l’Irlande, l’Allemagne, l’Autriche, l’Espagne, la Gréce et la Suede ont annoncé des mesures nationales pour protéger leur épargnants.