Europe Pressures Obama Ahead of G20 Summit

Link to my article which appears on CNS News today:

Dusseldorf, Germany (CNSNews.com) – As European leaders prepare to attend the G20 meeting in Washington later this week, they are stepping up pressure on President-elect Obama to support their plans on both international finance and climate change. The meeting is the first of a series of summits proposed by President Bush, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the president of the European Union’s executive Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, to address the global financial crisis.

The E.U. is planning sweeping reforms for the international financial system, involving a total overhaul of the 60-year old International Monetary Fund (IMF). The proposals include stricter regulation of hedge funds and cross-border financial institutions, a clampdown on tax havens, and a global “early warning” system. European governments have already pledged roughly two trillion euros ($2.5 trillion) in cash injections, bank deposit guarantees, interbank loan coverage and partial or full nationalizations in an attempt to minimize consumers’ concerns about the crisis.

Alongside these wide ranging proposals, officials say the E.U. remains committed to aggressive investment in measures to combat climate change, and – encouraged by Obama’s election – will be aiming to secure increased U.S. support. Saturday’s meeting aims to emulate the Bretton Woods conference in the latter stages of World War II, which established the IMF and the World Bank Group with the objective of preventing a repeat of the 1930s worldwide economic meltdown.

Expected participants include leaders of the Group of Eight leading industrialized countries – the U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia – together with those of emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa, as well as Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Australia.

Dutch Constitutional Referendum

The Dutch government is considering cancelling the national refereundum on the EU's draft constitution should the French vote non.

On the one hand, the referendum was an initiative not of the Dutch government but of the Dutch parliament, so that it seems the government is meddling where it isn't wanted.

On the other, it is a commonsense idea. If the French vote non, the consitution is a dead letter. The opinions of other countries won't change that.

EUobserver.com

Update - In the event, of course, the referendum went ahead and the Dutch voted nee by an overwhelming margin. The outcome, far from making the constitution a "dead letter", has been beyond what even the most cynical observer could ever justify - the constitution, brought back under a different name ("The Lisbon Treaty") is simply being brought into law, by "governmental acclamation", against the express wishes of Dutch and French voters. In this way democracy is being fatally subverted in Europe. National democratic governemts are allowing their authority and authority to be taken over by the EU Commission whose members they nominate, on the whole, from the ranks of their most mediocre ministers.

For an interesting viewpoint on how government was managed in a gentler age, this links to an extract on local, squire-based governance, from Gilbert West's Journey Through Groningen and Frisia and the Frisian Isles. West is writing about the Oldambt, a county of the Ommelanden in the northern Netherlands, in the eighteenth century. How much more sensibly and locally things were run then. How much cooler and objective a view of government did people like West, Oomkens and Johnson have than most present-day comentators and policy wonks.