Disaffection, affection. A lack of trust. Perceived loss of relevance. A need to bring young people into the European picture. The gap between citizens and the EU (fill in institutions, leaders, "elites",  whatever). We may discuss these (and incidentally note, for instance, that there may be more "trust" than we might have thought), but I think we would probably all agree (possible, unpossible???) that, given referendum results over the last three years, and given our own experience as EU citizens (or not, in some ex-pat cases), the relationship between the individual's daily existence and the EU is sketchy at best.

What if we live as (perish the thought) Europeans? What if we live for a time in another member state, want to study there? If we settle down and live there? Or work in two or more countries during a career, acquiring different pension and other rights? What if we marry someone from another member state? Borrow money, hold property? Have children? Divorce? Retire to another member state? Lose someone and have to deal with a succession, die and leave others to deal with a succession? Or, more prosaically, get involved in litigation through Internet contacts and purchases? How easy are these things to handle, what efforts has the EU made to simplify them - what efforts, indeed, to move beyond the pre-existing bilateral arrangements or absence of arrangements between states? How well informed are we about them? What impression do we have that there is steady progress, a forward movement that actually changes our lives for the better?

As the FAO summit on the "food crisis" deliberated in Rome, I went to a projection of Le Monde Selon Monsanto (The World According to Monsanto).

I'd already seen it when Arte showed it last March, and found it impressive. But what drew me on Monday evening was that the film's maker, Marie-Monique Robin, was to be present.

Robin is an experienced maker of documentaries, and a true investigative journalist. There's something of the Michael Moore in her question-and-answer tenacity, except that she doesn't adopt Moore's Joe Six-Pack stance. She's an accredited and award-winning journalist (she won the Prix Albert Londres, the French Pulitzer). That doesn't necessarily show when she's interviewing Very Serious People™ in the film. Some of them tend to take her condescendingly for a sort of fluffy French lady, then start wondering why they agreed to the interview as she wrongfoots them and pins them down.

In real life, facing a packed (admittedly not hostile) house, she was focussed and energetic (though she'd just returned from Canada). She answered questions with relevance and at length, and some of the lines of force of the film became clearer. It's not, in any case, a standard hit job, nor a piece of journalistic conspiracy-and-doom porn. It's an historical investigation, and its sequences are lean and chosen with care.

I mentioned here an association I'm part of, that acts as a kind of cooperative between local producers and local consumers of foodstuffs. Over the weekend we held a wine-tasting. Little-finger-in-the-air wine snobs in a candle-lit cellar? Not.

Bullish talk yesterday in Slovenia from German Environment minister Sigmar Gabriel:

ENN: EU can hit biofuels goal without conflicts: Germany

BRDO, Slovenia (Reuters) - The European Union can achieve its 2020 target to get 10 percent of all transport fuel from biofuels without adding to soaring food prices and harming rainforests, Germany's environment minister said on Saturday.

"We can meet the 10 percent target through biofuel production in the European Union (and imports of) raw materials, which do not lead to a conflict with food or rainforests," Sigmar Gabriel told reporters on the fringes of a meeting of EU environment ministers in Slovenia.

Apparently Sigmar Gabriel has a line on mysterious "imports of raw materials" that would not concern oil-palm or sugarcane plantations on cleared rainforest land. Even supposing such materials exist and could be marketed, transported, and brought online, the fact that this is, yet again, reliance on mining the outside world to provide energy to keep cars and trucks running -- the periphery feeding the core -- escapes an environment minister. The fact that the price of such materials would necessarily follow the oil price curve, and that imports are no solution to Europe's energy dependence, also escapes him. Never mind, he's bullish all the same.

Not so the European Environment Agency.

UPDATE It's been pointed out in comments that I misunderstood Luis's point. This seems to be the case, and I apologise to Luis. What follows is therefore to be read as further corroboration of his argument!

This is one of those comments that got too long. It's in response to Luis de Souza's diary, Adris Piebalgs : getting a sense of proportion. Reading that diary is essential for what follows, but, to resume, Luis argued in it that a back-of-the-envelope calculation showed that the EU could very easily produce [NOT - Update] the biofuels needed for the EU target of 10% by 2020. He concludes:

Luis de Souza - Adris Piebalgs : getting a sense of proportion

the EU needs to allocate thirty five million (35 000 000) hectares to bio-fuels production.

I live in state that has an area of less than 9 million hectares. Germany has an area just over 35 million hectares. <...>

Good or evil? Friend or foe? This kind of wording doesn't fit in my Engeneering/Architecture dictionaries. Bio-fuels are not an option, it's all a matter of numbers.

Here goes with my reply:

I'm writing this in response to The3rdColumn who wanted to know my solution to the "Afghanistan problem", and told me:

If you don't know the "Afghanistan problem" yet after everything that's been written about it and NATO's involvement in Afghanistan, I'm afraid no definition can help.

So here goes: I don't know what the Afghanistan problem is. I can see, not one, but several. If I were Afghan, I would probably see more, or at least I would see things differently. Afghan or European, I might think (as The3rdColumn her/himself did) of the problem of opium production. But, among the possibilities, there are three "Afghanistan problems" that stand out for me.

I remember a time when the UK was not yet in the "Common Market", as we used to say. From central London newsmerchants, you could get a copy of a French newspaper. If you were an antisocial polluter of other people's lungs, as I was then, you could buy French cigarettes. Then you could sit down for a coffee or a glass of wine and read your paper and smoke. You could hear French conversation around you, especially in South Kensington, where the Lycée français is. This was part of the cosmopolitan colour of London life.

Thierty-five years later, it seems it's a big deal:

Bloomberg.com: Exclusive - London's French Foreign Legion Shuns Sarkozy Plea to Come Home

On Bute Street in South Kensington, you can pick up the Paris newspaper Le Monde at the French Book Shop and read it across the street while sipping an espresso at a sidewalk table of La Grande Bouchee, a Parisian-style deli. Nearby stands Monceau Fleurs, the Parisian florist's first U.K. outlet.

Oh, good, and it seems the Lycée français is still turning candidates away, as it used to. Apart from that, this Bloomberg article Jerome linked to the other evening tells us top French restaurateurs have opened London branches, surprise surprise. That smaller luxury food suppliers find their niche, a French baker being shown as an example. That London being congested and expensive doesn't put off a Chelsea-dwelling bestselling French author, who doesn't mind if British public services are "a catastrophe". That an expat lady has written a book about her experience of the English. That there's a magazine (at least one) for French ex-pats. That a Frenchman who found high-school visits to London horrible is really quite taken with the place now he's an analyst for JPMorgan and lunches at a top (French) restaurant...

I'm not being fair, am I? Of course London is a wealthier and more cosmopolitan place than it was a few decades ago. Of course there are many more French there now then back then (so much the better). But this "local colour" round-up by the Bloomberg journalists is not so very convincing.

The ideological slant of the piece, on the other hand, doesn't miss its target.

(This is the third part of a survey of US employment. The first was Where the jobless go..., the second, How the jobs are counted...)

Stripping out student part-time jobs may seem like cherry-picking, but it is a reminder that any small job adds to the employment level, even one hour of paid work in the week referenced in the survey. An economy that creates a lot of short-hour part-time employment will look a lot better in the labour stats than one that doesn't. So, the Netherlands, with 45 % part-time jobs in total employment 15-64 (Eurostat), has been considered a "miracle" economy. No doubt there are employees happy with part-time work, but in general it fits with the flexibility sought for by employers.

At least, it's the type of flexibility chosen when the employer must pay a minimum wage, plus social contributions. Another type of flexibility (one many employers would no doubt find preferable) is to have people work full time at low hourly rates. It's been said (and denied) that the US employment numbers look good thanks to "Macjobs" -- low-paid waitressing and burger-flipping. In fact low hourly rates are more prevalent in the US economy than that narrow "Macjob" frame suggests.

In Where the jobless go... I took another look at the vagaries of the unemployment rate, with particular application this time to the US labour market. I suggested that the employment rate, or employment/population ratio, might be a better indicator than the unemployment rate. And it seems to me that there's a growing tendency in the economic press (and in OECD communications, for example), to use the ER rather than the UR, as if they knew they were not going to be able to go on selling such a crock. What follows is a look at what goes into the employment numbers in the US, with some comparative analysis of Britain and France.

What improvement is the employment rate on the unemployment rate? Well...

An exchange between Paul Spencer and Drew Jones the other day sent me looking at John Williams' Shadow Government Statistics site to see how he justified 12% unemployment in the US.

Shadow Government Statistics: 1. Employment and Unemployment Reporting

Up until the Clinton administration, a discouraged worker was one who was willing, able and ready to work but had given up looking because there were no jobs to be had. The Clinton administration dismissed to the non-reporting netherworld about five million discouraged workers who had been so categorized for more than a year. As of July 2004, the less-than-a-year discouraged workers total 504,000. Adding in the netherworld takes the unemployment rate up to about 12.5%.

I've been to Williams' site before and left disappointed, because he ain't saying much unless you pay him $175 for his newsletter. And I don't think he's helping us much here either. I tried, all the same, adding in 5 million discouraged workers to the 2004 unemployment numbers: it doesn't take the unemployment rate to 12.5%, but to 8.8%. Though that doesn't mean Williams is all wrong. A couple of years ago we had Paul Krugman and Brad De Long discussing this with a reference to a paper by Katharine Bradbury of the Boston Fed that made some noise.

There are other reasons too why I think "stellar" US employment numbers are not as good as they look, but this is a good one to pick at first.

This is not my diary, it's JohnnyRook's. In the act of front-paging it, I brilliantly succeeded in hitting "Delete". I have managed to retrieve the text, but I have dang well lost the comments (bang bang bullet in head). My apologies to JohnnyRook and the commenters.
afew (dead).

As Michael Pollan points out in his fine book The Omnivore's Dilemma A Natural History of Four Meals not many people know who Fritz Haber was.   That is probably because of the German chemist's prominent role in designing armaments for the Kaiser's army in World War I. Haber's invention of synthetic nitrate allowed the German munitions industry to continue to turn out bombs even after the allies had cut off their access to natural Chilean nitrate. Haber then went on to develop chlorine and other poisonous gases for the German army. On April 25, 1915 he personally oversaw the first use of poison gases on the battlefield.

Crossposted on DailyKos

Nicolas Sarkozy's control of French media has come up again several times recently here, not least in the stormy present's 'self-censorship and excessive zeal'. Disparate events in the world of newspapers and also public TV seem to support the view that Sarko and his group of wealthy business backers are maintaining and even increasing their hold on the Manufactured Consent industry.

Update [2007-7-1 9:40:26 by afew]: Daniel Schneiderman (see below) has been fired by France5 management for a "serious professional misdemeanour" - more precisely, for telling the story of the closing down of his excellent and useful TV programme on his blog : read here (in French).

At newspaper of record Le Monde, journalists and staff have used the shareholder powers that remain to them by vetoing Jean-Marie Colombani's reconduction as chairman of the board of directors. This can be seen as a rejection, by those who actually make the paper, of hazardous business practices and capital-seeking leading to a certain loss of editorial independence (see my brief history here) -- in other words, to the neutering of what used to be a rigorous, authoritative news source on the centre-left.

bumped by whataboutbob

The unemployment rate again? Well, unless anyone has fresher news than I have, the unemployment rate (hereinafter UR) is still one of the handy key factoids - soundbite statistics - announced by economic pundits and the media as a means of instantly evaluating a country's economic performance. A recent example is furnished by Martin Wolf, who, in a Financial Times article on France the other week (see Rewriting European History, Again), came back to the UR :

France does indeed need domestic reform <...> The unemployment rate is now higher than in all other big western European countries.

We can, of course, without going far wrong, simply reject the notion that the UR can be compared from one country to another. But what is the UR? Is it a (1) dependable and (2) useful metric? What's behind it? No, I don't mean in terms of social exclusion and difficulty, of human suffering, though there'd be plenty to be said about that - but what is the overall labour market picture that is purportedly summed up in this statistic we hear about as often as we hear about GDP growth?

Promoted by whataboutbob

One of Sunday's French election exit polls, by CSA, quizzed 5009 voters with a side order of questions on the media. Here's one general question, on the sources voters used in making up their minds. An interesting extra is it goes back over the last two presidential elections, in 2002 and 1995. (My translation).

QUESTION : For this presidential election, which among the following information sources have been the most useful to you in making your choice?

	2007	2002	1995
(Responses chosen from a list)	%	%	%
- Political programmes on TV	41	27	27
- Newspapers, the printed press	30	24	32
- TV News	30	25	43
- Discussions with friends and family	24	20	25
- Radio	20	19	23
- Internet (4)	7	2	-
- Discussions with political activists	5	5	-
- Candidates' programmes delivered to your home	5	8	6
- Opinion polls	5	3	5
- Rallies	5	3	-
- Tracts	4	6	4
- Satirical shows on TV, (les Guignols for example)	4	6	13
- Campaign posters	2	2	1
- No opinion	7	18	10
TOTAL	(5)	(5)	(5)

(5) Totals do not equal 100% since several replies may have been given.

In a diary last month (Why We Pay Taxes) Jérôme translated a petition launched by the French economics monthly Alternatives Economiques and backed by Libération, in favour of a progressive tax system. It has received over 40,000 signatures.

Alter Eco sent the petition to all the candidates in the presidential election and asked them for their point of view on progressive taxation in the French system, and what reforms they might want to carry out. Nine candidates replied (nothing from Schivardi, Nihous, or Villiers). There's a summary here (FR) and the full text of their replies here.

The candidates' replies are too long for me to translate in extenso, but here are some titbits:

[UPDATE: José Bové will run, the Conseil Constitutionnel has just (19/03/07) announced the validation of his 500 signatures. So the list of twelve candidates below is complete]

Migeru asked for a breakdown along political lines - economic/social left/right, attitudes to Europe - of the official candidates for the French presidential election.

See below the break for the list and main points of their programmes.

Partances is the name of a festival held annually in Toulouse (I mentioned it last year). It's a photo-video-film festival focussed on travel, adventure, natural beauty, culture, humanity. Most of the participants are amateurs, but you'd be hard put to guess that from the quality of their offerings. I was fortunate enough to be there last Saturday for the afternoon and evening sessions. There were lots of good things to see, but I'll have to cherry-pick...

The afternoon was, for me, crowned by a short film from the French island of Mayotte, in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Mozambique. The film consists almost entirely of teenagers (with a couple of brief exceptions, girls), speaking framed head-and-shoulders to the camera. About their lives, about work, family, tradition, love, sex, marriage, freedom and the lack of it. With no punches pulled, yet with grace and subtlety and a delightful sense of fun.

Mayotte is 97% Muslim. It is geographically part of the Comoros Islands, which lay claim to it, but the population has several times voted to remain a French Overseas Collectivity. There is a certain amount of confusion, if not conflict, between Islamic common law and French law. To judge by the film - entitled Munafikyano, rigividzane (Meaning, as best I understand it: Understanding (oneself, others?), enjoying life) - that split is mirrored in a cultural divide where the girls, at least these girls, are attracted by modernity and French secular mores.

In late 1944, the French press, requisitioned and kollabo (with the obvious exception of the Résistance publications) during the Occupation, lay in ruins. Working at the task of raising France up again (not a sufficiently new France, unfortunately, but that's another story), De Gaulle asked Hubert Beuve-Méry to take over the remains of the defunct Le Temps and build a national, quality daily. Le Monde was born.

Brief news of the French electoral campaign. I wondered the other day if Sarkozy wasn't over-confident and over-protected by what it's an understatement to describe as compliant media, and if there might not be a turning-point in the air.

Well, maybe, maybe not. But things that matter to Sarkozy - TV ratings and opinion polls - have turned on him over the last few days.

On Monday evening, Ségolène Royal was on TF1 being quizzed by a panel of "representative French". Sarko had done the same show a couple of weeks before, and Bayrou had made some quite justified noise about the partiality of the channel (belongs to Sarko's dear buddy Bouygues) and the producer (a former chief advisor to PM Raffarin, great Sarko-supporter). Sarko had also made errors during the show, notably declaring that 50% of French employees were on the minimum wage (in fact 17%), but since it was Sarko no one noticed, he's the man who's right whatever he says. Royal got through it better than that. And she got a higher audience rating, 8.9 million to Sarko's 8.2 million! Sarko said ratings didn't matter, but he was peeved all the same.

The next piece of news requires confirmation by other results, but the first poll out after that show is good for Royal and Bayrou, bad for Sarkozy. I'm lifting this from my comment in the Salon:

Royal repasse devant Sarkozy au 1er tour, selon CSA Au lendemain de sa prestation sur TF1 suivie par une audience record de 8,91 millions de téléspectateurs, la candidate socialiste enregistre une hausse de deux points, avec 29% d'intentions de vote. Son adversaire de l'UMP, Nicolas Sarkozy, accuse quant à lui une baisse de cinq points par rapport au précédent sondage CSA des 14-15 février. Il est crédité aujourd'hui de 28%. Au deuxième tour, le ministre de l'Intérieur l'emporterait par 51%, contre 49% pour la présidente de Poitou-Charentes. François Bayrou... gagne quatre points au premier tour et recueille 17% des intentions de vote, devant Jean-Marie Le Pen (Front National), crédité de 14% comme lors du précédent sondage CSA.

Ségolène Royal moves ahead of Sarkozy in the first round, according to CSA The day after her appearance on TF1 followed by a record audience of 8.91 million, tha Socialist candidate picks up two points, with 29%. Her UMP opponent, Nicolas Sarkozy, drops five points compared to the last CSA poll held February 14-15. He is now credited with 28%. In the second round, the Interior Minister would win by 51% to 49% for the president of the Poitou-Charentes region. François Bayrou gains four points in the first round with 17% of voting intentions, ahead of Jean-Marie Le Pen, credited with 14% as in the previous poll.

Let's imagine a presidential election in the Republic of Far, Far Away, or Freedonia, or anywhere you like from the movies or books, just so long as it's holding a presidential election that has nothing to do with, you know, a presidential election that might be taking place soon in a European country that shall remain nameless. And let's imagine a candidate who:

1. firmly intends to contest every patch of ground, every demographic, every social or professional group, and to that end uses the usual paraphernalia of private polls and focus groups;
2. does not have to fear intense media examination of her policies and propositions.

What might this candidate fail to watch out for carefully? How might she go overboard?

Well, how about promising too much, too often, to too many people? A promise here, a promise there, so many votes gathered... But then the promises might become demagogic. There might be so many that some of them are contradictory. (Don't forget this candidate doesn't fear media scrutiny). Some might be simply unfeasible. The whole package taken together might be completely over the top financially.

So what? There's a French political proverb (I know I said Far, Far Away, but that was just to trick you into getting past the first line, dear reader, knowing as I do that yet another article on the French elections is borderline likely to make you scream and run) that says that a promise is only binding on the person who believes in it. (Nasty, cynical, Machiavellian people, the French...) As long as no one notices, our candidate can go on promising. After the election, screw you, voter!

All right (say you, reader). You lied about Far, Far Away, it was France again after all, and now I know what you're going to say: Ségolène Royal has gone and made too many promises, wow does she get everything wrong! Well, in fact, no. Of course, discussion of her programme has focused almost entirely on its cost, and the absence of costing, and the presence of costing, and arguments about costing, and meta-arguments about costing, and on the human drama involved in costing... All of this with the subtext, serious people in suits know that women on the left are sublimely ignorant of the weighty realities of state and will tax and spend the country to its knees. So Ségolène Royal has gone on getting the full treatment. Before, she didn't have a programme, and that was bad. Now, she has one, and as we expected it costs too much.