Wow. You may wonder, as I did: “OK, we had swine flu in the spring, and now they say it’s going to come back soon. Where has it been off to in the meantime?” The answer: in the Southern Hemisphere! It’s winter there now, so I guess it has something to do with cold weather – although it has stuck around to an alarming degree nonetheless in the UK. That could be a function of the rather “un-summery” (i.e. cool, cloudy, rainy) summer we’ve mostly had here so far in Northern Europe.

Turning back to the Northern European press – i.e. to something you may not be able to just read yourself – the French-language Belgian paper Le Soir has picked up on those reports that we discussed here earlier about swine-flu cases being discovered that are resistant to Tamiflu. Once again with Le Soir, the article includes a brief mention of how “The Roche laboratory [maker of Tamiflu] had indicated that it expected a 0.5% rate of resistance to its antiviral [drug] according to results from clinical tests,” and that makes me see red. That’s just marketing propaganda; how can they truly know how widespread the resistance to their drug will be through “clinical tests”?

Here’s what Le Soir has that’s new about the swine flu, however (although they tend to call it the “Flu A/H1N1,” which seems standard for French media): the Tamiflu used to combat it also induces undesirable side-effects in children – “important” effects, according to the article, effects “quite a bit more than the preliminary studies done to get the medicine approved allowed us to guess.” This is evident from the unpleasant experiences of pupils at one particular elementary school in England where they all were given Tamiflu after it was found that one of them had returned from a vacation to Mexico with the swine flu virus, and it obviously argues against that kind of preventive prescription of the drug.

                          

When last we left portly, avuncular old King Albert II, he had received Prime Minister Yves Leterme’s resignation but had yet to decide whether to accept it. In fact, he did not, but what he did do was appoint three “mediators” with assignment of working out some way to breakthrough the current government deadlock. The fundamental problem is that the political representatives from Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern half of the country, of whom Leterme is currently the leading representative, are not willing to let things go on without some concessions from the other half of the country, French-speaking Wallonia, which would increase the former’s and reduce the latter’s influence over the national government, especially concerning what federal tax monies are spent on (of which the Flemings contribute the larger share). And interestingly, the three “mediators” King Albert appointed have nary a Fleming among them: they are two politicians from Wallonia (François-Xavier de Donnea, Raymond Langendries) and one from the tiny German-speaking part of the country (Karl-Heinz Lambertz).

They might have been handed something very close to a “Mission: Impossible” if the analysis from “V.R.” in today’s La Libre Belgique is anything to go by (Ten Days to Get Out of the Impasse). The deadline to accomplish something seems to be 31 July, but who set that deadline? The King? Well yes, in a way, in that that is the day the King wants to see some sort of preliminary report from the three. But it was Bart De Wever, head of the somewhat militant Flemish political party Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA), who set a more seriously deadline by announcing on Friday that he expected to see some concessions from the French side by that 31 July date on the subject of reforming the Belgian State along the lines his party desires (as summarized above). De Wever can throw his weight around like that, you see, because his N-VA is a large part of the coalition with the more moderate Flemish party of Yves Leterme (the Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams, or CD&V) – and with three parties from the French side – that forms the present Belgian federal government. It’s the existence of that coalition that enabled the King to reject Leterme’s resignation in the first place, in effect saying “No, you go back to your coalition and resume governing the country.” If/when the N-VA leaves the coalition, then it no longer commands a majority in the federal parliament and some other Prime Minister has to be found who can put together a coalition that does – the King certainly does not have the power to appoint as Prime Minister anyone he pleases, only one that has that kind of support in parliament, because after all Belgium is a parliamentary democracy. (Yes, a prime minister can be appointed from a minority coalition, but of course only then with additional guarantees from outside-the-government parties that they will not vote to topple it in vote-of-no-confidence – in the present situation, basically tantamount to having to have a majority coalition behind you.)

Leterme The Only Choice

At this point I finally realize how naïve I was in my previous entry over Belgium’s latest crisis, when I concluded that the King would not reject Leterme’s resignation because “that’s really not the sort of thing you do.” In fact, that was likely the only thing the King could do here because, with Leterme gone, there was really no one else Albert II could think of who would be both willing and able (defined as being able to command a majority coalition) to replace him as head of government. Of course you keep the guy who is already there, otherwise Belgium is plunged again into a chaotic and annoying situation in which there is no government, there is no prospect of a government, and while everyone argues about what should be done there is no duly-constituted national authority in place to make the policy decisions that need to be made about affairs both inside and outside the country. Belgium has already faced that situation too many times in the recent past – generally, after every recent national election, including most especially the nine months of this exquisite sort of political purgatory after the latest such elections in June, 2007.

So Albert II avoids that for now by telling Leterme to get back to work – but the point of that July 31 deadline from the N-VA is that the N-VA will start getting what it wants politically or else it will withdraw from the coalition then, so that Leterme cannot be Prime Minister anymore, and so plunge the country once again into this purgatory. Really, imagine that sort of thing happening in your own country: no national government, and nobody able to say when there will be a national government or who it will be. It’s really something that’s barely tolerable, and the important thing is that, each time it happens, everyone gets that much more exasperated with the present system. Belgium happens to be a very federal country already, with substantial powers and responsibilities handed over to the regional governments who never have crises of this sort, for the simple reason that the regions more-or-less correspond to the separate cultural/linguistic areas. So the answer that becomes more and more obvious to the electorate is to do away with this national government that seems to be always paralyzed – do away with the nation – and proceed with only the regional governments. (But then there remains the question of who takes charge of the notable island of prosperity, tax-revenue, and EU institutions that is Brussels: a French-speaking island – but not by much – surrounded by Dutch-speaking Flanders . . .)

Rainy, Gloomy Celebration

Anyway, it was 21 July yesterday so the show had to go on with the usual festivities. Appropriately, though – just so that no one would forget themselves or the situation and get into too festive a mood – yesterday was also a very rainy Monday, coming after quite a rainy weekend, and De Standaard reported that, temperature-wise, it was one of the coldest July days of the last hundred years. Still, Brussels Celebrated Despite the Political Crisis. The royal family attended the traditional Te Deum Mass at the Brussels cathedral, accompanied by Yves Leterme who slipped into the cathedral by a side door. Naturally, the cardinal president at the service preached for mutual understanding in his sermon. Then, despite the rain, the customary military parade took place in front of the Royal Palace, starting at 4:00 PM. In addition to Army soldiers and vehicles, representatives from the police also took part in the parade; De Standaard notes their particularly notable demonstration of riot control personnel and equipment. And King Albert gave his National Day speech: “In our land we must think of new forms of society.”

Meanwhile, as his own contribution to National Day, the mayor of Antwerp, Patrick Janssens, noted that Belgium was reverting to where it was back in the beginning in the 19th century, when only Finance, Justice, Interior and Foreign Affairs were competences handled at the national level, everything else was in the hands of the regions. (French-language reporting in Le Soir here, to give a bit of balance.) It’s not sure whether he thought that a good thing. But the Gazet van Antwerpen issued the results of its own poll, which indicated that 33.7% of the Flemish people would like to unite Flanders with the Netherlands. (The respondents had some funny ideas about how that would happen, perhaps reflecting their over-estimation of the hand they would hold in negotiations to bring that about. Name of the new country? How about “Vlaanderenland” or “Nedervlaanderen,” although “Nederlanden” would probably be best – cf. the current “Nederland” as the Dutch name for the Netherlands. Capital? Amsterdam, or maybe Antwerp. Head of state? Preferably no royal family; if there has to be one, then let it be the House of Orange, i.e. the Dutch Royal Family, certainly not the Belgian Royal Family. Etc.) On the other hand, a collective of “progressive Flemish intellectuals” marked the National Day by releasing a manifesto (“The Flanders That We Want,” printed here in the French-language paper La Libre Belgique) in which they regretted that political interests in the 21st century still seem to have to be based upon regional and language interests, denounced the long-standing demands from the Flemish political parties for a “re-balancing” of the federal government more in favor of Flanders, and called for a new political order in Belgium.

                          

But delving into the news and commentary on both sides of the Belgian divide (i.e. Flemish/Dutch vs.Walloon/French) provides a more nuanced picture of the situation, as you would expect. For one thing, the Economist’s concern, “Time to dissolve Belgium?”, seems not to be the question at the forefront of Belgian political minds right now; rather, it is “What do we do now?” As the authoritative Flemish newspaper De Standaard reports (King sets confederate steps), that is a question that it is the immediate task of King Albert to decide – and he is expected to take until the end of this week, at least, to do that, in the meantime holding consultations like crazy with the country’s various political and societal actors. (One of the main assertions of the front-page De Standaard article is that the pattern of whom the king has consulted with so far suggests he is leaning towards finding a solution that would make Belgium a somewhat looser-knit confederation.)

Leterme @ Wit’s End

Theoretically, the king could simply decide to refuse Leterme’s resignation, but that’s really not the sort of thing you do except in a grave emergency, one that usually involves war in some way. The text of his resignation statement makes his position clear that he does not know what else it is that he could do: “It turns out that the opposing visions between the communities over the needed new balance in our state institutions cannot be bridged today. This indicates that the model for consultations at the federal level has reached its limits.” It’s also not clear that much of the country would welcome his staying on as Prime Minister, in any case. Commentators in the French-language papers are not pleased with him at all. In his editorial in Le Soir (A Country on the Edge of the Abyss), Luc Delfosse dismisses Leterme as “the little man from Ypres [a city in West Flanders]” and accuses him of selling out to his Flemish coalition partner, the N-VA (Nieuw Vlaams Alliantie, to gain power at the cost of giving full rein to the N-VA’s more stubborn Flemish-nationalistic political stance. (The Dutch-language financial newspaper De Tijd concurs in its lead article on the crisis, concluding from its analysis that Leterme indeed chose maintaining his party’s coalition with the N-VA over maintaining the government.) And in La Libre Belgique Michel Konen writes (Yves Leterme Leaves Without Glory) that “it is the nerves of Yves Leterme that ended up cracking.” There is no reason to make such a big deal of failing to meet the 15 July deadline, but, then again, maybe it’s good to finally see the back of the Prime Minister anyway: for the last 13 months of his time in office he has accomplished precious little, and has certainly shown absolutely none of the political courage that he breezily asserted he would bring to the job when he was originally approved for it.

Big Deal Deadline

Indeed, there does seem to be something to the point that, pace that Economist article, 15 July did not need to have such a cataclysmic significance. Yes, a new plan for federal power-sharing was supposed to be presented by then and, yes, it was nowhere close when the time came. But there was no crying need to make such a big deal out of it – that deadline was essentially of Leterme’s own making (and I don’t think I’m going way overboard if I speculate that missing deadlines for completed action like this is pretty much par for the course in Belgian politics). De Standaard has an excellent analysis piece on this (What Brought Yves Leterme Down?), which even terms the resignation “surprising,” as if no one really expected that Leterme would plunge the country again into crisis over a mere missed deadline. After all, the article points out, it had been pretty obvious for a long time that it was not going to be met, but there had been no real sign that Leterme was going to react like this – people probably just complacently assumed that he would not go so far as to resign. So why did he? Well, again, it was Leterme’s own deadline, and it turned out that he was serious about it, mainly (one can speculate) as a prod to get the other side (i.e. French-speaking/Walloon) to finally make some concessions to move talks forward toward “re-balancing” the Belgian federal government (code for “tipping the balance of power a bit more towards Flanders”). But it wasn’t working; the De Standaard article reports that the Walloon side seemed resigned to the stalled talks and looking forward to the next federal-level elections in 2009 in hopes of coming up with a new political alignment that would enable forward progress. This attitude was unacceptable to Leterme – either to him and/or to his coalition partner, the N-VA, which indeed has a more militant attitude about gaining power concessions for Flanders and gaining them soon. So you could say that Leterme did indeed choose maintaining his CD&V party’s coalition relationship with the N-VA over maintaining the government; or you could say that he had tried “brinksmanship” tactics – setting a scary deadline – to finally get some progress, the other side had called his bluff, and so he felt obliged to take the country over the brink.

In any event, whether 15 July really is supposed to mean anything or not, 21 July definitely does: that is the Belgian National Holiday (think the American 4th of July, or the French Bastille Day). How embarrassing to be in the middle of a government crisis that threatens to split your country apart on your National Day! Could that prospect move King Albert to quicken his deliberations and find some solution? More to the point, what will the streets of Brussels look like next Monday? The last couple of years the Belgian National Day has been marked by impressive solidarity demonstrations, especially in Brussels, of citizens marching to show their determination to keep the Belgian state whole. Will any more of those materialize next Monday in the shadow of this latest crisis?

Hitting Belgian Pocketbooks

De Tijd being the good business newspaper that it is, it also devotes an article to analyzing what the paralysis in the government means in practical terms for the Belgian electorate (What does the crisis mean for your pocketbook?). Quite a lot, it seems, mainly because all this hullaballoo is unfortunately occurring just when, in an ideal world, the government would instead presumably be devoting its energies to shielding Belgians from an oncoming storm of economic pain (including recent 5,8% inflation which the newspaper terms a “record” – but that can’t be right). Yes, the Belgian authorities have managed within the thirteen-month life of the latest government to divert themselves from inter-communal bickering enough to move forward on a number of economic measures, including raising pensions and even agreeing on a whole “social-economic program” for the period 2009-2011. The problem is that many of these still need to go through the final step of being formally approved by the legislature. Now that the government is once more in danger of falling – the PM has submitted his resignation, after all, even if that has not (yet) been accepted by the King – there is the real danger that these measures will have to start all over again with the legislative process.

Finally, indulge me for a moment as I bring into the record a perspective on this whole affair from outside Belgium, if only from its neighbor to the North, the Netherlands. Naturally, the Dutch are following Belgian developments with close attention, and the leading newspaper NRC Handelsblad even devotes an in-house blog to the situation there, whose latest entry is Navel-Staring in Belgium.

Unfortunately, the blog is not by-lined; but whoever is writing it does hope that Belgium could come up with some way to keep itself together as one country: “Seen from the North, Belgium is an interesting, prosperous, diverse and cosmopolitan land. As a cultural-economic twin-state it has more dimensions and options than the homogeneous Netherlands.” A split would simply result in two more islands of homogeneity, Dutch and French. More practically, as much as the Flemings and Walloons may want to claim they don’t need each other, in actual fact they are quite deeply intertwined economically, and wrenching that apart will inevitably carry high costs. And these precisely at a time when the winds of economic distress are rising! It is hardly a formula for the sort of peaceful “velvet divorce” (on the pattern of the split at the beginning of 1993 between the Czech Republic and Slovakia, of course) that some in the country may think is achievable. Any split could turn out to be more violent than people may expect.

                          

At least this time the leaders of the 25 present-and-future EU member-states did not have to endure any marathon negotiating sessions stretching way into the night and ultimately into Monday morning, as had been the case before (including most notably at that very Nice summit three years ago). No, this time it was all over officially by 14.15 hours on Saturday afternoon, when EU Council President Silvio Berlusconi announced to the press that there was still “total disagreement” on the voting-weights question so that there was nothing left to do but go home and try again later under the Irish presidency. In fact, even by lunchtime Saturday the only remaining issue for the assembled heads-of-government to sort out was what was going to be put into the final communiqué.

GET ME TO THE MATCH ON TIME!

Taking up coverage from the French Le Monde (Silvio Berlusconi Tries to Avoid Failure for the European Summit), it seems that Berlusconi had made it clear to his fellow heads-of-government from the beginning that a weekend-long negotiation session was not in the cards. At lunch on Friday, trying to lighten the atmosphere, he proposed that initial conversation revolve around “women and football.” (See the Belgian coverage just below for his comedy routine at that point.) “Football” gave him the opportunity to mention that the Italian team that he owns, AC Milan, was scheduled on Sunday morning at 11:00 to play the Argentine team Boca Juniors for the Intercontinental Cup in Milan – and that he intended to be there.

After lunch the summit got underway for real, with both the Belgian and Danish prime ministers (Guy Verhofstadt and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, respectively) speaking up to defend the work of the Constitutional Convention and advocate that it be accepted as unchanged as possible. But it soon transpired that the real action towards seeking some sort of compromise that could enable the summit towards to achieve its goal was taking place away from the plenary sessions, in one-to-one meetings between Berlusconi and fellow heads-of-government that the former called “confessionals”: come to Papa Berlusconi and tell him your wants and your fears – and especially tell him where you’re willing to back down so he can put together a compromise!

NIGHT ON THE TOWN

After a last plenary session from 18.00 to 19.30, Berlusconi abruptly suspended the Intergovernmental Council’s (IGC) work for that day, which meant canceling the common state dinner that was supposed to happen later that evening. Instead, more “confessionals” followed, as heads of state headed out to Brussels restaurants and hotels in self-selected groups to continue talking and get something to eat. Belgium’s De Standaard takes over the story from here (EU-Top Descends into Bartering): Gerhard Schröder, Jacques Chirac, and Belgium’s Guy Verhofstadt dined together at a fancy Japanese restaurant, while Berlusconi himself huddled mainly with Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller – in a back-brace and wheelchair – which was a highly appropriate choice since at that point Miller’s refusal to yield on the Council voting-weights was threatening to sink the summit. Saturday morning was likewise more about bilateral discussions than full plenary sessions, and by noon it had become obvious that there was no more progress to be made.

The Standaard article reports considerable dissatisfaction among several national delegations over Berlusconi, in particular over his usual off-the-cuff style in leading the common discussions. He followed that joking proposal of his at Friday lunch that they just start out talking about women with the suggestion that German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder lead that discussion, since “you know all about that, Herr Schröder!” (who indeed has been married four times). At another point, De Standaard reports, Berlusconi made the observation that most of Italy would be happy to see him thrown out of a helicopter – something Leszek Miller could not have appreciated much, since a serious helicopter accident from the week before last was precisely why he was going around everywhere in a wheelchair.

The Belgian French-language newspaper La Dernière Heure (which means “the last hour”) appropriately-enough has noteworthy coverage of the summit’s end-game in its article EU Summit: Delegations Confirm Failure. It seems that what precipitated Berlusconi’s decision to simply call the whole thing off was a late-morning meeting he had with the leaders of France, Germany, and the UK; it was after this that he announced his decision to the summit’s other participants at Saturday lunch, and the communiqué-writing began. A Belgian inside source told DH that a new meeting of the IGC, at whatever level, could happen as early as January (although, as we’ll see in other reports, the Irish expect nothing like that to happen under their presidency until March at the earliest). As a Belgian paper, perhaps it is no surprise that in its reporting DH included Belgium with France and Germany as among the stoutest defenders of the Constitutional Convention’s work; but maybe that is valid anyway, as Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel distinguished himself from his colleagues by abandoning the usual policy of non-recrimination to criticize “countries which are unwilling to recognize the results of the Convention” at a press conference at the summit’s end.

TOWARDS A “TWO-SPEED EUROPE”?

German Chancellor Schröder choose much the same path in his remarks after the summit’s close, as covered by the FT Deutschland (EU Constitution Summit Failed). Regretting the summit’s failure, he attributed its “decisive point” to the decision of some countries (no prizes for guessing which two he meant) to place their national interests before the European ideal. The task now was to use the additional time to bring these countries around from that position. If they refused to be brought around, then he had something else for them to think about: Europe could split into a “Europe of two speeds,” with Germany intensifying its integration with like-minded countries (he named France and the UK) to push through measures among this restricted circle that perhaps would not be approved by the entire EU. “Those countries that want more integration should think about this path.”

Coverage of the summit’s break-up on the CNN.de website also reports these remarks, and adds that Schröder defended Berlusconi’s stewardship of the summit, saying that he had done all that he could. It also reports on parallel post-summit remarks by French President Jacques Chirac, that perhaps that “two-speed Europe” would be a good idea. The failed summit had reinforced the concept in his mind that there was a “cultural difference” between EU member-states, namely between those who have long been members and others with “less European experience.” (CNN.de also includes a quote from Leszek Miller, one of those with “less European experience”: He expressed the hope that the failed summit “will make our entire European family wiser in the coming weeks and months.”)

Belgium’s Le Soir amplifies Chirac’s thoughts about how to go on from here in its article After the Summit’s Failure. Chirac actually preferred to use the phrase groupes pionniers (“pioneering groups”) rather than “two-speed Europe.” “I persist in thinking that this is a good solution because it will provide a motor, provide an example. I think that that will permit Europe to go faster, further, and better,” he proclaimed to the press. Of course, to many others a “two-speed Europe,” or groupes pionniers if you like, is just another way to phrase the break-up of the European Union, as groups of like-minded states despair of getting approval for EU-wide action and instead go off together to do what they want. On the other hand, it’s also very accurate that that “two-speed Europe” already exists in areas such as defense (where some member-states are neutrals while others are very active in NATO), border controls (the Schengen group is the sub-set of EU members which has abolished border checks on their common borders), and of course the euro (still not adopted by the UK, Denmark, and Sweden). At least Luxembourg Premier Jean-Claude Juncker was willing to recognize that Schröder’s and Chirac’s idea was essentially being used as a “stick” – meant to bring Poland and Spain around and back into line in time for the next summit – when he told reporters that “two-speed Europe will only be the result of persistent disagreements.”

It is also in this Le Soir article that we hear from Irish Premier Bertie Ahern about what happens next: “There won’t be any other IGC in the next months to come. I don’t think there will be any agreement before March. There’s not enough political will to find an agreement.” And an interesting comment from Guy Verhofstadt at his post-summit press-conference: “A number of countries, which includes Belgium, are no longer prepared to make a Constitution by bargaining ["par des marchandages"].” This marks an important change; before, reaching an agreement – any agreement – was key, so European leaders would bargain into the night to finally find it. But now member-states are prepared to walk away and face the prospect of failure straight-on. That explains why such business as there was at this Brussels IGC could be wrapped up by early Saturday afternoon; it also goes a long way towards explaining why it failed. Is this failure better than the “success” at Nice, which apparently produced a treaty whose terms so many European leaders regret today? (Remember Valéry Giscard d’Estaing: Better No Constitution Than a Mutilated Constitution.)

POLISH SUSPICIONS

In its early coverage warning readers that the Brussels summit had failed, A Fistful of Euros did a particularly good job in choosing a sample out of the Polish coverage (namely Gazeta Wyborcza’s Fiasco-Summit in Brussels. The Irish Will Take Up Negotiations over Constitution), which raises some interesting questions about just what went on there from the Polish/Spanish bloc’s perspective. Poland and Spain were ready to compromise at Brussels, Gazeta’s writers proclaim (three writers, with long Polish names and strange letters within them; I’ll refer you to the on-line article itself if you’re just dying to know who they are). The problem was simply that the Italians presented no compromise offer. Indeed, according to one source quoted from the Polish negotiating team, “No one made any special efforts to come to a compromise. There wasn’t even one full plenary session, and never any offer placed on the negotiating table.” Was Berlusconi and the his Italian delegation being incompetent – or was he just not much in the mood to try too hard for any solution, and instead looking for an excuse to cut the summit short and get out of town? Just what influence did the international football match he wanted to attend in Milan on Sunday morning – again, an appointment of which he had made everybody aware from the beginning – have on the course of this summit?

Finding no assistance from those who were supposed to be in charge, Poland and Spain made their own offers. Throughout the summit they pushed – to anyone who would listen – for the “rendez-vous clause” compromise, which would put off consideration of the Council voting-weights question until a later point. Later, they even proposed a compromise which would retain the Nice voting system but adjust it to recognize Germany’s greater population: Germany would be granted an additional two votes, to a total of 31. But the German side was not interested.

In the end, where the blame for the summit’s failure should be placed is clear to the Gazeta writers: on France and Belgium. As the negotiations went on through Friday night and Saturday morning, it was Jacques Chirac in particular, with the support of Verhofstadt, who rejected repeated compromise proposals which Poland, Spain, and Germany had found acceptable. And then, after it was all over, there was that Belgian Louis Michel, facing the press and denouncing the “egoism of some [states],” who by their actions had merely “shot themselves in the foot.”

Let’s conclude by consulting a handy scorecard on the issues that remain unresolved published by Le Soir (The Principal Stumbling-Blocks). Number one is the European Council voting arrangements, of course, where (to recall) disagreement is still “total,” according to Silvio Berlusconi. But other issues remain outstanding as well, such as the argument about whether to reduce the Commission to fifteen voting members as the draft Constitution proposes. According to Le Soir, France and Germany still insist on that fifteen-member solution, while it seems Italy has proposed a compromise under which each member-state would get its one voting Commissioner until 2014, at which point the argument about what to do next would presumably erupt all over again. Further unresolved points include that question about whether to write an explicit reference to Europe’s Christian heritage into the Constitution, about whether to grant the European Parliament the final say over the EU’s budget as the Constitution proposes, and on the placement of certain policy-areas (to include foreign affairs and fiscal policy) into the “unanimity” or “qualified-majority voting” categories in the Council.

                          

According to the Brussels newspaper Le Soir, there’s no need to give up hope for the Concorde yet. Its potential savior is Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Atlantic airways. “We are very determined to see the Concorde continue to fly” (translated from the French) he told a recent press conference at London’s Gatwick airport. “We think that it has a potential of 20 to 25 years of life ahead of it.”

Branson pointed out that last year was certainly a bad year for the airline industry as a whole, “but one does not simply get rid of such a marvelous machine forever because of the profit-and-loss from one year” (again, translating from the French). What is more, the British minister (“ministress”?) for Industry and Commerce, Patricia Hewitt, told the BBC that she would be very interested in hearing Mr. Branson’s proposals for reviving use of the aircraft.

Yes, I know this is mainly a British story, so that by rights it should also be covered in one or more of the British papers – so you folks out there can read what’s happening for yourself, and stop having to take my word for everything! How about this, in the Daily Telegraph?