Paul from Paris

“Money for nothing and chicks for free”
Dire Straits, “Money for Nothing” (1985)

The story, first reported in The Times of London, quickly gained coverage in conservative media outlets: Antonio Tajani (I’m told that, in Italian, the “j” is pronounced like a “y”), vice-president of the European Commission with the portfolio for industry and entrepreneurship, affirmed at the European Tourism Stakeholders Conference that “traveling for tourism is a right” and that the “right to be tourists” will be at the heart of his policies throughout his mandate.

Tajani also stated that the EU plans to subsidize travel by youth, retirees, and others too poor to afford vacations, which irks conservatives and sounds like a spoof from a Euro-skeptic’s parody of Brussels bureaucrats.

My reaction is fourfold:

• It’s true. It’s for real. It’s change you can believe in. Tajani is a longtime associate of Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and a seasoned player in European policies and politics. He held the transport portfolio in the previous European Commission (Barroso I) and was promoted in the current Commission (Barroso II).
• The policy proposal –subsidizing leisure travel– is grounded in a belief in a multiplier effect: for every X euros disbursed by Brussels, economic activity in an amount greater than X will result. Tajani also seems keen to encourage off-season travel, to flatten the effects of seasonality on employment and economic activity. For my part, I’m skeptical whether a multiplier effect exists, and I’m inclined to see this as wishful thinking.
• I won’t cast stones at Tajani for qualifying vacation travel as a right. In the classroom, in reply to the question, “What is Europe (or the European Union)?”, I’ve offered as a possible answer: a place where people travel for leisure or fun. This is a norm, an expectation, perhaps a right.
• Tajani’s pronouncement confirms my low expectations for the Borroso II Commission. Is this initiative really at the heart of policies for the Commissioner in charge of industry and entrepreneurship? Is it absolutely necessary that the Commissioner’s web page feature (as of this date) prominently a photo of a lovely beach, with parasols and chaises longues? Isn’t this far removed from industry and entrepreneurship?

Organic farming enjoys growing popularity throughout Europe. Organic products, like other goods, can travel within the European Union; and European consumers deserve a high of confidence, when they buy organic foods, that reality conforms to expectations.

The European Commission‘s work in organic farming is a model of what European institutions can do: useful standards, clearly expressed.

This Summer, product packaging for organic products must feature the EU label if produced in the EU. (Labeling is optional for products imported into the EU.) Products are considered organic when at least 95% of their ingredients are organic, as certified by an approved inspection program. If products are not foods, they can be labeled only if they are raw: flowers or a massage oil made from sesame oil can be labeled as organic; a t-shirt made from cotton cannot be so labeled.

In addition to its web site, the Commission’s efforts in organic farming deserve praise for their attention to economy. Instead of commissioning a design agency to develop a new organic product logo, the Commission invited submissions and held a contest open to art and design students. More than 3,000 students participated, and nearly 130,000 voters chose the winner: Dusan Milenkovic, a student from Germany. I admire the initiative, because European taxpayers saved the expense (even after organizing the contest) of a logo design at market prices, the EU has a new logo for organic products, and its designer has a gem in his portfolio. And the logo is beautiful: the European stars, arranged to form the outline of a leaf, on a green (organic green?) background.

Thanks to the harmonized EU labeling plan, national labeling schemes can whither and drop by the wayside: national schemes cannot be more restrictive or lax than the EU plan, so they become superfluous. This having been said, producers may use other labels, in addition to the EU label. This would present an interest for organic farmers who use certain techniques or products, such as bio-dynamic agriculture certified by Demeter, which already has a parallel labeling system.

In France, there is a national project intended to go beyond the EU requirements: Bio Cohérence, launched by Alternative Bio 2009 (now named Bio Cohérence). I mean this group no ill will, but was dispirited to find, at this late date, that it has no web site, rules for logo use, or logo available for use when printing packages.

European Consumer Day 2010 fell on March 15. Did you notice?

The EESC –that’s the European Economic and Social Committee, “a bridge between Europe and organised civil society”– marked the day with an event, held in Madrid, on enforcement of consumers’ rights.

A few days later, in Brussels, the European Union hosted a two-day European Consumer Summit.

This week, the European Commission released the third edition of the Consumer Markets Scoreboard, which benchmarks and tracks national consumer behaviors and the realization of the common market.

As reported in yesterday’s Financial Times, the European Commission has decided to reconsider an initiative to make it easier for consumers to claim damages for losses suffered from anti-competitive conduct. The initiative will not become law any time soon; the Commission will instead renew consultations with stakeholders.

John Dalli, the freshly seated European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy from Malta, duly notes consumer frustration with retail banking, electric utilities, and rental cars. For good order’s sake, Dalli also talks about “urban transport” and “green energy”. At the top of Dalli’s agenda is something he calls “Web 3.0″, which seems to be crossborder sales done over the Internet.

All of this matters to consumers, but none of it is compelling. Mr. Dalli lacks conviction, political will, or legislative ambition today. An advocate for neither consumers nor business, the Commissioner seems content to preside over a formidable institutional machine left to idle. The lost opportunity is colossal.

Given the fondness or chauvinism French speakers can have for their language, the news comes as a surprise: there is a shortage of interpreters capable of translating to French.

The shortage affects the Council of Europe, the European Union, and the United Nations.

In an effort to reverse this trend, the UN entered into an agreement this week with the two main translation schools in France, ESIT and ISIT. The UN’s aim is to have a steady stream of well-trained candidates for its recruitment exams.

These are the questions that puzzle me:

• I’d think the foreign-language performance of native French speakers continues to improve: among 20-somethings, more French people are English-speaking or German-speaking or Spanish-speaking than among 40-somethings or 60-somethings. My anecdotal impression is that there are more of these people in France, and that their average performance level is climbing.
• Preferences may be changing. Being an interpreter at an international organization may be thought less desirable today than it once was. Maybe other professional opportunities have developed that seem more desirable to those who would otherwise have become interpreters.
• The path to becoming an interpreter at the UN, EU, or Council of Europe may be seen as overly burdensome. From remarks made by the UN, ISIT, and ESIT, preparation for the UN exam requires particular time and effort. Particularly if successful recruitment at an international organization is difficult for a candidate to ascertain, other professional opportunities may be preferable to candidates.

Early in 1994, I saw a manager, an IT consultant, arrive at a meeting. I noticed this because he was late. I remember it because he came into the meeting with a bunch of European newspapers. At the time, I saw this as an encouraging sign for European integration and European journalism, an alternative to the corraling of news behind paywalls erected by Lexis/Nexis, West, Bloomberg, and other services.

I thought back to this anecdote while reading a thoughtful and data-rich report from the Pew Research Center on how people (American people, in this case) get news. Most Americans say they follow the news most or all of the time, generally with several news sources: television, online, radio, newspaper.

I suspect that Europeans seek out and consume news like Americans. But I’m disappointed that the offer of European news hasn’t kept pace with technological change.

As in 1994, a Paris resident like me can buy daily papers, at a neighborhood newsstand, from France, the UK, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The biggest changes are an increase in price, and the inroads made by papers with a European scope, such as The Wall Street Journal (Europe) and The Financial Times.

Most European papers have web sites that feature daily newspaper content, and I can access these pages easily, without paywalls. This is a positive change, but I regret two things:

• many papers seem to offer watered-down versions of their print editions, whereas I seek out strong or clearly expressed editorial voices;
• as with print newspapers, it remains difficult to access news from European countries with small populations and distinct languages: Finland, Lithuania, Bulgaria (Cyrillic alphabet), Greece (Greek alphabet).

Radio and television news from European neighbors is as difficult to access in 2010 as it was in 1994. Cable networks seem to favor exotic fare, especially from the Middle East or North Africa, at the expense of leading stations from European neighbors. And radio seems paralyzed by an unwillingness either to use the Internet or to let people abroad know about Internet radio streams.