The art of dying politically, with or without a cigarette

By Craig Winneker

Date: 01/04/04

LOW taxes? The horror!

That's the response from German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who complains this week that somebody had better do something about new countries with low tax rates joining the EU. They might take away jobs from the West!

But wait a minute? Aren't we supposed to be worried about Eastern workers coming this way?

Never mind that. Schröder called for a "critical debate" over how to avoid tax competition between the old and new EU members, saying the average corporate rate in the new member states was roughly 10% lower than in the old EU states.

"This creates a competitive situation that is problematic for the current members of the European Union," Schröder said, according to Deutsche Welle.

A chilling new academic study shows enlargement countries are taking an "aggressive approach" toward poaching businesses from old Europe, using their "business-friendly" tax structures. "It's at levels at which western Europe cannot compete," tax experts at the German Chancellery warned Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Do we need further proof that, in Europe, competition is a four-letter word? Ask Polish farmers, who are complaining (justifiably) about having to compete with their heavily subsidized Western counterparts.

I know it's television and not the newspapers, but I have to pass along a quote cited by CNN's chief European correspondent Robin Oakley at the end of a report on the Polish farmers (it looked as though he was actually mucking about their barns in his wellies). Said one, according to Oakley: "We survived World War II and communism, we should be able to survive joining the EU."

Well, at least now we know how they view the prospect of membership.

More complaining on a different subject comes from pernickety painter David Hockney, who vents his frustration at smoking bans in the April issue of Vanity Fair. (By the way, the glossy is also worth picking up for Harold Bloom's hilarious reworking of 'the Scottish play' into Macbush!)

But back to Hockney. Turns out he can write, too.

He doesn't like all the 'nanny state' efforts - from New York to Dublin - to keep people from lighting up in public places, including bars.

"In Europe they have taken half the cigarette packet to tell you smoking kills," he writes. "I'm going to insist it should also say on the back, 'death awaits you whether you smoke or not.' They seem to have forgotten this."

Finally, The Times of London reassesses UK premier Tony Blair's European strategy in the wake of the Spanish "electoral earthquake" and its aftershocks - namely Poland and Spain's relenting opposition to an EU constitution.

"Mr Blair's resolve appears to be weakening too," the Times writes. "If it is the case, as it appears to be, that he will no longer press to retain an outright veto over matters of judicial cooperation, so permitting common legal standards to exist in the EU, then what was once held to be a non-negotiable 'red line' will have become a pink smudge."

The bottom line? What Blair "can no longer hope to achieve is a state of affairs where the constitution is killed off without his fingerprints being left behind on the knife. Relying on Madrid and Warsaw to perform this function for him was pragmatic, if not especially heroic if the constitution is to be blocked, as blocked it should indeed be, the prime minister will have to lead from the front."

Or instead - like José María Aznar and Leszek Miller and perhaps Schröder and Jacques Chirac - be put out to pasture.

• Craig Winneker is the editor of TCS-International (www.TechCentralStation.be), a Brussels-based website.

Brief article considering the ban on smoking in European Commission buildings, due to come into force on 1 May 2004.

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