Interviewed by Olivier le Bussy, Jean-François Sneesens - professor of rural economy at the Catholic University of Louvain - considers that CAP reforms "are perfectly in line with what was done previously. On the one hand, it is an adjustment to the demands of the WTO, and it is also linked to the evolution of the EU itself. With 27 member states, the CAP is more and more difficult to manage. The Commission has a very strong desire to simplify it. ... The present situation is very advantageous for cereals and milk, and this facilitates the Commission's task. But prices will not peak forever. The idea is that we could do without regulating supplies. I think the Commission is a bit too optimistic, because these are unpredictable markets and it is always good to be able to count on regulatory mechanisms." (21/11/2007)

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With special reference to Austrian farmers, Michael Moravec asserts that farm subsidies should not be entirely abolished. "Despite the positive income developments, many farms in Austria are still facing the question of whether to continue or close down. And if they do close down the tasks that cultivation of the land involves will be neglected. For Austria, a popular tourist destination, it's crucial that meadows and Alpine pastures are not left to run wild, that forest paths are tended to and village structures are not allowed to further deteriorate. The 'modernisation' of the EU's agricultural policy is entirely justified: we must get away from funding production only to have the products destroyed, away from the lakes of wine and mountains of butter, and move instead towards bonuses for the preservation of areas under cultivation - and stronger support for farmers in a difficult environment. There should be managed farms in the mountains, even if such measures are expensive." (21/11/2007)

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Werner Balsen praises the draft proposals put forward by the EU Agriculture Commissioner, saying the timing "could hardly have been better". "Many farmers from Lapland to Andalusia are now better off than ever thanks to the rise in milk and grain prices. Therefore it's a good time to open a debate about the EU's instruments for pampering farmers. North Rhine-Westphalia and Brandenburg have just revealed who receives what of the funding from Brussels - and often enough it's the larger farms and foodstuff companies. ... Fischer Boel's proposals are forward-looking because they would cut subsidies for large agricultural operations and use the money to back a more environmentally friendly type of agriculture that can meet the challenges of climate protection and the protection of endangered species. ... Berlin's almost knee-jerk reaction is therefore unjustified - even if the underdeveloped region of eastern Germany would be hard hit by the changes in Brussels." (21/11/2007)

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Gilles Anquetil and François Armanet met up with the American writer Paul Auster. For him, narration should not be encumbered by detailed descriptions. "Fairytales enthral me because they give very little detail. The human mind dreads emptiness and automatically provides all the missing details. It is this implication of the listener or reader that contributes to forging the story and completing the storyteller's work. The more that is eluded, the better the story. ... A strange thing happened to me, proving how personal reading is: when, aged around 20, I read 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen, who I consider a genius, I noticed as I read that all the novel's action was taking place in the house where I grew up. I had transposed everything into my own world, into a familiar setting, all the more easily because Jane Austen is very parsimonious with descriptions." (15/11/2007)

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Politicians like to cast themselves in the role of de-bureaucratisers in the hope that this will win them votes, writes political journalist Peter Fahrenholz with reference to Brussels' bid to cut down on red tape. "Only a regulated, controlled, legally-bound administration, or in other words a functioning bureaucracy, was able to put an end to the despotic rule of those in power to which pre-democratic societies were subjected. Only a system based on rational, generally-applied rules and regulations can prevent the preferential treatment or discrimination of individuals and thus create a kind of umbrella justice. ... The discussion about bureaucracy is dominated by popular prejudice. One of the most common clichés is the idea that you only need to reduce the number of regulations for everything to improve. ... It's much more important to concentrate on reforming the spirit of bureaucracy. The State has changed and therefore its functionaries must also adopt new ways. The goal should be to turn bureaucracy into a service at the citizens' disposition rather than an act of sovereignty." (20/11/2007)

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Next Sunday Romania will elect its representatives to the European Parliament for the first time. Mircea Marian is appalled: "I haven't seen such a weak and pompous set of candidates since the 1992 elections. At the top of each list is the 'star' of the party in question - followed by a rabble lacking in both experience and character. These are people who wouldn't survive Romania's political scene for five minutes, but are now using their connections to get sent to Brussels and Strasbourg to do European politics there - if you can call it politics. People who want to live in Western Europe and whose ambitions are limited to enjoying good food and wine - and we all know the Belgians and French are good at that. It's even possible that some of them may learn the tricks of the trade before their mandate ends in 2009. We should be ashamed that we've failed to take these first elections to the European Parliament seriously. Now they're just a farce." (21/11/2007)

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Silvio Berlusoni has created a fracture within his own camp by announcing the creation of his new party. Edmondo Berselli ponders the tumultuous events that have been affecting the Italian right over these past few days. "Gianfranco Fini [leader of the National Alliance], for whom Berlusconi's project is a mere media stunt, has thrown down the gauntlet on television... . The situation of the late centre right is spectacular. In Germany, this would be called 'Götterdämmerung', the Wagnerian Dusk of the Gods, which we would more prosaically call a wasteland. ... There is now a real conflict between Fini and Berlusconi. The explosive invention of the Italian People's Party for Freedom, the complete overhaul of Forza Italia [The right-wing coalition], the opting for proportional representation and the weakening of left-right divide is making it difficult for other parties to exist." (21/11/2007)

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Bulgarian teachers have decided to stage another major strike in the current school year. This time the goal will be not only higher salaries but also a rise in the entire education budget. The teachers' union considers the current 4.2 percent of the gross domestic product to be insufficient. Dolores Vitanova criticises the teachers for making too many mistakes in their first strike, which lasted 40 days: "First they wanted more money, but when they reached a compromise in the negotiations they realised that their calculations were wrong. Many teachers felt betrayed and some gave up on the strike. ... The problems in education are not new, but each government passes the reform on to the next like a hot potato. If the reform is postponed any longer we won't even be able to keep up with Romania." (20/11/2007)

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Organised crime is a growing problem in Sweden. Last week police helicopters were shot at in Göteborg and last Monday a bomb detonated in front of the house of a public prosecutor involved in the battle against the Mafia. The newspaper comments: "When you hear the word 'Mafia' you think of the US or the countries of the former Soviet Union. But the Mafia, or organised crime, is just as present here. There are many indications that this phenomenon is eating its way into our society. ... There was a time when you could talk of the 'police hunting the bad guys'. Nowadays things are less clear-cut: shots aimed at police stations and threats against policemen, judges and public prosecutors show that it's no longer uncommon for the 'bad guys to hunt the police'." (21/11/2007)

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Mark Steel comments on French strikes: "Seeing as the new government in France is determined to smash the culture of unearned privilege, Nicolas Sarkozy must be familiar with the characters at the top of the French rich-list. The No.1 spot in this list is a surprise, as you would imagine it must be occupied by a train driver from Lille with lots of stubble, but it turns out that it's Bernard Arnault, chairman of Christian Dior, who's worth $21bn. ... Sarkozy represents the frustrated wing of French business that wants their country to be handed to the same City types [as in the UK and US], their one per cent. ... When a government proposes cutting pensions, closing 200 courts, cutting 11,000 primary school teachers and privatising parts of the university system, these aren't random flights of madness but part of a pattern." (21/11/2007)

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Slovenia's centre-right government under Prime Minister Janez Jansa won a parliamentary vote of confidence by 51 votes to 33 on Monday. Jansa proposed the vote of confidence because he saw Slovenia's unity under threat in the run-up to the country's EU presidency, which begins on 1 January 2008. The opposition insists that the real reason for the vote of confidence was the election victory of presidential candidate Danilo Türk. Igor Krsinar comments: "The outgoing president, Janez Drnovsek, often found it difficult to see eye to eye with the government. Now he's leaving. The government's image has suffered considerably as a result of its conflicts with him. The more fruitful the government's cooperation with Drnovsek's successor is, the more its public image will improve. Particularly during the time of Slovenia's EU presidency, the government must present a united front." (21/11/2007)

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Witold Gadomski calls for the rapid introduction of the euro in Poland. In his opinion the former governing PiS party postponed the step unnecessarily. "If the preparations for the conversion to the euro had begun in 2006 we would have been using the currency that is accepted in most European countries in two months' time. Thanks to the low inflation rate which resulted from the decisions of the monetary council 2001 and 2002, introducing the euro would have been easy. But the PiS government missed its chance. Now its politicians are warning the PO-PSL government not to remedy the mistake. It's true that the economy isn't doing as well as it was two years ago and the cost of introducing the euro would now be higher... But the introduction of the euro is an investment for the future and would pay off in a couple of years." (20/11/2007)

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The daily notes that "Twice this week the UK chancellor of the exchequer, [Alistair Darling] has struggled to deal with crises on his watch. On Monday, it was Northern Rock [shares plunged, breaking Darling's pledge that investors would be protected from mortgage crisis fallout]. On Tuesday [Nov.20], he admitted HM Revenue & Customs had lost computer discs with personal and financial details of 25m people. The resignation of Paul Gray, HMRC's chairman, over this damaging error was proportionate. This is primarily a Revenue mistake and the right man has gone. But there are painful lessons for ministers. ... Mr Brown's administration has failed in one of the first duties of government: to protect its citizens. Never mind breaches of data protection laws. Fraudsters armed with details of bank accounts, national insurance numbers, and the names of almost every child in the country could wreak identity theft havoc on an undreamed-of scale." (21/11/2007)

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Fintan O'Toole notes the demise of the 'Celtic Tiger', i.e. the Irish economic boom. "Ever since the slump that followed the attacks on the US in September 2001, the classic Irish boom has been a thing of the past. If most of us haven't noticed, it's because the money has been flowing in regardless. The boom in exports was replaced by two related booms - in property prices and construction, and in consumer spending. ... This has created an American-style economy in which people borrow money to buy more stuff and economic growth becomes dependent on the insatiable appetites of consumers. If the real boom of the 1990s and early 2000s was about us importing American capital and exporting American products, the second boom has been, logically enough, about us becoming American consumers. We've replaced the public debt of the 1980s with private debt." (21/11/2007)

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To save the Italian opera scene, which has been on strike since November 9th, the journalist Alberto Mattioli appeals to strikers who are requesting a revision of their salaries and their working conditions. "A requiem for the Verdi's Requiem at the Scala. The strike has cancelled its performance planned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Toscanini's death. The same is happening in Parma and at the Venice Fenice, where the director's offices are being occupied ... . The problem, the biggest issue of all, remains the fact that Italy would not be Italy without opera, the quintessential Made in Italy product that has been a major success all round the world for four hundred years ... . The fact that the Italian opera scene has been in bad health has been written about a thousand times. The road to recovery unfortunately appears beyond human capacity. Let us at least prevent it from dying." (20/11/2007)

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"European warming is not good for the climate", notes Richard Werly, as three European meetings have been scheduled for early December: In Lisbon, there is the EU-Africa summit on December 9th followed by the Signature of the Charter of Fundamental Rights on December 12th, and then there is the European Council meeting in Brussels on December 13th. "The 27 are concerned about criticism coming from environmentalists regarding the inevitable flights between Lisbon and Brussels. ... With an impressive airborne ballet on the horizon along with a terrifying ecological record. Make way then for calculators and protocol. The idea of the European Council in Lisbon does indeed make sense. But not so for Belgium, where the 27 have decided to hold their two annual summits there since it enlargement in 2004." (21/11/2007)

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