Ambassador's Corner
WEEKLY MESSAGE FROM AMBASSADOR JOHN BRUTON
February 20, 2008
California State Senate
I was honoured to be invited to
address the Select Committee on
California-European Trade of the California State Senate in Sacramento last
week. The session was chaired by State Senator Dick Ackerman who has been the leader
of the Republican group in the Senate since 2004. He represents Orange County
and previously represented the same area in the State Assembly. I was also
questioned by Senator Dave Cox, Senator Alan Lowenthal, Senator Christine Kehoe
and Senator Bob Margette. I had the chance of meeting numerous other members of
the State Senate and the Consuls in California representing the various Member
States of the European Union and Switzerland.
I said that Europeans were exceptionally interested in California for three
reasons.
Firstly, California had led the nation in tackling the problem of
climate change
and has been innovative in this area since the 1970s. It has the fourth lowest
emissions per capita of the fifty states of the US. The adoption by California
of its Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 and of its Clean Cars Law are vital
achievements, which are admired all the more in Europe because they have emerged
from a consensus between Republicans and Democrats in which the Governor, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, has played a prominent and creative part.
Secondly, Europeans admire and have benefitted from California's leadership in
high technology. This leadership has been built on the basis of California's
exceptionally strong system of higher education, which has 2.5 million students
at any given time in college and which is also a world leader in
research.
Thirdly, Europeans admire California's achievements in the area of venture
capital and regulatory innovation. One of Europe's problems is helping fast-moving new firms access capital and we can learn from California's success in
this area. California has promoted the highest environmental standards and
frequently California’s standards have later been adopted at federal level in
the United States. At global level, the European Union is also a leader in
regulation, most recently in regard to chemicals, and wishes to work closely
with California on such matters.
California’s farmers
After the session in the Senate, I crossed the road to the beautiful Sutter Club
to dine with representatives of fourteen different organisations representing
agriculture in California. The dinner was given by the Agricultural Council of
California and included the Farm Bureau, the Canned Peach Association, the Milk
Producers, the Cattlemen and the Raisin producers. California is the most
productive agricultural region in the world. I argued for an agreement in the
current World Trade talks on better protection against deceptive use of names or
of marks indicating the geographic region from which a particular product comes,
like wines from Napa Valley or ham from Parma. The EU believes that consumers
want to be assured that products really do come from the place suggested on the
label.
Berkeley University
I visited the University of California at Berkeley to sign a Memorandum of
Understanding with the Chancellor,
Robert Birgeneau, on cooperation between the
University and the European Union on issues of business regulation and consumer
protection. Berkeley has a number of world-class experts on regulatory issues on
its faculty and the EU wishes to avail itself of their expertise in a structured way so
as to do our job better.
Chancellor Birgeneau told me about the role of a Chancellor of a major
university. A great amount of time has to be spent in fund-raising from
philanthropists.
He wants to improve access to university
education for
students from middle and lower income groups. At Berkeley, 33% of the students come from families with
annual
incomes
of less than $40,000, whereas only 10% of the students come from such families
at private universities like Harvard, Princeton and Yale. The
cost of higher education is rising faster than peoples’ incomes.
I asked him if abolishing tuition fees, as had been policy in many European
countries, would make it easier for students from less-well-off families to get
to college. He disagreed. The blanket abolition of fees would largely just save
money for those who could already afford to go to college, would not much
benefit students from lower income groups.
The payment of substantial fees by families or students who could afford it
produced funds, which the university could use both to write-off tuition fees and
to meet the living costs of students who could not afford college otherwise. One-third
of the fees collected at Berkeley were used for that purpose, he said.
Thus fees were a form of income distribution.
I said that many of the European countries which did not charge tuition fees had
progressive income tax systems, which partly performed the function fulfilled by
tuition fees in the United States.
Meeting with Mr. Nick Burns
Last week I called to see Ambassador Nick Burns, Under-Secretary of State for
Political Affairs, who has recently announced his intention to retire from that
position. In the course of his career, Nick has been United States Permanent
Representative to NATO, US ambassador to Greece and Spokesman of the Department
of State. He has also served on the National Security Council in the White House,
and has held positions in the US embassies in Nouakchott and Cairo as well as
the US consulate in Jerusalem. He has been a particularly effective
representative of the United States in all these capacities.
We discussed the developing situation in
Kosovo and the legal role of the
European Union in the
visa policy of its 27 Member States.
Turnout at Elections in US and European elections
I have often thought that it is the people who stay at home who really decide
elections. If you can get your opponent's voters to stay at home, you win the
day. Low turnouts also give disproportionate influence to those with strong
partisan opinions.
The Washington Post published some interesting statistics last weekend on
voter turnout in the primary elections here so far.
The contrast between a caucus and an election is notable.
Only 3% of those eligible to do so went to the Kansas caucus, 5% in Maine, 7% in
Minnesota and only 16% in Iowa. This may be due to the fact that caucuses take
more of the voters’ time and involve a public display of one's preferences.
In the secret ballot primary elections in New Hampshire, 51% went out to vote
(although 49% still stayed at home) but the turnout was as low as 16% in the
primary election in New York, and 18% in Connecticut.
In an election that has caught the imagination of the rest of the world, it is
surprising that so many did not go to vote.
But this phenomenon is not confined to the United States. In the last
European
Parliament Elections only 45% of voters went to the polls, ranging from a high
90% turnout in Belgium and Luxembourg, 82% in Malta, 71% in Cyprus and 63% in
Greece down to just a 17% turnout in Slovakia, 20% in Poland, and 29% in
Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania.
In Europe, the turnout in national parliamentary elections is on average about
20 points higher than it is in European Parliament elections, although the laws
passed by the European Parliament are far from being 20 percentage points of
less importance than those passed by national legislatures.
That may change if the new
Reform Treaty is ratified, and national legislatures
become more involved in giving early opinions on draft legislation before the
European Parliament. People in Member States will then become more aware of the
importance of the voting decisions of MEPs [Members of the European Parliament].
Gettysburg
Washington is surrounded by Civil War battlefields, and I already have visited
Manassas and Antietam. My son and I availed ourselves of the President’s Day holiday to go
to Gettysburg. This was one of the bloodiest, most decisive but also most
debated battles in US history.
Was Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania an act of desperation by a Confederacy that
was already at risk of being split in two by Grant’s siege of Vicksburg? Was it
an attempt to secure a spectacular victory that might lead to diplomatic
recognition by Britain and France of the Government at Richmond? Should Lee have
attempted a flanking movement rather than a direct assault?
When one stands on the field, the distance separating the two armies looks so
small. The attack by the Confederates on Cemetery Ridge on 3 July 1863 resembled
those launched by both sides in the First World War. The losses in three days of
the battle at Gettysburg were appalling. Each state now has its own memorial on
different parts of the field, reminding the visitor that, even after the Civil
War was over, identity with one's own state remained a strong force in American
life.
Please send me your
comments about this or any of my weekly messages or other EU matters. I
look forward to hearing from you!
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