Ambassador's Corner
WEEKLY MESSAGE FROM AMBASSADOR JOHN BRUTON
April 28, 2008
Congressman Tom Tancredo
I was honoured to meet last week with Tom Tancredo, until recently a candidate
for the Presidential nomination of the Republican Party.
We focused on the world
food price situation. Tom, who serves on the Africa and
Global Health Subcommittee of the House of Representatives, fully shared the
EU's concern about food prices. He mentioned that rice was now selling at $1,000
per ton.
To reduce the price by producing more rice, one would have to take land out of
either palm oil production or rain forest, and neither of these options was
acceptable, he said.
He believes that the natural operation of the market is the best way of finding
an ultimate solution to the issue but he accepted that, in the short term,
substantial food aid was needed to allow the poorest people in the world to get
enough to eat.
I said that the EU believed that food aid should be provided for the purchase of
food in the part of the world in which starving people were living. In this way,
agricultural production in that part of the world would be stimulated, and the
problem alleviated in the longer run. Sending food from America or Europe to
these regions often involved a 4 month voyage on a ship and, when the food
arrived, it undercut local producers.
We also discussed the emergence of
China and
India as economic powers, and the
integration of
immigrant communities in Europe. I remarked that France is making
a big effort in that regard, as evidenced by the prominent positions in
government now held by people of recent immigrant background.
Congressman John Yarmuth
John Yarmuth is a newly elected member of Congress from the Louisville area of
Kentucky.
I told to him I would be visiting his district to attend the Derby at Churchill
Downs. Congressman Yarmuth was at high school with the Honorary
Consul of
Belgium in Louisville, Al Welsh, who will host my wife and me at the Derby.
We discussed the need to provide additional funds for
educational exchanges
between the United States and the European Union. An agreement exists for
exchanges of students to take place between groups of colleges on either side of
the Atlantic.
Surveys show that Europeans who have had an opportunity of living in the United
States for a period have a much more positive understanding of America than
those who have not. It is already unfortunate that Congress has not been
appropriating sufficient money to fund agreed exchanges on a matching basis with
the funds in the EU budget but it is doubly so now that the exchange rate is
making it very difficult for students from less wealthy backgrounds to study
abroad.
John, who is a member of the Education and Labor Subcommittee of the House, was
very receptive to this message.
Congressman Geoff Davis
Geoff Davis also represents Kentucky. Nearly half of the residents of his
district live on the state border in the suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio. He served
in the military from 1976 to 1987.
He gave me a thorough briefing on the situation in
Iraq. He said that the
security
situation had improved and many benchmarks set for the Iraqi government
had been met. He said that it was necessary to create a new balance of power in
the region that would give stability.
He worried about the possibility that autocratically governed states might form
a strategic alliance on natural resources that could be damaging to the
interests of the rest of the world.
We also discussed the need to achieve deeper understandings between the United
States and Europe on how best to respond to very serious difficulties in
financial institutions. We are fortunate that, so far, such difficulties that
have arisen have done so mainly in institutions whose business was confined to
one country. Managing the situation would be more difficult if banks operating
in a number of countries were involved.
Congresswoman Diane Watson
Diane Watson represents Los Angeles and is a prominent member of the Black
Caucus. Prior to coming to Congress, she worked in the education field and has a
Ph.D. in education-related disciplines.
We discussed similar issues to those discussed with Congressman Tancredo, namely
the food price crisis and the need for assistance to countries in
Africa facing
starvation. She told me that she had attended a hearing in the Foreign Affairs
Committee that morning about reorganizing the US system of aid for foreign
countries. She was interested in EU ideas on giving food aid in cash, rather
than in kind. She was concerned that assistance not be wasted through
corruption. She was interested in an EU submission on these issues for her
Committee.
Congressman Michael Capuano
Michael Capuano represents an historic
district of Boston. His district was once
represented by “Honey Fitz” or John F. Fitzgerald (the grandfather of President
Kennedy), by President J. F. Kennedy himself, by Mayor Michael Curley, by the
legendary speaker Tipp O'Neill and most recently by Congressman Joe Kennedy.
His District includes Boston's historic revolutionary war sites, Harvard
University and
also the city of Somerville, of which Michael Capuano himself
was Mayor before coming to Congress.
Our discussion focused on the reform of the US Food and Drug Administration
(the FDA). The EU wishes to work closely with Congress to ensure that the reform
of the FDA delivers maximum protection to American consumers of food and drugs,
without placing unnecessary obstacles in the way of business, and without
putting undue costs on taxpayers. We believe that this can best be done if EU
and the US mutually recognise one another's food and drugs protection systems.
Congressman Capuano also underlined the great contributions that successive
generations of immigrants have made to his district and to the larger US.
Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson
Jo Ann Emerson represents the largest congressional district in the state of
Missouri.
She serves on the powerful Appropriations Committee and specialises in
agriculture, energy and the environment. We discussed the pending legislation on
the FDA.
We also discussed bio-diesel and the problem the EU has with the tax credit
granted to US producers of bio-diesel, which they can use to sell bio-diesel into
Europe. This has the effect of US taxpayers subsidizing European motorists, and
of undermining the viability of Europe's bio-diesel industry. This was not the
original intention of Congress and I hoped that the difficulty could be
resolved. The European Bio-diesel Board has just lodged an anti-dumping and
anti-subsidy complaint against US “B99” exports with the European Commission.
Congressman Ron Lewis
Ron Lewis also represents Kentucky and is retiring from Congress at the end of
his present term, having served since 1994. He is a member of the Ways and Means
Committee and specialises in social security and trade.
We discussed the prospects for the Colombia FTA [Free Trade Agreement]. I said
that the difficulty in passing this agreement revealed an increasingly negative
attitude to trade in the US. Congressman Lewis said that he was disappointed
with some of the anti-trade rhetoric currently being heard.
We discussed the effect of globalisation on jobs. He himself has had experience
working to find alternative jobs where an industry closed down because of
technological change. In Campbellsville, Kentucky, in his district, a Fruit of
the Loom plant closed down in 1997 causing hundreds of layoffs. But, now, thanks
to his efforts, Campbellsville is a hub for new jobs and has 13 newly-arrived
companies employing 3,700 people. This diversification has actually been good
for the town.
Congressman William Lacy Clay
William Lacy Clay is the son of a Missouri Congressman, who represented the
state in the House for 32 years. He himself is a member of the Financial
Services Committee. We discussed the proposed legislation to resolve the
difficult situation faced by many homeowners in the United States.
He felt that the voluntary approach advocated by the Administration to the
crisis facing some homeowners on mortgage rate renegotiation was not sufficient.
He felt that a mandatory approach would be necessary if anything was to be
achieved.
We also discussed
insurance. I said that the current arrangement, whereby
insurance providers have to register in each of the 50 US states individually,
inhibits European companies from providing insurance services to Americans. This
narrows the insurance market and reduces competition in ways that are not to the
advantage of the American consumer. We discussed the blueprint of the Secretary
of the Treasury for an Optional Federal Charter for insurance companies, which
could help overcome this problem.
Congressman Chris Carney
Chris Carney represents the northeastern corner of Pennsylvania. Many of his
constituents commute to New Jersey and New York City, but it is a predominantly
rural district with important dairy and poultry production.
Chris has served as a
counter-terrorism consultant to the US Department of
Defense and continues to serve in the US Naval Reserve. He is a member of the
Homeland Security Committee and of the Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee.
I outlined to him the ways in which the EU helps joint efforts on terrorism.
Intelligence sharing, the European arrest warrant and a range of other EU legal
instruments maximise the effectiveness of the counter-terrorism effort in all 27
EU Member States. Congressman Carney was very receptive to this message and to
the prospect of enhanced EU-US cooperation in this area.
I said we must inhibit recruitment to terrorist organisations and deal with the
causes of terrorism. Some turned to terrorism because of uncertainties about
their identity; others because of real grievances. I said that we ought to work
on all fronts against terrorism, and that had to include working for a genuinely
fair and durable settlement to all disputes in the
Middle East, notably to the
dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. Irish experience showed that
addressing real grievances was a valid part of any serious anti-terrorism
effort.
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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