Transatlantic Politics

So it’s official. Obama’s honeymoon with Europe is over. Yesteday’s overwhelming vote against a key agreement on EU-US bank data transfers is the first major snub from the European side after Obama’s inauguration last year.

The vote in the European Parliament is particularly embarrassing after Hillary Clinton’s intense efforts in the past week to change the lawmakers’ minds - phonecalls, letters, op-eds.. telling them how important it is for Europe to allow US investigators to get data on their banking transactions on the search for terrorism funding. Nothing helped.

Euro-deputies scoffed at being sidelined in negotiations and claimed the data protection provisions were too weak.

Added to that, and maybe more important than privacy issues, the Parliament used this vote to flex its muscles towards national governments and the EU commission - the bloc’s executive.

A "historic victory" claimed the Socialist leader in the parliament, Martin Schulz. "The US Administration may have wrongly thought they could deal with the European Parliament like Gulliver with the Lilliputians," the German politician said. 

As one fellow journalist put it, "15 minutes of fame for the European Parliament at the expense of EU security."

Now what? Well, the US can still negotiate bilateral deals with the Netherlands and Switzerland, where the company dealing with this data, SWIFT, has its data bases. A mirror data base on US soil, which had been at the thrust of a big EU-US scandal in 2006 has been reconfigured since January 1st, so that it no longer has information on European transactions. That is why the US had negotiated this deal last year, but meanwhile, the new EU legal framework - the Lisbon Treaty - came into force, giving the Parliament the power to reject the agreement.

Washington can also pursue the EU track, negotiating a new agreement with the whole Union, but that would take considerably longer and the European Parliament will still have the right to say ‘nay’ at the end of the process.

The Parliament’s snub comes shortly after Obama himself gave Europe the cold shoulder, when cancelling his attendance to an EU-US summit planned in Madrid in May.

In fairness, the summit more than anything else was a photo-opportunity for the Spanish Prime Minister Jose Rodriguez Zapatero, who has developed somewhat of a crush on Obama. He even attended the National Prayer Breakfast, despite being a convinced secularist, just to shake hands with Obama. His country’s plummeting economy and soaring unemployment rates, his dwindling popularity, were all enough reasons to be depressed. Not to mention that although he is the chairman of the rotating EU presidency, he has way less powers than his predecessors, because of the same Lisbon Treaty that gave a bigger say to the EU parliament. It actually shouldn’t be Zapatero, but the standing president of the EU council - Belgian low-key politician Herman Van Rompuy - who organises such summit. These institutional quarrels were one of the reasons why Obama decided not to go to Madrid. "We’ve told them: ‘Figure it out and let us know,’ " a White House official told WSJ.

However, summitry is what EU is best at. And diplomats say it’s a way to cement relations between the EU and US. Especially after the deep freeze during the Bush years. Obama just doesn’t seem to be bothered by this. Will this come back to haunt him? Maybe the EU parliament’s snub is a first sign already…

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If Ceausescu would have lived and hit oil, Bucharest would have probably looked like Astana: an alien mix between Soviet-style and modernist buildings, such as the Pyramid of Peace and Accord - designed by sir Norman Foster. The thing cost 50 million euros and is only one of three different projects bearing the signature of the famous architect.

Astana reflects perfectly the personality cult of president Nursultan Nazarbaev, who just celebrated 20 years of non-interrupted reign in Kazakhstan. He’s the only USSR leader to have stayed in power until now.

Media freedom? Opposition rallies? Internet freedom? Forget about it.. And by all means, don’t ever mention Borat..it’s a national offence.

Yet everybody wants to be friends with the oil-rich country bordering Russia and China and almost as big as whole Western Europe. NATO needs its cooperation for the war in Afghanistan, the EU wants some of its lavish energy ressources. But so do Russia and China, and Nazarbaev has been around long enough to know how to play this game and let everyone believe he is their friend.

Here is how the Norman Foster pyramid looks like from the inside.

And watch some more Kazakh talent  thrown for NATO guests invited to Astana for a security forum with partner countries:

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Despite the arrests, killings and beatings of protesters in Iran, Western leaders keep  the invitation for the Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki at the G8 meeting in Trieste (Italy) next week. The Obama administration apparently still hopes the Iranians will help in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and so the Italians followed orders and did not withdraw the invitation.

According to EUobserver, Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi explained on Friday at an EU summit that the invite was "in agreement with the US administration."

"We equally believe it is important to involve Iran in the stabilisation of Afghanistan," he said.

German foreign minister Frank Walter Steinmeier, who will also be present at the G8 meeting, also said that retracting the invitation would not help - not with the nuclear file, nor the current demonstrations.

"I think we must respect the US position in criticising strongly the reaction of Iranian authorities towards the demonstrators, but we must also realise that we won’t solve these conflicts just by withdrawing our foreign policy activities," said Steinmeier.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton broke her elbow and won’t be able to travel next week. Which makes it even less understandable why the US still wants the Iranian minister to be there. Wouldn’t it appear as if the West is accepting the brutal crackdown on demonstrators?

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So the left lost bigtime in the European elections this week. In France, Germany, Spain, Italy, but first and foremost in Great Britain, where Labour scored its lowest since 1918.

Hopefully, that will tone down the whole "capitalism is dead, long live socialism" discourse. More importantly, isn’t it interesting how Europe is turning to the right, while the US is turning more to the left than ever before? Maybe now they will finally meet each other halfway and we’ll have a real economic connundrum.

Here is a funny illustration of Brown’s downfall:

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A dose of Russian humour from Moscow’s military district chorus. Very much appreciated by the audience, as you can see from the video below.

"Should Ukraine join NATO, there’s no need to quarrel or be mad, we’ll just cut their gas!"

"Europe also has problems, American special forces are already there. But we’ll just smile - it’s their own business - and at night we’ll just cut gas to Europe as well."

"We can solve any problem, we just need to know where the Gazprom faucet is, so that we can cut the gas for everybody, just in case!"

and if you’re into some more Russian tunes, here  is the Gazprom anthem. Warning! VERY KITCH!

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