Big Fishers, Small Nets, Smaller Stocks

BRUSSELS – "We may not be big in anything else," said one Spanish diplomat this week, "but in fish^* we are a super-power." True enough: the Spaniards have the European Union’s biggest fishing fleet, account for a fifth of its total catch and eat more sea-food that anybody except the Japanese and the Koreans. Why, then, have their EU partners been pressing them to accept the unacceptable in a fishing dispute which began last month when Canada’s Navy seized a Spanish trawler fishing for Greenland halibut just outside Canada’s 200-mile (320-kilometre) limit?

The simple answer is that superpowers tend to attract criti­cism – in this case for using illegal nets, catching tiddlers and gobbling up the world’s diminishing stocks of fish. Perhaps that is why the European Commission has been urging Spain to accept a deal – to be monitored by satellites and onboard inspectors – that would cut its catch of Greenland halibut by four-fifths. Britain, displaying Commonwealth rather than European solidari­ty, said that it would veto any EU sanctions against Canada – a position that Spain’s prime minister, Felipe Gonzalez, called "a serious mistake".

halibut – палтус,

tiddler – колюшка (рыба)

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Germany’s eu Burden By Brandon Mitchener and Tom Buerkle

Coming just one month before Germany assumes the rotating six-month presidency of the European Union, the debate in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, underscored the country’s growing ambi­valence about its traditional role as "paymaster" for the community.

"It is right that we, as the strongest country economically, should pay the most because we derive the most benefit," the Chancellor told the Bundestag. "But it is also true that the future financing concept in the community must be much more strongly oriented towards income per head in the individual countries".

"Our goal is that other member states with comparable incomes per head must take on more financial responsibility than they had in the past," he said.

German enthusiasm for Europe while still strong, has suffered dramatically from the signing of the European Union treaty which effectively writes the Deutsche mark out of existence.

A former Belgian prime minister who heads the Christian-Democratic bloc in Europe, said the Chancellor’s renewed commitment to a single European currency was significant, given the skepticism of the Bundesbank and many citizens about abandoning the Deutsche mark.

He said both the Germans and the French, who succeed Germany in the Union's presidency next year, "know they have to lie low with ambitious programs until the dust settles."

International Herald Tribune

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Status Quo for Bank of England By Eric Ipsen

LONDON – The bank of England has hit a dead end in its attempts to gain more independence, and that state of affairs is likely to continue for the next few years, the bank’s governor, Eddie George, said Wednesday.

On European monetary union, Mr. George insisted that it was some time off. He said that until the problem of structural unemployment had been tackled in a number of European countries, it would be wrong to move to a single currency.