EU-DIGEST - special edition

Another 8.7 megawatts of solar energy is now available in Spain. SunPower Corp. has opened two new solar-electric power plants in Llerena and Lebrija. The solar power plant constructed by SunPower in Llerena is 4.8 megawatts; the plant in Lebrija is 3.9 megawatts. In Spain, SunPower has completed or has signed contracts to deliver solar power plants totaling more than 100 megawatts.

SunPower says renewable energy has a great potential of thriving in these regions of Spain.

For the complete report from Domestic Fuel click on this link

This is to inform you that EU-Digest at http://www.eu-digest.com is back on-line following a series of technical difficulties and interruptions experienced, as a result of FTP linkage problems with our service providers Google Blogger, and Globat.

To keep providing our readers with a daily stream of European related news while EU-Digest was off-line we launched EU-Digest - special edition .

We have decided to continue publishing EU-Digest-special edition at http://eu-digest.blogspirit.com/ as a weekend editorial supplement to the EU-Digest , In this format it will specifically focus on Europe's strengths and weaknesses as Europe seeks to assert itself on the world's economic and political stage. It will also continue to serve as a back-up to EU-Digest in case of renewed FTP publishing problems.

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We thank you for your forbearance during this time of technical difficulties and appreciate your continued interest in EU-Digest

It was inevitable that the subprime financial crisis would provoke jeremiads from the left. That has been particularly true across the Atlantic, where politicians and eurocrats have used it as an opportunity to pour scorn on “Anglo-Saxon casino capitalism.” As such, the crisis has been particularly useful in distracting attention from the problems of overregulated European economies. Moreover, it has presented an opportunity to climb aboard the old moral high horse and trot out the hoary Marxist menagerie. Last week, German President and former IMF head Horst Kohler described global financial markets as a “monster” that needed to be put in its place. He compared bankers to medieval alchemists. French President Nikolas Sarkozy has called for a “re-moralization of capitalism.” (Wonder if that would include a re-moralization of marital relations?) In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi has returned to power bemoaning globalization. EU finance ministers have spent a good deal of time lately berating executive pay. Nobody calls for the outright scrapping of capitalism any more. Instead, what is reportedly needed is more and wiser “governance” of the capitalist beast by diehard proponents of the system that failed.

Note EU-Digest: Excuses and more excuses. The fact is that the unregulated Global Markert Place has been exploited by a greedy corporate world and not benefitted the average citizen

For the complete report from FP click on this link

There are plastic time bombs sitting in your wallet - they are called credit cards. The "bargain" you bought at your favorite store with your credit card will increase in price by at least 28 percent, within a year, if you keep that purchase on your credit card by not paying off your credit card monthly.

The situation in the credit card industry is getting out of hand on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe earlier this year the European Commission's antitrust regulator said in a draft summary it would possibly investigate banks and payment card providers for colluding on prices and using practices aimed at keeping competitors out of their markets. Also, according to the report, credit card fees and interest rates vary between countries, which indicate that there is limited cross-border competition.

In the US the Merchants Payments Coalition, which groups about 30 associations, representing almost 2.7 million stores in America, applauded a congressional hearing on unfair credit card practices in the United States. The hearing, held by the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, is one of several meetings already held this year to investigate the allegedly unfair practices imposed on consumers and merchants by credit card companies and their member bank companies. "This hearing is another example of how serious the issue of credit card abusive practices is for everyone", said a Senator on the Subcommittee. "The credit card industry is profiting from outrageous fees". During the Tuesday Subcommittee meeting the discussion also focused on the so-called "interchange" fee, which represents a percentage of each transaction that American Express, Discover Visa, MasterCard and their member banks collect from retailers every single time a credit or debit card is used to pay for a purchase. The fee varies with the type of merchant, transaction, and card, but averages out to roughly 2% per transaction. This fee is the reason why some merchants require a minimum purchase of X amount before they will permit a customer to make their purchase using a credit or debit card. Unfortunately, the US Congress so far has only held discussions, but has done nothing to actually reduce or limit the exorbitant fees, sky-high penalties, and above normal interest rates being charged to cardholders. The need for action is becoming more and more pressing. Specially now the US Federal Reserve has cut benchmark interest rates. The credit card companies and their member bank companies have not followed suit after the interest rates were dropped and are still charging abnormally high interest rates and ridiculously bloated service fees.

In the US the five banks that issue most Visa and MasterCards include JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Capital One, and HSBC. Surveys show all these banks have a poor reputation for making their Customers pay outrages fees for services and far higher than normal interest rates. The Household Bank MasterCard has a cash advance rate of 25.15 percent. Blue from American Express and Sun Trust’s Visa charge 23.34 percent. On top of that, there usually is a transaction fee of 3 percent or more. Someone using their Chase credit card to get a $1,500 cash advance will pay about $465 in interest and fees for this so-called "service" within the first year.

During the past months the Central Banks from all over the world have pumped billions of hard currency into the world-wide banking system to fight off liquidity problems, mainly the result of their own making and poor judgment. So far, the benefits of the Central Banks bailout have not trickled down to the US consumer, where household debt continues to rise, after it reached $14.2 trillion in the third quarter, or a record 138% of US household disposable income, up from 113% in 2002.

Therefore it seems that one of the areas which urgently needs to be looked at by governments world-wide is the unregulated credit card industry.

Figures today show that the average American owes about euro 6,872 ($9.900.00) in credit card debt, which amounts to a staggering total of euro 639bn ($920bn)for the whole US. In Europe, according to the BBC and the Credit Action Group the average European has about euro 2,185.00 ($ 3,147) of unsecured/credit card debt. One third of the total European credit card debt involves British credit card owners. Banks in Britain generally apply American credit card policies and standards.

Given these facts and the steady rise in the use of credit cards and consumer debt in the EU, the European Parliament would do EU consumers and the economy a service to also open an investigation into the practices of the credit card industry, but hopefully with better results than the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has achieved so far for American citizens.

For the complete report click on this link

While many politicians are willing to engage with "rogue states" such as Iran and North Korea, they draw the line at terrorists, who are seen as intrinsically ruthless and radical. That's why "I will not negotiate with terrorists" is a refrain heard across the political spectrum – and why Jimmy Carter took such flak recently for visiting with Hamas.

But this knee-jerk rejection of negotiation with radicals is deeply misguided and likely to do more harm than good. The smart question is not whether to talk to terrorists, but, instead, which terrorists to talk to and how to talk to them. Many nonstate militants are weak and peripheral; they can be quickly squashed or contained without any need for negotiation. For instance, violent left-wing groups such as the Red Brigades in Italy and Weather Underground in the US were eliminated in the 1970s without negotiation.

But some terrorist and insurgent groups are very powerful. They are embedded in robust social networks, generate revenues from areas under their control, and have enough military power to impose serious costs on governments. They cannot be easily crushed, nor can they be wished away.Negotiations and cease-fire talks, or their offer, should be seen as one of a range of tools for overcoming militancy. Indeed, there are three good strategic reasons to talk to these kinds of armed organizations.

For the complete report from the Christian Science Monitor click on this link

The owners of cafés in the centre of Amsterdam are again up in arms against what they say is the umpteenth attempt to turn the city into a prudish provincial backwater. A majority of the Amsterdam district council 'Amsterdam Centrum' have voted in favour of a measure that would forbid customers from sitting outside on a terrace past midnight. A Dutch newspaper says the centre of Amsterdam is moving another step towards becoming a 'Staphorst on the Amstel'. Staphorst is considered the most strict and devout Calvinist town in the Netherlands.The Amsterdam City Council is also in the process of "cleaning up" the city. Permits for a large numbers of rooms in the Red Light District, where prostitutes stand behind windows, are being rescinded. The rooms are being turned into fashion shops and the women replaced by mannequins in designer clothes. Recently the town council ordered the closure of the famous sex club Yab Yum as well as the live-sex theatre Casa Rosso.

One website which has collected thousands of signatures protesting against the council's policies writes: "This is where Rembrandt rose to fame, Michiel de Ruyter departed for his epic journeys, the great author Descartes wrote his best works and (besides Paris) the first city to erect lights...we were then progressive. Now...our city seems more like a provincial village than one with the allure of an international metropolis...The beautiful vibrant city centre is being literally paralysed. A city is a city with all of its achievements, as well as its bad habits...When someone moves to the country he can't ask for a ban on fertiliser, roosters and mooing... Amsterdam should remain Amsterdam. A fantastic place where for centuries freedom and individual development have been of paramount importance."

For the complete report from Radio Neterlands click on this link

Charlotte Roche's exploration of filth in all its meanings now tops Germany's literary charts. Soon it will hit the shelves in her country of birth. Wetlands, which has beaten Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns and Ken Follett's latest to the top of Amazon's international sales list, has sparked a frenzy among major British publishers. Roche's German publishers last week refused to speak to The Observer or to arrange an interview with Roche to avoid pre-empting what is expected to be a massive UK deal and publicity campaign. 'No, nothing, impossible,' they said.

For whether it is the fantasies about sex, the polemics against the use of deodorants, the avocado cores grown specially for use in masturbation, or the detailed and inventive passages of scatological or genital description, Wetlands has left few indifferent.

French magazines have run articles on 'taboos and literature', Swiss papers have worried about moral corruption and, after seven weeks at the top of the bestseller list in Germany, no one is tiring of the debate. Der Spiegel summed up the message of the book as 'I stink therefore I am' - a reference both to the heroine's distaste for personal hygiene and her sexual fantasies about bodily odors.

For the complete report from the Guardian click on this link

EU foreign ministers approved plans to begin discussing a new strategic partnership and cooperation agreement (PCA) with Russia. The talks are to start at the Russia-EU summit in Khanty-Mansiysk, the capital of Yugra in Western Siberia, on June 26-27. Yugra, an exotic place for many Russians, let alone Europeans, held its presentation in Brussels three days before the EU ministers approved the mandate for the talks. The talks may last several years and the new agreement must be ratified by all 27 members of the European Union. Most experts in Brussels believe that French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was too optimistic when he said coordination and ratification would take only 12-18 months.

For the complete report from Ria Novosti click on this link

UK juddering down a rockier policy path than the US - by Gerard Baker

For all the fashionable chatter in economic circles about how the world has decoupled from America in the past few years, the crisis unfolding in Britain is proceeding along remarkably similar lines to the one that has engulfed the US. Nothing better illustrates the point than the bleak state of the incumbent party’s political prospects. In Britain the governing party toils below 30 per cent in the opinion polls, the Opposition wins control of London and takes its first parliamentary by-election in 30 years. In the US the approval rating of the President barely touches 30 per cent and his party has lost three “safe” congressional seats in special elections in the past three months.

Note EU-Digest - the reason why Britain is still coupled to the US can all be traced back to the "meeting of the minds" between former President Reagan and former UK PM Thatcher, as to the alignment of economic policies of the US and Britain. Both Britain and the US can thank these two politicians for the disastrous state these two nations are in. On top of that, Britain's aversion of the EU and everything it stands for, including its superior long-term economic policies which do not align themselves blindly with the US is coming to haunt them in a big way.

For the complete report from the Times on line click on this link

The European Union's top trade official said Tuesday he would "push back hard" against a global trade deal that would give China more time to shield its economy from foreign imports. A draft World Trade Organization agreement would offer China up to 15 years before it had to obey all trade liberalization rules. EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson told the European Parliament's trade committee that an additional grace period for China to cut tariffs and allow more foreign competition went too far. "I cannot support such wide flexibilities for China as a newly acceded WTO member. We will push back hard on this," he said.

China was offered special treatment because it only joined the WTO in 2001. However, the world's most populous nation is different from many other emerging economies because it is a major exporter that has won sizable market share for its goods in Europe and the United States.

For the complete report from the IHT click on this link