Europe’s leaders will have no difficulty in reaching today’s informal European Union summit as they fly into the industrial Finnish city of Lahti on their plush government jets.
Less fortunate souls experienced more of a struggle after a strike by Finnair’s cabin crews grounded a majority of the national carrier’s flights.
The strike, deliberately timed to disrupt the summit, has great symbolism as Europe’s leaders meet to discuss the challenge of globalisation, most notably the threat from the booming economies of China and India.
Finnair’s cabin crews parked their trolleys after the airline announced plans to hire 500 extra staff through its Estonian subsidiary where wages are 30% lower. The new jobs — and the dramatically lower wages — are all part of a plan by Finnair to use the country’s location on the polar route to try and cash in on the growing demand for flights from Europe to Asia.
The sight of grumpy Finnair passengers will provide a small illustration of how changing economic patterns are disrupting lives on the day that Europe’s leaders work out how to respond to globalisation. The informal summit follows on from last year’s meeting at Hampton Court Palace, during Britain’s presidency, where the EU started to draw up a common energy policy and to direct resources at hi-tech research and development in the face of competition from China and India.
All sides agree that Hampton Court brought Europe’s leaders closer, as one diplomat put it, to the ”same page” on how to respond to globalisation. But little progress has been made in the past year and Britain now admits that it failed to highlight the threat posed by climate change.
”We must treat energy security and climate security as two sides of the same coin,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair says on Friday in a joint letter with his Dutch counterpart, Jan Peter Balkenende.
Finland has shown that most EU leaders are taking the energy security side of the coin a little more seriously by making Russian President Vladimir Putin the guest of honour at a dinner on Friday night. Many leaders want to ensure that Russia, which provides 25% of the EU’s oil and gas imports, remains a reliable partner after supplies were hit in January during a dispute between Moscow and Ukraine over gas prices.
The official EU line says that dinner will be, if not a meeting of equals, then an encounter in which the two sides can help each other. José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European commission, said: ”It is true that we have an interest in having Russia as a credible reliable supplier. But it is also true that Russia has all the interest in keeping EU member states as the most important consumer they have.”
Many diplomats believe life is not that simple, and have been dreading Friday night’s dinner. They fear that Putin will exploit European divisions.
On the one side stand Poland, the Baltic states and other former communist states, all still deeply wary of Russia. They will not think twice about registering their unease about Moscow’s heavy-handed tactics over the supply of gas, its bullying of Georgia or about possible state involvement in the murder of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
On the other side stand Germany and other members of ”old” Europe, cautious about upsetting Russia after they signed favourable gas deals. They might want to pull their punches on human rights and over gas supplies on the grounds that Moscow seems to have resolved its differences with Ukraine over energy prices.
Amnesty International is pressing the EU to speak out. Dick Oosting, director of its EU office, said: ”Energy issues are important but Europe will be doing no one a favour, least of all ordinary Russians, if this is allowed to override all others. It is crucial that the EU does not limit its protest to words only.”
Should any Europeans challenge Putin too aggressively, he will hit back. Moscow has already let it be known that it is not ready to sign an energy charter, governing Russian supplies and EU investment in Russia, with the EU.
A former KGB spy who made his name in east Berlin in the last years of the Cold War, Putin may also tell Europe that he needs no lectures from them on human rights. He is said to be ready to raise the plight of Russian minorities in the Baltic states and to question an apparent wallowing by Estonia in its Nazi past.
Matti Vanhanen — the Finnish Prime Minister, whose country has learnt not to confront its giant neighbour — will want to keep the atmosphere friendly. Journalists have been provided with beanbags at the summit, which is being held in the shadow of Lahti’s famous ski jumps.
Holding an informal summit encourages free-flowing discussions because leaders have no fear that their words will become legally binding. No formal, legally watertight preparations are made and no formal conclusions are issued.
Turkey’s EU membership talks and the future of the European Constitution will only be mentioned on the sidelines, if at all. Turkey’s friends and foes want to create space for the next step in Turkey’s membership talks: the European commission’s annual ”monitoring report” on the talks on November 8. This is widely expected to lead to a ”train crash” in the negotiations, ensuring that the next formal EU summit in December will be dominated by Turkey.
Once that bloody experience is out of the way, the EU will turn to the vexed subject of its constitution, which has been in a coma since French and Dutch voters rejected it last year. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been asked to draw up proposals on what to do with the measure when Germany assumes the EU’s rotating presidency on January 1.
Dining with Vladimir Putin in the autumnal chill of Finland may seem a lot more cosy by comparison. – Guardian Unlimited Â