Europe caves in to Big Tobacco

A few days before Christmas, the tobacco industry chalked up a small but significant victory.

When the European Commission published a new anti-smoking plan on 19 December, it backed away from recommending that cigarettes should be sold in plain packets. Compulsory pictorial warnings of disease will be introduced, yet 30% of the surface area in a box of fags will be reserved for branding.

Why have Brussels officials decided to allow Marlboro and Silk Cut entice young people with their distinctive colour schemes? Why couldn't the EU follow the example set by Australia where tobacco is now wrapped in a shade of green so hideous it reminds me of the uniforms worn in schools run by nuns?

Based on the information I've been able to gather, it appears that the Commission has capitulated to cigarette firms.

Over the past few years tobacco lobbyists have been playing a game of "divide and conquer". After they learned that EU health officials were entertaining the idea of plain packaging, the lobbyists turned to staff in the Commission's trade department. Reading between the lines of the correspondence that I've obtained, it is clear that the lobbyists perceived civil servants handling commercial matters as bigger allies than their colleagues tasked with preventing cancer and heart disease.

Threats

In October 2011, the "public relations" consultancy Bell Pottinger - working on behalf of Imperial Tobacco - contacted various trade officials, expressing its unease about the planned strengthening of the EU's anti-smoking legislation. One letter argued that plain packaging would "compromise European business as a whole". Such a measure would run counter to "fundamental spirit" of EU law on protecting trademarks and designs, according to Tobias Ghersetti from Bell Pottinger's Brussels office.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) - a corporate-funded group that once boasted Donald Rumsfeld as chairman of its policy board - made a bizarre plea to Karel de Gucht, the EU's trade commissioner, in late 2010. ALEC's Karla Jones sent de Gucht a policy paper which contended that "the institution of plain packaging regulations amounts to a government's seizure of, what is in many cases, a corporation's most valuable asset - its trademark". Having made that hard-headed observation, ALEC dismissed all suggestions that putting cigarettes in unattractive wrappers dominated by images of disease could be beneficial for public health. It referred to "reports of smokers in some EU countries" collecting and exchanging pictorial warnings that have been introduced at national level as if they were macabre bubblegum cards.

Not surprisingly, ALEC didn't cite any actual data to support its inference that robust public health laws encourage perverse fetishes. Contrary to what ALEC implied, there is data available to demonstrate that sound legislation leads to a reduction in smoking. As a follow-up to its ratification of the World Health Organisation's framework convention on tobacco control in 2004, Uruguay banned indoor smoking in all public places, increased tobacco taxes and stipulated that 80% of both sides of a cigarette box should be covered by pictorial images and health warnings. In 2003, 39% of Uruguay's men and 28% of its women smoked. By 2009, the rates had fallen to 31% for men and 20% for women.

It is particularly telling that in 2010 Uruguay became the first country to outlaw "differentiated branding", under which lighter shading could be used to distinguish "mild" cigarettes from those with a higher tar content. A 2012 study by the International Tobacco Control Evaluation Project concluded that the proportion of Uruguayans who believed the myth that some cigarettes were less harmful than others decreased from 29% to 15%.

Could the European Commission's decision to allow tobacco firms preserve their brand identities be the result of cowardice? Almost certainly, the answer is "yes". Industry has bombarded officials with papers from lawyers lately, giving less than subtle hints that it would take any plain packaging initiative to court.

Messenger boy

Both EU health and trade officials have held many closed-door discussions with tobacco representatives. This amounts to a rejection of World Health Organisation guidelines, which emphasise that any contact between regulatory authorities and the tobacco industry should be kept to a minimum and should be conducted in public as much as possible.

The Commission's trade department has been broadly helpful to tobacco lobbyists. Rather than rowing behind Australia's efforts, de Gucht and his team made enquiries in 2011 about whether or not plain packaging would constitute a "technical barrier to trade". This stance was at odds with that of Brazil, Cuba and India, all of which defended Australia's right to restrict corporate activities on public health grounds when a case was brought against its anti-smoking law at the World Trade Organisation.

A year earlier, the EU acted as a messenger boy for Big Tobacco. When Canada introduced new rules against tobacco marketing aimed at young people, the Union demanded that it submit a formal notification to the WTO.

Nor should it be forgotten that de Gucht is tacitly encouraging tobacco firms to sue governments whenever their profits are at stake. The trade agreement he is hoping to clinch with Canada shortly looks set to have provisions that will enable corporations contest health, environmental or labour rules perceived as impediments to business. Philip Morris has used comparable provisions in other trade agreements to litigate against Uruguay and Australia.

We should not delude ourselves into thinking that the EU is at war with the tobacco industry. Sadly, it isn't.

•First published by New Europe, 13-20 January 2013.

Apartheid college inspires EU "terrorism" project

Haifa University underscored its support for Israeli apartheid during the eight-day offensive against Gaza in November. While Palestinians at the college were banned from expressing solidarity with those under attack, the academic authorities seemed to have no difficulty with Jewish Israeli students chanting "Death to the Arabs."

So why is this racist institution considered a good source on "terrorism" by a European Union-financed project on internet surveillance?

For the past few years, the Clean IT (information technology) forum has been organizing discussions between private companies and public bodies about how websites and chat rooms are allegedly used to recruit young people to "terrorist" groups. The project is coordinated by the Dutch ministry for justice and security and has received a grant of more than €300,000 ($400,000) from the EU.

To guide its work, the initiative has collected a number of studies. One of the latest additions --- Al-Qaeda has sent you a friend request -- was written by Gabriel Weimann, a professor of communications at Haifa. It kicks off with an anecdote about Hamas giving lessons in bomb-making techniques online before recycling reports that Palestinian resistance fighters have set up video-sharing sites modelled on YouTube. (Needless to say, Weimann doesn't use the word "resistance").

Affront to civil liberties

Weimann's analysis is, to be charitable, not exactly incisive. But what's significant is that it is being taken seriously by a forum that is studying proposals which represent an affront to civil liberties. A leaked paper drawn up by the Clean IT project last year recommended that "knowingly providing hyperlinks on websites to terrorist content must be defined by law as illegal."

I asked But Klassen, chief administrator with the project, why documents posted on the Clean IT website depicted Hamas as a "terrorist" organization, when there is ample evidence that it has perpetrated far less violence than the State of Israel. He replied that the documents (including the Haifa study) had been posted "because we received questions about terrorism, what it is and if it really exists."

He added: "As these are documents from others, the Clean IT project does not have a responsibility for the content of these documents. We realize this might be confusing, so we will clarify this on our website."

Klassen also said that his project "does not have a policy with regard to any (possible) terrorist organization." Yet that assertion is somewhat misleading. As a Dutch civil servant, Klassen is bound by the policy of his government, which -- like all EU countries -- has blacklisted Hamas as "terrorist." Moreover, the project has reported that there is "consensus" among its participants about accepting the EU's definition of "terrorism", which contains the caveat that the "t" word can never be applied to any act committed by a state. According to the Union, then, people who fight oppression by Israel can be labelled "terrorists" but the oppressor cannot be.

Clean IT should be viewed in the broader context of attempts by the EU to nurture the development of a "homeland security" industry. The European Commission has advocated that €3.8 billion from is science programme be spent on subsidizing "security research" between 2014 and 2020.

Racial profiling

Some of the companies taking part in Clean IT seem to be hoping that their innovations will foment xenophobia.

Euvison Technologies, one such firm, says it has the "exclusive right" to sublicense Impala, a video search engine pioneered by researchers in the Netherlands. The firm's website gives an "impressive list" of "concepts" that Impact can "detect" in digital media.

When I clicked on the section "faces," I learned that the technology can distinguish people based on their skin pigmentation. Showing various photos and screen grabs, the section told me that Impala can be used for "ranking Caucasians." The underlying message was unmistakable: Arabs and Africans could just as readily be "detected" or "ranked."

A similarly implicit message was delivered by the section titled "people with beards." Several brown-hued men, one clearly a Muslim, featured in the head-shots on display.

This means that a firm marketing "racial profiling" software is trying to benefit from an EU-supported scheme.

Distance

After I and a few other journalists wrote articles critical of Clean IT during the autumn, the European Commission sought to distance itself from the project. Responding to a number of queries, Cecilia Malmstrӧm, the EU's internal affairs commissioner, said that the "conclusions of the project will only reflect the opinions of the authors and will not represent the views of the European Commission."

The Commission is not as aloof from the project as she wants us to think. Clean IT reflects the mania for "public-private partnerships" in Brussels and throughout the EU. Under this rubric, services that ought to be under democratic control are handed over to corporations with just one aim: making profits by any means necessary.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 11 January 2013.

Thatcher haunts Europe's healthcare 'reforms'

Shoulder pads are less prominent. Filofaxes have been replaced by iPhones. And a whole generation has grown up without being subjected to Kajagoogoo.

So why I am worried that 2013 will feel like the 1980s?

This year will result in a fundamental transformation of European healthcare. By October, all EU countries are required to put a new law on "patients' rights" onto their statute books. At first glance, the law seems laudable. People who travel from one state in the Union to another for treatment will be entitled to have their medical bills reimbursed by their home country.

The small-print to the law is more revealing. Because it has been introduced as a "single market" initiative, it paves the way for healthcare to be treated primarily as a business. This is a retrograde step; it runs counter to the philosophy on which a welfare state should be based, namely that everyone should receive the same quality of treatment regardless of his or her income. The reference to "patient's rights" is Orwellian: those who can afford to go abroad for an operation will be accorded more rights than those who can't.

Where does the idea of a "single market" or "internal market" in healthcare come from? In 1984, the American economist Alain Enthoven spent a month in Britain on the invitation of Nuffield, a group of private hospitals. He recommended applying "internal market" principles to the National Health Service in an attempt to "capture some of the virtues we generally associate with the private sector and combine them with the social responsibility and concern for equity we associate with democratic government".

Choice?

Enthoven also complained that the British system of medicine lacked the elements of "consumer choice" and "competition" found in America. Although Margaret Thatcher didn't get around to implementing all these suggestions, many of them were found in a policy paper on NHS "reform" published by Ken Clarke, health secretary in her government, in 1989.

Supporters of the EU's "patient's rights" law have used the same terminology and arguments as Enthoven. Graham Watson, then head of the Liberal grouping in the European Parliament, told me in 2009 that "the best way to improve services for all" is "to ensure that there is a healthy competition among suppliers so that patients and authorities are free to choose the best offer among several".

That same year, a study was published by the American Journal of Public Health, stating that almost 45,000 people died per annum in the US because they have no medical insurance. This is what happens when legislators decide the provision of medicine should be determined by "choice", rather than need.

We should not kid ourselves into thinking that we are immune from these problems in Europe. Greece used to treat its jobless citizens without charge. Cutbacks introduced as a result of pressure from the EU and International Monetary Fund have meant that the unemployed now have to pay for treatment once benefits linked to their old jobs expire. Similar changes have been made in Spain.

"Tough love"

Even though 1.2 million Greeks are now uninsured, these measures have gladdened the denizens of think tank land. The Lisbon Council, an outfit committed to "competitiveness" is headquartered in the Residence Palace, a former luxury hotel in Brussels. It recently published a "state of the Union" assessment written by two economists from Berenberg, Germany's oldest private bank. Holger Schmieding and Christian Schulz, the two analysts in question, cited the austerity measures imposed on Greece and as an example of "tough love" in that "close-knit family of nations" called the euro-zone. While the analysts warned that the "love" risked being a little too "tough" at times, they broadly approved of it. The Athens government, they concluded, had made "exceptional progress" on "adjustment" towards "competitiveness" (a byword for destroying the welfare state).

Bruegel, another Brussels "tank tank", has been striving to make satire redundant. It has been busy lately promoting a book by its one-time chief Mario Monti. In the book, Monti addresses the need to enhance democracy. Few people are less qualified to make this case: Monti spent a year between 2011 and 2012 leading an unelected government in Italy, where one of his first acts was to announce that health spending would be cut by 5 billion euros.

The UN's World Development Report for 2010 ranked countries based on public satisfaction with their healthcare systems. Five of the top ten - Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Britain - belonged to the European Union.

This finding indicates that Europe has made enormous strides towards providing high quality and affordable (in some cases, free) treatment. The achievement is all the more remarkable when you realise that Europe's welfare states were founded following the destruction of the Second World War. As there is no demand for health "reforms" (another despicable euphemism) among voters, it's no wonder that they are being undertaken by anti-democratic means.

Nye Bevan, the Labour Party politician who was instrumental in setting up Britain's NHS, once said that no society can call itself civilised if it deprives a sick person of care because he or she is poor. The US remains uncivilised, partly due to the unflagging efforts of Alain Enthoven. At the age of 82, Enthoven continues to urge that public spending on health be "curtailed".

His inhuman thinking has caused immense suffering in America. His vision should not be realised in Europe, too.

•First published in Our World in 2013, special edition of New Europe, January 2013.

Canada trade deal threatens Europe's environment

The funniest TV clip I've seen all year was broadcast in January. It featured an interview with Paula Broadwell many months before her affair with David Petraeus became public knowledge and forced his resignation as director of the CIA. "The real controversy here is: is he awesome or incredibly awesome?" The Daily Show host Jon Stewart said to Broadwell's face. With that brilliant put-down, Stewart underscored how her biography of Petraeus was an exercise in fawning.

At least Broadwell can point to how she was sleeping with her subject in mitigation. Lots of journalists have flimsier excuses for why they pander to the powerful. Take Bill Emmott: as editor of The Economist, he displayed his slavish devotion to the British establishment by insisting that the magazine support the war against Iraq.

Today, Emmott chairs the Canada-Europe Roundtable for Business (CERT), along with Roy MacLaren, a former minister in the Ottawa government. The two men want to convince us that a free trade deal between the EU and Canada will bring tangible benefits to ordinary people on both sides of the Atlantic. But why should we take them seriously when both are wealthy elitists? Both are active in the Trilateral Commission, an unelected group of political and business leaders that holds an invitation-only confab about how the world should be run every few months. (This isn't a conspiracy theory; it's a statement of fact).

CERT could soon be celebrating. There are strong signals that the trade deal it covets will be signed in the near future. To show that this is no ordinary deal, it will have a fancy title: the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).

Documents that I have seen prove that corporations have been pushing for an accord that will give them the wherewithal to overturn labour and environmental laws which they perceive as barriers to making profit. Xstrata, the mining giant linked lately to Emmott's chum Tony Blair, has made specific proposals about the "dispute resolution" provision that is likely to be part of the trade deal. This provision will allow companies to sue the EU or Canada over measures or decisions they dislike. In a 2011 letter, John Smillie from Xstrata Nickel complained that REACH - the Union's main law on chemicals - can lead to substances being banned from the entire EU market based on the hazards they present.

Demand for "teeth"

"The challenge for any dispute resolution mechanism is how does it engage with a process that has no economic consideration and yet can have a very severe economic impact?" he wrote. "If the dispute resolution mechanism does not have the 'teeth' to deal with these sorts of issues, it is just another tariff-based trade agreement, and not the landmark, comprehensive and ambitious framework agreement that is being claimed and, we understand, both sides want."

Regardless of Smillie's concerns, the deal looks like it will be comprehensive and ambitious. An internal briefing paper written by the European Commission last month indicates that a dispute resolution mechanism will be included but that there was some difference of opinion about what it should cover. There is nothing in the paper to suggest that the Commission has told Xstrata or any other company that rules designed to protect nature and human health cannot be diluted on the say-so of a chief executive and his legal team. On the contrary, EU officials are pushing for a mechanism with "teeth".

CERT has breezily dismissed protests against the trade talks. When the National Union of Public and General Employees and several other Canadian groups called for transparency about what was under negotiation, CERT's Jason Langrish sent a "for your information" note to his contacts in Brussels. "Not a major concern, but shows engagement," he wrote.

Ideological warrior

Langrish is an ideological warrior. In a separate email message, he argued that Ontario's state-controlled alcohol shops should be privatised. "We would like to be able to buy our wine at the corner store at whatever time we want like anywhere else in the world. Most people recognise that the government really shouldn't be in an area where business can do the same job as well, if not better. It isn't health care, after all."

His pay-off line was misleading. CERT and its partner BusinessEurope have seen the trade talks as an opportunity to fundamentally transform Canadian health care. At their behest, the European Commission has advocated that large pharmaceutical companies should enjoy more robust "protections" for their "intellectual property" as a result CETA. Most particularly, the Commission wants Canada to introduce new restrictions of up to a decade on selling non-branded versions of patented medicines. A study carried out for the Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association has calculated that the EU's demands could push up the cost of medicine plans by $2.8 billion per year. Most of the extra spending will fall on provincial authorities, which cover 45% of prescription drug spending in Canada, according to the study.

It appears that the EU is attempting to damage Canada's health system - until now, much better than America's. Poverty among Canada's elderly has been rising since the mid-1990s - after two decades of being reduced. The old will inevitably suffer most if medical bills rise. Why do Brussels officials want to make senior citizens poorer? Will the EU simply do anything that Big Pharma asks it to? Is this the kind of behaviour we can expect from recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize?

•First published by New Europe, 16-23 December 2012.

Is Europe starving Iran of vital medicines?

Adolescents cannot be blamed for the policies of autocrats. So why did 15-year-old Manouchehr Esmaili-Liousi have to die because the West wants to punish Iran's leaders?

Manouchehr lost his life when no medicine could be found to treat haemophilia. Iran used to import drugs for this disease but has been unable to recently because it is subject to a trade embargo.

This young boy may be the first victim of sanctions imposed on Iran by America and the European Union. He is unlikely to be the last. In November, The New York Times - not a journal renowned for decrying US imperialism - reported that Herceptin, a cancer medicine, had "disappeared" from Tehran's hospitals and pharmacies. Theoretically, humanitarian supplies are not covered by the sanctions. In practice, the ban on financial transactions with Iran is so comprehensive that it has affected supplies of essential drugs.

The death of Manouchehr serves as a depressing reminder of what happened in neighbouring Iraq. Denied equipment, medicine and even blood, Iraqi doctors struggled and often failed to provide the most rudimentary of care to their patients. UNICEF estimated that 600,000 children died over a decade as a result of sanctions.

According to the official narrative, everything was Saddam Hussein's fault. Saddam was blamed for the sanctions against his country because he wouldn't allow scrutiny of the nuclear and chemical bombs he was suspected to have been developing. Eventually, America invaded Iran based on a pack of lies. Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. And he had nothing to do with the atrocities committed on 11 September 2001.

Bogeyman

Iran has replaced Iraq as the bogeyman we are supposed to fear most. In October this year, the EU's foreign ministers agreed to extend the scope of their sanctions on Iran, citing "deepening concerns" over the country's nuclear programme. The sanctions were "not aimed at the Iranian people," we were told.

If that assurance was genuine (and I don't believe it was), then our governments must immediately lift the embargo. In 2004, EU officials drew up guidelines for the use of sanctions as a tool "to maintain and restore international peace and security". These guidelines state that sanctions should be carefully targeted so that any "adverse humanitarian effects or unintended consequences" can be avoided "to the maximum extent possible".

The EU's sanctions against Iran run counter to those principles. Rather than being focused on the Tehran authorities, they prohibit all dealings between European and Iranian banks, except under "strict conditions". This amounts to economic warfare.

Why has Iran been singled out in this way? The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently reported that Iran was not providing it with the "necessary cooperation" to determine whether or not the country's nuclear programme has "military dimensions". That is worrying. But it is hardly poses a greater threat to world peace than what Australia has done this year. Julia Gillard, the Australian prime minister, has clinched a deal with India to supply it with uranium. Whereas Iran has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, India and its enemy-next-door Pakistan have refused to.

An obstacle called Israel

Did the EU introduce sanctions against Australia for giving the key raw material required for nuclear weapons to India? Did it denounce the Canberra elite for helping to exacerbate tensions in South Asia? I've checked all of the statements that the main EU institutions issued about Australia over the past twelve months. Not one of them was critical of Gillard's reckless behaviour.

There is much that the EU could do about nuclear proliferation at home. The NPT requires signatories that have nuclear weapons to get rid of them. Britain and France have ratified the treaty but, the last time I looked, both of them still had nuclear weapons. With the Labour Party still in power, Britain's House of Commons voted in 2007 to renew its Trident nuclear submarine programme. David Cameron has indicated that he remains committed to that objective and that a decision will be made on the matter in 2016. It follows that Cameron is way more dangerous than Mahmoud Ahmadenijad. Yet I haven't seen any EU countries threatening Britain with sanctions over its enduring love affairs with nukes.

If the Union was serious and consistent about tackling the radioactive menace, it would be overseeing disarmament within its own borders. That would put it in a strong moral position to advocate the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. There is one major obstacle to giving the Middle East this status. It is Israel, another NPT rejectionist. Declassified documents show that the US has known that Israel possessed nuclear weapons since at least 1975. In 1999, the US Defence Intelligence Agency estimated that Israel possessed between 60 and 80 nuclear weapons. Others believe it has more. Yet William Hague, the British foreign secretary, has stated in recent days that there is no appetite among the Union's governments to penalise Israel. He was speaking about Israel's ongoing colonisation of the West Bank. The same double standards apply to nuclear weapons.

The most plausible explanation for why Iran is being harried is that it refuses to act as the West's doormat. In 1953, Mohammad Mossadegh's government was overthrown as it had the audacity to suggest that Iran's oil resources didn't belong to Western firms. Europe and the US are hoping for another regime change today. To bring it about, they are robbing pills from cancer wards.

•First published by New Europe, 9-16 December 2012.

Comment l'Europe courtise l'industrie d'armament israélienne

Haneen était âgée de 10 mois, Omar 11, Ibrahim 1 an. Pour avoir commis le crime de vivre reclus dans Gaza, ces enfants ont été tués à l’aide de missiles israéliens dits ‘à précision guidée’.

Quelques jours avant leur mort, la Commission Européenne parrainait ‘la 2nde conférence internationale sur la sécurité intérieure’ tenue à Tel-Aviv. Lors de ce qui ressemblait plus à un bazar qu’à un lieu d’échange, l’évènement a fait la part belle aux sociétés israéliennes leaders en matière d’armement et leur a permis d’exposer leur arsenal. Lors de l’allocution de clôture, le président Israélien, Shimon Peres, a profité de cette auguste occasion qui lui était donnée, pour se vanter, tel un trafiquant d’armes pour adolescents, d’être ‘impliqué dans la création des entreprises israéliennes de défense’. Puis Peres d’ajouter qu’il était ‘ravi de voir les innovations en matière de développements technologiques leaders dans le domaine de la sécurité intérieure’ et enfin d’exprimer la fierté qui était la sienne d’être à la tête ‘d’une nation riche en créativité, sagesse, courage et culot’.

A ma connaissance, l’implication de l’Union Européenne à ce salon est passée inaperçue dans les médias. Ce qui est en soit très déconcertant. Cela dénote que la Commission peut soutenir des firmes qui tirent profit de bombardements sur des enfants palestiniens sans que personne ne sourcille.

Les responsables qui ont donné leur aval à la participation de l’UE au salon de Tel-Aviv ne peuvent nier le lien avec la dernière offensive sur Gaza. Toutes les deux ont fourni là l’occasion pour l’industrie de l’armement de promouvoir ses produits : dans le premier cas dans une salle de conférence, dans le second sur le ‘champ de bataille’. Defense News, un magazine bien connu des vendeurs d’armes, a rapporté que Rafael, la société publique d’armement israélienne,‘a lancé des opérations urgentes et intenses’ pour pouvoir répondre à une demande en forte hausse pour l’acquisition de l’Iron Dome, un système ‘intercepteur’ de missiles qui est récemment venu compléter l’arsenal israélien.

Ce n’est pas non plus un cas isolé. Les institutions européennes sont régulièrement représentées lors de salons ou l’industrie israélienne de l’armement a la possibilité de mettre en avant ses dernières ‘innovations en matière de développements technologiques’, selon les termes employés par Peres. En Septembre dernier par exemple, l’Agence de Défense Européenne a offert son aide à l’ILA – un salon aéronautique proche de Berlin - au cours duquel la susnomméeRafael tenait un stand. En juin, plusieurs firmes israéliennes prirent part à Eurosatory, un salon de l’armement organisé à Paris ; des délégations de l’UE et de l’OTAN étaient également présentes.

Fricoter avec ceux qui tirent profit de la guerre n’est en soi pas répréhensible. Mais octroyer des subventions à ces mêmes profiteurs revient à cautionner le non-respect des droits de l’homme dont dépend leur résultat de bas de page. Israël prend actuellement part à 800 projets de recherches scientifiques subventionnés par l’Union Européenne, pour un montant total évalué à 4,3 Milliards d’euros. Israël lorgne déjà sur une part encore plus grande de Horizon 2020, le prochain pactole mis à disposition par l’Union.

Il est intéressant de noter que, plus tôt dans le mois, le salon de Tel-Aviv mettait l’accent sur la manière dont les équipements de surveillance pouvaient être utilisés lors d’évènements sportifs majeurs comme les Jeux Olympiques. Lorsque Londres a accueilli les jeux au cours de l’été, l’UE a financé les tests d’un nouveau système de sécurité menés à l’aéroport d’Heathrow. Elbit, un fabricant de drones largement utilisés ces derniers temps pour survoler le territoire gazaoui, constituait l’un des ‘partenaires’ de ces tests.

Il y a comme une ironie sordide de la part de l’UE derrière cette recherche de conseils auprès d’Israël pour rendre nos aéroports plus sûrs. En 2001, Israël détruisit le seul aéroport de Gaza. Il avait été construit avec 9,5 Millions d’euros d’aides de l’UE. Chris Patten, alors en charge des Relations Extérieures au sein de la Commission Européenne, refusa de poursuivre Israël pour ces faits. Il essaya de justifier son inaction en prétendant qu’une fois les chèques remis à l’Autorité Palestinienne, l’Union Européenne n’en n’était plus la propriétaire.

L’an dernier, à la même époque, la Commission publia une liste de 82 bâtiments détruits par Israël et financés à l’aide de subventions de l’UE. Les responsables ont évalué le préjudice subi par l’Union Européenne à 30 Millions d’euros. Et pourtant, la bureaucratie bruxelloise n’engagera aucune action en justice qui rendrait Israël responsable ; lorsque Israël lança la dernière offensive majeure contre Gaza en 2008 et 2009, l’UE débloqua des fonds d’urgence pour réparer les dommages causés par Israël à l’aide de composants et d’armes européens et américains.il y a fort à parier que le schéma se reproduira très prochainement.

Pour quelles raisons l’UE est-elle si encline à supporter la machine de guerre israélienne ? Un indice réside dans le ‘plan d’actions’ en faveur ‘de la compétitivité de l’industrie de la sécurité’ publié en Juillet dernier par Antonio Tajani, Commissaire Européen pour l’entreprise. On peut y lire que le marché de la sécurité représenta en 2011 plus de 100 Milliards d’euros -soit dix fois plus qu’en 2001.

Les responsables bruxellois savent qu’Israël est le sixième exportateur en matière de biens de ‘sécurité’. Coopérer avec Israël est donc nécessaire, disent-ils, pour permettre à l’Europe de développer sa propre industrie de la ‘sécurité’. Cirer les pompes du gouvernement de Benjamin Netanyahu leur permet d’espérer que les firmes européennes pourront signer de juteux contrats. A titre d’exemple, l’italienne Finmeccanica a arraché au cours de cette année, un accord d’un Milliard de dollars pour la livraison à Israël d’avions d’entrainement.

Et lorsque l’Europe vient à manquer d’armes, elle fait appel à Israël. L’agence en charge du contrôle aux frontières, Frontex, caresse le doux rêve de commander des drones israéliens pour contrôler les demandeurs d’asile. On rapporte que le Danemark a fait l’acquisition de bombes israéliennes après qu’elle ait épuisé son stock lors de sa participation à la guerre menée par l’OTAN contre la Lybie. Le mois prochain, l’Union Européenne recevra très officiellement le Prix Nobel de la Paix à Oslo. On nous vantera les engagements de l’Union Européenne en faveur des Droits de l’Homme & d’autres ‘valeurs’. Le spectacle ne manquera pas d’être nauséeux. Le soutien indéfectible de l’Union Européenne à l’égard d’Israël prouve que ces ‘valeurs’ qui sont vraiment chéries peuvent être quantifiés en termes monétaires. Au nom de quoi l’Union Européenne ne continuerait-elle pas à aider ceux qui gagnent à mettre Haneen, Omar & Ibrahim dans de petits cercueils ?

Traduction: www.michelcollon.info

EU takes tax advice from Enron's auditor

Would a mafia godfather be trusted to end organised crime? Would a wife-beater be the right man to ask about how domestic violence should be punished? Would an auditor to Enron be the best source of advice on making companies pay more tax?

The answers to these questions hardly need to be spelled out. Unless they repent or display signs of remorse, wrongdoers are not usually consulted by policy-makers tasked with addressing the harm they cause. For some reason, though, an exception is made for accomplices to corporate misdeeds.

Before the end of this year, the European Commission will publish an action plan for tackling tax avoidance and evasion by large firms. As I've been trying to deepen my knowledge of taxation issues for a while, I was eager to learn who the EU executive has turned to for guidance. To my astonishment, I found out that the Commission's tax department has hired PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to write a number of studies in recent times.

PwC is world's biggest auditor. Although Arthur Andersen may be the accountancy firm generally associated with Enron, PwC was also deeply implicated in that scandal a decade ago. It provided advice on off-balance sheet transactions both directly to the Houston giant and to partnerships run by Andrew Falstow, its chief finance officer. That was despite how ethical standards applying to the accountancy profession require a degree of objectivity when dealing with different clients.

As if that wasn't bad enough, PwC gave a clean bill of health to the accounts of banks and other financial service operators that engaged in highly risky activities before the global crisis. PwC was the auditor for American Insurance Group for many years, yet did not disclose a "material weakness" in AIG's accounting methods until 2008. By that time, AIG was involved in a dispute over "collateralised debt obligations" with Goldman Sachs. PwC was also the auditor for the "vampire squid", to use Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi's colourful description of Goldman Sachs.

Loopholes

Meanwhile, PwC confessed in 2011 that it failed to detect flaws in the accounts of JP Morgan over many years. In a separate case, it agreed last year to fork out $7.5 million to settle charges by the US Securities and Exchange Commission over the deliberate inflation of revenue by India's Satyam Computer Services. Because of the scale of the misreporting, the affair has been dubbed "India's Enron".

And, of course, PwC has handled Mitt Romney's accounts since 1990. Documents unearthed during the US presidential election campaign indicated that Romney availed of legal loopholes to dramatically reduce his tax bill over a 15-year period.

In his book on tax havens Treasure Islands, Nicholas Shaxson calls major auditors like PwC "the private police force of global capitalism". The limitations of private police forces were highlighted when the Olympic Games came to London during the summer: G4S was unable to perform tasks traditionally done by the public security forces. The same can be said of PwC. Is it right to give a for-profit auditor the sole responsibility for signing off the accounts of the globe's most powerful corporations?

Window-dressing

PwC clearly serves the interests of its masters. It helps ensure that the super-rich pay a much smaller proportion of income tax than the rest of us. PwC is active in those tax havens that EU officials profess to abhor. In Jersey, it even wrote a law designed to shield auditors from scrutiny.

On the surface, it appears absurd that the European Commission has hired PwC to provide expert analysis on such subjects as business tax reform and the links between tax avoidance and global poverty. Yet if you work from the assumption that the Commission is undertaking no more than a window-dressing exercise, things begin to make more sense.

The EU executive has indicated that the forthcoming action plan on tax avoidance is part of its work on "corporate social responsibility" (CSR). We are supposed to believe that by working in tandem with big business, the Union's governments and institutions can convince them to cough up a bit more so that future generations will have good quality schools and hospitals.

Yet CSR is about as meaningless as putting a picture of a dolphin on a tank replete with toxic chemicals. As Joel Bakan explains in his book The Corporation, the laws of most countries are clear about the role of big business. Under these laws, the overriding responsibility of corporate decision-makers is to maximise corporate gains. "The law forbids any other motivation for their actions," Bakan writes. "Corporate social responsibility is thus illegal - at least when it is genuine."

As it happens, PwC is not the only "expert" with a less than pristine record advising the Commission's tax department. Michael Devereux is one of those to have contributed to a data-heavy study on the "effective tax levels" paid by corporations, which has been prepared at the Commission's request. He is director of the Oxford University Centre of Business Taxation. The centre's website thanks a number of corporations for their "generous" financial support. Among them are Vodafone, a British telecommunications company that paid no corporate tax in Britain last year.

Depriving EU countries of an estimated 1 trillion euros per year, tax evasion and avoidance is one of Europe's most pressing problems. Turning to those who benefit from this problem for "expert" advice is one sure way of preventing a solution.

•First published by New Europe, 2-8 December 2012.