Europe
Commission to propose minimum gas stocks requirements;
£16bn cost for UK energy customers predicted
The Telegraph reports that European Commission officials are currently carrying out a feasibility study to examine the implementation of minimum gas stockpiles for EU member states. "There will be legislation along the lines of the Strategic Oil Stocks Directive in October or November," said an official.
Britain currently has no statutory gas storage capacity, and maintains around 14 days' gas supply in storage. The Commission proposal is likely to mean bringing UK gas storage requirements into line with those of countries such as France and Germany which both have 80 day reserves. The cost of creating 80 days of gas storage in Britain is estimated at least £16 billion, a burden that would be passed on to consumers via higher energy bills.
Neil O'Brien, Director of Open Europe, is quoted as saying: "We must avoid ending up with an artificially high storage target from the EU which would impose huge costs on consumers, and not benefit anyone. This is a bad time for the EU to make a proposal which would jack up energy bills even further."
The UK Government is opposed to such measures. A spokesman said: "At the moment, we continue to believe that well-functioning markets are the most effective mechanism for ensuring adequate investment in gas."
Under the current rules, the UK would have a veto on this kind of legislation, but if the Lisbon Treaty were in force, it would be decided by qualified majority voting.
Telegraph FT FT 2 EUobserver OE briefing note - What the Constitutional Treaty means in practice: Energy as a case study
EU renewable energy targets to push half a million into fuel poverty;
Tony Blair didn't understand what he was signing up to, says former UK Chief Scientific Adviser
The Government's former chief scientist has warned the drive to increase the UK's wind power to meet EU targets for renewable energy could push half a million more people into fuel poverty. Sir David King told BBC Radio 4's The Investigation: "If we overdo wind we are going to put up the price of electricity and that means more people will fall into the fuel poverty trap... numbers around half a million are not at all unrealistic."
He criticised the targets for 20% of energy across the EU to come from renewables by 2020, which will require the UK to source up to 40% of electricity from renewable power, mostly wind. He said a more realistic and less expensive target should be negotiated.
"This is an issue which needs to be revisited and I say this as somebody who feels that we really have to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions very substantially but in my view it is an expensive, and not a very clever, route to go for 35% to 40% on wind turbines," he said.
Professor King said he believed that Mr Blair and the other EU leaders did not understand what they were signing up to when they committed to the renewables targets last March. He said, "I think there was some degree of confusion at the heads of states' meeting dealing with this. If they had said 20% renewables on the electricity grids across the European Union by 2020, we would have had a realistic target, but by saying 20% of all energy, I actually wonder whether that wasn't a mistake." Professor King, who was Chief Scientific Adviser at the time, added: "I was rather surprised when I heard what the decision was."
Meanwhile a recent study from Brussels think tank CEPS has shown that the EU will face annual costs of between 60 and 194 billion euros to meet its climate change targets.
However Maria McCaffery, Chief Executive of the British Wind Energy Association said: "We don't have to pay for wind power", claiming that "it just comes to us naturally and is totally sustainable."
Sarkozy warns of Israeli strike against Iran should uranium enrichment continue
During a visit to Damascus yesterday, Nicolas Sarkozy warned that Israel would bomb Iran should the Iranians continue to enrich uranium, the Irish Times reports. "Iran is taking a major risk by continuing the process of obtaining nuclear weapons, which is a certainty for us. Whatever government is in power in Israel, we may wake up one morning and find that Israel has struck", he said. A leader in the paper calls Sarkozy's bid to mediate a deal between Syria and Israel a "refreshing change."
Irish Times Irish Times-leader Irish Times
UK Attorney General defends proposed EU law on trials in absentia
In a letter to the Times, Attorney-General Baroness Scotland of Asthal defends the proposed EU law which would force member states to recognise foreign trials in absentia and thereby force them to extradite nationals. She claims that "the new rules, widely supported by member states, strengthen legal safeguards for defendants," and would "help to ensure that people who deliberately evade their trial because they have gone to another member state do not escape justice".
Telegraph Times-Baroness Scotland Open Europe Briefing note
European Parliament urges action against "sexist" images in the media
The European Parliament has voted in favour of a report calling for national media monitoring bodies to be set up to deal with stereotypes in advertising and media, particularly degrading depictions of women. The vote is not legally binding but it could be used by governments to justify the biggest shake-up in the industry for years. The rules could target any campaigns deemed "sexist".
Telegraph Daily Mail Daily Mirror Brand Republic Hollywood Reporter Telegraaf Telegraph
EU gives blessing for Italy's Roma fingerprint scheme
EUobserver reports that Italy's plan to fingerprint Roma people - including children - has been give the green light from the European Commission, with Brussels' experts suggesting that the controversial measures are not discriminatory or in breach of EU standards. A Commission spokesman told journalists that the practice proposed by Italian authorities earlier this year is only aimed at identifying persons "who cannot be identified in any other way" and excludes the collection of "data relating to ethnic origin or the religion of people." The Italian government welcomed the move, but Hungarian Roma liberal MEP Viktoria Mohacsi said: "I find it most strange that, contrary to the commission statement claiming compliance with the EU law, the fingerprinting procedure seemed to be applied exclusively to Roma, which I cannot interpret otherwise than a discriminatory treatment targeting one specific ethnic group."
Russia/Georgia round-up
On a visit to Georgia yesterday US Vice-President Dick Cheney "delivered a bellicose warning to Russia", according to the Times, promising that the country will one day join the Nato alliance.
Deutsche Welle reports that EU Foreign Ministers are holding informal talks in France today in order to "review the whole range of the EU's relationship" with Russia and Georgia in order to see where it could "reinforce" its current policies, according to the French government.
The FT reports that Russia's central bank intervened heavily to support the rouble on Thursday as analysts said $21bn of foreign capital might have been pulled out of the country as Moscow paid the price for its conflict with Georgia.
In the Telegraph Con Coughlin argues that: "far from being cowed by the international condemnation it has received for its dramatic intervention in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, this is just the start of Russia's quest to establish a new era of imperial glory."
Meanwhile, Le Monde reports that the EU will propose an "association agreement" with Ukraine during an EU-Ukraine summit on Tuesday next week, despite disagreements among member states over the exact nature of the agreement. The French EU Presidency has assured Germany and the Benelux countries that the proposal will not open the way for Ukraine's automatic accession to the EU. Le Monde also reports that Commission President Jose Barroso has told Serbia it could be an official candidate for EU entry from 2009 "if everything goes as planned."
Telegraph Coughlin Times DW FT Le Monde Le Monde 2
The Economist Europe edition carries a cover depicting the EU as a wobbling jelly for its response to Russia
A leader notes that, "In early August Mr Putin would not have dared imagine that Russia could invade and partially occupy a neighbour for the first time since the cold war, let alone recognise South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states--and meet such a wobble."
"Thus the second casualty, after wretched Georgia, is the idea of a common European foreign and security policy. This was supposed to be a morally superior combination of the soft power of Europe's economic attraction (morally superior, of course, to trigger-happier America) with an occasional harder edge only in the lawless bits of the world beyond Europe's shores. After Georgia's folly, not even the United States was proposing to take on Russian tanks as they rolled in. Yet how quickly talk of sending EU troops to uphold the ceasefire that Russia was flouting died away. Instead, civilian EU monitors--not even the paramilitary police Europeans claim to be their speciality and who might protect Georgian villagers from South Ossetian militias--may eventually, if Russia agrees, join those from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, a body to which Russia belongs. Such a collective Euro-shrug only stores up trouble, since there are other places where Russia enjoys fomenting bother."
Numerous blogs pick up on reported EU plans to regulate blogs. EUreferendum argues that "the commission hates blogs, holding them - and the internet in general - partly responsible for the success of the 'no' campaign in Ireland."
Iain Dale EUreferendum Telegraph Hannan
Economist says eurozone is a "ticking time bomb"
In a recently released report prominent Belgian economist Ivan Van de Cloot argues that the eurozone is a "ticking timebomb" because of the lack of interstate money flows. He points at Ireland and specifically at Spain, citing calculations which show that Spain would need a 500 billion euro injection to cure its housing crisis. This could be provided by an interest rate cut, devaluation or an IMF injection. He argues that neither option is possible as Spain has given away its capability of solving its crisis by joining the eurozone.
Paul de Grauwe: "ECB to blame for euro appreciation bubble that causes economic downturn"
Monetary economist Paul De Grauwe writes in the FT that the ECB is partly to blame for the economic downturn, not because of its interest rate policy but primarily because of its malign neglect of the exchange rate, which has been the biggest factor behind the sharp deceleration of growth. He calls the appreciation of the euro since 2001 "a bubble driven by speculation gone wild" and calls for the ECB to intervene in the foreign exchange market.
The EU has hailed the decision of Turkish president Abdullah Gul to go to Armenia on Saturday as a "historic and highly symbolic visit," expressing hopes that it constitutes a first step in the normalisation of tense relations between the two countries.
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